OLD DOG...NEW TRICKS

I consider myself a fairly smart fella. Not "Get rich at 30 and retire" kinda smart but not "Put a knife in an electrical outlet" kinda smart either. My friends think I am a smart ass, my co-workers think I am a smart alec, and my wife says I am the smartest person she knows...but she doesn't get out much. My Mom, on the other hand, thinks I'm a horse's ass. Which, of course, doesn't change the fact that she thinks I'm fairly smart. (Because it reflects well on her, I think.)

But, smart as I think I am, I am perfectly capable of performing amazingly dumb things.

Yesterday, after picking up my Extra Large Timmie's Dark Roast coffee, I proceeded to perform one such dumb thing. As I approached my parking spot at work I wondered...How good are my brakes? A quick look around showed no traffic anywhere so I slammed on the binders. The results? My brakes are friggin' AWESOME! You know what else is friggin' awesome? Physics! The car stopped, I was prepared so I stopped. My coffee, however, was taken by surprise and vaulted forward out of the cup holder with enough force to remove the lid mid flight. Wow, I did not know my dashboard and console had so many hot liquid attracting nooks and crannies. Ten minutes and half a box of tissues later I had most of the mess cleaned up, except for the carpet, which I'm sure is going to remind me of my superior intellect for days to come.

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The other day the intrepid Explorer and I were sipping our coffee and chatting (about what I don't remember) when she said something that I found rather surprising. In response to what she said I replied with a resounding "Yikes!" Yes, I actually said yikes. To which she responded with laughter that almost made coffee come out her nose. "Did you really just say Yikes?" she asked, as she giggled merrily away. I did, and for a good reason. I have lately found myself peppering my daily speech, more and more, with certain words that are not generally used in polite company. Yikes was a conscious effort on my part to clean up my language.
But, you know what? F**k that Bulls**t. I'm a God@#$% adult and I'll speak any f***ing way I want...oh wow...did I really just type that?

"YIKES!"

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I am what most people would consider a fairly tall guy. Not a giant, but at 6 foot it does make me taller than average. What causes me grief, though, is I am married to a short girl. Don't get me wrong, I love it when I hug my sweety-pie and can kiss her on the top of her head but the height difference does cause issues.

I can't count the number of time I have had to contort myself trying to get into the driver's seat after she has been driving my car. Nor the number of times I have stopped whatever I was doing to come to her aide to fetch something she can't reach on a shelf...not even the top shelf at that. (On the plus side, anything I want to hide I put on top of the fridge.) But the real headache, and I mean that literally, is the rolling shutters on our patio doors.

These shutters roll up and down giving us some security when we are out and also some insulation from heat or cold. The problem is that my honey bunny, the love of my life, the ying to my yang, rolls the damn thing up only high enough for her to walk through. I have, on numerous occasions, smacked my head on the damn thing walking out onto the deck to join her, swore profusely, turned around in a huff to stomp back into the house just to smack my head again on the way back in.

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was a fairly smart fella earlier, and I should have learned my lesson by now, but even though I have never shoved a knife in an electrical outlet, I have used one to dig out burning toast stuck in a plugged in toaster. So there ya go.

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I have come to the conclusion that what makes my smart phone a SMART phone is the damned thing is smarter than me. I have a laptop, a smart TV, a Kobo e-reader, a stereo system, a Bluetooth motorcycle helmet communicator system, a work computer with twin monitors, and didn't have a problem learning how to use any of them. But that phone, that damned phone, is going to be the death of me. I can make calls and text and that is about it. I know it can do a million other things, I have seen the commercials, but I just cannot seem to get it to do anything else in a consistent, when I want it, manner. Pictures I can't delete (no, not that kind...pervs), constant pocket dialing, functions I can't access, apps I can't access, apps I can't delete, functions that, I swear to god, are using words in a foreign language. Why don't I read the manual you may ask. Because there is no manual. The stupid manual is a function on the phone and I can't figure out how to access the functions on the phone. Go to "Settings" someone told me. Been there, done that, lost all my "Contacts" info and had to start that miserable process all over again.

I am not a Luddite, nor an idiot but, good lord, the phone came in a box (mostly empty space) bigger than the box my last pair of shoes came in. Surely, they could have squeezed a printed manual in that thing.