We have three dogs in our household. That’s at least one dog too many, but what can we do about that now?
I used to think that the line between dog lover and weird dog person was between three and four. If you had three dogs (or cats), you just liked dogs. But if you have four, it’s one of your defining characteristics.
Now, I’m not so sure we’re not thought of in the neighborhood as “the people with all the dogs.”
It didn’t start off like that. We didn’t get all of the dogs at once. It took years to accumulate this little menagerie.
The oldest dog, Poncho, pre-dates the children. He turned 13 this summer and he’s a little blind and a little deaf, but not completely either.
When my wife, Stacy, and I went to the pound in San Diego and found Poncho, we were actually looking for a bigger dog. Not Great Dane, but maybe border collie-sized. We were also looking for a female, though I’m not sure why it mattered, because either way the dog was getting fixed.
But there was this puppy, small and scruffy terrier in a pen with a sexually abusive cell-mate. He just had this “please get me out of here” look on his face. We were hooked.
Actually, I think we were hooked a few weeks later when Stacy and I came home to our apartment and Poncho did not come running out to welcome us as he normally did. We went searching and found him, obviously embarrassed, behind the bed in the spare bedroom.
He’d somehow managed to get his head and one front leg through the hole in a plastic grocery bag. Inside the bag was a smaller plastic produce bag and inside that was one plum. While trying to get the plum out, he’d gotten himself stuck in the bag. There was no way of telling how long he’d been like that, but we’d been gone four or five hours.
It was the kind of trouble I would get myself into if I were a dog. Thankfully, I have opposable thumbs.
Poncho, who topped out at about 18 pounds, has been with us through two children, multiple career changes and a couple of home purchases. When we bought the first house, it came with a big back yard. We figured that Poncho needed a playmate.
We went to the pound, this time in northern California, and spotted a pair of puppies, obviously brother and sister. We went to ask about the male and were told that they hadn’t been there long enough to get adopted, but we could come back Saturday morning. It was first-come, first-served and we were advised to get there early, as a lot of people had asked about the pair of corgi mixes. Doors open at 7 a.m.
It seemed like a lot of trouble to me, there’d be other puppies. But Stacy, who was not sure we needed another dog in the first place, was now obsessed with getting this dog. She got up at 4 o’clock in the morning and drove down to the animal shelter. When she got there, there were two cars already in the parking lot.
She called me on the cell phone, convinced that she was too late. But we decided that she would wait it out. When the sun came up, the sleepy people began to get out of their cars. The man that had been there first announced that he was there for one of the corgis and he wanted the female. Stacy was amazed to find that the second guy in line was there for a kitten.
Stacy came home with the dog the kids names Shaggy. Later we added to the name, it’s Shaggy the Love Sponge. This is the most passive and lovable dog you’d ever want to meet. If you pay any attention to him, he’s your friend for life.
He also likes to sleep in the bed with Stacy and I. But it’s like sleeping with a 25-pound bag of sand. More than once Stacy has had to wake me up and tell me to get the dog off her legs so she can roll over.
When we still lived in the house in California, Poncho and Shaggy had the run of the back yard. There was a dog door and they could get out whenever they wanted. The yard was bordered by an eight-foot fence. They went in the back and played and laid little doggy land mines. Occasionally, there would be a squirrel (and once an iguana) on the fence and they would bark. But, otherwise, we rarely heard anything from them.
When we moved to Ohio, we got a corner lot with a four-foot fence that the dogs can see through. It turns out they are barkers. And everyone in the neighborhood, who walks a dog or a baby stroller, passes right past our yard.
Next week, dog No. 3 enters the picture.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Writing a weekly blog, if you know what I mean
I've been thinking a lot about euphemisms lately. I'm generally pro-euphemism -- at least the clever ones.
But, when advertisers, public officials and the military start using them to hide the truth because they think whomever they're talking to is too stupid or isn't ready to handle the real words, they can be condescending, dishonest and dangerous.
The euphemism stuff started about a week ago when my wife, Stacy, and I were doing some work in the backyard around the deck. A couple of years ago, we planted some vines that were supposed to make their way up the side of the deck and onto the arbor that covers it. We had mistakenly thought that they would accomplish this pretty much on their own.
It turns out that, left to their own devices, these particular vines would rather grow horizontally than vertically. We inadvertently let the vines go on their own for too long this season and they spread out all over that section of the backyard, slowly overwhelming everything in their path.
One of those things was a wrought-iron flamingo planter that we'd purchased in the spring. The flamingo is about three feet tall and has a place in the middle of his back where you can place a flower pot. The vines, which had been small at the beginning of the season but had since been aided by some especially rainy weather, had almost completely covered the flightless bird.
So Stacy and I decided that it was a good time to free him before the vines got any thicker. As we were pulling him free we decided that "extricating the flamingo" was a good all-purpose euphemism.
This came on the heels of someone at work actually being observed cleaning the surface of a piece of fruit.
"Scott, what are you doing?"
"Polishing my nectarine."
Euphemisms are useful to people who want to talk about things they consider either uncomfortable (death) or taboo (sex). They think that if they say things like "passing away" or "sleeping together" they are somehow being more tactful.
Euphemisms can become fun when they aren't the least bit tactful. Passing away becomes "taking a dirt nap." Sleeping together becomes "doing the horizontal mambo."
I'll admit that almost any phrase can become a racy euphemism, especially if you follow it with "if you know what I mean."
"So, what did you and your girlfriend do last night?"
"We stayed home and polished the nectarine, if you know what I mean."
There's even a random euphemism generator on the Internet. The Web site will complete "The last time I saw him, he was ..." with a random verb-adjective-noun phrase.
You get potentially racy sentences like, "The last time I saw him, he was 'launching the eternal fire hydrant' or 'grasping the velvety ottoman.' "
It's entertaining for about two minutes. Then it's just silly. Euphemisms are more fun when they're naturally occurring. I might actually use "extricating the wrought-iron flamingo" one day because there's a story behind it.
I can't imagine saying "placating the holy phonebook." Even followed by "if you know what I mean," it doesn't make any sense.
My favorite euphemisms are group specific. David Letterman's Top 10 Lists are often group specific euphemisms.
His top 10 Keebler Elf euphemisms for death (for example -- creamy casket filling), Canadian euphemism for sex (pulling the goalie) or mob euphemisms for killing somebody (canceling his subscription to Life magazine) are usually hilarious.
Again, the Internet is full of these kinds of lists. Some of them are clever, some not so much. Two of my recent favorites are the cartoon character euphemism for death "catching the big anvil" and "chilling with Walt."
But you have to be on the lookout for euphemisms that are designed not to be funny, but to confuse, inflate or soften the meaning of something that should be straightforward.
A couple of years ago, car dealers began calling used cars "pre-owned vehicles." Did they really think this was going to work? We're not talking about a pair of jeans here. Someone who "pre-owns" a car for you is not doing you a favor by breaking it in for the first 50,000 miles.
Job titles are famous for trying to make somebody's career seem more important, or at least more dignified, than it is. Calling someone a "sanitation engineer" does not make him any less a garbage man.
