Gratitude journal: New shoes!

Tonight I am grateful for my daughter’s inexplicable change of heart in regards to the shoes that Elysha bought months ago.

This morning, on the way to school, Elysha told Clara that her purple sparkly shoes were falling apart and in need of replacement. Clara responded by removing her shoes, throwing them to the floor and crying all the way to school.

Unlike every woman I have ever met, my daughter has absolutely no interest in new shoes. 

Unaware of these events, I coincidentally cleaned off the top of the bureau this evening, where two new pairs of shoes had been sitting, still in their boxes, for months.  Clara had rejected them long ago, but we decided to put them in her closet tonight in hopes that she might one day reconsider.

By the time I returned to the bedroom with her toothbrush, Clara has a new pair of shoes on her feet and she was admiring them with a wide grin. She even asked to go to sleep in her new shoes, and we quickly agreed.

Anything to cement the love that she suddenly felt for them.

New shoes at last. We probably have about three months before we’ll need to attempt another changing of the guard. A welcomed respite in the toddler footwear battles.

 

Gift giving insurance: Appealing to the basest, most vile members of the human race

A recent New York Times piece by Ann Carrns describes the new business called WeddingGiftRefund.com.

The site works like this. When you buy a wedding gift, you register on the Web site and upload an image of your receipt (you can also mail in the hard copy). You pay a fee of 8 percent of the purchase price. (For a $100 gift, that’s $8.) You dance happily at the wedding and leave your gift on the table. And then, you wait.

If the couple’s union endures, everyone’s happy — and you’re out a few dollars. If the marriage sours, however, and the couple divorces within 36 months, you can notify WeddingGiftRefund.com and get your purchase price back.

I’m not sure if I would ever bother to use the service, but it seems clever enough. My issue is not with the actual business model but with the first sentence of the article, which says:

Admit it. You’ve sometimes grumbled after buying a nice wedding gift, only to see the couple split up a year or two later.

No, I haven’t. Not once. Not ever.

This is because I am not one of these sick, materialistically minded, equity-in-gift-giving lunatics who maintain a mental inventory of the gifts given and received over the course of their lifetime. In the midst of a friend or family member’s oftentimes heart-wrenching divorce, what kind of twisted, self-centered, mean-spirited cretin would think for even a second about the wedding gift that they had given a year or two ago?

These are the kind of people who become outraged with friends and family members who fail to meet their monetary gift giving expectations.

There are the people who say things like, “We gave them $300 for their wedding, but they only gave us $150. Can you believe it?”

First, who bothers to keep track of this stuff?

Second, if equity in gift giving is required, why don’t we all just stop giving gifts and hold onto our own money?

Giving is supposed to be a generous act of the heart, given freely and without expectation of reciprocation.

But these gutter rats maintain mental balance sheets of the gifts that they have given and received.  These are the people who not only take great umbrage when a friend forgets to send a thank you card for a gift they have given but actually think that it isn’t a thousand times more rude and disgusting to gossip about their friend’s faux pas to anyone who will listen.

I’m not saying these people don’t exist, because I have encountered them many times in my life, and I suspect that there will be customers for WeddingGiftRefund.com. But I’d like to think that these vile forms of human protozoa are the exception rather than the rule.

No, Ann Carrns, I have not once grumbled about giving a gift to a couple who divorces a year or two later, and I strongly suspect that the majority of my friends feel the same way.

A song for all the crazy readers of the world

I’ve been a fan of the Canadian band Moxy Fruvous for a long time, and as a result, I assumed everyone else was as well. But when I  mentioned this song to an author at the Newburyport Literary Festival this weekend, she had never even heard of the band.

I fell in love with this song long before I published my first book, because like all authors, I was very much a reader first. And while this may seem like the ideal song for an author, it is really a song about the oftentimes unspoken obsession that readers have for books.

Gratitude journal: The boss lady

Tonight I am grateful for Brenda Copeland, my editor and friend.

