In My Man Cave

It's my man cave. It's where I do my work, my manly work, and I cherish my solitude within its confines. The room itself is known by various names...bedroom #3, the office, and the computer room. I guess the man cave title is only accurate when I'm inside it and alone. And "my manly work" when the room and I are in man cave mode consists of genealogy research much of the time (including surfing on Ancestry.com for computer generated hints), tracking income and expenditures since I'm still responsible for the family budget (delegated to me abruptly three years ago when I leased the Sorento despite someone else's advice not to), logging medical expenses and charitable donations just in case they are needed for income tax itemization (although with both of us on Medicare now, itemizing doesn't seem to be in play anymore; but I'm not complaining), and blogging from time to time (but my blog production seems to be suffering from retroactive inhibition...my blogging skills have deteriorated the more I work on genealogy...that's my excuse, anyway).

Most of the time I work in my man cave alone and with the door shut. I do maintain an "open-door" policy for anyone in the household to come inside the room. The closed door is to eliminate or reduce noises which I find distracting. The television downstairs is set fairly high on volume in deference to my mother in law who's pretty hard of hearing. I'm not sure turning the volume up is really that productive for her because she still tries to read lips but we want to afford her the opportunity to hear in case she's actually watching a program and not dozing. And, truth be told, a loud television audio setting is a hundred times more pleasant to listen to than if she decides to hum or sing her famous nonsense lyrics to, for the most part, non-existent tunes. I love my mother in law and I hope she lives another round of ninety years but it would be a blessing to my ears if she were to take a vow of silence. At least as far as music is concerned.  A loud television is better for all of mankind (and especially to this man). Anyway, the closed  door is free to be opened by anyone with appropriate business to conduct. And when the door is opened the definition of the room transitions to the task at hand: if my wife enters with the mail or packages the room becomes the office. If my wife or a grandchild enter with a request for something to be printed the room becomes the computer room. If guests are visiting overnight the room transitions into either bedroom # 3 or the guest bedroom depending on how formal a title we want to assign. We have a sofa bed for guests to sleep on.  And finally, when my canine granddaughter Coco visits (and back before American Bulldog Lucy passed away) the man cave evolves into a clubhouse of sorts, a place where man and dog can just chat, scratch, sniff, fart, and nap together when we're not peeking out the windows and spying on anybody outside.  When dogs are present I can't officially call the room a man cave because all the dogs I know are female. Due to our gender difference I would be  fully on board designating the room as our "buddy room." That basically covers the bases and is still politically correct.

While in man cave mode I will readily confess that my work area is a little disorganized. Well, not so much as disorganized as it is a little messy. If it was disorganized I might not be able to find something. Given enough time I can usually find things within a reasonable time.  Not super quick like if I needed to grab a specific document or something in case of a fire quick but since that tragedy hasn't happened and I certainly hope it never does, the mess doesn't bother me. A little guilt now and then? Sure, but nothing the next discovery of family history doesn't override.  The real issue at hand here is my procrastination in filing. I'm letting my filing obligations get a little behind. Here's a view of my work desk inside the man cave (or the office, bedroom # 3, buddy room, or computer room, take your pick).

                                                                             
On the far left next to the closet door handle is the postal area, bottom left open drawer is one of three for hanging files, and from left to right on the desk are AARP petitions (not sure I want to sign yet), high school alumni donation solicitation, pedigree chart and photographs of ancestors, statements and documents for filing received in today's mail (behind computer screen), historical publication by an ancestor I recently received from New England Historical Society, all of the data pages and mysearchgoeson blog for my research on Lenora Webber,  correspondence and data pages on my Kentucky cemetery search last summer, and my family files and binders in the cabinet on the far right. There's also a monitor on the floor that's part of my old desktop computer that one of these days I need to get rid of once I figure out how to destroy the hard drive inside the tower.  I've been procrastinating on that since last December when I replaced the desktop with the laptop pictured here.

 I remember when we used to think how wonderfully simple our lives were going to be because we wouldn't have to deal with paperwork anymore. Computers were going to replace paper! Yeah, right.  Granted, I keep too much but old habits die hard. And I've got a great new shredder I bought at Costco that can handle 12 pages at a time and with staples!! So when the filing (if I ever catch up to it) is done but the hanging files are bulging inside the file drawers, all I've got to do is feed twelve page gobs of parchment into Lenny (my name for the shredder) and he gobbles them all up pretty good. The best part about Lenny is he consumes those one half inch thick credit card solicitation letters with no hesitation. No fuss, no muss. ZZZZrrrrrrrraaaaaPPP!!! I love the sound of Lenny devouring unsolicited mail. Better than listening to Mom-in-Law hum, too.  Much better!

