COOKIES AND HOOKY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-20-18)

     There's a chill in the air, a tart briskness that seems like you could shatter it with a hammer. Most people would reach for a pullover, but that chill causes me to break into a sweat. Even after all these years, the first time I feel Jack Frost nipping at my nose, an abject panic sets in and I start trying to think up excuses for why I didn't do homework that was due 44 years ago. It's just a physical response, my body trying to prepare me for possible blood loss from the piercing stares of my teachers.

     September came each year like clockwork no matter how vigorously I tried to put the brakes on August, and the specter of school would loom before me like a reverse shadow. Would my teachers accept me for the slacker I was? Would I like the kids in my class? Would I be able to learn enough about "the three R's" to figure out why only one of them starts with the letter "R?" It didn't start out all bad. I had a nice relationship with an older woman. We went around together for a whole year, holding hands whenever we could, going on romantic walks at recess. Her name was Jean but she liked me to call her Miss Franz. I was eight, and she had twenty or thirty years on me, but I was pretty mature for a third grader and I thought I handled our age difference pretty well. I figured that when I was eighty-eight and she was a hundred and eight, it wouldn't seem like a big deal.

     My sisters and I used to walk through the woods for twenty minutes to get to elementary school. Can you imagine parents of today allowing that? My Mom just pointed us in the general direction of the school and handed us a lunch. Apparently, she had never read "Little Red Riding Hood." "If a bear eats you take off that jacket first, it's new." These days the kids are chauffeured to school in the SUV, and if for some reason they need to take the bus, mom drives them to the end of the driveway, in case there is a dangerous squirrel in the area. Everyone is on guard against any possible threat, real or imagined. "Look at that car- was that there before?" "Mom, that's OUR car." "Hmmmm... it needs a wash."

     When I got to high school things took a turn for the worse. It became apparent that I was not good in math or science, and it became harder and harder to focus on the lesson. I used to sit in the back of the class and lean my chair against the wall so I could take a little nap. In our school the desk was attached to the chair, so when I woke up I had to pick up my books and my lunch from the floor. What are the odds that such behavior would be tolerated in my Probability and Statistics class? The other students could have figured it out pretty easily. And so I was charged with insubordination and instructed to bake two dozen cookies, because my teacher was a slave driver with a sweet tooth. If I had remained awake during Home Economics, I would have learned how to bake cookies, which may have prevented me from getting kicked out of the math class.

     But the teachers didn't give up. They kept teaching, and occasionally in my spare time, I attended class. I discovered that I like to write. I started out with creative writing- forged permission slips, excuses from my parents about why I missed class, that sort of thing. After a while I didn't need to miss class anymore, because I found something I was interested in.

     So kids, if you're out there, get off your phone for a little while and listen to somebody who knows something. The most useful thing a teacher can teach you is how to learn. And the most useful thing you can teach yourself is how to want to learn. If those two things happen, success can be coaxed from even the most meager excuse for a student. Without learning, brain matter doesn't matter very much. Until something like "E=MC2" pops into it, a brain is just a stagnant bunch of cells waiting for a party. Who knows? You may become the genius that invents the #3 pencil. And teachers, like my retired reader friend Judy, keep teaching. As for myself, I owe a lot to my education, and since graduating Syracuse University I have become a highly functioning member of society, depending on the function of course. I've learned how to bake cookies. I might even finish that homework from 44 years ago and turn it in, better late than never.

BACTERIA OVER BROADWAY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-13-18)

      We went to see a musical comedy at the Belasco Theater last Thursday, and I want to give it a shout out because it was nonstop fun, and it's called "Gettin' the Band Back Together." I won't give too much of the plot away, even though when we saw the play they gave the whole plot away anyway by the time it was over. It involves a middle-aged do-over of a long-standing feud that began with a high school battle of the bands.

      Somewhere in the middle of the first number, which was nothing to sneeze at,  I notice that there's a kid next to me coughing up a storm. An actual storm- you could almost see the germs in the air, with their little faces, looking around for the nearest theater patron to rain down on. Which was me. His dad kept reaching over to cover his mouth with a handkerchief after he had already finished coughing. Aren't you supposed to put your arm over your face and cough into the inside of your elbow? This kid was laughing and hacking at the same time, and his elbow was lounging around on the armrest, healthy as an ox. The only thing he was using to treat this possibly life-threatening malady was a huge Kit Kat bar.

