Married, with children, frequently hungry.

From 1987 to 1997 a popular sitcom called “Married with Children” aired on the Fox network. You can still find the re-runs on cable. The central character is the always-suffering Al Bundy. He has a wife and two children and works in a shoe store. His family basically ignores him and spends what little money he makes. His wife doesn’t work and only gets off the couch to shop for clothes.

For me, one of the funniest reoccurring threads was that there was never any food in the house when Al returned home from work. Prior to his returning, his wife and children would sneak out to some fast food joint or chain restaurant and return with nothing for Al. Watching it as bachelor and then as a young father, it seemed inconceivable that a wife and children would not care about whether their husband/dad ate.

“I had two mini-burgers saved for you, but Danny was still hungry after his steak and ate them,” Mary tells me as I return home from work on a recent night. My family had eaten at one of those chain restaurants I hate, but tonight the thought of two mini-burgers made my mouth water. Oh well. At least Danny and Mary and Michael were well fed. Instead of mini-burgers, I opened a can of soup.

“You guys are going to Burger King?,” I ask as Mary and my sons as they head out the door on another night. “Just get me the usual.”
The usual is nothing. It has become a running joke in my house.

“Ok Danny the joke is over. You can get my food out of the car now,” I tell my 15-year-old on yet another night when he and his mother have dined out.
“Dad I’m not kidding. We didn’t bring you anything from the diner,” he responds. I love diner food.

Let me know what you think.

Watching Grass Grow

Standing over a wheelbarrow full of topsoil and grass seed Sunday afternoon, my eyes began stinging from the sweat pouring off my forehead. Reaching into my pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the sweat away, I find it is empty. My shirt is too dirty to wipe my eyes, so I pull off my work gloves and do the best I can to clear my eyes of the salty, stinging sweat.

Walking into the kitchen 15 minutes later, Mary looks at me and laughs.
“What happened?” she asks. “You have something all over your face.”
A few seconds later the reflection in the bathroom mirror looks like a jungle warrior. Streaks of dark black topsoil mixed with sweat cover my cheeks, chin and under and above my eyes. Wiping the sweat with my dirty work gloves was not such a good idea. An hour earlier my neighbor had warned me to stop working so hard on such a hot day. Two hours before that Mary had told me to skip the yard work and stay in the pool.

But my newly-planted grass needed me. About a month ago I planted it to repair the damage made by a backhoe that had dug a three-foot wide trench from my house to the street after the pipe that carries water to my house gave out. I was not happy with how the grass is coming in and decided to spend about three hours in the blazing heat patching the bare spots.

Growing grass is very important to me, just ask my neighbors. One night about two weeks ago I was going through my usual around-dusk ritual of inspecting the new grass. It takes me about 10 or 15 minutes to walk and inspect the entire length of the area that was dug up.
“I hope the neighbors don’t see me looking at my grass,” I think to myself.
A few nights later, I was at a banquet celebrating the 90th birthday of two Wallingford sports legends. I was surprised and happy to see my neighbor Holly. I moved across the crowded banquet hall to say hello.
“Hi Ralph,” Holly said. “I saw you looking at your grass the other night.”

Let me know what you think.

My take on a Forum section thread

There is an interesting thread in our MyRecordJournal Forum section on a topic that a lot of us can relate to. According to one of our regular forum posters, a man had the police called on him for offering to pay for a young girl’s ice cream at the Wallingford Dairy Queen. Apparently someone misinterpreted his actions and thought he was up to no good.

Whether this happened exactly as described or not, we all know that in 2010 you have to be careful about ran-dom acts of kindness being misinterpreted, especially when these acts of kindness involve an older male and a younger female. Since I’m a few years away from 50 and was raised to always be especially kind to children and women whether I know them or not, I’m acutely aware that I cannot always do the things my father taught me to do.

Occasionally one of the 24-hour news channels is on at the gym where I work out and watching reminds me why some people think any older male talking to a younger female might be a pervert or worse. Nancy Grace is especially guilty of overplaying what are tragic, but isolated incidents of strangers doing harm to children or women.

