Get Out of the Fridge!

It’s just a given that at some point, kids are going to need a snack. When my kids were little we never left the house without some snacks for later because we knew that they were going to get hungry or thirsty before it was time for the next meal. Even now they still need snacks, especially my 15-year old son. I sometimes joke that I need to get a second job to keep him in food. Seeing what he eats, I truly feel for my parents having to deal with 5 boys in the 10-17 year old range at the same time. We were eating machines.

When we got hungry we’d ask Mom if we could have something to eat and most times she’d answer that we could have a piece of fruit. Luckily for me, I’ve always liked fruit – apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, just about anything other than watermelon. Sometimes she said we could have a piece of bread with butter and sugar. Back then we used real butter and real sugar. Now that was a treat! But most of the time it was fruit or some Saltine crackers. It really didn’t matter; we just needed something to hold us over to the next meal, usually dinner.

However, boys being boys, there were also times that fruit, bread or Saltines just wasn’t going to soothe our appetite and we’d open the fridge to see what was in there to eat. Usually within a few seconds of opening the door Mom would say, “Get out of the fridge!” Even if she was in the living room, where she couldn’t even see the refrigerator, she knew we were going in there. We thought she was just hearing the door open, so we tried to open the door as quietly as possible, barely making any noise at all. Still we heard, “Get out of the fridge!” Then we figured she knew we were going into the kitchen so we’d go into our bedroom or the bathroom first, then sneak into the kitchen and ever so discretely open the refrigerator door. The result was the same – “Get out of the fridge!”

According to Mom, she had eyes in the back of her head, so she always knew what we were doing. Now that sounded good, but eyes can’t see through walls. We just couldn’t figure out how the heck she knew when we opened that door. So we started planning our attacks on the fridge. Instead of going in solo, we’d work as a team. One of us would pretend we were going to the bathroom, close the bathroom door and head for the fridge while the other person would talk to Mom as a diversion. One of us would use the bathroom ruse while the other would head toward the kitchen, but before getting there, fake cough or sneeze loudly just as the other quietly opened the fridge door. All the planning was in vain though because we still heard “Get out of the fridge!” How could this be? No matter what we did we couldn’t even get a bite, let alone a snack out of the fridge.

It wasn’t until years later at a family party that Mom’s secret of how she knew we were in the fridge was revealed. It wasn’t the sound of the refrigerator door opening and it wasn’t the sound of items moving in the fridge. It wasn’t that our plans weren’t brilliant and it certainly wasn’t that Mom had eyes in the back of her head that could also see through walls. No, it was actually very simple. For some reason, when the refrigerator door was opened a line would go across the TV. There was some kind of electrical short that made a line across the TV. It just so happened that most of the times we were trying to sneak some food were also the times Mom was watching TV.

There is a lesson here for parents. You don’t need to be the smartest person or the most perceptive, although I like to think that my parents were both smart and perceptive. You don’t need to always be in the same room as your kids or know everything they’re doing, although there were a lot of times they somehow knew what was going on. No, sometimes the key is just being in the right place at the right time. Or better yet, you can use weird electrical issues in your house to your advantage.  

The BIG FIVE OH

Last week I celebrated my birthday, and not just any run-of-the-mill birthday, but a milestone birthday. One week ago, I celebrated my 50^th birthday! It was a pretty good week, as birthday wishes poured in almost every day. Well, OK, they didn’t pour in every day, but I did get at least one just about every day of the week. Then last Saturday, we had a party at my house and lots of my friends and family stopped by for some food, some hanging out and lots of laughs. It was a great time!

One thing I find amusing was the number of people who thought I would try to hide the fact that I was turning 50, like it was something bad. I can just picture two people talking in hushed tones:

“Did you hear about Joe?”

“No, what’s up with him?”

A quick glance around. “He’s turning…50.”

“Oh, no! How’s he doing? Is he OK?”

Yeah, I’m OK. Really. One of my brothers cracked that “50 is the new 30”. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I do know that 50 is not that old. Statistically speaking, I can expect to live another 25-30 years. And with all the preservatives I’ve eaten of the years, maybe another 35-40 years! Who knows, maybe some brilliant researcher will find the fountain of youth or figure out a way to slow the aging process. Because if I’m going to live to 90 or 100, I want to be healthy. Right now, thank God I am. Besides, being eighth out of nine, I have siblings that are already into the 60’s and they don’t seem old to me. Even if they are grandparents.

