What's In a Name

This will only make sense if you are the younger of two brothers or sisters.

I have had an identity crisis most of my life.  It’s probably one of the reasons why I thought that acting was a good career choice, albeit one I gave up years ago.   From the time I was in grade school, I really had trouble knowing if someone was talking to me.  This is because I have an older brother.

Now, older brothers are cool, like if you’re Ben Seaver on Growing Pains. And, unfortunately, sometimes they are shits like Wayne Arnold on The Wonder Years.  In any case, I don’t blame my older brother for my identity crisis growing up.  I blame everybody who knew him. 

There is a seven year difference in our ages and even with that gap, people had a hard time reconciling the two of us being different people.  I find this odd, in that we have a definite difference in looks.  We even have different hair color.  His is more brown and was even dirty blonde as a child, while I’ve had dark brown, even almost black since I was a child.  The only similarities in us is our voices and personalities.  We have the same traits that we probably got from our parents.  Yet, it’s odd that people had a hard time telling us apart.

Case in point, Ms. Nancy Jones, our grade school nurse was the biggest offender.  For six years, whenever she saw me in the school, she would call me by my brother’s name.  Sometimes she would catch herself, sometimes she wouldn’t.  When I was about 12, I sensed that she was being facetious as she would wink when she would call me the wrong name, but it was still a thing in my mind.  Even my own parents were guilty of doing it.   I would never know they were calling me, because they were calling me by the wrong name.

The identity issue continued as I followed my brother throughout schools and into graduation.  We even went to the same college, but by then, it was a different problem.   Apparently, there are a lot of me in this world.  None of us are related.  In fact, when I was registering for classes in college, I had another case of mistaken identity when first of all, the admissions office lost my records behind a filing cabinet for three days.  And after it was found, they proceeded to question my class choices, insisting that I should be in the pharmacy program because my father was a big name in the field.  I said, “No, that’s not even the right first name on that file and unless he’s paying for school, he’s not my dad.”  In 2011, when this doppelganger who shared my name died, one of my former  classmates posted a “RIP” message up on Facebook.   He happened to be a former boss and it led to a few of our mutual friends thinking I was dead.  I had to jump in and give the old Monty Python and the Holy Grail quote just to clear things up.

As I approached my 30s, I thought I was finished with the whole naming issue.  I was my own person with my own life.  My brother was his own.   Then, my sister had a son.  Not only did he have a completely different name, he looked nothing like the two of us.  Yet, one day, as I was visiting my parents, I hear my mother yelling out my name as if I had done something wrong.  It turned out she was correcting my nephew and using my name.   And so it began again.

This is why I have a daughter.

Away Alone

It’s that time again, the time when they shut down half of the streets in Oakland while yellow laundry carts crisscross the campus, stuffed to the gills with lava lamps, microwaves, and refrigerators.

Mothers will weep as they say goodbye to their little birds leaving the nest.   Yet, Fathers will dispense words of wisdom to their sons about responsibility and adulthood, all while noticing the crop of young coed girls.   Moms will sigh, Dads will say, “Sick em, boy!”  And thus the cycle begins, again.  Those clean cut kids from suburbia will turn into tattoo getting, bong toking, mistake making animals, all the while surviving solely on Rum, Ramen, and Red Bull.

However, research says that the average college student isn’t having any more sex than the ones from 25 years ago.  Really?  Maybe not, unless they just aren’t admitting to it.  I’d venture to say they are, or at least they are redefining what the definition is and who it is with these days.  I'm sure patrols are still set up in the quad to take note of all those participating in the Walk of Shame 5K.

Now, before parents go completely bonkers over this kind of thing, you have to understand, college is uncharted territory.  Remember that scene in Home Alone?

That’s what it’s like.  You go from a sheltered environment to complete and utter freedom.  No one is there to make sure you get up, go to class, do your homework, or take care of yourself.   You step onto that campus and 7 years of suppressed primal freedom just explodes.  You lose your composure.  There’s vice everywhere and no authoritative body to say no, outside of campus police.  Kids are basically kicked out of the nest into the real world and expected to make the right decision.  And even if you are the best parent in the world, expect there to be some bad choices made.  And also realize, that it’s OK. 

Your kids will be fine.  They are going to have to go through this, eventually.  Would you rather them have that moment in the real world, when they are completely on their own, with no parachute, or benefits?

Even adults have these moments.  I was left alone to my devices last weekend and for two days, I managed to eat at Sheetz twice for lunch.  I did, however, do some work around the house, cut the grass, and kept the place from catching fire, so win!

Those Quiet Moments In Time

You make plans.  You dream.  You plot out every step until you are the astronaut, actor, sports star, scientist, or homemaker you thought you would be in your mind at age ten.  You enjoy moments in your life where the world is at your command.  The room may be quiet but your mind is buzzing so loud, it could wake the dead.  Life is good.   You know when you grow up that you will conquer the world with your dreams and schemes. 

