Let's do the time warp again

Things move slowly this time of year. Christmas has long been a holiday that luxuriously stretches its arms and legs beyond the bounds of Dec. 25, seemingly because people can’t get enough of shiny ribbons and jolly snowmen who can somehow breathe through a carrot. For that reason, the days and nights that surround the holiday crawl languidly. Business grinds to a halt, and even a lot of the travel that takes place seems to have an unhurried quality, a slippers-and-hot-chocolate vibe that foreshadows deep rewards in warmly-lit living rooms and family dens. For the devout and the secular alike, it’s the time of year when we pause and take stock.

And it freaks me out.

Not in a bad way. I mean, it’s kinda nice, right? The sleepy pantomime of work, the welcome distraction of jangling silver bells and pudding-thick eggnog -- it’s nice, an old-timey bulwark against winter blues. Yet it’s so unnatural that this seven-to-12-day stretch is always disorienting, a time apart. It has the untethered quality of unexpected time off, with the added strangeness of reindeer with flashlights for noses. (A hallucinatory vision if ever there was one.)

My own particular theory as to why these days have such a specific aura: The warm reminiscences in which many of us indulge. Simply put, when your mind is moored to the past, the present can’t barrel forth with the same unrelenting velocity.

No observation, this one included, is universally applicable, of course. This theory works primarily when talking about those of us lucky enough to have fuzzy Christmases past on which to draw. People who lack this well of holiday cheer are likely more weirded out than I am, just biding their time until January, when relative normalcy resumes. I would like to offer these people a red-and-green sugar cookie and a cinnamon-infused craft beer. It’s not much, but it’s more feasible than my only other idea, which is to host a ’50s-style sock-hop in my living room. The space is too small, and besides, you can’t really dance to Anthrax.

If you’ve got a robust history of bustling yuletide bliss, though, then this out-of-time feeling you’re likely experiencing will be handy for inevitable trips down memory lane. Time folds in on itself during the last two weeks of December. We look back at the year that was and have our inevitable conversations: “I can’t believe so-and-so died! Remember in the spring when Aunt Margaret finally mastered the time-honored art of sword swallowing? And hey, I lost 10 pounds and can finally fit into that dress with the print pattern of burning pirate skulls!” These reflections feel like a way of solidifying experiences, of sealing them permanently in our own personal history books. It’s also a fun way to re-live some of the good times, like when you finally gathered up the courage to go sky-diving (and peed just a little during your jump).

At the same time, we tend to speculate on how the coming year will unfold, knowing our prognostications are probably wrong put peering intently into our crystal balls regardless. I’ll refrain from making forecasts about 2017 since I’m as bad at predicting this crap as anyone else, but I can guarantee you that the big shock-worthy moments and life-altering circumstances won’t be what we expect; they’ll come out of left field and gobsmack us, catch us unprepared. A lot of people are uneasy about what will transpire politically as the next few months unfold, but the top story of early 2017 will be something entirely random, like killer mutants taking over local government in Vancouver, or the Ku Klux Klan producing an off-Broadway musical about the history of turnip farming in western Europe.

Personally, Dec. 24 and 25 are the only days in which I find myself actually living in the moment. The fact that things grind to a halt during this period certainly helps in that regard. But even so, I can’t fully escape the weight of the past; it’s as though each Christmas is superimposed on top of all the others, a teetering pile of them, all conspiring to give the holiday a kind of outsized gravitas. I’m not just a mid-30s guy sharing gifts and laughs with my small family. I’m an 8-year-old boy fawning over his new Ghostbusters action figures; a 10-year-old singing carols by the fire with the extended clan in New Hampshire, back when there was one; a college kid coming to grips with burgeoning adulthood, mimicking grown-up behavior, poorly. I’m a first-grader who still believes in Santa, and whose heart aches at the thought of him taking flight from our snow-covered roof, gone for another year. And then another. And then forever.

I’m all of these things and none of them. I’m something new, something still in the process of being made, and it likely won’t be until next Christmas when I can look back on 2016 Jeff and give him any sort of label or definition. That’s the tricky nature of time. We can’t ever truly live in the moment, because by the time we’re able to make sense of whatever moment we’re in, it isn’t that moment anymore. FYI, when my thoughts get this convoluted, it’s time to hit the eggnog, and hard.

Oftentimes I wonder if the people who don’t celebrate Christmas still experience that end-of-year time-warp sensation. It’d be hard not to. The days-long slowdown of Western civilization is pretty inescapable, a feeling in the air that trumps religion or custom. It can be sweet, sad, joyous and melancholy, sometimes all at once, but rarely can it be ignored. It’s baked into the bread, as they say.

Say what you will about the holidays, but they take their sweet time. And that’s not necessarily  a bad thing.

Santa Claus walks into a bar...

Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are sitting at a bar. Both look dispirited. St. Nick is idly sipping a Sea Breeze; the rabbit’s nursing a whiskey and Coke, lost in thought as he stares in the general direction of a college football game being broadcast on a flat-screen TV. There’s also a horse at the bar, but nobody seems to know who he is or why he’s there. It should be noted that this is a very strange bar.

“So,” says the Easter Bunny to Santa, “what’s got you looking so blue?”

Claus expels a long, watery sigh. “It’s Christmas, man,” he says in between sips. “It’s really dragging me down this year. I mean, I should be happy right? It’s my busy time, with the toys and the malls and the ho-ho-hoing, and normally I look forward to it. Spreading goodwill and cheer and all that. But this year…”

Easter Bunny glances sideways at his red-clad compatriot. It’s the first time in half an hour he’s taken his eyes off Notre Dame. “What’s different this time around?” he asks, squinting as if bracing for the answer.

“Oh, you know. Everything. Look at the world, dude. Nobody can agree on anything. People bicker and argue and shout each other down over the stupidest things. They spend more time looking at their social media feeds than at each other. Meanwhile climate change is threatening their very existence, and the only people in a position to do anything about it deny it’s even happening. It’s like the human race is hardwired to self-destruct. Kinda hard to be jolly when the world is such a scary place.”

“And that’s why you’re drinking a Sea Breeze at three in the afternoon?”

Santa considers for a moment. “Well, I’ve also got this rash that’s bothering me. You spend all day walking around the North Pole’s toy factory and you start sweating a lot on the insides of your thighs.”

“For crying out loud, you really shouldn’t have told me that.”

“Sorry.”

A moment of silence passes. Santa Claus is twirling the remnants of his drink around the bottom of his glass, contemplating ordering a second round, but Easter Bunny has been eyeing him steadily, interested in something other than the game for the first time all day.

“I’m not buying it,” says Easter Bunny.

“Pardon me?”

“I’m not buying it.” Bunny shifts in his seat. “You’ve been doing this for a long time, right? Playing the whole ‘Christmas ambassador’ role? Generations have lived and died, and still you load up your sleigh and travel the globe and bring joy to millions. Think about all the crap that’s happened in the world since you first started doing your thing. A couple of World Wars, that whole Vietnam debacle, market crashes, military coups, terrorism this and that. The rise and fall of Pauly Shore. ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians.’ It’s been one disaster after another. And that’s just in the last hundred years or so.”

“OK. So what’s your point?”

“My point,” said Easter Bunny, fully engaged now, “is that the world is always in crisis. Civilization is always on the verge of collapse. I’m a rabbit, so I’ve got sort of an outsider’s perspective on the human race, OK? Humans, as far as I can tell, are generally a self-destructive lot … to a point. It’s always two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back with these people. It’s frustrating, but they do eventually make progress. You just have to give them time. They can always be counted on to do the wrong thing. Until they do the right thing.”

Santa considers this for a moment. He slides his empty drink across the bar and taps on the glass. The bartender fills him up.

“I see what you’re saying,” says Santa. “I do. But it just feels like everything is coming to a head. Divisions are deeper. The stakes are higher. This past year…”

Easter Bunny nods. “Yeah, this past year was a stinker. Prince and David Bowie are dead and ISIS is still alive and kicking. It’s not what you’d call fair. But see, that’s exactly why we need you right now.” Bunny sticks out a paw and pokes Santa in his jelly belly. “You’re a powerful symbol, don’t you get it? Even people who don’t consider themselves Christians see your face and associate it with with good things -- family, friends, warm feelings, all that fuzzy stuff. The world is complicated. You’re not. That’s your appeal. You exist for one reason, and that’s giving. It’s a lesson we all could use right about now. You want my advice, you need to quit your whining and hop back on that sleigh. And tell Prancer to give me a call. Dude owes me 50 bucks, no pun intended.”

Santa nods and pushes his unfinished drink back across the bar. The beginning of a smile plays at the corners of his mouth.

“You know what, Bunny, you’re right. What am I doing here? I should be making toys, and lists, and hawking iPhones in TV commercials! I should be drinking bottles of Coca-Cola with the label facing outward! I should be gathering my sugarplums and roasting my--”

“Yeah, we get it.”

“Right. Well. Off I go to spread some Christmas cheer, then. Only a matter of days now. Happy Friday to all, and to all a good night!”

Santa leaves his barstool wobbling as he abruptly bounds for the door, letting in a draft of cold air as it opens to the pre-twilight world beyond. A few faintly shimmering motes -- pixie dust? -- are left in his wake, slowly settling on the bar and at Easter Bunny’s feet. He brushes some off his shoulder and smiles. His job is typically easy, just hide a few colored eggs in someone’s backyard (as if that even makes any sense), and so he puffs out his chest a little at the thought that he had a hand in a successful Christmas this year. It wasn’t in his job description, but darned if it didn’t make him feel good. Sometimes the holiday blues afflict the best of us. We just need a little push, thinks Bunny. Someone to reach out and let us know they care.

