Casual Entropy

Category: Uncategorized

  • Snitches

    I’ve always loved the word ‘snitches’. Not the act though. A younger me, and I guess still a little bit of me now, was and is a fan of Dr Suess. His imagination and creation of such quirky strange characters. All of them too, from animals to humans, his creations covering his pages in what I can only described as the rainbow explosion of pastel colors. Here though my brain sees the word snitches of course goes to the oh so similar ‘Sneetches”, which by all accounts also suck in a similar way snitches do. Go back and give it a read if its been a minute and you too will agree, they surly are not the well mannered and accepting society of the Whos from Whoseville.

    Small tangent aside, I have realized that a luxury I have always wanted and in some small parts continue to work for, is the luxury of having a personal driver. No I don’t care for a fancy car or mansion that would take a small army to keep clean and dusted, but the idea of never having to drive again is so tantalizing, its infectious in a certain way and just achievable enough that I think I may one day get that opportunity.

    Obtaining a drivers license in Colorado was considered the ultimate goal of any 16 year old. And dammit if within a short while of obtaining that goal did I not grow a deep hatred for driving. Sure, at the age of 15 when I was allowed my permit I couldn’t get enough of the stuff, signing up for the littlest tasks of taking my parents to the grocery store so as to get 20 min more added to my hour log sheet. The idea of total freedom and ability to get out and visit friends that wouldn’t require me to ride my bike for about an hour was a dream I knew that was within reach. Add on top of that the fact girls were seeming to have interests in me, it was something I would smile at every day I got closer to my 16th birthday.

    I don’t recall actually passing my drivers test, I just remember that I was the first one in my siblings to pass it on the first go and I rubbed that in their faces for days. Temporary licensee in hand though, I asked to borrow the car to grab milk from the store, understanding we probably already had milk, and with the permission from the parents headed out on my own. It took all of about three days for the high of achieving my license to disappear. Maybe I had built it up in my mind so long and with such expectations that when I had finally come to the accomplishment I realized that I deeply disliked it. I disliked the outrageously, almost comically long suburban stop lights, looking ahead at the many, many rows of lights changing from green to red; I hated cars that would drive far too aggressive for the suburbs or even far too defensively going 10 or even 15 miles an hour UNDER the speed limit; I hated the responsibility that it takes to sit behind a 4000 pound vehicle while wildlife could run out at any moment; and most of all, the bane of driving, I hated the traffic. And this was 2010 Colorado traffic. When a person living here could still drive from Denver to Summit County in 50 minutes.

    A friend I had made life guarding at a country club had a personal driver. His father worked as, well as he put it, ‘something for Lockheed Martin’. Which means just two things; 1. that his family had money; 2. It definitely came from military contract.

    A few times after work I would chain my bike up outside the country club, hop in the car with my friend and his driver would be up front, playing the Eagles greatest hits CD as we headed off to his place. Sure my friend had all the Colorado toys. A huge house, nice cars, a speed boat and fishing boat, 2 jet skies, and I think his father mentioned that he and his few friends split a private jet out at the Broomfield airfield. But when it came to what really surprised me about their wealth, it was not their toys, but that they had a private driver. That to me was wealth understood.

    One time on the way to his house my friend openly was discussing a party he went to that weekend where he drank his ass off, did some ecstasy, and made out with his crush, all of which was said in front of the driver. When I pointed at the driver as secretly as a teen could, my friend let me know that the driver did not care about this stuff, the driver chiming in almost appropriately saying his job was to not get my friend in trouble but to drive the family when they needed to go somewhere, and to do it safely. Later that night as the driver took me back to my bike, we unlocked it, loaded it up in his car, and then he proceeded to drop me off at home. This, this was a luxury I did not know really existed 12 hours earlier for the elite, yet immediately felt that it was highly underestimated. I guess its because I had always seen people with loads of money driving themselves in whatever hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of vehicles they had. When do you ever read a headline that goes “Brad Pitts personal driver arrested on DUI charge on way home from ‘Feed Africa’ Gala.”

