Kahlua and Breast Milk

I have lurked and unwillingly been dragged into a few threads about women’s issues in my brief blogging career. I’ve read about total strangers’ menstrual cramps, hot flashes and parenting philosophies. But this weekend I discovered seomthing new from the mother of a two week old baby girl: the “pump and dump.”

Several of us were at the surprise birthday party of one of our friends, but we were also eager to see the new mommy for the first time since her emergency C section. The mother is a sweet young lady, who always seemed rather naive and wide-eyed about the whole process of gestation. Everything was a wonderful surprise to her, except for the fact that drinking and recreational drug use were off-limits until term.

I was worried that during the breast feeding period her monasticism would have to continue, and she wouldn’t have any fun at the party. Then I noticed her knocking down a Jager shot. “What’s up with that?” I asked. “Pump and dump, dude! Pump and dump.” Whereupon, she excused herself to the ladies room, drained the udders and flushed it down the loo. She said she had been pumping all day to get ready for the pary and had a pretty good alcohol-free reserve built up.

I don’t know whether I’m revolted or tickled by this practice. Is this for real? Can you just wait to process everything out like sitting at the bar drinking cokes until your BAC gets low enough to drive? I’m glad she’s happy and the child is being fed naturally, but WTF?!

We also discussed the incongruity of the fact that you can take no depressants at all during pregnancy, but if you get a Caesarean, apparently Percocet and morphine are immediately back on the menu. I came up with the idea that if that were to happen anyway, why not have a tattoo artist standing by to go ahead and get that Maori symbol for strength or your baby’s name scripted out while you have the spinal block and morphine buzz going good?

That’s another reason why I have not been encouraged to breed…

I Feel Like the Poseidon

Last night I lay groaning on my back while thousands of beasties tried to escape my hull. A few intrepid explorers managed to get out through a crack near my main shaft, but most were left behind to die a watery death.*

Luckily, the USS Immodium is responding to my distress call and is rushing to plug the leaks in my bulkhead.

Ugh. No more hot chicken wings for dinner…

*Unlike that lying bastard charlatan David Blaine.

One of the Reasons I Am the Way I Am

I remember growing up that one of the coolest things that would happen in your house was when your mother dropped a thermometer. The globules of mercury were like an exposed lava lamp you could play with on the table with a pencil. Try as you might, you could never pick the stuff up with your fingers, so my brothers and I would play soccer with it across the dinner table until we finally got tired of it and swept it into the trash can.

Flash forward a few years to my middle school years at Presitigious Prep, home to nerdy outcasts and cromagnon atheletes charading as students. We had one Chemistry teacher (who happened to be the cross country coach), who actually divided the class into “Entities” and “Non-Entities” depending on whether you played a varsity sport. The good thing about being a “Non-Entity,” was that meant you were probably also on the Honor Roll which allowed you to spend your study halls doing whatever you want, namely screwing around while the lunkheads struggled to stay academically eligible to hit each other around in practice in the name of school pride. So where was one of our favroite places to screw around? That’s right, the self-same teacher’s chemistry lab doing “unauthorized experiments.” And what was our favorite thing to “experiment” with? You guessed it, mercury.

Once, an entire bottle of the stuff accidentally “fell” into a friend’s bookbag while he was walking through the chemical storage room. He couldn’t reach into his bag to put it back, because if someone saw him they might think he was stealing it. (Well, you try to go through a whole day without rationalizing or engaging in some revisionist history!) Plus the bottle was impossibly heavy and really cool. We had HG for days.

My nerd friends and I did not get sports cars for our 16th birthdays like many of our classmates. We rode the city bus from our middle-class suburb to a stop near campus and walked the rest of the way. We shared the bus with many of the maids and gardeners of our classmates and were the only caucasians aboard most of the time. The rest of the riders politely ignored us and our adolescent blatherings for the most part.

But now that we had the mercury, we decided it was time to play a new game. The floor of the bus was covered in a rigid rubber mat with ridges that ran the length of the bus. I imagine it was so they could simply park the bus on a hill and hose the insides down periodically. Unbeknownst to the MTA it also provided the perfect track for our favorite new pastime: mercury racing. Each contestant chose a groove and poured a different amount of the liquid metal while the bus was either accelerating or going up a small rise. When the bus went downhill or slowed to a stop, the silvery racers would rush forward down the aisle while each groove’s “backer” would cheer for his blob to be the first to reach the front and spill into the entryway steps. We would giggle and shriek like excited schoolgirls in a bizzaro version of cigar-chomping gamblers at a dog track. Eventually, after hundreds of races, our mercury supply was gone and we returned to the Super Bowl of Paper Football as a diversion to studying.

