A 37-year-old video clip brings back a flood of memories

The video at the top of today's post is a 1-minute snippet of a longer segment recorded on Wednesday, November 2, 1988, my 19th birthday.

The clip was captured by my dad using our trusty old – and decidedly heavy – Curtis Mathis video camera. The quality is exactly what you would expect nearly four decades on, though I'm not sure the lighting and the videographer were exactly top notch to begin with.

(I say that with all due respect to my dad, who made up for whatever he lacked in moviemaking skills with love and enthusiasm.)

No matter, though. What's important is that it captures a moment in time that, while receding further and further into the past, still vividly recalls the optimism of young adulthood.

I was a freshman at John Carroll University, while my then-fiancée Terry (seen in the last few seconds of the video) was working at Lincoln Electric and banking the money we would use to buy our first house 3 1/2 years later.

There's much to savor here, including:

• A striking resemblance between 1988 me and the 2025 version of my son Jack. People have said we look alike, and I see it here.
  
  
• A starring role for my niece Jessica, who was 3 years old at the time and the star of nearly every video my dad shot.
  
  
• Cameos from loved ones long gone (Mom, my sister Judi) and those thankfully still with us (my brother Mark, my sister-in-law Becky, my brother-in-law Jess).
  
  
• Mark with my stuffed Bill the Cat on his head.

Mine is not the first generation to have its life chronicled through home movies, though I think the VCR era did make it easier to record and watch moments like these.

And I'm so grateful for that. A few years ago I went through our VHS tapes and digitized as many as I could. They're full of clips like these I never want to lose.

Time marches on. Technology makes it possible to remember the people and places we encounter along the way in more than just our hearts.

Tonight we will be among the old people gathered to listen to (and cheer for) Men at Work, Toto and Christopher Cross

 

Only one of these original members of Men at Work will be onstage this evening at Blossom Music Center.

I have long since passed the age when you fret over the fact that the music you listened to as a teenager is now regularly played on "oldies" stations. That happened years ago.

On the spectrum of musical fandom, I'm at the point where I willingly attend cheesy, nostalgia-laden reunion concerts. I revel in being surrounded by other mid- to late-middle-aged people whose enthusiasm is perhaps muted compared with what it once was but who can still be described as "spirited."

I also make no apologies that the average age of the crowd at the concert I'll be attending tonight (along with my brother Mark and sister Debbie) is likely to be older than 50 and possibly pushing 60.

That's the demographic I expect will turn up at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, this evening for a triple bill featuring 80s acts Men at Work, Toto and Christopher Cross.

I suspect most in the audience will be there because they're particular fans of one of those three bands. For Mark and me, anyway, the clear headliner is Men at Work.

I have been a pretty ardent MAW fan since 1983, when the first 45 I ever bought was their single "Down Under" and the first cassette I ever purchased was their album "Business as Usual." (Northeast Ohioans will appreciate the fact that I bought both of these items at Zayre's.)

The thing is, as is so often the case when bands tour decades beyond the peak of their popularity, the group performing tonight under the name "Men at Work" only has one original member. That would be lead singer and guitarist Colin Hay.

Mark (along with his son and my nephew Mark) and I have seen Colin perform live several times as a solo artist, and we saw this incarnation of Men at Work play a few years ago. You can say we're fans.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also looking forward to hearing Toto play its hits, notably "Africa" and "Rosanna." And there's no doubting the talent Christopher Cross brings to the stage with his "Sailing," "Ride Like the Wind" and "Arthur's Theme."

But I'm there for the Men, who actually now include two women. One is a wonderful musician named Scheila Gonzalez, who plays saxophone, flute and keyboards in a way that eerily recreates the sound and vibe of the late Greg Ham, Men at Work's original multi-instrumentalist. (NOTE: Since writing this, I've come to find out Scheila won't be there tonight, but is instead touring with Weird Al Yankovic. Darn.)

The other is Cecilia Noël, Colin's wife and a talented singer and performer in her own right.

We'll have a good time, I have no doubt. It will be 2-3 hours of letting the music take me back to when I was much younger and much dumber. And also skinnier. With more hair.

You couldn't pay me to actually go back to that era of my life and live it again, but I don't mind taking a temporary trip back in time. I look forward to the whole thing.

As long as the bands don't play too long, of course. I need to get home and get my sleep, you know.

Birthday Week makes you take stock of the relationships in your life

My brother Mark had a birthday yesterday.