Feeling accomplished, Bunny turns his attention to the horse, who’s been at the end of the bar listening silently the whole time. He shoots his equine friend a smile and a wink.

“So,” says Bunny. “Why the long face?”

New-age Amazonians

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Soup that eats like a meal

Soup or salad? Some people have a tough time with this choice. They idly stroke the covers of their menus while vacillating back and forth, debating the relative merits of each. Meanwhile the server gets to stand there awkwardly with a pen in hand and a carefully neutral facial expression, hiding their impatience with dreams of knocking off work and playing Xbox with their roommate Willy. Naturally they’ve forgotten that Willy is giving a speech at the library tonight on the topic of sexually confused termites, but nevermind that for now. Soup or salad -- that’s the question.

And the answer should always be soup.

I know, I know. There are a lot of salad lovers out there, and look, I get it. A salad is a nice treat every once in awhile. It’s customizable and colorful and contains a lot of variety, not unlike a multi-layered cake, only salads have the distinct advantage of being made of actual food. Salads are sneaky, though. They are, in fact, a lie.

The lie is this: Salads like to present themselves as the healthy choice. “Look at all of this green!” they shout at you from their bowl. “Look at the splashes of red and orange! The crumbly croutons! Eat me and be thin and happy, friend!” If you hear your salad saying these things to you, do two things. First, be skeptical of its claims. Second, seek psychiatric care. Salads can’t talk, you freak.

If salad was just salad, that would be one thing. What makes it such a clandestine smuggler of unwanted calories is the dressing, a viscous stew of sugar and unmentionables that consistently thwarts a salad’s claims to healthfulness. You might as well be pouring chocolate syrup on your lettuce. That would probably be preferable, in fact, because not only is chocolate syrup more delicious than balsamic vinaigrette, but you know exactly what you’re getting -- an electric jolt from your tastebuds and a lot of extra wheezing while walking uphill.

We know this about salad dressing on some level, and yet we pour it on anyway, because when you get right down to it, most dry salad is gross. It’s like someone reached into their backyard garden, grabbed a fistful of whatever was handy, and dumped it into a bowl shaped like a half-head of cabbage (a bowl design that has never, ever been clever, by the way). A naked salad is like a naked congressman: frightening, a little fascinating, and regarded with disdain by almost everyone involved.

Consider the ingredients in a typical salad. Most contain cucumbers, which is a vegetable so bland it makes a rice cake taste like a Toblerone. Who’s idea was it to incorporate this culinary travesty into a dish? A cucumber is a pickle that isn’t done yet. Much like Pauly Shore, it has no place in a civilized society.

Tomatoes are also common, and that’s unfortunate, because they’re the most vile fruit this side of pineapple. Judging from the BLTs and tomato-tastic burgers everyone seems so fond of, I’m probably in the minority on this one, but I will maintain my anti-tomato crusade until I’ve rid the world of this evil scourge, or at least convinced the guy at the sandwich shop to remove it from my tuna melt. Indeed, some people are shocked that I hate tomatoes so much, and when they ask me why, they always try to guess the answer: “It’s the consistency, right?” Wrong. I mean sure, the consistency reminds me of those pig lungs my biology teacher brought in one day, and that doesn’t help their case. But the flavor is also highly offensive. They have no place on a salad, in a burger, in my apartment or on the planet Earth. Plus they look bad. Boom, epic tomato takedown complete.

Remove dressing, cucumbers and tomatoes, and there isn’t much left in your salad. Lettuce, mostly, which people think is more healthful than it actually is because it’s a shade of green that doesn’t glow in the dark. What a lot of people don’t realize is that lettuce, while not deleterious to one’s health in any way, actually doesn’t contain a whole lot of nutritional content; it’s mostly water. It’ll hydrate you, but it won’t make your biceps bulge like in a Popeye cartoon -- unless you lace it with protein and steroids, in which case you’re either a professional baseball player or certifiably insane.

For me, a salad’s true worth is in the extras, those added bits that give it its classification, be it Caesar, Greek, etc. Cheese cubes, ham, shaved carrots: That’s all good stuff. But you don’t need a salad in order to eat those things. You could add those ingredients to a roast turkey sandwich, skip the salad altogether, and eat a satisfying meal that won’t leave you hungry again in half an hour.

All of this runs through my head in a nanosecond. The server doesn’t even notice. I’m well-practiced at this, and I’ve eaten way too many salads to be duped by their false promises. Soup may not be as green -- in fact, most soup rather looks like a congealing pool of motor oil -- but at least you know what you’re getting. And if you’re lucky, you get noodles.

“Soup,” I say to the server, and in my head he walks away nodding his head slightly, thinking to himself, “Now that’s a guy who knows what he wants.” In reality he probably hasn’t given me a second thought, but it’s still nice to imagine sending someone off into the tingly embrace of a good mood. Besides, he’ll need that good mood. Once he finds out Willy’s at the library, he’s going to be pissed.

