Jewish infiltration at the North Pole, perhaps?

My daughter, Clara, and I spent part of Christmas day watching the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special. My wife is Jewish.

I celebrate all holidays involving anthropomorphic creatures and gift-giving.

As a result, our children receive a mixed-bag when it comes to holiday celebrations.

I think it’s great. The best of both worlds.

My wife grew up in a Jewish household, so she is quite young in Christmas years and has no understanding of the fundamental importance of these stop-motion animation Christmas specials.

I’m happy to be passing the tradition onto Clara.

With all this in mind, I found myself with a new perspective as I watched Rudolph for perhaps the two-hundredth time.

Specifically, I had an insight on Hermey, the Christmas elf:

Hermey is a self-described misfit who prefers studying dentistry to making toys. Abandoning Santa's workshop, Hermey runs away, leaving Santa Clause and Christmas behind.

Rejects Santa Claus and Christmas?

Chooses dental school over the toy industry?

Jewish, perhaps?

How to turn a toy gun into an appropriate gift

A few pre-Christmas observations: 1. Men are simple creatures. As I meander up and down the aisles of Toys ‘R Us, I continually to stumbled upon toys that I would love to receive as a gift. Remote controlled helicopters and cars, sling shots, Nerf guns, yo-yos, jump ropes, board games, skateboards, video games and more.

While I struggle to fill my wife’s stocking with anything but candy every year, she continually packs mine with the cleverest of gifts.

In fact, she’s the best stocking stuffer I have ever known.

But I realized as I made my way through the toy store that this is because men never outgrow the toy store. Filling a man’s stocking is easy because men continue to play with toys throughout their lives, and the toy store will always be a place where a clever woman can shop for her man. I don’t know what Elysha has planned for this year's stocking, but I promise you that her choices are likely to be small, silly and some of my favorite gifts of the year.

3. F.A.O Schwarz has apparently leased a section of the Toys ‘R Us store to sell their own merchandise, and at the beginning of this section is a kiosk selling F.A.O Schwarz gift bags for 98 cents each.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the implication here is that there are consumers in this world who shop at Toys ‘R Us but who purchase an F.A.O. Schwarz toy in order to convey the appearance that the gift was actually purchased at the world famous store in New York City.

Is there any other explanation for a brand-named gift bag?

The presence of the kiosk or the bags themselves didn’t bother me so much.  As much as I like to think that austerity is slowing creeping into people’s mindsets, there will always be people on the bottom end of the sensibility bell curve.

But the fact that the kiosk was capable of holding hundreds of bags and yet was nearly empty was my greatest cause of concern.

3. Searching for a gift for twin boys, I came upon an enormous section of Nerf guns. A glorious collection of handgun and rifles that fire small, soft Nerf pellets at their target.

I stared at the choices for a long time and finally texted Elysha.

Me: Can I get the boys toy guns? Nerf guns.

Elysha: Not sure…

Elysha: I think so. Is there something else as good?

Me: Nothing is as good as a toy gun.

I continued staring at the array of weaponry before me, trying to decide if the boys’ parents would approve. I thought about the parents' careers, their religious beliefs, their political leanings and examples of their parental decision-making from the past. I thought and thought, and then the solution struck me like a thunderbolt.

I bought four guns. One for each boy and one for each parent.

Buy a gun for everyone and it becomes time well spent with family.

Sort of like buying Monopoly. Only a hell of a lot better.

My treatise on tipping

A reader recently asked me to comment on the process of tipping, hoping that I might be able to provide some insight on the subject. She must have noticed that I am rarely bereft of an opinion on any matter.

My basic philosophy on tipping is to always round up and always be willing to throw in an extra dollar or two if the service was satisfactory. The extra dollar will always mean significantly more to a server than it could ever mean to you, both in terms of straight monetary compensation but also (and more importantly) as an acknowledgement of a job well done.

When given the opportunity to compliment a person on their work performance in such an easy and cost effective way, take it.

This rule does not apply, however, to situations in which tipping is optional.  The tip jar at your local Dunkin’ Donuts or a Starbucks is a good example of this.

Tip jars of this kind are optional and should always be treated as such.  Traditional wait staff are paid considerably less than minimum wage because of the expectation of a tip following service. In order for these people to earn a living wage, tips must be given. A counter person making your coffee at the local Starbucks or a sandwich maker at your neighborhood Subway is earning at least minimum wage and likely higher, and therefore you should not feel the obligation to tip.

Also, these tip jars seem rather arbitrary in their deployment, and they strike me as unfair and unjustified attempts to capitalize on the tipping that takes place in full-scale restaurants.

The cashier at Target, for example, probably makes less money per hour than the average Starbucks employee, and yet both serve a similar function.  But you would never see a tip jar adjacent to a cash register at Target.

Similarly, counter employees at dry cleaners, video rental stores, gas stations and the like also earn the same kind of wage as your average Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks employee, yet they are also not asking for tips either.  For some reason, the presence of food seems to signal the opportunity for a tip jar, and this is simply not the case. Pouring a cup of coffee or handing me a scone is hardly equivalent to the work that wait staff do in full service restaurants, and it is not all that different than the service that a dry cleaner counter person offers.

