Author: A.T.

Yesterday and the day before I wrote about DEP, a company that had gone into bankruptcy but emerged – to no fanfare – and managed to make some lucky, patient holders like me a heartening return. It’s not an investing style that’s for everyone, by any means, nor is it a style that always works. Not remotely.

Anyway, I know what you were thinking yesterday and the day before. You were thinking: “Why didn’t you tell us about DEP before it tripled?” And the answer is twofold. First, I’m reluctant to tout stocks I have any meaningful share in – especially little thinly traded stocks like DEP, where what I write could move the price. Second, this stuff is really risky, and I don’t want you to make an investment that turns out to be a clunker.

That said, I do have a stock you might want to look into – Calton Homes (American Stock Exchange symbol CN), understanding that I own a lot of it, purchased years ago, and that it really could fall five-eighths of a point. That doesn’t sound like much of a drop, especially for a American Stock Exchange-traded stock, but in this case, at least as of my writing, it would bring the price to zero. Zero, I need hardly mention, is a price at which it is hard to feel flush no matter how many shares you own and a decline from which, no matter how adroit the court-appointed receiver, it is hard to recover. Zero is not good.

So here’s the deal.

A smart guy with a very expensive faxed newsletter for exclusive clients (and me, as a favor) identified this homebuilder at around $5 a share when, by his calculations, just the undeveloped land it owned was probably worth that much. So you paid a fair price for the land and got the business for free. My kind of stock, but I didn’t buy. For one thing, home building is cyclical (unlike hair gook – no matter how bad times get, people are going to want to run bright blue or red gook through their hair) and I claim no ability for predicting the cycles. For another, you can’t buy every tempting idea that comes along.

But I did follow CN in his newsletter with each subsequent fax … and when I noticed it down at 2½, I couldn’t resist. The land at half price, if his calculations were right; the business for free. In I jumped for 2,000 shares. I bought more at 2 and then at 1¾. Where I really bought boatloads of it, near the end of 1995, was at three-eighths of a dollar. (Then, waiting 31 days, I sold the original shares for a tax loss. You have to wait or the IRS considers it a “wash sale.”) And then again, near the end of 1996, at 25 cents a share. (With a truly hopeless stock everyone is totally disgusted with, as Calton was, November and December can be a good time to buy, as last-minute tax-planners finally just kick it out to get the tax loss.)

Part of this was out of pure stubbornness or self-flagellation or that thing we do (well, I do) when you’re playing Hearts and you know, rationally, you cannot successfully shoot the moon but, well, you just can’t resist trying anyway and … well, what I’m saying is that part of it may have more to do with dreaming-of-the-big-score than doing any sensible thinking. Let alone actual research. (I have never, for example, seen a home built by Calton or visited any of the putatively valuable land.)

But part of it was that the fellow who had founded and built the company from 1981 to 1993 had by now stepped back in from retirement to try to rescue his investment. Owning 11 million or so of the 28 million shares outstanding, he has a strong incentive to try to restore the health of the company.

Will he succeed? Maybe not. Will he be hit by a backhoe on some job site and have his life — and my dreams — dashed? Maybe. (Sure the backhoes beep when they’re backing up, but maybe his hearing isn’t what it used to be.)

But this is the bet. The stock last week was trading between 56 cents and 62 cents, and I really, really, really mean it when I say it’s risky and you could well lose every penny making this bet.

Yesterday, I told you a little about a company called DEP. Today I want to show you, through excerpts, how a 120-message thread evolved from mid-January, when the stock was around 1¼, up until last month’s takeover announcement at 5¼.

I tell you up front that what struck me about this thread, when I happened on it recently, was the level of … well, let’s just say there are more than a few players in the game today who lack a great deal of experience (one worries for them), not to mention a handful who are incredibly rude.

The thread appears on the Yahoo! Message Board. It’s a place to trade thoughts about any stock.

