My two simple rules of gift giving

The New York Times reported on research from social scientists that seems to  indicate the following in relation to gift giving:

1. You don’t have to spend any time looking for “thoughtful” gifts.
2. You don’t have to spend much money, either.
3. Actually, you may not have to spend any money.

I won’t get into the reasons why. You can read the article and find out for yourself. But I must say that it’s quite compelling.

In place of these three rules, I would like to offer two simple rules of my own in regards to gift giving:

1. No one judges you based upon the quality of your gift.
2. If you think that people are judging you based upon the quality of your gift, then you must be judging people based upon the quality of their gift, and if that is the case, GROW THE HELL UP.

Solutions to the problem of too many freakin’ gifts

This is an exceptionally gift-filled season for our family. My wife is Jewish, so we celebrate Hanukah. Or Hanukkah. Or Chanukah.

Her people really need to decide upon a spelling.

In accordance with the tradition, we should be giving a gift to one another every night for eight straight  nights.

That means a total of 24 gifts if Clara, Elysha and I participate in this tradition.

That’s a lot of gifts.

And it’s just the start.

I grew up celebrating Christmas, so Elysha and I celebrate this holiday as well. There are stockings in need of filling and space under our Christmas tree in need of presents.

More gifts to add to the mix.

But there’s more.

My wife’s birthday falls in the first week of January, and my daughter’s falls in the last week of January.

More presents.

My birthday falls in the middle of February.

Still more.

Add to this my father-in-law’s birthday on New Year’s Eve and we have a great many gifts to purchase over a two month period.

And while my wife and I are probably less enthusiastic about receiving gifts than most, we enjoy giving gifts quite a bit. It creates quite conundrum since we are not yet independently wealthy and still need to eat during the holiday season.

But good news! The New York Times reported on a study this week that illuminates three new rules for gift giving:

1. You don’t have to spend any time looking for “thoughtful” gifts.
2. You don’t have to spend much money, either.
3. Actually, you may not have to spend any money.

“Our research shows that while gift-givers think they’re being more thoughtful by picking out expensive gifts, the recipients don’t appreciate the hefty price tag,” Dr. Flynn said. His experiments have shown that the price of a gift matters more to the giver than to the recipient, and that people like a surprise gift less than cash or something they picked themselves through a gift registry like Amazon’s wish list.

Good to keep in mind during this holiday season.

And while I wholeheartedly agree with the findings of this study (I wanted to send deposit slips with our wedding invitations but Elysha nixed the plan… and later acknowledged it wasn’t so bad an idea), there are individuals in my life who place great meaning in both the gifts they give and the ones they receive.

Gift giving and gift receiving is a serious situation for these people, so tread carefully lest you find yourself in a quagmire of backbiting, misplaced angry, nonsensical logic, and materialistic fisticuffs.

Thankfully, my wife is not one of these lunatics. She is a genius when it comes to finding gifts under $5 that I will adore forever, but like me, she does not place a great deal of importance on the receiving of gifts. While some concern themselves with gift giving equity and gift giving reciprocity, we care very little.

Nevertheless, we face a massive demand every holiday season, and as a result, Elysha and I cut deals in order to avoid going into massive debt every year.

In regards to Christmas, she and I have agreed to stuff one another’s stockings this year but otherwise forgo Christmas gifts in favor of upgrading our entertainment system. A device of some sort to stream Netflix and perhaps other media outlets like Hulu, and maybe (at last) an HD television.

We currently watch TV on a 46-inch projection television that I purchased in 2002. It’s plenty big and still works fine, especially for two people who don’t watch much television, and I have no place for it once it’s been replaced with a more modern TV, but it might finally be time to retire the massive thing it to the basement.

My friends won’t even come over to watch football anymore since I can’t display it in high definition.

So giving ourselves an upgraded entertainment system makes sense. We were going to eventually spend the money anyway, so why not make it our mutual gift and kill two birds with one stone.

Then we had to make a decision on Hanukah.

We began by agreeing to give each another a gift on the first night. After that, we decided to get creative.

I proposed a small food item for each night. Something that we wouldn't normally have the chance to eat, or perhaps something new altogether, but this idea was dismissed based upon the number of calories that it would introduce into an already calorically challenged holiday season.

I thought my next idea was a stroke of brilliance. In lieu of gifts, we would each provide the other with a URL to something on the Internet that would interest and entertain each other. A website that we would not normally land on without someone specifically directing us there.  It would be the gift of discovery.

Elysha didn’t like it. In retrospect, it is kind of dumb. But I still like it.

Then Elysha proposed an admirable solution.

In lieu of gifts, we will take turns taking one another out on a date once a month for seven months.

I take Elysha out in January. She takes me out in February. We continue alternating months this way through July.

