Category Archives: Paul

December 3, 2013 · 21:13

DIY Knee Surgery

I don’t think Rube Goldberg knew what he was starting.

1. Start with a long day at work for The Long Suffering Wife

2. This leads to a strong desire to not cook dinner

3. Add a desire for Chinese food

4. Make call for delivery

5. Settle back to relax while waiting

6. Allow cat to sit on my lap, as she does

7. Allow dog to sit on floor in front of The Long Suffering Wife, as she does

8. Wait forty-five minutes

9. Have delivery guy ring the doorbell

10. Have dog go absolutely bananas because SOMEBODY RANG THE DOORBELL, as she does

11. Have cat successfully recognize dog’s barking as the proper launch authorization code for an immediate departure for Low Earth Orbit

12. Launch cat from the preferred position (my lap)

13. Apply tourniquet to my bleeding leg

photo14. Apologize to everyone for putting a picture of my leg on the internet

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Filed under Cats, Health, Paul

November 24, 2013 · 21:11

Tech Support For Mom

I’m pretty tech savvy, which leads to all kinds of “Can you fix my computer?” type questions. It goes with the territory.

Then there’s my mom.

Mom has never been a tech person. Mom has always been a practical joker. This leads to some interesting conversations where I’m never quite sure if she’s pulling my leg, totally clueless, or both. Today would be a good example.

Mom has a satellite TV setup and she wanted to watch all of the KC Chiefs’ football games this year, so she paid for the NFL package. Almost every week this season, I’ve gotten a call asking what channel the game is on. Sometimes it’s because she’s looking for it at 1:00 when the game doesn’t start until 4:00. Or the other way around. Last week the same question, but this time the game was at 8:30. She’s looking for the game on CBS, when it’s on NBC. That sort of thing.

Today I got a call because she wasn’t getting the Chiefs game, seeing a different game instead. Turns out that she was watching the local CBS feed, while the KC/San Diego game was also a “local” game, but for different markets. There was some confusion over this, where it seemed to me that she kept turning it back to the CBS affiliate or to ESPN or to the NFL Network. I kept trying to explain that there should be a whole block of channels, probably up in the higher-numbered pay-per-view and premium channels, where channel N would have Game A, channel N+1 would have Game B, Channel N+2 would have Game C, and so on. She just had to find that block of channels and pick the Chiefs game.

Still no go. She wasn’t understanding what I was describing and didn’t know how to search the listings. (DirecTV does have some sort of search function or directory channel, right?)

I was online and she wasn’t.  (There’s a good reason she wasn’t. Mom doesn’t have a computer, pad, or smartphone. I’m not even sure she has a cell phone. No email, word processing, social media, games, photos — nada! The Internet and Mom are not on speaking terms.) So I pulled up the DirecTV web page and tried to search for her. For the record, at least on an iPad, the DirecTV site sucks when it comes to trying to search for a specific program.

Fine, I had the webpage for display of the channel lineup, current show, and shows for the next two or three hours. We’ll do it the old fashioned way, I’ll just scroll through hundreds and hundreds of channel listings looking for this mysterious NFL block that I knew had to be there. (It’s in the low 700’s.)

In the process of getting there, I’m talking to myself and I’m wondering if DirecTV carries NASA-TV on one of their channels. I’m a huge fan of NASA-TV and when Time-Warner dropped it here a few years ago I did my best to be politely annoying at every opportunity, wondering when they could put it back on and why they had dropped it to begin with. I watch a LOT of NASA-TV. (Still scrolling through the channel listings.)

Mom asks what I’m talking about. I tell her that I was wondering about NASA-TV. “Never heard of it,” Mom says.

“Really? NASA?”

“Never heard of it.”

Okay, maybe I’m not enunciating or we have a bad connection. “NASA, the guys who put people on the moon? The space shuttle?” (Still scrolling through the channel listings.)

“Oh, right, I know them.”

“Okay, they have a channel you can watch that I like.”

“Oh, no,” Mom says, “I have a Samsung.”

Count backwards from ten. Slowly. “No, Mom, I’m not saying NASA makes TVs. I’m saying that they have a channel you can watch with space stuff.”

