You sleep on the same side of the bed every night, right?

Yeah...I'm with Jeff on this.

(Our monthly Blog Rerun series continues today with this post from August 18, 2021. For the record, Terry and I are still sleeping on the sides of the bed we chose when we got married 33 years ago...)

I guess it happened on our honeymoon in 1992, but at some point, Terry and I settled on which sides of the bed we would occupy for the rest of eternity.

From the point of view of someone standing at the foot of the bed (creepily staring at us as we sleep), you will always, always, always see me on the left side and Terry on the right.

Was there a reason for this? Or did it just kind of happen?

I don't know. You could argue it should be the other way around, since this arrangement puts our non-dominant hands nearest our respective night stands (Terry's left, my right). Not that it's a problem to roll over a little so we can use our preferred hands to grab our phones or whatever, but I can't remember if there was a reason we settled into our permanent sides of the bed.

NOTE: This is assuming we're both on our backs. I start on my stomach and end up on my back, so I guess it's not a problem at the beginning of the night and turns into one by the time I wake up.

Interestingly, when I travel for work and find myself alone in, say, a king-size bed, I sleep way over on my normal side. The other side remains untouched, as if I'm expecting Terry to show up in the middle of the night and just slip in beside me.

Most of us are intractable creatures of habit, to the point that it's uncomfortable for us to do certain things in our lives any other way.

I could sleep on what I consider to be Terry's side of the bed, but it would feel weird.

I could also vary the order in which I wash myself when showering, but again, weird.

Granted, to keep your brain sharp as you get older, it's a good thing to vary routines and challenge yourself every day. But I guarantee I will be sleeping on the same side of the bed and making my breakfast the same way until the day I'm 6 feet under.

Some things may not be worth changing.

Allons, enfants! Bastille Day is as good a day as any to celebrate all things French

Image credit: CultMTL.com

(NOTE: This is one of our Blog Rerun posts. It originally ran here on 5Kids1Wife.com on this day in 2021.)

Today is Bastille Day. I'm always reminded that, on this day in 1989, my friend Kevin and I went to our high school French teacher's house unannounced and drank wine with her in celebration of the holiday.

I give Madame Whitehorn credit for being so gracious to us. She was under no obligation to invite two former students (who showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep) into her home on a mid-summer Friday morning.

Yet she did, and she remains one of my favorite teachers ever, as does another former French teacher of mine, Madame Pumphrey.

As I've mentioned, I took 14 years of French classes between the Wickliffe City Schools and John Carroll University, so I have a deep interest in French language and culture. It also doesn't hurt that, as a First World War buff, I have a relatively detailed knowledge of the geography of Northeastern France, where so many battles were fought.

By the way, contrary to what you may think you know about France's military history, the French army was a tough out in WW1. The Germans had deep respect for their tenacity and fighting capacity.

I've visited Paris four times, but I've only scratched the surface of things to see and do there. I also someday hope to make it "en province" and experience some of the non-Parisian parts of the country.

The closest most Ohioans get to all things French is visiting some part of Francophone Canada. I have been to Montreal five times, and while it's lovely, it's not the real thing.

Nor should it be. It is a wonderful city with a mystique and culture all its own.

French people have a reputation for being rude and snooty, and I'm sure many are (just as many Americans are). But during my trips to France, the people I've met have been nothing but kind and gracious.

That includes the French woman whose job it was to stand in the men's room while I peed at the Gare de Nord train station in 1999. I don't know if she kept any notes on customer behavior, but if she did, I'm sure she noted my exceptional cleanliness and respect for French urinals.

So much of my mental wellbeing depends upon a nearly empty inbox

 

Please, as a favor to me, don't do this.

(NOTE: This post was originally published here four years ago on June 18, 2021. As is usually the case with these blog reruns, I have not changed my opinion on this subject.)

You may have heard it said that there are two types of people in this world: Those with zero emails in their inbox, and those with 5,000 emails in their inbox.

I am of the former camp. You can almost always fit my inbox onto one screen. It is stressful for me to have unread emails in any quantity, let alone a list that numbers into the tens, hundreds, or (gulp) thousands.

There have been times when I was watching a presentation by a co-worker sharing his/her screen, and for a brief second you could see Microsoft Outlook with an ungodly blue number like 32,418 next to their inbox, representing the total number of unread messages in there.

I would have a heart attack. Seriously, at that point you need to just start over.

I maintain an orderly folder system for both my personal Gmail and work Outlook accounts. These folders are divided into categories, and I place emails into each upon receiving and reading them. And many I just delete right away.

"What about emails that need to be acted on but I don't have the time to do it right when they come in?" you might ask.

Then have a "To Do" folder or something that tells you these are messages that need to be addressed in short order. Or make good use of a program like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote that allows you to easily create tasks and reminders for yourself.

Just, please, don't allow that blue "unread" number to get into the five digits. Or the three and four digits, for that matter. The aneurysm you save will probably be mine.

Guys, here are three reasons you should just listen to what your wife says

It's time for our monthly Blog Rerun. This post was originally published 10 years ago on May 22, 2015. I still find it to be true.

I've been married for nearly 23 years (EDITOR'S NOTE: That was in 2015. It's now nearly 33 years.) Not as long as many people I know, but longer than some. I'm occasionally asked how Terry and I make it work, and when it's a guy/husband doing the asking, I always tell him one thing:

It's largely because I just do what Terry tells me to do.

