A Message From Beyond

I mentioned, back in April, that my mom passed last September. Before that happened, there was a spooky little occurrence that I’d like to tell you about. (I’ll come back to current events and the latest political atrocities next week.)

In the weeks before passing, she’d been bedridden, either asleep or highly medicated. When awake, she didn’t always make a lot of sense, but would have occasional bouts of lucidity, holding conversation as if it were just another Wednesday in the parlor.

About three days before she passed, my brother was sitting beside her bed as she slept. On his cell phone, he received a text from his son, Sam, then a sophomore at Penn State, saying that he had been turned down for the fraternity he’d been trying to join. My brother never said a word, nor was his phone within Mom’s view.

Then suddenly, and quite clearly, Mom said, “I wonder how he’s going to handle the rejection,” before resuming her sleep.

My brother said he got chills up and down his body. He was astounded, as was I, when he told me about it. But that was completely in character for Mom. She always was a little “mystical.” She loved her crystals, horoscopes, lunar calendars, and such. So this didn’t exactly come out of left field.

I guess moms really do know everything their kids are up to. That “third eye” is real! Perhaps the door to the otherworld really does open a bit when one is at the end.

Mom at her 75^th birthday party, making good use of her magic wand.

Mom

I lost my mother last September. She was 86. She was also a teacher, poet, and whiskey drinker.

When I lost my dad, back in September of 2021, it was a much different situation. He was hit by a stroke, out of the blue, and then he was gone. He was almost 83, and I was sure he’d be around well into his 90s because he had been in great shape.

Mom had a much tougher path. She’d taken a couple of falls since Dad passed, and they really messed her up. By the end, she was in chronic pain and had to be heavily medicated. She spent her last two months with home hospice care, dependent on others to get to the bathroom and move from chair to bed. It was an undignified life, and she hated that; hated being a bother to anyone. So when she passed, it was really a blessing because her suffering was over.

So now my brother, sister, and I are 60-year-old orphans.

I can’t complain because we’ve had a good run. So many people lose one or more parents early in life, so we made out. I hope my retirement is half as good as theirs was. But still, over the last several months, things would happen in my life, and I’d itch to tell Mom about them, and it would come back to me that she was gone, leaving me nothing to do with my news. She loved to hear stories about the latest thing the dog did, or how our kitchen renovation was going. I guess I never outgrew the phase where I want to tell my parents about something I did and get their approval.

Anyway, we had her Celebration of Life last Saturday, and a slew of relatives came to Baltimore from Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, California, and North Carolina to enjoy lunch, some drinks, and tell stories and remembrances about Mom.

2016

This was my presentation:

Once upon a time, a traveling entertainer was on the road and came across a beautiful kingdom. He asked the first person he saw to direct him to the palace, so he could request an audience with the king and ask about landing a performing gig there.

Eventually, he was shown to an ornate chamber where the king and queen sat high on their thrones. Brought before the royal couple, he realized that the spotty road food he’d eaten earlier had left him uncontrollably gassy, and he loudly passed some of it before he could even begin.

The king was greatly offended and thundered, “How dare you fart before my queen?”

To which, the entertainer replied, “I’m sorry, Your Grace, I didn’t know it was her turn!”

 

That was one of the first jokes my mom ever taught me. She knew that potty jokes always landed with grade-school boys. So she provided me enough material to kill on the playground for years to come. That was helpful because when you’re always the new kid and you’re not the biggest or toughest, it’s good to be funny. She also inspired in me a love of wordplay, which I’ve used to torment my friends and family ever since.

I’ve always said that I’m a combination of both my parents. Some things I got from Dad were the need for things to make sense and call Bullshit when it doesn’t, the will to mess with people just for fun, and an enhanced sense of practicality.

From Mom, I inherited much different set of personality traits.

The first was a need to create via writing. I never had Mom’s gift for poetry, but I picked up journaling from her, which fed my need to chronicle and catalog everything in my life, like a born scorekeeper. Like, it’s not worth doing if you can’t record it and tell someone about it later.

And with writing came her family’s knack for storytelling. Her father and brother were two of the masters, and Mom carried on the tradition, regaling us with the family stories from her childhood and on. Modern life doesn’t provide us with as many one-on-one storytelling opportunities as it used to, so I turned to writing and eventually blogging to tell my stories.

Mom was my first editor, from book reports to research papers, and all I ever wanted to hear was, “That’s fine, turn it in as is.”

Now, I never, EVER, heard that. And remember that all of this was back before the internet or even onscreen word processing. I had to use a manual typewriter, and it wasn’t until college that I got to use a fancy electric one. So, anything more than a small misspelling meant that I’d have to type the whole damned thing over again. Sometimes we’d go round and round about a correction. It took a while before I realized that she was always right about those things, and it would have been easier on me if I had just gotten started on the retyping.

I remember once I mailed Mom a short story I’d written up, and that Sunday when I called for feedback, Dad answered the phone. I asked where Mom was, and he told me she was out, shopping for more red pens.

That was probably just Dad messing with me, but I couldn’t be certain.

Another gift from Mom was that of political activism, idealism, and the pursuit of social justice. I learned empathy from her and to try to leave the world better than I found it. Again, that’s another thing that surfaced in my more recent writing. Mom was my biggest fan and usually the first commenter, right up until she could no longer use an iPad.

Sometimes, still, in these last few months, I’d do up an essay and think, “Mom will really like this one… oh yeah...shit.”

Not only was she our mom, but she often acted as a backup, auxiliary Mom to the rest of the Neighborhood. All of my closest friends knew that when they were having troubles at home, they could come by for some comfort and a hot meal. Especially on Friday nights, when everyone knew they could find a crockpot full of mac n cheese. That was Mom’s specialty. My buddies would go on about its savory qualities, describing everything from the aroma to the ~pfffft~ sound it made when you broke the top layer.

And then there were the Morning-After-Barn-Party detox sessions. I’d crawl down from my room and survey all the human wreckage sitting around the kitchen table… blankets around their shoulders, hair all messed up, and Mom plying them with coffee and hot homemade cinnamon rolls. We’d reconstruct the night by playing another game of I Did What? Mom would just be over there shaking her head in exasperation.

Sadly, the Crock Pot Mac n Cheese came to an end during the time Mom was staying with us. Mom was always saying, “What can I do? What can I do?” Mostly it was just “Get out of the way, get out of the way,” but sometimes Sweetpea would ask her to make a batch of mac n cheese, which Mom was only too happy to do.

Then one night, as I dug into a big helping, it tasted a bit off. I couldn’t quite place the ingredient, so I tried some more. Still not right. Then Sweetpea took a bite, scrunched up her face, and asked Mom, “What did you put in this?”

Mom said, “Just some olive oil,” and pointed to the bottle of dish soap on the counter.

Meanwhile, I was still poking around my plate, trying to find a place that didn’t have as much soap in it. I just couldn’t stand having to dump the whole batch, but it had to be done. And that’s when we figured it was time to retire Mom’s wooden spoon, which as my brother and I fully remember, she could wield like a ninja when we needed our foolishness to end.

At my parents’ 50^th anniversary event, Dad explained that there were two reasons they’d been married for so long. For one, he traveled a lot. And the other was that he married an angel. When it was Mom’s turn, she stood and said, “Everything he said is true,” then sat back down.

