I'll Miss it Here

Tomorrow will be my last day at my current position here in Watertown, Massachusetts. As a send off, a bunch of coworkers took me out for drinks. I got the night off from father duties in order to really take advantage of the night.

I was pleasantly surprised at the turn out. You gotta love it when you reach for your wallet and they tell you to put that thing away. I stayed out late, drank more than I have in who knows how long, then drove to my faraway home in boonesville. By the way, I know it's irresponsible to drink and drive, but like Sam Kinison once said, I don't want to drink and drive; it's just that there's no other way to get the fucking car back to the fucking garage.

By the way, Sam was eventually killed by a drunk driver.

That's no joke.

So I am trying not to think about it, but I'm really going to miss these guys. Tomorrow I'll be going out to lunch with the crew, so today was my last trip to the Meat Spot deli, where I have gone faithfully for almost a year now. They are the best people; Dick and Harry are the Armenian brothers that own it. Karen, Dick's wife, always has a smile and book recommendations for me. Their daughter works during the summer once in awhile, and has Karen's looks and personality -- cute as a button (and miraculously only in eighth grade). I brought a coworker who just started yesterday with me, and introduced him as my replacement. Harry though... he's my favorite. Quiet, unassuming, a perfect gentleman, the kind of guy you love to make laugh. As they bid me heartfelt goodbyes, I promised to bring my wife in sometime to meet them. Walking back to my car, I have to admit that I felt a little misty.

I'm getting sentimental in my old age. Good people are never to be taken for granted.

Eight Random Facts about Me

I've been tagged by Toni, Shawn and Jason. It's about time I got on with it.

1. I was one of the last kids in my school to swear off Sesame Street. When I was in eighth grade, I still had a stack of 45 RPM records with such famous hits as the Sesame Street theme song, Somebody Come and Play, I Love Trash, I've Got Two Eyes, and Big Bird's alphabet song (the one where he finds the alphabet chalked onto the sidewalk and thinks its one big word). I couldn't get enough. While the world dreamed of living in a yellow submarine, I was playing games at the ladybug picnic.

I put them away for good when my step-brother announced it to my schoolmates.

The great sadness of my childhood was that Ernie, Bert, Grover, Oscar, Big Bird, Kermit, Cookie Monster, The Count (ah, ah), et al were not real. I dreamed of a living, breathing Muppet world and vowed when I was in sixth grade to bring them to life, so I bought a science book from the grade above me and read it from cover to cover. When I finally went to college, Robotics seemed like too much math, so I settled for a generic computer programming degree instead.

2. When I was in fifth grade, all the neighborhood girls three or more years younger than myself had crushes on me. Nobody my own age, of course. So I set up a kissing booth thinking to make a few dollars. This created a "swarm" of about fifteen girls, so I crawled on top of a mobile home trailer and dangled my hand. The first stepped up and pecked at it like a woodpecker until I jerked it back and closed up shop.

There was another girl that was older than me that always referred to me as dimples. She always greeted me on the bus as such, then laughed as I squirmed and turned red. If she ever saw me around the neighborhood, she would chase me, threatening to kiss me if she caught me. I was too fast.

3. I've always had a dream, and not so coincidentally, same too with my father. Thankfully, I at least was instilled with a worker gene.

4. In college, while wrestling with Jeff Gordon, I threw him onto his guitar, snapping the neck clean off it. I didn't have money or any access to money, so he took my skis as collateral until such a time as I had it fixed. At the end of the school year, situation unchanged, I took my skis back. He asked, "How do I know you'll make good?" I answered, "You don't."

That summer a friend bet me that he could shimmy up the side of a skinned log we had stuck in the ground as the first ingredient of a home-made crane. He didn't make it five feet. Instead of paying me, he offered a guitar that he had taken from a previous business partner who had screwed him out of some money. I accepted. The next semester started without me in attendance, but I took a special trip to Washington State University in order to make good on my word. The guitar was far superior in quality and sound to the one I had broken. It even had built-in pickups for plugging into an amp. I was feeling quite magnanimous as I handed him the guitar in a beautiful, hard-shell case.

