Because I believe in a free market economy fueled by healthy competition, I stopped by the new Caribou Coffee in the train station yesterday, thereby making my contribution toward toppling the Starbucks Empire. This being my second visit to the new coffee shop, I have now determined that Caribou’s market positioning must be something akin to, “The Coffee Shop That Cares.” I say this primarily because everyone working there shares the same smurftastic, whistle while you work type attitude.
Now, I’m all for good customer service – far too many establishments lack this crucial skill – but I also like to keep a professional distance between myself and, well… pretty much everyone else. I don’t want to be pals with the barista, I just want her to make me some coffee. I guess really, I like my coffee encounters just the way I like most of my human interactions: quick and anonymous.
So I instantly knew I was in for trouble when the 20-something perky cashier with burgundy hair bounded over to the cash register, and gave me a huge smile as she chirped, “Hi there! How are you doing today? What can I get for you this afternoon?”
I squinted at their menu board to see what they called a medium sized coffee, and was refreshingly surprised to see that they just call it a “medium.” I pulled out some cash and said, “Hi – can I have a decaf medium skim latté, please?”
“You sure can! We’ll get that for you right away! Is there anything else I can interest you in? Maybe some chocolates or some Caribou mints? If you’d like to put $20 on a coffee card, your latté will be free today!”
“No, just the latté is fine, thanks.”
The Stepford cashier rang up my latté, handed me my change, and kept talking to me as I was walking away, her voice slowly drifting off: “Thanks for coming in! Just step right over there, and we’ll get your latté to you in a jiffy! Hope to see you again soon.”
As I waited for my drink, the barista gal had a permagrin on her face, and kept looking over at me while I impatiently flicked a packet of raw sugar between my fingers.
She smiled widely at me, and said, “Hi there! How are you doing today? I’ll have that decaf medium skim latté ready for you in just a second! Will you need a coffee sleeve for that? I’ll get you one just in case.”
I closed my eyes a bit and calmed myself with the soothing image of a sweaty, gold-chained Mr. T smashing through the glass doors of the coffee shop while shouting, “Enough with the jibber-jabber! Give the woman her damn latté, fool, ‘fore I mess you up, real good!”
I was snapped out of my fantasy by the arrival of my piping hot coffee, but the whole experience reminded me of another encounter I had with overly engaged service employees. Several years ago, a friend and I were eating dinner at a local restaurant. Our waiter was a young man, clean-cut, seemed nice enough, but he would not stop smiling and staring at us the entire time he was taking our order. His eyes were fixed intently on mine as I perused the menu, and as I gave him my order, he kept looking directly into my eyes instead of down at his notepad as he scribbled out my order.
The frozen eye contact made me extremely uncomfortable and fidgety. As soon as he walked away, I leaned over to my friend Kim, and said, “Why is it that we always get the crazy waiters? I mean, how totally creepy was that guy?!”
Kim nodded in agreement, and whispered, “No kidding! Hey, Starey McEyeballs – try looking away every now and then, why don’t you!?”
Later in the evening, the waiter came back to see if we were interested in dessert, and as I looked over the menu, I asked him what the cheesecake of the day was. I kept my head fixed firmly on the menu because I didn’t want to look him in the eyes, for fear that he might steal my soul.
This time, he didn’t start writing my order down right away. Instead he stopped, and said to us, “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that – I’m actually a little hard of hearing.”
As he walked away, Kim and I looked at each other with an entirely new perspective on the situation. So as it turned out, our waiter wasn’t a psycho after all – he was just hard of hearing, and had to keep staring at us in order to read our lips. This was one of those experiences that really makes you think twice before passing judgment on people.
We walked out of there with a whole new attitude, having learned a valuable life lesson. I guess that the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover – black, white, gay, straight, deaf, hearing. The bottom line is that no matter what your background, it’s still really creepy to hold someone’s gaze for more than ten seconds.

