The Virtue of the Five-Second Rule

Lately, it seems like every time I turn on the television, there’s a news report about the grave concern we should all have about childhood obesity. Of course, accompanying those reports are videos of prepubescent boys and girls walking around in less-than-flattering bathing suits and ill-fitted clothing. (Wow, sounds like some old 8mm home movies I’ve seen of our family reunions!) One could take the view that all children are evil and, like vampires, they can’t see themselves in mirrors so this fashion gaffe is excusable. However, that one doesn’t wash because you see these children out in public when the sun is up (usually sitting in a food court at a mall). At this point, you want to yell back at the television reporter something in this vein: “Put childhood obesity aside for a moment, sister! What about this rash of completely moronic, if not insane, behavior displayed by these parents who allow a pudgy girl to walk out of the house wearing a bikini?”

While I’m still waiting on my online degree from Dr. Phil in psychology (three box tops from Raisin Bran and $5.95 for shipping and handling), I’m afraid I’m not qualified to touch on the reasoning/motivation behind this parental behavior. However, having been a pudgy young man at one point in my life (I’ve come full circle back to being a pudgy adult-like man) I feel I am more than qualified to explore the question of obesity. I blame the Olympics!

Before I explain, a little history lesson is in order: in 1785, Antoine Lavoisier put forth the Law of Conservation of Mass, which states “matter is neither created nor destroyed.” Not to be outdone by some Frenchy, the German physician and physicist and co-founder of thermodynamics, Julius Robert von Meyer (he later dropped the “von” because it made his business cards look too “stuffy”), put his own spin on it in 1842 with “energy can neither be created nor destroyed.” (Scientific genius aside, I’m impressed that both of these gentlemen were able to speak English with such facility and proper grammar.) And then in 1907, Al Einstein (“The Steiner” to his friends – I can’t tell you without blushing what his tenth-grade girlfriend called him) wrapped his arms around the whole thing with “the total amount of mass and energy in the universe is constant.”

With the Olympics upon us, these athletes have been losing weight and trimming down to be at their peak performance levels. Great, but where does all that mass (a kinder word for “fat”) go? Some of you smartypants out there would say it’s converted to energy and burned off. Ha! I didn’t have to go to college and major in something completely unrelated to science or physics to know that’s totally wrong! Look around you: whenever a friend or loved one loses weight, another friend or loved one gains the equal amount – it’s The Law, and you can’t break The Law. These Olympians are shedding the pounds, and that mass is descending on the waistlines and thighs of our children like Paparazi on a C-list celebrity walking out of rehab.

Why have the Olympics? The Cold War wasn’t won because of the West’s dominance in kayaking. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t averted with the shotput. As far as I know, we haven’t found a cure for cancer with beach volleyball. Ironically, we sit around and watch people with freakishly perfect bodies do things that have no practical application. Take the Decathlon, for example: running incredibly fast for certain distances, jumping over obstacles, and throwing odd-shaped objects as far as you can. The only practical application I can find for that would be a life of crime.

If we really wanted to bring the Olympics down to a level of reality, we should have events like “how fast can you put a flyer for the local dentist on 200 windshields without provoking the ire of the car owner” and “escaping the boss’s notice for an entire morning, an entire afternoon, or the whole day” (that one could be broken down into heats, for sure). Other events could be “how much food can be eaten off the floor using the five-second rule” and “talking your way out of a speeding ticket.” Useful stuff, you know.

Oddly enough, the path to becoming a humor columnist never ran parallel to that of a world-class athlete. Hard to believe, I know. With that said, though, many of you may say my lack of understanding the appeal of the Olympics is rooted in my inability to master a pommel horse. That’s fair. But see how long it’ll take a pommel horse to get you to the grocery store to pick up dinner for the family.

Democracy on Aisle Ten (second try)

Not too long ago, I found myself in line at a convenience store getting ready to purchase “breakfast”, which consisted of a 32-ounce Coke and a pack of Ho-Hos. I realize my eating habits mirror those of a thirteen-year-old whose parents have left him home alone for the weekend for the first time, but what I did next would have made my parents proud. As I made the front of the line, I noticed a soldier standing a few paces back preparing to buy his breakfast – I can assure you, it was far more healthful than mine. When the clerk went to ring up my purchase, I motioned to the guy and said, “This and whatever the soldier’s having.” The young man walked up to me with his hand out and said, “Thank you, sir.” I could hardly look him in the eye – seeing a man with Ho-Hos crying is just what the terrorists want – and I said, “Thank you for our freedom!”

What makes us “Americans”? After a lot of soul searching (and a couple more Ho-Hos), I came to the conclusion that what makes the American culture so uniquely “American” has its roots in or association with the South. You go to the Northeast, and they have deep ties to Italian and Irish culture. In the Midwest, you have a lot of Polish and German influence. Latin America weaves itself solidly through the Southwest. And the West (read: California) has its origins from another planet. But the South gave us NASCAR and Elvis, Wal-Mart and Kentucky Fried Chicken – that’s America!

Do you want to know the real reason Abraham Lincoln was so adamant about not allowing the Southern states to secede? He knew that without the South, the country would have no identity – the resulting country would be known as “those ninnies who have no national identity”, or something like that.

In the wake of Sherman’s March to the Sea, the land was scorched and flattened. Popular belief is that Sherman’s plan in doing this was to assure the Confederate Army didn’t have anywhere to fall back and gain shelter and provisions. That was only a by-product of the March to the Sea. The real reason was to pave the way for Ted Turner (a northerner!) to start up CNN and open his cable superstation, TBS, bringing the world an endless supply of re-runs. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Coke’s headquarters are in Atlanta? Don’t be naïve!

Now, admittedly we have a rather kooky outlook on the rest of the world that doesn’t make a lot of sense. For example, we don’t think twice when our fellow citizens from one part of the country add an “r” to all words that end in “a” and drop the “r” at the end of other words and replace it with an “a” (example: Linder instead of Linda, Lobsta instead of Lobster), but when we hear some foreign tongues being spoken we think it all sounds like gibberish or a bunch of people who are really ticked off at each other all the time.

Also, we as Americans are very selective about what we deem as quality and how we talk about it. If something’s from France or Germany, it’s “imported”. That’s code for “classy”, which if my Latin serves me correctly is another word for “ridiculously overpriced”, or something like that. If it’s from somewhere else, we call it “offshore” and deem it as sub-standard. Using that line of reasoning, are we to assume the consumers living in those “offshore” countries are okay with buying crap?

Speaking of France and Germany, we really should be careful how we “value” their imports to us. There’s something off with both of them. Even today, the French just love Jerry Lewis – yes, he’s the same guy who has the telethon over Labor Day weekend who can’t ever seem to get his bow tie on his tuxedo clasped properly around his neck. And the Germans are absolutely ga-ga over David Hassselhoff’s music – he sings?

Another odd thing about our country is that the side that “won” the Civil War is known as the Yankees. In today’s vernacular, that means absolutely nothing because the only Yankees we know are a bunch of overpaid guys in pinstriped tights and black mascara (they say it keeps the sun’s glare down – ha!), and most of them aren’t even from this country and don’t speak English. Pass the fried chicken, the race is about to start!

Democracy on Aisle Ten

Once the Fourth of July has come and gone, will our patriotism have lessened in any way? Will our fervor, passion, and love for democracy and freedom reach a crescendo as the last firework pops in the sky and fades as the black of night descends over us in its place? Heck no! We’re happy to be Americans, warts and all, year round!

I have not travelled abroad extensively – Canada, Mexico, and Hong Kong are the three places I have visited – but I’m willing to bet we have a unique perspective of the world. That’s not to say that it’s better or worse than, say, a Belgian’s view but unique.