I think she might well have been an angel, or at least as close as we humans get. We're fortunate that we’ve been able to stand in her light as long as we have. I know we’re all better people for having had her in our lives. May her spirit live on through us.

2013

Let There Be Light

A lot went on last week. The Iran War dragged on, with various accounts of whether there was a win, talks were going on, talks were never going on, the “decimated” Iran air defenses were active enough to shoot down two of our jets, we successfully retrieved the pilots, the Attorney General was fired, and the president sent out a profane Easter message to all, with a shout out to Allah. Just another week in the life. But what’s really important is that I fixed something around the house. Now that I’m retired, I’m going to have to do a lot more of that.

My dad wasn’t much of a “fix-it” guy. He could do some basic stuff, but was never one of those toolbox and workshop types. So I never inherited the home repair gene. Granted, I’ve spent most of my adult life as an apartment dweller, so there wasn’t much I ever needed to do, aside from changing bulbs, hanging a few pictures, or hooking up TV cable and stereo equipment. I can also build the occasional piece of furniture from a kit, like end tables or dressers. I assembled our giant entertainment center some 30-odd years ago, which took me two days. But for stuff like plumbing, painting, or electrical, I always stand aside and let the professionals take over.

My oldest buddies are most definitely certified DIYers, but they live a couple of states away. They’re not much practical use, but I do get to regale them with my tales of Bluz the Incompetent Handyman. I should have probably kept my yap shut about it over the years, but I trade the teasing for the priceless look on their faces when I tell them of the latest thing I fucked up.

Like the time I was trying to hang curtain rods in a new apartment. I had just moved out after separating from my first wife, back in the late 90s. I borrowed her electric screwdriver and was desperately trying to sink a couple of screws into a window frame. The frame was soft pine, but no matter how hard I grunted and pressed, the screw would not bite. After about 20 minutes or so, I examined the electric screwdriver a little more closely and noticed it was set to retract, so no matter how hard I pressed, it wouldn’t sink because it was turning the wrong way. (D’oh!)

I didn’t set it that way, but my mistake was assuming that it was set correctly when the Ex gave it to me. Once I flipped the switch, I was done with the curtains in about ten minutes. I had to call my buddies that night to tell them the story; it was just too good to keep to myself.

Now, to the most recent endeavor, the on/off switch to the bathroom light broke Saturday night. We figured it should be a simple matter of buying a new switch and swapping it out. I was also keen to replace the electrical outlet beside it, which was still the original piece from when the house was built in 1959. It looked like this:

The problem was that it’s not wired for modern 3-prong plugs. And unfortunately, three-prong outlets are all we could find at the local hardware store. I was pretty sure I could handle swapping out the on/off switch, but I didn’t want to start messing around with more in-depth wiring issues, so we decided to table that part and just ride with the plugs as is, because they at least still work.

Now, I haven’t worked with electrical wiring since I was a junior high student, and built a hot dog cooker by banging two nails through a piece of wood, splitting a cord from an old iron, and wiring one side to each nail. (Put the hot dog on the nails, and the part between the nails will cook in a matter of seconds. Try that at your kid’s science fair!) So the fact that I was even attempting something like this was daunting. But I figured, I’d open up the panel, take a look around, and if it was any more than taking wires off one thing and putting them on another identical thing, I’d bail and call the experts. Otherwise, I’d take a shot.

So, the first order of business was to find the circuit breaker to shut off the power to the bathroom. That took a little trial and error because while our fuse box had labels for each breaker, none of them said “bathroom.” But we found it.

I swear, even though I KNEW there was no juice, it was still nerve-wracking poking around in there. I knew that any minute, I'd get a big shock and Sweetpea would be able to see my entire skeletal system. (OK, maybe I should have watched more YouTube tutorials and fewer cartoons.)

Ultimately, it looked like something I could handle. I only needed to disconnect the two black wires from the screws (on each side) and reattach them to a new switch capsule, then screw the whole unit back into the wall and replace the cover plate.

And that’s what I did. It took about 15 minutes in full. Sweetpea ran downstairs to turn the breaker back on, and when tested, both switches worked as they should.

Then it was time for celebration. We threw our hands up, and she said, “You have created light!”

I said, “Now bring me your finest meats and cheeses!”

With that, I reviewed my mental checklist for the event:

Replace the switch capsule          ☑

Don’t black out the house         ☑

Don’t start a fire                       ☑

Don’t electrocute yourself        ☑

Don’t fuck it up                         ☑

Meats and cheeses                         ☑

 

Dirty Pool

I’ve got vacation coming up next week for our annual trip to the shore. We don’t take a lot of trips, and this is our one time a year to do something nice. Sweetpea and I have stayed at one particular hotel for the last five years because it has exactly what we want: a central location, free breakfast, an on-site tiki bar, a nice pool, and a balcony for watching the sunset over the water.

A sunset from last year.

Every year, it’s a big song and dance to arrange our departure; I make reservations in January and file for my time off, Sweetpea has to finish with school (teaching), and make dog-sitting arrangements.

Last Tuesday, I got an email from Hilton, confirming my reservation. But there was a little note included that dropped the bottom out of my stomach. It said that the pool would be closed during the entire month of June.

This, I knew, would not go over well. Sweetpea is a “pool” fanatic. If it were solely up to her, we’d have a pool in our tiny L-shaped backyard. She is all about vacationing at a site with a pool.

And I was right, this news went over like Al Sharpton at a MAGA rally. Sweetpea was ready to chuck the whole vacation if we couldn’t get a place with a pool. Sure, the beach is right there, but that’s more of a “stay for a couple of hours, then go” kind of thing. Plus, it’s a pain to schlep all the stuff with us… umbrella, chairs, blankets, towels, drinks, etc. The pool is the hub for our vacation life, whether we’re reading a book in front of it or floating around in it. And it’s right out the back door; no schlepping required.

I’ve already paid for an upfront, non-refundable reservation, so I’m not eating that without a fight. I knew I’d have to call the hotel in the morning to see what relief they might provide. I know the cost was non-refundable, but they moved the cheese! The pool was front and center on the hotel website when I booked it in January. I hoped our loyalty over the last 5 years would count for something. Last year, we had a small squabble over our room. (I say I booked one size, they said otherwise.) They mentioned that if I’d have booked through their website, as opposed to the banking and travel site I used, they would have some wiggle room. Lesson learned, I booked this year on their site, so I was expecting some of that wiggle room they dangled in front of us before.

I needed to call and see if they could either (in order of preference) find us a comparable place with one of their sister properties (there were 5 more in the area, but only two had an outdoor pool and one was sold out), refund our money so I could look elsewhere, or reschedule our reservations to later in the summer.

I was awake for 20 minutes in bed that night, trying to get straight in my head what I wanted to say. I was dreading the call, afraid I’d get too pissy with them. And it was a legit concern because I’m totally pissed off that a well-regarded property like this, in a well-known vacation site, would close their pool during prime season! It’s not like this is a pass-through like some Motel 6 in Peoria. This is a destination site in a resort town. The pool is a major component.

It’s always been my nature to respond to a fire by throwing gas on it, but I hoped I could remain calm and tactful. Being a dick never helps a high-emotion situation.