Then you grow up and those moments turn on you.

The reality is that very few of us actually end up where we thought we would and that’s OK.    There are things in my life I’d like to change.  There are decisions that I wish I could do over, as if I hadn’t taken my thumb off the page I flipped from in that Choose Your Own Adventure book called my early 20s.    But that isn’t the case.  In fact, you have to be careful not to dwell on those thoughts of what you would do over if given the opportunity.  Your past isn’t a do over. 

When you’re a kid, no one is dependent on you in an everyday scenario.   But when you’re an adult and on your own, others may be dependent on you.  Your decisions can be as important as a chess move against Bobby Fisher or even Death himself.  

I could be wrong, though.  Your life may be a world of rainbows and unicorn fluff, but for most people, it’s as monotonous and plain as your mother’s curtains.   What’s worse is when you think you’ve made all the right moves and life decides to change the game.   Doesn’t seem like much, the days go by like they normally do but then you look back and a week has gone by, a month, a year, and you haven’t moved.

It may not hit you at first.   But there are those moments when you’ve put your kid(s) to bed, you’re sitting alone on the couch, looking over some Facebook posts, and it hits you.  There are no distractions, like broken toys or spilled milk.  Panic sets in.  You think about your age.  You think about your life.  You think about death.   The quiet scares the hell out of you.   What the hell have you done with your life?  No one expected you to keep to a 20 year plan when you were a kid.   But at almost 40, just getting through the day and accomplishing one task seems like a huge victory. 

Like I said, though, you’re life could be perfect.  You could have a healthy kid and a wonderful spouse.  You could live in a home, safe and secure.   But what happens if all that were to go away.   What about some of it?   What about one thing?  What could turn your life upside down and force you to shelve all those hopes and dreams you had/have?  Can you deal? 

We live in an age where everyone is connected and yet we find ourselves more alone than ever.  It’s those quiet moments that kill.  I remember sitting in a hotel room in Nashville, alone.  I was on a business trip and at nine in the evening, I was sitting there, no television on, just being.  I had already talked to my wife and most of my online friends were somewhere else or just disconnected.   I had a brief panic attack because I was just there, invisible.  

The same thing happened to me in 1993.  I was a freshman in college.  I was at Coastal Carolina University and it was any Friday night, I don’t remember which.   We didn’t have the Internet or cell phones.   I didn’t have the money to call my girlfriend.   One of my roommates had gone home for the weekend and the other two were volunteer firemen, hanging out at the station.   I was there, alone.   No cable, only a handful of computer games, and I was in the quiet.    Granted I was 18 and my whole life was ahead of me, but it was like that night in 1993 and 2008 somehow connected to each other in the universe.   The quiet of my room in Nashville ripped open a wormhole back to 1993 and attached itself to that 18 year old in Myrtle Beach and sucked the life right out of him, leaving him near hyperventilating from panic.  

Some nights, I look for the quiet and see if it opens to another time in my life; those nights when my kid is sick and she just lies there, not wreaking havoc across the house.    I wonder what childhood moment will they attempt to steal?  What hope they will choose to supplant with crippling fear that I will have failed everyone around me as an adult?    I feel like I’m in a horror movie and the noises and distractions are like a light shining around me to keep out the evil monsters.    Then I wonder if there are others like me.  Maybe the quiet comes to them and finds their childhood moments.  Maybe we connect to each other’s moments and cancel it out.    

Life is never what we intend it to be.   It’s what we make of it.  We need to make the quiet work for us.  We need to master our own quiet moments.  We need to reverse the flow, allowing those childhood moments to come back to us.  We need that positive force pushing out the quiet.   Our lives are still under our control.   We can make it better but we have to try.   Our intent should be to augment, not destroy, though.  We still have those around us that depend on our stability.  They are balanced on our shoulders and too quick of a direction change could dislodge their footing.  We need them as much as they need us because they are part of that new future, a better one, one where the quiet is ours for the making.

Tablet vs. Placemat: Raising Kids With Technology

I didn’t want to be the kind of parent that just lets their kid watch TV or play video games, just to stop the madness.   I looked at other parents that just let their kids amok and I thought, “Wow, really?”   Sometimes, I’ve found myself falling into that trap, though.   I get home from my hour long commute and just want to escape for a bit so NickJr or Angry Birds can rescue me for awhile. 

Now, we usually play an entirely different game when we eat dinner.   No television, unless we are out a place that has sporting events televised.   No texting, usually, until after dinner.  The usually covers things like, I need to ask that person a question pertaining to the conversation we are having.   We all eat together as a family.  I tend to not waiver on these because it’s the one time of the day we can all sit and be with each other without the trappings of our social and technological lives interfering.   

