Smell Like You Mean It

Our apartment stinks. It has stunk for weeks actually. Not so much our apartment but our building in general. The smell was strong, but honestly not offensive. It was sort of a medicinal smell, like someone was busy sterilizing a wound. My wife was convinced it was mothballs. Not terribly familiar with the smell of mothballs, I trusted her nose. It must be mothballs. But mothballs made no more sense than wound sterilization. Our apartments aren't fancy, but they're not crawl spaces. It was hard to imagine someone needing mothballs let alone enough of them to keep insects from devouring the entire building.

A couple of days ago a note was taped to our door. It read, "URGENT: There will be a meeting at 5:00 p.m. discussing the offensive smell in your building. We will meet in the hallway." After reading the note, I saw no sense in urgency. Why would anyone willingly meet with a bunch of people who can't wait to tell him he stinks. But the meeting was held and out of the six apartments in our building four tenants showed up. My wife and three of our neighbors met out in the hall and agreed the smell was an issue and discussed the next step. The plan was to notify the maintenance guy about the issue. His solution was to write another note and tape it on everybody's door. It read, "There is an offensive smell coming from one of the apartments in your building. It smells like mothballs. Please remove the source of the smell from the premises."

The note didn't work. The smell remained. I wasn't surprised I guess, in fact, I still wasn't convinced it was mothballs. The strength of the smell was too powerful. Someone would have to have a bathtub full of them to be able to permeate every other room in the building. It was a complete mystery to me. Luckily, one of our neighbors across the hall had a father that seemed to be a detective of some sort.

While my wife and I were leaving our apartment yesterday afternoon, we met them in the hallway. The woman had just had a baby and was terrified that whatever was causing the smell was poison and her baby was in danger. Her father was convinced it was a meth lab. "This is what it smells like when people cook meth," he told us. I wanted to ask him how the hell he could be so sure about a thing like that, but I could see the panic in their faces, and I knew it was no use trying to calm them down. Nothing is worse than two paranoid people reinforcing each other's craziest fears. So we left as quickly as we could. There was no telling what these two worry warts were capable of.

They decided to call the cops. I tried to imagine the old man's conversation with the officer on the phone.

"Hello, what is your emergency?"

"There's an odd smell in our hallway."

"I'm sorry?"

"A smell. It smells like mothballs."

"Sir, remain calm, we're on our way."

By the time we got back, we had missed all the action. It was indeed mothballs. Apparently the police officer and our building manager met our downstairs neighbor Earl, a fellow grad student. His apartment was covered in mothballs. He had them everywhere. Though strange to be sure, I still felt bad for the guy. Why he felt he needed his apartment littered with mothballs, I will never know. But to feel, however briefly, that you were a about to be arrested for stinking was probably unpleasant. I suppose this could have all been avoided if we took the time to meet one another around here. Now, all I know of Earl downstairs is that he's sort of crazy. And sadly it's likely to stay that way. Unless I need to store some blankets.

The House Always Wins

At work, we are all chipping in to win 172 million dollars. I am well aware this will never happen but I had to chip in. I had to. I can vividly picture the rest of my officemates winning, then coming into work the next morning and quitting. Written all over their faces as they pass my cubicle will be, Not so smug now are you asshole? I'm not proud of this but I tend to have lapses where I sincerely think I could win the lottery. I think, Sure, others deserve it more than you, but you could really use it right now. I think about how I don't quite know what I want to choose for a career, and hey, wouldn't it be nice to not have to worry about money? You could have your pick of profession, and even if you suck, your kids won't starve. This is actually what keeps me from gambling. I know how far these illusions could take me. I can picture myself spending my lunch breaks scratching away at tickets thinking that if I buy them all, I'm bound to win right? This mentality runs in the family.

I had spent the year going to school in Montana, and on my last day there I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of my father. The plan was simple, he would drive out, we would go on a hike and then split my belongings between our cars and caravan back to Wisconsin. In my excitement to leave Montana I didn't realize what a mistake I was making by asking my dad to come out and help me move. I was essentially inviting a compulsive gambler to drive through the most tantalizing stretch of United States Interstate imaginable. As some of you may have experienced, the drive from Wisconsin to Montana has nothing much but fields and gas stations, nothing to keep you from dozing. However, just as you're about to fall asleep, you see what looks to be a mirage in the distance. Are those lights? Civilization?, you ask yourself. Sure enough, two miles later you are driving past a pretty sad looking casino, with a full parking lot.

At the time, I was not thinking about the poor man and the gauntlet I threw down. Instead, I was itching to get back to Wisconsin, where I was missed, and could feel important. Montana is a great place for anyone who likes the outdoors. The first Montanan I met told me a little bit about what people do for fun there.

"Well basically, me and my buddies go out in the woods, grab a six-pack, and sit around and shoot shit". The guy's name was Chris, and to his credit, he was immediately embarrassed. "Man, you're gonna call home, and tell your friends, You won't believe it, I met the biggest hick today." Which was true. Not all the people in Montana were as level headed as Chris though, and after a year there, the majesty of the mountains had wore off. It had become increasingly clear I didn't want anything to do with the state. I was excited to get back to the modest midwest.

Just as my excitement was at its peak, I got a phone call from my dad. He seemed to be tiptoeing around something.

"How are you son?"

"Good Dad, where are you?"

"Well, I ran out of gas."

"No way. Well, where are you now?"

"I'm at a gas station."

Great, I thought, problem solved.

"So what's the problem?"

