"I think something is burning...I think something is burning..."

The following accounts are true.  The names have been changed to protect the guilty.  This week we present the culinary offenses of two brothers for your consideration.  No partners in crime, they committed their transgressions independently and inadvertently decades ago.  Despite having moved on to competency in the kitchen, the siblings have not forgotten what they once did, nor have they ever stopped arguing about it.  At issue is the question of whose kitchen mishap is the stupidest.  As both jury and judge, you will see for yourself that there exists no debate whatsoever as to whether each unfortunate cooking decision was stupid, for you will soon observe that this is a given.  Rather, you must weigh their relative stupidity.

The defendants would prefer that you take into account their youth and inexperience in the kitchen before rendering a verdict.  They were raised in a coddled and protective environment by a generous and solicitous mother who saw to it that they were provided with delicious and nutritious meals on a daily basis.  Thus, when left to fend for themselves at ages somewhere between late adolescence and early adulthood, they encountered what the general public might think of as common kitchen situations for the very first time.  In the spirit of fairness and impartiality, and to spare them further embarrassment, you shall learn of their crimes without direct reference to their age at the time of the incidents.  Nevertheless, the defendents reiterate their pitiable excuse that their actions were understandable because they were young and inexperienced, and hereafter they submit themselves to the mercy of the court.

Incident Number One occurred at approximately ----- on the evening of -----, when the defendant, Emeril Lagasp, experienced hunger pangs while watching Helen Hunt in a broadcast of the TV movie Quarterback Princess.  Repairing to the kitchen, he examined the contents of the refrigerator and freezer before at last retrieving a frozen pizza.  Mr. Lagasp was undaunted by the fact that he had never before prepared a frozen pizza, reasoning that any boob is capable of following the brief and uncomplicated directions printed on the box.  To this end, he duly preheated the oven until a commercial break, whereupon he removed said pizza from its box, stripped away its plastic outerwrap, and placed it directly upon the center oven rack as recommended in the printed instructions.  Mr. Lagasp then set the timer for the specified interval and returned to the living room to resume watching television.

According to the defendant, his first inkling that something might be amiss was caused by repeated utterances of "I think something is burning" by his grandmother, whom he dismissed partly due to her senility and partly due to his stubborn refusal to give her the satisfaction of being right.  Within minutes, however, it become undeniably obvious that something had gone wrong, as an acrid stench permeated the living room and the smoke alarm sounded.  Mr. Lagasp reports being confused by these developments, as they occurred only halfway through the recommended cooking time, and he was certain that he had set the oven at the correct temperature.

Upon entering the kitchen and opening the oven door, Mr. Lagasp discovered multiple tendrils of melted cheese and various toppings descending from underneath the pizza, oozing through the center rack and contacting the bottom surface of the oven, causing said elements to congeal in a burnt, black mass.  As the defendant's grandmother heightened the drama with cries of distress and subtle, passive-aggressive gloating, Mr. Lagasp had a sudden revelation.  He recalled the moment he initially removed the pizza from its box and noted the thick shell of frozen cheese that obscured its toppings.  Mr. Lagasp remembered thinking this was odd, but having never before prepared such an item, he assumed this was what the top of a frozen pizza looked like while still in its frozen state.  Now staring at the smoking mess in the oven, the defendant realized and painfully acknowledged that he had placed the pizza into the oven upside-down.

Incident Number Two took place sometime on the evening of -----, as the defendant, Wolfgang Schmuck, was enjoying a brief out-of-town stay with relatives.  Mr. Schmuck states that he took it upon himself to prepare a small meal intended for his own consumption.  He is unclear about many of the details, which attending psychiatrists have attributed to either repressive memory loss as a coping mechanism or the defendant's general lack of observational skills.  In any case, Mr. Schmuck is certain that the foodstuffs he desired required cooking, prompting him to search throughout the unfamiliar kitchen for the appropriate utensils and a suitable pan.  He soon encountered a rectangular pan with convenient handles attached at either end.  The large cooking surface was more than ample for his purposes, and having thusly acquired all necessary materials, he set about at once to prepare his meal.

There was a small amount of difficulty in commencing the cooking, as the pan was unconventionally equipped with a quartet of squat legs that elevated its cooking surface by approximately one inch.  However, Mr. Schmuck overcame this inconvenience by carefully placing the pan on the stovetop such that it straddled a gas burner.  By adjusting the burner setting accordingly, he was able to produce an adequate flame that contacted the bottom of the cooking surface.

To the defendant's credit, he rapidly ascertained that something was not quite right.  For as he prodded his meal with a spatula, he noticed that not only did the pan have handles and legs, it also sported a rectangular, metallic protuberance from one end.  It occurred to Mr. Schmuck at this moment that he was looking at a receptacle that might accommodate a small thermostat that could in turn be plugged into an electrical outlet.  That would mean, of course, that the four-legged pan contained its own heating element, making the use of an external heat source unnecessary and possibly even dangerous.  Mr. Schmuck immediately turned off the burner as it dawned on him that the foreign pan was, in fact, an electric skillet.

Ladies and gentlemen, the defense rests its cases and awaits your verdict.  The defendants agree to shut up once and for all about the matter after the impartial public has spoken.  You are hereby entrusted to resolve this long-debated question.  Baking a frozen pizza upside-down or placing an electric skillet atop an open burner:  which is stupider?

Things had just quieted down in the east wing when the welcome silence was pierced by another bellowing shout from Room 11.  “Loo-eeeeze!!”

“Good heavens,” sighed Kaylee from behind the nursing station.  She brushed a lock of hair from her eyes and replaced the phone in its cradle.  “Doesn’t that man ever stop?”

“I can tell you’re new here,” drawled Janice as she checked items off of her clipboard.  “I don’t even notice it anymore.  It’s like the racket them geese make out on the patio.  Drives you crazy at first, but then you get used to it.”

“I don’t know if I can ever get used to that.  It makes me want to jump out of my skin every time he does it.  Imagine having a man shout at you like that!  Then again, I suppose poor Louise probably got so used to hearing it that she just tuned him out like you do.”

“Poor Louise?”

“Well, I’d say she was poor, having to put up with Mr. Francis until the day she died.”

Janice gave a hoarse laugh that died out in a series of coughs.  “Ah, honey, you know what they say when you assume!  Far as we know, nobody was putting up with Mr. Francis but himself.”

“What about Louise?”

“There’s never been any Louise that we know of.  Old Mr. Francis was a bachelor, didn’t have no kids, lived alone and never said boo to the neighbors about any Louise until they started hearing him shouting the name over and over like he does here now.”

Kaylee furrowed her brow.  “Well, that’s…odd.”

“And that ain’t the half of it!  Wait ‘til you see him with his hockey players.”

“His what?”

“Hockey players!  Had ‘em in a little plastic bag in the pocket of his robe when they brought him in.  They got little silver sticks and everything!  There’s even a goalie with a little face mask on him.  Oh yeah, old Mr. Francis and his hockey players.  Don’t even think about takin’ ‘em out his sight.  He keeps ‘em on his tray most of the time, except for the one little guy with the green hat.  He sleeps with that one.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Kaylee, her lips thinning into a grimace as she tried to suppress a giggle.  It was totally unprofessional to speak of the residents in a disrespectful manner, and she feared that they were on the verge of crossing that line.  As hard as it was to stifle her amusement, she reminded herself that there was nothing entertaining about the manifestations of mental illness.  Janice, a veteran of several nursing homes but of little sensitivity training, had a bad habit of poking fun at people who had no control over their eccentric behaviors.  Kaylee cleared her throat and spoke softly.  “Thank goodness poor Mr. Francis is here, where at least he’s safe and cared for.  He’s probably just lonely.  The next time he yells like that, I’ll calmly walk in and see what he wants.”

“Oh, but honey, that’s the thing.  He won’t tell you nothing when you look after him.  He won’t even notice you’re there.  I really don’t think the man’s lonely, odd bird that he is.”

“Maybe,” offered Kaylee diplomatically, “but there’s no way to know for sure, not if he isn’t having conversations with us.  The next time he gets upset again, I’m going to—”

“LOOO-EEEEEEEEEEZE!”

