21st Century Mom

I was in line at the supermarket, killing time. Next to me was a mother, about in her mid to late 30’s, with her son, who was about 7 or 8. We were at the front of the lines, next I guess, and we both started to put things on the belts. As I was getting my stuff, she whacked her son “up side the head” with a package, and I could hear it hit! 

It was an error, and she was all over him apologizing with OMG! Honey, what did I do? Oh my dearest, I am so sorry!

It was a pretty hollow box of stuff and he hardly felt it, and did not cry and it was fine. She continued to fill the belt, but now had my attention.

There it was, the reason she hit the kid! Her focus (her attention) was on an iPhone she had in a death grip in her left hand! She was reading texts while shopping, and never saw her package as a weapon, she just kept on reading.

She hardly skipped a beat!

I hope she changed her focus for the ride home.

The Sandwich

It was lunch time and I was in my car, and was out shopping. I had come from the house and had taken a cold diet coke with me and thought I ought to get a sandwich or a hot dog or a piece of pizza. These were my major considerations.

I was at the bank and next door was Sobeys Supermarket, the new one with a large “gourmet food section”. I could go to Costco for a cheap hot dog but it meant parking again and getting through Costco at noon is a bit difficult most days.

Into Sobeys I went, and looking over a huge lunch counter of gourmet carry out I realized they had fresh sandwiches to go. They had a few specials printed on cards, and one was a roast beef and provolone and another was a Montréal smoked meat sandwich. For my American friends, Montreal smoked meat is the Canadian equivalent of corned beef. It’s just as popular, but instead of being a corned brisket, it’s a pastrami kind of thing and it’s great, especially if it’s fresh and hot! It’s a kosher-style deli meat product made by salting and curing beef brisket with spices. The brisket is allowed to absorb the flavors over a week, and is then hot smoked to cook through, and finally steamed to completion.

I stood at the beautiful new counter, full of food, and there were no customers. There were also no employees. It was 12:20p.m., on a weekday! As I looked around I saw one woman in a white uniform with gloves in her hands and said, “I’d like to order a Montréal smoked meat sandwich please”. It was if I’d said something very bad. She stared at me and kind of ran away. 

There was a big sign over my head that said: Special, Montreal smoked meat sandwich $4.99. This was a great price.

Another woman came out, with a white uniform on and gloves on her hands and looked at me and I said, “I’d like to order a Montréal smoked meat sandwich please”. She looked at me startled, turned around quickly, and ran into the same place the first woman ran. A minute later a young guy dressed like a chef came out with the other two women sneaking in behind him, and another woman way in the back (they must have employees but they hide) and he had a hat on which seemed to give him secret powers so he could talk.

I said, “I’d like to order a Montréal smoked meat sandwich please”. He said (HE SPOKE!!!) “We no longer carry that product here but you can go around to the meat department and they can get it for you” and he said this very quickly as he wanted to run away. I laughed and changed the order to a roast beef and provolone and that made everyone easier and they all came out of the rabbit hole.

I was asked if I’d like it toasted which I did, and they did. However, they had no steamer or anything so the roll was great and toasted but the insides, roast beef, provolone and fresh veggies including mushrooms was all cold as a refrigerator. The man with a hat also told me they can’t change the sign so it will continue to say Montreal smoked meat.

A piece of tape or a marker would end the sign I guess, but a multi-billion dollar corporation wouldn’t have the means to figure this out or pay for a new sign.

I think they will not be in the “gourmet carry out business much longer!”

The Recall

This was what it said on the internet:

Recall Date:

JUL 02, 2014

Model Affected:

2006 Cadillac SRX

Summary:

This defect can affect the safe operation of the airbag system. Until this recall is performed, customers should remove all items from their key rings, leaving only the ignition key. The key fob (if applicable), should also be removed from the key ring. General Motors LLC (GM) notified the agency on July 2, 2014 that they are recalling 554,328 model year 2003-2014 Cadillac CTS vehicles manufactured August 16, 2001, to April 28, 2014, and 2004-2006 Cadillac SRX vehicles manufactured March 20, 2003, to August 11, 2006. In these models, the weight on the key ring and/or road conditions or some other jarring event may cause the ignition switch to move out of the run position, turning off the engine.

