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.

Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The T-Rex

We do our best to protect our kid from the dangers of bad dreams.   When you try to explain something scary in a movie that they may have seen, it can go all wrong.    You don’t want to downplay the act as something that is acceptable in real life, say a fight between two people.  You explain, “Those are actors, and after the scene changes, they get up and go on being friends or coworkers.  It’s not real.  That’s not blood.  That’s like ketchup or something.”  Unfortunately, for me, I may have ruined my child for good when it comes to the magic of movies.

Growing up at the beginning of the Sci-Fi blockbuster genre, circa 1977, I was completely blown away by Star Wars and Indiana Jones and other fantastic sights on screen.  Even as an adult, the sight of a dinosaur in Jurassic Park was magical.

By today’s standards, it barely registers on a movie goers radar, but in 1993, when the best CGI effects were still yet to come, that sight was something that made the movie geek in me squeee nearly out loud.

At the age of two, noticing that my own kid had an affection for dinosaurs, I made the choice to let her watch it.    We talked about it, and I made her fully aware that it was not really a dinosaur.  Even went as far as to show her the behind the scenes stuff with the models, and green screen, and animatronic characters used in making the film.  She accepted it and loved it anyway.   We also happened upon Ghostbusters on cable and she ate that up like Slimer in a hot dog cart.  Again, I had to explain the ghosts, and the dogs, and Stay Puft.   She accepted it, and loved it.

At almost six, she is now quick to point out any scene in a television show or movie that is “not real”.   She happened upon me playing Dead Island of all things, and I let her watch me play it, with the subtitles on, so I could cough, clear my throat, or “Hablaedfhaefhah” over the bad language.   Now, I could be perceived as the worst parent in the world, here.  Dead Island is a far cry from House of the Dead II & III which she saw my father-in-law and I play on many occasions a couple years before.   I told her, this could be scary, and if you start to have issues with it, I’m quitting it.

“No, Daddy.  It’s not going to give me nightmares.“
“Why do you know that?”
“Because.  That’s not real blood.  It’s like ketchup or something.”
OK, she hasn’t made the distinction between video games and films being made in different ways, yet.  But, she has become quite the backseat gamer.
“Daddy, stop going through all that luggage.  The zombie will come get you.”
“Daddy, leave that zombie, over there, alone.  It’s not bothering you.”  I go and bother the zombie and fifteen more appear out of nowhere and kill me.  “See?  What did I tell you?”

Touche, kiddo.

But I worry.  I worry not for the chance that she’s going to grow up with a detached sense of right or wrong or even that she is going to be desensitized to the point of grabbing a high powered rifle and climbing into a clock tower.  I’m worried that, as she gets a little older and I can share more films with her that struck a chord in me at that age, she will not be impressed because, “I can see the wires” or “That’s ketchup.”  There are so many fantastical movies that are full immersion into a suspended disbelief from my generation.  Even today, the adaptations of The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit are beautiful in terms of CGI.  But, she will just see pick apart the process that created them, because I was worried she’d have nightmares.

She had to accept death at such an early age and we didn’t pull any punches with explaining what happened to her maternal grandmother.   They were great friends and she loved her Grammy so much.   To see her in a hospital, on life support, after having a brain hemorrhage.  To remember the image, and now always recall “Grammy’s Yellow Hair” from the surgery to try and relieve the pressure, kills me.  But, we didn’t want to say, “Grammy’s sleeping” and we didn’t want to deemphasize the importance of what has happened, so we gave it to her straight.  And now, the kid has more knowledge about life and death than most her age.

She may never develop that “suspension of disbelief” in films because she learned at such an early age to, pay attention to that man behind the curtain.

Damn Parents

We don’t cook a lot. I can count, on one hand, how many consecutive days we’ve eaten dinner at home and still have enough fingers left over to tell how I feel about the little punk in this story I am about to tell.

So, as I said, we tend to go out. We have regular haunts. On Wednesday’s we usually go for wings at Zackel’s in Claridge. We like Pasqaulino’s in Irwin. And at least once a week we go to Johnny’s Wife’s Place II in Harrison City for pizza. Last night was pizza night.