Everyone needs to keep in mind that the chances of any of us being harmed by a total stranger are about on par with the chances of being struck by lightning. If it happens to your loved one, that is no consolation. But we need to keep the threat of strangers in perspective.

The chances of a child or woman being harmed by someone they know, is far greater. In fact, most women and children who are murdered are killed by someone very close to them, usually a husband or close male relative.

The thread mentions that it was a man and a woman who confronted the man and called 9-1-1. The woman has a much greater chance of being harmed by the man she was with than the children have of being harmed by the stranger who apparently felt bad that one child couldn’t pay for her ice cream.

Check out the forum thread and let me know what you think.

Do as we say, not as we do.

A story on underage drinking in last week’s newspaper included this quote from Cheshire Youth and Social Services Director Michelle Piccerillo: “The people who are drinking include successful athletes. That’s discouraging.”
Piccerillo was referring to an incident where police cited 35 teens for underage drinking at a house party several hours after the Cheshire High lacrosse team won the state championship. Several la-crosse players were among those ticketed.

You can be discouraged, but no one should be surprised. Raising two children reinforced the con-nection between sports and alcohol. My sons, now 15 and 17, became aware of the existence of beer thanks to the NFL. I’m sure others have noticed the same.
Each time a team wins a championship, they guzzle and poor champagne all over each other in front of millions of viewers, including children. Any child attending a game notices that the longest lines are the beer lines. Once they hit 13 or 14, they also become aware that adults are willing to pay a premium price for the privilege of sipping a beer as they watch their favorite team play.

The connections between sports and alcohol are too endless for me to mention. It is therefore inevitable that some high school athletes are going to drink after games, especially big wins. It’s commendable that Cheshire has spent so much money and time trying to curb the problem. But Cheshire doesn’t exist in a bubble. Until the professional leagues that make billions on beer advertising are willing to change their attitude, high school athletes will continue to drink. In fact, I’d suggest that the link between alcohol and sports probably makes high school athletes more prone to drinking. I haven’t been to many classical music concerts, but the ones I’ve attended didn’t sell beer. I’ve worked at newspaper for almost 25 year and can’t remember a story about members of the high school band being cited for drinking after winning a big statewide competition.

Let me know what you think

Staring into the Future?

A young couple is crossing at State and East Main streets in Meriden. He is pushing one of those double-strollers with two children. She is walking a few steps behind, starting at her phone. Yours truly is stopped at the light. At the same time a man is walking in the crosswalk at East Main and Per-kins Square, directly behind the one the couple is in. He is staring at his phone so intently he almost runs into the railroad gate at the downtown crossing.

Less than a hour later, I am in a meeting with a half dozen people. Two are starting at their phones intermittently, checking for updates via e-mail. It is not the first time people have drifted during one of my meetings. At least these two are doing other work and not falling asleep or staring out the window as people often did in the days before they had phones to stare at.

The night before, like millions of others, my attention was focused on the championship series be-tween the Celtics and Lakers. NBA star Dwyane Wade was in the front row with his son, who ap-peared to be around 5, give or take a year or two. The third and fourth quarters were an old-style NBA war. Players were pushing and shoving and hitting the deck. The home crowd was loudly supporting the Celtics. When the camera showed Wade and his son, the child was staring at some kind of hand-held device I assume was a game player.
No surprise. My sons, 15 and 17, spend more time looking at their phones than listening to their fa-ther. Before they were old enough for phones, they spent a lot of time looking at hand-held video-game devices.

This makes me wonder about the future of human interaction. Sales of what are referred to as un-tethered devices such as iPads are expected to approach cell phone levels in the next decade. When most people have the equivalent of a desktop computer in their palms, will they ever pay attention to someone doing something as antiquated as talking?

All this makes me feel a little envious and scared because when I cross the road I prefer to look around at the people and buildings that make up the downtown landscape. In meetings, I prefer to listen what is being said. At sports events, I like to watch the action. I’d even prefer my moody, demanding, unforgiving teen-age sons to staring at some screen that I need my reading glasses to make out.

So how do I and others like me survive in a world that values texting over talking?