There are a couple of times each year when I have a slew of family and friends celebrating birthdays all at once.

One is the month of March running into early April. I won't even get into the list of people in my life who have birthdays during those five weeks, other than to say it's long and includes both Terry and Elissa.

The other stretch of birthdays happens right now in mid-July. It doesn't involve as many people as that March/April run, but it's no less important.

It began yesterday with my brother Mark's birthday, it continues tomorrow with my good friend Kevin's big day, and it concludes on Sunday when my sister Debbie turns a milestone age.

I won't tell you exactly how old Debbie will be, other than to say it's a number ending in 0 that falls somewhere between 69 and 71. And she makes it look good.

Oh, and also, when my Aunt Peg was alive, her birthday was also this week.

All of these people have played important roles in my life, and they're all good folks worth celebrating.

The fact that they're each a year older this week makes me appreciate them all the more.

As I've often (morbidly) pointed out here on the blog, we all have an expiration date. As much as we would like to believe life as we know it now will go on forever, it won't.

One by one, I and the people celebrating birthdays are going to shuffle off this mortal coil. And that's OK.

Really, it's OK. It's the way of things, and there's no getting around it. Acceptance feels a lot better than dread and denial.

Anyway, I digress. Here's wishing the happiest of birthdays to my big brother, my big sister, and my buddy Kev, and here's to the memory of good old Aunt Peg.

I only wish to point out that you're all older than me and always will be.

I can drive 55, but can I live it?

By way of context today, kids, you should know that for a time in the 1970s and 80s, the maximum speed limit on our nation's highways was a uniform 55 miles per hour. And it felt every bit as slow as it sounds.

In 1984, a guy named Sammy Hagar released a song called "I Can't Drive 55," supposedly in response to having received a ticket for going 62mph in a 55 zone.

The gist of the song was, "Go ahead and give me a ticket or throw me in jail or whatever you want to do, but I can't stop myself from going faster than 55."

I don't drive as fast now as I once did, which I attribute to getting a little older and hopefully a bit wiser.

Speaking of getting a little older, we arrive at the point of the post, which is this: Tomorrow I turn 55 years old.

This is not an especially momentous occasion for anyone, least of all me. I'm not a huge birthday guy to begin with, though I do enjoy hearing from my kids and other family and friends wishing me well, making fun of my advancing years, and generally touching base in the course of their otherwise busy days.

This just happens to be one of those birthdays that has some significance to it. When the second digit of your age is a '5,' it means you're halfway between age milestones. In my case, I'm five years from having turned 50 and five years away from a number that sounds particularly imposing: 60.

I don't know why I think this way, though. Those who are 60-plus in my immediate family (my sister Debbie, my brother Mark, my sister-in-law Chris) are all energetic and youthful and fun. They look and act nothing like 60 seemed to me when I was a teenager.

There is evidently much truth to the idea of age just being a number.

Still, I remember clearly when my dad turned 55 in 1984. Despite having always had gray/white hair since I was a baby, it was the first time I thought to myself, "Oh man, he's getting OLD. This is a little scary."

I don't feel that way now, though of course none of us feels a certain age is "old" once we ourselves approach it.

You get to a point where "old person" just means, "anybody older than me."

I think I'm going to go with that approach for now.

In the meantime, while I do drive faster than 55, I'm still sticking to the right two lanes along with all the other geezers. You reckless whippersnappers can feel free to blow past us in the finest Sammy Hagar tradition.

I'm increasingly behind the artificial intelligence curve

My brother Mark knows a lot about artificial intelligence (AI). To the point that he's considered an "industry thought leader." (That link, in which Mark talks about the business use of AI, is worth your time.)

To be clear, what Mark knows is generative AI, which our friends at Wikipedia define as "artificial intelligence capable of generating text, images, videos, or other data using generative models, often in response to prompts."

AI that creates stuff for you, basically.

We all use AI more than we think, whether it's a digital home assistant (think Alexa), facial recognition on our phones, or browsing the recommendations Amazon has for us based on our shopping history.

More and more of us are also using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, and I really want to tell you I'm one of them. I am, after all, a corporate communicator. My people have helped lead the generative AI revolution in recent years.

But I would be lying if I said I was an AI power user. Or even a regular user.

Honestly, it just doesn't occur to me to use AI tools day to day in my personal or professional life. ChatGPT is incredible (most people don't understand what it and similar apps like Claude and Microsoft Copilot can really do), but it's simply not top of mind for me.