For example, when you watch the business portion of the evening news or read that section of the paper, you continually come across reports about “offshore” or “overseas” materials and technologies flooding the US market. You never see the reporter dancing a jig over this news; it’s always with a very stern face akin to that of someone who just wolfed down a box of prunes thinking it was a Whitman’s chocolates sampler. And when they speak of these “offshore” or “overseas” items, they’re always from a third-world country or China. Those terms are code for “inferior”.

By these news media’s standards, basically everything outside of the United States is “offshore” and/or “overseas” even if we’re connected by land. So, does that mean that the rest of the world just settles for crap? Does the guy from a Taiwanese factory that produces “offshore” lighting fixtures just go home and sit in the dark because he’s not going to be caught dead using the flop his company turns out? Does that thought ever cross our minds?

We as Americans are very selective about what we deem as quality and how we talk about it. If something’s from France or Germany, it’s “imported”. That’s code for “classy”, which if my Latin serves me correctly is another word for “ridiculously overpriced”, or something like that. Conversely, if I buy a dress shirt that’s made in Indonesia – I own my share – I’m not wont to tell people it’s made from imported cotton.

Speaking of France and Germany, we really should be careful how we “value” their imports to us. There’s something off with both of them. Even today, the French just love Jerry Lewis – yes, it’s the same guy who has the telethon over Labor Day weekend who can’t ever seem to get his bow tie on his tuxedo clasped properly around his neck. And the Germans are absolutely ga-ga over David Hassselhoff’s music, which is even worse than his acting.

The ironic thing about what makes us different is that most of those things that make the American culture so uniquely “American” have their roots in or association with the South. You go to the Northeast, and they have deep ties to Italian and Irish culture. In the Midwest, you have a lot of Polish and German influence. The Southwest is predominantly Hispanic. And the West (read: California) has its origins from another planet. But the South gave us NASCAR and Elvis, Wal-Mart and deep-fried everything.

Fortunately, David Hasselhoff was born in Baltimore, Maryland, which is north of the Mason-Dixon line, so for all intents and purposes we don’t have to claim him as part of our culture and can let the Germans have him to keep. The Belgian guy would agree.

We Don't Need Nine Lives

Our oldest son had undergone a tonsillectomy recently but had some complications and needed another surgery. This development threw a major monkey wrench into our vacation plans, but what could we do? I didn’t go to medical school, and my humor column credentials don’t necessarily qualify me to override the surgeon’s admonitions, so we ended up staying home. As a consolation prize for our son (and for my wife’s sanity), we bought the “Rock Band” game for Wii.

I would highly recommend everyone who reads this column run right out and purchase this game for their family. I don’t own stock in any of the gaming companies, and I can’t say I particularly fell in love with the game. No. My reasons for this recommendation is it’s a harmless but necessary reality check: after playing it for about two minutes, you’ll quickly realize you were never destined to be a rock star and your parents were right when they told you to go to college or trade school. Suffice it to say, my fantasy of being a drummer was crushed, and I can safely say my wife isn’t the next Nelly Furtado or Gwen Stefani. In other words, all the years of my life leading up to this moment weren’t wasted.

Listening to the radio the other day, the host of the program read a statistic that the average life span for American males is now 78 years. I didn’t think much of it until I realized that I’m going to turn 39 later this year – for all of you who don’t like to do math that requires more than taking your shoes off to count higher than ten, that’s exactly half. Rather than look at this in the classic half-empty/half-full manner, I care to look at it like a roller coaster ride.

As the great chain-driven Roller Coaster of Life chinks its way to the top of the hill, it’s nice to look around and take in the view that only such heights afford. You look around at your fellow passengers: some are peeing their pants with excitement even though nothing’s happened yet (there’s a huge metaphor in that alone, but we don’t have time), some are trying to look indifferent but you know they’d rather be giving a bath to a cat with a multiple-personalities disorder, and some have no reservations at all – they are screaming at the top of their lungs begging any deity or pagan god to deliver them from this evil.

Not me. I’ve enjoyed the ride up so far, but I’m certain my plunge through Middle Age will be an incomparable experience with the upcoming corkscrew of Paying for Braces and the double loop of College Tuition. Next will be the double humps of the Twilight Years that make you feel like you’re going to be thrown out of your seat, which produces that sensation that you’re going to involuntarily lose bladder control at any moment.

Before I know it, I’ll be climbing another hill with my hair a little mussed up, and a small dab of spittle starting to drip from the right side of my mouth. Yeah, who cares? I’m not trying to impress anyone! I crest this hill and proceed downward into a tight spiral of the Home Stretch, teeth (or dentures) rattling and my vision slightly blurred. I’ll take the last corner and know that I’m about to enter the Great Wheelhouse in the Sky. The Grim Reaper will pass his scythe to his left hand and reach out to me with his right slowly shaking his head when I try to get out on the wrong side of the car – one way only. I won’t argue but only ask if my wife has already arrived or if I can wait around for her. The ride wouldn’t be worth it otherwise.

Thanks, Oddballs

Quite honestly, I had some pretty bad teachers during my pre-college (that is to say “free”) educational career. In second grade, I had Mrs. Harold who, I swear, was Mr. Magoo in drag only with bigger, rounder glasses. My fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Payne, would prance around the room like Lawrence Welk on lithium and then scream at the top of his lungs when he wanted our attention. It worked. Sixth grade brought Mrs. Fontaine who always wore these gigantic fake fingernails that she inadvertently flicked into Sam Haymon’s hot lunch one day. He almost ate the thing, and I don’t believe he would have noticed if Christy Schlotski hadn’t flipped out and run from the room as if a giant booger had landed on one of her puffy sweaters – Sam’s love for all things gastronomical was surpassed only by his unrequited love for Christy.

Fast forward to high school: I’m fairly certain that my Geometry teacher drank . . . a great deal. Based on having to deal with just a handful of the kids in my class alone, I can’t say I blame her, but that’s another discussion for another day. While she never showed up for school wearing her underwear on the outside of one of her three polyester pant suits (burnt orange, pastel blue, and earth brown), she displayed the classic behaviors of slurred speech (which is probably what kept her from teaching English also), mood swings, and the avoidance of bright lights. My Economics teacher’s idea of giving us proper instruction on the inner workings of the New York Stock Exchange was to show us the movie “Trading Places” from start to finish. Isn’t tenure a wonderful thing!

While we would all prefer to decry the shortcomings of tax-payer-funded institutions – especially when we’re waiting in line for two hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles – we all have to give a nod to the public school system and say, “Well done!” Despite the fact these learning experiences don’t quite live up to sitting at the feet of Socrates and Aristotle, I believe I survived and came out of “the system” prepared to face the world. Why? Because that’s REAL LIFE. These experiences, good or bad, prepare you to deal with all sorts of oddballs that come across or even completely block your path in life – and I’m not just talking about your college professors.

When your refrigerator’s ice maker stops working, or you need to replace the muffler on your 1987 Honda Civic, you go to someone who probably didn’t attend an east-coast prep school or aced the SAT’s math and verbal sections. But you can probably bet good money that they were smart enough to NOT let a public education stop them. Further, you’re not likely to see a group of men and women gathered around a table at a technical school reviewing applications and saying, “Gosh, this kid looks like he could be a promising BMW master mechanic, but either his English teacher was ineffective in teaching him the subtleties of Beowulf or he’s just not smart enough to get it. Either way, I think he’s too big a risk.” Free education has value!