“Well, here’s your chance, Florence Nightingale,” grinned Janice.  She bowed slightly and gestured toward the hall, extending one arm like a theater usher.  “Enjoy the show!”

Kaylee reflexively bit her lip and cast an apprehensive glance at the open door to Room 11.  This wasn’t how she had envisioned her first day.  She had hoped to become a bit more familiar with the various protocols of Weber Estates before attending to any of their more confrontational residents.  Now that she had claimed the higher philosophical ground, though, she would have to follow through with her good intentions.

She was halfway down the hall, just a few feet short of Room 11, when Mr. Francis yelled yet again, causing her to check her balance against the near wall.  What in the world did the poor man mean by repeatedly roaring the name Louise?  Was there any sense to it at all?  Had he once known a Louise who had meant something to him?  Might he mistakenly take an unfamiliar nurse to be this mysterious Louise?  Kaylee gathered her courage and strode confidently through the doorway before she halted in a moment of unguarded shock.

The frail man sitting upright in his bed did not look like he possessed the lung capacity to produce more than a whisper, so wizened was his frame.  He was hairless save for two shocks of wispy, white cotton that protruded above his ears.  His cheeks were sunken, and tears gathered at the outside corners of his eyes before following rivulets down the wrinkled crevasses of his leathery skin.  Most startling of all was his bizarre attitude:  bony arms raised with clenched fists as though he were crossing a marathon finish line, and a defiantly victorious smile to match.  An assortment of miniature hockey players littered the folds of his bedspread.

“Mr. Francis?”

True to Janice’s prediction, he seemed to take no notice that someone had entered the room and was standing at the foot of his bed.  Slowly he lowered his arms, and then he began reaching out with his hands and retreating repeatedly, like a child opening and closing dresser drawers.  Not once did he regard her in any way, but his head swiveled suddenly and his eyes darted here and there in a long series of convulsions.  At last Mr. Francis let out a prolonged and satisfied sigh before falling back onto his pillow.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, honey,” called Janice from the hallway.  “He does that every time.”  Her shuffling footsteps faded until Room  11 was uncomfortably quiet.  Mr. Francis had closed his eyes and was drawing long and raspy breaths.

Kaylee looked about the room for clues but found no traces of her patient’s identity.  All of the furniture was standard issue, and there were no photographs anywhere.  No personal effects at all, except for the miniature hockey players.  Was there anyone alive who could provide his history?  If so, did they even know that Mr. Francis was here?  Most likely the decrepit figure before her was once a highly-functioning, productive member of society, but now he was reduced to living out the rest of his existence trembling and repeating a meaningless name.

Suddenly Mr. Francis’ left leg twitched violently, sending a pair of hockey men clattering to the floor.  Kaylee reached down and retrieved the figures, which were painted in garish shades of yellow and red.  She placed them carefully on the bedside tray and noticed that the remaining miniatures were all balanced precariously near the bedrail.  One by one she extracted each little hockey player and placed it with the others until the one miniature with a green helmet remained, perched just below the pillow near Mr. Francis’ gnarled neck.

Leaning in to examine it closely, Kaylee noticed the sharp edges of the tiny hockey stick’s blade.  If Mr. Francis were to roll over, there was a minute possibility that he could inadvertently puncture his carotid artery.  Really, this was a danger that the other nurses should have recognized.  Letting a senile, non-communicative resident who is prone to tremors and possibly seizures sleep with a potentially hazardous object was unacceptable.  She slowly reached out and secured it in her palm.

Before she realized what was happening, a cold and icy grip was clamped around Kaylee’s wrist.  The old man was holding on to her!  His strength was supernatural, and she could not free herself.  Terrified, she tried to access the call button, but it was beyond her reach.  She was on the verge of screaming for help when she saw that Mr. Francis was looking directly at her, and her voice deserted her.  His gaze was steely and unrelenting.  He had her wrist pinned firmly to the mattress.

Then, without breaking his stare, he raised his free hand before her quivering face.  Desperately she struggled to break free, but her efforts had no effect.  He was going to do something to her, she somehow knew, grab at her eyes or disfigure her in some way.  She pulled back with all her strength until she saw that he appeared to be signaling her.  He was extending his thumb and index finger at a right angle, curling the rest of his digits against his palm.  It almost looked like he was attempting to sign the letter L.

She felt herself let go of the green-helmeted hockey player, and instantly Mr. Francis released her.  A bright red mark encircled her throbbing wrist.  She stepped away from the bed as the old man gathered his treasured toy into his hand and tucked it against his heart.  The room was quiet once more.  Kaylee stepped silently toward the door.  As she crossed the threshold, she thought she heard a whisper from behind her.

“Louise!”

Let's see:  1 inch equals 2.54 centimeters, so 1 centimeter equals...hmm...

Whatever happened to that great push to fully implement the metric system of measurement in the United States?  I was only an elementary school student in the Seventies, yet I was not immune to the controversy surrounding some contemporary educational issues.  There was the backlash against New Math, for example, as parents questioned the relevance of learning abstract mathematical concepts to the computational competency of their children.  The use of phonics instruction still annoyed those who remembered becoming perfectly good readers without repeatedly breaking down words into their phonetic components.  I was dimly aware of these debates, but the hot issue that really got my attention was the impending rise and dominance of the metric system.

As a child, this major societal shift was presented to me as an inevitability, and I perceived a menacing future.  There would be no use resisting, it was implied.  It wouldn't matter if you expressed a preference for the customary system or voiced an objection.  Well, you better learn to like it, because it's coming!  By the time we were adults, we could expect grocery store shelves filled with canned goods packaged by the gram, gas stations selling liters of gas, and car speedometers indicating kilometers per hour.  I was apprehensive.  Just the sight of the fraction 5/9 in the Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion formula made me uneasy.

Unfortunately, performing cumbersome system conversions seemed to be the extent of the educational effort to make the metric system relevant to our everyday lives.  No wonder so many of us developed a prejudice against a measurement method that is preferred by nearly everyone else in the world.  Working within the metric system seemed simple enough, but outside of using tangible quantities in science classes, the process was more like an abstract game.  It had no meaning outside of school.  The only way to connect it to our lives was by comparing alien metric units to the customary standards with which we were familiar, and that required the dreaded conversions.  Who but the mathematically stoutest among us actually enjoyed finding the metric equivalents for distance, capacity and temperature when the fictional Johnny rode his bike seven miles to the grocery to buy a 12 fluid-ounce soda on a 90-degree summer afternoon?  Who cared?  It had no relevance to our lives other than the vague threat that some day soon, everybody would have to know this.

But a funny thing happened on the way to our national metric conversion.  It didn't happen.  Decades after change seemed certain, the use of customary measurement units has not declined.  Our kitchen drawers still rattle with tablespoons and cups, and we're still relying on absurd linear increments like 3/16ths of an inch.  You won't see gas sold by the liter in this part of North America.  In fact, it is difficult to uncover much acknowledgement of the metric system at all outside of the metric tools we use to service our foreign cars.  Only in the beverage aisles of supermarkets and convenience stores can one find the sole example of metric packaging that is truly ubiquitous in 2010:  the two-liter soda bottle.  It is, I would argue, the lone success story in our nation's attempt to embrace the metric system, and its popularity suggests what is necessary for further progress.

The wonderful thing about the two-liter bottle is that it holds an almost universally popular commodity in a precise amount of metric capacity.  It would be even better if one-liter bottles were as plentiful, but it is not difficult for most people to visualize how much liquid there would be in half of a two-liter.  Thus, thanks not to our educational system but rather to our enterprising soda marketers, all of America has a meaningful standard of reference when discussing liters.  Just how successful is it?  Try this experiment:  ask everyone you know to tell you exactly how many fluid ounces are in two liters.  Many will not know, and this is because we don't think of the liquid in those bottles that way.  We buy it by the liter.  If only we were to stop selling smaller quantities by the fluid ounce and instead buy our beverages by nicely rounded numbers of milliliters, our country would develop a good sense of that metric unit, too.

