A co-worker was complaining that he had injured his foot after landing funny. He figured it happened after jumping off a short wall. A very short wall. “Man, this is what happens when we get old, right?” he said. He is in his late 20s. I thought about bludgeoning him, but the only thing in reach was a box of tissues. “No, bean sprout,” I told him. “It’s not ‘what happens when we get old.’ Just when we have the coordination of flopping fish.” Maybe it hit me hard because I’m turning 43 next week. And like most of us, I don’t like this idea of growing older. That certain things are out of our control. My philosophy on age has always been that it’s all in your head. The more you get consumed by the notion that you’re getting older, the more you start to feel it. And the more you feel it, the more you fall off of walls. That’s my theory, at least. So I go around looking at the world the way an 8-year-old might: I see butterflies and rocket ships everywhere. I eat a lot of ice cream. I never take the garbage out until I’ve been asked 22,000 times.
Fearing the appliance apocalypse
A few years back, I had a bit of appliance bad luck. We’re talking BAD. Like the appliance apocalypse. Loosely defined, that’s when you start to believe your house was built over the grave of an appliance god’s temple, or that aliens are planning an invasion and your appliance failures are early warning signs. (I have a lot of time to dream up very elaborate things to worry about.) I think it all started with a washing machine dying, and soon after, pretty much anything with a chord or a battery seemed to bite the bullet. Ever had an expensive string of luck like that? You wonder when it will ever end. Why it’s happening to you. How you will ever pay it off. And if aliens are attacking, why they don’t just get it over with before the toaster dies, too. So when I walked into the kitchen the other morning and found the dishwasher had conked out — soap ran down the inside of the door like it had screamed, “Forget this!” mid-cycle — I had flashbacks. I panicked. I glanced nervously around my kitchen while grumbling, “Yeah! Well, who’s next, traitors?” It was not my proudest 6 a.m. moment. Truth is, I didn’t want to believe my dishwasher could be having a problem. First off, it’s not that old, it’s a very good brand and it seemed downright rude to die. I figured there had to a simple explanation. Isn’t there always a simple explanation? You just need to […]
The great bike search
There are millions of color combinations in the world. Maybe billions. But if you want to buy a 24-inch beach cruiser girls bike, it seems there are only three choices: pink, pale blue, and light green. Somebody explain this to me. I know this because I’ve been in the bike shopping business for a couple of months now. My daughter, as she is rudely known to do, keeps growing. The last time she went to ride her bike, she resembled a gorilla on a toy. Her knees jutted out so far that they looked like wings. “Child,” I said, “this bike is done!” But 24 inches is an odd size with major color limitations. Obviously those three colors sell best — I can’t argue with that — but my daughter isn’t in to any of them, and the search is driving me nuts. As a kid, I don’t remember having an awful lot of color choices. For little boys, color didn’t really matter than much anyway. It would quickly be covered in a crust of mud, grease and probably my own blood. More important, at least for a boy like me, was that it looked “mean” — a dirt bike with attitude. The tires would have treads like angry teeth. The handle bars needed to be sturdy and cocked forward. The seat had to be tar black. And there couldn’t be any safety devices anywhere — no nighttime reflectors or foam pads keeping you from knocking your teeth out. (Knocking your teeth out was […]
Back to ‘normalcy’ as a parent finishes chemo
It was the 6-month checkup. It felt normal, and routine. Like going to the dentist. I drove my mother to the doctor’s appointment in Jacksonville. It was raining, and she worried about the “squaw line” coming across the state as if it was a band of radioactive storms sent to wipe out mankind. “Do you know how to drive in a squaw line?” she said. It was funny, worrying about something else for a change. Could it have been 6 months already? Six months since this very same doctor told her that even though it looked like all the cancer cells had been removed during surgery, chemotherapy was needed to mop up possible stragglers. I can’t remember the last time I had the wind knocked out of me. But this did the trick. Six months on the wildest, bumpiest ride I’ve ever experienced. Country-road-with-bad-shocks bumpy. She started chemo in September. She fell in the driveway the next day and broke her hip. She fell again a week or so later and fractured a knee. Six months of metal rods and rehab. Social workers and anti-nausea medicines. ER visits, wheelchairs, bone marrow shots, white blood cell counts, handicap rails … It’s easy to lose perspective while you’re in the midst of it. You need a moment of reflection, when you’re free from it all, to put it in context. When you can look back and say, “Whooeeee!” only to realize “Whooeeee!” doesn’t do it justice. You need a word that a […]
Here come the big kid teeth
In 10 years of parenthood, I can think of only two things I could do without: 1) diapers (luckily long ago in our past) and 2) losing teeth (unfortunately still with us, and getting bigger. And badder. And more terrifying with every one that pops free.) I think I’ve been a fairly good parent. I think I’ve met some obstacles and challenges that I handled well. But this teeth thing is testing me. It’s one of the few things about having a kid that gives me the squirms. “Hey dad,” my daughter says, tapping me on the arm. “Is this tooth loose?” “What’s that you … OH MY GOOSE-BILLED PLATYPUS, WHAT IS THAT?!?!” I am met by the most horrible sight I have ever seen: a tooth seemingly dangling in mid-air as my daughter presses her wide-open mouth into my eyeball. I scream. I clutch my head. On occasion I faint. Losing teeth used to be easy. They were little baby looking things. More like Chiclets than actual teeth. Tiny, cute, no harm to anyone. They got a little loose and then they fell out. She put them under a pillow and money showed up! But these days, my daughter is dropping boulders out of her mouth — the big boys. Molars and eye teeth. Maybe a small meteorite — possibly the one that got the dinosaurs. They don’t just fall out. They’re dramatic about it. They bleed profusely. “Does this tooth have a little blood on it?” my daughter will ask, […]
