Jesus + Magnets = Penetratingly Awesome

I have a maxim in my house when it comes to mail:

"If it's not in an envelope addressed to either me or my wife, or both, it invariably gets thrown in the recycling bin."

This policy bodes rather ill for the following items of mail:

* Solicitations

* Newsletters

* Junk Mail Addresesd to "Current Resident" (Mr. Resident don't live here no more and he can go fuck himself anyway)

* Alumni Horseshit

* Fabric Store Circulars (if I throw these away before Mrs. Apron gets to see them, I risk falling asleep as a little red laser light finds its way between my eyes)

* "Come Pray With Us" ads for local churches

* Catalogs (I hang onto the Vicky's Secret ones for nostalgia)

* Coupons

They say you don't start caring about coupons until you have at least two children. I don't know if there's any hope for me. I lack the attention-to-detail, the patience, the energy and the overall competency to deal with coupons. They require a complex skill set that I just do not possess, and I hardly think that facilitating the squirting out of two kids is going to annoint me with that skill-set that includes the ability to assimilate the knowledge of what goods go with what supermarket/drug store, what goods we are in need of and/or are projected to need prior to the expiration date of the coupon, a reliable place to store the coupons, the ability to utilize scissors without risking a puncture wound, the cognitive ability to remember that one has a coupon for a particular item, go obtain the coupon, place the coupon in a pocket, bring the coupon into the store, select the correct item that corresponds to the coupon in your pocket, and pulling the coupon out of the pocket and presenting it to the cashier while at the check-out lane.

You practically have to be Baruch Spinoza to be able to accomplish that feat. Or at least Ron Jeremy.

It took my father three children, and then about twenty-five more years, to become utterly enamored with coupons. I don't know exactly how it happened, but, one day, I came home and washed my hands in the kitchen sink (some mothers go absolutely bananafuck when you do that) and I happened to glance at the little shelf above their sink-- littered with coupons. It looked like a newspaper supplement had exploded in the kitchen. Coupons for Tylenol Gel-Caps and Vitamin-E and V-8 Juice and grapes and Lemon Joy. It was amazing. They were categorized and piled according to their corresponding retail establishment. It was disturbing.

Sometimes, my father will call me on the phone, like a stockbroker with a hot tip too good to pass up.

"Mummy-- do you eat at Applebees? There is coupon here-- $5.00 off a whole meal!"

A pointed, offended silence inevitably follows before I say something like,

"I am going to hang up the phone now before someone gets hurt."

I don't mean to be insensitive. I know he's just a man who loves his son, and loves his coupons, and wants the two to commune in festive, Jewish, money savingness on common ground. But, at Applebees, ne'er the two shall meet.

My wife enjoys eyeballing the coupon circulars that come to our house and, on the days when she gets home from work before me, she is able to do so. Otherwise, the circulars are shoved into the recycling bin. I know-- it's like throwing away money. But, on Sunday, on our way back from a brief sojourn to Pittsburgh, Mrs. Apron and I got into a huge fight that was precipitated by the existence of a seemingly innocuous McDonald's coupon at her sister's apartment. See? It is possible for coupons to visit upon us untold amounts of unhappiness.

Unless, of course, they're coupons like THIS ONE:


Behold: the healing power of the Copper Magnetic Jesus Bracelet. Thing.

The mere existence of an item like this, you would think, would be enough for me to abandon my reckless, everything-must-go-in-the-bin mentality, but we know I don't change so easily. Not even Jesus with his supercool magnets and wristwear can change me.

Try as he might.

I must say, for $9.97*, (*plus shipping & handling from Heaven) you're getting quite a sweet deal. You get the healing power of Jesus, the penetrating power of magnets, and the soothing power of copper.

That's a lot of power for the money-- and a lot of different kinds of power, too!-- though I'm not sure the average Christian will very much fancy seeing the words "Jesus" and "penetrating" so close together.

I have to confess-- I did, mostly for your edification (I hope you're happy) visit http://www.dreamproductscatalog.com/ to see what other Jesus-related offerings they had to peddle. I admit I was very surprised by what I found on this site.

While I didn't go poking around on the website too too much, the homepage has some of their "Favorite Products." Whose favorites they are and what these people eat out of which garbage cans, I couldn't say for sure, but some of the Favorite Products were:

Cardigan Slipper Socks (only $12.97)

Talking Teaching Teddy (not to be confused with Teddy Ruxpin or Alan Greenspan)

Zip-Up Security I.D. Case (looks suspiciously like "a wallet")

and, my favorite,

The Sleep Bra

"Our Sleep Bra is the most comfortable bra on the planet. It shapes, lifts and supports in a way no other bra can. Its silky, soft fabric stretches to fit any cup size from A to DD, AND it conforms to changes in your body maintaining a perfect fit any time of the month. So comfortable you can even sleep in it. Fashion nylon/spandex import. Available in even sizes 34 through 52."

