Archives for August 2013

Like most folks, I’ve gradually developed an idealized internal image of myself that’s often wildly out of sync with the me that outside observers experience.

That’s OK. I understand. They’re just wrong. No biggie. See what I mean?

I’m an easygoing dude. Call me Mr. Mellow.

I like to think that I’m basically a calm, rational open-minded fellow. So patient and tolerant I’m surprised The Nobel Peace Prize Committee hasn’t called yet. Compared to the real me, of course, this is all a huge pile of Grade A nonsense, a fact which recently smacked me in the face like a big gooey custard pie.

Last Thursday I fired up my old Mercedes roadster (a mellow ride if ever there was one) and joined the stream of bumper-to-bumper traffic along Route 1.

Despite the glacially slow progress, my mellow mood never faltered. I simply relaxed, enjoying the warm, sunny weather as, ever the good son, I motored on down to the Harbor to visit my mom.

The first cracks in Mr. Mellow’s persona appeared around the middle of the second round of what is currently my mother’s favorite game “Upwords,” a clever three dimensional variation on the old classic Scrabble. It began to dawn on me that I was, once again, being badly trounced by the unfailingly polite, always charming matriarch of Clan Sample.

Taking my intellectual defeat (a more frequent occurrence than I like to admit) in stride, I slapped on a smile and headed back to Route 1 to get to a meeting with some friends in Yarmouth. Mellow fellow that I am, I had even factored in time for the inevitable Wiscasset bridge traffic jam.

Did I say traffic jam? Well, that’s certainly what the tourists have to put up with. But not me. Not Mr. Mellow.

I just took the local insider’s short cut around the backside of Cod Cove and let some polite tourist wave me back into line at the entrance to the bridge. Having thus saved 20 minutes, I was ahead of schedule!

The second slip in my laid back facade came when a fender bender in Brunswick slowed traffic to a crawl bumping my blood pressure up at least a couple of notches. Grr, this is not good. Mr. Mellow always arrives early. Mr. Mellow is not a “time waster.” To be perfectly honest, Mr. Mellow is beginning to get just the teensiest bit ticked off.

Once I was on 295 south of Brunswick, it only took a few minutes of arrogant, inconsiderate, pig-headed driving to get me to the appointed meeting place in Yarmouth.

I arrived about 10 minutes late. But where were my friends? My phone calls were shunted to voicemail forcing me to conclude that I’d been stood up. The nerve! Don’t they know my time is valuable? At this point I’d have to say Mr. Mellow had pretty much left the building.

My last remnants of mellowness in tatters, I screeched to a halt in the Maine Mall parking lot and rushed inside to retrieve a pair of glasses my wife had asked me to pick up for her.

(By the way, my sincerest apologies to the elderly lady I nearly bowled over on my way through the door.) Mr. Mellow was now in a full-blown meltdown!

I was returning to my car when my cell phone rang. My friends were wondering why I never showed up for our meeting in Freeport. Freeport? Yup, Freeport. Not Yarmouth after all. Oops. The fact that they were having a jolly old time without me just rubbed salt in my wounded ego. But the fun wasn’t over yet.

Upon reaching my roadster I attempted to open the trunk only to discover that it was jammed shut and wouldn’t unlock even with the key. Yikes! With visions of the jaws-of-life, cutting torches and thousands of dollars in repair bills dancing in my head I raced over to the Scarborough Mercedes dealership and explained my dilemma.

The 12-year-old manager in the service department was extremely patient considering that he was clearly dealing with a hysterical old person.

I explained that the motionless trunk lid was blocking access to my briefcase, which contained my driver’s license, photo I.D., credit cards and most importantly: my laptop containing my half finished newspaper column.

As I blathered on the service manager gently reached down and pressed the trunk release button. The trunk magically popped open. Embarrassed? You bet. Humbled? Plenty.

Reviewing the half written column I found myself striking off in a whole new direction, one which I hope you’ve found interesting. If so, perhaps Mr. Mellow’s meltdown will not have been entirely in vain.