We have one kid and she’s a handful, to say the least.  She’s too damn smart for being only five and comes up with arguments that would make her an excellent trial lawyer.  She gets bored and when she’s bored she usually takes it out on us.  I don’t mean that I am complaining that she’s needy.  I mean that she’s an evil genius that has figured out the code for our patience.   Don’t believe me, I have an example.

She wanted to go for a walk one day after school.  Now, I’ve been trying to lose weight, so it’s not a bad suggestion.  It was just dark and gloomy and I didn’t want us to be out when the skies finally went pffft.   So, as we’re walking she comments that she wants to go down the big hill in our neighborhood.  I did not.  The reason being, if we go down a big hill, there’s an equally large and steeply graded hill that we have to climb to get to our house.

“But, Daddy, I have all this energy that I need to get rid of.  If I don’t then I’ll be bored when we get home.”

“Kiddo, that’s not exactly my problem, now is it?”

“But, if I’m bored, it WILL be your problem.”

She’s five.  I’m scared.

Needless to say, we took the big hills.

But when we go out, she’s usually content, sitting there with a placemat and some crayons.   She has a vast collection of placemats with art all over one side and ads for home cleanings and excavating on the other.   So, when we went out this past week and brought along her Samsung Tablet, I was a bit disappointed that we caved to this type of distraction.  We usually sit and talk and she colors and really goes into her own little world.   Why are we placating her with this technological?  How dare we?

Then it dawned on me.  The placemats were my tablet.  The placemats were a distraction.  The placemats were used to keep me seated in one place instead of getting us kicked out of a restaurant for standing on the high chair and crowing like a rooster.   True story, though it was my brother that accomplished that task.

What the hell is the difference between a tablet and a placemat?

Well, the obvious is about $179.   Restaurants usually supply you with a placemat and a few crayons.  The tablet can be used to play games.  The placemat uses imagination or creativity.  Quite frankly, they both achieve the same goal.  The problem is, getting the most educational or creative benefits out of technology for your kids.   They also need to understand limits.  When the food arrives, the placemat and crayons get put away as should the tablet or other mobile device.    Maybe have a drawing or paint program for them to use instead of Temple Run 2 or Candy Crush Saga.

Now, I am not a doctor and can’t speak to the possible detrimental side effects of a child of five interacting with a tablet and what games could do to her learning abilities or possibly contribute to attention deficit disorder.   What I do know is that she’s not crowing like a chicken and as long as she doesn’t get in trouble for repeatedly talking in kindergarten she gets to use the tablet after school.

“But, Daddy, I just have so much to say!”

Yep.  She does.

Coach Bully

There’s been a lot of talk about the firing of Mike Rice from his coaching position at Rutgers.   Video leaked out of him berating players, throwing balls at them, pushing them, grabbing them by the jersey, and calling them derogatory names.  He was suspended in December by Athletic Director Tim Pernetti .   In April, the tape came out to the media and Mike Rice was fired.  Soon after, Tim Pernetti resigned.   Now, a lot of this could point to Eric Murdock retaliating for being fired last July.  He gave the tape to Pernetti.   

But beyond the scandal and the suspension and the firing lies a bigger question.  Did Mike Rice bully his players?  Did Mike Rice deserve to be fired?  Was Mike Rice’s behavior taken somewhat out of context and made to look worse than he was?

When I was in Junior High we had a gym teacher that was less than smiles and rainbows.   I called him Coach Bully.  The first day of gym class, we had to bring in a white t-shirt.   He would then take a black magic marker and write our names on the front.   It was for his sake, of course.  He had to remember 30 kids' names.  Don't want to yell at the wrong one, right?   The manner in which he wrote our names told us from day one what kind of teacher he was going to be with us.   He wrote in my name and  dotted the “I” with the same force that John Travolta used to deliver the adrenaline shot to Uma Thurman’s heart in Pulp Fiction.   There was a nice dark welt on my chest where the marker made contact.  

The days in gym class, as a 12/13 year old, were not fun for someone who was on the pudgy side.  Constant remarks made about weight and physical aptitude were thrown about as I struggled with running a mile or climbing a rope.  I did get it done, but it took a lot of work. 

Once, I even attempted to be so brazen as to throw a comment back my teacher’s face.   “So-and-so, you must have thought they said trains when they were giving out brains and took a slow one.”    He told this to one of the other unfortunate fattys in the class.  Somewhat under my breath I chirped, “Yeah and when they gave out looks, you thought they said books and got a scary one.”   He shot a look down the line where he met with some stifled giggles and smiles but I managed to escape detection.

I feared gym class that first year.  I prayed for rain when it was time to run the mile.   But after awhile, I got used to his barbs and managed to get Bs and a few As in those three years I was in his class.

