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## From The Desk Of Walter's Brain

Take a seat at Walt's brain's desk and see for yourself what's going on in there.
*HINT* It ain't always pretty, but it's always worth the read!

## what happened, america... afraid to break a sweat?

Okay, enough with the wheelie bags!
You’ve seen them, the ever-present suitcase with the pullout handle. But they’ve escaped the airport and they’re rolling out into city streets. On buses, in buildings, on their way to schools. Women, men— big, burly, manly men — even kids pulling their crap along behind them on tiny wheels. Wheelie backpacks. Yippie dogs in roller carts. Xerox repairmen dragging precision screwdrivers and toner cartridges bungeed to handcarts. Construction workers trundling toolboxes from site to site.
It’s sad, isn’t it, when an entire country loses its upper body strength.
What happened to the land of broad shoulders? Strapping young guys building the Golden Gate Bridge with their bare hands… Rosie, the Riveter flexing her guns to fight the Nazis…
I can’t seem to picture rugged explorers heading west, crossing the Great Plains. Daniel Boone, Lewis & Clark — double-shot, no-foam latte in one hand, wheelie bag of rabbit pelts in the other, making their way through the wilderness.
What happened, America?
Afraid to break a sweat?
Or maybe we’re just carrying too much crap. We’ll be donning powdered wigs soon; I can feel it, squinting through monocles while we pinch our snuff.
The United Fops of American’t.
One nation under-developed.
​
With doughnuts and Segways for all.
(see the video version of "this Wheelie Bag rant" on the home page or the audio version on our podcast.)

## swimming naked in gym class really happened

Boys being boys at New Trier 1970 (originally published on ChicagoNow, the Chicago Tribune’s blogging community) There are things the world did when I was a kid that, seen through today’s politically correct lens, would be unthinkable now. Driving without seat belts. Smoking while pregnant. Voting for Nixon. Swimming naked in gym class is another one. Wait! Naked? What? That’s right, we swam naked in high school gym class. Let that little thought nugget sink into your head for a second or two. The 21st century mind, drummed full of politically correctness for so many years, won’t parse that information quickly. Nude? Swimming? In school? Yep, mixed in with four weeks of volleyball, four weeks of softball, floor hockey, dodgeball, whatever… there were four weeks where we’d strip naked and splash around in the school pool with the other guys in class. In broad daylight. 3rd period. 6th period. Whenever we had gym. They’d have us run through the communal showers first, past the showerheads already going: hot, cold, cold, scalding, warm, freezing. Then it was up a few steps, through a passageway, straddling a pipe that inexplicably squirted water at our crotch, and to the pool--- where we’d dive off the blocks for a race or sit along the cold tile ledge waiting for our turn. Naked. Say what---? You got a problem with 20 or 30 teenaged boys in various stages of puberty, with any number of body issues--- good and bad --- jiggling around in front of each other and three or four fully clothed gym teachers, any one a potential Jerry Sandusky? Get your 2024 mind out of the gutter. The girls had P.E. They took swimming. They wore suits. Suits were mandatory for girls. So why were boys required to let it all hang out? As twisted as this practice was, it was not isolated to my particular high school in our quiet, little Chicago suburb. Men in Wisconsin, Michigan, other places in the Midwest, and as far away as Texas have this warm and fuzzy memory from childhood. They told me the same story in emails, comments, even a phone call. It seems kids on the coasts were mostly spared, but I may be wrong. One theory/excuse: nude, communal swimming among boys was natural, acceptable, a tradition dating back to the early 1900s. I mean, c’mon, boys swam naked with boys all the time down at the ol’ waterin’ hole--- no biggy. Folks done bathed in th' crick, too; took bars of Ivory soap with ‘em (it floats!). Why ya'll so all fired up? Another theory/alibi is that until pool filtration technology improved, swimsuits of the times were thought to carry loads of bacteria and potential diseases too much for the filters to handle. Men’s swimsuits back then were one-piece shirts and trunks made of heavy wool. The American Public Health Association set the standards for pool maintenance in 1926, which officially recommended male skinny-dipping. These guidelines went beyond schools to other indoor public pools including the YMCA--- where you could, according to the Village People: “get yourself clean” and “do whatever you feel.” Even after the science of chlorination advanced, the mandate remained until 1962. The practice, however, continued well into the 70s as my au naturel gym class will attest. “Haunt” might be too strong a word, but for the men who went through it, the experience sure sticks in their brains. For everyone else, it’s just too weird to believe. Clearly, I’m not the first guy to write about this odd, um, custom. “The reasons for this barbaric and hurtful practice were ill-founded,” Richard Senelick, a neurologist and medical director of the Rehabilitation Institute of San Antonio, writes in The Atlantic. “The need for hygiene, the fear of bathing suit threads clogging the pool or the desire to ‘build cohesion’ between young men” Senelick believed, resulted in boys’ “shame and embarrassment.” I don’t know if I’d say hanging around naked for an hour every day with my male classmates traumatized me. But I could see how it might for some boys. I think it helped that I’m blind as a bat without my glasses, so the whole experience was a blur--- literally. Can you imagine a nude gym class in 2024? The PC Police, as well as the actual police, would be all over it. My kids didn’t even shower after P.E.; it’s not a requirement. Lawyers would be lined up down the block. Yeeeeah, those were different times, simpler times--- when men were men and boys swam around naked in front of them. 8/30/24 ## NOT IF I SEE YOU FIRST ​​ I say “see ya” to people I meet that I know I’ll never meet again. Strangers in the elevator, cab drivers, people I know I’ll bump into only once in our lives. It’s my little joke to myself. Of the seven-something billion humans roaming the face of this planet, I’m pretty sure the story arc of the guy who asks me directions to the local tourist trap will never cross mine, ever again. The cosmos has other plans for us. ​ So I say: “see ya.” It’s my tip of the hat to the infinite void that is our existence. ​ And while you’re at it: have a nice day. ​ 7/27/23 |