I didn’t want to talk to their main booking site; I needed someone in that building. Luckily, I still had the front desk number in my phone, after an incident from two years ago, when Sweetpea and I got locked out on the balcony. All the numbers I could Google from the balcony turned up the main reservations line; it took some digging to find the front desk, so I put it in my contacts list. (Yes, they got into the room and let us back in, with minimal embarrassment. But that was a close call. Our drinks were empty out there.)

So, once I had a break in my morning schedule, I called the front desk and told them I had reservations for next week but there’s a problem: my confirmation email said the pool was closed, and asked if that true?

She said, “Well, yes… the INDOOR pool…”

[Weight of the world lifts off shoulders]

“Well then,” I said, “I guess we don’t have a problem after all! KThankyoubye…”

We don’t give two shits about the indoor pool, that’s where all the screaming kids tend to congregate.

So now we’re back in business. We don’t have to rearrange our schedules or get used to a new venue, and I don’t have to boycott their chain for the rest of my life.

Wish us luck. Sorry you can’t come along. Please try to keep the world from burning down until we get back!

Thunderstruck

We pause this series of spleen-venting posts about the impending end of this free Republic to bring you something completely off-topic. It’s the same old stuff going on week after week anyway, isn’t it? This week we have a new pope. I saw a post from MAGA wingnut Laura Loomer vehemently complaining about Pope Bob. All I can say is that if MAGA hates him, then that’s probably the best-case scenario I can expect. Meanwhile…

I’ve never made it a secret that I’ve been an AC/DC fanatic ever since the early 80s. They’re my favorite band by far, and I’ve been jamming to them since I first saw the concert movie, “Let There Be Rock.” Seeing the phenomenon known as Angus Young in action was life-changing for me. I’ve seen them five times before, from 1985 to 1996. So when I saw that their latest tour was going to Pittsburgh, I figured it was time to act. 

OK, to be honest, the only "action" I took was to plant the seed in my brother’s head (he who first brought AC/DC records into the house) that maybe we should round up his boys and go see the show. He did the rest, securing us tickets and hotel accommodations. (Thanks, bro!) Going to the show tonight in Landover, MD, would have been closer to us here in Baltimore, but we have family in The Burgh, so that made it a much more attractive trip.

The concert was to be in the football stadium downtown, a venue with which we are quite familiar. We stayed at the Sheraton at Station Square, across the river from the stadium. After landing in town and soaking up a little South Side* ambiance (and beer), we took the Gateway Clipper (ferry), which dropped us off outside the gate.

* "Sah-side" to the locals.

I was pleased as I could be with our tickets, not because they were the closest, but because they were in the first row of the second tier, meaning there would never be someone standing up in front of me, so I needn’t stand either. (These old knees aren’t what they used to be.) We had the same deal when we saw Springsteen last September. 

This was our vantage point:

It was an interesting crowd, definitely older than what I used to see at an AC/DC show. And I was pleased to see that a lot of the old folks were there with their kids. In fact, I sat beside a very nice mid-40s woman who was there with her mother. I had a great time yapping with them and trading concert experiences before show time.

We never got out there in time to see the opening act, so I have nothing to say about them. But as expected, AC/DC went on at the stroke of 8:30. Too bad they didn’t make a big entrance like they used to. When I’d seen them before, they usually had a big stunt or effect to get things going. This time, they just ran a video intro, followed by the band moseying onto the stage.

In the prior week, I looked up their set list for prior stops on the tour and learned that they didn’t deviate much. So I knew what to expect for the night, and it panned out that way exactly.

Now, two main issues were apparent. (And also expected, due to the preponderance of video on YouTube from the tour so far. The first was the State of the Angus.

Yes, Angus Young is old now, 70 to be exact. So there was no way he would match the energy and raw mania that marked his 20s and 30s. But goddamn, he still got around pretty well for such an old guy. He didn’t run around as much, and only did his trademarked “duck-walk” maybe a half-dozen times. But it was still there and always in the right place.

The other issue is Brian Johnson’s voice. It was still there, but we couldn’t really gauge the quality because the vocals were so far down in the mix. If we didn’t already know all the words, we’d have no idea what he was singing.

The photo looks like black and white because that’s how the video was designed for Back in Black.

But ultimately, it didn’t matter because the crowd was all-in on participation. I know I was singing my face off along with everyone else, especially during the big choruses of Highway to Hell, You Shook Me, Dirty Deeds, and all the “Oi’s” of TNT. I was surprised I still had a voice in the morning.

The good thing about knowing the set list was that I could pick the perfect times to nip out and take a leak. (And with all the pre-show beer, there was a lot to leak!)

There will always be songs you wish they’d play but didn’t, especially for a band with as many albums out as AC/DC does. But there are also “locks,” which you KNOW they’ll play, like (aside from the ones mentioned above) Shoot to Thrill, Thunderstruck, Let There Be Rock, and my favorite, Whole Lotta Rosie. But they played six songs I’d never heard them play before: If You Want Blood (opener), Demon Fire, and Shot in the Dark (two new ones), Have a Drink on Me, Stiff Upper Lip, Rock & Roll Train, and old classic Riff Raff (from Powerage, 1977).

As always, they finished the initial set with Let There Be Rock, which ended in a 17-minute guitar solo, with Angus working out on the end of his runway and being raised high overhead on an accordioning platform, finishing to bursts of confetti. My rock musician cousin, who was there with us, said that was his favorite part. For me, I’d prefer they trim the long-ass solo and play a couple more songs. I’d recommend Shake Your Foundations and Flick of the Switch, from their mid-80s albums (from which they never play anymore).

For the obligatory encores, they opened with TNT and closed with For Those About to Rock, cannons and all.

The cannons rolled up from above the drum riser.

They also had a set of differently-styled cannons on each side.

We bugged out during the last of the cannon fire, missing the fireworks show, but that was a small price to pay for not getting trapped in the aisles, waiting for everyone above you to file out. We got back to the ferry in good time so we could relax with another beer on the way back to Station Square.

I’d seen two other AC/DC shows with my brother, in ’85 and ’88, but I was especially happy with this experience because my two nephews got to go. They’d been hearing our stories all their lives, and while they’ve seen many videos, nothing is like being there.

I don’t know if this is the band’s last tour or not. I would hope they hang it up before they become a joke. I know it would still draw, but I just couldn’t see them all sitting up there on stools, playing an acoustic show. It may work for the Eagles, but they’re a different kind of band.

I’ve gotten to meet a lot of different musicians, back when I was in the record store business, but I never got to meet anyone from AC/DC. I’d love to grab a minute with Angus and let him know just how important he and his band have been to my family and me. His music was the soundtrack to every Barn Party we ever threw. It’s hard to boil so much content down to a quick pleasantry, while posing for selfies, but I think I’d tell him this:

“I’ve probably gotten more pleasure from your right hand than I have from my own!”

Hell, he hung out for years with the mischievous Bon Scott, I’m sure he’d take it in the spirit with which it was offered.

This is the set list from Minneapolis, which exactly matched the Pittsburgh set.

 

The Traveling Christmas Show

Happy Christmas, my friend. Hope you're happy and well as we dive headfirst into the big holiday week. Whatever it is you celebrate, I hope you have a joyous one.

All my life, Christmas was a happy but chaotic time of year.

