Why do people do things that they know are silly? Be honest, don't you do things once in a while that might appear totally ridiculous to other people? It might be a habit that you can keep private. Sometimes you might forget yourself and cut loose, perhaps drawing a wary glance from some nearby stranger.  If you haven't done it lately, you probably did at least once in your life.

I'll admit my goofy habit first. I figure that way you'll feel better about your personal idiosyncrasies. You might get to the bottom of this paragraph, decide I'm a lunatic and quickly jump to another blog, but's a chance I'm willing to take. Ready? Now just take your hand off the mouse until you've heard me out. Here goes. My personal bugaboo is...I talk to my truck.

Oh good, you're still there. It's true. I speak out loud to a 1995 Ford Ranger. Oh, it doesn't talk back, and I don't expect it to. I don't know if it's a nervous habit or just that I don't want to feel alone. But sometimes I talk to my truck as we go down the road. I don't jabber along for miles, but I do exclaim, I declare, and sometimes I ask rhetorical questions. What's more odd is that I don't talk to any of my other vehicles. The car only rates an occasional "Come on" when it cranks an extra time or two. To the riding mower and the tractor, I may as well be Harpo Marx. Only my truck ever hears from me...if indeed it can hear. And that's unlikely.

I think cowboys talked to their horses as they rode the open prairies, so there may be a historical precedent. A cowboy's horse and a truck share some important traits. Both are beasts of burden; neither one talks back. Both can carry a solitary rider for long distances. And if you jab the spurs too hard either one can kick its back end loose and take you on a wild ride! My truck doesn't have leather seats, but the cloth reclining buckets are way more comfortable than a saddle.

After a stimulating and rewarding day at work (they do happen sometimes!) I climb in, turn the key and call out "Truck! Let's go home!" I presume the truck gets bored sitting in its parking spot all day, as I do in my cubicle. It might even be anxious to get back to its garage and out of the sun just like I want to get to my favorite chair in my den. Or at least it would if it was alive like Lightning McQueen in Cars. Both our assigned spots are about the same shape; the only difference is that my cubicle faces away from the window; the parking spot has a better view.

If the conversation stopped with just one exclamation it would merely be a ritual and I could brush it off. But it doesn't. I'm in the cab for two hours each day (mostly because my company hasn't yet seen the light and instituted telecommuting) and at the end of the day I'm ready to talk. I point out various doofuses and morons as we make our way through rush-hour traffic. I know the truck hasn't read my Driver's Field Guide but we've discussed it. Heck, I did most of the research for the article from its driver's seat! If, when I park, I leave the lights on or the keys in the ignition, the warning chime rings. I douse the lights, pocket the keys and say "Thank you, Truck" as if it's done me a favor.

I usually talk to the truck as a single entity. Sometimes I address specific parts. I scold the turn signal that clicks off too soon. I cajole various parts to loosen so I can fix problems. When I talk to the radio, though, I'm usually interacting with whatever it's playing rather than with the radio itself. I get into heated arguments with Sean Hannity on AM talk radio and with Daniel Schorr on NPR. Most days, though, I'm not in the mood for indignant political diatribe of either stripe; I just want to mellow out with some music. Once in a while even that seemingly benign pastime can start a discussion. I like oldies stations but I get irked when they play the same song daily ad nauseum: "Aw, not again! Is Joy to the World the only Three Dog Night you own? For crying out loud, play Family of Man or My Impersonal Life! Criminy!" (A similar reaction occurs with The Monkees and Daydream Believer.) I suppose I could pick up the cell phone, call the station and actually complain to the DJ, but there isn't always a safe place to pull over. My way may be crazy, but it's not dangerous.

On very rare occasions the conversation can turn deadly serious. A few winters ago I was on my way home, barreling along on a plowed dry road. I hadn't learned the wisdom of putting a few hundred pounds of sandbags in the bed. I changed a tape as we crossed an intersection and didn't notice that the dry pavement had disappeared suddenly under packed snow and ice. The back end started dancing the hula.