I've encountered skepticism from today's elementary schoolchildren regarding the relative difficulty of using the metric system, and I've always sought to ease their math anxiety by pointing out that they are already comfortable with metric intervals.  After all, what kid doesn't know a little about money?  It's easy to add things using base ten, whether it involves the hundred pennies that make up a dollar or the hundred centimeters in each meter.  Multiples of ten are sensible intervals for measurement systems.  But what if our monetary system were organized like our units of liquid capacity, in which eight fluid ounces make a cup, two cups make a pint, two pints make a quart, and four quarts make a gallon?  Better hope your cash register doesn't fail.

Obvious as the advantages of metric computation are, our country persists in using the quirky measurement systems we inherited.  Imagine the conversation if anyone were to propose the use our linear measurement units to someone who had never heard of them:

"This is the foot.  It's the standard unit of linear measurement."

"I see.  It's pretty big.  How do you measure smaller increments?"

"Well, we break it up into twelve units called inches."

"Uh-huh.  And what if you need to go smaller than that?"

"Well, then we break the inch up into sixteenths."

"Really.  Well, say you need something bigger than one foot.  Then what?"

"You can put three of them together to make a yard."

"Well, that's not much bigger, is it?  What if you need to measure a very large distance, like for traveling?"

"Oh, well then you would use the mile."

"The mile?  How many feet are in one of those?"

"Five thousand, two hundred eighty."

"Seriously?"

I can only speculate that the United States passed its optimum window of opportunity for metric conversion long ago, and now the longer we wait, the more taxing the change will be.  Too many elements of our infrastructure, manufacturing, and construction are produced using customary units.  Switching to the metric system in a meaningful way would require not just changes of heart and mind but an enormous expense as well.  It will be difficult to persuade the general public that easier computation is worth all that effort.  Perhaps the rather embarrassing fact that the only metric holdouts left are Burma, Liberia, and the United States will wound our national pride sufficiently.

Uphill as the battle may be, it is an organized fight, and the nearly century-old U.S. Metric Association continues to advocate for the "metrication" of our country.  Their website includes a list of suggestions for promoting the metric system, from buying metric goods whenever possible to supporting metric legislation.  My favorite USMA idea is this one:

When engaging in trade, state that you prefer your product or service in the metric system because it is the legally preferred system of measurement for trade in the U.S., according to the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 (as amended 1988).

I would love to witness a staunch metric advocate employing this tactic at the local Wal-Mart, asking to speak with the customer service manager and ready to whip out a dog-eared copy of the Metric Conversion Act of 1975.

Maybe one day the metric system really will be as common to our everyday lives as two-liter soda bottles.  If so, there will be more work to accomplish, starting with the adoption of metric time.  I mean:  sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, and twenty-four hours in a day?  You gotta be kidding me.

It can be hard to change your mind about things set in stone.  Especially icons.

My father worked second shift when I was very young, and it was not unusual for me to be awake to greet him when he returned home.  It might explain why my earliest memories include the experience of watching our local television station sign off for the night with a patriotic montage set to The Star Spangled Banner.  Somewhere among the rippling flags and sweeping aerial vistas was a glimpse of Mount Rushmore, and the sight of it stirred within me a deep and primal fascination.  The visceral impact of this enormous sculpture in the context of our national anthem and other famous monuments never left me.  I began a precocious campaign for my parents to take me to see "Mountain Rushmore."

Within ten years we were there, standing on the observation platform and gawking up at Gutzon Borglum's colossal sculpture.  It was enthralling to be in the presence of such an iconic monument.  Prior to actually being there, Mount Rushmore existed only in pictures and films, and though my mind knew that there really is such a place, as far as my own experience was concerned, the actual physical entity might have been as mythical as Atlantis.  But there it truly was, a granite reality that could not be denied.

I envied the fortunate citizens whose proximity to Mount Rushmore would allow them many visits throughout their lives, and when I yearned for the opportunity to bring some of my precious time there home with me in a tangible way, the adjacent gift shop was ready to oblige.  For the price-conscious and children on a budget, very small Authentic Replica, brass-finish Rushmore sculptures were affordably available.  I gleefully bought one, which was destined to sit upon my bookshelf next to my Authentic Replica, brass-finish Sears Tower, to be joined after a later vacation by an Authentic Replica, brass-finish Liberty Bell.  The American Tourist's Souvenir Triumvirate.

Years went by and I grew up, but my perception of Mount Rushmore never really changed from the way I saw it as a kid.  It was majestic, awe-inspiring, patriotic, a statement of ideals and an accomplishment to be revered.  Gutzon Borglum was nothing less than an American hero.  I always enjoyed seeing his sculpture parodied in a good-natured manner, but serious proposals to add a fifth face or alter the monument in any way struck me as blasphemous.  As for the relative appropriateness of its very creation in the first place, I never gave it any meaningful thought.   Mount Rushmore, in the context of my lifetime, has always been there.

Several years ago, I was perusing a bookshop when a pale profile of Abraham Lincoln caught my eye.  At the time, my wife and I were considering various options for a summer vacation with our daughters, and a trip out west was in the running.  I reached toward the shelf and pulled down a copy of John Taliaferro's Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore.  Thumbing through its pages, it occurred to me that a return visit to the cherished destination of my youth would be richer if I were a little more educated about what I was seeing.

Taliaferro's book traces the history of the Black Hills and its transformation into a tourist mecca with a detachment not found in the souvenir books at the Mount Rushmore gift shop.  Far from a denunciation of Borglum's achievement, it nevertheless examines alternative assessments of the monument and asks what the gargantuan sculpture will suggest to sociologists and archaeologists of the future.  I learned a bit about why not everyone has held Rushmore in high esteem, and I began to question my own evaluation of it.  If I had been around at its inception, would I have thought its creation was a good idea?

With this illumination percolating in the back of my mind, I eagerly returned to Mount Rushmore in the summer of 2007 with my own family.  Despite my newfound empathy, I found myself just as transfixed in its presence as I had been when I was a boy.  It was just as captivating as I had remembered, and my wife and daughters were similarly impressed.  There is simply something mesmerizing about Mount Rushmore.  Perhaps it is due to the contradictory combination of its colossal size and its surprising humanity.  Standing at its base, it would almost seem natural if one of the stone heads were to blink or speak.  Would its artistic impact be much less if the faces were anonymous?

As Mount Rushmore approaches the 70th anniversary of its completion in 2011, it seems highly improbable that anything like it could be achieved in the United States today.  Imagine the public outcry if one of our least populated states tried to boost tourism by using millions of dollars in federal funds to create a massive, patriotic relief sculpture on a mountainside.  Cable news channel political pundits would lambaste the state for soaking our country's taxpayers in the name of public art at a time of unprecedented national debt.  Skeletons would be exhumed from the closets of every historical figure whose countenance was under consideration for inclusion in the project.  OSHA regulations would hamstring the sculpting crew with cumbersome mandates.  A huge precautionary investment in numerous insurance policies would be made.  Environmentalists would decry the impact on local habitats, and corporations would try to bridge the funding gap by purchasing naming rights.  If the thing got built at all, its features would be determined after exhaustive market research revealed which four faces would appeal to the broadest demographic swath of Coca-Cola drinkers.  Perhaps young and old Elvis bookended by the Thriller and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?-era Michael Jackson?  The Kings of Mount Rockandpop.  But I digress.

Whatever our opinions of it are, Mount Rushmore is as firm in the public consciousness as it is on the face of a once-obscure peak in the Harney Range of South Dakota.  As long as I have been alive, it has been one of the great American icons, and its stony visages will continue to stare across the Black Hills long after we are gone.

If gloves could talk...this one wouldn't have much to say.

"You want me to play softball in a prison?" I asked incredulously.

"I know," said Brian in a calm tone that resonated with sympathy and reassurance.  We both knew that my objection had little to do with the unusual venue, and it was painfully obvious that he was desperate for players.  So desperate, in fact, that he was approaching one of the last people you would want to ask if you wanted to forge a decent softball team.  My brother tried to bolster his sincerity with a smile, but he could barely suppress a laugh as he tried to entice me by adding, "It'll be fun!"

"Yeah, fun," I grumbled.  Brian belonged to a service organization that not only did the occasional good thing for the community but also participated in a recreational softball league.  Scheduling a game against the inmates of our local minimum-security prison was a way to join the two vocations.  Unfortunately, only a handful of members had signed up for the opportunity.  Joining Brian in this endeavor would be the noble thing to do, but it would require a complete consumption of my pride.  It was akin to taking a willing dive into a pool of embarrassment.  "Let me think about it."