Near the beginning of the DEP thread was this sensible January 19 posting, from Bill, 47, from Florida:

“I am playing this company as a turn around play. They once made about a buck a share, and they probably will do so sometime in the future. When they do, this stock will be worth about $15. Which gives us a reward/risk ratio of about 10 to 1. Odds I like and will play all day. In the meantime, we’ll just have to wait for it to be discovered as earnings continue rising.”

These were my thoughts exactly. Bill, who seems to be “my kind of investor,” only better at it than me, went on to say:

“I bought Chrysler in their bankruptcy phase too, actually the preferred stock for $4 which had $15 in interest arrears. And Ford in ’83 when Templeton indicated on Wall Street Week that they could make $20 a share in a good year. The stock was selling for $20. I put everything in. Three months later it was selling for $15 so I mortgaged the house. Sold at $80 in a few years. I do not mean to imply that DEPCC is as solid as Ford was, but when you play these stocks, patience is a mandatory requirement as is the ability to lose your money. Remember, it is a gamble with the odds highly in your favor.”

Mortgaging the house — even for Ford — is a little scary, but you can see there are profits to be made from Bill’s style of investing.

Around the same time, Tom asked:

“Anyone know why the volume is so low? I realize this stock is coming out of bankruptcy and not well known, but the other day the volume was 0. Is there any other reason for this?”

To which Oldflyboy replied:

“It would seem reasonable people have no interest in this company and that those who do have shares are desperately hoping the price will go up so they can sell. In reality, though, the price goes down. Does anyone really think this company has a future?”

OK. This is what makes horse races. Here is a man who probably uses no bright blue gook in his hair. But his comment is perfectly civil — and he could have been right, although if he’s basing his opinion on any research or financial analysis, he doesn’t tip his hand.

RedCrownYankee chimed in:

“There are four of us following this stock and that is the problem. Time and positive earnings reports will turn this stock around. Until then, BE PATIENT!!!”

Orion:

“There are more of us following DEPC [DEPCC] than you may think. I know of at least two others. I’ve been following this stock since September and have bought and sold it once since then. I am waiting to see if it dips below 1½ before buying again.”

Even a stock with only 7 million shares outstanding needs more than six guys on Yahoo betting on it to make it go up. And judging from his message, Orion seemed really to be betting, not investing. Trading in and out means fun! But it also means commissions (albeit very small ones), spreads (between the bid and the asked, which with DEPCC amounted to at least 3% coming and going), and taxes (in case you had a gain). Better with stocks like DEPCC and most others to buy and hold (and hope and pray).

Fast forward to late March. LT_Georgia has chimed in:

“Does anyone know when the next earnings come out? My research showed that 17% of their sales come from Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart earnings are up, so I am expecting the same for DEP. Hope I am correct.”

I’m not sure there’d be too close a link between Wal-Mart success and the success of any particular one of its few thousand smallest suppliers, but I admire LT_Georgia for doing a little research and trying to find a straw in the wind.

Now it’s June, DEPCC is up in the low two’s, the company has reported earnings of a few cents a share, and someone named MARKET_2000 is providing a somewhat broader overview:

“Dep should finish the year with $11.5 million in EBITDA. If you put a 10 multiple on this you get a $115 million enterprise value. The company currently has about $48 million in debt. Thus, the implied equity value is $67 million.

“The company has 7 million shares outstanding. Thus, the implied equity value per share is at least $9 a share. Any way you cut it, Dep Corporation is extremely inexpensive.

“Does anybody care?”

EBITDA (rhymes with KEY-bit-dah) is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. I’ve always been a little puzzled by it, because interest is something you really do have to pay (taxes often you do not, and depreciation and amortization are accounting charges that can be ignored with greater or lesser peril depending on the nature of the business). Still, and especially with hindsight, his analysis seemed plausible.

