The Pomp and Circumstance Is Over

The pomp and circumstance is over, the ensuing party complete. My son has graduated high school! The last half of the year was a battle, not because the classes were hard, but just getting him to get up and go to school was difficult. Somehow, even though he had zero motivation to be there and he put in as little effort as possible, he managed to graduate Magna Cum Laude. Much to the horror of his guidance counselor at school, he has no plans to go to a conventional four year college. I find this quite refreshing and courageous.

There is a sort of unwritten rule these days that you MUST go to college, especially if you’re considered smart in school. Kids are told from the time they hit middle school that you have to go to college if you want to make a decent living and not end up flipping burgers your whole adult life (no offense intended toward any burger flippers out there). There seems to be no choice; you go to college and you’ll get a great job, or you don’t go to college and you’ll be a loser. Granted, you have a better chance of getting a higher paying job with a college education, but as adults with a brain of our own we know this is not an absolute truth. We all know people who went to college and barely scrape by, and we all know people who never went to college or dropped out and are fairly wealthy. Besides, it’s not all about how much money you make, but about how much you like what you do. That seems to be missing in the discussion today.

When I was a senior in high school, I wanted to take a year off and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. It’s not that I didn’t want to go to college, I just didn’t have the money to go where I wanted, as my parents had told me in my senior year that they couldn’t give me any money for college. I also wasn’t sure what I wanted to go for. Well, actually, I did know what I wanted to go to college for, but it wasn’t what my parents, some of my family and friends, most of my teachers and my guidance counselor thought I should be doing. I wanted to be a writer, preferably a sports writer. I thought that would be a great career choice since I loved writing and I loved sports. Plus, I figured if I ever got married, I’d still have to go to the games (Sorry you don’t like me going to the Bruins game, dear, but I have to go. It’s my job!).

I was constantly being told I was too smart to be a writer, that I should be an engineer or an architect because I was very good in math, or I should go into accounting or finance. My thought was that I didn’t want to do any of those things, but I felt pressure from all sides to do something like that. I was also one of those kids that did what my parents told me to do – well, sometimes, but I didn’t like to go against them. I thought if I took a year off, maybe my parents would forget about what they thought I should do and just let me go for what I wanted to do. However, we all somehow came up with the money to pay for my first semester’s tuition and I never took the time to truly explore what I wanted to do.

Fast forward 35 years and here I am doing a job I like but don’t love, and thinking about writing most of the time. And I’ve felt like this for a number of years. So when my kids were small, I swore I wouldn’t push them to do something I wanted them to do or thought they’d be good at, and I would let them choose their career and be what they wanted to be (within reason, of course, I wouldn’t let them be an axe murderer or a drug dealer). So when my daughter told us that she wanted to take some time to figure out what she wanted to do after 3 semesters of college, we totally supported her decision. When she decided to go back to school after a year, we totally supported that decision, too. She’s going for what she wants to do, not what we told her to do. Now my son wants to pursue a career in the music field and I’m totally for it. He may be a musician or a producer – it’s what he wants to do and has a passion for.

I’m proud of both my kids as they make the transition to full-on adulthood. They’re exploring what they want to do with their lives and not letting the masses make them conform to some artificial norm. I wish I had had that kind of strength and courage when I was their age. Who knows, maybe I’d actually love what I do and you’d be reading my book instead of my blog!

Prom Disasters

As my son hurtles to the end of his high school career, barely motivated to get out of bed to go to school, I can’t help but think back to my senior year of high school. Like him, I really had nothing to go to school for. I didn’t need to pass any classes the second half of the year and I could still graduate. Passing wasn’t an issue, as I had taken fluff classes all year. I took a class called Tales of Mystery and Intrigue, where we read books, like Serpico. I took a class called Comedy and Satire, where we talked about things like The Three Stooges. I had no Math class, no Science class, and no French class. My senior year was pretty much a waste of time.

He’s also coming up to Prom season, and because he’s dating a girl a year younger, he’ll be going to the Junior Prom and the Senior Prom. Let’s be real, the girls think about it all the time and the guys for the most part couldn’t care less. At least that’s how it was when I was in high school. Maybe I’m just bitter after all these years, because both my Junior and Senior Proms were horrible. To say things didn’t go well would be an understatement.

The girl I was dating Junior year couldn’t wait for the prom. It was all she talked about for weeks. On the evening of the prom, we met up with another couple (her best friend and a guy that I had played soccer with, whom I’ll call Mike), took some pictures and then hung out with some other people for a while. We had one or two drinks with alcohol and Mike purposely made all the drinks kind of weak because none of us were big drinkers, especially the girls. Heck, I don’t think I was even slightly buzzed after two of them. We went to the Prom and after a short time my date went to the bathroom – and didn’t come back for over an hour. Apparently, she was getting sick…from the alcohol. I can’t even tell you how many dirty looks I got that night from outraged females, all suspecting that I had got her drunk for nefarious purposes. Disaster #1 in my Prom experience.

