A Letter to the High and Mighty

"Seriously?"

"Yes, Seriously!"


Let's take a moment and go further back in time. I woke up later than usual this morning, and I had to go to the gym before going to work. As usual for situations like this, I would browse through my BlackBerry on Nokia to see what's on the docket for the day, and ensure that I have the flexibility to work out and shower. If not, I'd just shower and go straight to work. But this morning, I was all clear.

Throughout my workout, I constantly kept an eye out at my BlackBerry on Nokia, checking it routinely to ensure no new meetings pop up for the day. Everything was fine, so I went to the locker room and showered. As soon as I got out of the shower, as luck would have it, my cell phone and pager rang off the hook! Apparently, the vendor had set up a conference call, and I was a critical person for the call, and the vendor forgot to add me into the invitee list. Great...

As I stood in front of my locker buck naked, another fellow gym user came in from his workout. His locker happened to be next to mine. I paid him little attention, other than to get out of his way so as to provide more room for him, and started dialing into the conference call on my cellular phone's speakerphone.

As the call progressed, I continued to dry myself and put my clothes on. And finally, when I was doing my hair, the last thing of my getting ready for work, the aforementioned guy (henceforth to be called The High and Mighty) returned from the shower and started getting dressed next to me. Throughout the entire time, The High and Mighty kept on giving me the eye, and like a spoiled rotten girl throwing a temper tantrum, did things loudly while using his locker.

When The High and Mighty got dressed and prepared to leave, he slammed his locker as hard as he could, then finally opened his lips to say condescendingly, "Seriously? Speakerphone in a locker room?"

I knew it wasn't the best etiquette I've displayed, but considering the situation, I had no choice. So I responded, "Seriously, yeah. When you get paged for an emergency, I'm sorry. What else should I do?"

The High and Mighty shot back, all the while walking away from me, "You could've gone downstairs."

Just then, I had to unmute the call and respond to some of the discussions, so The High and Mighty left the locker room. But I was nearly done with my routine, so I hurriedly responded to the discussion, muted the call, and then put on my coat jacket. I tried to catch up with The High and Mighty, who was about 15 yards ahead of me, but he had his iPod on. He would look back at me once in a while, but not want to continue the discussion. And judging from the way he was dressed and the heavy backpack filled with leather bound books that he carried, I assumed that he was probably a law student at Northwestern University.

When he stepped out of the gym, The High and Mighty turned east. Alas, my work is westward. So in the interest of getting to work in a timely manner, I gave up on him. Hence this letter to The High and Mighty now.

Dear High and Mighty,

My many apologies for my social faux pas at the locker room. I want you to understand that I normally and typically would frown on people who carry on a phone conversation (or conference call) in the middle of a locker room as well. I knew it wasn't right, and my sincerest apologies.

But mothereffer, what bothered me was the fact that you saw me buck naked, and you heard and saw my phone and pager going off, to which I was frantically trying to respond to. Please don't flatter yourself into thinking that I like to show off my personal package instead of prioritizing putting on my underwear first.

When you returned from your shower, you saw me half naked, but you also clearly saw my badge that clearly stated that I work for a hospital. You of all people know that a majority of the patrons at this gym are employees of this hospital: doctors, nurses and technical staff like myself. It is not like their badges (and pagers) are always hidden from view when entering or leaving the gym. Northwestern University law students come in at a distant second when it comes to patron demographics. You knew that. It was in your gym discount orientation package. In fact, the entire make up of the patrons at our gym are affiliated with either the hospital or your school!

Here's the thing. You have every right to feel offended that I was on a conference call on speakerphone, but seriously, do you have to behave like a little pussy ass girl with a temper tantrum? I gave an honest response, asking what I should've done if I got paged into an emergency. Your response was ill thought out, and without any forethought. How can you expect me to just "go downstairs" when you clearly saw me get paged while I was buck naked and all wet? Your response was so f*cking dumb that I wonder how much your precious daddy had to donate to the school for you to get in.

I know the odds of getting paged in an emergency just as I have stepped out of the shower are pretty slim in the future. But I do know that the odds of this happening to someone in a professional walk of life are higher. So I hope that you will write a project plan on how to deal with this situation when you, The High and Mighty, have become a professional yourself (assuming you graduate some day) and encounter the very same dilemma as I had today. If you can make a better decision and act better than I have given the situation, please do share this with the world. Obviously, just "going downstairs" buck naked cannot be considered a good action plan, because it would involve having the risk of getting arrested for indecent public exposure.

So seriously, I am very interested in how The High and Mighty can act better in this situation.

Sincerely,

John.

PS: I am also sorry that your penis is smaller than mine.

PPS: I hope that when you get old and fat (should you develop some kind of a health problem) that you'll suffer a massive coronary heart attack while your doctor (or the ER doctor) is buck naked in his gym shower, and that he will take his sweet ass time to get dressed and "go downstairs" to respond to his/her nurse's emergency page regarding your health because he/she believed that proper etiquette trumps emergencies.

Are Americans In General STUPID?!?

Okay, aside from the current president, I don't think Americans in general are stupid. Sure, Americans have for years been lagging behind citizens of other countries, including third world and developing nations, on math and science, but I have for the longest time defended the notion that in general, Americans are not exactly stupid.

I have taken this stance even before I became an American citizen myself back in 2005, including way before as in when I was merely an international student in college (1996 through 2001). Sure, the other kids in class tend to sit next to me so they can copy my answers, and I was always the one who answered questions thrown out by the professor, but I typically attributed why most American students wouldn't dare raise their hands to the fact that Americans are typically shy when speaking out in public, including public forums such as classrooms.

