If I Had A Hammer

Hello World, Play ball! Well, the baseball season has finally gotten under way in cities all across the country, although it must be said that tossing around the old horsehide in April can be an exercise in character-building that is not for the faint-hearted, and that goes for players and spectators alike, in some of the more inhospitable climes. And while it's a well-known axiom that early season records are no indication of things to come (after all, no one expects the Red Sox to go 0-162 simply because they started the season 0-5) it can't be overlooked that the Mets are already playing like a .500 team, with a record of 3-3 in their first two series out of the gate. I suppose there is something to be said for the old standby reassuring sameness, although I have to point out that it is Lent, and so those are words that I am not at liberty to use at this time. Speaking of time, for anyone who wondered when the switch-over to Daylight Saving Time would have occurred under the old schedule, I have the answer to that, because my Palm just changed the time over to DST finally on Monday, April 4, springing ahead belatedly to join the rest of humanity at long last, thanks not. This is the kind of Johnny-Come-Lately that's not going to win any punctuality awards, and that's not just a lot of peanuts and Cracker Jacks, believe me. Meanwhile at work, I found myself at a meeting recently, where someone used the phrase: "You can just put your 'John Henry' right there." Now, I realize that the mighty John Henry was a steel-drivin' man, Lord, Lord, but I'm not sure how much his signature would be worth as a guarantee of integrity, compared to a more upstanding citizen such as John Hancock, for example. And while we're on the subject of integrity, I was on the phone last week with an insurance adjuster, who was emphasizing the fact that we all need to protect ourselves from the threat of lawsuits these days, because as he put it, "There are a lot of scrupulous people out there." Personally, I'm more worried about the unscrupulous people, and if we have to worry about the scrupulous ones as well, by golly, the world really is going to blazes in a hand-basket, and at this rate, we're all bound to die with a hammer in our hands, Lord, Lord. Also at work, I answered a call in our department from one of the executive secretaries in Administration (and please remember that she called me, not the other way around) who said she needed to ask me a question about someone in another department, that is to say, oh you know, what's-her-name ... and here, she just sort of trailed off with a resigned air of bewilderment and unable to continue. At that point, I admit that I laughed and said I couldn't help her with that, because I would never be known for my ESP, so without any further clues, she could not count on me to come up with the person in question. She apologized, and made a point to acknowledge all of the many things that I always do for her, and here she's asking me to be a mind-reader on top of everything else. "Oh no," I assured her. "Heck, I can't even read my OWN mind anymore, much less someone else's!" She laughed. Alert readers may recall that Bill and I enjoyed an interesting train adventure in January, rather than driving the Buick all the way to Albany and back, in order to spare the balky transmission even more wear and tear. We don't like to complain about the Buick, not only because it's 25 years old, but also because we've had it for 10 years and it hasn't given us any trouble in all that time. But when Bill took it to work on Monday and tried to back up into the driveway, he discovered to his chagrin that was no longer one of his options, as the transmission had unilaterally decided to reduce its mobility selections to moving forward and standing still, while going in reverse was now a thing of the past. Fortunately, our mechanic was still in front of him by just a couple of blocks, and he was able to drive forward over there without needing to back up at any point, which was indeed fortuitous under the circumstances. The mechanic declared that the day had come, as we knew it would, that the noble Regal was past repairing, and it was time for us to part ways. Even worse, since he's our usual source of replacement cars, he said that he had no cars available for us to take off his hands, because he claimed that the economy is so bad that nobody is getting rid of their cars, and may I say to the President's economic advisers, thank you so very much not. Striking out on his own, Bill's first try was at local used car dealer around the corner from his job, where they had a couple of nice cars that were reasonably priced, but our eagle-eyed mechanic voted them both down after a cursory examination. Undaunted, Bill then walked over to the hospital to pick up the Escort from the parking lot, and drove to another used car dealer across town, and they offered another nice car, but with high mileage that didn't bode well for the future. This time, the mechanic not only voted it down, but trotted out the whole tag-team effect with the mechanic and his son playing the good cop/bad cop routine, until Bill threw in the towel and gave it up as a lost cause. On the other hand, they're not the one hoofing it to work every day, and not being able to go anywhere that's not within walking distance, day after day and no end in sight. Besides that, it was turning into a busy week, with lots of places to go and people to see, and mine wasn't any better, so we couldn't even share one car between us and still get everywhere we needed to go. Finally he had no choice but to rent a car for the duration, which is how we wound up with a cute maroon Kia Spectra, and it's been keeping us going ever since, albeit slowly, as Bill is convinced that it obviously needs more peanuts for the squirrel-in-the-wheel that's under the hood. It at least has the advantage of going backward as well as forward, but the legend of John Henry has nothing to worry about, because it's not going to be this squirrel that dies with a hammer in its hand, Lord, Lord, and that's also not a lot of peanuts and Cracker Jacks, believe me. In these uncertain times, we've started off on a safety kick at church, where we grabbed everything out of the files, including the mounds of historical records in the balcony, and moved them all to a secure location off-site as a precaution. This wasn't done in a blind panic, but a more methodical process, at least for some of us, with the intended result that our important documents would be protected from any unsavory individuals for their own nefarious schemes, whatever they might be. As I said, this was a methodical process for some people, but what I found myself doing was snatching everything I had from the file cabinets, and just tossing it helter-skelter into my car with no rhyme or reason. Then I just ended up carrying it all around with me everywhere I went from then on, from pillar to post and hither and yon, and dragging parts of it into church with me on Sunday when I would need something filed or updated. I finally got tired of this last week and took a look through what I was lugging around, and in the cold light of day, the realization eventually took hold that I didn't really need to take everything that I had originally grabbed, such as my spare mouse pad, paper-clips, scrap paper, tape dispenser, magnifying glass, batteries, hidden stash of extra pens, blank envelopes, wooden ruler, push pins, rubber bands, key tags, tissues and golf pencils. In fact, I would go so far as to assert that returning them to their place in the file cabinets would in no way jeopardize the security of the church's sensitive information, which prompted the pastor to concur: "Probably not the FIRST thing they'll go after." Amen! But I will say that unlike the legendary John Henry, that steel-drivin' man, if it comes to a final showdown at church, I doubt that anyone will be writing folk songs about me if I die with a mouse pad in my hand, Lord, Lord. Elle