So after a great birthday week, I spent the first week of my new year…sick. Now I expected a bit of a letdown after the big 5-0, there always is in the days following a big event, but this was not just a letdown. It was a beatdown. For two days, the biggest thing I did was move from the bed to the couch downstairs so I could watch some TV, or move from the couch to the bed upstairs so I could go to bed. That was after sleeping for more than half the day. Over those two days, I ate one piece of toast, one bowl of Tasteeos cereal (a generic and better version of Cheerios) and a couple of scoops of ice cream. That’s it. Maybe that’s why people talk in hushed tones about turning 50!

As I lay there on the couch the second day, I of course thought back to being sick as a kid. Other than a short stretch in third grade, I didn’t get sick much. Maybe it was because of the rules Mom had for when we were sick. It wasn’t a fun time staying home from school, which is probably why we didn’t like it much. We had to stay not just in our room, but in our bed. There was no TV allowed. We could read in our bed or we could rest in our bed. When we got a little older there were no phone calls from friends allowed either. For meals, we got toast, maybe some soup. For drinks, we got water, some orange juice and, if we were lucky, warm ginger ale.

But this was the rule that always made me think if I really needed to stay home: if you missed one day of school because you were sick, you needed to stay home one more day to make sure you were better. So if you were sick on Tuesday, you stayed home on Wednesday, too. If you were sick on Thursday, you had to stay home on Friday. This meant that when we got older, we couldn’t go out on Friday night. Oh, and by the way, you probably couldn’t go out on Saturday either because you needed to get your rest and make sure you didn’t get sick again and miss school on Monday. The result of being sick on Thursday was that you didn’t go out of the house until you went back to school on Monday morning, except maybe for church on Sunday, and only if you seemed to be totally well. I can remember a few times feeling kind of sick on a Thursday but going to school anyway so that my whole weekend was spent sitting in the house doing nothing.

As much as I didn’t like it back then, I appreciate it now because I don’t miss work just because I don’t feel like going into the office. I really need to be sick or I’m going in. Maybe it’s being responsible or maybe it’s because I hear a little voice in the back of my head reminding me of the rules of being sick. And dry toast with some warm ginger ale is just not going to cut it these days.

Of Pixy Stix and Pop Rocks

People bring a lot of leftover food into work and put it in the kitchen for anyone to eat. It usually doesn’t take too long for something to go – to the swift go the spoils! Once in a while, someone brings in something that sits…and sits…and sits. I often wonder about items like that. Did someone try it and then tell everyone else it tastes terrible? Did somebody see somebody else take a bite and retch? If so, how come no one warned me?

This week I went into the kitchen on Tuesday and there was a pile of Pixy Stix on the table. Pixy Stix? That’s exactly what I thought when I saw them. It looked like Pixy Stix, but I wasn’t quite sure. I picked one up and, even without my now-required reading glasses, I saw that it was indeed Pixy Stix. My first thought was, “They still make these things?” I really didn’t know they still made them after all these years. After all, they were a big thing when I was a kid. There wasn’t much better than pouring some flavored powdered sugar into your mouth, so dry that you almost couldn’t swallow. It was awesome! At least it was when I was a kid.

I didn’t eat any of the Pixy Stix last week. As an adult, the thought of pouring powdered sugar into my mouth really didn’t interest me whatsoever. However, it did get me thinking of some other so-called food items that were great as a kid. I don’t know why, but one item that always comes back to my mind is Zarex. Thick syrup that you mixed with water, Zarex was a staple at my house, especially in the summer. You could make a pitcher full or just a glass full, mix it with some ice and drink it down. And sometimes when no one else was around we’d just take a swig of the Zarex syrup – talk about a sugar rush! The funny thing about that is that just thinking about drinking Zarex straight up makes me kind of shiver. Oh, and if Mom found out we did that, we weren’t allowed to make any ourselves, which meant that we got her version that was more like water with a little flavor instead of sweet, thick syrup with a little water. Kool Aid was no match for Zarex. It also appears that Zarex is being manufactured again.