The Traveling Christmas Show

Christmas was always such a busy time, growing up. When we were little and still living in Pittsburgh, it was such a flurry of activity having our own Christmas and then heading off to both grandparents’ places. I know it was all pretty hard on my parents but as kids, we loved it! Three Christmas extravaganzas of cookies, good food, presents and cookies! Lots of cousins to play with! And did I mention the cookies?

My grandpa on my Dad's side always took movies… the old 8mm silent kind and he always used a movie light; a big, brilliant, blinding, white light. It was so bright we could barely open our eyes wide enough to see what we were opening. Then when it was over, he’d turn it off and the room would seem positively cave-like and we’d spend the next 10 minutes walking into things until our eyes adjusted. Too bad the camera was off by then… this footage would have been much more entertaining.

In later years, my aunt had those movies knocked off onto VHS. It was funny then to see essentially the same movie over and over again but with the characters aging by a year each time.

Hey, there’s a bunch of blinded kids opening presents...

Oh, look at the baby surrounded by wrapping paper...

Look who's coming in the door... Say hi!

Now it’s dinner time… there’s the table. Look at all the food.

Everybody wave… annnnd CUT!

Now it’s the next Christmas… look at the same blinded kids, eww, what are they wearing?

There’s another baby…

It's them again, coming in the door...

And on it goes…

It was agonizing to see myself going through all the horrid fashions of the 1970’s.

Several years of plaid pants… Auuuugh!

The "Saturday Night Fever" year of silk shirt and necklace… Gack!

The "Urban Cowboy" year with a freakin’ cowboy hat with a wrap-around feather the size of a vulture’s ass! Who did I think I was, Charlie Daniels?

Nevertheless, it was cool seeing my cousins growing up right before my eyes. In fact, we only got to see the cousins in yearly increments anyway, once we left The Burgh. (I was 6.) As the first-born of two firstborns, I was the alpha cousin and in later years, it was up to me to maintain order among the kids. That is where my high school class ring came in very handy. I learned from my dad just how powerful a good backhand flick of the ring was. In fact, I think I still have an ornate, backward “D” on the top of my skull from his Duquesne ring.

Once we moved away from Pittsburgh, my siblings and I got to enjoy a new Christmas perk… Christmas a week early! The weekend before Christmas, we’d have our own celebration and do the stockings, presents and the whole sha-bang. Then we’d travel to Pittsburgh for the actual holiday and make the Grandparental rounds.

The trip was always hell, especially when we were coming from Chicago (the furthest from which we had to travel; three bored, punchy little kids, fighting their seat belts and each other, trying to listen to a scratchy AM radio. Mom still smoked back then so we had regular noxious gas intervals. She’d crack the window, thinking the smoke would go out. Unfortunately, it was mostly the freezing air rushing in to spread the carcinogens around.

But it was all worth it when we got to my grandparents’ place for the best meal of the year: The Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes. It’s an Italian thing. There would be fried smelts and shrimp, fish fillets, heaps of pasta, plus chicken, wedding soup, and Lord knows how much other savory stuff. I’d eat until I couldn't move.

Later in the evening, after the dishes were cleared and the olives, celery, and cookies were put out, Grandma would break out the Bingo game. They used to play Bingo in the old days to kill time before midnight mass, but by this time they weren't going to the late mass anymore. Grandma would save up change all year for us to use for Bingo and we’d have the big family Bingo showdown.

I always liked it because it was something that the kids and grownups played together. Although one year that led to some not-very-kid-friendly terminology getting thrown out after a long, tension-filled game:

Cousin: BINGO!!!

My mom: Oh HORSESHIT!!

God Rest Ye Merry Merchantmen
Years later when I was all grown up and managing a record store in Cleveland, the holidays were brutal. From the beginning of November through the middle of January, to quote retail legend Al Bundy, it was like “one long month… Helluary.”

As a store manager, I’d be working 12-16 hour days. The place would be mobbed… just accounting for all the money was practically a full-time job. (I do admit that it's quite a sight to see all that bundled cash sitting on the desk, awaiting deposit.) We would be so busy, I’d go home and collapse in bed and have dreams that I was still at work, tending the register and clearing customers. I’d wake up and be like, “Fuuuuck! I can’t even escape with sleep!)

I didn’t have any family in Cleveland. The closest kin I had were in Pittsburgh. So when we’d finally get permission to close up on Christmas Eve, usually around 5:30 or 6:00, I’d shut it all down, bolt for the car, and bust ass down the turnpike for Pittsburgh.

I’d get to Grandma and Grandpa’s house about 9:00 or so and Grandma would have soup on the stove and sandwich fixin’s ready. Grandpa would appear with a cold Iron City Light. After the meal, Grandma would tell me that when she heard I was coming, she got some Klondikes for me, which at the time, could only be obtained in Pittsburgh. They were always my favorite treat as a kid. 

I hope she knew how much those Christmas Eves meant to me. It was like an oasis of comfort in a sea of aggravation. After a month of retail chaos, it was great to be able to settle into a big easy chair, chat with my grandparents, and just… breathe…

It was home, sweet home.

Apocalypse Pretty Soon

Well, our vacation was quite fine, thank you very much for asking. We visited Ocean City MD for the week and sat on the beach or by the pool every day, read a couple books, and visited various bars and restaurants. Then between 7:30 and 8:00, we’d adjourn to our balcony to have some drinks, play some music, and watch the sun set over the bay.

Best show in town!

Wednesday night we got to watch a storm roll in, which gave us quite a different show.

We decided to pull the chairs in behind the sliding door and watch the rain pour from our nice, dry, room. Sweetpea’s idea. And that kept the chairs dry for the next morning.

The trip wasn’t without incident though. I had some trouble checking in because the room I ordered and what they received were two different things. I went around and around with the front desk people but to no avail. They explained that if I hadn’t used a travel site to book the room, they’d have the leeway to at least reimburse me for the downgrade on the room. (I used my bank’s travel site to get extra travel points. I won’t be doing that again.)

But the main tragedy was when we wheeled our bags and supplies into our room with the hotel cart. As we hit the bump between the carpeted hallway and our room’s tiled floor, the bag containing two unopened 1.75L bottles of vodka fell off and one of them smashed. Oh, the humanity!

The other tragedy was Thursday night when we watched the debate. Damn, was THAT ever a let-down. I thought Joe would show a little more life than that… I kept waiting for him to use his favorite debate tactic where he lures you in by speaking softly, then BAM, he’s thundering with outrage and raining verbal bombs. But it never showed up.

Meanwhile, TFG was his usual self. It’s no wonder he famously refuses to prepare for debates. There’s no reason for any prep at all. He just spews forth about how everything he did was great and whatever Biden did was the worst of all time, and lob baseless accusations. It’s the kind of thing any kid on the playground can do. There’s no need to remember facts or statistics when you just make shit up! And who cares about what questions the moderators ask when you don’t intend to answer them in the first place. The MAGAs would rather see him look forceful in telling lies than quietly telling the truth.

I came to learn the next day that what TFG did is known as a "Gish Gallop."

If that isn't the very definition of what TFG does during debates and interviews, I don't know what is.

In addition to his stutter and a cold, Biden had to carry the burden of remembering actual facts and figures. Bringing up data like that upon demand in front of the nation is not an easy thing for anyone to do, let alone an octogenarian.