Filed under: General on May 4th, 2005 | 8 Comments »

After encountering three children in the elevator, and one pre-teen eyeing up the coffee machine at work, I eventually deduced that last Wednesday was “Take Your Child to Work Day.” I’m all for inventing new holidays, particularly if they involve me getting presents, but I’d at least like a little more truth in advertising. With that in mind, I came up with a few more descriptive names for this annual event:
“Get Out Of Paying For Daycare Today Day”
Or
“Flaunt Your Fertility In Front Of Your Single, Childless Co-workers Day”
Or
“Let’s See If We Can Possibly Make Union Station Any More Crowded At Lunchtime Day”
Or
“Prove To Junior That At Least Someone Respects Daddy Day”

Filed under: General on May 2nd, 2005 | 3 Comments »

Okay, so I just have time for a couple quick questions that I’m hoping to gain some insight into:
1. Have any of you actually seen a chicken with its head cut off, and if so, is that really what I look like right now?
2. How would I know if I had a collapsed lung? Would I definitely know? Can your lungs deflate due to stress?
3. Is there any medical evidence of people going blind from an eye twitch?
Results will be tabulated and published in the quarterly review. Thanks!

Filed under: General on April 27th, 2005 | 12 Comments »

As I stood on the street corner, hugging myself to fend off the unseasonably frigid wind which was blowing my hair in my eyes, I tried unsuccessfully to hail a cab. I was running late to meet a friend for dinner, and didn’t have time to take the El. It seemed like everyone else had the same idea since each cab that drove by was already loaded with people rushing off to start their weekends.
A homeless man who had just been kicked out of the Starbucks behind me started to occupy himself by pulling on the doors of all the newspaper machines on the corner. After grabbing a copy of The Reader, he saw me standing on the curb, and said in a high-pitched, scratchy voice, “With hair like that, you gonna go crazy!”
His eyes opened wide as he spoke, and he pointed at his ears with both hands and twirled his fingers in a circular motion. He then repeated for emphasis, “Craaaaazy!”
I stopped myself from launching forth the verbal jab that had served me so well in middle school – “I know you are, but what am I?” – fearing that it might be another few minutes before a cab came to my rescue, and that my retort might either inflame or intrigue the man, neither of which would serve me well. So I just fixed my gaze on the southbound traffic, desperate to leap into a vacant taxi.
Eventually, my golden chariot arrived, and I quickly hopped in. I glanced back at the man, who was now leaning against the bus stop pole. He looked at me, and twirled his hand around his ear again, in case I hadn’t understood his previous message.
I slumped back into my seat and checked my cell phone for missed calls. As I sat in the cab, looking out the window, I thought about what the man had said. Crazy. My hair will make me crazy. Huh. That’s not even possible… is it? Nah. He’s just an old homeless man, trying to mess with me.
For some reason, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Does anyone really know what causes a person to go crazy? I must admit that many thoughts enter my mind that I choose not to share, lest people think I’m a bit off-kilter. I always thought it might be because I was a Pisces, but what if it all comes down to hair? Mental illness is often genetic, and curly hair is certainly genetic, so is it really that much of a leap to draw the connection that curly hair might just be the physical manifestation of insanity?
I imagined my head in cross-section – the twisted, gnarly hair follicles poking deep down into my brain. It all started to make sense. And with time, won’t the corkscrews twist deeper and deeper into the soft grey matter, ultimately causing the madness to consume me?
All during dinner, I found myself completely distracted by this image. But what could I do? Is it possible that my curls were both the source of my strength and my weakness? How could I avoid this inevitable demise? Shaving my head would be futile. A flat iron wouldn’t work.
My friend Lana noticed that I was just pushing my veal medallions from one side of the plate to the other, so she asked, “Jenny. What’s wrong? Don’t you like your dinner?”
“No, it’s fine. It’s good. I’m just thinking about something somebody told me today. Hey, do you think they can do laser hair removal on someone’s entire head?”
Lana coughed a little as she sipped her Chianti, and said, “What, are you crazy?!”
I took a gulp of my wine, nodded my head, and said softly, “With hair like this, what do you expect?”

