A Box of Nothing

As I went past the kitchenette area where I work, I noticed a box on one of the tables, the kind of box that looks like it holds some kind of treat. It could be cookies, or cake, it doesn’t really matter at 2:00 in the afternoon when something sweet would hit the spot. I put on the brakes and made a quick left into the kitchenette to get something before it was all gone. Yes, it was a bakery box!

I took one last look around to make sure no one was watching, like I was doing something wrong (it must be some kind of learned response from my younger years), opened the box, and…it was empty. Empty! Unless you count a few measly crumbs in the corners of the box, it was empty. What a letdown. I thought I was going to get at least a little sugar energy to help me through the afternoon, even if it was just half a cookie or pastry, or even a sliver of a cake or a pie. I felt like the box was taunting me, laughing at me as I walked away.

Why do people leave an empty treat box sitting on the kitchenette table like that? It’s such a tease and such a disappointment. One minute your imagining yourself eating a piece of chocolate cake, or munching a chocolate chip cookie, or being lucky enough to find even a quarter of a cinnamon bun, and the next you get air. A handful of nothing is what you end up with. I guess if you’re desperate, you eat the crumbs, but I wasn’t. Truth be told, I have too much pride to do that anyway.

I had lots of experience with finding something empty growing up in a big family. I cannot even tell you how many times I came into the house to get a cold drink of water, opened the freezer, and found one ice cube in the multiple trays. I’d take the one ice cube left in the top tray, and go to get another out of the next tray, only to find it empty. Someone actually left an empty ice cube tray in the freezer! If I complained to Mom or Dad about it, they told me it was wrong for someone to do that, but could I fill up both trays so the next guy didn’t get the same problem.

For some reason, my parents insisted on buying the ice cream that has vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry in the same package. None of us really liked strawberry, so when you went to get some cold, refreshing goodness in the summer, the vanilla and chocolate were totally gone, like they were never even there. I know, you’re thinking that the container wasn’t empty, that there was still some ice cream left, however, as far as we were concerned it was empty. None of us kids were going to eat the strawberry ice cream.

Mom also liked to get us the variety pack of cereal with the small boxes, which was great for the first week and maybe the second week. After that the only cereal left was Raisin Bran. I don’t know any kid that would take Raisin Bran over Frosted Flakes, or Sugar Pops, or any other sugar-laden cereal. The Raisin Bran would sit in the cabinet getting stale, unless one of us was desperate enough to take it and pick out all the raisins, throw a couple of spoonsful of sugar on it, maybe some sliced banana, pour in some milk, and only then eat it. That’s how you start your day with a good breakfast!

I could go on. There were 99.99% empty potato chip bags; containers of milk, Zarex, or soda with, at most, a mouthful of liquid left; toilet paper rolls with one square left on them and paper towel rolls with no sheets left on them; boxes of holiday chocolates with the only leftovers the kind that old ladies like (my apologies to all the Grandmothers out there). Letdowns one and all.

Over time, though, these letdowns have faded into the background because over time I’ve learned what is more important, that being family. Tasty treats, ice cream, ice cubes, even toilet paper, won’t always be there, but I know my family will.

Pains

I work for a software company and work in an office so I don’t do any physical work, unless you call carrying my laptop to a meeting physical work. I can also work from home and connect to the office, so if I’m not feeling so great, I can still work. I don’t get sick too often anyway, so I don’t miss many days from work. Add to all that the fact that no one in the media is following me around or analyzing every move I make and I’d say I have a pretty cushy work life. 

Sometimes I feel bad for professional athletes, especially in sports-obsessed cities like Boston. As a former wannabe athlete, I can tell you that no one wants to get hurt and they don’t want anyone to know they got hurt. So these guys play when they’re hurt (hello Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins) and don’t let on as to how bad they really are. At times, they’re not playing well and we find out later that they’ve been battling a serious injury for days or weeks. Then in cases where someone is hurt and they’re perceived as not toughing it out and still playing, they’re ripped in the media and on every sports talk show by every know-it-all “expert” alive (hello pretty much all the major league baseball players).

When I was in high school I hurt my throwing arm at the beginning of the baseball season but I didn’t tell the coach because I wanted to play. When I couldn’t throw the ball from shortstop to first base anymore the coach finally asked me what the heck was wrong with me. When I told him my arm was killing me he wanted to know why I hadn’t told him earlier. I told him that it hadn’t been that bad until the last couple of days and that I wanted to play. What I didn’t tell him was that I had a childhood incident that haunted me and wouldn’t let me say I was hurt.