There's also a certain Lazy Old Guy factor at play. I don't always want to make the effort to learn new ways of doing things, especially when the old ways serve me just fine.

(Of course, Mark is 12 years older than me, and he doesn't seem to have any problem learning how to use these tools to their full potential.)

The more I read about generative AI and its growing importance in 21st-century society, the more I worry I'm missing out.

There's an easy way to fix that, I know. I just need to get with the times and become an AI guy.

But hey, my brother uses it often enough for the both of us. For now I'll stick to my method of doing things, which I know is SO 2018.

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.

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.

I guess I thought I would be more emotional about my youngest graduating from high school

For many years I've tried to imagine this point in time.

Even when our son Jack was just a little guy, I often looked ahead to his high school graduation. What would it feel like, knowing an era in our family was coming to an end? How would I react to the conclusion of a very long journey involving the Tennant family and Wickliffe schools?

After all, Tennants have been students in this district for 50 of the last 61 years. It began when my family moved here from Euclid in the spring of 1963 and continued with only the slightest of interruptions when my brother Mark graduated in June 1975 and I started kindergarten that September.

There was an 11-year hiatus from the time I graduated in 1988 until Elissa started at Wickliffe Elementary in 1999. But since then, there has always been some combination of our kids in the schools.

Now, come May 15th when Jack dons the cap and gown, it all comes to an end. As a family, we're exiting stage left.

What I expected, when I thought about it those many years ago, was that I would be filling up Facebook right about now with a series of sentimental and highly emotional posts. I figured I would be lamenting daily about time going by so fast and little Jack getting his diploma the same way his four siblings did before him.

But I haven't done that. I haven't felt especially moved to do it.

And I wonder why.

It's not that I don't care. That's not the case at all. It's just that I'm...tired, I guess. 

Many families have reached this point before us, and I think most would agree it's a long road. Even when it's an especially enjoyable road, as it thankfully has been with our children, it's still a long one. It takes its toll mentally, emotionally and even physically (I'm fine never again having to move another chair or heavy table around the middle and high schools as an event set-up volunteer, thank you very much.)

Terry is the one who keeps Jack organized and focused on a daily basis – as one must often do with 17-year-old boys – but I still find myself running on fumes as we approach the finish line.

Speaking of finish lines, it doesn't help that Jack's senior track season has been all but derailed by a recurring calf injury. This was supposed to be the year he peaked and ran his personal-best times over 800 and 1600 meters. But as I type this, he hasn't even participated in half the meets.

If you've ever had a calf injury, you know how long they take to heal and how easy it is to make them worse when you push yourself too hard trying to come back.

I suppose there's also the fact that, while Jack and Terry are at home doing school-related stuff, I'm at work earning the money we all need to live on. There are events and activities I miss.

That has always been the case, though. Nothing new there.

In the end, it may simply be one of two things:

(1) Maybe the rush of emotion and sentimentality is yet to come. Maybe, once that jam-packed mid-May weekend of prom, senior awards and commencement arrives, I'll start feeling all the feels I anticipated in the first place.

(2) Then again, maybe I'm mistaking quiet contentment for apathy. Maybe this is the way years of worrying about the kids, helping them through the tough times, and taking pride in their achievements was always going to culminate.

Maybe this all ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

A low-key, joyous whimper. Accompanied by a half-smile and a look ahead to all the exciting things yet to come in our lives.

We're not even in our mid-50s yet, Terry and I. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we still have a lot to do and a lot to look forward to.

It just won't necessarily involve the Wickliffe City School District anymore.

I think it's what the word "bittersweet" is supposed to describe.

We mark the passing of time through anniversaries...good and bad

Dates stick in my head, so it's never a problem, for example, when I have to recount the various jobs I've had and the precise start and end dates for each.

I can rattle those off no problem. Even though it's probably sufficient to say I started at Dix & Eaton in "December 2002," I'm always very specific. It was December 2nd, 2002. My last day at The Cleveland Foundation? Why, that was February 1st, 2011 (a Tuesday).

Today is one of those job-related anniversaries. On this day in 1997, I started as managing editor of Urology Times magazine. As I always like to point out, this is and was a real publication, and it was such an interesting and fulfilling job. I was only there for a little more than two years before I accepted my first PR position at The Cleveland Clinic, but without Urology Times, that Cleveland Clinic job likely wouldn't have happened.

So in that sense, May 12th is a good day.