Cell Phone Blues Part 2

In a blog last week, I complained about the never-ending cycle of new cell phones that allegedly don’t cost me anything.
My other complaint about getting a new phone every 12 months is that as soon as I get used to a phone it is replaced by one that is supposedly better. My wife and sons would get a new phone every six months if they could so they are always happy with a new phone. Once again, I feel left out.

Am I the only one that has this problem?
If not, how do others deal with it?
Is it true, as my family tells me, I have to get a new phone when the service contract is due for renewal?

Peace Frog

My neighbor’s 9-year-old granddaughter runs into my yard and proudly displays the melted chocolate on her fingers.
“Look, we have chocolate,” she tells me.
“No kidding,” I respond, warning her that she had better not get chocolate on her good clothes. Her 7-year-old sister is right behind. She also shows me the chocolate on her hands.
“Are the boys home?,” the older one asks.
When they were younger, I would take the two girls on a tour of my house, spending the most time in Michael and Danny’s rooms.
“Look they didn’t make their beds today,” I’d tell the two tiny girls as they looked in awe at all the trophies, medals, baseballs, posters, instruments and other stuff in the bedrooms.
Since then “Are the boys home?” is really code for “Can we go inside and look at all their new stuff?”
I explain that Danny is at a baseball game and that Michael had four wisdom teeth pulled less than 24 hours before and is trying to rest.
Ending my sentence, I notice the black “peace sign” earrings dangling from the 9-year-old’s ears.
“I like your earrings,” I tell her.
She twirls them proudly and tilts her head to one side the way girls sometimes do when they receive a compli-ment on what they are wearing. We did not have a discussion about the evolution of the peace sign over the past 50 years. When her grandmother overheard me complimenting the earrings, she remarked that she didn’t even realize the strangely-shaped earrings were a symbol for peace.

The day before, a peace sign T-shirt on a boy who couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 caught my attention. Just before the girls with the chocolate on their hands had come over to see me, another neighborhood girl was playing tennis in the street wearing a tie-dye T-shirt.
Children wearing symbols of the 60s and having no idea what they are is nothing new. For some reason, the earrings, the T-shirt and the tie-dye made me feel a little nostalgic. Born in 1963, I was not a member of the 60s generation. As someone who came of age in the late 70s and early 80s, I did admire a lot of 60s music, fashion and philosophy.

“Alexis had the cutest peace sign earrings on,” I tell my wife later.
“All the girls wear them,” she explains.
Danny, 15, is curious about why we find a child wearing peace sign earrings so interesting. Everyone wears stuff with the peace sign.
I explain that when I was a child the peace sign was not a child’s toy. Wearing a peace sign was too radical for a young child. It symbolized all kinds of things to the silent majority, including possible “anti-American” leanings.
“Isn’t it silly that people could get others so angry by wearing a symbol for peace?” I ask my wife and son.
Mary agrees.
Danny doesn't respond.

Let me know what you think.

(Bonus points if you recognize the title of this blog and its connection to this area. It doesn't count if you have to use Google.)

Is there a free lunch?

Standing at Doolittle Park watching my younger son Danny play baseball, my blood pressure rises slightly when older son Michael turns and asks his mother if she can bring him to the cell phone store. The spike is short as my wife tells him she doesn’t have time.

My problem with the downtown AT&T store is not the employees. They are nice and helpful. My problem is it always costs money, despite what Mary and my sons tell me.
“The phone was free because we got the upgrade,” is a typical response to my question about how much the new phones cost.
I took one economics course in college. In the first class, the professor went to the board and wrote: “There is no free lunch.”
“If you remember nothing else from this class, remember this,” he urged.

Driving home from work about three or four hours after the baseball game, I decide to call home and tell them I’m stopping at the library. Danny answers. No one else his home, he says.
“They are still at the phone store.”
About 10 minutes later, I’m driving by the AT&T store and see Michael sitting in a chair and Mary talking to an employee. It must just be a problem with Michael’s phone, I think. No worries.
I dial my cell phone and instead of getting my wife, I get a recording that tells me to call the service department for more information. I am trying not to panic, but recall that this is the message you get when they are switching over your phone and plan.
The library takes my mind off potential phone problems. Arriving home, I find Mary in the kitchen taking something out of a small box on the counter.
“There is some kind of problem with our phone...”
She cuts me off.
“Here is your new phone,” she tells me, smiling. “It didn’t cost you anything.
“I’m going to get a $50 rebate,” she adds.