Tree's company

There’s an ornament I always place at the top of the tree. It’s a thin, faux-gold depiction of a boy about 6 years of age; he’s wearing those full-body pajamas with foot pads so thick they could deflect point-blank rock salt fired from a sawed-off shotgun. He’s holding a wrapped present in one hand and a teddy bear in the other, and the name “Jeff” is inscribed across his chest. He’s supposed to be me.

What a metaphor for the unique time-warp that is putting up a Christmas tree. For those lucky enough to enjoy this as a consistent tradition, setting up that wobbling pine is a trip inside Peabody’s Wayback Machine, a wormhole that connects us to holidays past. It would be more fun if there were an actual wormhole, because then we could make a detour into the 1930s to punch Hitler in the face and invest in Oreo stock. But lacking that, the tree is a nice stand-in.

Golden Boy is always the last ornament I place in the tree. There’s a reason for that.

Largely it’s because the rest of the process is a gigantic pain in the butt. I’m a firm believer that the tree should be erected as soon after Thanksgiving as possible -- otherwise you expend more energy than a deadsquatting coal miner, and for what? Two weeks of light and mirth? Forget that. Egyptians building the pyramids brick-by-laborious-brick had a less burdensome task than getting Christmas in order, and for my efforts I’d like my creation to stand as long as possible. Preferably through Easter.

By far the most tedious part of tree prep is stringing up the lights. In my years of doing this -- I’m the official Tree Guru -- there have been maybe two instances in which I got it right the first time. This is an exultant feeling; it’s like sinking a hole-in-one on the windmill course while blindfolded and balancing on a roller skate. Nine times out of 10, however, I take an initial stab at the lights, step back to assess my handiwork, and realize that all of the bulbs are in two knotted clusters. Or there’s a tangle in the middle that looks like an antelope mooning teenagers from the rear window of a Dodge station wagon. In these moments I marvel at how wonderful it would be to celebrate Hanukkah.

Surviving the process requires music. Lots of it. If I had my druthers I’d string the lights up to the sound of some hellion ripping buzz-saw guitar solos while screaming about werewolves, but there’s usually someone else in the room, so no heavy metal for this guy. I settle for Bing Crosby and lush orchestral classics, the kind of stuff they should play at the mall but never do. This gets me in the spirit. Hearing Kenny G blast out “Silver Bells” -- he’s got a decent Christmas album, don’t judge me -- ignites the necessary fire under my roasting chestnuts, and in this way I can get the lights straightened out without giving my animatronic Frosty a hat-shattering piledriver. You cope any way you can.

It would be easy, once the lights are settled, to climb into an easy chair and slip into semi-lucid consciousness in front of the 1000th broadcast of “Frosty Gets a Back Massage.” A nap is surely needed at this point. But the lights are only step one. Step two is hanging the ornaments, which becomes an increasingly complex challenge every year; the family is constantly adding new pieces to the ornament collection, while the old ones aren’t retired unless they’ve been cracked, smooshed, splintered or melted by the heat of an oil drum fire. That means more and more ornaments and less and less tree on which to place them. One more bear hugging a candy cane, or Santa riding on the back of a dolphin, and we’ll have to get a second tree -- a “kiddie” tree, if you will, for all the newcomers who are still too young to hang with the 30-year veterans. It would be similar to the kiddie table at Thanksgiving, only the kiddie tree would be quieter and require less cake. I’m still working out the details on this one.

Fitting all of the ornaments on the tree is one challenge. Age is another. I’ve been on ornament duty for about 25 years, and at the beginning it was easy, at least from a physical standpoint. When you’re young you can abuse your body in the most horrendous ways -- slam butt-first into a tree branch, do somersaults on nail beds, you name it -- and in two days you’re ready to rumble.

Those days were long ago. I have now officially reached the age of little annoying aches and pains, and while they’re mostly survivable, it makes ornament hanging a difficult endeavor, what with the ducking and bending and kneeling. It’s pathetic, really, because there are men my age still playing professional football and hurling themselves into people’s bodies like they’re trying to save them from an oncoming bus. Here I am, by contrast, wincing at my sore hip as I find just the right branch for the hand-knit Christmas booties I wore when I was 1. When I’m double my current age I’ll have to outsource this task entirely. Should make for an interesting entry in the Help Wanted section.

Despite all that, there’s one moment I get to experience each year which is perhaps the sweetest and most wistful part of my holidays: hanging up Golden Boy. He always gets the highest branch, and when I place him there, my hand lingers for a moment on his sharp, coin-thin curves. It may not be the oldest ornament we have, but it’s my favorite, has been for decades, and one of the most heart-wrenching aspects of Christmas is that I get to hold him only twice -- once when putting him up, once when taking him down -- and then it’s done. Off into a box, to be held and seen in another 11 months. The best and worst thing about this time of year is that it’s so fleeting.

