Who needs hair?

By DARREN HANDSCHUH
OK, what is the deal with hair.
Is it some cruel joke Father Time likes to play on people for his own personal amusement?
When you are born, odds are you had little to no hair on your head.
But it doesn't take long before your head is covered in this wonderful fluffy stuff known as hair.
During those first few years, hair can be more of a hassle than anything ñ for the parent anyway who has to try and keep Junior's hair clean after a hard day of playing in the dirt.
But as you enter the teen years, hair becomes an important part of your life. You wash it, condition it, comb it (a lot), dye it, style it, admire it...
There is just no end to the youthful enjoyment of a full head of hair.
Hair also starts to sprout on your legs and arms.
For most girls, this hair is light in both density and colour. Ladies can shave their legs and have skin as smooth as silk in a matter of minutes.
I would need a blow torch and weed-whacker to hack down the forest growing on my lower appendages. One wrong move could result in a medical emergency of the blood loss variety.
Many people keep their crown of locks well into their senior years, however, there are those fortunate few who get to experience balding at a young age. The chosen ones, I like to call them.
Yes, I am talking about yours truly. I started losing my hair when I was 20. By the time I was in my mid-20s, it was quite noticeable. In fact, my dad had more hair than I did.
I decided I might as well embrace my enhanced scalp and go bald gracefully.
No comb overs, no hair clubs and no growing it long in the back just to fool myself into thinking I still have a fountain of flowing follicles.
No, if I was going bald, - which I was ñ I was going to do it right. After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I shaved my hair super short and decided that was probably the last hair style I would ever have.
But as the years progressed, I realized I was not actually losing hair ñ it was just relocating. I bet if I could count all the hair on my body, it would be exactly the same now as when I had a full head of hair because the hair on my head is simply sprouting up in other areas.
Why I need hair to grow out of the top of my shoulder I do not know. Not both shoulders, no, that would make way too much sense. Nope, I get to have hair growing out of my left shoulder only.
Why? I guess the answer could be why not.
Why do I need eyebrows that are bushy enough to hide a small immigrant family in? I don't, but my body thinks I do, so the older I get, the bushier the brows become.
While the shoulder locks are a mystery and the abundant eyebrows are kinda creepy, the hair growing out of my ears is utterly pointless.
I guess everyone has hair in their ears, but on most people it is not long enough to braid.
One year for Christmas, the Missus bought me a nose and ear trimmer ñ more as a practical joke than anything ñ but several years later I am putting that piece of battery operated gear through the paces on a regular basis ñ which is something she encourages actually.
I spend more time shaving my eyebrows, ears and shoulder than I do my face.
Come to think of it, Father Time is kind of a butthead.