Filed under: General on April 25th, 2005 | 3 Comments »

Hi, you’ve reached Jenny at 555-5555. Leave a message at the beep and I’ll call you right back!
Tuesday
10:43am: Yeah, Jimmy. Give me a call. It’s Pops.
11:24am: Jimmy – where are you? Call me. It’s Pops.
1:49pm: Yeah, uh. Tell Jimmy to call Pops. It’s Pops.
Wednesday
2:03pm: Can you have Jimmy call Pops? Yeah.
4:27pm: Hey, I need to talk to Jimmy. Have him call Pops.
Thursday
9:36am: Jimmy! Call me. It’s Pops.
8:24pm: Hi, you’ve reached Jenny at 555-5555. Leave a message at the beep and I’ll call you right back! Unless this is Pops, in which case, listen you stupid #@$%! Jimmy’s never calling you back because he’s with me now! You think you can just leave a few messages, and then pretend like nothing happened? You can’t tell him what to do anymore – he’s a grown man. Jimmy loves me and never wants to talk to you again. If you keep calling us, Jimmy will slap your ass with a restraining order so fast that your bald head will spin. And he said that if you ever want to see your grandkids aga- what’s that, Jimmy? Okay, I will. Jimmy says to tell Moms to call him.

Filed under: General on April 22nd, 2005 | 4 Comments »

This afternoon, while sitting in the train station food court and lunching on my McDonald’s California Cobb Salad with Grilled Chicken and Paul Newman’s Low Fat Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing, I noticed that the table in front of me was overloaded with two beat up suitcases, several tightly packed shopping bags, and a guitar case. Amidst all this debris, however, the owner was conspicuously absent.
My immediate thought, as we live in the post 9/11 era, was of course, that there must be a bomb in the guitar case. Before I could alert the gendarmes, a travel weary, ragged looking old man came over with a sandwich and a coffee, and sat down at the table. He looked like someone who might have gone by the name Boxcar Pete, if this were the 1920’s. I fully expected him to pull out a long stick with a red plaid handkerchief tied on the end, concealing a few items of clothing, a jug of moonshine, and perhaps a harmonica.
Bomb threat now averted, I had just re-focused my attention on identifying the seven different types of lettuce that McDonald’s claims to include in their salads, when I heard someone calling out to me.
“Hey, Miss? Excuse me – Miss?”
I looked up to see Boxcar Pete smiling at me, revealing years of missed dental appointments. He reached his arm out toward me, and clutched tightly in his rough hand was a small jar of what appeared to be jelly. I stared ahead, confused, and unsure of how to interpret this gesture.
“Excuse me, Miss. Do you like apple butter?”
My brain ran through all the possible responses to this question, and the likely outcomes. If I said yes, would he try to sell me some? If I said no, would he be offended and throw it at me? If I said I didn’t know, would he offer me a taste? Think, Jenny, think! What’s the right answer?!
He could see that I was desperately trying to process this unexpected request, so he gave me further clarification, “See, I’m going to Canada, and Customs says I can’t bring food items into a foreign country. I said it was just some apple butter, and I’m just going to Canada, but they said I had to leave it behind. Seems a shame to waste. Would you like to take it?”
When I glanced over at the garage sale he had accumulated on that table, I was a bit surprised at the fact that the apple butter was the only thing that triggered the watchful eye of Customs. From the looks of it, he could have been smuggling a whole nest of rabid ferrets in that DSW bag alone. Certainly he must be stashing some raw poultry in that guitar case.
I thanked him for the offer, but told him that I would hate to waste it, because I could never eat that much by myself. He nodded his head in agreement and said, “I know. That’s what I hate about this – I just can’t stand to see good food go to waste. My cousin made this – it’s the best you’ve ever tasted. I didn’t know it was illegal to take apple butter to Canada. I just didn’t know. How could I know?”
I agreed that it was really unfortunate, wished him a nice trip, and continued eating my salad. I heard him offer the butter to a few other people, who gave him a variety of responses that ranged from “no” to “no.”
But this got me thinking – do I really not like apple butter, or did I just turn him down because he seemed like he might have a touch of the crazy? Would I have accepted apple butter from a man in a business suit? From a woman in a sundress? I had to know, so I devised a chart mapping out my honest opinions on what type of edible items I would, and would not, accept from various people, including close friends, casual acquaintances, and complete strangers. I think you’ll agree that the results, shown below in Figure 1, are nothing less than astonishing.
Figure 1: Analysis of Jenny’s Free Food Acceptance Philosophy:

What I realized is that, although I do not consider myself a devout germophobe, it appears that I do practice germophobia when it comes to free food. There is very little that I would accept from even a casual acquaintance, and really nothing from a complete stranger. Do I have trust issues? Have I acquired an eating disorder? Was I not exposed to enough diversity as a child? Only further research will determine the answers to those questions, but until then, save your apple butter for yourself, because Jenny? She don’t want it.