I now have several good friends who are nurses at various hospitals around town. I asked one of them how her day had gone and she replied, “Terrible! Some idiot dropped a thermometer, and we all had to evacuate the entire floor for a couple hours while the team of guys wearing the HazMat suits came in to clean up and sterilize the area.”

“Oh, so that’s a problem?”

I acknowledge how stupid I was and fully accept any damage I may have done to myself. I now eat tuna with impunity knowing that there’s little danger of raising my inherent mercury levels. RUABelle knows the potential for square-headed babies from my seed. But to anybody traveling on the Westmeade bus in the early 80′s who wonders why their hair fell out in clumps, I anonymously apologize.

I blame society.

Little Miss Communication

I had an idea last night. I suggested to RUABelle that “we should have a good Bordeaux for dinner.”

She replied, “Why the hell would we want to go to MetroCenter on a Sunday night?”

I know that allergies have got her ears plugged up, but that shit’s funny! Anyway, there’s always Neely’s Barbeque in MetroCenter until the Mothership opens up.

Bone appetite!

The Pig and Nothing but the Pig

I just got back from the Mothership. You’ve already seen the reviews of Knucklehead’s bbq, so there’s not much I can add except that the shoulder sandwich ROCKED!! But I can give you a sneak preview of the decor:

That’s right. It’s Shaun Nielsen, Elvis’ favorite singer. I won’t even tell you about the decorations in the ladies room (or why I was in there), but it will be worth seeing!

I Feel His Pain

Short and Fat has hit close to home with his description of his current maladies. The day I turned 40, I woke up with a completely locked up neck. After my first 3 visits ever to chiropractor, I felt I was making progress. I got up at 4:30 this morning to do stretching exercises and get ready for work, when RUABelle came in to tell me a branch as big around as my waist (big) had fallen across our driveway in last night’s storm. The chainsaw’s up at the Sewanee cabin, so an hour of sawing with a little hand saw and hauling branches and logs away, I’ve pretty much undone any good the doc did. Pass the Alleve.

If I Had…

My friend and former little drummer boy CanIBFrank has finally posted his first meaningful prose online outside of a Steve Gadd worshippers’ chatroom. It’s a nice homage to his father and the evocative properties of hand tools.

Go check him out and welcome him to the time-waster we call the blogosphere.

Another Reason I Can’t Bring Myself to Vote for Van Hilleary

When he talks, he sounds just like Michael Waltrip on the Domino’s Pizza commercials.

Creepy!

Moroccan My World!

I know I’ll never be able to convince the rabid SEC football fan that the first 89 minutes of last night’s USA/Morocco football match was really exciting when it was 0-0. Then the Moroccans scored in the final minute and it suddenly really sucked!

We had great seats on the aisle at about the 40 yd. line in the 5th row, so the action was great to watch. It’s like the first time I attended an NHL game in person. You have no idea the speed at which these guys operate until you see them live.

Some random thoughts:

Contrary to popular belief, the fellows walking around with the banners that said “Maroc” were not misspellings of “Mapco.”

Who lets their fourteen year old daughters walk around a stadium in low-slung cut off sweat pants and a mini halter top rolled up under their boobs and “USA” painted across their bellies? This is not Rivergate!

We sat right in front of the Moroccan fan section and they kicked ass! They chanted together, played really cool drums and were active and knowledgeable fans. They also managed to get great seats in the back of two sections that stretched between the forty yard lines. After the game, they were appropriately jubilant and made it just difficult enough to get through their section and take our lumps. It was good-natured and fun to be a part of such an international experience. I don’t know how far they all traveled from to be there, but I’m sure it was worth the trip to them. Well, done Moroccans!

On the flip side, the supposed rabid group of USA football fans, Sam’s Army, was just plain lame. They huddled in the corner of the end zone, sat for most of the game and seemed disorganized and lackluster in their cheering. They were filing out of the stadium within 30 seconds of the end of the game, while the rest of the crowd stood to applaud the effort of both sides and wish the USA well in the upcoming World Cup. Don’t tread on this, ya’ losers!