"Hey now, Truck!" I intoned, tapping the brake to kill the cruise. "Where we going?" I popped the shifter into neutral. The hula continued as I tried to steer out of the skid. "Come on baby!" I urged, spinning the wheel from back to forth, turning into the skid. "Come on, come on, come on!!" The dance changed to frantic pirouettes. Helpless, we skidded backward down the wrong side of the road; I stopped talking to the truck. "Oh Lord, HELP!!" I yelled as we bounced off the road, coming to rest in a ditch full of soft-packed snow.

I quickly checked to make sure all the parts were still attached the way they were when I left work. Then I checked the truck. "Okay now," I soothed, "you're a truck. You're going to walk right out of this." The motor was still running; I shifted into second. "Okay, here we go." I brushed the gas. The rear wheels threw great rooster-tails as the snow under the belly of the truck held it like a fly in pine pitch. I tried to rock it loose...shift, gas, nothing. Brake, reverse, gas, nothing.

"Stupid piece of junk!" I yelled, pounding the steering wheel. "Are you a truck or a Geo?" I was fortunate at that point that I had a truck instead of a horse; a horse might have bucked me into a snowdrift and stepped on my hat. Eventually someone with a chain and a bigger truck happened by and yanked us out; nobody said a word the rest of the way home.

Winter ditch parties aside, the little Ranger's been a good companion. It gets me to work and back and it doesn't ask a lot. It's as comfortable as my favorite ball cap. However, it is racking up the miles and its tranny's starting to slip. I know one day it'll head for that big parking lot in the sky. I'll be sad when the day comes that I have to look for a new traveling companion. It's been a long time since I shopped for a truck. Does anyone know any good pickup lines?

We live in an age of unparalleled technological advancement. Diseases that were once death sentences are cureable now. A person can fight cancer and only miss a few days of work. In former times telephones were rooted to buildings. Now they fit in your ear. In my youth people who walked around talking to themselves were nuts. Now it's more than likely they're just talking on the phone. Computers were confined to air-conditioned rooms and accessible only to super-intelligent people. Now I have one. I ponder the amazing machine that connects me to you, a device that fits under my writing table and yet is more powerful than mainframes from days of yore, and I wonder...why the Sam Hill can't you stay connected?

When I built this machine four years ago it didn't even have a modem. I built it strictly for development work. Then I realized that once I wrote my killer application and made my fortune I might need to transfer funds at the bank, so I installed a 33.6k internal modem. It lasted a few months and died a mysterious death. I didn't make much of it. The 56k modems had just hit the market so it seemed like a good time to step up. I bought a medium-priced device and put it in the slot the old one had occupied. It lasted a good long time, as these things go, but one day I left the machine on during a thunderstorm and a near-hit of lightning fried that modem like a potato stick. I replaced it with another one, which quit working last winter for no apparent reason.

About that time the phone company started advertising, actually they heralded, the advent of DSL in a town a couple of miles away. I bought a cheapo modem to get me through until the township that I live in caught up to the turn of the century. Unfortunately the century turned at the main road; I live about a mile too far out for DSL. I looked into satellite service, and from the price the company quoted I think they expected me to buy the satellite! Cable doesn't stretch this far either, so the only two options were to go with a cellular company or stick with dial-up service. Since the modem held its speed and I had fuel bills to pay I decided to stick with dial-up.

The computer ran fine for months. I could work from home, connected to my office computer, and the difference in speed was almost undetectable. I stayed online for hours at a time and never once dropped a connection. I could even download large Windows update files in a reasonable amount of time without fear of coming unhooked and losing all that data. Sadly, it was too good to last.

One afternoon I heard rain falling outside my window. I dropped offline and plugged my modem line into the surge protector. (At one time I used it religiously; then a phone-company repairman told me that removing it would give me one fewer "possible point of failure." I leave it off on sunny days but since Mama didn't raise a fool, I return it to service whenever the weather turns ugly.) I dialed back into work, enjoying the sound of the gentle rain outside and an occasional distant rumble of thunder.

