How to open your safe when you’re drunk

When I was a kid, my dad put me to work in a little engineering shop. My jobs were to cut steel jackets on a lathe, and run the semi-automatic hacksaw.

Friday night everyone left on time. I waited for the owner to come by and give me my first paycheck.

He showed up very drunk, and couldn’t remember the combination to the safe. So, he called his wife; “Hey, Doris! What the hell is the combination? I need to get into the safe,” he yelled. He was so drunk he sat on the floor with his legs splayed out, leaning on the safe, yelling.

The office was in front, on a fairly busy street, and the front door was wide open. But I was so paralyzed I didn’t think to close it.

“Four to the left.” He yelled. “Then back around to, what? Seven? Okay then what?” He yelled. “fifteen?”

Two shots of yelling out the numbers, the safe opened, and he handed me a twenty.

I had earned twelve dollars that first week, not bad money for a fifteen year-old kid in the early Fifties. Anyway, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. I hoped he’d come in drunk every Friday night.

The next Friday, he wasn’t drunk. I had earned fourteen dollars that week.

He handed me my pay. Six bucks, minus the extra eight he’d given me the week before. I must have had quite a look on my face, because he said, “That’s right, isn’t it? Fourteen—minus the eight I gave you last week?”

I nodded yes, and left broken-hearted.

Life gives us lemons—we know what to do

I’m getting some macular degeneration in my right eye.

When I close my left eye and look, it’s like looking at a fun mirror.

Everything is distorted through my right eye. And the distortion moves around when I move my head. Eyes, lips, and foreheads wiggle around.

Watching the talking heads on the news is the most entertaining. They’re saying serious things, but they look like rubber people. “A Senator was arrested today,” sounds even funnier when a rubber person is saying it.

There are others. 

With just my right eye Conan’s head looks even weirder. Same thing with Kelsey Grammer’s head. It’s the most fun with people with large foreheads—and for some reason, John Boehner.

I’m guessing people who smoke pot and have macular degeneration must have really wild visions.

I know, I know. I wrote “visions” on purpose.

When I’m sculpting, I don’t have to wonder what a shape might look like if it were a little more curved. I just use my right eye and move my head around until I see the shape that’s most attractive, then open my left eye and carve it. That’s making lemonade out of lemons, right?   

And sometimes there’s a little dark spot in the middle of my vision.

I saw a little bug on the brick floor in our living room today, so I stepped on it.

It wasn’t there.

A little later I came back and there it was again, the same little dark bug. So I stepped on it again.

Same result.