Filed under: General on April 20th, 2005 | 14 Comments »

Now that the harsh winter is over, I’ve decided to come out of hibernation and throw myself headfirst back into the dating scene. But this time, I’m adopting a new strategy utilizing a three-pronged approach: take a new class, start venturing out into uncharted neighborhoods for coffee and drinks, and test the waters again in the online dating pool.
The last time I tried online dating, it ended with a late night intervention followed by three weeks of intense deprogramming after I fell victim to the eHarmony cult. With the pain of that experience still lingering in the deep recesses of my brain, I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake, so I solicited the help of my most trusted friends. After all, who knows me better than they do? If anyone should be able to help me attract the attention of a prospective suitor, it would be my pals.
Or so I thought.
See, I consider myself to be a fiercely loyal friend. If one of my pals needs help, I’m there in a heartbeat. And I don’t ask much in return, but when I do need my friends’ help, I expect them to be there for me. Yet, to date, they have disappointed me immensely. I gave them all one simple task, but they have consistently failed to deliver. The mission? Help me come up with a catchy headline so that I can post a new personals ad. Is that so much to ask? As I quickly learned, the answer to that is, yes. Apparently it is.
About a week ago, I was talking to Seamus to see if he had any ideas for headlines. He said he needed some time to think about it, and that he would get back to me with some options. We met for lunch later in the week where he pulled out a scribbled list and handed it to me:

After Seamus’ hit play was over, a group of us went out for drinks to recap the highlights of his theatrical debut. During the play, there were some young kids in the audience who kept shouting to their mother who was performing on stage. Later on, as we sat in the bar, conversation soon led to the topic of children who aren’t quite as cute as they, or their parents, think they are. I took a sip of my scotch and soda, and decided it was time to share the tale of a boy who would come to be known as the Crabapple Kid.
It all began on one of those insufferably long days at work, where nothing seemed to be going right. The project I had been working on for two weeks was scrapped, and the one I had let slide was now top priority, and consequently overdue. It was cold and rainy, and if one more oblivious suburban tourist nearly poked my eye out with her umbrella, I felt like I might have to shave my head and turn vigilante, à la Travis Bickle.
I just wanted to sit on the train, stare out the window, and think about what I might eat for dinner. But that wasn’t meant to be.
I took the only seat that was available, which was behind a young woman and her son, who was probably about four years old. He was a chatty and overly animated boy, probably the kind who would end up taking theatre classes in school, and later perform in hit plays at the local church.
Normally, I love kids. I am charmed by them, and enjoy their company. But not that day. That day, I just wanted to sit on the train, stare out the window, and think about what I might eat for dinner. Alas, the boy had other plans for us.
As soon as the train left the station, he knelt on the seat, and turned around to face me. He then attempted to engage me in the babbling conversation of a four year old, his gibberish broken only by bursts of coughing. I stared blankly into his button eyes, and watched helplessly as he interrupted the steady stream of fluid trailing from his nose by wiping it on the back of his chubby hand.
Avert your eyes, Jenny. Ignore him and he’ll go away.
Finally, he began to trace the outline of my ticket with his moist fingers. I looked up and politely smiled, assuming his mother would tell him to sit down and leave the nice lady alone. But she didn’t, because she believed, incorrectly, that her son was the most adorable creature I had ever seen in my life.
Perhaps fatigued by the sustained loss of vital bodily fluids from his pug nose, he eventually sat down and directed his energy toward kicking the seat in front of him instead of contaminating my monthly pass with the croup. His mother tried to entertain him with storybooks and Highlights Magazines, but he wasn’t interested. When he spoke, it was in a baby talk voice that was at least a year too young for him.
“I’m hungwy. Can I have my apple, Mommy?”
His mother reached into her backpack and pulled out the tiniest apple I had ever seen. It was clearly the kind that was not meant for eating, but intended to be baked into a pie or boiled down into applesauce. This was the kind of apple that came in ten-pound bags, was all banged up, and was perpetually on sale for $2.99 a bushel. The kind of apple your Polish great-grandmother might offer you as dessert, but only because the dementia had recently set in, and she was convinced that you were a gypsy.
The boy held the tiny mottled apple carefully in his hands, turning it round and round, inspecting it. Then, something caught his attention.
“Look Mommy. There’s a bwown spot there.”
And unlike 99.9% of the normal population who would have avoided the wormhole and simply eaten around it, our modern day Johnny Appleseed decided to sink his soft baby teeth directly into the rotten part.
He held the apple out, and said, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy! Look! I eated the bwown spot! No more spot!”
His voice lilted with a singsong cadence that made my ears start to itch. I watched as he proudly chomped into the apple with exaggerated head movements, leaving a trail of dime-sized bites. With each dramatic nibble, he would look over at his mother, and then glance back at me, waiting for some sort of approval or applause.
At one point, I imagined myself snatching the half-eaten apple from his sticky paws and throwing it with all my might against the front of the car, laughing maniacally as its mealy innards exploded, raining down on all the unsuspecting commuters.
Thankfully, however, my stop was approaching, so I quickly retrieved my bacteria-laden ticket from its clip and hopped out of my seat, trying once again to focus on what I might eat for dinner.
As I shared this story with my friends, and pantomimed the boy’s dramatic fruit consumption, Natasha was particularly taken with the image of the tiny apple. As we continued discussing it, I realized that we had created yet another new catch phrase: crabapple kid.