To be continued.

Sorry, Wrong Number

“Is this the priest?,” a woman who has just called my cell phone asks.
I explained that I was not a priest and that she had the wrong number. She was very apologetic. I told her it has happened before and not to worry.
“Have a nice night,” I said, haning up.
Over the past two or three years, about a dozen people have called my cell phone looking for “Father.” After the first few times, I guessed that some priest and I have a very similar cell phone number.
The strange thing is that I used to also get calls on my home phone from people looking for a priest with a very similar last name. At least at first I thought it was “people.” After a while, I suspected it was the same older woman who was calling. Over the years, she sounded more confused.
Just before it stopped, we actually started having conversations that went something like this:
“Hello,” I would answer.
“Father (similar to my last name)?” she would ask.
“No this isn’t the Father. You have the wrong number ma’am,” I’d reply.
“Are you sure Father isn’t there?”
“No priest lives here ma’am. Our last names just sound alike.”
A couple of other times she called asking for her brother. Again, I’d tell her she had the wrong number. Sometimes she would engage me in a short conversation about her brother or some other family member she was looking for.
By this time I’d figured out that she was older and starting to get confused and since I’m a lot younger and sometimes get confused, I couldn’t be angry.

I didn’t think much about all this until a few weeks back. Sitting at work, my cell phone rang. Noticing it was an unfamiliar number, I was prepared to take another call for the second priest whose name I don’t know.
“Hello,” I said.
“Why did you just call my cell phone?,” a woman asks in an angry, accusatory tone.
“Who is this,” I asked.
“Never minds. Who are you and why did you call my phone?,” she replied.
Fortunately, my father taught me it is cowardly to get loud on the phone with someone you don’t know. I calmly explained that I didn’t call her number and wasn’t even on my phone at the time she said she received the call.
“I know you called my number,” she insisted. “Where did you get it from?”
When she threatened to get the police involved, I ended the conversation as politely as I could.
After hanging up, I checked my outgoing call history and did not see her number.

Let me know what you think.

Should I be on YouTube?

A story last week about a Cheshire teen who met his prom date via You Tube got me to thinking about whether I might become a YouTube star. The young woman, from Georgia, has become popular on YouTube by talking about fashion and makeup.
I do a daily video for MyRecordJournal on the top stories for the next day’s newspaper. I was surprised to learn we don’t offer it to YouTube. Apparently someone in the online department doesn’t think anyone would be interested. When I asked about the decision, an online employee pointed out to me that the young lady You-Tube star is 17 and since I am in my 40s (I am not!) I probably wouldn’t be a popular YouTube commodity.

Take a look at my daily video and let me know if you think it should be posted on YouTube. If not, what might I do differently to make the video more YouTube friendly?

I am open to suggestions. For example, maybe I should also talk about fashion. I don’t require makeup. But I could start using some. It doesn’t show in the video, but I do have bags under my eyes and a few wrinkles. I could sample creams for these problems and report on them instead of the news? Maybe the MyRecordJournal hierarchy would then put my video on YouTube.

Let me know what you think.

Finding the fireworks

“Don’t go down there,” Mary says, referring to a driveway leading to one of the many businesses in Wallingford’s industrial park area off Route 68.
It is overcast on Saturday night, making the roads and the long driveways leading to the mostly empty parking lots and buildings seem scary to my wife. Michael 17, sitting in the back seat, senses his mom’s fear and urges me to go down the driveway.
“Mike, the fireworks are going to start soon. I don’t have time,” I reply.
After spending a couple of hours in the late afternoon working at the Record-Journal Daffodil Festival booth, I raced home to cook out and finish cutting the lawn. I finished around 8 p.m., realizing I didn’t have time to make it back to the park to watch the fireworks display.
“Maybe we can see them from where we watch the Wallingford fireworks,” I tell Mary and Michael as we head out.
Like thousands of east-siders, we watch the annual Wallingford fireworks parked in one of the many businesses near the intersection of North Main Street Extension and Route 68. But when I pull into the spot where we watch the Wallingford display it is empty and I suspect not the place to view fireworks at Hubbard Park. When I park, the tree line blocking the Meriden ridgeline confirms my suspicion.
We spend the next 20 minutes driving the industrial park area. Each time we find a parking lot that is high enough it is blocked by trees. All the lots clear of trees are too low to see Castle Craig. Finally just as the fireworks begin we find a spot along the road that is high enough and clear of trees to see most of the fireworks exploding over west peak. It wasn’t ideal, but we enjoyed the show.

