The family text chat group: Misplaced mail, memories of years past, and endless cat photos

We have a family text group that includes all seven of us plus two significant others (Mark and Lyndsey). It is active almost every day and is used for a variety of purposes.

One recent conversation, for example, centered on Chloe's ongoing attempts to convince the post office that a former resident of her house is, in fact, a former resident and no longer lives there. Several times she has taken items intended for this person and written "Return to Sender" and "Not at This Address" on them, but mail for the previous occupant keeps on coming.

This was followed up by texts from other family members with suggestions on how to handle the situation, and one threat from Jared to alert the authorities that Chloe is committing mail fraud if she starts simply throwing these misaddressed cards and letters away.

He was kidding (I think).

Almost every day it's something different in the chat group, but there are at least three common types of activity you'll find there:

(1) Cat content: We are a cat family and my kids like to share photos of their current cats as well as the cats with which they grew up. I enjoy all of this because it's sometimes the only way I can keep tabs on my grand-kitties. (As you can see above, the official photo of the text group is an old image of Fred, George and Charlie, three of our former cats who have each moved on to their greater good, as my friend Kate Tonti would say.)

(2) Random memories: These conversations will often begin with one kid texting something like, "Thinking about the times Lissy and I used to sit at the computer at the old house and play Harry Potter." Then they will all go back and forth about the details of the game that have stuck with them. We also sometimes get memories of stuff we wouldn't let them do when they were little that their friends were allowed to do. There's always some bitterness there.

(3) Big announcements: Suddenly one child or another will text, "Attention everyone, I have a new job," or some such off-the-cuff piece of important news. Everyone then celebrates through congratulatory messages, "heart" and "exclamation point" reactions, and the occasional funny GIF. Twenty years ago, conveying this news would have involved separate phone calls to parents and siblings. Now it's just a single 7-second text. I'm not sure which is better.

Gotta go, Melanie just sent a great picture of two of her cats standing on their hind legs looking out the front door. <heart emoji>

I am still the family copy editor

I want to ask the AI Blog Post Image Generator why it thinks the woman (it's presumably a woman) holding the red pen in this image only painted half her thumbnail. Still, as you'll see if you scroll to the bottom of this post, it could have been a lot worse.

Every family has at least one person to whom everyone else goes when they have written something they want proofread.

"It's a 200-word statement for a scholarship. Can you look it over and fix the mistakes, and maybe jazz it up a little?"

I used to regularly receive requests of this sort from my kids when they were in school. Now these assignments are less frequent, but they still occur. Recently, for example, Chloe asked me to spruce up a few paragraphs she wrote as part of an application for an academic prize related to her PhD program.

Actually she asked both me and her older sister Elissa. Elissa is a professional marketer and has always been a great writer and editor. Jared also makes his living with words and can be counted on to clean up your copy in a pinch.

We don't have any bad writers in the family, but there's a tendency, when one of your siblings is in the trade, to doubt your own ability and ask a professional to help.

I will admit I may have rewritten a couple of the kids' scholarship essays over the years in an attempt to take them from "good" to "very good." Or even "money-worthy."

NOTE: As I recall, both of the essays I rewrote resulted in the child receiving a scholarship. I should have asked for a cut.

If you aren't the person who handles proofreading chores in your household, you should write a thank-you note to whomever fills that role.

Make sure you read it over very closely before you give it to them, though.

EXTRA NOTE: Every time I ask the AI Blog Post Image Generator to come up with an illustration for one of my posts, I have it create a few possibilities from which I can choose. Following is the second image it spit out in response to the one-word prompt "Proofreader." I...I don't know what to say. The tiny red pen is somewhat amusing, but the outsized thumb is borderline terrifying. This is what I get for using a free and unproven AI image tool.

Don't be a hero: If you have vacation time, use it

Of all the things that confuse me about Americans (and I say this as an American), the most perplexing is probably the concept of unused vacation time.

I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but I'm willing to bet that nowhere else in the world do people leave 25% or more of their paid time off (PTO) on the table. That's about the average percentage of unused PTO in the U.S. each year, according to figures reported by Forbes.

I happen to really enjoy what I do for a living, but the idea of someone offering to pay you the same amount of money to go off and do something fun and relaxing as they do when you're at work, and you responding "No thanks, I'm good!" does not compute in my brain.

I use every last hour of PTO every year, without exception. It's silly not to.

Now, I realize some people are in job situations where they simply can't take time off, for whatever reason. Or at least they think they can't take time off without something bad happening at work.

If that describes you, please know that I love you. Truly I do. But understand, you're not indispensable. Life at the office/plant/hospital/store goes on without you.

Actually, that's one reason some people give for not taking their vacation time. They're afraid that if they leave for a week or two and everything goes well, their boss will think they're not important to the success of the organization.

I am a boss, and I have worked for many bosses. I can say with confidence that no boss I've ever encountered would think that way.

Admittedly, this all assumes you have paid time off available to you in the first place. The folks at Forbes say 28 million Americans don't get any PTO at all, making the U.S. "the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation and paid holidays."

This is not a point of pride, my fellow Yankees.

Of course, there are also those who have started their own businesses and simply don't have the financial wiggle room to take off for the beach and go unpaid for any length of time. That I get.

To you hearty entrepreneurs I say, "Good luck and Godspeed."

But as for everyone else, we need to understand that taking vacation time is good for us and it's good for our employers. We can't be "on" 24/7/365, nor can anyone reasonably expect us to be. Human beings are more productive and more engaged when they're intentional about scheduling downtime to rest and recharge.

I'm not the best relaxer in the world, but even I realize the truth of this.

Take those PTO hours, folks, please. For your own sake.

Talking to yourself is either a sign of intelligence or mental instability

A few minutes ago I walked past a co-worker who was mumbling under his breath. I asked, "Are you talking to yourself?" And he replied, "Well, I'm the only one who will listen!"

On the spectrum of Corny Office Small Talk, this ranks right up there with "Working hard? Hardly working!" and "Thank God it's Friday, huh?"

But there is also some truth to it.

I talk to myself a lot.

A. Lot.

To the point that I'm fairly certain I say more words out loud to myself each day than I do to Terry or anyone else in the world.

People will walk past my closed office door, peek in and see my mouth moving, and assume I'm in a Teams meeting or on a call. They will make that thumb-and-pinky-extended-near-the-ear gesture, which is of course the universal request to "Call me!"

This will momentarily confuse me until I realize what's going on, and usually I wave for them to come into my office. When they do, I explain, "Sorry, I was just telling myself I need to remember to write that organizational announcement email today!"

