To some people, summer begins when they open their swimming pool and ends when they close it. We don’t have a pool but we do have a screened-in porch that pretty much holds the same significance. It is from there I set out to open the large windows across the Great Room so the warm summer breeze could wash through the house. The distance I traveled was about 23 paces, a short saunter, a brief mosey or a minimal meander, depending upon your unit of measure. In that short distance, somebody stole my keys. I wasn’t mugged … I remained vertical the whole time and never once even saw anyone else. Yet, when I reached into my right front pocket, the keys were gone.

I knew I had put them in there because for decades, as soon as I put my pants on in the morning, I load the pockets: Keys and change right front; comb and pen-knife left front; handkerchief right rear and wallet rear left. Besides that, my change was happily jingling away against my thigh and would not have come aboard without the keys … they’re inseparable! “Okay.” I said to myself, “Self, let’s solve this logically.” You know, the way you pick the winner of The Superbowl or the Miss America pageant.

Did you ever walk into a room and get the feeling that whatever you were looking for was jumping up and down, waving its arms, shouting “Here I am! Hey Dopey! Over here!” I turned the house topsy-turvy like a burglar, resulting only in my skinning a knuckle and unearthing a couple of rusty old skate keys. When I was a kid, if I couldn’t find something my Mom would tell me, “It’s not there.” or “That’s not where it is.” I always wondered how she knew where ‘it’ wasn’t if she didn’t know where ‘it’ was. My favorite kid retort was, “Then where is it?” She would even invoke the name of St. Joseph, who I guess must have lost a lot of stuff in his day to qualify for his own prayer.

What I didn’t know at the time is that it was all a mask for her radar! Women have it, guys don’t. Eventually, Mom would always come up with the missing item and the only thing she’d say was, “See?” Back then I was just a kid and couldn’t see much of anything … now I understand. Through the years, I’ve even submitted to her theory of divine intervention but it doesn’t work for me. It can’t!

A few years ago, some PhD wrote a book called Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. It instantly confirmed my long held feelings about the differences in wiring between men and women … differences you don’t need a PhD to figure out, only a marriage license. Everyone has blind spots and, for guys, a big one is not finding lost stuff. Fortunately for Martians, one of the strengths of Venusians is the ability to find lost stuff. I used to think that maybe they had special vision and could actually see the object jumping up and down, but I’ve come to accept the more rational explanation that ‘finding’ is just as much a part of a woman’s chemistry as not asking directions is part of a man’s. All in all, these things make for a nice balance, as long as nobody suddenly gets off of the seesaw!

Anyway, like most other captives in the dark absent object abyss, my keys were not to be found anywhere between the porch and the windows … or anyplace else I had roamed. After retracing my steps two or three times, just to make sure, I even searched upstairs and several other places I hadn’t been, figuring they may have migrated! Nothing, nada, zilch, zippo.

At last my favorite Venusian arrived home from work. She listened to my tale of woe as she slipped into her comfortable clothes and morphed from mild mannered business woman and associate into the intuitive Champion Finder of Lost Souls … almost the way I used to change into my cape and flying togs with the big red letter “S” on the chest. “So, you were sitting over there?” she asked. I pointed and sheepishly muttered, “Uh-huh.” Veege paused for only a second. I could almost hear the radar switch on. Then, she confidently marched directly over to the chair, lifted the cushion and voila … the keys appeared in her hand as if by magic! Apparently they had wedged down in there next to the arm. I know I looked there … twice!

She does that all the time. Mom used to do that all the time. My buddy’s wife Barb does that all the time. They spend seconds, we spend hours. ‘XX’ chromosomes? Sometimes I guess the best move a guy can make is to man-up and ask a woman. Vive la différence!

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.

I’m not sure people know what friendship is anymore. For my money, most of them use the term so casually that it loses all meaning. Social networking websites see a friend as anyone who visits their site and clicks on a certain box. For T.V. and radio hosts it’s pretty much anyone that watches, listens or calls in.

To me, a friendship is much more than that and is just as complex as any other relationship. Despite this complexity, my favorite definition is a simple one: A friend is someone who will laugh at your jokes when they’re not so good and listen to your troubles when they’re not so bad. I would hasten to add that it’s also important to walk through some kind of fire together, to cement your common bonds.

I’ve had only five people in my life that I’ve considered worthy of wearing the title ‘Friend’ … and I’m fortunate enough to still be in touch with four of them. The funny thing is, while I am friends with all of them, they are so diverse that none of them could ever be friends with each other!

Vigi actually knows who I’m on the phone with according to my speech mannerisms. Apparently, I adopt the appropriate communication style for the conversation … something I wasn’t even aware of until she pointed it out. It’s not a matter of being forced or phony, just flexible. I suppose it’s an ability that even merits a certain amount of pride.

Of the group, one is primarily a friend of longevity who is more formal than the rest, therefore our conversations tend to take on a more serious tone. I’ve always had the utmost respect for him and he has earned it, among other ways, by keeping my tendencies toward ‘over-the-topness’ grounded in reality. Another likes structure and almost always needs a specific topic for discussion … he even shows up with one when he visits. For him, life will always be a college debate. If Veege is within earshot of a political rant or hears musings about the location of human consciousness, she always knows the identity of the other culprit.