I don't mean to denigrate garbage men. But calling me an emperor does not give me an empire any more than calling me a vertically challenged person of girth keeps me from being a short, fat guy.
Politicians can call a cardboard box a "makeshift home" and a committee a "task force" or a tax increase a "revenue enhancement," but if we're paying attention, we know what they're talking about.
The jargon pouring out of the Pentagon about Iraq right now is typical of the military. The people who once changed the name of their political leader from secretary of war to "secretary of defense" and changed the MX missile to the "peacekeeper," are masters at this kind of thing.
The war has "friendly fire" and "collateral damage." An early morning parachute drop is evidently called "a pre-dawn vertical insertion," if you know what I mean.
George Carlin points out that "shell shock" became "battle fatigue," which has become "post traumatic stress disorder," all in an attempt to soften the reality that war is hell.
The fact is you have to think about euphemisms all the time. Sometimes you think about them because they're fun, but most of the time because they intentionally make something unclear.
I'd like to write about this more, but I have to pick up the kids at camp (if you know what I mean.) No, I really have to pick up the kids at camp.
But, when advertisers, public officials and the military start using them to hide the truth because they think whomever they're talking to is too stupid or isn't ready to handle the real words, they can be condescending, dishonest and dangerous.
The euphemism stuff started about a week ago when my wife, Stacy, and I were doing some work in the backyard around the deck. A couple of years ago, we planted some vines that were supposed to make their way up the side of the deck and onto the arbor that covers it. We had mistakenly thought that they would accomplish this pretty much on their own.
It turns out that, left to their own devices, these particular vines would rather grow horizontally than vertically. We inadvertently let the vines go on their own for too long this season and they spread out all over that section of the backyard, slowly overwhelming everything in their path.
One of those things was a wrought-iron flamingo planter that we'd purchased in the spring. The flamingo is about three feet tall and has a place in the middle of his back where you can place a flower pot. The vines, which had been small at the beginning of the season but had since been aided by some especially rainy weather, had almost completely covered the flightless bird.
So Stacy and I decided that it was a good time to free him before the vines got any thicker. As we were pulling him free we decided that "extricating the flamingo" was a good all-purpose euphemism.
This came on the heels of someone at work actually being observed cleaning the surface of a piece of fruit.
"Scott, what are you doing?"
"Polishing my nectarine."
Euphemisms are useful to people who want to talk about things they consider either uncomfortable (death) or taboo (sex). They think that if they say things like "passing away" or "sleeping together" they are somehow being more tactful.
Euphemisms can become fun when they aren't the least bit tactful. Passing away becomes "taking a dirt nap." Sleeping together becomes "doing the horizontal mambo."
I'll admit that almost any phrase can become a racy euphemism, especially if you follow it with "if you know what I mean."
"So, what did you and your girlfriend do last night?"
"We stayed home and polished the nectarine, if you know what I mean."
There's even a random euphemism generator on the Internet. The Web site will complete "The last time I saw him, he was ..." with a random verb-adjective-noun phrase.
You get potentially racy sentences like, "The last time I saw him, he was 'launching the eternal fire hydrant' or 'grasping the velvety ottoman.' "
It's entertaining for about two minutes. Then it's just silly. Euphemisms are more fun when they're naturally occurring. I might actually use "extricating the wrought-iron flamingo" one day because there's a story behind it.
I can't imagine saying "placating the holy phonebook." Even followed by "if you know what I mean," it doesn't make any sense.
My favorite euphemisms are group specific. David Letterman's Top 10 Lists are often group specific euphemisms.
His top 10 Keebler Elf euphemisms for death (for example -- creamy casket filling), Canadian euphemism for sex (pulling the goalie) or mob euphemisms for killing somebody (canceling his subscription to Life magazine) are usually hilarious.
Again, the Internet is full of these kinds of lists. Some of them are clever, some not so much. Two of my recent favorites are the cartoon character euphemism for death "catching the big anvil" and "chilling with Walt."
But you have to be on the lookout for euphemisms that are designed not to be funny, but to confuse, inflate or soften the meaning of something that should be straightforward.
A couple of years ago, car dealers began calling used cars "pre-owned vehicles." Did they really think this was going to work? We're not talking about a pair of jeans here. Someone who "pre-owns" a car for you is not doing you a favor by breaking it in for the first 50,000 miles.
Job titles are famous for trying to make somebody's career seem more important, or at least more dignified, than it is. Calling someone a "sanitation engineer" does not make him any less a garbage man.
I don't mean to denigrate garbage men. But calling me an emperor does not give me an empire any more than calling me a vertically challenged person of girth keeps me from being a short, fat guy.
Politicians can call a cardboard box a "makeshift home" and a committee a "task force" or a tax increase a "revenue enhancement," but if we're paying attention, we know what they're talking about.
The jargon pouring out of the Pentagon about Iraq right now is typical of the military. The people who once changed the name of their political leader from secretary of war to "secretary of defense" and changed the MX missile to the "peacekeeper," are masters at this kind of thing.
The war has "friendly fire" and "collateral damage." An early morning parachute drop is evidently called "a pre-dawn vertical insertion," if you know what I mean.
George Carlin points out that "shell shock" became "battle fatigue," which has become "post traumatic stress disorder," all in an attempt to soften the reality that war is hell.
The fact is you have to think about euphemisms all the time. Sometimes you think about them because they're fun, but most of the time because they intentionally make something unclear.
I'd like to write about this more, but I have to pick up the kids at camp (if you know what I mean.) No, I really have to pick up the kids at camp.
Monday, June 4, 2007
TV poker is the last respite for the athletically decrepit
Have you ever wondered who on earth could be watching all this televised poker? The answer, of course, is me. (or is it I?)
Either way, there has been a poker explosion in this country. And, if you really want to, you can watch people play cards on TV most any time of day or night. The poker boom started on ESPN a couple of years ago when ratings for the World Series of Poker began to take off.
This is a series of tournaments played in Las Vegas where anyone with the entry fee can play. The series culminates with the main event which has a $10,000 buy in and thousands of people play Texas Hold `Em for a couple of million dollars.
The 2003 tournament was won by an amateur by the name (I’m not making this up) of Chris Moneymaker. He defeated a lot of professional players along the way and I think that’s what made it so interesting for so many people – the idea that an accountant from the Midwest could defeat the best players in the world and win a fortune.
When I was a kid I watched baseball games thinking that one day I could be a Major League player. Then I saw my first curve ball. Even in my 20s and early 30s, I could hit a 3-pointer and play in a decent pick-up game. But my days of taking it to the basket are behind me.
These days it’s golf. But poker I could still do. It just takes a little intellect and a little luck and anyone could win the biggest tournament in the world. “I could do that,” the middle-aged, overweight couch potato such as myself might think. You could spot me 20 strokes a day and I’d never win the Masters, but I could sit around a table and play cards for a week and maybe even win.
Unlike most sports, where the action is shown live on television, ESPN shows the World Series of Poker months after the actual competition has been completed. It condenses each of the smaller tournaments into an hour or two and boils down the main event, which might take three or four days to play, to half a dozen or so one-hour episodes. That’s roughly the equivalent of showing an entire baseball game in 20 minutes.