crabapple kid, krab’-apl kid, n. A child who tries to be overly precious, or works too hard at being adorable; one who is deserving only of wormy crabapples.

For the rest of the weekend, we kept trying out our new expression on each other, looking for different contexts in which to use it.
“Nat, your kids are gonna be so rotten that your biography will be called, Natasha Crabapple and the Crabapple Dumpling Gang!”
“Shut up! Your grubby children are gonna have to rob banks to pay for all their wormy apples. And then they’ll make a movie based on your life called, Jenny Cassidy and the Crabapple Kid!”
“Ooh, good one. Oh wait, remember when your daughter was in that boxing movie? What the heck was that called? Oh yeah – Million Dollar Crabapple Kid!”
Then Nat started testing out our new catch phrases in combination:
“Damn, Jenny! Why’d you go and have so many nasty crabapple kids? What, were you walking the squirrel or something?”
After two straight days of this, the mere thought of an apple would throw us into hysterical fits of laughter. Farnsworth reluctantly joined us for dinner and a movie on Sunday night, fearing he would have to endure another few hours of crabapple themed insults. We made it through the meal like civilized human beings, and therefore felt deserving of dessert. Nat agreed to split the mango cheesecake with me, and Farnsworth asked what the sorbet of the day was.
The waiter folded his arms behind his back, and said, “Well, tonight we have coconut, raspberry, and green apple.”
I paused a moment, and exhaled slowly before looking over at Natasha, who already had tears welling in her eyes. She didn’t make a sound, but just stared down at her plate, her shoulders heaving from suppressed laughter.
I leaned over to Farnsworth and whispered, “Don’t mind her. Your girlfriend’s just walking the squirrel again.”

Filed under: General on April 15th, 2005 | 3 Comments »