Yes, this means that the last couple months will run into the new baby, so the date may consist of pizza and a movie (hopefully streaming through Netflix on our new high definition television), but it will be up to the person responsible for that month to make the date the best it can possibly be.

A good solution, I thought, and something we should be doing for one another more often anyway.

So I find myself wondering if other families cut these kinds of deals in order to avoid going into hock.

And also wondering if we might still be doing the same thing even if we had all the money in the world.

Alternate-date month sounds like fun.

Opting for an upgraded entertainment system over another new sweater sounds about right to me.

So many of us have so much already. Too much.

No more goodie bags

Elysha, Clara and I attended the birthday party of our friends’ three year old daughter today. It was an art-themed party.

 

While the 1:00 start time on a Sunday was less than ideal, especially in the midst of an NFL season, I was extremely pleased to leave with party without a meaningless, useless, wasteful after-party goodie bag for my daughter.

What a pleasant change of pace.

In fact, I hereby call for an end to all goodie bags and similar parting gifts at children’s birthday parties.

Will you join me?

The problems with these goody bags are numerous.

First, it’s not my kid’s birthday, damn it. She shouldn’t be coming home with an assortment of candy and trinkets that I will invariably be throwing away in less than a week. Not getting a gift when it’s not your birthday is one of life’s little lessons. It needs to be learned. Stop indulging every child’s desire to acquire junk.

I’ve been told by more than one mother that they felt obligated to provide a goody bag for their guests because their own child had been given a goody bag at previous parties.

I am here to assure you that goody bag reciprocity is stupid.

It reminds me of the kind of adherence to peer pressure that caused kids in my high school days to wear parachute pants and Member’s Only jackets.

As stupid as these kids looked, they put those ridiculous clothing items on every day because everyone else was wearing them.

But this is not high school. Just because Sally Jane up the street handed out a bag of crap at the end of her child’s birthday party doesn’t mean you need to do the same.

There are also those parents who have raised the after-party goody bag to an art form, presenting children with personalized gifts that only similarly insane parents could appreciate. These are the goody bags that look as if they required massive amounts of planning, money, ribbon and hot glue.

In the end, no matter how much time you spend filling your otherwise empty life with good bag fabrication, that stupid bag is going to end up in a garbage can.

So just stop it. Stop it now.

Let’s all agree to reduce the amount of sugar and petroleum-based trinkets that enter our homes by dispensing with this ridiculous tradition as my friends did today.

More important, let us also agree to stop doing stupid stuff just because everyone else is doing stupid stuff.

Can I get a “Huzzah!”?

I finally found something I want for Christmas.

My approach to the book tour: Part 2

Yesterday I described the format of my typical book talk. Today I offer a few suggestions on how to guarantee success at a book talk.

1. One of the criticisms of my book talk format is that not everyone has a plethora of stories to tell about their books, and in these cases, reading from the text is required in order to fill the time.

I do not believe this to be the case.

Even if it were true, however, I don’t think that filling the time by reading large portions of your book is ever a good idea.

But still, I believe that everyone has a story to tell.

While I have admittedly led a less-than-conventional life, I believe that everyone has stories waiting to be told. When I prepare to compete in a Moth storytelling competition (as I am doing now), the first thing I do is ask my ten closest friends for stories that might fit the assigned topic, because I am constantly forgetting many of my story-worthy moments and discarding others as not interesting enough.

Do the same. Ask your friends and family what stories might be appropriate for your book talk, and remember that the connection between the story and the book does not have to be very strong.

If it’s a highly entertaining story, there connection between it and the book can almost be indiscernible.

Also remember that people love to read and listen to stories about work. Pulling back the curtain on your experience in the publishing world is often fertile grounds for storytelling.

2. When you’re finished with a book talk, write down all the questions that the audience asked you, or better yet, have a friend attend your talk and do this for you. Questions from the audience often serve as excellent prompts for future stories, and they can often guide you in terms of what your future audiences will want to hear.

One of the questions I get quite often asks how and when I decided to become a writer. The answer to this question is actually an interesting and amusing story from my days in high school, but I would have never thought to include this story in any of my talks had I not been asked the question so often. When you find a story that audiences seem to appreciate, don’t wait for someone to ask you the right question in order to tell it. Find a way to include it in every talk.

3. Do not read from notes. You should always speak extemporaneously. As unfair as it may be, audiences expect authors to be effective, engaging public speakers, even though we spend much of our time alone and in our heads. Reading word-for-word from a script (which I have seen done three times) will only cause the audience to question your abilities as a storyteller. More importantly, watching someone read from a script is never entertaining. Better to stumble a few times and speak from the heart than to simply read from a set of note cards.

4. Don’t be afraid to form a partnership with another author. There is nothing wrong with sharing the stage. Not only does this double your prospective audience and introduce you to a new set of readers, but it can also be very helpful to a less experienced, less effective public speaker.