Seriously. 98% of the time, if she says something, I pretty much follow her lead. And it works.

Here's why:

1. She's smart: I'm not saying your wife is necessarily smarter than you, though my experience suggests she probably is. Regardless, if your wife is like mine, she's pretty sharp and will very rarely steer you wrong.
   
   
2. She has thought this through: Chances are, whatever big decision you're considering or whatever task you're facing, your wife has given this far more thought than you have. This isn't universal, of course, and many guys I know are very thoughtful in their decision-making. But by and large, my wife spends more time thinking about important issues than I do, from how we raise our children to whether or not we should move to Florida. So in most cases, her argument is more well-reasoned then mine, seeing as how I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about hockey and apples. In cases where hockey and/or apples are important elements of the issue at hand, she allows me to make the final call. In all other instances, I defer to her.
   
   
3. There's less effort involved on your part: Maybe this just applies to me, but I'm generally looking for the path of least resistance. And given items #1 and #2 above, I think you'll agree that your wife's judgment is likely to be sound. Therefore, you don't need to go down the path upon which she has already trodden. Go along with whatever she says and you have that much more time and energy to dwell upon your own personal version of hockey and apples, whatever it might be.

I do our taxes, but I'm pretty sure I don't do them right

(NOTE: This post originally appeared on the blog 10 years ago tomorrow on April 15, 2015. For the record, I have yet to be audited or imprisoned for tax fraud.)

I know a lot of people who hire an accountant or H&R Block or a friend to do their taxes.

Not me. Ever since we've been married, I've handled preparing and filing our federal, state and local income taxes.

I have no formal training in finance, tax law, or generally accepted accounting principles, yet year after year I take on the responsibility of filling out these forms on behalf of myself and my wife, knowing that I'm risking an audit or, frankly, arrest.

Because I'm pretty sure I never get it quite right. Which is saying something since I use the popular TurboTax software to do my taxes, and the creators of that program try their best to make the whole thing as easy as possible.

95% of it really is easy. It's just a matter of filling in numbers and answering relatively simple questions.

But there are always a few things on my taxes about which I'm not quite sure. Like, for example, when and how to claim my daughter Elissa's college expenses. Or how much to claim. Or even why I'm claiming them in the first place.

A good, conscientious person would take time to do research not only to get the numbers right, but to ensure he or she fully understands the applicable tax code.

Then there's me. Once I start doing taxes, my only goal is to finish doing taxes, and to finish them as quickly as possible.

So if I'm the least bit stumped, I kind of guess a little. To my credit, I try to guess in a direction that favors the government rather than me. But I do guess somewhat.

In the end we always end up getting a sizable refund, not because I'm a tax genius or anything, but mainly because we have five children. And the tax code is set up such that you are encouraged to be prodigious in your childbearing. Got 10 kids? Cool, we're give you a deduction for each and every one of them.

It's always with some degree of trepidation that I click the "File" button in TurboTax to send my information to the IRS. I second- and third-guess myself, but I rarely change anything I've already entered. At some point when it comes to taxes, you figure prison is probably preferable to combing through that stack of receipts one more time to make sure you got everything right.

This past year my employer stopped withholding local tax from my paycheck. When that happens you're supposed to make proactive, quarterly estimated payments to your local tax authority, which we sort of tried to do with the City of Wickliffe but failed.

And then, when I did file our city taxes, I forgot to mail a W-2 form. So the city sent me a letter, the gist of which was, "Hey genius, thanks for your tax forms. Wanna send us a copy of the ol' W-2 this time?"

At least they didn't audit or arrest me. Which is more than I can probably say for the IRS once they stumble on this post.

My family refers to me as the Noo Noo...and I'm not sure it's a compliment

(NOTE: This post originally appeared here on the blog nine years ago on February 12, 2016. I remain the family Noo Noo.)

I know a lot of people are weirded out by the Teletubbies, the British kids TV show starring Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Po. And rightly so. They're creepy, no doubt about that. They're meant to be innocent and fun, but whoever created them was clearly under the influence of a substance of questionable legality.

One of the minor characters on the Teletubbies is a little thing called Noo Noo. Or "The" Noo Noo. I'm not sure which. And I do mean "thing," by the way, because that's what Noo Noo is. It's a little living vacuum cleaner that goes around cleaning up messes. The Teletubbies at least speak, even though it's gibberish. Noo Noo just rolls around making sucking and slurping noises.

Noo Noo's sole purpose in life is to clean, but he/she/it sometimes takes things too far, as in this video:

This, I freely admit, is me. I am Noo Noo, and Noo Noo is me. When I am home, I take it on myself to clean up anything and everything: Stuff on the floor, the dishes, various messes, etc.

I will also freely admit that sometimes I clean up stuff that is not at all intended to be cleaned up.

Like, for example, there will be a glass of water on the kitchen table, and my instinct is to remove it before one of the cats knocks it over. But the person who owns the glass of water has just stepped out of the room and their cold beverage has been dumped in the sink and the glass deposited in the dishwasher. All in the space of 17 seconds while they were gone.

My bad.

On Christmas morning, I have one primary job: I walk around with a garbage bag and collect all wrapping paper, discarded bows, tissue, packaging, etc. If you don't proactively give me the paper you tear off a gift, I will come over to you and snatch it. THERE WILL BE NO MESSES ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, DO YOU HEAR ME? NO MESSES!