## FILE ME UNDER: "WIMP"

​ Today is Income Tax Day in the U.S. Everyone knows that, right? I only know it because my wife has been walking my son through filling out his tax forms. Otherwise I wasn’t really aware of it being anything other than Tuesday.
That’s because I’ve never done my taxes. I’m no scofflaw, part of some protest and the Feds’ll be knocking down my door any minute. I’ve got no problem paying my fair share of taxes. The way I look at it, America is an exclusive country club and taxes are my dues. The cover charge to get into Club USA. I pay my taxes.
What I mean to say is: I’ve never done my own taxes. Forms have been sent to the IRS with my name on them since I was about 17 or 18. I’m just not the one who sent them. I’ve never filled out a tax form in my life, ever… I’ve never added line 23 to line 24 and subtracted line 12 or whatever it is you do.
It started when I was a teenager. The way I remember it, my dad had me on the payroll of the company he owned. Except I never actually worked there, not a day in my life. I’d go and play when I was little, run around. I'd get company pencils and other office supplies for the ride home. Take Your Kid to Work Day before it was a thing. But no work. He had me on the books, though, starting in high school. Every once in a while he’d give me something to sign. One of them was probably a tax return. I didn’t ask questions. I figured the less said about it, the better. Wink. My dad’s accountant handled the paperwork.
When I got an actual job a couple years later--- a bartender down at school ---I automatically had my dad’s accountant handle the taxes. I guess I could’ve jumped in, rolled up my sleeves, put on that little visor you's see in old movies, and filled out my own returns but I didn’t. I just went with the flow.
I was still flowing along after college when I worked as an assistant at a photo studio. I never had any deductions, no dependents, so I’m sure it wouldn’t’ve been a big deal to do my own taxes, but I had my dad’s guy take care of it…
Lazy? Yeah, maybe a little. But I’m sure a lot of people have accountants do their taxes. I know a few accountants who’re probably happy for people like me. I don’t drill my own teeth or cut my own hair, either. I didn’t perform my own quadruple bypass!
Of course, since I’ve been married, my wife does our taxes. And I let her. Yeah, I know. Not very manly. She insists the kids do their own taxes so they learn to be self sufficient, knowledgeable about money, and not wussy like me. That’s a good thing. Me? I feel like a wimpy, little Nancy boy this time of year. But only for a day or two, then it fades.
So, Happy Tax Day everybody! Or as I like to call it: Tuesday.
4/18/23

