Secret Agent

Do you ever think about what the story of an average day in your life would sound like if you rephrased it to be as suspenseful and exciting as possible? Dull events become riveting. And interesting events become mindblowing adventures worthy of a movie script.  With enough hyperbole and superlatives, anything can be fascinating.

For example, here's the true story of my last call shift.

Version Blah:

On Friday night around 7pm, I was called by the sales rep of a biologic membrane company, telling me that he had sent a package to the wrong hospital, and that I would need to figure out a way for that box to be picked up in the morning and brought over the the right delivery destination at our hospital. The graft membranes are delivered on ice so they're time sensitive, and they're pretty expensive, so it was important to get them to the right place over the weekend. In the morning, I called the hospital it had been sent to, made arrangements, then went and picked it up and drove it back to put it in the freezer in our clinic. The end.

Version Awesome: (in which I look like a supermodel, am dressed entirely in black action attire, and wear stiletto heels at all times)

It was an uneasy evening, too dark outside to be merely 7pm, when the sound of my secret agent pager pierced the chilly air. When I picked up the call, the trembling voice of a man named Bruce told me that he had  had no other choice but to send the shipment to the dock across town instead of our previously-agreed destination. I thought I caught a trace of the sound of heavy, angry breathing in the background -- perhaps his captor, prompting him what to say, threatening his family if he didn't comply.

My mind spun, churning through the possible motives for Bruce to double-cross us. More importantly,  I was working through a plan for intercepting that shipment before it was too late. Billions of pesos were at stake. I considered climbing up the exterior of the Cardinal Glennon hospital under the cover of darkness to break in and retrieve the package, but that would never work. The FedEx guy wouldn't arrive until 7:30am, and by that time of day the sun would be up and my cover would be blown. Perhaps if I strung a tightwire between the buildings. No. Thwarted again by the daylight delivery time. Similarly, laser beams and a smoke machine would likely fail, even if I did complicated gymnastics as part of the break-in process. I would have to rely on our network of internal covert operatives instead. I made a call on a secure line to "The Nurse." I can't divulge further details.

In the morning, I sped across town in a silver sports car, the engine roaring. In a hand-off coordinated down to the very second, The Nurse gave me the box the moment I arrived. In my hands, I held a human transplant, chilled with dry ice to keep it vital for a few brief hours. As I peeled out and tore onto the interstate, heading west toward safety, I knew that disaster had been averted, albeit only narrowly.

Obscure Roving Holiday

It probably won't utterly shock you to hear that Mardi Gras isn't a big holiday in Eagar, AZ. For whatever reason, remote, conservative, non-Catholic hick towns in the desert southwest just don't pay much attention to it -- neither its pre-Lent date on the calendar nor its rich Creole cultural nuances. Especially not its strippin/drinkin/flashin revelry. It was kind of a non-existent holiday there. Thus, now that I live in St Louis, home of the second biggest Mardi Gras celebration in the US after New Orleans, it's essentially like discovering a whole new holiday that never existed for me before.

I didn't participate at all in the strippin/drinkin/flashin aspects of the holiday, but somehow there's been a trickle-down effect of Mardi Gras into my daily life anyway. So what does Mardi Gras seem like to a novice outsider like me? It boils down to three questions:

- First: Why is that girl drunk at 10 o'clock in the morning and wandering through my neighborhood wearing metallic turquoise spandex and cheap necklaces?

Answer: Because that's what people do on Mardi Gras.

- Second: What does Mardi Gras mean, anyway?

Answer: Fat Tuesday. As the day before Ash Wednesday, which kicks off the Lent fasting season, it's the last chance to eat, drink, and indulge before all the confessing and abstaining begins. The idea of racking up extra sins to confess and extra addictions to then abstain from doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I don't think the drunken spandex necklace girl would've appreciated that logic, though.

- Third and most important: Is there supposed to be a tiny naked plastic baby in this cake?

