Clean Does Not Equal Comfortable

I feel very uncomfortable when I go to someone’s house and the place is spotless. Not just the main room where you’re hanging out, but every room in the house. You go into the kitchen and there’s not a stray glass on the counter, there’s not even a hint of the remnants of a spill on the countertops, the stove top is perfectly clean, the sink is just gleaming and all the kitchen utensils, from spatula to ladle, are in their proper places, neatly arranged and in order. You go into the living room and there’s not even a molecule of dust or dirt visible to the naked eye, the magazines are neatly stacked by publication in date order, the coasters for drinks are all in their holder and the various remote controls are stored neatly. You go into the bathroom and you could practically eat off the floor, there’s not any toothpaste spatterings anywhere, there are decorative soaps that are never to be used and the towels are all perfectly matched, hung and clean.

These kinds of houses scare me because, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit of a klutz. When I’m there I’m always worried that I’m going to knock something over, or spill something, or worse, I’m going to break something. You know how that works; the more you worry about something, the more likely it is to happen. When sports teams play to not lose instead of playing to win, they usually lose. So as I’m sitting in the beautiful, immaculate living room and enjoying a drink, I’m afraid that the glass is going to slip out of my hand and smash on the coffee table, probably taking a divot out of the table for good measure. In reality, I’m not even enjoying the drink. While we’re eating dinner, I’m afraid that I’m going to drop my forkful of food onto the plate, breaking the plate and sending food flying across the room.

When I went over to some of my friends’ houses as a kid, they had whole rooms you couldn’t even go in. The first time I went to one of my friend’s house, we were goofing around and I ran into a room that seemed like any other. He stopped at the edge of the room and shouted, “Get out of there!” Seeing the panic in his face, I looked around, thinking his parents were in there or maybe a dead body was hidden in there. There was a couch, a couple of chairs, some lamps and end tables. However, everything was covered in plastic. I went to sit down on the couch and my friend practically burst into tears. “Don’t sit there! Get out of there now!” I loved the power I had at that point, but the sheer panic and lack of color in my friend’s face was freaking me out. He wouldn’t even go into the room. It turns out that the room was used like twice a year on specific Jewish holidays – and only on those days. He said that if his parents caught him in there, they’d kill him.

I can tell you we had no such room in my house. Every room in my house got used all year round. There were no off-limits rooms where everything was cover in plastic. Our house wasn’t the nicest, nor the neatest, but what can you expect with nine kids? As Mom used to say, we lived in our house. I guess that’s one of the things I remember most about our house. It was never spotless and things weren’t just so, but it was comfortable, homey and lived in. When my friends came over, they didn’t care that we didn’t have a brand new living room set or that all the magazines weren’t in perfect order. No, they were there to hang out and do what kids do – have fun. My kids have had to remind me of that on occasion when they had friends coming over unexpectedly. I’d look around the house and go into a little panic because the house wasn’t perfectly clean. When I’d start to tell them all the things that needed to be done, they’d just say that their friends didn’t care what the house looked like. It took a few times of this happening before I realized they were right. Kids don’t look around and make mental notes of the condition of a house or judge a person or family based on their house.

So come on over to my house, sit down, relax and have a drink without worrying about spilling it. If you’re expecting to see a perfectly clean, spotless house like you see in magazines, you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re expecting to see a house that looks like people live in it, and a house that is warm and comfortable even in the middle of the winter, then you’ll feel right at home. Besides, even if there are a few stains on the couches, they are much more comfortable without a plastic covering.

Year of the Dandelion

As I’ve been driving around the last few weeks I couldn’t help but notice that there are a lot of dandelions this year. It seems that everywhere I went I saw lots of the bright yellow weeds. They sure do look nice, adding a nice touch of color to the greenness that is finally here. The last week or so, I’ve seen quite a few of the little white puffballs that hope to some day be full-fledged dandelions. Some of my neighbors’ yards have been inundated with them this year, whereas in past years they had very few. I have them coming up in places that never had them before. The Chinese have designated 2011 as the year of the Rabbit, but I have dubbed this year the year of the Dandelion.

I’m pretty sure that as kids, all of us picked up the white puffballs, blew as hard as we could and then watched all the little individual pieces go flying every which way. It was always fun to do it on a bit of a breezy day and watch them go up, up and away to who-knows-where. Now that I own a house and have a decent lawn, I understand why some of my neighbors got angry at us as kids for spreading the dandelions. Of course, we didn’t know that was what we were doing, we were just having fun. I’m also pretty sure that as kids, we all picked some “pretty yellow flowers” for Mom. When I was growing up, we always had dandelions in my yard and we didn’t care.

We actually played in our yard. We played football in the back yard until we got an above ground pool, which pretty much messed up our field. The pool also messed up softball. We had a pretty good size field for a bunch of young ball players and we even ran the bases. I’m not sure how many windows we broke, but I do remember a few getting hit by a foul back or an errant throw. We had this wooden bat, Old Betsy I think we called it, that was too big and heavy for most of us, although we all tried to use it. After swinging and missing and practically being dragged down by Old Betsy’s weight, we’d get a regular bat and take our cuts with that one. Funny, I don’t think we had a name for the other bats, just Old Betsy. We had two big Weeping Willow trees in the back yard that were in fair ground in the “outfield” and the rule was that you could catch the ball out of the trees and the batter would be out. I don’t think I ever caught one out of the trees (and probably never hit a ball into the trees), but I do remember my older brothers and some of their friends doing it. They’d get under the tree, go this way and that, and then lunge for the ball as it came through the lower branches, occasionally snagging it before it hit the ground.