Jeff picked it up, strummed it once, leaned it against the wall and said, "Thanks. I've got a lot of homework to do, so if you don't mind…"

5. I have an obsessive personality, whatever that means. For example, when I finally got it in my head that I wanted to play guitar, I drove everyone absolutely bat shit crazy talking about it. I played Johnny B. Goode in my room over and over until Dave Haase finally told me to play something else. Then I went through a Doors phase. In college it was The Wham Rap, which led to Lip Synch. Later, much later, in the bars, happy hour, after work, it was Karaoke. Then it was La Fonda Del Sol where a band had me sing Cover of the Rolling Stone. Then it was softball. Now it's writing. I talked a lot about it as recently as a month ago, but now, for some reason, I don't blather on about it, preferring now to get something done and let the work do the talking for me.

6. I'm phenomenal at making new friends. Keeping them… now that's the trick.

7. At forty two, I think I'm finally over high school. Maybe.

8. I have an infinite capacity to love and forgive, and I often wonder why people don't see that. Then again, maybe they do.

I'm supposed to tag eight people, so here goes: Tee, Mr. Schprock, Beth, Jen, Natalie, Toast, Peter, Unlucky Girl. I'm not sure if the last two would even be interested, but I think they would be interesting.

Coach Johnson

I don't know if I've told this story before, but all this discussion of junior sports, about winning and effort and what's important, has got me thinking about a time when effort meant more to my coach that the actual results.

Damn if I'm not forgetting my team name at the time, but I was in sixth grade in Akron, Ohio. We were playing the best team in our league. They could hit and field, and didn't have a weak player on their team. At least that was my impression. They would eventually take the championship trophy home. But on this day, they had to go through us.

We were pumped. Though we were huge underdogs, in our hearts we knew we could beat them. I played first base, and can still remember the intensity I felt on the field. The only play I can remember was a line drive shot over my right shoulder. I reached up with my glove hand (my left) and pulled it down to end their inning.

It was electric. We really came to play.

But in the end, we lost.

There were two traditions after any little league game in those days. You shook hands, and then the winners went for soft serve ice cream at the custard stand.

Shaking hands was always a perfunctory ritual. Get in a line, shuffle forward, slap hands on the way by muttering "Good game, good game, good game..." But today, as we passed by, I got real hand shakes. I felt the relief, saw it in their faces, heard it in their voices. "Great game, oh my God! That was close, nice snag you had there..."

Still.

Heads low, we gathered around the coach as he called us in for the obligatory speech. I'll try to reconstruct it, but keep in mind that this is only a reflection of the emotion I can still feel after all these years, after the details have faded away.

"You boys played one tough game out there today."

I thought, "Yeah, but not good enough."

"I have never been more proud of you than I am right now. By all rights you should have won that game, and it's only by dumb luck that you didn't. You played your hearts out."

He looked at each one of us, making sure we were paying attention. There was no mistaking his sincerity. "Now I'm not supposed to do this, but..."

We perked up like dogs hearing a sound outside the human range.

"I'm taking you all out for ice cream."

Today we have a thousand flavors to choose from, but back then it was chocolate and vanilla. I've probably sampled each of those myriad flavors since; but never, ever, has an ice cream tasted so sweet as that plain vanilla cone did that day.

His name was Paul Johnson. I'm betting that his son, Paul Johnson, Jr., my erstwhile friend, classmate and teammate, is a little league coach today.

A Word of Explanation

I'm getting the feeling from the response to my last post that I've sold myself as a different kind of person than I am.

I love kids.

And many of you know that. But I have to be clear on one point. As a coach, if I have six kids on the field and six sitting, the six that are on the field need to be playing to the best of their ability. I don't mean to say they should be the best in the league, and not even the best they can be. But they better be out there trying and paying attention. Or they will be pulled out until they get that.

I'm not going to be responsible for scarring kids for life, and if you ask any parent whose kid is on my team, you would not get one of them saying that I'm being unfair in any way. I had one parent observe that his kid hadn't played in a quarter, but one kid has to sit every quarter of a game, and that has to cycle through every kid in my team. The only criticism you could level, and one that would fall on deaf ears, is that I don't make my best players sit out.

A game is about having fun. On that we all agree. Where people diverge is on what the definition of fun is. Fun for me is hard play, and yes, winning. Winning is fun. There I said it. Winning is FUN. Losing is not fun. The trick is balancing a winning strategy while spreading the play time around to all the kids involved.

So, to be clear, I have several players on my team that have absolutely no soccer skills. They can't kick, pass, stop a ball or get in someones way. They simply do not exist on the soccer field. They get equal playing time, and when they make a play, any play, coach Scott is out there letting them know.