We’re pretty much well known in the restaurants we frequent and have a good relationship with the staff. Last night was no exception as the poor server at JWPII was all on her own dealing with some large parties in the dining room. One of those large parties had a lot of young kids, say between five and ten years old.

Now, I will be the first to admit my kid can be a handful. She has her moments when she cannot be corralled but we do our best to rein her in and apologize when needed. However, this group we saw last night was very lax when it came to policing their kids. At one point, the most hellish of fiends wandered around, getting under foot and eyed up the ice bin. I could just tell what was going to happen next. As a parent, you get this sort of precognitive vibe when a kid is going to act ornery. You can see the child standing in a room and know exactly what kind of trouble they are about to get into given the various outlets for mischief that are available. In this instance, I knew he was headed for the ice bin, right under the drink station.

Demon spawn walked right over to the bin, and reached his big ole snotty paw into the bin, grabbing the ice scoop. Pulled it out and grabbed a chunk of ice with the other snot paw. He wandered over towards his table where the adults were oblivious to his actions. He put the ice in his mouth and then he was noticed by parental units who asked where he got his new toy. He pointed and they mouthed something and he wandered back. At this point, I knew, KNEW, what was going to happen next.

You guessed it. Ice scoop and slobbery chunk of ice went back into the ice bin. A barrage of “NOs” was coming from our table as both my wife and I began yelling to the kid not to do it. The only thing that stopped me from physically going over there was that it wasn’t my kid and the last thing I wanted was some adult looking at me like I’m Jerry Sandusky.

So, we grabbed our overworked server and explained what happened. She closed the ice bin and brought out a huge bucket of fresh ice for glasses.

But it didn’t end there. The demon spawn also wandered over and began banging on the POS screen for the food and drink orders. At this point I looked at him and said, “HEY! Hell no, man. Get!”

Meanwhile, parents and other adults at the raucous table were oblivious to the actions of the little bastard and I yelled out, “Why am I policing other people’s kids?”

Eventually, the party made plans to leave and I could tell that the mother was just looking to get the kids home and into bed before she sat down with her glass of wine and Ambien. I could tell this group was Penn Township’s pretentious elite. The, “I don’t police my kids because they’re angels and it interrupts my free time to give a damn!”

Had my kid pulled a stunt like this it would have been a huge ordeal. First of all, she would never have made it to the ice bin. Also, had she eluded the radar and made it into hostile territory and came back with the ice scoop we would have grabbed it and her and marched back to the wait staff to tell them what happened. Then she would have apologized to them and I would have offered to help fix the situation.

Cleaning out an ice bin is not fun. I’ve done it. And not even just the small ones on a rollaway bar. I’m talking the big ice machines in the kitchens of establishments. I’ve had to clean them out, completely. It’s a big undertaking when you don’t already have 14 other jobs to do.

Needless to say, we were angry and it didn’t even technically affect us.

Police your damn kids!

The One That Got Away

Way back before the Internet gave us the ability to make complete asses of ourselves, like I do on a regular basis, we had outdoor activities. We went camping. We did not have any televisions or game consoles or air conditioning to keep us indoors.

We roasted marshmallows and took walks in the woods. We swam in the lakes and played volleyball on the beach. We competed in camp races and other activities all summer long.

Now, most of those activities can be done on a Wii. That includes fishing.

Fishing is one of those activities that can be done while drinking which tells me it is not a sport. Professional fishermen should not be called athletes in the same manner that NASCAR drivers shouldn’t. Still, it takes a certain amount of skill and talent to be a Bass Master.

I am not one of these people; far from it, in fact. First of all, I don’t like killing things unless I have to. I’ll save a moth from being stuck in my garage as well as moving a caterpillar off the road for fear it will be squashed. But, as a child, I did go fishing with my father on our many camping trips to parks around Southwestern PA and I did bait my own hooks and clean my own fish.

But it took a while to get the hang of things like casting.  I had to have been about seven or eight when my father tried to teach me to cast my own line. Usually, he would cast for me and then hand me the pole. I would take it from there. There’s a ‘teach a man to fish’ joke in there somewhere, I’m sure of it. However, on this particular trip to Keystone State Park he decided I needed to learn how to cast myself. He explained it very clearly.

