MadMup.com

My brother is two and a half years older than I am. While that means a lot of different things, one of the things it means is that he started getting mailings from the various Armed Forces a lot earlier than I did. Unfortunately for him, the Army was always offering him all these what I thought were neat things for him to request more information. A seventh grader thinks a pair of wristbands or a T-shirt is infinitely cooler than a high schooler thinks they are. So, since he could get these cool things for requesting more information and I couldn’t, I would sometimes send the postcards back. In a few weeks, the bundle of more information would arrive at the house, along with whatever thing I thought was cool at the time.

What I did not understand at the time was that the arrival of the postcard at Army headquarters meant – to them – that my brother was interested in joining the Army. So, to follow up with the more information and the silly whatever, they would often call my brother. I remember him more than once saying on the phone, “Um, I’m sorry, but my brother actually sent that card in because he wanted the compass.” I think he even made me tell them once.

Seriously, though, what else were they expecting to have happen? The whole point of them offering the pencils and hats and carabiners was to pique someone’s interest and maybe hit on someone who thought, “okay, sure, why not?” and join up, all because of the little thing that got mailed along with the more info. I’m sure it happened all the time.

My brother never did join the army, and neither did I (I often considered it, but my fear of water kinda made that decision for me). I have long forgotten most of the Army-branded things we collected around the house, except for one: an Army flashlight.

It was cheaply rubberized and had a camouflage pattern, with a stark-white “ARMY” emblazoned on the handle. It was about six inches long, and there might have been a hole in the end of it to loop a cord through, I don’t remember exactly.

Like most of the Army stuff we got, it was fairly cheaply made, but it did work. Two AA batteries would give it enough juice to light the tiny bulb. Make no mistake – this was no Maglite, this was a pathetic attempt at impressing kids. Sure it worked on me, but it was still pathetic.

I remember this flashlight so vividly because it was so poor. My room at night was pitch black. We lived out in the country, so there were no streetlights providing a soft glow through my windowshades. Lights out meant lights out. I kept this flashlight by my bed, and if I needed to get up during the night, I would use it to light my way to the door of my room and to the stairs. Only it wasn’t a powerful enough flashlight to show me where the door was – seriously, this was a majorly poor flashlight. The only thing I could do was set out in the general direction of the door and point the flashlight at my feet. There was enough light to illuminate any obstacle that threatened to trip or maim me, even if I couldn’t see the doorway. By adjusting each footfall, I was eventually able to reach my goal.

I’m not sure what eventually happened to the flashlight. I suspect it just fell apart one day of its own accord. I have a couple of new little flashlights now, both of them have bright LEDs in them, and they more than light up where I need to go. But I still occasionally remember that old Army flashlight.

A couple of years after the flashlight had shuffled off this mortal coil, I had occasion to speak on the 105th verse of Psalm 119: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” The verse made a whole lot more sense to me after having that flashlight – as long as I set out in the generally-right direction and took care to take carefully-illuminated singular footsteps, I’d eventually get to where I needed to be.

I still have problems setting long-term specific goals, but I like to think that I carefully consider each next step, and I’m ever hopeful that I’ll end up where I’m supposed to.

Even though I don’t like to be cold, there are reasons I don’t like to see Spring roll around:

• My winter coat has two inside pockets, perfect for carrying stuff. Spring coat, not so much.
• When the weather’s nice, I don’t (in the eyes of other people) have any excuse for staying inside.
• The nicer the weather, the more likely it is that the neighborhood kids will play right outside my window, which wouldn’t be so bad except that the neighborhood kids are apparently banshees, and with the advent of Daylight Savings Time, they can play outside much longer than they ought.
• Bugs.

I’m sure I’ll be able to add to this list as the weather gets nicer and I’m reminded of things.

Though it’s a little later in the season than I typically like to go, I made an appointment to get my taxes done yesterday. My taxes are pretty easy to do, but I will admit to some paranoia about audits and prison and governments being mad at me – I don’t have any reason to fear those things, as I’m not trying to rip anyone off, but I think that’s why it’s called “paranoia” and not “groundedinfactoia.”

I’d gone to this place before (okay, fine, it was Jackson Hewitt), but last year I bought TurboTax to try to save some money. It turned out that with the fees to electronically submit my returns, it cost about the same as having them done, so I figured I’d just go back to Jackson Hewitt this year. I called them on Saturday and made an appointment for yesterday.

I got there a little earlier than scheduled and the nice older lady (I’m guessing she was in her early 70s) had me fill out a form. There was a bucket of candy on the counter, so I had a piece of Hershey’s milk chocolate, which I’ve really been enjoying lately, probably as a response to all the bad advice Dove chocolate has given me over the years.

When I’m done filling out the form, the lady takes me back her cubicle amidst a bunch of other cubicles which do nothing to prevent anyone from hearing your conversation, as evidenced by the other tax lady prairie-dogging her head over the wall and jumping into our conversation. It’s a good thing I didn’t have anything embarrassing to declare – “Well, I was in prison for most of last year, do I have to declare the 30 cents a day I earned making license plates?” or “Can I file jointly with all three of my wives? What if they’re each in a different state?” I actually wonder if people get into the tax-preparation business because they like to hear about other people’s money and problems. “You owe… let’s see… 43 million dollars to the government this year. Wow! That’s the most I’ve ever seen! I’m sad for your circumstances, but impressed at the same time!”

This lady took about 8 minutes to do my taxes, which should tell you how easy they are to do. She asked a couple of questions, showed me what my return would be, and then said, “That’ll be $167.”

Um, what?

Granted, I hadn’t asked about price when I made the appointment, as I’d figured it’d be somewhere in the neighborhood of $60-70 like it was the last time I did this. but $167? I figured it must be a $100 charge since I didn’t use them last year. I let her know that this was a surprising figure to me.

“Well, we can hold onto the paperwork until you’re ready to pay for it.”

“Um, I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to pay $167 to have my taxes done.”

I apologized somewhere between 7-10 times for having taken up her time, and she said “It’s okay” in a tone that clearly indicated it was not, and then I left.

I got in my car and Twittered that I was going to Best Buy to get a software solution. Literally two seconds after I Twittered that, my friend Brian called and basically said, “Don’t waste your money.” He told me he had a list of 19 different free ways to do my taxes and then said, “And if you have State Farm Insurance, you can do TurboTax Online for free.” As it happens, I do have State Farm, and as it further happens, he was right: you can do TurboTax Online for free if you’re with State Farm, both state and federal.

It took me about 45 minutes to get everything entered and checked, re-checked, and printed, but they’re done and submitted and I already had an email this morning that said my federal return was accepted. Sweet.

Now I wait 9-12 days to get my returns electronically deposited and then blow the money in riotous living, which in this case is defined as “putting some in savings and most on paying bills.” Maybe next year I’ll do something even more riotous, like put a down payment on a house.