Day 22: If I Ruled Lichtenstein... Dirty Jobs Would Pay Bank

Something I've never understood is the absolutely disproportionate salary structure of the world we live in. Sports stars make millions of dollars a year for playing games for a few hours a week, and doctors make a modest living even though their job is to save lives and work 80 hours a week 48-hour shifts at a time.

In Lichtenstein, I'd be the one setting the starting salary structure for every job in my country. Actors and sports stars would be at the very bottom of my salary scale. Actors get to pretend to be someone else for a few weeks, and sports stars play the games they love for paychecks - both with six digits ahead of the decimal in today's world. Their jobs are pure fun, so paying them the most money to do something fun for a living makes zero sense, and is simply just not fair.

Police officers, firefighters, and those who serve in the military would make the millions. Their lives are literally on the line every single time they go to work to keep us safe. Doctors and EMTs would be a close second, as they go to school for decades to learn how to keep us healthy and help us in dire times of need.

The blue-collar workers and those who perform the mundane jobs that need to be done to make the world work would be making six figures. Without them, our garbage would pile up, we'd have no cars to drive, no one to cook our food, and our children would be uneducated. These are the jobs that people should be well-compensated for doing.

In Lichtenstein, we celebrate the unsung heroes where it counts for so many - their paychecks for an important job well done. And those who play games for a living will get the pleasure of playing games for a living - the way it should be.

Day 21: What Did Batman Say to Robin... On Numbers That Have Nothing to do With the Bible Chapter

Holy reversal order of numbers Batman!

What did Batman say to Robin about why the numbers on a calculator and a phone are reversed? My partner in crime gives his take on it:

Partner in Crime: Some of life’s most complicated questions have the simplest answers. Take the question, “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” The answer is the chicken, which is why he needed to cross the road. He was looking for an escape route. Clearly staying on the same street as the crime would get him caught in a matter of seconds. Who sticks around at the scene of the crime unless you're a serial killer or arsonist? It's Criminology 101.

Another seemingly complex question is, "Why are the numbers on a calculator and a phone reversed?" The answer is simple. Confusion.

When the telephone keypad first came out, it was a marvel of technology. No longer did anyone have to sit an extra 20 seconds for the rotor on a traditional phone. And forget about dialing out of area. What used to take a full minute to dial could now be done in less than 8 seconds; 10 if you didn’t have the phone number memorized.

Another technological breakthrough was advent of the calculator which replaced the abacus. No one had to deal with that annoying rattling sound or confuse their math instruments with strange Arabian sex toys or Inuit back massagers. Now people simply had to type in numbers and this the equals signs.

Because people were far, far stupider back then, they would simply get confused as to which instrument is which. Sometimes they would pick up a calculator and try to make a phone call. They would of course not get any response. That would not stop them, however, from sending an angry letter to the phone company asking why their phone is out of service. They would, in turn, receive a reply 2-3 weeks later saying that their phone lines were indeed working. I mean, we’re talking about people who thought deodorant shouldn’t be invented yet, and streets don't need to be paved even though it's easier to dribble a basketball on hard ground and wood is clearly a better medium for tooth replacement than veneer.

Since the one phone company was getting inundated with mail, they decided to strike a deal with the calculator council known as C.O.C.K at the time (Council of Calculators Kentucky). Calculators were now to have their number reversed from telephones. This would end the confusion. In exchange, the phone companies would not include a “Tip Calculator” on their future cellular phones until at least the year 2000. Consequently, this also ended the feud between the Hetfields and the Mccoys because both families were too confused about using either to fight anymore. Calculators and phones – technologies of peace.

My response: My PICs response is a completely logical one - people are stupid. They were stupid back then to confuse a telephone with a calculator and they're stupid now to confuse venomous snakes with the harmless variety or botox with actual human facial expressions.

But the real reason the numbers were switched is as follows: The telephone was invented first, so Alexander Graham Bell had first dibs on how he wanted the numbers placed. Naturally, he chose to put the numbers left to right - the way we read - beginning with the number 1. He was smart enough to invent the telephone; and obviously was smart enough to know where the numbers should logically be placed.

The inventor of the calculator, however, was practically the polar opposite of the older, wiser Bell. He was a dorky kid fresh out of MIT whose life experience is contained within the confines of the pages of mathematics textbooks. This kid seriously needed a chick in his life - and for much more than her having to point out to him that it is extremely juvenile to put the numbers of the calculator in reverse because when one types "55378008" and reverses the direction of the calculator (i.e. turns it upside down) the numbers spell "boobless."

So why are the numbers on a phone and calculator reversed? Because the phone companies want to deal with as few idiots as possible and because some immature dork was seriously in need of a good lay.