Alexa, and the high-tech, low-tech collision
“Alexa, play ‘Party Rock’ please,” said my daughter. Immediately the little black cylinder on the breakfast bar lit up in blue and started emitting — or spitting … The song sounds like drunken cats mewing — music into my living room. This is the future. Our voice-activated devices do what we want. Our houses are automated and our revolutionary machines are at our every beck and call. They do fantastic, incredible things … like repeat the “Party Rock Anthem” over and over until my brain becomes tapioca pudding. High tech. It was followed by me yelling over the surging music and frantic dancing: “Hey y’all, I’m gonna’ go outside and set some rat traps in the chicken run.” I was transported from the future to 1886. The voice-activated, revolutionary device snickered at me. I was about to use something that doesn’t listen, even though I begged it not to snap my finger off. I baited it with chicken kibble and ran screaming for the door. Low tech. This is my life. Where high tech and low tech collide. Future-man and old timey farmhand rolled into one. How did it come to this? The little black cylinder arrived for Christmas. It’s an Amazon Echo that goes by the name “Alexa.” Part music player, part personal assistant, she will tell jokes when you ask her, give the weather, advise on stock picks, predict presidential elections and pretty much mishear everything I say. “Alexa, please play traditional jazz,” I tell her. She replies, “Playing classic […]
Goodbye to the holiday snacks
I went searching for the holiday chocolates. The peanut brittle. The pecan pie. The $75 worth of exotic cheeses that my aunt had brought to town (inexplicably, she forgot the crackers!) The candied nuts. The salami with the peppercorn coating. The last edible vestiges of a bygone holiday season. Anything. I would have taken anything. But the cubbards were bare. The snack drawer famished. The refrigerator shelves like salt flats. The holidays? Officially over. The holiday snack bonanza had gone. It isn’t when the Christmas tree comes down that I rue the end of the holidays. Not the Christmas lights getting boxed up or the absence of Christmas music played from sunrise to sunset. (Actually, my daughter still does that.) But when the holiday snack well runs dry, the reality sinks in, and I sink into a deep, dark depression. “There’s nothing to eat for dessert,” I grumbled pathetically to my wife one night, exasperated. “Have we been robbed?!?” “You’re used to the Christmas cornucopia,” she replied. “Now it’s a wasteland. You’re going to have to cope. Detox. Get some professional help. Maybe eat a carrot.” A carrot! What kind of answer was that? For weeks, I had lived like a Christmas king, feasting on teeth-rotting and waistline-expanding delicacies. Now I was ruined. This wouldn’t do. I couldn’t go back. My eyes darted around wildly as I tried to make sense of it. A “wasteland?” No, there had to be something. I stood at the door of the pantry, trying […]
Resolutions … I should have made
I guess there’s still time. You know, to make some resolutions I should have made. The big ones. The serious ones. The ones that didn’t make the cut. Because I resolved to do little things instead. Like drink more carrot smoothies or not blame my daughter for the cookie crumbs I left on the kitchen counter. (In my defense, it’s a 50-50 shot they’re hers!) But I go with the easy ones. Don’t you? There’s still time, though. Time to resolve to do the big ones, like these: • Click on fewer “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” blog posts with theories about the movie. I’m a child of “Star Wars,” which means I’ve been totally hooked on the new film. Addicted is more like it. If anything comes up on the computer with “Star Wars” on it — “What kind of underwear do First Order stormtroopers wear?” — I click on it. And suddenly two days of my life are gone and I have a Jed-length beard. I need to realize it will be two years before the next movie and that no one on the Internet can tell me if Rey’s dad is really Chewbacca. No more links! • Stop looking for new house projects. Every time I finish a major job around the house, I commend myself for a bad job done poorly and pledge to never take on another do-it-yourself disaster AGAIN. This pledge lasts all of 13 seconds before I notice some wood rot and think, “Hmm, maybe I should […]
The kid grows up
“Have I grown up?” my daughter asked me a couple of nights before Christmas … and her birthday. It was a serious question, asked in a serious voice. She sounded like she wanted to know if the end of the year was a good time to buy stocks, or if El Niño was going to make the oceans rise faster. We had been watching old Christmas morning videos. How odd to say “old.” Because there should be nothing old about them — she’s still just a kid. Yet, they were labeled strange years, long in the past: 2009, 2010, 2012 … And the kid in the video was nearly unrecognizable. In one, she was missing all of her front teeth. “Did you get in a bar fight?” I asked. “You look like a hockey player!” And her voice in some didn’t sound like the little girl sitting in front of the computer. “Yep, that was my little kid accent,” she said. “I’m not sure when that went away.”
The Christmas panic shopping guide
The little sign reached out and smacked me upside the head: “14 days to Christmas,” it proclaimed. Unwritten and invisible to all but me were these words: “This jerkface hasn’t started Christmas shopping yet. He’s doomed!” Wow, Christmas countdowns have gotten mean this year. But it was right. Two weeks out and I was desperate. In trouble. Possibly ruined. How had this happened? How could this be? Christmas is supposed to be the season of giving. I had turned it into the season of goofing off. And at that moment, the Christmas Shopping Panic set in.