The upcoming World Cup is being played in Germany. The time difference pretty much demands that you miss work in order to watch the key games. See you at the Sportsman’s Grille for lunch and a beer!

West Bound and Down

Once again my muse, Sista Smiff has inspired me with her post of her husband’s band and their odyssey to Branson in the back of a Uhaul. Back in the day, my band would play just about anywhere for a hundred bucks a head. The band leaders, DogDoc and I, occasionally got an extra $50 if we did the booking, hauled the gear and provided the “entertainment” for the ride to and from the gig.

That’s right, Knucklehead. We skimmed the till on you, but bass players only buy strings once every ten years and I got the damn 1099′s from bars that actually kept track of that stuff. Wow, that’s a load off my mind. I’ll pay double for my first shoulder sandwich at the Mothership.

But this particular adventure was during a period when Knuck was off on a cruise ship getting blown off course by various divorcees for a year or so. Our bass player at the time was a graduate of two prestigious private institutions of higher knowledge in Nashville and whose father, ironically enough, had been my child psychologist when I dropped out of one of the aforementioned institutions. (and not into any other institution, I might add.) My friendship with this bass player, let’s call him “Rocco,” has certainly been more valuable than my connection with either his alma mater or his pater familias, though I’m sure they’ve both been beneficial to lots of other people.

Our drummer was one of the funkiest white men on the planet. If you’ve gone to 3rd and Lindsley on a Wednesday night, you’ve probably seen him. In the five years I played with him, I never saw him want to take a break or miss a beat. He also beats the drums like he caught them in bed with his wife. But he is also a very soft-spoken man with a wry sense of humor. We’ll call him “Chambers.”

So the gig opportunity comes from somebody who saw us play at some wedding or bar mitzvah or reunion or hayride, but it’s a big money gig. To us, big money was anything over $500.00. This was for $600.00. The bad news was that it was in Memphis. The worse news was it was a surprise birthday party. The worst news was that it was in a really big room and we’d probably have to rent gear and get a truck to handle the gig.

Not one to want to spend extra money on gear or transportation, I began to scrounge. I had always been able to get both my and DogDoc’s guitars, amps, mike stands, effects boxes, monitors and the entire PA into my ten year old Legend with enough room to spare for exactly one twelve pack of beer and a couple of Atlanta Rhythm Section cds. Since the drummers and bass players were more transient within the band, we let them fend for themselves.

First the expanded PA. We began calling anybody we knew who had speakers and amps. We figured (correctly) that with all the liberal arts education represented in this combo, we could somehow piece together a sound system that would at least be very loud. Ultimately, we sounded like somebody dipping an electric guitar with a pack of beagles strapped to it into an aquarium full of electric eels, but at least we were f&%#king LOUD!

So how to schlep this gear to Memphis? Rather than rent a UHaul and have the other two band members follow DogDoc and me in the rental, I decided to ask if I could borrow one of our delivery trucks from work. My father used to be one of the owners of the company where I work, so I have occasionally been able to use a truck for a short haul during the weekend. During the day. In perfect weather. On surface roads. With a light load. Sober. None of those would be the case this time.

We met Rocco and Chambers at my house and loaded all the gear into the back of the truck. As we heaved this last huge speaker into the five foot high platform at the back of the truck, Chambers asked, “What does this lever do?” Oh, I guess that was the control to the Dolly Lift on the bed of the truck. That would have helped. When all the gear was in, there was a surprising amount of room left. The rhythm section asked if they really had to drive all the way to Memphis and back. I knew I wouldn’t be sitting in the dark on a wedge monitor for four hours, so I said, “Sure, you can ride in the back.” But being the scrounger that I am, we searched the basement of the band house and found a Coleman lantern and a moldy couch so disgusting that it had been thrown out of DogDoc’s fraternity house. Whereupon, we had salvaged it for just this sort of occasion. This couch was so nasty that the fleas on it had lice. So nasty that the cat wouldn’t crap on it any more. So nasty that DogDoc only slept on it when he was really drunk…like twice a week.

