Diary of a Network Geek

Through a circuitous route, I stumbled across an article by Tony Snow, a speech writer and media consultant for President George H. W. Bush.

Mr. Snow died on July 12, 2008, after fighting cancer, twice. Before he passed away, however, he wrote this article for Christianity Today, titled Cancer’s Unexpected Blessings. Go, read the article, then, if you can stomach some more, come back and I’ll share with you some of my thoughts on slow-dancing with death for the better part of a year.

We humans spend a lot of time worrying about death. Perhaps not on an individual basis, but in the aggregate, we spend a lot of time trying to avoid death, to hide from it, to deny it. When I was diagnosed with cancer almost two years ago, I could no longer hide from it or feel myself into thinking that it was a long way off. It could be tomorrow, next week, months from now, or years, but I’m going to die. In fact, we all are, sooner or later. I’ve heard it said that death is the one thing we all have in common. None of use make it out of here alive.
So, what does that mean? On a practical level, what does it mean to know that I’m going to die? It means that every moment is borrowed time. Every experience, no matter how painful or uncomfortable, is an opportunity to learn something, about myself, about my world or about my God. Frankly, it’s hard to put into words. I think that only someone who’s been close to death really gets it deep down in the bones where words don’t quite reach. Because, you see, when I was there, when I was right close to taking my last breath, I was convinced that it wasn’t quite time yet. Only later, when I’d had a chance to think about it did I truly understand how close I’d come to being gone. When I was there, when the Angel of Death had me in that cold, bony bear-hug, it was the farthest thing from my mind. Then, all I could think about was living. All I could think about was seeing people I missed, doing things that I wanted to do. Maybe trying to correct a few of the mistakes I’d made along the way and, hopefully, God willing, have time enough to take another shot at some of those things and do ’em right this time around.
Naturally, when I was first diagnosed, I was quite upset. I felt cheated, like God owed me so many more years of life and taking that away from me was unfair. That, however, didn’t last nearly as long as I would have thought.

In another article on MSN, I read “Learning you have cancer and going through treatment can dramatically affect a person’s life. Cancer can be isolating, and depression affects up to 38 percent of cancer patients.” My thought when I read that was, “No shit”. Who can understand something like this? How can you explain it? A fellow cancer survivor, and a good friend of mine, talked about going to the doctor after getting diagnosed to “…see how badly my body had betrayed me.” And, that, as much as anything, sums up that weird feeling of loss and surprise and gut-checking impact when the diagnosis is made, then confirmed. It knocks you off your emotional feet, stalls your motivational momentum, and kicks you in your spiritual nut-sack. Suddenly, every uncomfortable moment becomes more precious than any commodity you’ve ever owned. You find yourself suddenly willing to trade any possession, no matter how precious, for a just a few more minutes in the embrace of an old friend, or the bed of an old lover. Some, like me, may find themselves longing to know the mind of God, but without the big rush to look Him in the eye to ask the questions.
It’s funny, when I think of it now, how many times I’ve contemplated killing myself over the years. Well, it’s funny in light of how many radioactive enemas I’ve had, and how much personal dignity I’ve traded, all in the effort to squeeze a few more minutes out of this drab, pre-processed world of ours. Not too many years before my diagnosis, I was at one of those points. It’d been a rough year, or two or three, and I thought I was done, finally. But, God had a few lessons left to teach me, a few things for me, perhaps, to teach someone else, so I’m still here, flailing about for words to express the unexpressible.

In the end, what cancer taught me was something I thought I’d learned from that old poet, Warren Zevon, several years before, when he was dying of cancer. It was a quote, from his last live TV appearance on the David Letterman Show that appeared on the VH1 retrospective, which I watched again while I wrote the last bit of this post. After long last, I finally understand just how much to enjoy every sandwich.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong."
   --Warren Buffet

My house almost blew up tonight.

No, really.
As I write this, I’m waiting for a serviceman from Centerpoint Energy to come out and turn my gas back on. Apparently, shortly after I left for church this evening a neighbor smelled gas by my house. They called emergency services in Jersey Village, where I live. When the emergency services got out, they could smell gas, so they turned off my power and got Centerpoint out. Centerpoint repaired the leak, or so it seems. Actually, the first thing the serviceman is going to check is to make sure the leak isn’t a leak any more. Then, assuming all is well, he’ll turn the gas on and I can light all my pilots and so on. That’s why the gas was turned off when I got home. Naturally, they couldn’t find me, since I’d gone to church, so they couldn’t turn anything on until they knew I could light all the pilots again. Otherwise, my house would have filled with gas, hit something electric and, well, let’s just say I was irritated with the whole thing until I got the lights back on and figured out what almost happened. Thank God!