They will then look at me uneasily with an expression that suggests, "Wow, I had no idea Scott was insane."

I talk through virtually everything with myself. And rarely are these conversations silent and internal. They are almost always broadcast loudly to anyone who happens to be nearby.

This is OK when I'm driving and loudly saying to myself, "I think I need to turn left up here, right? Or do I keep going straight? Maybe I should have used Google Maps!" No one hears my crazed rantings then.

But when it happens in the grocery store, I notice other shoppers give me a wide berth. I'll be standing near the canned fish products and saying (in a voice that can clearly be heard two aisles over) "WHY DO THEY ONLY HAVE THE SARDINES IN HOT SAUCE? I DON'T WANT THE SARDINES IN HOT SAUCE, I WANT THE SARDINES IN WATER. WHO BUYS THE SARDINES IN HOT SAUCE? NO ONE, THAT'S WHO."

I take consolation in the fact that, the older you get, the more acceptable this behavior seems to become. It goes from "scary" and "potentially threatening" to "cute" and "eccentric."

Right now I'm somewhere in between.

Over and over I tell myself – loudly and proudly, even when no one else is in the room – that it's OK and I'm not at all crazy.

Which of course is exactly what a crazy person would say to himself.

I never anticipated being at the top of my game in my mid-50s

Three times I asked the AI Blog Post Image Generator for a photo of a "happy 50-year-old white man." This is what I got.

If you would have asked me when I was 18 at what age I would "peak," I probably would have said 30 or 35.

And sure enough, life really was good in my 30s.

But it's even better now at age 54, and I didn't see that coming.

None of us knows what's around the next corner of our lives, but at this moment, I can say things are humming along way better than I would have anticipated.

I have no chronic pain, I get to exercise regularly, I have a job I enjoy at a company that appreciates me, my family continues to be awesome despite my influence, and I engage in hobbies that are a heck of a lot of fun.

Like I said, any or all of that can change on a moment's notice. I have no idea what God has in store for me (read the book of Job for a case study in "whoa, didn't see that coming").

But right now, in 2024, my cup pretty well runneth over.

I have as much energy now as I did 25 years ago, though that's partly because we had a house full of little kids 25 years ago that made me chronically tired.

Still, I remain able to go hard from dawn to dusk and generally accomplish a lot of things in the course of a day that I find satisfying, both personally and professionally.

I have earned none of this privilege, by the way. I am entitled to zero of these blessings. And again, bad news could come tomorrow that puts a damper on all of it.

But right now, at this point in my life's journey, I am happy, relatively care-free, vibrant, and maybe a tad less dumb than I used to be.

(Still relatively dumb, of course, but getting smarter in slow, painful increments.)

And that's enough.

Whatever is coming down the road, my experience is that life begins at 50.

Who knew?

A small phone that fits in my pocket vs. a larger phone that I can actually, you know, see

Unless you're a woman who regularly wears pants and keeps your phone in your pocket (and I'm sure there are many), this may be an issue only for men of a certain age.

My age, to be specific.

I have an iPhone SE. It was provided by my employer, who also pays the monthly bill for it. Free phone, free data. That's a deal I can get behind.

This phone fits easily into my pants pockets, whether I'm wearing dress pants or jeans. Its relative portability is one of its strong points, as far as I'm concerned.

But there is a price to pay for a smaller phone.

If, like me, you have reached a point in life where reading glasses are a key element of your daily existence, a small phone screen can be a problem. You can't always tell what you're looking at when watching a video or looking at a photo. Text defaults to an impossibly tiny point size unless you're proactive in doing something about it.

It is, in short, quite often a pain.

I have thought about upgrading to a larger phone and footing the bill myself, but the issues there are patently obvious:

1. The whole "footing the bill myself" thing
2. The inability to stuff said phone conveniently into a pants pocket

The solution is likely a foldable phone. The trouble there? I'm an Apple/iPhone guy, and currently available foldable phones are all Android/Google-based. Apple is planning to release a foldable phone, but last I checked, this little piece of technology is at least two years away from hitting the market.

I could be legally blind by that point.

On balance, I guess I'll keep my free SE and squint every morning as I watch NHL hockey highlights on its tiny screen.

It's better than carrying around a much larger device, at least for me.

You know you're first-world spoiled when something like this is among the toughest issues you're wrestling with in life.

I should be more motivated to brush up on my French before we head to the Olympics

Nice job with a "stereotypical French guy" photo, AI Blog Post Image Generator!

One of my favorite things about traveling to French-speaking areas of the world is getting the chance to put my 14 years of French language education to use.

As I've chronicled here before, I grew up in a school district where everybody took French in 1st through 6th grades. I continued taking it throughout middle and high schools, and nearly pulled off a minor in the subject with three years of additional French classes at John Carroll University.

The result has been that, on my eight or nine combined trips to Montreal and Paris over the years, I've been able to hold my own when it came to ordering in a restaurant, asking directions, getting answers to simple questions on the street, etc.

Actually, I've held my own in Paris much more than in Montreal. The Quebecois accent is such that my Parisian French education, combined with my Northeast Ohio inflection, renders me as unintelligible to some Montrealers as they are to me.

The point is, I know some French. Having not used it much, I read it much better than I speak it.

My daughter Elissa had almost as much French education as me and has taken actual French classes in recent years as an adult. She and I (along with Terry and Elissa's boyfriend Mark) are scheduled to arrive in Paris 16 weeks from today to take in some Summer Olympics events and generally see the sites as we're able.

I figure that, with our collective French proficiency and past experience in Paris, we should navigate just fine in the City of Light.

But I'm not going out of my way to review French vocabulary and syntax before we jet off to the continent. I should, but I'm not.

There are any number of excuses I can give for this, but the reality is that I'm simply a lazy American.

Language-wise (and many other wises), we are among the most spoiled people on earth. There are few places we can go where people won't either willingly speak English to us, or else roll their eyes and switch to English because we're obviously not going to make the effort to learn their language.

This is even worse because I mostly know their language. It wouldn't take much for me to get back into Francophone shape, but especially with a multi-cultural event like the Olympics, it will be easy to get around using only English.

I'm hoping to get more motivated between now and early August, but don't bet on it.

C'est la vie.

At some point in a marriage, you've pretty much seen everything you're going to see

She has read the whole book that is her husband and she still sticks around.

No matter who you are, you have a limited number of funny stories and jokes.

You have a finite list of special talents and tricks.

You have a set amount of quirky habits and preferences.