They’ve been playing the World Series of Poker for years, but the recent development was the installation of tiny cameras in the tables that can show what card the players are holding. That’s made it possible for the audience at home to get some idea of what’s going on. We can tell when a player’s bluffing or when he’s trying to trap his opponent into making a big bet.
ESPN also discovered that no matter how many time they show the same poker tournament, people seem to be watching it.
Fox Sports has jumped in with a series of made-for-television tournaments for professionals only. The pros are fun to watch too. It’s group of people that look like everything from suburban housewives to 120-pound Vietnamese grandfathers.
There’s the long-haired guy with the cowboy hat that everyone calls Jesus and the John McEnroe of poker who has been known to knock over his chair and curse at his opponent after losing a big hand. All these people need are trading cards.
The Travel Channel televises tournaments as well. The World Poker Tour goes from one glitzy venue to another showing many of the same players.
Then there was Bravo’s version, Celebrity Poker Showdown. Did you ever wonder what would happen if you put Alex Trebek, Travis Tritt, Rosie O’Donnell, Rickie Lake and Meat Loaf at the same poker table who would win? Me either, but I’ll watch to find out. I don’t feel good about it afterward, but I do watch.
I’m an easy mark. I’ll watch almost anything the sports channels show. Obviously, I prefer the big three, baseball, basketball and football, but, in a pinch, I’ll watch almost anything, including golf.
My mother used to say if there was a show with two guys bouncing a ball against a wall, I’d watch it. The exception to this rule is NASCAR. I just don’t get it. It’s like standing on an overpass and watching traffic.
I’ve played in a few semi-regular poker games in my life, but they’ve always been with guys that didn’t really know what they were doing. We had a good time and drank enough beer to float a small boat, but the poker was pretty bad.
The dealer would call the game and there were always a bunch of wild cards and goofy rules. We played games like Anaconda or Three-Card Low Ball, Draw One Twice. If the game is different every hand, you can’t learn anything about your opponents.
I did learn an important lesson once. One night I had something to do early in the evening so I showed up after the others had been playing (and drinking) for an hour or so already. And I was on a diet at the time that didn’t allow beer. So I sat and drank diet coke all night and left with most of the money. The others announced that I wouldn’t be allowed back in the game until I was drinking beer again.
I’m not sure you could get anyone to watch if they televised that.
Either way, there has been a poker explosion in this country. And, if you really want to, you can watch people play cards on TV most any time of day or night. The poker boom started on ESPN a couple of years ago when ratings for the World Series of Poker began to take off.
This is a series of tournaments played in Las Vegas where anyone with the entry fee can play. The series culminates with the main event which has a $10,000 buy in and thousands of people play Texas Hold `Em for a couple of million dollars.
The 2003 tournament was won by an amateur by the name (I’m not making this up) of Chris Moneymaker. He defeated a lot of professional players along the way and I think that’s what made it so interesting for so many people – the idea that an accountant from the Midwest could defeat the best players in the world and win a fortune.
When I was a kid I watched baseball games thinking that one day I could be a Major League player. Then I saw my first curve ball. Even in my 20s and early 30s, I could hit a 3-pointer and play in a decent pick-up game. But my days of taking it to the basket are behind me.
These days it’s golf. But poker I could still do. It just takes a little intellect and a little luck and anyone could win the biggest tournament in the world. “I could do that,” the middle-aged, overweight couch potato such as myself might think. You could spot me 20 strokes a day and I’d never win the Masters, but I could sit around a table and play cards for a week and maybe even win.
Unlike most sports, where the action is shown live on television, ESPN shows the World Series of Poker months after the actual competition has been completed. It condenses each of the smaller tournaments into an hour or two and boils down the main event, which might take three or four days to play, to half a dozen or so one-hour episodes. That’s roughly the equivalent of showing an entire baseball game in 20 minutes.
They’ve been playing the World Series of Poker for years, but the recent development was the installation of tiny cameras in the tables that can show what card the players are holding. That’s made it possible for the audience at home to get some idea of what’s going on. We can tell when a player’s bluffing or when he’s trying to trap his opponent into making a big bet.
ESPN also discovered that no matter how many time they show the same poker tournament, people seem to be watching it.
Fox Sports has jumped in with a series of made-for-television tournaments for professionals only. The pros are fun to watch too. It’s group of people that look like everything from suburban housewives to 120-pound Vietnamese grandfathers.
There’s the long-haired guy with the cowboy hat that everyone calls Jesus and the John McEnroe of poker who has been known to knock over his chair and curse at his opponent after losing a big hand. All these people need are trading cards.
The Travel Channel televises tournaments as well. The World Poker Tour goes from one glitzy venue to another showing many of the same players.
Then there was Bravo’s version, Celebrity Poker Showdown. Did you ever wonder what would happen if you put Alex Trebek, Travis Tritt, Rosie O’Donnell, Rickie Lake and Meat Loaf at the same poker table who would win? Me either, but I’ll watch to find out. I don’t feel good about it afterward, but I do watch.
I’m an easy mark. I’ll watch almost anything the sports channels show. Obviously, I prefer the big three, baseball, basketball and football, but, in a pinch, I’ll watch almost anything, including golf.
My mother used to say if there was a show with two guys bouncing a ball against a wall, I’d watch it. The exception to this rule is NASCAR. I just don’t get it. It’s like standing on an overpass and watching traffic.
I’ve played in a few semi-regular poker games in my life, but they’ve always been with guys that didn’t really know what they were doing. We had a good time and drank enough beer to float a small boat, but the poker was pretty bad.
The dealer would call the game and there were always a bunch of wild cards and goofy rules. We played games like Anaconda or Three-Card Low Ball, Draw One Twice. If the game is different every hand, you can’t learn anything about your opponents.
I did learn an important lesson once. One night I had something to do early in the evening so I showed up after the others had been playing (and drinking) for an hour or so already. And I was on a diet at the time that didn’t allow beer. So I sat and drank diet coke all night and left with most of the money. The others announced that I wouldn’t be allowed back in the game until I was drinking beer again.
I’m not sure you could get anyone to watch if they televised that.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Some movies you just can't turn off
I was in self-imposed exile from the living room the other day. My wife and daughter were watching some movie which was built around the premise that Heather Locklear couldn’t get a date.
I went back into bedroom to fold the laundry that had been piling up on the bed and see what was on the TV back there. That’s how Stacy and I divvy up the laundry. The kids and I pull all the dirty clothes out and pile them in front of the laundry room. Stacy divides it all into piles of appropriate size and color and pushes it through the system. I pull it out of the dryer and pile it on the bed where I eventually fold and hang it up.
The kids’ clean laundry gets loaded back into the hamper the dirt laundry came down stairs in and they put it away. Well, Max puts his away. Madison lives out of the hamper for a week before the process starts over again the following weekend.
Anyway, like any guy with full control of the remote control, I couldn’t decide on what to watch until I’d checked every channel – and we get them all. So I surfed through and couple of times before finding what I was looking for, even though I didn’t know it.
“A Few Good Men.” This is one of a long list of movies that once it comes on I have to watch it all the way to the end. I can’t turn it off until Jack Nicholson tells Tom Cruise that he (Cruise) can’t handle the truth.