Senior year was no better. I had a girlfriend whom I liked very much and things seemed to be going pretty well. I honestly don’t even remember exactly what happened, but I think we had had an argument one night, and the next day a friend of hers overheard a comment I made, took it out of context and told her I didn’t want to go to the Prom with her. Me, being the dim-witted clod I was, didn’t realize anything was up until a day or two later when I talked to her and found out about what had happened. To make matters worse, she was going to go to the Prom with her old boyfriend because she thought I didn’t want to go with her. Disaster #2 in my Prom experience.

Feeling like I was going to be one of the few not going, I found out that a girl I had been friends with since Elementary School wasn’t going to the Prom either, so we ended up going together. We had been good friends, but not romantic, over the years so I figured we’d have a good time. Boy was I wrong. About ten minutes after we got there, she totally blew me off and left me to myself. I was a third wheel for most of the night, hanging out with people here and there until they went to dance …or whatever. On top of that, I had to see my now ex-girlfriend looking very pretty at the Prom with another guy (who, by the way, wanted to kick my butt). Disaster #3 in my Prom experience.

So as my son finishes up his last couple of weeks of high school, I hope he has a much better Prom experience than I did. Then again, it couldn’t be much worse.

No Home Phone

Starting this week, for the first time in my life, I will be without something that I never thought I could live without. My wife and I will be cutting the cord and getting rid of our home phone. Maybe at some point when I was very young, we didn’t have a phone, but as far back as I can remember it’s always been there. I can still remember the phone number I had growing up, even though no one in my family has used it in over twenty five years!

Thinking back, it’s like a trip down memory lane, a trip back to a much simpler time. In the old days, there were no cell phones, so you had to have a home phone. Oh, by the way, there was only one Phone Company back then, so you got what they offered and you paid what they told you. There weren’t any cool, sleek phones, just a few different colors. It hung on the wall and you had to dial the numbers on a rotary dial. Remember how long it took to do a 9 or a 0?

There was also no call waiting, so if you called someone and they were on the phone, you got a busy signal. I can tell you it was totally annoying when my friend, Bruce, would ask me to eat dinner at his house and when I tried to call my Mom, the phone was busy – forever! Okay, in all fairness, it was probably only 10 – 15 minutes, but it felt like forever when the food was almost ready and his Mom had already set a place for me at the table.

Which reminds me; we had a 15-minute limit on phone calls. With six of us living at home and everybody wanting to use the phone (except Dad, he really wasn’t much of a phone talker), there had to be some kind of rules. So my parents instituted an unofficial 15-minute time limit. I say unofficial because if no one else wanted to use the phone or no one was expecting a call, you could stay on longer. However, most nights the phone was in use from 7:00 to 10:00. I think we even had another rule that there were no phone calls after 10:00.

The cool thing about our old, on-the-wall phone was that the cord was extra long, so we could go out into the garage and talk in privacy. It really was not fun to be talking to a girl and have my older brothers making kissing noises or repeating what I said in a mocking tone. When my time was up, I’d get the “Say goodnight to Snooky Wookums” thing, or something similarly embarrassing, and they’d wait right there in front of me until I hung up. It’s probably those times (or because I’m like my Dad in some ways) that I really don’t like to talk on the phone today!

Another great memory I have is Mom sitting there doodling away while she was talking on the phone. She’d get on the phone, take a piece of paper or something from the mail, grab a pen, and start drawing. A little while later, she’d have the whole thing filled with designs and patterns. I thought, and still think, that her doodles were pretty cool. It appears she did get some of her mother’s artistic ability after all.

Saying goodbye is usually not easy, and this does feel kind of strange. However, the only calls we get on the home phone these days are telemarketers. Pretty much everybody else calls our cell phone or texts us. So even though there hasn’t been a cord for many years, we’re cutting the metaphorical cord and doing away with the home phone. Goodbye, and thanks for the memories.

Trying to Get Ahead

I get frustrated at times because it seems like whenever I start getting ahead a little financially, BAM!, something happens. Get a little money from my tax return? Oh, that loud noise was the washing machine refusing to wash any more clothes! Get a little reward at work for doing a good job? The mailman just delivered the updated quarterly real estate tax that went up by – look at that – the same amount as my reward! How about a raise at work? Oops, not even enough to keep up with inflation. It sometimes feels like the more money I get, the more bills I get without even buying anything. Maybe I should stop trying to get ahead.

