Tag: Misadventures

It’s been a long time since anyone has called me a potty mouth; even so when my wife hears the words, she still gets the giggles.

If any of you have worked in the industry world like I have most of my life, terms like “Lock, Tag, Try” and “Three Way Communication” are slogans that the safety departments drill into us to keep employees from getting hurt.

“Lock, Tag, Try” of course means to lock out a piece of machinery and tag it with an explanation of why it is locked out. Then you try to start the piece of machinery to verify it is indeed dead.

“Three-way communication” means that someone gives you an instruction and you repeat it back. Then, the original person confirms that yes, that is indeed is what he meant or in my case, I get a blank look and the requestor starts all over again.

I was lamenting to my wife Cheryl a few years back about being out of shape and how the young muscular guys at work were giving me a complex. She was quick to remind me that the best I could hope for was a simplex. Then she suggested that we take the grandkids on a hike in the mountains.

I found it hard to explain to my daughter Kalene that there were no such thing as haunted toilets. After my traumatic experience, I had a hard time convincing myself.

From the laundry room came a piercing scream … “My delicate underwear is completely tangled with your Velcro helmet liner! How many times have I told you…”?

I tried calming the situation by assuring her, “Don’t worry dear, good commercial grade Velcro is hard to damage.”

I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast as Cheryl entered with a large ball of fabric just taken from the dryer. I could tell by the look on her face that I would be buying new underwear when suddenly she looked out the back window and realized she had left the porch umbrella up all night.

“Oh crumb! Look at the umbrella rocking back and forth in the wind. I’d better go out there and collapse it before it gets torn to shreds.”

Cheryl and I have visited four of the Hawaiian islands: Oahu, Kauai, The Big Island, and Maui.

I would rate them as #1 Kauai, #2 The Big Island, #3 Maui, and #4 Oahu. This is based on things that interest me.

In the early 1920s a phrase was coined which stated, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” That being the case I started thinking, “Maybe my audience includes story writers who don’t know they can write stories.” So here is my idea, I’ll post some photos and you make up your own stories of what you think happened in each photo. Then I will tell you the real story behind the photo. We’ll compare your creativity with the truth. This will save me a great deal of time that I would otherwise have had to put out for this week’s blog post.  It seems like a simple exercise; let’s try it.

For the longest time he had no name. Perhaps if he had not made a simple mistake, we never would have known his true identity.