Knowing that breasts change as the weeks go by in a given month is something that I find funny, which just reinforces the fact that I am emotionally twelve years old. I would also like to go on record by saying how disappointed I was that the aforementioned products on this website had nothing, apparently, to do with Jesus. I would probably pay a hell of a lot more than $9.97 for a Jesus Copper Magnetic Sleep Bra.

Dream Products: take note.

Sti(cke)r Crazy

Bumper-stickers always kind of got on my nerves, and so I never thought, growing up, that I would become the kind of person who'd want to put any on my own car.

Turns out, I was wrong about that.

Not only do I have several bumper-stickers on my car, I actually had one custom-made, just for me, and I'm pretty convinced that, because it was an original creation, I'm the only person in the world who drives a PT Cruiser with a bumper-sticker that says:

"WARNING: Gilbert & Sullivan Freak Behind Wheel"

After all, I think it's only fair to alert other unsuspecting motorists in the immediate vicinity that the vehicle rolling near them is being operated by a less-than-sane Anglophile who might, at that very moment, be singing the patter song, "My Name is John Wellington Wells" at the top of his lungs and rolling his "Rrrr's" while driving.

It's probably more dangerous than texting, though I don't think enough empirical research has yet been done.

I have another sticker on the back of my car, and it is the Pennsylvania Department of Health seal, which only certified Emergency Medical Technicians are permitted to display. While I no longer work on an ambulance, I am still certified by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as an EMT until 2011, at such time I will either have to renew my certification or, I guess, peel that sticker off my car.

There are lots of reasons why I keep that sticker on my car, even though I quit my ambulance gig back in 2007. First of all, it lets people know that the PT Cruiser with the blue dashboard light flashing that stops at the scene of a fresh car accident is supposed to have that light, and is supposed to be there, and contains someone useful who can be of service. It says that if you've been hit by a car or you've been shot in the back or you've just had a stroke, that this is a car you can stumble over to and ask the driver for help-- and I'll give you whatever help I can remember how to give. I've got an emergency EMS bag in the back with some tools of the trade-- not many, though.

More than any of this, I display the sticker because I'm proud of the work I put in to become an EMT. In my class of thirteen, only two of us hung around long enough to get to the State Certification test, and I was the only one who passed. I worked for seventeen months for crap pay, got a bullshit performance evaluation that resulted in a disgraceful 33-cent-an-hour raise, suffered through an endless stream of incompetent, irrational, psychotic, delusional, violent, unpleasant, odoriferous partners and patients and only crashed one truck and, damnit, if I'm entitled to slap a sticker on my car's ass, well, I'm going to.

The other sticker on my car is from a non-profit organization that I support, financially and through my writing. It's the Officer Down Memorial Page (www.odmp.org) and it was started by a young man named Chris Cosgriff, approximately my own age-- a civilian who, like me, found himself deeply moved at a very young age over the tragedies of law enforcement fatalities in this country. On opposite ends of the country, he and I share a lot in common, and, in our twenties, we both decided to do something about it. I wrote a book, Chris created a non-profit. The ODMP features a small profile of every single police officer who has ever died in the line of duty (either of natural or felonious causes) since the first recorded police fatality in 1791. There have been over 16,000 since then, and the ODMP honors every one of them. They have also been very kind to me, keeping the ever-flagging, modest sales of my book on life-support by stocking my book on their online giftshop.

A lot of people probably think I keep the www.odmp.org bumper-sticker on the back of my car so I don't get stopped by the police, so they know I'm a friend-- but I don't give a shit about what people think. Besides, it doesn't work anyway. I got banged for speeding just this year, and the fine was as steep as Mt. Olympus.

The three bumper-stickers on the back of the car that used to be owned by my wife tell the stories of three very different, very important parts of my life, and I like all three of them very much. I'm very interested by the things people choose to slap on the back of their own cars, these little tidbits of information that tell us things about the driver.

"Keep Honking, I'm Reloading."

"Like My Driving? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT."

"YES, WE CAN!"

"Vote for Ron Paul"

"Abortion Stops a Beating Heart"

"Visualize World Peace"

"I <3 Jesus"

I wonder what Jesus thinks of "I <3 Jesus" bumper-stickers. No doubt he appreciates that there are deities out there who could benefit from publicity more than he. Even I know who he is. I say his name every time I hurt my knuckle on a doorway while carrying the laundry basket.