Unfortunately, it's overshadowed by another May 12th date. On May 12th, 2009, as I was brushing my teeth in preparation for a trip to the dentist, we received a call from my brother telling us that my sister Judi had suddenly, shockingly, passed away.

She was only 56, just five years older than I am now. And she was Judi, the oldest sibling and driving force of our family. She organized things. She laughed and smiled. She made everyone happier.

And then...she was just gone. In many ways, we still haven't recovered.

Every May 12th for the rest of my life, I will think about that day and the days that followed. It was just stunned sadness, and it lasted for a very long time.

It never really ended, I suppose.

Still, we move on, because there's nothing else to do. Days like this come and go on the calendar, and as we get older, connected to each one is a memory, a milestone, and a set of emotions.

Some are good. Some aren't.

On balance, this one is an "aren't."

It isn't 1982 anymore: Cutting the cable cord and digitizing your music

Live long enough and you're going to see all sorts of advances in technology.

Actually, with the pace at which things advance these days, you don't even have to live all that long to see revolutionary changes.

The most noticeable shifts in my 51 years seem to have come in the way we consume various forms of entertainment.

Think back to the mid-70s when I started watching TV and listening to music. The TV was a big (and I mean BIG) old console model that sat in the living room and did not budge for a decade or more until one or more internal components blew out beyond repair.

Changing channels involved twisting a plastic dial. If the weather was bad, your reception could be iffy.

As for music, I began listening on record and 8-track players, and later graduated to a Sony Walkman, which my brother secured for me when he was in the Air Force and stationed in South Korea. Cassettes! Portable! Lightweight! In 1988 I moved up to CDs, which were mind blowing at the time.

Now consider the way these things work in 2021.

A couple of weeks ago, we finally cut the cable cord and signed up for a streaming service (AT&T TV). I can now access far more channels on far more devices that are far more portable than the heavy Zenith unit on which I grew up.

I can just as easily watch TV on my mobile phone or iPad as I can on an actual TV.

On the music front, it's all digitized and stored on that same mobile phone (or iPad). No actual material media to worry about.

And it sounds great. I know audiophiles prefer vinyl, but I'm just fine with the quality of the sound being pumped through my AirPods.

Those AirPods are wireless, by the way.

Maybe I'm just easily impressed, but it's all so amazing to this Gen Xer.

When your youngest child is really your YOUNGEST child

This happens a lot: Our family will be reminiscing about some vacation we took or an activity we used to enjoy when the kids were little, and six of us will laugh together as we fondly remember our shared experience.

The trouble is, there are seven of us.

Often, that memory happened before Little Jack, our youngest, was born.

I call him "Little Jack" because I've always called him Little Jack. Or Jackie.

He's the baby of the family, though he may also be the tallest. He and Jared are neck and neck. They're both essentially 6-foot-1, though according to Terry's Pencil Mark on the Kitchen Wall Measuring System, Jack wins the race by a hair. Jared denies it.

Whatever the reality, the fact is that "Little Jack" is now nearly 15 years old and a decidedly tall kid.

Our oldest four were all born about two years apart. The gap between Melanie (#4) and Jack (#5), on the other hand, is a full 5 years, 4 months.

It's not as long an interval as exists between my brother Mark and me (nearly 12 1/2 years), but I know what it's like to be the youngest.

I missed out on an entirely different existence my parents and siblings had. In the years before I was born (basically the late 1950s and most of the 60s), they lived together as a family of five. Once I came along, my oldest sister Judi was nearly 17 and a junior in high school.

There is no denying I was what is impolitely called "a mistake" and somewhat more sensitively referred to as "a pleasant surprise." Jack, it should be noted, was entirely planned.

It never hurt my feelings when my family would talk about things that happened before I existed. I was more intrigued by it than anything else. I wanted to learn more about this family that predated me.

But I'm afraid sometimes that Jack feels left out when we watch really old home videos or talk about a Disney trip that happened years before his birth.

Don't get me wrong: We've created plenty of great memories with him, too. He has also enjoyed the advantages of being spoiled as only a youngest sibling can be spoiled.

Jack is a smart, talented kid and an all-around good guy. I'm proud of him. He proves that just because you arrive a little later to the party doesn't mean you can't still be the life of it.

Being the baby of the family

Today my brother Mark turns 58 years young. This Monday, my sister Debbie will hit the big 60-year milestone.

And if she were still with us, my sister Judi would be 62.