“Don’t I have DirecTV?”

Again, take a deep breath. Count backwards from ten. Slowly. In German. I’ll (foolishly) try again. (Still scanning the channel lineup.) “No, Mom, DirecTV is the service provider that you pay to get the signal that goes into your Samsung TV. You have a lot of channels on there, like CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, CNN, ESPN, HBO, and so on, right? NASA-TV is one of those channels.”

“Never heard of them.”

Deep, deep sigh. When working tech support it’s not nice to get frustrated and start yelling at the customers. This is doubly true when the customer is your mother. Fortunately, at this point I found the channel carrying the Chiefs game (#707). Mom changed the channel, found her game, and I was able to get off the phone and take a deep breath.

The Long Suffering Wife came in to watch the game, having missed the conversation with Mom and wondering why I was looking pissed. I started relaying the details. As soon as I got to the “I have a Samsung” line, she starts cracking up. As in, she might fall out of her chair type cracking up. That gets me laughing as I realize how silly the whole conversation was. When I mention the “Don’t I have DirecTV” line, the laughter just gets worse.

An hour or so later my son calls from Germany and we’re talking about the game. I mention the conversation I had with Mom. When I get to those lines, The Long Suffering Wife again starts laughing like crazy, my son is laughing as well, and I’m off the deep end again.

Later on, when I checked with Mom to see if she was okay with me telling this story, she claims that the “I have a Samsung” line was a deliberate joke. Well, she got me good if it was. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. In my defense, it’s pretty tough to tell the difference between her being confused and her being a prankster.

Wait… Maybe she’s been doing that all along! Maybe this has all been a diabolical plot of hers, a fifty-year performance art piece to “play dumb” and see how long she can keep me falling for it! Decade after decade of her testing me and seeing if she can drive me insane! When I was a teenager I was sure that she was, but now I know it!!

Well done, Mom! Well done!

P.S. — FYI, Mom’s fine with me sharing the story. But she has no idea what a “blog” is. I wasn’t going to open another can of worms. I’ll print out a copy and snail mail it to her. WITH AN ENVELOPE AND A STAMP! (How barbaric.)

P.P.S. — For the record, the DirecTV channel lineup search works just fine on my desktop. Maybe on an iPad there’s an app you’re supposed to use instead of going to their web page.

P.P.P.S. — NASA-TV is on Channel #346 on DirecTV. HEAR THAT, MOM? CHANNEL #346!

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Filed under Entertainment, Family, KC Chiefs, Paul

November 22, 2013 · 16:45

I Was At Home, In The Basement

As so many people are doing today, I’ve been remembering where I was fifty years ago, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

I was seven, in second grade in a Catholic school in Kansas City, Kansas. For some reason, possibly a cold or some other ailment, I was at home. My father was at work, my next younger brother would have been at school, my oldest sister would have been at kindergarten. Four other siblings would have been in the house, the youngest only six months old, and my mother was in one of those rare moments when she wasn’t pregnant. (I’m the oldest of eight kids, the last one born in September, 1964.)

I was alone in the basement that my father had converted to a family room. The laundry room was also down there. I remember my mother coming down the stairs off and on to check on me, but I have no recollection of any of my siblings around. This may have been in part because I was sick and we were trying to limit the plague’s spread through the family (a futile effort, I’m sure). The other factor in isolating me was that I was supposed to be studying.

As a good Catholic boy, I was studying my doctrine lessons for an upcoming religious test of some sort. I’m pretty sure I had gotten First Communion in first grade, so by the middle of second grade I was probably studying for a Confirmation test. The television on for some reason, possibly for my mother to watch, since I was supposed to be studying and I didn’t watch daytime programming.

As everyone says, “I’ll never forget”. I’ll never forget sitting on the couch in that basement rec room, studying, when they broke in with a special bulletin. My mother was upstairs at the time and I remember running to get her to tell her about it. She came back downstairs and for the rest of the day we watched the grainy black & white images that we’ve all seen so many times. Walter Cronkite, the frantic live reports, conflicting news, finally the word that the president was dead, and the news that LBJ had been sworn in. I remember the funeral coverage. I remember watching live as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24th.

