Spring Is In the Air

Spring is in the air. There’s about a million birds around my neighborhood, chirping away like they’re on "Bird Idol" and gathering stuff for their nests. The grass, while not what I’d call green yet, is starting to come alive. We’ve even had a couple of days where I didn’t need to wear a jacket! This being New England, those days were followed by temperatures in the 30’s again, which felt even colder after having been in the high 60’s or 70’s. The first day of spring was last Sunday, so of course we got some snow on Monday. I would have been surprised if it didn’t snow.

The biggest difference, however, has been the number of people outside. People are actually going outside for longer than it takes to get from the house to the car. One of my neighbors has two kids, a boy 5 and a girl 3. They’ve been riding around on their little bikes and using the swing set. I heard their voices the other day, looked out the window and saw them swinging up to the sky, having the time of their lives. They had their winter jackets and hats on but you would have thought it was the middle of July with the fun they were having. Just the fact that they could get to their swing set after all the snow we got was an accomplishment. 

My neighbor across the street has two boys, about 11 and 9. Those two have been outside playing basketball, street hockey and baseball. They’ve been tossing the baseball back and forth and they even have one of those pitch back devices so they can throw the ball at it and have it come back to them. What caught my attention one day was the older boy trying to make the younger one do something by throwing him to the ground, sitting on him and torturing him into doing whatever it was. Nothing like the love between brothers. Eventually, the younger and smaller one wiggled his way free, put a move on the older one and was suddenly on top. The older boy started yelling and screaming and about 30 seconds later their mother came out and told them to break it up and to stop making so much noise. The younger boy never yelled or screamed; he just worked his way out of the death hold his older brother had him in and came out on top. Did I mention that the younger boy is also smaller? Yet the older, bigger boy did all the yelling and screaming. As far as I’m concerned, justice was not done.

When one my older brothers got me in one of those choke holds when we were kids, I would try my hardest to get out of it and gain the advantage. I may have gotten lucky once or twice and escaped, but that just meant when they got me locked up again it was a little rougher and harder. However, I never stopped trying to get out of whatever hold they had me in. Why bother, why not just take it like a man and get it over with? Because it was kind of a measure of how “big” I was getting. If I could make them work to subdue me, that meant I was getting stronger. If I could escape, even for a few seconds, it meant I was getting tougher. I looked forward to the day when I could say that I beat them, that I got away fair and square, because that would mean I was on their level. All the kids I knew that had older brothers wanted the same thing – to be as strong as, as tough as, as good in sports as... as cool as their older brothers. Ultimately, what we wanted was to not be their little brother anymore, but to just be their brother.

However, we never got that victory as kids. Justice was not done. By the time we thought we were actually able to come out on top, our older brothers had moved on to bigger and better (maybe, maybe not) things. I’m sure they had long forgotten the times they knocked us down and pinned us to the ground, or held us in a head lock and gave us noogies, or grabbed us by the arms and gave us Indian rope burns. They probably even forgot they had given us the dreaded Cherokee Drag where they knocked us down and dragged us around by our legs, taking us across the driveway or street and into the bushes. In the summertime. With or without a shirt on our backs. Nothing like the love between brothers.  

But something happened to us little brothers, too. We also grew up and moved on to bigger and better things. Revenge? Nah, not for me. My older brothers were the ones giving me rides to my baseball games or somewhere else in their cool cars. While other kids got dropped off in their parent’s station wagon, I got dropped off in a souped up Olds 442 or a Chevy Camaro, tires spinning and tunes cranking. When I needed a ride, they were there. When I had one of those questions I just couldn’t ask Mom or Dad and knew my friends didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, they were there. I soon realized that when I needed just about anything, even some encouragement about something, they were there. At some point, I had crossed some unseen dividing line and was now on their side. Sure they still gave me a hard time, but it was different. Somehow I was no longer their little brother, and I may have still been their younger brother, but I was now just their brother.  

Now, some forty years later, we still make fun of each other at times and give each other a good ribbing when the opportunity presents itself. They may have laughed more then, but not anymore. Especially now that some of them are grandparents and proud card-carrying members of AARP!

An "A" for Effort

I am totally amazed by the number of people on Facebook, YouTube, and the internet in general, during work hours. There are a number of people where I work that are constantly doing anything but the work they’re getting paid for. They’re uploading pictures, videos and news items to Facebook or commenting on their friend’s status or pictures they just uploaded; they’re texting or chatting with friends; they’re shopping or at least looking at stuff. Yes, these people are younger, in their 20’s or early 30’s. No, this is not about me being older and being cranky or grumpy. The fact that we have a looming deadline doesn’t seem to matter to some people, or the fact that what they’re supposed to be working on is holding something or someone else up doesn’t seem to bother them.

I’m not saying I never go on the internet at work. I take about 30 minutes at lunch and check out Facebook, the latest sports news and read what I think are important emails. I even occasionally check my emails at other times, but I don’t read them if they’re not important. And by important, I mean something that can’t be taken care of once I get home or a family matter. That rules out 99% of my emails. Before you start pasting a big “SELF RIGHTEOUS” label on me, I am the first to admit that I am far from perfect. I’ve already admitted that I sometimes go on the internet during work hours. However, I don’t do this when we’re under a work avalanche and we can barely keep our heads above the surface. There are times when you just need to bust your tail for 8-10 hours straight. I think it is the time-appropriateness (if that’s even a word) of the actions that bother me. Or maybe it’s just that it appears that the people I’m talking about just don’t seem to care if they do a good job or not, even though they know they’re being watched.