In addition, tip jars do not typically afford the customer the opportunity to signal to the counter person that the job was well done. Dropping your change into a tip jar is hardly an indication of appreciation, and the money accumulated in the jar is often divided amongst several other employees, preventing you from acknowledging any single person for their service and sometimes forcing you to offer appreciation to the undeserving.

All that said, I am not opposed to dropping money into a tip jar, especially if you are a regular customer who is treated well on a daily basis. But this should be a choice that a person makes and never an obligation.

As I’ve written about in a previous post, my evil step-father taught me that when the service is especially poor, leaving a single penny is more insulting than leaving no tip at all.

Not surprising, this is terrible advice.

I am strongly opposed to not tipping a waiter or waitress regardless of the service, knowing that service is also dependent on many other factors beyond the control of the wait staff and keeping in mind that these people make less than minimum wage.

Tipping 10% rather than 20% seems like a more reasonable response to poor service.

Not tipping at all, or tipping a single penny, is simply unacceptable. If your service was so poor as to warrant the absence of a tip, you should have asked to speak to a manager long before it came time to calculate a tip.

Leaving without tipping is the coward’s way of handling the situation. It’s the passive-aggressive, indirect, almost anonymous means of expressing dissatisfaction, and it is typically done in lieu of a frank and honest discussion about the service rendered.

Passive-aggressive, indirect, and anonymous are three of my least favorite qualities in any approach to communication.

They are the coward’s way out.

I’m not surprised that it is the kind of thing that my evil stepfather would have advocated. Thankfully, my evil step father was fairly simple to decipher. I learned to do the opposite of what he said in almost all circumstances, and that policy has served me surprisingly well over the years.

Hardest decisions are usually the best decisions

Case in point: As an educator and a parent, I am opposed to placing a television in a child’s bedroom. With the quality of programming available on TV today, as well as the fierce competition that our children will face in a global economy, there is no time and no need for un-monitored television viewing in the bedroom.

I am not saying that children should not be watching television at all. Just that the placement of this device is a child’s bedroom amounts to an utter disregard for the realities that face our children today, and the research which clearly shows the damage that a TV in the bedroom can do.

In 2008, the New York Times reported that children with televisions in their bedrooms score lower on school tests and are more likely to have sleep problems. Having a television in the bedroom is also strongly associated with being overweight and a higher risk for smoking.

In addition, a television in the bedroom increases the total amount of TV that a child views in a given week by nearly 9 hours, from 21 hours to 30 hours.

All three of those numbers are staggering to me.

Every year I survey my students, asking how many of them have televisions in their bedrooms, and typically more than half do. After more than a decade of surveys and observation, I can offer anecdotal evidence that supports the data reported in the Times. Children without televisions in their bedrooms are consistently better readers and more focused learners.

Does this mean that removing the television from the bedroom will boost a student’s reading ability and overall learning profile.

Probably.

Does this mean that I have never had a high achieving student who also had a television in his or her bedroom?

Of course not.

But I also wonder how much potential was lost because of the television.  Could one of these students have been the next Einstein had they not been watching reruns on the Disney channel?

Maybe. Lost potential is difficult to measure and convenient to ignore.

With this in mind, I routinely advise parents to remove the television and gaming systems from their child’s bedroom. I once took action myself by going to a student’s house and removing the power cords from the three game systems he had in his bedroom and not returning them until the end of the school year.

But in the decade that I have been offering this advice, I can count the number of times that a parent removed a television from their child's bedroom on one hand.

There are lots of reasons why parents ignore the data and the advice of educators, but it typically amounts to this:

Removing a television from a child’s bedroom is hard. The child has gotten accustomed to the television and would be angry if it were removed. The family would not be able to watch two different shows at the same time. Parents and child would have to compromise on their viewing preferences, and that would cause additional problems.

I agree with this sentiment. I do not doubt its veracity. I know, because I once made the mistake of placing a television in a child’s bedroom.

When my former step-daughter was ten years old, I purchased a new television for the living room and I placed the old TV in Nicole’s bedroom, thinking it a nice gesture and a means of alleviating the constant debate over what we should be watching.

Less than a week later, I had realized that by placing a television in her bedroom, I was seeing considerably less of Nicole. She was spending more time in her bedroom, with the door closed, watching TV while doing her homework. I also realized that I was unable to monitor what she was watching and how much programming she was consuming in total.

These were all things that I should'ave realized beforehand but did not.

In short, it took me a little more than a week to realize how stupid it was to put a TV in her bedroom, but once I did, I removed it.

Nicole was inconsolable when I removed the television, and more than a decade later, she was still angry over the decision that I made that day. Even though she now has a television in her bedroom, she describes that day as one of the angriest moments of her life. For years after removing the TV, she would complain about the decision to me, her mother, family members, friends and even strangers who were willing to listen to her tale of woe. She would describe me as mean, cruel and uncaring. She would lament over the the fact that all of her friends had televisions in their bedrooms and ask why I did not love her enough to do the same.