But today, I'm starting to think that maybe, with a slight possibility, that Americans in general might be stupid. Case in point: Aluminum. First of all, despite the fact that the ancient Greeks and Romans have used aluminum compounds for different purposes, Humphry Davy in 1808 discovered aluminum in its base metal form. He called the pure metal aluminium. In every country where the Roman alphabet is used, this common metal is spelled with an i at the end, except for the United States! What the hell??? But I am not going to go into this spelling debate, as there is something more important at stake for this topic...

So what prompted me today to get on this topic? Well, I went down to the Corner Bakery Café to get a simple lunch: pesto pasta with bread. When I got back to my cubicle and began eating, I noticed that although my pasta was still hot, my grilled bread has quickly turned cold. And there is a very legitimate reason, because my grilled bread was wrapped in aluminum foil with the wrong side facing out!!!

Okay, for the average reader, you probably are wondering why that mattered. Trust me, the majority of my friends would share the same reaction as you, which quite frankly, is helping me make my case here. Do Americans lack the urge to be curious? I mean, when I saw aluminum foil for the first time when I was a kid, aside from learning quickly that the edge can slice my skin open, I immediately noticed that one side of it is shiny and the other side is dull! Of course, I quickly learned in junior high why that is so. But let's not get into that just yet.

If you have no idea why I'm going off and off on some stupid aluminum foil, let me dare you to try an experiment. Go bake some lasagna in the oven, with two separate casserole dishes. Give each dish the same ingredients and the same amount. And make sure the dishes are of the exact same size, shape and manufacturer. Now, cover one casserole dish with an aluminum foil with the shiny side up, and cover the other with the dull side up. Leave both on the same rack, and bake both together per the instructions as far as time and temperature goes. What do you think will happen? Let's get back to this later...

The incident with the Corner Bakery Café today wasn't the first of its kind to happen to me. There was once when a friend, who will remain anonymous, who baked some delicious food with the aluminum foil with the wrong side up. Thankfully, the food was not frozen, and it was quick to cook. Nobody got salmonella out of that. Then there was this one time when I went to a non-chain deli store and ordered a nice, warm Italian sandwich. Since the store wraps their sandwiches in aluminum foil, I noticed that they were wrapping everybody's warm sandwiches with the wrong side up!

My favorite aluminum story of all? The 2005 Chicago Marathon. Whenever the Chicago Marathon ends up occurring during cold weather, race organizers have always provided finishers with warming blankets. Warming blankets are nothing more than the thinnest and cheapest version of emergency fire blankets used by fire fighters. Anyway, in 2005, I noticed that all marathon finishers were given warming blankets with the Chicago Marathon and LaSalle Bank logos printed on the wrong side! Of course, nobody wore the blankets with the logos inside and the non-logo side outside, so everybody was wearing it the wrong way, save for a few runners which I proudly commend for their brilliancy.

[Please note: A few years ago, a team of firefighters in California died in a passing forest fire that they couldn't beat due to lack of training. Basically, if the wind kicks up and you cannot outrun the fire, you are trained to pull out the emergency fire blankets and cover yourself in it and stay on the ground. This will only last you a few minutes, but most fast blazing forest fires will blow by within the average few minutes. Anyway, autopsy revealed that this young team of firefighters burned to death because they didn't have the necessary training, since they wore their emergency fire blankets made of aluminum the wrong side up!!!]

So let's get back to the basics. I learned in basic, generic science class in seventh grade that the shiny side of aluminum reflects heat, whereas the dull side absorbs heat. Sure, it was covered again in chemistry as well as physics in my high school years, but it was first taught in basic science in seventh grade! [Note that I went to a school that uses American curriculum.]

In the case of my grilled bread for lunch, had the food preparer used the aluminum foil with the dull side out and the shiny side in facing my bread, the grilled bread would still have been nice and warm by the time I got upstairs. That's because the shiny side would have reflected the heat from the bread back into the bread!

In the case of my friend who cooked that chicken, had my friend baked the chicken with the shiny side in and the dull side facing the oven, the food would have been cooked significantly faster. And I wouldn't have accused my friend of trying to poison me with salmonella.

In the case of the 2005 Chicago Marathon, nobody got to stay warm except for the handful of runners who actually wore their warming blankets with the dull side out, and the shiny side (with the logos) in. Basically, their body heat escaping the bodies would have been reflected back into their own body, while the dull side facing out would have absorbed as much heat from the sun as possible. 95% of the finishers were probably wondering why they continued wearing defective warming blankets when they know they still remained cold.

So can you guess what would have happened to your lasagna casserole? If you guessed that the lasagna covered with the dull side up would have turned out perfect, you're right. And the one with the shiny side up? Well, you better learn how to heat up lasagna in the microwave if you have guests waiting for dinner.

Long story short: How the hell can so many people make this damn mistake? Seriously! How can the company that makes warming blankets allow the logos to be printed on the wrong side, and have 35,000 such blankets distributed?!? You would think that a company that specializes in the manufacturing of warming blankets would have caught this mistake if it was done by them! Worse yet, if it was specifically ordered by the race organizers like that, the manufacturer should have given a warning and try to correct the problem!

So, back to my question. Are Americans in general stupid? Something as simple as a piece of effing aluminum foil cannot even be used correctly! What's next? Using Q-Tips® as toothpicks, and plastic Saran® wraps as condoms? You decide... Before today, my answer had always been no. But today, I am sooo on the fence on this one...

If I get food wrapped up the wrong way in aluminium ever again, I swear on the baby lord Jesus, I am going to sit there and provide a free lecture!