Another way of looking at something like this is as a multiple of sales, if you think a reasonable profit margin can one day be earned on sales. It varies greatly from industry to industry (because industries have different average profit margins and growth prospects), but a company valued at “one times sales” is not ordinarily a company grossly overvalued unless it’s headed for the dumpster. DEP had sales of about $120 million — not at all far from the $115 million valuation MARKET_2000 had come up with. (Is he “MARKET_2000” because he has his eye on the year 2000, I wonder, or is he an incredible bear?)

It is now July 4 and, while there have been some thoughtful messages with additional information about the company’s turnaround, skeptics are surfacing. NAFART writes in response to one of the bulls on the stock:

“Guys like you talk it up and are selling out as guys like us that you sucker in buy. This will be a penny stock in the next year.”

Someone called Dreckola (42/M/Biloxi,MS) agrees with NAFART:

“I agree. Start shorting this bowser. One way to go: S O U T H.”

Needless to say, July 4th would have been a bad time to start shorting this stock, still in the high two’s. The next day, someone named vontzen (32/M/Wicjhita) provides this message:

“This stock has peaked unless big shareholders keep promoting new people to buy in, which is making shareholders who bought in at a 1½ a lot of money. Eventually there won’t be new money and it will be back to a buck and a half. There ought to be a law against investors buying at the lows and hyping it on every message board they can find. This puppy is going south.”

Presumably vontzen was basing this opinion on something. My guess is: bitter experience. But it was about to get more bitter if he shorted DEP, because just a few days later the takeover at 5¼ would be announced.

And I suppose this was when it began to get … ugly, because someone calling himself TommyLeeJo replied to vontzen:

“Now we know where the kids from special ed are hanging out!!! The market is obviously too complex/simple minded for you morons!!!”

Much gentler was MARKET_2000, replying to NAFART:

“This company is turning around and if you are short, you are going to get smashed. Be careful.”

On July 6, Bill — with whose message I began this sampling — was obviously in a breezy mood when he responded:

“I don’t think there was any hype on this board. As a long whose average cost is less than a buck, I am only accumulating. Nice day today, up 3/8 on heavy volume. Somebody is buying a lot. Regards.”

Throughout history, there have been longs and shorts, bulls and bears, winners and losers. This day, Bill was long, and winning.

“To All Bears On DEPCC” read the heading of a message July 7 from “Bluepointer” –
“What fundamentals will cause this stock to go down? Last year the company earned 32 cents in the fourth quarter. What makes you think that this year will be any different? If you are going to sell this stock you should do it after October when the big numbers have already moved the price. If you want to lose money, go ahead and do it now. My prediction is that you’ll get squeezed good and hard.”

Vontzen, the 32-year-old from “Wicjhita,” did not take all this lying down:

“This special ed kid has more money in his pocket than you have if you list all of your belongings and your mamas. See ya, TommyLeJoMamaLOOOOSER”

It is my experience that when people begin bringing “your mama” into a discussion, the civil underpinnings of that discussion begin to totter.

TommyLeeJo — in a message he headlined “Greaseball” July 8 — fired back:

“Then why are you hangin’ on a two dollar stock bulletin board??? Did you sell all of your shares of Microsoft and have nothing else to do??? GET A LIFE!!!”

NAFART fired back:

“TommyLeeJoMamaLoser — These boards aren’t bad until pompous asses like you treat them like your personal chat rooms with stupid inflammatory posts.”

“Put your money where your mouth is and short the stock!!! Loooooooser!!!!” suggested TommyLeeJo later that day in a riposte he titled “Greaseball II.”

“The only money you act with is the two nickels you have,” NAFART offered TommyLeeJoMamaLoser the following day, July 9. “Your big time investing is with Monopoly Money. Grease up your hair with Dep, looooooooser!”

It was about this time I began to think that talk of a speculative bubble, with too many unsophisticated “investors” in the market for the first time, might have some validity to it.

“So, [expletive deleted]-for-brains,” shot back TommyLeeJo the same day, “short the stock and let everybody get on with their life ….”

