Trick-or-Treating

Trick-or-treating helps us teach our children good values—like the fundamentals of begging for food. But let’s face it, with the meager portions that come from going door to door, it’s important to identify strategies that will help you get the most out of your experience.

For the Kids

1. Wear a mask with two faces or carry a second mask so you can ring each door twice.
2. Hide a pillowcase under your costume to hold your candy, but carry a plastic pumpkin or bucket. When people see your empty bucket, they take pity on you and give you more candy.
3. If you find a bowl of candy on a porch with a sign that says take one, take it at its word—enjoy your new bowl and all the candy that comes with it.
4. Skip houses that are far away from the street—creepy shut-ins live there and all they give out are last year’s sourballs. It isn’t worth the time it takes to go the extra 100 steps.
5. Take a second candy container and tell people your sister is down sick with chicken pox—if she is, take most of the candy and tell her that, with the current cost of oil, treats were pretty slim this year.
6. Dress as a U of U fan—people take pity on you and give you extra candy.
7. Dress as a BYU fan—that just takes guts.
8. Take the asthma inhalers away from the Star Trek geeks, then run away with their candy—they’ll never catch you.
9. Start knocking doors at 9:30, asking for all the candy that’s left over. By then, people are so sick of trick-or-treaters that they’ll just give it to you.
10. Trick-or-treat year round—Thanksgiving is great for yams.
    

For the Adults

1. When you put candy into plastic pumpkins and buckets, swap your nasty candy with the good stuff the kids got from the neighbors. By the end of the evening, you’ll have more candy than when you started.
2. Put out an empty bowl with a sign that says “Take One.” If anyone complains, tell them they should have come earlier—it was full of candy when you started.
3. Drop a piece of candy into a bucket, then steal a piece to give to the next kid. Repeat until you have swapped candy with all the kids, putting the last piece in your own bowl.
4. Hide in the leaves and scare the crap out of any kids that cut across the grass.
5. Turn on your sprinklers.
6. Give out chicken bullion cubes—mmm.
7. Dress in costume, then sit on your porch with a bowl of candy in your lap and a sign that reads “Take One.” When the kids approach, don’t move—wait until one of them takes too much candy, then jump up shouting “I said take only one!” and chase them across the yard.
8. When you open the door, hold up a single candy bar. Throw it out on the lawn and let them fight for it.
9. When you answer the door, look at the trick-or-treaters, act shocked and scared, then start screaming your head off and slam the door. Repeat until they go away.
10. Instead of candy, give out cans of tuna, flour, or handfuls of wheat—kids need to learn the value of food storage.

Working with Engineers

During a job interview a few years ago, my interviewers asked me why I abandoned engineering and opted to seek a degree in English. My reply? "I was unwilling to abandon my social skills and personal hygiene." There it was. It had slipped out even before I could do anything about it. As I sat in my seat, reeling from shock, the interviewers stared at one another momentarily, then burst out laughing.

Engineers are a "special breed." They take things apart not because they're broken, but because they want to see how they work. In my industry, we employ the cream of the crop--the weirdest of the weird. We step well beyond the Trekkies or the guys that wear Cheetos-stained Star Wars shirts that are two sizes too small, these guys have gone so far over the edge that some of them can barely converse with outsiders--normal people who have actually seen the sun.

That in mind, we have to deal with some peculiar situations in our office. A few months ago, I published an article in our company newsletter that received cheers from many, and grunts from some of our engineering staff. It was rumored that one of our senior engineers was even going to write a rebuttal that explained why this practice was simply unnecessary.

The article was as follows:



Wash Your Hands
The next time you stand in line at the company barbeque waiting for your turn at the trough, ask yourself —“Did the guy in front of me wash his hands when I saw him in the bathroom before lunch?” If the answer is “No,” maybe you should have tried to get in line earlier. At any rate, consider skipping the finger food.

As tantalizing a thought as it is, there are several “gentlemen” in this company that refuse to wash their hands after using the bathroom. These are the same guys that stand in front of us at company lunches with their hands in the bag of chips or that we see trying to snag a pickle out of the jar.

Consider the following story:

Three men stood side-by-side at the urinals. The first man finished, zipped up and started washing—literally scrubbing from his hands clear up to his elbows. He then used about twenty paper towels before he finished. Turning to the other two men he commented, "I graduated from Harvard and they taught us to be clean."

The second man finished, zipped up and quickly wet the tips of his fingers—as he grabbed a paper towel he commented, "I graduated from the University of California and they taught us to be environmentally conscious."

The third man zipped up and started walking straight for the door. With a smirk on his face he turned and said, "I don't know about you guys, but where I went to college they taught us not to pee on our hands."

While I am aware that everyone of us subscribes to his own measure of personal hygiene, clean is clean. Even if you don’t “pee on your hands,” it’s still absurd to think that you don’t need to wash them. You don’t have to scrub for surgery after using the bathroom, but at least wash with soap and water for a minimum of 10-15 seconds (per the CDC). No matter how hard you try, flicking your hands won’t get the germs off.

If you are one of the chronic offenders that thinks it’s no big deal, look at the mound of used paper towels by the bathroom door—the rest of us use these when touching the door handle so we won’t catch your diseases. There are often so many paper towels that they fall out of the trash and onto the floor—think of it as a silent protest from the rest of the company.

Aren’t you glad you washed? Don’t you wish everyone did?

Language of Shape

At the behest of my sister, I decided to dig up more of my work to thrust upon the world. The following is a shape poem I wrote back in the eighth grade for an assignment I felt was rather silly. Looking back, I realize that the exercise was quite interesting...we must often sculpt our words to convey meaning and give significance.