But, I'll admit that I did want to have an assembly of kids that could really play the game, mostly so that my son could know what it was like to be on a team of crackerjacks. I still remember when I was a kid and won a little league championship. The feeling was beyond description, and it lasts a lifetime. And it doesn't happen to everyone, and maybe I'm hopping on that ride too soon. But I promise that I'm not taking it out on the kids, that they are having fun, and I would rather shoot myself through the head than to give them a bad experience of the scarring variety.

We've all had them. I'll never forget mine, and I won't be responsible for dishing them out. I still want to win my games. I give it my all just like I want my kids to give me theirs.

Sweet and Sour Weekend

Mother's Day we took my wife to the Brimfield Antique Show. I was prepared for an extremely boring day of shopping. As it turns out, it was kind of neat. The proprietors of each station are some kind of hybrid between carnies and deadheads, selling some pretty random shit. I should have kept a notebook of some of the more obscure, such as a child's toy that I remember from my own childhood. It was one of those panels that have a series of knobs that click, whir and ding, a rotary telephone dial. Funny thing is, for as old as it is, my kids zoned in and went to work on it. I had to pull them away.

One station had old band equipment, used up trombones and tubas. There were ancient baseball mitts, catchers gear, helmets, and bats. Arrows with the guide feathers stripped. Crazy. And old man scrutinized us as we sifted through the trash. As we left, he seemed angry that we didn't buy anything, picking up the tuba and slamming it with a thundering crash back onto the pile of twisted brass.

I ended up buying a collection of old pinup art of sexy ladies in embarrassing situations, such as the time Marilyn Monroe stepped over the street vent, and she had to hold her hands down in front of her to keep it from blowing up. My wife is still trying to figure out why.

The day before, on Saturday, my son had his sixth game of the soccer season. You may already know that I am coaching this team.

Now this is where some of you are going to diverge on your opinion of me. This is an under eight league, meaning that the kids are only seven years old. I am all about having fun; but fun for me is all about winning. I could amend that by saying that I can take losing as long as our effort was a hundred percent. But to me, there is no sense in playing anything unless you are there to play.

There is another coach in the league that handpicked her team and gave everyone what was left over. When I was asked to coach originally, I was able to have a few choice players as well. My aim was to have a team that could compete on game day, so my son could have that experience. Last year the coach didn't care, and it trickled down to the players. I could see it on the kids' faces that they didn't like losing.

So once I had my team in place, the aforementioned coach didn't like that my team looked so good, and it got around that I was stacking my team (I know this sounds ridiculous, we are talking about kids here--I get it). So, I gave one of the other teams that didn't have many talented kids basically my best player. So, the aforementioned coach decided that she had a kid she didn't want, so she gave him to me.

That same player's father this weekend complained to me when we were up five to four with three minutes left in the game that his son hadn't played in a while. It was true, but one kid needs to sit per quarter due to the number of kids on my team. It was his turn. However, I acquiesced, and put his son in the game, the same kid that just earlier was contemplating the mystery of a hole in the ground while he should have been defending.

The other team tied it up. Then, when we got the ball back, this kid gets the ball and dribbles it backward, toward our goal. He passes it to the other team, and they scored the winning goal.

I have been going back and forth about this in my head. My whole goal for this season has been dashed. Now I have to be a smiley bobble head and say that it's just about the kids and having fun.

But I tell you what, I could have strangled that kids father. At the same time, I'd hate to be in his shoes.

Oh, by the way, my son is totally digging baseball. We bought a new bat and a cool batters helmet, and suddenly he thinks he's Big Papi.

The No Asshole Rule

This is the kind of thinking that made America great, the lack of which has made us a country of simpering milquetoasts.

The following is an excerpt a Publishers Weekly review of the book, The No Asshole Rule:

This meticulously researched book, which grew from a much buzzed-about article in the Harvard Business Review, puts into plain language an undeniable fact: the modern workplace is beset with assholes. Sutton (Weird Ideas that Work), a professor of management science at Stanford University, argues that assholes—those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their aggression on the less powerful—poison the work environment, decrease productivity, induce qualified employees to quit and therefore are detrimental to businesses, regardless of their individual effectiveness. He also makes the solution plain: they have to go. Direct and punchy, Sutton uses accessible language and a bevy of examples to make his case, providing tests to determine if you are an asshole (and if so, advice for how to self-correct), a how-to guide to surviving environments where assholes freely roam and a carefully calibrated measure, the "Total Cost of Assholes," by which corporations can assess the damage. Although occasionally campy and glib, Sutton's work is sure to generate discussions at watercoolers around the country and deserves influence in corporate hiring and firing strategies.