The bond with my third ‘bud’ is based almost purely on chemistry and we’ve walked through a lot of fire together. When we talk, we simply shoot the sh**, as we call it. Anything is fair game and we leap from subject to subject with the grace of a gazelle but stumble through a half-century of memories with all the poise of an Abbott and Costello routine … we usually both wind up on first!

My fourth friend is, in many ways, a combination of the first three. We exist somewhat at a distance but are joined at the soul. I don’t see him very often, we don’t talk much on the phone but we’ve always kept in close contact. When we do have a phone conversation, it scrambles Vigi’s radar … maybe it’s the blend of communication styles or perhaps she just doesn’t get enough practice hearing us.

In case you’re wondering, the fifth guy bailed out of our relationship after a relatively few years, around the time of my divorce. His wife was particularly close with my ‘ex’ and I guess, when it comes to heroes and villains, it was easier to switch than fight [to paraphrase an old cigarette commercial]. Maybe he wasn’t really a friend in the first place but I’ll always be grateful that our lives crossed paths and count him as one anyway.

Like anyone else, I’ve had hundreds of acquaintances in my lifetime but I have no known friends on any radio station or website, regardless of what their counters say. None of us have even met … and it’s too late for Veege to learn my conversation style with them if we did! What I do have are these four great guys, most of whom I’ve accompanied through the fire, and I’d gladly walk through it with any of them again.

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.

Captain Furillo carefully traced his finger along the naked spine of his Public Defending femme fatale. Just as the two were about to embark on a much anticipated evening of mattress magic, his beeper went off. I was watching a rerun of Hill Street Blues, my all time favorite cop show. Even though I had seen each episode six or seven times, I never noticed that beepers were as much a part of the story as guns and badges!

Whether occupied with tracing his girlfriend’s back or chalk outlines on a sidewalk, that infernal beeping sound never failed to launch one of Hill Street’s finest on a frantic search for a telephone. It started me thinking about how much things have changed in just a few short years, as the cell phone has become a dominant communications tool and an earpiece a permanent part of Twenty-First Century anatomy.

Gone are the beepers. Gone are public telephones … and telephone booths are a thing of the past. Yikes! Wait a minute! Where is Superman supposed to change? He can’t fly with his cape tucked into his trousers! Does this mean a sudden rise in the crime rate of Metropolis or will the man of steel use his super powers to ‘text’ criminals into the slammer?

The era of the cell phone brings with it the end of good old fashioned privacy. Whenever someone thinks they need you … they’ve gotcha’! It’s merely a matter of ringing up that portable phone booth you carry in your pocket, confident that no one has cut the cable to the handset and that you can always be found at the other end. For salesmen it’s curtains to those long lunches or the occasional midweek afternoon on the golf course. Big Brother is listening!

In my own pre-radio days of sales and marketing, I used the time between appointments to assess my last call and plan my strategy for the next one. It was truly valuable time for fluffing my cape and making sure the big red “S” on my chest was centered and in plain sight. Today I would be expected to use that time making appointments, schmoozing with clients … or even worse, trying to sell on the phone.  No wonder I haven’t bumped into any great salesmen lately!

The problem is, that little beeper replacement has evolved into so much more than just a telephone. Darwin would be proud. If I had any doubts before, they were erased on my last visit to the telephone store. ”Can I help you?” asked the fresh-scrubbed face with the electronic gizmo sticking out of one ear. “Yes.” I said. “I need a new phone.” To the casual observer, this reply might have seemed obvious, even flippant, given where I was standing. In fact, just a telephone was all I really wanted but, one look at the dozens of little techie toys lining the walls told me it was an improbable request.

The girl with the gizmo asked my first name and, after a turn or two around the generation barrier, she finally settled for Mr. Masey. I was told that a ‘Telephone Geek’ would be right with me and, whoa, was she ever right! I told him what I wanted but he seemed to have a problem understanding the concept of a pure telephone. When I made a crack about two soup cans with a piece of string inbetween, he looked at me with the same expression I must have had looking at his pierced eyebrow.

The first phone he showed me was something called a Blackberry that, apparently, did everything but make coffee … that is if you had little elfin fingers, tiny enough to work the rice-size buttons. I assured him that I didn’t need a camera, want to play MP3s, exchange text messages, or like any kind of berry that wasn’t soaked in cream. At first I thought that listening wasn’t one of his strong points but as I examined the various options, I realized it wasn’t him. My first impression was correct. The telephone was now becoming a communications center and I either had to evolve with it or be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the new world of geeks and gizmos. Superman, I just folded up my cape … you’re on your own.

I selected the phone that offered the fewest features and headed home, secure in the knowledge that it possessed the one feature I felt made it worth the price. Whether I was carefully tracing my finger along Vigi’s naked spine or just watching reruns of my favorite T.V. cop show, I could always avoid unwanted interruptions and gotcha’ calls by activating the little red button on the side labeled ‘OFF.’

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.