I sat folding laundry on a Sunday afternoon and watched the movie build toward the familiar conclusion. And as I watched I asked myself why I was watching. I must have seen all or part of this movie 25 times. Yet there was nothing I’d rather be watching.
I started thinking about all the movies I’ll watch even though I’ve seen them all many times. It’s sort of a couch-potato Oscars. I came to a couple of conclusions. First, the movies that I watch even though I’ve seen them many times fall into three basic categories: good movies, bad movies and comedies.
The good movie list includes, but is not limited to, “A Few Good Men,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Usual Suspects,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “Silverado” and, even though it’s a little before my time, “The Dirty Dozen.”
These are all great movies. I’ve seen them all many times, but I still can’t turn them off until Nicholson admits he ordered the code red, Morgan Freeman shows up on the beach in Mexico or Kevin Spacey’s limp goes away and we find out he’s Keyser Soze.
The comedy list is familiar to anyone my age. “Animal House,” “Stripes,” “Fletch,” “Monty Python & the Holy Grail,” “Blazing Saddles” and, of course, “Caddyshack.”
I find it interesting, or at least telling, that most of the comedies are about five to 10 years older than most of the dramas. I’m sure there were good dramas made when I was in high school and college, but they didn’t burrow into my brain the way the comedies did. The dramas all came along after I graduated and became, for lack of a better word, and adult.
All of that is somewhat understandable. It’s the bad movie list that concerns me, at least a little. We’re not talking about Ed Wood bad here, although some of them are close. But these are movies that don’t belong on the same list with Shawshank and “Silverado.”
This list includes a brief plot synopsis since theses movies aren’t as well known as the others. “No Escape,” Ray Liotta is sent to island prison to fend for himself and battle cartoonish bad guys. He meets svengali-like fellow prisoner dying of cancer played by Lance Henriksen.
“Next of Kin,” Patrick Swayze is the middle of three Kentucky brothers who moves to Chicago, marries Helen Hunt and becomes a cop. The younger brother follows him to the big city and is murdered. The older brother, played by, I’m not kidding, Liam Neeson, comes to the city to take on the mob and avenge the younger brother. The hillbillies outsmart the mob.
“Roadhouse,” Swayze is the hired as the bouncer in a bar in a town controlled by Ben Gazarra, who’s determined to run the bar out of business. Sam Elliot is super cool as the Yoda of bouncers, Gazarra chews up scenery and Swayze gets to take his shirt off a lot. This is the Godfather of bad movies.
But my personal favorite on the bad movie list is “The Quick and the Dead.” This has to be the worst movie ever made with five Academy Award nominated actors, three of who actually won (but not for this movie).
Sharon Stone plays a mysterious female gunfighter in a quick-draw tournament being run by Gene Hackman who is a caricature of every western bad guy ever put on film. It’s the bad guy he played in “Unforgiven” times five. Also entered in the tournament are Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio. Rounding out the list of Oscar nominees is Gary Senise as Stone’s father. We see him only in flashbacks and it turns out that Gene Hackman didn’t kill him; he forced Stone to do it.
It’s a cinematic train wreck and when it’s on I can’t change the channel or go to bed before Stone gets her revenge and blows a hole in Hackman that you can see in his shadow. Why is that? It’s bad, I know how it ends and still I watch.
The second thing that I know about my Couch-Potato Oscars list is that it’s very different that my wife’s. Most guys’ lists are going to be different than most women’s. Stacy’s includes “Mystic Pizza” and “Say Anything.” It doesn’t include the movie where Heather Locklear can’t find a man. She’ll only watch that one once.
I went back into bedroom to fold the laundry that had been piling up on the bed and see what was on the TV back there. That’s how Stacy and I divvy up the laundry. The kids and I pull all the dirty clothes out and pile them in front of the laundry room. Stacy divides it all into piles of appropriate size and color and pushes it through the system. I pull it out of the dryer and pile it on the bed where I eventually fold and hang it up.
The kids’ clean laundry gets loaded back into the hamper the dirt laundry came down stairs in and they put it away. Well, Max puts his away. Madison lives out of the hamper for a week before the process starts over again the following weekend.
Anyway, like any guy with full control of the remote control, I couldn’t decide on what to watch until I’d checked every channel – and we get them all. So I surfed through and couple of times before finding what I was looking for, even though I didn’t know it.
“A Few Good Men.” This is one of a long list of movies that once it comes on I have to watch it all the way to the end. I can’t turn it off until Jack Nicholson tells Tom Cruise that he (Cruise) can’t handle the truth.
I sat folding laundry on a Sunday afternoon and watched the movie build toward the familiar conclusion. And as I watched I asked myself why I was watching. I must have seen all or part of this movie 25 times. Yet there was nothing I’d rather be watching.
I started thinking about all the movies I’ll watch even though I’ve seen them all many times. It’s sort of a couch-potato Oscars. I came to a couple of conclusions. First, the movies that I watch even though I’ve seen them many times fall into three basic categories: good movies, bad movies and comedies.
The good movie list includes, but is not limited to, “A Few Good Men,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Usual Suspects,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “Silverado” and, even though it’s a little before my time, “The Dirty Dozen.”
These are all great movies. I’ve seen them all many times, but I still can’t turn them off until Nicholson admits he ordered the code red, Morgan Freeman shows up on the beach in Mexico or Kevin Spacey’s limp goes away and we find out he’s Keyser Soze.
The comedy list is familiar to anyone my age. “Animal House,” “Stripes,” “Fletch,” “Monty Python & the Holy Grail,” “Blazing Saddles” and, of course, “Caddyshack.”
I find it interesting, or at least telling, that most of the comedies are about five to 10 years older than most of the dramas. I’m sure there were good dramas made when I was in high school and college, but they didn’t burrow into my brain the way the comedies did. The dramas all came along after I graduated and became, for lack of a better word, and adult.
All of that is somewhat understandable. It’s the bad movie list that concerns me, at least a little. We’re not talking about Ed Wood bad here, although some of them are close. But these are movies that don’t belong on the same list with Shawshank and “Silverado.”
This list includes a brief plot synopsis since theses movies aren’t as well known as the others. “No Escape,” Ray Liotta is sent to island prison to fend for himself and battle cartoonish bad guys. He meets svengali-like fellow prisoner dying of cancer played by Lance Henriksen.
“Next of Kin,” Patrick Swayze is the middle of three Kentucky brothers who moves to Chicago, marries Helen Hunt and becomes a cop. The younger brother follows him to the big city and is murdered. The older brother, played by, I’m not kidding, Liam Neeson, comes to the city to take on the mob and avenge the younger brother. The hillbillies outsmart the mob.
“Roadhouse,” Swayze is the hired as the bouncer in a bar in a town controlled by Ben Gazarra, who’s determined to run the bar out of business. Sam Elliot is super cool as the Yoda of bouncers, Gazarra chews up scenery and Swayze gets to take his shirt off a lot. This is the Godfather of bad movies.
But my personal favorite on the bad movie list is “The Quick and the Dead.” This has to be the worst movie ever made with five Academy Award nominated actors, three of who actually won (but not for this movie).