Sure, I grumble and grouse. I’m a grumbler and a grouser. But a finished creation like that is always worth the effort.

Just don’t tell anyone I’m such a sap. It’d ruin my reputation.

Bird brain

Traditions are never a hundred percent traditional. And no, that’s not some vague aphorism I found in a fortune cookie.

What I mean is that traditions always have their core elements, plus a bunch of tacked-on personal or family elements that customize them, make them ours. Let’s use Thanksgiving as an example, since most of us are still so crammed with pie we can’t stand up without the aid of household furniture.

Thanksgiving has its own baseline features that are consistent across most families: Turkey, stuffing, orange- and brown-colored side dishes, and that one cousin who gets tanked on Merlot and belts out “White Christmas” during halftime of the Lions game. These are all niceties that go back to the early days, when European pilgrims and Native Americans gathered to feast on hearty food and complain about Detroit’s offensive line.

From there, traditions vary. Maybe your family members dig out the old plastic Christmas tree from the basement and decorate it while their gastrointestinal systems try to make sense of what just happened. Or they break out the Monopoly board and devolve into fisticuffs in a dispute over Park Place. Every home is different.

In Maison Lagasse, Christmas begins as soon as the last drop of beer is drained from its mug. This is due primarily to my mother, who begins her holiday shopping in February and would keep candy canes stocked in her cupboard year-round if it were in any way socially acceptable. Eyelids drooping after a gut-busting gorge, she pops in a favorite yuletide classic -- which for the past several years has been “The Polar Express,” an animated romp that scores points for a Santa Claus who looks like a lumberjack in an L.L. Bean catalogue. My father quaffs Heineken and endures this yearly ritual with relative grace while Mom fights back tears and sings along with the musical numbers in an off-key falsetto. I find myself stuck somewhere between these two extremes, moved by the film’s earnestness but finding myself desperately in want of a clear drink with an olive in it. Sometimes tradition requires endurance. And booze.

Our particular rituals are as comfortable and well-worn as old sweatpants, but to members of another clan our little idiosyncrasies may seem strange. In millions of living rooms across the country, disparate families are up to their own shenanigans. Judging from the stories people have shared online, many of these activities are of the “Aww, how heartwarming” variety, which makes sense because if you’re lucky Thanksgiving is an “Aww, how heartwarming” kind of holiday. (As opposed to Halloween, where the overriding sentiment is “Please, children, don’t leave flaming bags of poop on my front porch.”)

One woman shared her family’s tradition of having a “Thanksgiving tree,” which initially struck me as an unnecessary indoor plant in a season already rife with them. But this is a laminated paper tree; throughout the year, everyone in the family writes down something for which they’re thankful on fall-colored construction paper leaves and puts them in a box. On Turkey Day they tack the leaves up on the Thanksgiving tree and read them aloud. Nice stuff. Another woman said she cooks food based on recipes in her late grandmother’s cookbook, working from handwritten text in her relative’s shaky scrawl. These traditions are so sweet they’re almost sickening, the kind of stuff you see people doing in Lifetime Original Movies with corny titles like “When Caroline Learned to Love Again.”

Not every tradition is quite so saccharine, though. One man, sharing his story on the website pgeveryday.com, said that he and his family have a gun battle every Thanksgiving. They use toy guns, naturally; if they used real ones, each subsequent Thanksgiving would just get lonelier and lonelier, until a day 10 years from now when it’s just one sad man ripping into a turkey in a backwoods motel while evading the cops. His family’s rule, apparently, is that as long as you’re old enough to hold a toy gun, you’re a part of the make-believe melee -- no points, no rules, no winners. Just a bunch of people wagging around plastic Glocks and spraying each other with water while fighting off the encroaching drag of meat-sleep.

Bizarre as that is, there’s one tradition I find even stranger. On danoah.com, one family said that after they’re finished noshing on squash and pie, they all engage in a game of hide-and-seek … with their cars. The gang piles into four or five vehicles, with one car labeled the “it” car, and the rest all seek a quiet place in town where they can park, turn off the lights, and avoid detection; the last undiscovered car then becomes the “it” car, and around they go again. This one gets major props for creativity, but I’m still left wondering what the locals -- not to mention the local police -- think of a bunch of people huddling in cars in the dark in random neighborhoods. Has anyone’s hackles ever been raised? Hopefully these automotive hide-and-seekers don’t live in the same town as the gun-battling family, or else it’s only a matter of time before someone gets a plastic firearm stuck in their face. “Happy Thanksgiving! Now freeze, sucka!”

Goes to show that repetition is all that’s required for something to be a tradition. It can be the goofiest thing in the world, but do it enough times and it’s as ingrained as the natural human instinct to punch a clown.