I don't mean to annoy anyone, but I really, really prefer having a clean house whenever I can. It makes me happier. And if you're someone whose mess-making detracts from the cleanliness of the house, I will rectify the situation post-haste.

Compare me to a Teletubbies character if you must. I proudly wear the Noo Noo badge.`

BLOG RERUN: I generally don't cook because I end up bleeding into the food

I prompted the AI Blog Post Image Generator with the phrase "man bad cook," and it returned this. Which is...actually pretty good, though it appears that steaming pot is not in fact resting on top of either stove burner.

NOTE: Today's Blog Rerun was originally posted here four years ago today on December 20, 2020. You will note that I continue not to cook.

As I type this, I have a batch of Moroccan Lentils bubbling in the slow cooker on the kitchen counter.

This is an extraordinary sentence in that I very rarely have anything bubbling, cooking, roasting or otherwise being turned into something edible through the application of heat. I don't cook. Or at least, I hardly ever cook.

There are reasons for this, the chief one being that I married an incredible cook and she feeds me and my family delicious food every day. Terry and I laugh over the fact that in 28 1/2 years of marriage, she has made exactly one dish I didn't like. And for the record, she didn't like it, either. It was an eggplant thing, though I generally like eggplant.

That means she's batting something like .99998, which is a championship-level culinary performance by any measure.

To be fair, I am also the least picky eater you may ever run across. I like everything. I really do. You would be hard pressed to name a food I haven't eaten and enjoyed, or at least wouldn't be willing to try. So that helps.

Still, she's a great home chef.

So I don't really have a need to cook. Plus (and maybe this is just because I haven't done much of it and therefore haven't developed the knack) I don't really have the talent or inclination for cooking. It doesn't interest me. Only the eating part does.

One of the last times I tried cooking a full meal for my family, I think the main dish was fennel chicken. As I was chopping ingredients, I sliced my finger and, despite my best efforts to staunch the flow, managed to bleed directly into the pot.

I look at it as added protein.

Anyway, these Moroccan Lentils caught my eye when I saw the recipe in one of Terry's cookbooks, so I bought the ingredients and am making them. And really, there's no "making" involved. It's a slow cooker recipe, so you measure everything out, dump it in, mix it, set the slow cooker going, and that's pretty much it, other than occasionally wandering over to smell your creation and stir it.

If that was all there really was to cooking, I would be the Gordon Ramsay of our house.

BLOG RERUN: One unfortunate side effect of full-time work is feeling disconnected from the day-to-day reality of your home

True to form, the AI Blog Post Image Generator created this surrealistic tableau when I prompted it with the phrase "busy household." Yet somehow I think it fits.

(I originally posted this on November 27, 2015. It still rings true.)

We are a single-income family. I go to work five (sometimes six) days a week, while my wife Terry stays home and runs the house. This is no small feat, considering that seven of us live there, but she does it well.

Or at least I assume she does it well, because I am rarely a witness to the daily operations of our household. I leave for work at 7 a.m. and am usually not home until somewhere between 6 and 7 p.m. In between, there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens without any input from me whatsoever.

Well, except the money. The money I earn funds the operation. But that's OK because I like it that way. As I always say, I am in charge of Accounts Receivable. My wife – who pays the bills and manages monetary outlays – has complete jurisdiction over Accounts Payable. This system works for me.

But on those days when I happen to be off or working from home, I get a glimpse into how one goes about helping to manage the lives of two college students, two high schoolers and a middle schooler. Terry is constantly running to and fro, packing lunches, helping with homework, reminding kids to do this assignment or practice that piece of music for band.

She spends much of her days driving to various schools to drop off forgotten soccer socks and misplaced trumpets. She runs errands and cleans the house. She serves as the Uniform Mom for the high school band, a never-ending job that requires gobs and gobs of hours and effort. 

She goes to daytime school events, emails teachers when there are issues to be addressed, and takes kids to various doctor and dentist appointments.

It's like this day after day after day after day.

And all the while I get only a glimpse into it. I hear about what's going on through hurried texts and quick afternoon check-in phone calls.

A typical conversation between Terry and me goes like this:

ME: So how was your day?

TERRY: <proceeds to rattle off 147 different things she did involving the kids>

ME: You did all that? Today?

TERRY: Yes.

ME: This Melanie person you mention. That's our ninth-grader, right?

And so on.

Don't get me wrong, this approach to life is a good one for us. Or at least it is for me, as I'm not the one having to serve as cook, maid, chauffeur and administrative assistant for six other people with crazy schedules. But I think Terry is OK with it, too.

It's just that all of these things happen without my knowing it, which makes me feel a bit disconnected from the reality. It's as if the family lives a separate life that I get to participate in for only a few short hours every night and on weekends.

Speaking of my family, if you see them, tell them I said hello. I miss them. And I'm fairly sure I know all of their names, too.

BLOG RERUN: Things I miss and don't miss about growing up in the 70s and 80s

NOTE: This post originally ran here on the blog 11 years ago today (August 12, 2013, for the calendar-challenged). I bring it back now because I still miss and don't miss these things.

Things I Miss

Fantasy Island

There have been some good shows on TV in the past 50 years, but none have matched the awesomeness that was Fantasy Island. Saturday nights at 10, as I recall. ABC aired it right after The Love Boat, and I have to believe they dominated the ratings. Mr. Rourke ruled the island with an iron fist ("Smiles, everyone, smiles...NOW."), but it was Tattoo who got the girls. Something about that little guy was apparently irresistible. 