It was a dark and stormy night as we headed west down I-40. I didn’t have a lot of experience driving a commercial vehicle and had a lot of trouble maintaining my lane. Well, I had a lot of trouble maintaining in general. This truck wasn’t ever driven at night, and it showed. The windshield wipers swept at about 30 beats per minute and only served to smear bugs and road grime across my vision. The headlights were apparently two anemic lightning bugs encased in dirty glass. The big old truck crabbed like a sailboat with a stuck jib in the gusting crosswinds. I was really worried about the well-being of Rocco and Chambers as I heard equipment sliding around the bed of the truck, but I couldn’t turn my head to open the small hatch between the cab and the back. “Hang on, brothers,” I yelled through the steel panel separating us.

We came upon a weigh station and I wondered what to do. We were in a commercial truck, but I had no CDL. We weren’t hauling anything commercial and there were already at least six empty tall boy Miller Lite cans rolling around the cab, so I figured we’d run it and take our chances. I got DogDoc to open the panel so we could warn the rhythm section of our plans.

With a mighty effort he pried open the opening, and what to our wondering eyes should appear? A dim light illuminated the back of the truck, and I could see the shadows of equipment heaving back and forth as the truck swayed in the breeze. But was our rhythm section concerned? It was doubtful considering the fact that Chambers had a Hustler magazine held up to the Coleman so he could make out the latest story of a student at a small southern college in the Forum section and Rocco had his lips around a four foot bong that glowed like the embers of hell in the flickering lantern light.

“Yeah, we’re definitely running this weigh station…” So we crashed the gate doin’ ninety-eight. I said let them truckers, roll. 10-4.

We finally made it to Memphis and the address we had gotten from the back of the cocktail napkin at the bar where we originally booked the gig. Hmmm, this can’t be right, can it? Well, it was a big room. We had arrived at Celebration Station. I’d seen it from I-40 many times on the drive to and from Memphis, but i had never really realized what sort of place it was.

“Hello, Cleveland!” we bellowed as we opened up the back of the truck to a billowing cloud of green smoke. “Look on the bright side, guys,” I rationalized. “We’ve never played at a place with batting cages and bumper boats before.”

We unloaded our gear and prepared to soundcheck our Pink Floydesque sound system that we had assembled. We were told we couldn’t play until the facility was officially closed to the public and then that we shouldn’t play until the birthday boy got there, being as it was a surprise party and all. Oh good, we had more power daisy-chained together than we’d ever played through in a warehouse-sized room filled with somebody’s cousins and grandparents and we don’t get to sound check first. This should be good…

With nothing else to do until Myron arrived, we went to get some tokens and play some games. “Oh, those are only free to guests with armbands.” Nice. “I don’t suppose we could have any of that beer from that keg while we wait?” No dice. They did let us borrow a basketball and play H-O-R-S-E on an indoor court in between shots by paying customers. Stoned or not, Rocco kicked our asses. And now, we smelled really bad to boot.

Finally, young Myron arrived to cheers of “Surprise!” and polite golf claps from his family. Apparently, the lad was a bit of a hothouse flower with a nervous disposition. They let him walk around the whole facility, taking in the fact that it was all just for him while we stood in the corner of the basketball court with our instruments poised, debating what power level to start this unfamiliar PA at and get this debacle going.

We didn’t know what sort of music this fellow liked or how we would sound once the downbeat fell, but the straining beast that was Conscious Pilot could be held back no longer. We hit the first chords of “Magic Carpet Ride,” and several miraculous things happened at once. The power surge from the amps caused the lights in Celebration Station to dim noticeably. The curious out of phase sound of two guitars and a bass all tuned to three slightly different interpretations of the muscial scale blended in a peculiar shriek. Chambers’ double kick drum reverberated off the concrete walls a hundred feet ahead and slammed back into our faces, knocking us temporarily breathless. Myron and his family literally ran to the other corner of the buliding from the band and began to huddle around the birthday cake wondering how to get rid of these crazed heathens.

We came up with a suitable solution. We played 30 minutes, got our cash, stopped by the liquor store and drove home.

All in all, it was a pretty successful gig for us.

So What Are YOU Doing on Tuesday?

I’m gonna be learnin’ me some grappling and size equalization at that there free ninja class.

I almost didn’t see this poster because it blended so eerily into the background of the ten telephone poles it was posted on within one block of my house.

Spooky!

