Worst gift-giver

Hayter for December 10, 2023

“I am the worst gift-giver”

          There comes a time in one’s life when you don’t care if you get anything for Christmas. It came early in my Dad’s life. Faris Hayter was good at so many things, but he couldn’t act worth a flip. “Daddy, do you like your new house shoes?” – “Oh, these are great! Who wouldn’t like ‘em?” I could tell right off that he didn’t want any house-shoes.

          Dad was much better at giving gifts than accepting them. He gave Dennis and me our favorite gift ever, at a time when I was in the third grade and Dennis was in the sixth. I got a 24-inch J.C. Higgins bicycle. Dennis got a 26-inch. I could barely touch the pedals on his bike. Our next best gift was a BB gun that we got two years later. We could knock clothespins off the clothesline. At least we could until Mom put a stop to it.

          Over the years, stuff like that ceased to interest me. Whatever I wanted was too expensive. And anything Kay wanted, required careful study. She likes jewelry, but I am the worst at picking it out. Clothing? Get real. There’s no way I can pick out women’s clothing. The times I’ve tried, Kay would accept it with complete sincerity just like my Dad… only she’s a better actor.

Yep, I’m no good at picking out clothing or jewelry. What I am good at is finding things you can throw, play with, or other things that look interesting. I may not know what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it. I tell you that to tell you this. I’m going online and I need help in selecting a gift for Kay. If I hear you turn the page, I’ll know you left me. – Here we go.

 The first thing I see is one of those flying orb balls. One of those glowing plastic web-encased contraptions that generally have blue light in ‘em. It looks cool as all get out. I know because Kay used to have one. Within five minutes it refused to fly, roll, glow, or emit light. The commercials for the object look fantastic. They’re fragile as a baby mallard. Advertisers were bound to have destroyed 100 of them while shooting the commercial. 

The second you let go of that thing, it will seek out the closest hard surface it can find. Wall, floor, ceiling, tree… It will hit it and hit it hard. Kay’s orb immediately found the backdoor. The collision caused an orange wire to break loose. You could see it plain as day, but to reach it you’d have to remove the plastic webbing and do some probing.

Kay is going to send it in and get her money back, but I thought it might be nice if I got her another one. Help her forget the loss of her first orb. And I would do that, were I a complete idiot. What else can I find?

Ah, here’s one of those Japanese hand-held, 36-language interpreters. I wrote about it a while back. It’s under $100. I’ve wanted one for myself, but not enough to pay for it. Nor will I buy one for Kay. Let’s face it! We live in Texas. The only other language I hear is Spanish. Fortunately, well over half of the Latin Americans I run into have bothered to learn English. I love the Poles, French, and Dutch, but those who don’t speak English need to buy a handheld interpreter. I don’t run into enough Europeans to buy one myself.

Oh, my goodness. It’s a $100 drone that costs as much as $1000 drone. How can companies make a profit on a deal like that? It defies anything factual. If I got out of the house more often, I might buy one of those things for Kay. It turns out that this particular drone, known as the Black Falcon 4K, might be one of “the best-kept secrets among social media influencers…” just as much as I might be the best-kept secret of the San Francisco 49ers.

Let’s see, here’s something called a Tinickle Pro. It’s a three-legged contraption that has octopus sucker things on all three of its legs. The story goes that you can strap your phone to it and it will attach itself to anything but cat fur. Unfortunately, Kay would never remember where she stuck her phone. -- “Kay, the last time I saw your phone, it was stuck to the BBQ pit.” -- She can’t have stuff like that.  

But, she might like this. It’s called a Sure Sleep Mask. It looks somewhat like a gray Pomeranian with straps. When you strap that thing on, it will put you to sleep in 15 minutes. By the way, astronauts supposedly use it. Regular people are easier to con than astronauts.

What I learned from the ad is that the reason we can’t sleep is because our brainwaves keep us on edge. The Sure Sleep thing closes down your brainwaves which knocks you out, At this very moment, there are 43,590 people in Sweden now sleeping thanks to their Sleep Masks.

Nowhere in the ad was the price provided. What I found at the end of the ad were the words  “Check on availability and get yours now.”  Why don’t one of you order a Sure Sleep Mask and get back to us in March?  If you give it a thumbs up and it costs less than $70, I’ll get Kay one for her birthday.

I appreciate you sticking with me as long as you did. I’ll finish up on this by my lonesome. For this to go well, I’ll need to make sure to only order something that can be returned, because that’s a happening thing.