The Sony Walkman

I could walk around and listen to music outside. OUTSIDE. Without carrying a 14-pound boom box. I could go running and listen to music. Or cycling. Or whatever it was we did back then (I can't quite remember how we filled our days, to be honest.) Of course, the music was on cassette. And you had to fast-forward and rewind to get to different songs. And that fast-forwarding and rewinding drained the life from your double-A batteries. But it was revolutionary, don't you understand?

This version of Michael Jackson

I miss that guy.

Things I Don't Miss

People smoking...everywhere

Good Lord, it was terrible. You kids have no idea how good you have it in this department. People just lit up all over the place...in their homes, in their cars, in their offices, in church, etc. OK, maybe not in church. As far as I know. I mean, I didn't go to church in the 70s. The point is, the world smelled like cigarettes. Which is to say the world was disgusting and it stank. The fact that there are still people who smoke amazes me. I just assumed we all collectively came to our senses round about 1997 and that everyone was going to quit. What did I miss?

Four channels of TV

After the iPod and the Keurig coffee maker, I say cable/streaming television is Western Civilization's greatest contribution to the universe over the past several decades. When I was growing up in Cleveland, you had channels 3 (NBC), 5 (ABC), 8 (CBS), and 43 (independent). And at some point there was channel 61, too. And that was it. The reception was bad during storms AND YOU HAD TO GET UP TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL. Who does that? Not us now. Which is why we're all fat. But still...

Rubik's Cube

There wasn't anything intrinsically wrong with Rubik's Cube, other than the fact that I could never solve it. Ever. Even bought a book explaining how to solve it and couldn't understand it. Yet there were people appearing on "That's Incredible" who, given a randomly configured Rubik's Cube, could solve the thing in, like, 12 seconds. Maybe less, I don't remember. All I know is that I was bitter about it then and I'm bitter about it now. DARN YOU AND YOUR DEMONIC INVENTION, ERNO RUBIK!

BLOG RERUN: The flawed strategy of the bunnies by the side of the road

(NOTE: I have mentioned here before that I often have little idea which blog posts are going to resonate with people and get a lot of clicks and which ones will fall flat. When I published the following in June 2021, I thought for sure it would be a hit. It still makes me laugh. But the engagement was almost zero, and page views were minimal. I still can't understand it, so we're trying again. Maybe I'm wrong here.)

Originally posted June 11, 2021: I take the majority of my morning walks/runs along our street, Miller Avenue, and its creatively named westward extension, West Miller. Together, these streets provide a simple (if hilly) 2.32-mile loop I use as the basis for most of my A.M. excursions.

The route passes by a series of wide grassy areas in which you can usually find some combination of deer, racoons, possums, birds, and skunks, depending on how early you get out the door. Also featured there are what Terry and I simply call The Bunnies™.

These are some common species of wild rabbit, but we never call them "rabbits." It is always "The Bunnies™."

This morning while chugging down West Miller, I had a very typical encounter with one of The Bunnies™.

A bunny will be happily chomping on grass by the side of the road as I approach. He/she will then see me coming. If these bunnies were smarter and had some system of passing down tribal knowledge, they would have learned from their parents that I am a common sight on the streets in the morning and am absolutely harmless.

(As an aside, I wanted to use the rabbit equivalent of "tribal" in the previous paragraph, so I looked up what a group of rabbits is called. There is apparently some difference of opinion out there, but one of the common designations is a "fluffle" of rabbits. Really. I would have happily used that word except I don't know how to render it in adjectival form. "Fluffle-ey" knowledge? "Fluffinial" knowledge? "Flufflenian" knowledge? I have no idea. So I stuck with "tribal.")

Anyway, rabbits don't seem to have any method of societal knowledge transfer, so they rely purely on instinct. And this bunny's instinct told him I could definitely be a threat and he should do what The Bunnies™ always do when I approach.

He stayed where he was and sat perfectly still.

This is not, it must be said, an ideal approach. For one thing, The Bunnies™ are not camouflaged against the grass, so they're readily visible even from a distance. And even though they generally do a good job of remaining motionless, it doesn't matter. I'm already staring right at them.

Regardless, here's what also happens every time: They will stand there until I get within a few feet, and then they'll run away in terror. Every time.

The problems with this whole philosophy are evident:

(1) You, as a bunny, are very quick. By waiting until I'm right on top of you before you run, you nullify this advantage and make it easier for me to lunge out and get you (which, let's be clear, I would never do, but you don't know me).

(2) More importantly, if this is your strategy, then you have to stick to it. Have some nerve, bunnies. If you're going with the stand-perfectly-still approach, see it through to the end. The assumption here (the key to this whole method of defense, really) is that I don't see you in the first place. Why ruin it by running away at the very late minute and making yourself extremely obvious? Why, The Bunnies™, why??

I have no answers, but I'm considering some sort of leaflet campaign among The Bunnies™ urging them to reconsider their absolutely terrible approach to keeping me from killing them.

Which, again, I would never do. But they're bunnies. They can't be expected to know I have their best interests in mind.

BLOG RERUN: For it's money they have and peace they lack

NOTE: This post originally ran on the blog on September 7, 2017. I bring it back today for three reasons: (1) It is baseball season; (2) It feels even more relevant today than it did nearly seven years ago; (3) While I mostly don't love my own writing, I've always thought I did an OK job with this one. I hope you do, too.