You have certain faces you make, certain things you say, certain nervous ticks, certain chewing noises, certain ways of sleeping, certain favorite movies and TV shows, certain likes and dislikes, and certain ways you behave, speak, and just generally exist.

You are not, in short, a well of infinite possibility. You are human, and there is only so much another person can uncover.

If that person is your spouse, there comes a time when they have essentially seen the entirety of You.

I don't know exactly how long you have to be married for that to happen, but it probably takes considerably less than 10 years for them to have experienced 99% of what you have to offer.

That's the point when, if they decide to stick around, you know they love you.

Unconditionally.

Terry has heard every one of my little anecdotes. She has a thorough understanding of my faults and shortcomings, along with my good points. She can generally guess how I'm going to act and react in any given situation.

There is very little I say or do that surprises her.

The same is true for me when it comes to her.

And yet here we are, 32 years down the road of marriage and more than 38 years into our relationship. Without ever actually saying it, we have come to an agreement that despite anything about us that is less than attractive, the positives outweigh the negatives and we're going to ride it out together as long as we can.

That's my favorite thing about being in a long-term relationship: You've seen the entire show, yet you're sticking around for whatever comes next...even if you're pretty certain you know what it is.

With apologies to Benny Goodman, Bette Midler and anyone else who has ever performed the song, that right there is the story of, that's the glory of, love.

The day is finally here! Yes, my nephew's birthday (what day did you think I meant?)

I don't know what year this was, but my choice of full-body thermal underwear suggests I was about to embark on an Arctic expedition of some sort. That's my nephew Mark on the right.

Oh, I guess it's also Eclipse Day for those of us fortunate enough to be in the path of totality. As I write these words on March 13th, I have no idea what the weather will be in Northeast Ohio for the big event. But even if it's cloudy, I'm hoping the sudden mid-afternoon darkness will at least be worth going outside for.

Anyway, what I meant was that my nephew Mark turns 49 years old today. Nine years ago, I wrote a tribute to him on his 40th birthday. Now, a year from his 5-0 milestone, I hope you have a minute to go back and read about an awesome husband, father and lover of Oasis. Click here to give that 2015 post a look.

As for me, I'm going to dig out those long johns and head outside this afternoon to take in whatever celestial spectacle the skies over Wickliffe will afford.

Happy Mark/Eclipse Day!

My greatest Facebook fear is using the wrong reaction button

 

I've always liked the fact that Facebook offers a wide range of reactions you can click in response to someone's post or comment.

"Like" and "Love" simply didn't offer a sufficiently broad palette of sentiment. They have been augmented over time by Care, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry.

Together, these little clickable emojis are like the Seven Dwarves of Emotion, and I use them liberally.

The only potential pitfall – and it's a big one – is ensuring I choose the correct reaction to any given post or comment.

Specifically, my biggest fear is that I'll choose the wrong one on someone's heartfelt post and immediately continue scrolling without realizing my error.

Every time someone posts about the death of a loved one and I click on a reaction (often in addition to leaving a comment), I check, double check and triple check that it's the correct reaction.

I have nightmares that a friend posts their mom's obituary and I mistakenly click on "Haha!" in reaction to the news, rather than the little heart-toting Care button.

It almost feels inevitable that this will happen eventually, and it hangs over me in ways that Mark Zuckerberg and team can never prevent.

Anyone who knows me will automatically understand it was done in error, but that doesn't take away the shame of appearing to laugh at someone else's tragedy.

"Your mom died? That's hilarious!"

Like I said, it's only a matter of time before it happens, no matter how diligent I am.

Despite what I thought, an empty nest can still sometimes mean an empty wallet

 

My longtime Wickliffe friend Laura Jones got a kick out of it some years ago when I posted the image above in reference to how expensive it can be to have kids.

This was back when most of our children lived at home and there were always school fees, sports fees, large grocery bills and related accounts payable to attend to.

My assumption then was that one day, when they moved out, the constant outflow of cash would cease, and Terry and I would live in peace and financial prosperity the rest of our days.

What can I say? I was young and naïve.

The reality, I'm now finding with only the 18-year-old living under our roof, is that while there are fewer kid-related expenditures now than they're used to be, we still end up funding our offspring from time to time in various ways.

For example, the rule in our family has generally been that, if you decide to move out and live on your own, this is an admirable choice that comes with certain realities and consequences. Like, you need to get your own car insurance and start paying for your cell phone.

That kind of thing.

This doesn't automatically occur the second the child gets his/her own house or apartment, but over time it does become reality.

In the meantime, during the transition period, we end up providing unintended subsidies to ensure our kids are driving legally, kept connected to the outside world with a functioning phone, and, you know, eating regularly.

We do this willingly and lovingly, of course. But the point is, we do it.

So does Laura with her two daughters.

And probably so do you if you have older kids.

You never stop being a parent, but eventually you do stop being a savings and loan for your children.

It just takes a bit longer than you might think.

And that's OK. Particularly if you don't mind eating cat food in your retirement years.

I should have hired a copy editor (or "I can't believe how many typos there are in my book")

I asked the AI Blog Post Image Generator to give me something related to the prompt "book editor." On its own, the app apparently decided this fake editor must have fat fingers.

If there's a lesson in today's post, it's that when you're doing something that's important to you, be willing to put in the time and spend the resources (dollars included) needed to ensure it's done right.

I know this now. I wish I would have known it a year ago when I started working on my book.

"5 Kids, 1 Wife" is my little contribution to the publishing world. Yet again, I will mention that it's available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and a variety of obscure online bookstores of which you and I have never heard.

It is likely the only book I will ever write, so you would think I would have done everything I could to make it perfect. Or as close to perfect as can be reasonably expected.

I did hire both an interior book designer and a separate designer to create the cover. No way I was going to try either of those things on my own.

My mistake was not hiring someone else to edit the actual text.

I have enough experience in editorial matters to know that no matter how many times you read your own copy, you're not going to catch all of the mistakes. You need a second (and sometimes a third) set of eyes to polish the sentences over which you have labored and agonized.

But what did I do? I read through the book myself a total of six times, figuring that would be sufficient and that surely there couldn't be any typos left.

This was an unwise decision.

I always assumed one or two boo-boos would get through in the finished book, but I've come to realize it's more than one or two.

As I type this sentence in early March, I'm a little more than halfway through recording the audio version of the book, and it seems like I'm discovering some painful little slip-up or another in every other post.

Missing words, double words, wrong usage, comma splices. You name it, I think I've found it.

I have no idea how I could have screwed up so many times.