Suddenly It’s 90 Degrees and 90% Humidity

Apparently Spring fell on a Friday this year…

Help Unwanted

A friend pointed this out to me:

From the front page of Wednesday’s City Paper

Same day, same paper, page 22

Now, I’m no job counselor…

Home Schooling

As much as I enjoyed yesterday’s trip around the mall, Sista Smiff has inspired me to post again, but this time in response to her opinions on home schooling. I think she’s actually approaching editor status for me, since I can’t seem to come up with any good assignments for myself this week.

I agree that there are certainly situations where home schooling can lead to overly insulated children with underdeveloped social skills. They do have groups that go on traditional field trips together and there is actually a local home school prom which I shudder to think about. Of course I shudder to remember my own proms too, but that’s for different reasons.

It’s unfair to generalize the effects of home schooling and the reasons why parents choose it, just like it’s unfair to lump all traditional schools together as one experience. I attended a prestigious all-male school in Nashville (until there was an incident…), and some of those guys went from 6 years of guy school to pledging a fraternity and moving into the the frat house before freshman year even started. They were likely to marry whoever they went to freshman Spring formal with as soon as they graduated and suddenly found themselves in the workplace having to interact with women for the first time on a non-dating basis. I don’t think that’s very healthy either.

But I do want to speak up for a very positive home school experience I was personally involved in. I taught a young woman for several years in math and history as part of her home school curriculum. Her other instructors were localy grad students who needed some extra money, and her parents found me through some tutoring I had done and through my Princeton Review classes. The reason this young lady was being home schooled was that she was a potential Olympian in a competitive sport that required her to travel to meets all year long. Her parents were also in position to take her on long trips around the world and offer her the kinds of life experiences that only a small fraction of children could undertake.

She was extremely well adjusted, mature and had a thirst for knowledge that hadn’t yet been beaten down by any set of rules or guidelines. I wrote her recommendations to apply to over 10 highly competitive colleges including Ivy League schools, and she got into every one of them. From what I’ve heard, she is now a successful attorney, but I guess you can’t win them all. She would have made an excellent professor.

I recognize that her situation was unique in her opportunities and personal work ethic. What I wanted to point out was that everybody’s experiences are unique. Having a dedicated home school parent on the Metro Board of Education doesn’t necessarily mean she will bring a specific agenda to the group, and there should be checks and balances in place to prevent any one point of view from dominating discussions or policy. But the chance to bring any new perspectives to the educational process should always be embraced.

Memories…Like the Corners of a Mall

I love a writing assignment. Based on an off-handed comment on her site, Sista Smiff has suggested that a post on 100 Oaks Mall might be in order. Now that’s a challenge! How do you make something this ugly interesting?

My memories of the mall actually go back to stories from before the mall was built. My parents used to go rabbit hunting together in the oak-filled forest that gave the area its name. They never ate meals together and slept in separate beds as long as I can remember, but when it was time to load 10 beagles in a station wagon and chase Brer Rabbit around the briar patch, they actually had some family togtherness. Dad was away on business most of the time and left Mom to care for the pack of yalping dogs, but Sunday rabbit dinner made it worthwhile, I guess.

The Nashville Knucklehead has already told the story about one of the major reasons that 100 Oaks has been a failure of a mall: the fact that former Mayor Richard Fulton was an investor in Rivergate Mall and blocked interstate access to Powell Rd. But I always say if you got your ass kicked by Rivergate, you were in pretty tough shape to begin with.

For a boy growing up in Westmeade in the 1970′s though, 100 Oaks was the place to go. Outside of short trips to Ben Franklin or the Big K store to by Lik-M-Aid Sticks (in retrospect, a really unfortunate name for a candy), 100 Oaks was the only place to do some serious hangin’ out.

As a budding young hippie, I liked to go to the Sargeant Pepper Store on the bottom level. Only five years old, I wasn’t exactly sure why I wanted to buy incense and black light posters and American flag patches for my bell bottoms, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I always had to share a bedroom with one of my two brothers, so my decorations rotated on a semi-annual basis whenever one of them couldn’t stand living with my precocious little smart ass anymore. They did enjoy being able to use my incense to hide the smell of pot from our ex-Marine drill sargeant father.

We used to buy piles of vinyl at the Port of Call record store across from Sgt. Pepper, and if I remember they had a pretty nice incense selection too. Oddly enough, I gag at the smell of patchouli today. I blame it on Widespread Panic.