Sharon Stone plays a mysterious female gunfighter in a quick-draw tournament being run by Gene Hackman who is a caricature of every western bad guy ever put on film. It’s the bad guy he played in “Unforgiven” times five. Also entered in the tournament are Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio. Rounding out the list of Oscar nominees is Gary Senise as Stone’s father. We see him only in flashbacks and it turns out that Gene Hackman didn’t kill him; he forced Stone to do it.
It’s a cinematic train wreck and when it’s on I can’t change the channel or go to bed before Stone gets her revenge and blows a hole in Hackman that you can see in his shadow. Why is that? It’s bad, I know how it ends and still I watch.
The second thing that I know about my Couch-Potato Oscars list is that it’s very different that my wife’s. Most guys’ lists are going to be different than most women’s. Stacy’s includes “Mystic Pizza” and “Say Anything.” It doesn’t include the movie where Heather Locklear can’t find a man. She’ll only watch that one once.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
At graduation, remember the little man on campus
It’s commencement time and all over the country high school seniors are making speeches. They’re speaking of the times they’ve had with their classmates – the times they’ll never forget. They’re remembering fondly the homecoming dance and the big game.
They’re telling of the day they arrived as terrified freshmen and how they’re leaving proud graduates. They’re waxing poetic about the rivalries and the rallies, about the parties and the proms.
And one of them is undoubtedly saying, “Those were the times of our lives.” And out from under their mortar boards many of their classmates are mumbling under their breath, “God, I hope not.”
I taught high school for four years and I saw a lot of students who were just biding their time. They were working just hard enough for the “A” or “B” their parents expected of them or they needed to get into the college of their choice, but they were clearly not having the times of their lives.
The best of those students would carve out a niche for themselves in the art department or the band that would make the rest of the stuff bearable. But others were just plain miserable for four years. And many of them seemed to think their entire life would be like that – not fitting in, not caring about what the rest of the crowd did or thought and not seeing their contribution to the school as important.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2007, most of you graduating today can be easily divided into two categories – those of you who see today as an ending and those for whom it is a beginning. For the fortunate few among you, it is both.
For those of you in the first group, high school was a four-year Sarah Michelle Gellar/Freddie Prinze Jr. movie. The clothes were hip, the people were pretty and the problems were superficial but seemed important at the time. These people were the prom queens, the football captains and the student body president.
For those in the second group, you’re through with the adolescent posturing and the popularity contests. While there might have been some good times and some good friends, the four years could have just as easily been two and you’d have been just as happy. Perhaps that’s the vast majority of the class.
For every big man on campus there are a dozen “little” ones who made him feel large by comparison. They may have been smaller is stature or in the eyes of the “in” crowd, but in 20 years many of the big men will be working for their smaller classmates.
For every homecoming queen there are dozens of girls who would rather do their homework than their hair.
It’s important to remember that 20 percent of a high school’s population appears in 80 percent of the pictures in the yearbook. For many of these people, high school was one of the highlights of their lives. They were popular, successful and admired.
Many of them will go on to be all of those things. But for others, it’s down hill from here. Many of the students from that other 80 percent will go on to be popular, successful and admired. For some it will happen in college, for others it will take place in their careers.
Some of the skills required to be a successful college student – compliance, a willingness to play by the rules or the ability to throw a football, shoot a basketball or look cute in a cheerleader’s skirt – are not necessarily the skills required to make a good adult or even a good college student.
To put it another way, some of the traits that make for an unsuccessful high school students – creativity, restlessness, the questioning of authority and convention – become more valuable down the road.
I write this not to belittle the cheerleaders or the jocks, although they could come down a peg or two. I write this to recognize and encourage the rest of the class, those for whom high school was way too long with way too much busy work and not enough challenge.
Don’t get me wrong: You’ve finished and that’s quite an accomplishment. But for most of you there was never a question about whether you would graduate, just whether that day would ever actually arrive. You’ve learned to jump through all of the hoops that have been set before you. And, if you were lucky, you found a little corner of the campus like the drama department or the school paper that you could call your own.
But now you’re ready to move on. And hopefully your schools have done their jobs and you’re well prepared to take the next step in your lives.
But high school is not a pattern for the rest of your life. At least it doesn’t have to be. On a college campus you’ll find that you’re not alone in your view of the world. There will be other people there who thought high school was superficial and homogenized, too.
In college there will still be cheerleaders and football players, still be homecoming and silly rituals. But in college you’ll find it’s a lot easier to ignore the Greeks than it was in high school to ignore the popular crowd. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.
So, when you’re sitting through the graduation ceremony next week and the speaker says, “It seems like only yesterday we were scared freshmen looking for our lockers” and you find yourself mumbling how it seems like forever ago, remember that the end of high school not just an opportunity to start over, but a chance to finally be appreciated for what you bring to the table.
If you are one of those people who will look back on high school with fond memories, good for you. But if you’ve reached the end and you can’t figure out what all the fuss was about, relax, you’re not alone. It’s the beginning, not the end.
They’re telling of the day they arrived as terrified freshmen and how they’re leaving proud graduates. They’re waxing poetic about the rivalries and the rallies, about the parties and the proms.
And one of them is undoubtedly saying, “Those were the times of our lives.” And out from under their mortar boards many of their classmates are mumbling under their breath, “God, I hope not.”
I taught high school for four years and I saw a lot of students who were just biding their time. They were working just hard enough for the “A” or “B” their parents expected of them or they needed to get into the college of their choice, but they were clearly not having the times of their lives.
The best of those students would carve out a niche for themselves in the art department or the band that would make the rest of the stuff bearable. But others were just plain miserable for four years. And many of them seemed to think their entire life would be like that – not fitting in, not caring about what the rest of the crowd did or thought and not seeing their contribution to the school as important.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2007, most of you graduating today can be easily divided into two categories – those of you who see today as an ending and those for whom it is a beginning. For the fortunate few among you, it is both.
For those of you in the first group, high school was a four-year Sarah Michelle Gellar/Freddie Prinze Jr. movie. The clothes were hip, the people were pretty and the problems were superficial but seemed important at the time. These people were the prom queens, the football captains and the student body president.
For those in the second group, you’re through with the adolescent posturing and the popularity contests. While there might have been some good times and some good friends, the four years could have just as easily been two and you’d have been just as happy. Perhaps that’s the vast majority of the class.
For every big man on campus there are a dozen “little” ones who made him feel large by comparison. They may have been smaller is stature or in the eyes of the “in” crowd, but in 20 years many of the big men will be working for their smaller classmates.
For every homecoming queen there are dozens of girls who would rather do their homework than their hair.
It’s important to remember that 20 percent of a high school’s population appears in 80 percent of the pictures in the yearbook. For many of these people, high school was one of the highlights of their lives. They were popular, successful and admired.
Many of them will go on to be all of those things. But for others, it’s down hill from here. Many of the students from that other 80 percent will go on to be popular, successful and admired. For some it will happen in college, for others it will take place in their careers.
Some of the skills required to be a successful college student – compliance, a willingness to play by the rules or the ability to throw a football, shoot a basketball or look cute in a cheerleader’s skirt – are not necessarily the skills required to make a good adult or even a good college student.