All at once there was a big bright flash and a ka-BOOM! outside; at that same moment I heard a pop under my desk and my connection dropped. The first word I thought was Aw! I clicked Connect and waited breathless, leaning toward the desk, straining to hear that little whistle. There was no sound but the rain, now falling harder. Thunder rolled again, this time more loudly. I picked up the receiver; there was no dial tone. I was on a forced break.

I waited out the loss of service with the gloomy stoicism of a little-leaguer sitting out a rain delay. Over and over I lifted the receiver, hoping for a dial tone and not even hearing a click. I called the phone company on my cell phone, climbing up the branches of their phone tree. I keyed in my area code, the phone number that was out of service, a number where I could be reached, the phone number my parents had when I was born and the first and last numbers of my blood pressure, which was near 160/98. Apparently people who are about to have strokes get moved to the front of the line; my call was transferred to the next available representative.

Rep: Phone company repair.

Me: Hello. My phone is out of order.

Rep: Is it the phone you're calling from?

Me: No, it's my home phone.

Rep: You're calling from your home phone?

Me: No, it's dead. I'm calling from my cell phone.

Rep: Are you sure it's dead?

Me: It was when I called but I haven't checked it in the last three seconds.

Rep: Sir, are you sure the problem isn't in your house wiring?

Me: Oh, I've played this game before. Yes, I tried the box outside. It's your problem, all right.

Rep: Very well sir. I'm just going to test the line to be sure.

I heard keys clicking, or possibly magic beads being poured out. The representative mumbled a strange and ominous incantation, and the dead phone returned from the grave.

Rep: Sir, it seems to be working now. Is there anything else I can do for you?

Me: Can you send me some of those magic beads?

Rep: I'm sorry sir, that's against company policy. Thank you for calling your phone company.

I returned to my computer with restored faith in the inherent goodness of faceless behemoth corporations bent on global domination. I clicked Connect once more and again heard that familiar little hiss and whistle. Maybe, I thought, just this once, I'll get by with a simple fix. I watched as progress messages scrolled on the screen. Come on baby, I urged, hook up at 50.6 for Daddy.

For a long moment nothing happened. Then the monitor got a strange look and flashed a message that had been buried for so long the memory of it had faded:

"Unable to establish a connection."

"NOOOOO!" I shouted. "It can't be!!" I clicked Connect again. The computer whistled. Then it waited. The cursed message appeared again, like a skeleton from the back of the closet. Over and over we wrestled; time and time again disappointment rose up and batted my hopes down like a Chinese volleyball player spiking the ball.

Finally I couldn't stand another heartache. I shut down the computer, unplugged the phone lines, and removed the modem. I held the now-useless plastic sheet in my hand, contemplating whether it would be more satisfying to run it over with the lawn roller or get my two-pound hammer from the tool box and reduce the poor thing to elements.

As I stood coldly plotting mayhem, I remembered that in times past my connection would return once the foul weather had passed. Calmly I lay the modem on the keyboard and went outside to study the sky and to make sure my mini-sledge was still in the garage where I'd left it. When the ground dried and sunny skies returned I went back in the house and reinstalled the modem. I braced myself for another letdown as I rolled the mouse over Connect and clicked. The computer whistled. Messages scrolled. The computer paused longer than Apollo 13 took to re-establish contact with Houston. I took a deep breath, and then...

"Connected at 31.2 kbps."

"Thirty-one point two?" I shouted unbelieving. "That's the best I get?" Then the connection dropped.

I still haven't bought a new modem, but this could be the payday that I do. I've been limping along as my connection has good days and bad. When the connection's been good I've done a little covert research, and everyone needs to know what I've learned. I found proof that the phone company and modem manufacturers are consipiring to.....9bF87....lj4%#dl

(Unable to establish a connection)

Well, it's happened again. I broke one of my cardinal rules and now I'm paying the price. Or at least I'll have to if I want these speakers to work.