The next time you’re driving down the highway behind someone who’s driving an SUV the size of a third-world country, talking on a cell phone with the attitude that he’s the center of the universe, and traveling at least fifteen miles an hour below the speed limit in the fast lane, the first thought that’s going to come to mind is, “What’s this cat’s deal? He’s driving like he owns the road!” Truth is, he probably has enough money to own it, and he probably paid way too much for his education – you can’t buy IQ!

Dim Your IQ for Takeoff

In our day-to-day lives, I believe it’s safe to say that most of us are reasonable, semi-intelligent human beings. Send us through the metal detector at the airport, however, and I believe we act as though we just underwent a temporary frontal lobotomy. In other words, from the moment we walk into the secured area of an airport until we exit at the baggage claim, we’re complete morons who blissfully go on with life as if everything’s normal. Follow me through this process.

After gathering up all of our clothing following the strip search, here’s one of the first things we hear coming over the intercom: “In the interest of aviation security, please maintain your personal property in your possession.” You find yourself thinking, “That’s good advice. I totally want to maintain aviation security.” Others around you are sporting similar nods of agreement as the disembodied voice of reason drones on and on. In the interest of “aviation security”? How about in the interest of common sense? Is there an assumption here that once we’re outside of the airport, leaving personal articles lying about willy-nilly is perfectly acceptable? So, we clutch our bags a little tighter and go wait in line to spend $78.94 on the latest issues of Time and People magazine, a pack of gum, a roll of Lifesavers, and a bottle of water. That’s smart.

In between the “aviation security” announcement and the constant intercom paging of one Michael Wisterbean to report to gate D1 immediately (for the last thirty minutes – leave the guy already!), you hear this little piece of wisdom: “If anyone unknown has asked you to carry a foreign object, please contact airport security immediately.” First of all, DUH! Secondly, why all the fancy wording? Foreign object? Seriously, do we anticipate someone approaching us and asking us to carry a Frigidaire refrigerator on the flight to Sioux Falls? On second thought, though, stocked properly, that could make for a much better selection for in-flight meals. At any rate, admit it: you’ve found yourself pausing for a brief moment to review the last few hours to MAKE SURE a stranger hasn’t asked you to carry a foreign object on your flight – and Aunt Mildred’s fruitcake doesn’t qualify.

When we finally get on the plane (which is a humongous chunk of metal far heavier than your 6-year-old self who tried and failed to fly by jumping off the roof of your house with an umbrella), we settle into our seats and dutifully listen to the flight attendant’s announcements and admonitions. Most of this stuff is pretty innocuous and seemingly unnecessary (like showing us how to buckle our seatbelts “tight and low across the hips”), but the one thing every flight attendant says that no one ever questions is, “We’re going to dim the cabin lights for takeoff.” The cockpit is sealed off, so it’s not like driving a car at night where internal lights make it hard for the driver to see outside of the car. So why dim the lights? Are the engines’ electrical needs so great that more than five or six passengers simultaneously turning on their overhead reading lights will cause a complete shutdown and make us crash? You don’t read about THAT in the safety brochure.

This “lobotomizing” of the flying general public does help explain why some people try fitting the luggage equivalent of a stuffed alligator in the overhead bin and the reason some airline pilots have been caught flying naked, but this has to stop for the simple reason that the intercom system in all major airports should be used exclusively for the paging of fictitious persons like Amanda Hugandkiss, Al Coholic, and the crowd favorite, Seymour Butz. We must return to simpler times!

Ben The Jokester

One recent morning found my oldest son and me sitting at the breakfast table together and chatting about this and that. Out of the blue, he begins explaining to me the mechanics behind building a dry-ice bomb. I believe he garnered this little nugget of newfound “wisdom” from a kid at school – we seriously need to screen his friends better – and the intimacy of our conversation naturally coaxed it out of him. For an eleven-year-old boy, you can’t find a better bonding moment.

Nevertheless, as he finished his explanation of this phenomenon of fun, I pointed out that he had a couple of holes in his understanding of this matter and filled them in for him. This didn’t produce the “thanks, Dad” I was expecting; instead, he looked at me squarely with an eager look of curiosity and asked, “Dad, have you ever built a dry-ice bomb?” At the very moment the last syllable came out of his mouth, the world stopped spinning on its axis – you might have sensed it, too – and everything froze in mid air. It felt as if I was in the middle of The Matrix, and I wasn’t sure how long this was going to last. (The only other time this happened was when the last syllable came out of MY mouth when I was explaining the facts of life to my son, and what seemed like an eternity was really only a nanosecond.) So I did what any normal approaching-middle-age dad would do: I grabbed a Sharpie, drew an Abe Lincoln beard on my son, got back in my chair, and waited for time to start up again. And when it did, I screwed up my courage, looked my son right in the eye, and got up from the table without answering the question. Never lie to your children, people.

Many of you are probably wondering how old I am and when am I going to grow out of pranks. Granted, the ALLEGED dry-ice incident was over twenty years ago back in college, but the Abe Lincoln beard was recent. (I’ll admit that the beard was a bit immature, but you have to know your audience.) At any rate, I’m not that old, and I don’t believe there is an age limit. I’m willing to bet the whole thing with Benjamin Franklin with the key on the kite string had absolutely nothing to do with electricity experiments – one of his buddies was probably locked in his bedroom on the second floor of a neighboring building because they had been caught mooning the town pastor. Obviously, they didn’t adhere to the maxim of “know your audience”. I digress – but that’s probably why most of you are reading this in the first place.

In that vein, I recently changed jobs, and in the process of moving on, I needed to return some equipment including a cell phone. The company acknowledged receipt of the equipment, and about a week later I was curious if they had disconnected the service for my old cell phone. Alas, they hadn’t, and I still have the password to access the outgoing voicemail greeting. When the great gods of pranks smile upon you and hand you an opportunity like this, you don’t pass it up. As of the writing of this column, if you call my old cell number, this is what you’ll hear:

“Hi, you’ve reached the now-defunct cell phone voicemail of Grant Greene with the XYZ Corporation. While rumors that I am a member of a cult or that I joined a cabaret troop under the name of Lydia Johnson are totally untrue, I am no longer with the XYZ Corporation. If you’re calling about a matter related to the XYZ Corporation, you’re going to want to hang up and . . . actually, you’re going to want to listen to this part first and then hang up and call XXX-XXX-XXXX and ask for customer service. If you’re just now learning that I’m no longer with the XYZ Corporation, rest assured I’m not a member of a cult or traveling with a cabaret troop under the name of Lydia Johnson, but you’ll need to call me at . . .”

Whether I’m an approaching-middle-age dad or a feral teenager, some of you may find no humor at all in the idea of having a little fun with corporate America. As for myself, I have to admit to some degree of satisfaction knowing people are either laughing or scratching their heads when they call my old cell number. However, if campus security from my old college starts calling around about some dry-ice bombs twenty years ago, Grant Greene is dead and Lydia Johnson is in Brazil on an extended engagement with the cast of “Moulin Rouge”.

Spell it Out

Driving home from a long business trip the other night, my wife called to inform me that the family dog had escaped from the backyard. “Escaped” is probably too strong a word as that evokes Hollywood images of someone who was wrongly convicted fashioning a shovel out of a toothbrush and digging his way to freedom to prove his innocence by catching the real killer or a prisoner of war outsmarting the Nazis by timing the spotlight passes and making it under the wire undetected. While there may be times when our two sons may see us as evil prison wardens who punish on a whim, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t go so far as to equate us with Hitler’s minions. With that said, though, the predicament in question here was the result of a gate left open – by whom I’m not allowed to say – and a very curious dog with enough Terrier blood in her to follow a scent.