And even less idea why I was so cheap that I didn't bite the bullet and allow a professional editor to correct my errors.

If you've not yet read the book, please don't let this deter you from purchasing a copy.

Please also understand that the author is a bit of a moron. A penny-pinching moron who is now paying the price for this own tight-fistedness.

Again, expend the resources to make your passion project as good as it can be, that's my advice to you.

I don't go to a lot of concerts, but the one I'm attending tonight is special for reasons beyond music

By Derek Russell - https://www.flickr.com/photos/184778751@N03/48954387052/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83341876

If all goes according to plan, this evening I'll be joining The Marks (my brother and my nephew, who share that first name) at the Kent Stage in Kent, Ohio, for a night of music and storytelling offered up by one Mr. Colin Hay.

If you know Colin at all, it's likely as the lead singer of the highly successful early-80s pop group Men at Work. In the years since, he has forged a nice solo career, having released more than a dozen albums.

Colin has always meant a lot to me, in part because Men at Work was the first musical act that really caught my interest. I bought their single "Down Under" on 45 in 1982, the first record purchase I made using my own money (from my paper route, of course).

I never got to see the group perform live before they broke up, but I've seen Colin in concert several times over the past 20 years. Nephew Mark is better at keeping track of this than I am – he has been there with me for every one of these shows – but I think tonight might be the seventh time I've been there in person to watch Colin work his magic.

And "magic" is actually a pretty apt word. Not only is he a wonderfully talented songwriter and musician, he's also a master of between-song banter. He tells stories and jokes in an understated Scottish way that holds audiences captive.

(Colin is known the world over for being from Australia, but he is Scottish by birth and lived there until he turned 14 and his family moved Down Under.)

Anyway, while I'm looking forward to the show, I'm more looking forward to spending some time with my brother and nephew. We probably don't get together as much as we should, but when we do, it never fails to be memorable.

Your takeaways today, then, are these:

(1) Make the effort to spend time with people you love.

(2) Colin Hay is still making music and is worth checking out if you've lost track of him.

Do you need an alarm to get up in the morning?

First, let's establish the fact that, yes, I have a clock radio on my nightstand. I realize this is very 1987 behavior, and my iPhone is a more-than-capable substitute, but I like having the time instantly visually accessible in big, blue shiny numbers whenever I want to check it.

As you would expect, my clock radio has an alarm feature. I used to set this alarm regularly, especially when I was running a lot and needed to be up by a certain time in order to get my miles in.

Terry always makes fun of my alarm, by the way, and with good reason. When it first goes off, it's very, very soft. Almost like it's whispering to a sleeping 6-year-old: "Hey buddy! Rise and shine, champ! Up and at 'em, tiger! Time to get up!"

The volume increases the longer you wait to turn it off, but this is a very gradual process. There used to be times when I was so fast asleep, the alarm tone would ring for minutes on end and wake Terry up instead of me.

Nowadays, though? I haven't set the alarm in at least a year. Maybe two. I no longer have need for it.

At some point in the past 24 months, my body has decided we're getting up every day at exactly the same time, without the need for an alarm or wake-up call.

That time is 5:30am. Regardless of when I go to bed, my eyes pop open each morning within 5 or 10 minutes either side of 5:30.

This is a good thing, since 5:30 is when I want to get up anyway. It's just uncanny how consistent it is.

There are occasions when I "sleep in" until 6:00, but these happen only once every two to three months, and only near the end of long weeks in which I've exerted a lot of physical or mental effort.

Otherwise, my internal alarm clock is as dependable as they come.

This may be an old person thing, and by the time I'm 80 my consistent wake-up time is going to be 3:30am instead.

If and when that happens, just show me to the nearest Denny's, order me a cup of coffee and a Grand Slam breakfast (using my senior discount), and I'll be fine. Tired, maybe, but fine.

It's always fair to question whether people know what they're talking about

More nightmare fuel from the AI Blog Post Image Generator. The eyes are just a little too wide, the pupils a little too small.

One problem with the Internet (among many) is that everyone has a voice, but relatively few have credibility.

That is to say, you can't go far wrong ignoring the vast majority of what you read online. And I'm not just talking about the wacky social theories or the laughably partisan political stuff, either. I mean just about everything.

Including this blog.

A few months ago I worked with a brilliant guy named Brian Skillen and his team on ways to increase sales and visibility of my book. They knew exactly what they were doing, and to the extent I followed their advice, I undoubtedly ended up selling more paperback and electronic copies of "5 Kids, 1 Wife."

The biggest thing the experience gave me, though, was clarity around who I am (and am not) as a writer, what I have to offer, and why I write in the first place.

I learned from Brian and Co. that non-fiction books that sell well tend to do so because they help a reader along his/her individual journey. They solve a problem or provide a way forward with a relevant issue or challenge.

In short, they answer the reader's eternal question of "what's in it for me?"

Brian suggested the best route for me would be to position "5 Kids, 1 Wife" as a practical – if somewhat humorous and even tongue-in-cheek – guide to parenting. Lots of people want advice on how to raise their kids, and who better to get advice from than a guy who raised five of them?

In theory, this makes sense.

But here's the thing: My kids turned out pretty well despite me. I really don't know what to tell people when they ask for parenting advice.

Honestly, I just kind of stumbled my way through it, and thankfully it ended up working out. I'm simply not an expert when it comes to being a dad.

Over time, I've come to realize that what I offer up here on the blog and in the book is not practical instruction, but really entertainment. It's just me writing goofy stuff for the fun of it and hoping you'll come along for the ride.

So if it ever seems like I'm offering serious (and clearly unsolicited) advice about being a parent, a spouse, a friend or anything else, remember I don't really know what I'm talking about. Like most people who create content on the Internet, I can be safely disregarded.

My only hope is that, when I write about something stupid I've done or I make another painful dad joke, you will chuckle for a second and then go on with your day feeling a wee bit happier.

That is, in the end, all I can really give you.

My daughter turns 30 on Sunday, and I hope you'll watch this short video and read this old blog post

 

In two days, my daughter Elissa turns 30 years old. I could go on and on about the things that make Elissa an impressive force of nature, but if you know her, you're already aware. And if you don't know her, I hope you don't mind if I indulge in a bit of nostalgia. I originally posted this video (and the words below) on the blog on January 22, 2021. I bring them back today because, no matter how old Elissa and our other kids get, there's always a part of me that will think of them like this. At this age. At this particular stage of life...