This is an area I give my parents a ton of credit. It’s not like we had a lot of money when I was growing up, but they always seemed to figure out a way. Sometimes they didn’t pay a bill, or we had to get by for a couple of weeks on powdered milk (Warning: not for the faint of heart). If I ripped my jeans playing street hockey or football, I didn’t get a new pair. No, Mom put a patch on them or sewed up the tear and I was good to go. As Dad used to say, “As long as we have a roof over our heads, food on the table, and clothes on our back we’re OK.” It’s that simple.

Don’t get me wrong, there were times I knew we weren’t very well off, but for the most part I didn’t think about it much. That was mostly because my parents were so positive that everything would be OK. I also think a large part of it was that they didn’t even look to the things they couldn’t have. They didn’t think about getting a brand new car like some of the neighbors did every two or three years. A dependable used car in good shape that ran well was enough for them. They didn’t think about going out and buying the latest model television. Until the one we had was unwatchable or died, we didn’t get a new one. Taking a trip to Disney was out of the question. If we drove to my Aunt and Uncle’s house in New Hampshire, that was a vacation!

Looking back through somewhat fading eyes and with less than 20/20 vision, I think we were pretty happy as kids. We played together, we did stuff with friends in the neighborhood and we made do. Though a few of my friends seemed to have a lot of money, there were a lot of families in the same place as mine. We had a house to live in, rented or owned, we had three good meals a day (and a few snacks thrown in to boot), and we always had clothes to wear, even if they weren’t the newest and greatest fashion. I don’t think any of us really cared.

So why, forty years later, does it bother me that I’m not getting ahead? I think it may be that there are things that are almost within reach, that they’re just beyond my fingertips but I can see them. When you can’t even imagine buying a new car financially even if you may need one, it doesn’t bother you as much as when you have almost enough saved to do it. It seems like every commercial on TV is for cars when you’re getting tired of the one you have but can’t afford a newer one. It’s like the car industry is taunting you, daring you to buy a new one with their nobody-is-turned-down credit.

Thankfully, I can break the spell of the so called American Dream by just looking back over my life. Mom and Dad never lived the high life, never really got ahead financially, but they were happy. As a kid, I was happy with the little I had because I had something way more valuable – a family that loved each other. I don’t need more stuff or new stuff, I just need to be more grateful.

It really is that simple.

Let It Snow

We’ve gotten a lot of snow this winter here in the Northeast. The way people have been talking, you’d think we’ve been getting two to three storms per week, though if I really think back, that has happened only a couple of times. People I know, and even some I don’t know, have complained to me about the snow. It seems that a lot of people are sick and tired of the snow.

We haven’t really gotten that much snow the last couple of winters so maybe people are out of practice when it comes to winter, but come on, we live in the Northeast and it’s winter! It’s going to snow and it’s not always going to be at a convenient time. I get it to a certain point; you have to clear the walkway and the driveway, you have to clean off the cars, and then you have to drive to or from work in a snowy mess. It’s not all fun and games as an adult like it was when we were kids.

It seems to me that we used to get more snow when I was growing up than we do now. I don’t remember many winters where there wasn’t a decent amount of snow or when we weren’t able to be skating on the ponds. That was just part of growing up – or was it? I looked back and found a website that listed the annual snowfall in Boston, MA by month. Covering the years from when I can actually remember things up through high school, this is what I found:

 Season       Total (inches)

1966-67         60.1

1967-68         44.8

1968-69         53.8

1969-70         48.8

1970-71         57.3

1971-72         47.5

1972-73         10.3

1973-74         36.9

1974-75         27.6

1975-76         46.6

1976-77         58.5

1977-78         85.1

1978-79         27.5

Throw out 1972-73 as an outlier (what happened that year?) and 1977-78 (“The Blizzard of 1978” skewed those numbers) and we’ve averaged 46.3 inches per season. This season we’ve gotten 42 inches, so I’d say we’re pretty much average this year. Maybe some whiners around here need to get out and do some fun stuff in the snow instead of cursing their very life for living where it snows. Maybe the adults need to go back to their childhood and have some fun.

Winter didn’t stop us from going outside and having fun when we were growing up. We went skating, we went sledding, and we built snow forts and had snowball fights. We played Alaska, a game where we pretended we were in Alaska, caught in some huge blizzard, and we had to rescue someone. We made noises that we thought sounded like the wind, we threw snow up in the air to make it be like it was snowing out of control. We pretended we were rolling down the side of a mountain or, gasp, falling over the side of a cliff! Lucky for us, we had our buddies with us to keep us from plunging to our deaths.

We didn’t complain about the snow, that’s for sure. The more the better as far as we were concerned. It gave us more choices of what to do. And that’s what it comes down to for all the people who’ve been whining about the snow – choice. You can choose to see the negative (clearing the driveway, cleaning off the cars, driving in the snow) or you can choose to see the positive (the beauty of the bushes, trees, and lawns coated in white, sledding, skiing). I’m choosing to let my inner (winter) child enjoy the snow.