Jeff Likes to Tell Stories

Welcome to my blog. I haven’t kept up with it in a while. But I hope to get back to writing the types of stories you’ll find here. If my life was a sitcom, these might be considered scripts for the show. I write about my life, my interactions with my family and those strangers I encounter on a daily basis. My more serious writing can be found in various places. But I often post them on Medium.

Commuting with Nature, Mechanical Aversions / 15.06.2002

I knew it was going to be a bad day. The whining began immediately at our front door as we rushed off to school and work. By the time we were safely ensconced in our secure subway seats my daughter was broadcasting loud and clear to the hundreds before us! "I'm tired." Not just just like it reads but more like "Iyaaaaaaam tirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRD." Oh, it defies transliteration! Ask any parent to repeat this to you over and over and over and over for its full effect. My usual, logical next step is to accommodate my little one. "Put your head on...

Commuting with Nature / 21.05.2002

I lied. I flat out lied and it was so effortless I was shocked to hear the words slip so easily out of my mouth. I am never fully awake when we ride the morning Metro. I'm not sleepy, though I'm in some closely associated world. I'm coherent enough to be a good parent to my accompanying little girl and be engaging and interactive with her early morning banter. But it takes a good amount of effort to maintain my equilibrium. Coffee is not a sufficient antidote for this condition. So when a woman we've seen at the subway elevator a few...

Commuting with Nature / 05.05.2002

I started taking my 4 year old daughter to school on the Metro (DC's subway) without a stroller this week. We are now walking, hopefully hand-in-hand, across the Metro platforms. She's simply getting too big to be pushed around. Too big physically: the wheels of my $40 umbrella stroller (meaning it folds up neatly like its namesake) can no longer support her weight and the wheels suddenly twist and turn in directions you don't wish to go. This is bad when you find yourself around the milling multitudes and moving trains underground. And too big mentally: our stroller is the last...

Fairly Odd Parents-Past, Idiosyncratic Celebrations / 01.05.2002

My name was Chaim Shmuel Guyetsky. My friends call me Jeff. My father calls me Chaim Shmo when he teases me and Jeffrey when he's about to invoke his fatherly rights of advice. I'm a Jewish boy in a gentile's body (well, almost). Like a family heirloom, the original importance of which is now lost, my spirit has been handed down from the shtetls of the Ukraine. Yet, like the game of Telephone, where a string of people quickly whisper messages from ear to ear, by the time it's gotten to me I can't understand a word of it. I...

Idiosyncratic Celebrations / 22.04.2002

Today's Primo Giro Grande della Bicicletta con il Giorno Correttamente Gonfiato delle Gomme, a celebration of my first bike ride of the year! The April weather has been unseasonable warm, more like June. Warm, dry weather is my favorite, just like the summers of my SoCal youth. Coworkers are complaining about the heat while I'm ready to sunbathe on the sidewalk in front of my office. I'm in a good mood and have temporarily suspended all new entries onto my fret list. I usually don't look forward to my first ride, more specifically preparing for my first ride. The tires...

Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 13.04.2002

Sometimes I've been known to fret. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm actually admitting it for the first time right here. In fact, I just came to this conclusion last week. And, quite honestly, I'm relieved. This is a load off my mind and simplifies my life quite a bit. To fret: to be vexed or troubled; worry. Synonym: brood. A worrier? Hmmm, that's what I thought I was before last week (for years, actually). After all, I was voted most pessimistic in my high school graduating class. This is not to say I don't worry. But worrying is reserved for...

Book Reports, Professional Auteurism / 20.03.2002

Do I Know You? Inside each one of us, laid out like a grid, is a network of complementary, anatomical, psychological, hormonal, and linguistic structures, which in turn allow us to function—I’m paraphrasing Dr. Kai here—within a larger social system made up of its own equivalent and parallel structures, and somewhere within this mesh of inner grid and outer grid lie those gray, baggy pockets of indeterminancy which we call human behavior. My own behavior had been very gray. Mr. Statler in Robert Cohen’s Oscillations How does one describe their first f2f? Is it like recounting one’s first kiss? Face-to-face, for those of...

Book Reports, Commuting with Nature, Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 02.03.2002

I am an actor. I act in morality plays. I am a street performer of sorts, displaying my lessons on the DC subway. I captivate some, yet most are captives. My daughter is both my unwitting foil and the object of my ulterior motives. While my focus is on her (just yesterday, we performed a One Act about a nearby little girl whose father was no where to be found), she teaches our captives what they need to know. Her admonishments are clearly enunciated, perfectly timed, and to the point. Recently, in that famous scene from our wildly popular delight...

Medicinal Properties, Worker's Comp / 14.02.2002

I've got laryngitis. The rest of my body feels fine. In fact, my throat and voice box feel completely normal. It's only when I attempt to speak that I even realize I've got a problem. I'm revisiting puberty as my voice cracks and jumps two octaves without prior notice. But this might be a good thing. Co-workers don't expect you to answer them. In fact, you aren't called upon at meetings to report. If you try, you are given sympathy (a valuable commodity in the workplace). It can be a problem in an emergency, like when your 3 year old...

Book Reports, Commuting with Nature / 08.02.2002

My ride into work this morning: I take the subway but it's elevated much of the way in. It's getting lighter earlier and my commute and the sunrise are almost in sync. I'd say by next Wednesday it should be rising just as we come to the surface. When waiting for my morning train I usually position myself towards the middle of the platform. That way I'm perfectly situated to transfer to another line at the Metro Center stop. Today, however, the train was pulling into my station just as my daughter and I exited the elevator. So we raced to...