After the meeting in the movie theater, we drove to San Onofre Beach. I had been excited for this. But after a few minutes I thought “why was I excited for this?” It’s at these events that the social structure of an organization steps fully into the light of day. I had always felt a little out of place at this company. I had made a decent effort to befriend people, and had some friendly relationships. But at these big events, you realize that the people you are closest with are usually much closer with other people, especially if you are relatively new. They go drinking with these people, maybe went to school with these people, sometimes dated these people. I felt a little left out at these events, which was a feeling I wasn’t used to; a feeling which made me wish I had put up a better effort to include people throughout my school years. But this lack of intimate work relationships didn’t concern me too much because I was married and wasn’t very interested in being friends with these people outside of work. I think many of us Mormons (including me) can be bad that way. We have a built-in social system which lends itself easily to clannishness. We have a host of popular activities, words, and conversations that we don’t engage in, and we want our friends to have kids we trust our kids with, so we don’t “venture out” too much.

My least favorite of these functions had been the celebration we had after winning the JD Power Customer Service award. After the rah-rah rally we were let loose into this very small amusement park (think of an outdoor Chuck E. Cheese, but 5 times bigger) to have our fun with free kiddie rides and games. I did my best to suppress the self-conscious feeling welling up in my throat at the weirdness of a grown man cruising around a two-bit amusement park alone in the middle of the day. It was either that or join up with a group of dudes I didn’t know well who were following around another dude I didn’t know well who was deciding what whack-a-mole type game the group would go play next. I left after half an hour.

But this day wasn’t that bad. I had been around a year by now and was closer to a couple people than on the amusement park day, and at least there was the beach. Plus I won an iPod in a raffle.

Earlier that day my cell phone ran out of batteries, so I stowed it away in my car. At around 3, I decided go to my car, turn it on to charge the battery, and listen to my messages. The first one was from Rebecca. “Hey hon, I’m at my OBGYN appointment and the Dr. says I am having regular contractions, which isn’t normal, and she wants to take me to the hospital across the street to be monitored for 20 minutes on a machine. Call me.”

Second message: “Ok, I’m at the hospital and they have me on this machine and I keep having regular contractions, and she says if it continues they might have to take me in and do a C-section. Hurry and call me back.”

Third message: Sobbing throughout: “Honeeeeeyyyy, She says they are going to do the C-section. I’m so s-s-s-cared. You need to g-g-get here!”

To be continued…

This past weekend in New York was – to use a word that is as unimaginative as it is appropriate and fitting – beautiful.  Saturday and Sunday were both sunny and cloudless, with temperatures reaching into the low 50s.  I am embarrassed and troubled by the extent to which this amazing weather raised my spirits.  An example:  Melissa and I, along with 10 friends, are signed up to run the New York Ragnar Relay in May.  I have no business running this relay, and I’m still not convinced that I’ll make it.  Because I need something to point to as proof that I had every intention of actually running the race when I inevitably pull out at the last minute, I’ve been dutifully training for the last few months.  My training has consisted of following a program that mixes running and walking, with the walking tapering off as time goes on.  Saturday’s training called for uninterrupted running for a period of time that was over twice as long as last week’s, and I was really dreading it.  Just to be safe I put some packets of ketchup in my mouth that I could bite into to make Melissa think that I was bleeding internally and should stop running immediately.

Don’t do it.

Although the run wasn’t particularly easy, it wasn’t particularly difficult, either, a fact I attribute entirely to the weather.  Lyla, Melissa and I trotted happily through Central Park, picking our way between runners and bikers and rollerbladers,  collectively remembering what life outside of winter is like.  About halfway through the run I shed my jacket, drawing tremendous contentment from the simple fact of being able to wear shorts and a t-shirt outside without being cold.

After running we came inside and did some cleaning and then prepared to go outside again for the evening.  As I got dressed I very nearly opted for flip-flops and a swimsuit, but yielded to my native caution and went with shorts and a mesh tank top.  I didn’t actually, but that’s what my mind told me to wear, because, according to my mind, “If you want to be conservative, you could call this spring, but there are a lot of people – reasonable people – who would call this summer.”  And that’s how it goes with me when it comes to spring and summer, always a full three months ahead.  I believe you should start wearing white around Valentine’s Day, and I can frequently be heard complaining about the dog days of Easter.  I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember.