There is a cult within America – populated largely by white, middle-aged males, but certainly not limited to them – that has romanticized the game of baseball beyond what it probably deserves.

I am perhaps one of them, but at least I know I am one of them.

The reasons for this idolization of the sport are varied. For many, baseball was their best (and perhaps only) connection with their fathers. Many of us root for the teams our dads rooted for because there is an indelible bond, strengthened ever further by blood, among those who live and die with the fortunes of a common athletic team.

For others, baseball represents a simpler time. In most cases, I think that simpler time for which they yearn was really no simpler than today, but it certainly seemed simpler in a pre-Internet age...and with the passing of time, of course, which tends to whitewash every flaw.

In the days before massive youth soccer leagues, baseball was the one sport in which most young men – it was softball for the girls – participated at one level or another. I played through the age of 13 until I could no longer keep up with the fastballs and had no hope of hitting a curveball. More importantly, I became a fan of the game at the age of 9 and remain one to this day.

It is a slow game, some will say, and I don't disagree with them. But "slow" does not equate with "boring." Watching a well-played baseball game is just about the best way I can think of to spend a summer afternoon, even if it takes 3+ hours to play and ends with a 2-1 score.

I bring this up because, as I type, my beloved Cleveland Indians have won an astounding 14 games in a row (the second consecutive season in which they've accomplished this feat). And tonight they go for No. 15 with ace pitcher and Cy Young Award candidate Corey Kluber on the mound.

So many people I come across these days (including my doctor as she poked and prodded me this morning as part of my annual physical) want to talk about the Tribe. Could this be their year? Will they stay healthy? What's up with Jose Ramirez's incredible bat? And his hair, for that matter?

They ask these questions with that note of restrained, even fatalistic, optimism that Cleveland sports fans have perfected. We have been burned in a variety of creatively cruel ways over the years, and there is a part of us that always assumes the worst will happen.

But the important thing is, talking about the Tribe is fun, and it makes us happy. It gives us a few minutes to stop thinking about hurricanes and politics and flag protests and everything else that makes us cry and worry and act viciously toward one another.

There are poor people in this country, no doubt, but as comedienne Marsha Warfield said about hunger in the U.S., "It ain't but so bad." The vast majority of us have the essentials we need to live. Most have roofs over their heads and some sort of food on the table. We have the things our wages can buy.

What we don't have, what perhaps we've never had, is peace. A sense that everything is going to be OK. Maybe that's impossible to have in this (or any) age, so we settle for small glimpses of it. We talk about the things that make us feel good and remind us that humans have the capacity to do meaningful, inspirational things.

And I include baseball in that. It's just a game, you might say, and you're right. But it's also an escape, albeit temporary, from everything else that weighs on us. It is a way to connect to the part of our collective consciousness that shuts down in the face of worrisome news and constant conflict and our own mortality.

There are bad characters in baseball as in anything. There is greed, there is selfishness and there is cheating.

But there is also purity and honesty and beauty that mostly eludes us as we slog our way through everyday life.

It's purity, honesty and beauty that can be had for the price of a ticket, or even the click of a TV remote.

If acknowledging that simple fact constitutes over-romanticizing baseball, then I can only plead guilty.

In the end, I'll be back season after season to watch and cheer and fret and fume. I follow other sports, but in the end, it was baseball that was my first love. And she never fails to deliver.

Is "pirate" a viable career choice? On balance, yes.

I simply entered "pirate" into the AI Blog Post Image Generator and it returned this. I'm a fan.

(NOTE: I wrote this post in 2013. There have been several posts over the years that have made me laugh and no one else, and this is one of them. It's still probably not nearly as funny as I think it is, but it's Wednesday and I needed material, so...we're bringing this one back.)

The downside of being a pirate

• The hours. It seems like sailing the seven seas is a hard job and requires a lot of long hours. Not a problem if you really love the work, but still...
• Inordinate risk of on-the-job injury or death. There are a million ways to get hurt or get dead when you're a pirate. Like, for instance, when you try to take over another ship, you could get a sword through the gut. Or the captain could make you walk the plank. And then there's the apparently ever-present risk of scurvy. I'm in corporate communications and have never known one of my colleagues to die of scurvy, so score one for my side.
• Surly co-workers. If the movies and television are any indication, pirates as a group aren't the friendliest lot. The experts will tell you that workplace relationships are important, but I just don't see Black Bart standing around the water cooler talking about last night's ball game.
• High chance of alcohol poisoning. If you're not on duty on a pirate ship, you're drinking. And usually you're drinking rum. I had a bad experience with rum more than 30 years ago and have tried to avoid it ever since. No way I make it even a week if I'm forced to drink rum.
• Little chance for advancement. I'm not sure how the org chart looks on a typical pirate ship, but it seems that any position besides captain or first mate is less than desirable. There's just no potential for promotion for most of the crew.