## FINDING YOUR INNER GRASSHOPPER

​ You know the old Aesop’s fable about the Grasshopper and the Ant, right?
The hard-working, industrious ant spends his warm, summer days gathering bits of food for the brutal winter ahead. The lazy, good-for-nothing grasshopper, on the other hand, spends his time dancing and singing and otherwise screwing around. Aesop’s thinly veiled morality tale extols the virtues of hard work while chastising the frivolities of, well, joy.
Aesop, if he really existed, was a Greek slave by most accounts. He’d spin his fables to a receptive crowd, the legend goes, in an attempt to win his freedom. As a slave, his POV was probably a bit skewed. I’m sure he was all too familiar with hard work. Joy? Maybe not so much. Plus: he wasn’t up on his entomology. The harsh reality that Aesop didn’t know or conveniently left out was that grasshoppers, in general, don’t live through the winter.
Grasshoppers hatch in spring, spend five to six weeks shedding their exoskeletons in, pretty much, their awkward teenager phase until they’re fully grown. They spend summer to early fall eating and laying or fertilizing eggs, depending on their gender. They get about two months and that’s it. By autumn, when temperatures drop, they drop, too--- dead.
Ants, however, kick back during frigid weather, hibernating underground, waiting for the next spring thaw. Behaving like hoarders makes sense for an ant. Grasshoppers don’t need to save for later because for them there is no later. Grasshoppers don’t need a 401K. A grasshopper that gathers food for next year is like the businessman who talks about retiring “someday” only to collapse from a massive stroke on the way to his retirement party.
The other major tidbit Aesop’s story leaves out is that the ant busting his thorax all summer is a worker ant--- because if you’re not the queen of the hill or one of her mates, you’re a worker.
Worker ants are wingless and female and not so much industrious by choice as they are genetically programmed to work. They’re born into the job; they know nothing else. Like Jango Fett’s clones or kids whose parents own a restaurant, their die is cast from the get-go.
I was in fairly serious ant mode for a big chunk of my life, but I’ve switched lately to a grasshopper state of mind. That’s the moral I want for my fable.
Take that Aesop…
​
4/12/23

## WHAT I WANT

## NO FOOLING

​ “A fool’s errand”
I couldn’t tell you the first time I heard that phrase but I loved it right off the bat. It just conjures up all sorts of weird images in my head.
A fool’s errand refers to a task someone is attempting to do that has no chance of success. It’s a dumb idea. They are certain to fail but they’re going to try it anyway. Typically one person will send another person on a fool’s errand. Think frat house hazing. Or intern prank.
But in my head, I’m picturing a court jester picking up his dry cleaning. Or getting the emissions tested on the King’s carriage. You know, it’s Saturday, the palace fool’s only day off, the only time he gets a chance to run errands. So he’s out getting the bells tuned up on his pointy shoes or stopping by Ye Olde Joke Shoppe to see if those new tricks he ordered came in. He’s swinging by the bank or dropping his kids at soccer. Checking stuff off his Fool’s To Do List.
Because any fool can see those errands won’t do themselves.
12/12/22

## SMELLS LIKE HOLY SPIRIT

11/18/2022
I saw a Jesus air freshener the other day, hanging from a rearview mirror of a parked car. I am not making this up. A Toyota Corolla, I think.
It was Jehovah-shaped, a cutout with a picture on both sides. An artist’s rendering, not a photo, it looked like, I’m sure: long hair, beard, two fingers up in that little peace gesture he does. And I wondered— what does a Jesus air fresher smell like?
Pine tree shaped air fresheners smell like a lovely Douglas Fir, we all know that. If it’s shaped like a bunch of cherries, it smells like maraschino. But what did Jesus smell like? You know, back in the day.
​
Old Spice, I’m thinking.

## HBD BRA

11/3/2022
It’s the brassiere’s birthday today! Yes, the over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder, as we used to call them when we were, like, 12--- is 108 years old! Or not, depending on where you Google.
November 3rd, 1914 is noted as the day the first patent for the modern brassiere was filed with the US patent office. Ah, but some sort of female support contraption has been hanging around for centuries. But let’s make this easy and say it’s today.
Fashion changes with the times, obviously: from poodle skirts to platform shoes to flannel shirts to skinny jeans… Some say that’s because fashion reflects the times. Everything from the length of women’s skirts to the color of their nail polish has been used to predict economic fluctuations. In general, fashion trends say a lot about the attitudes of a culture.
I surfed past a 70s movie the other day, a courtroom drama, I believe. The lead actress was dressed in a sweater. Not a tight, Farrah sweater; it was smart and conservative, somewhat loose. It was obvious after a second or two that the actress wasn’t wearing a bra. I didn’t go all Beavis and Butthead; it was no big deal. Then I tried to remember the last time I saw that fashion “statement” in a movie or on the train or at the office.
There was a time when women routinely went braless (mainly during my formative years) (Yay, me!). It seemed normal, “natural.” Women were said to have burned bras around that time to protest the male-dominated ideal of women’s roles and to free themselves. It was an open, honest time.
But those times, they were a-changin’… 21st century women wouldn’t dare be caught without a bra. Remember when lack of that undergarment was big news, making headlines when “American Hustle” came out a while back, a movie set in the braless past.
Bras aren’t only ever-present, they’re formidable contraptions now. Like a flak jacket, heavily padded with wires running through them sometimes, to push up and out or hold down. They make the perfect companion to impossibly tight, skinny jeans and button-busting blouses in highlighter marker colors.
Bra straps are proudly on display. I can remember my mother and sisters going to great lengths to hide their bra straps, safety-pinning them to their top or wearing alternate strap configurations: crisscross or strapless. Now women don’t bother.
Guys’ fashions followed a parallel path. Just look at old footage of NBA games: Abdul-Jabbar or Bird going for a lay-up in their Daisy Dukes. Tighty-whities were the underwear of choice. Speedos. Male croptops.
Some experts believe you can tell a lot about society’s collective psyche by looking at their clothes. Today’s cultural wardrobe with its over-sized, covered-up, strapped-in, sausage-casing fashions, fits perfectly.