“Push in the button here. Hold the pole tightly. Raise your arm back and snap your wrist. Let go of the button and then wait.”

I got it. I was ready. I was about to cast my very first fishing line, all by myself. I went over the instructions again and again as I pantomimed the actions.

“Push button. Hold pole, tight. Laugh a little at that. Raise arm. Snap wrist. Let button go. Wait.”

OK, I’m ready. I baited my hook and made preparations to cast.

“Everyone, look out. I am about to cast my line!” My words echoed across the empty lake.

I held in the button. I gripped the pole, tightly, still giggling at that instruction. I raised my arm back. I snapped my wrist. SPLASH!

That splash I heard was my pole hitting the water after it jerked out of my hand. “Oh, no!” I cried. I just threw my fishing pole into the lake. It was gone.

There was a silver lining to all this, though. At some point, during the raising of my arm, the hook dug into the pocket on my dad’s shirt. I had forgotten that he was directly behind me as I casted. The tip of the pole grazed his chin and caused it to jerk out of my hand. So, even though the pole was gone, the worm and hook were still in the boat. That was the good news.

The bad news was that I had already pushed in the button, so the line was free to unspool and it did, as the pole sailed out into the water, away from our boat. My dad cursed every way he knew how as he pulled 300 yards of fishing line out of the lake, looking for the pole at the end.

I spent the rest of that afternoon winding the line, which was now piled up in a mess on the floor of the boat. I didn’t cast by myself the rest of that summer. I was merely given the pole which was already set.

I quit fishing a few years later as it was no longer any fun to gut and clean blue gills. That was the only thing I ever caught. I was the blue gill master with only a few perch in my list of accomplished catches. I never let go of a pole again, though.

Today I am surer of myself as I cast. Why?

Because, I am sure to tightly grip the Wiimote. Then, I giggle a bit and cast my virtual fishing line. No TVs have been harmed, as of yet.

My Memory Has Just Been Sold

There have been many times where I have been embarrassed. I’m sure there are many that I cannot remember or have suppressed. However, there are a few times you have that total brick in the pants experience that you will never, NEVER, forget no matter how many drugs or MIB memory wipe thingees you experience.

Entry number 413 in the “I’ve been embarrassed by…” logs show a quite memorable moment from my first freshman year of college. It was… yes I had two freshman years. Apparently, in 1994, unless you actually took the exact same classes that Pitt offered you could not transfer credits. I was reduced from 15 to seven and then let culture shock take care of the rest, dragging me into academic probation by the end of my first year.  Where was I? Oh, yes. It was the fall of 1993 and I had started attending Coastal Carolina University.  My one and only semester there led to the biggest embarrassment of my then 18 years.

Now, I apologize for rehashing this but the layout of the dorms went as this.   Four people lived in a dorm / apartment with a common area / kitchen.   A hallway led to the back where four bedrooms were located, a double vanity and then three additional doors contained a toilet, shower, and closet.    This meant that all four residents could be getting ready at the same time.  One could take a shower, one could shit, and two could shave.  The dorm / apartment units exited outside onto the floor and you could have neighbors of the opposite sex.  The apartment directly across from us held four girls.  It was our own version of friends.  We came and went into each other’s apartment, usually at will, usually with nefarious intentions.

One of those intentions was to recover an item of mail that we had deliberately delivered to them.   Since one of the girls had a first name that could be considered unisex, it was easy for my roommates to sign her up for a subscription to Playboy, asking to be billed later.  We simply went over to the apartment, stealthily grabbed the latest issue from their pile of mail and returned to our place.  To give you a frame of reference, one of the three issues we were able to get, before Playboy caught on to our ruse and canceled our subscription, contained a pre-implant version of Jenny McCarthy.   Personally, I think she looked better then.   This was before the Singled Out, belching, farting, and Jim Carrey days.

Anyway, eventually, one of my roommates would go through the magazine and pick out the better pictures to tack up to the inside of the bathroom door. Soon, the interior side of the bathroom door became a bulletin board of naked women. The regular light bulb was even replaced with a red one for added effect. My one roommate made mention that the next time he went home, he was going to get some more pictures from his personal collection and add them to the door.

