Tag: humor

Pat was my boss at the diner. I’d say she was around fifty years old, but I don’t know for sure. That’s just not the kind of question you ask your boss. Donnie the dishwasher was thirty-five, with the mental capacity of an adolescent. Then again, how many teens do you know who could work a forty-hour week and pay their bills on time?

I was seventeen when I started working there. The second shift, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., meant no late nights and, more important, no early mornings. The diner was open twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. On Christmas that year, we got our first real snow of the season. No accumulation, just swirly snow-globe snow. My walk to work that day seemed longer than usual because of the quiet. You’ve never known quiet until you’ve walked downtown St. Paul on Christmas Day. Actually, this wasn’t just downtown St. Paul Sunday quiet, this was a higher grade of silence, like the difference between gold and platinum. It was ominously beautiful, like an act of God or something. Like the Rapture. I could see the diner up ahead, glowing dimly in the snow, the Pancake House of Purgatory.

When I got there, Donnie was quartering chickens back at the prep table, singing and dancing and slipping around on chicken guts on the floor. I put on a clean apron and took my station behind the counter. It never dawned on me that Christmas might be dead on top of everything else. Pat slapped a Phillips screwdriver in my one hand and a bleach-soaked towel in the other. She said, “No way you’re gonna sit on your rear all day and moan, kiddo. We all got other places we’d rather be. You’re gonna take apart the pie case and scrub it down.” Three hours later, Donnie had moved on to chopping onions, I had the pie case put back together, Pat had the meat cooler sparkling, and we got our first customer.

Al Vanoni was a fat cab driver who always carried his own insulated coffee cup with him. That thing was about the size of an ice-cream bucket, suiting the scale of his body. If Vanoni tried to drink out of one of our coffee cups, he would have looked silly, like a fairy-tale giant. He came in wearing a Santa hat and ordered a double patty melt to go, on the double. “I’d love to stay and talk, but I got volleys all day between the senior high-rises and the suburbs.” When Vanoni went for the ketchup, he pounded his meaty hand on the bottom of the bottle, sending a fair-sized splat onto his patty melt, and a fair-sized one onto my pie case. Before he left, I saw him sneak a small brown paper bag to Pat.

Pat said I might as well order my shift meal as long as the grill was dirty, so she wouldn’t have to clean it twice. She yelled back to Donnie to do the same. Ten minutes later, she told us to have a seat in one of the back booths. “Today, we can eat like human beings at the table, at least.” I plugged the buck that Vanoni gave me into the tableside jukebox, and entered some Mitch Miller tunes.

Pat brought over three cups of coffee; when I sipped mine it turned out to be laced with Wild Turkey. I looked at her in surprise. She smiled. “Doncha know that Santa always comes on Christmas?”

Pat closed her eyes and bent her head to pray. I thought it was a joke at first, what with the whiskey and all. Donnie followed her lead. I looked down, but admit I kept my eyes open. I still heard the words.

“Heavenly Father, thank you for this day, and this good food.”

The whipped cream on Donnie’s sundae smelled wonderful as it melted into the waffle squares.

“Thank you for our families. At home, at work, and in Christ your son our savior.”

I looked from Pat’s strong face to Donnie’s earnest one, and I felt as close to them as anyone else in my life.

“Search our hearts, God, and please bless and keep us in the path of your everlasting light. Amen.”

In that instant, before either of them opened their eyes, I felt if God had searched my heart, he would have found it as spotless as the pie case. It felt new, and shiny.

In the past twenty years, I’ve had family Christmases and orphan Christmases. Work Christmases, hospital Christmases, Christmases when the tree fell down and the turkey caught fire, and Christmases when everything went just right.

My Christmas at the diner taught me that Christmas is transferable. The only responsibility you have to Christmas, wherever you are, whoever you’re with, wherever you’re headed, is to put it in a to-go box.

It’s time to take that other monthly business more seriously.

Yeah, I know this is the November issue. But, gentle readers, I am speaking to you from the recent past of October third! Boooooooo! I am the ghost of October third! And where I’m coming from, it’s still National Breast Cancer Awareness month.

So let’s take a minute here to be aware of our bajungas. I know some of you are male, and I do always try to play to a mixed crowd. But it ain’t gonna happen this month. You fellas can still read on if you’d like; just be aware that I’m going to be talking about woman stuff, and what the hell, as long as you’re still reading, take a minute to be aware of your breasts. You guys can get breast cancer, too.