All this within the complex, tenuous and oftentimes uncertain dynamics of a step-father/step-daughter relationship, and with almost no support from her mother, who disagreed with my decision.

Yet I did it, knowing it was best for Nicole. My hope was that she might someday thank me for caring enough to endure six years of constant badgering and complaints, but that moment of appreciation has never come.

As I said, she is still mad as hell about it.

But I made the difficult decision because I knew it was right, and because I know that the hardest decisions are usually the best decisions.

In that same New York Times article, Dr. Leonard H. Epstein, professor of pediatrics and social and preventive medicine at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Science at the State University of New York at Buffalo, is quoted as saying:

“Once the set is in the child’s room, it is very likely to stay. In our experience, it is often hard for parents to remove a television set from a child’s bedroom.”

Why is this true?

Because too many people are unwilling to make the difficult decision.

As parents, we are all capable of making stupid decisions. In the course of raising my children, I expect to do a lot of foolish and tremendously dumb things.

This is the cross that every parent must bear.

But it is our willingness to undo our stupidity and make the tough decisions that set us apart.

More importantly, it is what will ultimately set our kids apart as well.

So stop ignoring the data and take the advice of an experienced educator and parent capable of some very stupid things:

Get that goddamn television out of your kids’ bedroom today.

The forgotten freedom of adulthood: Stop disappointing the childhood version of yourself and do something ridiculous

It's strange that a vast majority of Americans favor the four day work week yet somehow we cannot make this happen. Sometimes I think we forget that we are adults, capable of altering our lifestyle and working environment if desired. We forget how much control we have over our lives if we're simply willing to stop caring about what other people think. We ignore the fact that we have the power to reject or rise up against many cultural norms and traditions if we so choose.

May I suggest you take a long, hard look at your life and find those areas where change might make you a happier person?

To do this, think back upon your childhood and all those things that you vowed to do as an adult.

Are you doing them?

Could you be doing them?

A friend and I were recently lamenting the absence of ice cream in our day when the freedom that adulthood confers to me suddenly flooded by mind.

“You know what?” I said, more excited than perhaps was necessary. “I always wanted ice cream for breakfast when I was a kid, and I don’t think I’ve ever followed through on that. I’m getting some tomorrow. Ice cream for breakfast, damn it.”

My friend agreed. We are adults, and unless it violates a law or harms another human being, we can do whatever we want, including Ben and Jerry’s Carmel Sutra for breakfast.

Sometimes even a nonconformist can forget that he is an adult and certain rules no longer apply to him. In this spirit, I have been breaking the following rules for a long time now, and I would venture to say that I am a much happier person for  it.

1. Ice cream for breakfast whenever I want. I have yet to find a place that serves ice cream in the morning, but a tub of ice cream from the grocery store has sufficed.

2. No more boring greeting cards, regardless of the occasion. I routinely purchase greeting cards for incorrect or inappropriate occasions and transform them into something befitting the moment.

A pet bereavement card converted into an anniversary wish.

A bar mitzvah card rewritten into a thank you note.

A Valentine’s Day card made over into a birthday invitation.

A couple years ago, this became my standard approach to all greeting cards, regardless of situation or recipient. Even for the most formal of occasions, how could any reasonable person complain about the effort put into one of these transformations?

3.  No more neckties. This has actually been a rule that I have been living with for years. At some point I’ll write about this issue with more depth, but suffice it to say that a necktie is a meaningless, arcane item of clothing that amounts to little more than a colorful noose around the neck.

I stopped wearing them to all formal occasions, including in my role as a wedding DJ, years ago, and you know what?

Nobody cares.

I attended a wedding a year ago, and I was the only man present without a tie on. Do you think anyone noticed other than me? If they did, do you think they cared?

Once you realize that no one pays as much attention to you as you think they do, life gets a lot easier.

Once you realize that being yourself and caring little about the opinions of others is far more attractive than a good looking tie or anything else that you might wear, life gets a lot better.

I've worn a tie twice in the past eight years, both times by request. My sister-in-law asked me to wear one at her wedding (I was a member of the bridal party) and a couple who I married in the capacity of minister asked me to wear one. I complied in both cases but none other.

And unless the request comes by way of a bridal party requirement or in my capacity as minister, I will not wear one ever again.

I’m an adult damn it. Let’s see someone try to complain about my new ways of living.

I just hope Elysha agrees with me.

Standing up against the norms and rigors of society is one thing. Standing up against your wife is an entirely different matter, and often a more perilous one.

Worst things ever

The protagonist in the book that I am currently writing lists these as the worst things ever:

1. Waiting
2. Not knowing
3. Not existing

It’s not my list, mind you, but I think it’s a pretty good list and I’m considering making it my own as well. 

