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.

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.