I guess my little efforts and building up a little good karma in the short term paid off today.
See, I helped two people with computer things today. This morning, I started reformating and reinstalling my friend J.’s wife, L’s, laptop. She’d been having problems with it and I looked at it several times, but I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong. So, rather than spend any more time on it, I backed up her files and started reinstalling it. Of course, that got interrupted by my power being out, but, still, I’m sure I’ll get it done pretty quick now while I wait for Centerpoint to turn my gas back on.

The other person I did a little mitzvah for was Alison over at Inspired Work of Self-Indulgence.
She was having a little trouble with Comcast and their network. More specifically, it seemed to me she was having a problem with the assigned DNS servers. As any good network geek knows, an Internet connection with out DNS isn’t very useful. She had a connection, sure, but she couldn’t get anywhere. Comcast had been out multiple times trying to fix things. They’d even changed out her cable modem, which seemed to be connected fine when I looked at it. But, her wireless gateway was picking up the normal, default DNS servers from Comcast’s autoconfiguration. I reset the wireless router to the factory default and tweaked the settings a bit. The part that I think mattered the most was adding additional DNS servers from outside Comcast’s network. So now, if the main DNS server goes down or stops working, the backup servers should still find what she’s looking for.
Though, if the problem comes back, it occurred to me on the way home from church that it might be her laptop turning off her wireless connection in a power-save mode, so I might have to check that. (If she’s reading this, that’s a hint!) In any case, it was nice to at long last finally get to meet her. We’ve exchanged e-mail and comments and read each other’s blog posts for quite literally years now. She even sent me cookies when I was in the hospital getting chemotherapy that first time! But today was the first time actually meeting. Hopefully, now that she’s seen I’m completely harmless, it won’t be the last time.
Oh, and I got to meet Piedmont and his new pet human, er, owner. Both were sweet, too. And, of course, I got to meet Cheyenne, Alison’s chocolate lab. She’s as cute in person as in the pictures Alison takes of her and as spoiled, too! She has almost as much tummy as my own Hilda!

So, in spite of almost coming home to a smoking hole in the ground where my house used to be, it turned out to be quite a good day indeed! Stay warm, y’all, and make sure to check your gas!

Update: Apparently, my sins still out-weigh my good deeds, since the guy from Centerpoint Energy never showed up. I stayed up waiting for him until 4:00am, then went to bed, mumbling about liars in the night. I wish it were the first time.
I’m half tempted to turn it on myself and to hell with them. But, better safe than sorry, so I’ll just mumble quiet, Lovecraftian curses on them and try to be on about my day until the next lying serviceman arrives.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
   --Martin Luther King

Right, I need to keep this all in mind.

So, as my regular readers know, I’m technically back in the dating world. I say that, “technically”, because, honestly, I haven’t been trying very hard at it. I’m still really recovering from chemo and trying to get my life back on track, which, rightly or wrongly, I feel I need to do before I’ll be ready to date. Naturally, for me, part of straightening out my life revolves around money, or the lack thereof.
See, back when I was out of work for a year, to keep the house and my erstwhile family together, I took a rather substantial pay cut. Now, I’ll grant you, I also didn’t work as hard, or as long, which was fine at the time, since I actually liked spending time with my family, especially my step-daughter. I liked being dad, even if I was one of two and only his “stunt double” most of the time. But, the thing is, I made a trade-off. I decided it was better to not have quite as much money so that I could have more quality time with friends and family. Only, sometime between that decision and now, during the divorce or chemo most likely, I lost sight of that. Until I read this article on MSN about dating a woman who makes more than you.

Sure, the average female lawyer or doctor earns vastly more than I do, but she also has to slave away for 80- or 100-hour weeks, whereas I can achieve my modest income with just a few hours of writing a day. Often, the result is that I’m desirous of her attention, while she’s envious of my ability to kick back on a lazy summer weekday afternoon and do absolutely nothing.

Wow.
I read that and re-read it. Then, it occurred to me just how unhappy I really was when I was “doing well” financially. I was so miserable and grouchy and stressed and … Well, let’s just say I wasn’t any fun to be around anyway, so I might as well have been at work where at least I might do some good.