Because I took this picture of myself, I accidentally cropped out my face.

Christian has rather uncharitably described the home in which we grew up as the “Himmler home.”  This joke strikes me as inapt; I’ve always thought our home had more in common with modern-day North Korea than Nazi Germany.  I’m kidding, with the exception of the rules governing the topic of wearing shorts.  Because I was always three months ahead of the weather, I wanted to start wearing shorts around Presidents Day.  In order to prevent us from asking every morning whether we could wear shorts that day, my parents instituted a hard-and-fast temperature threshold that had to be met in order to wear shorts.

Given how completely this temperature determined my happiness as a child, it’s strange to me that I now can’t recall exactly what it was.  I think it was 70 degrees, but I’m not certain.  This was clearly a stupid rule, because decisions on what to wear to school had to be made in the morning, and in Utah it doesn’t reach 70 degrees at 7 AM until August.  After several years of lobbying and hunger strikes, I believe the rule was changed to 65 degrees before, say, 9 AM, and 70 degrees any time after that.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

For whatever reason, we didn’t have one of those outside thermometers stuck to a window, so our only way of determining the temperature was to call the toll-free time and temperature number.  You’d dial the number with trembling fingers and suffer through the naming of the sponsor (usually Barnes Bank) and the reciting of the time – I don’t need to hear the time!  I have a watch! - at which point the impersonal, robotic voice would tell you whether you’d be have a fun, happy, carefree day or not.  For the first few months of spring, this phone call usually resulted in crushing defeat.  ”The time is three thirty two PM.  The temperature is thirty six degrees.  Winter is never going away.  Aslan is dead.”

It was during these months that I was forced to resort to all manner of trickery.  Sometimes I’d wear sweat pants to school, which could then be pushed up above the knee, resulting in a shorts-like feeling, if not a shorts-like appearance.  Once I realized how silly this looked I simply started taking a pair of shorts in my backpack, making a quick change in the bathroom before and after school.  This was risky business, though, as it was easy to forget to make the change once school was over.  Further, I never knew when my Mom would be wandering the halls of my school to help a sibling with their VIP Day or to fulfill a class mother assignment.

Finally, chances were good that I could run into Christian, who in those days was not a signatory to the “Don’t Tattle” treaty that was an article of faith among the three older brothers (our oldest sister, Andrea, was unpredictable, but for reason’s far more noble than Christian’s).  Because I’m writing another post on this issue, I don’t want to go into too much detail; suffice it to say that getting caught in the act of wearing shorts in sub-70 degree weather by Christian would either result in his telling my parents or my having to shell out a handsome bribe to a loathsome mercenary.

Christian.

I don’t remember in what month we’d stop checking the temperature and just automatically wear shorts; maybe May?  Now that I’m 32 I don’t have to call time and temperature to wear shorts, but I find myself jumping the gun on spring and summer in the exact same way I when I was a kid.  Which is why I rode my scooter to work today in thigh-high shorts and a half-way buttoned up Hawaiian shirt.  It felt amazing for the part of it that I was able to feel.

My firm shares our building with a very large healthcare services corporation.  I suppose it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they traffic in certain medical commodities.  But this is the first intimation I’ve ever had that they actually ship spare parts around.  This realization was both disconcerting and comforting– disconcerting to know that the shipping is done in what looks like the U.S. Mail, rather than in some high-tech refrigerated truck as you’d expect; comforting to know that at least the parts go well-labeled.  If you need to ship breasts, it is infinitely safer and more cost-effective to ship them in a box specially made for the purpose.  Yes, this looks like a normal, everyday rectangular brown cardboard box, but don’t be fooled.  This box is a BREAST MAILER BOX.  Certified for safety and freshness by the Governing Board of the United Breast Shippers Association (I think).  It contains every bell and whistle you could ever need to provide the absolute most comfortable possible environment for these valuables, as well as great support.  Or maybe it is just a standard cardboard box, but still, it is clearly marked, which is enough to tell people to handle delicately.