This reminds me of the time back in the seventies when the boys and girls in fourth grade were separated for that special gym class. The boys went to their talk with Mr. Leinfelder, the gym teacher. We girls were ushered into the multipurpose room to watch a filmstrip about private parts. The Kimberly-Clark Corporation gave us gift packs of U-boat sized “mini” pads. Just about every female teacher was present to make sure there was absolutely no giggling. Even a couple of the lunch ladies were there. I don’t remember what the filmstrip detailed, exactly, except that we all were supposed to expect to become women soon, and when one became a woman, there were certain accoutrements that you had to keep on you at all times. Things that you would keep in your purse, because you were now a woman and women carried purses just for this purpose, to carry things in them for a while and then put them in their underpants. Things to contain the flow. After the filmstrip, to our collective horror, and with all the enthusiasm of a flight attendant demonstrating the nearest exits, Mrs. Chevalier, the most soignée member of our faculty, held up a pair of giant practice ladies’ briefs, unwrapped a mini, and pulled the adhesive zip strip off to show us all how to stick that bugger on target.

“Like a diaper?!!” Deanna LaMenga yelled out. And then there was giggling, and plenty of it. Nonstop, irrepressible giggling—from the time the filmstrip ended, throughout the painfully awkward “Question Asking Time,” and during the bathroom break, when Deanna ripped open her Kimberly Clark Gift Pack and stuck mini pads all over her face and chased a guffawing Jenny Tooley out of the girls’ room and down the hall, arms stretched out stiff in front of her, groaning like the Mummy.

I laughed that day until my sides ached, and then I laughed some more. Everybody did. The lone exception, curiously enough, was Gina Venutti. Gina was in our grade, ten or eleven years old, but she had C-cup boobs and a figure that would make grown men look the other way fast. Gina didn’t laugh that day. And now I understand why.

When you’re a young girl, accepting the responsibility of your changing body is so thrilling, so new, that you don’t take any bit of it for granted. Then you grow up, live a little in your skin, and it’s just another damn thing on the to-do list.

For women, there’s always a party in our pants. Menarche and menstruation, childbirth, perimenopause, menopause, cramps, aches, pains, not to mention yeast infections, bladder infections, and all the rest. You couldn’t ignore it if you tried. In the upper berth, meanwhile, your buoys bob calmly, isolated from the relative storm of the southern hemisphere. As long as they look good, they are pretty easy to forget about. Until there is trouble.

So, as the ghost of October third, I’ve come to haunt you into performing your breast self check. Not just this month, but each and every month from here on in. Pick a day each month and stick to it. Do it a week or so after your period. Think of it this way: You got your oil changed, so now it’s time to rotate the tires. Do what works for you. My friend Kiki uses the arrival of the telephone bill as a reminder to do her self check. This wouldn’t work for me, as I studiously disregard the arrival of all my bills. I’m the type of person who needs something more dramatic to jog my memory. So I use the air raid siren that goes off the first Wednesday of the month. I immediately take cover, and take my health into my own hands.

I was at a garden center the other day, looking to score some indigenous weed for my front boulevard garden. That tall fall grass, you know. Zone Five hardy, tight buds, premium stuff. Anyhow, I was standing in the aisle, surveying the goods, when this completely irate woman charged at me.

She was waving a section of newspaper, red faced, whisper screaming, and ramped up to warp speed. It was so shocking, all I could do was stare blankly at her. It took me a full thirty seconds to figure out what she was so enraged about—which was a misprinted price in a sale circular. Not only that, but she was going to make damn sure that I made right on it, and in her favor, too! No way was I going to bilk her out of two dollars! Huh?

Then the warm sunshine of understanding permeated my fog of confusion, as I looked down at my weekend errand outfit of choice that day: khaki skirt, faded lilac polo shirt.

As soon as I figured out that this public dressing-down was a simple case of mistaken identity, I tried to get a word in edgewise with the roasted nutjob. I tried to say: “I’m sorry! You have mistaken me for a purple-and-tan-garbed employee of this establishment!” When I couldn’t fit that in between her ragged breaths, I tried something shorter: “I don’t work here!”