And it’s a big improvement on his initial list:

1. Tommy Swinden
2. Bonus poops
3. Not existing

Determiners of intelligence

I judge intelligence (rather unfairly) by the following criteria:

• The number of Supreme Court justices that a person can name
• The amount of time a person spends watching television
• Smoker or non-smoker
• The scope of a person’s musical interests
• A person’s overall ratio of speaking to listening
• A person’s willingness to act self-deprecating
• The total number of tabloid magazines that a person reads in a week
• A person’s acceptance of evolution as Darwin initially described
• The ratio between a person’s degree of religious belief and the number of times that he or she has actually read the Bible
• The way in which a person spends his or her time in a waiting room
• A person’s acknowledgement of human-induced global warming
• The degree to which a person finds Jon Stewart and David Sedaris funny
• A person’s ability to debate without raising his or her voice, repeating a previously-stated viewpoint or interrupting
• New York Jets fan or not

Like I said, I’m not exactly fair in my judgment. 

How to win a Thanksgiving Day argument

John Dickerson wrote an entertaining piece about how to win your Thanksgiving Day fight. Dickerson’s piece centers on politics, which is his field of expertise. On his weekly podcast, he explained that his father would go so far to assign red and blue cups to his guests in order to identify their political leaning.

Brilliant.

As an experienced combatant of Thanksgiving Day fights, my strategy for winning falls along one of two lines:

1. Reinforce a winner
2. Sacrifice and retreat

Allow me to illustrate each stratagem.

A few years ago a vociferous argument erupted at the Thanksgiving dinner table over the state of the economy and the reasons for the economic downturn. As with most debates, I chose to remain silent, waiting as battle lines were drawn and positions were staked out. When it became clear to me that my father-in-law was the only person at the table who knew what he was talking about but stood alone against an army of overly emotional combatants who had no fundamental understanding of credit default swaps, toxic assets and the true causes of the banking collapse (they were blaming the entirety of the crisis on media hype), I decided to enter the fray, bolstering my father-in-law’s side with facts and data that illustrated the lack of fundamental economic understanding on the opposing side.

Hence my strategy of reinforcing a winner.

A couple years ago my father-in-law took a familiar stand against the violence of the NFL, declaring that in twenty years we would be watching a bastardized version of flag football. This is a position that he has staked out many times with me, and occasionally I allow myself to be drawn into the fray. Last year,  however, I quickly saw the battle lines being drawn, with my father-in-law and my brother-in-law’s father taking up positions against the violence of today’s game and my brother-in-law choosing to oppose them.

Though I do not believe my father-in-law is correct in his predictions about the the future of the NFL, I am also smart enough to avoid taking up positions against two older, wiser men on Thanksgiving.

So instead of fighting, I took a couple small steps into the fray, saying just enough to draw my brother-in-law into the fight before retreating to the kitchen to baste the turkey and make myself scarce. For the next fifteen minutes, the old men hammered away at younger man, armed with their years of wit and wisdom. Only once did I reenter the battle, and only then to remind my father-in-law that shouting does not enhance the overall quality of a person’s argument.

Hence my strategy of sacrifice and retreat.

Better to live and fight another day. And in doing so, I managed to catalog a laundry list of arguments and counterpoints that my father-in-law may use against me in the future. All of this may seem a little over-the-top and unnecessarily complex given the circumstances, but it was halftime.

It’s not like I was missing the game.

Sucks to be a cashier

The advent of the self checkout line has diminished the already diminished reputation of the grocery store cashier. Imagine what it must feel like to be replaced by a barcode scanner and a change machine.

Not fun.

A good rule of thumb:

Whenever your job is effectively transferred over to your customer, it is a blatant repudiation of your skill set and a serious threat to job security.

Spreading the McRib and other good news

Over the last week or so, I have been yearning for a McRib, which my local McDonald's is now offering for a limited time only. Frightening words for a McRib lover, and I love the McRib, regardless of what McRib-bashers may say.

Two days ago, in between parent-teacher conferences, I finally ate my first McRib in more than ten years.

It wasn’t as good as I remembered it to be.

IT WAS BETTER.

And since posting about my desire for a McRib and my attempts to convert my wife to the joys of this delicacy, I have convinced three other people to partake in its pleasure.

The verdict:

One person “Loved it!” and two said that is wasn’t bad.

Converts! Its always gratifying to know that my belief system has improved the lives of others.

A similar, less barbecue-enhanced situation occurred earlier this week.

Based upon my previous brushes with death, which include two instances in which my heart and respiration stopped and another time when an unloaded shotgun was placed by my head while the trigger was pulled, I conduct my life by adhering to the following philosophy:

Since you could die at any moment, do not complete any assigned task until the last minute. Avoid spending your last hour on this planet finishing some mundane and soul-crushing chore that will do you no good once you are in the ground.

For the most part, I strictly adhere to this philosophy, consistently procrastinating on tasks that lack any appeal to me.

I also work well under pressure, and perhaps better under pressure, so this admittedly makes my philosophy easier to apply.

Not everyone thinks this policy is sane. A least a couple of my friends are constantly questioning this belief, challenging my compliance, and a few are downright annoyed by it at times.

