Ask Mr. Smartypants

By the time my wife mentioned that none of the electrical outlets in her bathroom were working, I had nearly forgotten the plume of sparks arcing out of my daughter's bedroom wall the day before.

I was installing hooks for a series of nets Angela purchased to hold Quinn's stuffed animals, which currently number 1,337 and are subdivided by species, size, cuddliness, corporate family (Disney, Pixar, WebKinz, etc.) and, for all I know, political affiliation.

Quinn collects stuffed animals compulsively for the same reason she lives on a diet composed entirely of cheese pizza, cheese toast, cheeseburgers, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese and, just for a non-cheese thrill, chicken tenders: Because before she was born, Angela and I always said, "I tell you one thing, our kid isn't going to be some stuffed animal-obsessed picky eater," and God heard us.

So I was drilling holes to install the anchors for the hooks for the nets. Years ago, I would have skipped the anchors and just screwed the hooks into the sheetrock, causing the animal-filled contraptions to crash down on my sleeping daughter in the night and teaching her to deal with sudden, suffocating fear, but I've grown.

And as I was drilling a hole near a corner, a thick, steady, fairly beautiful stream of sparks shot out of the wall.

"Ahhhhhh," I shrieked courageously and stopped drilling. The sparks ceased, too, but the room filled with an odd odor: melted rubber, ozone and my terror stink.

While I terrify easily, I also have a short attention span, so once the sparks abated, I installed the anchors and hooks, hung the nets and forgot the whole thing.

Then, the next morning, Angela said, "The outlets where I plug in my makeup mirror and curlers are dead."

Me: "You do not need makeup or fancy hairstyles. You glow with a natural beauty."

Angela: "So you've done something horrible and don't know how to fix it?"

Me: "Well, there were sparks shooting out of Quinn's wall yesterday, but I assumed it was fine because ... Man, that's a hard sentence to finish when you say it out loud."

So I looked at the breaker box, tried switches, went in the oven-like attic, scratched my head and allowed myself to get frustrated by the fact that every time I walked past Angela, she'd say, hopefully, "Did you get it?"

Me: "Until I tell you otherwise, assume I'm failing miserably and stop asking."

Finally, I called my ex-boss and still friend, Carl, who has a passion for electricity. He came right over, his eyes glowing as I explained about the sparks, my terrified squeals and the dead plugs.

We cut out a small piece of sheetrock, just enough to let us see that yes, I had drilled through not one but two electrical wires, then left them in the wall, exposed and live, insulated only by hyper-flammable furballs.

A trip to Lowe's, a much larger hole in the wall, wires, junction boxes and a heroically excessive Taco Bell break later, the problem was solved.

As for the gaping maw in the sheetrock, thank God for enormous nets full of stuffed animals. I don't think my wife will even realize it's there until Quinn leaves for college.

Sometimes, when I've stopped at a red light, looked for cars, then gingerly turned right, my wife will say, "That sign says no right turn on red, dear," and I will respond, "They don't mean me."

Since that's what so many of us believe about so many laws, I think it's admirably honest of me to simply admit it.

They don't mean I should drive 55. They don't mean I should pay all that federal income tax. They don't mean I shouldn't dump my 55-gallon drum of Aqua Velva in the creek, shouldn't distill my own kumquat vodka, shouldn't plot the overthrow of … well, the details aren't the point.

The point is, they don't mean me when they talk about all those laws. They mean the other people. The little people.

You people, in other words.

But then I'm out and about, starring in the movie that is my life (and in which so many of you do a great job as extras -- thanks for all the hard work), and I start interacting with cads who think laws don't apply to them. That's ridiculous, because laws exist to control other people, so they don't screw up the movie that is my life.

So people don't follow the leash law in the city of Spartanburg. Mostly, I don't care. If you live on my street and your dog's behavior earns my personal approval, then it's all good. If you and your dog hang in places I never go, then I don't insist you leash your dog, because it's no skin off my pudding if they terrorize the non-Lane populace.

I personally follow the leash law because my dog, Rosie the WonderBoston, is a moron. Untethered, Rosie would chase every car, squirrel and cat she encountered for approximately 3,023 miles, then stop and look around as if she expected the house, her food and her bed (okay, my bed) to have followed her across the country.