football is boring

OK, I'll admit it.
I am saying it right here in black and white: I don't get what all the Super Bowl hoopla is about.
It is just a football game, sure it's a championship game, but still it is one single game.
I am even going to take things a little further and admit I am not a big football fan, not even Canadian football (but you probably already guessed that.)
There, I am out of the football closet as it were. I have watched football of course, and I find it just slightly more exciting than soccer.
I know, I just alienated both forms of football fans, but what can I tell ya, I just find both games a little on the slow side. And by a little, I mean a lot.
And why do they call football, football? I can understand why Europeans call their game of choice football, because you kick the ball with your foot ñ not too big of a stretch there.
But in the North American game, they spend most of the time carrying the ball. Maybe they should have called that soccer instead of stealing the name of another sport which can cause confusion among die-hard football fans (I'll let you decide what brand of football I am talking about because at this point, I am not too sure myself.)
I am glad basketball was invented by a Canadian.
Based on their creativity when it comes to naming sporting activities, had the Yanks invented basketball, they probably would have called it hockey.
But a good ol' Canuck decided the point of the game was to put a ball through a basket, and seeing as how football had already been taken ñ twice ñ he went with basketball.
Basketball is an exciting game, with lots of action, passing, shooting and super stars creating more drama than than those boneheads on Jersey Shore. It's kind of like a soap opera with a jock strap.
I will admit, there are a few exciting moments in football, but you have to sit through a lot of agnonizingly boring plays before there is that brief flurry of action.
Then it is back to huddles, some guy with the ball running a few feet before being tackled, then another huddle, then another short run, then another huddle...and so on and so forth.
Yawn.
Instead of spending a few precious hours of my life watching the game, I just tune in to a sports show at the end of the day and catch the highlights. Perfect. I can see everything worth seeing in about three minutes.
Which brings us back to the Super Bowl.
So much hype goes into one single game, you would think the second coming will happen at half time.
Advertisers spend millions of dollars for a singe commercial. Why? Because there will be millions of people worldwide watching the game. This year 111 million plunked down in front of a TV to watch the championship game of 'carrytheballî (what the game should have been called.)
Thanks to the wonders of the Interweb, I do not even have to watch the Super Bowl to see the commercials ñ which is typically the best part of game anyway. I can just go to Youtube and viola, there they are, free of all the pointless stuff ñ like the game itself.
I am sure right about now there are some die-hard football fans frothing at the mouth for such sacrilege and to them I say if you want to watch a real sporting event, catch a hockey game.
Fast, hard hitting and exciting with a play off that is not decided in a single game.
That way if your team has an off day, there is always game two to even the score.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to Youtube those commercials again.
Oh, and, can anyone tell me who won the game?

Weird is an understatement

By DARREN HANDSCHUH
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a strange world out there.
Need proof? Read the news. Even the best Hollywood writers could not come up with some of this stuff.
Real life ranges from the weird to the strange to the really weird.
The following lands in the really weird category.
It would seem a man in the United States awoke from an evening snooze to find his dog had eaten some of his toes.
Really, that's what the story said.
The man had diabetes and could not feel his feet and after taking a nap he noticed something was amiss, or more accurately - missing.
The family hound took it upon himself to apply his own version of medical care. Officials said if the toes were gangrenous or dying, the mutt thought he was doing his master a favour.
The dog will not face any repercussions for his actions as it was determined he was not doing it "in any form of meanness."
What's even weirder - as if it was not strange enough already - the man and his wife were quite happy with the pooch performing the in-house amputation.
The story did not say what kind of a dog it was, but I really hope it was not a chihuahua. How long would it take a dog that small to perform the impromptu surgery?
I don't know, and I don't want to know. Like I said, true and really weird.
Another odd little ditty is closer to home. As I am sure you have already heard, a Tim Horton's was used as an overflow for an emergency room in a B.C. hospital.
The comments have been flying fast and furious over this one.
"I will have a large double-double with a honey glazed and could you set my broken arm please? Thank you."
Only in Canada could a Timmies double as an emergency ward triage.
A lady in the United States filed a lawsuit against a railroad company after she was struck by a train. The woman was walking down the tracks when the train hit her.
The woman was not listening to an iPod or any other such device that would prevent her from hearing the massive locomotive barreling down the tracks behind her, and in the lawsuit, blamed the rail company for not posting enough signs stating the tracks were used by trains.
She also filing a lawsuit against her parents for bearing a child that is dumber than a twig.
I have my doubts she will emerge victorious against the railway company, but the lawsuit against her parents sounds like a lock.
What jury could possibly argue when all the proof they need is being documented in the earlier lawsuit.
In the northern wilds of Alaska a woman was attacked by a moose (she was not seriously injured.) Nothing strange about that, you say. I say guess again.
You see, Morty Moose was relaxing in a snowbank near a town when the lady decided to pet the humungous beast.
OK, let's review: the moose is a wild animal, a large wild animal and that makes it a dangerous wild animal.
I wonder if she is related to the train lady?
This next one is weird in a cool way. In the U.S, a 25-year-old scumbag broke into a home and attempted to assault the 71-year-old woman who lived there.
But this super senior was having none of that. Granny grabbed a frying pan and laid a whoopin' on the bad guy to the point where he needed medical care.
His police mugshot has him wearing a cervical collar from injuries inflicted on him by the feisty senior.
I say good job Granny, that's my kind of senior citizen.