Was he a bully?  It could be argued as such.   If we had cell phone and digital camera technology then, someone could have easily of filmed our classes and put together a pretty damning video of his behavior.   Do I think he was a bully.  Ehh?   Maybe, but it didn’t bother me.    I’m sure some of the other kids, the ones who weren’t used to the abuse took it harder but we all survived.

The thing is, that kind of behavior has been around since the dawn of athletics or exercise.   Any time you have a group of younger players on a team, their coach or teacher is bound to be rough on them to get certain results.   Bobby Knight was infamous for his behavior on and off the court.   But, perhaps the problem with the Mike Rice case is, no one asked the players how they felt about.

I’m sure some of the players would like nothing more than to burn him in effigy for his behavior towards them, but on the whole I think they got it.  I think they understood it was a style of coaching.   Not everyone is like that and not everyone responds well to it.  

Were Rice’s tactics needed?  Of course not.   No one deserves to be treated like that and there are probably more effective ways of being tough and getting results without having to throw balls or insults around.  Look at Herb Brooks at the 80 Olympics.   He wasn’t exactly a peach, but he also didn’t call his players, “F**king Fa**ots.”

Part of the problem my generation faces as we head into parenting is that we tend to want to give our kids a better life than we had.  The issue is that we had a pretty decent life.   Our kids have it a hell of a lot better than they should and that’s the problem.   This generation of kid is too entitled and expecting of instant gratification.   If they don’t like the way they’re treated, the other person, teacher, coach, whatever needs to be fired.  It’s never their fault or their responsibility.

Kids playing soccer these days are not subjected to competition.    There is no score.   Everyone wins.  Everyone gets a trophy, including the kid who rode the bench all season.    The truth is, everyone is not the same.  Everyone is not the best.  Someone has to lose once in a while and that someone needs to be your kid on occasion.   

Now, like I said, Eric Murdock could have orchestrated this whole thing to look worse than it was in retaliation for being fired.   Mike Rice is his own worst enemy when it comes to his behavior  but it was contextually damning.

I think the suspension and mandated anger management class would have been sufficient.    Unless there were conversations behind closed doors that showed he had no intention of changing his ways and was not remorseful for his representation of his University then firing might have been the right choice.   However, considering what happened at Penn State, administrators are not willing to risk sanctions and punishments handed down by the volatile NCAA powers that be.  The public is keeping a close and watchful eye on their investments.  Parents will pull up their kids recruiting tent stakes and go somewhere else if there is a possibility that some harm may come to their precious snowflake.

Then again, maybe Rutgers did this as a way to not lose money.  Hide the scandal in order to keep Rice coaching as he was doing a pretty decent job there.   When it came out,  scuttle the mess to avoid recruiting losses and NCAA punishments.   In the end, the business of being a big name basketball program tarnishes the image of trying to foster and mentor young student athletes. 

In the end, none of us died at the hands of Coach Bully.   Some of us got a little more motivation to succeed.   Granted, we weren’t vying for a national title, but seems like our little egos were strong enough to overcome the hot air ramblings of a guy we only saw twice a week for nine months.   Maybe, we need to give our own kids a chance to rise to the occasion.  Maybe we need to let them make it better for themselves before we swoop in and save the day.    Maybe, that welt on my chest healed just fine with no scar or permanent damage left behind.  Know your kid.  Know their limits.   Know when to catch and when to release.

Phone a Friend

A coworker brought this up to me and it made me wonder the following:

“Do people spend long amounts of time talking to their close friends on the phone?”

By that, I mean, the friends that they see on a regular basis. Not the ones they haven’t seen since childhood or went to college with and only see like once in decade. I’m talking about classmates, coworkers, neighbors.

The reason I wonder is that with the technology we have, the ability to talk on a phone is probably the least of the features people want when they shop for a phone. People want texting and Internet and apps. And do people even worry about home phones anymore?

If talking on the phone with a friend for more than ten minutes is a out of date practice then I weep for the new generation. Let me set up a scenario for you.

Circa 1987, there was a show on MTV called Remote Control. Most will only know that this is where Adam Sandler became well known and moved onto Saturday Night Live from there. At its zenith, MTV could balance shows with music videos but… that ended with a loud thud around 1992. That’s another story.

Anyway, after a long day of seventh grade, I came home and turned on the television to see this new show on MTV. The next day I told my friend about it and he said he had seen it, too. So, the next time it was on, I called him and we pretty much sat on the phone for a half hour, bullshitting while watching this show. There was no important discussion; no need for a call. It was just two friends watching the same show, in two different houses, at a time when a stretched phone cord could be considered lethal to someone under five foot had they ran from one room to another.