I imagine there’s a stack of these up in the floors above mine, each one sitting there flattened, waiting for some employee to pick up a tape gun, fold the box together, and fill it with its precious cargo, for mailing.  Questions arise, however.  What’s the capacity of one of these boxes?  How heavy would it be when filled?  And isn’t it fascinating to imagine the person opening the box at the end of the line?  I wonder, is he or she excited?  A little afraid?  Or perhaps it’s a surprise?  No matter.  Whoever the BREAST MAILER BOX recipient is, she can’t be more excited to receive her shipment than the man waiting for his brand new NEWBORN HAL.  Man, I’d love to get one of those.

Have you seen this video yet (you really only need to watch the first 45 seconds)?

I like these types of statistics, and I particularly like the ones about China and what an unbelievably, incredibly, insanely humongous population it has. We have seen a proliferation of these statistics in the last few years. Of course the undertone to all this isn’t “Wow, China’s huge. That’s cool and interesting.” but rather “America has another 3 or 4 good years, so get handy with your chopsticks and ditch the Free Tibet bumper sticker, bub.”

So here’s the deal. We’re going to have a little contest to see who can create the best Scary China statistic. The winner will win any candy bar of their choosing with my signature on the wrapper (I will mail anywhere in the contiguous U.S. Also, the candy bar you choose must be available in regular American grocery store, and not some hand-spun by Uruguayan spider monkey orphans dark chocolate bar only available in your San Francisco Whole Foods). Also we will be able to compile the best few and try to make money off them. I’m not sure how yet, but one idea is to take out an ad in AARP magazine where we share these statistics and a phone number where people over 80 can call in to buy Chinese Invasion Insurance or Sean Hannity t-shirts or something like that.

Let me get you started:

China is so big that the vomit of all the people there with the flu on an average day would fill 4 of the 5 Great Lakes.

If every person in China jumped up off the ground at the exact same second, the simultaneous landing would throw off Earth’s orbit enough to make it “spaceborne” in space, eventually putting it into a different solar system.

China has more window cleaners than the U.S. has windows. And windmills.

If all the people of China were crammed into the U.S., they would be stacked on each others shoulders 6 people high.

There are more man eating tigers in China than there are men for them to eat in the U.S.

Satellite pictures of the Earth taken 25 years ago show China as green, while pictures taken today show China as solid black, since no ground can be seen between the tops of heads.

If Brad Pitt is the coolest American, statistically there are 37 million Chinese cooler than him.

Don’t be shy (even you lurkers); submit one, or as many as you want (nothing even remotely racist, please). I really will send the candy bar.

Polls close midnight Monday.

When I say “work at the DMV in Utah” I am talking about a 40-year career of waking up, stopping at Maverik to fill my 84 Oz. mug of Diet Coke, punching in, dealing with harried mothers swatting children and impatient businessmen trying to renew their license on their lunch hour, administering literally tens of thousands of eye exams, sending enraged patrons home for lacking that eighth and most important form of ID after they’ve waited in line for three hours, and having “Luau Day” be the highlight of my month because I get to mix things up a little by wearing a Hawaiian shirt. I would accept all of this in order not to have to go back to the New York DMV.

As I was dreading my upcoming trip to the DMV, I realized that I was thinking like someone who has never spent any time in the developing world. I thought about the places I’ve been to in Africa and Latin America and realized that even the New York DMV would be the national pride of any developing country on earth. I mean it. You put the New York DMV in, say, Nicaragua, and it would be on postage stamps. The guy who set it up would be President in two years. A minor example:

I spent a couple of years in Argentina (wink, wink) where I became acquainted with an American who managed a large ranch. He told me of an incident in which the ranch was threatened by several armed intruders; understandably alarmed, my friend called the local police department. I should note that 90% of the men in any small, rural town in Argentina are employed by the local police department. Given the bucolic and tranquil nature of these towns, these massive police departments typically have very little to do beyond deploying their officers to stand idly on street corners, licking ice cream cones and leering at women.