Fast forward to Fall Break and I am spending some much needed time back home with my family. After wards, my parents drove me back 12 hours to my dorm.

I would just like to break up this statement by saying my parents are nuts and I love them. They drove nearly 24 hours straight, three separate times, to and from South Carolina; my first day, after Fall Break, and Christmas Break.  They were truly notappreciated by the asshole that was my 18 year old self.

Now, after driving 12 hours, the normal thing is to have to go to the bathroom. Once we arrived, I took a load of items up to my room along with my mother. She stayed behind while I went back to the car to retrieve more stuff. Upon returning to the apartment, I could not find her.  It’s not like the apartment was that big, so she couldn’t have gotten far.  I asked one of my roommates where she was and they said she needed to go to the bathroom.

My jaw immediately dropped to the floor.  ‘THE BATHROOM!’ The door, the red light, Oh My God, my Mother!?!?!

I raced into the back of the apartment where my mother was coming out of the bathroom. She had a look on her face that spoke volumes. Had I the opportunity to find out I would have removed the four pictures posted up inside the door or better yet, asked our female neighbors if she could use their bathroom, instead.

I felt that the damage was minimal, even though she had that look. As she got ready to leave for their 12 hour return trip, I made my own stop into the bathroom.  Apparently, my roommate was true to his word and had ‘added’ his own personal collection of magazine centerfolds.  The entire door was a lesson in female anatomy.

Now, Playboy pictures are somewhat demure when it comes to the portrayal of the human body. Those original four pictures were juxtaposed alongside the more graphic and shall we say, revealing pictures that were added. Whatever these girls had underneath their skirt was just too good to share with just their physician.

I, now, knew the extent of the damage that was dealt at the hands of my roommates. That look my mother had now spoke tomes. As I walked her back down to the car I apologized immensely, again and again, for what had happened. I can only imagine how the ride home was. Seeing as how my dad had a bladder of steel, he never got to see what she did. Oh, to be a fly on the windshield.

In My Day...

There’s an old group of sayings, usually coined by our parents or other baby boomers about what it was like “in their day.” “In my day, we didn’t have 300 hundred channels. We had three.” We’ve all heard it at one time or another. And if Al Gore needed any ego stroking he could just saddle up next to a senior citizen and ask them about snow. “In my day, we had snow three feet deep and had no school for a week.”

Now, it comes to pass that my generation as adults and parents can start spinning their own nostalgic yarns about how we could build snowman five feet high that would last for weeks. And it’s true, at least for us here in Pennsyltuckey, we haven’t had a lot of snowfall since we were in high school. In fact, my senior year occurred during the all too well known and oft quoted, “Blizzard of 93.” I can count on both almost two hands how many times we were called off during my three years of high school. Since my district covered an extensive area that included, what we considered, “the mountains” we had a lot of times where it wasn’t that bad at my house yet school was cancelled anyway.

I remember once was during my Sophomore year when we had a cancellation I was really peeved because I was going to be out of class all day to help with the stage crew for a multi school choir concert. To brag to your friends that you got of class all day just to have them cancel everything for the day but the reason you were out of class was a bit of a downer.

From then it was a whole decade before I saw a record snowfall. That was in February of 2003 and I actually walked up the main street of my town and didn’t see a car. But that was it for almost seven years. During that time we barely saw enough snow to make a snow midget. If we did get a good snow it was in April and was only around for a week before it melted.

So, here we are kicking off 2010 with record snowfalls around the country. Temperatures, overall, are low in even the Southern regions. What really gets me is how much of a surprise this is to anyone. I mean should we be shocked that it’s January and snowing? Well, for the past few years we’ve been rather spoiled. I’ve been able to get by without using the snow blower, which doesn’t work, in my driveway. Now, I can’t keep up with the shoveling. But, still, this is after all, winter. It should be snowing. Yet, people are out there driving like they are from South Carolina. I swear I need to leave five minutes earlier in the morning to get to work, not because of road conditions but because people are so ridiculously ill equipped to drive in this weather. There’s cautious and then there is idiotic.

