Many years ago, when I was fresh out of school, I thought it would be worth fishing for jobs that I wasn’t exactly qualified for, and immediately found several to apply to. One was to be a proofreader at Fidelity (or maybe it was Putnam – I can’t recall). There are jobs out there you can talk your way into – sandwich guy at a sub shop; clothes washer at a Laundromat – and I’d held several of these. But this job wasn’t like those. You had to possess specific skills, such as being able to spell.

In grade school, I was a small-time champion speller, vying with 2 or 3 other kids for top honors in my class of about 25 . Occasionally, I’d even win a bee, unless the teacher threw a curve ball at me and only accepted “racquet” as the correct spelling for the piece of sports equipment you swing at a tennis ball. But this was the real world now, and getting paid required that I be able to spell “annuity,” and know that “benchmark” was one word, not two. Actually, it wasn’t the real world. The real world allows you to use reference works like dictionaries to help with spelling. But in this case, I was given a page and a half document to edit with no dictionary nor access to the internet (anyway, it was like 1987). The one thing I can recall vividly from that pop quiz was pondering for quite a long time the question of how to spell Massachusetts. I’d lived in the Commonwealth for upwards of 5 years at that point, and couldn't amble through town for a minute without seeing the word printed everywhere, but the more I looked at it, the more it looked wrong.  So I decided to cross it out and spell it "Massachusettes."  Approximately two minutes after walking out of that "interview," I pulled out of my jacket pocket a pack of -- oh no! -- cigarettes!  The state I lived in would surely rhyme with these lung snacks if that extra "e" I added belonged in the word, I thought.

Little surprise that I didn’t get that (or any other) proofreading job.

When I think of things that are “classic,” I think of cars made in the 1950s and one liners delivered by Henny Youngman. Wine vintages can be classic. Artistic eras. Rock music. People like to apply it to questionable behavior, when so-and-so got drunk and puked at a black-tie dinner, and it was “just classic.” In my neighborhood, there is a “Classic Car Wash and Propane.”
This place is just classic too. The propane in particular. I grill using that propane, and let me tell you, it’s truly classic. I’m not sure about the car wash because I never use it, but just looking at how popular it is and all the attendants around it taking cash, I think, yes, it very likely is classic. The one thing I don’t understand is why the gasoline isn’t classic. Isn’t an independent gas dealer these days the very definition of classic? Anyway, this has prompted me to go around my house identifying things that are classic, like the sheet of copy paper that’s taped to the ceiling in our office. Not only is this a classic example of my not having dealt with certain of this house’s aesthetic and operational shortcomings, but the previous owner’s taping of a piece of copy paper to the ceiling to cover an improperly recessed junction box is, I would submit, simply classic.

Ever since I got into the site “Wines till Sold Out,” I thought it would be good to start my own flash sales site. Wines Til Sold Out sells selected wines at steep discounts (or so I am enthusiastically willing to believe) until the lot is gone, which can take anywhere from a few minutes to half a day. This got me to thinking: how could I cash in on this idea that someone else came up with? Then, I had it: Hosts Til Sold Out. Same basic concept, except instead of selling wines you sell hosts to churches.

These are neither blessed by sacred rite yet nor heavily regulated by the state, keeping red tape at a minimum. In these tough economic times, everyone could use a financial break, even churches. There must be lots of competition and market gluts, and manufacturers of altar breads would probably be amenable to moving old product by dramatically slashing prices. (I’m thinking out loud here.) There are some kinks to work out yet but I’m going to run by my wife the idea of using a slice of our nest egg (or children’s college fund!) to invest in this scheme.

“Hi There. I know this is an ad for sales, but it turns out we live just down the road from each other. How’s it going? I’ve been thinking about you ever I noticed you selling these tickets online. I’m sorry, I can’t beat around the bush any longer, I think you’re smokin’ hot. Got a couple secs to shoot the breeze? I’ve used this site before, and I guaranty it’ll rock your world. Even though we don’t know each other and I’m responding to an ad in craisgslist about tickets to a rock concert that happened more than a week ago, I’ve saved snapshots just for you. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to pay). That’s how fascinating, and hot, you sound from your craigslist rock concert ticket ad. Section 103, you say? Row J? Very hot! I’ll message you once I see you logon to the site below.”