Day 20: Never Have I Ever... Said Such Ridiculous Things That Were 100 Percent Work-Related

A former colleague of mine and I used to talk quite a bit at lunchtime at one of my past jobs. It was an unnecessarily stressful and quite un-enjoyable job, so we used to take advantage of the full 13 minutes we were allotted to eat lunch to attempt to have a bit of fun before our slave-driving boss started making snide comments that since we were done eating and talking about nothing of particular importance, we'd be more useful if we went back to work.

Not many of our conversations made any sort of semblance of sense - much to the chagrin of another colleague who used to eat lunch with us. We'd talk about how a quarter was the same as a dime (it's not), how much of a blow fish you'd be able to eat before you'd die (not much), and who was stupider - someone who stared into a bright light for a full minute because it would make the night seem darker or the person who believed it was true and convinced the other to do it. (The first person is totally stupider. And yes, we used words such as "stupider" and "funner".) It made the long hours at this particular job much more bearable.

At my current job, dare I say my conversations with colleagues are even more ridiculous, yet these conversations allow me to do what they're paying me for.

My boss and I were sitting down completely seriously discussing my current project today, and every other sentence sent my two neighboring cube mates into fits of giggles, even though they both were familiar with my current project of creating fun games for children. And what game for children isn't fun without personified ketchup bottles and a mariachi mouse playing a song for a hamster in a diaper?

Another colleague who was not familiar with my games actually stopped in her tracks as she was cruising past my cube to give us a "WTF?" look and a "What. The. Hell. are you guys talking about?" sentence to match.

I can understand her confusion. It's like the lame game always played at bridal parties after the bride-to-be has finished opening her gifts (where the "best maid" reads off sentences the bride has said while opening gifts that she'll supposedly say on her wedding day about her groom, such as "what a surprise!" and "I never knew it was so big," etc.).

Or, better yet, it's like a game I made up with a friend called "Awkward Something" where you wait until that moment where someone is just within earshot and you say something completely awkward to your friend as if the two of you were actually immersed in a conversation surrounding retrieving panties from the top of a Christmas tree.

Therefore, never have I ever said absolutely ridiculous sentences that were 100 percent work-related. A sampling of sentences I jotted down after the two conversations I had with my boss today (yes, these are just from today):

"Oh! So this must be how hot dogs have sex."

"With the frog, I'm leaving out its arms and the legs but keeping the tongue cause it's so cute."

"It's totally a smart snake because it's wearing glasses. So do we want to decapitate the smart snake's head for the game? And if we do, where would he be going?"

"Hey Heather? If you were a cow, where would you be going? You wouldn't be going to milk because you give milk, right? Or are you a male cow and want to taste the milk... wait this seems to be going somewhere not kid-friendly."

"Why is the mariachi mouse going to a piece of cherry pie? Seriously - do mice like cherries?"

"Is the alien going to be flying from his planet to planet Earth or is he going to visit his friend on another planet?"

"We can't do a kiss because the monsters' faces don't have lips."

"How can those monsters be in love? They're not even the same species. One has one eye and has a horn - or is that a party hat? - and the other is a dinosaur with stars on it. Wait, is he also wearing a party hat? Are they going to a party? Should they have presents?"

"Don't look up 'hamburger guy', look up 'hamburger man' so we can find the hot dog man a friend."

"Should we photoshop out the mustard line so we can have the ketchup send the hot dog to the mustard for a yellow squirt? Oops - again probably not kid-friendly. Why is my mind in the gutter today?"

"Why is the mouse wearing scuba gear to get drunk?"

"Grandma is just going to have to be white because this website doesn't favor the ethnic elderly."

I love my job.

Day 19: Shakespeare's High School Poetry... I Love This Game

This week we're going to celebrate a type of poem I remember writing a bunch of in early elementary school - the acrostic poem. It's a simple poem where the first letter, syllable, or word of each line spells out a word or message - typically what you're writing about.

Maybe Shakespeare actually studied the acrostic in school, as it's popularly used as a mnemonic device. I know I had a bunch of these types of acrostic poems, the most memorable one being in third grade to remember the order of the planets, starting with the one closest to the sun:

My (Mercury)
Very (Venus)
Eager (Earth)
Mother (Mars)
Just (Jupiter)
Served (Saturn)
Us (Uranus)
Nine (Neptune)
Pickles (Pluto - yes when I was in third grade, Pluto was still a planet. Nowadays, apparently my mother is not serving me nine of anything.)

So this week, I'm using this simple yet fun form of poetry to celebrate one of my great loves, where I get one of my favorite quotes from, which is applicable to both the game, and life in general: "You'll always miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take."