Answer: Apparently yes. Ignorant to this potential food hazard, I unwittingly bit into that tiny naked plastic baby as I was foraging bites from a random left-over cake in the residents' lounge at work this morning. According to Mardi Gras custom, that either means that I will be Queen for the day, or have a baby soon, or make tamales for everyone, or bring bagels to share next Thursday. Strange predictions. Strange holiday. But even stranger still: the fact that someone baked a tiny naked plastic baby into a cake. An intervention may be in order.

Counterpoint - A guest blogger weighs in on Good Gifts

Dave Says...

I feel like I’m doomed in this Point/Counterpoint format. You, dear reader, likely already think that I am a complete jerk, since thus far you know me mainly as a man who ridiculed his brother's gift and accused his mother of having bad taste.

Hopefully you have read some of Sarah’s other recent entries, so that at least my character can be redeemed by my predilection for wearing costumes involving women’s cutoff jeans (which looked fabulous, by the way. But I digress). Regardless, this is Sarah’s site, so I’m at a disadvantage simply because of the home-blog advantage. Perhaps the results would be different if the polling were conducted at my new blog (http://angry-cross-dressing-guy-insults-his-loving-family.blogspot.com/).

Okay, enough pre-debate (prebate?) excuses. Bring on the rebuttal!

I think that Sarah has sidestepped the difficult issue, and focused instead on the easy cases. She asked rhetorically “Can a bad thing be a good present if it’s really super appreciated by the person you’re giving it to?” Of course we can all think of examples that fit this niche exception. I think it's easy to recognize that something that is clearly crap to a neutral bystander can have value to an involved person (frequently for sentimental reasons). We rightly put a high value on time, effort, and personal connection. This is part of why some people pay double for cheese made by a local dairy owner – one with whom they can meet, chat, and shake hands. It’s why Whole Foods plasters its walls with pictures of plucky suntanned farmers smiling next to their harvests. We are suckers for the hand-made. We are beguiled by the stories behind the things we buy, stories crafted specifically to make us feel special by highlighting the thoughtfulness and unique value of the product. Is it any different with the gifts we receive? But I ask you, dear reader: does copying and pasting the lyrics to a sappy country song really imply an investment of time and effort?

Sarah also posed the converse of the original rhetorical question: “Can a good thing be a bad gift just because the recipient doesn’t appreciate it?” I presume that most of us would say “No”, because we accept the premise that the gift is inherently a good thing. But what is an objectively good thing? We’re missing the real question: What determines value? Is it ever objective? One could argue that value is by definition subjective.

It all comes down to whether you agree with Plato or Piggy.

To paraphrase Plato: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Or is Miss Piggy correct? To quote this keen observer of the porcine condition: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed person a black eye.”

And now, the main point:

For the record, I don’t actually think that my mom has bad taste because she expressed gratitude for my brother’s uninspired gift. If I were to insult my mother’s aesthetic sense, I wouldn’t pick the framed song lyrics as my prime example. Rather, I would demand an explanation for why she continues to let my dad leave the house wearing blue nylon windpants (circa 1991) and a maroon-and-black flannel shirt (over a turtleneck, obviously). Combine the flannel/nylon outfit with the genetic predisposition for men in my family to have unusually robust thighs, and the result is that when he crosses the room it sounds like a lumberjack on a NordicTrack.

Does Mom tease Dad for this? No. But does she make a mental note to check the fire extinguisher before the next time Dad wears corduroy? Yes, she does.

I won’t pick on my dear mom for her complicity in my dad’s fashion disasters. Rather, I think these anecdotes lead into my main point: One simple and effective way to assess the goodness or badness of a gift is to normalize the recipient’s response compared to her/his baseline. For example:

- If you give a gift to your mother (or anyone who changed your diapers, wiped your snotty nose, and still keeps the macaroni necklace you gave her in 1987 next to her jewelry box) and she expresses thanks, it might not mean that you are destined to be a nominee for Gift Giver of the Year. It may just mean she is a very sweet, thankful person who has loved you since before you were born, and would gush over any gift you gave to her.

- Conversely, if you come upon a Veruca Salt character who expresses even tepid satisfaction with your gift (does the little ingrate even know how hard it is to find Snozzberries?), or if the East German judge scores your birthday present a meager 5.6, don’t fret. That's actually more appreciation than they usually show. And don’t feel guilty if a wave of Schadenfreude engulfs you later, when Veruca plummets into the Eggdicator and Frau Eislaufen Richter is picked up by the Stasi.