House full o' sickos

By DARREN HANDSCHUH
My wife has been a nurse for more than two decades.
She has been a mother for almost as long.
If you put the two together what do you get? Apparently, a house full of sick children.
I came home the other day from work to find my home had been invaded by a horde of youngsters ñ as it usually is. I have three kids of my own, but it is a rare day when it is just my own kids roaming my castle.
My home has become 'the house' where my kid's friends gather to hang out, play video games and eat everything that is edible, and a few things that aren't.
The difference this time was Junior's friends brought some friends of their own in the form of germs. They were infected with a very nasty cold, but that did not stop them from crashing at my house ñ it also did not slow down their eating, which I was kind of hoping it would because short of winning the lottery, buying all that extra food is going to put me in the poor house (where I am sure all those teens will follow in their nomadic quest for food.)
Anyway, as I pulled into the driveway, I was unaware of Germ-stock that was taking place in my basement.
I popped downstairs after a hard day in the salt mines ñ commonly known as my desk ñ to relax with my good friend, Mr. X-Box 360.
The electronic gaming wonder and me go back several years, and before that I was rather well acquainted with his distant cousin, Mr. Playstation.
Some people might say I am too old to be playing video games. I say poo-poo to you too. Mine is the first generation to play video games. From the adventures of that little yellow ball with the eating disorder, Pacman, to the amazing stuff they have today, I have lived the evolution of gaming.
And even though I am into the latter half of the f-years, I still enjoy grabbing a controller and smiting bad guys before they can take over the world.
But what does my gaming prowess have to do with the mini epidemic festering in my home? My infected son and two of his infected friends already had their grubby little paws on the controllers and you could almost see the germs crawling around, waiting for another victim to infect.
Once they were done their game, I grabbed one of the controllers covered it with a very liberal dose of hand sanitizer and went about saving the world yet again.
This time the enemy had a secret weapon ñ three secret weapons actually ñ in the form of a trio of teenage boys who sat behind me, watching me play while they gacked, hacked, coughed and snorted more snot than an elephant with a head cold.
I tried to concentrate on the game, but the noise from the peanut gallery was far too distracting and I decided to forgo saving the universe in favour of saving myself from having to listen to the snot fest that was taking place in the basement.
I asked my wife why there were two additional ill young men in my basement, and she basically said her mother and nursing instincts kicked in and she decided it was better for them to stay at our house where she could look after them and make sure they got rest and medicine. Besides, they were already there.
Kind of hard to argue with that seeing as we had already agreed to be 'the house,' so I resigned myself to the fact my home had been turned into an infirmary for the criminally snotty.
Of course, a few days later I was the one with the runny nose, hacking cough and general feeling of ickyness.
The cold was brutal and seriously knocked the wind out of my sales for almost two weeks, but because the teen crew was afraid of catching the cold again, they left the room every time I wanted to play the X-Box.
I guess there is a silver lining to every dark cloud.