I Love This Game

Before I had a team, I had a ball.
A black-and-yellow
Striped ball that I
Kept near the chain-netted hoop cemented into concrete.
Ever since that first dribble,
That first sound of a swish, and
Banking that first lay-up,
All I've wanted to do is play. I
Love this game and I
Love this feeling.

Day 18: A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words...

Hmmmm... what to do, what to do?

Last week's cliche: Pot calling the kettle black. 

Day 17: Stop. Focus. Click... On Perspective

When you gaze at the world from this perspective, problems just don't seem as daunting.

Day 16: Remember the Time... I Lost My Innocence

I grew up in a newsroom. Not literally, as I was 22 when I started working at The Blade newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, first as a two-year apprentice and then as a full-fledged staff writer whose beat was the east side of Toledo and anything in the surrounding communities.


What I mean is, I actually became an adult in the newsroom. Because I was there, I could no longer be blissfully sheltered against the real world in my tiny community of Lambertville, Michigan. In the real world, people kill each other. Rapes occur. People abuse the elderly and the young. They lie, steal, and cheat.


And some are even on their cell phones with their lawyer literally minutes after hitting a child, only concerned with themselves instead of the child they fatally injured.


Ironically, I think it took a kindergarten student to strip away the rest of my innocence and open my eyes to the real world.

Remember the time I lost my childhood and was forced to grow up?


Dameatrius McCreary. Even after seven years, I still know how to spell his name, and can visualize the exact shade of his white-yellow hair and his trying-too-hard smile, even though I never actually saw him alive.


Both times I saw him, he was dead. The first time I saw him, he was under a sheet near a yellow-taped-off area wearing white socks and just one shoe. The car that killed him had hit him so hard it literally knocked the shoe off his left foot. The photographer who had accompanied me to the scene had to explain this fact to me, as I never knew the phrase "knock your socks off" had some sort of truth to it.


I was at the scene because the accident that blared across the police scanner near the end of my shift occurred in Oregon, an eastern suburb of Toledo, so I was responsible for the story: A woman who was distracted by her cell phone somehow missed the flashing red lights of the school bus and hit the boy as he was crossing the street to get home the day of Easter break.


After the ambulance left, I was shakily interviewing Dameatrius’ uncle when he got the call that he was dead. I wish I had looked away as the news sank in and hadn’t had to see his face shake as hard as his voice did as he screamed “oh my God” and exploded into inconsolable sobs.


Though it wasn’t over an actual loss, I too cried the entire drive back to the office, but composed myself enough to walk into the newsroom and update the editors on the story. That composure was short-lived, as I went right back to crying as I was transcribing my notes from a passer-by who saw the accident and described the gruesome way the small-for-his-age kindergartner bounced off the hood of the car after he was hit.


My colleagues were concerned, but understood that it was my first first-hand experience with the real world. I only later learned that it was an especially harsh way to be introduced to the real world’s cruelty, as many of my colleagues who were parents said they would have had to refuse to cover the story, as it would have been too hard for them. And this was coming from newspapermen with decades of experience covering the real world.


The nightmares about that day only intensified after attending Dameatrius’ funeral. Those who know me are well aware that I am not good at funerals, and never have been, as I just don’t know how to handle death.


Yet for my job, I was told I’d be attending a funeral for a five year old.


It was an open casket funeral. For a child.


Nothing could have prepared me for the child-sized casket filled with stuffed animals, including an oversized Spongebob Squarepants right near a small child’s too-white face.


I spent the funeral in the very last pew of the church, clinging to the photographer who was assigned to the story muffling my sobs into his plaid shirt during a photo montage. Afterward, before we drove back to the office, we went back to sit in his truck. Neither of us wanted to be alone in that moment, yet neither of us had anything to say, so we sat in silence lost in a loss that wasn’t really ours, yet felt like it was.


I was still at a loss when I finally made it back to the office, and, for the first and only time in my career, admitted to my editor that I literally was at a loss for words. I had a notebook filled with quotes and observations, yet just couldn’t find a way to begin or formulate a story about a five-year-old’s funeral. Five-year-olds are supposed to be outside getting dirty and fighting imaginary bad guys, not inside a coffin near people fighting grief.


He gently suggested trying to paint a picture of who Dameatrius was, which I couldn’t answer myself, but found later while struggling with this story that I could do through his loved ones’ remarks about his love for his family and strawberry milkshakes.


Dameatrius was only a child when he was killed, and ironically, it took this tragedy to force me to grow up and realize that the loss I was feeling on that day was the complete loss of my innocence.