Parents Beware

Before adopting our first child last year, I was warned by those more experienced with parenthood what I should expect – horrific diapers, midnight feedings, likely incarceration for neglect…but possibly the most far-reaching change has nothing to do with bodily functions (although my eyes have seen a couple of diapers that should have been submitted to the FBI’s X-Files division).

This insidious effect is akin to an involuntary loss of mind control, losing autonomy of thought and mental independence.

The syndrome, of which the scientific community cannot yet agree on a universal name, has a singular source and at this time we are powerless to stop it.

This infectious danger is known by many as simply DTES - Dora The Explorer Syndrome.

Its effects are both invasive and powerful. After as little as one viewing, the songs featured in the children’s program Dora The Explorer, one by one, will burrow their way into adult consciousness where they will grow, thrive, and multiply, essentially jumping to the forefront of active thought while overwhelming most other non-critical thought.

I was strong but naive– my resistance had been unchallenged for 40 years before initial exposure. It took several episodes before I noticed something was not quite right.

For me, it started with the minor songs. My daughter, Izzy, enjoys music greatly and insisted we rewind the TiVo and replay a few choice music segments by using one of her first words (“more, more”). Initially, it was the “Backpack Song” (a surprisingly catchy 15 second ditty with a toe-tapping bass line). My wife and I would laugh about how much Izzy loved hearing the tune, amused by the workings of a simple 15 month old mind.

The next morning, I awoke humming “backpack…backpack” under my breath and didn’t think much about it. DTES always starts innocently. But once the seed has been planted, it spreads like Paris Hilton in front of a video camera.

After initial infection, the next phase of DTES is Rationalization. I had talked myself into believing that the “Backpack Song” really was a well crafted tune and there was nothing wrong with enjoying it – anyway, it was far superior to its counterpart, the inane “Map Song”, which repeats the line “I’m The Map” about a dozen times as the bulk of the tune. Backpack is way cooler than that know-it-all Map.

A few days later, I couldn’t help but notice how much heart and soul the Map puts into his song and my mind’s adult defenses faltered just long enough to let the Map in. Now, I was walking around humming the praises of the one “who can get you there, I bet.”

After two minor songs lodge in your mind, there is no chance to resist the keystone production numbers. The festive show-ending dance song “We Did It” stormed past my defenses like a steam train through a house of cards. And, I have now fallen victim to the show’s intro song and succumbed to the mid-episode “Vamanos” anthem.

Experimental treatment is available. I’ve tried intense adult-music therapy by playing my iPod during the day, hoping something else will eclipse the Dora music in my head. I have chosen high doses of the latest vaccine, Van Morrison’s fantastic new disc, and while enjoying it immensely, in quiet moments, it’s not Van The Man but Dora The Explorer that I hear.

At this point the best I can do is attempt to limit the spread of DTES and hope it doesn’t leave my quarantined home. I have vowed to never let a Dora song make it to my car or iPod (although I’ll bet I could find something on the web to download…).

I don’t know what will come next. As Izzy leaves the Dora phase, will the music stay with me? I can only hope that science advances far and fast enough to provide an answer.

If any of you know of a cure, please post it in the comments.

Thanks for helping!

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Service With A Smile

Ever since man began trading and bartering to obtain needed goods, there has always been a minimal level of service that was expected during the transaction.

In the middle ages, it was assumed that a blow to the noggin with a mace would not conclude a trade for rice or grain. In the times of Columbus, it was commonly expected that one would not receive a rapier swipe to the ear at the completion of a transaction. In the early 20th century, a gunshot to the forehead would certainly have been a disappointing end to a deal for Prohibition era booze.

Now that society has made it this far with this loose set of ground rules, it was time for corporations to get involved. With all the gusto & planning found in a boiler plate Dilbert comic strip, Big Business has surveyed, studied, and analyzed us to determine what kind of service we expect from them.

They learned that the customer expects to deal with a knowledgeable, compassionate human being who understands our needs and sympathizes with our frustrations.

They also learned that the chances of finding a large team of people fitting this description and willing to work for $7/hour is about as easy as finding a website without commercial sponsorship. [This paragraph has been brought to you by BidFinders, a non-profit organization (although we hope to turn a profit some day).]

Since the average human being is not knowledgeable, compassionate, understanding, and sympathetic, they did the next best thing – just short of fitting a square peg into a round hole, they have taught their service staffs to follow a script with their customers. The idea makes sense if the customer service reps make a semi-human attempt to be sincere – sadly, most have the acting chops of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

For the sake of this blog, it would be handy to have an example at this point. Fortunately, I bought a defective dishwasher last week (!) and had to place a call to customer service at a big box appliance store. (I would reveal the name of the store but have no vendetta against them – besides, they did offer the best buy on this fine appliance.)