Alas, the Crazed Complainer had perceived my initial stunned silence for guilt at being caught in the act of flagrant gladioli bulb price gouging. By then, a small but excited crowd of eavesdroppers had gathered. They could smell the blood of the unfashionably smocked. Years of petty consumer grievances had whipped this bunch into a posse of persnickety purchasers. The crowd drew closer as the ranting continued, eager to witness the ultimate reward for the practiced grumbler, the apex of achievement for the professional complainer: that is, getting sumthin’ fer nuthin’.

Now. In my life, I’ve done my share of taking complaints from the general public. Me and them. Mano à mano. At the tender age of sixteen, I handled angry phone calls to the Pioneer Press circulation department. I was powerless. All I could do was listen to their bullsnit and log their complaint into the computer. But a lot of the callers needed the drama of a heated exchange with a department head. I worked the night shift, and everybody who was important was gone by then. So I would say, “Just a minute, let me get my manager.” I’d put the phone down for a few seconds, clear my throat, then get back on the line with a different voice and a made-up name and talk them down. Quite a few times I promised to fire that smart-assed Colleen.

So anyway, I had been standing there with the crazy lady amid the bloodthirsty spectators long enough for the “flight” response to drain away. In its wake came a delicious, stronger rush of adrenaline. My heels dug into the linoleum. George Thorogood power chords cranked in my cerebellum. I settled my face into the kind of patient, insincere smile passed down to me by the ancient shift managers who came before me, the smile that says both “How can I help you?” and “Tough toenail!”

At this point, the woman had been blathering at me for four solid minutes. She saw me engage the Smile of Polite Indifference and raised the stakes with an immediate Call to a Higher Up. “I can see that I’m getting nowhere with you!” she snapped. “I think we should go have a talk with your manager! What’s your name?!”

“Colleen, ma’am.” She smiled back at me, sickly sweet. She took the bait. “Okay, Colleen. Why don’t we go talk to your manager together?”

“Sounds good!” I chirped.

When we got to the help desk, she located a manager and started the rant all over again, jabbing her finger in my direction from time to time. The manager listened, employing his own version of The Smile.

When the woman finished, he agreed to give her the price on the circular. The woman’s eyes blazed in triumph. In the heat of victory, she couldn’t resist a parting shot. She snatched the discount slip out of the manager’s hand and said, “You should train your employees in customer service! This woman was very rude to me!”

She stood there, hoping for the manager to say something to me. It took a second, all of us, standing there looking at each other. Then the guy registered the colors of my outfit. And he started to laugh.

I was chatting on the phone the other day with an old buddy, someone I haven’t seen for at least eight years. Lives change, people drift apart, you know how it is. About an hour and a half into this gossip-a-thon, I remembered the reason why this friend and I drifted apart. All we ever did together was talk about other people. Frankly, it made me feel dirty. But I couldn’t get off the phone.

This next part sounds terribly selfish, and it probably was. But hear me out. The other thing I remembered about this old friend is that I used to call her when I had housework to do. I am not what you’d call a natural housekeeper. I get the work done all right, but I need distractions while I do it. When I was fourteen and had to clean my room, a kick-ass Hall and Oates album would do the trick. (Don’t judge, only love.) As a young mother, it was Phil Donahue or early, pre-Optifast Oprah. (I never quite stooped to the level of Jerry Springer.)

But back when this gal and I were running with the same crowd, I’d think nothing of bellying up to a full sink of dirty dishes with a 3M scrubby sponge in one hand, a casserole that looked like the underside of an off-road four-wheeler in the other, and the telephone receiver wedged under my chin. My friend would get the ball rolling by dishing about her co-workers, and we’d yammer on, all up in everybody’s business, as they say. Next thing I knew, it would be a couple of hours later. When I hung up the phone, I had a sparkling sink, folded laundry, a crick in my neck, and a nasty case of ring around the karma. Take it from somebody who knows, you can try scrubbing, you can try soaking, you can try spraying. But really, the only thing that’s going to clean your soul in those hard-to-reach problem areas is minding your own business.

Still, during this recent conversation, I found myself wondering—while also listening raptly and shaking out the lint trap—“Is it technically considered gossip if I haven’t the slightest idea who she is talking about? I mean, come on. She’s living in a different state, with a whole new set of dysfunctional friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Anonymous accounts of workaday backstabbing, tenuous marital emotional underpinnings, and bedroom scandals galore, starring people I will never meet—this could be a golden opportunity. The residents of this faraway South Carolina suburb will unknowingly offer their daily lives to entertain and horrify, thrill, and enthrall me as my own personal soap opera.”