If athletic ability is predestined by our DNA, the sports gene is surely absent from my genetic code.  If it is a matter of nurture rather than nature, then I must have been abandoned as a fledgling and raised by charity.  Whatever the cause, it has always been painfully evident to everyone that I am far more suited to the role of spectator than that of participant.

Not that I didn't try.  When I was about nine years old, I signed up for Catholic Youth Organization summer softball.  Lord knows whose idea it was.  Maybe my parents thought it would provide me with exercise and boost my overall confidence.  Perhaps I actually suggested it myself on a whim fueled by youthful denial.  Somehow I wound up playing softball that summer, clad in my purple team shirt with the CYO logo on its front and an ad for a sponsoring local insurance company on the back.  I had an oversize softball glove and an undersized, red-painted, wooden bat.  I understood the rules and showed up for every practice.  I really did try, but I was inept.

Considering my offensive play alone, I am uniquely qualified to claim ineptitude.  Although I was always included in the batting order, if for no other reason than it was mandated by league rules, I struck out every time I stepped up to the plate throughout the regular season.  Our coach first advised me to "choke up on the bat," then to not choke up so much, but however I tried it, all I could do was choke, period.  Opposing teams were merciless with their chatter, every one of their mean-spirited utterances ridiculously unnecessary.  Instead of taunting me with hey, batter-batter-batter-SWING!, they could have chanted please hit the ball, please hit the ball and it would not have made any difference.

When it came to fielding, I spent more time on the bench than my teammates.  Still, I got out there for awhile every game, pragmatically stuck out in right field.  I always struck the little leaguer's pose, lurching forward with my hands planted on my knees and my eyes fixed on the batter.  Although my physical attitude might have fooled a passerby into admiring my apparent enthusiasm, inwardly I suffered the angst of a young Les Nessman:  Please, God, don't let them hit it to me.  When the odd fly ball did come my way, I would manage to run toward the general vicinity of its descent with my arm outstretched, whereupon the ball would inevitably plunge with a thud into the grass.  My frantic throws to the infield could turn a single into a home run.

Thanks to gym class, my lack of athleticism was evident not just during the summer but all year round.  Once I attempted to emulate the stance of a sprinter at the starting blocks when it was my turn for speed trials.  I was crouched down with all the tension of a coiled spring, and at the starting signal I suddenly catapulted forward and fell on my face.  When we were made to run laps around the field, I clutched my cramping sides and cast envious glances toward our asthmatic classmate Billy, who was permitted to walk his circuits.  What I would have given to trade places.  Maudlin images of juvenile asthma sufferers staring longingly from their bedroom windows as their peers engaged in strenuous physical activities did not arouse my sympathy but instead provoked my jealousy.

Nor did the passage of time lead to much improvement.  High school phys ed brought further humiliation, as it was taught by the head basketball coach, and my prowess on the court was even less impressive than my dexterity on the diamond.  It could not have surprised him to observe my utter incompetency with layups, the mechanics of which were a true mystery to me.  I saw others dribble toward the hoop and toss the ball in with ease, but my own attempts were executed with all the grace of Frankenstein's monster.  Obvious as my lack of talent was, it nevertheless perplexed our teacher when I was unable to complete an obstacle course due to its final element:  a successful shot from the free throw line.  He watched in disbelief as I missed again and again, unable to sink one until I was allowed to move embarrassingly close to the net.

As senior year loomed, everyone of my acquaintance knew better than to rely on me to help lead a sports team to victory.  This was something of a relief, as it meant that I was generally left alone to fulfill my non-athletic destiny without suffering humiliating interludes of awkwardness.  You wouldn't waste your time trying to train the family dog to take pinochle tricks, right?  Some efforts are simply unnatural and, consequently, fruitless.

However, I occasionally found myself once again a bumbler among the graceful.  During a co-ed summer leadership camp, I watched nervously as girls were assigned to the outfield for a friendly afternoon of softball.  The sexist assumption of the team captains was that boys would make the best infielders.  Having ascertained that I was a male, they put me at third base.  No one but I knew what a dreadful mistake they were making.

I can still see the mischievous smile of my new friend, Mark, as he strode to the plate and cockily pointed the bat at me, telegraphing his intentions.  Sure enough, he sent the first pitch hopping just inside the third base line.  I remembered from my CYO days that fielders are supposed to get down in front of ground balls to stop them, even if it meant taking a bad hop to the face.  I tried to do just that, but the ball zipped underneath me and continued deep into the outfield.  The girl playing left field intercepted the ball and sidearmed it back toward me with an athleticism ten times greater than my own.  Really, her arm was strong and bulls-eye accurate.  The ball landed a mere foot in front of me, and though I ordered myself to get down there like I was taught to do, it once again hopped beneath me and followed the foul line to home plate.  Mark jogged onto third base and laughed at his good fortune.  Two between-the-legs errors on one play by the same player is, I feel safe to say, statistically rare.

Not long after that notorious incident, I distinguished myself on the tennis court during a game of mixed doubles when I served into the back of my partner's head.  Such an action is pathetic under any circumstances, but being a guy and clobbering a girl in the noggin with an overhead smash is just mortifying.  She took it in good humor after recovering from the shock, having neither seen nor expected the offending projectile.  Still, I played the net after that.

These and other personal bloopers ran through my mind as I considered Brian's request to join him for some prison softball.  Ultimately, I agreed, succumbing to sibling pressure while harboring a kernel of hope that I might somehow find redemption for my past errors.  When we arrived at the correction facility, the dismal results of Brian's recruiting efforts became coldly apparent to me, as we didn't even have enough guys to field a team.  Playing against prisoners didn't sound too bad to me, because if I made some dumb mistakes, it would only benefit them.  But this meant that we would be playing with some inmates as well.  I wondered how they would take having a misfit like me on their team, and the thought turned my stomach.

We passed through security and were escorted to a rectangular courtyard surrounded by high brick walls.  There didn't seem to be anything particularly intimidating about the guys who had been permitted to play, and I was pleasantly surprised to find my inmate teammates treating me with good-natured camaraderie.  For the first time in my life, I was asked to play left field, and the gray clouds of my third-base fiasco began to threaten my optimism.  But when the opposing team stepped up to the plate, I realized that every single batter was pulling for right field.  This was because the dimensions of the courtyard made the right field wall much closer than the left field fence.  It was conceivable that a ball might possibly clear the courtyard wall for a home run, but at the very least, the right fielder was going to face a difficult rebound off the bricks.

I managed to avoid total embarrassment at home plate, flying out and grounding out rather than striking out.  And once, incredibly, I got a double.  Out in quiet left field, I watched with gratitude as ball after ball bounced off the right field wall.  Then someone who either swung too soon or decided to take advantage of my milquetoast game sent a high fly ball into my territory.  Like the terrifying interval between skidding tires and crashing cars, time slowed down to the accompaniment of my thundering heartbeat.  I followed the arc of the ball and tried to visualize the end of its trajectory.  I held my oversize glove open and kept my right hand ready to trap the ball.  There was a sudden thwack in my mitt, and I willed myself to react with nonchalance.  It was by no means a tough play to make, and I couldn't expect to be taken seriously if I sank to my knees in ecstasy.

"You know," I said giddily to Brian during the drive home, "I actually did have fun.  And I can't believe how nice our teammates were.  I really thought they'd give me a hard time, but they couldn't have been nicer."

"Mmm," Brian nodded, and we traveled on happily.  Redemption at last.

Years later, when I recalled the extraordinary cordiality of our hometown's minimum-security prison inmates, Brian cleared his throat and added an asterisk to our experience.

"Yeah, well...they were nice.  I didn't think it was necessary to tell you at the time, but..."

"But what?"

"Well, I told them that you had never played baseball before."

"You what?"

I looked at Brian in open-mouthed astonishment, and just as suddenly it dawned on me how great a brother's love can be.  He had been looking out for me, and I hadn't even suspected it.  We started to laugh, and we didn't stop for quite awhile.

Standing before my 2-story home in Perstai.  I hope to add a basement soon.

