A buddy of mine asked his readers for Christmas stories on his blog The Dick Summer Connection … and among the many responses he received, this one jumped right off the page. Most guys have experienced something similar, although I would hope less extreme. Dick said I could share the story, so from my house to yours, here’s Bill Ervolino’s house. Whew!

 I thought it would be a nice idea to bring a date to my parents’ house on Christmas Eve. I thought it would be interesting for a non-Italian girl to see how an Italian family spends the holidays. I thought my mother and my date would hit it off like partridges and pear trees. So, I was wrong. Sue me.

I had only known Karen for three weeks when I extended the invitation. “I know these family things can be a little weird,” I told her, “but my folks are great, and we always have a lot of fun on Christmas Eve.” “Sounds fine to me,” Karen said. Read the rest of this entry

As you tread the long road between first tooth and last, you stumble into some things that most of us are never really ready to do … you just do them and work out the consequences along the way. Getting married, having kids or buying a house are a few of the ‘just do it’ things that leap to mind. If you examine them too closely or too logically, you’ll end up lonely, childless and renting a one room flat where the bed folds out of the wall, because you won’t do any of them. I believe retirement ranks high on that list.

My concept of retirement was to be able to do all the things I’ve always wanted, without worrying about being successful at them or having to impress anyone. That included working at my own pace, not someone else’s. Read the rest of this entry

About the time I was entering my teens, I remember counting the decades on my fingers to figure out if I’d be alive in the year 2000 for the arrival of the new millennium. With the typical hubris that heralds the arrival of excess growth hormones and causes a kid to walk ten paces in front of his parents at the mall, I decided I’d probably still be here … but I’d be so bleepin’ old it wouldn’t matter. Well, I was and it does! It’s interesting how your perspective changes, depending upon which end of the telescope you’re looking through. Here I am with the millennium just a speck in my rear view mirror and I still feel an excitement about watching the mile markers zip by, especially on New Year’s Eve.

It wasn’t until after I graduated from home that I was able to grasp why so many people made such a big deal out of December 31st. Read the rest of this entry

I remember when I thought communication was two Campbell’s soup cans with a string in-between. That home made ‘walkie-talkie’ was not only a blast but it taught a couple of young kids something-or-other about sound conductivity. Besides, it really didn’t cost much and I could see my friend Ralphie over at the other end. There were [only] two things wrong with this device: Sometimes the string would break if you pulled it too tight, and you had to eat the soup before you could use the cans.

About ten years later, I discovered a more stimulating method of communication. It had nothing to do with walkie-talkies, string or my friend Ralphie. We called it ‘legalized.’ Nobody ever talked much about just what it was that was legalized but instead of soup cans, it involved dancing really close with a girl. There were no formal steps and it didn’t matter what music was playing … or if there was music playing at all! One of the many added benefits was, you didn’t have to eat any soup.

Enter 21st Century technology: Electronic games, e-mails, chat rooms, cell phones and now the wonderful world of text messaging. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a technology junkie. Like most guys I love dials, buttons and flashing lights, whether or not they serve a purpose. Some guys can be entertained for hours by almost any shiny metal object, but that’s pretty extreme … still I don’t guess I’ll ever get a grip on the whole idea behind texting.

I mean, if someone hands me a telephone my first impulse is to speak into it, not to write on it. Call me crazy, but I like the warmth of a human voice at the other end plus there’s less margin for error when you can hear the other person’s vocal inflection. For instance, if your wife texts you the message, “I’m mad” that’s informative but sort of vague; on the phone, you can actually hear just how much trouble you’re in. The only higher level of communication would be to see the corners of her eyes scrunch up and that little vein pop out on her forehead. However fear not, that questionable ability is already edging its way into cell phone circles with picture phones! And you wanna’ text?

If I stick with traditional phone functions, I don’t have to pick at a bunch of tiny rice-size buttons with my not-so-tiny ham-size fingers or worry about my speling … yet my response from the person at other end is every bit as fast as I used to get from Ralphie with the soup cans. Hm-m-m. Of course, the act of texting employs so many abbreviations [CU@4] that most grammar rules are tossed to the wind and no one really cares whether cat is spelled with a ‘C’ or a ‘K’.

When I was a kid we were never inside, except for rainy afternoons when we drove our parents crazy. These days ‘Computer Potatoes’ are getting so bad, the government is trying to mandate that kids be pushed outside to play for at least an hour per day. Inhaling a molecule or two of fresh air is fine but working on a few social skills may be even more important somewhere down the road. Getting along comfortably with others isn’t part of everyone’s DNA; it takes effort and is something that’s tough to work on alone … or with one’s face leaving nose prints on the screen of a computer or cell phone.

I think I may have witnessed the ultimate in un-communication the other day when I saw two kids sitting together on a pair of swings, not saying a word but sending TEXT messages to each other! How ironic that the very electronic marvels we’ve invented to expand our universe have, instead, begun to isolate so many of us in our own, private little caves.