I have to tell you, I was of two minds. They sounded like this: Ick! Yes. Ick! Yes. I was on the road to hell, paved with highly polished linoleum floors and salacious tittle-tattle. Ultimately, my prurience gave in to shame—but that doesn’t mean I sacrificed domestic sanitation. These days, it’s most often an audio book or some talk radio that gets me through my chores. Jim Dale’s seventeen-cassette unabridged performance of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was enough to empty a five-year accumulation of trash out my garage, organize my tool shed, and sweep approximately three quarts of mice poops out of my attic. At least I think they were mice poops. I don’t remember spilling any caraway seeds up there.

That’s not to say my life is now gossip-free. The appetite for this kind of dirt is encoded in the human genome. These days, however, I prefer to focus on people who are well compensated for their humiliation. Soap-opera actresses, pop divas, celebutantes, Larry King. In June, a photojournalists’ exhibition in New York featured pictures of famous people’s garbage bins. “Found objects,” they call ’em in the art world. The CNN interviewer’s receptacle contained adult undergarments, and I’m not talking about suspenders worn beneath a suit coat. King’s people denied the Man-Huggies were his. Maybe it was a prank by one of his eleventy ex-wives. Whatever. The point is, no matter what mortifying things people say about Larry King, he’s still paid millions to yak on TV. In his world, a dash of notoriety is just the thing to jack up your ratings. When a tabloid ran a photo of Kirstie Alley bent over while putting groceries in her SUV’s trunk, and captioned it “Kirstie Loads Up Her Back End,” she parlayed the attention to land a TV series, a book contract, and a Jenny Craig endorsement deal. When we gossip about people like that, we’re doing them a favor. Guilt doesn’t even enter into it. Ask Katie Holmes.

As a food service industry professional, I sometimes find it difficult to retain my tableside manner. Back in 1986, when I first strapped on my apron at Mickey’s Diner, I took the Oath of Hypocrisy: Never, ever, under any circumstances let those you serve know what you think of them.

I’m good at what I do because of this rule, and also because I tend to like most people, even when they are crabby and need French fries with a side of red bell mayo and Stoli lemonades to calm their colic. It makes me feel good to have a snarling, capri-panted, kitten-heeled Eaganite click-clock to a table, fully loaded with the day’s frustrations and ready to blow—only to see her sheath her claws and start purring when I deliver a hot basket of bread. Likewise for the fifty-five-year-old Grumpy Gus who needs a blooming onion and a Michelob Golden Light—stat! Hey, man, have at it. It’s your breath, and it’s your funeral.

A perk of working in the food service industry is the feast of conversation that I overhear each night. True, most of it is fragmented sound bites unburdened by context. I think of these snippets as appetizers in relation to the smorgasbord of banter that I share with my esteemed colleagues in culinary service. And lately, each shift has been looking and sounding uncannily like a feature-length version of that classic joke: “A man walks into a bar … .”

Colleen: “Hi, everybody! Tonight’s special is a pork chop smothered in salsa verde, and our soup is chilled pineapple mango.”

Customer #1 to Customer #2: “I’ve had that soup before. It’s weird. It tastes like flavored lube.”

Completely crudité—but consider that Customer Two ignored this explicit warning and still ordered the soup.

Overheard while filling glasses with ice water:

Woman: “Why did you order me the Caesar salad?”

Man: “You always get the Caesar salad.”

Woman: “Typical.”

Man: “What do you mean? Is it typical for you to order what you always order? Or is it typical for me to assume that you want to order what you always order?”

Woman: “I’m getting really sick of your thinly veiled hostility towards me.”

Man: “What are you talking about?”

Woman: “Oh, sure. Now I’m the one who is crazy.”

Maybe they both are. Only Edward Albee knows for sure. But I still like to guess while replenishing ketchup containers at the end of the night.

Sometimes I wonder if people say things to me only because I’m on the clock, and my time isn’t my own, and I don’t charge psychotherapy rates.

Colleen: “So, you wanted a starter of the spicy green beans?”

Customer: “As long as the beans aren’t too spicy. I like things ‘Minnesota spicy,’ you know? It’s bad if I have things that are too spicy.”