Arriving home, I immediately began walking through the neighborhood in the hopes of finding our stray, bearing her on my shoulders, and returning home to a hero’s welcome. Ha! I roamed through the neighborhood calling the dog by name in a loud but caring voice, of course. Although I was feeling a little downtrodden by the thought that I may never see our dog again, I felt an immediate wave of relief that we gave her a normal name – Lola. I couldn’t imagine myself wandering about the neighborhood in the dark of the night and calling out “Here Mrs. Finkeltoots” or “Sir Stinksalot, where are you?” I agreed right then and there that had we done something like that, I would have abandoned my search immediately and said to myself, “Well, it was a good run while it lasted. The kids can’t say we never let them have a dog.”

Although we ultimately found Lola at a friend’s house, this experience caused me to think in bigger terms.

I admit that it’s rather childish of me to feel I would have been embarrassed going around looking for a dog with a silly name; nevertheless, had I found myself calling out for Mrs. Finkletoots, and my neighbor laughed at me, I could have saved face a little bit by explaining it was a dog and the kids had named her. However, has anyone stopped to think that the Democratic Party, in the presidential nomination process, has the potential of making us the laughing stock of North America, if not the world? It’s all in the names.

Should the young, sharp politico from Chicago gain the nomination and win the general election, he’s going to spend the first two years in office interrupting every press conference with, “Okay, for the last time, I don’t care how you pronounce my name. Just make sure you spell it correctly. Now, can we discuss my economic stimulus plan?”

As an alternative, the other candidate shares the same first name with 40% of high school cheerleaders. At State dinners, she’ll be forced to make it clear in her opening comments that she and the other “Ovalettes” will not be performing a half-time show. Might I add, the German Chancellor and the French Prime Minister will both breathe a sigh of relief.

Inasmuch as the presidential election involves humans (for the most part), and only adults are allowed to vote, how do we explain this to Mrs. Canada and Señor Mexico, our neighbors?

Fun but Risky

I’ve been in a lot of crowded places in my life: Times Square on New Year’s Eve, the Hong Kong Subway at rush hour, and a Wal-Mart at 5:00 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. Each of these situations offers an opportunity to watch people and see them at their most primal. However, you haven’t really availed yourself of a truly great people-watching opportunity until you’ve mixed and jostled with the crowds at the FBR Open in Scottsdale, AZ.

As I was driving up to the golf course, my oldest son asked me what FBR stood for, and I had to tell him I wasn’t really sure. However, after no more than five minutes of being in just the parking area where a charter bus picks you up to take you over to the event, it’s obvious that FBR stands for Fake Breast Rendezvous – and I’m guessing that “Open” alludes to the plunging necklines. These women were wearing four-inch heels that certainly wouldn’t be allowed on any putting surface, and I’m fairly certain that if you asked what they thought of Aaron Baddelely’s or Rory Sabbatini’s chances in today’s field they would probably say “I’m more partial to Dolce & Gabana and Vera Wang, but I guess there’s always room for more on the runway.” There were plenty of women in attendance at today’s round, I’m sure, that could certainly take me to school on the golf course, but the ones that seemed to be in greater numbers were obviously not there to watch golf.

As many of you know, the 16^th Hole is famous for being “lively”. Imagine attending an Oakland Raiders football game where the gridiron has been replaced with a 162-yard par three. Since this is not an official NFL event, there don’t seem to be as many limitations on the amount of beer the spectators are allowed to drink. Sitting among the crowd on the 16^th, it was obvious that FBR stands for Full Beer Ruckus. While I was convinced that many of my fellow onlookers had started drinking at 9:00 a.m., my wife thought I was grossly underestimating them and said they probably started last night.

With the Super Bowl in town this weekend there was another group of persons in attendance at today’s round who were lost. They were wandering around aimlessly with a look on their faces that said, “This is the worst NFL Experience I have ever seen in my life!” Those who found their way into the bleachers on the 16^th hole were granted a small portion of solace, though.

Although I have never attended any other PGA events, I’m going to go out on a limb here and bet that there were three times as many Port-a-Potties at the FBR Open than at, say, the Masters. With as much beer flowing at this event, you have another possibility for the letters FBR: Full Bladder Release.

800-lb Ninja

Author's note: This will appear in the newspaper in a shorter version. However, for the sake of those co-workers of mine who went to the spa with me, I'm including full detail here. Holly especially might be interested.

When you think of the word “massage” your body should instantly relax, and other words like “soothing” and “restful” should come to mind. But that would be before you actually receive a massage. Once you’ve undergone one, words like “breezy”, “flab”, and “pile driver” are more likely to leap to mind. My first time was certainly an eye opener for me.

After changing into my plush robe and sitting in the “meditation room” – that’s massage talk for a place to read a magazine while making sure your legs are crossed and the robe is wrapped tightly about your body because you’re basically hanging out (no pun intended) with a bunch of strangers in the same state of undress – my masseuse calls my name and introduces herself. Berta, a slight Panamanian woman who could not have been more than 4’8” and 100 lbs. soaking wet, shows me to our massage room and explains that she will wait outside the door while I disrobe, slide myself between the sheets on the table, and lie on my stomach with my face resting on a padded horseshoe – once I place my face in the horseshoe, I am happy to learn that it didn’t appear to have ever been actually used on a horse. Here’s where the fun begins.

Berta calls to me from outside the door to assure I’m ready, and I presume she enters. The reason I presume is that I have my face firmly implanted in the padded horseshoe and can see absolutely nothing but a small spot on the tiled floor below me. (What I forgot to tell you is that the table is completely covered so you can’t see its legs – this is vitally important to the experience, as you will see.) Berta asks me which scented massage oil I would prefer. As I can see the choices don’t include “Stinking Rich” or “Smell of Victory”, I defer to her. Berta recommends lavender, and we’re off.

After sufficiently coating my neck, shoulders, and back in enough massage oil to rainproof me, Berta takes a hot stone and begins to rub it over the aforementioned body parts. I must admit that feels pretty good. However, the temperature of the rock is high enough that if she just lets it sit in one place it can cause third-degree burns, so there’s that unspoken understanding that I not complain lest she duct tape it directly above my third and fourth lumbar vertebrae and walk away. Needless to say, the wonderfully soothing quality of the heated rock moving about my back is immediately cancelled out by the knowledge that this same rock could cripple me – that wouldn’t be one of the selling points you would see on the spa’s brochure.

Next, Berta begins working on the muscles in my back – this is where the table’s legs being covered comes into play. I swear an 800-lb ninja has been secreted below the table and when given the signal, he stealthily slips out of his hiding place and climbs atop my back and begins jumping with precision on specific muscles. There is no way that little Berta has the leverage to push that hard on my back and render me completely without oxygen in my lungs. All the while, of course, I’m staring down at a spot on the ground that’s no more than a cubic foot. For all I know, a whole team of ninjas could have been hiding under that table – sort of the massage world’s equivalent to a clown car at the circus – and they all got on one guy’s shoulders to perform the Pile Driver on my back. Occasionally Berta says something to me just to preserve the illusion that we are alone in the room.

Once the ninja or ninjas go back under the table, Berta begins kneading my skin like bread dough. And as she does this, the less-than-flattering term Doughboy comes to mind. Unless you’re an underwear model and have zero-percent body fat, good Ol’ Berta’s going to find every inch of flab on your body and shamefully remind you of each and every Twinkie and Ho Ho you’ve consumed in your life.