Excited by the chance to actually fight some crime, the police commander dispatched nearly 50 of his men to the scene. They took their positions around my friend’s home, at which point my friend heaved a giant sigh of relief. Not long after, the police commander knocked at the door. Hat literally in hand, he said, “Sir, I must ask you for a favor. We have left our bullets at the station. I sent the truck back to fetch some, but it has run out of gas in route. May I please borrow some gas? And, perhaps, some bullets?”

Did that anecdote make you think, “I’m so lucky to live in the US?” Then you missed the point. If you’re thinking clearly, it should make you wish you lived in Argentina, or some other place in Latin America or Africa or Asia. While it’s true that people in those places put up with a lot of inefficiency and corruption, they also pretty much get to do whatever they want. I lived in Guatemala for a summer and somehow one of the people I was with stumbled upon Guatemalan firecrackers. Do you know what a Guatemalan firecracker is? It is gunpowder wrapped up in newspaper with a fuse sticking out. They cost about $0.25 and two fingers. These are sold openly to children.

We started buying them in bulk and testing their destructive force. We put one in a shoe, and were gratified to see it blow the sole off the shoe, sending both around 100 feet in the air. We then put a few in a large cylinder made of concrete, receiving a first-hand education in the power of shrapnel. And you know what? We never once received a visit from the police or the fire department, and the only complaint we got from neighbors was that we threw them too quickly after lighting them. Apparently half the fun is waiting until you can’t see the fuse anymore before throwing it (said the two-fingered man).

I now live in a place where you have to buy a permit to play tennis on the public courts, where you’re only allowed to go into the ocean in a few narrow roped-off sections – and even then you can’t go in past your chest. So yes, a trip to the DMV in Guatemala would require waiting in line for 4 days. But the point is that if you lived in Guatemala you wouldn’t bother going to the DMV to get a license to ride around on a scooter. You’d just throw your family of six on the scooter and head into town to buy your three year-old some firecrackers for his birthday.

(Ed:  Major technical difficulties this morning both with posting and with my dog, which is why there are no pictures and the formatting looks a little screwy.  Are you thinking about getting a dog?  This decision can be made by answering a simple question:  Are you a person who has too much money?  Are you tired of all the things you’ve been doing to get rid of this troublesome money? Has putting money in a paper shredder lost its thrill? You should get a dog.)

The numbers on offer were impressive, though never very easy to precisely nail down. We took it as evidence of our own naiveté that we couldn’t figure out whether your 12% super-seller escrow bonus kicks in between your gold and platinum level merit awards, or after your management star upgrade. But Oliver and Becton always had answers, the kind of answers that penetrate you with good sense and then instantly evaporate into the pepperoni air. Regardless, the bottom line numbers were easy to understand: If you had disfiguring acne and the kind of demeanor that causes young mothers to draw their children closer, you were looking at around $100,000 for the summer. For a group of impressive, charming young strivers like us . . . well, Ollie and Becton will let you do the math.

So one morning in early summer, four of us caravanned out of Farmington in four different cars, each packed with a few small possessions and unbounded optimism. No prospector ever headed west with higher hopes than we took with us on the high road to Denver, and no product bore more promise than our ProtectAmerica Basic Package with optional key fob and added glass break detection upgrades. We could almost hear those Colorado criminals making their relocation plans as the mile high skyline appeared on the horizon (A skyline that benefits greatly from being the next stop on the line from Cheyenne, by the way). Just kidding. I have no clue about the criminals. All anyone thought during the whole 10 hour drive was whether they’d save any of the $100,000 in summer commissions, or blow it in a month.

Our apartment was waiting for us. We had to arrange the cable TV for ourselves (NBA playoffs were the primary logistical concern), but everything else had been previously arranged by our super-competent manager, Jason. Some training was given, some glossy one-sheets passed around, and then we sacked out to rest for the work of the coming day.