As part of the news coverage for today, NPR has a great audio clip (here) of radio communications between Air Force One, the Situation Room in Washington, and a plane (Aircraft 972) which was two hours out of Honolulu on its way to Japan. That plane carried Secretary of State Dean Rusk along with five other members of Kennedy’s Cabinet, so one can understand the concern for that plane and its passengers. If the assassination of the president was part of an attempted coup or other attack on our government by foreign agents, that plane would obviously be a target. It’s fascinating to listen to these recordings, hearing these men trying to do their jobs and figure out what to do on the fly in the middle of an enormous crisis.

It’s one of those moments. I’ll never forget.

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November 10, 2013 · 19:53

How I Try To Kill Houseplants

Some people have “green thumbs” — mine are black. But they’re getting better.

I like to have plants on our front porch – it makes the place look welcoming and homey!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASo I periodically go buy some flowers and plants, water them religiously, and it looks great!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAA month or so later it looks like this, no matter how religiously I water and feed and care for them.

The most tortured example of this “skill” of mine is a poor philodendron that I have tried to kill repeatedly, only to nurse it back to health at the last second, only to then neglect it to the point of near death again so that the cycle can continue. A houseplant web site (Dave’s Garden) says about philodendrons, “The easiest plant to grow, you can almost point and the plant will start to grow for you! The heart shaped leaves can take a lot of abuse and are not fussy at all.” Obviously Dave hasn’t ever met me.

After about a dozen cycles through the “almost dead” to “feeling better” to “almost dead” pattern, about a year ago this poor, abused plant (which you can see in one of its healthier phases at the far right of the first picture above) was down to one single leaf on one single vine.

2010-05-10 Front Porch Flowers (Cropped)Here you can see it on the down side of a cycle, but still with at least a couple of leaves. It went downhill from here. Nonetheless, at that point I again jumped on the Good Gardener bandwagon and started nursing it back to health.

2013-11-04 'Mathusela' PlantHere it is today, not quite thriving, but again on the way back with at least one foot (or vine) in the land of the living.

This is why I think that the universe is filled with life in every bizarre niche, nook, and cranny possible. If this stubborn little plant can survive all of the neglect and abuse that I inflict on it, just think what we might find under some semi-moist rock on Mars, floating in an ocean under the ice on Callisto, or even swimming in a pool of complex hydrocarbons on Europa!

 

 

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Filed under Castle Willett, Paul, Photography

November 5, 2013 · 15:25

Movember (NOT!)

I mentioned yesterday that I was not participating in this year’s Movember “celebration”. While it’s a fine cause and a charity to be supported, it’s not for me to participate in again. Yesterday I said that I had let it grow out last year and the results were memorable, but not in a good way. I just went looking for pictures and discovered that it was two years ago that I participated. Whatever.

2011-11-11 Movember ResultsEleven days of growth. Being out of focus doesn’t help quite as much as one might hope.

2011-11-30 Movember ResultsDecember 1st. Vaguely Captain Kangaroo-ish, but definitely not my best look.

Universal Response To MovemberThe world’s response, and the reason that I’m not doing it again.

You’re welcome.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

October 26, 2013 · 22:28

Open Lines Of Communication

GIt occurs to me that I have not yet put additional contact information on the site, should someone wish (for example) to send a private e-mail about something regarding the site. Or perhaps someone wants to see if I write similar nonsense on Twitter. (Spoiler alert — I do.)

First of all, on e-mail you can get me at any time using:

  • pwillett@ix.netcom.com (my original, ancient account that’s still my primary email account)
  • momdude@gmail.com (my “personal” Gmail account)
  • PaulJWillett@gmail.com (my “business” Gmail account)

On the more pubic and “conventional” social media sites, almost all of my accounts have this picture on them as my ID:Paul J Willett

Paul in a happy, happy place

Yes, of course I’m on Facebook, as “Paul Willett”. There are more than one “Paul Willett” out there (not quite as bad as being a “John Smith”), but I’m the “Paul Willett” in Los Angeles, California with that photo. I read and post on Facebook a couple of times a day. It’s a primary channel of communication for staying in contact with family, high school friends, college friends, and friends from science fiction fandom.