There is some hope after all.

Healing Smile

I really, really hate the snow, and the cold, the ticks, the mosquitoes, opening and closing the pool, and even the neighborhood where I live, the neighbors that form against you for whatever reasons secret reasons they have (could it be because I voted for Darth Bush, the creator of terrorism?).

This place kinda grows on you though. Nothing worthwhile comes easy, as they say.

I spend a lot of time around the kids, and it makes me sad to think that someday, every last blame one of them will be crusted over by the time they reach adulthood. Maybe I'm being cynical. The world has a way of doing that to you.

There's a new girl in the office: young, blond, pretty. I've tried to say hi here and there, but when she passes me in the hall, she looks away. She seems a bit unnerved by me. I think, "Do I exude the stalker vibe?"

But after she accompanied me and the guys for a few coffee walks here at the office, she's opened up to me in particular. "Has anyone ever told you," she asked me, "that you are a bit intimidating?"

That sounds a lot like my dad. Mean looking, hard edge, soft creamy center, hard core.

"But then when you smile," she said, "I see that you are OK."

I'm really getting into the rhythm of coaching soccer. At first I was shy. Who wants to listen to me anyway? And where does that negative thinking come from? The same negative thinking turns the corners of my mouth down, and I peer at passersby, as if to say, "Don't fuck with me or you will pay!"

Wow. You would think I'd spent time in prison, or kicked in doors in Baghdad and watched my friends get cut down in routine raids. Is life really all that bad? The answer is, for some, yes, but for an average Joe like me, not even close. But then I think it's precisely because my hackles are up that I don't get eaten by the wolves.

But when I see the faces of those children, the kids who run up and down that field for me on Saturday mornings, I feel like I'm doing something important, and it heals me in a small way.

There are two girls on my team that have never played soccer before. One of them, Caroline, jumped in front of the opposing offense, stole the ball, and dribbled it a quarter of the field, approximately three kicks, before losing it to the last defender. I cheered my head off, ran out and gave her a high five. Previous to that, she was nearly comatose out there. She tasted success, and I let her know I noticed.

You should have seen her smile.

A New Job

As a courtesy to all who enter his contest, Jason gives honest critical feedback to all contestants that request it. I took him up on his offer, and found it to be quite helpful. Little things make a big difference in reader perception.

So thanks Jason. I really appreciate your honesty and your commitment to writing and to the community you've fostered.

In other news, I just gave a month's notice to my current employer. I've just accepted an offer from another company whose software developers, and any other of their employees for that matter, are completely remote. They don't even have an office.

This was the first step in what will likely be our departure from Massachusetts once we are able to sell our home. Roughly translated, we could be here for a while, or we could be out of here in a flash.

I've made some good friends here where I work. I never expected to. Past experiences at the work place have conditioned me to keep to myself, to keep my opinions close to the vest. In short, I was starting to feel I'd gone the way of the dodo, the rotary telephone, the cassette tape, or VHS. It turns out that I may have overreacted.

I'll be posting more about that later. Let's just say there are some difficulties that must be overcome before I leave. But the most important hurdle has been cleared. I have a job.

Prom

I've said it before, that in high school, I was invisible to the upper crust. And I totally get it, especially looking back at some of my old photos. If you know anything about me, perhaps by being a long time reader, or having grown up with me, watching me make my mistakes and learning from them ever so slowly, then you would too.

I didn't even bother to ask anyone to the junior or senior prom. It would have been better had I just been a total geek, which I may have been, but not in my mind. I played football and put the jocks on their backs, but I couldn't put that damn basketball into the hoop or dribble for shit; I had the stamina of a tree sloth and was utterly baffled by the curve ball since eighth grade (a story for another time).

I didn't think I needed to work for anything, and couldn't understand as the years went past, why everybody else was stronger, faster and better than me at everything.

My sense of humor was childish; much like it can be today, which makes me a pretty damn funny dad to have. High school nearly squashed me flat. It tried to take the smile from my face, but I wouldn't let it.