To put it another way, some of the traits that make for an unsuccessful high school students – creativity, restlessness, the questioning of authority and convention – become more valuable down the road.
I write this not to belittle the cheerleaders or the jocks, although they could come down a peg or two. I write this to recognize and encourage the rest of the class, those for whom high school was way too long with way too much busy work and not enough challenge.
Don’t get me wrong: You’ve finished and that’s quite an accomplishment. But for most of you there was never a question about whether you would graduate, just whether that day would ever actually arrive. You’ve learned to jump through all of the hoops that have been set before you. And, if you were lucky, you found a little corner of the campus like the drama department or the school paper that you could call your own.
But now you’re ready to move on. And hopefully your schools have done their jobs and you’re well prepared to take the next step in your lives.
But high school is not a pattern for the rest of your life. At least it doesn’t have to be. On a college campus you’ll find that you’re not alone in your view of the world. There will be other people there who thought high school was superficial and homogenized, too.
In college there will still be cheerleaders and football players, still be homecoming and silly rituals. But in college you’ll find it’s a lot easier to ignore the Greeks than it was in high school to ignore the popular crowd. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.
So, when you’re sitting through the graduation ceremony next week and the speaker says, “It seems like only yesterday we were scared freshmen looking for our lockers” and you find yourself mumbling how it seems like forever ago, remember that the end of high school not just an opportunity to start over, but a chance to finally be appreciated for what you bring to the table.
If you are one of those people who will look back on high school with fond memories, good for you. But if you’ve reached the end and you can’t figure out what all the fuss was about, relax, you’re not alone. It’s the beginning, not the end.
Monday, May 21, 2007
My brain is keeping me up nights trying to retrieve lost data
As humans continue to evolve, one day we will have a switch in the back of our heads to turn off our brain. This will come in handy when you’re trying to get some sleep and there’s something your brain just won’t let go of. Hopefully, we'll be able to flip the switch back on again in the morning.
This idea came to me in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep because my brain was busy trying to remember the name of a cartoon show that's been off the air for a half-dozen years.
It started that day when somebody used the phrase “arms akimbo” in a conversation that I was not part of. The person uttered the phrase in a completely cartoon-free context. But my brain, which was eavesdropping, immediately told me to barge into the conversation and relay this bit of information:
There once was a cartoon show called “Earthworm Jim.” My son used to watch it, and one of the recurring villains was named Arms Akimbo. His arms were permanently akimbo, meaning his hands were stuck on his hips with his elbows jutting out to the side. He’d barge into rooms and knock people over by swinging his arms back and forth.
I butted into the conversation to impart this factoid to my friends. They seemed to think it was somewhat interesting, but totally irrelevant to the discussion they were having. Feeling satisfied that I’d reaffirmed my standing as meaningless trivia champion (especially when it comes to mid-`90s cartoon shows), I went back to what I was doing.
Later that night, I was sitting on my couch, watching a baseball game from the West Coast. The rest of the family had gone to bed. Five minutes after Stacy disappeared into the bedroom, I was asleep on the couch.
I awakened at 2 a.m. a little confused and groggy. I let the dogs out and stumbled off to bed. At some point during the two-thirds comatose walk to the bed, it occurred to me that Arms Akimbo was not a villain on “Earthworm Jim.” He was a villain on another show of the same era, the name of which I couldn’t remember.
I remembered the show was on right after “Earthworm Jim” on the Cartoon Network and the hero, whose name was the same as the show, wore a red suit with a yellow lightning bolt on the front and he had a big black pompadour. I remembered that the police captain on the show was voiced by Ed Asner.
I remembered that we had videotapes in the basement with episodes of “Earthworm Jim,” “Pinky and the Brain” and this other show. I remembered that these shows were very funny, written more for me than my 3-year-old son, Max, who had watched them with me. I remembered pretty much everything about that show, except what it was called.
I have a theory about this. It’s my belief that everyone's brain has a finite amount of information that can be stored in it. Not everyone’s brain can hold the same amount of information, but everyone’s brain will eventually fill up.
This happens to most people in their 30s. Once your brain is full, you can't remember anything new without forgetting something old. Here’s the tricky part: You don't get to choose what your brain is going to dump to make space for new information.
You’d like it to be National League baseball statistics from 1970 to 1980 and the words to Neil Diamond songs, but sometimes it’s your mother's birthday and where you left your car keys.
At some point, my brain needed some space and threw out the name of this cartoon show from 1996. I lay in bed that night trying to recall the name of the cartoon with the guy in the red jumpsuit.
“This is silly,” I thought to myself. “It's 2:30 in the morning. Go to sleep. You can figure it out in the morning. Just ask Max; his brain's not full yet. He'll remember.”
But the more I thought about not thinking about it, the more I thought about it. It was during the next half-hour that I remembered about Ed Asner and about how Earthworm Jim had a sidekick named Snot and his love interest was Princess What's-Her-Name.
It was also during that half-hour that I came up with the switch to turn off your brain theory. (The full-brain theory is one I've had for some time.) But I couldn't recall the name of the show.
I thought about going to the basement and digging through the box of old videotapes. Then I decided that the Internet might be easier. I stumbled out of bed and upstairs to the office.
I sat down, but before I could Google, it occurred to me I didn't know what to type. “What's the name of the cartoon show where the guy wore a red jumpsuit and one of the villains was named Arms Akimbo and Ed Asner did the voice of the police captain?” seemed like it might not work.
My first attempt was – “Arms Akimbo,” villain. This got me a bunch of literary references (possibly whatever the co-workers were talking about), but nothing I recognized as the show. I then tried – “Arms Akimbo,” Cartoon Network.
Eureka. The fourth site was dedicated to “Freekazoid.” How could I forget “Freekazoid?” It turns out that the lightning bolt on the front of the red jumpsuit was an “F!” It also turns out "Freekazoid" started on the WB before finding its way to Cartoon Network. But other than that, I remembered it correctly -- except the name, of course.
After reading a couple of sites and discovering that the Dodgers had won the game 7-3, I made it to bed about 3:30. Later that morning, when I had to get up to make sure the kids were getting on the school bus, I was glad I didn't have my brain turned off the night before. It would have taken more than a switch to get it running again. It might have required a car battery and a set of jumper cables.
And now that I've got “Freekazoid” back in my brain I'm sure something else has been pushed out of there. I'm sure it wasn't that important.
Has anyone seen my car keys?
This idea came to me in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep because my brain was busy trying to remember the name of a cartoon show that's been off the air for a half-dozen years.
It started that day when somebody used the phrase “arms akimbo” in a conversation that I was not part of. The person uttered the phrase in a completely cartoon-free context. But my brain, which was eavesdropping, immediately told me to barge into the conversation and relay this bit of information:
There once was a cartoon show called “Earthworm Jim.” My son used to watch it, and one of the recurring villains was named Arms Akimbo. His arms were permanently akimbo, meaning his hands were stuck on his hips with his elbows jutting out to the side. He’d barge into rooms and knock people over by swinging his arms back and forth.
