KRYPTONITE

Aside from being a precious gem from another world that could literally kill the Man of Steel, Superman, aka Kal El, aka Clark Kent, Kryptonite is also the name of a Top Number One Hit from the band 3 Doors Down, circa 2000.

I wasn't a fan of the song, at first, if I gotta be honest.  When it'd come on the radio I'd clench my teeth and work my way through it or change the channel.  It wasn't until one weekend when I attended a bachelor party.  My memory is a little foggy on the evening.  (I wasn't drinking, but my memory is SO terrible these last few years and it's only getting worse - ha ha.)

I believe we had a nice supper, somewhere.  May have attended a bar at some point.  I really don't remember.  Can't even recall whose bachelor party it was, to be honest.  However, what I DO recollect is our attending the local strip club.  I can't for the life of me, remember the name of the place, but it's long gone and it doesn't matter for the sake of the story.

As I stated, I was not drinking, so when the bunch of guys left to table to go do shots or something, I was left alone at the table.  Situated next to the dance floor/stage where the nice girls were strutting their stuff, I looked like some pervy guy seated alone.  So when the song "KRYPTONITE" came blasting over the airwaves and an attractive strawberry blonde dancer came over to the table next to me, I politely turned my chair and looked away.  

Now if I'm being completely honest, I didn't turn all the way.  I turned just enough.  My peripheral vision is most excellent, still to this day.  Now, that combined with a few casual glances, now and again, was enough for me to appreciate her performance.  The young woman was putting her heart and soul into this dance.  To quote Donna Summer, "She Works Hard For The Money".  She was earning that tip from the next table. 

When the song concluded, I was thankful, as I never cared much for the song up to that point.  The dancer strode across the stage to her bag, withdrew a poster and walked sexily back to the table next to me where she'd just been dancing, fully nude, for the table of young men.

One, let's be honest, boy, opened his wallet and began fingering through many bills.  I glanced at her eager reaction, hoping for a sizeable donation, but that looked quickly disappeared from her face, replaced with disdain.  She was visibly upset, for the young fella pulled out a measly ten dollar bill then asked if she had change.

My jaw literally dropped.  I could not believe that these three people sat and watched this lovely woman flash them all her pretty pink parts and they wanted change for a f*cking ten.  She told them off, turned to me and rewarded me with the poster.  I never gave her any money and she didn't want any from me.

Since that evening, circa 2000 or so, whenever that song comes on the radio, I'm reminded of how stupid, ignorant, and arrogant some people are.  Okay. Okay.  If I'm being honest, when the song comes on, I just remember that asshole asking the stripper for change and her getting angry.  And I actually like the song, too.

....Always tip your waitress and your stripper.... 😄

Tap Dancing

Listening to the radio the other day, when a solo, Clayton spoke up about the person at his local Tim Horton's laughed at him when he produced his debit card to pay for his morning coffee, then proceeded to insert the chip and punch in his password and so on.  "You don't have tap?" she scoffed.  The situation caused nothing more than an uncomfortable situation and subject matter for the morning show.  Normally, Clayton has an announce partner, Stacie, who was absent this day, so Clayton had the listening audience weigh in. 

Clayton described that he did not have the TAP feature on his debit card, adding that he felt it wasn't a necessary feature. Plus, he mentioned, it's way too easy for someone to steal your wallet and go on a spending spree.  I can't say that I don't agree, as that last part never even entered my mind.  Thank you Clayton for adding to my list of presently existing paranoia's. 😄 

Like Clayton, I resisted the TAP feature on my debit card for a very long time, finally succumbing to peer pressure when I began getting stuck behind slowpokes in checkout lines, who'd leisurely punch buttons searching for the right bank account and yada yada yada.  It was impatience that finally tipped the scales for me, a decision that I've come to regret, although I continue to use the TAP feature on my card.