The only thing is, with medical bills stacking up, I really started feeling the pressure and getting stressed and grouchy and miserable all over again. So, I really need to enjoy that I don’t work every weekend any more, or eleven-hour days. And, I need to not waste that time suckling at the glass teat, either. Geez, I have so many books to read that they’re piling up! Not to mention all the stuff I have to write.

Heh, maybe God really was doing me a favor when He forcibly slowed my life down and curtailed a lot of my spending.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out."
   --Italian Proverb

I once read somewhere that doing 100 push ups in the morning makes you feel like you can accomplish anything.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve done 100 push ups every morning, but, when I used to do that, it was true. I’d feel like if I could do that, well, at least the day wasn’t wasted, so I might as well give whatever crazy task was at hand a try.
Apparently, someone else agrees with me and has actually developed a program, of sorts, that lets you build up to that goal of 100 push ups. Not coincidentally, the site is called “one hundred push ups” and, if you believe their press, following this plan will let you do 100 push ups, in one, continuous set in just six weeks.

I haven’t tried it yet myself, but I’ll get back to you.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"'One of these days' is none of these days."
   --English Proverb

It’s getting to be that time of year again.

I’ve really been craving a cigarette the past week or two. It always happens this time of year. The air turns cool and crisp, which makes it perfect weather to stand outside and suck long drags of hot, molten tar down deep into my lungs. Of course, I won’t. It seems morally incorrect to increase my chances of cancer again after M.D. Anderson worked so hard to keep me alive, but, oh, I do so want to just sit with strong coffee and smoke cigarette after cigarette, one after another. I don’t know what it is, really, besides the time of year and the change in weather. Perhaps there’s something that’s making me miss a time long since past, before I moved to Houston, before I was married. Another Fall, in another place, when I was another person.

It may surprise my readers to know that I am a bit of a romantic. I suspect that my co-workers would especially be surprised, since I tend to maintain a somewhat cynic mode of conversation in the office. I think, perhaps, most of my friends from church would be surprised, too. There, oddly enough, most people see me as a wise-cracking joker, I think. But, a tired, world-weary, old romantic is what I am most nights, especially in the Fall.
The holidays are approaching quickly. Too quickly, it seems to me sometimes. And, with the holidays come memories. Memories of old dreams that died young. Memories of old betrayal, old pain, that nags at me like a bad knee in damp weather. The holidays are a hard time for me these days. Alone again, after thinking I’d never be alone again. My family is all in another state, two thousand miles away. Even home isn’t home any more, another place that’s changed too much and a time that will never return. This season, which includes my birthday, always reminds me of all the things I regret, all the ways my twisty life has gone in circles no one could predict. Even my old ally, words upon words, fail me, leave me stranded. What words can describe the hollow feeling this season evokes in me? Not sadness, not really true regret, but an emptiness so full that it sucks all feeling out of me like a vacuum.

I’ve been watching an old movie. The Yakuza, starring Robert Mitchum and Ken Takakura. Mitchum plays a former service-man who, along with a number of friends, was part of the Occupation after World War II. One of those old friends, played by Brian Kieth, has gotten into trouble and asks Mitchum’s character to help him out. The trouble, of course, involves the yakuza. I think it may have been my first exposure to any sort of yakuza movie. It’s hard to find, but Netflix had it. Maybe this, too, reminds me of all the ways life has surprised me. And, naturally, it’s filled with smoking, which makes me crave that cigarette even more. But, I have to watch it, twice, back to back. It’s as if I’m looking for an answer to my own past in the way the characters deal with theirs. I always find myself stuck in no-win situations with people I care about. Someone to whom I can’t express my deep affection without causing hard feelings with someone else to whom I owe a debt. There’s a line in the movie, one character talking to another about the part played by Ken Takakura. “Yes, he is insufferable at times. Honorable men often are.” I sympathize with that, identify with it. Once, when describing a complicated social situation I found myself in to a friend in Japan, he told me I was “more Japanese than Japanese”, which is quite a compliment, actually. I’ve always admired yakuza films, the Japanese film noir.