This year my intent was to start a new Thanksgiving tradition of not eating so much blueberry pie that I temporarily go blind. Can I repeat this year after year? Possibly. But someone may have to hold a plastic gun to my head.

Let the other shoe drop

“Those must be comfortable shoes.”

That’s an oft-quoted line -- one of many -- from the 1994 movie “Forrest Gump,” about a man with a below-average IQ and an above-average heart who somehow finds himself at the center of the 20th century’s most significant historical moments. He offers this observation to a woman sitting next to him on a park bench, and it serves as a launchpad for a series of flashbacks: Forrest running, Forrest leaping, Forrest running some more. He’d know a thing or two about comfortable shoes. He needs them. Without them, his feet would be unusable slabs of flesh, much like Pauly Shore and half of Congress.

I can relate. I need comfortable shoes, too.

Yet they’re so hard to find, and it’s such an important process. Choosing new shoes is like choosing new feet; pick wisely and it’s like walking on the lightest of vapors, your tootsies fortified against the harshness of glass-littered sidewalks and crumbly cow poop. Pick poorly and it’s a special brand of torture, in a league with the dreaded purple nurple. (Protip: Do not do a Google Image search for purple nurple.)

Playing it safe is never a bad option, and it’s been my modus operandi for the past several years. I plow through a pair of shoes in about 10 months, and every 10 months I walk into the same shoe store in the same town, plop my size 12-and-a-half on the same time-worn bench, and say to the same clerk, “Give me more of the same.” Generally this works. My particular model will occasionally cede ground to the latest and greatest upgraded pair, and it’s usually fine, but for the most part I’m able to walk out with fresh clones of whatever I brought with me. Good thing, too, because there’s nothing like trying on 30 pairs to make a person feel like walking into traffic while chewing on a cyanide tablet.

One of the first things you notice when you walk into a shoe store is the absurdly large selection. Two hundred years ago there were three styles to choose from: wooden, leather, and none. Now there are a thousand different categories, each broken down into a thousand sub-categories. Do you go running primarily in the morning, when the sidewalks are glistening with dew? There’s a shoe for you. Do you frequently go mountain hiking, and as soon as you reach the summit, start tap-dancing to “Uptown Funk?” There’s a shoe for you. Do you keep your shoes on in a chlorinated swimming pool because of that weird phobia you’d prefer not to talk about? Our phobia shoes are right this way, valued customer.

Weird feet make the process even harder. Lengthwise, my feet have been at a flat 12-and-a-half since the mid-1990s, when one last teenaged growth spurt gave me the proportions of a sasquatch. But for feet of that length, they’re wider than they should be. If a normal foot is oblong like the tip of a rowing paddle, mine are like ceiling tiles with toes. That makes it frustrating to find a shoe with a good fit. Many a time I’ve thought about simply building my own footwear with a bucket of superglue and the rubber from old bicycle tires.

That would at least be the most economical option, because after you’ve finally sifted through waterproof running shoes, all-weather hiking shoes, air-soled cross-trainers and eco-friendly tennis sneaks, you’re probably shelling out at least a hundred bucks for your chosen pair. And it doesn’t end there. If you’ve got flat feet, like I do, you also have to drop sixty hard-earned clams on inserts for your much-needed bridge support. By the time you walk out of the store you’ve got more money on your feet than you do in your wallet. If you ever find yourself strapped for cash in a bartering situation, just fork over your shoes. The recipient can sell them on eBay for prices that rival those of German auto parts.

I’m lucky in the sense that I’m perfectly content to buy, and wear, one pair of all-purpose shoes at a time. This mitigates the cost and inconvenience of shopping somewhat. Not everyone can get away with that. Maybe your job requires specialized footwear, like boots, and your company won’t buy them for you because the CEO is embezzling money to pay for his Ritalin addiction. Maybe you’re a fashionista and need to own at least 14 pairs at all times. Maybe you’re secretly The Incredible Hulk and you destroy your Nikes every time you get angry. Could happen.

Whatever the scenario, it’s a lot of time and expense. It used to be that time and expense were rewarded with a personalized touch at the local shoe outlet, but an almost imperceptible shift has taken place over the years: Clerks are no longer allowed to touch your feet. When I was a child, the friendly shoe-slingers at the mall would reach down and measure my foot with one of those metal doohickeys, then help me slip into pair after pair, even threading and tightening the laces for me. This was almost luxurious, in the way that being fanned with palm fronds on a tropical beach is luxurious.

Now they just hang back and awkwardly watch as you do all the work yourself. Nobody informed me this change was going to occur. Never got an email, never got a letter. I’m sure it’s a liability thing; some clerk somewhere probably got kicked in the teeth by a customer with over-sensitive reflexes, or a litigious shopper sued for injuries when a strong-handed salesperson squeezed their ankle a little too hard. These changes happen for a reason. But this robs the whole shoe buying experience of its charm, which is all it ever had going for it to begin with.