I cannot remember the last time I spent a half hour talking with someone on the phone without an explicit purpose. “We have Facebook and texting and email, who talks 30 minutes in a row? How do you get anything done?” We’ve become so task oriented in life. If we can’t get it done while doing two other things, we don’t do it. I can’t sit in a meeting unless I’m troubleshooting one issue, reading email, and IM’ing another person about another issue all at the same time. I am not that important of a person. I could only imagine someone with three letters in their title. You probably never see those people laying on their bed with a phone pressed to their ear to the point of sweatiness discussing their favorite show with their friends. These are things we don’t do anymore.

Do teenage girls call teenage boys anymore? Is this something I’ll need to deal with when my kid is ten years older? Her generation will never know the pains of my generation when it comes to a house telephone. We had one line, no call waiting, and no answering machine before 1984. That was when we had two high school students in the house at one time.

When we moved into a new house in 1984, we had a second line set up for my brother and sister, but still no call waiting or answering machine. In fact, we still had two rotary phones and a push button one, all corded. Then, when my brother and sister were off to college or working late nights, my parents had another push button phone put into their bedroom. Still no call waiting but we did have an answering machine by 1987.

In fact, I don’t think my parents have call waiting in 2012, but they have upgraded to wireless handsets and both have cell phones. That’s why I don’t know how much of an impact the phone will have in my life when my daughter gets to be a teen. She’s certainly not getting a cell phone… at least one that can text or take pictures until she’s 18. (I know. I can wish, right?) If anything, I’d like her to be only able to call us or the police from a cell phone until she’s 18, but I know that’s not going to happen. In any case, I have a cell phone. My wife has a cell phone. We don’t use our home phone that much except for other calls, that we usually don’t answer as it is. We mostly have the ringer turned down because stupid calls come at inopportune times. We can called ID on our television, so we know if we want to answer it, anyway.

But even in the most extreme cases, I won’t care that my kid is on the phone, unless she’s talking long distance to a friend, for hours, or if she’s calling a nursing home for me. Then, I might cut the cord. Or… at least the power.

Pete's Possible Pencil Lead Explosives

Ah, the Fourth of July. A holiday marked with the cooking of flesh, both animal and man; the animals’ on the grill, and man’s from poorly supervised firework launching. Yes, nothing is as patriotic as celebrating the invention of America with an invention from China. All the while, displaying flags made in Taiwan.

I remember when the Fourth meant something. I remember a time in my youth where we travelled long hours to distant lands like West Virginia and Ohio to buy fireworks. This was a time after the guy at the little convenience store in Dunbar Twp. stopped selling “The Good Stuff”. You remember the place? It was right across the street from the Willow Inn. You used to walk in and see the smoke bombs and snaps and sparklers and a few tanks and boats. If you were lucky, they might even have Jumping Jacks. On a good day you would say, “Hey, Fred. Got any of the good stuff?” Fred would smile and disappear behind a curtain and you were walking home with illegal fireworks. That was when the Fourth meant something, when you could get bootleg fireworks from a guy in a gas station off of the main road.

I remember another guy, named Pete. He was a friend of a friend. He was the one guy who was 18 years old and just starting his senior year, again. He was the one who could “get stuff”. He had a tape to tape VCR set up and could get you porn, alcohol, and illegal fireworks; fireworks better than Fred could get.

I met Pete through a friend, as I said. It was right around the time we stopped being able to get the “good stuff” from Fred. This was also right around the time they took the video poker machines out of Fred’s. Which is also right around the time when Fred “went away” for awhile.

With Fred gone, we had mentioned the lack of quality fireworks being made available and my one friend said, “Hey, I know a guy. For $20 he can get you a quarter stick.” I was intrigued. I was also 15 and didn’t know any better. Still, this Pete was an unknown person. He’s probably shady. I was probably dealing with an element of organized crime and didn’t know it. This could be exciting. A man that could get me fireworks. He probably knows a lot of guys with nicknames like “Fingers” and “Boom Boom” He could be a cousin of Al Capone, thrice removed on his mother’s side.

We went to Pete’s house in his Custom Cruiser Deluxe station wagon, $20 in hand.  This car was hardly a ghetto hoop dee.  We called it the White Beast For Leprosy as it was losing paint everywhere.  I didn't care though, I was going to a deal. I felt like I had to hide the twenty somewhere in case we ran into the law. There was probably an undercover vice squad member watching Pete’s house from across the suburban street of the South Side of Connellsville. That was a shady area. It was home to the famous hacker, Billy Driscoll. He took down the Pentagon with a dial up modem and a Commodore 64. At least, that’s what we were all told as kids. He was like Matthew Broderick.

