I swear I'm sorry

I’ve noticed that most of the time I let a profanity slip out, which isn’t very often, I almost always immediately apologize. I do this even if the slip occurs in my office with only one other person present. I’ve noticed people doing the same with me. The latest example was at a gathering of basketball parents at a local bar Friday night. The parent I was talking to used the f word in a very casual and quiet way. It wasn’t vulgar or loud and I didn’t think much of it until she apologized. To be honest, the apology made me feel more awkward than the profanity. Does she think I would think less of her for such a minor slip up? Do the people I apologize to feel the same way?

Later in the night a few other parents were talking about a town in Connecticut that has started fining students if they use profanity. That started a conversation about how people in general, including teen-agers, seem to swear less than in previous generations. We all agreed that when we started our careers swearing in the work place was prevalent and today it is a rarity.

A few minutes later a patron with fewer inhibitions dropped a very loud f-bomb because she was unhappy they had turned the music down. She didn't apologize or seem the least bit embarassed. In fact, a few minutes later she did the same thing. I kind of admired her ability to let loose. After all, were were all in a bar around midnight on Friday. Shouldn't people feel relaxed enough to use a little profanity?

Just today I screwed up my daily video about halfway through and let out a very angry swear in front of a longtime male colleague who has heard the word more than a few times. It was an impulse-swear, done out of frustration because until that point the video was flowing well. I apologized to him three times before he left the office. Not sure why.

Let me know what you think

Pathetic Blog

Watchers of my daily video may have noticed my hair is much shorter. Regular readers of the blog may recall getting a haircut is one of my least favorite things to do. My barber, Gerardo, is the best. I just like my hair long. It was some fellow 40-something friends that prompted me to return to Gerardo’s chair.

“Ralph, you know you have really full hair for someone your age,” one friend said as he labored on the ellip-tical machine at the YMCA. “And almost no gray.”
A couple of days later another 40-something guy at the Y said almost the same thing. Suspecting it was some kind of prank orchestrated by my wife, who is jealous that I have almost no gray, my eyes scanned the room to see if she was watching. She wasn’t even there.
On Saturday Mary and I attended a benefit dance. Shortly before 11 p.m. the lights were turned down and we were standing side by side near the back of the hall watching the dance floor. Suddenly someone’s fingers were running through my hair. Since Mary was slightly in front of me, I deduced they were not her fingers. Spinning around, I was face to face with another middle-aged man who complimented me on my hair and asked if I could spare some for his bald head. I didn’t need a breathalyzer to know he had had a few drinks.
“Sure,” I said. “When I get it cut, I’ll save some for you.”

Gerardo is closed on Sunday. My schedule was full on Monday. Tuesday was a day off. First thing on the list was a trip to Gerardo’s.

My wife will probably view this blog as a pathetic attempt to highlight my lack of gray. But it’s really about karma. Middle aged men aren’t the target audience I had in mind. Two compliments and one feel in less than a week seemed to be an omen.
It also made me think that at 46 perhaps I’m too old wear my hair long.

Let me know what you think.
(It is Ok to agree with my wife. In fact, it would probably help me at home if people would treat me a little harsher on this blog.)

A nice suprise

Based on conversations and other anecdotal evidence, my assumption is most Americans feel we spend too much on “foreign aid.” It seems the recession has only deepened the feeling that we need to take care of “our own” before we send more money overseas. This is why the crowd at a recent high school basketball game caught my attention.

The game was being played at Amity Regional High School a couple of weeks ago. Most high schools don’t charge those who show up early for the freshman and JV games. About halfway through the JV game the fans in the stands noticed a table was being set up outside the main entrance to collect admission. Many started discussing whether they would voluntarily go over to the table and pay the admission price. Most decided that the Amity school system was not hurting for funding and could get by without their contribution. It also spurred a lot of discussions about school budgets in general. Many felt they could not afford to pay one dime more for education.
About the same time, about a half dozen students started canvassing the growing crowd for contributions. I can’t recall what school club they were collecting for, but no one in my vicinity contributed. As I looked over to other sections, I saw almost no one was responding.

As the varsity game was about to start the crowd grew to almost 200. A young woman came to our section and announced the Key Club was collecting to help earthquake victims in Haiti. Everyone stood in unison, reaching for their wallets and purses. No one complained at all. The half dozen students left the gym, each with a coffee can stuffed with bills.

Let me know what you think.

Worried my kids won't leave

One of the best ways to cope with teens is to talk to people who have raised them and survived. You learn that everything your teen has done, someone else’s teen has done. Also, some good strategies for dealing with things like curfews, driving, homework and parties. It won’t solve all your problems, but you won’t feel so alone.

The only downside is that you discover that a lot of 20-somethings and even 30-somethings are still living at home. Some expect mom and dad to foot ball the bills, cook all the meals and do all the chores. This scares me because although I love my soon to be 15 and 17-year-old sons and will miss them dearly, part of me wants them out of the house yesterday.

On a recent day, after a particularly trying night with one of my sons, I received an e-mail on a new cartoon called “Dustin.”

“Dustin is a 23 year old college graduate and he’s returning home to live with his parents and 15 year old sister until he finds his way in life. Dustin believes he is destined to lead the charmed life of a pro golfer or famous comedian but in the meantime he takes on numerous odd jobs through a temp agency.”