And, that’s the thing, maybe. On the inside, my life feels like film noir, but on the outside it plays like a Doris Day comedy. God, not even a Cary Grant comedy. I could take that. Who doesn’t want to be Cary Grant? Even Cary Grant would’ve liked to have been Cary Grant. But, my problem is I’m always trying to be Robert Mitchum or, yes, even Ken Takakura, “the man who never smiles”, except I can’t keep a straight face. It’s hard to be a tough guy if you can’t keep a straight face.
They say every comedian is crying on the inside, and maybe that’s me. Maybe that’s why I’m always joking, to hide the fact that my life seems a little tragic to me. And, yes, if it seems tragic to me, how must it seem to anyone looking at it from the outside? Almost forty and alone. My friends seem to think I’m undatable, or incapable of picking someone appropriate to date. I’m not so sure they’re wrong. If I drank hard anymore, I’d start drinking myself to sleep every night, but even that’s not really a viable option to me anymore, thanks to my doctors. I told someone not too long ago that I’d done all my crying and that’s why I joked so much now. Because it was a choice I’d made between laughing and crying and I’d cried myself dry. So bad jokes are all that’s left. No smokes, no women, maybe a little booze, if it’s the good stuff, but all that’s left really are bad jokes and brooding self-recrimination.

I suppose if I were smart, I’d take all this ennui, this overgrown teen angst just returned from French boarding school, and channel it into a moody mystery novel or a vampire story or something. But, I’m not, so instead, I just blog. And you read. Thanks.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them."
   --Walt Disney

StJude-withoutFlash

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I do not believe in saints.

I don’t, really. I don’t believe that burning a candle to Saint Jude made any difference whatsoever in my divorce when I thought I was going to lose my house, my dog, and everything that really mattered to me. But, I did it. In fact, I did it a lot. I think I have five or six of these Saint Jude candles around and I used to light them all and recite the prayer on the back of each candle as I lit them.

Prayer to Saint Jude
Most holy apostle, St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, patron of hopeless causes of things almost despaired of, pray for me. I am so helpless and alone. Make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege given to you to bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. I promise to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron. Amen!

Well, even though things turned out well there, I’m sure the Saint Jude candles had nothing to do with it. I’m sure. So, why bring it up? Well, funny you should ask….

As with most of my hopeless causes, it starts with a girl. Well, a woman, but when it’s a boy pining over her, they’re always girls. Do we ever progress beyond Junior High?
So, yeah, a girl. To say that she doesn’t know I’m alive would be too harsh, but I’m quite certain I’m not on her radar, so to speak. I’m forty and she’s, well, younger. I walk about a mile and a half four times a week, and I’ve been told she runs six miles virtually every day. I make her laugh until her sides ache. But, a friend told me that Chris Farley used to complain that no one wanted to have sex with the funny guy. Things do not look good for me at all, do they? But, still, I persist. Why? Because Saint Jude is my patron saint, I guess.

Time to start lighting candles, I guess.
“Most holy apostle, Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, patron of hopeless causes and things almost despaired of, pray for me…”

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Being right too soon is socially unacceptable."
   --Robert A. Heinlein

I voted yesterday.

Yeah, I know, something like two weeks before the normal election day, I was able to vote.  Turns out, there has been a massive response this year and huge numbers of people are voting.  Personally, I think that’s great.  I mean, a friend of mine said he’d heard they were expecting something like a 60% turn out rate, which is monster.  As I recall, normally, the percentage of people who vote is less than 20%, so to get so many people out voting is wonderful.

I always have felt that if you want to complain about the way our current leaders are running things, then you better have voted.  Me, I like to complain, so I vote.  From what I understand, this year, you can even vote early on Sunday!  Thanks to Google, you can find your local early voting polling place with just a few clicks of a mouse, so why not do it?  If you haven’t voted lately, why not start this year?

Also, I’m not normally a very political animal.  No, really, stop laughing, I’m not.  Oh, sure, I’ve ranted and raved about certain tiny aspects of politics, but, mostly, I want everyone to participate in the process.  This year, though, I’m going to make a suggestion.  I think everyone tends to get in the mindset that you have to choose between the Democrats and the Republicans, but, you know, we’re not a two party system.  There are a wide range of parties in the United States, but the popular news media almost never talks about them.  Did you know that Ralph Nader was running again?  Have you heard of Bob Barr?
Just think about this for a couple minutes.  Over the past fifteen years, both the Republicans and the Democrats have been in power.  Did you like the way either of them ran this country?  If you’re not happy with either the Republicans or the Democrats, why not give a third party a try?  The Libertarians are well represented this year, at least in Harris County, Texas.
Maybe it’s time we gave another party a chance to make a difference.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"A day hemmed in prayer is less likely to unravel."