We were having one of our neighborhood softball games in our backyard on a nice sunny day. We had about five guys on each team, including three of my older brothers. We had been playing for a while and we took a break to get some water. In those days we didn’t go in the house to get a drink of water, we drank the water right out of the hose. There was nothing like a cold drink out of the hose on a hot summer day. Plus, you could soak your hat or your shirt and stay cooler longer. Mom wouldn’t have let us do that at the kitchen sink.

We all got our drinks and went back to the game. However, I think that I drank too much water because when I started running around again I got a really bad stomach ache. When it was my team’s turn in the field, I couldn’t even stand up straight so I lay down on a picnic bench. I guess no one on my team noticed because the inning started and the first batter hit an easy ground ball right to the spot I should have been in. Needless to say, my brother that was pitching was not happy when he saw me laying on the bench.

When he asked me what I was doing over there laying on the bench, I didn’t quite know what to say so I responded in a pitiful voice “I’ve got pains!” When everyone stopped laughing five minutes later, the mocking began. For the next few minutes after that, I was treated to “I’ve got pains” being said in high pitched voices or like a 3-year old. I was just a kid myself, but I was humiliated. I think I heard that wonderful phrase from my brothers for the next five years whenever I felt sick or got hurt doing something.

So when my coach asked me why I hadn’t told him I was hurt it was kind of a matter of pride. I guess in some small way, I didn’t want him to make fun of me for having a sore arm. In retrospect, I probably humiliated myself by not being able to reach first base from shortstop. I don’t know, maybe some professional athletes had similar situations to mine when they were kids and as adults their pride kicks in, too, and they play hurt.

I’m glad that I don’t get sick much and I can take a day off when I need to without being made fun of or mocked. I just hope that as I head into my senior years I don’t have to lie down on a bench somewhere because “I’ve got pains.” 

Puddling

My son and I went to our local D’Angelo’s sandwich shop recently, as it is one of his favorite places to eat. Since I drink a lot of water, I had to go to the men’s room, as usual. As I was washing my hands I noticed one of those “Employees MUST wash their hands” signs. Ya think? There’s probably some state law that says that all restaurants have to put one of those signs in the restrooms, but do we really need a law to tell food handling employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom? Shouldn’t everybody be washing their hands before they leave the bathroom? That is something I was taught as a child and have now taught my kids to do.

As a matter of fact, when I was a kid, washing my hands after using the bathroom might turn into an extended play time. I’d bring some of my little army men and my GI Joe action figure (boys didn’t play with dolls even then) into the bathroom with me, fill up the sink with water and make up all kinds of scenarios. Sometimes they were all just having fun, going swimming in some lake. I’d line them up around the sides of the sink and each one would take a turn jumping in. The more daring men would jump off the cup holder or the soap dish, sometimes doing amazing dives with five or six flips before they hit the water. Sometimes the little army men were the bad guys and GI Joe would come and wipe them all out, throwing them into the water with loud screams and splashes. Sometimes GI Joe was the evil giant and all the good little army men would fight him until he plummeted to his death in the cold water below, but not before a few of the good guys met their demise there, too.

I would also take some of my Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars in with me and play with them in the sink. Sometimes one of the drivers would take a turn too fast, skid around the corner and then drop from the cliff into the ocean below, screaming until the car hit the water. Sometimes the sink was just a big car wash and nobody got hurt or died! Of course, those episodes were not as fun or exciting as the others. And of course I had to do the sound effects. The conversations of the participants, the shots being fired, the tires screeching and the men screaming until they hit the water, mostly done out loud but sometimes only in my head. When the water got too dirty or started getting too cold, I’d put all the guys in the sink, open the drain plug and they’d all fight for their lives as all but one or two got sucked to their death in the whirlpool.

Then I’d refill the sink with water and…usually Mom would come to the bathroom door and ask, “Are you puddling?” That’s what she called our playing in the bathroom sink, puddling. She’d let us puddle for a while and have some fun, but not with multiple sinks full of water. You see, we had only one bathroom for all eleven of us, so someone would want to use the bathroom at some point. And if not, Mom wasn’t going to let us waste that much water. She must have noticed me go in there, heard the toilet flush and the water running in the sink and me not coming out. So when I ran the water the second time – which could have been five minutes or fifty minutes, I was totally lost in the moment and really don’t know how long it was – that was enough time and water for her.  

Most likely Mom wasn’t too mad, though. I probably had the cleanest hands, army men, GI Joe and toy cars in the neighborhood. Something a Mom could be proud of. Unfortunately, we, as a family, almost certainly had the highest water bill in the neighborhood. I guess you take the good with the bad. These days I don’t have any little green army men and my GI Joe action figure is long gone, but every so often while I’m washing my hands I’ll let the soap or the toothpaste take a dive into the lake below. And they’ll be screaming all the way down until they hit the water with a final splash!