Colleen: “Well, maybe it’s better to be on the safe side. You also expressed an interest in the cream cheese wontons … ”

Customer: “No, I want the green beans, as long as they aren’t too spicy. Uh, well, maybe I better get the wontons, I don’t know. They sound good, but fatty. I’d rather have too spicy than fatty. But then the last time I had too spicy it went right through me. I practically crapped out a Chinese dragon.”

Colleen (wishing desperately for a mental defragmenter that would erase the image from her mind): “Sooooo, you’d like the wontons?”

Customer: “What the hell, give me the beans.”

I’ve been in the business long enough to realize that I can’t save people from themselves. The best I can do is distract them. So much of what I do during the day is about keeping your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut. And yet the writing part is all about gathering information and experience and letting it roll around upstairs and repeating it to amuse you, the reader. Forthwith, here are my top ten favorite overheard items in the last three months.

“I can’t eat meringue. It makes my gums itch.”

“Oh my God. I can’t believe this place doesn’t have Diet 7UP. Every place has Diet 7UP. They are probably losing business.”

“Ick. Look at that girl over there. She’s dressed like a hooker.” Five minutes later: “Quit looking at that girl over there.”

“If you’re out of the sauvignon blanc, I’ll have a Godiva chocolatini.”

“That guy was too gay for me. C’mon. He irons his T-shirts.”

“Here’s my card. I would like to start a tab at this table. But just for me, nobody else.”

“Can you throw this diaper away for me?”

“Do you have any low-carb bread?”

“We have a birthday at this table. When the cake is brought out, she’ll try to run. Don’t let her.”

“Are mussels supposed to look like that?”

One of those basic-cable lifestyle programs recently ran an episode on a hotel/spa that caters to the dogs of celebrities. Andy Warhol would have loved it. Classical music gets piped into a sleeping chamber lined with rows of plush dog beds. Guests drink from personalized Baccarat crystal water dishes and dine on cubed beef filets with sage gravy. Lab-coated aestheticians administer “paw”dicures.

What I want to know is, will the dogs go to hell, too, after they die? Or will it just be their owners dancing the Frug on fiery coals for all eternity? I also wonder what it’s like to be the concierge of such a joint. Hey, God bless America, and a paycheck is a paycheck, but come on already. I’m all for giving a good dog a reward, but a spa day? They used to eat us, you know.

I understand we all probably have to leave our companion animal under someone else’s watchful eye sometimes. But there are other, not quite as luxurious options available to discerning pet owners who may want to save the spa day for themselves.

My friend Chris is an artist who travels quite a bit. Her fourteen-year-old camel-colored pug shar pei usually rides shotgun in her Jetta wagon. They’ve crossed the country together more than once. Winnie loves her lady, and the adventure of life on the road. But sometimes it’s not feasible for her to tag along, and that’s when she gets checked in at the Bed & Bone out in Buffalo. They call it a doggie hotel, but it’s more of a doggie fun park. They’ve got a swimming hole, a big ball-chasing field, and couches for the dogs to crash out on. You can even arrange to have your pet eased to sleep by the drone of the TV. In short, this is doggie heaven.
I mix with dogs that have, shall we say, more junkyard tastes. For instance, my Siberian husky would never stay anywhere that didn’t serve cat-crap canapés. For the salad course, Dutch likes to gnaw on my ten-year-old rubber tree plant. Follow that with a couple scoops of Purina Large Breed Formula, and you’ve got a meal fit for a king. It doesn’t matter to ol’ Dutchie that I always keep out a bowl of fresh icy water—some days he simply prefers eau de toilette.

You see, dogs are tougher than we doting owners think. Dutch’s predecessor Sammy, a pure white German shepherd (Sam Shepard, get it?) was just about indestructible. He was the size of a palomino. When we inherited him from my parents, he weighed 130 pounds. If you’re a woman, that means you’re a size ten. The remarkable thing is that when we acquired him, he had only three legs, having lost his right rear in a high-speed car chase. He caught the car but couldn’t quite drag it back home. If his prey had been a Mini Cooper, I think he could have done it. My folks drove him 120 miles to the U of M Small Animal Hospital right after the accident for the surgery. He never whimpered. The vets had to amputate his leg at the hip, so we never knew what his total weight would have been.