I’m on Twitter as “@momdude56”. Occasional rapid-fire or live-tweeting silliness, 140 characters or less at a time. Twitter is rapidly becoming my primary source of news and updates on what’s happening with things I’m passionate about, like the space program, astronomy, writing, my favorite sports teams, and so on.

For business type contacts (you say you’re looking for a jack-of-all-trades type accountant or controller with over twenty-seven years of experience?), you can get me on Linkedin at www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-willett/4/156/482 (there’s that picture again!)

In the last month I’ve just started an Instagram account. You can find a growing album of pictures there at “momdude56”.

Let’s stay in touch!

 

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September 3, 2013 · 20:06

A Pint Low

Today I donated blood at the local American Red Cross donation site. This is not by any means the first time that I’ve done this, nor will it be the last, but it had been over two years since I have been able to donate due to some policies of the Red Cross which I don’t agree with. (I hear that they’re not the ones making up these rules, but the CDC is.)

20130903-200617.jpgIt’s funny to me these days that I’m a regular blood and platelet donor, given the need for needles and poking involved. As a child, when we would all get taken for our vaccinations, I had to be carried kicking, screaming, and crying into the clinic. As the oldest of eight kids and supposedly the one who was supposed to be setting the example, this were not my most gracious moments. A stint in the hospital for an emergency appendectomy when I was thirteen, along with all of those IV’s and shots, left me no longer upset by needles.

I think that I first donated blood when I was a college student, but I know that I started donating regularly when I got involved in science fiction fandom. Robert Heinlein, another Grand Master in the field and one of my favorite authors, was a huge proponent of blood donations since he had a rare blood type. Beginning in the mid 1970’s, because of Heinlein’s efforts in fandom, blood drives at conventions became fairly common. While not at every con, most larger cons and annual recurring cons schedule blood drives.

A few years back, since I also have a slightly rare blood type, I was asked by the local Red Cross office if I would consider donating platelets. For those who have never done it, platelet donations are similar to whole blood donations, but generally involve two needles instead of one and can take up to two hours instead of fifteen to twenty minutes. Your blood is removed from your body, centrifuged to separate the platelets out, and then your blood (minus the platelets) is pumped back into you. Where whole blood can only be donated ever eight weeks, platelets can be donated every two weeks. They do a great job of keeping you comfy while donating platelets, keeping a big supply of DVDs to watch and putting you into a comfy chair with a screen and headphones. The downside is that if you’re properly hydrated it’s tough (at least for me) to not have to pee for two hours, and you can’t stop in the middle of the donation, so sometimes it gets uncomfortable and awkward. The other mild side effect comes from an anti-coagulant that the use due to the length of time that your blood is being pumped in and out; it can leave a funky taste in your mouth.

A couple of years back, I was donating platelets about every three weeks, and occasionally donating whole blood just to give myself an eight-week break. Then to my surprise, I was “deferred”, told that I couldn’t donate for a year. The reason was that the Long-Suffering Wife and I had taken a cruise to the Mexican west coast. Cabo San Lucas and Puerta Vallarta were no problem, but apparently there was a case of malaria reported within 100 miles of Mazatlan, so I couldn’t donate blood for a year for fear that I might have been exposed.

Uh-huh.

The year went by (while I still got calls a couple times a month from the ARC asking if I would like to schedule an appointment to donate) and finally I went back in. And again I was deferred for another year. It seems that in the intervening months I had gone to Asia, and while China and Japan were fine, there was a problem with being in Korea. I triggered their system by flying in and out of the country through the airport at Inchon, and Inchon is a no-no for exposure to malaria. The fact is that I never left the building or was exposed to the outside in Inchon – I flew in, stayed in the terminal long enough to get my luggage, got on a train in the terminal, and left for Seoul, then reversed the process five days later. I was told that being in Seoul was not a problem, but that Inchon was, regardless of the fact that I was there for less than an hour each time and I never went outside. No more donations for another year. No exceptions.