I butted into the conversation to impart this factoid to my friends. They seemed to think it was somewhat interesting, but totally irrelevant to the discussion they were having. Feeling satisfied that I’d reaffirmed my standing as meaningless trivia champion (especially when it comes to mid-`90s cartoon shows), I went back to what I was doing.
Later that night, I was sitting on my couch, watching a baseball game from the West Coast. The rest of the family had gone to bed. Five minutes after Stacy disappeared into the bedroom, I was asleep on the couch.
I awakened at 2 a.m. a little confused and groggy. I let the dogs out and stumbled off to bed. At some point during the two-thirds comatose walk to the bed, it occurred to me that Arms Akimbo was not a villain on “Earthworm Jim.” He was a villain on another show of the same era, the name of which I couldn’t remember.
I remembered the show was on right after “Earthworm Jim” on the Cartoon Network and the hero, whose name was the same as the show, wore a red suit with a yellow lightning bolt on the front and he had a big black pompadour. I remembered that the police captain on the show was voiced by Ed Asner.
I remembered that we had videotapes in the basement with episodes of “Earthworm Jim,” “Pinky and the Brain” and this other show. I remembered that these shows were very funny, written more for me than my 3-year-old son, Max, who had watched them with me. I remembered pretty much everything about that show, except what it was called.
I have a theory about this. It’s my belief that everyone's brain has a finite amount of information that can be stored in it. Not everyone’s brain can hold the same amount of information, but everyone’s brain will eventually fill up.
This happens to most people in their 30s. Once your brain is full, you can't remember anything new without forgetting something old. Here’s the tricky part: You don't get to choose what your brain is going to dump to make space for new information.
You’d like it to be National League baseball statistics from 1970 to 1980 and the words to Neil Diamond songs, but sometimes it’s your mother's birthday and where you left your car keys.
At some point, my brain needed some space and threw out the name of this cartoon show from 1996. I lay in bed that night trying to recall the name of the cartoon with the guy in the red jumpsuit.
“This is silly,” I thought to myself. “It's 2:30 in the morning. Go to sleep. You can figure it out in the morning. Just ask Max; his brain's not full yet. He'll remember.”
But the more I thought about not thinking about it, the more I thought about it. It was during the next half-hour that I remembered about Ed Asner and about how Earthworm Jim had a sidekick named Snot and his love interest was Princess What's-Her-Name.
It was also during that half-hour that I came up with the switch to turn off your brain theory. (The full-brain theory is one I've had for some time.) But I couldn't recall the name of the show.
I thought about going to the basement and digging through the box of old videotapes. Then I decided that the Internet might be easier. I stumbled out of bed and upstairs to the office.
I sat down, but before I could Google, it occurred to me I didn't know what to type. “What's the name of the cartoon show where the guy wore a red jumpsuit and one of the villains was named Arms Akimbo and Ed Asner did the voice of the police captain?” seemed like it might not work.
My first attempt was – “Arms Akimbo,” villain. This got me a bunch of literary references (possibly whatever the co-workers were talking about), but nothing I recognized as the show. I then tried – “Arms Akimbo,” Cartoon Network.
Eureka. The fourth site was dedicated to “Freekazoid.” How could I forget “Freekazoid?” It turns out that the lightning bolt on the front of the red jumpsuit was an “F!” It also turns out "Freekazoid" started on the WB before finding its way to Cartoon Network. But other than that, I remembered it correctly -- except the name, of course.
After reading a couple of sites and discovering that the Dodgers had won the game 7-3, I made it to bed about 3:30. Later that morning, when I had to get up to make sure the kids were getting on the school bus, I was glad I didn't have my brain turned off the night before. It would have taken more than a switch to get it running again. It might have required a car battery and a set of jumper cables.
And now that I've got “Freekazoid” back in my brain I'm sure something else has been pushed out of there. I'm sure it wasn't that important.
Has anyone seen my car keys?
Friday, May 18, 2007
Supervising chickens easier than chaperoning 7th-grade musicians
They were looking for volunteers, but it was easy for me to beg off. My son, Max's middle school music programs were looking for chaperons to accompany the band, choir and orchestra to a competition with a side trip to an amusement park on the way home.
It would be a Saturday that started at 5:15 a.m. and returned after midnight. A good portion of your day would be spent riding on a bus full of middle school students. But as wonderful as that sounds, I had no trouble saying "no," I did it last year.
It started about three weeks before the seventh-grade trip when Max came home with the permission slip for the field trip. The orchestra, along with the band and the choir, would be going to the competition in Shelby, Ohio, and then on to the Cedar Point. The packet also said they were looking for parent volunteers to be chaperons.
I tried to hide as Stacy and Max were talking about it, especially when they outlined the start and end times. But Stacy gave the “of course you’re going to do this for your child” look.
Stacy said she would do it, but she was already committed to do the Race for the Cure that day. How can you argue with that? So I said I would go.
For a couple of weeks I didn’t worry about it too much, but as is got closer the dread started to set in. First was the starting time. I’ve never been much good in the morning. It used to be the only way I ever saw 5:45 in the morning was by staying up all night. But since this wasn’t about watching the sun rise and then going to bed, I figured that was a bad idea.
The other part of the assignment that was making me a little anxious was the idea of being responsible for a group of what I assumed would be all 12- and 13-year-old boys in an amusement park. Under the best of conditions, taking charge of a group like that is a little like herding chickens. By the time you get most of the going in one direction, a couple of the stragglers will have wandered off. If you go after them, you’ll lose the ones you have headed in the right direction.
But I’d committed myself, so there was no backing out of it.
Thursday night there was a preview performance of music the orchestra would be performing. Afterward as I was trying to get my lone chicken to pack up his cello and get to the car, a number of his friends told me that they were going to be in my group for the field trip.
I didn’t know how many I was going to get total, but I knew I’d have Alex, Alex, Michael and John, plus Max. Five wouldn’t have been too bad. But when I got there on the blurry-eyed Saturday morning, I found that my number was actually nine.
I guess not as many parents got the “of course you’re going to do this for your son (or daughter)” look as I might have hoped. So we loaded on the bus and headed north. Thankfully, it was not a school bus. I put on the iPod and tried to sleep.
It was not the best sleep I’ve ever had and as we approached Shelby, the kids began to get a little restless. This was the only truly disappointing part of the day. I guess disappointing is not really the right word. But as the kids entered Shelby, which has obviously not seen its best times economically in recent years, rather than count themselves lucky, the busload of kids was more than a little snobbish.
These were students from on of the fastest growing school district's in the country. The vast majority of them are from comparatively comfortable families and most have never gone to a school that’s older than they are. Shelby Middle School was built before their parents were born.
They were singularly unimpressed. But that’s understandable really. They’re young and haven’t seen a great deal of the world. They don’t really understand how good they’ve got it.
The time at the school for the competition was mainly an exercise in waiting. We were there from about 8:30 a.m. until 1:45 p.m. and my particular group of kids was on the stage for about 20 minutes.
So we tried to give them a schedule. We took them to the cafeteria and to the room to pick up their instruments and get them into tune. Then they got some time to walk around outside. Then back to the room to wait for our escort to the practice room. A rumor ran through the group that all of the school’s groups had been penalized points because the seventh-grade choir had been caught playing leap-frog in the hallways. It turned out that they’d just been given a warning.