Eye doctors rock

It's kind of a Pavlov thing I suppose.
You know who Pavlov was, right?
He was the guy who got a dog to salivate every time he rang a bell because he taught the hound to equate food with the tinkle of the bell.
Kind of like Brian Mulroney every time he hears the work kickback.
The Big BM - as I like to call him - looked like a St. Bernard he had so much drool dribbling down his freakishly large chin.
I know, that's not nice. So I would just like to apologize to all of the St. Bernards out there.
Anyway, Pavlov deduced the dog associated the sound with the reward of food ñ making a mental connection with an auditory stimulant (oooh, fancy words.)
The same thing happens to me every time I walk into a dentist's office.
No, I don't start barking and dragging my butt across the carpet, but as soon as I open the door of doom I am hurtled back in time to when I was a kid and went to a dentist we had nick named The Butcher.
He was a rather rough dental specialist and I quickly grew to dislike seeing the man. And of course every dentist office in the free world smells exactly the same, so even as an adult when I walk into the office I am gripped with the same feeling of dread I had when I was a youngster.
Mind you, I am all grown up now so I can face my fears like a man, which means not whimpering and tearing up at the mere sight of the dentist chair.
I still do it, but I manage to stifle it so no one can tell.
But it is this Pavlov thing with a dentist that makes going to the optometrist so enjoyable.
You see, The Butcher had an office right next door to our family eye doctor, so the dentist smell would flood the entire floor, but on this occasion I got to walk past the door of doom and go directly to the eye guy.
The relief was noticable and eye doctors have always been OK in my books, even when they put that goop in your eye that freezes it for the next hour.
Small price to pay to avoid The Butcher.
The eye doc was also cool because of all the neat instruments he had in his office ñ none of which hurt.
You got to put you chin on that little strap thingy and look through the other thingy and read the eye chart.
ìOK, now can you read the first line for me.î
ìNo problem doc, that E is so big Stevie Wonder could read it.î
I would then work my way down the line of letters until you got the microscopic letters at the very bottom line that nobody could read and was put there just so the optometrist could keep flipping those things in the eye machine.
Every time I went, I had 20/20 vision and I left his office without a frozen face, sore jaw or bad attitude.
As I mutate into an older gentleman, my eye sight is no longer 20/20. It would seem Father Time has a thing against being able to read the fine print, so I am now the proud owner of reading glasses.
I must admit, I am not too crazy about having to wear reading glasses, mainly because they are kind of a pain to have to always have nearby just to read a set of instructions, or whatever that is not printed in a giant font.
I have long arms so I do not need to carry the glasses every where I go, but I do have to smile as I read a menu at arms length because I can remember watching 'old' people doing that when I was a young people.
Life is a funny thing, isn't it?

Did you hear that? I didn't

Selective hearing is an interesting condition, and not something I did on purpose.
You see, when my children were little I never heard them at night.
Honest, I did not do it on purpose, I just didn't hear them.
They could squawk in the black of night and I would be blissfully asleep, dreaming about not hearing any noise so I would not have to get up at some unholy hour.
My wife, on the other hand, would hear just about every little sound they made.
If they rolled over and rustled their sheets a little too loudly, the Missus was wide awake. Meanwhile, they could be playing the drums and I would be sleeping away without a care in the world.
To put it mildly, this used to drive my wife nuts.
"Didn't you hear Junior crying for juice last night at 3 a.m?"
"Nope."
"Really? You didn't hear a thing?"
"Sorry dear, but the only thing I was aware of last night was the dream I had where I was wearing a purple spandex uni-tard while juggling two squirrels and a chihuahua. What do you think that means?"
She would then tell me the tale of her dragging herself out of bed at an hour no one should have to, to take the little one a cup of juice.
When the youngsters were babies and I did not have the ability to feed them, it was not that much of an issue.
I did not have the necessary equipment to make the situation better, so the Missus would take care of things while I snoozed away – a situation I felt guilty about. Honest, I did, really.
The problems really began when they got older and I still did not hear them.
I suspect right about now there are many mothers out there wishing me some sort of annoying rash as pay back for all those extra hours of sleep I was able to get.
Sorry ladies, but that darned selective hearing selected not to hear the little ones in the dead of night - that is unless my wife was not around.
One weekend, she went out of town for a work thing (or so she claimed anyway) which left me alone with two small kids and a dog.
Being the only parent in the house, an amazing thing happened ñ I could hear every noise the offspring made.
In fact, my hearing became so in tune with the household, the dog would fart and I would sit bolt upright.
One of the kids would rustle in his bed and I was suddenly more awake than a caffeine addict after getting a Starbucks fix. It sucked.
I survived the weekend, expanded my appreciation for my wife and her mothering abilities, and found the whole thing rather odd.
When the Missus returned, I told her about how a bug belch would wake me up and I could tell she was enjoying this new-found hearing ability.
Her eyes got a dreamy, far-away, glazed-over look as she anticipated more sleep-filled nights while we shared the late-night duties of raising our spawn.
My new super sonic hearing did not last however, and the first night the little woman was home I could have slept through a thermal-nuclear strike.
I heard nothing, not a peep, not a rustle, not a single blessed sound.
But every time my wife had to go out of town, I would tune in to the sounds coming from the kid's rooms like an old mother hen ñ a flabby, bald mother hen, but a mother hen nonetheless.
So why does this happen? Beats me (something my wife felt like doing on more than one occasion I am sure), but that's the way it was.
Now that my kids are teenagers they have selective hearing.
ìClean up your roomî somehow translates into ìI have nothing for you to do today, so play video games and talk to your friends online.î
The only time they truly hear what I have to say is if the words ìmoneyî and ìfoodî are involved.
Darn that selective hearing.