      I'm trying to enjoy the show, and we're leaving to go out of town for a long weekend the next day, and now I have this kid next to me with consumption or the croup or something, and my attention is focused on getting the hell out of there without attracting too much attention. I was pushed up against my wife so hard she had a dent in her shoulder for an hour after the show from my nose pressing into it. I wish I had brought some disinfectant so I could have hosed him down. This miasmic moppet was the most dangerous thing I've seen at the theater since John Wilkes Booth. We stood up to make our getaway, and just then the leading lady broke into this dramatic ballad of love lost. It's so quiet you could hear a pin drop if this kid wasn't coughing so loud, and angry people are looking up at us in the balcony, so we quickly sat back down.

     I have a healthy respect for the theater, and I'd like to keep it that way. Next time I'm going to bring a thermometer, a stethoscope and a tongue depressor so I can perform a few quick medical tests on the people sitting around me. It's not like I'm a germophobe or anything, either. Rene at work used to wipe the telephone down for cooties and spray it with Lysol. It seemed like she was afraid that the cooties might actually call her up and give her an earful. I used to tease her mercilessly that she missed a cootie and I saw it crawl into her purse to lay eggs. I read somewhere that the sponge in your kitchen has more bacteria on it than anything else in your house, so that thing you're using to wipe your counter is actually spreading germs all over the place. Maybe you should clean your sponge with another sponge before you tidy up.

      Anyway, the show was really light and funny, and I would have been rolling in the aisles if I could only make it out of my seat. Marilu Henner was in it, who I had a real crush on back in the day. She has this weird medical condition called hyperthymesia, which enables her to remember what she did on any given day in her past. You could ask her what happened on March 28, 1977, and she would tell you she was wearing a blue dress, watching the Oscars that day. If you asked why in the world "Rocky" won instead of "Taxi Driver," she wouldn't be able to tell you that. So when you go on a date with her, don't do anything stupid because she'll remember that you spilled spaghetti sauce on her sweater for the rest of her life, and she won't ever let you forget it. That's the number two reason I would never go out with her. The number one reason is that she would never agree to it. But twenty years from now, if you ask her what she did on August 30th, 2018, she will have no choice but to say that she was at a Broadway show with ME!

      Finally we got up and found an empty pair of seats- right next to two teenage girls who were howling so loud I couldn't hear the play. Admittedly their laughter was infectious, but HOW infectious? I thought, here we go again....

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-06-18)

     It's becoming harder and harder to keep your kids entertained today. Even taking them to a major league baseball game can mean a serious cash outlay, and it'll cost you even more if you bring them back. I read on the internet that if you factor in ticket prices, parking, scorecards, food, drinks and a hat, the average price for a family of four was one million dollars. Here's an affordable alternative: take your son and daughter to a minor league game. I know what you're going to say, Junior is a die-hard Yankee fan and doesn't want to settle for an afternoon with the Batavia Muckdogs. This is a teachable moment, so don't waste it trying to teach them something. Trick your kids by explaining to them that someday soon they'll be seeing that exact same pitcher out there at Yankee Stadium, parking cars in the 153rd Street lot, which is by far the best one.

     We went to a Hudson Valley Renegades game at Dutchess Stadium and had a really nice time. At an A-ball game kids run the show, and it's best just to get the hell out of the way. Youngsters can really relate because the players aren't a whole lot older than they are. The shortstop at our game had braces and acne, and looked like he joined the team as a summer job only because it payed slightly more than mowing the neighbor's lawn.

     In between innings they sometimes have a contest with some boys and girls from the crowd involving water balloons or super-soakers. "Hey that kid should be careful of his wallet," I cautioned. "I got my wallet wet once and it was a big nightmare. And if he's wearing expensive shoes his mother's going to kill him." "He's wearing sneakers!" My wife said. "Those are the most expensive shoes on the planet these days!" I read that Adidas Pharrell Hu NMD Trails are going for $240 bucks, and you can only get them in left feet. If you're a lousy dancer things should work out fine. For that kind of dough I don't want to ruin my sneakers when I play tennis, so I wear dress shoes that I get from Kohl's for $25 bucks. Plus I get ten dollars in Kohl's Cash that I can redeem if I happen to go to Kohl's again in the next 20 minutes.

     We sat in the nosebleed seats- they weren't far away from the field, but we were sitting right next to a kid with a corn dog and he almost hit me in the nose with it. The stadium is small and intimate. So intimate that you could bring a bottle of wine and a book of poetry and share it with the first base coach.