I recall being a young boy, in seventh or eighth grade when another classmate, Jimmy, presented a news article in class.  The short article described how in the future, cash money would no longer be required, going on to explain that we'd all have plastic cards that would access our money.  The article also mentioned that the Devil was behind the science to bring about easier access to our monies, a factor that had our young minds oohing and aahing, at the time, but in retrospect, seems far-fetched.  The news article being little more than the rantings of some bible-loving crackpot.  The whole thing sounded like fantasy, as if a practice featured on an episode of Star Trek.  

Not to date myself, I do remember that at that time, if you hadn't visited the bank by Friday afternoon, you didn't have money for the weekend.  However, Jimmy's news article eventually did come to fruition and the article he shared during that show and tell from my youth always played out in the back of my mind.

In the beginning, I remember having my card in hand and making frequent visits to my bank machine, which at the time would administer money in $5 increments.  We, as a society, no longer had to race to the bank by 5pm on a Friday if we wanted to do shit on a Saturday.  Plus, for a lazy guy like me, having to stop at any bank or bank machine to grab cash of any amount, was enough of a deterrent to prevent me from spending money, until...

Using our debit cards to access our bank accounts at stores, became a game changer.  No longer having to make an effort to stop, get out of the car, punch in my info a bank machine, getting charged a whopping $2.50 to access my own money,  just to grab a few bucks...  I began spending a little more money, as I imagine happened with a lot of people.

If anyone recalls this progressive step forward, there were a number of setbacks.  We'd swipe our card and often, nothing would happen, as the magnetic strip on the back of our cards would wear out, forcing clerks to improvise.  One method was cladding the card with a plastic bag.  The practice worked sometimes, but other times the clerk would then add a strip of scotch tape to the card, swipe it through the machine then tear away the tape like a band-aid on a scraped knee, taking the magnetic strip along with the tape, rendering the bank card virtually useless.  Society, already past the visiting the bank stage, would often meander through life, now with a shitty card that didn't work and aggravating people in checkout lines forever thereafter.

For every step forward that science and creativity provides us, usually we're pushed two steps backward.  Banking's effort to push us forward, was not working, so the chip was added to our cards.  No longer did we have to rely on crossing our fingers in hopes of the strip working, now we just had to insert the chip and punch in our shit.  This progressed crowds a little quicker, but we were still stuck behind grandma who just didn't quite "understand how these new-fangled things work" and lineups continued to grow.

Ever notice how when things change in an effort to make one's experience easier, tends to be plagued with negatives.  Everyone fails to see the big picture in favour of the benefits they believe with come of the changes.

I resisted getting the TAP feature on my card for the longest time, not because I was afraid of some dastardly dick stealing my wallet and accessing my vast (un) fortune, but more afraid that I'd be that very dastardly dick, TAP dancing all over town buying shit without really thinking about the consequences.  You may notice that the money flows much easier when you remove the arduous task of punching in security codes 'n' shit.  Sometimes I won't even realize how much money has drained from my account, due to this ease.

In recent weeks, my attempts to get my car up and running, had me traipsing all about town buying this and that and tapping my card every time.  I'm afraid to look at my account balance.  Spending money is way too easy, nowadays, and the rising prices aren't helping matters any.  Government and all these banking institutions bombard us with the necessity to save money, yet they make it so difficult to do so with the cost of living rising on a daily, dare I say, hourly basis.  Shit's gotten so bad, I think back to that Show & Tell with Jimmy and his crazy news article and I can't help but think, maybe the Devil is responsible.  The financial anguish definitely feels like torture.

Guitar Zero

I was tidying up the other day, clearing up some small trinkets and such off of my dresser.  There's a big mirror and my cat, when able, likes to hop up there and stare at himself in the mirror.  He's a vain little guy, but if I looked remotely as good as him, I might find myself staring into the mirror, too.

Among the trinkets and doo-dads, I found a guitar pick.  A solo, dark red pick that I immediately placed between my forefinger and thumb and made out like I was playing a guitar.  I don't know why, as I've not played a guitar since I was a very young boy and it can be debated whether or not the sounds that were emitted from that guitar, when I was a child, would be construed as being musical or reminiscent of a car accident.  It was probably better than I recall, but not nearly as good as my fellow students.