United we stand...

One day, when my children were little, they wanted to do something they were not allowed to do and I informed them of this.
ìBut why can't we? Why? Why? Why?î
OK, now husbands please pay attention to this next bit, because the answer I gave is so far from the correct answer it is not even on the same continent.
With my young children questioning why a certain rule is in place, I responded, ìLook, I don't make the rules around here, alright. Your mom does.î
Warning! Warning! You have just foolishly stepped into the how-to-make-your-wife-madder-than-a-fat-guy-at-a-salad-bar zone.
Upon hearing my answer ñ which was said before I really thought about it - the Missus turned an interesting shade of red. The vein in her forehead was not only pulsing, it was taking on Incredible Hulk-like proportions.
For a brief moment I was mesmerized by what was happening, but that fascination quickly turned to a sense of 'I think I just screwed up.'
I was right, I did screw up.
I knew I had made a mistake of epic proportions and quickly filed the information under the don't-ever-do-that-again category ñ with a big read sticker on it, flashing lights and siren should those words ever attempt to escape from my vocal chords again.
I have been known to be a little on the sarcastic, smart ass side of life and this is one of those times it did not bode well for me.
It was an attempt at humour, but it was an attempt that failed, resulting in a closed-door 'discussion' with my better half.
The Missus was not impressed that I would make her the bad guy, er, gal, and blame her for being such a stick in the mud and creating all those rules that were repressing our little ones.
She failed to see the humour for some reason. Needless to say, the Missus was not too thrilled with the man she chose to be her lawfully wedded spouse until death do us part.
And if looks could kill, the parting would have happened and the young 'uns would likely have a new daddy right now because the original daddy didn't know when to shut the hell up.
You see, kids will believe pretty much everything you tell them ñ when they are young anyway ñ so the Missus did not want the sproggs blaming her for all the silly rules in our home, like brush your teeth before going to bed, no chocolate before breakfast or no setting things on fire.
It is very important for a parental unit to be united when it comes to setting rules and enforcing those rules and apparently I broke that iron-clad bond when I blamed mom for all those rules I was talking about.
ìParenting is a partnership. We are in this together. We must be united, and if you say that again you will find out how comfortable it is to sleep in the shed in January,î was sort of how my wife explained the situation.
Of course, now that my children have reached their teen years it does not matter what I tell them because they know everything there has ever been, or ever will be worth knowing.
When the children are young, parents must be united on matters of discipline so the children grow into fine adults. When they are teens, parents my be united as a survival tactic more than anything else.
United we stand, divided we end up debating our teens about why they cannot leave their room in a state that most civilized nations would declare a disaster zone.
And the Missus was absolutely right in building a united front when they were younger, because that united front will get tested when the kids are older.