IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

Friggatriskaidekaphobia is the fear of Friday the Thirteenth. I am superstitious but I widely believe that Friday the Thirteenth is an invention of the movie industry. It does not exist. Therefore, I don’t believe that Friday the Thirteenth is a day of bad luck.

Last Friday morning, I woke up to the first cool and overcast morning we have had in weeks. The Piedmont has been ravaged by a heat wave that has brought unusually high temperatures, so to wake up and find the mercury hovering around seventy-eight was a welcomed sight. I had been neglecting the grass and the jungle that has been growing up around our house needed to be cut down to size. Cooler temperatures meant that I could finally mow the lawn.

I went into the garage and pulled out my lawnmower. When I went to fill the lawn mower with gas, I realized my gas can was empty. Frustrated, I trudged back into the house for my car keys and I was off to the local filling station. As I stepped up to the counter to pay for a gallon of gasoline, the attendant said, “Watch out, it’s Friday the 13th!”

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It was a hot, sticky Wednesday afternoon when I dropped everything and drove to the AT & T store. It was June 23, 2010 and after a couple of days of unpacking, Stephanie and I decided it was time to order our internet service and to plug back into the world again. After placing many calls to various stores and companies, I felt like the store in Apex offered me the best bang for my buck.

I walked up to the counter and when the representative asked me if he could help me with anything, I declined. I had spoken with a knowledgeable sales associate on the phone and realizing that most sales associates work on commission, I decided to wait for the person I had established a business relationship with prior to my visit. So I walked around the store and looked at some of the phones they had on display in their showroom.

I was finally called up to the counter. As I placed my order, the price for my DSL service increased by five dollars per month. When I inquired as to the price difference, it was explained to me that I was only ordering DSL service and not a phone as well. I had stated that I was only interested in DSL service when I initially called and the prices had been explained in detail. The sales associate apologized for the misunderstanding but since I didn’t need phone service and I was getting a “dry loop” DSL plan, the rates were a little bit higher.

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There is a place in my house where I cannot sit. I cannot read there. I cannot think there. I cannot focus there. All I can do is laugh there. The last time I sat there I laughed so hard that my children had to inquire about what was so funny. But I could not tell them.

There are four pictures in the room that make it impossible to sit there. Like the classic paintings in the Scooby Doo Cartoons that have eyes that follow you everywhere, these pictures stare at you. Their expressions are comical. The irony of the situation is comical so that whenever I sit there, I can do nothing but laugh. It is because of those pictures that there is a place in my house where I absolutely cannot sit.

The first picture is on the window sill. It is a picture of our friend Angie holding baby Chloe in a rocking chair with a big radiant guffaw. She is laughing at me. She is questioning me. And as her gaze pierces me from the window sill, I feel as though she can read my mind. I have tried to look away, but I can feel the picture staring at the back of my head and I can see the laughter upon her face.

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I just found out that one of my favorite television shows has been cancelled. I knew it had to happen one day but I am still dismayed. The show has given me many hours of great entertainment and in retrospect, it even created one troubling period in my life where I learned an invaluable lesson.

Five years ago, a friend of mine got me hooked on the show Numb3ers. When he first told me about the series, I thought the plot seemed pretty laughable but I promised to watch a couple of episodes. The premise of the show is simple; an FBI agent named Don has a brother named Charlie who is a math genius. Charlie is a consultant to the FBI and through mathematical theorems, he helps Don solve cases.

It sounded pretty far-fetched to me at first but after watching a few episodes, I was captivated. Charlie’s premise was that arbitrary activity is part of a larger, more complex design. By adding variables to an equation, the cases can be cracked by deciphering the underlying pattern of behavior. As I became more engrossed in Numb3ers, I started creating my own mathematical theorems to see if the random aspects on my life were actually random.

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When my son was born, my parents gave my wife a little silver cup that I used to use when I was a toddler. The cup is beat up. It is dented. And depending on who is describing the condition of the chalice, the goblet looks like a feisty, opinionated and spirited child made his feelings known to the world by banging it on anything and everything he could find.

My wife loves the fact that my parents gave her the cup because it speaks volumes about the deep rooted convictions I hold. To her it proves that I have always had an opinion about everything and well, whether people like it or not, I am more than willing to make my opinions known. I disagree with her assessment but whenever I want to argue my case, she has proof to the contrary.

“Look,” she says holding up the little silver cup with a glint of glee in her voice, “the evidence speaks for itself!”

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A few days ago, I woke up early in the morning with a pounding headache because I had slept in the wrong position again. It was too early to start my day, so I trudged down the stairs to the medicine cabinet, took some ibuprofen, stumbled half asleep back to my bedroom and climbed sleepily into my warm bed. I laid there for a while trying to find any comfortable position that might ease the pain. But eventually, I gave up and lumbered downstairs as the aroma of warm coffee being brewed wafted throughout the entire house.