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

I finally solved one of life’s little mysteries last Saturday, while loitering in the middle of our kitchen. “What are you doing?” Vigi asked quietly, as I stood there sort of swaying like a new calf or an old dog. “I came in here for something, but I’ll be damned if I can remember what the heck it was!” replied a voice that sounded incredibly like mine. If there is even a smidgen of gray in your hair, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You send yourself on a mission. It’s not like going to, say, Shanghai or something. Often it’s just an excursion into the next room … but once you get there, the rest of the directive is obscured by something I call “Brain Fog.” It’s from the Latin, brainus foggus, which loosely translated means “Wait, I knew that a minute ago.”

For the longest time I’ve been puzzled by why it takes me longer to do things now than it used to.  There are still sixty seconds in a minute, right? Suddenly, Saturday afternoon, lights flashed and trumpets blared! It was so simple. When I was a kid, I just did stuff. When I was finished, I kept going and did more stuff. There were no limits! Now, I spend half my time trying to figure out where I put something or what I’m doing somewhere … then spend the other half working at a speed approaching molasses on Prozac, instead of my former legendary warp factor nine. Think of it in terms of throwing a fastball over the plate: When you’re younger you just rifle it in to a catcher. Now you toss, toddle sixty feet six inches, change gloves and catch your own pitch, on one bounce!

The good news is that such episodes are temporary, and a quick retrace of my steps usually causes the tumblers in my head to click into place. Failing that, sometimes just sitting down hard can jog the missing debris down to my primary thought center. The bad news is that it all chews up valuable time in a changing world where minutes seem to perceptibly have fewer and fewer seconds!

By the way, the first cousin of “Brain Fog” is “Mind Vapor” … from the Latin, vaporus mentalus, which is the complete disappearance of a thought or idea in mid-sentence. You don’t have to travel at all to trigger this one. I’ve discovered that retracing words in a conversation can be even tougher than retracing steps into a room … especially once I realized no one was actually listening, including me! Like my mission directive the missing piece is usually retrieved, although sometimes not right away. Veege is frequently puzzled when I pipe up with something like, “Hey, remember when I was telling you about … (fill in topic) ?” Of course, not only doesn’t she remember the conversation but she can’t figure how I don’t know where I put my glasses five minutes ago, yet I can suddenly remember exquisite detail from an incomplete conversation last Tuesday!

If these tendencies toward fog and vaporization continue, it shouldn’t be long before I can start thinning out my extensive DVD collection. In a few short years, we’ll only need to keep a couple of discs around … watch a movie and it’s brand new again by tomorrow!

Most young people can’t really apply these little inconveniences to themselves. After all, it’s not their own reflections they see in the fun house mirror. Not yet. The first gray hair or squint line may herald some reality for newly christened middle-agers, but the idea of operating at less than light speed is beyond imagination. At thirty or forty,  when the world is at your feet and you’re ninety mile-an-hour fastball is still popping the catcher’s glove, it’s impossible to picture a time when just finding the plate may occupy a significant portion of the day. That’s something that only happens to … old people.

The next time I run into some multi-tasking lightening rod who acts like he has all the answers or thinks older folks are kind of funny, my tolerance will be increased a hundred fold … because not only am I the one who understands most of the questions, but I know who’s going to have the last laugh! I hope I can remember that.

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

It was a perfect dive … arms fully extended, head down and four inches of rock-hard ice rising to meet me at warp speed! The emergency room doctor later called it a “Superman”, although my instant replay indicates it must have looked more like an Elmer Fudd. I bruised several ribs and possibly cracked two of them, just to enhance the effect. But th-thea the-thea that’s not all folks!

Since my arms were occupied with a death grip on my upper torso, Vigi went outside to chip some ‘winter mix’ off the windshield so we could find our way to the hospital … and, not to be outdone, she successfully executed a back flip on the same slippery, snow dusted surface. Her L4 vertebra is now attempting to pass L5 like a couple of NASCAR drivers closing on the finish line at Daytona. That was more than a month ago and we’re still nursing our bruised, battered bones. Last night as we poured ourselves into our respective couch corners she asked, “Is this what old age is going to be like?”

Since Veege is a pretty upbeat person, I know when she asks a question like that it usually isn’t rhetorical. I’ve never been known for a loss of words, so the resounding silence that enveloped the room echoed even louder, eliciting both a slightly arched eyebrow and an actual pause in her knitting. It’s amazing how much can stampede across your mind’s hi-def widescreen in only a few short seconds.

I remembered a lean teen standing shirtless in front of the mirror, flexing his muscles and vainly admiring bulges that I eventually learned were called names like pecs and abs. During my middle years, I didn’t have to take my shirt off to see that many of those bulges had shifted somewhat and now stood before the looking glass calling them ‘contours’ and saying things like, “Not bad, not bad.” While I still have bulges, they have completely reconfigured themselves in both geometry and geography. None of them have names anymore.