Near the end of the massage session, Berta discreetly reconfigures the sheet lying atop my body to expose my legs, which she does one at a time by tucking the sheet under my midsection and wrapping it around and under my leg. The first leg goes just fine, but as she covers it up and repeats the process with my other leg, she’s a little overzealous and ends up giving me a major wedgie. If that’s not bad enough, in her haste to proceed with this portion of the treatment, let’s just say she comes up a little high – I can feel a cool southern breeze coming across the poop deck, if you will. At this point, I’m truly not too worried that Berta’s ogling me because (1) I don’t hear any laughter, and (2) she keeps her lunch down.

To top off the experience, Berta gives me a scalp massage with, yes you guessed it, the same hands that are covered in massage oil. So, to sum up, this is an experience that people pay for so they can be potentially burned, have the wind knocked out of them, have all their physical flaws indelibly pointed out to them, be given a wedgie, and walk out of the room with hair that looks like Johnny Depp’s Sweeney Todd. Wouldn’t it just be easier and cheaper to go back to high school for a day?

In a Fix

If what I write in this column has the same effect/power as those things that come out of my mouth, the likelihood that my kids will read this by choice ranks up there with the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series or woolly mammoths roaming the Arizona desert. With that said, however, if anybody out there chooses to tell my kids what I’m writing about today, I won’t be responsible for what I do next – atomic wedgies and wet Willies come to mind, though.

Our dog Lola is dying. A few months ago, we took her to the vet to have her “fixed” (what a euphemism!) and the vet ran some type of blood panel. The results came back, and the vet told us that there may be something wrong with her liver. She then told us that other factors may have been creating a false positive so we should bring her back in a month or two for an additional test. We did, and the results came back with even more severe indications that her liver isn’t even working. To look at Lola, said the vet, you’d never know she had anything wrong with her. She’s energetic and rambunctious; she eats well and sleeps well. With the results of the second test, the vet indicated that Lola’s condition is beyond the help of medication or even surgery. (I have to say here that surgery for an animal still seems a little kooky. “Sorry, son, we couldn’t send you to college because the dog needed surgery. Sure, the surgery was a success and all, but dogs only live so long.”) Erin and I haven’t told the boys yet about this development, and since learning about this it seems like Lola’s just a ticking time bomb. The reason we haven’t told the boys is Lola may be that exception – our fingers are crossed – that defies medical reason and lives to a ripe old age of 97 dog years. It’s a baseless hope, I’ll admit, but it’s what we’re holding onto.

I have to pause here a moment and make something clear. I may have given some people the impression that I don’t like dogs. That’s just not true. I was against the idea of getting a dog because of the costs associated with dog ownership and the slim possibility of something like this very thing happening. Although I freely admit that I find surgery on dogs a little kooky, I’m not a heartless person. It’s not my inclination that a dog should be put to sleep at the first hint of problems. For the very reason that I’m not a heartless person, I didn’t want to get a dog because I didn’t want to be placed in a position of needing to decide a life-or-death question for a small, furry animal.

With that said, I must make a further admission: I love this darn dog. I love the fact her tail wags like a juiced-up metronome when you walk into the room. I love the fact she’ll jump up onto the couch and do a face plant on the side of the cushion because she misjudged the height – and then she’ll try it again without a hint of embarrassment. I love the squinty-eyed look of contentment she gets when you scratch her in just the right place. I’ll admit it: I’m a nutball.

My sister has a cat, George, whom she adores. I’m not sure why because it always seems to be lying under the bed. My mom and dad have a dog, Gus, who goes everywhere with them. In fact, my mom will take Gus through the drive-thru at Jack in The Box when it’s raining to get him a sourdough bacon cheeseburger. Again, the reason my parents find so much joy in this dog eludes me because he mostly just lies around and emits strange smells – I can’t imagine the sourdough bacon cheeseburger helps with that. Nevertheless, these animals bring some of my loved ones unequaled joy. Who am I to question that?

My heart aches for Lola as I type this. Please let her be the exception! Please! Whether she will or won’t be remains to be seen. In the meantime, hug your kids a little longer and give Fido and Mr. Kibble an extra treat now and then. It’ll make YOU smile.

The Virtue of Amnesia

Thomas Wolfe once wrote a book called You Can’t Go Home Again, the title alluding to a universal truth that you can’t recover the past. (Interesting side note: the book was published after Mr. Wolfe’s death so it might just as well have been titled I Can’t Go Home Ever.) This knowledge of an irrevocable past produces in us a degree of melancholy when we think back on particular happy moments that have long since passed. However, we quickly come to our senses and realize how liberating it is that we’ll never have to relive thousands upon thousands of experiences we suffered through originally in years gone by.

I would imagine my oldest brother is pretty happy that he’ll never have to wear a corduroy suit that our mom made for him for his graduation from Junior High School. (He’s not completely blameless in this matter – he willingly went along with mom’s foray into haute couture, which is French for “one arm of the suit is slightly longer than the other”.) Locking myself – on accident, of course – in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus at the age of four isn’t something that necessarily gets me misty eyed. Neither does having my other brother sitting on my chest and pinning my arms to the ground while he would let a big loogie drip from his mouth in a spider-web-like string and dangle over my face before sucking it back up. (Sometimes he’d just spit and let it spread over my face while I couldn’t move.)

My sister Kim, I would be willing to bet, isn’t rushing to relive the moment when she was learning to drive and my two brothers, along with their host of friends, sat in the backseat and laughed like hyenas each time she cut a corner too close or applied the brakes a tad too hard. (The braking would later be immortalized by the term “Kim stop”, which we still use today, and can be re-created by violently throwing your upper torso forward and hitting your head on your hand as if it’s the dashboard or seat in front of you.) Those were good times for us (the brothers), but I’m happy not to be sitting in the back of a 1975 Chevrolet Kingswood station wagon without a seat belt and my sister behind the wheel again.

This sanity-saving knowledge of the past is further enhanced by our ability to forget odds and ends that are either emotionally crippling or, more importantly, embarrassingly incriminating. The former is usually a result of the mind protecting itself, while the latter is the result of denial – a denial that you were once immature, foolish, and even carefree. When your son or daughter comes home with a note from the principal informing you that your child has been engaging in shenanigans frowned upon by civil society (i.e. lighting a girl’s ponytail on fire with a Bunsen burner in Chemistry class or pasting a photo of the Social Studies teacher’s head on the torso of a donkey), you conveniently forget that you laughed until you nearly peed your pants when you had devised and executed a plan to mix a laxative into the brownies in the Teachers’ Lounge and then put plastic wrap over the toilets in the Teachers’ Bathroom. You have to forget about that or else the world would go to Hell in a hand basket because rather than disciplining your child you’d be comparing notes and trying to figure out how to pull a better prank and not get caught the next time.

I’m sure you’ll agree with me: no good can come from reliving the past. It’s best that we look to the future and try to forget about those uglier moments of days gone by – like acid-wash jeans, leisure suits, and the Mullet.

Season's Bleatings (Christmas 2007)

You may choose to think of this yearly dispatch from the Greene clan to be the holiday equivalent of an annual proctology exam. For some, you may look to this event as a necessary evil and take solace in the fact it’ll all be over in a few moments. Others may find it completely unnecessary and wonder what type of paperwork snafu got them on the list. It’s possible that there may even be a small minority who actually enjoys it, and all I can say is that there are support groups and therapy out there to help. Regardless of the category that may apply to you, I am willing to bet that you all share one happy thought about this: at least we have another year before the next one. With that said, happy reading!