As I stood in the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee, Stephanie looked at me, smirked and said, “You look like we did when we first had kids?”

“How’s that?” I asked as I stood there half awake, hair standing straight up and my head cocked to the side in an attempt to find a neck position that would stop the jackhammer in my brain.

“Like you haven’t had sleep for days,” she replied

“Great,” I said as I went into the living room and sat on the couch. “I look like a zombie. Thanks.”

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Halloween is over or so I thought. I spent a big part of the last month hearing about the inevitable Zombie Invasion and I have even learned how to defend myself in case of an Attack of the Killer Poms, but nothing could have prepared me for the fear of what I learned about next; Koobface Friends!

It sounds like a hoax but it isn’t. The term Koobface comes from a worm that has been spreading on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace but unlike its virtual counterpart that can be cleaned up and rectified, Koobface Friends are wreaking havoc in the real world with catastrophic results! And by the time people realize what has happened to them, it’s too late. The damage caused by Koobface Friends has been completed with devastating precision.

“She ruined my life,” said Ima Frayed when she agreed to be interviewed last week. “I met a woman at the park one day. Our children played so nicely together that we started meeting up at the park on a daily basis. We went to the mall together and before I knew it, we did everything with each other. We quickly became the best of friends.”

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I used to play a game in college called “Bet the Bottle Cap.” It’s a simple game that is meant to be played in conjunction with Poker. Here is how you play: place a dollar in the side pot and then affix the bottle cap to your forehead. Once the cap is firmly in place, you cannot touch it. After every hand, if the bottle cap is still on your forehead, place another dollar in the side pot to continue the game. If the bottle cap falls off your head or if you touch the bottle cap, you lose. Last person with the bottle cap still on their head, wins the money.

Every once in awhile when I am watching a sporting event on television, I will open a beer bottle and affix the cap to my forehead to see how long it will stay. It isn’t under the same conditions as when I used to play “Bet the Bottle Cap” many years ago, but it makes me smile as I remember my old college days. It’s like a little trip down memory lane. The added bones these days is that every time I place a bottle cap on my forehead, my kids take the cap off my head and stick it to their own foreheads. Why is all of this important? Because it rained last Saturday!

Rainy days are an adventure in our house. We have two young children who are constantly underfoot and who vie for mine and Stephanie’s attention. We spend rainy days engaged in a multitude of activities and finding a few minutes in the day just for me is always a golden opportunity. It allows me to take a quick breather before “losing” again at games like Candy Land, Monopoly and Uno for the eighteenth time in a row.

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As I was leaving work and walking to my car a week ago, I noticed that my rear tire was losing air pressure. As I knelt down to inspect the wheel a little more closely, I saw a nail sticking out of the tire.

“Damn!” I said to myself as I jumped into my car and drove slowly to the nearest service station to have the tire plugged. But once I got to there, my day started to get a little worse.

“Sir, I think you might have a bigger problem,” the mechanic said to me after he removed the wheel from my car and rolled it into the service bay.

“What is it?”

“The inner tread of your two rear tires is worn away,” he said as he showed me the wheel he had just removed from my car. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Neither have I,” I replied as I inspected the tire for myself. “Will it last the week or should I replace them now.”

It was 6:00 p.m. and the mechanic was in a rush to get home. He told me that he could plug the tire and it would be fine for a couple of weeks, but he strongly suggested that I replace my rear wheels as soon as possible.

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The sun was shining through the windows while a gentle breeze was blowing through the curtains and I could tell right away that it was going to be a great day. I needed to take my car into the repair shop by 8:00 a.m. so I poured a cup of coffee, headed into the living room and turned on Sports Center. I was lacing up my sneakers and keeping an eye on the Yankees highlights when Stephanie came into the living room and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to follow you over? You can drop off your car and then come with me to drop off the kids at school.”

“Thanks, Steph, but I’ll be fine. Take the kids to school and I’ll meet you back here afterward. Besides, it’s a great day for a walk,” I responded as the kids came running into the living room.

“Can I watch Curious George, Daddy?” Chloe asked.

“You need to get ready for school,” I said as I touched her nose with the tip of my pointer finger. Then I picked up the remote control and turned off the television.

“Are you sure? I can drive you…”

“Trust me, Steph, I’m fine. The sun is shining outside; a walk will be nice after the winter we have had,” I said as I cut her off mid sentence. I took one last swig of my coffee, gave the kids a bunch of hugs before I left, went outside, got into my car and drove off. After I pulled into the repair station and gave the mechanic my car key, I started to walk home. As I crossed the street, I made my way to the local garden center and walked in the front door.

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