Even as a tripod, Sammy pulled at his leash like a musk ox. It was a test of endurance to walk him from my mansion near the 35W sound wall to Minnehaha Creek. He was always trying to leap into traffic, jaws snapping eagerly, his tiny walnut brain rattling around in his skull like a bean in a maraca. If he’d knocked the other hind leg off, I’d have had to get him wheels, but I doubt even that would have slowed him down. With his spunk, he would have been perfect for a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie. A Wheel for Sammy, starring JoBeth Williams. With Verne Troyer as Sammy.

Sammy never would have slept in a velour-covered bed. When we imagine that dogs appreciate human luxuries, we’re deeply misunderstanding the nature of a dog. Dogs may consent to being dressed in little sequined halter tops and pants with a tail hole, but they’re just humoring us because we feed them and throw them the slobber-soaked tennis ball. But there are certain lines that aren’t meant to be crossed. Dogs have their idea of a good time, and we have ours. If you don’t believe me, liven up your friends’ next cocktail party by licking food off every plate that you can and scouring your rear end across the Persian carpet. Then get back to me.

Hi! I’m Colleen Kruse. I’m that pal of yours who is the proud owner of the Richard Caruso Molecular Hairsetter, the Miracle Blade/Ginsu Knife Garnish Set, the Euro Broom, the Magic Bullet, the Vitamix. Let’s not forget the Kitchen Plus 2000, either. These products are the fruits of hours spent watching late-night infomercials. I was so thrilled by the money-back guarantees that I bought each and every one. Better still, in most cases I called the 800 number before the program ended, so I received not one but two of each gadget; since you are my friend, you probably got one for your birthday, anniversary, housewarming, or Secret Santa surprise.

Let me explain. If you’re like most Americans between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine (and I know I am), then you must forgive me my gullibility. Come on. Who wouldn’t want to slice tomatoes so thin that their in-laws would never come back?

Advertising. Some call it art, some call it science. Some call it a way to keep English majors from moving back in with their parents. But no matter what you call it, it’s influential. It’s not just a double-edged sword, it’s a dual chopping blade that cuts both ways. On one hand, it gives people a chance to express themselves artistically within a medium where a lot of creativity is squashed into ready-fit demographics. We all saw multiethnic Coke commercials long before Denzel got his Oscar. In the space of a thirty- to ninety-second TV spot, advertising can inspire audiences to imagine.

On the other hand, it can take them to the outer limits of psychological manipulation. Case in point: Two years ago, my best friend Roxanne stumbled home after a night of clubbing, fixed herself a cheesy bedtime snack, and snapped on the telly, where she chanced to see her favorite Dallas star from days gone by, Victoria Principal. The club buzz, the piping-hot Super America burrito, Victoria Principal–it was all too much. A woozy half-hour later, she dug her credit card out of her evening bag and purchased two hundred dollars worth of waterproof makeup intended for burn victims. Under the fluorescent lights of her office, she looks very peaceful, nearly lifelike. Almost like she could get up and … HEY!

I’m even more susceptible, as evidenced by my sizable collection of “as seen on TV” objets. I actually prefer infomercials to standard commercials, because that extra twenty-eight or -nine minutes that they offer tells me they really care. Infomercials romance you, whereas commercials are too quick for my taste, too flash-in-the-pan. While watching commercials, I like to pretend that I am better than the people in them. It makes me feel smart to sit silently on the futon of judgment in my basement and refute a commercial’s claims of whiter teeth, hotter sex, and better living through cellular communication. In most cases, I feel that I am superior to them all–except Wilford Brimley.

Yep. He’s the grandfatherly guy in the old Quaker Oats commercials. He’s better than me because he knows the difference between right and wrong. No matter that his best friend in real life–I am not making this up–is acquitted felon and accused murderer Robert Blake. Wilford Brimley oozes integrity. You can hear it in the deep, resonating timbre of his voice. When old Wilford says eating oatmeal is “the right thing to do,” I feel morally obligated to munch through a bowl of fiber.