Uh-huh again.

I can go off on a rant about the logic behind those policies some other time (in fact, I know that I will!) but the second time I just figured it was their loss. I still got called on a regular basis and emails about once a week asking me to schedule a donation, but they just got ignored. I really think that they can use some better database management on their calling setup, but I haven’t gotten that job yet.

Now the second year is up and it was time to donate again. I was half expecting some other problem, and I offered to donate platelets instead of whole blood since platelets are more valuable and can be donated more often, but they wanted the whole blood. OK, “not my float!” (Remember that phrase as well…)

In the tradition of the great Robert Heinlein, let me encourage all of you to donate blood (or platelets!) if you can. Help to save a life! There are restrictions if you’re too young or too thin or if you’ve been exposed to certain diseases or taken certain medications or if you’ve ever participated in any “risky” behavior. You will be asked some rather blunt questions about your sex life and possible drug use, since keeping the blood supply clear of the AIDS virus is still critical.

But if you’re not in any of the groups that they consider risky, please take a look at donating either at a local blood drive or at a local Red Cross center. If you’ve never donated and have concerns or questions about the process, there’s a lot of good information here on the Red Cross site. If you’re concerned about needles, don’t be – even a world-class wussy-boy like me can do it.

Fortunately, today’s donation went without a hitch, easy peasy. (Well, at least my donation was easy.) I was in and out in less than an hour, and the actual donation itself only took about fifteen minutes.

It was a good day to be a fast bleeder.

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Filed under Fandom, Health, Not My Float, Paul

August 6, 2013 · 19:53

One Hundred Days

Back on April 29th I created this blog and posted the first article, “A Time Of Changes“. At that time I wrote:

It’s time to find my voice and let it out of my head so it can play with those of you who wish to join in the conversation with me.

What will we talk about? Anything I feel passionately about…but I’m sure common topics (in no particular order) will be the space program, science, books, music, family, sports, stupid people, politics, amazing people, photography, flying, humor, and travel. For starters.

Today is the 100th consecutive day of this blog and this will be the 104th posted article. Looking at where the blog appears to be in terms of the number of people reading it, subscribing to it, and commenting on it, I’m both very satisfied and very hungry for more.

When I started I had almost no idea of what to expect in terms of participation by others. I figured that it would be nice to have others joining the conversation, but the main purpose of the blog initially was to give myself a structured place to write, and to force myself to write and be creative every day. In that respect it has most certainly worked.

I’ve seen some themes develop that I like a lot thematically. I like the way WLTSTF looks and feels so far.

  • I like the “Odds & Sods” articles as a way to periodically mention small items and update the news on previous articles or events.
  • I like the “Random Blatherations” articles as a way to put a pair of defibrillator paddles to my writing muse’s imaginary chest on days when I really don’t feel like writing.
  • I really, really like the way I’ve gotten involved in Chuck Wendig’s weekly Flash Fiction Challenges. I’m not sure the words coming out there are golden yet, but a couple of the little pieces I’ve written there I like a lot.
  • I like that I’m reviewing books that I’m reading. I know that I’ve got a long way to go in finding my voice there and not just doing glorified high school book reports, but it’s a start.
  • I like the articles on astrophotography and the way they’re getting me to get my telescopes and cameras out again. I like writing those articles and sharing the pictures that come out of them.
  • I like sharing my other pictures with everyone, such as the flower pictures, flying pictures, critter pictures, fireworks pictures, and so on. (I take a lot of pictures!)

When I started posting articles I started to get total strangers reading and subscribing to WLTSTF. Granted, I rarely (if ever) get more than a dozen or so views a day and I understand that a lot of the interest comes from other bloggers in the WordPress community. But it doesn’t matter how folks get introduced to WLTSTF, what matters is that they seem to occasionally like what they see and there has been a steady stream of interest.

I obviously hope that interest continues and that it continues to grow. I value the feedback I get and the comments people offer, whether they come from the blog comments, Facebook, or Twitter. I think it would be a good thing if over time WLTSTF became a place where there’s a lively discussion and lots of civil and intelligent interaction.