A few years ago, I posted this video on Facebook, accompanied by these words:

Parents of young children, I know you're tired. I get it. I spent several years living the life you're living now. But believe me when I say you're going to miss the chaos. It's a lot of fun having older kids, but I would love to go back and relive moments like this one every once in a while. Which I suppose I could, but I might not survive if they all smothered me like this now. This was shot in late October 2001, which would have made Elissa 7, Chloe 5, Jared 3, and Melanie a little more than a year old (and Jack that proverbial twinkle in the eye).

All four kids shown in this video are at this moment in their 20s. And as noted, our youngest was still 4+ years away from being born.

Having little kids is an exhausting business. It requires constant mental alertness, emotional investment, and physical exertion. You are part teacher, part caretaker, and part goat herder.

When we were in this stage of parenthood, people often told me to enjoy it, that someday it would be gone and I would miss it, etc. It's not that I didn't believe them, I just never really thought very far ahead in those days. It was always about getting through that particular week.

Not that life suddenly becomes a cakewalk when your kids get older, but I do find I have a lot more room to breathe in 2021 than I did in 2001. Just from a stress perspective, it's better to be here than there.

But every once in a while, when it's quiet in our house in the evening, I find myself missing the chaos of two decades ago. There was always a diaper to change, a child to feed, a crier to attend to. It was all Barney, Teletubbies, Winnie the Pooh, and whatever PBS Kids had to offer up that day. It was loud, tiring, and frankly annoying more times than I care to admit.

But it was also wonderful. All of it. I realize the distance of time accentuates the positive and diminishes the negative, but even then, there was a part of me that knew I had it good.

I still have it good. I wouldn't go back to that time permanently for all the money in the world.

Maybe just a 10-minute visit, though. Just long enough to hold a happy baby, do zerberts on some toddler's soft belly, and get in a quick game of Candyland.

That would be nice.

Maybe that's what grandkids are for...reliving the best parts of the maelstrom of parenthood that, in truth, passed by all too fast without you realizing it.

I wouldn't know. We're not in that stage of life...yet. But it's coming.

In the meantime, I have the memories. And thanks to digital technology, I have the videos.

For now, that's enough.

She doesn't say it, but Alexa thinks she's better than me

We have, I think, five or six Amazon Echo/Dot devices scattered around our house. They can do a lot of different things, but I interact with them in only three ways:

• To turn the lights on and off in our bedroom
• To play background music when I'm engaged in a particularly tedious or time-consuming task
• To play the Question of the Day trivia game

These little "digital assistants" do a great job with the first two items. I particularly like the way they seamlessly integrate with your streaming music service, which in our case is Apple Music.

As for the Question of the Day, that usually goes off without a hitch, too. I play it most days and do fairly well, as I'm somewhat of a trivia guy. (Some might also say I'm somewhat of a "trivial" guy, but that's another discussion for another day.)

My only complaint is the passive-aggressive way Alexa – the default name of the disembodied Echo/Dot voice – sometimes treats me when I'm trying to answer that day's question.

For instance, almost invariably when I fire up the app, Alexa will try and get me to subscribe to the Question of the Day Trivia Club, which costs money.

My response to her offer is always "no."

I don't mind these commercial pitches, by the way. Question of the Day is free to play, and I feel the Amazon people are within their rights to try and upsell me if they so choose.

It's just that, when I tell her no, Alexa usually responds with a cheery "No worries!"

"No worries" implies that I've inconvenienced her and that Alexa herself is magnanimously forgiving me. Which isn't the case at all. I'm allowed to say no, Alexa. I've done nothing wrong.

Even worse is when I finish the game and then she tries to sell me on something. Again I'll say "no," but instead of an irritating "No worries!", Alexa will often simply say nothing. The game just ends without even a "Goodbye!"

I interpret this silence as disappointment or outright contempt. And again, I deserve neither. It is my right to turn down her offers of a subscription or an additional game without having to feel guilty about it.

At least that's what I tell myself. As the silence between us lingers and becomes increasingly awkward, I find myself inwardly defending the decision to say no to an electronic device. As if I need validation that I'm still a good person.

I appreciate Alexa's constant readiness to serve. But her smug superiority and utter disdain for me as a person cancel out anything she does right.

I will not let you shame me, Alexa.

Or maybe I will.

Either way, please stop it.

My wife's birthday today reminds me of the reality of my situation

Every once in a while I pull out this gem of a photo from 1987 (I think). Terry and I were much younger then, which makes both mathematical and biological sense.

Today my wife turns a year older. To me, though, she is no different now than she was 10, 20 or 30+ years ago. She is still Terry - Worker of Miracles.

She is still the single most impressive person I know.

She is still the first one I see most mornings and the last one I see most nights.

She is still the love of my life and the saver of my sanity.

It does not escape me that I am blessed to have her, and that my existence simply wouldn't be the same without her.

So in addition to wishing her a very happy birthday, you may also want to thank her for keeping me from doing a myriad of stupid things that could result in someone getting hurt, including you.

In that alone she should be commended as the hero she is.

Thanks, hon. And happy birthday.

When the folks at 23andMe give you permission to be more Irish than you thought

For many years, St. Patrick's Day never seemed especially relevant to me. I know it's the day when we're all supposed to be Irish, but biologically speaking, I figured I was English, Scottish, German, and not much else.

Wearing green and walking around with a shillelagh in one hand and a Guinness in the other seemed a tad inauthentic.

Then, a couple of years ago, at my request, Terry got me a 23andMe genetic testing kit for Christmas. I sent off a dollop of spit to their labs and eagerly opened my ancestry report weeks later when it arrived via email.

I am no geneticist, so I can't speak to the accuracy of these mass-market, saliva-based tests. I hear and read good things, but the results are sometimes so precise as to evoke a level of skepticism.

I choose to believe the 23andMe test is reliable, though, if only because I like what the results had to say.

Yes, I am mostly English. And yes, there's indubitably some German blood in me, thanks to my maternal grandmother, one Ms. Bertha Spitznogel.

I was surprised to have Swiss and French roots, as well.

What really caught my eye, though, is that I'm 47.9% "British & Irish." When you break that down further by region, I'm classified as a "Highly Likely Match" for both "Galway and Central Ireland" and "Central and Southern Ireland," not to mention being a "Likely Match" for "Central and Northern Ireland" and "Northern Ireland and Central Scottish Lowlands."

Well, top of the mornin', kiss the Blarney Stone, and keep your hands off me Lucky Charms! Who knew?

Of course, I don't know exactly how much of my ancestry is Irish, but it's apparently more than the <0.1% I originally assumed. And that whole thing about me being of Scottish origin? Maybe not so much.