Pounding pavement and knocking doors in the name of commerce and ambition is more invigorating than you might think. We were an energized group, fed on motivational chestnuts and a stew of sketchy crime statistics. We invaded those neighborhoods not only as salesmen, but as experts—educators partnering with our neighbors to cast out the criminals and take our communities back. “Just having this sign in your yard reduces your chances of a burglary by 20 percent, ma’am,” we’d say, “but of course only the full system is going to stop those committed criminals. And that’s the only way to get the free key fob too, but I don’t know if you’re the type of person who uses a set of keys . . .”

Every day, five hours or more, you knock the doors, looking for that perfect neighborhood. You try a rich area, then a poor one, then one that is exactly the middlest middle class neighborhood in America. You find an ethnic pocket every once in a while, and you try out different greetings based on the demographics. Your one deepest certainty is that these people are afflicted with crime, and the best possible thing they can do is to just stop hemming and hawing and making excuses and hand over their money to you– the security professional.

And then you find that none of them want any help. For two weeks straight, and 2,000 doors in a row. Life gets harder fast. You stare at the calendar wondering if there’s still time to hit that six-figure mark that was a given just days before. You rationalize: “Hmm, I guess in a pinch I can make do with earning only 90k this summer.” But still, nobody’s buying.

Until day number 14. When you knock on Mr. Martinez’s door. And finally, everything changes.

To be continued . . .

Going through this season with Jake, watching him court and sift through 25 women, and seeing him zero in on and fall for Vienna gives me an idea of the sick feeling a parent must get when their child brings home a goth they met on Second Life and says they are engaged. It’s a very painful thing to watch. I don’t really have anything against Vienna. I just don’t think she’s right for our Jake. But what can we do? Nothing. We just have to trust his judgement and hope for the best, I guess.

A few thoughts:

I wonder if they’ll really get married? If you think about it, the Bachelor and Bachelorette really have a pretty lousy track record of lasting relationships. Out of the 19 previous seasons, there have only been 2 marriages (including the coming marriage of Sneaky Jason to Molly). Although in fairness, if I had Chris Harrison directing my life, and was living on St. Lucia and eating fruit and flying around in helicopters you could get me to propose to Wanda Sykes herself, so maybe we can’t blame them for feeling something that doesn’t really last.

…

Ali’s the next Bachelorette?  BOOOOOOO!

…

I’m surprised at how blown away all of these women are to find a generally upstanding guy who won’t steal their cat or poison their grandmother for inheritance money. Is there really a complete global drought of good guys in the world? And it’s not just the Bachelor women, I often hear real women talk about the impossibility of finding a decent guy, like every single bachelor out there is Mike The Situation. I feel like I personally know a couple hundred guys like Jake, but they also have compelling personalities. Seriously ladies (especially any non-Mormon ladies, if any read this blog), I want to know, so tell me.

…

Tenley’s a sweetheart and I want her to marry Prince William or Harry because I think she deserves to be a real princess. Tenley, I hope you never give up on love.

“Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance”

…

Boy, Chris Harrison is just the consummate pro, isn’t he? I about died when Rozlyn threw that seedy allegation at him last week in “The Women Tell All,” and he didn’t miss a beat. It’s like Pat Sajak and Jackie O. had a son and they named him Chris Harrison. That man is worth every penny.

Your thoughts?

A personal nemesis is someone or something with which you are locked in a struggle characterized by hatred, obsession, and frequent clenching of the teeth and fists. It’s possible that the stakes of this struggle are quite high, with fame or fortune hanging in the balance. It’s more likely, though, that the stakes are by any sane person’s estimation fairly low.

This may cause you to ask why a low stakes struggle could drive a reasonable, well-adjusted person to obsession and hatred and the clenching of teeth and fists. My answer: I guess it doesn’t make sense, because you’re so logical and perfect. You should move away and found an independent nation-state. Your chief exports can be fish, timber, and self-righteousness.

Anyway, personal nemeses. Rather than continue defining the term, I will give you an example of one of my own personal nemeses. In fact, I’ll show you a picture of it:

I can barely stand to look at it.  Yes, I’m talking about that traffic light, the one located at Columbus Avenue and 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  I pulled this picture from Google Maps, and I find it less than coincidental that in this picture the light happens to be red.

