It’s a six hour holiday. NOT A SEASON.

Yesterday I worked at a Halloween-themed wedding.  Masks were worn by the bride and groom and many of their guests, centerpieces consisted of ceramic jack-o-lanterns filled with candy, and guests danced to The Monster Mash.

It was one of the finest Halloween-themed wedding I have ever seen.  Just the right amount of Halloween paraphernalia to bring home the theme without taking away from the wedding.   

I have only one complaint:  It wasn’t Halloween.

The wedding was held on October 30th, one day before Halloween, and contrary to what seems to be becoming popular opinion, Halloween is not a seasonal holiday. 

It is a single day.

In fact, it’s not even a day.  It’s more like a six hour period from about 4:00-10:00 on Halloween night.  Masks are donned, children trick-or-treat, eggs are thrown, and that’s it. 

At least that’s how it should be. 

But for reasons that escape me, Halloween seems to be stretching itself across the October calendar, filling days around the holiday as if it were a blob of spreading goo. 

Yesterday thousands of college football fans filled stadiums, dressed in all manner of Halloween costume. 

But it wasn’t Halloween.

Yesterday thousands of citizens gathered on The National Mall to rally with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for reason and sanity, and many of them also donned masks and capes and costumes.

But it wasn’t Halloween.  

And on Monday night, when the Houston Texans and Indianapolis Colts face off, there is a good chance that we will see spectators dressed in Halloween masks, even though at that point, Halloween will be 364 days away.    

Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years are a part of the holiday season.   

Baseball is played over the course of a season.

Autumn is a season.

Halloween is not.

Brick House and breasts

I hate the song Brick House by The Commodores. But as a wedding DJ, I am forced to listen to the song more often than I want. I think the lyrics are just plain stupid. If I was a woman, the last thing I’d ever want to be compared to is a brick house.

But it gets worse. I recently discovered that many historians and anthropologists believe that Amazon women routinely removed their right breast as part of a religious ritual that helped them hunt, allowing them to pull back on bow strings and throw javelins without their breast getting in the way. Though there is much debate over the veracity of this claim, the name Amazon is believed to have derived from the Greek word a-mazon, meaning “no breast.”

Read more about this here.

What does this have to do with Brick House and the Commodores?

Ironically, the Commodores sing about women’s breasts and Amazons in their song:

Yea she's a brick-house, that lady's stacked, And that's a fact, Ain't holdin' nothin back, oh she's a brick-house, Yeah she's the one, the only one, Built like an Amazon.

Whether or not Amazon women cut off one breast, I find it ironic and amusing that The Commodores would attempt to compare a woman’s breasts favorably to that of Amazon women, who may have purposely removed their breasts.

For one who truly hates the song as much as I do, I hope you take as much pleasure in this discovery as I did.

The original Nordstrom's employee manual contains the only rule that any organization needs to function effectively.

Nordstrom’s first employee manual was a work of genius. It reads:

Obviously this rule would not work well with the bounty of micro-managers who dominate our business and professional cultures today.

But idiot bosses aside, I've also known and continue to know many people who are thoroughly enamored with rules. These are people who desire clearly delineated codes of conduct for all situations. While there is a place in the world for rules, these people believe that there must be a rule for every place.

In my estimation, these people tend to be timid, conforming, paralyzed by choice, lacking confidence, afraid to be perceived as the bad guy and unable to enforce discipline or garner respect without explicit norms. These are people who value structure and obedience over choice and good judgment.

In raising my daughter, I’m hoping to be more of an old school Nordstrom’s man.

This is a phrase I never thought I would ever utter.

Panty raid!

Panty raid!

Am I Ned, too?

I was just reminded of a student who fell and hit his head on the pavement several years ago while at recess. The blow had been so traumatic that for weeks after the injury, the boy was not the same person. His personality, his demeanor, and his cognitive abilities all seemed altered by the concussion that he had suffered. Eventually he returned to his normal self, but for what seemed like weeks, I thought of him as an entirely different person, even going so far as to rename him Ned in my mind for a time. I have suffered from more than my fair share of concussions in my life, beginning with a fall from the rings during a gymnastics unit of PE during my freshman year of high school. Somehow I missed the mat and landed on my head, knocking me unconscious for about a minute. It was a serious injury that kept me out of school for a week and in a fog for a long time.

Since that day, I’ve probably experienced about a dozen concussions, from two automobile accidents, a diving accident, two pole vaulting accidents, a softball to the head, several fists to the skull, and general clumsiness. I was once found unconscious in a walk-in freezer, having slipped and fallen on a patch of ice. Doctors have told me that my repeated head injuries make it more likely for me to experience concussions in the future. And with head injuries in the news because of recent developments in the NFL, I’ve been thinking about my history of concussions a lot.

