How to Get Great Service at Torchy’s Tacos... and Other Things I’ve Recently Learned

 Things I’ve Learned About Solicitors Offering Me Bug Extermination Services:

1.  If you say “We don’t have a bug problem” or “We don’t need exterminators” or “We don’t really mind the bugs”, the person at the door will argue with you and tell you that EVERYBODY has a bug problem and that you may need exterminators more than you even KNOW (suggesting that perhaps you have termites in the attic or a giant wasp nest* or gremlins).  But if you smile and phrase your refusal this way—“No thanks, we live in peace with our bugs”—the solicitor will smile back uncomfortably and say okay and tell you to have a nice day before backing off your porch.  (I can only assume he thought we were Buddhists or something and had nothing in his salesman’s kit to combat religious objection.)

*This is something we may actually have but are afraid to find out.

Scorpion, trapped under a glass,
with cat hair stuck to its tail.

2.  If you decide to humor the guy at the door and let him give you his spiel—“Well actually, yes, we have seen twelve scorpions in our house in the past month and we are slightly concerned that one half of our attic is nothing but a giant wasp hive”—and if you engage his attention with friendly banter long enough, he will eventually tell you things that his boss probably does not want him to tell you.  Such as…

Me:  “I’m definitely not going to buy anything today (or ever) but you can leave me your contact info if you want (so I know what company not to hire).”

Him:  “Ok, but I’ll only be here until August 15^th, so you need to decide by then.”

Me:  “What do you mean?”

Him:  “I don’t live here, I’m from Utah.”

Me:  (Ah-ha, your summer job is to go to Texas and sucker people out of their money, huh?)  “We have better bugs than you do in Utah, right?”

Him:  “You definitely have MORE bugs!  My job is easy down here, I don’t even have to BS people!”

Nice. 

And, for the record, I am not purposely protecting this guy or his company.  I accidently recycled his info and can’t remember who he was.

3.  Despite the fact that it is sometimes fun to reveal solicitors as idiots, I have decided henceforth to stop opening my door to strangers.  Though (and this is a real piece of advice from the police and everything) I will also not take the coward’s way out and pretend to not be home, because that can tell the solicitor-burglar hybrid that it’s ok to kick your door down and rob you.  So from now on, I will say, “Who is it?!” And then if it’s not a friend or a neighbor or a pizza or a puppy or Google Fiber, I will say, “No thank you!  Go away now!”

Things I’ve Learned About Baby Screech Owls:

1.  They are adorable.

2.  They are born with only one emotion:  SURPRISE.

3.  When they are first learning how to screech, they sort of sound like a mockingbird with a cicada stuck in its throat.  Or maybe a cicada with a mockingbird stuck in its throat. *

* In the absence of a video of baby screech owls screeching, I instead offer you this fifteen-second video of a goat at the Capital of Texas Zoo.

Things I’ve Learned About Doing Research For My Writing:

1.  If you are writing a short story with a Chihuahua as a character and you are trying to find out whether or not to capitalize the word “Chihuahua” (the answer is yes) when it is referring to a dog breed and not the place (still yes) and you do a lot of Googling about Chihuahuas, Facebook will decide that you really love (and need lots of) Chihuahuas and will show you several ads like this:

2.  If you decide to mess with Facebook by Googling poisons for fifteen minutes or so (clicking on such links as “10 Poisons Used to Kill People” and “The Deadliest Poisons in History and Why People Stopped Using Them”), Facebook will stop showing you Chihuahuas and will instead start showing you sunglasses and jewelry and Toyotas and swimsuits (all things you have never shopped for online) because Facebook is worried about you and these are the things Facebook thinks might make you happy and pull you back from the brink.  Because people who drive Corollas while wearing swimsuits, sunglasses, and earrings never want to poison themselves or those around them.

 

3.  If a scene in your short story takes place in Torchy’s Tacos and you decide to have lunch there in order to do “research” and you spend your whole visit jotting down notes on a pad of paper, you will get the BEST service anyone has ever gotten at a Torchy’s Tacos ever.

* Number of times an employee asked me, “How is everything?”  =  3

* Number of times an employee asked if they could throw away my trash for me  =  2

* Number of times an employee gave me a nervous smile  =  4

(I was not trying to give the poor guys an anxiety attack—I was just too wrapped up in my note-taking to realize they thought I was a restaurant critic until after I left.  Rest easy, Torchy’s.  I enjoyed my green chili pork taco.)

Looking forward to what this week has to teach me…

Pointing Out the Owls

When people ask me if I miss teaching, my gut reaction is to say no.  But that's not really true.  The question I am really answering is do I miss my JOB.  And I do not.  The first things that pop into my mind when I think of my job are the negatives from last year-- the hours of grading and never catching up, the endless meetings, the overload of... everything. I guess the wound is still too fresh.

But of course I do miss teaching.  Teaching was what I loved, and there is evidence that I miss it all over my life.

For instance... 

Lately I've been reading a lot of books about the craft of writing, and-- I can't help myself-- I keep noting in the margins passages that would be good to use in the classroom.  Even when I am the student, studying articles for my own learning, I am still the teacher, wanting to pass that learning on.

Also, I've always loved recommending books to my husband, but now when he needs something new to read, I find myself getting a little carried away.  I thrive on the pleasure of scurrying from bookshelf to bookshelf collecting titles that I think he will enjoy and then presenting them to him.  This is not just a simple, "Honey, I left a couple of books on your nightstand."  No, no, no.  This is a sit-down-give-me-your-full-attention presentation of the books.

"Ok... this is the book I was reading when I kept laughing out loud last month.  Remember?  I think it would make you laugh too.  And this one was kind of weird, but honestly I think you would like it more than I did and I'd love to know your thoughts on the ending.  And this one I haven't read yet, but it's by the same author of that other book you liked.  And THIS one, I know it looks like a girly cover, just don't look at the cover, in fact-- here, I am taking the cover off-- this one is SO GOOD if you just give it a couple of chapters to get going."

The hubby is always so patient/slightly-patronizing/completely-silent during these ordeals.  When I finish, he points and says, "That one," making his choice.  Admittedly, he does not get as excited about these presentations as I do, but he DOES usually like the books.  (You can ask him.) 

Anyway, I know that my passion for supplying Mark with good reading material comes from how much I miss doing the same for students.  I absolutely loved getting the right book into the right hands.

But maybe the most glaring example of my longing for the classroom is in the owls.

Sharing the Owls

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, which is practically in my backyard, is a lovely place to spend an afternoon.  Last spring when I was there on a busy day, a small crowd had gathered at the archway leading into the central square.  The attraction?  In the planter in the corner where the stone walls meet, high above the heads of the visitors and well-protected from wind and weather, a great horned owl nested with her three fuzzy babies. 

I fell in love with them on sight.  I am a sucker for seeing animals of any kind in nature-- rabbits, deer, snakes, lizards, armadillos-- but I really love owls.  I love the screech owls that roost in our big oak tree in the spring and I love hearing the great horned owls hoot to each other behind the house at night, but I rarely ever see one.  And here they were, just fifteen feet above my head, calmly going about their owl business, content to let us gawkers down below point and photograph and ‘ooo’ and ‘ahh’.  A volunteer at the center told me that the mother comes back there every year to nest.  I thought it was so cool.

Mom and Baby - April 9, 2012

Since I live so close, I began walking over there weekly to watch the babies grow.  Sometimes I'd take a book and sit on the bench by the turtle pond and read, snapping a photo now and then or just enjoying the "company" of the owls.  But after that first day, I never saw a big crowd.  See, the thing is, unless you know they're there, the owls are really easy to miss.  It's not like there's a sign or anything.  And the more families that I saw walk past the arch, unaware, the more I wanted to show them the wonderful sight they were missing.  So I did.  

"Have you seen the owl?" 

Over and over again last spring, I pointed out the owls to people who were coming and going from the center.  And this year, now that the mama is back in her nest, I am doing it again.

People are always a little taken aback at first by the stranger woman suddenly accosting them about owls, but after they realize that I am harmless and they see the owl for themselves, they are almost always grateful.  Their eyes light up and they gasp in delight and often they mention how they can't believe they didn't see it before, how they almost missed it. 

And it makes me feel so good.

Baby - April 14, 2012

I’m not doing anything, really.  I’m only showing them something beautiful that was already there.  But it still makes me glow with pride because it reminds me of being in the classroom.   Teaching is like pointing out the owl.  There it is, right there above your head, not even a stretch really to see it, and yet if you don't know one is there, if you are walking, head down, not looking for owls, there is almost no way you can discover it on your own.  You need someone to guide you.

And so, the real answer is yes.  I do miss teaching.  I miss sharing the writing craft with my students.  I miss putting books they'll love into their hands.  And, above all, I miss pointing out the owls.  I miss watching students’ faces light up with the discovery that something so beautiful was right before their eyes and they’d never noticed it before.

Baby - April 18, 2012