Smells Like Happy

In Case You Haven't Seen It

Star Wars, as recapped by a 3-year-old.

Thanks, Ward.

Lessons in Customer Service: When All Else Fails, Be Maddeningly Polite

"Hi. I need to schedule a pickup."

"Yes, miss. I can help you with this. When does the package need to be picked up?"

"As soon as possible. It was supposed to be picked up Wednesday but nobody picked it up."

"Oh! I am very sorry for the inconvenience. What is the tracking number?"

"[Blah, blah, blah, several digits]."

"Yes, miss, very sorry for the inconvenience. I am showing that this package will be delivered today by 5 p.m."

"Uh... no. It won't. Because it hasn't been picked up yet."

"Oh. Yes. Very sorry for the inconvenience. Can you please hold?"

"Sure."

....

"Yes, miss. What I can do is schedule a pickup for you, miss. Is this something you would like me to do?"

"Uh, yes. Very much so."

"Yes, very sorry for the inconvenience. We can pick it up Saturday. Is this acceptable?"

"That's fine."

"OK, miss. Very sorry for the inconvenience. We will pick it up tomorrow. Your confirmation number for the pickup is 5--"

"I'm sorry, what is 5?"

"The pickup confirmation."

"Oh, OK. Go ahead."

"5."

"Yes...?"

"............"

"Wait, what is 5? The time you're confirming that you'll pick it up? 5 p.m.?"

"No, miss. Very sorry for the inconvenience. Your confirmation number is 5."

"5."

"Yes."

"5...?"

"5."

"5-5...?"

"5."

"Wait, what are we talking about? It's 5? Just 5? What do I do with '5'?"

"When nobody picks up your package tomorrow and you have to call to tell us that nobody picked it up, you can give us confirmation number '5'."

"Right. Five."

"Yes."

"When nobody comes tomorrow."

"Yes, miss. Very sorry for the inconvenience."

"Oh, me too."

Distant Cousins, But STILL.

"Branko and Tanja broke up."

"Broke up?!? Aren't they somehow cousins?"

"Yeah. That's why they broke up."

This is why I let him take his arguments to their own natural conclusions.

"Teej, I start work tomorrow! Can you believe it?"

"I know. Crazy."

"Man, I am never going to be home."

"Right. And why do you keep reminding me of that?"

"I'm just saying. I have to leave early, then go to practice, then I won't be home until late... You've gotten pretty used to having me around, you know?"

"Have I?"

"Yes. We'll have to wean you off of my presence. It's like a baby being weaned from breastfeeding."

"So..."

"Oh. Right. So I guess that makes me the big boob."

"Yes. Yes, it does."

This Is How Much He Loves Italian Ice

"Slow down."

"Why?"

"I want to see if he's out today."

"Who?"

"My dealer."

"Your dealer?"

"My Italian ice dealer."

"Oh. I don't think he sets up his cart when it's raining like this."

"Or when the cops get him. That stuff is lethal."

How to Announce to Your Friends That You Have Eloped

A Case Study in Gender-Differentiated Communication Styles

Me:

"Hi, it's Teej -- how ARE you? Oh, good! Yes, everything here is good! How's work? Yeah? Oh, that's great. Nice! Me? Well, I'm actually calling because I have some news. NO, I am not! Don't even joke about that. No, actually... The Mouse and I got married! On Tuesday! Yes!! No, I swear! Yes, it was wonderful! We eloped! Well, we kept it a secret from most people -- which was not easy, by the way -- and it was just a private ceremony. Yes, exactly. OK, do you have a while to talk? OK, so it all started about a month ago..."

Him:

Beeeeep.

"Hey, Phillip, it's The Mouse... Just calling to say hey and see how things are going with you, see how you're liking Hawaii. Hope you're getting some beach time. We're in San Francisco for a little vacation, I graduated a few weeks ago, and I'm just bumming around for the summer, waiting for our move to D.C. and all that. Everything's good, sooooo... not much else going on here, sooooo... give me a call when you have a minute and we'll catch up. Oh yeah -- and Teej and I got married. Bye!"

Alarmed

We live in a new building with all kinds of cool new features. For example, the keys to our apartment are these weird little electronic keys that slide into a reader that emits a high-pitched "beeeeep" when the door unlocks. We also have a very high-tech fire alarm system, which never fails to give me the scare of my life when some drunk idiot decides to smoke in the elevator at 3 a.m.