But pet owners are letting their dogs run loose on the Cottonwood Trail. That's a problem because I jog (and jiggle) on the Cottonwood Trail. These loose dogs are friendly, which is why the owners think it's OK to let them run free.

So I'll be zooming down the path at a fat-boy sprint of 4.7 miles per hour when, suddenly, a golden retriever will bound happily toward me and come to a direct stop in my path.

I try to instantly stop the forward motion of all 211 pounds of hurtling Laneflesh, but cannot. The feet stop, but the internal organs and spinal column continue forward, sloshing into each other and creating all sorts of long-term middle-age injuries I couldn't have imagined in my youth, when I fell 25 feet from tree branches, hopped up and happily went about my business.

"There's a leash law," I yell.

"Don't worry, he won't hurt you," the owner answers.

"No, he won't bite me," I retort as I try to rearrange my gall bladder, small intestine and ultra-masculine water bottle fanny pack. "He already hurt me. Just put him on his @#$%^%$# leash."

"I didn't see you coming," she replied, miffed.

"It's not a 'leash the mean dog' law," I scream. "It's not a 'leash the dog when you see someone coming' law. It's just a 'leash the dog' law."

Seriously, it's like these people think the law doesn't apply to them. I mean, who do they think they are? Me?

I've accepted that I'm often going to find myself in an unexpected part of my home, with no idea why I went there.

"I wonder why I'm in the laundry room," I'll think. I sort of poke around, fold a few things, look in a couple of cabinets, and that frequently does the trick. As I'm peering in the dryer, I'll see the bed linens and think, "I was going to make the beds -- that's why I'm here."

Maybe I'll spot the Canadian Mountie uniform or the hoop skirts back from the dry cleaners and remember that it's Dress Up Date Night. Regardless, when I come to in an unusual part of my home, the room itself provides clues.

If I'm in the kitchen, I'm probably hungry. If I'm in the garage, something needs fixing. If I'm in the guest room, I probably overestimated Angela's enthusiasm toward Dress Up Date Night.

When driving alone, I have the same problem. I might be engrossed in a particularly zesty book on tape (a recent 15-cassetter on the causes and effects of the Battle of Hastings comes to mind) and, suddenly attentive, realize I'm in eastern Georgia.

This is different from getting lost in my house. I know why I'm in Georgia -- because regardless of what my mother says, IQs are not like vision, and having a score of 40 is not "perfect 20/20 intelligence." I just have to puzzle out where I need to be, and since I only go to work, the YMCA and grocery stores, it's not that hard.

Lately, though, I've been getting lost in cyberspace and finding it more and more difficult to regain my bearings.

I'll be wondering about something really important -- who is 11th in line for the presidency, or whether the Thompson Twins were named Thompson or related to each other, and I will type in the name of a search engine.

But in the time it takes me to tap out the keystrokes www.google.com, I completely forget what it was I wanted to look up. Utterly befuddled, I stare at the cursor and the search window and ... nothing.

I try to trace back my train of thought, but recapping my intellectual process is like trying to follow Jeffy through one of his daylong "Family Circus" adventures: difficult and entirely unrewarding.

"Was I looking up something about baseball? Constitutional law? The odds against filling a straight flush? Mountie uniform maintenance?

Sometimes, I drag down the "Open" option on my computer and then, before I can do anything, forget what Web site I was headed for.

These aren't occasional problems. They happen 10 or 20 times a day.

And there are no clues, no hints, no methods of determining what I might have been trying to do.

My absentmindedness has even affected Dress Up Date Night. Half the time, I can't remember whose turn it is to wear the hoop skirt.

Some people enjoy testing their wits with a crossword. Others like Sudoku.

But when I'm looking for a brainteaser to solve, I sit down with a billing statement from a health care provider and chew on that for a while.

"That doctor charged $30 for an 'ASSAY OF CK (CPK)-82550,' " I said to my wife. "How do they get away with it?"

Angela was listening to the Black Eyed Peas on her iPod, something she likes to do when she fears I might try to share my thoughts, and replied, "I couldn't agree more, dear."

Me: "But the 'RBC SED RATE, AUTOMATED-85652' was $34. In my day, for $34 you could take a gal to see 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit,' fill up the Chevette and still have money for a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill."