    What finally hammered the last nail in my coffin for hating driving was only 4 months into my new license. It was summer time and I was at my best friends house, spending the warm early June night in his pool. We had rented a river kayak, complete with skirt and paddle from REI (a thing you used to be able to do) and spent hours trying to see if we were any good at recovering. We sat outside switching out, practicing flipping ourselves over in his pool, to see if we had the capability of getting ourselves out from being turned over in water. Our thought was that if we were good enough, we would rent some for the summer and test our metal on the rivers nearby. Exhausting ourselves it was around 1130 at night I started to head home. Just as soon as I was getting in my car my older brother called me and with slurred speech asked if I could pick him and his friend up since they were too drunk to drive. Of course I was not going to let my brother drive so I found out where they were (a shit house party a little out of the way) picked them up, and then headed home. It was now well after midnight. My brother and friend sat in the back of the car, teasing me about my driving skills, asking me to play a CD they had just burned, and all I wanted to do was get home. I jumped on the highway to home as soon as I could. Going honestly 5 miles over the speed limit, I passed over a bridge near Morrison (anyone who has driven that road at night knows how much the police love to hide in a small corner out of sight) when I saw lights appear in my review mirror without a seconds notice. Pulling over the cop came up, asked for my license, and upon providing, he said that I was way out past curfew and grilled me about my actions. I received a curfew and speeding ticket for 540 dollars, and the officer called my house to inform my sleeping parents.

    Upon arriving home not 10 minutes later, my parents were already up waiting in the kitchen, single light above their heads turned on, and my drunk brother and friend squeezed by me quickly to head to his room downstairs.

    “how dare you be out past curfew”; “What were you thinking”; “Why are you holding swim trunks”; question after question came out their mouths furious with me.

    The one that stumped me was “why didn’t you just spend the night at Mitch’s house?” They knew my friend, and knew I had spent the night there on multiple occasions, not understanding my actions to drive home so late. What they didn’t know was that I left early enough to make it home before curfew ended, I just was not expecting the second part of my late arrival. Some might say the most crucial aspect was that I forfeited my opportunity to get home before curfew, so as to pick up their drunk son and friend to avoid them from getting behind the wheel.

    Hell yes I too was furious. A part of me imagined dragging my brothers ass upstairs and sit him in the chair while I slide on the other side of the table where my parents sat so I could grill him on it. I wasn’t just upset that I had not only received a ticket for about three weeks worth of work for me, but that I was now also getting in trouble for doing what in my mind was the right thing to do. And I know in that moment I could have simply said, “well I picked up your other son and his friend because both of them are smashed and I didn’t think they should have driven home”. In which case my parents could have gone downstairs at that very moment and found my brother, head in a trashcan as his friend took the toilet, vomiting up the different cheap liquors they had ingested that night. I could have been scot-free and maybe convinced my parents to have him pay for my ticket. I could have snitched.

    Sitting in the dimly lit kitchen, both parents firing questions at me still, wet swim trunks in one hand and a ticket for half a grand in my other, my mind wandered to the moment in the car with my own friend and his driver. How the driver looked in his review mirror at the two of us and with a reassuring smile, stated how he was not there to get anyone in trouble, just make sure everyone was safe during transportation. And the care he showed me when he would drive me back home. Not just dropping me off to pool so I could grab my bike and ride the twenty minutes home on the dark on curvy mountain roads. How he took care of me even though I was not a member of my friends family as though I was.

    “I don’t know I guess I just was tired and wanted to sleep in my bed.”

    I thought that was a good enough reason to get my parents off this whole situation but it really just started another litany of scolding’s from “that’s the worst time to drive at night and as a new driver” and or “you could have had maybe his parents drive” and so on and so forth.

    I was grounded for 1 month only being allowed to go to work via bike, as my driving privileges were taken away until I was able to pay off my curfew and speeding ticket. There I was at 16, brand new driver, right at the beginning of my first summer with the freedom only a car could provide, trying so hard as to remember why I was so excited to get my license.

    And I can’t be too upset. That summer riding my bike was amazing. My love for riding a well built bike was deepened because of it (I was on a fast road bike that was my mothers old college road bike). And honestly that summer of riding my bike planted the seed for me wanting to purchase an expensive bike when I headed off to college, one in which I still own and ride religiously today even after over a decade of owning it. Riding my bike to and from work on those Colorado summer mornings and evenings were as gorgeous and lovely as one could imagine. But it helped solidify a simple conclusion in my brain. I hate driving.