Consequences:

If the key is not in the run position, the air bags may not deploy if the vehicle is involved in a crash, increasing the risk of injury.

Remedy:

GM will notify owners, and dealers will provide two replacement key rings, and vehicles with slotted keys will receive key inserts, free of charge. The manufacturer has not yet provided a notification schedule. Owners may contact Cadillac customer service at 1-800-458-8006. GM's number for this recall is 14172.

Potential Units Affected:

554328

Notes:

General Motors LLC

I called General Motors and asked what this all meant, and if I needed to go to the dealers to do this. They said I needed to call Cadillac Canada to get my question answered as they were Cadillac US. They transferred me.

Cadillac Canada said it was a Canadian recall as well, but I needed to talk to my local dealer in order to get my question answered. They would transfer me but I said I’d call later as I had already spent too much time on this important issue.

They were very nice and gave me the dealers name and phone number and even looked up my VIN number because I needed to know that to get a question answered and make an appointment for a recall repair.

The dealer transferred me to Service and a very nice woman answered and explained the whole thing to me and all I could do was laugh! You see, if you were tall, and had long legs, you could hit the key with your knee and shut off the car while driving. I explained that if you forgot to put gas in the car it would not move but any fool would know that as well. I have been driving this car for 4 ½ years and never turned it off with my knee and would have a hard time doing that one even on purpose. She got started laughing and told me I made her week!

She also advised that General Motors have no fix for this but will move your key to a separate key ring and give you a rubber top for it if you need it.

I realize they have to respond to these problems but we may have gone over the top here. I promised not to hit my key with my knee and not make an appointment to have a service technician put a rubber top on my key and move it to a new key

What's in a Name?

When my maternal grandparents came to the US at the turn of the century, my grandfather went to register, and told my grandmother we were named Katz (Ketz with the accent).

 

She was angry because Zvares was their last name not Katz.

 

He told her Katz was the man in front of him, and it’s easier to spell than Zvares.

 

She made him go back and change the name to Zvares.

(My grandparents and me, 1950)

The Curse of the Thong

It was quite a night. The original plan was a trip to the grocery after work to pick up a barbequed chicken on sale, and home for dinner with our younger daughter before she had to go to work.

The plans began to unravel as we started. While going into the grocery our daughter texted that she had to go to work early so she would eat later. While my wife was in buying a chicken, my daughter called to say her sister’s concert tickets we had been waiting for had arrived and she needed them immediately as she would be leaving for Montréal, for the concert, on Friday. She was at work in Toronto.

I got to my daughter and explained the situation as my wife re-entered the car and she talked to my daughter to firm up plans.

By the time we reached home, the plan had changed, and we would put the chicken away, keep the potato salad in the frig, and meet my older daughter in Burlington at the train station with the tickets, and we would all have dinner before she got back on a train to get back to Toronto.

To add to the situation, it was pouring! We started the trip at 7:00 p.m. by going to my younger daughter’s work, to get my older daughter’s umbrella from my wife’s car which was on the work parking lot.

Rushing off in the rain to the train station, we chose a closer station (to Toronto) so my daughter would have a shorter trip. She got off in the wrong direction and we spent 15 minutes driving around Burlington looking for the secret hidden parking lot entrance so we could find her as she did not come out the front door! This was all of course blamed on me!!

Finally, in the car with my wife and older daughter, we hand her the tickets and went off to find a place to eat.

We found an Italian restaurant we had seen before and it was great. The restaurant experience is the point of this story.

Sitting nearby last night was a couple, an older guy with thinning gray hair, and a very sophisticated woman, having dinner. They were in my peripheral vision and I was not staring, but for our usual dining out in Hamilton, they were better dressed. This was Burlington, and as an upscale place and neighbourhood, it made sense. They were clearly “after work” people, not in jeans as we were.