Let me tell you the story of how this particular traffic light became my personal nemesis.  First, you should know that I own a Vespa.  Second, a quick lesson in New York City street geography and traffic flow:  Major roads that run north to south in Manhattan are called avenues.  Roads that run east to west are simply streets.  Many avenues have traffic lights that are coordinated, meaning that if you time it right you can progress up or down an avenue and cross each street as the light turns green.  However, if you get held up by traffic or simply go too slow, the green lights get ahead of you and the red lights eventually catch up to you, bringing your uninterrupted flight to a demoralizing halt.

Some avenues are better for timing the lights for uninterrupted travel than others.  For example, I am going to name my first son 10^th Avenue Bell, because 10^th Avenue enables you to proceed from 14^th Street all the way to 93^rd street without stopping (assuming you are ridiculously good at scooting).

My wife, Melissa, and I live on 95^th Street.  We attend church every Sunday at 11 AM at a building on Columbus Avenue and 66^th Street.  We are almost always late and thus in a hurry as we ride from the apartment to church.  Every second counts, and hitting all the green lights without getting stopped at a red light is the difference between quietly taking a seat to enjoy the organ music before the services start and walking in late after the service has already started and having to awkwardly try to get to a seat in the middle of the front pew.  It’s a big deal, ok?

These goggles don’t photograph well. They look really great in person.

Thus, every Sunday morning when I turn on to Columbus avenue at 90^th Street, I’m all business.  I wait quietly at the light, knowing that I need to travel 34 blocks without stopping at a light.  I know that while doing so is possible, it is also very, very difficult.  I know that in maneuvering around taxis and delivery trucks I will need my scooter to become an extension of my body, like a centaur with wheels instead of horse legs.  I turn around and look at Melissa.  We both nod.  I turn back around and fix my gaze on the traffic light.  It turns green, and we’re off.

The first few blocks are easy, as I hit each light just as it turns green.  However, as we progress down the avenue into the 80s traffic increases and our momentum slows.  We begin crossing streets after the light has been green for a second or two.  By the time we hit the 70s I can see in the distance that the green lights are now starting 5 or 6 blocks ahead of where I am, which means the light where I’m at is about to turn red.  That’s when I turn it to 11.  I begin taking risks.  We begin to sing “The Distance” by Cake.  This helps a great deal.  I make up some of the gape, and now the green lights are only one street ahead of me.

As I hit the 60s, I notice that the lights of the next few streets all turn green at once, rather than progressively, as they have done for the past 30 blocks.  This is an act of blatant cheating on the part of Columbus Avenue, but I remain calm.  I weave in and out of cars and use the bike and bus lanes shamelessly.  I can almost hear the organ music when BAM!  The light at 66^th Street turns red before I’m able to go through it.  I am half a block shy of my goal.

Melissa and I wait at the light in a miserable silence thick with failure and contempt.  She contemplates divorce.  After several long minutes the light turns green again, and I scoot the half block to where we park and we enter the church building.  We are late again, and have to walk all the way to the front pew, the red, pulsating gaze of our fellow worshippers on our backs.

I guess it’s possible that people stare not because we’re late to church but rather because of what I’m wearing.

And so it goes nearly every Sunday, flying through 33 green lights only to be stopped at the very last light, followed by an embarrassing march to the front pew as we enter after the services have begun.  This isn’t to say that I haven’t beaten the 66^th Street light a time or two.  I have.  But doing so is possible only in the unlikely event that not one single thing goes wrong during the race from 90^th Street.  So yes, the light at Columbus Avenue and 66^th Street is my personal nemesis.  I hate it.  I obsess over beating it.  And I often clench my teeth and fists at it when it beats me.

(Ed:  We’ve moved since I wrote this.  But we still take the same route to church, and my route to work now runs right through the light at 66th Street.  Indeed, I am off to face it right now.  I should go anyway, since typing with clenched fists is more difficult than you’d think.)

I had a tight-knit group of friends at that point, all of whom were Dude to me.  I was Dude to them as well, which was right and proper.  As the group of friends expanded, each new friend was Dude in turn, through high school, a time when friends seemed to just make themselves.  In time everyone was Dude, even a few of those girls whose charm was casual enough to hide under a guise of friendship for a day or two until you realized you never cared to be just buddies.  Dude drew boundaries and pledged allegiances and said whatever kind things teenage boys were never willing to just come out and say.