My cardinal rule is this: Never Get Rid Of Anything. I save all kinds of things against the day when someone will suddenly have a good use for them. Our attic holds old toys that are just hanging around for grandkids to discover, picnic baskets and styrofoam coolers that haven't held food in ages, boxes full of books I've read, books I may read someday and books that I bought because they looked interesting at the time. There's a perfectly good HO train set for which I'll build a fantastic layout in the spare bedroom, if I can find another place to store the unused exercise equipment, cabinets full of old clothes and furniture that's too good to discard and the kids may need someday. If it's true that one man's trash is another man's treasure, I am either King Midas or Fred Sanford.

I like to think my saving habit is a thrifty and environmentally sound one, and not just a sign of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I find new uses for perfectly-good parts of things that have otherwise hit the end of their useful lives and I reuse items that have outlasted their original use. And by loading up the unused rooms in my house, I'm filling space that I'd otherwise burn fossil fuel to heat and saving landfill room for others.

A shoe box is a simple example of an item with more than one use. Imagine that Christmas is coming and I need to wrap up a teddy bear for my three-year-old niece. I could go to the local big-box store and buy expensive and tastefully-textured gift boxes at a time when I've already stretched the budget as tight as a snare-drum head. Or I can walk to the closet, pull out a box that once held my new walking shoes and toss the bear in that. Either box will be wrapped in Christmas paper before it travels to the family gathering. The paper and the box will be flung aside when the tot discovers the teddy bear, and I'll have not only trod gently on old Mother Earth, but I'll have three bucks to boot. Now, at this point a word of caution is due. If you try this yourself, be careful about recycling boxes when the kid is old enough to read. You won't be remembered sweetly if your teenaged nephew finds a box labeled "Play Station 3" stuffed with practical gifts like socks and underwear...unless your nephews are very different from mine.

Those plastic fruit cups are prime candidates for imaginative reuse. They nest nicely in a kitchen drawer and can hold lots of things that aren't fruit. Mints, candies, nuts, bolts and screws all fit neatly in them. They make dandy little Jello molds and they hold enough ice cream to satisfy me for a good fifteen minutes. If next year's Miss Relay costume requires falsies, a couple of strategically-placed fruit cups and a few strips of bandage tape should give me that extra touch of feminine allure.

So, how did I mess up my little system? I did it by an act of goodwill. This spring our Relay For Life team held a fundraising yard sale. We all donated some of our excess items. A few of the things that people brought actually were good bargains. I pitched in a couple of sweaters, some gently-read coffee-table books and a box full of old AC adapters, figuring that someone would be overjoyed to find a working 3VDC power supply with the funny tip, the one that would bring their long-dormant electronic gizmo back to life. I worked the sale for a while and when relief came I left to run errands. When I returned to help take things down I saw that the team had been super-efficient. Our sale site was cleared out and any unsold merchandise was gone.

I looked around the piled folding tables and neatly-boxed tent poles. "Where's that orange shoe box of power supplies?" I asked one of the ladies. "With everything else we didn't sell," she replied. "At Goodwill."

I rushed to the local Goodwill store. Too late, I saw the orange box, along with a familiar sweater and a coffee-table book about owls, parked in the donation bin. A large sign posted nearby warned in capital letters that once an item was in the bin it was theirs, and people who removed such items...well, they wouldn't receive any good will. A closed-circuit TV camera glowered, its red light menacing, from a bracket on the wall above. I returned home beaten, but still optimistic. At least I had an empty drawer in which I could start a new power-supply collection. I promptly forgot them and moved on with life.

Then came the new laptop. At least, it's new to me. I picked it up at a yard sale for $20 (and hopefully the lady's husband isn't asking, "Honey, where's that old Dell...Oh, you didn't! Dang, I was saving that for the kids!"). I wanted to try out all the features so I dug out an old dot-matrix printer and some speakers. The printer works great but the speakers need...say it with me...an AC adapter! I hurried to the drawer and rummaged through my new collection. I didn't rummage long; there was only one, and it's the wrong voltage. I wouldn't feel badly except that I'm not sure that both speakers work. That leaves me with a conundrum: What if I buy a new power supply and one speaker's dead? I guess the answer's obvious: I'll put the stupid thing in the drawer, because sooner or later someone will have a dead gadget that will need it!

