Category Archives: Captain Quirk

November 4, 2010 · 11:38 am

Call Me Quirky

Contrary to popular belief, no one on earth is immune. Evvvvvverybody’s got ‘em. Quirks, that is. Some stranger than others. Some stranger than fiction.

Personally, I find the whole topic of idiosyncrasies remarkably intriguing. They fascinate me. What can I say—I’m easily amused. Good grief, I found being hurried to death in a restaurant so incredibly amusing that I was moved to write about it. So to be humored by good old-fashioned oddities almost makes sense. Almost. Call me quirky.

Perhaps my biggest curiosity stems from wondering where they come from in the first place. Do we arrive on the planet pre-wired for the development of certain eccentricities? “Okay, let’s see…this one will have blue eyes and will forever dot her i’s with little curlicues.” Is it somehow genetic? (Weirdness simply breeds weirdness). Or is it mostly influenced by our environment? (Monkey see, monkey do).

Who knows where such peculiarities originate? I don’t pretend to know. But what I can say for certain is that quirks are very real and are utterly brimming with entertainment potential. Think: “Felix Unger” (The Odd Couple) or “Monk” (of Monk). These guys have literally defined (and some would even argue, “glamorized”) the concept of quirkiness. Popularized it to a degree.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe each of us is eager for the limelight—striving for a slice of uniqueness that will set us apart from the throngs of ordinaries. Public bizarreness—that’ll definitely do it—famously, if done right. The next time you carpool for instance, try holding your breath and raising your knees to your chin whenever you cross a bridge WITHOUT anyone noticing. That’s just plain strange—quirkiness at its finest; but it’ll surely get you noticed. Or try this one: While standing at a busy checkout, lovingly ogle your stash of wheat-backed pennies and painstakingly organize all your bills, so that those stoic-looking characters you cart around in your wallet are all right-side-up and facing the same direction—not one-another. No doubt, you’ll get some queer stares—with or without a three-dollar bill.

Another one that gets me is when people meticulously wipe their silverware while dining out—which goes WAY beyond checking for dried food particles. If you ask me, it borders on the obsessive; as does the practice of methodically arranging individual lunch items in the same manner day in and day out…sandwich at six-o’clock, carrot and celery sticks at three and nine-o’clock respectively and Red Delicious at high noon. And how about those who can’t bear to consume anything “out of order?” Or those who won’t tolerate the peas and potatoes touching at dinnertime? We can’t have chummy vegetables now, can we? I suppose it’s no different than refusing to allow the blues and browns to mingle in a sock drawer. People would talk.

I especially enjoy watching individuals like my husband, who are absolutely compelled to “erase” a mid-air sketch, lest someone bump into it later—just hanging there in all its imaginary glory. It cracks me up each and every time I see him do it. Just for fun, I’ll scribble a “note” on this so-called canvas merely to watch him squirm when I leave it there. It kills him. I know it’s cruel, but I can’t help myself. Nor can I resist the temptation to hand Captain Quirk a plain, old ordinary pencil every so often—just to watch him cringe in disgust. You’d think I had offered a bucket of spiders or something. The man won’t go near one (mechanical variety excluded), since he finds them positively repulsive. Sharp, dull, freshly gnawed or in mint condition. Doesn’t matter. Won’t touch ‘em. In my opinion, it simply defies logic. Welcome to Quirkville.

Even dogs and cats suffer. Poor things. Ever watch them settle down for a nap or try to poo? Can’t do it unless they spin themselves into the ground first. Idiots. Even my kids have begun to show signs of budding peculiarities. One won’t run. Only gallops. Another didn’t blow her nose till she was 10. And the third strange child of mine refuses to eat sandwiches—period. Until yesterday, that is. Captain Quirk apparently offered up something so tasty even She-Who-Thrives-On-Rebellion couldn’t resist. Potato chip and jelly, in case you wondered.

I just HAD to snap a photo. It’s a quirk of mine.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (quirks and all).