I had the pleasure of spending the weekend with Brenda at the Newburyport Literary Festival.  When we weren’t speaking on a panel or cavorting with other authors and editors, we spent the rest of the weekend dining and chatting about bookish things.

We even spent a couple hours in Starbucks working side by side.

In truth, I have been lucky enough to spend a great deal of time with Brenda over the past year in the run up to my next book, which is more than I can say for many authors and their editors.

Brenda is a fascinating blend of frivolity and stoicism. Invite her to a cocktail party and she will have introduced herself to every guest within the hour and charmed them all.

Yet she is also a woman who does not abide by grandstanding or unnecessary attention-seeking. She possesses a quiet dignity that I admire greatly. I imagine Brenda as the kind of woman who would have endured the London Blitz by reminding her friends and family that cities have been bombed before and will be bombed again, so Please go about your business with as little whining as possible, and for goodness sake, try not to get killed.

It’s a wonderful and unusual blend of personal characteristics that I think we rarely find in this world anymore.

Not to mention she’s also damn fine editor and smart as hell.  

Tonight I find myself  exceptionally grateful to have Brenda helping to guide my books and my career. Not everyone can say that they adore their editor, but I am one of the lucky authors that can.

The secret to early retirement

According to Gallup's annual Economy and Personal Finance survey, the average non-retired American now expects to retire at age 67, up from age 63 a decade ago and age 60 in the mid-1990s.

But the secret to early retirement is simple: Work more than one job.

I retired from a five year career in banking in 1996.

I retired from a twelve year career in restaurant management in 1999.

Sometime within the next five years, I will probably retire from a sixteen year career in the DJ business.

Within the next decade, I may choose to retire from a fifteen year career in teaching.

And I have at least three other careers planned for the next three decades, and I will likely retire from each of them at some point.

Retiring is easy. I do it all the time.

But not working at all?

Why would anyone want to even consider such a thing with so many interesting things to do in this world?

Gratitude journal: So damn lucky

I watch this and can’t help but think that I am the luckiest man in the world.

A long period of self-imposed silence might be lifting

Three months ago, the Patriots lost the Super Bowl.

On Thursday night they began drafting new players for the upcoming season. In the past couple weeks we’ve received the schedule for the 2012 season, paid for our season tickets and watched closely as the team began signing free agents.

A lot of time has gone by since the Super Bowl, and a lot has happened in the football world,  but I am still not able to discuss the loss.

I’m still not able to discuss or even think about the Super Bowl loss in 2007.

I’m almost able to talk about the loss in the 1996 Super Bowl. In that game, Green Bay’s Desmond Howard opened the second half by returning the kickoff for a touchdown, ending any hope of a Patriots victory.

When that happened, I removed my shoe from my left foot and threw it through my friend’s wall. I still can’t believe I did it. It happened so fast that there was absolutely no thought involved at all. One second I was sitting on the couch, watching the game, and the next, my shoe was sticking out of the drywall, about five feet off the floor.

The room went perfectly silent for a moment. No one said a word. Every eye turned to me. Then my friend stood up, examined the damage and said, “That’s the perfect spot for our wedding photo. Just the right height and everything.” 

He and his wife, who was not quite as forgiving as my friend, eventually moved out of that house, but for the next five years, their wedding photo hung in front of the hole that my shoe left in their wall.

I think I’m ready to talk about that Super Bowl loss now in case you’ve been waiting.

My new favorite photo of me and my girl

We’re sitting in a booth at one of our favorite restaurants, and she is ordering me to draw shapes.

She’s bossy like that.

Gratitude journal: This

I’m in Newburyport, MA at a literary festival this weekend.

Tonight I am grateful for snippets of video like this, which make the time away from my little girl a teensy bit easier.

The prize for this writing contest includes tears and humiliation

Parents and teachers often ask me about how my students so consistently fall in love with writing. The answer to this question could probably fill a book, but here is one tiny example of why my students tend to love writing so much: Each week I sponsor one or more writing contests in my classroom. I choose the topics for these contests, and a panel of three independent, anonymous judges (usually teachers and former students) determine the winner. There is a standard prize for every contest, consisting of a blue ribbon, a certificate of achievement, an in-class privilege for the following week and the winner’s name added to a plaque of previous winners that is displayed in the classroom forever.