For decades, I've reflected on that time with a great deal of regret.  Not because I never followed through on my quest to become a guitarist, but because our family didn't have a lot of money.

We weren't poor, or at least I never felt like we were poor, but knowing what I do now, opposed to then, the money that was, for lack of a better term, wasted on my silly dream, was a lot of money.  Money that might have been spent better, elsewhere.  For that, I will always feel regret, but as best as I can recall, my mother was smiling when she was following me around the showroom of the shop where I had been taking my lessons.  (*Thinking about that, is genuinely bringing tears to my eyes.  Remind me, someone, to apologize to my mom.)  We never struggled, but maybe that was the image that my parents wanted to show in front of the kids.  Parents are good that way, aren't they?

After a year of taking lessons, I lost interest and the guitar, amp and stand that my parents had purchased for me, got shoved away, into the back of a closet, where it sat for many many years, untouched.  (A few years ago, while on one of my many unemployment stretches, I had a friend check out the guitar and amp and help me sell it.  We didn't get very much, but those feelings of regret, did come rushing back and I was overwhelmed with grief.)

Why did I quit?  For years, I believed it was because "my fingers hurt" or "I wasn't good right away", the latter being an excuse I heard from a favourite rock singer, which I always took some jaded source of pride for.  That's just dumb!!  However, that morning that I found the red guitar pick on my dresser and placed it betwixt my fingers, I realized why it was that I had quit playing guitar and, of course, many waves of emotions swept over me, once more.  Regret and shame and many other emotions, because that reason was so miniscule and stupid.  My parents wasted all that money on me for something this stupid!!

The reason wasn't because I wasn't good enough, right away.  It wasn't because my fingers hurt from pressing down the guitar strings.  The reason I had quit guitar lessons as a kid was because I didn't like holding the guitar pick.  Even all these years later, holding the pick in my hand and faking strumming motions on my upper thigh, I hated it.  After a few seconds, my hand began to cramp like it had when I was a child.  This...  This was the reason for my quitting guitar.

Now, in the days since this discovery, I've thought about what if I would have stuck with it.  I know that my fingers would have toughened up.  That the strength in my fingers would increase to where I didn't have so much difficulty pressing the strings into the neck of the guitar.  Even, perhaps, I would have earned an ear for music and even wrote some original music.  Even now, I find music playing in my head that I don't recognize from any of the influences around me.  I believe an artist staked the claim, once upon a time, that everyone had original music in their minds and hearts, it was just a question of being able to convey it onto paper and into the airwaves.  Of course, I'm paraphrasing, I don't recall the actual quote, but it's along those lines.

Now I'm thinking, 20/20 hindsight in play, of course, that if I had stuck it out, that I could have traded up to another instrument.  (I always liked the drums.  My dad loved the drums, but given our financial hardships when I was a kid, drums were definitely off the list.)  However, playing a bass guitar has it's advantages, namely, not having to use a pick.  I know that some people use a pick, but not needing to use it is a huge advantage, I think.

In the weeks that have followed, I've found myself really watching and listening to the bass riffs in songs and videos.  I watch Hagar on the Late Late Show with James Corden or Metallica's Robert Trujillo as he hammers on his bass during concerts.  Would I have been as good as either of these artists?  Would I have been any good at all?  Unfortunately, time has eroded away the answers to those questions.

Today, I...  I wouldn't call myself successful, per se, but I don't think I am as poor now, as my family was then, but I certainly can't afford to buy a bass guitar, take lessons and see if I'm good enough to entertain myself.  Nah.  I'll leave that up to the young uns.  For now, I'll continue to appreciate what might have been and entertain myself via other ducts.  Like writing this blog.  Contributing to the long list of topics on my Brain Matter page.  I'm finding myself inspired more and more, daily.  It's just organizing my thoughts in a way that can be accurately conveyed onto the page.

Robert Trujillo of Metallica