Dudes

It stayed with us in college, expanding wherever we could find the right mix of casual camaraderie with any new friend.  But even before then it had clearly come under attack. Not long after Dude came to our part of the world, it became tired, overused, and then—the death knell for any good slang word—was found in the mouths of overeager adults seeking esteem in the eyes of youth.  When a lady church leader saw us coming down the hall and said “Hey, look at those Cooool Duuuudes!” I wanted to abandon Dude forever.

But Dude never abandoned us.  Graduation came, we grew up and most of us moved away, and people expected us to start just saying whatever it was that Dude was letting us not say.  So I stopped.  I made plenty of friends after that, and hardly any of them was ever Dude.  I felt nearly certain that those years after college would make me get rid of it for good; that moving on was the price of growing up.  But right at that moment, when it was about to go for good, it didn’t go.  I saw my old friends on visits home or visits to each other, and I was surprised to find that they were all still Dude.  And Dude meant exactly what it had all the way back when it began.

Dudes (example no. 2)

So I put my trust back where it had always been.  Close friends were never made as often as they once had, and they were intermixed with a far larger share of acquaintances and polite friendships than ever before.  But every once in a while I still came across a new friend, the real kind, and Dude would come right into the friendship as if it were 1990 all over again.

I am surprised to find myself still using Dude, and still finding new friends deserving the title, some 20 years after Dude came along.  The circle of people in my life bearing that honor is small—smaller than it was all those years ago.  But it is steady.  My co-writers here, a group of old friends, a handful of new old friends, and just three or four companions around the office.  When I dropped my first workplace Dude a couple years ago, I realized that the title was neither lightly used nor, I think, lightly received.  People who did not grow up in that crucial time may never understand the depths, the multivariate meanings, the subtext and implications of the term, nor the status it conveys.  But to those of us who did, Dude remains, strong as it ever was.

(lesson 1 here, lesson 2 here)

Ok, so now we have a product. We’ve come up with some very nice bumper stickers with chocolate jokes on them and I’m feeling really good about this. Heck I might even make this my full-time business! “Whaaaatttt?!” say some of my thousands of  window cleaning clients who read this blog. I’m kidding people, I’m not going anywhere!!!

The next piece of the puzzle is figuring out who we are selling to, which is called Demographics. It’s a big word and if you have a hard time remembering it think of your favorite horror movie (your favorite “GRAPHIC” “DEMOn” movie) and you’re good to go. Demographics is the science of being able to look at a person’s face, skin color, and clothing—from a picture or on the street—and knowing what consumer goods and pets and electronics that person prefers.  For example, if you are trying to sell a laser hair growth brush, who should you market it to the most.

This guy?

Or this guy?

You say that was easy? Well it was supposed to be. Now let’s take this thing to the next level and give you some real “mental floss.” Look at the pictures below and tell me what you should try to market to these people. Try to guess the right answers, then check your guesses with the correct answers below the pics:

1.

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Answer sheet: 1: Pet snakes 2: A unicorn of hope and wonderment 3: Crossbow and ice pick 4: A chill pill 5: Dog surgery 6: Phineas and Ferb Laughapalooza Joke Book 7: A wife and legal system who can love and accept him for who he is

Now, some of those correct answers aren’t products you can really sell, but I wanted to give the idea about how to look at someone and know what they need.

Ok team, now that you understand how Demographics works, help me figure out our targeted demographics. Who likes chocolate? Woman gym coaches, German children, and other children who are German (i.e. Dutch, Swiss, Austrian, Norway, etc), white people, pregnant women, depressed people, government employees, and cat owners. Can you think of anyone we are missing? “What about dogs? My dog loves chocolate!” Well, chocolate actually kills dogs and your dog will likely die soon if you keep it up, so no, we can’t target dogs because it would be unethical. Ok, well I think we got just about everyone we need to sell to. Next time, I’ll teach you how to sell your product.