Coin Toss

Hello World, Merry Christmas! There's no denying that the big day has well and truly arrived on our collective doorstep (or chimney hearth, as the case may be) with all the candy canes, sleigh bells, sugar plums, and boughs of holly that anybody could ever want - and not to mention, candles in the window and carols at the spinet, I shouldn't wonder. From this point, there's not too many days left until the end of the year, when we kick 2015 to the curb at long last, and make a clean sweep of things to usher in 2016 in fine style. Speaking of clean sweeps, at the temporary job where I am now, one of our janitors recently left for greener pastures elsewhere, as it were, with the result being that we had only one person to take care of 3 buildings, 4 parking lots, 60 tenants, and innumerable flowers, trees and shrubs of all types. The lone worker still here was doing a heroic job keeping everything neat, watered, illuminated, and flushing, but it's true that in the real estate office itself, it was starting to look a bit neglected, as I didn't have the heart to ask him to clean our little home suite home, when there was so much else for just one person to do. I'm prepared for the likelihood that nobody in their right mind would believe this, but it finally got so bad that I actually broke out the upright, and vacuumed the place myself, of all things. (!!!) Now, anyone who knows me, if they had seen that, would have been on the phone to the FBI's UFO Task Force at a shot, and had me picked up on suspicion of being taken over by alien pods from some weird Ricochet-Presto-Change-o Planet in the Bizarro Universe, where everything is the opposite of what it should be. I honestly don't know what came over me, that I was somehow channeling the spirit of the irrepressible Hazel from the old comic pages and TV show, and it certainly left our old friends the dinosaurs and me all shaking our heads - and if we were cartoon characters, you would hear the sound of loose coins rattling around in a metal can, and see question marks floating over top of us. Failing any other logical explanation, I'm considering it an early Christmas present to my employers, and leave it at that. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, anyone? And while we're in the holiday spirit, at church we received a handout with information about the real Saint Nicholas, a 4th century Christian saint and Bishop of Myra (in modern-day Turkey) who was renowned for his compassion and generosity. Apparently in his most famous exploit, he was moved by the plight of a poor man with three daughters, for whom he could not provide a suitable dowry so they could be properly married, and without which, they would have been subjected to a life of hardship and prejudice - something at that time, might easily amount to a fate worse than death. The good saint was determined to help, but too modest to do so publicly (or embarrass them by accepting charity) so he is reputed to have done any or all of the following scenarios, all under cover of darkness: 1) he threw 3 purses filled with gold coins through the window, one for each daughter; or 2) he threw one coin-filled purse through the window each night for 3 consecutive nights; or 3) he threw one coin-filled purse through the window over the course of 3 years, as each daughter came of age; [ Both #2 and #3 have the related corollary that the grateful father lays in wait to meet the mysterious benefactor, while the humble Nicholas avers that it is not he, but God who deserves thanks. ] 4) with the father on the lookout after the first two purses, Nicholas drops the third one down the chimney instead; or 5) the same as #4, but with the added twist that the last daughter had washed her stockings and left them in the fireplace to dry, and the purse fell down the chimney and landed in the stocking. Well, I don't mind saying that this cock-and-bull story has all the earmarks of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" written all over it, as far as reality and legend and Grade A hogwash is concerned, and no amount of ecclesiastical white-washing is going to turn this sow's ear into a silk purse, even by the longest leap of faith, for heaven's sake. (In fact, it reminds me of nothing so much as the poor ill-fated Rangers, who first win a bunch of games they should lose, then lose a bunch of games in dismal fashion - prompting beat writer Rick Carpiniello to decry what he described as their "well-documented lipstick-on-a-pig record of 17-6-2." Lipstick on a pig, indeed!) And mind you, this is an actual real person we're talking about here, not some fictionalized figment of everyone's over-active imagination, and you would think that the facts of the matter would have long since been nailed down with pinpoint accuracy. Heck, if they made him a saint without actually knowing what he did, let's face it, he could have easily been up to all sorts of unsavory skullduggery and underhanded shenanigans, instead of saving souls and performing miracles, and the Beatification Committee would have been none the wiser, obviously. This is a classic case of what I would call "nobody minding the store," and somewhere off in the great beyond, Liberty Valance is having a big fat laugh, I'm sure. Of course, everyone knows that "safety first" is my watchword, and I'm always happy to see increased vigilance and precautions being implemented, for the improvement of public safety. So I certainly hail Con Edison's efforts to alert residents to the dangers of gas leaks, by printing what they must have considered helpful pictographs for the situation at hand, on the outside of their billing envelopes, for all the world to see. They're very simple designs, perhaps a little too simple for the point they're trying to get across. It all starts out on the left with a small ground fire, for some reason, followed by a non-specific person who looks like a crossing guard with a sash or something. The next picture looks like someone trying to catch a train, and the last one seems to be someone lifting weights, or maybe eating a sandwich, or waving - it's really too indistinct to be able to tell what exactly is going on there. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, it utterly fails the first test of pictographs, since you basically have no idea of what they're trying to convey, and if this was some kind of emergency, I hate to tell them that everybody would have long since died in the meantime, while trying to puzzle out the hidden messages behind the diagrams, and thanks ever so much not. While I applaud their attempts at heightening awareness to the hazards, I would still have to say that there's plenty of room for improvement in the actual application of their warnings. And speaking of room for improvement, alert readers of our local newspaper would have spotted a small story tucked in the corner of the front page, with the understated headline of: "Yonkers Fires Jailed Teacher," and nothing at all blatant about it. I'm no expert in criminal investigations, and I don't even play one on television, but it seems to me that every time there's some kerfuffle with a teacher, it's the same old typical suburban brouhaha, generally over something vague and spurious, like allegations of suspected downloaded pornography on personal computers or the like - with a firestorm of accusations back and forth, but no real evidence one way or another, that eventually just collapses under the sheer weight of acrimony and bad publicity, all the while accomplishing nothing. Anyway, the article goes on to explain: "The city Board of Education fired a teacher last week, after he began a 22-year prison sentence for kidnapping." (!!!) Well, that's a whole different kettle of fish right there, and not to mention, a horse of a different color, and that's not just a load of orange jumpsuits, believe me. I certainly didn't see that one coming, and it was a far cry from the usual "he said, she said" sort of overblown melodrama that the media thrives on. I think my favorite part of the story is that Yonkers didn't go flying off the handle and fire the guy when he was first accused of kidnapping, or even rush in wildly to fire him when he was arrested on this kidnapping charge, or even yet still, go ahead and fire his sorry butt when he was actually convicted of kidnapping after all that. It would be captious to fault the Board of Education for being willing to give their teachers the benefit of the doubt, and the belief in second chances, so they didn't actually fire this thug until after he had already started serving his sentence for the crime. Frankly, at this rate, I'm surprised that they didn't agree to hold his job for 22 years, until he pays his debt to society and gets out of prison in 2037. After all, it's only kidnapping, for crying out loud, it's not like it's computer porn or anything. Honestly, you just can't make this stuff up. Unless you're Saint Nicholas of Myra, that is, and then all bets are off. Elle