With St. Patrick's Day now just 48 hours away, I feel much more justified laying some small claim to the holiday. Maybe I'll sip a green beer on Sunday and listen to Irish pipe bands.

The English side of me will hate it, of course, but I can shut down that part of my brain for one day, at least.

Oh man, did I bomb the Wheel of Fortune audition

These are the faces Vanna and Pat would likely have made if the producers had let me appear on Wheel of Fortune.

Before we get into this, I think it's important to mention two things:

1. Yes, as you'll see in a moment, my journey through the Wheel of Fortune audition process ended badly. But for the 6,738th time in the history of this blog, I feel compelled to remind you that I did appear on both Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and The Price Is Right, and I did OK on those shows. It's not like I'm completely incompetent in these matters.
   
   
2. In my defense, I had no idea I'm simply no good at playing Wheel of Fortune. Not until I actually tried it did I realize I have zero aptitude for the game.

OK, so what happened?

Well, it all started a couple of months ago when, on a whim, I decided to apply to become a Wheel of Fortune contestant. This involved filling out a simple online form and submitting a one-minute video of myself talking about my life and why I would be a good fit for the show.

That was the easy part. I'm good at that kind of stuff, and less than two weeks later, a contestant coordinator called me for a phone interview. We talked for 10 minutes, and I apparently did well enough to advance to the third round of the process.

I found this out when I received an email on a Thursday afternoon saying they wanted me to do an online audition the next day. Yikes! The email encouraged practicing before the audition, so I downloaded the Wheel of Fortune app and played several dozen games.

I also watched reruns of the show and played along with some of the Wheel Toss-Up Round videos that are all over YouTube.

I did start to vaguely worry when I was rarely able to guess the Toss-Up answers before the contestants in the videos, but at that point I still figured I was probably as good as anyone else at the game.

The next day I logged on via Zoom and discovered I would be auditioning with two delightful young women also seeking to become contestants. They were both very likeable. More important, it soon became apparent they were also much better at Wheel of Fortune than me.

The first thing we did was play some Toss-Up, in which letters in a puzzle are revealed one at a time until someone buzzes in with the answer. In this case, we just had to say "Buzz!" to indicate we were ready to respond.

We played, I think, eight Toss-Up puzzles. Know how many I answered? Zero. I didn't get even one of them. The two young women answered all eight between them.

It then slowly began dawning on me that I was either too old and slow to complete with them, or else I simply don't have an eye for word puzzles like I thought I did,.

It was probably a little of both.

Anyway, we then spent a couple of minutes introducing ourselves and being asked questions by Shannon, the producer running the online audition. As I said, I'm pretty good at this and showed well there.

Then we were given some one-on-one time with Shannon during which we were individually shown four screens, each displaying four Wheel of Fortune puzzles (so 16 puzzles total). Certain letters were already revealed in each puzzle, but unlike the Toss-Ups, that was all we got. No other letters would be turned over.

We had 90 seconds to try and solve each screen full of four puzzles. When the 90 seconds were up, you automatically moved on to the next screen no matter how well (or poorly) you did.

I did not do especially well. I think I got three puzzles right on one of the screens, but I scored a big fat zero on another and got maybe one or two on the others.

I just couldn't figure it out. I simply can't "see" the answers the way others can when they look at partially solved Wheel of Fortune puzzles. I tried talking and sounding them out, but for the most part, I failed.

And that was the end of the audition. We were told the producers would get in touch with us if they were interested in having us come out to Los Angeles (at our own expense) to appear as contestants on the show.

Shannon didn't officially say I had failed, but...it was obvious I didn't have the skills for the game. I can talk well and be personable and energetic on camera, but it doesn't mean anything if you can't actually, you know, solve the puzzles. Which I largely cannot.

I have just enough game show experience to know the results of my audition were a gracious "thanks but no thanks."

I actually don't feel too bad about the whole attempt. For one thing, it's not like this was my one and only shot at being on a nationally televised game show. This was going to be, at best, the icing on the cake after Millionaire and Price Is Right.

Also, no amount of prep was going to make me better at playing Wheel of Fortune. I simply don't have the right brain chemistry for it. And that's OK.

Really, it's OK. That's what I keep telling myself.

Because I was on two other game shows before. And I won cash and prizes. A good amount of cash and some nice prizes.

I don't need your stupid little game, Pat Sajak. You and Vanna can go ahead and enjoy having my 21-year-old audition opponents on your show.

I, in the meantime, will take solace in the fact that one time Bob Barker shook my hand and complimented me on my custom Price Is Right t-shirt.

So there.

This is the point when I get really tired of wearing sweaters to the office

I prompted the AI Blog Post Image Generator with "white guy in a sweater" and I love the result. This fake person perfectly conveys the feeling of angst (and frostbite) I'm trying to convey here.

If you choose to live on the southern shore of Lake Erie like I do, you have absolutely zero room to complain about snow, wind, cold, or really anything weather-related.

One way or another, you have options. You can move south. You can go someplace where your face doesn't hurt for extended periods of time during the year. You can become a snowbird.

So when I start complaining about the weather five seconds from now, please understand I have no right to do so.

That said, this whole "winter" thing has run its course, as far as I'm concerned. I respectfully request that my local government, or whoever is in charge of flipping the switch from one season to the next, do so now.

By the time we get to this point in March, even with the sorts of mild winters we've had the last couple of years, I feel like we've paid our dues. Enough of this, let's move on to something resembling spring.

And while we're at it, let's make it possible for me to start wearing only button-downs or thin pullovers to work. As it is, I've run through almost every combination of sweater and shirt I have in my closet. Time for something new.

The problem is that, in my office anyway, it doesn't matter what time of year it is. It's always cold. Always. February, July, September...doesn't matter, it's cold. And thus I need to wear layers when I'm working.

There is a thermostat in my office. It's located under my desk near the floor. Really, that's where they put it.

But its location isn't the problem. The problem is that the thermostat itself is fake. Either that or they simply haven't connected it to the HVAC system in any meaningful way.

Whether I set the dial to 85 degrees or 55 degrees, the conditions in my office are perpetually chilly. As  my dad Bob Tennant would have described it, "colder than a well digger's ass in the Klondike."

The point is, I would love to have at least a few months of the year in which I can wear, say, only a polo to the office and feel fine. But it's impossible. I start showing signs of hypothermia by 10 in the morning if I do that.

So I will continue with the sweaters from now until...well, indefinitely, I guess. I could submit a maintenance ticket to have the issued fixed, but experience suggests the chances of success there are about as close to zero as you can get while still accurately calling it a "chance."