"You should get a home in Perstai, Dad," urged Melinda.  I had reservations.  I was not looking for new ways to occupy my time, and I had seen how willingly Melinda would sacrifice a free hour here and there to amble about her virtual world.  I couldn't quite get it.  It seemed like her avatar never did anything of much significance, yet unwinding within this mythical land apparently provided her much pleasure.  I had to admit that Animal Crossing, the Nintendo Wii title that made Melinda's imaginary journeys possible, was a clever game.  Its designers had crafted a tightly controlled environment that gave a satisfying sense of individual freedom within a dynamic fictional society fueled by limited artificial intelligence.  Melinda was well aware that she was playing a game by herself and that her illusory interactions with pixelated neighbors were nothing more than simple, scripted encounters.  But she didn't care, because it was fun.

"Maybe," I said, by which I meant, "No."

She had already persuaded Mom to establish residence in Perstai, and I had noticed Julie starting to take almost as much pleasure in this digital alternative existence as Melinda did.  Sometimes one of them would watch the other strolling about town for awhile, then the one playing would log off and the one watching would log on.  It didn't seem to make much difference who was actually playing, as both gamer and observer appeared to be equally absorbed by Perstai culture.

"Look," one of them would say, "Bones just clapped when I caught that fish!"

"Ha, ha!" the other would guffaw, and I would glance at them with withering condescension.  Time wasters.  It would be a cold day in Perstai before I indulged myself in that sort of pointless activity.

And so it was.  Snow covered the ground not only in Perstai but in Ohio as well, and as I was enjoying that most magnificent of perks that come to elementary educators - namely, the annual two-week break at the end of the calendar year - it seemed harmless to idle away a few of those hours in a virtual way.  Melinda would be pleased by my interest, and maybe it would even be a little fun.

"You'll start by working for Tom Nook," Melinda informed me.

"Who?"

"Tom Nook.  He's the raccoon who runs the store.  He'll give you different jobs around town, and when you're done, you can pay off your mortgage."

"My what?"

"It's like rent.  He'll let you expand your house, and when you pay it off, he'll let you expand it again.  When that's all paid, you can get a second floor."

"Why would I want that?"

"More room for your stuff!"

I wasn't quite sure if I liked the rather materialistic bent of the game, as it seemed to eerily parallel the reckless home-buying practices that ignited our nation's housing crisis.  "Don't worry about the money, just pay me back as you can," is the message parroted by Tom Nook, who seems eager to lend without any evidence of consumer responsibility.  In fact, he never even mentions interest, which conveniently does not exist in this virtual paradise.  Pay off your house renovations, however, and he's all over you to expand again, hinting that you must be somewhat dissatisfied by your current lack of space.

I diligently began running errands for Nook, and soon I had enough money to enlarge my squalid starter shack into something more comfortable.  There didn't seem to be much point in the whole endeavor, although I did register a twinge of pleasure at replacing my standard-issue cardboard box and candle with a decent end table and lamp.  Soon afterward my indentured servitude to Nook was rapidly fulfilled, leaving me free to seek my own fortune.

Seeking one's fortune in Animal Crossinginvolves participating in a cycle of redundant activities to generate income.  Sometimes just shaking trees and banging on rocks with your shovel releases currency, but most money is earned by acquiring goods and selling them to Nook.  Picking fruit, catching fish, and digging up fossils are the beginner's route to financial freedom.  Oranges go for 100 bells apiece in Perstai, and some of the rarest fish can fetch up to 15,000 bells.  The bell, by the way, is the official monetary unit used in every Animal Crossing town.  If ya wanna make it big, ya gotta have bells.

I had noticed Melinda and Julie scurrying about Perstai trying to generate bells by engaging in these mundane tasks.  As a mere observer, I perceived only irony in their efforts.  Why would anyone fritter away their free time on work?  Virtual or not, that's what it was.  Run here, run there, fill your pockets with oranges, go sell them to Nook, run here, run there, fill your pockets with fish, go sell them to Nook.  You wouldn't do that for less than minimum wage in the real world, but Animal Crossing players gladly do these things for no real recompense.

Having a go at Animal Crossing myself gave me some insight into the human condition.  We are definitely a goal-oriented species.  It does not matter if the objective is particularly meaningful, nor must it be real.  Provided that all basic needs are met, give your average homo  sapien a sufficiently stimulating challenge and he or she will not rest until that aim is accomplished.  As I became immersed in Perstai life, I chided myself for having once dismissed this virtual existence as pointless.  I had been terribly closed-minded.  Because now that I had increased the footprint of my home to its maximum area, I was only 248,000 bells away from adding a second floor.  So it wasn't like I was wasting time, because I was actually accomplishing something.  I was saving bells.

But it wasn't all about making money.  Well, mostly it was.  Yet in addition, I had become charmed by the pre-programmed residents of Perstai.  The amiable dogs Bones and Marcel.  The endearingly boastful bear Teddy and the similarly macho eagle Pierce.  The girly-girl bear Tutu and the lady rhinoceros Rhonda.  Even the somewhat bitchy duck Mallory.  They would tell me amusing little anecdotes and sometimes send me on errands for which I'd always be rewarded in goods or bells.  Once in awhile, one of them will suggest a game of hide and seek, and my inevitable victory yields even more loot.

And they are wonderfully gullible.  The residents of Animal Crossingtowns love to use catchphrases and customized greetings, and they will frequently ask for suggestions along these lines to keep conversation fresh.  If, say, Marcel approaches you for some help in coming up with a clever new phrase, and if you propose something that is less than tasteful, and so long as the game designers did not foresee the sort of drivel your deviant mind is capable of concocting, then Marcel will henceforth trot happily about town repeating your crude remark.  This simple pleasure does not get old as quickly as you might think.

Plus, if you take the time to write them letters with an enclosed gift, they will ecstatically return the favor.  Your mailbox will soon be flooded with a bounty of free furniture, clothing, and exotic fruit.  The best part is that they are thrilled with whatever you give them, even if the items are totally worthless.  Thus, I write a flowerly love note to Tutu and enclose an old tire.  She gushes with appreciation and sends me a lovely violin.  I give Marcel a smelly boot that I fished out of the river, and he presents me with a computer.  This delightful practice also does not get old with any rapidity.

As life in Perstai evolved from Melinda's solitary preoccupation into a family pastime, more and more evenings included the warm, animated glow of Animal Crossing emanating from our television.  Only eldest daughter Amber remained a staunch holdout, declaring the whole enterprise a total waste of time.  We regarded her sympathetically, as a zealot looks upon the unsaved.

It was somewhere around this time that Julie and I became more frequent visitors to Perstai than Melinda.  One of us - I can't really remember who - wondered naively if there might be some useful information about Animal Crossing on the Internet.  It so happens that there is far more to our virtual existence than we had ever anticipated, and once we discovered this, there was no turning back.  No longer contented innocents, we were compelled to fulfill our destinies.  There were so many more species of fish for us to catch, a plethora of insects still uncaught, and untold varieties of fossils yet unearthed.  If you had enough bells, you could even add a basement.  And there was something that Melinda had not yet tested:  the stalk market.

Every Sunday morning, a warthog named Joan shows up with turnips for sale.  She always has one red turnip seed that can be turned around for a 14,000 bell profit on a 1,000 bell investment, providing that you remember to water it daily for a week.  Even more enticing are the white turnips, a highly volatile commodity.  One week Julie bought a few at 108 bells and waited to sell until Nook offered her a buying price of 459.  That was all it took for us to start dropping in at Perstai on a fairly regular basis.

On my most recent trip, I had been logged on for no more than five minutes when I had the good fortune to land a rare stringfish, a great catch at 15,000 bells.  Melinda was watching.

"Go sell that stringfish to Nook and let me play."

"But I just got on," I protested.  She looked askance at me, and I surrendered the controller.

"At least I'm not addicted to it," she added reproachfully.  "Unlike some people I know."

Relaxing in the comfort of my second-floor study.

One minute everything is fine, and then...