If just one fall on the pavement can alter a kid’s personality for more than a month, what have the repeated concussions throughout my life done to me?

Am I also a Ned?

Has my personality, demeanor and cognitive abilities been permanently altered by my history of head injuries?

This may explain a great deal.

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.

I am a giant nerd

I admire the guy’s willingness to put his passion on display, and I love his courage to be himself, but this guy has no chance of ever getting a date.

Right?

Testicular cancer talk

Sometimes former students and I maintain friendships long after their days in my classroom have ended. These students and I tend to share similar personalities and interests, and as they get older, it’s easy to understand why they continue to visit me in my classroom long after they have left elementary school. For a few former students, the teacher-student relationship has slowly developed into a genuine friendship. As I have become close with their parents (and now call some of them my closest of friends), and as they have headed off to college and bigger and better things, I have begun to view these young people as friends, even if they continue to call me Mr. Dicks.

One of my former students, now in college, is my daughter’s primary babysitter and an all-around friend of our family. On Saturday, while I was working, she and my wife spent the afternoon together, playing with Clara.

Two other students (a brother and sister combination) are our primary dog sitter, and still another is our backup dog sitter. We have invited former students and their families to our home for Christmas and Thanksgiving and Clara’s first birthday, and we have been invited to their homes for similar reasons. I count myself lucky to have these young people in my life.

Yesterday two such former students, now all grown up and attending college, came to visit me at the end of the school day. We chatted for about fifteen minutes before I headed off to a meeting, but in that time, it became apparent why these students and I have become such good friends.

The first girl’s hair is quite long. In the midst of our conversation, I asked if she planned on cutting it soon and perhaps give the hair to an organization like Locks for Love. She replied, “Of course not. I’m saving it for when I get cancer. In that case, my wig will match my natural hair color.”

While a fellow teacher was slightly horrified at the remark, I found it quite clever.

We then began chatting about cellphones, and somehow this led to a discussion on how radar detectors once emitted so much radiation that police officers in the 1970’’s were contracting cancer at alarming rates. “It’s the same with cellphones,” the other girl added. “So keep your cellphone out of your pocket or you’ll get testicular cancer.”

Having the former student mention my testicles was odd enough, but as she did, she pointed to my groin as well.

While I found the moment refreshingly innocent and amusing and a clear indication of the friendship I share with these girls, teachers never want students, all grown up or otherwise, pointing to their testicles.

Bits and bytes from my first days with Elysha

I was rooting through old short stories, poems and other miscellany on my hard drive when I came across a five-entry diary that I began in March of 2004. This was the month that my wife and I began dating. I’ve kept a journal off-and-on for most of my life, and I have a bunch of hand-written ones stacked in a drawer in my desk. This is the first and only one I can recall writing with a keyboard.

Three of the entries mention my future wife, and oddly enough, the diary ends on the evening that Elysha and I unofficially-officially began dating.

I got busy after that, I guess.

Here are the three entries that mention Elysha.

March 12, 2004

Tonight at the Talent Show, Chloe poured oatmeal over my head to end a skit that I had written for us. Chloe may have cancer. God I hope not.

Dinner with Elysha. That girl is great.

Late. Bed.

March 21, 2004

Met Elysha and friends at Trumbull Café. Later we went to The Red Plate for pizza. Good time. Paul, a guy sitting next to her, hit on Elysha at the bar, but he never asked for her number. What a dummy. Elysha called me around 2:00 AM and we chatted for an hour. Asked me about my religion.  Very interesting.  Just love talking to that girl.

March 22, 2004

Going to Coaches tomorrow night to watch the Lady Huskies. Elysha will be there. I’m excited.

Elysha didn’t call tonight. Was hoping she would.

No spread of cancer for Chloe. Hooray!

Old men quitting on their teams

I have a friend who will not be watching the Celtics or NBA basketball in general this year. He’s older than me and has become disillusioned by the involvement of agents in the sport, the inability of small market teams to land free agents, the creation of supposed super teams like the Miami Heat and more. All of this is nonsense, of course.

In the past thirty years, only eight different teams have won NBA championships, including the Celtics and the Heat.

The domination of certain markets is nothing new.

But his newfound attitude is not surprising. I have a number of friends who have abandoned baseball, basketball and even football because of a variety of reasons, mostly related to the way the games are played, the ways the teams are assembled and the attitudes of today’s ballplayers.

All of these friends are older than me, and all are over fifty years old.

I do not think their age is a coincidence.

I would argue that quitting on a sport has more to do with becoming old, nostalgic and intractable and less to do with the fundamentals of the game.  My friends may believe in their hearts that they have abandoned these teams and sports as a result of their passion for the way the game used to be structured and played, but the truth is that all sports evolve over time, and these guys have found themselves at an age when they can no longer adapt to these changes.

