Month: September 2018

How To Get A Bug Off Your Windshield While The Car Is On The Highway

A few years ago, Judy and I were driving home on Hwy. 41 when I noticed a tarantula on the upper corner passenger side of the window of the car. Judy rolled the window down to try to get rid of it and it got sucked into the car.

I continued driving and she was trying to see where it went, but couldn’t find it, so we thought it had blown off, outside the car.

A few minutes later, I felt something crawling up my leg under my jeans, and looked down – there was a lump moving up the inside of my pants leg…

Yep – it was the tarantula inside my pants. I quickly pulled over at the first opportunity, got out, ran to the other side of the car and jumped up and down while un-doing my pants until the thing (the tarantula, I mean) fell out onto the ground.

It really freaked Judy out and I wasn’t too happy about it, either. But it was super hilarious after it was over.

She doesn’t open the window to shake bugs off the car anymore…

Photo by Jean Papillon
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Opening Scenes to Books That I will Never Write – Chapter 7: The Girl Of My Dreams

Her name was Cathy…  She lived just down the street from me, and we were in several classes together in the sixth grade.  She was smart and I was – me.  We didn’t talk much, but we had been neighbors and classmates since the fourth grade, and I thought she was kind of cute – she had blonde hair, a pageboy haircut, blue eyes behind, and framed by, some sort of tortoise shell looking glasses with fairly thick lenses.  Though I didn’t quite understand why, I really liked her and wanted to get to know her better. 

During class one day, we were instructed to form teams of two for some assignment or other.  I was about to team up with one of my buddies when I felt a tap on my shoulder.  I turned around and almost swallowed my tongue – there was Cathy – standing before me and looking all cute…

Our eyes locked, and for a short eternity, I was completely lost to all that was happening around me…  My universe had suddenly contracted to the exact space in which Cathy and I were standing… There were no stars, no planets, no moons, no sky, no sea, no people… There were only her eyes, and I was immersed in those two pools of blue – It truly was one of those incredibly rare moments in life when time becomes completely frozen in its temporal tracks.  And then she spoke… To ME…

She said “Billy, will you be my partner?” 

My heart joined my tongue, stuck in my throat… I didn’t know what to say… I – I stammered, searching for words, just – just the right words… What were the words I needed at this exact moment???  Where were they? The words that would be etched in her mind for all time as the most perfect, the most wonderful, the most – the most – the most – perfect statement that anyone could ever deliver at this, the most perfect moment in my life, so far??

Search as I might, the words wouldn’t come… So, rather than say something imperfect, I did the next worst thing… Simply stated, I farted.  It wasn’t of the great bull moose variety, mind you (I doubt it was heard in the principal’s office), but it was loud enough…  I had heard it, she had heard it, she knew that I had heard it, I knew that she had heard it. And, worst of all, we each knew that the other knew that we had each heard it…

This, of course, broke the spell…  She must have assumed that my flatulence was just my way of saying “No,” because she just turned away and found another partner.  

It is still, today, the most humiliating moment of my life.  And it’s also one of my great disappointments.  My one chance with the girl of my dreams, gone in an audible puff of methane.

Fortunately, it was not long after this that my dad was transferred to Ventura…

(From Chapter 7 of my bio. But I thought it would be a good addition to the category…)

Sayings By Bill 4: The Wisdom Of Age: Simple And Easy

** ” How could something so simple be so hard?”

Here, another great lesson in life was revealed to me:  The words “Simple” and “Easy” are not synonyms.  I don’t even think the actual definitions share any letters in common.  I wanted them to be the same, but the best I could do was to make up my own definition of each…  After much contemplation, I decided that:

  • The concept of Simplicity is conceptual
  • The concept of Easiness is procedural

For instance:

  • The concept of a G, C , D chord progression is simple, not confusing.
  • The process of putting them together on the fret board of a guitar for the first time is hard, not easy.

So that (applying the Bill Kammerer “’swapping the order’ law of equality” to the second statement):

  • Simple = Not Confusing
  • Easy = Not Hard

By doing this, I was at least able to come up with definitions that shared a common word: 

“Not.”

The only thing that I could determine about the mutual sameness of the two concepts is that they are “NOT” the same.

Therefore:  Simple ≠ Easy

 

Sayings By Bill 3: The Wisdom Of Age: How To Swear

“…Yeah, I know… Me, too…  I was practically dumbstruck… nearly completely without words.  And the only words I could think of at that precise moment was a two-part phrase beginning with the word “holy” that had actually gotten my mouth washed out with soap a few years earlier… 

“With that event still fresh in my memory, I decided that silence is the better part of swearing, so, silent I remained…” – The Very William H. Kammerer, Jr, Esq. (not)

The Truth About Me Comes Out…

A couple of days ago I did something that I almost never do. I did one of those copy and paste things on Facebook.

Unfortunately, this has lead to the exposition of at least one of my life’s most closely guarded secrets. Things I have been afraid to reveal for reasons that – well, read below…

 

 

 

As you can see, I got a few responses from friends and relatives around the country, mostly adhering to the ‘one word’ part of the project, and those that added more didn’t do too badly.

And then this showed up…

I was, to say the least, surprised. Here’s why…

Dear Tom, I love you, man. I have always loved you. I will always love you. But now you have revealed, for all of the world to see, my most closely held secret, and it hurts.

I have never spoken of my heroic deeds within the space program. I have always painted myself as your normal, every day (albeit abnormally handsome) all American guy. I had hoped to have people love me for my “ordinariness” – never suspecting my extraordinary accomplishments on Earth, in space and under the sea.

I wished that my self-sacrificing actions in singlehandedly saving the world from complete and utter destruction at the hands of an, (thus far, known only to the three of us) enemy might stay hidden in the dark recesses of our memories.

But now you have exposed a small hint of my true greatness, and I fear that people will look at me differently… Not loving me for who I pretend to be, but for who I truly am.

Sadly, I will now have to practice making my signature semi-legible for all of the autograph seekers about to invade my space. And then there are the Paparazzi – who knows what to expect from them…

I could request that everybody who reads your description of how we first met take it as a brilliant and successful attempt at humor, however, by the time they get to the end of your post, they will have realized that “there was always something ‘different’ about” me and that your report can only be taken seriously and not as a humorous joke meant to elicit laughter.

As I said in the beginning, I still love you, man…

PS – Your family and friends should know about your own heroics, Tom. Have you told them about the “volcanic surface of Jupiter” incident? I didn’t think so…

Update:

jupiter 1.jpg