Why not dress for success?

As I was driving home yesterday, I noticed many fashion troubles. Given that my sense of fashion is less than refined, it takes something quite horrendous for me to notice. But when it comes to what you wear when you work out, I know what’s what. Khakis while running—uh, no.

Let’s start from the top. Headgear is permissible for baseball, running, football, tennis, hockey . . . pretty much anything. Except soccer. Wearing a baseball hat while playing soccer is wrong both functionally and morally. First of all, you can’t head the ball with a baseball hat. Second, is the sun in your eyes? Poor baby. Get off the field! I’d rather see sunscreen, sunglasses, and a parasol on the pitch than somebody wearing a baseball hat.

Shirts. Unless you are golfing, playing tennis, or wearing a team uniform, shirts with collars should not be worn. Same thing goes for shirts with elaborate patterns. This is especially true if you’re running. If you’re running, no shirt, a T-shirt, or an expensive, high-tech sports shirt is permissible. Anything with buttons or a collar should only be worn before or after running. And if it’s a T-shirt, it should not have cost more than $15. Free is preferable.

Shorts or pants. Do not wear anything made of a high percentage of cotton or wool. Workout clothes are meant for wicking away sweat and drying quickly. The more poly-whatever material, the better. Anything with a lot of pockets should only be worn casually, not while strenuously exercising. That means no cargo or jean shorts.

Socks. This is simple—no dress socks. That means no black or brown or tan or argyle—unless specifically made for the sport like soccer socks.

Shoes. Don’t wear dress shoes. Don’t run in sandals. Wear something that at least looks like it has support. Otherwise, you just look like you’re trying to ruin your feet, shins, knees, and lower back all at the same time. It’s also ideal to have footwear appropriate to the sport. Running on a treadmill in basketball shoes looks like you are not a regular runner. It also makes it look like you have nothing better to do with your shoes than run, i.e., you aren’t balling much nowadays.

OK, that’s all of the ones I could think of off the top of my head. If you have issues with these general rules, tell me I don’t even know exercise fashion. If I’ve forgotten something here, post it.

Why is AT&T so difficult?

Difficult. That’s what comes to mind when somebody mentions AT&T. I don’t know where the company falls on the customer dissatisfaction list, but it’s probably pretty close to the top. I don’t understand why they have to make things so painful for customers. It took less time to set up a joint bank account than it did to combine two calling plans into one.

My girlfriend and I wanted to combine our accounts into one single “family” plan. Before you get excited, no, we’re not engaged--or pregnant. We’re just practical. Each of us would save $10 per month. Simple, right? Uh, no.

Employee #1

First, we visited a store. I wanted to talk to a person face to face to get some information. We wanted to know how much the data plan would cost for an old, non-3G iPhone that we inherited.

We walked into the store, at which point Employee #1 took our names and told us we could watch TV while we waited. It was like restaurant meets hospital waiting room. At least it was nice to be entertained by some golf. But if we had hated golf . . .

Employee #2

After waiting for 15 minutes, we spoke to Employee #2, who told us that the data plan for the old iPhones is the same price as it always was: $20 / month. I thought it was going to cost $30, regardless of which generation phone you had. I was pleasantly surprised.

#2 also said we could activate the phone at home through the internet. This was actually very easy to do, mostly because we didn't have deal with AT&T. We could do it through iTunes. Well done, Apple.

Employee #3

At home, we realized that we should probably just combine our phone plans to save money, so we ended up using internet chat to talk to Employee #3. Of course, the only way to get the Employee #3 is to pretend you're going to buy a plan. Anyway, he told us that we would need to call or visit a store to do so. Blerg! If only we had chatted with Employee #3 before Employee #2.

Employee #4

We activated the phone through iTunes and then called AT&T. Employee #4 basically said that I could just put my girlfriend on my account as a family plan member. My girlfriend would just have to call and say it was OK. Instead of doing that, I just handed the phone to said girlfriend.

Employee #4 then told my girlfriend that she would have to call a certain number. Really? I’m not clear on why she couldn’t just transfer us. I mean, it’s a phone company. If anybody has the technology to do so, wouldn’t they?

Employee #5

Whatever. We called the number. After surviving the menu and maze of “press this number, press that number,” she got Employee #5. Of course, Employee #5 was the wrong person, and she told my girlfriend that she had to call--take a wild guess. That's right, the same number she had just dialed to get Employee #5. Fortunately, #5 checked and told us that the people we needed to contact had already gone home for the day.