Partly this is because Wilford looks nothing like a TV spokesperson. He’s rumpled and portly and bald, with a mustache that is thick, white, glossy–and irony-free. He looks like Santa’s macho brother. His steadfast gaze and whole-grain baritone are Kryptonite to my skepticism. The rational part of my brain knows that he doesn’t really put oats in his feedbag. He weighs 250 pounds because he eats porterhouse steaks, washed down with plenty of Cutty Sark. But if Wilford Brimley told me to jump off the Washington Avenue Bridge, I just might. He is now hawking diabetes-testing devices on late night TV. I don’t need one, but I’m thinking of buying a few just in case. They could be nice to have around for guests. A fun party game, maybe.

If tobacco lobbyists were smart, they would get Wilford Brimley. Who could resist? I see him dressed in corduroy and flannel. He’s sitting in a cozy cabin, beside a roaring fire. There’s a butt in his mouth. A few rosy-cheeked child actors come clamoring inside after a snowball fight. “Grandpa!” the youngest would say. “Whatcha doing?” Wilford would turn to the camera: “Smoking. It’s the right thing to do.” He’d tousle the little boy’s hair and say, “Here y’go, Timmy. Puff on this heater. It’ll warm ya right up. While we’re at it, why don’t we check your blood sugar?”

There’s a story in the good book, about a cup that is clean on the outside and dirty on the inside. The cup is golden, pretty to look at, and almost certainly the first one that you would take off the shelf. But you wouldn’t want to drink from it, because you’d probably get sick. The point of the story is to illustrate the fact that things aren’t always as they seem.

Sometimes when I am alone in my car, or before I go to sleep, I find myself thinking about what my own cup is marked with–but usually just for a minute or two, before I go back to concentrating on polishing my shiny external surface.

I don’t for one second think that I am better or worse than anybody else. Or that anybody is so very much different from me. It’s probably human nature to run down the ol’ laundry list of personal transgressions late at night in the quiet of your mind, when no one is looking and no one can hear. Just as it’s human nature to change the channel if things become too unpleasant to watch.

After I had a baby, I felt like I understood some very basic truths. That people are simply these sad, crazy sacks of muscle and bone and might. And even though might gets us out of bed in the morning, it will also eventually do us in. In that hot July of ’88, looking into my baby’s eyes, I was overwhelmed by love and terror. To this day, I swear I saw the whole world laid out plain. The helplessness, the hunger, the beauty, and the suffering. The hilarious vulnerability of it all. How ultimately, this is all doomed to failure.

Sure, that might have been postpartum depression. But things were different back then. Wellbutrin hadn’t been invented yet. What I mean to say is that as human beings, we want love, attention, safety, and food. Our will gives us the ambition to seek and possess these things, but somehow, even if there is enough to go around, there will never be enough seats at the table. It’s this kind of innate selfishness that makes an otherwise reasonable person believe statements like “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” (Never mind that the chlamydia follows you home on the plane.)

We’re not meant to be altruistic. I mean, we’re meant to try. And the punch line is that we are also meant to fail, so that we can bear witness to our shortcomings and learn from them. So that we can transcend our base nature.

So it was then, at my baby’s birth, that I felt like I understood. I understood who we are as human beings and the nature of wrongdoing, of sin: the sin of intent, the sin of omission, and the sin of the spin. The sin of the spin is a tricky one because it happens way down deep inside our hearts where no one else can see. Like maybe when we’re alone and thinking about the thing we shouldn’t have said, or the thing we should have done, or any of the garden-variety activities that make up the sediment of regret each of us carries at the bottom of our cups.

I don’t know about you, but in my mind what usually happens with the sin of spin is that I identify something I did wrong, and then quickly come up with four reasons why my behavior couldn’t have been helped. If I can’t come up with enough reasons, I change the channel. I don’t get away with this all the time because good lies, even the ones you tell yourself, have to bear the ring of truth.

You can’t change people, no matter how hard you try. But people do change. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, in others, and in myself. And so, if I believe in the idea of earthly sin, I also have to believe in redemption. In my experience, the quickest route to redemption is forgiveness. To forgive is to free. To salvage what might otherwise be lost. It’s not easy to forgive, or to live with the realization that I am a person who is in need of forgiveness. But few things in life that are worthwhile come easy.

The words “forgiveness” and “sin” are turbo-charged social no-no’s, but I’m not particularly interested in convention late at night, before I fall asleep. When I’m alone with the contents of my gray matter, I know that forgiveness and sin exist, just as I know that the monster doesn’t live under my bed but rather in it. In my DNA, and in everybody else’s. But it’ll be okay, I think. The hero lives there, too.