I was amazed, when I walked around the corner of the house and saw the way the sunlight caught the details in the trim, that what had been just a bunch of dull gray wood and peeling paint earlier in the day suddenly became architecturally interesting and actually quite pretty. It almost made up for the price I paid to make it look nice.

The trim on the house has looked awful for years. I'd planned to freshen it up for several summers but things just got in the way. Rain, infestations of wasps, emergency brake jobs and countless other pursuits had eaten one weekend after another until the woodwork appeared to be in imminent danger of collapse. Finally I could postpone the job no more. I conceived a simple plan. I'd start at one end of a gable and scrape it, moving the ladder across the house, and then I'd work the other way, priming the woodwork and finally painting it. I figured that one gable's worth of trim would take a couple of hours. The last time I painted any major trim on a house, "major" meaning anything I couldn't reach from a kitchen stool, was about fifteen years ago. On that project I ran up and down an extension ladder, both hands laden with brushes, scrapers and cans of paint, feeling nothing but job satisfaction at the end of the day. Since then my extension ladder and I have both gained considerable amounts of weight. In previous times the ladder was just heavy; when I tried to set it up this week it weighed just slightly less than a mid-1950's family car. It was also just as maneuverable. Nonetheless, I armed myself with a scraper and wire brush and alighted the ladder.

For all its weight, the extension ladder is incredibly flexible. In fact, it weaved and swung like a tree branch in a windstorm. I dropped the tools and grabbed a rung, hanging on for dear life until the bouncing subsided. Timidly I picked up the tools and restarted upward, noticing that the ladder was much more accommodating to my slower pace. Once I reached the base of the gable I started scraping, watching as little flecks of old paint dropped like bird-turd, the smaller pieces clinging to my arms and blowing down my back and into my hair. Still, I couldn't skip this step, and I figured a good hot shower would be an ample reward for the effort. I scraped with one hand and then the other, reaching as far as I could, and when one section was laid bare I descended the ladder and moved over. I discovered on the first trip down that my feet had also become wider since the last project, and I had to move carefully to avoid stepping on them.

I pulled the ladder toward the center of the gable, taking care not to drag it over a window centered just below the peak. Just then I realized that not only would I have to raise the ladder to reach the unscraped areas, but I'd have to lower it again on the other side. Realizing that three rounds of ladder-bobbing would leave my arms as flaccid as shoelaces, I adjusted my plan and borrowed my neighbor's very light fiberglass ladder. It's a beauty that one man can raise and lower without serious injury and it sports non-skid aluminum rungs. In fact, upon brushing my bare knee against a rung I recalled a childhood incident involving new roller skates. Still, the convenience of extending the big ladder once and leaving it extended made up for the skinned knee.

I finished the scraping and prepared to prime, grateful that the heat wave we'd suffered earlier in the week had subsided. I popped the lid of the primer can and stirred it up. Ascending the ladder, I looked to my left and saw a large section of unscraped trim. Our house is L-shaped, and part of the gable end hung over the L. I needed to step onto the roof and traverse about five feet to reach it. I've been on the roof several times before. The last time I was up there, somehow the pitch had become so steep I had a tough time creeping back down to the ladder. Still, I couldn't leave that trim untouched; I'd have to adjust my plan once more.

I reset the ladder so I could step off it and grab the gable, giving me an opportunity to catch my balance before mounting the ascent to the trim. I leaned it against the L and scrambled up. At the top I realized the ladder was too low; I had nothing to hold while I reached for the house. I descended and raised the ladder. (I've learned that the top portion of an extension ladder is called the "fly section," which to me seems inopportune; one thing I don't want to do on a ladder is fly, because the only conceivable flight path is down!) Once again in the air, I found that the way the rungs are spaced my foot was too far below the roof edge to step up. If I climbed another rung I would have been completely above the edge, which might have changed the point of balance, turning the whole contraption into a giant teeter-totter with no fixed fulcrum, which could only lead to that dreaded downward flight.