Employee #6

Two days later, we called back. Employee #6 tried to get rid of us by again giving us the SAME number as Employee #4 and #5. At least they were consistent. Upon further explanation by my girlfriend, they realized that we weren’t navigating the menu quite right. Fine.

Employee #7

Call back, enter the magic combination of numbers, and get Employee #7. Employee #7 told my girlfriend that all she needed to do was give a thumbs up that her account could be put on mine. Now, all that had to happen was I had to call in and finish the deed.

To recap, I had to put a note on my account OK’ing combining; then my girlfriend had to put a note on her account OK’ing combining. Then I had to call back to finally slay the dragon that is combining accounts.

But ah ha, I am in the room, so she just handed the phone to me, so I could deal with the details right away. Now that we’ve both given the thumbs up, it should be no problem, right?

Even more Employee #7

First, they had to run a credit check. Why? Don't know. Don't care. Whatever, go ahead and check my credit. What? You also need my address again? It's not right there on the computer in front of you? OK.

Employee #7 then explained that it was going to cost $60 to combine accounts. That makes sense because there’s a guy that has to go in the back and splice a bunch of wires together and . . . oh wait, no there’s not. Fine, nothing is free, and in the long run, after three months, we’ll be saving money.

20 minutes later, which probably cost us minutes, we had a family plan going. And in three months when we are actually saving money, I’m sure it will be worth it. Of course, they always tell you things may not show up on your bill for a few billing cycles. And that also makes sense because there are a bunch of interns hand writing the details of my paperless account.

All of these employees were helpful if not enthusiastic. I can hardly imagine being enthusiastic when you work in such a terrible system.

At the end of the day, you may tell me to just shut up and join a different company. Unfortunately, I can’t join a different company. I don’t actually have a choice because AT&T is the only cell company that works on campus. And if I want to have an iPhone, only AT&T works. If somebody could explain the marketing logic of that, I’d love to hear it. As for the shutting up, I’m done whining.

Why would I need help from sticks and stones, Part 2?

When I was 15, I was a week away from taking my driver’s license test. One week and a simple test stood between me and unfettered freedom—at least in my mind. But my body wasn’t quite on board. It had to go get broken, possibly causing life altering teen drama.

That Saturday morning was sunny and breezy: a perfect morning for a spring soccer game. The opponent was a team made up of my friends from my high school team. Twenty one buddies on the same field sounds like a big party to me. The whistle blew and the game was underway.

About midway through the game, I was dribbling up the field. I juked two or three guys as usual (or by accident) and then came up against a guy we’ll call Splevin Spletano to protect his identity. Splevin was probably one of the nicest guys I knew. I approached him doing my patented cross over spin move, aka, looking like a spaz. I’m sure he was afraid of getting burned like kindling or passed like salt or some other clever schoolyard simile.

Whatever he was thinking, the next thing I knew, I was on the ground. As I lay there, I immediately knew I had broken my collar bone. I’m sure there was no malice intended. In fact, I think I actually just didn’t quite get around his leg, which caused me to basically fall like a tree onto my shoulder. He was apologizing profusely before he even knew I had injured myself. Like I said, he was a nice guy.

I eventually got up, gingerly tested my arm, and subbed out. And then it was off to the hospital. The diagnosis was a fractured clavicle. Eight weeks sidelined from soccer and maybe social life.

For some reason the DMV won’t let you take a driving test when you have a broken collar bone. Perhaps, it’s because lifting your hand above 8 o’ clock on the steering wheel hurts like hell.

So, I had to reschedule my driving test. On top of that, my driving permit expired while I was incapacitated, and I couldn’t take the license test without it. Thus, I had to retake my written permit test before taking the driving piece. My freedom was stuck in neutral, seemingly in reverse. Was my teen life over?

If my life had been a movie, events preceding the soccer game would have included an approaching dance and the hottest and purest girl in school. There would have been non-threatening study dates, a quarterback stud competing for her attention, and a plain looking female confidant. The hot girl would attend the dance with me because I could drive her to it in a sweet ride. But now, without my license . . .

After the trip to the hospital, I would have sunken into a deep depression and explained to my wiser, plain-looking but blossoming friend that this broken collar bone had forever changed the course of my life--in a bad way. And then I’d finally fall for her even though she had wanted me since the second grade. Cue music, hand out tissues, roll credits. Or some version of that. That’s if my life were a movie.