When I was a kid, we had chores to do. There were daily chores, such as setting the table for dinner, clearing the table after dinner, washing the dishes, drying the dishes and sweeping the floor. All of us had a responsibility each day. We also had weekly chores, which included vacuuming, dusting, washing the kitchen floor and washing the dining room floor. All of us had a weekly responsibility, too. In addition, some things not included in these categories are shoveling snow, cutting the grass when we were old enough and cleaning our rooms. And these are the ones I remember, there were probably more. We all learned to pitch in and do our share. But no matter what our assigned chore was, we were expected to do it right. It’s called responsibility.

I remember having to wash a floor a second time because I did a half-baked job the first time because I wanted to go hang out with my friends. Dad took one look at that floor and knew I didn’t do it right. He didn’t yell at me or make a big scene, he simply asked me if I thought the floor was truly clean and if I had done the best I could in washing the floor. I said “No” to both questions, figuring he’d let it go and let me go hang out with my friends and do a better job next week. But that’s not what he did. He actually made me do it again, do it right, before I could go and hang out with my friends. I’m glad he did.

That lesson was reinforced throughout the time I lived at home. Both my parents taught all nine of us to do the best we could no matter what we were doing. They did not expect perfection, but they did expect our best effort. Win, lose, pass, fail – it didn’t matter; what mattered most was that we gave our best effort. I remembered that lesson all through school and tried not to worry about grades. I remembered that lesson when I got my first job when I was in high school, working in the kitchen of a function facility on what was called the “slop table”. It was as good as it sounds. I remembered that lesson when I was in college and worked in the local skating rink, making the ice and sweeping up the place at the end of the night. No one would have known that I didn’t sweep everywhere, but I would have. I remembered that lesson when I got my first “real” job after college, doing something I hadn’t planned on and for a lot less money than I expected. I still gave it my best effort. I remembered that lesson at every job I’ve had since then and I still remember it today.

My wife and I have taught our kids the same lesson: to always give your best effort and do the best you can. As long as they can honestly say they gave it their all in school, I’m OK with whatever grades they get and they are, too. In their extra-curricular activities, as long as they give their best effort, I’m OK with their performance or outcome and I hope they are, too. Sure, you can pretty much always improve on something, but perfection is not the goal. People much wiser than I am have said something to the effect that it’s the journey not the destination that matters. I just think that if you give everything your best effort, the destination will be that much sweeter.

What a Car!

A friend of mine sent me some pictures of this new car that is being custom made in a limited edition. It is called the 789 by n2a Motors and takes elements of the ’57, ’58 and ’59 Chevy’s. When I first saw it, I thought it had to be a fake, something that someone Photoshopped together. I thought the pictures were cool, but I truly thought it was a fake. After a little research, it turns out that it is legit. Here are the pictures I received:

I’m not really a car guy. I’ve only been to a couple of car shows in my life, I don’t work on cars myself and I don’t follow the newest car trends. For me, a car is to get me from Point A to Point B. I don’t see them as status symbols or an extension of my personality, but just a mode of transportation. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to drive a car that’s falling apart, all dented up and has no muffler. I just want something reliable and comfortable. If it looks nice, that’s a bonus.

So maybe it’s something of a mid-life crisis, but I have to say that is one sharp car! Forget the Camry sitting in the driveway; even forget the Matrix that I drive most of the time. If we still owned a minivan I’d probably take an axe to it after seeing these pictures. I could see me cruising around in this baby, top down, only one hand on the wheel, my beautiful wife sitting next to me holding my other hand. Well, maybe not from November through April, but the rest of the year, definitely. That’s when it hits me. On top of the $140,000+ price tag for one of these cars, I’d only be able to drive it about half the year. If I was independently wealthy (I’m not), perhaps it wouldn’t matter to me, but I’m just way too practical to even consider a car like this.

As far back as I can remember my parents had functional, practical cars. I guess that when there are nine kids you really don’t want to have anything too fancy. You can’t afford it anyway. One of our cars, a Chevy station wagon, not only got us around town, it also served as a hang out spot for me, my younger brother and our friends. On those late fall/winter/early spring days when we wanted to be out of the house but not necessarily out in the cold, we were happy to see the car sitting in the driveway. You see, there was this strange set of steps we could do to listen to the radio without a key in the ignition. These may not be the exact steps, but it was close to this: hold in the emergency flashers so the lights come on but don’t blink, put the right turn signal on, step on the brake, turn on the radio and voila! We had music. We’d sit in the car for a while, listening to the radio as we warmed up and then we’d get back to whatever we were doing. That is, unless Mom didn’t boot us out so she could go somewhere or run an errand. I have no idea who figured this out, probably my older brothers, but it somehow worked in this car. And I can tell you, none of our friends could say their car did this! Actually, we couldn’t even sit in any of my friends’ cars.

Imagine that, we couldn’t even sit in our friends’ cars for a few minutes to warm up. Maybe their parents were afraid we’d try to drive their car, even though we didn’t have the keys to start it. Or maybe their parents were afraid we might break something, which we never did in our car. That’s why I like practical, non-fancy cars. I don’t want to worry about every little thing I do in it or every single thing my kids do when I’m driving them and their friends some where. If I had a car like the 789 I would probably hate to drive. I’d be worried that someone would crash into it, or try to steal it. I wouldn’t even enjoy it. No, give me a nice, reliable, practical car that will get me from Point A to Point B with some comfort and that doesn’t look too bad. Oh, and a radio that doesn’t need some crazy steps to play some music on a cold day.