After the expected maze of incorrect transfers, I was eventually connected to the right department. My call was picked up and I could clearly hear someone laughing hysterically, as if watching an episode of Arrested Development, or more likely in this case, America’s Funniest Home Videos. There was a period of about five seconds in which it was clear to me that the rep who was tasked with answering my call was taking a moment to compose herself.

The woman finally regained control of herself long enough to ask me how she could help me, using all of her will power to get through the canned line without cracking up. I felt like a part of a Carol Burnett skit with Conway, Korman, and “Katie” trying to get through a scene.

My explanation that my dishwasher wasn’t working was met with silence – she was again trying to regain control of her involuntary laugh reflex. She was able to ask me how long I’ve had the problem, in an apparent attempt at small talk. I let her know it’s been a few days and mentioned it’s a bit inconvenient having to do the dishes by hand.

She read this as a disgruntled complaint, scrambled the F-16s, and went immediately to page 13 of the handbook: “I’m very sorry for your inconvenience, sir. I will do my best to help you today.”

This was said with all the sincerity of a Lindsey Lohan commitment to sobriety – if a robot could speak while trying to hold back a laugh, it would have sounded much like that.

She was skillful enough to drop these lines into our conversation two other times as we scheduled an appointment to have the dishwasher fixed. I was on the verge of calling her on her insincerity but figured it just wasn’t worth the hassle. Let her go back to the water cooler and regale her cube mates with the latest adventures of According To Jim before clocking out to buy lottery tickets.

The key to good service is hiring good people – without them, the customer service scripts could be written by Oprah Winfrey and Mother Theresa and I’d still feel like I took a rapier to the ear.


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Bright Idea

So how many members of the Smack Of Ham household does it take to change a light bulb?

Upon first viewing the house we purchased in late 2005, I was impressed initially by the cathedral ceilings in the main living areas – it’s a nice touch that adds to the open feel of the home. Gazing up at the 18 foot ceilings in the kitchen, I briefly wondered how one would access the five recessed flood lights illuminating the area. After living here for over two years, we had one of the lights burn out this week.

A couple of months ago, I had one of these burn out and I attempted to change it using an extendable pole - it telescopes to a ridiculous length (that's what she said) and has a suction cup on the end, so I could stick the suction cup to the bulb, turn the pole to unscrew said bulb, and slowly bring the bulb down 18 feet.

The plan worked well until I actually had the bulb on the suction cup and was bringing it down - I had to angle the pole to be able to reach the bulb and when I got to about 45 degrees and maybe 8 feet from the floor, the suction cup could no longer hold the bulb and the halogen flood light smashed onto my counter, flinging shards of glass and halogen stuff all over my kitchen, exploding like the fat guy in the Monty Python flick after the ill advised final morsel.

Lesson learned. What I needed this time was help - someone to act as a catcher in case the same suction cup failure occurred again.

I talked the old lady into holding a pillow-lined laundry basket under the burned-out light to catch the bulb if it fell. (I refer to her as “the old lady” because I know she has as much interest in reading this blog as she does training for the Boston Marathon and it sounds cool in a 1950s kind of way.) Possibly overthinking it, I realized it may be easier if she was standing higher so she would be closer to the light and I'd have less distance to try to carry the bulb on the not-so-industrial-strength suction cup. So, I got her a step stool and had her hold the basket up under the light as I readied myself to suction it with the 12 foot pole. I nearly couldn’t make time to change the bulb as I was busy patting myself on the back for this ingenious plan.

It was time. I got the bulb stuck on the suction cup and started bringing it down toward the basket. Wifey couldn't see where the bulb was as she was standing on a stool with a laundry basket over her head, so it was up to me to bring the bulb down for a landing in the largish basket. As I slowly brought the bulb down, hands a bit unsteady as my confidence began to leave me like the air in Kirstie Alley’s bicycle tires, I thought "wow, I can't really tell if it's lined up over the basket from this angle...”

Simultaneously, the bulb, impatiently waiting to humiliate me, proceeded to drop from the suction cup, missing the basket by roughly 2 furlongs, and smashing on the tile floor.

My wife looked at me without a trace of surprise, shrugged her shoulders, said “well, that didn’t work”, and walked away, leaving me to clean the uncountable pieces of the bulb from the floor.

At least I’m getting good at that.

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