But what really bugged me was that there was so much meat left on the table. There were some great arguments and rebuttals to be made but he never brought them up, no matter how loudly I was yelling them at the TV.

To that end, Sweetpea wished she’d packed a tranquilizer gun to use on me as I paced around the room. I just couldn’t sit still as I saw all the headlines for the week being written about how the President froze up or mumbled, with hardly a mention of the fact-free blithering from the challenger.

While I really wished Biden’s showing was better, I take comfort in the fact that face-to-face debates have nothing to do with being president. It’s really just a campaign appearance.

Presidents don’t sit down to have a standardized debate with foreign leaders, or even the domestic ones. They all get together, experts and advisers present information, the President discusses it with everyone and he gives direction on what he’d like as the next course of action.

He’s already done the job for three and a half years and I think his performance has been wildly underrated. The fact that Democrats have gotten as much as they have, (with things like the infrastructure bill) with a split Congress is nothing short of miraculous. I have every confidence he can do the job; he just won’t necessarily look flashy while doing it.

And if the stakes couldn’t get any higher, today the Supreme Court issued its latest travesty in finding that the President has at least partial immunity on actions taken while in office. This decision destroys the last shred of impartiality the high court might have claimed and creates a King out of what is supposed to be a public servant. The platitude that no man is above the law has been decimated for generations, thanks to The Federalist Society and their willing proxies, the Republican Party.

Even schoolchildren know that rules have to be applied equally or else it’s “no fair.” And this is exactly how TFG considers the concept of fairness… if he’s not allowed to stomp on the rules and do whatever he wants, it’s somehow “unfair” to him.

I’m sure there will be more in-depth analysis to come and I’m hoping this decision is not as bad as it seems at the outset. But I don’t think there can be any clearer signal that Republicans have to be stopped NOW, and resoundingly. It’s not just TFG, it’s the whole team. Nothing that they seek benefits the non-rich, the non-evangelical, and non-sexist/racist/xenophobic. And they’re not going to change until the People demand it.

And even then, they’ll just hide their intentions again and run on some other populist message that doesn’t cost anything to the donor class.

Adding to attacking reproductive freedom, overturning reasonable healthcare access, cutting Social Security and every other safety net program, opposing drug price negotiation for Medicare, and tax cuts for the rich, Democrats need to hang this new thing around their Republican opponents’ necks and call them out at every opportunity.

A stuttering president is the least of this country’s problems.

Floaters - Round Two

With the success of my first surgery for eye floaters (aka a “vitrectomy”) two months ago, I was eager to get the other eye done. And this time, there would be no need for an air bubble to be injected and then dissipate over the next 10 days. (They had to do that the first time, to protect an area of the retina I’d already had repaired.) I expected I’d be able to see clearly again, right away. When I went back for my 1-month follow-up, I practically did cartwheels when they told me they could get me in to do the other eye the next week.

I should have known better.

The surgery went even more smoothly this time than it did the last. There was no long wait beforehand so I was in and out in 90 minutes, again with a plastic guard taped over my eye.

When I went back the next day to get the bandages and shield removed, I had fairly decent rudimentary sight. It was hard to tell because they had to dilate me again. But I could at least get several lines on the eye chart.

That night, as I was watching TV, I experimented a bit. With my right eye, it looked like I was watching HDTV, with everything crisp and clear. With the newly repaired left, it was like watching an old, non-HD TV. Not perfect, but serviceable. Considering this was the day after surgery, I was thrilled.

Then Friday happened.

Overnight, I noticed that whenever I moved my eye around, I was getting light flashes, like lightning. It wasn’t something uncommon; that happened a lot following my three prior eye surgeries. So I wasn’t panicking yet. But in the morning, when I took off the sleep guard, my previously serviceable-but-a-bit-blurry world was replaced by a mass of indistinct color. I could not recognize anything I looked at with that eye, other than maybe an outline.

OK, now it was time to panic.

I tried to contact my doctor’s office but all I could get was an impenetrable voicemail tree. Once I remembered to try to “jimmy the system” by pressing “0”, I got a live person and was able to make an appointment for later that morning. Sweetpea was at school and unreachable, so luckily my brother was gracious enough to give me a ride. I sure as hell couldn’t drive.

The doctors gave me the once-over and determined that I’d lost pressure in that eye overnight and the eye had “deflated” a bit. (Picture a football with about a third of the air let out.) They prescribed some more eye drops and set up another appointment for the next Wednesday.

I’d already been using some of the drops but now the regimen was changed: 6 daily drops of the anti-swelling agent, 4 daily drops of a steroid, and 2 daily drops of a dilating fluid. I had to create a spreadsheet just to sort out all the dosing times.

That was the Friday before Memorial Day. Over the long weekend, I started to see some changes. By Monday, I could see that there was a face on the front of a head, not just a pink blob. But there was more. There were also some vertical lines that looked like green tally marks blocking my focus point, so I was unable to read anything. If I stared long enough, the green would disappear but there was still an obstruction, like reading through blurred glass.

The biggest problem seemed to be that all the straight lines I could see… wall corners, doorways, tabletops… were all wavy like they were designed by a kid with an old grade-school compass. Or maybe Picasso.

Looking out at our slatted backyard fence, the slats were bending every which way, like they were guarding a haunted house.

By the following Wednesday's appointment, that was my primary problem. The pressure was back to normal and I could make out some lines on the eye chart (when I looked through the thing with the holes in it, like a colander), but otherwise, it looked like I was stuck living in the movie Beetlejuice.

The doctor was able to show me a good visual of what was wrong. He said that the lining of the eye contracted and wrinkled at the loss of pressure. But it would take time for the wrinkles to “iron out” now with the pressure back to normal. Showing me this helped:

This is a scan of the affected eye. The top image is from after the surgery, the bottom is before it.

See the wavy lines running through the “after” picture? That’s what’s causing the problem. When the lining is smooth, you get an accurate reflection of the world around you. But wavy lining functions like a funhouse mirror and bends the image every which way.

Doc said that this after-affect usually only happens after glaucoma surgery, not what I had. In fact, he said he’d never seen it before following a vitrectomy. Said the odds of this happening were like 100-1.

Lucky me.

When I went back the next week, I could do a little better on the eye chart, but still had the full-on funhouse mirror effect. He said he expected the waves to dissipate over the next several weeks to a couple of months.

There looked like some progress on the scans though:

The top is the newest scan, the bottom is from the previous week

You can see that the lines have smoothed out a bit so there’s some improvement physically, but not much practically.

At this point, all I can do is be patient, because it has to heal itself. He said there are no surgeries to correct it, nor eyeglasses that will compensate. So I just have to sit here and wait to get better while contemplating a possible lifetime of being one-eyed.

Around the house, I can get by. It’s frustrating, but I can function. What I can’t do is DRIVE, and that’s what frustrates me the most. I hate having to depend on others to get around. When I look out at the road, from the front seat of a car, it looks like what I used to see back when I was a college student, driving home from a late night at the bars. I was lucky I found my way home in one piece during those nights. I don’t think that will make a good “new normal.”

I do know that it’s not illegal to drive with one eye, as long as you pass a test. I have to figure out whether it’s better to have wavy but wider vision, or wear a patch and have 20/20, but no peripheral vision to my left.

So I’ll just have to be patient and see what comes next, while I contemplate the nagging question, “Why the hell didn’t I just learn to live with the goddamned floaters?