In the past, I have partnered with a very successful author who is an excellent writer but a less effective public speaker. While she has many interesting stories to tell, she is often unable to weave these stories seamlessly into her talk. She becomes nervous onstage and requires a moment or two to formulate her thoughts before she is able to answer questions from the audience. When we work together, I serve as a moderator of sorts, sharing my own stories but also providing openings that allow her to tell her stories as well. I answer questions from the audience first in order to provide her the time she needs to think, and I prompt her with questions of my own that I know will engender interesting and amusing responses from her. The format works quite well, and together, we are able to draw a fairly large number of people to our events, making our talks enormously successful.

5. A partnership between a traditionally published author and an indie author or even a self-published author can also be highly beneficial to both parties. Indie and self-published authors often have a difficult time arranging appearances in bookstores and libraries, but if they are partnered with a more traditionally published author, bookstores and libraries can often be convinced to sponsor a joint event. In return for helping these authors gain access to these venues, traditionally published authors will often find themselves with considerably larger audiences than what they are normally accustomed to. Indie and self-published authors are people who have to aggressively sell themselves and will often pound the pavement incessantly in order to ensure that there is a decent-sized audience at an event. A traditionally published author can take advantage of this entrepreneurial spirit by helping the indie author gain access to a venue and thus ensuring a very successful event for both parties.

6. The day before an appearance, I often ask my Twitter and Facebook followers if there are any questions that they would like answered at my event, even if they will not be in attendance. I write these questions on note cards and will use them to initiate the question-and-answer session if needed. Having them in my pocket means that I am guaranteed to have 3-5 questions that I can use is my audience is less than forthcoming in terms of questions, and because I was able to choose them, they are questions that I know will provide me with interesting stories to tell.

7.  Be the last to leave person to leave your event. Close up shop with the bookseller or librarian if possible. The extra twenty or thirty minutes that you spend at the end of the night will mean a great deal to the stragglers who have hung around hoping for just a few more minutes with an author they admire. Above all else, never appear to be in a rush to leave. No author, regardless of his or her success, is so important as to run out the door immediately following the talk.

8.  There is always one crazy person at every book talk (or at least this seems to be the case). These are people who will attempt to monopolize your time, thrust half-written manuscripts into your hand, and tell you stories about the conspiracy behind their failure to publish. When you encounter these people, I try to be as direct and polite as possible. With luck, your host will help redirect this person away from you.

9.  It’s always better to be self-deprecating than self-aggrandizing. Save all your success stories for your parents and grandparents. Book talks are the time to roll out the most embarrassing and humiliating moments of your life. Nothing helps an author connect to an audience better than a reminder that he or she can be just as stupid at times as everyone else.

Thoughts on these suggestions?

Suggestions that you’d like to add?

Have you attended any of my previous book talks and have anything additional that you’d like to add about my performance?

We’re all ears.

Your greatest accomplishments probably mean nothing. Or they only meant something for a moment.

Not all accomplishments are equal, and not all accomplishments are duly recognized for what they are worth. For example, consider the driver’s license examination.

When you pass that test and are issued your license, everyone in your life congratulates you. It’s a big deal. A major step to adulthood and independence.

And the prize is one of the best that you will ever receive:

The freedom of unrestricted, self-selected vehicular movement.

The status that comes with being able to drive an automobile.

The sheer joy of sitting behind the wheel with the windows rolled down and the radio blaring your favorite song on a summer day.

It is a momentous occasion in the life of a young person.

Then two or three months pass and it’s over.

Nobody cares about your passing exam score anymore. Everyone around you is getting their license. Everyone older than you already has a license.

It become yesterday's news. Or worse, it was never really news at all.

Even the joy of driving has started to wane under the cost of gas and repairs, the annoyance of stop-and-go traffic and the erosion of the newness of driving. What was once one of your greatest accomplishments and the fulfillment of a lifelong dream has now become just another aspect of everyday life.

Nobody cares that you drive anymore. Not even you.

By contrast, I was a Truman Scholarship Finalist in 1998. I was one of eight college students in the country to make it to the final interview with the board of review.

Sitting in the waiting room with me that day were three students from Harvard, two students from Yale, a student from Dartmouth, and a student from Princeton.

I was attending Manchester Community College at the time.

I was outclassed, out-muscled and out-brained, yet somehow I had made it to the finals.

This was a major accomplishment.

I did not go on to win the Truman Scholarship. My journey to become a Truman Scholar ended that day in New York City, but just sitting in that room with those young men and women was an accomplishment worthy of recognition.

In contrast to my competitors, I was working 60 hours a week managing a fast food restaurant and serving as my college’s Treasure and President of the National Honor Society. The fact that I had made it as far as I did in the competition was remarkable, and yet after I lost, even I didn't consider my accomplishment noteworthy. I remember riding in a cab back to Grand Central Station that day thinking about how lousy second place felt.