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hayter.mark@gmail.com

 

Facinating Facts

 

Hayter for December 3, 2023

"All but one, fascinating fact!"

          I heard a gentleman say recently that a college degree will soon become non-essential due to the amount of information available online, and the many advances being made by AI. Perhaps teachers will soon become obsolete.

Without question, much of what I learned in college prepared me for my job as a teacher. That’s because I had to take courses in science, math, geography, literature, handball, gymnastics, bowling… that added to way more hours than my studies in history and political science.

At the time, I was not pleased with having to take that many courses in subjects that didn’t apply to my major. However, after a couple of years, I noticed how much my “unrelated” courses aided me in acquiring a better understanding of how math, science, geography, English literature and other topics applied to any subject where people were involved. Bowling and gymnastics? Not so much.

          Even though I no longer teach, I’m constantly discovering so much important stuff online. In fact, before Kay’s relatives visited last week, I looked up some interesting facts to share for times the conversation died. – If you happened on to last week’s article, you’ll realize that there was no conversational death witnessed during the gathering.

          So, that’s the reason I’m going to share with you some facts that Kay’s family never shut up long enough to hear.

          I discovered that April 11, 1954 was the most boring day in the 20^th Century. I guessed August 3, 1923, because it was the day Calvin Coolidge was inaugurated. I missed it by 30 years and a few months.

          I read about the most boring day topic because something popped up on my computer screen that said I should. I would have never known about Belgium’s general election on April 11, 1954 or about Turkish scientist Abdullah Atalar being born on that day. Now that learned that information, I am as depressed as can be. I don’t mean to dis  Belgians or Mr. Atalar, but let’s face it, no day could be more boring than that!

          The real interest behind such research has to do with the method used in finding the most boring day. I’m here to tell you that computer scientist William Tunstall-Pedoe, developed a supercomputer search engine that came up with 300,000,000 facts concerning the most important things that happened in all countries from 1901 to 2000. Included with the program was a method of rating the importance of each happening. On April 11, 1954, Belgium and Turkey were complete losers.

          I mentioned at the beginning that I jotted down that useless information to share with Kay’s family. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read my scribblings. All I could remember was 300 million” and “boring day”, so I keyed four words into Google, and in a nanosecond up popped, “What happened on April 11, 1954?”

            To get that info, I suppose my computer sent radio waves to a tower that bounced it off another tower that then sent it to a satellite that shot down to the main headquarters. After some quick research, the info followed its path in reverse back to my computer.

          Keep in mind that the towers and satellites involved in all of this were constantly being bombarded with billions of other fact-finding missions. I do not know much at all, but one thing I know for sure is that I am going to die not knowing how all of that happened.  

The other weird facts that I gathered were in no way as technical as the one I just shared.  For example, did you know that John Smith was 28 years old when he first met Pocahontas, who at that time was 12? Did you know that Pocahontas means “Little Mischief”? To determine that, someone had to discover the Powhattan language as it was spoken in 1595. Absolutely amazing.

          Speaking of light bulbs, the first one was developed in 1840 by Warren del Rue, a British astronomer. Warren never got a patent on his invention, but in 1880 Thomas Edison got one for his light bulbs thus giving him credit for the invention. Hopefully, Warren wasn’t alive to know that.

          The story of George Washington having wooden teeth was not true. At his inauguration in 1789, he only had one tooth left in his head. Eventually, a so-called dentist made him a set of teeth that were set in lead, with uppers and lowers connected by two springs. Turns out, lead is a poor substitute for gums.

George gathered up teeth from a couple of his slaves, one of his cows, a horse, and some small pieces of bones. After some serious carving and welding, the dentist pushed the contraption into the President’s mouth and said, something like, “So, what do you think?” We don’t know his answer, but it can be readily interpreted by the fact that there is no portrait of Washington smiling. That story depressed the daylights out of me. 

          A small photo of Jason Mamoa popped up on my screen with the words “Many mourn Jason Mamoa—". Since Jill never called to tell me he died, I decided to click on the photo and the true story. What I found was the headline, “Many women mourn the fact that Jason Mamoa shaved his beard”. One can imagine my horror.

          Okay, that’s enough of this. I just wanted to share with you how many interesting things I didn’t share with relatives, nor did I find any of it in our family’s set of Compton's Encyclopedias. – Speaking of which, do any of you remember the Disney character who taught me how to spell Encyclopedia? You younger ones may need to use your cell phones for this one.