I don’t quite understand why. All I do is live life as if every day could be my last. It’s a nice platitude that is repeated quite often, and it seems to make sense unless you actually attempt to live by it. Then you realize that in order to do so, you must also live on the precipice of deadlines, the constant awareness of mounting responsibilities and time slipping away and the danger that important tasks may go unfinished.

But this is the way I choose to live, despite the outrage that some feel about it.

But not all.

Over the weekend, one of colleagues and good friends was supposed to complete an important assignment that could impact the future of her teaching career. As she walked into my classroom this morning, I asked how her weekend went.

“Fine,” she said.

I asked if she had spent most of the time working on her assignment, which is what I would have expected her to have done.

“Nope,” she said. “I started it at 8:00 last night and finished around midnight ”

“You saved it for the last minute?”

“Yup,” she answered, beaming with pride. “And it all thanks to you. I thought about how you don’t believe in doing things until the last minute in case you die. Since there was a chance that I might die this weekend, I decided to enjoy my two days off and waited until last night to get started. And you know what? It worked out just fine.”

Just think: My first disciple.

I wonder if all great religious figures started out this way.

With a handful of McRibs and one believer.

Lessons from two years of parenting

I’ve been collecting a list of lessons that I have learned from my first two years of parenting. The list was getting long so I thought it was time to post it here. I may add, revise or edit the list in the future, perhaps in a couple months at the time of Clara’s second birthday, and it may eventually become the framework for a book on the subject. Either way, here is what I have so far.

1. The parent who assumes the tougher position in regards to expectations and discipline is almost always correct.

2. Writing to your child on a daily basis helps you better appreciate the moments with your little one and prevents you from wondering why times flies by so quickly.

3. Training your child to fall sleep on her own and sleep through the night takes about two weeks if done with tenacity, an iron will and an absolute adherence to the advice of experts. Parents must also possess the grudging acceptance that thunderstorms, nightmares and illness will upset the apple cart from time to time.

4. You cannot take too many photographs of your baby.

5. Taking care of a baby in the first two years of life is not nearly as difficult as people want you to believe.

6. Telling parents that taking care of your child has been an easy and joyous experience will usually annoy them.

7. Changing a diaper is not a big deal and is never something worthy of whines or complaints.

8. A great majority of the people in the world who are raising children are not happy unless they have attempted to demoralize you with their assurances that parenting will not be easy.

9. Experienced parents who are positive, optimistic and encouraging to the parents of newborns are difficult to come by and should be treasured when found.

10. Experienced parents always know which toys are best.

11. Unsolicited advice from experienced parents should always be received with appreciation. It should not be viewed as a criticism or indictment of your own parenting skills and can be easily ignored if need be.

12. There is absolutely no reason for a child under eighteen months old to be watching television on a daily basis.

13. Consignment shops are some of the best places to find children’s clothing and toys unless you are a pretentious snob.

14. Parents seeking the most fashionable or trendy stroller, diaper bag, and similar accouterments are often saddled with the least practical option.

15. Little boys and little girls are entirely different animals. They have almost nothing in common, and it is a miracle that they might one day marry each other.

16. The ratio of happy times to difficult times in the first two years of your child’s life is about a billion to one.

17. Parents have a tragic tendency to forget the billion and accentuate the one.

Pouty Sanchez

Tim Graham of ESPN writes:

The Jets want Mark Sanchez to stop pouting. To force Sanchez into acting as regal as a franchise quarterback should, offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and backup quarterback Mark Brunell have been fining Sanchez for undesirable body language. This sounds like "Romper Room" stuff. Remember when the Jets color-coded Sanchez's play-call wristband last year? Schottenheimer suggested the fines are enacted for fun, but the team obviously felt something needed to be done. Perhaps the fines will help Sanchez refrain from whining to officials, gesturing to his receivers over drops or haggling with pizzeria employees over 59-cent dipping sauces.

Three initial thoughts:

1. I’m glad the quarterback of my favorite football team doesn’t need to be fined for whining.

2. Being fined for whining sucks. Having news of the fines reported in the national media is downright humiliating.

3. Can you imagine what defensive linemen are going to be saying to this guy on Sunday when they line up against him? I hope NFL films have enough microphones on hand to catch what promises to be a relentless wave of trash-talking and insults.

But more importantly, imagine how wonderful the world would be if people could be fined for whining in real life.

Fines for those who complain that life isn’t fair.

Fines for those who whine about their job being too hard.

Fines for whining about the weather or the wife or the rotten children.

As someone who has been known to whine on what I hope is a very rare occasion, I would fully support a national whining policy, complete with monetary fines and optional community service, if only to make the world a more productive and palatable place. Not only is whining uninteresting and stupid, but it is also counter-productive and often a signal of cowardly passive-aggressive behavior.

Whining about your job, for example, does not make it better. And the energy invested in whining could have been used to improve the state of your career.

Whining about your boss or your spouse is usually an indication of an unwillingness to be forthright, direct and honest with that person, which all but guarantees that things will not change for the better.