How meaningless it was.

Throughout my life, I have been the king of second place finishes.

No one really cares about second place.

Not even me.

No one cares that I was a finalist for the Truman Scholarship.

No one cares that I passed my driver’s examination on the first try.

They did for a minute, but that was it.

Two major accomplishments long since forgotten, and for good reason.

There is great truth in the question, “What have you done for me lately?”

Brand new gift idea for that needy boy named Sue.

This is the kind of gift that isn’t right for everyone, and it might not go over well with the boy’s parents, but here’s a possible holiday gift idea that might be perfect under the right circumstances: Give a boy a real name to replace his wimpy, girlish, pansy name.

I'm not going to call out any names in particular in fear of offending, but you know the kinds of names I mean. We all do.

Place the new name, preferably something like Stan or Jake or Troy, in a small box with an explanation that reads something like this:

Despite your parents’ unwavering love for you, they have inexplicably saddled you with a name normally assigned to girls, dolls, and small animals. Therefore, I hereby assign you a new name. A manly name. A name that you can feel free to use whenever your parents aren’t around.

And when you turn eighteen, you can get your name legally changed to this new name if you’d like. I’d be happy to take you down to the courthouse and help facilitate the process, and maybe afterwards, you’ll let me treat you to a celebratory dinner.

Like I said, this idea might not be fully appreciated by the boy’s parents, but sometimes the best gifts are the ones that parents despise.

Finger paints, water guns, fireworks, and now new names.

Under the right circumstances, this might turn out to be the best gift ever.

Trust me.  I speak from experience.

My father’s name is Leslie Dicks.

Can you imagine how happy he would’ve been as a kid to receive a new name?

What I never told you about marriage

The Forbes piece is “What Your Mother Never Told You About Life After Marriage.” The thesis of the piece (if you haven’t already guessed) is this:

Marriage is not easy, and you were naïve and foolish to think otherwise.

The author cites potato chips in the bed, battles over the remote control, and snoring as irritants that will eventually make any spouse, but especially a wife, crazy.

I find this position to be trite, whiny, shortsighted, cliché and typically advanced by individuals who have made bad spousal choices and are lacking any reasonable degree of perspective.

I would like to offer an alternate thesis:

Marriage can be almost perfect if you marry the right person, avoid selfishness, and have a sensible perspective on life.

A friend recently asked me how Elysha and I manage to have such a good  marriage. He pointed out that we almost never argue and continue to live as individuals within the context of a couple.

“How do you guys do it?” he asked.

First, I assured him that we are far from perfect. I still haven’t learned to wash the dishes to my wife’s satisfaction and recently left my daughter’s hair full of shampoo. Last week Clara spent an entire day with her shoes on the wrong feet, courtesy of her father.

I can’t be easy to live with.

Elysha is not without her flaws as well. She is incapable of syncing her iPhone until it becomes nearly inoperable and places items on counters and can no longer see them in the same way the T-Rex in Jurassic Park loses track of it prey if the prey isn’t moving.

We all have room to grow.

Still, our marriage is pretty fantastic. It’s true that we almost never fight and genuinely love spending time together.

We’re frightfully and disgustingly blissful on most days.

So my answer to my friend’s question about how Elysha and I manage this constant state of bliss was this:

I spend 75% of the time ensure that Elysha is happy and 25% of the time ensuring my own happiness.

Elysha spends 75% of the time ensuring that I am happy and 25% of the time ensuring her own happiness.

As a result, we are both happy, and we are both supremely happy with one another.

Simple.  Right?

Will this plan work for everyone?

I’m not sure. There are certainly some problems that our 75/25 split cannot overcome.

I know a couple who negotiates free time from the kids as if they are negotiating nuclear nonproliferation.

I have a friend who married a shallow, soulless woman who is incapable of experiencing happiness on any level.

I know a man whose in-laws despise his wife.

I know a woman who cannot share information with her husband because he lacks discretion and tact (no, this is not me).

These are problems that our 75/25 plan might not overcome.

But I also know many couples who are extremely happy in their marriages and do not complain about potato chips in the bed or snoring.

In fact, I know more happy couples than unhappy couples, regardless of what the Forbes piece would have you believe.

Perhaps the people around you play an important role, too.

Three principles to guarantee happiness

I live my life by three core principles that have served me well:

1. Happy wife, happy life

A man who had been married to his wife for 75 years offered this bit of wisdom to me years ago, and he couldn’t have been more right.

If a man’s wife is happy, he will be happy. It’s that simple. I cannot attest to the inverse, but since it doesn’t rhyme, I suspect that it does not hold up.

If you find that you cannot make your wife happy, or that your wife’s happiness is not making you happy as well, then you married the wrong woman.