The upside of being a pirate

• The travel. You get to see a lot of Caribbean islands if you're a pirate. And if you break the ship's rules, you'll get to know one particular island really well when they strand you there. But seriously, no endless days at a desk for you, me bucko!
• The potential payoff. If there's one thing pirates live for more than rum, it's gold. And they tend to find it at an uncanny rate. Assuming your captain is a fair man who evenly distributes the booty once it has been claimed, you're in for a handsome salary. Note, however, that income equity is still not a notable feature of many pirate ships.
• The wenches. There are, of course, virtually no women on pirate ships. But when you hit one of those exotic ports of call to patronize a local watering hole, you will almost certainly be waited upon by a busty server in an off-the-shoulder white top. And after months at sea, this will not be an unwelcome sight.
• The status. Pirates are much cooler than, say, accountants. Or corporate communicators, for that matter. For all the risk of death and dismemberment, there is a certain cachet in being able to say offhandedly at a party, "Yeah, I'm a pirate." And you don't have to look like Johnny Depp to enjoy this little social perk.
• The movie rights. Speaking of Johnny Depp, being a pirate means there's an excellent chance some Hollywood producer is going to want to make a movie about you, or at least he'll want to cast you in a movie, which is just as good. Pirate movies never go out of style.

Conclusion

If you can endure the constant specter of death and the poor hygiene of your shipmates, then being a pirate is a solid and even admirable career choice. You'll need to make sure you have no moral qualms about killing innocent seaman on passing merchant vessels in order to steal their worldly possessions. But really, once you get past that, everything else is cream cheese.

BLOG RERUN: To my children - Just pick up the blanket

(NOTE: Hey, it's Blog Rerun time again! Let's go back into the musty blog archives and resurrect a post from the past that I happen to have liked, for whatever reason. This particular one first ran on July 31, 2013. And for the record, in the three years since this was posted, not a single person in my house apart from Terry has yet picked up the #@%^! blanket...)


I was down in the basement a few minutes ago, and I was disheartened to find that one of you has, yet again, left a blanket on the floor.

You know the blanket I'm talking about. It's the one that has a green and blue plaid design on one side and white fleece on the other. I won it in a work raffle, I think, 15 or 20 years ago.

At least three times a week, I will come downstairs and find this blanket in a heap on the floor. And I know how it happens: One of you wraps it around yourself as you sit on the couch and watch TV (which I totally understand, given that it's a perpetual 27 degrees down there).

Then, when you're finished watching TV, you simply fling the blanket onto the floor, get off the couch, and go upstairs to attend to other things.

And there sits the blanket, which you got out of the storage cabinet in the entertainment center.

My plea to you is simple: Pick up the blanket.

It's not hard. When you're finished using the blanket, just fold it up and put it back where it belongs in the cabinet.

Heck, you don't even have to fold it if you don't want to. You can just crumple it into a big ball and throw it in there. But the important thing is that you pick it up and put it away.

Got that? Just pick it up and put it away. I've asked you to do this before and you have repeatedly failed to comply. All you have to do is pick it up and put it away. That's it. That's all I ask.

If I go around and ask who left the blanket out on the floor, chances are that all five of you will say it wasn't you. And since I know it wasn't me, and I'm 99.9% sure it wasn't your mother, then one of you either has a very bad memory or is outright lying.

Speaking of your mother, you need to think about her when you leave the blanket on the basement floor. She spends her days cleaning up messes you created, and she is now at her absolute limit. If you leave the blanket on the basement floor again and fail to pick it up and put it away (which, you'll recall, are the simple instructions I gave you earlier), she may snap.

I'm not kidding. She may lose it. And by "lose it," I don't mean that she might yell at you or anything. I mean she may literally murder one of you.

Again, you think I'm joking. I'm not. If she walks down into that basement and finds the blanket on the floor one more time, just one more time, I think it will be enough to push her over the edge. It won't surprise me in the least if she grabs a screwdriver and plunges it into one of your skulls.

I'm not condoning this behavior, mind you, but I'm also extremely sympathetic to her frustration. And when she goes on trial for this crime, I promise I'll be testifying on her behalf.

Because there's not much you're required to do here. This is maybe a 12-second job. When you're finished using the blanket, you just need to put it back into the cabinet. Don't leave it on the floor. Pick it up, then put it away. The folding part, as I mentioned before, is completely optional. Just put the blanket away.

I'm not home as often as your mother, seeing as I spend my days working so as to earn enough money to buy products for you to leave on the floor. You don't only do this with the blanket. You leave everything from cups and plates to toys and chip bags on the floor. Where did we go wrong with you?

Seriously, at what point did we convey the idea that using something then leaving it on the floor and walking away is OK? When was that even implied? Because it's not acceptable. Not in the least. Pick up the blanket. After you use it, pick it up and put it away. OK?

The temptation, of course, is to just put the blanket away myself when I see it. But all this does is perpetuate the problem. You'll just keep doing it unless we point it out to you and make you go back downstairs to put it away. Experience suggests you'll keep on doing it even then.

Which I don't understand, because I fail to see any complicating factors here that would prevent you from performing this small task for us. I will break it down into three steps, in case that helps:

Step 1: Pick the blanket up off the floor
Step 2: Fold the blanket (AGAIN, OPTIONAL)
Step 3: Put the blanket into the cabinet in the lower left corner of the entertainment center

Aaaaaaand, you're done. Finished. Nothing more to see or do here. Just put away the blanket. Please, when you're finished with it, just put away the blanket.

Put away the blanket.

BLOG RERUN: Why crushing your kids in Junior Monopoly is OK

(NOTE: Here's our monthly Blog Rerun, in which we bring back a post from somewhere in the distant and not-so-distant history of this blog. This one originally ran on June 4, 2012.)