How many twenty or even thirty year old guys have you met who once loved a sport with all their hearts but have now given it up?

Any?

No, it’s around forty, and perhaps closer to fifty, when the game no longer resembles the game of a man’s youth and these old men no longer want to adapt to the changes. While I understand the sentiment, I find it a little sad and tragic.

I cannot imagine quitting on basketball because three possibly incompatible players decided to join forces in Miami or because agents may have helped to facilitate the move.

The NBA has a bad guy once again (something it hasn’t had since the Detroit Pistons of the 1990s), and it makes Celtics victories even more sweet.

It’s basketball. No matter how the teams were put together and who had their hands in the decision-making pie, it’s basketball.

If I ever get to the point that I sound like an old man, complaining about free agency, league balance or a lack of fundamentals in today’s game, smack me on the head with my cane, stuff my AARP card down my throat and remind me of the greatness of these games, regardless of how they may evolve over the years.

A lot can happen in twelve years…

Tonight I learned that a student from my very first class, a former second grader who I taught twelve years ago, is modeling a line of clothing that was designed and manufactured by my friend and his partner.

That is a damn small world.

I can’t get over it.  I’m sitting here, staring at photos of a woman wearing clothing designed by my friend, and I can remember teaching this woman how to add with regrouping like it was yesterday. 

And now I am feeling a little bit old. 

My little second grader is now modeling high-end fashion?

I still can’t believe it.

Identity crisis

I called in an order at the local sandwich shop today. When I picked it up, there was a slip of paper attached to the bag with the order written on it. I described my roast beef sandwich (American cheese, salt and pepper on wheat) and dessert choice (apple pocket). At the bottom of the slip it read:

Clara’s dad Picking up in 15 minutes

My identity has been usurped.

Forever young

Last week I went to the doctor’s office for a routine visit. Prior to seeing the doctor, a nurse took my blood pressure and pulse. “Wow,” she said, staring at me in near disbelief.

“Good?”

“Great,” she said. “And your pulse too. I’m surprised!”

“Alright,” I said, becoming uncomfortable with her level of astonishment. “It’s not that amazing. I know I don’t look like I’m in the best shape of my life, but I’m doing okay.”

“I guess,” she said, smiling.

I get this reaction from nurses all the time. They take one look at me and assume from my fire hydrant shape that my blood pressure will be off the charts, when it is usually around 100/80. And my resting heart rate tends to be around 60, which it was last week. Both of these numbers are very good.

Incidents like this make me realize how people’s perceptions of me change as I get older while the perception that I have of myself do not. I still think of myself as a young, athletic man, and though I have a rotator cuff problem and a bad knee, I’ve had the knee trouble since high school and the rotator cuff tore while I was diving for a ball, so it was hardly an issue of age. And while I also would like to lose some more weight (I’ve lost about 25 pounds in the last year but would like to lose another fifteen), I am still able to run 2-3 miles with relative ease, spend an hour or more on the elliptical machine, and play hoops with kids half my age.

In fact, the same day of my appointment, I stopped by the basketball courts near my home and joined a pickup game with some kids of high school and college age. We played two on two for about an hour when four other guys showed up, forcing us to reconstitute the teams. It was quite a scene, a 39-year old white guy playing alongside six young, black guys and a young white guy who carried himself like Eminem.

Captains were chosen, and as the choosing began, the first captain, one of the new arrivals, asked the second captain, a guy who I had been playing with, about me. “What’s up with the old guy?” the kid asked.

“Well, he’s not too fast and he can’t jump, but he knows how to pass and when to shoot, and you can’t move him once he’s under the basket.  And he fouls hard.”

I was still picked last, but I didn’t mind the assessment of my skills, and I managed to hold my own that morning.

Nurse Judgmental can go to hell.

Shooting little kids in the chest

On Friday night I played laser tag against two students and a band of marauding birthday party kids. Eighteen players in all and I was the only adult in the maze. I finished second, despite the frequent and illegal teaming by children who wanted to do nothing else but destroy me.

I left the game feeling pretty good about myself.

Actually, I felt great about myself. I play laser tag a couple times a year and rarely finish below second place, often winning the game. And in most circumstances, I am playing against kids who play more often than me and often team up to defeat me.

Then I tried to explain my euphoria to an adult, and she looked at me with a less-than-impressed stare. She was listening to a grown man describe the way in which he defeated children in a game involving lasers, fog machines and a maze.

I was suddenly wrenched back down to Earth. Back in the land of mortgage payments and child-rearing, I felt foolish for my unmitigated enthusiasm and joy.