## GR8 NMS 4 U

10/20/2022
Beyonce. Adele. LaBron. These people have only one name.
Awkwafina. Obama. Lizzo. They don’t have time for any more.
Halsey. Oprah. Ye. Their day planners are completely crammed.
And the people who love them, of course, and adore them and speak their singular names fondly to each other in lunch rooms and day spas across this great country of ours don’t have that kind of time either. They’ve got stuff to do. They’ve got C-List celebrity dancers to vote off and spam to filter. They’ve got YouTube.
We LOL, WTF, IMHO. We DM. We get MRIs and CTs for our ADD.
Ozark. SWAT. Veep. Point. Click. Surf.
Minions. Amsterdam. Dune. Entertainment. Short. Sweet. Done.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, these days, is a doctorate dissertation, so twentieth century when we could spare the extra syllables. Englebert Humperdinck, these days, would’ve had a name-ectomy by now.
Like P-Diddy or AOC. He’d go with E-hump, something like that.
Maybe it’s all the texting. RU@KFC kind of thing. “Thx” instead of “Thanks” shaves those all-important nanoseconds from our already jam-packed lives, leaving us time to ponder the meaning of existence. Yeah, maybe that’s it.
​
Maybe it’s all that time on our Pelotons. Peddling in place, creating the illusion we’re going somewhere, moving ahead somehow, even though we’re standing still. Or maybe the cold, harsh, brutal reality is— we really don’t have that much to say.

## Eat Me!

01/27/2013
Whenever I see one of those big guys, those beefy athletic guys, not roly-poly chubby guys, but stocky ex-high school jocks, that kind of guy. Every time I see one of them coming my way, especially in shorts, I think: “Man if I were ever stranded on a deserted island, no food, and had to resort to cannibalism, I’d sure like to have a guy like that along.”
Okay, I’m not a big fan of cannibalism, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a practicing cannibal; I don’t make a habit of it. But I respect it as a lifestyle choice, I guess, like vegans or the Rotary, if that’s your thing. So if the situation ever came up, if I was ever pressed into making that decision, and it’d be a tough one: eat human flesh or starve in the Andes, I really want to have a big beefy guy nearby.
I’m not thinking about his ass at this point, this meal ticket, when he’s lumbering toward me, though that’s where the biggest chunk of meat is, the rump roast. I’m not imagining that to be a tasty morsel. I’m turning my head to the side; I’m looking at his calves. I’m eyeing those two big drumsticks, those huge Fred Flintstone drumsticks. I’m picturing Wilma serving them to me on a giant, prehistoric dinner plate that tips my car on its side.
There’s no real point to the supermodel matchstick gams. Nice to look at, sure, but save those for the first course, the hors d’oeuvre platter. No, give me the six hours on the Stair Master ham-hocks, that softball-in-the-park, honkin’ juicy dark meat.
Think about it the next time you get on a plane. Switch seats with your fellow passengers until you’re next to the beefiest guy in the cabin. He may come in handy!