And whining about things that are beyond your control (like the weather) amounts to little more than noise pollution.

In fact, the only whining that I support is the whining done by immature New York Jets quarterbacks in the midst of a game, and only because it hurts their team.

I hate the Jets.

Simple and doable

Here is the best solution that I have seen to my recent electronic voting rant:

Brilliant idea

Sex in a carefully monitored lab setting

In a Slate piece that asks if you actually have to consult your doctor before having sex (as the Cialis commercials have made abundantly clear), Craig Bowron cites the following research:

“…a 1984 study that involved ten married couples who were paid to have intercourse in a monitored lab setting. Blood pressure, pulse, and oxygen consumption were recorded, but only for the men; no one paid attention to the women. (Indeed, medical research is only now beginning to emerge from its dark, sexist past.) Foreplay was allowed, but the "results-oriented" nature of the experiment (the husband held an event-marker button to be pushed at the beginning and the end of his orgasm) did tend to play into a male view of sex. As the paper noted, "Some physical expression … was limited by the recording equipment. For example, the mask used to collect the husband's expired air kept him from kissing or talking."

I think I could write an entire novel based upon a fictionalized version of this research and just one of the ten couples.

In fact, I’m adding it to the idea list.  This might actually make a great story if I can find the right characters to fill the roles.

And I have so many questions.  For example:

How were the couples recruited? How much were they paid? What were their motives for getting involved in the study? Was the intercourse monitored visually? Did the research improve or hinder sexual performance? What percentage of the couples remained married following the research? Was the the male-female dynamic in terms of joining the study?

So much fodder for a possible book…

And no, unless you smoke three packs a day, dine on three pounds of red meat a week, and rarely leave your couch, there is no real need to consult a doctor before having sex.  At least according to Slate.

At last! A job tailor-made to my abilities.

When Clara is old enough, I will tell her to try to combine her talent and her passion into her choice of career in order to ensure happiness and success. And if I ever get tired of teaching and writing, I think I’ve found a job tailor-made for my skill set.

IDump4U.com is a service by which you can pay $10 to hire a professional to breakup with your boyfriend or girlfriend over the phone. Launched by social media consultant Bradley Laborman, IDump4U.com will also break off engagements and end marriages for an additional fee.

Company founder Bradley Laborman will not only dump the object of your un-affection, but he will say all of the things you're unable to say yourself. Fill out the site's dump form and offer up your reasons behind the breakup to be read by Laborman.

Normally I am opposed to all forms of passive-aggressive, non-direct behavior, but this opportunity may be too good to pass up. Even though I despise the use of email or telephone calls to express serious emotion, there are people in the world who have difficulty dealing with conflict, find it impossible to be direct and have significant others who would make a breakup exceedingly difficult (as evidenced by some of the calls that have been recorded and posted on the website).

If you are one of those people, I can help. Utilizing my ability to be direct and honest, combined with my fondness for shadenfreude, this seems like a career built for my talents.

And as a special introductory deal, the first five customers will receive my services for free.

Email now.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is RentAFriend.com.

RentAFriend.com offers up friends for hire with prices ranging from $10 to $150. If you need someone to go to a movie with, go for dinner with or be a wingman on a night out with, you can just search the site and connect with someone who's willing to do it with you—for a fee.

The site, which has been around for six months, already has a reported 200, 000 members.

This is not the job for me. While I am certainly capable of being a good friend (though some of my friends may disagree), I may be too honest to fake a friendship with someone who is desperate enough to pay me to be their temporary friend. Fifteen minutes into our friendship session, I’d inevitably be diagnosing the reasons why this person has no friends and pointing these flaws out to them, hoping to make changes in their otherwise pathetic lives.

Perhaps I could even review my Friendship Application with them (which I am currently revising), in hopes that they might learn something in the process.

Perhaps instead of RentAFriend.com, I should launch WhyYouAreALoser.com.

This seems more suited to my skill set.

You’re not welcome

I spent last Saturday attending a bat mitzvah in New Jersey. It was a long drive and an early start, so we awoke early, plucked our daughter from the crib, changed her diaper and plopped her into her car seat, still wearing her pajamas.

Upon arriving to the temple three hours later, my wife and her sister brought our daughter, Clara, into the ladies room to change her into something more appropriate.

While waiting outside the restroom door, I removed my iPhone and began answering email.

A few moments later a woman approached me and said, “Cell phones are not allowed inside the temple. You need to turn that off now.”

Her tone and demeanor were less than polite.

“Oh, okay,” I said. “I’ll turn it off now.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re not welcome.”

It’s a phrase I’ve used before in circumstance such as these.

She was already turning to walk away, so this unexpected comment spun her back in my direction. “Excuse me?”

“I’m willing to follow your rules since this is your place and not mine, but I don’t have to like it or pretend to like it.”

She stormed off, resuming her position as guardian of the lobby, shutting the doors to the temple and directing people where to go.

Immediately I regretted my decision. It was Shabbat, and though I am not Jewish, I understand the religious significance to the day, which forbids work of any kind, including many arcane rules pertaining to technology.