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Filed under Captain Quirk, Daily Chaos, Home is Where the Weirdness Lives, We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

Tagged as dysfunction, family, humor, husbands, kids, madness, moms, oddities, parenting, quirks

September 1, 2010 · 9:05 am

Apples and Peaches and Pears, Oh My!

I don’t get this harvest thing. The picking and plucking, heaving and hauling, sorting and stowing to me seem hardly worth the reward—a bunch of garage-consuming, sickly sweet-smelling produce bent on wearing out its welcome faster than I can swat fruit flies.

Naturally, the overzealous-fruit-grower-guy in my life views the whole process, from buds to bushels, in an entirely different light. Throughout each season, he lovingly ogles his babies—one each of the apple, peach and pear varieties that inhabit our lawn. Countless hours are spent admiring their beauty and resilience, stroking their green leafiness and for all I know, whispering sweet-nothings into their ear-like blossoms which, strangely, seem eager to soak up his praise and words of encouragement. The man talks to trees, for crying out loud! He claims he’s simply “monitoring their growth and development.”

“Okay, Captain Fruitage. Mr. Happy Harvester. If you say so. Just get on with your foolishness and quit trying to save me from a life filled with apathy toward the wonderment of reaping that which we sow—namely, the apples and peaches and pears, oh my! You’re obsessed. Positively obsessed. And you seem to grow even more fanatical with eachpassing year. Ugh.”

When all this harvest schmarvest hoo-ha began eight years ago, I should have recognized the telltale signs of dysfunction right then and there. Painstakingly, this Doctor Dolittle of fruit trees fashioned two-by-fours into props, so that branches heavy with ripening fruit wouldn’t snap. At first glance, this actually makes a lot of sense and even smacks of ethical treatment for trees (Yea!). But when the casual observer notes just HOW OFTEN he checks and rechecks and checks yet again the positioning of said props, he or she might think the behavior a bit odd.

“It’s not as if mischief-minded grasshoppers or crickets are messing with your silly little sticks of wood, you foolish, foolish man. Stop with the paranoia already.”

Over time, this champion of growing and gathering sidled into the role of Extreme Protector, going above and beyond the call of duty. One year he attempted to coat practically every square inch of the trees in question—spritzing and spraying some magical, stench-ridden formula guaranteed to nix bugs, blight and all things fungal. (It doubled as cologne). He also fertilized, pruned and prayed to the hilt. But mostly, he cursed the shameless bears and deer for daring to pilfer his precious fruit. Blasted scavengers.

More recently though, I’ve noted that the fervor with which Captain Fruitage approaches nearly every harvest-related conversation has exceeded the bounds of tolerability. In fact, it has led him (oh so erroneously) to believe that I, too, should possess a deranged level of enthusiasm for said topic. What am I—a squirrel?! I think not.

Granted, I do enjoy a luscious piece of fruit now and then—plucked straight from the tree or vine, its juices still warm from the sun. But why the insistence upon converting me to “his kind”? Maybe he feels that without a fruit fixation, I am somehow incomplete or deprived. Or maybe he just thinks I’m lazy. But I’m not lazy. Really, I’m not. Just disinterested. Period.

Much to my chagrin, however, he recently pried me away from live coverage of the U.S. Open one afternoon (Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!) and half dragged me to a spot in the lawn where I guessed that I was supposed to ooooooh and ahhhhhh or rejoice or something upon seeing the bountiful harvest—hanging there in all its succulent glory. What happened next involved a ladder crushing my foot, branches whacking my face, fruit thumping me about the head and shoulders and great masses of bugs that seemed intent upon flying up my nose and into my eyes. It hardly seemed worth all the grief.

And for my efforts under the trees, I was granted the opportunity to separate the worm-eaten and the non-worm-eaten varieties. Joy. I also got to lug those unwieldy props (grumble grumble) and boxes brimming with fruit all the way to the garage—where hordes of them are still parked.

I just don’t get this harvest thing.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live.