We usually see oddball weather, or more accurately, appropriate weather roughly every seven to ten years around here and how quickly people forget what it was like when it happened last. It makes me laugh because we are society of memory driven denizens that recall a simpler time without cutting edge innovations like smart phones and the Internet and yet for all our waxing nostalgic about walking to school, uphill, both ways through three feet of snow we panic and complain when it happens again.

Here’s a rule of thumb for all you people unsure of what to do in bad weather. If you turn on the news and you see a story about a salt truck that plunged over a 100 foot cliff because of road conditions, maybe you should stay home. Or at least leave extra, extra early so that you are out of my way by the time I get there. Another favorite picture of mine is the news stories of people with their cars stuck in the snow. Usually, you get a low shot of one of the tires as the reporter says the following. “When he left for work today, this is what happened.” Next thing you see is the person spinning their wheels in the show. Last time I checked, rule one for getting unstuck in the snow is to NOT jam on the gas pedal spinning your wheels at high RPMs.

The one thing I haven’t seen a lot of anymore is the mad dash for bread and milk at the store with just the slightest threat of snowfall. Usually as soon as the weatherman flips his coin and chooses snow as the prediction it’s like Black Friday out there with Cabbage Patch Dolls.

So, as we brace for more snow, and it will happen again this winter, just letting you know, realize that a level head is the one thing we all need to keep in our bag of tricks when we go out, or as we called it in my day, common sense.

Princess Leia and Kindergarten Redemption

It seems the older I get, the more I can spin silly and pointless stories by weaving the tiny, fine threads of relevancy into a thicker, more industrial strength rope of crap. Since I have been on a back to school kick this past couple of posts I thought I would share a first day of school story from my own life.

I was recently in a conversation with someone about how some schools, nowadays, offer all day kindergarten to students. I was taken aback by this revelation as I was firmly rooted in the mythos that kindergarten was a half day rite of passage for children. That first foray into public education was a small step, to be taken, and not a full gallop into eight hours of instruction. Besides, at the age of five, what can they be teaching kids that takes eight hours? Times have changed, I guess. In my day, I had afternoon class which meant I could sleep in and watch most of The Price is Right before having to be educated in subjects that aren’t as nearly as important as how much denture cleaner costs and should I bid a dollar, confident in everyone else’s inability to understand the actual retail price of a Zenith floor model television set in a fine oak cabinet. These are practices that would not be exercised again until I reached college some 13 years later and could schedule all my classes around this meticulous study of the economy and retail industry.

From the moment I set foot into the viper pit that is the public education system, I knew I needed to choose my path very carefully. I was in a strange land with unfamiliar native mores. I looked around at all the kids playing together and knew that this was something that could make or break me over the next 12 years. I was a little hesitant to jump in right away. Even though I had spent the previous year in preschool, I had reservations about doing this on a daily basis for the next nine months.

In preschool, I was known as a man who could get things. Other kids joined in my reign over the plastic kitchen sets. They would partake in my practical jokes, hurrying back in from recess to hide underneath the tables, in an attempt to confuse the teacher of our whereabouts. Once, I even convinced a friend of mine to help steal another classmate’s sandwich and we flushed it down the toilet. In preschool, I was someone. But in the real world, I was just another kid, like everyone else. And that world was about to get bigger as the one person who knew me was about to leave.

My Mother was getting ready to head for the door and for a moment I thought I could not hack this dreadful experiment. I could feel the knot tighten in my throat and the burning sensation in my eyes. Soon the air was filled with falsetto ranged wails and streams of tears, flowing down the doughy cheeks of a child not wanting to be left behind by his mama. But they were not my tears or my wails that had pierced the atmosphere. Before the first drop could form in the corner of my eye, another child standing a few feet away from me had begun to sob uncontrollably and latched onto his Mother’s leg with a vice like grip. I stood there gawking, not at his performance, but at the reactions of the other children in the room. All forms of play and interaction had ceased. All attention was focused on this child, flailing around at the door. His mother trying to pry his clasped hands from around her thigh, now numb from lack of blood flow. As the minute long exchange took what seemed like hours, we all witnessed the equivalent of the first day for fresh fish in Kindergarten. Somebody always breaks down crying. Happens every time. The only question is, who's it gonna be? It's as good a thing to bet on as any, I guess.