A new voice chimes in July 11. HSCORE writes:

“You are all losers and liars!!! If you are long, good luck, this company is going nowhere fast!! If you say you are short, yah right!!! At the end of June, total short interest in the stock was a whopping 386 shares!!!! Looks like we have a bunch of liars here ….”

July 12: TommyLeeJo addresses “NAFART, HSCORE, etc.” —

“Do you ever get the feeling that the bus stopped in front of the loony bin just as there was a group escape? Why don’t all of you idiots go back to the institution and let the rest of us move on with our lives!!!”

Next day, Dreckola from Biloxi chimes back in, addressed to “TommyLeeJoMamaLoser-NeedstoGetaLifeBesidesThisBoard” —

“Sell this [expletive deleted] short, especially if it hits 3. Couldn’t be an easier way to make money. To [sic] bad you [expletive phrase deleted].”

You can just see this sort of dialog going back and forth between analysts with opposing views at Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch, say, only neither one, to my knowledge, had an analyst covering DEP.

TommyLeeJo, July 13, 9:41AM EDT, to Dreckola:

“Sell the stock short and you will get squeezed!!!! Or maybe you don’t understand that move, MORON!!!!”

Later that day, DEP hit 3.

July 13, 1:31PM EDT NAFART addresses TommyLeeJoMamaLoserKnowsAllAbout-SqueezesFromMaMa:

“Watch and learn TommyBoy”

Minutes later, Dreckola piled on with something truly unprintable.

The next day, the stock doubled as a takeover was announced at 5¼ a share.

My ship had come in, as had Bill’s and TommyLeeJo’s and Bluepoint’s, whoever they are.

If Wall Street was once the exclusive province of the straight-laced, white shoe, well-heeled (or any other footwear superlatives), I think the Internet has pretty well ended that era.

With all my moaning over Amazon.com (I shorted it), more than a few of you have become concerned for my solvency. Actually, I place such relatively small bets that no one of them, however ill-conceived, is likely to sink me. (Conversely, no one of them will make me rich, either.)

Still, I was not having a lot of fun watching my shorts climb to the sky. And just when things seemed bleakest, with Amazon at $145 a share, my ship — a ship nearly four years out to sea — finally came in.

The company is called DEP (symbol: DEPCC), and it makes brightly colored hair gook. When first I heard of it, DEP had fallen from $15 a share to $6, the result of a disastrous acquisition it had been too eager to make. (With eagerness comes sloppiness — they had not scrutinized it adequately.) But management had been at this game for decades, had most of its own family fortune tied up in the stock, and with time, I figured, might work their way back out of the mess. (They might also collect $40 million from a lawsuit they had filed against the seller of the disastrous acquisition — but as it turned out, they did not.)

So I bought 500 shares at $5¼.

And then a bit more at $4½ and a good chunk at $3 — well, for one thing, the company was about to file for bankruptcy protection, which tends to depress a stock — and a lot more at 2-and-change and a boatload last year at 1-3/8. (By then, it had emerged from bankruptcy.) And still people bought brightly-colored hair gook.

At 1-3/8, the entire company, divided into about 7 million shares, was being valued at barely $10 million, yet it had sales of around $120 million. Imagine if it could one day struggle back to the $1-a-share in earnings it had had before that disastrous acquisition! It would take a while, because it had $50 million or so in debt, much of it taken on to make the acquisition. But I was in no rush.

A few weeks ago, it was announced DEP would be bought by a large German company at $5.25 a share. The stock now trades at just a few pennies under $5.25; the German company hopes to have it all wrapped up in a few weeks.

I raise all this partly to brag, gloat, and just generally dance a jig on the dining room table — finally! But also to suggest that there remains a place for the boring school of backwoods stock picking. I recognize that hair gook pales in significance beside high-tech innovation. The rapidly evolving future of the human species will have little to do with hair care products. But high-tech stocks hardly lack for enthusiasm; relatively few languish unconsidered or on the bargain block. When was the last time you read a research report on a boring $100 million hair gook company?