No, really, I have this friend who wants to know what people think.

Specifically, he wants to know what people think about a particular question.  See, it’s like this…
So, about a year ago, this friend of mine started dating someone he met via eHarmony.com. Well, things started slow with this woman, but he’s a very rational guy and allowed logic to guide him.  She had many appealing qualities, so, even though he didn’t have an immediate romantic attraction to her, he stayed the course and did his best to make a connection with her.  Sadly, it didn’t work out.  He could never quite get any chemistry going and, in the end, she obviously never felt that either because she pretty much broke it off.

Well, it turns out that was okay with my friend.  Why?  Well, as wrote previously, he never felt any real chemistry with her.  But, more than that, there was a complication.
The complication was a sister.  A single sister, as in not-married.  It seems he had an immediate reaction to this sister when he first met her.  In fact, one could say that all the chemistry he was hoping for with the original woman was, instead, centered on her sister.
Her sister had been seeing someone, sort of.  He was also from eHarmony, but he was from another state and, well, apparently there wasn’t enough chemistry.  So, even though she was kind of involved when my friend met her, she’s single now.

Now, here’s the dilemma…
After having dated the one woman for a year, can he now ask her sister out?  If so, under what conditions?
There are a few details that may be important, too.  First, these two sisters are Phillippina and pretty conservative Catholics.  Secondly, my friend is a staunch Christian and, therefore, is waiting until he’s married for sex, so that complication is not an issue.  Thirdly, my friend is very much NOT Phillippino and a Protestant.  Also, he’s waiting a respectful time before he’ll even contemplate asking the sister out, but, that time is drawing near.  Though, that raises another question, though.  What is a respectful enough time to wait before asking the sister out?  Oh, and should he ask the first woman’s permission first?

Right, so vote on the poll in the right side-bar, okay?  And leave any thoughts and insight in the comments.
(And, yes, I am talking about an actual friend, not myself in disguise!)

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Everyone deserves to be happy, but not if that happiness is dependent on imprisoning or enslaving another human being."
   --Unintentionally ironic comment left on a blog

SwampFlowers-Manual-03

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I deleted a post on my blog this morning for the first time in a long, long time.

Usually, I have an editing process for posts that may accidentally cross the border into Too Much Information Land or sound to bitter or too angry or too whatever. But, last night, I came home from church and dinner and had a wild hair to find a bunch of music via SeeqPod and run it in a loop while I hammered away furiously at the keys. Angry music. Angry music the like of which I haven’t listened to in a long, long time.

I felt a little hopeless and helpless and, well, angry. So, I dialed up a little Rob Zombie and Rammstein and Lords of Acid and Fu Manchu and then I used the “Discover” function on SeeqPod to find other stuff like that. Old thoughts and old memories just washed over me when it started playing and looping. I just wanted to jump up from the keyboard and rip into the heavy bag out in the garage. But, I didn’t, I just kept typing and typing and typing. Normally, I’d let that kind of thing sit over night and look at it again in the morning. Last night, though, I just hit the Publish button and walked away, exhausted, in the small hours of the night.

This morning, I reread a little of that post and then deleted it.
TMI, “sharing violation”, rant. Whatever you want to call it, that’s what I’d typed. It’s also why I deleted it. No one needs to read that. Not even me. It was good to write it out and get it out of my head, but it really shouldn’t have been out for public consumption. So, I deleted it.

If you’re still reading, you may be wondering what that has to do with the picture here. Bear with me.
So, this morning, I got up and threw on some shorts and a shirt and a hat to take the dog for a brisk walk before I got a shower. See, I want to get back into shape. Yes, back into shape. You see, more than ten years ago now, I was, to put it mildly, in far, far better shape than I am today. I did hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups every morning, five days a week. And, I hit the heavy bag. And, I worked with dumbbells. I was, in short, in good shape. I was lean and I filled out a suit jacket pretty damn well, thank you very much. Now, after a bad marriage, a couple of job changes, some other heart-ache, and a slight case of cancer, I’m fat and lazy. I don’t like it. Ergo, there’s only one thing to do about it; change it.