After the spectacle had ended, my Mother looked at me and we both shared a look of understanding. The kind of look that says, “I love you, but I can’t show it right now or I’ll never survive past recess.” She nodded and left. For the next four hours, I would have to fend for myself in this uncharted territory. An explorer in a foreign world of sand boxes, story times, and milk and cookie lunches. I figured I better make friends fast or I will be swallowed up by the system. Another casualty of social calcification, doomed to a lifestyle unfit outside these walls.

I scanned the room for someone I could interact with and not be dismissed as weak and inferior. This small towheaded boy sat on the other side of the room and I struck up a conversation. He was a rather quiet but cordial kid named Richie. We became friends that first week of Kindergarten. On the playground we took to imagining ourselves in the Star Wars universe. I was, of course, Han Solo and he was my loyal Wookie companion, Chewbacca. The merry go round was our Millennium Falcon and the slide that stood nearby served as The Death Star, with it steps on either side, an arched ladder in the back, and a space underneath to hold an imaginary Princess Leia. We made various attacks on that slide in many offensive campaigns against the Empire, which were real girls, at that age, always returning to the merry go round in victory after freeing the invisible Princess. Those were definitely the greatest days of my early scholastic career. Soon those days, like many in my youth would be over, converting to a sepia toned flash of synaptic nostalgia.

One night, a fire had broke out at Richie’s home and they had ended up moving away. I never heard from or saw him again after that. He faded into the tapestry of my mind and serves as a small, but bright stitch on a much larger and faded canvas of memories. I have no idea where he is in this world but I still remember the days of him gurgling out a passable bark as Chewbacca. His own voice, used so little in our conversations, is gone from my recollection.

There have been times when I have visited my parents’ home, nestled among the trees on the ridge overlooking my old Elementary school. I would stand on the edge of their yard, near sunset, looking down at that same playground that served as my “Long long ago in a galaxy far, far away” nearly three decades prior. The playground equipment still stands, however, standing on the edge of the merry go round, today, would invariable spin the metal plate off its axis, grinding it into the concrete slab beneath it. With my 30 years of growth, attempting to fit myself underneath the slide would result in needing the jaws of life or a really good can opener to extract me from my confinement. Those relics of recess past were better left seen at a distance in the pristine condition I could make out with my strained eyesight. Getting closer would reveal the Monet-like painted truths, rusted and worn and in places missing paint. Those chips could probably be found in the stomach contents of a small child enrolled in the school or a thirty-four year old, suffering from acute lead neuropathy.

In any case I hope my friend is out there, somewhere, doing fine. I hope one day I can shake his hand. I hope I can tell him that the continued missions of Han Solo in those days, minus Chewbacca, were victorious yet not as fun without him. I hope.

The Six Million Dollar Miracle

We can rebuild her – We have the technology.

That title is a bit of a misnomer. Not the miracle part, but the price tag associated with it. After all, in the 1970s, the operations that gave Steve Austin his bionic abilities may have cost around six million dollars, but in today’s terms, the actual cost attached to all of that hardware may put it closer to what the government gave AIG in TARP funds. However, to say that my Mother-in-Law was given, not only bionic parts, but a six million dollar cumulative price tag for all her surgeries is probably incorrect. In fact, they didn’t exactly add anything, more like they took pieces out. OK, I should have titled this “The Incredible Shrinking Woman.” Are these 70s and early 80s pop culture references doing anything for ya? Thought not. Well, then let’s just find the chase and cut to it.

I spoke before about my unwillingness to understand how someone can have faith in a higher power when all they’ve done is fight to keep death at bay. This time around, I think I’ll look a little more positive on the subject but I won’t give into too much praise of a higher being keeping her around. Here’s a quick rundown on what we’ve had so far.

In 1997 after a bout with a tricky case of pneumonia, she found out that she had a football sized tumor on her kidney. When they opened her up on the table, they wished that they hadn’t. RCC (Renal Cell Carcinoma) had metastasized into her lungs. They put her at stage IV and removed the tumor, along with the kidney, and an ovary. When I say “They wished they hadn’t” I mean that had they known what was going on inside her, they wouldn’t have bothered and told her to go home and be comfortable. But they didn’t. Instead, they put her into a study for an experimental treatment that would quite literally take her to death’s door in order to reboot her immune system. Consider it the Jurassic Park computer system method.