I raise all this also because I was fascinated to read, in the last few months, some of the small-investor dialog concerning DEP on Yahoo. Tomorrow I will offer you a sample of those messages and show you what I mean. Thursday I will suggest another totally obscure, ridiculous (and highly speculative) stock that could conceivably follow the same script as DEP (but that, given my luck, doubtless will not).

[The following question and answer were written shortly before the recent market drop.]

“I know they don’t ring a bell when the market hits the top, but a fish company doubling because they whisper the word ‘internet’ does reverberate somewhat. How would you suggest an ordinary investor protect against a big market collapse? I would like to hedge against a drop without risking all or most of any potential continuing rise (in case there are more ‘greater fools’ out there.) I’m sure there were similar signs as the market struggled to break through the then unheard of DOW 3000 level, and obviously selling would have been a disaster. I have a mix of tax-sheltered and after-tax investments. What I am looking for is a way to turn some of the potential paper losses into real gains in the event of a big drop, yet at a small enough cost such that if it doesn’t happen, I will feel the price was worth the peace of mind. I know this is a tall order, but if anyone has a practical answer, you’re the man.” – Paul Berkowitz

Thanks, Paul. You are looking for the thing EVERYONE wants, and it comes under the category of a free lunch.

You can certainly buy puts or short some stocks or find a hedge fund you think will short stocks better than you could … but the simplest solution is often best. In your case, it would be to take some profits in your tax-deferred account.

If the market just keeps going up, you’ll be pleased – and may not hate me for getting just 5% or 6% on half the money in your tax-free account (in shortish-term bonds and sensibly-chosen REITs, say). After all, you’ll be getting rich in your taxable account and part of your deferred account.

If the market plunges, you’ll be glad you took some profits.

In assessing the mix between stocks and cash (or other pretty safe stuff), each person needs to find his own sleeping point. That is not the point, I should note, at which people blissfully ignorant of the risks sleep well but rather the point at which you, who do understand them, sleep well.

To buy enough puts to accomplish the same sweet sleep is very expensive (and shorts are no way, really, to get any sleep at all, witness my piranha-infested swim down the Amazon.com). What’s more, any gains, by and large, will be fully taxable.

“I have about $10k that I can invest for one month only. I was considering buying Home Depot stock, but I have never bought stock before and do not know if buying stock for only one month is worth the transaction fees. Can you tell me what you think of HD stock and if you think it’s worth investing for one month?” – Joy

Buying stock for one month is: CRAZY. Unless you totally don’t care if you lose a chunk of it and just feel like flipping a coin. In any given month, any stock could easily drop, climb or stay even. And since you have use of it for only one month, I assume you DO need this money.

The place for this money is, basically, a bank (or any other completely safe place).

And don’t feel bad: good for you for having it in the first place!

“Interesting suggestion on Japanese stocks. You recently mentioned a Korean fund that was not trading at a large premium. Is there such a Japanese fund? Can you buy the Nikkei like you can buy “spyders” here? Also, Japanese P-E ratios were sky high in the past, as you pointed out before the dive. Are they reasonable now by US standards?” – Dan Stone

I’m not sure Japanese stocks have much e these days to divide the p by.

EWJ is the symbol of the Japan WEBS (single-country index funds), but they trade with no discount.

Some believe that active management is worth paying for in Japan because a good manager will shun the stocks that are artificially propped up by face-saving old-boy-network cartel arrangements.

TKIOY is the symbol for a Japanese insurance company with a portfolio of stocks that are, theoretically, worth more in the market than TKIOY is. I haven’t researched it well enough to know whether much of that portfolio is the propped-up kind.

I don’t think it would be unwise to make a small long-term bet on Japan (and Korea and Thailand and maybe Malaysia and Russia and, well, lots of other places as well). And maybe average down a year or two from now in case things in Japan get decidedly worse. (One good sign: If you make bets like these, most people will say you’re nuts.)