In the end, I'm not complaining about the weather so much as the artificial climate in my office. There is, I would say, solid justification for that.

Be grateful for the ability and opportunity to do the things you love

It was a Friday evening about a month ago and I was dragging.

It was the end of a busy week and I was getting ready to head out for what would be my eighth sports PA announcing gig in as many nights.

I love announcing, just love it. But I was struggling to find the energy and enthusiasm I like to bring to the mic.

For one thing, my beloved Wickliffe Blue Devils boys basketball team was playing a powerful opponent in Crestwood that evening. Wickliffe had lost the first match-up of the two teams a few weeks earlier by 27 points, and there was no reason to think that night's result was going to be any different.

I try to be lively and professional in my announcing whether my teams are winning or losing, but going in knowing a loss was likely made it that much more difficult to get up for the game.

There are also the simple logistics of announcing. It's not hard work by any definition, but it does inevitably involve a certain level of time and effort if you're going to do it right.

Even when the gig is just down the hill at the Campus of Wickliffe, as it was that evening, I have to pack everything up, drive to the school, unload and bring it all into the building, set up, test everything, get my hands on rosters and officials' names, confirm pronunciations of all visiting players' names as well as the referees, and confer with the athletic director about any special events or announcements.

Then I sit at my assigned table near courtside practicing introductions and announcements to minimize flubs and, more importantly, make sure I'm adding to (and not detracting from) the experience for everyone in attendance.

Like I said, it's not ditch digging or roofing or anything, but it takes work, both physical and mental. And I had been doing it over and over again every night for more than a week. I was ready for a break.

It wasn't until I walked into the gym in the middle of the junior varsity game, with my announcing backpack over my shoulder and my rolling equipment case in tow behind me, that my attitude changed.

You couldn't help but notice people clapping and cheering. Kids were sitting with their friends in the stands having a good time. The cheerleaders and pep band were eagerly getting ready to perform. It was exactly the type of positive, wholesome atmosphere that has always attracted me to PA announcing in the first place.

It was at that moment I remembered this is something I get to do and not something I have to do.

I always say announcing – particularly at my alma mater – is a true privilege, but sometimes I don't treat it that way.

The instant I started seeing this assignment through eyes of gratitude, everything became that much more enjoyable, and I found myself with more energy than I knew what to do with.

All of which is to say that even in the midst of busy and stressful times, if you're blessed to do things you love doing, whatever they may be, never forget to be thankful.

Be thankful you're given the opportunity to do them and that you have the ability to do them.

Often when I'm out walking and running in the morning, I will say a prayer of thanks for the most basic elements of that 30-minute exercise period: the breaths I draw, the steps I take, and the moments I experience.

None of those things is guaranteed, and I'm entitled to exactly zero of them. Yet God gives them to me anyway.

Even when I'm tired, bored, or for whatever reason generally disengaged while doing something, that realization alone is enough to refocus my attention and heighten the experience.

By the way, Wickliffe lost the game that night by 36 points, but I still loved every minute of the gig. It was another chance to do what I enjoy doing and to realize there's no absolutely no guarantee I'll ever get to do it again.

By the end, it didn't feel like the eighth night of announcing in a row at all. I was actually kind of sad there wasn't another announcing date on the calendar the next evening.

I'm not the only one who uses this app every day, right?

The most-used apps on my phone are the ones you would probably expect: Messages (for texts), Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, ESPN, etc.

I also spend quite a bit of time  playing a Yahtzee game I've had on there for years.

Much further down the list, in terms of actual minutes in use, is the built-in iPhone "Reminders" app. I am actively engaged with it maybe 3 minutes total each day.

Yet it is, far and away, the app that has the most positive impact on my life.

"Reminders" does exactly what you think it does. It reminds you of various events, tasks and occasions of which you feel you need reminding.

For example, these are some of the recurring reminders I've set up and how often they pop up on my phone to jog my memory:

• "Feed Cats" - Every day at 5:30pm. I feed them first thing in the morning out of deeply ingrained habit. But I sometimes miss the evening feeding when I get home from the office, often because I'm rushing around getting ready to go out and announce a game or some other nighttime activity. This reminder ensures our two feline girls don't starve.
  
  
• "Blog Post" - Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8:00am. This reminds me that a new post has just gone up on my blog and I need to make sure the link gets shared on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
  
  
• "Begin Church Newsletter" - Every 15th of the month. A year or so ago, I took over compiling the monthly PDF newsletter recapping all of the relevant news and events for our church. The newsletter usually goes out near the end of the month, so I begin putting each edition together two weeks earlier.
  

Right now there are also six one-off reminders in there that include reducing the price of the Kindle version of my book "5 Kids, 1 Wife" to 99 cents for a special promotion I'm doing with RobinReads.com, asking someone for photos to go with an article I wrote for our school alumni newsletter, and updating the resume/log I keep of all of my sports public address announcing gigs.

I'm not saying I would forgot all of these things if it weren't for the Reminders app, but enough of them would go by the wayside if I tried remembering them on my own that having Reminders is a life-saver.

The best part is that I don't have to type anything on the tiny iPhone keyboard to set a reminder. All I have to do is summon good old Siri and tell her, "Hey Siri, remind me Thursday morning at 10am to fill the tires in my car," and she does. Just like that.

As I grow older and somewhat more forgetful, I anticipate being increasingly dependent on Reminders and Siri, my faithful electronic friends.

That's assuming, of course, I remember to set all the reminders I need in the first place.

Terry moved the oats and now I'm irretrievably confused

This was about as close as the AI Blog Post Image Generator could get when asked to produce a picture conforming to the prompt, "Someone moved the oats and I can't find them." You don't want to see the nightmare fuel that is the six other images I rejected before settling on this one.

Today's headline is somewhat misleading in that it sounds as if I'm accusing my wife of doing something wrong.

That's not the case at all. What she did actually made a lot of sense.

The problem, as always, was me.

Here's the deal: I eat plain oatmeal every morning. I take a 1/2 cup of rolled oats, mix it with water and microwave it.

Quick, simple, delicious.

For many years, we kept those oats in a plastic container stored in one of the lower cabinets in our kitchen. Getting to this container involved some semi-awkward bending down and reaching into the back of the cabinet, but I got so good at it over time that I could do it without looking and didn't mind the required effort.

Then, as part of her ongoing reorganization efforts in our house, Terry decided the oats should be put somewhere more accessible. So she moved them to an upper cabinet in the same corner of the kitchen, right at eye level where they could be seen and much more easily grabbed.