When I met her daughter, my future wife, she had already been through the treatments and come out with a clean bill of health, for now. All of the spots on her lungs had disappeared and she had been cancer free for a year. I have since learned that you are never really free from it, regardless of how well scans look.

Jump forward to 2006. For nearly 10 years, my M-I-L has had clean scans but a new spot showed up on her pancreas. Soon, the doom and gloom crept back into the thoughts of her family. Statistically speaking, for her to live past five years would have put her into a bracket of about 5%. I’m not exactly sure but I’ve heard various differences pushing her closer to a 1% bracket. But, now she had to endure more surgery.

After 12 hours on the table, the doctors in Pittsburgh removed part of her pancreas, and her spleen, making recovery a difficult process. She spent five days in recovery, more because of the lack of empty rooms than anything else, but she really didn’t look that good and being lumped together in that bullpen of other surgical patients didn’t do much for her recovery process. Still, she came out on the other side with no apparent tumors or other spots in her system. The pathology came back as renal cell cancer; her old nemesis had shot seeds into her system and found a new place to sleep.

The three years that followed gave her an opportunity to see the birth of another grandchild, my daughter. “Gammy,” as my little one refers to her, is pretty much an everyday fixture in her life as we only live a few minutes away and because of the renewed bond between mother and daughter, we see them often, if not every night. We even share the stomach flu as we all got hit with it on Valentine’s Day, providing more evidence that I should just skip holidays all together.

But then something happened. Gammy wasn’t bouncing back from the stomach flu like the rest of us. That missing spleen might have something to do with it, or it could be that something more sinister was going on in there. She began to have problems focusing. Headaches became an everyday occurrence. She started to seem confused and even stopped at a mailbox and drove through a red light. Something wasn’t right. My wife, ever the enforcer when it comes to medical issues started to harp on her about seeing a doctor and her coworkers even forced her to keep an appointment for an MRI in March of 2009. Before she made it back to her desk after the scan, the hospital had called her. She needed to go directly to the ER and consult with an oncologist and neurologist. She had a brain tumor. After the diagnosis, we all realized that these symptoms were noticed long before the stomach flu incident. At New Year’s she seemed distant.

On March 18th, she went in for surgery to remove the tumor. Considering her last surgery lasted 12 hours, we expected a long day ahead of us, but the doctors came out to see my wife and her dad after an hour and a half. What had gone wrong? Could they not operate? Was it really bad? After losing all color in the face, they were given the news. She’s out of surgery and they had already removed the entire tumor. The surgery was quick and she was out of the hospital in two days. A follow up treatment, of radiation to the area, provided extra defense in case they had missed something.

During her stay in the hospital, the announcement of her other daughter’s impeding nuptials provided a method for getting my in laws to go on vacation. In their 43 years of marriage, they had never taken one. So, in we decided to tag along with the newlyweds and get a house at the beach. It would be the first time my daughter and her Gammy would see the beach.

The trip almost got cancelled. My M-I-L started to feel shortness of breath and would get tired walking a small distance. She also developed a lump on her arm. While in the hospital to do additional scans of her abdomen, everything came together. Another mass was found and she was suffering from blood clots in her arm, legs, and lungs. She ended up back in the hospital over Mother’s Day weekend for treatment. An EKG showed a weakened heart and surgery was almost scrubbed because of her condition. If anything, vacation would be cut because of surgery to remove the mass that had now been found in her remaining ovary. Why she did not have a hysterectomy back in 1997 is beyond any of us. Soon, we had a new list of problems to address. Would she be strong enough for surgery? Is this renal cell or ovarian? Can her remaining kidney handle continued stress from the dye used in scans and another surgery?