Floaters: The Eyes Have It

Late in 2019, I wrote about developing floaters in my right eye, in conjunction with cataracts. I had cataract surgery the following January but was told I should just “get used to” having the floaters. There was surgery available, but they were reluctant to take the risk. They said it was “low risk, but not no risk.”

So I adapted to looking through what looked like a twirling red spider web. Then, last December I developed floaters in my left eye as well. Trying to read anything, especially against a white background, (or watch hockey) was difficult and frustrating, like reading through a jellyfish. At that point, I began pursuing the surgical remedy for floaters, called a “Vitrectomy.”

This is a procedure where they use a laser to cut the floaters away from the inner lining of the eyeball, then drain out the floating material and eyeball fluid (aka Vitreous Fluid), and replace it.

Yeesh!

Yes, it skeeves me out too. Whenever one thinks about eye surgery, the mind conjures up images like from this old ad for Thorazine:

I wonder how much Thorazine this ad ever sold. Seems counter-productive to me to terrify your prospective customers.

But I just had my right eye done last Wednesday so I’m here to tell you about it and try to provide some insight (heh) on the experience. Many web resources tell you what it is, but I didn’t see any that told you what it’s like to go through it.

For me, the scheduling was half the battle. My original surgery date was 3/27 but about two weeks before that, they called and said the doctor wouldn’t be in that day (then why schedule me in the first place?) and bumped it to 4/10, two weeks later. This was a kick in the head because the original date was perfect. Sweetpea (a schoolteacher) would be on spring break that week, so she wouldn’t have to make arrangements and write Sub Plans to cover her absence while she took me to and from my appointments. (They do a follow-up appointment the day after surgery, and then again a week later.) But after the postponement, she would have to do all the extra work. (Which she did, because she’s such a good wife!)

I was also required to get a pre-op physical, to ensure I was fit enough to undergo the surgery. (It was the same for my cataract surgery.) I was due for one in another couple of months anyway, so this one wouldn’t go to waste.

As with all the surgeries I’ve had in the past, there was a strict “No eating or drinking” edict to be followed from midnight until “go time.” That’s usually a piece of cake, but this appointment wasn’t until noon, so I wouldn't be allowed to eat all morning nor have my customary iced tea. On the bright side, I’d get to have a post-op feast!

So we arrived about 10 minutes early, checked in, and then sat on our thumbs for the next hour. Obviously, we were scheduled for their convenience and not ours. I understand it though. They had a lot of other patients rolling through there and dealing with latecomers would jam up the whole system.

They took me in around 1:00 and got started with putting dilation and numbing drops into my eye, and inserting in the IV. That would be used for administering the light anesthetic later. They don’t want you out cold, just comfortable and able to follow directions. There were several applications of drops and it took about 20 minutes for them to take effect.

I was in sweats and a T-shirt. They laid a tri-folded blanket on me and there was no need for the diabolical hospital gown. I swear those things are designed by a sadistic branch of IKEA.  As usual, I joked around with the nurses and anesthesiologist so that they would like me. Just like with restaurants, you never want to piss off someone who can spit in your food, or decide not to worry about your pain level.

I understood about the blanket later when they rolled me into the operation room, which was about 15 degrees colder than the previous room. I presume it’s something they do to keep the laser machines from overheating.

At this point, I felt fine. Even when they started working on me, I didn’t really notice any altered feeling. I was just going along with it. Maybe that’s the trick… getting a patient pliable without their noticing anything’s different.

The first thing they have to do is put injections into your eye, to numb the whole site. That is the part I was most concerned about because, you know… [shudder]. I wasn’t even sure when the doctor was doing it. He would say, “Look up and to the right. Now up and to the left.”

It wasn’t until he was halfway done that I even realized he was giving me the injections right then. I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t even see the needle. I suppose he brought it up from the opposite direction from the one he had me looking.

After that, they lowered a big device over my right eye and covered the left with a towel or something. I could hear various things beeping and the doctors moving about, but there was no pain whatsoever. If I didn’t need to keep my eye open, I could have had a nap.

Before I even knew it, they had a plastic eye guard taped in place (lined with gauze) and had me sitting up in the recovery room. They wheeled me back out to Sweetpea at about 2:30, so aside from the initial wait, the whole thing took an hour and a half.

Instructions were to keep the guard in place until the next day’s appointment, don’t get it wet, don’t sleep on my back with my head facing up, not bend at the waist, no alcohol, and don’t pick up anything over 20 pounds. No problem.

On the way home we picked up some KFC for my post-op feast. (It had been a long time because I usually tried to stay away from eating things that would kill me. But it was sooo good.) It’s weird operating with only one eye. My depth perception was definitely off, so when I reached for something, it usually took some adjustments in aim. So I had to be careful not to poke myself in the eye with a chicken bone or spork full of mashed potatoes.

After that, nap time! I put in a solid two hours, then got up, watched a little TV, then turned in early. I figured the more time I spent asleep, the less time I’d have to wander around all cockeyed.

The next morning’s follow-up appointment would be the moment of truth. I was dying to see what I’d be seeing. They told me things would be blurry for a while but would gradually clear up over a week. When the eye tech removed the guard, I was shocked. I expected it to be blurry as in the letters looking distorted or unfocused. What I got was looking through a fish bowl. Then I really started to panic when the tech started going through the usual drill of asking what I could see.

She was like, “Can you read these letters?”

“No.”

“Now how about these?”

“No. I can’t even see that there are letters there, let alone read them.”

She narrowed it down to one giant letter, which I still could not see. So she asked how many fingers she was holding up. I was like, “I can’t even see that you have a hand.”

She left to let the next batch of dilation eye drops take effect before the doctor came in.

Now, I was expecting the blurriness, but the fact that she was testing me like I could still see something made me start to seriously worry, especially sitting alone in the room for 20 minutes. I kept thinking, “Holy shit, why couldn’t you have just lived with the @#$% floaters?”

When the doctor came in, he explained that the issue was that because I had a retina tear repaired in this eye four years earlier, they injected an air bubble into my eye to protect the repair site. It was this bubble that was making things seem like I was underwater. It was like my face was a leveling tool and the eye contained the bubble you try to line up. The bubble would reabsorb into my eyeball/face gradually over the next week. He said that after examining it, everything looked good, just like it was supposed to look. I was greatly relieved.

I guess the tech who scared the shit out of me was just going through the usual pre-visit checklist they do with every patient.

So I was dismissed with basically the same warnings. Don’t rub, keep water out, use the guard for sleeping, stay off my back (looking up), no bending from the waist, and take it easy for a while. He also mentioned that some people use an eye patch while they’re healing, which is exactly what I’d planned to do. 

We stopped for an eye patch at the drugstore on the way home, although not before I poked myself in the repaired eye with the earpiece of the sunglasses I was trying to put on. Like I said, the hand/eye coordination is way off when you’re down to mono-vision. I was lucky that the numbing drops were still in effect so it didn’t hurt, but I was worried that I jostled the whole structure which would cause more focusing problems.

At the store, I had the choice between the traditional black eye patch or the adhesive “Band-Aid” colored ones. I went for the black patch, obviously. So I could either wear my Pittsburgh Pirates ball cap and audition to be their new mascot or put on a straw hat and go out on tour singing “Cover of the Rolling Stone.”