But they won in many ways. I spent way too much time worrying about what the kings and queens of that society thought about me, instead of focusing on what I had. And believe me, I had plenty. I could have been happy, but I dwelt on what I didn't have. It ate at me from the inside. It wasn't until my ten year reunion that I realized how much, and finally began the process of letting go.

Like Lime Disease, it's a sickness that will always linger. Perhaps that's why I get so messed up about losing a contest, and worry about what my friends will think.

So prom wasn't even on my radar. Even then, in the height of self-denial, I knew enough to stay away.

So now, some twenty four odd years later, someone finally asked me to go to prom with her. Being the self actualized fellow that I am, perhaps now I am ready to face the music. Be warned, Beth: I've got two left feet.

It's Not Easy

I'm trying to put it delicately, without seeming like a poor sport, that in all of Jason's contests, my name has never even been mentioned. It takes me a couple days each time to get over it. Not only is it a blow to my self esteem, but I think it damages my image with my fellow writers, who at one point may have thought I had some talent.

This isn't a pull for sympathy. It just is what it is. I know for a fact when I enter that I won't be recognized, and yet I put myself out there, telling myself that I don't care, but hoping secretly that this time will be different.

This business, the one that I hope to be part of someday, is all about rejection. I have to be able to take it. But it isn't easy.

Scarlett Johansson is Too Funny

My wife and I were totally blown away by this Saturday Night Live skit. Check it out.

Big Papi

This weekend was Jackson's first day of rookie league baseball practice. I basically had to drag him there.

That will probably make a lot of parents cringe, and there are several of us that had parents that were rabid sports fans, that basically did the same thing, forcing their boys to play sports they had an interest in.

I get it. I really do.

But instinct is telling me to make him play.

Here's my thinking. My son is a negative thinker. I have to work on that, but his answer to almost any question is the opposite of what he thinks you want him to say. Unless he is wholeheartedly convinced that the upcoming activity is one that he will love more than a hot steaming stack of pancakes, he will refuse to do it. And nine times out of ten, when he does it, he loves it.

It doesn't always work that way, but if you were the kind that plays life by the odds...

The first time I hit a home run, it took me totally by surprise. I wore the green uniform of the Jaguars, a fifth grade little league team in Akron, Ohio. Everyone else had been playing since they were in tee-ball, but this was my first year. I didn't realize that when the ball goes into the deep weeds, it was an automatic home run. As I rounded third base, the base coach laughed himself to coughing as I booked by at top speed, he trying to tell me to slow down.

I shared the home run title with Mark McKenzie.

There might be better feelings in the world, but if I had to choose one to hold on to, that might be the one. Your team meets you at home plate, and suddenly, where you were just one of the guys, for a while, you are the only guy, the hero of the moment.

I've hit others since, and of course now I've learned to trot, and treat it like another day at the office, but it still feels great.

I can't explain that to my son. But I know in my heart that when he takes that first stroll around the bases, he will know. He might not thank me right then, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he will remember the time that dad dragged him to practice.

Or not.

That's the gamble.

So during practice, Jackson, like all the players, filled out a questionnaire, determining how much he knew about the game.

Oops. I watch football, and can't really be bothered with watching baseball, though it's my favorite sport to play. I felt like I had failed him in a small way.

Name: Jackson
Nickname: Dominick (I scratched this out and wrote: Jax)
Thing you like least about baseball: Red Sox
Favorite baseball team: Red Sox
Favorite baseball player: Tom Brady

He heard me telling his mother about this and said defensively, "Well I don't know anything about baseball!"

Great, I was making fun of my son. "No, Jackson," I said, "I thought it was really cute."

He seemed mollified by this. I continued, "It's my fault because I've never once even watched a game with you."

I turned on the TV, and wouldn't you know that the Red Sox were playing the Yankees. Perfect.

I paused the TiVo when they showed the line up and explained everything that we saw. He snuggled next to me on the couch, and I was surprised to find that he was getting into it. Not to mention that, being in first grade, he is able to read progressively harder words as the year goes by.

"What does DH mean?"

"Designated Hitter." I looked at the player name playing DH, and it was none other than David Ortiz. "Now if you want to have a favorite player, you could do a lot worse than Big Papi. He is always smacking homers in clutch situations."