Here are some links a smart friend recommends, and that I may include in the next revision of my book.

I hope you profit from one or two of them. (Please let me know if you think any are particularly useful or useless, or disagree with any of his descriptions.) Thanks!

INSURANCE

www.insureme.com is a quote service to find the least expensive health, automobile, homeowners, and life insurance policies.

www.insuremarket.com is a Quicken site with a well-written introduction to the different types of insurance a person may want to consider, and some tools for choosing good policies.

www.insure.com is another terrific site that teaches the ABCs of insurance and annuities.

TAXES

www.el.com/elinks/taxes has links to most of the very best sites on taxes, with informative descriptions of each site. This is the place to start.

www.owlsoftware.com is offering a free Roth IRA calculator to help in the decisions of which to fund and whether to convert.

www.irs.gov/formspubs/ is the place to get tax forms and instructions.

www.irs.gov/taxedu/faq/ is the extremely useful IRS taxpayer help and education site.

LOAN RATES

www.hsh.com is a good source for locating the best rates for home and auto loans, with additional assistance available for contacting lenders and starting the application process.

www.microsurf.com goes the extra mile in removing lenders from its database when they don’t honor information provided to it, and is also an excellent source for quotes on moving expenses and information to locate good realtors in your area. They are adding many other services, such as insurance quotes and apartment rental information, on a regular basis.

www.bankrate.com covers some larger lenders that don’t participate in the other database surveys.

www.banx.com provides information on other types of loans, including home equity lines, auto loans, and personal loans.

SPENDING

www.homeshark.com helps every step of the way for people who are looking for a house, including price information on homes and neighborhoods and, once again, more information on loans and rates.

www.housenet.com is all about home maintenance, repairs, and improvements, and ways of reducing all the costs of a home other than the mortgage payment.

www.classifieds2000.com is an online national forum for private party and dealer listings comparable to what you find in the newspapers and Pennysaver publications. There is a reasonably priced escrow service available to protect both the buyer and seller in transactions.

www.travelocity.com is a good source for airline prices, car rentals, and hotel information.

www.travelweb.com is another good site with similar information and the ability to book hotels directly for most chains.

www.teleworth.com provides help in choosing among all the long distance companies and plans available, based on your personal calling habits.

PERSONAL FINANCE

www.smartmoney.com is an interactive site created by Smart Money magazine, with many interesting worksheets and information on debt management, retirement planning, and other personal finance topics.

www.usatoday.com/money is the USA today money page and is becoming a very impressive start page for links to useful information.

www.forbes.com is the home of Forbes magazine’s site, with many useful tips for people who have accumulated enough wealth to worry about estate planning, and a large number of useful ideas on personal finance for people in all wealth categories. They also offer a toolbox with many useful financial calculators.

www.kiplinger.com is another excellent site along the same lines, sponsored by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

LEGAL

www.nolo.com provides a great deal of useful and, just as important, accurate information about legal matters that will enable you to know when you need a lawyer and when you can do it yourself, as well as what fits in between those two extremes.

www.legaldocs.com lets you prepare some legal documents online and download them for a minimal fee. This is definitely worth considering for simple agreements that you want to make with others where the primary concern is avoiding misunderstanding rather than making sure you’ll be able to sue!

SUCCESS!