But then my eyes returned to my scorecard, and the note on the bottom that indicated that I had placed second and had received 50 bonus points for my #2 ranking in accuracy. I noted the number of shoulder hits I had taken, primarily from a pod of five ten-year olds who had taken the high ground on the upper corner of the maze, and considered alternatives to taking on a fortified position in the future. I analyzed my own shot selection, counting the excessive number of times I scored a hit on the front of an opponent’s pack, a statistic in keeping with my flush-and-retreat strategy.

I had played a great game, damn it, and those unimpressed, glazed-over adult eyes were simply the eyes of inexperience and ignorance. Until you running through that maze, armed with a laser, battling platoons of four-foot tall warriors who will cover sensors and ambush you whenever possible, you cannot know the skill and strategy that goes into finishing second. Yes, it’s a game, and yes, it’s primarily a children’s game, but for those adults brave enough to enter that maze, it is twenty minutes of war, and to the victor goes the spoils.

Which in this case is a pink scorecard and an offer to play in the Halloween overnighter next week.

Still, do not belittle my accomplishment until you have carried a laser yourself. Events like the birth of my daughter and the publishing of a book contained moments of pure, unadulterated joy, and those moments far exceeded my laser tag joy of finishing second.

But finishing second is on that list of joyous moments, and it’s not too far down the list.

How often can you say that you beat seventeen kids at their own game?

But it’s just Bram

I told my buddy that I’ll be spending my afternoon watching football with my friend, Bram. “Who’s Bram?” he asked.

“Oh, Bram Weinstein,” I said. “He works for ESPN. He's a SportsCenter anchor. And other stuff, too. College football. Radio. He was the Redskins beat reporter for a while. Lots of stuff.”

“You’re watching the game with an ESPN SportsCenter anchor?” my friend asked, his voice filled with awe and reverence. “A guy who works on-air for ESPN?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess. But it’s just Bram.”

It’s remarkable how the celebrity luster fades once you actually get to know a person.

5 pieces of advice from my evil stepfather

In the ten years I spent living with my evil step-father before leaving home at the age of eighteen, he attempted to teach me the following things: 1.  The most painful way to die is by fire. Being a psychiatric social worker, I believed him. This, by the way, is always good information to give a ten-year old boy. His assertion has since been proven correct based upon my ample movie-watching career. When a bad guy catches fire, he flails and screams more than anyone else on screen.

2.  Don’t trust you’re real father. He didn’t love you.

3.  If you’re disappointed with the service you receive at a restaurant, don’t leave nothing for a tip. Leave a penny. It’s more insulting.

4. It's perfectly acceptable to scratch the paint of a car parked in a handicapped spot illegally.

5.  If you are going to be blamed for something, you might as well do it.

I agree with the fourth one, but I haven't actually done it in years.

This last one is the only lesson that I utilize today, and even this is used sparingly.

What is Hell?

The Devil believes that hell is a place where your greatest loves can be turned against you, so in my case…

Springsteen’s Thunder Road, over and over again for eternity.

But the Devil doesn’t know that I fall more in love with that song each time I hear it.

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.

Pants are not priceless

A clothing store called Khaki and Black went out of business in our town’s center last year and has been replaced by a bank. As I drove by with a friend, she said, “Great. Another bank. Just what the center needed.” When the store closed, my mother-in-law expressed a similar sentiment.

My response:

What makes a pants store any more valuable than a bank?

In fact, wouldn’t a bank bring more consumers to the center than a clothing store? A bank brings customers back again and again, often on a weekly basis, whereas a clothing store, particularly a women’s clothing store, only draws a select clientele on a significantly less frequent basis.

Why is a retail clothing establishment automatically perceived to be more valuable than a financial institution?

Do vegans force their pets and children to be vegans, too?

I find veganism fascinating, particularly when it is practiced for ethical reasons. The morality behind avoiding meat raises so many interesting questions. For example: Do ethical vegans force their pets into veganism as well?

Is a vegan’s dog not allowed to eat dog food containing rabbit, chicken or turkey?

Are the cats of vegans discouraged from hunting mice?

Is a boa constrictor owned by a vegan not fed rats?

Why might there be a distinction between the ethics of food when it comes to humans and pets? And is it ethical to alter an animal’s natural diet based upon your personal beliefs?

Also, is it ethical to impose your vegan beliefs on their children?

Should a person’s eating habits be defined by their parent’s sense of morality and their disregard for the presence of incisors in their child’s mouth?

I guess that if you believe that imposing religious beliefs on children is ethical, vegan beliefs could be viewed in a similar light. Yet there seems something less diabolical in a vegan stuffing green beans down their child’s throat than a parent stuffing the homophobic belief of a 2,000 year old desert-dwelling God into a child’s impressionable mind.