## Go Bless Yourself

03/13/2013
I stopped saying “bless you” to people when they sneeze.
I used to be a big bless you guy, jumping in mid-sneeze before the spittle even settled. Dutifully blessing total strangers, if necessary, calling out into crowds sometimes, blanketing the room to catch the anonymous sneezer, leaving no expectoration unacknowledged. Not to single out anyone’s deity, I went with the non-secular bless you and left the God part to someone else.
It’s an old custom; it’s polite. It’s up there with “please” and “thank you” and “your zipper’s open.” It’s the thing to do.
Then I started thinking about it.
One theory says, a long time ago, back when we all wore buckles on our hats, we believed “bless you” could ward off the Black Plague. Another theory says people thought demons would somehow occupy our body or our soul or our sinuses, I guess, whenever we sneezed. Commanding God to bless the sneezer soon after warded off the devil spawn and kept the hay fever sufferer demon-free. “Prithee kind sir, whilst I work my magic and keep thee absent of nasal imps.” Or something like that.
Which made me think some more:
Okay, there might be a God out there someplace, but demons? I’m not so sure. I can’t say I possess that kind of expertise. And battling evil spirits who can jump into your very soul the split second between Ahhh and Chooo, that’s really outside my skill set. I certainly don’t feel I wield the kind of power it’d take to keep them at bay so I stopped pretending I did.
I stopped saying: “bless you.”
And now there’s this huge empty space after the sneeze when the sneezer looks at me, waiting, waiting, narrowing their eyes after they don’t get the expected response. They’re thinking: Hey, what’s gotten into this guy?
I don’t know, demons, maybe?

## Movin' On Up

03/22/2013
I never took advanced placement classes in school. No honors English. No AP Biology. I was definitely not a candidate for skipping a grade. In fact, in some cases, I kind of went in the other direction. But the conventional wisdom goes like this:
“Whoa, Johnny’s doing really well in Freshman Algebra. He’s acing all his tests, 104% on everything he does. He understands the theories easily, absorbs information like a sponge. He’s way ahead of any other kid in his class.”
The conventional solution for Johnny’s terrible predicament goes like this:
“Since Johnny’s doing so incredibly well, sailing through his present level, it obviously means he’s not being ‘challenged’ by the work. Learning what’s expected of him and getting straight A’s must be boring to poor Johnny. Let’s pull Johnny out of that tedious, ol’, age-appropriate, Freshman class and stick him into a more ‘advanced,’ more ‘stimulating’ Sophomore class.”
In other words: let’s take Johnny out of an environment where he’s far superior to everyone around him, a situation where he can excel, and artificially introduce him into a new environment where he’s just average again.
Congratulations Johnny, you’ve just been rewarded! (Said the kid in remedial reading.)

## Yawning Of A New Era

04/02/2013
I was treated again to an unedited view of the inside of a stranger’s mouth today.
Fillings, bridgework, Juicy Fruit, the whole show. A lady, and I’m stretching the term here, on the train let loose with an all-out, open-mouthed, hippo yawn. It was like Animal Planet a foot and a half away. People do these now, the wide-open cavern yawn. On the street, busses, stores, wherever. Extending their jaws like snakes swallowing a pig. Maybe they don’t remember where they are, unaware they’re outside. Or they don’t see thirty other people around. Could be they don’t realize they’re yawning. Maybe they’re just really proud of their dental work.
I think about these yawning hippos as I dodge the globs of spit, hocked up loogies spattered freely across the city’s sidewalks interspersed with cigarette butts, burning and not burning, and samples of crap products nobody seems to want even for free.
Ah, but then I think, you know, that open-mouthed yawn could’ve been an uncovered sneeze.

## What're You Lookin' At?

4/20/2013
There were over 311 million people in the United States in 2011 and AC Nielson says 290 million of them are television viewers. Not so surprising, 290 million. Not as surprising as the other number— the 311 minus 290 number. Because if 290 million butts are in 290 million La-Z-Boys at any given time, where are the other 21 million butts?
I always figured there must be SOME strange people out there who didn’t watch TV, some weird lone wolves trying to buck the system, but 21 million? That’s a lot of unsedentary asses. What’re these people staring at instead of Survivor? What other diversion have they come up with to tick away the irretrievable minutes on their life clocks? How do they keep busy while eating dinner?
These folks can’t all be mountain men, living by their wits, unplugged, in the wilderness. Even hermits can get Dish TV nowadays. Are they street people? Heroin addicts? Smug college professors?
I feel sorry for them, these poor losers; they’ve missed so much already. I’m sure none of them can quote Seinfeld catch phrases. Or sing the Empire carpet jingle. I bet they’ve never Danced with the Stars. And odds are, they’ve never seen one, single Girl going Wild.
It’s their own fault, you know. TVs are everywhere. If these oddballs aren’t watching one, they’ve only themselves to blame. I suppose they’re too busy watching sunsets and surfing the actual ocean. Or talking to each other. Maybe they’re doing something really scary: like reading.

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