Well, as I’m letting the dog out to relieve herself before we go for our walk, I see these tiny white things on my sad, nasty pond. I get closer, thinking that they’re funny leaves or insects or something and I see that they’re teeny, tiny, little white flowers. Naturally, my walk can wait while I grab the camera and tripod. It took longer to get a decent shot than I thought it would, but, oh, it was worth it to me.
See, to me, these aren’t just little, white flowers. They’re a metaphor for my entire life right now. From the swampy morass of my mind and my slimy past, little, white hope can still bloom. There are no coincidences, truly. And, non-believers may scoff, but some power in the universe was sending me a message in an insignificant, white flower blooming on top of embarrassing slime.

Hope springs eternal.
Thank God.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything."
   --William Conner Magee

Jewelry

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

No, for real. I’ve got some jewelry I’m selling.

So, this weekend, I got a real education in the economics of despair. I’ve never been to a pawn shop to sell, only to buy. It’s an entirely different experience.
As I mentioned in an earlier entry, thanks to Ike, I’ve had some unexpected expenses come up around some damaged fences. Because of my darling Hilda, I really need to have a fenced yard. Or, I suppose, a better trained dog. But, since the fence is easier, that’s the choice I’m going with. For the sake of ease, and block politics, I decided to use the same guy who did the fabulous job on the neighbor’s fence. Incidentally, I’ll be paying some small fraction of that, too, since it’s shared, which is only fair. So, after I asked him, the fence guy came back with a quote of $1475, which isn’t as bad as it sounds when you consider the size of the fence, the height, and how quickly he seems to work. Also, I’m figuring it’ll buy me a little “good neighbor” currency with my oldest neighbor, the lawyer. Yeah, you can see why I like to stay on his good side.

Naturally, this guy doesn’t really do fence work as his main gig, which means this is a strictly cash business, otherwise, I’d pop it onto American Express and work out the details later. And, he’s going to want to be paid on completion, which is going to be, probably, Thursday. The time crunch really puts the squeeze on my poor, tiny, cold-slowed brain and, well, I started to get a little panicky. I’m not proud of that, but money being tight for as long as it has, a little blip on that front really throws me off. This has been no different.
Naturally, trying to handle it all on my own with as little help as possible, I hit on the idea that I can sell some of my ex-wife’s abandoned jewelry. Sounds great, right? I mean, my lawyer’s office pretty well confirmed that, based on the documentation we have of her demanding certain items be sent and leaving the rest, and the amount of time that has passed, that, in essence, salvage rights apply. In other words, this stuff is all mine to do with as I see fit. Great, right? Not so quick.

I saw fit to sell it to a jewelry store. The only problem is, I couldn’t find a jewelry store that would buy it. That meant checking out pawn shops. Naturally, that brought up all kinds of fears for me. Fears of getting cheated, scammed, you name it. But, screwing up my courage, I start asking around to see if anyone knows a good, relatively honest pawn shop. It came as no surprise that someone I know from church has a relative who owns a pawn shop. Her grandmother, in fact. There is, however, one small, um, “catch”. She’s a beautiful, young, athletic woman who is, intrinsically, attractive and I’m, well, not, and, frankly, still, even at my advanced age, get a little nervous and tongue-tied around that kind of woman. It’s sad, really, but, well, there it is. Thankfully, I have e-mail to save me.

So, I e-mailed her and she told me the name of the place and that her cousin runs it, usually, and if not him then her uncle will be. Then, she also told me about their other businesses that for various reasons, including at least one or two legal ones, I’m not going to mention. I think it was at about this point that I started to wonder just how good an idea this really was. I mean, if the most reputable pawn shop I can find with a recommendation from a church-going woman, no less, still has that faint, musty odor of potential illegality, well… Of course, none of this has ever stopped me before, and it doesn’t this time, either, but it makes me a bit more nervous and cautious.
In any case, I do trust this woman from church, and I’m starting to feel a bit of pressure to come up with the cash, so, setting aside my reservations, I get a shower Saturday morning and head over to check things out.
The closer I got to the shop, the more I recognized the neighborhood I was driving into as being, um, less than the best. I wasn’t worried, per se, but I suspected that I should be careful with stuff to sell in my hand, just in case someone got the idea to mug me. It was a longshot, but, still, I grew up outside of Chicago, so I’m not entirely naive. By the time I actually roll up on the place, I’ve gotten a bit nervous that these guys are going to see a desperate sucker coming and take me for all I’ve got. So, as I park, I resolve not to just jump at the first offer and see where the whole thing goes. And, it does occur to me that telling these guys no could end up reflecting poorly on me with this woman from church or get her into an uncomfortable spot with her cousin or uncle or something. None of which would be good, if for no other reason than I genuinely like this lady. I mean, besides being very attractive, she’s a pretty straight-forward sort of gal, and after dealing with the Queen of the Damned, that’s pretty nice.  Though, please, understand that, no matter how much I would like to be, I’m fairly certain I could never, ever be her “type” and that’s okay because I dig her anyhow, even if it’s just as friends.