Once home, I got to scope out the site in the mirror and yeah, it was as bad as I expected. Basically, the cornea from the bridge of the nose to the iris was bright blood-red. Again, it’s supposed to clear up over time.

I wore the eye patch constantly for the first couple of days. It was hard to see clearly, not only because of the mono-vision but because I still have floaters in my left (good) eye, so what vision I had was often blurry.

By the weekend, I could see a distinct reddish line going across the upper portion of my vision, like I was looking through a goldfish bowl, at the water level. Throughout the weekend, the line began to get lower and I found I could see reasonably well over the line. If I looked down, I could see a clear darkish circle. It was almost like a magnifying glass, in that if I held something up and looked through the circle, I could see it in super detail. But the farther away, the blurrier it got.

Today is Monday and I’m not wearing the patch at all. All of my computer screen is “above the line,” and the bubble is shrinking steadily. I’m betting that I should be fine by the end of the week. And then it will be time to schedule to have the other eye done. And that one should be a breeze because they won’t have to inject a bubble into that eye. Plus, my right eye will be floater-free.

OK, there are still a few tiny fragments floating around. I’m not sure if those will settle out or if I’m stuck with them, but it’s still a big difference.

If you ever consider such a procedure, I fully recommend doing it. The pain was minimal, (managed with Tylenol) and the recovery hasn’t been bad at all. I don’t yet know what the cost will be but I’m sure it will be worthwhile. One’s sight is something that’s often taken for granted, right up until it becomes damaged.

I write posts like these to help people who are evaluating whether they should undergo such a procedure and provide some first-hand information. If you have a question I haven’t addressed, please drop it in Comments.

“Here’s looking at (anything), kid.”

Director’s DVD Commentary: Here’s to anyone who got that “Cover of the Rolling Stone” joke! Dr. Hook lives!

New Year's Puck Droppings

A new year always makes me a bit nostalgic. As I’m waiting for the Annual Winter Classic hockey game (which takes place outdoors), I started thinking back to when I used to play pickup hockey.

I fell in love with hockey when we lived in Chicago and I was in 3rd grade. That’s the year I got ice skates and a hockey stick for Christmas. I learned how to skate with a stick in my hand and that’s just how it was.

Now when I say, “learned how to skate”, you have to take that with a grain of salt. I learned how to scramble around a bumpy lake or snow-packed street without falling down very much. The hockey stick was kind of like that big pole that high-wire acts use to keep their balance. But that first time skating, there was no teaching, it was just “you have skates, here’s your stick, there’s the ice… get out there.”

I never played organized hockey when I was growing up. That seemed way too complicated. But every day in the winter, my brother and I would be out on the street or on a local pond, “skating” around and shooting pucks at each other. Even in the summer, we’d play in the garage. One of us would grab a baseball glove and guard a little spot between two pieces of firewood we’d set up for a goal. We’d use either a real puck or a baseball. Man, my shins got so banged up sometimes that I could hardly walk.

We learned to skate on figure skates… that just happened to be what we got for that 3rd grade Christmas, so that’s what we used and never thought twice about it. I got a pair of hockey skates once in junior high school and I hated them. They didn’t have toe-picks, (the small jagged section on the front end of the blade) so I couldn’t push off. (Remember, I didn’t really know how to skate properly. Left to our own, we used our toe-picks to get started.)

A toe-pick almost killed me once… or rather, killed my ego. I was a teenager, skating at night on our neighbor’s pond, on a beautiful crisp night. I was telling a neighbor girl about how sometimes when I almost fall, I can throw a quick spin-around and come out of it looking like I did it all on purpose. I told her, “sometimes I can be pretty graceful”. The exact moment I said the word “graceful”, my toe-pick hit a crack in the ice and I pitched forward, flat on my face, spinning in lazy circles as I slid another 20 feet.  Pride indeed cameth before my fall.

In college, I took a semester of figure skating and it was the greatest thing. It was also very hard because I had to unlearn everything I’d ever “learned.”

The best thing I learned was that it helps to have sharp skates. My instructor had wondered why a big strapping guy like me was having such trouble with the rudimentary beginner’s drills. She said, “Let me see your blades.”

I showed her the blade of my old skate. She said, “Oh my God.  Take those off right now.”

My blades were about as sharp as butter knife handles.  What the hell did I know?  I thought skates were skates…

She got me in a pair of house skates that were sharp… ones with actual inside and outside edges… and holy hell! I had no idea skating could be like that! Suddenly I could stop, turn, and accelerate… It was like the first time I put on glasses, not knowing how well the rest of the world could see.

I didn’t learn anything terribly difficult in skating class, but I did re-learn how to skate, forward and backward. I learned to do those fancy backward crossovers. I could even do a 180-degree jump… in other words, skating backward, jumping, and coming down on the other foot, facing forward. On the last day of class, right at the end, I tried to do a 360. Almost pulled it off, too. The teacher was not amused.  “Do NOT try that again… you’re nowhere near ready for that!”

OK, OK.  I had to try though.

After that class, I hardly ever got to skate. Too busy out making a living and trying to find my way in the world. Next thing you know, 13 years down the road I’m married (cold chill runs down back), living in Albany, NY, in 1996, spotting an ad in the Pennysaver announcing the formation of a new co-ed, non-checking hockey league in Saratoga Springs.

I called and found out that it was started by a group of hockey parents. They’d had a pickup game, grownups against the kids, and found out how much fun it was to get on the ice and play. They decided to do so regularly and thus the “league” was born. I wanted in immediately and even without being a parent, I was welcomed with open arms.

First, I had to get suited up. I’d never owned a single piece of hockey equipment other than skates and a stick. I had no idea what was involved. A trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods was a necessity. Luckily, the guy in their hockey department took good care of me. He gave me everything I’d need for such a league and was careful not to overdo it. Like, for a non-checking game, I wouldn’t need the big Robo-shoulder pads; a nice light pair would do just fine. It’s a good thing he was there… I didn’t even know how to put all the stuff on.

And yes, I got some nice new hockey skates. No more toe picks for me.

I had no idea what to expect from the Just-For-Fun League when I showed up that first night. The rink was pretty primitive, but then so were my skills. I needn’t have worried, though, because so were everyone else’s. I was afraid I’d stand out as a rube, but in fact, I was in the middle of the pack, skills-wise.

While the name says “Just-for-Fun League”, it really wasn’t a league as much as a big pickup game. There would be about 20 players and we’d divide up teams. At first, we’d just throw all the sticks on the ice and then they’d be separated randomly, forming two teams. Later, after we got a good bead on each other, Ellen the “founder” (and one of the goalies) would take people of similar skill by twos and divide them, so that no one side could accidentally become stacked.

I scored a goal that first night so I at least felt like I belonged. In the early years, we were all pretty raggedy. There were some epic collisions… not because we were looking to hit, but because we weren’t very good at stopping and turning in time before, WHAM.

One of the cool things was that by design, you’d get to play every position. (Except for goalie, of course.) First, you’d have your starting five, and then as people got tired (usually after 1-2 minutes) they’d come to the bench and yell out their position. Whoever was next in line would go in and take that their place. That way, no one could monopolize any one position.