But sometimes I vary the prizes.

Inspired by Sharon Creech’s LOVE THAT DOG, this week’s contest requires students to write a poem that includes a dog and evokes sadness in the reader. There was a time when I would read aloud LOVE THAT DOG to my class, but after finding myself unable to get through the final pages of the book a couple years ago because I was in tears, I ask my students read it silently now.

Whenever I cry during the reading of a book, my kids never let me hear the end of it, so it is to be avoided whenever possible.

After explaining the origin for this week’s contest to my students, we entered a round of intense negotiation, initiated by them. It resulted in the following prize for this week’s contest:

1. I agree to read aloud the poem of every student who enters the contest, in hopes that I will cry (their hope, not mine).
2. I agree to record my reading of the winning poem.
3. If I produce even a single tear during the reading of the winning poem, I will post the video to YouTube with the title “Grown Man Cries Like A Baby.”

This is one tiny example of why my students love to write.

I make it fun. Or more precisely, I allow my students to make it fun.

Literary juxtaposition

Maybe you knew this existed already, but I did not.

And while I have been told that it is actually a well written, well edited, fairly esteemed publication, I can’t get over the name just yet.

Gratitude journal: Cuddling the baby

With about a month to go, there won’t be many more moments like this, so tonight I’m grateful to have recorded one for posterity.

Forgetting she’s gone

I heard an advertisement for the ideal Mother’s Day gift today and thought, “Mom would love that. I should order it now and not wait until the last moment,” forgetting, of course, that Mom passed away in 2007. This happens far too often to me. It crushes me every time.

Am I the only one?

Wisdom beyond his years. Or perhaps I just have a lot of growing up to do.

New York Times bestselling author Deborah Kogan tweeted a quote by her five year old son last week that continues to haunt with me. When it comes to my persistent existential crisis, this five-year old has summed up my feelings more precisely than I ever could have myself.

"When I die, I'm gonna miss myself." -Leo Kogan

The dude just gets me

.

Gratitude journal: Class or an AT&T dead zone

My daughter cuddled with me for a solid twenty minutes today, the longest on record.

We played hide-and-go seek for what felt like an hour. 

We assembled jigsaw puzzles together.

We tickled each other a lot. 

But no, tonight I am grateful that my friend, a Washington Capitals fan who watched his team defeat the Bruins in overtime tonight from the confines of the Boston Garden, has not fired off a text taunting me about the final score.

I’ll give him credit. He has class.

Or no cell service. 

Either way, I’m grateful.

A bookseller, a reader and an imaginary friend

In her Huffington Post “Notes from My (Book) Shelf”column, the very generous and highly esteemed Roxanne Coady, owner of RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, CT, writes: Serendipitous Moment of the Week Sandi Kahn Shelton (a writer and journalist; her pen name is Maggie Dawson) was in my store this week and literally bumped into a friend -- Matthew Dicks -- another author -- whom she introduced to me. There was something very charming about Matthew and his wife and it made me curious to read his new book which will be published in August. He graciously dropped off a galley of Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend the very next day. The title intrigued me enough to bring it home (as opposed to the other dozens of books on my desk saying "pick me-pick me") and started it on Thursday night -- I finished it Saturday morning. This book is magical, uplifting and incredibly smart. Loved it -- not only can't I wait to tell you more and encourage you to read it when it comes out but I think it would be great fun if we invited kids and adults to write about their imaginary friend -- and how that friend helped them or made a real-life difference.