Sadly, many men do.

2. Procrastinate in all that you do unless an important window of opportunity is closing. In these cases, act immediately regardless of circumstance or consequence. 

I believe in waiting until the last minute to complete any task that does not bring me enjoyment or make my life more efficient, productive or simple. I honestly believe (through unfortunate personal experience) that every day could be my last. Knowing this in my heart in a way that I suspect most do not, the last thing I want to do is spent my final hours completing mundane chores, filling out needless paperwork, or tackling a meaningless assignment that I could complete three days from now.

However, I am also keenly aware of closing windows of opportunity and act accordingly.

Procrastinate always.

But don’t allow procrastination to lead to regret.

3. Make decisions based upon my 4 favorite words: I told you so.

In making a decision, I attempt to evaluate the “I told you so” nature of both sides of the argument. I calculate the probability of each side achieving an “I told you so” moment, as well as the severity of the potential “I told you so.”

Once these factors have been properly considered, I make my decision.

For example, during the recent winter storm that devastated so much of Connecticut, a tree came down in our backyard, just missing our home. At least one other tree and several large branches were still overhanging parts of our home, and so my wife decided that we should sleep on the first floor, fearful of what might happen if the roof was actually struck by one of these large trees or branches.

I thought this was a knee-jerk reaction, and I was annoyed. I wanted to sleep in my bed, and I thought that there was very little chance of our house being struck by a falling tree.

But in the end, I agreed to sleep on the couch. Though I was almost certain that I could have spent the night in my bed and said “I told you so” in the morning, the potential severity of my wife’s “I told you” was considerably higher.

In my case, I could’ve said, “See? I told you so. Sleeping in bed was perfectly safe.”

In Elysha’s case, she could’ve said, “See, I told you so. That massive tree came right through our bedroom ceiling and now you are dead.”

Though my “I told you so” was considerably more likely, Elysha’s was much more severe in terms of overall impact, and therefore I slept on the couch.

Also please note that although I could have rightfully said, “I told you so” to Elysha in the morning, I did not. Just because I evaluate decisions based upon the probability of being able to say “I told you so” doesn’t means I always say it.

Not with my wife, at least.

Doing so would violate Rule #1.

500 years ago was not that appealing

You have to wonder what someone from the fourteenth or fifteenth century might think if he was to discover that people in the twenty-first century were spending their weekends at outdoor fairs designed to recreate the spirit of the Renaissance.

Sure, it was a time of enlightenment, but it was also the time of the Plague.

It was an age absent of penicillin, electricity and indoor plumbing.

The life expectancy at the time was about 30 years.

If you weren’t born wealthy and male and white, you had almost no say in what your future would hold.

In comparison to today, it was not a great time to be a human being.

Sure, everyone loves a good funnel cake and a nifty crossbow demonstration, but I have to think that a person who actually lived through the Renaissance would think it slightly odd, if not altogether stupid, to relive such a base time in human history.

Suggested revisions to religious services (and an offer to lead your congregation to happiness)

My wife and I brought our daughter to a blessedly brief children’s service a couple weeks ago during Rosh Hashanah. Granted I don’t have a lot of experience with these kinds of things (not being Jewish and all), but in regards to Jewish religious services, this children’s service was just my speed.

Some spirited music (in English), a short play based upon a children’s book, a thoughtful yet short reading, and some apples and honey on the way out.

Short, memorable, entertaining and engaging.

I wish that every rabbi, priest, minister, reverend and other religious whatnot would keep these four words in mind when planning their religious service, because in my experience, almost no one does.

And it’s annoying.

Why not attempt to make these services as entertaining, engaging and brief as possible?

Seriously.

If your service is more than 45 minutes and has failed to generate a single laugh, you’ve probably failed to keep the attention and interest of your congregation.

Why not actually try to engage the audience? Speak in a way that both delivers information and provides a modicum of entertainment. It’s probably not going to make a believer out of me, but I’d be a hell of a lot more likely to accompany my wife to some of these services if there was an attempt to make them palatable and memorable.

Hell, I‘d even be willing to help out. As long as the congregants didn’t mind my lack of faith, I’d be happy to put together a Sunday morning service for a local church.

A couple catchy tunes, a short, humorous yet meaningful sermon, a one-act play performed by a handful of adorable children designed to illustrate point, and a cookie on the way out.

I really think I’d be a hit. And I would not rely on the fear of God, the expectations of family and community, the inevitability of death or a lifetime of religious indoctrination to keep my audience coming back for more.

Oh, and I’d cancel all religious services if the weather is especially beautiful.  There’s nothing more silly than the thought that God would want you stuck inside listening to me (or anyone else for that matter) on a splendid autumn day.

Only one thing upset me about the Rosh Hashanah service that I attended with my wife and Clara.

