Stumbling to conclusions

Good morning, homepeople of the internets. It's a pleasure to see you here again today, even though technically neither of us is really seeing each other. I'm willing to let that slide. So, what's new with you? I feel like our relationship is pretty one-sided, so I'll just sit and listen for once.

Wow, that was fascinating. I never knew. Ok, time to talk about me. I was speaking with someone from Montreal recently, and it reminded me of a story. (That, in turn, reminded me of another story. You smell that, folks? There may be a theme brewing.) When my lovely wife and I took a Canadian vacation a few years ago, we had a great time seeing the sights, meeting the friendly people, and trying the occasional new thing. One of our stops was in Montreal, and upon learning that there was a nearby casino, I suggested that we check it out. Being of the agreeable sort, my lovely wife agreed. It was a pretty quick trip, and before long we were walking the casino floor and watching the table games.

The first sign that things were different was the felt at the blackjack table. The circle for where to place your bet was in a different location, and there were some extra circles and boxes that didn't quite make sense to me. "It's blackjack though, how different could it be?" I thought. We watched a hand, and I learned a big difference immediately: it was in French. I don't speak French, but as I watched I realized that I didn't need to. I understood blackjack just fine, and as long as the hand signals were universal for hitting and staying, I should be able to manage. The only other big difference was that there seemed to be an entire second row of bettors, constantly leaning in to place their chips on top of other people's bets. On any given hand, there could be ten to twelve people with some action. I've seen one person do that on a friend's bet from time to time in Vegas, but not an entire row of strangers doing it. But I could handle that, should the time come.

A seat opened up and I nabbed it. I cashed in for some chips and nodded when the dealer said something to me in French. I assumed it was wishing me luck, but for all I know, he could've been saying, "I took 5% as an exchanging fee, I hope you don't mind." During the first hand, I noticed a third difference: the cards were in French. "What the hell does that mean?" you may be wondering. Well, I got a picture card emblazoned with an R. I cocked my head sideways for a second like my dog does when a sentence starts with "Wanna." "Oh, that must be a king," I told myself, proving that I knew at least one French word. My hand signals held up, and I hit and stayed with the best of them. I was a little daunted when a stranger put money on top of my bet, but I rolled with it. I played by the book and lost the hand, so I turned to the stranger and shrugged, but he didn't acknowledge me at all. Sorry for trying to make you money, dude.

The funniest thing about the whole experience to me was my interaction with the dealer. He would point to my cards and say something. While I knew that he was probably just telling me what my cards added up to, it got in the way of my own internal math. This was compounded by the fact that it sounded like he said, "douche," "cans," and "deez nuts" while pointing at me. I have since learned that those were twelve, fifteen, and nineteen, respectively. (You can go to http://french.about.com/library/begin/bl-numbers05.htm to hear what I'm talking about, if you so choose.) I stayed for about 15 minutes and left close to even. Not bad, but it required a lot more thought than I'd anticipated because I'd wrongfully assumed that blackjack would be blackjack anywhere in the world.

Where else have I made a false assumption? 1989. Not specific enough for you? Fine, I'll tell the whole story. As I've happily written about in this space before, I'm currently in a bowling league with some friends. My parents are bowlers, and when I was eager to join a league as a little kid, it was clear that I'd inherited the gene. A few years into the league (and after winning the whole thing one year), my teammates and I became friendly with a team of four young ladies. We were all about 12 years old, so naturally it was an awkward combination of being fascinated by girls and utterly frightened by them. For reasons not quite clear to me, my friends and I gave each girl a nickname...that corresponded with a Central or South American capital. We must have just learned them in school, but that's still no excuse for quite possibly the nerdiest flirting mechanism in the history of the planet. In any case, it seemed like Tegucigalpa maybe liked me a little, so I gravitated toward her more than Belmopan, Paramaribo, and Montevideo. Her name was Jennifer, and after weeks or months of our weekly chats, she took the first step and gave me her phone number. I must've looked a little shocked because she followed it with something along the lines of, "Now you're supposed to give me yours." I did, and she said she'd probably call me sometime before our next bowling session to say hi.

Even though I wasn't sure if I "like liked" her, I was still in a constant state of anticipation for the phone to ring. When it did the next night, I cleared my throat and almost-confidently said, "Hello?" "Hi, is Peter there?" a young woman asked. "Hi!" I answered, "This is Peter!" "Do you know who this is?" she asked. "Yeah, Jennifer, right?" "Just making sure," she replied. We had a very interesting conversation. It started with us talking about movies and music we liked, and it was extremely comfortable. She said she forgot where I went to school, so I told her. "Oh, I know someone there," she said surprised. "Do you know Mandy?" I told her I did and that Mandy was one of my best friends at school. She had met her once at a birthday party, and it turned out that she knew a couple of Mandy's friends too. I said nice things about them all, and she agreed that they seemed nice to her too. We hung up after about 20 minutes, and I felt good about how that giant leap went.

The next day at school, I noticed Mandy and a couple of friends laughing a little when they saw me. "Crap," I thought, "Jennifer called them and now they're going to tease me about having a girlfriend." But no, it was worse than that. "Did you have a good conversation with Jennifer last night?" Mandy asked. Trying to appear confident, I said, "Yes, I did. It was very nice." They laughed even more. Shit. "Um, that...wasn't Jennifer. That was me." The two minions behind her started laughing their heads off. I tried very hard to have it sink in and make sense, but it didn't. How could that have happened? She explained: the three of them were having a sleepover the night before and played some girly board game. One of them pulled a card that said, "Call a boy from school." 99% of the time, this results in a five second long conversation replete with giggles. But no, my friends, this time Peter Klein was involved. "Do you know who this is?" she had asked me on the phone. Instead of saying that I didn't (since I clearly didn't), I leapt to the conclusion that it must be the person who said she might call me sometime during the entire week. You can't spell "complete moron" without Peter, after all.

(At least I only said nice things about the three girls giggling on the other end of the line. It could've been worse. And when Jennifer actually did call, it wasn't nearly as good of a conversation as our fake one. )

Ok, enough shenanigans. Let's go see what the Car Watch has in store for us today.

I was behind a car a couple of weeks ago with this plate: "ASKADOG." Now I have some experience with this, and I can tell you firsthand that one rarely gets the answer he or she seeks in this situation. Almost daily, my lovely wife will say to our pup, "Hallie, what should I wear today?" Not a single time has Hallie stated a preference. Similarly, I've asked Hallie somewhere in the ballpark of 4,000 times, "Who's my girl?" Guess how many times she's answered, "I am" or "Me." Zero. Ask a dog? Not if you want an answer, my friends.

A few months ago, I was parked near the airport and waiting for my lovely wife to call and say that she'd landed. A car pulled up in front of me and was waiting for a break in the action to turn right onto a busy street. The plate read, "MYSPACE." It was an old California plate, and I thought, "That's funny. They probably had no idea when they got that that it would end up being something hugely popular on something called the internet." I decided that while it was interesting, it didn't make the cut in my mind as blogworthy. Another car pulled up behind it, also waiting to turn right. The second car's passenger door opened, and a teenage girl got out holding something in her hand. Just as the MYSPACE car started to turn, the girl ran up close to it and held out what I could now see was a camera. "I got it!" she yelled to her car and got back inside, clearly happy with herself. As they pulled away I thought, "Ok, now that probably counts as blogworthy."

Lastly, my homey Rockabye sent me a plate that will probably elicit the same response from many of you. On a Porsche Turbo, it read, "SLUMING." My response: "Fuck you, man." I would also accept, "Fuck you, dude." I'm feeling accommodating today. Seriously though, the guy has to know that he's going to inspire some ire with that car/plate combo, right? Why not add a frame that says, "Happiness is...Being Rich - Duh!" and go for the trifecta?

Ok, that's it for now. I hope this regular-sized work week went just fine for you all. As always, I'll be back next Friday with more of whatever comes to mind. That'll be 12/12, or Douche/Douche in the way I hear French. Shall we toast to some happies in the meantime? Happy Half-Birthday today to my lovely wife (who is still 22 days older than I am). Happy Birthday to our dear friend Twilight on Monday. If you wish to share a license plate, bumper sticker, or your thoughts on anything, ptklein@gmail.com is there for you. Have a safe and healthy weekend and week, friends.

Caught in a jam

In previous UOPTA posts, I've documented in great detail some of the menial jobs I've had in the past. One in particular was actually quite fun, despite being almost the definition of menial.

For two summers, I worked at a country club. One of my jobs there was to drive a golf cart continuously around the parking lot to see if anyone wanted a ride to the clubhouse. For four to six hours at a time, I basically drove in circles. When I'd find someone and ask if s/he wanted a ride, the usual response was a puzzled look accompanied by the line, "But it's right there!" True, it wasn't much of a walk, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

Why did I enjoy that job? Mainly, it was beautiful everywhere I went at the club. I find golf courses to be gorgeous, and one overlooking the Valley with majestic mountain views is my ideal scenery. I often tell people that playing golf can certainly be frustrating, but man, it's a beautiful place to be frustrated. Likewise, there's hardly a better place to be bored out of one's mind.