“I did a book search today with www.mxbf.com, which I got from one of your columns a while back, and saved over $150 on a used book order.” – Bill Nagler

If the Postage Is Exorbitant, Just Fly There
“I was so pleased to find an out-of-print book that I was looking for at Powell’s on-line (which you had alerted me to in an article on Amazon) that I wrote to tell you. Unfortunately, the thrill was short-lived — the book had been sold and Powell’s database had not yet been updated to reflect that sale. Because you published my response in a follow-up column I feel duty bound to tell you the happy ending. That same follow-up column also included a reader’s response touting www.bibliofind.com. There I found the book available at a single store in Sydney, Australia. The price in Australian dollars, $22, was about $14 in U.S. currency (better than Amazon, worse than Powell’s) but the shipping would likely have been too much. Luckily for me I was travelling to Sydney later that month. I e-mailed the store, they held it for me, and I picked up the book a couple weeks ago.” – Gilman Miller

TELENUMEROLOGY

“Here’s some additional information on your ‘700 Club’: Toll-free 877 numbers (not 887) are already available, they were released on April 4 of this year. There is a plan to continue with that type of numbering (866, 855, etc.) as numbers are gobbled up. 700 numbers, by the way, are defined as special use numbers and would be charged based upon the type of call that is being made. This is why you are seeing various stories from people who have used 700 numbers. One of the more common uses for 700 numbers are [sic] for high speed digital dial up data applications which may be video. It seems rather odd that a local carrier would block a 700 number, there have not been the same problems with 700 numbers as with 900 numbers because they are not the same type of call.” – Kevin C. Johnson, AT&T, Omaha, NE

And from Dave M: “Bellcore no longer runs the North American Numbering Plan (NANPA). Now it’s Lockheed-Martin. They’ve got a website at http://www.nanpa.com/. It’s interesting if a bit jargon-y. They do have good area code maps, as well as a list of all the codes in numerical order and by state.”

COMPLIANT AND COMPLACENT?

From Brooks Hilliard, who I finally realized was not principal of a prep school, but principal in a consulting firm:

I’ve written a report on the Year 2000 which I am hoping you will find helpful. To tell, ask yourself this question: suppose you had to shut down all your company’s computers for 24 hours and your competitors didn’t.

• How much business would you lose?
• How many critical deadlines or deliveries would you miss?
• How many of your best customers would desert you for more reliable suppliers?

How about a week? … or a month, or six months? Well, Year 2000 is worse than that.

Most of what’s out there on this issue is heavy on warnings and light on solutions. But this report contains practical advice on what your businesses must do NOW to keep operating and continue your cash flow. This means more than just making sure your PCs have the right chip in them. Check it out at http://www.bizauto.com/y2k.html for the whole story. Helping businesses cope with major computer and technology challenges is what we do for a living.

A.T.: Yeah, yeah … but wouldn’t Brooks Hilliard make a great name for a prep school? Or a military academy? (“My kid’s at Brooks Hilliard. We are hoping he will get into Yale.”)

I got so carried with my Amazon.com short yesterday, and my quest for the goggles, I forgot all about the summer fun.

Here was the deal. I was in a pool shaped wrong for water volleyball, and how are you going to play water volleyball with just three guys anyway? So, not being ones to lie around aimlessly in the sun – where’s the competition in that? – we set about devising the rules of the afternoon. There would be a series of five events, each scored 3 points for the gold, 2 points for silver, 1 point for bronze. I was thus assured of at least 5 points, notwithstanding my pals being two decades my junior. The events were to be: Underwater Distance Swimming, Underwater Breath Holding, Push-Ups, Poker, and Scrabble (there is only so much time one can stay outdoors in Miami in the summer).

I actually used to be able to swim pretty far underwater, and now that I had a pair of Nike goggles, I felt a silver medal or perhaps even a gold was not out of reach. Until it developed that David knew how to do flip turns. I need hardly point out the importance of flip turns in generating the most flowing pushshsh off the side, or the importance of that pushshsh in covering the length of a 12-yard pool. In high school, I had pretty serious trouble with flip turns, living in constant fear that I would go into mine too early (pushing off vigorously against nothing) or else too late (smashing my knees against the edge of the pool). But that was a long time ago, so even what little expertise I had developed had pretty much left me.