As I hopped out of the car, I saw two guys loading or unloading something from a trailer, like a generator or pump or something pretty big. One was a younger guy, at least younger than me, and the other looked a little older than me. I kind of wonder if the older guy wasn’t her uncle, but I never did find out or even think to ask. The younger guy sort of squinted in my direction and then walked over toward me and where I parked as I headed into the pawn shop. Before I got too far in and could head toward any counter, the young guy kind of scooted in behind me. He seemed tense or nervous, which didn’t help me, but he was also pretty eager to find out what I wanted. I can’t blame him, since I looked and felt a little out of place. I introduced myself as a friend of the lady from church and tell him she said to ask for her cousin or uncle. He got even more nervous and admitted to me that he was her cousin. Now, keep in mind, this young woman has a couple of tattoos, but they’re tasteful and pretty easily hidden and, when they are, she’s the picture of respectability. The guy I was talking to was… Well, to use her words, dressed a little “thug”. I mean, he fit the role he was filling. Or, at least dressed the part, right down to his shaved head. Oh, also, he work a loose shirt, untucked from his baggy shorts, so I pretty well assumed that he was carrying a gun. Turns out, I was probably right.
Well, the poor guy seemed even more shocked that I knew his cousin or that she’d sent me, but we got down to business pretty quick. He didn’t want to even touch the pearls or the tennis bracelet, and I can’t blame him. They’re a little iffy without an appraisal. The ruby ring was only worth the gold in it, to him and the platinum rings were only had value based on weight. After looking at the rings and weighing them, he ducked into the back for a couple minutes. At first, I thought he might have been calling his cousin to check on me and my story, and then it occurred to me that he was probably checking on the price of platinum. Later, when I talked to his cousin, she confirmed that was probably just precisely what he was doing.
So, then he made me his offer.
Earlier in the week, I’d priced this stuff on eBay, just to get an idea of how much it might sell for. I figured I might get half of that price from these guys, which would have been enough.
They offered me less than a quarter of what I thought I could sell this stuff for on eBay.

In just a few seconds, I went from initial shock to trying to figure out how to tactfully say “no thanks” to a guy who may, or may not, be involved in criminal activity and who may, or may not, actually be strapped as I was talking to him and not insult him or cause trouble for this cute, sweet, and all around nice, woman from church. In that gap, filled with a small breath sucked in through tight lips and my clenched teeth, he gave me my out.
“Hey, if you think you can get a better price somewhere else, go for it. We’ll still be here.”

And with that, I scooped up the jewelry, dropped it into the Ziploc freezer bag and walked out, thanking him out loud and God silently.
When I got into my car, I noticed something was different, but I was a good three blocks away before I realized that what had made the guy nervous when I drove up was the fact that I was driving what looked like an unmarked police car, just like what the Feds drive. Combine that with being, um, ethnically incorrect for the neighborhood and I’m fairly certain he thought I was a cop, of some kind, coming to bust him for something.
You see, what I’d noticed was that the spot-light on the outside of my car had been moved so that someone could check the registration. After thinking about it for a minute, I was sure that what he’d done was check to see if I had a city or federal parking tag or registration on the windshield. I’d probably made him more uncomfortable than he’d made me!
And, when I got home, I called my parents, who were more than happy to lend me the money to pay the fence guy until I can sell the jewelry on eBay, or whatever. But, I sure did get a taste of how desperate you have to be to actually sell something at a pawn shop. I understood just how bad things had to have gotten for someone to be there and really not have the choice to walk away. Just take their offer or do without, somehow. Today, I’m very, very thankful that wasn’t my only choice.

On the upside, while I was waiting, I saw some very reasonably priced power tools. So, you know, when I do get a little working capital and want some tools, they’re probably going to be my first stop!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it."
   --W. Feather