Apparently it is catching on with a lot of newspapers. I can understand why. I e-mailed the syndicate rep that based on my recent conversations I thought it was a great idea. He responded : “We hear that 80% of college grads move back home.”

If you have any tips on how I might start preparing my children to leave before they are 25, let me know. I’m also seriously considering adding Dustin to our comic pages.

Let me know what you think.

Eye problems?

A much younger colleague passes out printed material at a recent meeting. When my copy arrives, I pull my glasses out but still have trouble reading it because the type is smaller than a box score. I look around and am disappointed that one person a few years older has not put on glasses. A minute later he is holding the paper a long way from his face. Ten minutes later he is complaining about the size of the type, which leads me to suspect he needs glasses but doesn’t have them or want to put them on. A colleague a few years younger, needs no glasses. Only the co-worker a little older than me puts on glasses.

Until a couple of years ago, I could read almost anything and see at a distance with my contact lenses. When reading became a problem, the eye doctor prescribed a pair of glasses for smaller type. About six months after I started wearing them, I needed them for all my reading and had to have a pair at work, home and in my car. About six months after that, I was doing work in the yard and noticed I was having a lot of trouble putting the screwdriver in the screw slot. So I bought myself a pair of cheap, durable cheater glasses to wear when I did close up work around the house. This summer I needed a pair of glasses to operate the lawn mower. Shortly after that, I noticed I was having trouble reading the radio dial and the odometer in my car without glasses. Soon after that, I needed reading glasses to operate my cell phone

When I went in for my eye exam in November, the doctor suggested bifocal contacts. When I put them in it was like a miracle. All of sudden I could see close up and far away without having to put glasses on and off. The only downside was looking in the mirror. I realized why people weren’t buying it when I said I was 39 and younger than my wife. The bifocal contacts are still working pretty good, but I need to put my glasses on for smaller type.

When will it end?

Let me know what you think.

noPod

“Hey Ralph. How come you don’t wear your iPod anymore?,” a friend asks as I reach the halfway point of my time on the elliptical machine at the Wallingford YMCA.
He gets on the elliptical next to mine as I tell him I keep forgetting to bring my iPod to the gym.
“I think I’m telling myself that I don’t like listening to it when I work out.”
“I never wear one,” replied Greg, who is about my age.
At any given moment, more than half the people working out at the Y are using an iPod or other audio device. With the under 30 set, it is almost 100 percent. Even the young guys lifting massive amounts of free weights have ear buds in. That scares me because I was taught that when you are lifting free weights you need to be alert at all times.

For a while, it seemed that the loud music from my iPod was motivating me to work out harder and longer. It also seemed to help me focus because one of the issues when you work out without a trainer or a partner is concentrating on working as hard as you can and not letting your mind wander.
What bothered me about having ear buds in all the time was that I noticed people, especially those close to my age, were not coming over to say hello and chat for a minute. Those of us not raised in a world where people simultaneously watch TV, do their homework and send text messages assume that if you have ear buds in you can’t or don’t want to say hello.
About six months back, in an effort to be more efficient, I started listening to audio books while working out. The free technology was kind of clunky (it was hard to pause, fast forward or reverse) so I gave up pretty quickly although better technology exists.
Even without an iPod, there is always music playing on the Y sound system and eight TV’s hanging from the ceiling, mostly tuned to the news and sporting events. No sound, of course.

Greg and I chat about work, family and sports and after a brief pause he points up at the breaking news flash that North Carolina has lost a basketball game to a team most people never heard of. Just before he had gotten on the elliptical next to mine I was feeling tired and thinking about cutting my workout short. When he got off, I looked down and saw I had just a few minutes to go.
“I don’t think I would have made it without him,” I thought.

Let me know what you think.

Life of the party

“I can’t believe you went outside to look at Steve’s wood piles,” my wife says as we hurry to her van after a recent holiday party where temperatures outside were in the teens. The party inside was warmed by good friends, holiday spirit and a wood stove on the main level of the house. I had been talking to my friend Steve about his eood stove for more than a year but this was the first time I had seen it. It was functional and decorative. I asked him about his wood supply. He said he had cut some of the wood and purchased the rest.
“Where do you have it stacked?,” I asked.
He went over the layout.
“Can I take a look?”
So on this bitterly cold December night he showed me his three wood piles and explained his system for moving wood into the house.

My father purchased a wood stove sometime in the early 70s, spurred on by the seemingly high oil prices that resulted from the first Arab oil boycotts. My brother and I spent the next 15 years or so helping Dad cut, haul, split and stack wood. At times we had up to four or five wood piles in our backyard. It was all part of Dad’s system for letting wood dry properly before it was burned. The trick was to also have a healthy smaller pile close enough to the house so that you could easily transfer wood inside during cold winter weather. Since it was our job to get wood in the house, the woodpile system was important.

Despite my lingering curiosity about stoves and wood piles, I do not have a wood stove. The gas stove that my in-laws gave us a couple of years ago keeps the house just as warm and requires less work. My house has a fireplace, but I’ve never burned any wood in it. The condominium I owned before I bought the house, also had a fireplace. When I moved in there was a shabby woodpile on the deck. The first thing I did was get rid of it.

“Did you have fun looking at the wood piles?,” a friend at the party asked with a smirk. My wife told me later that the partygoers had spied us outside and had a good laugh.
“I did,” I told her. “You know my Dad had a wood stove. My brother and I spent most of our childhood cutting wood. I remember the time.....”

Let me know what you think.