For a few months after we moved here, I asked The Mouse, "what do you think those speakers on the wall are for?" We have one in the living room and one in the bedroom, and we had no idea. We figured that perhaps the government is interested in the goings on in our home. We certainly couldn't blame them, what with all our child trafficking and drug smuggling, so we moved on.

But no. Most buildings have bells or intercoms stationed at intervals throughout the hallways, and they're plenty loud enough to rouse you from sleep; the developers of our building decided to puts the sound delivery mechanism right in the bedroom. Right next the bed. At a volume of 5,000 decibels.

The voice that booms through the speakers is a woman's voice. I do think the alarm system would be more effective with Julie Andrews's voice urging us to wake up and exit the building with haste. (Mary Poppins was extremely firm, never cross, if you remember, and she always turned "tidy up the nursery" into an awesome game.) But this woman is not soothing. She's angry. And demanding. And angry.

After a solid, eardrum-crushing tone sounds for about 10 seconds, she starts her speech.

"YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. THIS ALARM INDICATES THE PRESENCE OF AN EMERGENCY IN YOUR BUILDING. IF, AT THE END OF THIS MESSAGE, YOU HEAR FURTHER ALARM SOUNDS ON YOUR FLOOR, PLEASE WALK TO THE NEAREST EMERGENCY EXIT AND EXIT THE BUILDING."

By this point, I have already jumped to my feet and woken up -- in that order -- and probably put on a pair of jeans, decided to forego a bra, and indicted the spoiled kids who are likely responsible, the same kids whose parents are footing the bill for an Ivy League education, a Mercedes and maybe a lawsuit when my heart decides to give out the next time the alarm sounds in the middle of the night.

This happened again last night. After I had put pulled on pants and begun looking for a sweatshirt, I realized that The Mouse was just standing in the middle of the room, doing nothing. This is the same man who last time followed me around the room like a drill sergeant with a Napoleon complex, screaming down my neck, "GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR, RECRUIT! THIS IS A LIFE-AND-DEATH SITUATION, NOT A BEAUTY CONTEST, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE."

What he had learned, and I had forgotten in my 3 a.m. fog, is that angry emergency woman's speech contains a one-word loophole: if. IF, AT THE END OF THIS MESSAGE, YOU HEAR FURTHER ALARM SOUNDS ON YOUR FLOOR...

Last night, we didn't. And I was so elated that I didn't have to go stand in the front of the building for 20 minutes that I dispensed with the cursing and fell back asleep, despite the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

Soon, I will be entirely immune to the wolf cries of this alarm system. That'll show them.

***

I met my first friend from the blogosphere yesterday! Mammamer at Daily Kvetch recently moved to the Boston area from California. I also used to live in California, in the same area, and we even discovered that we volunteered at the same senior community. My first blog-to-real-life meeting was a total success, and you should know that Mammamer may be the easiest person to meet, possibly ever. She is a freaking master in the art of conversation -- and I thought I was pretty good. Meeting someone you don't know for lunch can sometimes be a conversational obstacle course in which you must be continually vigilant about what lies ahead and whether you'll be able to handle it, and whether it will turn into a one-way Q&A session. Or it can be, Oh! We are talking about our puffy sticker collections! We both collect puffy stickers! But I can tell that we're running out of things to say about the puffiness of stickers, which is sort of shocking, considering that we are the world's foremost puffy sticker collectors and both have limited-edition 1982 Michael Jackson puffies encased in airtight display cases, but it appears that we are indeed running out, and what are we going to talk about THEN? Uh-oh... I think this is it... And -- and here is the dead silence.

Not with Mammamer. I mean, we do have plenty in common, but I suspect that doesn't much matter. I'm fairly certain that she could make anyone feel at home in just about any place. Even if your home is not a Thai restaurant that plays Kenny Rogers's Greatest Hits.

That's right: She didn't skip a beat when I interrupted our conversation by throwing out the World's Biggest Conversation Stopper:

"Is this Kenny Rogers they're playing??"

"Is it?" she asked.

"You picked a fine time to leeeaave me, Lucille," I said.

We listened to a few more bars, agreed it was Kenny, and resumed our conversation with nary a wrinkle.