"Well I don't have the money for gas and they won't believe me when I tell them I'd pay them when we came back through."

"How do you not have money? Mom said she gave you plenty for gas?"

"Well...Can you come and get me and we'll go for that hike?"

"Where are you? Are you close?"

"I'm in Miles City."

"Dad that's four hours away, if I come and get you, we can't come back here."

"Oh. OK, well I'm at the Conoco here just off the highway."

Before leaving Wisconsin my mom had given him enough money for gas, food, and a motel room if we decided not to drive straight through. So for him to end up four hours short of the halfway mark, with no money, it could only mean one thing. My dad was no match for the glitzy temptations of Interstate 94.

I was a little disappointed to say the least, and because I had a four hour drive to listen to emo music and think about how I had to leave my roomate's recliner back in the student lounge, I decided to try and needle the truth out of him. Which before I even began, I knew was futile.

"So what happened dad, mom said she gave you plenty of money."

"Well you know me son, I just started driving, and you know I was so excited I was drinking pop after pop and smoking like crazy trying to stay awake, and I just didn't notice until it was too late."

This was of course, false. Gas was still inexpensive at the time and unless he was smoking the money, it didn't add up. But in these situations I had learned it's a lot less embarrassing to just ignore reality, nod, and move on as quickly as possible. You don't want to get caught in one of my dad's excuse brainstorms. The man has never been one to admit a mistake, and never has he been caught saying something ridiculous like, "I don't know". I once made the mistake of trying to play Trivial Pursuit with him. For every question asked, he would take two minutes mumbling through completely incoherent answers before guessing so far off the mark it seems he didn't even hear the question.

Looking back on it, I suppose it wouldn't have been any better had he told me the truth. I wouldn't have understood what I do now. If you play long enough you are bound to win. Or run out of money.

Got Crabs?

My father-in-law Dave is almost as crotchety as I am. But he's got thirty years on me, so he's sort of perfected it. He came to visit us on Friday night, and after settling on seafood for dinner, my wife and I gave him the only option we knew of which was Joe's Crab Shack. We had never been, and I specifically asked Dave, "What if it's awful?" He responded by saying he was hungry enough to eat anything. So we went.

To eat at Joe's you have to be of a certain character. One who loves a good time, and the Bee Gees. Upon walking in "Staying Alive" was being blasted and we were greeted with, WELCOME TO JOE'S! from the hostess. I asked for a booth, hoping it would be quieter, and after she brought us to a seat way in the back, Dave sat down and yelled across our table, "I HATE THIS PLACE ALREADY."

"DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE", we screamed back at him.

"NO. LET'S JUST EAT".

At this point I knew it was going to be a very difficult dinner. The waitress greeted us with "ARE YOU GUYS READY TO PARTY?"

Dave was not. I immediately felt bad for the poor woman, especially when she started telling us a little bit about the place. "WELL, AS YOU CAN TELL, WE LIKE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME HERE AT JOE'S, AND WHEN YOU SEE THE STAFF GET ON THE FLOOR TO DANCE, FEEL FREE TO JOIN IN."

For some reason she kept talking to Dave, as if she misread his obvious frown and pissy attitude as someone that liked to dance in public. She asked us what we wanted to drink, and when Dave asked for a Seven-Up, she did what every waitress does, seeing as though no one drinks Seven-Up anymore, and asked "IS SPRITE OK?" Dave answered with a definitive "No." I cringed as I could see the confidence drain from her face. From that point on, it got a little awkward. I tried my damnedest to make up for Dave, by being as sweet as I possibly could to the waitress, and vowing to leave a large tip for forgiveness.

It got a little worse as we waited for our food. Every fifteen minutes the place would erupt with hoots and hollers as the wait staff marched out to the dance floor to do their routine. It was quite a sight. I get what they were doing. It was a "fun" place. I think a lot of people dig it, but it was the worst possible place for us. I remember thinking. How in the world are these people able to do this every night and keep a smile on their face? Don't get me wrong, I always very sincerely admire someone working hard at an embarrassing job, I just knew there was no way I could do it. After eating as quickly as I could, and desperately trying to will the wait staff to stop yelling things like "HOT CRAB COMING UP" as they left the kitchen, I couldn't help but wonder how we could have made such a terrible mistake in choosing a restaurant to bring my wife's dad to. The place even had staff selling T-shirts like vendors at baseball games. Weaving around the restaurant yelling out prices and tag lines from the "Joe's" clothing line.

It wasn't until we left the restaurant that I finally figured out how these confident bastards were able to perform such ridiculous tasks on behalf of their employer. I was surprised that I didn't figure it out sooner. After getting to our car, Dave realized he forgot his jacket. Not wanting to make the man go back in there, I offered to run in. As I was waiting for the hostess to bring out the jacket, one of the employees came up to me and in a pretty friendly way, asked if I had eaten. I said, "Yes, I just forgot my jacket." He turned around to straighten a rack of T-shirts they had for sale, and one minute later he turned back and asked, "Hey man, have you eaten?" Confused, I was about to answer when the hostess came back to tell me the jacket would be right up. But as she was telling me this, she was awfully close and intense, as if she wasn't sure how far away I was. And that's when it hit me. Everyone working there was completely drunk. It made perfect sense to me then. The yelling, the dancing, many of the staff wearing sunglasses indoors. It's the only way a person can do that extremely difficult job, and do it well. I wonder if that's what it would take for us to enjoy our meal. A couple of stiff drinks, and some dancing shoes.