It’s not been a good year for the Greenes, honestly. Sure, our house hasn’t burned to the ground, nor have I been fired from my job – keep your fingers crossed – but those of you who haven’t kept in contact with us through the year may be shocked to learn that Erin has gone completely insane. It’s an insanity stemming from bringing the newest member of our family, Lola, into our home. No, I’m not talking about postpartum depression (you’ve seriously lost contact with us if you thought Erin was pregnant); I’m talking about the fact not only did Erin relent and bring a dog into our home but she is barking mad (pun intended) over this dog. Lola is a Chihuahua/Terrier mix, and Erin has been seen nuzzling, kissing, and hugging this dog repeatedly. Fear not, it’s nothing shocking enough to make YouTube, but it’s completely wrong to all of us who have listened to Erin’s oft-stated dislike for dogs for so many years. I believe this vehemence is best summed up by a pre-Lola quote from Erin: “They lick their butts, then they lick your face.” Ladies and gentlemen, I present you Erin the Flip-Flopper. Be careful, she may run for President next year – she now has all the necessary qualifications.

Sam is now in second grade, and he’s becoming quite the writer. Recently, he was asked to write about the Pilgrims and the ordeal they faced crossing the Atlantic. Rather than taking the usual approach by describing the fetid, cramped living conditions or the long hours of ennui and facing harsh elements, he summed up their plight by writing that the Pilgrims were “always hurling” over the sides of the ship. Not putting too fine a point on it, he simply described the journey as “dreadful”. From the mouths of babes . . .

For those of you who have been doing their research, Jack turned ten this year and started the fifth grade. Jack excels in science and math at school, and this wouldn’t be troubling except for the fact he’s keen on putting this newfound knowledge to use at home. I fear the day I’ll come home from a trip and find Jack standing on the roof and holding the neighbor’s cat with a piece of buttered toast tied to its back. I’ll have to ask, but he’ll of course say, “Dad, come on. I’m trying to see which phenomenon is true: ‘cats always land on their feet’ or ‘toast always lands buttered side down.’” Whether it’s fatigue from being on the road or looking a perfectly reasoned scientific experiment in the face, I’m afraid I might just shrug my shoulders, wish him good luck, and go inside the house. Frankly, I just don’t want to void my roof’s warranty. I’ll keep you posted.

As for myself, I’m still trying to create a force field around the house that will allow our family and friends to pass freely but keep out kids selling magazine subscriptions, religious zealots, and people leaving flyers on our porch. I’m trying to do this by using the available cell phone towers in the area and triangulating their signals around the house. However, I can’t quite get the frequency right because I’m constantly finding the Verizon guy standing on my porch with his host of thousands surrounding him. I’m sure it would be pretty easy to hide a couple of magazine sales people and missionaries in that kind of crowd.

May this Yuletide yammering find you warm and happy – hopefully without the help of medication. Drop us a line when you get a chance.

P.S. Erin wants to go on record that she’s not altogether pleased with the proctology analogy at the opening of the letter. Just so you know.

Giving 'Til it Hurts

I went down to the local church house and donated blood this morning. Evidently, there’s a great deal more peer pressure involved with donating blood than I had ever imagined. One would think that spur-of-the-moment cow tipping or Britney Spears impersonating would carry with it a stronger pull to be a part of the group – a pull with enough power for you to abandon your senses and do something you normally wouldn’t do sober or free of any prescribed medications. (Obviously, the sobriety or state of being drug-free might impede your ability to do a really good Britney impersonation.)

Before giving blood, one of the technicians takes you to a temporary cubicle away from prying eyes to ask you 348 health questions in 30 seconds to which you are supposed to answer “no” on each one. The “privacy” of this set up is what causes me to think there’s such a strong element of peer pressure. Sure, the questions they ask are mostly personal, but if you truly answer “yes” to any one of the majority, you have bigger fish to fry than taking the time out of your day to make it down to donate blood. “Have you had in the last six months or do you currently have bodily fluids that defy description with a standard pallet of primary and secondary colors freely flowing from any natural or recently created orifices?” (They read those suckers so fast – I think that was one of the questions.)

One would think that they could hand you a laminated card when you first check in that had all of these questions, and at the bottom of the questionnaire there would be a note saying: “If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the previous questions, you may not donate blood today – you have more important things to worry about.” Instead, they bring you back to the cubicle and grill you. Some of the technicians give you the evil eye if they think you’re lying. With all of this privacy, you’re waiting for the tech to lean across the little table, look you in the eye, and say, “Look. I understand you got caught up in the moment when everyone was signing up for the blood drive – you wanted to impress everyone with ‘Hey, look at me. I’m as selfless as any of you.’ But let’s be honest. You’re not eligible to donate, so I’m going to let you sit here for a couple more minutes and gather your wits about you. When you get up to leave, if anyone catches your eye and questions you, just tell them you have iron-poor blood. Do you understand? And don’t let me catch you back here again. Peer pressure’s tough, I’ll grant you. But the business end of my size eleven shoe up your keister is tougher.”

Peer pressure or not, I do find a great deal of personal satisfaction with donating blood. Sure, it’s nice to think about the people I’m helping, and that’s all fine and dandy, but what I really enjoy about the whole experience is watching how nervous people get with the whole ordeal. I feel beholden to feed that fear.

The son of a friend of ours walked up to me and said he accompanied his dad so he could understand the whole process. Noting a look of trepidation on his face I said, “Not a bad plan, Chet. But I’m surprised it’s so quiet here today. Usually you hear a lot of screaming and moaning. They must be using some pretty strong drugs today. Better make sure they don’t slip you something – you could end up with a needle in your arm, too.”

As the boy screamed and ran to find his dad, I noticed a lot of people were looking at me. I just told them, “Poor kid just found out he has iron-poor blood.”

The Theory of Relativity

Sharing family stories carries with it a certain degree of responsibility, a sacred charge if you will. Granted, it’s not exactly the equivalent of Moses coming down from the mountain with stone tablets, but I need to mind my Ps and Qs or else I face an even greater wrath – my wife’s.

Some of you may recall that a little over a year ago I wrote a column about my side of the family and the personalities that populate that peanut gallery. It was my contention that when taken as a whole, the dysfunction and borderline insanity displayed by my kin represent probably 95% of the population – in other words, they’re normal. This weekend, I attended a reunion for a branch of my wife’s family tree and learned that they’re just as “normal” as my family, and probably yours. It’s all relative, certainly. More on that in a moment.

Last week we went to our oldest son’s very first band concert. He plays the trumpet. He’s no Herb Alpert or Dizzy Gillespie, and last week’s band concert demonstrated that he’s not a child prodigy either. But that’s okay. When the band finished their first song, we had a little trouble clapping because we were busy keeping our youngest son’s hands down in his lap and not covering his ears. It would be safe to say that our youngest lacked the wisdom to see that the band’s performance went relatively well – no windows were broken and the neighborhood dogs didn’t join in a communal howl. My wife’s father, I noticed, had a very big smile on his face at the end of the first song – I couldn’t tell if it was a result of Grandpa Pride or if he had just turned his hearing aid way down. It was no philharmonic offering by any stretch of the imagination, but the relative simplicity of the song had my wife and me bursting with pride to hear our son blowing that horn like mad and following the bandleader’s direction.

Relative simplicity can go a long way. Take Gary Glitter’s “Rock & Roll, Part II” (otherwise known as the “Hey Song” frequently heard at sporting events) as an example. In the three-minutes-eleven-seconds song, only four words are uttered along with a whole slew of inaudible “ughs” that sound like a tennis player lunging for the ball played out in front of a catchy guitar hook that just keeps repeating itself – it’s not Beethoven even on a good day. Nevertheless, that simple song, more often than not, will find you painting your chest, belting out those four words, and grunting like a Caveman. Do that alone, and you’re a freak. Do that in a stadium with 60,000 other fans, and you’re normal. It’s all relative.