Twice in my life I have been momentarily convinced that a total stranger was about to kill me.  Given my sheltered upbringing and habitual avoidance of risky behavior and potentially unsafe scenarios, it seems an unlikely statistic.  Both incidents occurred when I was a college student engaged in the most humdrum of pursuits.  One moment I was just another Joe Average going about his ordinary business, and then suddenly I was staring death in the face.  Or so I thought.

My first brush with mortality happened on an otherwise dull September evening.  I had moved into my dorm room a few days earlier than most students due to required training for my work-study job.  As a member of the dormitory security staff, I would be expected to know what I was doing by the time the rest of the residents arrived.  I didn't mind getting a head start on campus life, especially since it was easier for me to move in while almost everyone else was still out.

An unusually quiet atmosphere transformed the boisterous dorm with which I was familiar into a strange and contemplative place, a tranquil chamber with echoing halls that fostered deeper thinking and even some serious reflection.  It was the dawn of a new academic year, I mused, the beginning of three more quarters' worth of new ideas and opportunities.  Like the final hours of New Year's Eve, the circumstance called for resolutions and a renewed commitment to self-improvement.  An investment in sound nutrition seemed like a good place to start.  Yes, I resolved, it was time to cut out the chips and fries and fill up instead with fruits and vegetables.

Determined to embark on this course of action before my enthusiasm could wane, I immediately pulled on a jacket and bounded down the stairs.  A gentle autumn chill wafted through the early evening darkness as I strode purposefully across campus.  There were no grocery stores nearby, but a United Dairy Farmers was conveniently located just a short walk away.  I was fairly certain that I had once spied a tiny amount of produce in one of their refrigerated cases, and with any luck I would find their kitchen gadget shelf stocked with vegetable peelers.  I envisioned myself back in my dorm room, setting forth on my journey to better health to the resounding crunch of raw carrots.

The shortest route to the convenience store included a trip through a covered passageway that connected adjacent buildings with the same roof.  Though its path was entirely above ground, we were in the habit of referring to the narrow space as a tunnel, as its dim interior produced much the same effect.  By day it was merely unsightly, but nighttime lent it a vaguely sinister air.  Even so, plenty of students used it at all hours.  It was much quicker than walking all the way around the block.

On this particular evening, I happened to be the only soul using the popular shortcut.  Its emptiness made me just the slightest bit uneasy, but I moved forward briskly with the confidence that I would soon reach the other side.  Nearing the end of the passageway, I made out the silhouette of a lone figure standing there motionless, as if waiting for someone.  The person was of small stature, and I checked my flight reflex with the counterargument that my sudden fear was only silly paranoia.  After all, there was nothing particularly threatening about this stranger, save for his loitering spot.  I picked up my pace to pass him quickly, and that's when he darted forward to intercept me.

He was a young man like myself, clad in jeans and a light jacket.  He stared at me with disturbingly intense eyes, and his voice was a grim monotone that befitted his grave countenance.  "Do you believe in life after death?" he demanded in an aggressive manner far more intimidating than his size would suggest.  It never occurred to me not to answer.

"Um...I don't know," I stammered, true to my agnosticism of the time.  Then came the kicker.

"Would you like to find out?"  He reached into his jacket, and I felt the sort of adrenaline rush that accompanies close calls in rush hour traffic.  I didn't exactly see my life flash before my eyes, but I was dumbstruck with terror and simultaneously overcome by the irony of it all.  Oh my God!  I cried out silently, somewhat unfaithful to my agnosticism.  He's going to kill me!  I'm going to be shot and killed because I decided to walk to United Dairy Farmers for a bag of carrots!  It's not like I was going to indulge in unhealthy snacks, either - I was going to buy carrots!  This is what I get for trying to be healthy?!

And then he pulled out his gun.  Only it wasn't a gun.  It was a small pamphlet entitled Are You Going To Hell?  The words were printed in a bold red font above black line art of a man's face contorted in agony.  The evangelistic thug had to know that he had just scared me nearly unconscious.  But he said nothing more, so I stuffed the fiery tract into my pocket and continued on my vegetable quest.  Somehow the relative nutritional merit of one food versus another seemed rather insignificant in light of my brief flirtation with nonexistence.  But I bought the carrots anyway, and my trembling hands found a peeler as well.  As for the pamphlet, I found its message less than persuading.

My second not-so-near-death experience happened not long afterward, this time not on campus but rather among the grassy hills of a city park in my hometown.  I had a summer job with the parks department, and I was entrusted with the mowing of one of our larger properties.  It took about a week to mow the entire park, by which time the section that had been mowed first needed to be mowed again.  As dull as the routine was, I enjoyed the independence I was given.  Someone from the parks department would drop me off at the maintenance shed every morning and come back to pick me up in the afternoon, and it was up to me to stay busy in between.

One sweltering day after lunch, I had taken the riding mower up into the northwest quadrant for a few more hours of grass cutting.  By this time my tasks had become so repetitive that I found it necessary to keep myself in a state of preoccupation in order to make it through the day.  A portion of my brain guided the mower along its course as the rest of my mind was far away, usually lost in an endless mental loop of whatever music I had been listening to recently.  We were required to wear jeans on even the hottest days, and so my senses were further dulled by the oppressive heat.

The park to which I had been assigned had a reputation for attracting odd characters.  Its acreage included many tall trees and undulating hills, affording visitors seeking seclusion a number of unpopulated options.  This gave it tremendous potential as a venue for hide-and-seek, but it also created the dependable lack of bystanders that is craved by nefarious types.  I was told that it was unwise to trespass its grounds after dark, but I always felt safe enough fulfilling my parks department job there.  I was mindlessly turning the mower around for another pass when I caught sight of a shirtless man walking toward me.

I stopped the mower, wiped the sweat from my brow, and tried to discern whether or not what I thought I was seeing was real.  I had heard of strange people roaming the park, and this man certainly fit the bill.  He wore only ragged cutoffs and sandals.  With his long, matted hair and unkempt beard, he looked like a Woodstock refugee who was unaware that it was no longer the Summer of Love.  The incredible part, though - the thing that chilled the sweat on my back - was his posture.  He was walking toward me with his arms stretched before him and his hands clasped together.  In fact, he was obviously pointing something at me.  Oh my God! I panicked irreverently once again, he's pointing a gun at me!  There was nowhere to run, the riding mower was far too slow to effect an escape, and so I simply stared in helpless horror as the crazed hippie drew closer.  To have survived the menacing evangelist only to perish like this!

Whereupon it suddenly became clear to me that he was, in fact, holding a squirrel.  Yes, a squirrel, and apparently an injured one at that.  This latter-day St. Francis had found the poor animal and was seeking aid, although precisely what was wrong with the critter was unclear to me.  When he saw me astride a riding mower in my official parks department green t-shirt, he assumed that I represented the nearest thing to a naturalist authority that he had yet encountered.  But I was just a college kid sweating through a summer job.  I didn't know anything about squirrels.

"What should I do with it?" he asked.

"Um...I don't know," I stammered, true to my veterinary ignorance.  He looked at me for a moment with disappointment in his eyes, and then he wandered off with his squirrel.  How should I know? I thought to myself indignantly.  Good God, I'm just lucky to be alive!

I hadn't thought about this object for quite some time.

The other I day I was teaching my class while walking about the room with a long, wooden pointer that I sometimes use to highlight important information but mostly enjoy twirling as a prop.  There's something about giving it a few spins that seems to relax any physical tension while simultaneously enabling me to focus my thoughts.  On this occasion, I was giving some routine instructions, thinking ahead to how I might best manage the next activity, and absentmindedly spinning my pointer.  After a few rotations, I held the long stick still, and in doing so I unwittingly brought the small metal ring fixed to its blunt end to within a centimeter of my nostrils.

For an instant I was suddenly transported from my classroom to another place.  It was not so much a detailed location as it was a sort of vague, cerebral space, and dominating this mental plane was the vivid apparition of a gyroscope.  I recognized it at once as the cherished childhood possession that my sister had given me, one of a number of gifts that were thoughtfully chosen to improve my overall development.  Alas, her attempts to increase my physical activity were unsuccessful, as I never quite got the knack of shooting the basketball, and I simply could not advance more than several bounces on the pogo stick before careening dangerously askew.  But the gyroscope occupied my attention for many hours.  I would moisten the end of a string on my tongue, delicately thread and load the axle, then set it going with all my strength.  I loved watching it stay upright no matter how precarious  its perch.  The sturdy device had a peculiar smell, a dank and earthy metallic odor,  a sort of dull acridity that smelled just like...just like...well, just like the little metal ring on the blunt end of my classroom pointer.  I hadn't thought about my old gyroscope in years, but everything from its shape to its heft in my hand suffused my mind in an instant.