And yes, I find these rules ridiculous. For example, one such rule prohibits the extinguishing of fires, even when great property damage will result.

When it comes to the use of electricity, it is acceptable to leave the lights on all day, but the flipping of the switch to turn the lights on is prohibited, making this a ridiculous and environmentally damaging rule. Wikipedia explains it thusly:

This prohibition was commonly understood to disallow operating electrical switches. When actuating electromechanical switches that carry a live current, there is always the possibility that a small electric spark will be generated. This spark is classified as a kind of fire. However, as science became more advanced, and the properties of fire and electricity became better understood, this reasoning broke down: fire is a chemical reaction involving the release of energy; the flow of an electric current is a physical reaction. Therefore, some hold that the proper reason it is forbidden to complete electric circuits is because it involves construction or building, which is also prohibited on Shabbat.

I couldn’t help but wonder what the guardian of this lobby would do if I turned off the lights in the temple and then started a roaring barn fire in the middle of the lobby.

Would she be as adherent to her rules as she was to the cell phone rule?

But this was not why I responded with “You’re not welcome.” I answered her in this fashion because the woman was rude in the way that she responded, making a non-Jewish person like myself feel less than welcome in the temple.

And I immediately regretted saying it, because I don’t keep secrets from Elysha and knew that I would have to tell her about our exchange. I knew that she would be disappointed in my response.

As I was mulling over the best way to relate the story, while listening to my wife and sister-in-law attempt to coax my less-than-cooperative daughter into her outfit, a woman and her son approached the restrooms, stopping to speak to the same woman who demanded I stop using my cell phone.

“Excuse me,” the woman said, holding the hand of her toddler. “Should I take my son into the ladies room, or would it be better if I went into the men’s room with him?”

“You can take him into the ladies room,” she replied. “But please try not to be as loud as those women who are in there now. It’s completely inappropriate.”

Again, she was not polite. And she was talking about my wife behind her back, with no intention of addressing her complaint to her directly.

Instantly, all the regret I had washed away.

Perhaps this is how things always work. Every time I am brutally honest or rude to someone, perhaps I am simply operating under the guise of karma, balancing the score for some other poor person who had been or would soon be wronged by my target.

And I was not the only person who responded sharply to this woman.  A couple hours later (because anything done in a Jewish temple must take at least three hours to complete) a man entered the lobby and removed his cell phone from his pocket. The woman, still guarding the lobby, pounced once again, demanding that he put it away.

“I’m checking the time, lady,” he said, flashing her the screen that indicated the time. “You wear a watch. I carry this.”

As she turned to leave, I gave the man an approving nod.

Solidarity is a fine thing.

Programmed to despise shopping

I was listening to a former student, a boy, describe his recent adventures in the mall. Though he spoke for about five minutes, the crux of his story was this: My friends and I went to the mall and other retail establishments in town and acted like twelve and thirteen year old boys. We ran up escalators, gorged on free samples and made a general nuisance of ourselves. As a result, we were repeatedly asked to leave these establishments.

I had many similar experiences as a kid, some stretching into adulthood. My friend and I used to play a game called Mall Football in which one of us (usually me) walked in a straight line from one end to the mall to the other without deviating course or speed while the other had to block for us, finding ways to remove innocent and unaware shoppers from our paths. If the shopper was not removed from the path, the ball carrier was required to bump into him or her to get by while maintaining course.

The last time I played this game was less than twenty years ago.

I won’t be more specific.

This game and the many others I once played sounded strikingly similar to the stories that my former student was telling me, and I think most boys have similar stories from their past.

And then it hit me.

No wonder so many men don’t like to shop.  We’re programmed to despise retail establishments like the mall from an early age.

Young girls can head off to the mall and be perfectly content by spending the day staring at clothing that they cannot buy, chatting with friends, and trying to look pretty and catch a boy’s eye.

Boys aren’t happy unless they are running, fighting, competing or causing general mayhem. Even today I must suppress the desperate urge to run up the down escalator. I was at the mall last week and the escalator was broken. I almost used it as an excuse to run up it, even though a perfectly good staircase was adjacent to it.

To a boy, the mall is very much like a church. It’s large, open, gleaming and full of boyish opportunities for fun and adventure, but for reasons that baffle us, we must be on our best behavior or a Rent-a-Cop will throw us out (although getting thrown out of church is nearly impossible. As a boy, I tried like hell but never succeeded).

Even suitable diversions like arcades no longer offer boys a retail sanctuary, as most have been replaced by boring shops and stupid boutiques. Retail is simply not a welcoming place to an adolescent male, and as a result, we grow up to despise these places.

If society could accept a little more Mall Football and the occasional clogging of the escalator, women might find their boyfriends and husbands much more amenable to a day in retail hell.

Words of marital wisdom

Maria McBride, the wedding style director at Brides Magazine, describes the enchantment with the 10/10/10 wedding date as this: “You cross your fingers and hope it lasts a lifetime.” Therefore, the prospect of a perfect ten times three, she explains, suggests good luck.