Plucked Rants

I heard recently that blogging is just a way for people to rant in public. I don't recall where I heard it or read it or who said it; probably from one of those Law & Order episodes I faithfully and frequently record on my Brighthouse DVR-equipped cable box. I like the old shows best, the ones that strart with the crime, then the police investigation, and finally followed by the district attorney's prosecution efforts. The other Law & Order versions, Criminal Intent and SVU are OK but I'd sooner the original format. It just seems to give a more complete picture of the story. Anyway and whatever the source, the theory of blogging being a public platform for ranting sort of struck a nerve. Well, not struck so much, that's a tad strong...more like plucked a nerve is what I mean. Like a harp player plucks a harp string. Firm, correct, and with flair, but sort of gentle at the same time. Much less violent than striking anything could ever be.  So, truth be told, I was plucked by the thought that my blogging, or anybody's blogging since we bloggers are sort of all in this together, is our means of stepping up on the technological soapbox of the Internet and spewing forth just about anything we want to rant about. And my kids think I'm a technological dope still living in the blinking 12:00 VCR age!  HA!  (I got rid of the VCR years ago but I will admit I sometimes have the instinctual urge to rewind the the DVD disk before I remember what century I'm in). 

So when the hypothesis associating blogging with ranting came to my attention, the sensation of nerve  plucking was followed closely by the shocking realization that this means, I am a ranter. Or I could be a ranter if my blog is brought in as evidence against me. God! How would I react to being interrogated by Detective Lennie Briscoe in one of those dingy "interview" rooms with the two way mirror on the wall with a gallery of detectives and assistant district attorneys on the other side of the glass watching my every move?  And I don't want to diminish the staging of my favorite TV reruns but can't the interviewees see through that shiny mirror the size of a 60 inch flat screen placed in the middle of a concrete block wall? I'm just sayin' ! I've never seen any suspect undergoing interrogation ask for a comb so they could spruce up a little bit. So, they have to know, don't they? Even the dumb ones? 

Quite frankly, I've never considered myself to be a ranter. Not a public ranter, anyway. OK, all right, I confess there are times, in the privacy of my own living room,  that I have made disdainful emotion filled comments directed at my 60 inch flat screen television. But I want to make two things perfectly clear. First, only when the television was turned on. I've never ranted against any television or any other appliance for that matter, that wasn't in the "on" mode. That would be grossly unfair and perhaps even cause for a little suspicious concern about my mental status were that to be the case. And second, I have inspected my flat screen (again, when it is off) to see if it could possibly be a two way mirror instead of the television it appears to be and can testify without reservation that it is, indeed, just that...a television. There's no one else on the other side and, I should add, and this is a BIG and...there's no CyberLink YouCam device on it either. That's right folks. You think all that fuss recently about hackers attaching themselves to your computers and watching your every move was scary? Think about what you have done in front of your television screens...the ones in your living room. The ones in your family room. And the one in your bedroom!!  Better check them out. You heard it here. Even if you just picked your nose or simply scratched an itch, the next thing you know you might see yourself on U-Tube with your index finger buried up to the knuckle in your nostril...or worse. 

I imagine there are few of us who haven't ranted a time or two at their televisions. I used to be a New England Patriots fan. Right up until they embarrassed me in the 1986 Super Bowl. I expressed a few feelings in front of my television on that day that could possibly be defined as rants. When I moved to Florida 25 years ago I fell in love with the Buccaneers. Actually my butt fell in love with them because I could sit and watch NFL football in the stadium in my shorts in November and my butt, obviously remembering how many times it was frozen numb at Foxboro, would say "thank you, thank you, thank you!"  But with the exception of the 2003 Super Bowl and a couple of seasons around it, can anyone imagine I would never have a rant or two to express about the Bucs? I'm still a fan but I have become more vocal now about my displeasure. Not at the stadium but only at home in front of the television. I don't believe in "booing" athletes, professional or otherwise...they work too hard to do their best and sometimes their best isn't good enough. Unlike politicians. Needless, to say, my non-YouCam flat screen probably did hear a few boos uttered last year leading up to the presidential election. I'm not going to say what politician or which grand old party was the target of my ranting but they sure gave me plenty of ammunition to rant about. And boo. I have other rant-worthy subjects but I'm going to step down from my technological soap box (I wonder how many people under the age of 50 know what "standing on a soap box" means?) and see what other issues pluck my nerves. And don't forget!  Be Kind - Rewind!  