All of which makes me feel comparatively like a spring chicken at age 45.

(NOTE: I suddenly wondered where that phrase "spring chicken" came from, so of course I Googled it. If the Internet at large is to be believed – and honestly, when is that really ever a good idea? – it has something to do with the fact that in olden times they didn't have incubators and the like, so chicks couldn't be raised during the winter. Quoting from one site, "New England growers found that those [chicks] born in the spring brought premium prices in the summer market places. When these Yankee traders tried to pass off old birds as part of the spring crop, smart buyers would protest that the bird was 'no spring chicken.'" So there you go.)

Anyway, I have siblings who are a bit older than I am, so I grew up essentially an only child. Judi got married when I was 2, Mark got married and joined the Air Force round about the time I entered kindergarten, and Debbie was out of the house by the time I was 7.

The result is that while I'm the baby of the family chronologically, I grew up more like a one-and-done kid.

Of course, I was spoiled like the baby should be, as my siblings have always been quick to point out. My response is that Mom and Dad finally got themselves a perfect child on their fourth attempt, so naturally they would want to lavish gifts on that child.

But really, in my formative years, my siblings were more abstract than real.

Mark was stationed first in Greece and then in South Korea, so we only saw him a couple of times a year. Judi came over on the weekends, but it's not like I ever really lived with her. And Deb spent thousands of hours working and eventually running her salon, and to this day I see her only for my every-two-weeks haircut.

My wife is also the baby of her family, and her experience there was much more traditional, as she's much closer in age to her siblings. In old family pictures, she's always the small, shy one, never far from her mother and seemingly rarely smiling.

I'm not sure if that is (or should be) the typical last-child experience. Usually, youngest kids are pretty happy people, in part because, as we said, they're spoiled. And in part because their parents are exhausted by years of child-rearing, so they tend to have fewer rules and relatively few constraints. Life is good for us young'uns!

This is all my twisted way of saying happy birthday today to my big bro Mark and the same to my big sis Deb in a few days. You guys, while perhaps not as perfect as your youngest sibling, still deserve to have a great day.

Which it will be when I call you to sing "Happy Birthday." What birthday is complete without hearing from The Spoiled One in your family?

The 40-Year-Old Nephew

Today my nephew Mark turns 40 years old. When something like this happens, you are forced to deal with the fact that you yourself are not quite as young as you like to think you are.

I remember when Mark was born, sort of. I was 5 years old, hadn't started kindergarten yet, and spent most of my days in the kind of brain-damaged haze that is the domain of accident victims and 5-year-old boys.

I had some vague idea that another human being was about to become part of our lives, and that my brother Mark was apparently going to be this person's dad, but that's about it. Mark Sr. was only 17 years old at the time and still pretty much seemed like a kid to me (as I'm sure he did to himself).

So then Mark Jr. was born and it didn't take long for him to seem more like a little brother to me than a nephew. When you're 5 years old, you shouldn't have anyone calling you "Uncle _______."

Mark spent a lot of time at our house growing up, which was generally OK but got a lot better when he became a teenager and was more fun to be around. In those few years when I was working at the newspaper and still living at home while in college, I would sometimes come home from my job around midnight, and Mark and I would go out for a late-night meal at Denny's.

Occasionally I would let him drive my high-powered, chick-attracting 1979 Chevy Chevette, which was technically a violation of the law given that he wasn't yet of legal driving age, but turned out OK in the sense that he didn't actually kill anyone. This was 2 o'clock in the morning, remember, so the streets were pretty empty (I wasn't so stupid as to let him drive in rush hour or anything.)

Then I got married and started having kids and I saw less and less of my little brother/nephew. We still see each other on holidays and we still laugh about the same stupid things, which makes 1990 not seem like such a long time ago.

And now "little" Mark is married with a daughter of his own, and like I said, he's 40 years old today. All of which blows my mind and makes me wonder how my mom feels as her "baby" (me) creeps closer and closer to 50.

That's the whole Lion King circle-of-life thing, I guess. We get older. It happens. We grow up. It happens. We stop driving Chevy Chevettes. Thankfully, it happens.

So at the risk of making this occasion about me (yeah, I know, too late), let me just say happy birthday to Mark, my nephew, substitute little bro, fellow Sting fan, and long-time Denny's connoisseur. Here's hoping you get at least 40 more.

And here's hoping you're still around when your little daughter turns 40 so that you can feel as old as I do right now.