Oh, she is good. Plus, she has been to Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand, and I am a little bit jealous of that. Plus, she wears supercute, funky eyeglasses. That's three thumbs up from me.

And That's How I Ended Up On the ASPCA's Ten Most Wanted

I swear I'm not a pet thief. I only act like one.

When I was a kid, I brought home every lost, homeless, hurt or hungry animal that didn't wriggle out of my grasp. Neighborhood kids brought me the strays they found because, while their mothers would unleash a string of curses at the sight of a filthy, nonhuman creature of questionable origin, the gatekeeper in my house was just as animal-crazy as I was.

When I was 10 years old, I found a reddish brown dog wandering through our neighborhood. A poor, lost soul with an oddly healthy belly and gleaming coat. Five minutes later, I had named her Sandy and housed her in the garage with bowls of food and water. Soon after, I heard a knock on the front door.

"Have you seen our dog?"

"I don't know," I said, full of suspicion. "What dog?"

"We were walking through the neighborhood with our dog and now she's gone."

"Well... I'm not sure," I said, increasingly certain that these strangers were trying to steal my new dog. "What does she look like?"

Not until they described, in perfect detail, the dog I had sequestered in my garage did I realize that she was not a stray at all and, therefore, did not need a pigtailed savior to love her until the end of her days. Rather than rescue the lost dog, I had overzealously -- though innocently enough -- stolen a dog who already had a warm rug to sleep on. It was a tearful goodbye when I parted with Sandy, whom they so callously called Shelby. She trotted to her owners as happily as she had trotted to me, and I mentally rewrote my future without her.

Apparently, I haven't changed.

A few nights ago I was sitting up at 2 a.m., stuck in a jet lag-induced cycle of sleepless nights, when I heard a sound from the hallway outside our apartment. It was an unmistakable sound that any cat lover would recognize: the rapid-fire, questioning "mow? mow?" of a cat who is calling for other beings, having found herself alone and lonely. This sound is quite different from a "meow."

A cry for help!

I poked my head outside our door and saw, at the end of the hallway, a dark little cat with a bushy tail. Lost! How did she end up here in the middle of the night? Poor, fluffy kitty! I could watch her until morning, when her owners would certainly realize that she was gone. In the meantime, we would hang out all night, playing with toys I would quickly fashion out of tin foil and shoelaces. She would rub her wet, pink nose on my hand and I would whip up a gourmet, kitty-worthy breakfast of turkey and tuna. Then we would nap together on the couch as her happy, continuous purr would lull me into a contented sleep.

I kneeled on the floor and snapped my fingers. "Hi, kitty! Come here!"

And that's when her owner poked his head from around the corner.

I could see the confusion in his eyes, the questions behind his glare.

"Oh! Oh my god! I'm sorry!" I said. "I thought she was out here by herself!"

But it was too late. The cat was bounding toward me with great enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm, in fact, that she paused at my feet for only a moment of ear scratching before she darted into my apartment.

"Oh! Oh! I'll -- I'll be right back!" I held up one finger as I hurried inside to retrieve his cat.

I gently pushed her into the hallway, begging her to return home and stop making me look like a crazy cat thief -- like one of those neighbors who makes the others say, did you hear? We should keep an eye on her. But at the same time, I started to wonder whether I could find a way to say, "I'm sorry, she just won't come out -- have a nice night!" and close the door behind us. Regardless, she was impervious to my pleas. Every time I pushed her into the hall, she turned and huddled against me.

Her owner's refusal to step out from the corner and away from his front door suggested that he was partially dressed, so I wasn't about to carry the cat back to him and embarrass myself further. In the end, I pushed the cat into the hallway and hurriedly shut the door. "Sorry again!" I called down the hallway to the silent owner, who only stared at me as though I were completely, utterly out of my mind.

And perhaps I imagined it, but I could swear that when I stepped outside our building yesterday, at least three dog walkers subtly took up the slack in their leashes.

Dispatch from Asia #5: I Imagine This Is What Would Happen If My Uptight Copy Editors Were to Get High

Sure, Mt. Fuji is majestic. Yes, the flashing, neon lights of Tokyo's Shinjuku district are dizzying. But you can find some of the best sight-seeing in Japan in the creative and awkward attempts at English on T-shirts, signs and advertisements everywhere. This is what is known, politically incorrectly, as "Engrish," a made-up word that exploits the difficulty that Japanese speakers have in differentiating between the sounds of the English "L" and the English "R." (In fact, Engrish.com has made a hilarious web site, updated daily, full of English flubs straight out of Japan.)

