The older I get, the earlier I wake up

My wife is philosophically opposed to the idea of, as she puts it, "getting up in the 5s." By which she means waking up before 6 a.m.

You might take from that that she would be OK with getting out of bed at, say, 4:30 a.m. And you would be wrong. Terry would no sooner get out of bed at that hour than she would eat blue cheese.

(Terry hates blue cheese, you see. I love it. Terry prepares the food in our house. Guess which ingredient you never see in our meals outside of the occasional rogue bottle of salad dressing?)

Anyway, Terry does not like to get up early, or at least what I consider early.

Most days, I'm out of bed at 5 a.m. Occasionally it's 4:50 a.m., and I don't need an alarm to do it. I just wake up, lay there for maybe a minute, and my feet hit the floor.

I realize there are many people for whom a wake-up time of 5 o'clock would be "sleeping in." These people generally fall into one of three categories:

(a) They deliver newspapers
(b) They have blue-collar jobs that require them to be at work at some unacceptable time like 5:30 a.m.
(c) They are 104 years old

That whole thing about needing less sleep as you age is true, right? I assume it is. How else do you explain the line of senior citizens at the buffet restaurants every day at 4 p.m.?

My sister Judi used to get up around 4 in the morning. She would use the early hours of the day to exercise, clean the house, and watch reruns of "Cops."

My family loves "Cops." It's a thing with us. There's something about seeing shirtless white people of Southern descent getting arrested that appeals to us.

Anyway, I get up fairly early only because I have to. If I'm not up by 5:00, there's no way I can do everything I have to do in the morning. That list, in order, includes:

- Get dressed for running
- Feed the cats
- Go downstairs and clean out the litter boxes and sweep around them
- Go outside and get the newspaper
- Get a drink of water
- Lace up my running shoes
- Go and run 2-3 miles depending on the day
- Stretch
- Come in and record the run in my running log book while getting a second drink of water
- Shower
- Dress
- Read the paper and eat breakfast
- Brush my teeth and head out the door for work

If I'm not out of bed by 5:15, something on that list is going to get sacrificed. And I don't want to sacrifice any of it.

Well, I would gladly sacrifice the cat-related items. But those have been my jobs for many years now, and I'm fairly certain no one else in the family is going to take them over. So I'll continue doing them.

During the summer I have the house all to myself in the morning because none of the kids have to get up for school, nor does Terry have to pack their lunches and see them off. My teenagers would, if given the opportunity, sleep until 3 p.m. every summer day.

We don't let them do this, of course. (Most of the time.)

As I type this, it's 9:20 in the evening, which means I'll be waking up in a little more than 7 1/2 hours. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and eat my nightly chunk of blue cheese and head off to Dreamland with the rest of the old people. Good night!

Why, back in my day we...pretty much did the same things kids do today

You know what makes me laugh?

When people my age post things to Facebook about how our childhoods were so much better and kids today are lazy and they're disrespectful and blah blah blah.

This makes me laugh, because I'm not quite sure exactly what childhoods they're remembering.

I knew a lot of these people as kids, and I don't remember them being especially:

a) Industrious
b) Respectful
c) Polite

A good chunk of them were, without a doubt, terrible little demons. Just like a certain percentage of kids today are terrible little demons.

Just like a certain percentage of kids 100 years ago were terrible little demons.

Are you following me here?

I realize the world has changed, but I just don't think we were necessarily raised any better than today's kids are being raised.

I think it's just a case of many of us now being parents and really noticing how badly suited some people are to being mothers and fathers.

Those same bad parents existed 30 and 100 and 1000 years, you know.

Maybe it's just me, but when someone posts that one item about "I didn't just grow up, I was RAISED," I am tempted to remind them of the time they were suspended for three days for throwing things at a teacher.

But I don't.

The reason, simply put, is the utter futility of arguing on the Internet.

95% of Internet denizens have no real interest in reasoned debate. They are interested in stating their ill-formed opinions, the facts be darned.

They are interested in visiting nut-job, off-brand "news" sites to have these opinions validated. Again, without letting facts and reason get in the way.

So for the most part, I keep quiet.

Not that I don't have ill-formed opinions, by the way. I am probably as misguided as the next person. It's just that I have learned the advantages of silence. Something to do with that old Mark Twain quote about keeping your mouth closed and letting people think you're a fool rather than opening it and removing all doubt.

And let me say that I am in no way attempting to slander my fellow Generation X'ers. It was great growing up in the 70s and 80s. I had a ball.

But this sudden feeling of superiority over the current generation (Millenials? What do we call these kids?) is not our most becoming trait.

Seriously, that guy really did get suspended for throwing things at a teacher. Was he "raised" to do that?

Here's what I've learned about marriage

Next week, my wife and I will have been married 21 years.

You would think that, somewhere along the way, I may have picked up a useful tip or two.

I'm not sure I have. But it seems like a good topic for a blog post, so I'm going to give it a shot.

In no particular order:

(1) If you make it all about you, there are going to be problems

Marriage is the ultimate give-and-take situation. Your emphasis needs to be on "give."