But life wasn’t a movie. No dance. No hot girl. No homely turned comely female friend. Not even much of a social life to lament being lost. In retrospect, all that was lost was six to eight weeks of playing soccer and driving a car that was built the year before my current car. But at the time, it seemed like a slightly bigger deal.

The lesson? The lesson that I often forget after a bad day at work is that failures or set-backs seldomly ruin our lives. They usually end up as tiny blips on our life lines, resulting in no change in the overall trajectories. They aren't worth the stress.

After all, a bad day at work beats a broken collar bone. And a broken collar bone isn’t even that bad.

Why would I need help from sticks and stones, Part 1?

If I told you that I’ve broken six (maybe seven) bones in my life, you may assume one of the following: I was in a bad car accident, I have early onset osteoporosis, I was jumped by a jujitsu gang, or my parents accidentally signed their scrawny son up for hockey. But none of those happened.

My parents were glad when I took a liking to the “safer” sport of soccer instead of football. They didn’t think that I would break five (maybe six) of my own bones while playing soccer and another doing Tae Kwon Do. But what did all those breaks teach me?

Break#1, Lesson #1: “Dis-graceful”

We’ve heard the phrase “brain over brawn,” but my club soccer coach probably realized that his team was a bit short on the brain part; thus, he focused on the brawn. He was always trying to make men of us teenage boys, toughen us up physically and emotionally. As a Navy man, he understood the effects of drills, so he had us do some inventive drills.

For example, in one drill, we formed two lines facing him and ran towards him, crashing our shoulders into the person’s in the other line. We did this before every game to toughen us up, get us in a mindset, and intimidate the other team. To my coach’s credit, he was trying to use brawn to get into the other team’s brain while simultaneously teaching us how to win a loose ball. But I was too naïve to realize that then—or care about it. I didn’t love the drill, but despite a few bruised shoulders, I never injured myself doing it.

The inventive drill that was my downfall was equally creative, but much less useful in my mind. The object was to practice slide-tackling. Two lines were formed facing each other about 30 yards apart. The person in front of each line would then run towards the other. At about midway, one would slide tackle and the other would jump over AND do a somersault. Why would we do a flying somersault? Beats me, but questioning the point of a drill was not an option at practice.

My turn to jump came and I ran and jumped. At the peak of my jump, which was insanely high because I had hops (no, I am not being sarcastic), I remembered that I was supposed to do a somersault.

Let’s pause while I’m in the air and emphasize that I didn’t like conflict, so I would avoid it all costs. I especially didn’t like being the receiving end of a stern reprimand. I would have rather injured myself than felt the wrath of my just-out-of-the-military coach. Who knew what he would make me do?

So, at the peak of my jump, I started tucking into somersault position. It must have looked like I was diving head first into a pool—but without the pool. I finished about half of the somersault, coming straight down on my shoulder. Yes, I heard a crack, but when you hit the ground with your limbs flailing, contemplating the meaning of new sounds takes a backseat to trying not to land on your head.

Whatever it looked like, it was ugly enough for the coach to call off the drill. He told us to take a lap. Did my shoulder hurt? Probably. Did I want to anger my coach any more after throwing my body into the ground and ruining his drill? Definitely not. I had no idea I had broken anything, so I got up and started to run with the team. Maybe it looked tough to run with a broken bone, but it was the opposite. I was a bit scared, and maybe a little dazed.

Thankfully, my coach noticed that I was running pretty gimpily (ßnot a word) and pulled me out of line. He asked me what was wrong and sent me off to the hospital. I was quickly diagnosed with a fractured clavicle. I say quickly because that was the fastest I would ever get through the hospital; my mom was working in Urgent Care that day. The treatment was an arm sling, rest, and a brace that held my shoulders back and in place.

At the end of the year, my coach had names or phrases engraved on our trophies that reminded him of each of us. Mine had the phrase “Dis-graceful.” I wasn’t hurt by the engraving, but you can imagine that I was hoping for something a little cooler. Besides, it definitely wasn’t the most proud or elegant moment in my life. And it did commemorate a number of important life lessons summed up in cliches: Brain over brawn, think before you act, look before you leap, don't jump up in the air and throw yourself head first into the ground (well, if that last one were a cliche, maybe I wouldn't have broken my collarbone). Unfortunately, it also commemorated just the first of many more broken bones.