Room furnishings came from the House of Bamboo outlet, which also had a store in Hillsboro Village. During kindergarten, neither of my brothers would tolerate me, so I moved a studio couch into our downstairs bathroom and lived there. To me, it was like camping, albeit in a damp cool cave. I divided my “living area” from the toilet with a bamboo curtain purchased with money earned by selling lemonade and homemade weed killer (don’t ask) from a card table at the end of our cul de sac. I spent my nights watching Charlie Chaplin movies on a tiny black and white TV on PBS back when it was still channel 2, and I was blissfully unaware of how strange my living situation was. I still remember that when channel 8 and channel 2 switched places on the dial and Big Bird made the transition from one to the other, it was a pretty earth-saking change in my reality.

The other mother lode for a kid visiting 100 Oaks was the Harvey’s department store. The opportunity to buy a bag of popcorn when you weren’t in the movies seemed so special that it made it ok to have to buy your clothes in the Haggar Husky department.

In these pre-Geranimals days, it was up to me to choose my own outfits. My brother told me of the time I got separated from him at Harvey’s, and he heard the following announcement: “We have a lost young boy wearing a yellow turtleneck and blue and green and yellow and red and purple pants. Please come get him at customer service.” A nearby shopper exclaimed, “They’ve apparently captured a clown,” and he knew it must be me.

As I got older, the out building of 100 Oaks became more important. That’s where the first multiplex theatre in Nashville was located, the Martin Twin. I remember watching all of Kurt Russell’s Disney movies and several Bruce Lee movies there from between my interlaced fingers over my eyes. Cinema South was too far away, the Belcourt and the Lowe’s were still showing porn and the Belle Meade Theatre had “The Sting” and “Paper Moon” held over for most of the 70′s, so the Martin was the place to be.

As I aged even more, I moved to the other half of the same annex. First it was video games in the arcade and then it was sneaking into Flanagan’s to dance on the multicolored Saturday Night Fever dance floor and drink 3 for 1′s on my fake green paper TN driver’s license. I’ll always remember one night watching Adrian Belew of King Crimson set a tiny amp down in the middle of that dance floor and play a solo set of the most amazing feedback for two hours on a Sunday night. I wasn’t on the same hallucinogens or piles of blow like the rest of the crowd, so I imagine my memory is a little sharper than most of the event.

Finally, the bloom came off the rose. Neighborhood malls and googleplex cinemas took away any reason to head out Thompson Lane. I will admit that I do still drop by the FuBu section of Burlington Coat Factory before every trip to Vegas to buy some fly threads. RUABelle will let me wear them on the Strip, but more than once she has made me throw shirts away rather than repack them for the trip home. But hey, if you ever need a big sweater with a picture of Rudy from the Cosby Kids on the front and back of it, 100 Oaks is the place to go. Otherwise, not so much.

So what are your recollections?

I Like to Think I’m an Intelligent Enough Fellow…

…but I spent five minutes this afternoon trying to lick the back of the printed postage out of our new postage meter before somebody told me we had switched to pressure sensitive tape. Good thing it wasn’t sharp or anything.

CeeElCee’s Tip o’ the Day

When you’re walking in a mall, never make eye contact with anyone carrying a clipboard.

And, yes, I did mall walk before I turned 40. Thanks for asking and keep those “Matlock” jokes coming.

Two phrases that drive me absolutely nuts!

1.) “Well, I guess we’re back at ground zero.”

Is that when you get to square one and blow it up?

2.) “Why don’t you just sign your John Henry right here?”

Err, yeah. Let me just get my steel-driving pen.

Anybody else got any that make them bonkers, or am I the only one?

Forty Plus

I woke up this morning and my neck had totally seized up. I can’t move my head more than twenty degrees.

I feel like my warranty expired yesterday and planned obsolescence is setting in.

On a related note, I had already decided to take the day off from work. I think Bob Barker is a doddering fool, and “The Price is Right” is an extremely dated, silly show. But I defy you not to watch it when you’re skipping work…

Come on down!

Old Man Take a Look at My Life

Do you remember back when you were 17?

Did you ever think about turning 40? Man, that’s old! I’ll never make it that far. And who would want to? And could you imagine how ancient you’ll look?

I was surprisingly prescient for a young `un.

Ugh.