Inevitably there are going to be times when your needs aren't being met, or at least when you think they're not being met, which for practical purposes is the same thing. It may sound counter-intuitive, but in these situations you need to concentrate on putting the other person first.

I know, I know. Right about now you're thinking, "Yeah, but what about me?" And right there is your problem. You're going to have to have a little faith. I don't know how it works, but whenever I think of what Terry wants first, I inevitably end up getting what I want, as well. Works virtually every time.

Trust me on this one. It's spouse first and you second (or, if you have kids, you third).

(2) If you don't make it all about you, there are going to be problems

See what I did there? This is the essence of one of the great conundrums of marriage.

On one hand, as I said, you need to seek first to serve rather than be served. But...

If you're continually playing the role of the martyr, the effect tends to wear off.

See, ideally, if you put your spouse first, they will reciprocate. You can spend a very happy several decades together if the pattern is mutual servanthood.

But if the servanthood is one-sided, the person doing the serving is inevitably going to become bitter and resentful. It will happen even to the best of us.

So you do have to assert yourself. Speak up. Don't make your partner guess. Let them know where you see problems in the relationship and talk it out. Don't expect the other person to read your mind.

(3) Understand something very important that holds true for almost any relationship...

My dear sister Judi (whom I miss dearly) once said something I didn't understand at the time, but that I later realized was very profound.

She told me, "The things that attracted you to your partner in the first place are the exact things that will irritate you and drive you crazy later on."

There is much truth to this.

I haven't asked Terry in what specific ways this applies to her as my wife, but I imagine it's my quirky forgetfulness and completely oblivious approach to life that make her nuts. Initially these may have seemed cute, almost endearing.

But now, two or three decades down the road? Let's just say the woman is a saint for continuing to live under the same roof as me.

(4) If you're like most couples, you will never have the same body temperature at the same time

Look, I don't understand how this works, nor can I grasp why it's so universal. But at any given time, one of you will think the house is too hot while the other will be running to turn up the thermostat because they think it's freezing.

And generally speaking, from my experience, men are usually hot while women are usually cold. There are exceptions, but that's the pattern.

If you watch Terry and me sleep, you will think we're living in different dimensions. She'll be snuggled under a pile of covers while I'm laying on top of the sheets sweating. And we're three feet away from each other.

Barring the very unlikely occurrence of differing climatic patterns within our bedroom, I will simply chalk this up to inextricably variable body temperatures. There's no solving it, there's only dealing with it.

And while I may be biased here, it seems to me the cold person should be the one who deals with it. If I'm too hot and I'm already laying in bed uncovered, what more am I going to do? Stripping down naked probably won't make that much of a difference.

But the cold person can pile on successive layers of blankets until they're warm, which would suggest that we should simply lower the temperature in the bedroom until the warm person is happy.

Unless of course I'm trying to adhere to my own Rule #1. In which case I'll just sleep on a block of ice while she blissfully snoozes next to me in our blazing-hot bedroom. What can I say? I love her.

The allure of the "highly selective" college

This summer, my daughter Chloe will spend two weeks at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, studying biomedical engineering.

A few years ago, my oldest daughter Elissa spent three weeks at that same prestigious university studying journalism.

Both experiences were part of what they call "pre-college" programs, designed to expose high school students to campus life at an Ivy League university.

Elissa, I think, learned quite a bit during her time at Brown, as I'm sure Chloe will, too.

Here's what I learned:

(1) Ivy League colleges are very expensive for full-time undergraduates.

(2) Very, very expensive.

(3) Like, if you attended college during the 20th century, you almost wouldn't believe how expensive they are.

(4) Rhode Island is far away from where I live.

I learned #4 because I had to drive Elissa to Brown from Northeast Ohio. Ohio and Providence, you will note, are only close when viewed on a globe.

When viewed on, say, a road map, they are quite a ways apart. Several states apart.

One of those states is New York. New York, it turns out, is a very wide state.

By my estimate, it took us 18 days to cross New York.

(It was actually only about six hours, but I was fairly certain it would never end. How on earth do people drive across those gigantic Western states without shriveling up and dying from boredom?)

All told, I think it took us 10 or 11 hours to get to Providence. I drove Elissa there on a Saturday. We stayed overnight in a hotel, then moved her into her dorm at Brown on Sunday, at which point I immediately got back into my car and drove those same 10 or 11 hours back to Ohio.

We'll be doing the same with Chloe, or at least that's the plan. We may tell her to pack light and just fly there.

One way or another, Chloe will spend half a month at the same university where countless famous politicians, artists, actors, athletes and other well-known people earned their degrees.

In a way, I view the whole thing as a bit of a cruel joke. These kids get to go to a nice school, they grow to love their surroundings and the learning environment, and then they come home to realize they will most likely never actually attend that school as a full-time student.

The reason, as noted in Scott Learning Points #'s 1 through 3 above, is that it is financially prohibitive to enroll at these schools, to say the least.

The admissions people from the Ivy League institutions, who as a rule are bright, articulate and very genuine, will tell you that schools like theirs strive to ensure that money is never an obstacle for a deserving student. Their financial aid is all need-based.