Pete’s house was typical. I think it used to be a dentist’s office when I was really young. It looked familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. He gave me quarter stick and it looked awesome. It was about the length of a toilet paper tube but made with a thicker cardboard, like a form. Both ends were sealed with paraffin and a huge wick stuck out of one. It’s bright red colored indicated doom as great plans were made. My friend Jim and I were going to have to plan the ultimate launch party. This was serious stuff. I wondered if black helicopters would descend upon us when the mushroom cloud dissipated.

We totally missed the Fourth of July that summer due to some unforeseen circumstances involving us taking our other friend’s VW Beetle nearly into the Loyalhanna River. This was the third incident that nearly killed the bug. The other being the great Summer/Winter Olympic run and the Lockout in East Pittsburgh. We made plans to reschedule the launch for another time. During those months we learned more about this guy Pete.

First off, he wasn’t that shady. I mean, to us out in the suprural area of Dunbar Township he was probably pretty nefarious; a world class gangster among us rubes. But, when you put him in a room with real hoods he looks like a pathetic dolt. One of the guys, who was five foot nothing and a hundred and nothing, was able to disarm and decimate another guy, twice his size, who came at him with a crow bar. Another made it an art to wear baggy clothes into a National Record Mart, in July, and get the five finger discount on Ice-T’s “Body Count” album. These were bad dudes.

The evidence mounted. We went out to a club in Latrobe with them and Pete, dressed in late 70s loud pinstriped pants and huge collar shirt, looked like he was Alexander Cabot III from the Josie and the Pussycats cartoon. Seeing how he interacted with others kind of put him in his place as the not-so-important, lesser, wannabe hood among the real hoods of South Greensburg. A few of them, “went away” or “went camping in Colorado” as they called it.

I soon began to wonder if my $20 quarter stick was really going to work. This guy wasn’t the notorious character he first appeared to be. He was actually kind of a dork. I mean I was a nerd but by the time I hit high school I kind of straddled that line between the nerds and the other kids. I could live in both worlds and adapt as needed. This guy was way out of his element among the others. So, it begged the question, “Did he sell me a fake?” Was this like that another hilarious fake deal I witnessed where one of the kids in my class sold an upperclassman a bag of grass clippings and claimed it was “good shit”?

Another year passed and we still had not carried out “Operation: Blow Shit Up”. The timing was never right. We didn’t want to end up in the ER with missing fingers but wanted to have the perfect location with the right environment. We could set it off at the beach but there was a possibility of too many witnesses, police presence, and lack of escape routes. We could set it off at the old ash dumps near my house, but it didn’t have a great location with maximum destructive properties. The only thing that would get destroyed was the ash and cinders. Who cares about that? It’s like a pyromaniac setting a waste basket on fire. Oooh, some paper got burned. No, the pyromaniac sets a fireworks factory on fire. That’s what it wants to see go up.

Eventually, I graduated high school and lived in a dorm on the Pitt campus. I didn’t dare bring the quarter stick to school. So, it sat in a box at the back of my bedroom closet. After college, I got my own place and was tasked with cleaning out my old bedroom. I thought about that closet, “I wonder if that old quarter stick is still in there?” I looked and looked and never found it. I even asked my mom if she ever saw it in there and threw it away. She said she didn’t. Then again, my mom probably wouldn’t know what a quarter stick looked like or what it could do. If she had, she would have thrown it out years ago. This is reminiscent of The Ballad of the Bud Under the Bed.

22 years have passed since I bought that $20 quarter stick that may or may not have possibly exploded when lit. To this day, as I set off crappy fireworks that are either PA legal or simply fountains from a road side stand on 158 in North Carolina I think about what that explosion would have been like.  I’d like to think it would have looked like that scene in Bridge on the River Kwai or Force 10 From Navarone.  I’d like to think that there would have been a hole in the world after that puppy blew up. Someday. Someday I may find that quarter stick and see the magic of a $20 piece of cardboard with a wick, paraffin enclosed ends and shaved pencil lead inside.

For more hilarious Fourth of July fun, check out Pittsburgh Dad. Those of us born in the 70s and in Southwestern PA will appreciate this.

The Dagobah Spa

Growing up, the one thing I always wanted to have was a pool. For the first ten years of my life, I lived in a house without air conditioning. We didn’t even have a window unit; just box fans to make the sticky July nights somewhat more bearable. Because I had become accustomed to that constant hum from the fans in the window, I sometimes would have to have them going in December just to sleep at night; white noise at it were. But something that would have made the summers even more enjoyable would have been a pool.

When my parents built a new house in 1984, AC included, I thought that perhaps we would finally get a pool. The backyard was flat and open. It was the perfect location for a pool. Now, at our old house, the back yard sloped right to left with a drop off onto the grass driveway before going further down as it neared our neighbors’ house. There was no conceivable way to put a pool there, other than the baby pool I had as a kid. This new yard was so much better. Two acres with plenty of space. Never got that pool, though.