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Filed under A Tree is Nice, Captain Quirk, Home is Where the Weirdness Lives, Rantings & Ravings

Tagged as dysfunction, fruit harvest, humor, husbands, quirks, summertime, tirades

June 17, 2010 · 6:00 am

A Rose by Any Other Name…

For a long time I’ve subscribed to the theory, “If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, it’s a duck.” Nothing fancy or convoluted about that little nugget of wisdom. Nope. I’ve tried (largely in vain) to convince my poor husband of the same—especially as it relates to his muddled and dreadfully misguided view on a certain sensitive domestic issue: the proper function of a sofa.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument, that he and I have some philosophical differences in this particular department. Okay, major philosophical differences. One of us is clearly wrong, never mind mired in denial. To frame it less delicately, if the man walks and talks like a couch potato, it would logically follow that said man is a couch potato—contrary to his intolerably skewed perception. It’s not rocket science we’re talking about here, people.

In my humble opinion, sofas are intended to be sat upon, lounged upon and even napped upon for a period of time not to exceed the bounds of reason. They also function quite nicely (I’m told) as something purely decorative in nature, fashionably adorned with an array of immaculate-looking throw pillows and perfectly placed cushions—well suited to those perfectly coiffed socialites that ooze sophistication and an I’d-be-appalled-to-find-a-three-day-old-peanutbutter-sandwich-wedged-in-with-the-Legos kind of air. I used to be appalled. And I once owned such a sofa. But it was still marginally functional, I suppose—almost as functional as my kids currently consider their beloved “launch pads” to be.

Not surprisingly, they have spent a goodly chunk of their collective childhood (clad in makeshift superhero capes, barn boots and strange-looking helmets fashioned from Winnie the Pooh and Dora the Explorer underwear) leaping from the backs of those gloriously cushiony surfaces with wild abandon, saving the day roughly 42 times a week. It’s been rumored anyway. More practically perhaps, couches serve as the most ideal cover known to man—a vast and wonderful dumping ground for the mounds and mounds of unsightly rubbish (i.e. kid paraphernalia) we can only dream of trashing one day. Instead, we settle for shoving it underneath and behind the sofa—out of sight, out of mind. A mildly liberating experience, some would say. But liberating nonetheless.

It is also my impassioned belief that couches are not to be confused with beds and they should never ever take the place of anything mattressy—except where the aforementioned naps (and unabashed mid-day romps) are concerned. Nor are they meant to be crashed upon till all hours of the night, perpetuating and exacerbating that horrendous, vegetative-type state I have grown to loathe. The one pictured thusly: a certain someone’s eyelids are slammed shut, his mouth—shamelessly agape and sucking air like nobody’s business and his arm (usually the left one)—suspended in midair by some strange force yet to be determined, sprouting forth from the cushions like a tree branch, aimed directly at the television screen, of course. At the end of that bough-like appendage rests the prized remote control device, firmly cemented in place for all eternity. Heaven forbid that some fool (namely me) would try to pry it away, adjust the volume, change the channel or try and convince Mister Sofa Spud that it makes far more sense to get up and go to bed than to vegetate half the night on the blasted couch. I may as well save my breath. It’s like conversing with a head of cabbage—a mildly intriguing concept in theory, but entirely futile in practice.

“Honey, why don’t you just shut off the T.V. and come to bed already. It’s late. Reeeeeeeally late,” I suggest for the 37^th time in as many minutes. “It can’t be all that comfortable there and besides, your snoring is disturbing the neighbors. More importantly, it’s disturbing me.” (Yes, I can hear those irksome rumblings all the way upstairs—plain as anything).

He then mutters something completely unintelligible in response and I have to ask him to repeat it 16 times so I know precisely how to counter his denial of the obvious and his predictably lame attempt to justify why he’s STILL on the stupid sofa at 1:37 in the morning. Ugh.

Like I said—if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck….

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (with a man who possesses a wealth of couch potato tendencies).