Such is the power of our sense of smell to resurrect latent memories.  It's a universal phenomenon, as immortalized by Marcel Proust in the first volume of Á la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time), in which the narrator's famous reacquaintance with tea and madeleine cakes unleashes long-forgotten sensations of his youth.  Proust personified the senses of taste and smell as patient entities imprinted with our past:

 But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

(Proust, M. (1913-27). Remembrance of Things Past. Volume 1: Swann's Way: Within a Budding Grove.  The definitive French Pleiade edition translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. New York: Vintage. p. 51.)

Now, I can't say that I had totally forgotten that gyroscope.  In fact, I still have it, stowed away in a cardboard  box along with other small mementos.  But it is always an arresting experience to have the present interrupted by an involuntary memory triggered by a chance whiff of the past.

The strong and distinctive smell of Murphy Oil Soap, for example, can produce within me a sudden and inexplicable sensation of elation, anticipation, and relief.  I'm sure the marketing folks at Colgate-Palmolive would be pleased, but my reaction is not suggested by any advertising efforts.  Instead, my feelings date back to when I was nearing the end of second grade.  The room was being prepared for summer break, and we were instructed to clean out our desks.  We had those wonderful old desks that doubled as chairs, a triumph of functional engineering.  The writing surface was bolted to an arm attached to the right of the seat (left-handers need not apply!), and a metal storage space enclosed on all but one side was located conveniently below the seat.  Those seats were wooden, cut to a gentle slope from front to back, enabling one to repeatedly scoot up and slowly slide back in order to alleviate the tedium of institutionalized learning.

After we had removed everything from our storage spaces, we were each handed a commercial-grade paper towel soaked in Murphy Oil Soap.  I dutifully swabbed mine across every surface, inhaling the heady fumes as I stuck my head in the storage space to ensure that I was doing a good job.  The actual cleaning was just another chore, but what a joy it was to know that never again would I labor through second grade, and a summer of freedom was about to begin.  You just can't achieve that sort of sensory-associated ecstacy in a cleansing product ad, not unless you can get the unmistakable smell of Murphy Oil Soap to emenate from the screen and imprint itself within viewers' brains.

Perhaps a long lag between our initial exposure to a strong scent and it recurrence is essential to the phenomenon of having our minds flash helplessly back to the past.  If  a particular aroma is part of our routine existence, why should we take special notice?  But if we happen upon an odor that hasn't wafted under our nostrils in many years, our minds start racing like a librarian toward an abandoned card file.  See? our brains cry triumphantly, I knew I might need that again someday!

Or maybe the key to these experiences is the imprinting of olfactory sensations during our formative years.  On how many different occasions throughout my life have I encountered the sharp scent of a charcoal grill?  Yet whenever the first flaming briquettes of spring fill the neighborhood with appetizing smoke, I mentally travel not to my last barbecue but much farther back to summer vacations along Marble Lake in Michigan.  A campfire, especially if its kindling includes dry leaves, produces within me the same effect.  For a moment, I am a child again, back when these curious aromas were still a remarkable novelty.

However vivid the flashback, the phenomenon comes and goes in an instant.  One moment I am twirling a pointer in my classroom, suddenly I behold a memory of my youth, and just as quickly I am back in the present.  My instruction continues uninterrupted, and as I survey the young faces before me, I wonder what will trigger their future memories of these simpler days.

Despite the technical wizardry of the various mp3 players and video game devices that fill the pockets and backpacks of my students, they seem no less fascinated by a far more modest fad:  fundraising pencils imbued with strong scents.  Packaged individually in plastic tubes, they are impressively fragrant when first uncorked.  One of the boys was eager to show off his new purchase on a recent morning, and as he walked into the room, he paused at my desk to produce a scented pencil marked ORANGE.

"Smell this, Mr. Hunt!  Doesn't it smell like Fruity Pebbles?"

He popped the cap off of the packaging tube and held it under my nose.  "Mmm..." I murmured solemnly with my eyes closed, inhaling with all the gravity of Orson Welles savoring a glass of Paul Masson.  "I think...yes...more like Froot Loops, I'd say."

"Yeah, that's it!" enthused my student.  He walked to his desk and showed off the pencil to some classmates.  "Check this out!  Mr. Hunt says it smells like Froot Loops!"

One day, long after my teaching career is but a memory, he may absentmindedly fill the cereal bowl of his grandchild and suddenly find himself back in fourth grade.

First by artist, then by original release date.  An island of control in a sea of chaos.

I am not an obsessively organized person, but I will acknowledge a few quirks that, to some, may represent an unnecessary attention to detail, if not a hint of madness.  Although many facets of general housekeeping escape my devoted attention (just ask my wife), there are certain areas in which I am particular.  None of them are of great importance, but they are distinct preferences nonetheless.

For example, I usually take care to sort the money in my wallet by denomination, from smallest to largest.  While I'm at it, I would prefer that all bills face the same way.  Never would I intentionally insert any currency into my wallet "head-first," as I should not like to encounter an upside-down image when fishing for cash.  Not that I couldn't deal with it, but I simply would rather not, and I don't mind taking the few seconds to put a buck in the right way.  Okay, once I did further organize my ones by serial number, but that was when I was saddled with a few minutes of unoccupied tedium, and though it did provide me a tiny amount of mental satisfaction, trust me that you could take a peek inside my wallet right now, and I guarantee that if there's any money in there at all, the serial numbers are all mixed up.  Not that it matters.

Then there is the question of compact discs and the manner in which I would like them to be stored.  My general preference, as established years ago with my collection of record albums, is to sort each item by artist and then by the original release date of the recording.  Furthermore, solo ventures from the members of established groups should be filed immediately after their respective bands.  Thus, you will find my Brian Wilson CD's just after The Beach Boys and just before The Beatles, which in turn precede the works of Paul McCartney (solo McCartney, then Wings, then Paul by himself again, as chronology would have it).  I used to separate the broader collection by the genres of Rock/Pop, Jazz, Country, Classical, Soundtracks, Comedy and Miscellaneous, but now it's pretty much just Classical, Soundtracks, and Everything Else.  That might sound like maturation, but actually it's because it bothered me whenever an artist straddled more than one genre.  Even now, I'm just the slightest bit annoyed that I must decide whether to file Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet's The Juliet Letters in either Classical or Everything Else, and likewise I am forced to shelve Peter Gabriel's Passion:  Music for The Last Temptation of Christ in either Everything Else or Soundtracks.  But then it would be even less tolerable to interfile the classical and soundtrack recordings among the remaining titles.  Again, not that it matters.  But still.

Now, I happen to know of someone who takes the trouble to ensure that the slots on the heads of the screws that secure his electrical face plates to the wall are all similarly aligned.  This seems to me to be excessive.  However, I suppose it's not so terribly different from my habit of taking a moment to rotate a CD to its correct orientation on the retention hub before closing a jewel case.  But then, would you really care to open that case again some day only to find its disc askew?  I mean, would you ?  Of course not.  You would rather unhinge the album with a sigh of satisfaction and a silent thank you to your former self for preserving your media with that little bit of extra care and attention that makes all the difference.  If you care about these things, that is.  And I don't know why you wouldn't.

And then there are those recordings that have been packaged with an environmental conscience, such that the jewel box has been bypassed altogether in favor of some less durable cardboard approximation.  Not only are their flimsy spines vulnerable to deformity, but their matte finish among all those shiny jewel boxes robs my collection of its otherwise attractive bookshelf homogeneity.  It's a small point, I'll grant you.  Alright, it's absolutely trivial.  But I would change it if I could.