And then, as if by divine intervention, Big Papi crushed the ball over the right field fence, putting the Sox ahead, where they would stay for the rest of the game.

Yesterday he told me that he wants to see a game, and that maybe we could bring our mits, catch a ball, and have Big Papi sign it.

Never Eat the Worm

Update: It's up!

Here is my entry, entitled Never East the Worm, soon to be up on Jason's blog.

Back aching, he woke on a cold linoleum floor. His brain seemed over inflated, throbbing in his skull, threatening to burst.

Sitting up too fast, the hot hand of nausea clenched his guts. A belch erupted from the pit of his stomach, spewing bile into his throat, raking as if he had coughed up a cactus.

No mistaking the day-after taste: Mezcal.

One eye felt like it was glued shut. Peering through the slit of the other, glaring sunlight scorched his vision like a point of light from a child's magnifying glass.

He lifted the object in his hand before him. Something was caked onto his arm, cracking like eggshell as he moved it.

His good eye popped wide open.

He held a cook's knife, covered in the same dried-on blood that spanned the length of his arm.

His shirt was ripped.

A garbage can was tipped.

A curtain was torn from the wall.

In a haze, he stumbled along a trail of blood and broken glass into the next room, where it led to the lifeless body of the girl he suddenly recognized.

Sobbing uncontrollably, he tossed the knife and collapsed to his knees beside the girl he had hooked up with the night before.

The room exploded with laughter.

He whirled to see a group of his frat brothers, braying like donkeys.

The corpse couldn't hold it any longer. Sitting up and putting a hand to his shoulder, she chided, "The look on your face is just priceless!"

Unlucky Friend

After a fair amount of hair pulling, I've finally convinced a friend here at the office to start her own blog. She's had an interesting life to say the least, so I am expecting to read some great stories from her.

Check her out at Life of the Unlucky Girl. Her emails at work are rife with personality, so I can only imagine what she's going to do with this blog as she learns how to give it some pizazz. She won't learn it here, that's for sure!

Also, Jason is sponsoring the latest of his writing contests, so be sure to check it out. I have participated in all of them, and I have taken something from each one, even though I haven't placed--not yet anyway. Maybe this will be the one.

As much as I would like to win, I have to stress that Jason has created a community, and is a fair judge and skilled writer in his own right. So enter if you will, but I speak for all the entrants when I say that any comment made is greatly appreciated. Writing is an exposure, and anyone who does it is vulnerable to the void. So fill it with words of encouragement if you have the time.

Footprints

I had an interesting thought this weekend.

Have you ever wished you could know more about your parents throughout their lives? The way they used to think when they were your age, how they met, who they voted for in past elections, who the bully was in their school, what they thought of you when you were born. How about your grandparents, and their parents?

It's sad isn't it, that our lives pass in obscurity, leaving only the faintest of clues behind for posterity. My mother for instance, will be totally forgotten when I pass away. My kids only know her from a picture on a wall, and from the few stories I've told that are rated G for general audiences.

In the old days, before the telephone, before email, and even before the telegraph, the only way to say I love you to someone far away was by mail. A lot of what we know about George Washington is based largely on his correspondences with friends and relatives.

Here is an excerpt of a letter he wrote to Martha Washington upon learning some big news:

My Dearest,
I am now set down to write to you on a subject which fills me with inexpressable concern-and this concern is greatly aggravated and Increased when I reflect on the uneasiness I know it will give you-It has been determined by Congress, that the whole Army raised for the defence of the American Cause shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon me the Command of it.

If I could only read a single paragraph from a family member's point of view on any subject of the past, I would feel connected in a small way. But technology took that away from us. How cool would it be able to listen to past phone conversations, for instance. But barring some miraculous national wire tapping and archive scandal, that's not going to happen. History of that nature is just not available to us.

But what if your parents had a blog? Could the internet be taking us full circle?

Natalie, aka the Magnetbabe, claims that she is not a writer, but her readers would certainly beg to differ. The mere act of writing itself technically makes one a writer, and as with any kind of exercise, constant repetition makes one better at it.

I find it ironic that the same technology that isolated us from the community is pushing us back toward it, hearkening back to a time when words were the footprints on the paths we once walked.

Thinking Blogger Award

Jaye Wells has once again proven herself a blogger of impeccable taste by including me in her list Thinker Blogger Award favorites.