At one point, the rabbi explained that this is the time of year when we should begin reflecting upon our lives and finding ways to live the life we have always wanted. He encouraged his congregation to be introspective, identifying those areas where improvement is needed, so that we can ultimately become the people we truly want to be.

When he finished, I turned to my wife and whispered, “I am the person I want to be, damn it. Who is he to assume otherwise?”

I really was annoyed. I wanted to tell him that when I was a little boy, I wanted to be a writer and a teacher, and damn it, that’s what I am today.

I wanted to tell him that I’ve also added DJ, life coach and minister to my list of current jobs, and if I could just find someone to hire me as a professional best man, all of my current career aspirations would be fulfilled.

I wanted to tell him that I am married to the best person I have ever known and have the best daughter I could ever imagine.

I wanted to tell him that I set 21 goals for myself back in January and am on pace to complete 16-18 of them, which is pretty damn good, all things considered.

I wanted to tell him that I have the best friends that I have ever had in my entire life.

I wanted to tell him that his assumptions suck.

I know. I’m probably taking a very well meant sentiment a little too personally, but in thinking about the type of religious officiate I might be (thus far I have only officiated weddings and baby naming ceremonies), I can’t imagine standing before a congregation and asking them to try harder to become the people they truly want to be.

While I am certain that this message might apply to some, it certainly doesn’t apply to all.

And it comes across a little holier-than-thou, which might seem appropriate for a temple or church but never is.

Best to-do list ever

I love this list more than I can describe. It’s so good.

I want to be friends with the person who created it.

I think I’m going to try the first item at the Patriots game this Sunday. There’s just enough crazy at an NFL game for people to believe that I might be drinking Windex.

The third one will be tough, since the closest IKEA is about an hour away, but I’ll keep it in mind the next time I find myself at a furniture story.

Even if the IKEA was next door, though, it’s still a logistically difficult goal to accomplish. Even if I was able to squeeze myself into a wardrobe without attracting attention, how long would I have to wait before someone actually opened it?

Probably a long time.

Still, it’s a brilliant idea.

As far as the second item goes, my rock opera debuts at the Playhouse on Park in about two weeks, so that should count in terms of going to a play.

But even better than trying to complete this list myself, I’d like to try to produce my own to-do list each week, modeled after the ingenuity, originality and humor of this one.  .

So I’m challenging myself.

One creative, ingenious and amusing to-do list every week, to be posted every Friday morning.

I probably don’t need another challenge in my life, but whatever.

Lunchbox notes for the ladies

Redbook recently posited the importance of men telling women why they love them in a piece entitled 50 Weird Things He Loves About You. In the same week, The Wall Street Journal published a piece about the extraordinary efforts that parents are taking  when packing a note into their child’s lunchbox, including the use of preprinted notes:

Lunchbox Love, a line of preprinted cards from Say Please, Inc., are priced at $3.99 for a small box of 12 at Pottery Barn Kids. Messages include "You've become so mature," "I love you unconditionally" and "I can't believe how creative you are."

I’d like to combine these two ideas and create a line of pre-printed cards that men can use to explain why they love the women in their lives.

Doesn’t that sound romantic?

Cards based upon some of my past relationships might include:

I love the way you expect me to understand the source of your anger based upon the quality of your silence.

I love the way your feelings about your outfit dictate your overall mood. 

I love your random and seemingly innocuous use of turn signals when driving.

I love the way you can sometimes encourage me to do something and sometimes express your disapproval for the same thing using the exact same words.

I love your appreciation for spontaneity as long as you have plenty of time to dress appropriately for the occasion.

I love how you so readily embrace martyrdom for the smallest of problems.

My pre-printed card for my wife would read:

I love you because you somehow inexplicably love me for exactly who I am.

Before getting married, ask yourself this:

It’s a picturesque Friday afternoon in mid-September. I am supposed to play golf with friends immediately after work and then join my wife and daughter for dinner at a restaurant of her choice following the round. Elysha has been at home alone all day with our daughter and can’t wait to get out of the house.

What I thought would be a 3:45 PM tee time turns into a 4:20 PM tee time, setting our round back considerably. As I round the bend and approach the third hole, I see that there are two groups backed up and still waiting to tee off.

I’ve never seen this course play so slowly.

As I wait under the shade of a maple tree, I realize that there is no way I am going to make it to dinner with my wife and daughter.

At this rate, I might be playing the last couple holes in the dark.

I decide that I should walk off the course so I can keep my dinner date with my wife and daughter.

I text her the news.

Her reply:

Finish the round. Try to make the most of it. It's gorgeous out. You're with your best friends. Relax and have fun. We can have dinner another time.

I know. It’s unbelievable.

Here is my advice to anyone thinking about getting married.

If you think you have found Mr. or Mrs. Right, ask yourself this:

Had you been standing at the third hole that day, offering to walk off the course and head home, would your future spouse have sent you a text like the one I received?