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register

Regular visitors to this space may recall a recent column wherein, upon returning from a family vacation, I discovered that an electrical breaker switch which has apparently been lurking in a box on the outside of our house ever since we bought the place, managed to fry itself while we were away.

Fortunately, our new best friend, local ace electrician Gary, had all systems up and running within 24 hours. Well, almost all systems.

Returning from my office a day later, I was greeted by a faint, annoying “beeping” sound, which emanated from the interior of our home.

For better or worse, “faint beeping sounds” of the “is that your cell phone or mine?” variety are an increasingly common fact of modern life.

Like most folks I’ve learned to accept these auditory intrusions for what they are: just one more off-key note in the increasingly jangly soundtrack of contemporary culture, a reminder of the still-a-work-in-progress technology, which pervades 21st century American life.

It seems that any consumer gizmo produced with a cord or a battery these days must also come equipped with its own distinctive electronic “voice.” As a result, domestic life often resembles an episode of what might just become the next wildly popular reality/game show, “Name That Beep.”

Ma: “Is it the microwave or the dryer making that beeping noise?”

Pa: “Um, neither. I think maybe it’s your new bread making machine, either that or maybe a low battery warning from the ozone detector.”

Ma: “You sure it ain’t just your hearing aids squealing again?”

Pa: “What?”

Alas, the sound I heard that afternoon was none of the above.

It was, in fact a distinctive, unmistakable and all too familiar tone. Not actually a “beep” at all, so much as a piercing high-pitched shriek, the sound of yet another smoke detector alarm “going off.”

Not that there was smoke within a hundred yards of the house you understand. From my own experience I’d have to say there rarely is.

Although I’m sure a fire would have done the trick just fine, from what I’ve observed, fire and smoke are pretty far down the list of things most likely to set the average smoke detector to wailing like a banshee.

In this particular instance I suspect the malfunction was related to our recent circuit breaker issues, but who can tell? It could have been almost anything. Ironically, water is often a prime suspect.

When shopping for new house in Portland a few years back, we rented an apartment in Portland’s Woodford’s Corner neighborhood. Though, my safety conscious Minnesotan wife was pleased that we were able to find one fairly bristling with smoke detectors, I was considerably less sanguine.

When I see smoke detectors, I expect trouble. In this instance, I didn’t have long to wait.

We’d barely gotten our things unpacked when the wailing began. Returning from a trip the corner market we heard the unmistakable ululations from several blocks from away. As we walked into our apartment, the cacophony was overwhelming.

A half dozen smoke detectors screeching in unison sounds something like I imagine a dressing room at The Metropolitan Opera would sound like if a gaggle of sopranos ensconced therein simultaneously attempted to hit a glass shattering “high C” note.

It was a devastating auditory assault, one from which I’m not sure our faithful poodle Maggie, snoozing peacefully in the apartment at the time, ever fully recovered.

Once the fire department had arrived, evacuated the building and checked everything out, we were informed that (surprise, surprise) no actual smoke or fire was involved. The culprit, they said, was “humidity.” But, frankly, it could have been almost anything.

Actually, my worst smoke detector nightmares have involved the dreaded “low battery” alert. There ought to be a special punishment for the sadistic genius who decided to make a smoke detector’s low battery warning virtually identical to the sound of a real cricket.

I’ve wasted countless precious hours of my life searching for the source of this random chirping. I once searched for nearly a week before locating the source of a hideously mind scrambling, intermittent “chirp” lurking under some acoustic ceiling tiles in our basement.

So what’s the solution? None that I can see. Until somebody wins an “X-prize” for developing a better system, I’ll just keep buying and using smoke detectors like everybody else. The risk of not doing so is too horrific to contemplate.

But I don’t have to like it.

Nope, I just don’t trust smoke detectors as far as I can throw them, which by now I’m sure you’ve figured out is a very long distance indeed.

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register