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hayter.mark@gmail.com

 

Kay's Cousins

 

Hayter for November 19, 2023

“A Full House”

        So how was Thanksgiving? – Okay. Okay, I see. Right, it’s always a wonderful occasion for all involved.  – Right now, I’d like to direct a question only to those who hosted a Thanksgiving gathering. How’d that go for you? – Forget it, let me tell you what I went through.

        Since Mom passed away, Kay and I have hosted so many family gatherings that it’s scary. Mom hosted the big events. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Jill and I took care of the vast majority of all non-holiday get-togethers. The others would have but would rather not. Each had relatively good excuses not to host a mass of Hayters.

        Elsie passed away in 2006. Before her passing, she lived in a small apartment. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to feed and entertain 20+ people in a small apartment? No one does. So, someone had to play Mom’s role. Who could do that? Who would do that?

        Each sibling gave it a shot. We lost three prospective hosts after that experiment. Big Al hung on for as long as he could but developed a case of curbed enthusiasm. It can sure happen. Jill and I are the ones who host most of the family’s few events.

        Over the past two years, we’ve both been a bit delinquent with inviting the clan over. It’s like a lot of work. It’s all great fun when we visit as a group, but prep time is almost as much trouble as clean-up. Jill hosted a Halloween gathering. Had she asked us to wear costumes, I would’ve used a headache as my excuse and missed it.

        The family had no Thanksgiving gathering this year. If they did I was not invited.  It doesn’t matter because we hosted Kay’s brother Mike and his wife Karen; her nephew and his family, then there were a bunch of cousins. Everyone was just as nice as they could be. One of the drawbacks to the event had to do with the venue. Our house doesn’t comfortably accommodate more than six guests. We had 22.

        The bad news was that it was too wet to go outside, so we all crowded together in the house. The good news was that Kay’s brother, and his wife were the only ones who stayed overnight. Two nights, actually. Have I ever mentioned how sweet Kay is?

        I was a different man while around Kay’s family. I barely fit into the Hayter Clan, but I have nothing in common with the Richards Clan. I didn’t even know what they were talking about most of the time. Way over my head. While I didn’t have much to say, it didn’t bother me any. Like my family, no one asks me anything. I seldom get asked a question. With Kay’s family, I never got asked a question. It was wonderful.

        And, I’ve got to tell you that I learned a lot about satellites, medications, diseases, AI, libraries, and weird foods. By the way, I’m a little less worried about AI. Cousin Keith told me that while five billionaires can control satellites and spy networks, and stuff that I’ve only noticed in Science Fictions movies, I have nothing to fear. Keith told me that the U.S. is far superior in any technologies produced by corporations or foreign powers. That was calming. At least it was up until I remembered the upcoming presidential election. A sane President would be essential, one would think.

By the way, I learned a lot from Keith and from Kay’s nephew Steven. That boy is as smart as the proverbial whip. Not quite as smart as his dad Mike, but then no one is.  Those people behave so much differently at get-togethers than the Hayters. I’m not saying that my family is better than Kay’s, but I can see where you might get that idea.

During the Hayter gatherings, the adults would generally hang out in the kitchen and dining room area. The kids preferred going nuts outdoors. When it rained, they preferred the outdoors even more. They were, apparently, so well-behaved because no one ever got killed or turned up missing.

As mentioned, Kay’s family did not make it outside during their visit due to the light rain. And what’s crazy is, they didn’t even care to. My nieces and nephews would’ve been out there doing abnormal things. Kay’s family’s kiddos stayed indoors and occupied their time with devices that had batteries in them. That was not even an option during the Wayback period.

Kay’s kinfolks have a different way of sharing stories. Eight of them sat at the dining room table with all of them talking at once. They must’ve been able to hear what the others were saying because they laughed at the same time. Some of the family stood in the living room, others in the kitchen. They had to speak loudly because the group at the table drowned out all other noises.

All in all, I felt pleased with the event. It’s gratifying to see a group of relatives remembering the way they were. They seemed to have a blast. They were grateful for Kay hosting the reunion-like event. They bragged about the food we prepared and how lovely the house was. I think the house part was somewhat of an exaggeration.

I was pleased that no one mentioned the times that I stood alone in the corner of the room and observed. It was so loud that I couldn’t hear what was being said by anyone. I must’ve missed out on a lot of jokes because there was so much laughter.

It turned out to be the most pleasant family gathering to ever be held in this house. There have been a couple of Hayter gatherings here, but no one was as excited to see one another as Kay’s family was. That was no mystery to me. None of us have been as close to one another as when Mom was with us.

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hayter.mark@gmail.com