Itch Scratching

As I neared the end of my three year lease on my KIA Sorento I started to get that new car itch that seems to take hold of me every three years.  And I suppose it's a little pretentious to say "my" KIA Sorento but lease, buy, or steal a vehicle, when you drive it for three years it just feels like you own it.   I could have owned it if I wanted to buy it at the end of the lease and it wouldn't have been a bad move because I knew the vehicle had been taken care of for maintenance and had not been abused. And I liked the Sorento except for one thing...the miles per gallon performance was not nearly as good as advertised. It was supposed to get up to 29 mpg highway. If you drove fifty miles per hour on a straight and level road, I could get 29 and higher. Sometimes as good as 32 mpg. But that's not realistic highway conditions as far as I'm concerned. At 60 to 70 mph the best I ever got was around 25 mpg. I'm not a lead foot driver but if traffic and weather allow I usually try to maintain 4 to 5 mph over the limit.  In Florida that means setting cruise control to 74 or 75 mph. The result was that the Sorento achieved an average of 24 miles per gallon at those speeds. Not terrible performance for a mid size SUV but disappointing nevertheless because it's so much less than advertised.

So, long story short, I did not buy the 2011 Sorento at the end of my three year lease. I shopped around and test drove the Ford Escape, the Mazda CX-5, the Jeep Compass, and the Hundai Santa Fe, and the GMC Terrain. I read all the reviews from Edmonds and Car and Driver. I test drove each of them and they all had their good points. But the one that seemed most likely to satisfy my itch was the Terrain. I've got about 1500 miles on it since I started leasing in December and highway mpg is averaging 30 mpg (as opposed to 32 mpg advertised). Not quite up to the hype but significantly closer than the promises by KIA. Anyway, here's the new wheels pictured below. Ain't she purty?

GMC Terrain SLE-2

She's not top of the line. As a matter of fact she's 2nd from the bottom of five available Terrain models. But she's got enough bells and whistles for me, a comfortable ride, similar size as the KIA, and much much much better miles per gallon performance.  She scratches my itch.

Unblocked at Last!!

I haven't posted any blogs since September, neither here on JD's Blahs nor on My Search Goes On. Not that I've broken any hearts or lost a bunch of followers because I don't have many followers to begin with. The truth is I write for myself because I enjoy it and I enjoy the feeling I get from writing that makes it seem as if I'm being creative. At the same time when it comes to posting I'm fully aware that others may see my words but that's not the first thing on my mind. No offense to whoever reads my blog in the near future but my primary thought when I'm posting is I hope my words will be read by family or friends somewhere in the future who might develop an interest in me in a genealogy sense. I have a set of diaries written by my great great grandfather that are like gold to me. If a great great grandchild of mine can access my blogs, regardless of how boring my writing and life may be, I'm betting they will be thrilled to have a picture of my thoughts.  But my recent reluctance to post is not for fear of disappointing anyone now or in the future. I just haven't put together anything that seemed worthwhile.  Perhaps this lapse took place due to plain old procrastination.  Add to that my weakness to succumb to the allure of distractions and I feel I have run up against the wall known as writer's block.  I have a few half finished works in draft form floating on my Blogger work page but nothing that felt right to go ahead and complete. And looking back on them now I still feel they were not worthy of posting. So if today's attempt results in a posting then maybe I can claim victory over my writer's block. We'll just have to see how it goes.

I don't see my writer's block as evidence that I went brain dead. I don't think so anyway (how would I know)?  I'm thinking it's just more like falling asleep at the switch. I know there are still a few episodes of brain cell activity inside my head from time to time. Maybe not a lot but some conscious thoughts seem to be still banging around in my cranial cavity most days and surely they coexist along with unconscious ones too. I don't become aware of what the unconscious thoughts are up to until I arrive at  some destination and then can't remember why I went there. (Destinations like another room in the house or at the pantry type destinations, not Orlando or San Francisco).  So conscious or unconscious, whatever, I'm still able to put together a few rational thoughts and conclusions now and then. Right, wrong, smart, dumb, inspired or generated by the boredom of my exciting life, it doesn't matter. Every thought is in the mix. They just haven't all formulated into a coherent dissertation I feel worthy of posting.  Time will tell how this one works out or maybe it'll just join its cousins in unposted Blogger drafts.

So perhaps the real culprit is those distractions I mentioned above.  There was the presidential election, of course.  I confess I got addicted to morning and evening news programs just to get the latest scoop on the campaigns.  If I was unable to view them for whatever reason I usually recorded them on my DVR but the bad part about that was the evening time slot conflicted with Seinfeld reruns. When sacrifice was called for it was Jerry and friends that bit the dust. Didn't want to miss any gaffes committed by any candidate and immediately following that the incredulous and outraged indignation of the opponent.  What a show!  Neither the President nor the Governor let us down in that regard. I found it fascinating to watch. Sunday morning talk shows on the three major networks were my evening news on steroids.  ABC  (live) at 9 am, NBC (live) at 10am, and I recorded CBS running in the 10:30 to 11:30 am slot so's not to miss a beat.  Although truth be told, the first half hour of each of these hour long programs was usually taken up by the candidates' staff or supporters and I quickly grew tired of the ritual stump speeches. For a while it was interesting to see how they sidestepped the questions or bent their answers to promote their agendas. But for me even that got tiring after awhile and it afforded me a good opportunity to read the Sunday newspaper. After some fine tuning in time management I settled into a fairly consistent routine on Sunday morning that made me feel I was keeping up with the issues and the polls from both televised and printed sources.

Watching the news shows on TV during the campaign was fascinating but offset by the  negative political commercials. I mentioned in a September blog that we had developed a means of ignoring the ads with liberal use of our mute button.  You can't catch them all, of course.  Let your mind wander for a minute and the next thing you know some doofus is explaining why the opposition would be a disaster for the country. If we could find the remote it was mute button time. If the remote was misplaced we stuck our fingers in our ears and sang Beethoven's famous unfinished symphony entitled La La La La La, (and the chorus La La La). Until we got coordinated there was a lot of singing in our house.  By the beginning of November we pretty much had it down to a science. And we did our best to be neutral of which parties' ads were muted. Even our favored candidates ads were distasteful and nauseating after a while so whether we liked the candidate or not, mute, mute, double mute, and sing when necessary. We eventually reached the ultimate stage of ad avoidance by employing PIP, picture in picture, wherein we could monitor another station and switch the channel to view a program without the monotonous repetition of negative political ads.  But towards the end this became more difficult as we were being bombarded with ads issued simultaneously in a shock and awe pace on all the networks.

There were other distractions besides monitoring the presidential campaign, all of much lesser consequence to be sure but, nevertheless drew my attention away from blogging. We replaced the second floor of our town home with new carpet, including the stairs. We did this right after filing a claim on our home owner's insurance for some old water damage in one of the upstairs closets. I used the closet repair and new carpet installation as rationale for redecorating my office (which also serves as a guest bedroom) and I spent a lot of time and thought (and too much money) putting together my new man cave. My old desk top is on its last legs after seven years of mostly dependable service so I've replaced it with a laptop. I'm writing this on my second new laptop because the first refurbished laptop had technical problems and I wasted many hours on the phone with southeast Asian technicians with unpronounceable names, each of whom promised that they were going to solve my problem but kept referring me to different departments where I had to explain my problems all over again.  After each of these strained and largely unintelligible conversations I just didn't feel motivated to jump back onto my old slow desk top to do any writing. And as much as I love the Sorento I've been leasing for two and a half years I've been day dreaming about turning it in next February and leasing or buying something new. I may just buy the thing but we are planning to reduce our household to just one car and I think we could get better value for my wife's Spyder by trading it in on a new vehicle as opposed to selling it outright. Besides, new car looks, smells, sounds, and open road fantasies have a way of singing sweet siren songs in my ear.  And the last but not the least of distractions are lifestyle adjustments necessary to live with a 90 year old mother in law. This is not nearly the burden on me that it is for my wife but without going into details let's just say our empty nest requires adapting and tweaking on occasion to ensure the comfort (and sanity) of all three of us in our household. We love her and want to keep her happy and comfortable for as long as we can.  But it ain't easy. We are blessed to have a daughter who volunteers to "babysit" her grandmother from time to time and enables my wife and I to get some couple time by ourselves.

So ready or not, Blogger world, here's my latest blah blog!  If you don't like it that's ok. Just remember, I didn't write this for you.  This is dedicated to my unborn great great grandchildren. Hope you like it, kids.

That's A BAD Thing?

Our campaign to mute out all political ads on TV is progressing nicely. But some unscrupulous ad exec has undoubtedly caught on...now the strong points are being highlighted by script!  Obviously, they're on to us and our muting campaign. They must have known that if we're going to squelch the audio, we're still going to be looking at the screen so's we know when regular programming resumes and then turn the sound back on. The ad that caught my eye, in an attack on one candidate's alleged plans for Medicare declares both in sound and in big bold script, the twelve person evaluation board consisting of  UNELECTED BUREAUCRATS!  (Although they didn't say it directly, I presume such a board would be the equivalent of Sarah Palin's Death Squad).

So now we've had to master turning our heads away from the TV screen so we can just catch a glimpse of the images but can't read them. Audiovisual muting so to speak. It's not too hard once you get the hang of it. But the unelected bureaucrats phrase has been turning over in my head. On the one hand I'm trying to imagine a twelve person board consisting of elected bureaucrats and then on the other hand I'm trying to visualize a board of twelve unelected bureaucrats.  And with these images in my head I just have to pause and ask, "Unelected, huh? Is that a bad thing?"

Non-Punditically Correct Non-Political Commentary

With the upcoming elections we hear more and more about political pundits. They are supposed to be experts and authorities on political matters. I am anything but a political pundit. As a matter of fact I'm pretty much an authority on nothing. Nothing that matters much anyway. But I do like to make comments now and then and my desire to do so is what motivated me to create JD's Blahs. So what follows is my two cents worth, so to speak, on things that have been on my mind lately.


Nature
On my walk today I observed three ducks standing on a concrete pipe that extended from the shore into a lake. One male, obviously a mallard with his greenish/bluish neck and head and the other two feathered with the speckled brown and gray coloring of females. The male and one female had bright orange webbed feet. The other female had brown webbed feet. So does that mean one was a different species? Or was she a mudder? I don't know. Just curious. 

Politics
Who thinks Romney stepped in it with his "47 percent" comments? Who doesn't? Now he says he did not speak "elegantly" in his response to a question. I think I know what he was doing. It's easy to picture any politician making his remarks to a $50,000 a plate group of supporters just a little juicier than the banquet mystery meat they were chewing on. People who fork over that much for the chance to rub elbows with a presidential candidate deserve more than a few token stump speeches. Unfortunately for Mitt, it just came out sounding like he was an elitist. Probably got a lot of affirmative nods from the wealthy crowd, too. And speaking of affirmative nods, do you think there were any plate-paying guests in attendance that had not made up their minds who they were going to vote for? (Possible exception being whoever recorded the video). Haven't we all made up our minds already? Who could possibly be on the fence? I don't mean the choice is obvious. We've all got our favorite and yours may not be the same as mine. That's democracy and that's a good thing! But it just seems to me that anybody who is really still on the fence by this time is decision-challenged.  

TV Ads
My wife and I have solved the problem of negative political ads. We just make extensive use of the mute button on the remote. At first we tried switching channels but more often than not we'd end up catching similar ads on the other channels. Now we just mute them out. Either party, makes no difference. Now we're including the lawyer ads too. We don't want to hear who we should call if we're "wrongfully injured" and not really sure but don't care what the difference is between that and "rightfully injured."

Fond Memories
Easter afternoon 1960. Two phrases stand out. Policeman # 1: "Oh really, you're the minister's son? Well, just hop in the back of our squad car and we'll take a little ride to the Reverend's house, OK?"  Older brother upon my squad car arrival at the Reverend's house with the blue and red roof lights flashing: "Oh, brother, you've really gone and done it this time, haven't you?"  This rhetorical question issued with a big xxxx-eating grin. 

Inanimate Objects
Am I the only one that talks to inanimate objects? Like cursing at my glasses when I misplace them?  Blaming the salt shaker if the salt comes out faster than I expected? Kicking the step that obviously jumped out and tripped me? I wonder if they have inanimate object anger management classes? Even if there is such a thing it probably wouldn't cure me of commending the throw away razor for doing a good job as I toss it into the trash. I could go on but I think I'm embarrassing my keyboard.

Trashy Business
We have a community dumpster. We put our neatly bagged trash into the community dumpster. The device serves the dual purpose of not only a dumpster but also as a compactor. So when you open the 4' x 4' sliding metal door to put your trash bags inside, you slide it closed and the compactor does it's thing with grinding and squealing sounds ending with a thud that signals it has completed the cycle of swallowing the trash and scrunching it all up together in a much smaller (ie. compacted) blob from the individual deposits of you and your neighbors. It's really an amazing technological wonder! So why don't all of our neighbors put their freakin' trash INSIDE this wondrous machine? And who are the lazy dopes that stack mattresses and furniture outside the dumpster instead of taking them to the dump? Every time I see these offenses to our posted community guidelines I ask myself, "Ok, I wonder who this jerk is voting for? Can't be the same one I'm voting for!!"

Football
We did not renew our season tickets for the Bucs this year. We were season ticket holders for twenty years with seats in the North end zone, both at the old "Sombrero" and at Raymond James stadium. It took some getting used to but after a while we really enjoyed the end zone perspective. And we liked being close to the field, about 15 rows up. Admittedly, the Bucs have been pretty stingy with their success over most of those twenty years but they gave us one Super Bowl and a few playoffs ten years ago. But the biggest disappointment is the change in the crowd demeanor. I like standing in order to see an exciting play. But I don't like having to stand after every play because the nimrod in front of me thinks it's cool to stand up for every down. I enjoy a beer or two, especially on a hot sunny game day but I don't much care for keeping company with sloppy drunks. And it was always fun to swap polite barbs with opposing fans sitting in the vicinity but always with courtesy and a smile. The last few years that's changed to scathing and hateful taunts and threats.I'm talking about the Bucs fans, not the visitors. I bet these morons don't put their trash inside the dumpster either.

Chap-Stick
Great invention. Chap stick, lip balm, Chap aid, whatever you want to call it. Like a tube of lipstick with the little twisty nob at the bottom to push the balm gunk or whatever you call it out of the tube. Not as sophisticated as the dumpster/compactor, but a pretty neat little device just the same. I use it more for my nostrils than my lips. Maybe because I like the camphor aroma. Smells clean. And keeps my nostrils from chapping. I'm just saying. 

Politics II
And another thing. I don't like it when politicians say, "the American people want... or...the American people don't want...or...the American people need..."  I don't like statements that begin this way because I am an American people. I never told xyz politician what I did or didn't want and I certainly never told him or her what I needed.  What I want and don't want and what I need these presumptive blockheads to do is just do their job and represent their constituents the best they can with their own decisions. They can't please every last one of us with whatever they legislate so just do the damn job and stop hiding behind the blanket claim that they are doing what the American people want them to do. If they guess right, we American people will vote for them. Guess wrong and hop on the bus, Gus. 

1957 As I Recall

"Now, quit that chirping" was a frequent and urgent demand issued by one of my junior high school teachers. I don't remember for sure what class it was. It could have been any one of them, perhaps even a homeroom class. I've just got a vague recollection of the class itself but the words are clear as a bell in my memory. The teacher was female and my mind pictures her as a heavy set older lady. But, of course, to a junior high school student, most teachers were perceived as "older" and maybe heavy set too. Nevertheless, the command to stop "chirping" was issued on more than one occasion and it's purpose was clear and to the point..it was a command to shut up. It was directed more or less to a group of students as opposed to just one. And as I recall this demand for action, or to be accurate, cessation of action, was always aimed at a group of chatting students behind me and towards the back of the classroom.  (Geez!. If that's right it would mean I was at the front of the class so what's that make me, a brown nose)? No, that can't be right because I don't remember being a brown nose with any teacher unless you count Miss Magoon for whom I would have had to jockey for position amongst the other boys in her class trying to situate themselves to the best vantage point from which to observe her bending over and giving any male pubescent observer an exhilarating look at her 44-D's swaying behind her low cut sweaters. All of us competing for her attention just meant we always had a lot of questions and maybe even a few silent bird whistles but I don't think there was any chirping coming out of us.  But back to the point it definitely wasn't Miss Magoon issuing the demand to stop chirping, I'm positive of that. And I don't recall any instances where I would have felt that I was being targeted to shut up. Maybe, maybe not. For the most part I was a quiet and well behaved kid except for the incident a few years prior in grade school where me and a kid named Danny got kicked off the safety patrol for conduct unbecoming our positions as co-captains of the patrol. But for this recollection of a junior high memory I just recall the command to "quit that chirping!" I also recall it as being a rather effective tool for controlling the class. I've no idea how today's junior high kids (oh, excuse me, now they are middle school, not junior high) would react to such a command. They'd probably think the volume on their smart phones was too loud. But back then, and we're talking mucho years ago,long before middle schools and smart phones appeared,  it seemed to work quite nicely in getting the chirping offenders to shut their beaks.