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Filed under Captain Quirk, Home is Where the Weirdness Lives, Rantings & Ravings, The Chicken Man, We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

Tagged as couch potato, disorder, dysfunction, family, humor, husbands, kids, madness, Mommie Dearest, moms, parenting, tirades

May 28, 2010 · 1:15 pm

That’s Corny

It has been said that you can tell a lot about a person by how they eat an ear of corn. Who needs fancy-schmancy personality inventories or the opinion of some accredited guru to learn the depth and breadth of someone’s quirkiness? Just watch them eat. The proof’s in the puddin’—or in the corn, so to speak. All sorts of dining-related peculiarities surface once those steamy plates of golden-y yellow are set before a hungry crowd. And I’d daresay the oddities are stunningly similar to the ones exhibited when they’re NOT chowing down on anything—least of all, those sweet and succulent kernels of perfection.

Just for fun, I decided to test my theory by conducting a little research of my own—at the kitchen table, of course, where most of life’s important discoveries are made over Spaghetti-O’s, Kool-Aid and tuna casserole. So is it any wonder that such vital data would be best gathered there? Perhaps the only location or event better suited for said clinical study would be at a backyard barbecue or at a mid-summer’s family reunion; but then again, my clipboard and frenzied note-taking might frighten the subjects and skew the results. At our modest dinner table, the variables were controlled as much as humanly possible and the gathering of information was discreet in order to maintain the integrity of the analysis. Needless to say, names were changed to protect the eccentric.

There was the child with buttery elbows who nibbled and gnawed at the cob, slowly and methodically inspecting each and every row upon completion, ensuring that no kernel was left behind. Pun intended. She would then return, typewriter-style, to the left-hand extreme and repeat. She had a system, sound reasoning and a need for logic and order. Naturally, fastidiousness is nothing new to this particular individual. For a long time she got her jollies by stringing a 30-foot procession of plastic cups and saucers, pots and pans across the floor through the kitchen and into the dining room (arranged first by size, then by color). She did the same with Beanie Babies. And Matchbox cars. And books. And pillows. Finally, with animal crackers. So truthfully, it was no surprise to discover how she might tackle an ear of corn. No doubt, a future candidate for OCD.

My other smallish nibbler employed a completely different strategy for the task at hand. She picked and pecked at those plump little nuggets of corn like some deranged bird, striking randomly and fiercely with every pint-sized bite. No identifiable pattern ever emerged. At least none that I could see—except for the flecks of yellow sprinkled on the floor, perfectly outlining her chair. There appeared to be no method to her madness. No logic to her lunacy. Once again, the personality characteristics in question matched uncannily—she’s a veritable live wire, bouncing from one thing to the next, blessed with the attention span of a gnat. Of course her corn would be consumed with haphazard flair. The typewriter thing just wouldn’t fly. Not for this free spirit.

Captain Quirk (not disappointingly) earned his stripes yet again, proving to me (and soon, to many) that his weirdness is without limit. A nonconformist to the core, the man devours corn-on-the-cob in perhaps the most unorthodox manner in existence. He begins by gnawing kernels from left to right, pausing in the center of the cob only to return to the left end again. He rolls it precisely one-quarter turn and follows with the very same action, over and over until exactly one-half of the ear is consumed. He then does the unthinkable. He sets it down on his plate to eat (Gasp!) something else, returning to it later. A heinous crime in most states, I am certain.

I, personally, don’t surface for air until the job is finished, classic type-writer style. And I’d never dream of touching a hamburger or hotdog in the midst of a session with hot, buttery corn-on-the-cob. It’s absurd even to entertain such foolishness. Pass the potato salad? Make idle chit-chat? Fat chance. I’m in a zone.

Quirky? Nah, just passionate about my corn.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (where napkins are entirely optional).