Sometimes the translations are full of mistakes. Sometimes they're unintentionally inappropriate, resulting in people wearing shirts that say things they probably don't understand, like "A Recent Girl Is Easy and Likes Cute Shape!" Other times, they just lack the flow of a native English speaker's words. They're often funny and sometimes confusing, but almost always oddly inspiring. First, you feel a sort of shocked delight at seeing, in print, phrases that would have gotten you flunked out of seventh grade or fired from your last copy editing job -- phrases that someone actually paid to have printed on signs and T-shirts. But then you realize that the Japanese, with their free-wheeling English, are communicating just fine.

Take this sign, for example, which was posted inside a fine karaoke establishment:

Initially, it makes no sense. None. But when you read it a second time and dispense with the restrictive grammar and construction rules of the English language, you start to feel its vibe. Songs! Delicious dishes! Dance it all together, yes! Fun! If that doesn't make you want to belt out "Material Girl" while you shake your hiney in a room full of people you barely know, and then stuff your face on soba noodles, then WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU? The Japanese are begging you to live a little.

This one was posted at a railway tour in the mountains near Hakone, where sulfuric gas spews out of the ground in white vapor clouds:

You'd never see that on a sign in the States, but why not? You understand what it means, although the things themselves aren't full of doubt, and its essence forms a most important rule to live by, right after "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." If this reminder against touching doubtful things were posted in public places, think of all the germs that would be denied access to your mucous membranes! If only I'd seen this sign seven days ago, I perhaps would not have had to sniffle and sneeze my way through the last six. The Japanese are concerned about your health and safety.

Kids' clothes in Japan are rife with goofy English. I noted a couple of young girls wearing clothing that proclaimed them students of "Cutie University, University of Cutie Girls." And you know what? If there were a Cutie University and I were on the admissions board, I would totally admit them. Especially that giggling toddler in the denim dress, because her round, rosy cheeks suggested that she has loads of potential.

I saw a clear-faced teenage schoolgirl on a train in Tokyo, dressed in a plaid, pleated skirt with white cotton blouse, navy blazer, navy knee-highs and brown penny loafers. She was the picture of academic rigour, except for her darling heart-shaped key chain that proclaimed, in a sweet, girly font, "I LOVE SATAN."

But one of my favorites was a T-shirt I saw on a young girl, maybe 5 years old, in a Hiroshima train station. I laughed at the words initially, but on second thought I couldn't deny its truth:

Daily Lover
Aloha!
Let us find the happy rainbow?

And really, when you think about it, isn't that what we're all after? The daily lover! And the happy rainbow! The Japanese want that for you. So stop laughing and show some gratitude.

But then go visit Engrish.com and resume laughing. I especially recommend the Clothing category.

Dispatch from Asia #4: Apparently, It Is Clear With Whom I Fool Around

At lunch one day in Kyoto, our waiter decided to test his patchy English on us.

"America have best TV drama!" he said. He proceeded slowly, pronouncing each syllable with care.

"Pri-son Break?"

"Yeah!" All eight people in our group cheered to show that we understood, alhough none of us watch the show.

"Twen-ty Four?"

We cheered again, louder. At this point, he was getting excited.

"Llll... Lost?"

"YEEAAH!" we shouted.

Then he pointed at The Mouse.

"He Sawyer. Sawyer on Lost!"

"Sawyer!" we cheered.

"Yes. When he come in, I say, 'he Sawyer.'"

"Sawyer?" The Mouse said to me. "Is that the old bald guy?"

"No," I said. "Sawyer is the guy with long hair and scruffy beard who always makes wise cracks. The one who fooled around with that girl Kate?"

"Oh," he said. "So... it's not the old bald guy?"

When we finished our meal, everyone shuffled out of the restaurant. I was last, and I turned to thank the waiter with one of the few Japanese words I know.

He took a breath but held it in, looking at the ceiling as though trying to find the right words to pluck out of the air. His face broke into a broad grin when he found his words, which he shouted proudly.

"See you, Kate!"