This was perfectly logical.

The problem was (and still is) that I couldn't get out of the years-old habit of bending down and reaching into the ground-level cabinet to get the oats. They have been in the upper cabinet for a good three months now, yet I still reach blindly for them in their old location probably three times out of seven each week.

I thrust my arm into the dark recess of the lower cabinet where my habitual brain believes they should still be, and I touch nothing but air.

Only when I give it a moment's thought do I remember the more convenient place the oats are now stored and change tack.

I simply can't stop doing this. Again, while it doesn't happen every day, it still happens regularly.

It's very much like the time Terry moved the silverware out of one kitchen drawer into another. I eventually adjusted, but not 100% of the way. To this day, I still occasionally open the wrong drawer hoping to find a knife or fork there, like it's 2005 or something.

I am whatever is one step beyond a "creature of habit."

If Terry really wanted to mess with me, she would occasionally put the oats back in the old place. Then I would either reach into the new spot and come up empty, or I would mistakenly try the old location again and become very disoriented the moment I realize the oats are there but shouldn't be.

Either way, I really shouldn't give her any ideas.

Pardon my technical language, but this eclipse is going to be, like, really cool

I wouldn't label myself an amateur astronomer by any means, but I've always been sufficiently interested in the subject that you could call me "an enthusiast."

For example, I own a telescope I sometimes break out to look at the moon, Jupiter and its moons, and Saturn's rings. And I'll run outside and look up if I know the International Space Station is going to fly over.

That's generally the extent of my astronomical engagement.

But all of us here in Northeast Ohio will be looking skyward in just over a month's time on Monday, April 8th, when we experience a total solar eclipse. Cleveland is smack dab in the middle of the path of totality, as are several other American cities including Dallas, Little Rock, Buffalo, and of course, Caribou, Maine.

We experienced a partial eclipse back in 2017, but this one is going to be total. To the point that it's going to get dark in the middle of the afternoon, even if the sky is cloudy (as is the case more often than not around here in early April). If skies are somewhat clear, we'll have four minutes or so to watch the moon pass fully in front of the sun, a sight most of us will never see again in our lifetimes.

I'm pumped. I've already ordered eclipse glasses for Terry, Jack and myself.

As a society, we are understandably so engrossed in what's going on with our ground-level lives most of the time we forget that, as Psalm 19 puts it, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."

The universe is an incomprehensibly big place, but even our relatively tiny solar system is a constant source of wonder. There is so much to marvel at if we just take a little time to stop and look up.

I rarely do, but on that Monday afternoon, millions of us will experience one of nature's true celestial spectacles.

I can't wait. 

AARP didn't ask me out, so I went chasing after them

Over the last few years, I've enjoyed watching people in my age bracket turning 50 and posing for photos holding the letters they received in the mail from AARP, otherwise known as the American Association for Retired Persons.

Often they have a mock sad face and jokingly(?) lament the fact they're now a half-century old. With the crack AARP membership recruiting team having tracked them down, they suddenly feel like senior citizens.

So many of my 1980s-graduating compatriots received these letters and posted about it that I was kind of sad AARP never sent me one. Somehow I slipped under their radar and didn't get an invite to the Old People's Ball.

But then, a couple of months ago, our family switched cell phone carriers from Verizon to AT&T. The AT&T guy told us that, if Terry and I joined AARP, we could get a discount on our phone bill.

Say no more. I hurried over to aarp.org and signed us up.

And it has been great! At least for me. I'm not sure Terry cares one way or the other.

You start getting all kinds of AARP emails and newsletters with product discounts and health tips and other items of interest to persons of an increasingly advanced age.

I find all of it useful.

Best of all, after getting off to such a rocky start, AARP and I are now very close. If this was 1984, I would say we were "going together."

Sometime soon, AARP and I are going to spend a Friday night playing bingo and watching "Murder She Wrote." Then we'll see where things lead.

What can I say? I'm smitten.

There will always be someone better than you at any given activity, which is really OK (I guess)

The AI Blog Post Image Generator returned this semi-abomination when prompted with the phrase "competitive streak." It was apparently taken from the finals of the Deformed Facial Features Track & Field Championships.

When I was (I think) 10 years old, I won our city's Pitch, Hit and Run competition for my age group.

Pitch, Hit and Run is/was, as the name implies, a baseball-oriented event in which kids would be measured on how accurately they could pitch a ball, how far they could hit it, and how quickly they could run the bases.

It was around the age of 10 when I started getting bigger, stronger and faster than most of the kids in my class at school. I was an early bloomer, so I had an undeniable physiological advantage in all three phases of the game.

Winning at the city level meant I advanced to the Cleveland-area Pitch, Hit and Run held at Edgewater Park, maybe a half hour from our house. I only remember three things about that event:

(1) I didn't perform nearly as well there as I had in my local competition.

(2) All of the boys in my age group appeared to be as physically mature as me.

(3) My brother Mark took me to Cleveland Municipal Stadium after the event and we watched the Cleveland Indians take on the then-California Angels.

I didn't come close to advancing to whatever the next level of Pitch, Hit and Run was, and I do recall being somewhat disappointed by that,

It was my first taste of "big fish, little pond" syndrome, but certainly not my last.

A few years later, while I was a pretty fast runner in middle school track, more than once I ran into kids from other cities who were faster than me.

In high school track, I sometimes made it to the finals of 100 and 200-meter dashes in big meets, but rarely could I win it all because other kids were, again, simply faster.

The same held true for spelling bees, writing competitions and other events throughout high school and college where there were defined winners and losers.

At some point, I inevitably came across someone who was better than me.

Which is both a good lesson to learn and the simple reality for 99% of us. No matter what you do or how well you do it, there is only a very, very small handful of people anywhere who can say they're the undeniable, absolute best at something.

This used to bother me to no end, given my wide competitive streak. I grudgingly accepted that certain people were inherently better and/or worked harder than me to succeed, but it took me years to come to terms with the idea of actually losing to them.

I'm not a big fan of losing even now, but I hated it way more when I was in my teens and 20s, let me tell you.

All of which is to say people like me need to learn to adjust to the reality of the world or else live our lives in seething resentment of the highest achievers.

When you run up against someone with more skill than you, the best approach, of course, is to learn from them. See how they practice and prepare. Understand how they got to where they are. Identify the little things they do that set them apart.

But even then, you also have to concede that they may just be more naturally gifted than you, and there isn't much you can do about that.

As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes getting to the top of the heap simply isn't in the cards.