How about Pop Rocks? When those first came out, every kid wanted them and every parent wanted to ban them. One of us would put half the bag in our mouth, close our mouth and everyone else would stand around that person listening to them pop, trying not to laugh too loud so we could hear them. Then came the Urban Legend that if you ate Pop Rocks with soda, your stomach would explode. Or maybe it was a marketing ploy. It either shows how stupid we were to go ahead and try eating Pop Rocks with soda or how smart we were to not believe it, but me and my friends are all alive today after doing it. Now that I think of it, maybe that’s why some of us have larger stomachs than we’d like.

Another item that comes to mind is Marathon Bars, which were chocolate covered caramel that was kind of twisted. Supposedly they took a long time to eat. I just remember the funny ads on TV – “I’m Quick Carl and I do everything fast”, except eat a Marathon bar. I probably ate one at some time, but it didn’t leave much of a memory.  Would I eat any of these now? Absolutely not. And now that I’m reading this over, it brings something else to mind. How the heck do we have any teeth left?

Another Super Bowl Sunday

There was a time when Super Bowl Sunday was a huge event in my life. It was something me and my friends looked forward to every year, especially once the playoffs started. It didn’t matter who was playing, we were watching. Here in Massachusetts, we’ve been fortunate to see three Super Bowl wins for the home team (and one painful loss) in the last ten years. But there were a lot of years that they weren’t even close.

My best friend growing up, Tony, was a Dallas Cowboys fan, while I was an Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Back then, the Patriots were about the worst team in the league so we rooted for other teams. To say that Tony and I had some minor disagreements over football would be an understatement. Back in the 70’s and into the early 80’s, Dallas, Pittsburgh and Oakland were in the Super Bowl almost every year. Dallas and Pittsburgh even faced each other twice in the Big Game, with Pittsburgh winning both games (sorry Tony). The Super Bowl back then wasn’t the spectacle it is now, but its popularity was starting to grow, and it didn’t matter to us, we watched the game because we loved football. It was just with a lot less people, sometimes just me and Tony.

As time went on and the hype grew, so did the crowds both at the game and where we were watching the game. It got to be ridiculous in the late 80’s because there were so many people at the Super Bowl parties you couldn’t hear the game or each other talking. Sometimes, it was hard to even see the game – there were no big screen televisions at that time. It was getting to the point that it wasn’t even fun anymore. Then in the early 90’s, my wife and I moved to California and, not having many friends, we watched the game ourselves. As much as it felt weird, I actually enjoyed watching the game with just us. It was calm, quiet and refreshing.

You see, I still remember watching my first Super Bowl like it was yesterday, remembering that game more than some of the more recent games. An almost-8 year old boy, slightly bored on a Sunday afternoon, flipped on the TV and watched the only televised sporting event on the 7 or 8 stations we got in those days. I don’t remember where everyone else in my family was that day, but I watched alone as a guy named Joe made good on his guarantee and led his team to a stunning victory over the heavily favored opposition. It was 1969, Super Bowl III, and the New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts 16-7. It was a much simpler time: we didn’t have 100+ channels on cable, no big screen TV, no surround sound systems; there weren’t 25 or 30 camera angles on every play, there weren’t constant graphics, there weren’t announcers from 50 or 100 countries. It was just me and a small 10-inch black and white TV, rooting for the Jets because their quarterback had the same name as me. I had been watching football, but Super Bowl III was the game that made me a true football fan.

Every year people reminisce about past Super Bowls, talking about the great plays, the great players and the great teams – and there were many of each of them. But when I think back, I always come back to Super Bowl III. Call me sentimental, but there are times I wish I could go back to that period of my life. To a time when everyday life went at a slower pace, when everything wasn’t as commercialized, when there was a feeling that anything was possible, when sports were still a game and not a business. To a time that I could sit alone in a room on Super Bowl Sunday and watch the game on a tiny TV and be the happiest guy in the world. Yes, I will always remember the Patriots’ victories in Super Bowls XXXVI, XXXVIII and XXXIX, but I will always cherish the memories of the Jets victory in Super Bowl III.