    *years later my brother at the age of 20 went to a fraternity brothers wedding and had 2 glasses of champagne. On the drive home he was pulled over and received a DWI (Driving While Intoxicated), simply because he had drank alcohol before the age of 21 and was driving. Story short, if you are ever driving through Morrison, just know the cops literally have nothing better to do.

  • Dyslexic Readers

    When do we actually learn to ‘read a/the room’? Let me rephrase that. I am damn sure that this is actually something that has been proven with actual data and facts and a liberal use of high end expensive brain scans, similar to the studies showing how children can start to learn the benefits of lying around the age of one; something in the brain receives that positive feedback to the lie and then cements itself in the “productive” region of our pre-frontal lobe; then for the rest of our lives we fight against it telling ourselves we are bad for utilizing a skill I feel can and is a gift. Few other animals lie and in reality isn’t that something spectacular? But that is a conversation I think for another time.

    Tangent aside, reading the emotional state of a room is a huge skill I would say is up there with lying. And having a young niece who at this time is a little over 3, she has even her moments where she can see something is not quite right. And not by staring at body language either. Tone or words or even just the silence where silence should not be, she is picking up on those queues. Is she learning this at day-care? what in our brain is the positive feedback to show us that something is going on, that we might be the cause, and therefore we might change our [insert emotion, act, tone, language, physical placement of body], as we are listening to our ability to ‘read the room’. A skill I guess that is just highly underrated.

    Only because we are actually picking up on (and god forgive me for using this terminology but it sadly fits) the vibe. Lets just remove the whole ‘body language’ aspect of being human. I would say this is something far easier to learn as hiding physical body language is a difficult thing for a person to not only recognize they are doing, but to go an then correct it; let alone hiding micro expressions (just do a quick search on Paul Ekman and you’ll see what I mean). So with this in mind, reading another persons energy via body language can, and I will say personally, is an easier trick no? That somehow it is, and I feel I have no actually clue if this is why, but something learned by our species prior to verbal language and expressive grunts.

    So then what happens when we only hear an individual. Or just even something written down. (again something I hate saying) as a millennial, will I be a part of the last generation to learn body before verbal? Due to the years of my developmental stages being spent in physical conversations and proximity to others near my age, where now with even schooling taking place in confined walls and space, where do the children go to learn these physical traits? Maybe this is why my niece at such a young age picks up on the awkward silences during a family dinner when conversation about our shared father (grandfather to her) and his less than stellar availability these past couple decades. She will ask if things are ‘okay’ from another room, not witnessing the slumped shoulders or furrowed eyebrows across our faces. Are we soon to enter a realm where body language entirely phases out? Is this why so many believe AI voiced over systems? Will bad dubbed Kung Fu movies make a comeback seeing as it will only matter what is said and not the 5 second delay in the lips?

    And why do I care? I guess because in this post, I want to share some love to a group of normally very underpaid individuals in the US society. I have ever only known really the back of house when it comes to the resturant industry. Minus a small stint when I was young acting as barback and busboy, my skills resided with a knife in had, Slightly Stoopied playing over a small speaker and the smell of BO somehow always within grasp. for my short stint in the culinary industry, that is still where my love and pride remain and if I can, you bet I will buy beers for the back of house, especially the people doing the dishes.

    But lets talk about the front of house folks. The hostess, waiters, and barbacks. Bartenders are not getting a shoutout because while not all exhibit it, show me five random bartenders who do not already have a head full of self-righteous indignation. The times I would hear a bartender near end of night complain to a cook that they had to make a drink again because the person said it was too “this or that” when the whole cook team was on hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen clean, sweat still dripping from their foreheads. And lets not forget those moments when a bartender would ask to get their meal during clean up. I get they send drinks back as we send food forward but there is a clear give and take my guys. The audacity to say to the cooks “bartenders are the reason restaurants get tips” when that night, the line cook beside me just had to refire 3 new dishes on top of his massive chit count, because a lady at table 10 did not know the differences in meat temperature, ultimately on the 4th try ordering a seasonal turkey dish that was sent back due to her wondering why her chicken tasted funny. I know there are bartenders out there who are down to earth and easy going, but I think even they would agree, the 25 dollar cocktails, curled mustaches, sleeve tattoos and bralette only, ‘too cool for school’ attitude is genuinely exhausting and looks honestly sad when the vast majority of your time is spent making two ingredient cocktails and opening up the tops of cans and bottles.