Once the last of the school’s groups had performed, we loaded on to the buses and headed north to Cedar Point. My group of nine immediately became 10 as a boy from another group wanted to join ours. The problem was that once inside the park, they all had different agendas. I knew it was going to be impossible to keep all of my chickens headed in the same direction.
We entered the park at a little after 3 p.m. and were supposed to be back at the buses at 8:30. Some wanted to go directly to the Top-Fuel Dragster (two-hour wait, 17-second ride), others wanted to go to the arcade (spend $10 to win a 79-cent stuffed animal) and others wanted to find the roller coasters with the shorter lines and get as many rides in as they could even if it meant missing the big attractions.
We decided that we’d setting a meeting place for 6 o’clock so we could eat dinner and I could count noses (or beaks). I had a cell number for at least one person in each group if I needed to get a hold of them before that. So two groups of three went off on their own and I was left with four, Max, one of the Alexs, one of the Johns and Roberto. They were the group in search of the shortest lines.
I noticed one thing right off. Boys walk at a different speed in an amusement park. Normally, Max’s pace can best be described as a slow meander. When traveling from one roller coaster to another, they all fell into the Olympic race walk category.
While the boys waited in the shortest lines they could find, I tried to find a bench in the shade and put the iPod back on. My roller coasting days are behind me. Getting me into a roller coaster seat is a little snug and, while I don’t come off the rides feeling nauseous, I do feel a little beat up afterward. So I’d buy a $3.50 soda and wait, find the nearest restroom and wait some more.
To this credit, all the boys showed up at the rendezvous point more or less on time and after a flurry of last-minute chicken behavior (if they had to give any money back to their parents, the boys saw it as a personal defeat), we made it back to the bus on time. The ride back to Powell was not the snoozefest I anticipated, but they were relatively quiet as everyone compared notes on their afternoon at the park.
In the end, I delivered all nine of my chickens back in one piece. It's the kind of thing that was fun once, but now it's somebody else's turn.
It would be a Saturday that started at 5:15 a.m. and returned after midnight. A good portion of your day would be spent riding on a bus full of middle school students. But as wonderful as that sounds, I had no trouble saying "no," I did it last year.
It started about three weeks before the seventh-grade trip when Max came home with the permission slip for the field trip. The orchestra, along with the band and the choir, would be going to the competition in Shelby, Ohio, and then on to the Cedar Point. The packet also said they were looking for parent volunteers to be chaperons.
I tried to hide as Stacy and Max were talking about it, especially when they outlined the start and end times. But Stacy gave the “of course you’re going to do this for your child” look.
Stacy said she would do it, but she was already committed to do the Race for the Cure that day. How can you argue with that? So I said I would go.
For a couple of weeks I didn’t worry about it too much, but as is got closer the dread started to set in. First was the starting time. I’ve never been much good in the morning. It used to be the only way I ever saw 5:45 in the morning was by staying up all night. But since this wasn’t about watching the sun rise and then going to bed, I figured that was a bad idea.
The other part of the assignment that was making me a little anxious was the idea of being responsible for a group of what I assumed would be all 12- and 13-year-old boys in an amusement park. Under the best of conditions, taking charge of a group like that is a little like herding chickens. By the time you get most of the going in one direction, a couple of the stragglers will have wandered off. If you go after them, you’ll lose the ones you have headed in the right direction.
But I’d committed myself, so there was no backing out of it.
Thursday night there was a preview performance of music the orchestra would be performing. Afterward as I was trying to get my lone chicken to pack up his cello and get to the car, a number of his friends told me that they were going to be in my group for the field trip.
I didn’t know how many I was going to get total, but I knew I’d have Alex, Alex, Michael and John, plus Max. Five wouldn’t have been too bad. But when I got there on the blurry-eyed Saturday morning, I found that my number was actually nine.
I guess not as many parents got the “of course you’re going to do this for your son (or daughter)” look as I might have hoped. So we loaded on the bus and headed north. Thankfully, it was not a school bus. I put on the iPod and tried to sleep.
It was not the best sleep I’ve ever had and as we approached Shelby, the kids began to get a little restless. This was the only truly disappointing part of the day. I guess disappointing is not really the right word. But as the kids entered Shelby, which has obviously not seen its best times economically in recent years, rather than count themselves lucky, the busload of kids was more than a little snobbish.
These were students from on of the fastest growing school district's in the country. The vast majority of them are from comparatively comfortable families and most have never gone to a school that’s older than they are. Shelby Middle School was built before their parents were born.
They were singularly unimpressed. But that’s understandable really. They’re young and haven’t seen a great deal of the world. They don’t really understand how good they’ve got it.
The time at the school for the competition was mainly an exercise in waiting. We were there from about 8:30 a.m. until 1:45 p.m. and my particular group of kids was on the stage for about 20 minutes.
So we tried to give them a schedule. We took them to the cafeteria and to the room to pick up their instruments and get them into tune. Then they got some time to walk around outside. Then back to the room to wait for our escort to the practice room. A rumor ran through the group that all of the school’s groups had been penalized points because the seventh-grade choir had been caught playing leap-frog in the hallways. It turned out that they’d just been given a warning.
Once the last of the school’s groups had performed, we loaded on to the buses and headed north to Cedar Point. My group of nine immediately became 10 as a boy from another group wanted to join ours. The problem was that once inside the park, they all had different agendas. I knew it was going to be impossible to keep all of my chickens headed in the same direction.
We entered the park at a little after 3 p.m. and were supposed to be back at the buses at 8:30. Some wanted to go directly to the Top-Fuel Dragster (two-hour wait, 17-second ride), others wanted to go to the arcade (spend $10 to win a 79-cent stuffed animal) and others wanted to find the roller coasters with the shorter lines and get as many rides in as they could even if it meant missing the big attractions.
We decided that we’d setting a meeting place for 6 o’clock so we could eat dinner and I could count noses (or beaks). I had a cell number for at least one person in each group if I needed to get a hold of them before that. So two groups of three went off on their own and I was left with four, Max, one of the Alexs, one of the Johns and Roberto. They were the group in search of the shortest lines.
I noticed one thing right off. Boys walk at a different speed in an amusement park. Normally, Max’s pace can best be described as a slow meander. When traveling from one roller coaster to another, they all fell into the Olympic race walk category.
While the boys waited in the shortest lines they could find, I tried to find a bench in the shade and put the iPod back on. My roller coasting days are behind me. Getting me into a roller coaster seat is a little snug and, while I don’t come off the rides feeling nauseous, I do feel a little beat up afterward. So I’d buy a $3.50 soda and wait, find the nearest restroom and wait some more.
To this credit, all the boys showed up at the rendezvous point more or less on time and after a flurry of last-minute chicken behavior (if they had to give any money back to their parents, the boys saw it as a personal defeat), we made it back to the bus on time. The ride back to Powell was not the snoozefest I anticipated, but they were relatively quiet as everyone compared notes on their afternoon at the park.
In the end, I delivered all nine of my chickens back in one piece. It's the kind of thing that was fun once, but now it's somebody else's turn.