Why can’t I just go and quickly find a comfortable pair of shoes? If he were a real person, I’d do my shopping with Forrest Gump. He can spot a decent set anywhere.

Now that things have cooled off...

We need to talk about what happened last week.

I run the risk of splitting my audience here. When you write columns about salads, shoe shopping and beer, you’re not writing for Democrats or Republicans, Independents or Libertarians. You’re writing for people who want to relax and indulge in something frivolous. I’m not trying to change the world here, just make it a little more colorful and a little less bleak.

But when a country elects a man like Donald Trump to be President of the United States, I take it as a cue to break with tradition. Spoiler alert: I’m not a fan of this man. I am among the chorus of those who find him a racist, repugnant, boorish boob lacking in intellect and moral authority, a totalitarian bully who fuels prejudice and inspires hatred. People are panicking. I am one of them.

It’s unnecessary to delineate my reasons for feeling this way. You know all the arguments, the scandals, the history. No need to go into them now that the election is behind us. It would be redundant, and besides, it’s easy to be the Monday-morning quarterback and analyze why things went the way they did. It’s quite another to ponder what might come next, and if what I saw on November 9 was any indication, what comes next won’t be pretty.

A couple of years ago I made the decision to become a high school teacher -- a modest and attainable goal, and one that I’m still pursuing. The course I’m currently taking at the University of New England requires me to make bi-weekly trips to Biddeford High School to observe instruction in various English classes, and I was slated to visit the school the day after the election. Normally, when you walk into a school during peak hours, there’s a sort of baseline thrum that permeates the building, as though the act of learning in itself is capable of producing a tuning-fork-like frequency. On this day there was a silence you only hear in the vacuum of deep space.

The second class I observed was a sophomore honors class -- a small one. Seven students sat in a tight cluster of desks intimately arranged in a semi-circle; I sat among them as the teacher presided at the front. The students’ assignment over the past several classes had been to conduct an analysis of a stump speech made by several presidential candidates over the course of the nearly yearlong campaign. With the election results still fresh, and a lack of sleep still evident in the pouches under the kids’ eyes, the discussion took on new meaning. You don’t typically address political stances during school. Outside of a social studies or current events class, it’s not exactly appropriate. This day was different. Given the assignment, and the tension in the air, politics was inescapable.

Clearly in need of catharsis, and perhaps emboldened by the intimate class size, the students shared their thoughts on what had happened. Most of their opinions were expressed through the teenage smokescreen of uncertain giggles and lighthearted banter, which is about what you’d expect from kids who had yet to see their 16th birthday. One girl wasn’t feeling quite so breezy.

“My mom came into my room this morning sobbing,” she said. “She held my head in her arms and told me she didn’t want me to live in fear.” With that, tears of her own started forming at the corners of her eyes. She dabbed at them with a tissue as the girls on either side of her put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s like rape culture is okay now,” she said.

I can’t begin to tell you how much that broke my heart.

Look, let me say a few things here that are obvious. The vast majority of Trump voters are not bad people. Most aren’t racist, or misogynist, or filled with hatred. And most of them certainly wouldn’t want to make a 15-year old girl cry and fear for her safety. Trump voters, as far as I can figure, were motivated principally by economic concerns. They believe -- rightly or wrongly -- that recovery from the financial crisis is sluggish, that their jobs are in jeopardy and their livelihoods in peril. I don’t agree with that assessment, but I understand the unease. Most adults have felt something like it at some point in our lives.

But here’s an important distinction: While most Trump voters are not racists or misogynists, they have elected a racist and a misogynist. It sends a message, to Americans and to the world, that this is who we are now -- a nation that willfully disrespects women, that judges people based on their country of origin or their sexual orientation, that rejects Muslims while providing safe haven to the intolerant and the spiteful. It sends the message that we are an ugly people motivated by bluster and bile.

Except I don’t think that’s who we really are. History is peppered with moments like this, when a man like Trump ascends to power despite our claims to logic and reason. It never lasts. Either the country falls, or it comes to its senses. This, I sincerely hope, is buffonery’s last gasp, a final violent thrashing before it dies forever. If we prove too strong to fall, we will heal. And hopefully Trump’s base will come to realize that brash indignity is not the mark of a leader, nor is it the ethos by which we should live our lives.

Mostly, I hope the girl in that honors class never feels she lives in a country that rejects her. Perhaps this will inspire her to act. And in the ensuing decades, when she’s fought successfully to create a better world, who knows? Her name may just appear on a ballot. My pen may just fill in the oval next to her name, and our democracy will only feel the 2016 election as a faint scar on its underbelly, faded and healed over with time.

That’s how this thing is supposed to work. I choose to believe -- and to hope -- that that is who we really are.