Here is what she had to say:

My favorite part of Scott's blog is when he talks about his life. He has a warped sense of humor that I appreciate. He's also painfully honest about himself, which is refreshing. Not sure if Scott and I could be related. Instead, he'd be more like that slightly nerdy but cute guy I might have dated in high school. The one I still wonder about.

Thanks Jaye.

The Thinking Blogger Award is an effort to build a network of blogs linked together outside of the usual search engines. Here is how it works (sort of like a meme):

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that tickle your grey matter.

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme;

3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative gold version if silver doesn't fit your blog).

So now it's my turn to award my own favorites. This is where it gets difficult. If your link is on my sidebar, then you can consider yourself a winner. My new policy is to keep only those that I visit and participate with, if only sparing in the days of late. But that would be a cop out of weenie proportions.

Scott's Thinking Blogger Favorites

1. The Schprock Report - No surprise here, for anyone that has been with me for any length of time. He's been busy lately, so we don't get treated with the trappings of his brilliant mind, but Mr. Schprock has to be the most talented writer I know. Why he isn't a sports writer or a humor columnist for the Boston Globe is beyond me. He has a photographer's eye for life's funny moments.

2. The Perfect Neurotic - I've been with Beth since my own inception. Speaking of brutal honesty, Beth can really lay it out there. The first post I read of hers related the story of her first sexual experience with a boy who basically followed the tenets of the four F's. Find 'em, Feel 'em, (you know what)'em, and Forget 'em. I can't stress enough that, when Beth gets in that mood, no matter the length of the post, you will be glued to your seat.

3. Magnetbabe - Natalie will someday be a Nobel Peace Price winning scientist. Sure, today she is but a student, but watch out for this one. She writes from the heart, whether about caring for stray dumpster kitties or a good friend that she recently lost to cancer. Natalie has the word power to make me regret the loss of a man I have never met.

4. Meanderings in Hicksville - Feel free to reuse this one Mr. Schprock, as Trina is the author of his top shelf blog. And it's no wonder. Trina creates phrases that have heft of popular expression, and has a personality that leaps from the screen. How she does it day after day is a mystery to me. Perhaps Trina is really a panel of writers under common direction.

5. Zombieslayer - Recently back in the game, Zombie is all about political incorrectness and spirited debate, but ever the consummate gentleman. Do not let the look of his avatar fool you. He is a deep thinker, and has my vote should he ever run for office.

There are so many more, I promise you.

Now, I'm off to the Big Apple Circus and am almost out of time. Sorry if some of my tributes seemed rushed. But, you know, they were.

Glad to be Home Again

I'm realizing with some regret that I've moved on from my family. Physically of course, but philosophically as well. My dad has always had dreams of becoming rich, but he has always lacked the common sense it takes to harness the momentum that he has made an art of building. I used to look at him with three-d glasses, but now, without them, he's just a fuzzy mess.

God, I feel guilty.

He's all promise and no delivery. Like when I was a boy. He waxed poetic about college, how I was going, and he was paying my way through. But when the time came, we were living in a trailer without the proverbial pot to piss in. Far from having any money saved, he took from me what little I had. Not that I would have spent it wisely. I was too much like him to think ahead.

And still, part of me can't bear the thought of sacrificing a thing for tomorrow. I thrive on the last minute save.

My family is just like my wife's in one aspect. Both dump the entire weight of a failed and frustrated life upon their children. This weekend we spent Easter at my grandma's home, which politically is a controversial move. Dad figures that he's the head of the family now that Grandpa has passed away, but we will not stay with him.

Why?

Let me count the ways.

On our last visit, his St. Bernard bit my youngest son. It turns out, thankfully, that the dog was only posturing. I blogged about it when it happened. But the scare at the time, the helplessness I felt… All just to make my daddy feel loved.

He swears that the house is ready for visitors, but it only has one bathroom, and the access is through the master bedroom. They gave us the master bedroom and slept upstairs, and used a porta potty, the kind that kids use for the first time.

To complicate matters, my dad's wife's son is staying with them, who as it turns out, pisses out the window to avoid having to go through their bedroom at night.

Wow. I can't wait.

I am starting to totally fucking resent the pressure.

So this weekend, dad said he'd come for the day. But when I told him we were going to visit a few relatives, he made a lame excuse for the morning and said he'd be late. With that time off, so to speak, we did a little sightseeing. When he showed up and found out that we still hadn't visited anyone, he made an excuse and left early.