Now, back to the family reunion. I heard one story about two couples (the two women were sisters) taking a trip down to Tijuana; one couple ended up leaving the other on the side of the road south of the border to hitchhike their way back to San Diego. I got the distinct impression that alcohol was involved. Another story involved the granddaddy of combovers that would have put Donald Trump to shame and given Bob’s Big Boy a run for his money in the styling department.

No one on my wife’s side of the family has ever been famous like Gary Glitter for penning and composing what has become known as a sports anthem, but I’m proud to have married into this “normal” family all the same. We can look at it in another way: neither has anyone on her side of the family been convicted and imprisoned like little Gary for doing naughty things with underage girls in Vietnam. Good thing, too, because it would be hell – relatively speaking – trying to get everyone together for another family reunion.

Giblets All Around

With the prospect or specter of having thirty or so family members and/or friends jammed around a table designed to seat eight for Thanksgiving dinner, many of you have reached your wit’s end (a shorter trip for some than others). This is evidenced by the fact you have resorted to sending e-mails to me, a humor columnist, asking for advice on matters concerning the holiday ranging from the aforementioned seating question to proper menus. I’m guessing Martha Stewart hasn’t been returning your phone calls.

Wendy Wisnewski writes, “What should I do to entertain the children while I am finishing the last-minute preparations in the kitchen?”

I’m assuming the husband/father here is either in jail or he has already been tasked to keep Uncle Herb and Cousin Phil in opposite ends of the house. Clearly, hiring a clown to come in and perform a small magic show and make balloon animals for the kids is out of the question – not necessarily because getting a clown to work on a holiday may be difficult but because you may not be able to tell him apart from your Aunt Phyllis. If you’re not planning on taking a family photo sometime that day, a nice paintball war in the backyard would be a good activity – dress the kids up like Pilgrims. Get them all tuckered out running around and then fill them with turkey (Mother Nature’s sleeping pill, tryptophan), and they’ll zonk out for hours after dinner. If you are planning on a family photo, just substitute the paintball guns with BB guns – it’s really easy to airbrush out any red marks the BBs might make on the children’s skin.

Bradley Rykoff asks, “I woke up this morning with a tattoo of a Smurf on my chest and a message on my answering machine telling me that I agreed to have all the guys from my office over for Thanksgiving dinner. I just bought a turkey, and it’s got a bunch of strange things stuffed up inside it. What are they and what do I do with them?”

I can’t help you with the Smurf on your chest (although I would recommend forgoing that trip to the Bahamas with your buddies until you resolve that issue), but the turkey thing is something I can address. That bag of goodies inside the turkey is called the giblets: the heart, gizzard, liver, and other edible organs of the turkey. If you were going to stuff the bird – that’s not a euphemism – you would take the giblets and chop them up and mix them in with the stuffing. My recommendation, though, would be to find out who got your drunk enough to get you to have a Smurf tattooed on your chest and place them in his sock drawer or bed sheets along with a note that says, “Killer.”

Lastly, Kelly Chadwick poses the question, “With seating at my one and only dining room table limited, where should I seat the children?”

When I was a child, we were banished to the kids’ table, which was basically a folding card table with a white paint stain from a long-forgotten home-improvement project. And while one could make the argument that such an arrangement is good for children’s socialization skills, the reality is that you’re going to spend more time ferrying the kids back to their own seats because they want to sit at the adult table. If you don’t go with the paintball activity mentioned above, and you don’t anticipate an opportunity to get your kids completely exhausted, the best thing to do is seat the children at the big table and have the adults sit in the family room with TV trays to watch the football game. Believe me, you won’t hear any complaints about not sitting at the adult table. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Blue Shame

There’s a saying about cars that goes something like this: “What’s the world’s fastest car? A rental car. What’s the second fastest car? A company car.” I have tested and proven both of these statements to be true, and I have come up with an addendum: “What’s the third fastest? Anything you are insane enough to give a teenager.”

When I was such a teenager, an old two-lane highway near my house had been widened and improved. And in between the time that it was finished and officially re-opened, it was used as a drag strip by the local kids because either the local sheriff’s office was unaware of this new development or they were turning a blind eye. Either way, I decided to take this opportunity and turn this strip of road into my own personal Bonneville Salt Flats.

My weapon of choice in my assault on the land speed record was the family grocery-getter, a baby blue 1985 Honda Civic – a car I had taken to calling Sid. The speedometer topped out at 120 mph, and I was intent on seeing that Sid reached his limits . . . or die trying.

After making a couple of cursory passes on the highway to check for Smokey (that’s 1970s trucker talk for “the law” for the uninitiated) hidden behind a billboard or hillock, I placed Sid in first gear, revved the engine (imagine how menacing those four cylinders of fury must have sounded!), and popped the clutch. (I want to say I had something really cool like The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” pumping on the factory-installed, two-speaker “stereo”, but it was probably something like Pet Shop Boys or Duran Duran.) At any rate, I took Sid through the motions and into fifth gear. When I reached 84 mph, the car started shaking. By the time I got to 92 mph, I could feel the fillings in my own mouth starting to loosen. But that didn’t stop me.

Funny thing here is that all those things I was taught in Drivers Ed – you know, the one about reaction times exponentially increasing for every mile an hour you are over the speed limit, the one about the likelihood of death should your car reach the speed of sound, etc. – didn’t suddenly leap to mind. While it was highly possible that the rivets and weldments holding my parents’ car together could fail at any moment due to the fact it was shaking like it was attempting re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and I would have to pull up to the house in only a car frame with four wheels and an engine, that concern didn’t cross my mind. The only thing I was thinking was, “Holy smokes, I can’t believe I didn’t bring my friend Craig as a witness. Who’s going to believe a factory-built 1985 Honda Civic is going 120 mph?”

Poor planning on my part, I admit. However, let us remember I was only a teenager. And had my parents found out at the time that I had done this, their reaction would have been something like, “Son, you could have killed yourself out there.” With my own experience as background and feeling as though I have learned something from my parents, I believe I would be able to take a more modern – if not more enlightened – approach to such a situation if I found out one of my own children participated in a re-creation of Death Race 2000. I would look my son squarely in the eye and say, “Son, do you realize gas costs $3.00 a gallon?” Kids!

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

My oldest son has a good sense of adventure, and for the past two years he’s indulged me in the Halloween costume department. The year before last, I got a large cardboard box, cut armholes in it and mocked up one of those “Hello My Name is” stickers on the outside of the box. You see, his name’s Jack, which I wrote in below “Hello My Name is”, so he went as a Jack in the Box. For those in the neighborhood who already knew his name was Jack, they thought it was funny. For the balance who were seeing this young boy for the first time, however, I believe about half thought it was creative and the other half probably thought, “That kid’s got the laziest parents in the world.”

Last year, I took a plastic garbage can, cut out the bottom and sewed a T-shirt into it to fit over Jack’s head. I then took a long piece of Velcro and made a chin strap out of it and fastened it to the lid so Jack could wear it like a hat. The stroke of genius with the T-shirt, if I do say so myself, is that Jack didn’t have to carry around a bag for candy; people could just throw it in the can, and the T-shirt sealed off the bottom so the candy could just gather around Jack’s person. Judging by the mixed looks Jack got that night as he made his Trick-or-Treating rounds, people just weren’t appreciating the creative genius that gave birth to this unique costume. We creative geniuses suffer so for our art!