It’s a simple rule: calibrate the recipient’s response by computing the number of standard deviations it is away from her/his median gift response. Try harder to please Mom, but don’t sweat a snub by Veruca.

In conclusion, what if the truth lies somewhere between Piggy and Plato? Maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but some people need a couple of diopters in one direction or the other.

He gave her a truck battery as a present?

Dave and I were tangentially wandering our way through a conversation when the following exchange occurred:

Dave: "Do you have a favorite sappy sentimental song?"
Me: "Totally. There's a great Garth Brooks song from Hope Floats. *Proceed to mangle the aforementioned song by trying to sing it quietly in a public place.*  What about you?"
Dave: "Well, you know that song *proceed to falsetto* I hope you daaaaaance *end falsetto* from about 10 years ago?"
Me: "Oooh! That one was great--very sweet. It's a little sentimental for your tastes, though, isn't it?"
Dave: "My mom really liked it. My brother typed up all the words and framed it as a gift for her. I kind of make fun of him for it. Typing up sappy lyrics and giving them as a present? That's a really lame gift."
Me: "But it was thoughtful. Did she like it?"
Dave: "She loved it."
Me: "Then it was a good gift."
Dave: "Just because she liked it? Her bad taste makes his bad gift a good gift? You can't just frame something and call it a good gift."

 He's got a point. There are things a mere frame can't redeem.

So here's the question:  What makes a gift good?  Does it have to be an intrinsically good thing in order to be a good gift? Can a bad thing be a good present if it's really super appreciated by the person you're giving it to?  I say yes!
  - Giving a box of laxatives to your date for Valentine's Day, randomly:  Bad Gift. 
  - Giving a box of laxatives to your roommate who's all stopped up and uncomfortable because of the pain meds they're taking after having an appendectomy: Good Gift. Even better if you put a bow on top.

Which makes me wonder if the reverse is true. Can a good thing be a bad gift just because the recipient doesn't appreciate it?

  - A shiny new car and fresh-baked cookies and Elizabeth Taylor's awesome emerald and diamond necklace and a bottle full of spritzy stuff imbued with the magical musk of Eli Manning (all the makings of a Good Gift)... If you give them to Veruca Salt, who pouts unhappily because you didn't also include an Oompa Loompa, does that mean it was a Bad Gift?

Snozzberries make great gifts.

Shall we put it to a vote?     [Polling Closed]
In order to be a Good Gift, a present must be:

   A.  A good thing AND thoughtfully given AND well-received  (20%)

   B.  Anything, as long as it's thoughtfully given  (20%)

   C.  Anything, as long as it's well-received  (3%)

   D.  A good thing OR thoughtfully given OR well-received   (37%)

   E.   I want an Oompa Loompa!  (17%)

And then they turned into Old People

Hi there. We are Old People.

Sarah's parents have joined our ranks.

My parents are wonderful. Eccentric. Delightful. Strange. Pungent. I've known this for as long as I can remember. I expect this from them when I visit.

What I didn't expect on my last visit was to find that they are Old. Officially. Not just the charming graceful aging you see on TV sitcoms or Betty White cameo appearances, but the actual aging that makes you wonder what we'll do for them if/when they decline a bit more.

I found that my mom sits in the same chair all day and tells the same joke. She wakes up at night and isn't sure where the bathroom is in a house she's lived in for over 30 years.

I found that my dad loses his train of thought more often than not, isn't sure where his money goes, takes an afternoon nap that sometimes lasts 8 hours, and several of his teeth have fallen out.

So there you have it: Old. Officially. I am not sure how to handle it, really.

I want them to maintain their independence as much as possible.

I want them to enjoy the remaining days of their lives.

If you come right down to it, I just want them to still be the parents I remember them being, but that defies a few laws of the human existence so I'm not keeping my fingers crossed for that to happen.

Have your parents gotten Old? What on earth do you do about it?