They finished before we did and paid the bill and were leaving. As the very sophisticated young woman got up, as she thought no one was looking, and as an almost automatic response, she picked the underwear out of her butt where it was surly stuck!

This all may be the "curse of the thong" in todays world but the event made me smile! No matter how wealthy we are or how sophisticated we get, underwear still sticks in our butt!

 

From an email to my sons I sent in 2001; Fooling with the old style TV's...

 

The TV in the basement playroom had seen better days. It was purchased in 1984, and had a convoluted electronic tuning system made for pre-cable type watching. The tuner has been drifting and requiring too much care to get it to work, and since the kids use it mainly, it wasn’t worth keeping or fixing. So, yesterday I bought a 32” TV for the family room, and the exchanges had to be made.

 

The problem started with the fact that the new TV weighed 121 pounds in the box, and even out of the box the weight was 112 lbs. So, the guy at Costco helped me get it on to a cart, and another guy helped me get it in my car. My wife and I moved it to the garage, and then very slowly we made our way into the house and into the family room. Since I don’t have a stereo VCR, the only plugs I needed to do were a VCR regular plug and the electrical plug. Still, we had to stop, almost in mid-air to get the plugs plugged. This was a scream.

 

After that deal was done, I had to move the TV from the family room downstairs to replace the old one. Since this was a few lbs.lighter, I slowly moved it to the stairs and this morning got it downstairs. Next (later) I will move the old one upstairs and to the garage where my wife has assured me that we’ll sell this marvelous piece of equipment in our soon-to-be garage sale. Everything is hooked up and working again.

 

As I finished this morning with the second TV, the moving truck arrived with our inherited stuff from my wife’s cousin’s estate. This was a delivery of 6 items. It was sent as “shipped” rather then “moved”, as we found out yesterday at customs as we had to prove that it was an inheritance so that there would be no duty or taxes. “Shipped” as you can figure means no moving men, just a big truck (18-wheeler) with a driver. No ramps,no lowering bed. Just a guy looking for a loading dock. Thankfully the driver was a nice guy who helped me with the load. As “shipped”’ everything was boxed, labeled, put on a palate and strapped. We had to undo all this and carefully lower each box to the ground and put them in the garage to be dealt with over the weekend.

 

So after moving TV’s and furniture, I was bruised and immediately returned to work.

A good story from the 60's as told by me in April, 2009

The Citizens Arrest!

From September, 1963 until June, 1970 I was the art teacher at Waterloo Junior Hugh School in Howard County, Maryland. Somewhere in that time we became Waterloo Middle School, and sometime later, when I was long gone, the school was torn down to make way for a new road.

Many of the experiences, and the stories I was to use for the rest of my life, stemmed from my time there. It was a great place to experience life and to enjoy teaching. I owe most of the rest of my life to those times.

I was on a free period one spring day, probably in 1965, when I wandered into the front office to say hello to the school secretary and see what was going on.

I heard a commotion coming down the hall, and I want to the office door to see what was happening. Running toward me at full speed was Mike, an 8th grader with a great sense of humor and a wiseass for sure. I liked him and was able to easily deal with him in class. He saw me and started screaming, “Help! Mr. Greenblatt, help me!” I was startled,. “What’s wrong?”

He told me that a substitute teacher, a retired Army Colonel (I think) was after him. No sooner than I had gotten him into the front office to calm him down than the retired Army officer came running, at full speed yelling, “I’m making a citizen’s arrest!”, and he lunged for the student.

The student lunged for me to protect him; I fell backwards trying not to be killed by both of them and backed into the principals’ door.

The three of us crashed through the Principals door; first there was me, falling backwards, the student hugging me and the substitute, clinging onto the student.
We were a human sandwich, and the Principal was on the phone with the superintendent of schools!

I scrambled to my feet, smiled and mouthed quietly that it was not my issue and got out of there as quickly as possible.