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Filed under Captain Quirk, Daily Chaos, Meat & Potatoes, The Chicken Man, We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

Tagged as corn-on-the-cob, dysfunction, family, humor, husbands, kids, picnics, quirks, summertime

March 23, 2010 · 10:13 pm

Men in Tights

Just bought Easter dresses for my brood and couldn’t help but remember the year I foolishly asked my husband to shop for tights…

Men don’t belong in tights. Nor do they belong in stores that sell tights apparently. At least that’s what my husband thinks—after I sent him on an insufferable mission to obtain a couple pairs for our resident ballerinas/heathens-who-needed-suitable-Easter-attire on short notice. Of course, this ridiculously urgent need arose because I don’t plan particularly well. June Cleaver (as a mother of daughters) would have had a stash of snag-free tights at her fingertips, available in a rainbow of sizes and colors for all of her tight-wearing brood.

I’m no June Cleaver.

Me: “Hon, would you run to the store and pick up some white tights for the girls? They need them for church in a size 4-6. Oh, and they have to have feet. And they have to be stretchier (is that a word?) than the ones I got for Palm Sunday. Remember those wretched things? It was like they were meant for some squatty toddler with beefy thighs—not a gangly first grader. Remember how stinking irate I got when I tried yanking and pulling on them to get them up where they were supposed to be—and they just wouldn’t go? A squirrel could have lived in that crotch gap. Anyway, I threw the hideous things away. Did I mention that the tights have to be white—not off-white or cream, but white white? Otherwise, they won’t match the dresses I bought. Can you handle that, Hon? I knew you could.”

Dutiful Husband: “Alright already. I’ll do it (insert string of indecipherable griping). White tights. Not cream. Size 4-6. With feet. Stretchier than the last ones. Got it. But remember this—you owe me. This is NOT my idea of fun.”

Needless to say, when the man returned it was evident that the assigned task, which had indeed not been the least bit fun, proved to be a supreme challenge. I would owe him for an eternity. Maybe longer.

Me: “Thanks for getting the tights, but where are the feet? I believe I specifically stated that they needed feet. These are ‘capris,’ Hon. They have no feet.”

Dutiful Husband: “Wad-da-ya mean they DON’T HAVE FEET?! Why doesn’t it just SPELL THAT OUT IN ENGLISH on the stupid package for crying out loud?! And what the $#@* does ‘capri’ mean?!”

Me: “It means they have no feet.”

Dutiful Husband: “And a man should know this—why?!” (I assumed—correctly—that this was a rhetorical question).

The love of my life then proceeded to fish out the phone book and dial up another establishment that could potentially save the day. (No sense driving there when the impression of idiocy could be made over the phone just as handily). It saves everyone time and trouble.

Dutiful Husband: “Hello? Yes, I need two pairs of white leotards in size 4-6 WITH FEET. Do you have such an animal? No? Okay, thanks anyway. Bye.”

Me: “Did you just ask someone for leotards? We need tights, Hon, not leotards. White ones. With feet.”

Dutiful Husband: “Who do I look like?! Fricking Baryshnikov?!!! I’m a DAD—not a guy who buys stuff like…like this!” he shrieked, motioning emphatically at the soon-to-be-returned merchandise. “Leotards. Tights. Tights. Leotards. What’s the difference?! I don’t pretend to know the difference! I’m not supposed to—I’m a DAD, remember?!”

At that point I quietly and privately acknowledged how infinitely obtuse I had been to expect the man to deliver under the circumstances. It was an impossible mission and one I probably just should have carried out myself. Then again, I could have wound up with that home for wayward squirrels/embarrassment-of-a-crotch-gap disaster a second time and felt like a fool all over again. Either way, I lost.

Me: “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have ever…”

Dutiful Husband (furiously punching numbers into the phone): “No, no. I’ll do it. I told you I’d do it and I will. Hello? Yes, it’s me again. APPARENTLY I don’t need leotards, I need tights,” he said through clenched teeth. “White ones. Size 4-6. With feet. Do you have ‘em? Good. I’ll be right there. Hold them for me and guard them with your life.”

This time he came back with four pairs of the silly things (just to be on the safe side). Lo and behold…THEY HAD FEET. And the crotch gap was at least tolerable. All things considered, I was comforted in the knowledge that he came through in the end. But I have to agree…men just don’t belong in tights.