One morning, I was helping set up for a tournament by putting people's names on the line of golf carts out in the main area. I took one piece of paper over to a cart and saw that the gentleman's bag had a tag on it from another event with the number 941 hand-written on it. Immediately, I heard Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder's voice in my head singing, "Nine four one, yeah!" It was an instantaneous reaction, but then I couldn't think of what song it was or what the real words were that I was replacing with those numbers.

Fortunately, I had some time on my hands. While driving the cart around the parking lot for the next four hours, I also was driving myself crazy. I tried incredibly hard to figure out my musical mystery. I started by singing every single song from Pearl Jam's three albums (at the time) aloud to myself, listening for the 941 part. I was a big fan, so I knew every word to every song in order, and I was calling upon that skill to finally be useful. Nothing sounded like it. I then realized that it could've been Stone Temple Pilots, whose lead singer sometimes sounded quite a bit like Eddie Vedder. I sang every song on their two albums aloud while looking for people who didn't want a ride. Nothing doing there either.

I asked my friend Greg a couple of days later when I still didn't have any success, since he was an even bigger fan of the band than I. I sang him the "9-4-1," and he started thinking about it too. He had some b-sides that I hadn't gone through in my circles through the lots, so we listened to those while carefully trying to locate that particular part of whatever song we were seeking. Nothing.

Months (literally) went by, and we joked pretty frequently about the 941 song. It even got to the point that we talked about writing a song with that as a chorus just so the song would exist. It was a catchy tune, after all, and maybe Pearl Jam would sue us for stealing their song. At least we'd find out what song we had stolen, right?

And then one night, Greg came back to our place after working late with an excited look on his face. "I found it," he said. "What?" "941." "No fucking way!" He then told me the story, and I sat there with the same eager look that kids get when they're opening a present and already know what it is. (I made that face when opening Megatron for Hanukkah, I'm sure of it.) Someone at Greg's work put on some music while they were cleaning up the gym after some intramural basketball. He was going about his business when he noticed the song that came on was a rare live version of a rare Pearl Jam song called "Wash." In the chorus, Eddie sings, "Wash my love" a few times. Near the end of this particular version though, Eddie more emphatically started shouting something different than "Wash my love." Instead, it was something like, "Life on the run" in a tune very similar to my 941 tune. Greg excitedly looked around for anyone he could say, "This is the 941 song!" to without getting a blank stare in return, but no one fit that description. He hurried home to tell me, ecstatic to have an answer to a question that had plagued us for the better part of a year.

There was one problem with this answer though: I didn't know that live version of that song. I had heard the studio version of the song a few times, but didn't remember ever hearing that live one before in my life. We came up with a hypothetical situation that is probably how it really happened: My friend Maya's brother had a bunch or rare, live Pearl Jam cds that would sometimes be on in the background of us all hanging out. That song must have been on one of his cds, and I registered it somewhere in the recesses of my brain. Why did it come out so quickly upon seeing 941? We didn't have the slightest clue, nor did we care much. We'd found our answer at last.

About 4 or 5 years later, a group of us all managed to fit a Vegas trip into our busy schedules. We stopped by the sports book en route to the tables to see if anything caught our eye. Greg had been working in the horseracing field for a while and said that we should pick some ponies. It's not my thing at all, but I like looking at the names. "I want to find a race to pick the numbers 9, 4, and 1 horse in a trifecta," Greg said. That's when you pick which horses will finish exactly in that order in the top three, and the odds are obviously stacked heavily against that. "Sure," I said, "let me know when you find a good one." He spent a while looking, and we were all getting restless. After a few more minutes, everyone but Greg and his brother Bryan headed out. "Ok, we'll meet you at the tables," Greg said.

Sure enough, he did meet us at the tables. "Never doubt the power of 941," he said, smiling and holding a wad of money. "Are you serious?" I asked. He nodded victoriously. He and Bryan had each put down $1. Those $2 (see, I do math occasionally) yielded a payout of $460. Un-frickin-believable. If I hadn't been in such a hurry to lose money more quickly at the tables, I would've been wearing that same smile all night long. We were happy for them, and even happier for ourselves that we might have a horse-picking savant in our close group of friends.

To recap, I got paid a little to drive around a beautiful country club with good music in my head that ultimately led to my friends winning hundreds of dollars. There are far, far worse ways to be bored, gentle readers.

Got anything you want to share with me? You know where to go: ptklein@gmail.com.