Now, my wife, on the other hand, had a pool during her childhood. However, when she got older, her father did not want to keep taking care of it, so they took it down. So, here we were, two different pool backgrounds; one that always wanted one and never got it and another who always had it but chose to get rid of it. I never could understand how someone could NOT want to have a pool. Now, I do.

When my brother built his own house twenty years after my parents built theirs, he got a pool. Of course, when you build a house, it’s hard to justify such a luxury. That’s what my parents had to do. They prioritized. But in the days of everything is possible, they came out with pools that were simply a liner, held together by piping. That INTEX pool may not have been the prettiest looking thing but it did the trick. So, when my wife finally wore me down into getting one for her and my daughter I thought it was a justifiable $400.

Of course, being the cheap bastard I am, I didn’t really want to pay that much. I was happy to pay $10 for a Saturday at the local public pool. Sure, you had to deal with the crowds, the chance of urinated water, and wet pool bathroom smells but it was still a pool and someone else’s problem. I mean, we did it growing up. We belonged to the Bullskin pool near our house. It was somewhat of a relief to go out there and swim. Still, my wife gave me that look and I cracked. Fortunately, my brother stepped in and helped out.

They had recently got a NEW pool. They got a bigger pool; a better pool. So, in pure family fashion, I got the old pool. Whether it was clothes or a car, being the youngest child meant hand me downs. This one, I could truly appreciate. I save $400 and made my wife happy.

I was never happy again.

Like my first house, growing up, my current house resides in a hilly area. My yard is about as level as Mordor. But, we managed to clear out a space that could be level enough for a 16 foot round pool that runs on paper cartridges and enough HP to power a car driven by a hamster for ten minutes. Constant trips to WalMart to buy more cartridges and chemicals proved to be futile as I could never get the right size filter. The trees in my yard, two oak and two maple, kept providing my wife with hours of enjoyment as she spent the better part of an hour skimming them out of the pool. Her first order of business was always to “MAKE A WHIRLPOOL!” I thought we got a pool to relax, not run around in circles tripping on the ladder every ten seconds.

At the end of the summer, she hated letting go of the pool and tried to keep it open until the last possible moment in September. Then she’d go off and work every weekend at the farmer’s market, leaving me with a toddler to close the pool by myself. In the Spring, after the cover blew off, the water had froze, and one out of every four leaves on my four trees ended up at the bottom of the exposed pool, I had to turn the green and brown cesspool into a clean and sparkly magical oasis of fun. Repeat the cycle.

The outcome was always the same. Try as we might to clear the pool with chemicals, the only option was to drain it, scrub it, and fill it. My water company just loved that. Because of our efforts to get it clean through chemistry, we always ended wasting most of June before coming to the conclusion that we just needed to drain it. Then, in the fall, I attempted to close it by myself and tore the cover and said, “EFF IT!” June came around, I drained it and restarted. However, this was a new year.

We could see the paper filter bit was not going well. In fact, because I could not find the exact filter model I needed, I had to use a table saw to just slice off the bottom off of the (A or C) filter model because it was big enough to just cause the cover of the filter to not close right.

Over Memorial Day, an old friend and teach of mine sold me a Haywayd DE filter and pump. That’s like sticking a HEMI engine on a moped. My father-in-law and I spent the better part of a week making various connective pieces out of what we were given and what I had, coming up with a strange hybrid of hoses for the intake and output. By the end of June, we had a working pool and I decided to be smart and buy a new cover. I was convinced that I was not going to drain the pool next Spring.  Come December, the pool cover was snug and secure in its box in my garage. The leaves were snug and secure in their watery grave at the bottom of my pool.

I did manage to dismantle the filter and pump and stored them underneath our porch which is out of the elements but still cold enough to weaken the top of the filter basin which cracked when I put it on this past May. Green water gushed out of the top and I was forced to consider the possibility that I would have to spend a good $200 to fix my $200 filter on my free pool which cost me $200 in a water bill last August.

Luckily, another friend had a filter and pump he looked to get rid of in June. And, by mid month, I had a working pool. A working pool that looked like the swamp on Dagobah that Luke crashed into in Empire Strikes Back. “DAMNIT! I AM NOT DRAINING THIS BASTARD! TO THE POOL STORE!” I took a gallon jug of my water to see what I needed to do to clear up the pool. I knew I still had leaves on the bottom, but I couldn’t see them. I needed to be able to see what was in there in order to clear it out. The pool store looked at my jug like I had just brought over a sample from Karen Silkwood’s bathtub.

I told them that I was all prepared to just drain the pool and start over, but if I could save the water, I’d prefer it. Well, of course they don’t want me to drain it. No. Because I would lose whatever chemical base was already built up. They did their little tests and came back with a regiment for how to treat the pool.