Not long ago, in the process of greeting the new day, I stumbled past the bathroom mirror and noticed an older silvery-bearded gent giving me a curious once over. The landscape between his right and left ears was dominated by a field of skin, and I wondered who had been trying to make waffles on the side of his face that only moments before had been nestled into a properly punched pillow. Thankfully, performing my morning toilette is the only time I have no choice but to stand toe-to-toe with the updated ‘Me’ … the rest of the day I try to avoid all reflective surfaces of any kind.

As those silent seconds passed, with my widescreen now beginning to flicker, the scene changed and a devilish little voice inside my head began whispering about how food used to taste better, things lasted longer and a buck stretched all the way from necessity through desire with a little left over for saving. It reminded me of 5¢ chocolate bars that filled out their generous wrappers and didn’t taste like something you’d light on fire atop a birthday cake; how steak was so succulent and tender it made you feel as if the cow had given it up willingly … and when stuff broke, you were able to fix it instead of throwing it away. Life just used to seem less complicated. Maybe being more energetic and less brittle had something to do with it.

Then, as I looked over at my bride, her eyebrow had returned to its normal down and locked position, the yarn resumed its flight around the needles, and for some reason I began thinking about our wedding vows. “For richer or poorer,” we had promised. We’d been fortunate enough to struggle ourselves up to a comfortable middle point over the years. Where adversity sometimes pulls people apart, it has always bound us closer together with a kind of “you and me against the world” attitude.  “In sickness and in health.” Well, like most people edging closer to the ‘getting-off’ place than the ‘getting-on’, we’ve had our share of door number one in the past few years. The thing is, I couldn’t remember anything about injuries anywhere on the list … certainly nothing about ice-diving.

Finally, trying to lighten the moment with something clever I offered, “Hey kid, like it or not these are the NEW good old days! If we’re going to have any ‘golden years’, I’d better buy a bucket of paint!” She didn’t seem particularly amused … didn’t even look like she thought it was cute. As if peering at me over an invisible pair of reading glasses, she sighed that sigh that women sigh [like when you spill something] and adjusted the stack of pillows supporting her back.

With one hand on my ribs, the other on the T.V. remote and Vigi’s question neatly tucked away in a corner of my cranium, we settled back to resume our evening secure in the knowledge that “for better or for worse,” we had each other … and a large bottle of Tylenol at the ready.

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

To me, our National Anthem is many things: It’s the song that uniquely represents America, just as our flag is our enduring national symbol. It’ s supposed to be presented in a way that is inspiring, respectful and reverent … not rewritten as part of some here today-gone tomorrow entertainment act. If really well done, The Star Spangle Banner may bring a lump to your throat and even a tear to your eye. It is the embodiment of pride and persistence!

Last Sunday I settled down in front of my sixty inch hi-def widescreen T.V. for an evening of ear splitting, mind thumping commercials when, suddenly, a football game broke out! The exercise in excess, billed as the halftime show, featured a group of electronically wired people that resembled a short circuited pinball machine on steroids. They were named after a variety of ‘pea’, which may provide some insight as to why a lot of kids refuse to eat their vegetables.

But before any of this began, an awkward slightly bow-legged young lady perched herself in the middle of the field on a platform, and proceeded with an acoustical assault upon the above-mentioned composition by Francis Scott Key. The announcer said she had won five Grammy Awards for previous attempts at conjugating musical notes, which instantly rekindled a flood of memories about why I haven’t bothered to watch those presentations in more than twenty-five years.

I can’t imagine a bigger moment or better venue for a performer than singing our Nation Anthem in front of a worldwide audience at The Super Bowl. Nevertheless, here was this Christina Aguilera person not only messing up the melody, but focusing so hard on doing so, that she screwed up the words as well. “What so proudly we watched, at the twilight’s last streaming” was, to my knowledge, not one of the visions beheld by Mr. Key as he sat in his precariously positioned prison cell. Do they audition people for such a multi-million dollar extravaganza or simply ask for a show of hands as to who wants to do the Star Spangled Banner this year, and just pick somebody? By the way, why doesn’t EVERYONE know the words and the history behind this song?

Older folks often find fault with a lot of things that just aren’t the same anymore and I’m no exception. Change, you know? It may be the only constant we can count on but, sometimes, it’s not easy to make certain adjustments. I can put up with bigger wrappers and smaller chocolate bars, tooth jell instead of tooth paste, and cars that measure power in  liters instead of cubic inches [I'm still working on those new, curly-fry light bulbs]. But when it comes to disappearing traditions, especially those affecting the texture and fabric of my country, about the best I can do is dig my heels in and say, “Enough already. Look behind you … the line is back there.”

A few years ago, I saw an old baseball movie about the minor leagues called “Long Gone”. It opened with a sort of flashy femme fatale who removed her chewing gum just before singing a nearly on-key version of our National Anthem … then placed the gum back into her mouth when she was finished and jiggled her way off the field. End act one, scene one. Even the tootsie’s rendition was more respectful. I liked it better.

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