You know how sometimes people start to tell you a story, and you can tell within about fifteen seconds that the story is only going to be funny to the person telling it, and possibly the other person who was involved? Well, the next couple entries may be just like that. So Natasha, I hope you’re reading this.
This weekend, Natasha and I decided to grab dinner before going to see our friend Seamus perform in his hit play at the St. Ignatius Catholic Church and Elementary School on the north side of town. As we were heading toward the restaurant, we saw a man walking what was perhaps the smallest headed dog I have ever seen in my life. It looked not unlike a mouse wearing a dog suit.
The man didn’t even have the dog on a leash, which I suspect is because the dog’s neck could not support the weight of a collar. We both started laughing as soon as the pinheaded pup passed us by, and Natasha said, “It looked like he was walking a squirrel!”
I snickered, “Heh. Walking a squirrel. Totally!”
Natasha smiled, and said it again, “Yeah. It totally looked like he was walking a squirrel. How dumb is that!?”
Then she slowed down for a minute, looked back at the microscopic mutt, and said, “Hey! We should start a new catch phrase! That could be our catch phrase! How come 13 year old skateboarders and Snoop Dogg always get to come up with the popular expressions? Why not Midwestern marketing managers in their mid-thirties?”
Intrigued, but slightly confused, I said, “So… what’s the catch phrase?”
“Walking the squirrel, of course!”
“Oh – that’s funny! But… what does it mean?”
“You know, it means like, you’re stupid. Or you just did something stupid, or crazy.”
I needed a bit more context, so I asked Nat to use it in a sentence.
Natasha kind of squinted, and looked up for a minute as she tried to collect her thoughts, and then she said, “Okay. So say that maybe you forgot to bring the tickets to the play tonight, and you didn’t realize it until the show was just about to start. Then I might say to you, Dang Jenny! Where’s your head at? Are you walking the squirrel tonight, or what?”
I quickly patted my back pocket to make sure I hadn’t, in fact, walked the squirrel. Nope, tickets were still there.
Since I know that active learning is the best way to retain a new concept, I tested out our new catch phrase in a sentence of my own: “Okay, so how about this one – let’s say that I was in a meeting today and our marketing director suggested doing a huge direct mail campaign next Christmas to kick off our new product line, so I lean over to a colleague and say, Man! He sure is walking the squirrel with that idea! You know we’ll never get a good response during a holiday!”
Nat pursed her lips, bobbed her head back and forth, and said, “Mmm… well, I guess you’re using it in the right context, but it just doesn’t quite flow in that situation. Keep trying, though. You’ll get it.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and started heading toward the restaurant. We met Nat’s boyfriend, Farnsworth, there, and she told him all about our new catch phrase. He seemed to really like it, and started testing it out immediately.
“Dude. I had so much scotch last night that I was totally walking the squirrel!”
Natasha’s shoulders slumped, her mouth pulled tight at the corners, and she rolled her eyes as she said, “No! You guys just aren’t getting it. It doesn’t mean drunk. Walking the squirrel means you did something stupid. A bonehead move. Think about it – you’re walking a squirrel. I mean, how stupid could that possibly be? You can’t walk a squirrel! That’s what’s so funny about it!”
Farnsworth gave it another shot, and said, “Okay, how about this? What if a guy I know locked his keys in his car while the car was still running, so then I said to him, Hey – you really took the squirrel for a walk there!”
Natasha and I quickly conferred, and then agreed that “walking the squirrel” and “taking the squirrel for a walk” have two very different meanings. The first one is funny, while the second one is just plain vulgar. I’m not exactly sure why, but it just is.
After we finished dinner, we started to head out to the car to make it in time to get a good seat for the performance. Just as I stepped into the street, two teenage girls on a scooter came burning around the corner, and I had to jump back on the curb just to save my toes.
I threw my hands in the air and screamed, “Hey, you morons! Way to walk the squirrel!!!”
Natasha looked over, and beamed with pride as she said, “Snoop Dogg ain’t got nothing on us.”

Filed under: General on April 13th, 2005 | 4 Comments »

Scene: Chicago O’Hare, Winter 2005
Girl 1: About 16 years old, Asian, appears to be a foreign exchange student
Girl 2: About 16 years old, American
Girl 1 is sitting quietly in the gate, waiting to board her flight. Girl 2 is eating Mentos and reading Newsweek Magazine. On the cover is a picture of Martha Stewart.
Girl 1: It is late.
Girl 2: Yeah, I’m tired. Do you want some Mentos? I love them.
Girl 1: No. Who is that?
Girl 2: Her? That’s Martha Stewart. Have you ever heard of her?
Girl 1 shakes her head no.
Girl 2: Well, Martha Stewart is a billionaire who made all her money by doing homemaking stuff. Do you know what that is?
Girl 1 shakes her head no.
Girl 2: Well, homemaking is basically like cooking and sewing and entertaining. She has a TV show and a magazine and writes all kinds of books. Anyway, she was accused of insider trading. Do you know what that is?
Girl 1 shakes her head no.
Girl 2: Well, it’s essentially like a white collar crime. You probably don’t know what that means. White collar crime is like when business people commit crimes or do insider trading or steal money from their companies. They call it white collar because business people usually wear white shirts and ties. Anyway. So she was arrested for insider trading a couple months ago and apparently she’s getting out of prison next week. Do you understand?
Girl 1 shakes her head yes.
Girl 2: But I could really care less.

Filed under: General on April 1st, 2005 | 9 Comments »