You might think that my acquisition of an iPod would have been the digital balm to sooth my organizational sore spots, but it has merely presented me with novel frustrations.  Unless I am willing to spend hours tweaking the tags of every recording to reflect their true date of release (and not their date of reissue), I cannot scroll through my virtual titles in the same order by which I would shelve their physical counterparts.  Oh, and this idea of adding guest players on an album track to the artist name, resulting in some albums being diced into several sections under the "artist" file - that drives me crazy.  And don't even get me started on vanishing cover images.  I hate seeing generic covers among my album art.

Among my three brothers and me, I am the only one who seems to possess this preference (they might use the word compulsion) for organization.  The four of us truly span the gamut from methodical filer to organizationally challenged.  Let me put it this way:  the one who is at the opposite end of the scale from me once bought a book called Getting Organized.  He lost it.

I enter their homes and look askance at their media collections.  One brother excuses his desultory DVD shelves with the pretense that he prefers to browse his titles with the maximum probability of a serendipitous discovery.  I, however, hold fast to the quaint idea that I would rather know where something is.  To my knowledge, he has never created even one categorical folder for his internet browser bookmarks, whereas I keep most of my favorites tucked away within a hierarchical system of increasingly specific subfolders.  He excuses his non-system of bookmarking in the name of serendipity as well.  Well, why stop there?  Why not maximize everything for random pleasure?  Just dump your furniture here and there, for example, and soon you'll serendipitously find something to sit on.

They find my systematic approach amusing, of course.  But when they visit me, and the conversation turns to a certain book we've read, or the need arises for one of several Scrabble reference volumes, I can descend into the basement and reappear with the desired item inside of a minute.  And what do they say when presented with the same challenge of their home turf?  Let me see if I can find it...

It's not like I've arranged my bookshelves by the Dewey decimal system, you know.  I just like to separate my books by genre and then by author.  And magazines should be filed in chronological order of issue date.  Does that make me some sort of obsessive-compulsive, Felix Unger neat freak?  I think not.

Anyway, I'm not sure I care for the way that Dewey guy categorized things.

Lowbrow meets lowbrow:  Rocky emulators sprint up the visage of Salvador Dali.

Recently I came across a live webcam of a construction site in St. Petersburg, Florida.  I was surprised to find not only active workers but fairly interesting activities going on, and I zoomed in to watch a pair of laborers installing triangular glass panes into a large, metallic lattice that bulged from a concrete edifice.  The structure looked somewhat odd for a conventional building but rather conservative for its intended purpose:  the next home of the Salvador Dali Museum.  Given the famous surrealist's iconic imagery of melting watches and drooping appendages propped up by crutches, one might have expected a design that abandoned recognizable geometric forms altogether.

The new facility, slated to open in 2011, is only a few blocks from the current museum, but it will offer fifty percent more gallery space and more than twice the overall area.  More importantly, it will provide robust shelter from violent storms for its collection in a way that the present building does not;  so vulnerable is the existing museum to damage that its exhibits must be removed and stored during severe weather warnings.  Constructing a more secure home for these treasures sounds sensible to me, because I would hate for the world to lose the original work of such an incredibly talented and imaginative artist.  I have been captivated by Dali's art all of my life, and obviously many people feel the same way.  Why, then, do I have the nagging sense that serious critics would dismiss his oeuvre as pandering to the lowest common denominator?

Perhaps because it does.  The great paradox of Dali's work is that it can be, at once, indecipherably bizarre and totally accessible.  Within the same painting one can find elements that have a cartoonish stylization alongside realistic details.  The arresting effect is illogical imagery with a hyper-realistic feel, the sort of perception that only makes sense to us within a dream but is incomprehensible to the waking mind.  That's no accident, because Dali was trying to bring his subconscious to the surface, no matter how offensive or blasphemous.  His images have a primal appeal, and one does not need an understanding of technique or composition to find them intriguing.

At the same time, Dali's technical brilliance is obvious.  Though the appeal may be primal, the art is not primitive.  His artistic skill would have allowed him to master any genre;  he might have prospered as a quiet painter of landscapes or commissioned portraits.  As my father remarked after viewing some of Dali's less surreal work, "I had no idea that he could paint so well."  But Dali certainly could paint well, and unlike many of the world's self-proclaimed geniuses, he had the talent and discipline to back up his apparent bragadoccio.

Therein is one of the reasons why his legacy is scorned by some:  Dali was a relentless and shameless self-promoter, sometimes referring majestically to himself as "The Dali."  Long before metamorphosizing pop stars began to regard their own bodies as artistic creations, Dali was a walking, talking, one-man surrealistic exhibitionist.  He accented his flamboyant mustache with maniacally wide-open eyes when photographed, ambled about in shoes that curled up at the toes, and made provocative statements like, "The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad."

When I was a senior in high school, I somehow found myself president of our chapter of the National Honor Society.  It was a position I didn't take very seriously, having been put off by a whiff of smug elitism that I had perceived from some club members the previous year.  Still, as president I was expected to do something, and organizing an intellectually stimulating field trip was suggested by our advisor.  Thus I was quite excited to learn about the existence of a Dali museum in a suburb of Cleveland, a possible day trip from our school.  Alas, my information was dated, and I made my inquiry four years too late.  The Salvador Dali Museum had moved to St. Petersburg.

Seventeen years would pass before I finally made my way there, albeit accompanied by my wife and our two daughters instead of the National Honor Society.  We were spending some time on Anna Maria Island in the Gulf of Mexico, and it seemed a shame to be across Tampa Bay from the Dali Museum and not visit it.  I will always be grateful that we took the time to spend an afternoon there.  There is nothing that compares with personally viewing original art, not only because reproductions rarely do justice to their subjects, but also due to the value of seeing an artist's work in context.  The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, a further meditation on the famous limp watches, is a mere 10 x 13 inches, just a tad bigger than its well-known predecessor.  It is an odd feeling to realize that an image that looms so large in popular culture is actually quite small.  In contrast, enormous canvasses like The Dream of Christopher Columbus and The Hallucinogenic Toreador (each about 13 feet tall and 10 feet wide) are breathtaking masterworks that cannot be faithfully duplicated in an art book.  When closing time came around, I left the museum reluctantly, wishing that I could always have it available to peruse at my leisure.

As it happened, I had another opportunity to see Dali's art just two years later.  The Philadelphia Museum of Art was the exclusive American venue for a Dali centennial retrospective, a huge collection featuring pieces that had never before been exhibited in the United States.  My wife and I used it as an excuse for a whirlwind spring break tour of Philadelphia, rashly driving across the Pennsylvania Turnpike with no hotel reservations only to luck out with a discounted room at a nice hotel in the heart of the historic district.  We slept within the same block as the buried bones of Ben Franklin, gawked at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, marvelled at the interred residents in the aisles of Christ Church, and indulged in authentic Philly cheesesteak sandwiches.  But we were there for the Dali.

The Philadelphia exhibition was extensive and crowded.  Although we had timed tickets, we still had to stand in line to be admitted, heightening our anticipation.  The wait was well worth it.  With portable audio guides offering insightful and revelatory commentary, the experience was a crash course in all things Dali.  I don't think it would have been possible for anyone to travel through the galleries and not be impressed by the collection.  Even if none of the varied subject matter suited your taste, you would have had to admire the artist's cleverness and ingenuity.  Many paintings featuring deftly interwoven multiple images were on view, and one room included a large stereo pair entitled The Christ of Gala.  As a fan of both Dali and stereo images, it doubled my pleasure to cross my eyes and see the work shift into three dimensions.

We wandered through the exhibit for more than two hours before we started to feel a bit overwhelmed.  So much Dali in such concentration can be a bit of a sensory challenge, and we both noted a feeling of exhaustion.  Whether it was physical or mental, we were not sure, but our surreal appetites had definitely been sated.  Lumbering somewhat dazed through the last gallery of later works, we paused at a display case near the exit.  Within it was a holographic cylinder containing a three-dimensional image.  Titled First Cylindric Chronohologram Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain (I guess that distinguishes it from all of the subsequent cylindric chronohologram portraits of Alice Cooper's brain), it shows the shock rocker sitting cross-legged and shirtless, holding a Venus de Milo statuette and wearing a tiara.  As a fan of both Dali and Alice Cooper, I was once again doubly pleased.

"See," I pointed out to my patient wife, "this is why some people will never take Dali seriously."

Sitting surreally in St. Petersburg.