In case I’m running late for the July 4th fireworks display at Hubbard Park, can anyone suggest the best place in Wallingford to view Meriden’s fireworks?

As you know the Wallingford display is in jeopardy this year. More on that issue in an upcoming blog.

No Water !

Checking the basement this morning, I saw some damp spots and was sure that today’s rain would mean at least a few puddles in my basement, possibly more. Last week, I had about two inches of water. It was the first time in the 15 years I’ve been in the house that we had any water in the basement.
The good news is I just checked with my wife. There are a few damp spots, but no standing water.

Some of the boxes and other stuff stored in the unfinished basement before the flood are now spread around my house, including the porch. My plan was to start putting them back into the basement, possibly as soon as this weekend. Now I’m wondering if it is safe.

Let me know what you think?

Also, can someone explain to me the forces of nature that have come together this spring to produce basement flooding in areas that don’t normally experience it?

No time for a dime?

Struggling to get through another grueling session on the elliptical machine at the YM, I look down in exhaus-tion and spot something shiny on the floor. Squinting, I realize it is a dime.

As you probably guessed, I did not interrupt my workout to pick it up. I also didn’t pick it up after my workout and didn’t point it out to the woman vacuuming near the elliptical. I was about to and then I figured I would be insulting her by suggesting she needed the dime.

Later I recalled that when I was a young child I would have stopped to pick up a penny. Has the value of money changed that much since I was young? This makes me feel old even though I’m relatively young for my age. I’m not sure I would have stopped my workout to pick up a quarter. This bothers me. Have I forgotten the value of money? Perhaps my family spends so much so quickly that I’ve become jaded. Picking up every piece of loose change from here to California wouldn’t even cover their fast food purchases for a month.

Let me know what you think. Please share with us the amount of money that would make you bend over and the last time you picked up money off the ground.

if my blog were an e-mail....

readers,
if my blog were an e-mail this is how it would look
i don’t capitalize or use punctuation
i simply start a new line for each new thought
i adopted this style to deal with 100+ e-mails each day
when writing a formal memo i capitalize and use punctuation
but 95 percent of my e-mail responses are in this style
my wife hates it and feels it is unprofessional
no one else has every complained
let me know what you think
ralph t

p.s.
i always sign "ralph t"
she doesn't understand that either
i worked with a ralph h for about 10 years and adopted the moniker
ralph h left about five years ago, but i continue
i've asked my wife to sign "mary t" so i know who she is

Don't call me "sir"!

Add “dude” to the list of things I don’t like to be called, right behind “sir” and “mister.”
The first time I noticed, I was in the locker room at the YMCA. Two men in their 20s came in and were planning on swimming. They couldn’t complete a sentence without using "dude" or "bro." They were nice, asking me about the YM and the pool. They were in the locker room again after my workout and we resumed talking. On my way out, one of them held up what looked like a nice ripe banana. “Do you want a banana dude,”? he asked. “They are good for you after you work out.”
I declined and walked out. For some reason, I didn’t like him calling me “dude.” A few days later a co-worker in his 20s called me “dude” after I asked him about an upcoming assignment. Again, it bothered me.
I’ve always hated sir and mister because they are too formal for me. As far as I’m concerned, everyone from 2 to 92 can call me "Ralph." In fact, I would prefer it.
I used to like when people called me “dude” because it is something young people say to each other. I hope this mood passes.

Let me know what you think.

I miss the movie theater

As I navigated through the movie theater parking lot on a recent night, a group of middle school-age kids darted in front of my SUV. Two girls were chasing two boys and when they got to the theater door the boys began playfully blocking the door. When an older couple needed to enter, they stepped aside. When the girls tried to sneak in behind the couple, the boys quickly blocked them.