So thanks to everyone for sticking with me for the first one hundred days. I’m looking forward to the next hundred and more days, hoping that you’ll continue to come along for the ride and occasionally throw your two cents in.

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Filed under Paul, Writing

July 30, 2013 · 17:32

The Forgotten Final For The Forgotten Class

A few days ago I mentioned here (at the end of the second blatheration) the common “anxiety dream” or nightmare that many students have. It involves suddenly realizing that you have a class that you desperately need in order to graduate but you completely forgot about. It’s now time for the final exam and you never went to a single class, you’re 100% unprepared, but YOU MUST ACE THIS TEST!!

Like many college students, I would occasionally have such an anxiety dream when I was an undergraduate, more than thirty years ago at UC Irvine. But one year, circumstances and a shot in the dark conspired to let me beat that subconscious torture, and I’ve rarely had such dreams again.

It was probably some time in my junior year when the classes I took all coincidentally had their finals on Monday and Tuesday. This totally sucked because I had to take four or five finals in just two days. On Tuesday night following the barrage of intense cramming and testing, I had a bad anxiety dream of this variety.

When I remembered the dream on Wednesday morning, something from an earlier Psychology 101 class popped up. It concerned treating phobias by aggressively forcing the patient to confront what they were phobic about. Someone’s terrified of spiders? Get them a tarantula! Are they catatonic just thinking about getting in an airplane? Take them skydiving! That sort of thing.

I wondered if this kind of technique might work in dealing with these recurring nightmares. I had three days coming up in which I had no pressure, no stress, no finals.

What if I went and took a final exam for a class that I had never been to or never studied for? While it wouldn’t be a class that was required, I could easily make sure that I wouldn’t even know what the class was until I got into the auditorium for the test. What did I have to lose?

This obviously wouldn’t work for an upper division class, since they usually had only a couple dozen students at most. If you hadn’t been there for a single class but showed up for the final, you would stick out like a sore thumb. But for a lower division “core” class, it would be a piece of cake.

The “core” classes are taught in huge, tiered auditoriums seating hundreds of students. Also, the tests there are often multiple choice using some kind of Scantron form, possibly with a couple of essay questions that would get written out in a standard exam notebook.

The finals schedule was like scheduling for the movie theaters – something like a round at 8:00 AM, a round at 11:00 AM, a round at 2:00 PM, and a round at 5:00 PM. All of the major buildings had at least one auditorium. I got a couple of exam notebooks, a couple of Scantron forms, a couple of #2 pencils, and just showed up at an auditorium in one of the Fine Arts buildings. (I was a physics major.)

I was not disappointed. There was a final there and it was 100% multiple choice, no essay questions. A couple hundred questions, some kind of art history class, maybe “History of European Art 101”. No one paid me the slightest attention when I grabbed a seat near the back.

It was a little bit like playing a really long game of “Jeopardy” with just one category and no little ditty to hum along to at the end. I have always been an avid reader with pretty broad interests and a good head for (useless) facts, so my answers weren’t completely picked at random. I could often confidently eliminate one or two of the answers, which upped the odds.

I didn’t do anything to try to make a mockery of the whole thing, like filling in bubbles at random and finishing the test in the first ten minutes of the two hours allowed, thus freaking out everyone else in the room. I took my time and did my best. Yes, there were a lot of questions where I was guessing at random, but there was no pressure. Who cared if I got every single answer wrong?

The next week I went to check how I had done. In the hallway outside of the professor’s office was a computer printout with student ID numbers, scores, and grades. They were in order by student last names, which weren’t shown for privacy reasons, making the list look like it was in random order. Way down at the bottom, following a couple of blank lines, was my student ID number and score, with a big question mark drawn next to it along with the notation, “See me”.

The entirely logical assumption was that some legitimate member of the class had foolishly filled in the student ID number incorrectly on the Scantron form and now was in danger of not getting credit for the class. I never heard from anyone, so I guess it never occurred to them to work backwards and find the student associated with the actual student ID number given. That just wouldn’t make any sense.