Here's the thing with little kids and board games (or card games or sports or any sort of competition): Sooner or later, they're going to have to learn how to lose. And you as a parent are the one who has to teach them.

This isn't as easy as it sounds. Most of us with children have, at one point or another, let our kids win at something without them realizing it. You know what I'm talking about. You reshuffle the cards in Candyland and surreptitiously arrange the deck so that, hey look at that! Junior just drew Queen Frostine and is now 157 spaces ahead of me and thank the Lord this game will finally be over soon!

(NOTE: If you're going to take that particular approach to Candyland, also remember to scan ahead in the deck to make sure there are no impending disasters awaiting Junior. Like two cards later, he picks Mr. Mint and suddenly is way back at the start of the board and you realize the game will never, ever end because you messed with Board Game Karma.)

I've done this a time or two myself over the years. It makes the game a little more enjoyable for the kid and gives them some confidence. I don't know that I have a lot of theories about parenting, but if I do, one of them is the importance of instilling confidence in a child. It does wonders for them simply to know they can succeed at something.

But of course you can only do this so many times. Just as important as gaining confidence is for them to learn the life lesson that we don't always win. Queen Frostine isn't always going to come up on your turn. The other baseball team is sometimes going to be better than yours. We all strike out, fumble, put the cue ball in the corner pocket, or simply fall short at Go Fish from time to time.

Some kids get this right away, and they're totally fine with it. Others don't deal with losing so well. Like, say for instance, my son Jack.

Jack is a very bright little kid, which is both a blessing and a curse. At school, he picks up on things pretty quickly...98% of the time. When he doesn't get something right away, he gets frustrated and sometimes doesn't want to make the effort to learn it.

I will freely admit that he gets this particular trait from his father. When I was in kindergarten, they actually had me see the school psychologist because I would get so mad when I got even a single math problem wrong. They thought my parents were putting pressure on me to be perfect, but the psychologist quickly discovered that my mom and dad were pretty laid back and I was just a neurotic little freak who had to get every single thing right or else I would slash my wrists.

And so I've passed on the perfectionist gene to my little boy, and he's slowly but surely dealing with it. There's no doubt he really likes winning, though, and I imagine that quality will stay with him forever. Which isn't entirely bad. Once Jack learns the value of applying himself to a problem rather than walking away in frustration, he'll have acquired a valuable skill.

A lot of people complain about today's culture of everyone's-a-winner, particularly when it comes to youth sports. They say we're raising a generation of wimps who don't know how to lose when we give everyone a trophy or a ribbon, no matter how unskilled they are.

I guess I come down somewhere in the middle on this. I have no problem keeping score even at the youngest levels of competition, but I also don't think it's a bad thing for a 6-year-old to walk away with a ribbon at the end of the season as an acknowledgment of his/her hard work and participation.

I think I've mentioned before that I do this with my U8 soccer teams, which are made up of kids in kindergarten, first and second grades. At the end of the season, everyone gets some sort of award reflecting their performance, whether it's Most Valuable Offensive Player or simply the Most Improved. The kids like it and, again, it gives them a little confidence and hopefully encourages them to continue playing.

But in the end, relatively few of them will stick with the sport through high school. And obviously, even fewer (if any) will go on to play in college or at the professional level. Which is why they need to learn to handle the disappointment of losing now. And so Coach Scott instills this by scrimmaging against them and absolutely dominating them.

I like to think of it as my little bit of life teaching for the kids...and feeding my lifelong perfectionist competitive ego at the same time. Everybody wins.

These, believe it or not, are your finest days

(NOTE: This is the Blog Rerun for January. This post still describes my life, and I suspect it also describes the chaotic but wonderful existence of many who read this blog as well. It originally ran on July 26, 2013.)

If you don't mind, I'd like for you to read a quote I've lifted from a novel called "Water for Elephants." It's a tad long, but it sets the stage for my ramblings today, and you may even find it as inspirational as I do:

Those were the salad days, the halcyon years! The sleepless nights, the wailing babies; the days the interior of the house looked like it had been hit by a hurricane; the times I had five kids, a chimpanzee, and a wife in bed with fever. Even when the fourth glass of milk got spilled in a single night, or the shrill screeching threatened to split my skull, or when I was bailing out some son or other...from a minor predicament at the police station, they were good years, grand years.

But it all zipped by. One minute Marlena and I were in it up to our eyeballs, and next thing we knew the kids were borrowing the car and fleeing the coop for college. And now, here I am. In my nineties and all alone.

You don't have to have children to appreciate the truth of those two paragraphs. You need only be someone who has been through great stress at one point or another. Which is to say, all of us.

If you read this little blog with any regularity, you've seen me wax forlorn over the chaos that is my life. I find myself running hither and yon from dawn to dusk, and I'm not even exactly sure where "yon" is, or why I'm supposed to run there. But I do.

Yet in all of my complaining, never does it escape me that I love this life. I absolutely love it. While there are many people who I admire greatly, I would not trade my existence for anyone else's in the world.

I constantly worry about my children. I constantly complain about their inability to clean up a mess. I constantly fret over the ways in which I fall short as a husband and father.

And it's wonderful. Every minute of it.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I think there's a certain nobility in what we as human beings do every day in support of ourselves and those we love. We sacrifice our time and energy for goals we like to believe are bigger than us, and we are better creatures for having done so.