Angela: "I don't know how women lived with men before it was possible to pipe loud music through headphones. I wouldn't last three days."

The bill, for an office visit and some lab work, listed 16 mysterious services and came to $1,118. According to the bill, we owed $273. The insurance company owed $845.

But further perusal indicated the insurance company only had to pay $198.18, or 23 percent of its bill.

"A-ha," I thought. "I'd also like to pay 23 percent of my bill."

So I called Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System's physicians billing service, which handles the moneygrubbing for the doctor, so when you complain that the bill is written in Klingon, the doctor says, "We don't handle that," and when you complain to the bill people that, "For $275, the doctor could at least warm his 'Mr. Freeze' hands before he ... investigates," they say, "Sir, we only handle the billing."

I got the very nice Amy.

"Amy, let's get right to it," I said. "I would like the 'Payor Adjustment' option, the same one you gave the insurance company for their portion, for my 77 percent discount."

Amy: "We don't do that."

Me: "Why not?"

Amy: "I can't explain that."

But I knew why all along. The real price of the services is $471.18, the sum of my share and the insurance company's. The $1,118 is what an uninsured person would be billed, 2.5 times the real price, because lots of uninsured folks won't pay, so they jack up the price to the ones who will to make it up.

So, a few true things:

-- Most people in America can get medical treatment even when they can't pay for it.

-- The price to those who can pay is already raised to cover the cost of those who can't, via insurance premiums, medical bills and taxes.

-- That means we already have a universal health care system, albeit a hypocritical, inefficient, ridiculous one.

So maybe it's time we stopped arguing about whether we should adopt a universal health care system we've already adopted, and instead talk about how to make it work.

I am a dangerous man, I swear it.

Not too dangerous, but bad enough to have my own government intelligence file. Right? Right?

I thought so, not because of the piracy on the high seas charges, (a misunderstanding), or the "conspiring to overthrow the government" thing (boys who read Ayn Rand will be boys who read Ayn Rand).

But because of where I've been and what I've done, I expected the government to take a bit of notice.

When I was 16 I entered Simon's Rock of Bard College, a school so leftist it was rumored you got your own FBI file just by enrolling. Admittedly, that was extremely paranoid, and admittedly, that paranoia amongst the students was largely my fault.

See, one of the most politically deranged guys on campus (he hoped the revolution would come before May, thus disrupting finals and nationalizing beach houses), already suspected he was under surveillance when I met him. After I broke into his dorm room every day for two weeks and moved everything he owned one inch to the left each day, his suspicion solidified.

Luke: "The feds are on me like white on rice."

Me: "Perhaps you should flee. I could look after your Volvo and girlfriend for you."

I never believed everyone at the college got an FBI file, but I do think some of my adventures worthy of official attention, and I'm not just talking about the time my apartment complex seceded from the U.S. to become the independent city-state of "Partyopolis."

Curious, I found a Web site that helps people file Freedom of Information Act requests and, to be safe, requested my files from nine offices. In addition to various FBI branches, I asked for my records from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, Homeland Security and the National Security Agency.

So far I've gotten six letters essentially saying, "Dude, we've never heard of you," one saying they'll keep checking and one from the NSA that said, in more polite terms, "We don't have to tell you anything, Buster. Now beat it, before we really do notice you."

Thing is, I've had to give my info to government agencies who said they were going to start a file, and should have. I've covered some pretty well-guarded politicians, including President George W. Bush, and that involves some paperwork.

More importantly, I was embedded with the Pennsylvania National Guard in Iraq and Kuwait for three months in 2004. I should have been vetted before that was OK'd.

It is the catch-22 of a government that keeps files on its people. I certainly don't want to find out the feds have a 600-page dossier that details how old I was when I stopped sucking my thumb (It was when I started smoking, so I must have been 7), the story behind my first kiss (ah, sweet mysteries of the wedding night) and my entrepreneurial failures (why "PicklePop, the soda with the salty garlic kick" never caught on remains one of my life's great mysteries).

But I hope they made sure I can be trusted around our soldiers and leaders.

I did read "Atlas Shrugged" 23 times in my teens, and I admit to smoking everything in the world except asbestos. What's a guy got to do to get some surveillance love?