If the answer is no, cancel the wedding and keep looking.

Every time I show this text to someone, I am told how incredibly lucky I am to have Elysha for my wife.

A couple of people have read the text and actually stared at me in disbelief.

One person sighed the sigh of someone longing for a better in life.

I know how lucky I am. I know very few few women as supportive of their husbands as Elysha, and I know even fewer husbands as equally supportive of their wives.

It is true. I am incredible lucky.

But doesn’t everyone deserve to be as lucky as me?

Andy Rooney and I have similar thoughts on sleep

Rooney and I are both exceedingly efficient when it comes to sleeping. We can sleep anywhere, regardless of comfort, and we can fall asleep almost immediately.

Rooney seems to enjoy napping, a practice that I vehemently oppose, but perhaps when I am his age, my tune will change.

But in terms of thoughts on sleep, we agree on three things:

• It’s a terrible shame that most people spend a third of their lives sleeping.
• Anyone who is sleeping more than 8 hours a day is sleeping their life away.
• Most people could probably benefit from a little less sleep and a little more life.

My solution to the soul-crushing nature of meetings

You’re in a meeting. The meeting is crushing your soul, as most meetings do.

You’ve already scanned the agenda and marked the items that could have been handled through a simple email.

It’s most of them, of course. It always is.

One or two people slow the proceedings by making useless, inane comments in order to hear themselves speak or ingratiate themselves to the speaker.

Minutia takes over.

The despair that comes with time wasted and minutes forever lost fills you.

There is little you can do to recapture the joy of being alive. You have been forced to surrender your humanity. You have become a thing. A listening box for the mindless, incessant droning of another.

This is the moment when I raise my head and look to the speaker. I focus intently, waiting for the moment when our eyes meet. When they do, I lock on, trying with all my heart to convey a sense of absolute focus.

Not interest. Not curiosity. Not understanding.

Just focus.

Then I do not move. I keep my eyes fixed on the speaker with laser-like precision while simultaneously assuming a countenance of intense disinterest. I flatten my features, dull my gaze and freeze all movement. I wait for the moment when I feel compelled to smile, furrow my brow, or best of all, nod in agreement.

The moment will come. It always does.

Regardless of the stupidity of the speaker or the meaninglessness of the meeting, there will be a moment when the speaker expresses a thought or conveys an idea that will naturally engender a physical response.

An approving nod. A questioning tilt of the head. A widening of the eyes.  A silent snicker of mutually-understood frustration.

When this happens, I do not move. I continue to stare at the speaker, dull and emotionless. As others around the room nod and smile and scribble notes that  will be thrown away minutes after the meeting concludes, I am a statue in a sea of inexplicably genuine and understandably feigned interest.

Having stolen my time and crushed my soul, I give to the speaker the only thing I have left:

Motionless, emotionless, unwavering disdain.

As my daughter would say, it feels me better.

Male self-deception is a beautiful thing. Sincerely.

From a New York Times piece on recent testosterone research:

This is probably not the news most fathers want to hear.

Testosterone, that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the boy or girl on his knee, reading “Goodnight Moon” for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops.

So says the first large study measuring testosterone in men when they were single and childless and several years after they had children.

While the research is interesting, I thought the first line of the piece was shortsighted, misinformed and silly.

Most fathers wouldn’t give research like this a second thought because most fathers are men, and men are imbued with three unique, protective traits:

1. The innate ability to assume that research like this may apply to most men but never to them.
2. The absolutely certainty in the depth and breadth of one’s manliness and corresponding levels of testosterone.
3. The unflinching self-assurance that even if one’s testosterone levels were exceedingly low, he could still overcome any hormonal limitation through sheer force of will.

Dr. Peter Ellison is quoted in the piece as saying, “Unfortunately, I think American males have been brainwashed to believe lower testosterone means that maybe you’re a wimp, that it’s because you’re not really a man.”

Dr. Peter Ellison is an idiot.

American males have been brainwashed into navigating life with blinders on.  We hone in on good news, compartmentalize the bad and think of ourselves as a self-actualized super beings whose flaws and foibles are merely the result of the misunderstanding of others.

My testosterone has been reduced since becoming a father?

Nonsense.

But if true, irrelevant.

And if relevant, ultimately meaningless.

Are digital wedding invitations acceptable?

In this week’s episode of Manners in the Digital Age, Farhad Manjoo and Emily Yoffe debate whether it's acceptable to scrap the paper wedding invitation and use digital invitations instead. Just for the record, I fully support the use of digital invitations for weddings and wish my wife and I had gone this route. Our invitations were lovely and incredibly expensive.

A few comments from this podcast that I thought were interesting.

