I’m not proud to admit it. That of all the news stories — all the monumental things happening in the world — this was the one that stopped me in my tracks: “Star Wars toys will be out in September.” Shame, shame. Let the record show: I am a 42-year-old man. I do not own or play with toys. At least, not ones that don’t belong to my 9-year-old daughter. I am not a toy collector. I do not crowd my shelves with kitschy stuff I find on eBay. Yet, part of me considered adding Sept. 4 to my calendar. It would read: “New Star Wars toys released. No appointments!” I have a problem and I must seek counseling.
College … way back when
Wham! It felt like a brick had been launched across the restaurant and hit me in the head. Or a sledgehammer. Or a bunker-busting bomb. Kablooey! That was the effect as I sat with my college students — members of the student newspaper, journalists, many soon-to-be graduates heading out into the world. Going to dinner with college students is surreal as it is. Similar to visiting another country where you don’t speak the language or understand the unique customs. I found myself nodding, smiling and politely saying over and over things like, “Yeah, I have no idea what you’re talking about … but it sounds illegal!” I will miss them, those who graduated this weekend. I was thinking about this at dinner — memories, their accomplishments, how they eat like ravenous dogs who have been starved for weeks — when the conversation turned to a topic that is tough to stomach when it comes to college kids. The year they were born. Maybe I asked it. I don’t remember how it came up. I just remember the hammer blow. How the room began to spin and everything turned blurry. The walls melted like a Dali painting. Did they put something in my water? It was all thanks to one answer to the birth year question: 1991. None of them knew what had just happened. It had been spoken so nonchalantly. They wondered why I was calling the waitress to ask for a defibrillator. Was he choking? Should someone give him […]
Time for family reading night
It sounded impossible. Unfathomable. A nice idea, sure. But nothing that could possibly pan out. Not today. Not in 2015. Not in our cell phone tweeting, video screen blaring, media invading, attention-free world. Nu-uh. Never happen. Nice idea, but not realistic. Whose idea was it? Strangest of all, it was the kid — not the parents — who dreamed it up: Family reading night. She wanted to read to us. My daughter had been planning it. Spending who knows how many hours coming up with the perfect book — “Abby Cornelia’s One and Only Magic Power.” (Ironically, it was written by personal technology consultant David Pogue.) She teased it for days. She must have had a huge marketing budget. Planes flew over the house advertising it, and there was a laser light show that flashed: “Coming to a night near you. Get ready for some reading!”
The rowing of the chalupa
I’ve never been a sailor. A boat man. In a city surrounded by water, with a nautical history going back over 450 years, I’ve always liked staring at the agua, but not necessarily floating atop it. That all changed this past Saturday thanks to four simple words: “Oars at the ready!” With that we launched the chalupa, a truly special boat. Two weeks ago it was christened the San Augustin, but thanks to low tide, it sat stuck in the mud. Saturday, the boat I’ve dubbed the S.S. Chalupa, finally stretched its legs (or whatever boats stretch) and made its maiden voyage under oar power, led by our captain and coxswain, Sam Turner.
The babysitters
“Would you like to color? How about we color? Want to color? Great. Hold on … Oh no! You can’t put a Crayon in the electrical outlet?!?” It was like I had never done it before. Like I had no idea what a toddler was. Had never had one before. Had no idea how to entertain one. My 9-year-old daughter stood mesmerized by her 1-1/2-year-old cousin. We were all babysitting so my brother and his wife could go to a wedding. We had him for maybe 2 hours, and we were exhausted afterward. Exhausted, like we had just wrestled a tornado. Like we had just herded wild horses. Like there were 17 of him. Toddlers are interesting people. How quickly I had forgotten. “Can’t we make him nap or just plant him in front of a basketball game?” I asked my wife. “What’s that medicine that makes dogs sleep on planes? Is that legal?”