Troll patrol

In Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore, a troll is a squat, humanoid creature who lives in a cave and hides beneath a bristly bush of coarse whiskers. They’re mischievous little suckers and are rarely helpful to humans, rather taking pleasure in seeing us upset or besieged by hardship. Kinda sounds like an evil Danny DeVito character, but nope. Trolls.

That’s in mythology. But trolls exist in real life. Oh yes. Click on any article on any news site, view any video on YouTube, and scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the comments section. There they are. Spouting racist remarks, engaging in wanton stupidity, and making controversial statements solely to upset people and send them into a frothing tizzy. Where once they lived under bridges, trolls now make their home on the internet; it’s their cave, and anonymity is their beard.

They must be stopped.

Take one comment posted under a recent news item about Hillary Clinton’s email woes. The article, entitled “Clinton calls on FBI to release ‘full and complete facts’ about email probe,” and posted on Yahoo, is about what you’d expect: A play-by-play of the newest revelations found in Wikileaks’ latest trove of formerly top-secret emails. News like this inspires a lot of conversation and heated debate, as it should. A robust conversation is one of the cornerstones on which the democracy is founded, and besides, tense debates make dinner with the family a lot more interesting. Without them, we’d just robotically shovel cold pasta salad into our mouths and try to pick out patterns on Grandma Betty’s ill-advised dining room wallpaper. “Look, I see an Egyptian pharaoh dunking a basketball into an aquarium filled with sea otters!” Ugh. Nobody needs that.

Online comments are a travesty, though, siphoning out any lingering traces of rational thought and replacing it with the kind of playground banter you’d expect from either third-grade delinquents or major-party presidential candidates. Here’s a comment on that article from a poster calling himself Basil: “LET'S SEE IS MICHELLE STANDS BY HR SIE WITH THIS MESS- CAN'T GO MUCH LOWER CAN YA.”

Oh, Basil. You had me at Caps Lock.

Let’s pick this one apart, shall we? First of all, this Basil fella has clearly never heard of punctuation. Now, maybe it’s that I’m studying to become an English teacher, or that I write for a living. Maybe it’s simply that, in a pinch, I have two brain cells left over in the ol’ noggin that I could rub together to start a fire. Whatever the case, the lack of any periods or commas immediately undermines any impact Basil is hoping to achieve here. Heck, I was feeling generous and gave him a period at the end, free of charge. One wonders if he was actually attempting a sentence or, in a fit or rage, got into a physical altercation with his keyboard. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I kind of hope the keyboard won.

Second, the typos. So many typos in such a short span. Everyone makes a typo once in awhile. Nobody’s perfect, except maybe Bruce Wayne and the guy from the Dos Equis ads. But nowadays, computers are pretty smart. They’re generous enough to underline our typos with red squiggly lines so gaudy their light could be used on runways to help land passenger jets. Even if Basil never developed the habit of proofreading -- which is a pretty safe bet -- seems to me he would have noticed that his sentence was festooned with more lights than a cruise ship. HR? SIE? These are not words. They are acronyms for human resources and Scottish Institute for Enterprise, respectively.

Third, his argument. There isn’t much there to chew on. Should I go into why? Forget it, I’m skipping this one.

There are two possible reasons why Basil’s sentence turned out the way it did. Either the last book he read was “Horton Hears a Who,” or he’s coming across this way intentionally, snickering as he lays the bait, and flat-out guffawing when otherwise normal people respond with the expected condescension and outrage. If it’s the former, well, one more reason why more cash needs to be pumped into the educational system.

If it’s the latter, he’s a troll.

Pernicious little creatures, these trolls. On the surface they seem fairly harmless, shouting into a million tiny black voids tucked under news items and videos of dogs catching frisbees. Avoiding them is a fairly simple task -- just skip over the comments section. They’re repositories for humanity’s worst instincts. But that’s easier said than done, especially if you’re a young person who spends any chunk of your free time online. The example I cited is fairly tame, someone who may or may not be trying to get a rise out of people with choreographed idiocy. Trolls can be meaner, more cutting. They can infiltrate a teenager’s Facebook feed and inundate them with disparaging remarks, leading to emotionally or physically destructive behavior. They can spread hatred and ignorance. They can kill.

Scandinavian lore describes trolls as kidnappers and usurpers of family farms and estates; they could only be struck down with lighting, as wielded by the god Thor. We need a Thor for these new trolls -- someone with a giant hammer who can lay the everloving smackdown on these cretins. At its best, the internet is a media and communications tool that makes our friends a little closer and the world a little smaller. At its worst, it’s a reflection of our ugliness and judgement, a means by which trolls can crawl out of the shadows and hijack any inclinations we have toward civility and discourse.

With the internet an open medium, it’s a difficult problem to address. So perhaps we need to literally summon Thor. Does anyone out there know how? A mythology-based video game from 1994 says you can summon Thor by hitting up, left, left, B, and A while the screen is paused. I’ll see if I can dig out my old Super Nintendo controller and make this happen.