ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-03-19)
If you live in the Northeast, why would you ever need to get on a plane to go on vacation in the summer when the Jersey Shore is right there in your back yard? It's so much nicer than my real back yard, which consists of a green-colored substance that I refer to as "grass" but others might refer to as "I can recommend a good landscaper but I can't picture this ever being a good landscape." Plus some ant hills owned by ants that can't really afford to live anywhere else. The good news is that there are no sharks that I know of. Every year we spend Father's Day weekend in Ocean City, New Jersey with my sisters, their spouses and whatever kids are around at the time. It's a great way to get together and spend time with family. Is there anything more important than that? Yes there is: Where are we going to eat for dinner?
There are about 14 of us, and they're all related to me, so draw your own conclusions. We need a restaurant that can accommodate all of us, has decent food and hasn't yet heard that I carry a retractable trick fork that extends about 30 inches so I can reach across the table and steal my niece's dinner roll. Our reputation precedes us and I just saw it go down 9th Street, so we need something on West Avenue.
Ocean City is a dry town. There's water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink of alcohol. So we have to venture back across the bridge to Somers Point if we're going to get a cocktail with dinner. It's ironic that I travel all the way from Somers to Somers Point to get a drink. The town of Somers Point was named after John Somers, the first European settler in the region. He operated a ferry that ran across the bay to Cape May County, and his grandson was Captain Richard Somers, for whom the town of Somers is named. It's doubtful that Richard Somers ever set foot in the place, but the founding fathers of this town were looking for a war hero, and World War II hadn't been invented yet. Captain Richard Somers died a hero's death when he outfitted his ship Intrepid as a floating firebomb and sailed into Tripoli Harbor to blow up the pirate ships that were blockading merchant traffic and screwing up our economy. President Thomas Jefferson could have filled you in better than I can, but the ship exploded prematurely, accomplishing its mission but killing Somers and his crew. What has this got to do with dinner? Well it took so long to explain that now I'm famished.
The next day at the amusement park, dads ride for free on Father's Day! I'm not a real Dad, it's true, but I play the role of Dad to three four-legged creatures and several five-finned ones. I'm a bit of a disciplinarian, and when I say "sit," I just sit down myself because no one else will. I can safely say that I would have made a great Dad, but if I actually had to be one it probably wouldn't be as safe.
I got ride-shamed into going on the Log Flume by my brother-in-law Paul. The ticket-taker got a little suspicious and asked which one of us was "Dad." Paul is a few years older than me so he had to suck it up and be "Dad" but he didn't look pleased about it, and I was afraid I would have to mow his lawn for a couple weeks if the ticket-taker decided to check up on us. I guess that meant my sister had to be my "Mom," my other sisters were "Aunts" and all of a sudden I was in the movie "Chinatown." By the way, I am not a thrill-seeker and even the ride with the helicopters and airplanes that doesn't have a height requirement makes me a little ill. So I would have been fine if my "Dad" wanted to throw a football around instead.
My other brother-in-law Bill said he would ride the GaleForce roller coaster, and that's something I wanted to see. It rises 125 feet into the air, then it comes back down at a 90-degree angle, and then actually goes concave on you. If you're still at all conscious you ride upside down for a while, then the ride comes to a stop for part of a second before it rolls backward to a gentle stop. Why stop there? Why don't they just launch you into outer space on a bungee cord, snap you back so that you bounce off the Earth a couple times, remove four of your teeth without anesthesia and then make you watch a Trump campaign rally? Bill rode the thing and said it was fine, although while we were talking it looked like he was re-attaching his esophagus to his epiglottis.
My wife gets me my traditional Father's Day Blizzard from Dairy Queen. Is it okay to use the word Queen anymore? There has been a lot of talk about what pronouns to use when referring to people these days, and I have some questions. My first question is, what's a pronoun again? This is National Pride Month, and the thing is, not everybody falls into the two categories of "man" and "woman" that questionnaires would like you to fit into. Guess what, they NEVER did, and now people are talking about it a little more and taking charge of their own descriptors and their own identities.
I will admit that when I first heard the term "LGBTQ" I thought it was a subway line. After a week of not getting to work on time, I realized that there was a whole world of gray areas out there, and I'm going to just sit back and let people be themselves. I'll do my part by being myself, since no one else seems willing to do it.