Our front yard was where we spent a lot of our summer days, playing wiffle ball for hours. We played with as many people as were available, even if it was just a game of one-on-one. For the most part, the rules were simple: we hit from the opposite side of the street, while the pitcher was on the same side as our yard; you got one swing, if it was a foul or a miss, you were out; if the ball hit the street or sidewalk before reaching the grass in our yard, you were out; a ball that reached the grass in the air was a single; a ball the reached the bushes up near the house in the air was a double; a ball off the trim of the roof was a triple; a ball between our house and the neighbor’s house, or in the gap as we called it, was also a triple; a ball on the roof was a home run; a ball that went over the fence in the gap was also a home run. We had a few different rules for larger games, but those were basically it.

We played for a while, occasionally running around the back of the house for a quick drink from the hose, which sometimes elicited a “Turn the hose off!” shout from Mom. She knew the quick drink could turn into an hour long cool off shower, or worse, a fight for the hose. Sometimes we took a break from the action, got a pitcher of water and some cups, and sat in the shade for a bit as we drank our water. If we were really lucky, we got a pitcher of Kool-Aid or Zarex to share. After a short break, we were back to the games for a while longer until someone had to leave or we just got sick of playing wiffle ball, whichever came first. With all those wiffle ball games going on in our yard, we didn’t have a Show Place yard. Yes, we had grass, but our yard looked like a yard where kids played. We had no “Keep off the Grass” signs, real or imagined, and there were a few bare spots due to the games.

I loved my yard as a kid because it wasn’t something that was off limits to me and my friends. It was a football field, a softball field and a wiffle ball park. We played tag and catch and ran around the yard. Sometimes we just sat under the tree in the front yard, talked and looked ahead to the future when we’d be old enough to…fill in the blank. I miss those days, when even just one friend meant a wiffle ball game and when a lush green lawn with no dandelions meant nothing to us unless we were playing on it. The grass may have been greener on the other side, but in color only. As far as I’m concerned, we had the nicest yard in the neighborhood.

Smooth Operator

Since everyone in the family has an iPod, we bought a connection cord for each car so we can listen to them through the car’s stereo system. As happens with so many things today, one of them is broken and the other one is falling apart but still works. On a recent Saturday I needed to drive my son to a friend’s house and was taking one car but had to get the working iPod connector out of the other car so we could listen to the music we wanted to. As I got back into the car I went to lean my arm on the center console like I always do when I get into the car. However, for some reason my son had opened it, so expecting something solid to lean on and finding nothing, I kind of stumbled into the car leaning over to his seat.

My being a klutz is nothing new to my kids as I do things like that a lot, which usually garners a few laughs, so of course my son laughed at me. He commented on how coordinated I was sometimes and how that particular incident was quite elegant. Actually, what he said was that it was “like a swan”. We both laughed and I mentioned that both he and my daughter got some of that DNA in them, because the both of them do klutzy things all the time, too. I won’t tell you how well my daughter wears her food sometimes or how my son knocks things over or trips on things because I don’t want to embarrass them by going into the details. Suffice it to say that we’ve all had our not so shining moments.

As we drove, I told him how when I was a teenager I could be walking through my living room and trip over nothing. My Mom once asked me how I could play sports and have such good balance but then walk through a room and stumble when there was nothing near me. The only explanation I have is that I had this special super-hero-like talent that only worked playing sports; at other times I was just like everybody else. When I was in school, I never ran up or down stairs because I knew there was a good chance I would fall on my face or my butt right in front of everyone. So I took it slow and played it cool – all while holding onto the railing. Heck, I could do the opening theme to the old Dick Van Dyke Show without trying.

My wife loves to tell the story about an incident that showed how much alike my Dad and I were. Here’s the setup: We were at my parent’s house, sitting in the living room, which was by no means small, and which had a coffee table that Mom kept some plants on up against the wall. Dad left the room for something and on his way back banged his leg on the coffee table. He basically walked right into the table. Of course, we all laughed. You would think that after seeing that happen I would be a little more careful, but a few minutes later I went to the bathroom and on my way back, you guessed it; I banged my leg on the coffee table. I basically walked into the same table that was in the same place in the same room that Dad had just moments before! Like father like son, I guess.

So we get to my son’s friend’s house and he gets out of the car to go up to the house. I always wait until my kids get in the house before I leave because you just never know what may have come up in the time since they spoke to their friend. This particular house is a two-story house and he had to enter on the second floor, which required him going up a set of stairs to the door. I’m sitting in the car watching him and all of a sudden his foot caught the step wrong, he stumbled and went down. If I hadn’t been watching him the whole time, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed, because he was up in a flash. As soon as he was back on his feet, he looked over to check if I had seen what happened. I just pointed at him and laughed as he laughed, too. I then took out my cell phone and texted him a very simple message: “Like a swan”. Like father like son, I guess.

You know, it’s great when your kids say or do something that is intelligent, creative or just plain nice, and people say “Your son is just like you!” or “Your daughter reminds me of you!”. Those are the kinds of things I hope I never forget as I grow older. Walking into a table two minutes after my Dad did the same thing or watching my son trip going up the stairs after telling me how uncoordinated I was, those are things that I know I’ll never forget. Those are the things that make us who we are – real, klutzy and human.