And by most normal standards they were correct, it didn’t make any sense. Who in the world goes and takes a final exam for a class that they never took? Well, I did. And it worked. I have almost never had that particular recurring nightmare again. (I have other recurring nightmares to deal with, but that’s another story.)

Oh, how did I do? I don’t remember the exact score, but it was less than 50% correct, somewhere in the high 40% range. But I remember getting a C- since they were grading on the curve. That score would have passed the class.

That score also meant that I did better than a significant number of students who had actually taken the class and needed the grade.

Those guys are probably still having nightmares.

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Filed under Art, Paul

July 26, 2013 · 20:27

I Was The Rock (Updated)

(A truncated, partial first draft of this got posted by mistake while I was writing it a few minutes ago. I apologize if you got a funky, messed up version in your email. This is the correct version. I guess next time I’ll know better than to try to write long posts on my iPad while watching the ball game.)

When I was a pre-teen in the late 1960’s I was active in the Boy Scouts in the Chicago suburbs. We did the usual activities – hiking, camping, merit badges, and so on. When summer came around we had the opportunity to go off to summer camp in Wisconsin for a week or two weeks. I think I was 12 when I first went.

On the first morning I was introduced to an aspect of Boy Scout summer camp which threatened to turn my two weeks there into a living hell.

We had several great activities planned for later in our stay, including a couple of canoe trips and daily swimming opportunities. In order to make sure we could participate safely, we had a swimming test.

As Bill Cosby so eloquently points out in his classic “Niagara Falls” routine, the water in our lake had just melted that morning and was at 33F. (That’s how my 12-year-old brain remembers it and I’m sticking to that story.) We weren’t given any warning, just herded into the water among the ice floes and told to see if we could swim out past the dock, past the rope, to the raft, and back.

I had never had any formal swimming lessons of any kind. When we had lived in Kansas City in grade school we had always gone to “the pool” a lot during the summer, but I had always just puttered around in the shallow end. If I was occasionally brave enough to go off of the diving board (by which I mean timidly falling off the end six feet from the edge, no actual diving involved) I would furiously paddle and flail back to the safety of the wall. Not to mention that the water was about 75F, crystal clear, and heavily chlorinated.

Finding myself in freezing lake water with mud and plants between my toes and snapping turtles and walleyes and muskies and barracuda ready to attack, I did not do well. I flailed and paddled as best I could, but when I thought I would go into hypothermia and shock and drown at any second, I was told by the lifeguard to just stand up and walk to the beach. I had made it about thirty feet and was in about three feet of water.

When everyone had taken their tests, we were sorted out into our different classifications. Those who had made it out to the raft and back (a hundred yards or so each way) were deemed to be “Sharks”. Those who could make it out to the rope and back were “Trout”. Those who could only go out to the dock were “Perch”. I was in my very own special group. I was a “Rock”.

I resigned myself to not going into the water other than wading a bit when we would have daily swims, and I would probably have to wear two life vests when we went on canoe trips. It was humiliating, but I could live with that.

The reality was far worse. The Boy Scouts of America could not allow any of their scouts to not know how to swim, and swim well. The Perch and I were told that we would have daily swimming lessons until we were Sharks. At six freakin’ AM every single morning. In that water with rime ice on the beach.

I have never been so miserable in my life. But they made it quite clear that they were serious. They wanted to teach me the crawl, the back stroke, the breast stroke, and the side stroke. I was not going to be able to get out of those classes until I could do all four strokes, float for five minutes, and make it all the way out to the raft and back using some combination of strokes. Paddling and flailing were not allowed.

Since they were going to be sadistic and cruel about it, I realized (to quote Frost) that “the only way out is through”, so I learned to swim. It took about four days, but I was actually one of the first in the remedial group to pass their test and get out of that 6AM class.

This did in fact serve me well later in life, particularly when I was a midshipman at Annapolis. (The Navy is almost as gung ho about swimming as the Boy Scouts are.) But I have never, ever liked swimming since then and I hate being in cold water.

Give me a nice Jacuzzi any day!

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