Now, when I looked at the chemical makeup of this water that would make Swamp Thing go, “DAFUQ?” I was a bit skeptical. Chemical makeup? The chlorine level was less than my tap water. In fact all of the levels were a third or fifth of what they should be. Yet, I spent $200 on chemicals and a new skimmer (The old one broke) in order to save my precious chemical base.

I followed their directions and by step three, when it says, “Your pool water should now be clear.”, I said, “EFF IT!” I bled that bastard faster than a Nigerian banker bleeds a naïve grandmother. When I walked out Sunday morning and saw what was left in my pool, I thought a new life form was going to crawl out of the ooze with plans to take over the top spot on the food chain. I half expected to find a dead cat carcass in there, amongst the leaves and inch of green algae. Although, I don’t know how that would compare to a “live cat carcass.” Would that have been Church from Pet Sematary?

Anyway, I now have a crystal clear pool ready to swim in and it’s only the second of July. Plenty of time until I have to scramble and get the cover on in October. Of course, the $200 I spent in chemicals will be nothing compared to the $450 I will have to spend in August. I left the hose on overnight, with the assurance from my wife that the pool would not overflow. I had a river in my backyard this morning.

The point is, if you are a lazy bastard like I am who keeps forgetting to close his pool properly at the end of the summer then you will have to spend the money to fix it in the Spring. The question is, do you spend $200 on chemicals to make your algae soup highly chlorinated, or do you just drain it and start over. Most pool store employees will tell you to use chemicals. I mean, why not? You spend the money on them and if it doesn’t work, you spend more money because now you have all that chemical base built up. Win-win.

But, if you have a 5000 gallon pool, like I do, you are better off draining it. Yeah, it costs a lot of money but now I’m $500 in the hole because of the chemicals I did buy and the fact that I drained my pool. Rest assured, I will be PROPERLY closing my pool and keeping the chemicals I didn’t use for reopening the pool next year. I will also put my pump and filter in my garage which is more climate controlled than the room under my porch.

It’s your own judgment, I guess. If you have anything bigger than a 16 x 48 pool, you might want to consider keeping the water and fixing it through chemicals. At that point, I would go to sever pool stores with a sample before making that decision. A lot of them will test the water for free if you buy something. If you have a pool, you’ll need chemicals anyway, so buy a bag of shock or tub of chlorine tabs at each place.

Now, I know why my father is one of the smartest men I know. Yes, we never had the pool, but he never had the headache.

Lies I believed in Childhood

As a kid, we take the word of adults or at least those in our family as gospel.   We never question their credibility because we haven’t learned that people lie to us for whatever reason.  Sometimes, we formulate our own truths and those authority figures around us never correct the notion because the fact that we believe it makes it seem cute and adorable.  Meanwhile, we lie in bed, awake, worrying about the consequences of those actions that we believed to be set in stone.

Lie #1: Crossing your eyes for an extended period of time will cause them to stay that way.

I believed this myth well into my teens. But being of a rebellious nature, I always tried to push the limits of that timeframe

Lie #2: A swallowed piece of gum will stay in your system for seven years.

Growing up, I enjoyed stuffing almost an entire pouch of Big League Chew into my mouth but never had the need or urge to swallow it. However, when it came to smaller pieces such as Big Red or Juicy Fruit, sometimes you accidentally could swallow a piece and then dread set in, “I just swallowed my gum! It’s going to be in my stomach for seven years. CRAP!” Of course, the truth is that is does digest much, much quicker than that. It may be a week but it won’t be seven years.

Lie #3: If I eat watermelon, orange, or apple seeds a tree will grow in my stomach.

Apparently, at the age of seven, I had not learned the basics of horticulture. After ingesting a few orange seeds, I was pretty sure that I had a the beginnings of an orange tree growing in my tummy. I imagined the tree growing inside me, like an alien, and it would eventually burst a branch full of oranges out of my navel. I had no concept of the makeup of the digestive system containing acids or the fact that there was no light or soil for those seeds to grow in while it churned away in my stomach. Nor did I realize that it if not already dissolved, I would pass the seed naturally before it could germinate.

Now, the ingestion myths did not hold up as long as the eye crossing one, but to this day I’m still convinced that I shouldn’t swim after eating.  Worse yet, I still need to remind my father-in-law that going outside without a coat will not cause you to get a cold.  He continually tells his daughter, my wife, “It’s no wonder you’re sick.  Put on a damn coat!”  To which I say, “We have a four year old in Kindercare.  That’s why we’re sick all the time.”

 
Still, the worst lie my family had me believe was that I was the mailman's kid.   I'm sure they were joking but you kind of get a complex when they keep repeating it like they did, year after year.

Maury, can I get a reading on this one?