With that said, I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority either wait until October 30th to come up with a costume, or they have children who have no vision (like my younger son who insisted on store-bought costumes like a ninja and Batman). Take the “ghost” costume for example. How many movies have you seen (excluding Abbott & Costello or “Beetlejuice”) where the ghosts look like your Queen bed’s flat sheet took flight and decided to start chasing people? In 1937’s “Topper”, Cary Grant plays a dashing ghost. Although the ubiquitous Internet wasn’t around yet to document it (perhaps because Al Gore hadn’t been born yet to invent the Internet), I’m willing to bet that Halloween didn’t see a bunch of 9-year-old boys running around in finely tailored gray wool suits and saying, “Look, I’m a ghost.” In 1937, most people would have said, “Oh, great. The kid’s dressed as the Angel of Death, a Union negotiator.” In 1990’s “Ghost”, Patrick Swayze plays a banker who is killed and hangs around his wife as a ghost to keep her safe. That year, you didn’t see kids running around in silk shirts and poofy, blown-dry hairdos saying “Look, I’m a ghost.” In 1990, most people would have said, “Look, honey, he’s a cocaine dealer.”

Parents, you need to take a little time (read: more than the ten minutes it takes to drive to your local Target or Wal-Mart) and give the costume question some thought. While you’re brainstorming, picture the following: Melissa and Joan Rivers are at the end of your street critiquing every child’s costume. As your child nears, you hear them say, “A witch was clearly the wrong choice for this little girl. She doesn’t have the hips for it. Wait, that’s a little boy, and I believe he’s trying to look like Gandolf. His parents should have known better. He needs a longer robe.”

Here are just two timely suggestions. (1) A plain, white T-shirt with a big, black asterisk: Barry Bonds’ 756th-home-run ball. (2) A crumpled car fender with the words “Lindsay Lohan was here.” Or, you could dress your child up as a fuel-efficient family car, and you’d hear people say, “Look, honey, it’s a ghost.”

Flea Collars Optional

Dr. Spock, it is said, understood babies extremely well and helped a generation of parents in the raising of their infants. I’m not sure how he had the time to do this while cavorting around the galaxy in the Starship Enterprise, or why so many parents would trust a guy who looked like he cut his hair by placing a bowl over his head, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s clear he wasn’t so much the Dr. Smartypants as he would have us believe because he never came out with a best-selling book on how to raise children past those infant years. He, like all other parents, was completely baffled. As a public service, though, I’m here to fill the breach.

Rather than trying to read our children’s minds, let us look to the animal kingdom for help. Understanding the stages of development and comparing them to the attributes of specific species will grant us inner peace – we still won’t understand what the heck’s going through their brains, but we’ll at least know that we’re not insane when we think our kids are acting like animals.

When children are very young, they’re like dogs. Beside the fact they would poop wherever they felt like if they weren’t wearing a diaper, I’m willing to bet that they would chase cars and bite tires if we left them to their own devices. Be that as it may, children and dogs commonly share a huge lack of patience. When Kramer the family dog is waiting by the door to go out/come in, he’s feverishly hopping up and down. You might be dumb enough to believe that you can win this battle of wills by making absolutely no move toward the door – and at that moment, your IQ will be half of the canine’s in question. Displaying that severely stunted IQ, you talk to the dog and say something like “I’ll be there in a minute, Kramer” fully expecting the dog to look at you thoughtfully, sit down on the sofa next to you, cross its legs, and pick up a magazine. (And you know that’ll never happen because if he had opposable thumbs, he’d open the door himself, silly.)

In addition to the fact you’re not fully realizing that all he hears is “human human human human, Kramer”, you’re forgetting that everything to him is seven times slower. If one of our years is like seven to dogs, they’re bound to be extremely impatient with us. We must seem like glaciers to them when it comes to moving. We think they’re yapping and running circles around us in the backyard when, really, they’re just scoping the area out at a trot and telling us, “I’d like to play fetch with you, old boy, sometime this century.” Children are much the same, and our only hope is that with growing older will come the ability to reason with them, and a sidelining injury will slow them down, at least temporarily.

It may come at a different time for every child, but they will eventually leave the “dog phase” of their lives and enter their feline years. Cats, it is believed, have nine lives. Not necessarily because of their inherent ability to cheat death or avoid crippling credit card debt – it’s all in their attitude. The reason cats couldn’t care less what you think about them, make no effort to come to you when beckoned, or find any reason to be your friend unless you have food is they believe they’ll outlive you – thus the “nine lives” phenomenon. With that said, many of you are telling me, “You just described my prepubescent son and/or teenage daughter.” Exactly. I can’t explain the reasons, only point out the similarities. Be warned, though, many of these children will adopt other attributes of other species while still living in the feline years.

Some will adopt the elusive Unicorn behaviors and disappear when household chores are afoot. This association with the Unicorn in the teenage years also holds true when they get that huge zit on their nose that feels like a singular horn protruding from their face; this will cause them to disappear in social situations, too.

Although it won’t apply to important matters like the things they’re taught in school or the fact you asked them to put gas in the car, they will employ the memory skills of elephants when it’s the most inconvenient for you. And they’ll use that information as slyly as a fox.

At some point, and this will be the true testament to their maturity, your children start to care about more than cleaning themselves and finding ways to sleep as much as possible. They get married, take on a mortgage, pay taxes, and start to have offspring of their own. And somewhere along that path, they will become one of us: the tortoise who can’t get anywhere fast enough.

Rules of Engagement

Although I have never resorted to putting them in writing, my wife and I have certain expectations of behavior for our two boys. Some of them are oft-repeated phrases like “No burping at the dinner table (unless Mom lets one fly)” and “No yelling at your brother (unless the house is on fire)”. Other expectations, though, we seem to take for granted and assume them to be understood.

However, because these seemingly “understood” expectations are not engraved on a plaque and hung on the family room wall, our sons will sometimes veer off into taboo territory and act shocked when we bust them. “Do you mean to say that the hardwood floor ISN’T a good chipping surface for golf practice AND I shouldn’t be doing it in the house anyway? It’s like I don’t even know who you people are!” Those may not be their exact words, but that’s pretty much what the looks on their faces tell us.

In that vein, I have compiled a list of “rules” that should be etched in stone (or at least carved into a warm piece of burled walnut) and affixed to a prominent place in the home where the children are sure to see it on a regular basis. (In my house, I’m thinking of engraving the toilet seat because they never lift that thing up.) With that said, I give you the list:

• No spitting on the floor or in your brother/sister’s mouth even if he/she dares you
• Making holes in the wall without prior written consent by both parents is forbidden
• You will wear underwear
• Any change found under the couch cushions is the sole property of Mom or Dad
• Gun play is to be confined to the den and the den only (this might be more regional in application)
• The law of gravity will be strictly observed and heeded in and on this house
• We have indoor plumbing; it will be used exclusively
• The family pets are not to be spray painted or set on fire – EVER (younger siblings, unfortunately, aren’t usually covered by this proviso no matter how hard you try)
• This is a nuclear-weapons-free zone

Looking back on my childhood, these were all rules that governed my home, and quite successfully I might add. We all made it to adulthood able to bring children into the world – so we could take our turn on imposing our rule on them. Following those rules, we made it through childhood with all ten fingers and ten toes intact and functioning (despite the fact I once let my older brother run my hand over with a Chevy utility van – oddly enough, Mom wasn’t altogether shocked).

Now, if you’re hoping to raise the next X Games gold medalist, career politician, performance artist, or Hollywood starlet, throw those rules right out or through the window. If that’s your plan, though, be warned that if they aren’t successful in reaching those goals and are unable to support you in your retirement, you could find yourself in a wheelchair without any underwear and being set on fire by your grandchildren. Good luck with that!