First, in posing the question about the acceptability of an electronic invitation for their child’s wedding, a listener writes:

“I’m worried that guests receiving an evite will chuckle derisively…”

I’m always surprised to hear from adults who are still so concerned about the opinions of others when it comes to something so trivial, trite and ultimately forgettable as a wedding invitation.

I think Manjoo says it best in the podcast:

“For a guest to scoff or chuckle at the medium someone uses to invite you to a wedding is rude.”

As uncouth, improper, ill mannered or cheap as a person may seem, it is always more uncouth, ill mannered and improper to talk about these perceived flaws behind the person’s back.

I know many people who think quite highly of their manners and sense of decorum who could benefit from this lesson.

Not surprising, the very traditional Emily Yoffe does not support electronic invitations for weddings, but she says a couple very important things during the podcast that I admire:

1.  She acknowledges that her opinion will probably change in 5-10 years.

2.  She tells the concerned parents who have posed this question that once they have stated their opinion regarding the invitations, they need to step back and allow the adults who are getting married to make the final decision without any protest or pleas for reconsideration.

I cannot tell you how often the parents of brides and grooms place their own concerns for image, appearance and taste over their child’s desires for their wedding day. Some parents are downright rotten when it comes to their child’s wedding, and I will never understand it.

When and if Clara gets married someday, the last thing I will be worried about is what my friends think about my daughter’s wedding.  Clara can do as she pleases, as long as she is happy.

3.  When asked what she would think if she received an evite to a wedding, Yoffe answered, “I’d think I’m really old.”

She wouldn’t think that the senders were cheap or stupid or ill mannered.  As traditional as Yoffe tends to be, she is also flexible in her thinking, adaptive in her attitudes and relatively open minded.

She’d probably make a great mother-in-law.

The curse of the hyper productive

A friend of mine included the following paragraph in an email about productivity and our mutual inability to relax:

The irony is that people like us will not have a deathbed in which to reflect upon our lives. We will keel over sweeping the kitchen floor or cleaning the litter box, typing a blog, or unpacking grocery bags. At most we will have a fleeting moment to realize that the task we are in the middle of will go unfinished. And as our last act, we will probably make arrangements for it to be completed.

Never before have I read something that sounds so accurate and so depressing and yet so good, too.

An acceptable alternative to everlasting life

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am both slightly obsessed with and terrified of my own death. Having come so close to death on several occasions (including two in which my heart actually stopped), I am keenly aware of the fragility of life. As a result, the possibility that I could die at any moment almost never leaves my consciousness. It is like an omnipresent balloon, floating just about my head, its string visible to me at all times.

It’s a difficult reality in which to constantly live, but it has also served as the impetus for much of my productivity, efficiency, and drive to succeed.

In that way, it has served as both a blessing and a curse.

A friend recently told me that he knows a person who approaches life in the same way I do. Eerily similar, in fact. And she is also the survivor of a near-death experience.

In describing our remarkable similarities, my friend lamented that he hadn’t been fortunate enough to almost died as well.

His comment sounded ridiculous, but then again, I wouldn’t change my past if given the chance. Living with the specter of death looming over me at all times isn’t fun, and years of suffering with PTSD  before seeking help were difficult, but I suspect that I would be a very different and far less successful person had I not endured those struggles.

Still, the constant awareness of death can be distressing at times.

If we could just solve the problem of death before I actually die and grant eternal life to all (or at least me), I could not die a happy man.

Is that too much to ask?

But there is an alternative, at least in Kurt Vonnegut’s mind.  In rereading Slaughterhouse Five, I came upon the Tralfamadorians, a race of alien beings that have the ability to experience reality in four dimensions; meaning, roughly, that they have total access to past, present, and future. They are able to perceive any point in time at will.

Able to see along the timeline of the universe, the Tralfamadorians know the exact time and place of its accidental annihilation as the result of a Tralfamadorian experiment, but are powerless to prevent it. Because they believe that when a being dies, it continues to live in other times and places, their response to death is, "So it goes."

Most important to my purposes, Tralfamadorians may die, but they never cease to exist, because they exist at all points of their lives simultaneously.

I could live with this.

Or not live with it, to be more precise.

And the appeal of the Tralfamadorian powers made me realize something very important:

I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of not existing.

While this distinction may seem like one and the same, it’s not.

Though never dying is certainly preferable, it is the loss of everything that has passed and everything that is to come that I fear the most. The complete erasure of all word and deed, both past and present, with the end of my existence.

But if I were able to continue to live in those past moments, re-experience them as the Tralfamadorians do, while simultaneously watching the future unfold from a detached state, that would be an acceptable alternative to everlasting life.

A damn good alternative, in fact.

While I would love to be able to live into the distant future, the ability to see it unfold, even if I am not a part of it, would be fine by me.

So it’s simple. I just need to learn to perceive the world in four dimensions.

I’ll Google it.

Google knows everything.