Once again I returned to earth to ponder the problem. I concluded that the only way to get on the roof was to brace the ladder against the house and swing sideways, releasing my grip on the ladder as I caught the gable with the other hand. For once the actual practice worked as well as the theory; I found myself standing one-footed on the roof! I swung around, planting both feet on the shingles, and reached for the scraper...

...which was no longer tucked in my waistband. It lay on the grass next to the ladder.

I let out a mirthless chuckle as the irony of the situation sank in. Well, I thought, as long as I'm here I will accomplish something! I climbed to the rooftop and replaced a section of metal chimney that blew down over the winter. Then I turned and made my slow descent to the ladder, at first upright and stepping lightly, changing to a crabwalk as I approached the roof edge. Then my boot slipped! Just an inch maybe, but far enough to scare the goo out of me! I grabbed the gable and pulled myself to it, replanting my boot and braking my skid.

Regaining my balance, I contemplated my narrow escape from certain death, how foolish I was to climb on the roof again, and how long it would take the township Fire Department to bring a big truck with a basket and two big guys to escort me out of this mess! Finally I thought Okay, if I could stretch out to grab the gable, I can stretch out to the ladder. Inching tenuously down the roof, I held onto the gable and stretched my leg way out until my toes rested firmly on the nearest rung. In one quick motion I lurched onto the ladder, grabbing the rails and making a quick, safe trip to the ground. Then I picked up that infernal scraper and flung it into the cornfield!

That seemed like a good time for a lunch break. After I ate I dug up another scraper and a long pole, with which I scraped the offending woodwork from the safety of the ladder. That completed, I started a regular cycle; up the ladder, prime, prime the other side, and down the ladder. Move the ladder, and repeat. Climb up the big ladder, and repeat. Climb down the big ladder, move the little ladder way over, and repeat. When the whole gable was primed I took a break while the primer dried. It gave me a chance to notice that my calves were plotting a mutiny. Just one more round, guys, I said to my legs, and we'll call it a day. I felt a little strange, talking to my body parts and all, but I felt I had to convince them we were almost through.

As the primer dried I noticed that clouds overcast the blue skies above. I reckoned it to be a good deal as it kept the sun off my neck. I got the paint out of the shed and started up the ladder once more. About halfway up my knees joined the rebellion; I ignored them. By the time I had to climb the big ladder again, ascending too quickly was no longer a problem. In fact, it wasn't even an option. My feet both wanted to stop and rest on every rung, my legs didn't want to push anymore, and my arms didn't want to pull. The neighbors paused to watch me for signs of motion in any direction, fearing that perhaps my heart gave out and stranded me at half-mast. I reached my zenith after what seemed like no more than a half-hour. Cautiously I continued the job, taking great pains to cover every inch of trim, knowing that a void would mean another trip skyward. I pushed paint into every crack and orifice, ensuring that I would have no need to return for as many years as possible.

Fueled only by sheer force of will, I made trip after trip up those ladders, slapping paint on wood until I once again reached the L. A low rumble emanated from under the gable above the roof. That rotten woodwork laughed at me! It seemed to say, "you can't touch me, and you never will!" Fighting the urge to throw the contents of the paint can toward that diabolical mocking laugh, I climbed down the ladder one last time, my hands raw from the non-skid rungs. Time is on my side, I said to the laughter. I'll get you later.

As I lay in bed that night, with portions of my body shouting obscenities for the abuse they endured, I felt glad that I started the work on the back of the house. If I'd started on the front I'd have called it good and abandoned the job. As it is, I still have to finish the front so the neighbors can enjoy the view. A gentle rain started as I drifted to sleep. Somehow I can break the worst of droughts merely by doing exterior painting. The last thing I thought before exhaustion overtook me was, "does paint have to dry for 24 hours before rain?"