Due to the EKG results, her surgery was being postponed for a month. The doctors did not feel that the tumor was dangerous enough to operate right now, so they felt they could wait. The blood clots were treated but they waffled on clearance for the trip. It was a 12 hour drive to the beach and she would have to keep her legs elevated and couldn’t sit for long periods of time. Having a two year old daughter would mean numerous stops along the way, so that wasn’t a problem. Also, thanks to my daughter, we needed to have a vehicle that could handle all of her things as well as ours, so we rented a Dodge Grand Caravan to make the trip. In a twist of fate, the blood clots nearly hampered but ultimately allowed for her to go on vacation. A trip, I feel, did wonders for her outlook and health. We had a three story house with lots of steps to climb, and a pool for her to exercise and relax in during the week. After we returned home, her multiple doctors all gave her a clean bill of health for surgery, citing that she was in better condition than she had been in months, perhaps years.

Skipping the Fourth of July was not an option my daughter shares a birthday with the adjoining day. A cookout/birthday party served as a celebration and feast before surgery. The following Thursday would be her latest date with the surgical blade. Because of the volatile nature of ovarian cancer, she could not be biopsied until after surgery. Running the risk of rupturing the tumor could escalate her into a higher stage. I had just learned that once you get classified as stage IV RCC, you keep that no matter how clean your scans are there was no sense in adding a high stage of ovarian cancer if it was possible.

After an hour and a half or surgery, she had been put into recovery. The gynecological oncologist sat with us in a room and discussed the procedure. He was used to see ovarian cancer on a regular basis and from what he saw, this was not it. There was a very condensed and compact area that was affected. There were no nodules or other infected tissue which suggested to him that this was indeed, renal cell cancer. Pathology could reverse that opinion but for now, we breathed a sigh of relief. When you have to root for one kind of cancer over another you start to feel like your rooting for one political candidate who is not as despicable as the other while still maintaining that they are both evil. When asked about the short length of surgery he said that it would have gone quicker, but they spent an hour cutting through a lot of scar tissue from previous surgeries in 1997 and 2006. At one point before surgery, my M-I-L wondered if they could just put a zipper in place instead of having to constantly cut her open since she’s becoming an old pro at this. I told her in recovery that the next time they ought to have it down to fifteen minutes. It could be like ordering a pizza. It’ll be done in 30 minutes or it’s free. Maybe you could start using a drive through for this. While trying not to pop a stitch from laughing at the lameness of my jokes, she said, “There won’t be another one.” I’m not sure if that means she hopes that this is the last time she’ll have to do this or that she feels that her luck has just about run out.




Think about it, while simultaneously keeping the Pittsburgh medical profession in business, she’s pared away about ever spare part you can imagine. How long before it’s something she can’t live without? She’s already a diabetic; she has OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea), hypertension, high blood pressure, and is prone to pulmonary emboli. She takes more drugs than the ballplayers listed on the Mitchell Report and the bands on Ozzfest. Sooner or later, she won’t be treatable. It’s not like she can take that amazing cocktail of drugs like she did in 1997. She was in perfect health back then. Now, she wouldn’t survive the extreme dosage needed when she first got diagnosed. Lesser doses may not be sufficient to rid her of more tumors.

Through all this, we have maintained that this is a chronic condition instead of a terminal one. Cancer has taken a heck of a lot of her body, but not her spirit. Approaching the back nine of her 60s has given her the frame of mind that she’s just playing with the house money and the deck has been getting colder as the time marches on. The Sword of Damocles is constantly hanging overhead waiting for her to exhale. One day, luck will run out and I hope that is well into her 90s or more as long as she can maintain a good quality of life. I know my wife will be devastated when the day comes and she wants every day she can get but she has to know that it’s not her choice and ultimately, there may come a time when she can’t fight. I’m just hoping that she goes twelve rounds with death before losing at Battleship, Clue, Electric Football, or Twister. Be that as it may, the fight rages on and she does not go gently into that good night. If there is a higher power, I think he’s just not ready for her. She is a force to be reckoned with say what you will about Mother-in-Laws; I think I’d like to keep her around.

Frankly, I think the medical profession ought to be asking her to do speaking tours. She’s beaten the odds so many times; I’m beginning to she’s unable to be killed. After all, her mother is in the upper half of the 80s and is still kicking it in an assisted living facility with an artificial hip, bouts with congestive heart failure, and some dementia. My wife also has a resilient nature as she’s come back from thyroid disease and MS to lead a normal life. So, to adjust for inflation, maybe my Mother-in-Law is the $30 million dollar woman, or perhaps just priceless.