If you live in the Northeast, why would you ever need to get on a plane to go on vacation in the summer when the Jersey Shore is right there in your back yard? It's so much nicer than my real back yard, which consists of a green-colored substance that I refer to as "grass" but others might refer to as "I can recommend a good landscaper but I can't picture this ever being a good landscape." Plus some ant hills owned by ants that can't really afford to live anywhere else. The good news is that there are no sharks that I know of. Every year we spend Father's Day weekend in Ocean City, New Jersey with my sisters, their spouses and whatever kids are around at the time. It's a great way to get together and spend time with family. Is there anything more important than that? Yes there is: Where are we going to eat for dinner?
There are about 14 of us, and they're all related to me, so draw your own conclusions. We need a restaurant that can accommodate all of us, has decent food and hasn't yet heard that I carry a retractable trick fork that extends about 30 inches so I can reach across the table and steal my niece's dinner roll. Our reputation precedes us and I just saw it go down 9th Street, so we need something on West Avenue.
Ocean City is a dry town. There's water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink of alcohol. So we have to venture back across the bridge to Somers Point if we're going to get a cocktail with dinner. It's ironic that I travel all the way from Somers to Somers Point to get a drink. The town of Somers Point was named after John Somers, the first European settler in the region. He operated a ferry that ran across the bay to Cape May County, and his grandson was Captain Richard Somers, for whom the town of Somers is named. It's doubtful that Richard Somers ever set foot in the place, but the founding fathers of this town were looking for a war hero, and World War II hadn't been invented yet. Captain Richard Somers died a hero's death when he outfitted his ship Intrepid as a floating firebomb and sailed into Tripoli Harbor to blow up the pirate ships that were blockading merchant traffic and screwing up our economy. President Thomas Jefferson could have filled you in better than I can, but the ship exploded prematurely, accomplishing its mission but killing Somers and his crew. What has this got to do with dinner? Well it took so long to explain that now I'm famished.
The next day at the amusement park, dads ride for free on Father's Day! I'm not a real Dad, it's true, but I play the role of Dad to three four-legged creatures and several five-finned ones. I'm a bit of a disciplinarian, and when I say "sit," I just sit down myself because no one else will. I can safely say that I would have made a great Dad, but if I actually had to be one it probably wouldn't be as safe.
I got ride-shamed into going on the Log Flume by my brother-in-law Paul. The ticket-taker got a little suspicious and asked which one of us was "Dad." Paul is a few years older than me so he had to suck it up and be "Dad" but he didn't look pleased about it, and I was afraid I would have to mow his lawn for a couple weeks if the ticket-taker decided to check up on us. I guess that meant my sister had to be my "Mom," my other sisters were "Aunts" and all of a sudden I was in the movie "Chinatown." By the way, I am not a thrill-seeker and even the ride with the helicopters and airplanes that doesn't have a height requirement makes me a little ill. So I would have been fine if my "Dad" wanted to throw a football around instead.
My other brother-in-law Bill said he would ride the GaleForce roller coaster, and that's something I wanted to see. It rises 125 feet into the air, then it comes back down at a 90-degree angle, and then actually goes concave on you. If you're still at all conscious you ride upside down for a while, then the ride comes to a stop for part of a second before it rolls backward to a gentle stop. Why stop there? Why don't they just launch you into outer space on a bungee cord, snap you back so that you bounce off the Earth a couple times, remove four of your teeth without anesthesia and then make you watch a Trump campaign rally? Bill rode the thing and said it was fine, although while we were talking it looked like he was re-attaching his esophagus to his epiglottis.
My wife gets me my traditional Father's Day Blizzard from Dairy Queen. Is it okay to use the word Queen anymore? There has been a lot of talk about what pronouns to use when referring to people these days, and I have some questions. My first question is, what's a pronoun again? This is National Pride Month, and the thing is, not everybody falls into the two categories of "man" and "woman" that questionnaires would like you to fit into. Guess what, they NEVER did, and now people are talking about it a little more and taking charge of their own descriptors and their own identities.
I will admit that when I first heard the term "LGBTQ" I thought it was a subway line. After a week of not getting to work on time, I realized that there was a whole world of gray areas out there, and I'm going to just sit back and let people be themselves. I'll do my part by being myself, since no one else seems willing to do it.
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