I think it’s important to note a few things about what Roxanne said:

1. As an author, there are few things better in this world than hearing that a reader loved your book. When that reader is a bookseller, it becomes  over-the-top thrilling. I can’t tell you how much Roxanne’s words mean to me.
2. Roxanne writes that there was something charming about me and my wife. I assure you that this was wholly my wife’s charm. I was merely standing in its glow.
3. The fact that the tittle intrigued Roxanne is credit to my agent, Taryn Fagerness, who suggested it and the title of my previous novel, Unexpectedly, Milo. I cannot title a book to save my life.
4. Though Roxanne is correct in stating that Sandi and I are friends, we were only friends through Twitter until that day. Sandi happened to hear me giving my name to the cashier for RJ Julia’s rewards program and asked, “Are you the Matthew Dicks from Twitter?”

Serendipity, indeed.

As if this wasn’t serendipity enough, Roxanne’s wonderful idea of inviting children and adults to write about their imaginary friends was thrown into motion yesterday evening when I received an email from an overseas reader who has just finished the book (which she has given me permission to post here).

She writes:

Dear Matthew

I'm typing this email with tears still running down my face after reading Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. I'm 48 years old and my imaginary friend,  Mrs Gaynor, still lives. Growing up on a farm with few playmates I created my own. A few years ago at a family dinner my parents told my teenage children about Mrs Gaynor.  Since that time she has lived in our home, leaving a mess, moving important things, hiding socks, and quietly taking the blame for many mishaps, her ways of staying alive. She will always live in my heart, real or imaginary, because she was my friend when I needed one. I really enjoyed reading your story about Budo and Max. It is amazing what strength and courage we can find when we reach inside of ourselves.

Thank you.

Mary-Anne Ryan

First Roxanne and then Mary-Anne.

As an author, I cannot imagine a better day.

Background television makes you stupid. Or perhaps you're an idiot for failing to turn off the television in the first place. Either way, turn the damn thing off when you're not watching.

My wife and I think that background television (the continued use of the television even though its audience is engaged in other activities) is the opiate of the masses. The basest and most vile form of audio input.

A distracting annoyance of the highest regard.

As unfortunate and unfair as it may be, we are likely to think less of a person who has a television blaring in the background of their home when it is not actually being watched.

Our feelings on this subject are strong.

We have also long suspected that you have to be an idiot to leave your television on all day long, and low and behold, it turns out that we were right. Either you were an idiot to start, or the persistent use of background television has turned you into an idiot, so says a recent study cited in TIME:

The researchers found that the average American kid was exposed to 232.2 minutes of background television per day — when the TV was on, but the child was engaged in another activity. Younger children and African-America children were exposed to the most background television on average.

“We were ready and willing to accept that the exposure would be high, but we were kind of shocked at how high it really was,” says study author Matthew Lapierre, a doctoral candidate and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. “The fact that kids are exposed to about four hours on average per day definitely knocked us back on our heels a bit.”

Previous research has found that exposure to background television is linked to lower attention spans, fewer and lower-quality parent-child interactions, and reduced performance in cognitive tasks, the authors said in the study.

What is most interesting about the study is that it only looks at the effects of background television on children.

Here’s the thing:

Kids are resilient. They can overcome overwhelming odds. They are highly adaptable and possess enormous reserves of unlocked potential. Most important, despite the amount of television they are being exposed to, they are also reading and writing on an almost daily basis thanks to school.

Adults are decidedly less resilient. Their ability to overcome obstacles is oftentimes limited. Their adaptability diminishes with age. Many do not read or write on a weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis.

If background television is reducing children’s performance in cognitive tasks, just imagine what might be happening to the less resilient, less literate adult population.

I’m willing to bet that background television is making them complete and total morons. And I can’t wait for the research that backs me up.

Gratitude journal: The absolute euphoria of prime factorization

Tonight I am grateful for the inexplicable joy and near euphoria that my students experienced when successfully negotiating the prime factorization of numbers like 1,056, 2044, and 4,096.

I really can’t explain it, but I witnessed fist pumps, leaps of joy, high-fives, twirls of victory,  and screams of delight upon discovering that they had successfully factored these large numbers down to their primes and accurately represented their work using exponents.

I take no credit for their surprising enthusiasm. It was all them today.

A joyous respite for book lovers everywhere

The joy of a cupcake

I don’t know if I have ever felt as much joy in my entire life as my daughter did while eating this cupcake: