RICKSTER IS THE COLUMNIST FOR THE WEEKLY PUBLICATION, "THE SOMERS RECORD"

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Friday, February 23, 2018

WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (11-09-17)

     Remember when it used to rain "cats and dogs," and you might step into a poodle? Well, those days are over. It never just rains anymore. Instead we have "weather events," which make them sound like something fun that you could show up to with a folding chair, a pair of binoculars and some potato chips. I don't know whether this is due to climate change or the rampant hyperbole of our times, but you can't leave your house anymore during a rainstorm, because torrential downpours, gusting winds and severe conditions are out to get you. If you do chance it, don't stand next to anything that looks remotely unstable, and that includes Charlie Sheen.
     We had a rainstorm last Monday, and it blew down trees, utility poles and knocked out power all around Somers and elsewhere. Don't just stand around and wait for things to blow over, because the thing that blows over might be YOU. The next day if you turn on your TV you'll see pictures of oak trees that fell through peoples' attics and cars sitting in the middle of flooding in the street. The good news is that you won't see any of that if a tree fell on your TV.
     And then there is lightning. The odds of you being struck by lightning in your lifetime are approximately one in 3,000, but if you ARE struck the odds just went up dramatically. People are always saying that whatever dumb thing they're trying to get you to do has less of a chance of hurting you than being hit by lightning. And after you've signed that disclaimer and the bungee cord snaps over the ravine and you go plunging toward the raging river, you have the comfort of knowing that at least you weren't hit by lightning.
     Lightning is a little like nature's short circuit. Negatively charged particles that form by movement and cooling within clouds are attracted to positively charged objects on Earth, and a release of electrostatic energy occurs in the form of lightning. You may be charged yourself, but you can just put it on PayPal like I did.
     There are some facts and fallacies about lightning. Wearing rubber shoes will not protect you from lightning, nor will they protect you from being looked down upon by people with more stylish footwear. People talking on landline telephone are the most likely to get hit by an indoor lightning strike. If you have caller ID make sure the call isn't coming from a rain cloud.
     People performing outdoor chores such as mowing the lawn are also at greater risk. That's why if you hear thunder within 30 seconds of seeing lightning you should head indoors. For the sake of safety I stop mowing the lawn just before I start in case I can't hear the thunder. Those involved with organized sports should be prepared to take cover sooner in the event of an electrical storm. Those involved with disorganized sports should be prepared for just about anything.
     All of this is making it hard for romance to blossom during inclement weather, as it once did. Remember that song "Laughter in the Rain" by Neil Sedaka? Neither do I because I'm way too young, of course. But if he wrote it today he would be singing the popular refrain, "Ooh, I hear laughter in the weather event, walking hand in hand during a wind advisory." Do you know how many words rhyme with "wind advisory?" Enough for Neil Sedaka to have a flourishing career at Home Depot.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE?

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (11-02-17)

     I get that question every Halloween because I refuse to go the lazy route and just buy a costume from the store. So I make my own, and the vision I have in my head does not necessarily translate to reality. "What are you supposed to be?" To that I answer, a little more well-adjusted, better at math and probably too old for this kind of thing.

     This year I went as "Hurricane Maria." I already had a dress for the occasion from past costumes, although it did seem a little fuller in the bosom this year, make of that what you will. I accessorized with some fiberfill "clouds," and I used a battery-operated fan and a plant sprayer to simulate actual hurricane conditions as a maelstrom of detritus and debris rotated above me. As weather systems go, if a qualified meteorologist had evaluated me I would have been downgraded from a "category 5" to a category somewhere near "personality disorder."

     The costume party was at a really nice house on the Island, all decked out for the occasion with cobwebs and spiders all over the place. I realize now that my garage celebrates Halloween all year round. My wife told me there was a huge spider in the basement, and that I had to deal with it. Don't kill the spiders, I said, they eat all the bugs. She insists that a spider IS a bug, only bigger and stronger from eating a bunch of bugs. How big could this thing really be? I went down there with a Kleenex to flush it down the toilet. Turns out this spider was GINORMOUS, and it looked like a tarantula with hairy legs and everything. Might need some heavier artillery, perhaps an anti-tank gun or something. All I had was a newspaper, and it wasn't even the Sunday section. I was sheltering in place behind the pool table until I could figure out what to do, and I ended up pleading with it to spare our lives and leave us in peace, or at least shave its legs now and then.

     Anyway, the party was fun, they had a band, a food table and an open bar. I like seeing people exercise their imaginations, especially people with fat and out of shape imaginations that haven't seen any exercise in a while. There were pirates, priests, witches, superheroes, monsters and ogres, all acting as if everything was perfectly normal. It was like a joint session of Congress. There were people dancing with the devil, cats were cavorting with mice, Freddie was chatting with Jason.

     As I looked behind me I noticed that I was hemorrhaging little pieces of fluffy fiberfill all over this guy's house. Incidents like this are precisely the reason I don't store any data on the cloud. I had a ping pong ball shaped like an eyeball that I got off the internet sitting at the top of my costume, but it almost dropped into the baked ziti. On the floor were feathers, body parts, colored hair and bits of clothing. As the evening wore on it started to look less like a party and more like a crime scene. I was starting to get some blowback because of the plant sprayer. I thought it might be time for this hurricane to make landfall at home before the cops roped the place off with yellow tape.

     I realize Halloween is just an excuse for adults to be something or someone else for a day. Maybe you've always wanted to be an astronaut. Perhaps you've always wanted a tail. Does this Grim Reaper sickle make me look fat? Yes, last Saturday I wore a lovely gown, but I wouldn't read too much into it. It's not like I had a Louis Vuitton bag to go with it or anything. That being said, Christmas is coming up and I wear a size 16 dress, just mentioning it.

Friday, February 9, 2018

WHERE THERE’S SMOKE THERE’S A FRYER

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (10-26-17)

     We stopped by the Somers Fire Department Annual Open House last Saturday to check in with our local fire-fighting professionals who keep us safe day after day, and sometimes at night. After making sure I didn't park in front of a hydrant or anything, we got out of the car and immediately noticed some smoke coming from the rear of the firehouse. My wife asked one of the fire-fighters if he knew there was a fire in the back of the building. "Yes, we started it!" He exclaimed as he rushed by toward the smoke.

     He didn't seem at all embarrassed, and I told my wife that it was probably a brush fire started by a hairbrush placed too close to a hairdryer or something. Bravely, I continued on into the firehouse to check in with Jody, the Somers Fire Chief. He informed me that one of the things they do during Open House is a controlled burn in a specially constructed house designed to demonstrate how fires start, where they start and how quickly they spread.

     Chief Jody is also the Fire Inspector. He told me that you should have a smoke detector within 10 feet of all sleeping areas. I'm pretty sure that includes the conference room at work where I get most of my REM sleep. He went on to say that soon smoke alarms will have a lithium-ion battery in them that lasts 10 years. When the battery is about to die, it beeps and you just throw it out and get a new one. If it contains the same lithium-ion battery that bursts into flames in hover-boards and e-cigarettes, it will certainly cut out the middle-man, but I'm sure they'll get that straightened out.

     At Open House they touch on other fire safety subjects, too. For instance, you should have your chimney cleaned regularly by a qualified professional. We had ours cleaned a while back, and I was expecting a British bloke with a top hat who could sing and dance. Instead this really tiny guy appeared, who looked like he might have been nesting there all along. In case he wanted to break into a couple numbers, I started him off with a little "Chim Chim Cher-ee," but he just asked where the bathroom was in a language I couldn't understand, possibly English.

     Did I ever tell you about the time I burnt down our kitchen? I was living at home with my parents after college, and I was cooking some frozen French fries on the stove. Now, I don't know how they do things over there in France, but my technique was to let the oil pre-heat for a while, say, approximately until just before the house burns down. Luckily, something told me to drop what I was doing and check back in on the pre-heating process, which had progressed all the way to the conflagration stage. That something was my Dad, yelling at me to call the fire department and get the extinguishers.

     Chief Jody told me that's about the dumbest thing you can do, trying to fight anything more than a little flare-up with a fire extinguisher. Just get out, he said, get your loved ones out, and let the fire-fighters do their job. I can think of something even dumber, which is a specialty of mine: fighting fire with fire. Whose bright idea was that? Thank god the fire extinguisher manufacturers didn't buy into that idea.

     The most important safety feature that there is is common sense. There is a goofy scene in the movie "Gravity" where George Clooney propels himself through space using a fire extinguisher. It's just the sort of thing Clooney would do. Thank god that when I was busy not using common sense and leaving something unattended on a heated stove, that George Clooney hadn't made off with our fire extinguishers to go gallivanting around in the solar system.

Friday, February 2, 2018

SHOW ME A SIGN

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (10-19-17)

     My sister Kathy is taking an advanced class in American Sign Language. She has no plans to become an interpreter, so I assume she is doing it so that she can talk behind peoples' backs without asking them to turn around. She says that for now she is better at talking in the language than she is at listening, but it seems like most people have that problem right now, hearing impaired or not.

     People have been communicating without words since the dawn of man, and ASL dates back to the 1800s. It uses an alphabet composed of hand symbols and motions, as well as movements called "classifiers," which in some cases are similar to pantomimes. The signs usually use only the hands, but other parts of the body may also come into play. And to make things more confusing, sign language can differ in other countries just as much as written language.

     I'm familiar with the usual hand gestures, like "check please!" where you sign a little imaginary restaurant bill with a little imaginary pen, or "A-OK!" where you make a little circle with your first two fingers and hold the rest up like a rooster's comb, or the sexist comment, "dangerous curves," where you wave two arcs in the air with both hands, three if she also has a thorax. And, of course, the one-finger-in-the-air signal I got the other day when I ACCIDENTALLY cut someone off in traffic, which I assume means, "I was here first."

     We're all getting older here, and I wish my senses would come to their senses. My eyes are temperamental, and after fifty years of playing in rock bands, I have to admit my ears are not what they used to be, and maybe they never were. My wife thinks I need a seeing-eye dog and a hearing-ear dog. I wish that I could have my entire life closed-captioned so that I would know what's going on. I mistook the words "dress pants" for " trespass" once and it got me into a lot of trouble. I don't know if there will be a hearing regarding the incident but I haven't heard anything.

     People use sign language all the time without even thinking about it. I was watching the Supremes on an old Ed Sullivan Show with the sound muted, and I could ascertain that I should stop in the name of love before I broke their hearts without even hearing the music. Then I noticed that Diana Ross made the sign for "pass interference" and then "illegal use of hands," so just be aware that the Supremes may be difficult to please.

     Politicians usually have interpreters for the deaf at press conferences now, and it's hard to concentrate on what the speaker is saying with all the dramatics that go on in the corner of the television screen. Some of these people look like they are trying out for a part in Swan Lake, a part somewhere near the deep end of the lake where it's hard to swim.

     Like everything else these days there is a lot of fine-tuning that comes with a better understanding of the subject. Some who were born without hearing prefer the term "deaf" to "hearing-impaired," which might be more accurate for people who experienced hearing loss later in life. Some identify with a "Deaf Culture" unique to their set of challenges and beliefs, while others prefer to assimilate fully into a mainstream culture and let adaptation on both sides happen organically.

     So let me just sum things up by saying that I probably didn't hear what you just said. That being possibly said, actions speak louder than words, so when all is said and done, no one will hear you if you didn't do anything.