His wife told me it was a "sharing" thing.

Tell me this: am I going to be this pathetic? If so, then take a gun and shoot me through the skull.

Why is it pathetic? Because the man has lived his entire life and made nothing of it. He lives in a home in the middle of Amish country that is barely adequate to sustain life. And that's fine. But he thinks it's an oasis, a paradise retreat, and expects everyone around him to tell him so. He wants me to subject my family to his delusion, and I won't do it.

Man, sometimes I just want to disappear.

I mean it. There's something wrong with him. Something seriously wrong. I used to think it was sorta cute how he would tell the same story over and over, each time growing it just a little. I think he actually believes the stories now. He told one about me this weekend, while I sat there and nodded, affirming the total bullshit.

Basically, what he said, was that I fell down a three story elevator shaft and survived it by grappling all the way down with the various protruding implements. The truth is that I fell one story from atop a wall in a house he and I were framing. Sure I grabbed a few things on the way down, but even if I didn't, I would have been banged up but living.

He told another. When I was a boy, there was a wall -- and I remember this -- that had large bricks with deep hand holds that tempted me to climb it. It was a two story apartment building to my recollection. When dad first told the story, he caught me on my initial ascent, grabbing me by the collar and pulling me off. This weekend, I was three stories up, and he had to run up the stairs and reach around a corner to get me.

You could see as he told it, something behind the eyes. He was working out the logistics. You see, the reality only called for him to reach up and snag me. The story changed even as he told it this time. It was two stories, then there was a stairwell, and oh yeah, it was three stories.

And then! All the men in the family sit around like big fat Buddha kings, waiting for the women to serve them, milking from that experience the only self-esteem they'll ever achieve.

And then all the pissing and moaning about the diseases they've endured, the spouses they've buried, and the death that will surely come soon. The white pallor and the bloated bellies, and the various groups of people in the world that have kept them down, as if they somehow deserve better than they got.

Pathetic.

I'm just glad to be home again.

Me

Our Pinewood Derby Car

On vacation until Wednesday. Until then, here is the Pinewood Derby car we made for Cub Scouts.


Peace!

Timmy

I was just wiping the shaving cream remnants from my face, inside my head -- thinking about how, on Friday after work, having drinks with coworkers as a sendoff to one of our number moving on to another dead end job, the new girl accurately guessed my age as forty two -- when it happened.

My wife's voice, accompanied by a two-boy chorus of sniffles and sobs, quietly beckoned from behind me, "Daddy, we have two very upset boys."

Oh my God. "What happened?" I asked, braced for the worst.

"Timmy just died."

"Who?"

"Timmy," she repeated, "their dog."

We have a dog, and her name is Roxie. I wrinkled my eyes to let her know I was waiting for clarification. The boys were on the bed. Emmett's back rose and fell where he lay curled into a ball, face in mommy's pillow.

Jackson looked at me through reddened eyes; in control, but clearly upset. He held out the Nintendo DS, which at one point shown brilliant ebony, now smudged and dull with fingerprints. I understood. The boys had been playing Nintendogs for the last three days, in which you adopt a dog and care for him.

"We donated Timmy," Jackson explained.

My wife added, "They didn't understand the finality of it. Now they can't get him back."

"I just miss him," Emmett wailed as he rolled over and reached his arms up for me. He rested his head on my shoulders as torrents pulsed through his little body.

Jackson continued, "When we gave him away, Timmy looked down and looked so sad." Then he was crying too.

I attempted reparations. "Jackson, you gave the dog up for adoption. Timmy isn't dead. Some other family has adopted him now that will take care of him and give him love. See?"

"You mean Timmy went outside of my DS?"

He believes in Santa Claus, doesn't he? "Sure." But my face had "LIE" written all over it.

"I don't believe you."

"Ok, listen. Timmy is still inside your DS, but it has a little world inside it. And in that world, you just gave Timmy to another family to take care of because you already had enough dogs to take care of. So if you think about it, you did what was best for Timmy. The family that has adopted him will take better care of him."

That seemed to do the trick -- for Jackson. Emmett, on the other hand, wasn't buying any of it.

This morning, Jackson searched around until he found a dog just like Timmy, and showed him to Emmett. "You see," Jackson said, "Timmy is alright."

We think that has done the trick.

Note to self: break out the old board games.