I was not dropping my children off at the Wallingford movie theater, just cutting through to Route 5. My wife tells me it among the longest of my infamous shortcuts and I use it only when she is not in the car because she freaks out. (When I first arrived in town almost 25 years ago there was no movie theater and the plaza was pretty empty so it made a convenient cut over from North Main Street Extension to Route 5. But I digress. If you would like me to write a separate blog on my not-so short shortcuts, let me know.)

Recently, a colleague was asking me about whether she should let her sixth grader go to the movies on his own. I told her I thought it was OK and offered some tips. My last words were: “The real trouble starts when they don’t want to go to the movies anymore.”

When they were in middle school, it seemed my sons were at the movie theater nearly every weekend, sometimes both nights. My sons, about to be 15 and 17, still occasionally go. The last time my oldest went he drove. When they were in middle school, it was cool to skip dances and go to the movies. Apparently dances are more closely supervised than the movie theater. But about halfway through their freshman year both stopped going regularly because going to the movies was no longer cool. Now they prefer to hang out at friend’s houses in the cold weather and almost anywhere during the nice weather, including our pool.

I can’t believe I used to complain about having to pick them up at the movies. Hanging out is much more stressful on parents.

Let me know what you think.

Becoming an X-File ?

I never watched the X-Files when it originally aired. In 2008, my wife and I saw the most recent X-Files movie at the theater and I left hooked. For the next three months or so I watched nothing but X-Files, making it through seven of the nine seasons. Why did I stop? Burnout. Watching one show exclusively for three months is not the same as watching it over nine years.

About three weeks ago I was re-arranging my DVDs and looked at my X-Files collection. Something clicked and I started watching it again. I’m up to season three. This is not the first time I’ve been compulsive about a particular show or channel. About 10 years ago I spent an entire winter watching the Golf Channel. I like golf. But part of the appeal was watching them play in places like Dubai, Australia and Hawaii, which are sunny and warm while we suffer through winter. For much of 2002 and 2003 I watched nothing but C-Span. When the NFL network first aired, I watched it non-stop for about three months. Last year I borrowed nearly every DVD from the public library that that interested me and didn’t bother with cable (except Yankee games) for the better part of six months. Prior to my X-Files fixation, I was on a college basketball binge.

On a related note, I also sometimes watch movies repeatedly. Some I’ve watched 25 times or more include Citizen Cane, Casablanca, My Cousin Vinny, The Queen (I’ve probably watched it 100 times), A Few Good Men (also about 100 times), Fog of War, Las Vegas Vacation, The DaVinci Code and The Burbs.

My family thinks this is all very strange, especially my temporary obsession with C-Span and The Queen.

Let me know what you think.

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.

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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?

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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.

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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.....”

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Tired of Hall&Oates

Sitting in a waiting room recently, I hear a young receptionist singing along to “Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates:
You're a rich girl, / and you've gone too far / 'Cause you know it / don't matter anyway / You can rely / on the old man's money
I hated the song when it came out in 1977 and still don’t like it or anything else done by a duo that had lots of hits but never critical acclaim.
The young woman singing wasn’t born in 1977 (she may have not been born in 1987) and I wonder if she knows anything about Hall & Oates. I also wonder how much longer I’m going to have to listen to Hall & Oates in waiting rooms.

When the show Happy Days came out in 1974, my parents loved it, mainly because of the music it featured. A 50’s revival swept over the land and a lot of radio stations had a 50’s format through the 1980s. In the early 90's it seemed some of the music I grew up on was beginning to be classified as oldies or classic rock. Tired of listening to bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, I switched to alternative, grunge and rap. A lot of my friends called me a sell out, but my children thought it was cool that their dad listened to the same music that they did. In an unexpected twist, by the time they reached high school, my sons were listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

If my calculations are correct, music released in 1977 should fade away somewhere around 2017. Soon after, artists like Nirvana, Dr. Dre and Pearl Jam will be considered oldies. I wonder if I’ll mind when the receptionists sings along to Smells Like Teen Spirit?