     We were were down the third base line, and I reminded my wife to look alive when a left-handed batter comes up, in case a foul ball comes our way. I was going through my instructions on how to catch the ball. "You mean like last time?" She interrupted. There was a little incident in Scranton where a guy hit a foul pop-up that must have soared a hundred feet into the sky. It looked like it was coming our way so I prepared myself mentally, physically and spiritually to make the catch. I didn't want some little brat to elbow me out of the way and snatch it- he's only going to grow up to be my age anyway, so what's the point of letting him catch it just because he's a kid? The ball was still in the air, so I did some breathing exercises, ate two Clif Bars, recited the prayer of the Apostles' Creed and did some readings from the Torah just to be on the safe side. Then I held my hands aloft as the ball drifted gently into my hands. Unfortunately it had so much English on it that even I, who scored a 590 on the verbal section of my SAT, could not make heads nor tails of it. It caromed out of my hands, hit me in the face, knocked my sunglasses off and bounced under my wife's foot, to the audible gasps of the crowd, who had paused to watch the drama. Without implying that she knew me in any way, my wife picked up the elusive orb and handed it to me, whereupon I handed the ball to the kid with some sage words of advice which I won't repeat here.

     Other than that it's a very casual and inviting atmosphere. There are no plaques or retire
d numbers or anything like that. If you hang around the minor leagues long enough to have your number retired, it's unlikely you'd brag about it. There's a scoreboard above left field that they update once in a while, if they remember. The players' photos on the screen looked like their drivers license pictures, except for those not old enough to drive. There were only two umpires, one at home plate, and a first base umpire who had to run around the field anytime somebody got on base. If there was triple play the poor guy would have had to take oxygen in the trainer's room. The best part of the day was that everything is much cheaper here than at the big-league ballpark- I even paid for our hamburgers with Kohl's Cash.
 

FIRE ESCAPE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-30-18)

     Fire Island is one of the three barrier islands that run parallel to the southern Long Island shore. Our friends Jenn and Jeff have been going there since childhood, and they arranged an awesome summer rental right on the ocean. We were about 75 feet from the water, so you didn't even need directions to the beach. If you did, for once it wasn't the beach's fault.

      We were in the Davis Park area, and there are no cars there, not even any bicycles. Most people arrive by ferry, so you can only bring what you can haul with you. We packed as if we might be cast away on an uncharted desert isle after a three-hour tour. I've been on several three-hour tours, and after spending that much time with me, the casting away idea has come up fairly often. In case we got marooned I thought it might be a good idea to bring a professor with us, like on Gilligan's Island, someone who could fashion a transistor radio out of some sticks and berries. The only professor I know is an English professor who wouldn't know how to correctly harness the hydroelectric power from freely flowing cocktails, but could save my life if a participle was dangling right over my head. Instead we just brought a handcart full of provisions, mostly Coors Light. I know what you're going to say: Coors Light? Why, that's not an IPA. If there is a Movie Star or somebody named Mary Ann on this island, don't expect to impress them with that.

     In case I needed to impress them, I brought an actual transistor radio. I like to listen to the ballgame at the beach. You probably think that the last transistor radio transisted its last broadcast decades ago, but you'd be wrong. Somewhere in the Pacific Rim is a country whose name I can't pronounce that is on the cutting edge of vintage technology. I hear that they're inventing an 8-track cassette player for your car. I can't wait!

     When we got to the beach there was a guy digging a huge hole in the sand. It wasn't a hole so much as an excavation, and this guy was digging for hours. I never found out what the hole was for, and I had a funny thought that he had a supervisor at work who didn't care for him too much. I would have gone over there to ask him if he had a variance for this project, if I hadn't seen the shallow grave scene in "Casino" so many times. You can survive a lot longer in life by doing the exact opposite of anything Joe Pesci does in a movie.

     The water was fantastic- perfect temperature, fairly calm, waves not too big and not breaking too close or too far. I'm not a bad swimmer, but my style is just a hybrid of backstrokes designed to keep my sunglasses from falling off. That way I can check out the scenery while I keep an eye out for sharks. A shark doesn't really want to eat a human- humans are chewy, bland and you might have to spit out a belly-button ring. My friend's kid Harrison said that what they really want to eat is a seal, so don't act like a seal. He's right, and you have nobody to blame but yourself if you balance a ball on your nose and a shark attacks you while you're still in the parking lot.

     In the evening we played wiffle-ball on the beach, since no one had thought to bring any bowling shoes. I suggested that we situate the field so that that big hole was between third base and home, to make the game more interesting and to prevent anyone from scoring on a throwing error. When the game broke up we sang songs on the deck as the sun went down. All of a sudden bolts of lightning blazed across the water, and the few remaining swimmers hit the beach. My mother told me never be in the water during a thunderstorm, but I never saw one mother fish tell all the little fishlings to get out of the ocean during the storm, so how dangerous could it be?

     After a long day at the beach, I could understand why Jenn and Jeff have such wonderful memories of the place. As I drifted off to sleep I could hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore, and it reminded me of my own childhood. We never lived near the sea, but if you didn't jiggle the handle on the toilet you could hear the tide rolling in all night long.