Surviving the pollen apocalypse
It’s always a shock to the system. Leave the state for a handful of days in March and return to a very different place. Cool and glorious one minute, hot and yellow the next. Oh yeah, I live in Florida! Spring = heat + pollen. I wasn’t gone that long. Just a few days in New York for a conference. New York, where there was still snow on the ground. Where the temperatures dipped down to freezing at night. Where the color scheme consisted of gray, light gray and winter sludge — a combination of ice, gravel and 3-day-old pizza crust. Where the only REAL color was when the tip of my nose turned Rudolph red. Pollen is just a dream in New York, no matter how much the store displays with phony flowers and pastel-y prints try to convince you it’s spring. No, not yet. New York is still an atrocious shade of winter sludge — like living in a black and white film. But not Florida. I was only gone a couple of days, yet stepping off the plane I realized how much I take Florida’s lush green landscape for granted. AND … how I forgot about March’s pollen assault. How everything turns Tweety Bird yellow and it feels like there are sandspurs in your lungs. We Floridians know just how to deal with pollen season, don’t we? If you’re not familiar, here are a few tips: • Wash your car. Because there’s nothing more wonderfully futile then […]
Light bulb insanity
It was sad. Almost pathetic. There I stood in the light bulb aisle of the hardware store. An entire aisle of insanity stared down at me. Laughing at me. Taunting me. “Hahaha. Whatcha’ gonna’ pick, silly man?” I didn’t know. I was a humbled doofus. A HUMBLED doofus! I had hit rock bottom. The only thing that made me feel any better were the two guys standing there with me. One was growing visibly frustrated. Like he might start throwing bulbs. “Halogen!” he mumbled to himself. “No, no, no. I don’t want halogen!” I gave him a sympathetic look. I was in my own miserable state. In my hand I held two different compact fluorescent lights, those funny shaped bulbs that look like strands of DNA with their coiling white glass. It seemed simple enough to go into the store and pick replacements. But I quickly realized that lighting is now a brave new frontier. Lower energy bills have come at a price: massive confusion. Furious frustration. Partial insanity. Why? So many options. So many variations. So many bulb sizes. Wattages that don’t mean what they used to mean. The new measurement is “lumens.” Lumens?!? I thought you ate lumens to lower your cholesterol. There were various shapes, codes and colors. I think there were scented light bulbs, and one that scolded you if you didn’t turn it off — “You just wasted 13 cents!” I had to remind myself that I’m all for this. That the old timey light […]
New invention: The pop-up yard
I am using my column this week to officially request proposals from top inventors around the world who are prepared to bring to market (and more importantly, me!) a product that will revolutionize landscaping forever. The proposal I am requesting is for the world’s first … wait for it … Pop-Up Yard™. (That’s good, right? A yard that you can buy to replace your own brown, weed-ridden, unkempt winter yard. Don’t try to steal the idea. It’s trademarked.) Guidelines for proposals will be addressed below. This is a competitive bidding process, and all proposals will be judged on their merit, as well as their ability to submit documentation that does not have any food spills or stains on it. Good luck and I look forward to your ideas. 1. The Pop-Up Yard should be easy to install. I am envisioning something akin to a bouncy house that you hook up to a giant inflator. Or possibly something you unroll across your weed-covered, mangy-looking landscape, revealing a bright, shiny green oasis of spring-time wonder. Extra points will be given for proposals including hummingbirds, the scent of jasmine and a device that prevents my dog from relieving herself in the EXACT!!! location where my morning newspaper lands.
Goals for turning 42 years old
“So, do you have any goals for 42?” my wife asked me over dinner. She and my daughter had taken me out to celebrate the day of my birth, some 42 years ago. Forty-two is an odd, neither-here-nor-there age. Basically, the only thing that happens when you turn 42 is boring, mundane stuff — you take up eating barbecue potato chips, you have conversations about mutual fund expense ratios and you start to ponder deep, universal questions like: Why do we have concrete AND asphalt roads? It’s getting serious in my world! So the question at dinner really kind of stuck with me. “Goals for 42?!?” I said out loud, thinking about it for the first time. I hadn’t even considered it. Well, aside from taking up barbecue potato chips, but that’s legislated. There’s no choice in that.
A Floridian’s apology for thinking it’s ‘cold’
I’m sorry our cold isn’t really cold, but the fact is, I’m still cold, and I’m not sorry about that. This is the lament of a Floridian every winter. How we poor, wretched, warmth-deprived beings have to fear how our commentary on the temperature will be taken the wrong way if mentioned in the wrong company. Know what I’m talking about? Happened to mention to a visitor from up north how you feel about our weather — even casually. “How am I doing? Well, it’s cold enough outside to freeze the freckles right off my body!” I will say. You know pretty quickly you’ve made a mistake by the indignation on the person’s face. It is as if Mount Vesuvius is about to uncork. That you are about to be beaten to a pulp for something you have said that is so insulting, so degrading and so blatantly ignorant that it could freeze the freckles right off your body. “Cold?!?” comes the reply, and it’s icy. “You call this ‘cold?!?’ It’s 134 degrees BELOW zero back at my home in Boston. It’s so cold, the ice got frostbite.” Ouch! And then, shivering Floridian that you are, you have to apologize and blush and feel awkward and say things like, “Well, shucks, that is cold! I just meant for us, we bronze-skinned Southern natives who don’t own any clothes that don’t incorporate flip-flops and shorts. We just find it a little … you know … chilly.” By that point we have […]