Is this really what people are feeling when they get married?

Are brides and grooms crossing their fingers and hoping for the best when they slip the ring on their partner’s finger?

I was fortunate enough to marry a couple on 10/10/10, and over the course of that day, I saw no dependence upon hope, luck or superstition in order to make their marriage last. These were two people who had known each other since elementary school, and they were clearly in love.

In fact, they didn’t even realize the numerical significance of their date until after it had been set.

I hope Maria McBride is wrong. Yes, marriages fail at a rate of nearly 50%, but it’s my hope that no one enters into marriage with their fingers crossed.

And if you want your marriage to last a lifetime, allow me to offer a few tips.

Though I am not a style director of a bridal magazine, I have been married twice (one failed and one near-perfect), have married more than a dozen couples in the last ten years, and have worked with more than 300 others in planning their wedding day in the capacity of DJ and wedding planner. I am also responsible for salvaging at least two marriages (in the words of those involved) and am frequently looked upon as a source of martial advice from people I know.

I’m not an expert, but I know some stuff.

So here are three things to keep in mind prior to getting married:

1. Don’t get married before the age of 30.  It’s not a sure sign of disaster if you decide to get married earlier, but it doesn’t help. People over the age of 30 are more established, more aware of their own needs, and better prepared to share a home and life with another person. In short, they are more mature and better able to meet the requirements of marriage.

Don’t believe me?  Survey the people you know in your life.

How many are divorced?

How many of those divorced people were married before the age of 30?

If you are like most people I know, the numbers will tell the story.

2. If you are in a relationship in which the negotiation required for a night out without your future spouse or a Saturday afternoon on the golf course requires you to carefully time your request and barter one obligation or privilege for another, don’t get married.

If you are in a relationship in which you find yourself “getting in trouble” with your future spouse, don’t get married.

When a husband, for example, must wait until his wife is in a good mood to ask if he can attend a football game, or when he worries about getting in trouble with his wife for staying out an hour or two later than planned, it is not a relationship on equal footing and it should be avoided at all costs. The marriage might last, but it ain’t going to be a happy life.

3. Do not marry someone who is unwilling to combine their finances with your own.

I have known couples who keep separate checking accounts and divide household expenses via complex formulas, and while some of them are still married today, they are simply not as happy as a couple who stands together as a team, under one financial umbrella.

A couple who keeps their money separate is a couple who is crossing their fingers and hoping the marriage will last while keeping one foot in the doorway just in case it doesn’t.

It’s a recipe for disaster. Money is already a contributing factor in most divorces. Don’t give it room to create any more trouble than it already does.

My good friend, Kim, tells her children that choosing their spouse is the single most important decision that they will ever make.

I agree with her.

Make it a sensible choice, and one that will give you the greatest chance at happiness. I know far too many unhappily married people and count myself extremely fortunate to be in a marriage that brings me nothing but joy.

You deserve the same.

Speeding kills… road signs.

A couple years ago, I gave my wife a GPS for her birthday. We quickly switched it over to the British voice and named her Diana.

Though Diana has proven to be extremely helpful in terms of navigation, I have an excellent sense of direction and can usually find my way around, so the benefits to me in this regard have been minimal.

This is never the case for Elysha. Once she leaves her hometown, her internal map is at times almost nonexistent. Thanks to Diana she can get around without having to write down directions before leaving the house.  For me, it’s meant that I don’t worry nearly as much as I once did when she is driving.

Nevertheless, the GPS has made one significant difference in the way that I drive.  One of the features on the GPS is an estimated arrival time, and it is remarkably accurate.  What I’ve come to realize through this feature is that speeding is pointless. Even on a two hour excursion, accelerating from 65 to 80 miles per hour for the highway portion of the trip doesn’t improve your arrival time significantly enough to make it worth the chance of a speeding ticket.

In many cases, it makes little difference at all.

This fact has become so evident to me that I think GPS should be required in every teenager’s car, as a means of slowing them the hell down.

Of course, a GPS probably wouldn’t have stopped me and Danny Pollock from getting my Datsun B210 up to 100 MPH on Elm Street just for kicks, and it would have done little to thwart my games of mailbox baseball and the subsequent breaking of my wrist.

And it have done little to prevent the accident that nearly killed me, and it couldn’t have saved the No Parking sign outside St. Paul’s Church or the Stop sign on the grounds of Blackstone Millville Regional High School or the door of the PhotoMat hut in the Almacs' parking lot

But I did a fair bit of speeding back when I was a teenager, and I received a multitude of tickets in response. Like many teenage boys, I was reckless and dangerous and should not have been given a license until I was twenty-one, but short of keeping me off the road, a GPS might have slowed me down a bit.

And it might have prevented the accident that totaled my Corolla and kept me and some friends from attending a Yankee’s game a few years ago.

It’s a miracle that I’m still alive.

You name the state

Have you noticed that the states with the most vociferous pride tend to be the states filled with the most repulsive people?