Making matters worse, when we did “odd-finger” to see who would go first, I “won” and had to go first. (Just in case you were wondering, it was the first time I had done odd-finger in perhaps 35 years. Yet it is an effective method for breaking a deadlock and one that should probably be used more often in corporate and diplomatic stalemates.) I adjusted my goggles, hyperventilated, and pushshshed. I embarrassed myself with three truly pathetic turns and, thus, did four laps underwater. David did six, so Marc did six-and-a-smidgen. This made David, who feels a deep need to win, crazy. “Two rounds,” he announced, meaning that each of us got a second try.

For my second attempt, I merely dipped my head underwater for a moment and brought it back up, grinning broadly.

“That’s it?” asked the pentathletes.

“That’s it,” I affirmed, knowing that I couldn’t have done better than third in this event so I shouldn’t, if you will, waste my breath.

David, who I may have mentioned is competitive, swam nearly seven lengths underwater and when he surfaced, pretended to be having a seizure of some kind. This was funny, until we realized he had so stretched the edge of his personal envelope that perhaps he was having a seizure of some kind. Fortunately, the pool is even shallower than it is short – yes, you can drown in six inches of water, but generally not if two guys are in there with you (unless they are both truly competitive) – so whatever respiratory problem David was having lasted only a few seconds, and he soon began to deny having had any difficulty at all. Marc merely repeated his previous six laps, fearing (I think) that if he beat David, David might go for a third attempt and truly do himself in.

Meanwhile, I rested.

So the score at this juncture was: David 3, Marc 2, Me 1.

“Who has a watch with a second hand?” was our shared question at the start of event #2. And then we realized none was needed. We would submerge simultaneously and simply see who could stay down the longest. “On three,” I said. “You count.” (I was hoping to trick one of them into counting out loud while I was hyperventilating, but instead we all mouthed the words.) One … two … three.

With my Nike goggles, I watched as first David and then Marc surfaced, breathless. But I was excelling at what I do best. Nothing. I was expending no energy, not moving, not breathing – that was the whole point of this competition: to do nothing. And I was doing it very well.

Soon, the other two started shouting “you can come up now.” But after my defeat in the first event, I felt it was important to make a point. I stayed underwater, doing nothing, for another 20 seconds or so, and then – still underwater – I swam over to the edge of the pool and, with my head still submerged, kicked furiously for about half a minute, watering all the plants to either side of the pool.

Aha! Triumph for the old guy.

The score, as you have already tallied, was now David 4, Marc 4, Me 4.

Push-ups are a very individual thing. I do mine on my knuckles, having once done damage to something in my wrist architecture doing them the normal way. And I go all the way down when I do them and come all the way back up. I do great push-ups. I just don’t do very many of them (or do them very often). David agreed that “form” was critical to a fair event, and offered to do his on his fingertips. Marc’s push-ups were, to put it charitably, non-standard. Though there had been a lot of them, David and I agreed to disqualify Marc’s push-ups.

The score was now David 7, Me 6, Marc 5.

And now we were coming into the “brain” events. The poker was five-card draw, and once we had agreed what beat what – an exercise I’m sure we did wrong because we had decided to leave the two jokers in the deck, which changes everything – I had my stroke of genius. Rather than just play best out of five hands or something, which would have left it entirely to luck, I realized my edge would come if we got strategy involved. (Because I’m so smart.) So I dealt each of us $50 in Monopoly money, with a $1 ante – success wouldn’t be who won the most hands, which is just luck, but who won the most money, which takes brains – and, through skillful betting, bluffing, and calculation of the odds, I proceeded to go bankrupt. Marc had all the money.

David: 9, Marc 8, Me 7.

Which meant we were tied, and a nice way to end the day friends.

(We were tied because it wasn’t even necessary to play the Scrabble – indeed, they refused, so sure were they of the outcome. This annoyed me, but I took the 3 points anyway, and Marc, who is also a writer, took his 2. We were 10, 10, and 10, although David somehow remembers it as being 13 for him. We are not quite sure how.)

I love summer. I hope you are enjoying yours.

Monday, at last: The Physics of Coffee