    As for the Barbacks, hostess, and the waiters congrats on your job. For I feel this is one of the last positions a person can truly become literate in reading a room.

    I feel like we have all either seen or heard about a situation from a friend or family member, or even your co-worker. X person is sitting at a restaurant and across from them or within ear shot there are two people having an argument or even to the level some would consider fighting. You cant tell if the two are in the middle of just a regular argument, maybe they are simply continuing a fight they were having previously and now it is just followed them to a social situation. Or maybe something just happened to spark the heated discussion. All you know though, is that this conversation does not seem like it will be ending well. You or the person telling this story talk about how they turned they chair or head ever so slightly to listen in, after all we mustn’t forget the impact schadenfreude has on our developed/ing brains, and trying their best to listen in to it all. At this point some loud clanking of flatware is hitting the plates or glasses a little too hard, the two are consistently leaning into the direction of the other so as to keep what are clearly not whispering whispers quite, one individual sits back in a huff and crosses their arms and the other reaches across spouting what sounds like apologies or maybe that individual follows suit leaning back hurling a quite yet very audible insult across the cooling main courses hardly touched, and just when it seems like one of the individuals is about to loose their “cool” a waiter steps right up and asks “how is everything”

    A palpable pain is felt am I right? It hurts so much you can feel it even tables away. One person not making eye contact or even trying to shrug the waiter off with a smile stating ‘everything is great thank you’

    I start to understand why so many other countries waiters simply do the minimum needed to be a waiter. Take food and drink orders, drop off said orders, and when all is said and done come back to take payment. Easy said and done. Let the individuals eat, or complain, or fight, but what is there moment is theirs and one does not need to interfere. It is not an easy job and it has to take a lot of effort to learn when to not approach a table.

    And not to mention I have personally had the other version. Out to dinner with a partner of mine when she grabs my hand from across the table, a bottle of wine imbibed between the two of us already at this point, she bits her bottom lip to follow the statement of “I want you to fuck me…” ‘and how is everything tonight’ a worried waiter states having clearly overheard the previous statement.

    So yes, this is a love letter to waiters who can read the room. Who see their sections and tables for what they are and act not only appropriately but providing the upmost service. I think about a gesture my siblings and I once received out. We had just finished attending the funeral of our uncle, only a couple months after burying our own mother, tear ducts still raw from the previous weeks, and sitting down to a meal at a table, our waiter came over seeing us in attire (not the most suitable for this restaurant), turn around and come back so she could drop off the bottle of cheap tequila and glasses simply saying “on the house, let me know when you are ready to order” and walked away.

    A moment very grand but lost on us all at the time.

    But grand gestures are not the only way. It could also just be a waiter who understands that you are out to a brunch with your friends and from a far can tell if they need the lively up-beat version of themselves to get a round of drinks going, or maybe these plans for brunch were made in an already heavily binging of alcohol the night before and a more reserved waiter dropping off pitchers of water is what is needed in this moment.

    So an applause for those who are doing a difficult job with aplomb.

    For those wondering why they can not seem to read a room or other peoples emotions, maybe pick up a part time shift and see for yourself. I can not imagine there is a waiter out there who has crossed paths with a fighting couple at a table and not walked away learning a little something from it. Or maybe there is and simply they do not care. I would say they are the AI generative forms of the art world. A place where one can showcase great skill and yet simply phone it in.

    My hope would be though that with the ever evolving divide that is here and increasing when it comes to the splitting of individual and individual, that we step away from the self ordering QR codes and table numbers, and create a place where even at the most social setting of a restaurant, we allow for the room to be read. Otherwise I fear others will become dyslexic readers.

    *The waiter who interrupted me and my partners intimate moment stopped coming by the table after she had heard what my partner said, but instead had another waiter take our table for a while. Upon dropping the check off she was back to apologize quite awkwardly and she also gave us a couple chocolate dipped strawberries to take home. Maybe there are perks to being heard, just maybe don’t overdue it.