Occasionally I find myself longing for the days when the kids are grown and things finally slow down. But I know for certain I'll miss this rat race.

So lately I've reveled in the bedlam. And so should you.

Whether you recognize it or not, my friend, these are your finest days. Embrace them. Learn from them. Grow in them.

Because when it's all said and done, these are the times that will define who you were and what you stood for. And if you're playing your cards right, you should be pretty pleased with the outcome.

Things that happen in movies but never in the world where I live

(NOTE: This is our monthly Blog Rerun, where we bring back a post from years gone by. This one originally ran on June 19, 2012. And now it's running on December 21, 2015. So there's that...)

People end phone conversations abruptly without saying goodbye
In the movies, people will be talking on the phone and say something like, "I'll meet you at 8 at the IHOP," and then they'll hang up the phone without another word. Just like that. Does this happen to you? It never happens to me. If I'm talking to someone on the phone and it's clear the conversation is over, one of us will say something like, "OK, talk to you soon." And the other one will say, "Great. Bye!" And then we'll hang up together in a mutually agreeable way. It could be that this is just too boring and mundane for movie dialogue. But if a movie is supposed to reflect reality in some way (at least to the point that I the viewer can relate to it), I'm willing to invest a few extra seconds if it means that phone conversations will end politely.

Everyone sleeps naked
OK, not everyone in the movies takes their clothes off to sleep. Like, if it's a middle-aged suburban couple or something, the husband will wear a full set of pajamas and the wife will have on a boring nightgown. That's to be expected. But other than kids, everyone else in the movies seems to sleep au naturale. Maybe I'm just not in touch with the average person here, but I do not sleep naked. Ever. Do you? Am I just an old fuddy duddy at the age of 42? I wear a t-shirt and shorts to bed. Not boxer shorts, actual athletic shorts. I am perfectly willing to admit I may be in the minority here, but you'll note that the title of this post is things that happen in movies "but never in the world where I live." (NOTE: If it's true that a higher proportion of movie characters sleep in the nude than in real life, I suspect this is because actors, for the most part, have nicer bodies than you or me. And there's a demand to see them unclothed. Understood and acknowledged. All I'm saying is, what's with all the nekkid people in movie beds?)

Doors burst open with the slightest kick
This is an unscientific observation here, insofar as I have never actually attempted to kick down a door. But it seems in the movie world that all doors are made of balsa wood. You don't have to be particularly big or strong to demolish a door in a movie. Are doors really that fragile? Has any blog reader ever actually kicked down a door? I need a ruling on this. If you have, in fact, pulled a Jean Claude Van Damme on a door, please let us know. I would be surprised if it's as easy in real life as it seems to be onscreen.

High schools all look like country clubs
Granted, more often than not, a high school in a movie is set in California, because so many movies are set in California. And growing up in Ohio, one is led to believe that everything in California is nicer than everything in the Midwest. I've been to California several times, though, and I can tell you that while the state has many lovely buildings, not all of them are better than what we have in Ohio. Yet so many high schools in movies look like luxury hotels. And class changes are often done outside, which I get is possible in sunny California versus, say, Cleveland in February. But still, do California kids all attend high-end private high schools? And if so, why didn't my parents move there back in the 80s?

The legend of Johnny Flipperhands

(NOTE: Here's our Blog Rerun for November, as we once again bring back a blog post from the past and run it because I like it, and also because it saves me the trouble of having to write a new one. This one goes way back, at least relative to the age of this blog: It was first posted on December 12, 2011. Enjoy it...and stop staring at my tiny hands.)


"Johnny hands." That's what I've always called my hands, because they look like they should be attached to a little 5-foot-tall guy named Johnny.

Seriously, I have the smallest hands. They don't look like they should belong to someone my age and body size. It's even weirder because the rest of me is fairly proportional. Well, except for my head. My head is freakishly large. I don't know why, but I've always had a large noggin. And my feet, while reasonable in length (size 10 1/2), are quadruple-E in width. And in some models of shoes, 4E isn't even wide enough.

So that's me in a nutshell: Large head, small hands, fat feet. Picture Fred Flintstone. That's me.

I have always had small hands. But now that my kids are growing up, my tiny appendages have become almost embarrassing. My daughter Melanie is 11 years old. If we hold our hands up against each other, palm to palm, my fingers are MAYBE an eighth of an inch longer than hers. And Elissa, my petite little 17-year-old who has trouble making the minimum weight to give blood, has fingers that are clearly longer than mine.

Don't even get me started on Jared, our 13-year-old man-child. He is not only taller than me, but his fingers are longer than mine by a full knuckle. It's amazing. Where did I get these little digits? My dad had short fingers, but they were at least bulky. They had some width to them. Mine? They're the fingers of a third-grader, and I'm guessing they're not growing any time soon.

Actually, I think they're shrinking. I don't remember them ever being this tiny before. I just measured the nail on my pinky finger, and it's 3/8" across. Three-eighths of an inch! There's going to come a point when my fingernails will disappear altogether -- a process I have admittedly helped along because I chew them all the time.

Sometime in the next 5-10 years, I would say, my fingers themselves will just vanish. Then I'll be left with tiny flippers and no opposable thumbs, making even the most rudimentary tasks impossible. I'll need to hire a full-time assistant just to pick things up for me.

Yes, this is the fate that awaits me. Just call me Johnny Flipperhands – Master of the Large Head, Fat Feet and Tiny Mitts.