The first thing I learned was that playing hockey was nothing like playing softball. In softball, you spend most of your time waiting for something to happen. Most of the time, it didn’t involve you. It was mostly standing around, followed by short bursts of furious activity. If you screwed something up, maybe you got a chance to redeem yourself, maybe you didn’t.

In hockey, it’s nothing but furious activity. You can lose the puck, stop the other guy, take it back, take a shot, and make a pass… all in about 30 seconds. It’s constant ebb and flow. You really don’t have time to dwell on mistakes because you’re immediately onto the next thing.

I loved the speed, the woosh of the wind in your earholes, and your hair blowing in the breeze behind you.  Yeah, I had longish hair back then, at least in the back.  My idol of that era was Jaromir Jagr. Hockey fans and Pittsburghers who were around in the 90s know who I’m talking about. For everyone else, Jagr joined the Penguins at age 18, directly from Czechoslovakia. He was a mullet-wearing, free-spirited bundle of talent back then and I totally wanted to be him. For most of our games, I wore a white Penguins jersey with his number 68 on it.

About once a year, I’d have my wife come to a game and shoot some video.  I was sure we’d all look fabulous out there flying around at such great speed. Then I watched the tape.

Oh. My. God. We were sooooo slooooooooooooooow. I don’t know how it’s possible to feel like you're zooming all over the place and then watch the tape that shows what looks like a bunch of people drifting aimlessly about the ice. It was excruciating.

I played for four years and had the time of my life. It was very gratifying, over the years, to see the overall skill level pick up. We were worlds better the 4th year than we were when we started.

If I had to scout myself, it would be like this:

Good skating in straight lines; not so maneuverable.  Outstanding reach. Hard to get around.

Smaller players skated rings around me, but I could often catch them if I turned and skated alongside them.  Having long arms helped a great deal. If I was facing someone on a breakaway, they’d go around me like I was a giant cone. But if I turned and went the same direction, I could always interfere with their shot and usually force them wide. One of the guys once told me, “Trying to get around you is like trying to go around a wall.”

Good in the corners, a grinder.

My skating or puck skills weren’t going to dazzle anyone, so I decided I’d try to out-hustle. I’d be the guy battling people, chasing the puck, and fishing it out of the corners.

Great wrist shot, absolutely no slapshot. (Where you take a big windup, with the stick up off the ice.)

I couldn’t shoot a slapshot to save my life. I’d either whiff or it would just kind of dribble up there. But I was a sniper with a wrist shot.  (Where you just kind of snap the puck without lifting your stick.) I was one of the few people that could get the puck up in the air easily… it’s something I’ve always been able to do since I was a kid.  Every shot came at least knee-high. I had this one stick I got from the local minor league team that had a wicked curve and loft to it.  It took me a while to get the handle on it, because every shot would go high and to the left. I took a shot from the right point once and almost took off our defenseman’s head. She was standing at the bottom of the left circle.

There was another guy that just had a cannon of a slapshot… but he couldn’t control it. I called it the Moses Shot, because he’s wind up from the point and everyone would just part like the Red Sea. No one had any idea where it was going to end up and it was seldom on net.

Plays a sportsmanlike game but don’t get him riled up.

I was so glad it was a non-hitting game because another thing I learned is how easy it is for one’s passions to run over. I normally played a very gentlemanly game, but if someone were to, say, jostle me, elbow me, or knock me off the puck in any way, it was like my eyes would turn red and I’d just want to plow into someone. I’d go all “Francis” on them and make it my mission to “accidentally” mash the offender into the glass, the post, the ice, or whatever.

"Lighten up, Francis."

I was only ever called for two penalties, one of which I deserved. One of the bigger dudes (four inches shorter than me but about 50 lbs heavier) knocked me off the puck and stole it, taking it up the ice. I got up and just charged. I was praying he’d keep possession of the puck because I thought that would give me cover. I caught up to him and basically flew at him, like "My Cousin Vinny" did to the redneck that wanted to fight him.

Tweeeeeet!  Two minutes!

Then I had the nerve to stand there with my arms out going, “What?”

It was a clean hit that wouldn’t be penalized in a regular game, but we were in a non-checking league, hence the penalty.

It was a learning experience playing with women, and sometimes their daughters. I found that while they may not have shot as hard as the guys or were as physical, they skated better and were better passers. What was hard for me was getting into the physical battles for the puck. Even in a no-checking group, there was a lot of pushing, shoving, and muscling for the puck. I always felt like I shouldn’t do that with women. I was brought up to never raise a hand to a lady and that was a hard thing to overcome.

The women helped me with that though, mostly by stealing the puck from me with great regularity, so often that I wanted to kill them. There were two, in particular, the teenage daughters of a 40-something player named Joanne.  We’d be in the locker room afterward, (no one was getting naked, just getting pads off and on) and I told a couple of them how troubled I was about not wanting to be rough with them.

They basically laughed at me, telling me that the boys they play against in their own league have no such inhibitions. Made me feel better, anyway. I still didn’t knock them around like I could have, but I didn’t feel so bad about using my size if I had to.

The family aspect of our group also made for some memorable encounters. I was skating with Joanne one game and she got plowed into behind the net. I went flying up to put a shoulder on the guy that did it, but I pulled up at the last moment when I saw that it was her husband!

We got back to the bench and I told her I almost went after him. She looked pissed. I said, “You want me to get him, next shift?”

She was like, “Hell yeah!”

There was one guy in our group that was really good. He was a smallish, wiry guy but he could just blaze up and down the ice. Before I knew his name, I just thought of him as "My Nemesis." (Later, he was just "Danny", and happened to be a really good guy.) But I decided to make it my business that this was the guy I was going to dedicate myself to stopping. The dude undressed me more times than a $20 hooker, but it forced me to get better. I became a much better defender because of it so that by the end of my tenure, we'd have some pretty epic battles. But that’s a life lesson, isn’t it? You never get better at anything unless you go up against someone who’s better.

But OMG, what a workout the game was! Every muscle group would be spent... legs from skating, back from hunching over the stick and getting low, arms and shoulders from pushing and grinding in the corners... After a game, it was all I could do to get my gear bag back to the car. I'd be totally whipped, especially early in the season. But later, of course, it would get easier. I was in the best shape of my life when I was playing hockey.

Anyway, it was really a great group of people.  We’d chase each other around for an hour and a half and then limp down to the pub and drink for another 2. Good times.

It killed me to leave all that behind, but my non-hockey life was in the toilet. Divorced, working a shitty job with horrible hours, living like a monk… there was nothing left for me in New York.

One night I made a list of all the reasons I should move to Baltimore to be near family, versus all the reasons I should stay. Needless to say, one list was very long and the other was quite short. The biggest reason on the short list, the one to stay in New York, was playing hockey. But sadly, there had to be more to life than that couple hours a week every winter, so I moved on to start a new life chapter.

After moving to Baltimore, I tried to find a similar gig. There was a rink nearby, but there were two things going against it. First, the pickup hockey hours were 11:30-1:00 on Saturday nights. I’m sorry, but I'm ready for bed at that hour, not ready to go out and scrap. But most importantly, the people were very clique-ish. I did NOT feel very welcomed. Everyone mostly seemed concerned with skating exclusively with their friends. I went twice, then never again. They were not interested in entertaining any "intruders" in their club.

Still, I’ll never forget the woosh of the wind in my ears and long-gone hair blowing behind me.