Two things to note from these statements:

(1) If they don't want money to be obstacle, then maybe they shouldn't charge $58,140 per year (Brown's 2012-13 undergrad cost).

(2) Their idea of my financial "need" is very, very different from my own idea of my need. My idea is that I'm approximately $58,100 short of being able to send my kid to Brown for a year (I'm willing to spring for the 40 bucks). Their expectation of what I can contribute to her education is, suffice to say, significantly higher.

So in a way, these pre-college programs, while undoubtedly wonderful experiences, are also the equivalent of academic teases.

Do I think my daughters have the credentials to get into schools like Brown, Princeton, Penn, Harvard and Yale? Eh, maybe. Hard to say. They're both smart girls. Very smart girls.

But there are lots and lots of smart kids at those schools, and it's difficult to tell whether my offspring would have what it takes to get one of those coveted acceptance letters.

My kids are at least smart enough, I can tell you, to know that any sensible person wouldn't drive round trip to Rhode Island in a single weekend if he didn't have to. Which puts them light years ahead of their father.

Confessions

1. I don't remember ever hearing of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight before in my life...and I live within 20 miles of them. Thus, when this whole story broke, it took me a good 24 hours to understand who these people were, what had happened to them, and why this was such an incredibly big deal. You can't imagine my confusion.
   
   
2. With huge apologies to my nephew Mark, until a year or two ago, I wasn't quite sure who the band Oasis was, and I couldn't have identified a single song by them. Mark is their biggest fan. I don't understand how their existence passed me by, but it did. They're apparently quite good. Sorry, Mark.
   
   
3. I don't dislike the New York Yankees nearly as much as I dislike the Boston Red Sox. Sorry, fellow Cleveland sports fans. I realize this violates some sort of code, but there you have it. Let it be said, though, that my intense dislike for the Pittsburgh Steelers trumps them both, for what that's worth.
   
   
4. I like raisins and prunes. A lot. Even more than, say, ice cream. I know this makes me a freak. I know this makes some people almost angry at me. But again, there you have it. I'm not changing. (And for the record, I think the Sun Maid girl in the little bonnet is pretty hot.)
   
   
5. Speaking of hot, if I had to pick another male on this planet that I could look like, I'm still going with George Clooney. I know he's not the Hot Guy du Jour, but I think he's a darn good-looking dude. In, um, a strictly platonic way, of course.

Life isn't a sprint, it's...well, yeah, actually it is a sprint

Between the ages of 13 and 18, I ran competitive track and field.

I was a sprinter, and I was actually pretty fast. Not "state champion" fast, but faster than most of my classmates. I got to win a lot of races and feel somewhat athletic in the process.

Sprinting was actually a lot of fun, because your work day was a relatively short one. When our team ran in one of those all-day relay meets, my schedule would look something like this:

• 9 a.m. to Noon: Sit out in the sun and work on my tan.
• Noon to 12:05 p.m.: Take off warm-up suit and stretch a little.
• 12:05 to 12:10 p.m.: Walk over to the starting line for the 100-meter dash and try to look cool while waiting for the starter to tell us to take our marks.
• 12:10 to 12:10 and 11 seconds: Run 100 meters as fast as I possibly could.
• 12:11 to 12:15 p.m.: Put warm-ups back on and return to working on my tan.
• Later in the meet: Repeat process for 200-meter dash and the occasional sprint relay event.

This was in stark contrast to the distance runners, whom I never understood.

For one thing, they had to run a long way. I mean, a long way. At least compared with the sprinters. Why, I wondered, would you opt to run 3,200 meters when you had the choice to run 100? Or even 200? Certainly no more than 400.

And their practice workouts were horrible. They involved running for impossibly long periods of time without stopping, and doing so ideally without throwing up.

The sprinters' workouts, meanwhile, would consist of a couple of spirited fast jogs around the track, and then we all went home to do our homework. I think our grades tended to be better than the distance runners'.

Anyway, I mention all of this because I have two kids running track now, one of whom (Chloe) is a distance runner. And wonder of wonders, I've become one myself.

Sort of.

I get up most mornings around 5:15 a.m. and amble three miles. Not very quickly, but I do it.

Which gives me a lot of time to think while I run. I think about all sorts of "big picture" things, and about life in general, I guess.

Sometimes I think about how quickly the last few decades have gone. For example, I remember being 10 years old. Vividly. And it seems like it couldn't have been more than about three weeks ago.

Yet here I am at the ripe age of 43 1/2. Not "old," really, but certainly not young.

And I begin to realize how sprinting prepared me for life. It taught me to go all out and take advantage of fast-fleeting opportunities. It taught me to compete, and compete hard. It taught me how to dig deep and find that extra gear in order to accomplish my goals.

It also taught me how to sun myself. I seriously had the best tan in the late 80s...

Four things I'll miss about being unemployed

(1) Stores with no one in them
You people who work 8 to 5 probably have no idea (as I had no idea) how wonderful it is to shop during the day. Stores are wonderfully uncrowded. The aisles are clear, there's always someone available to help you, and the checkout lines are nonexistent. You're in and out in minutes. I didn't even realize this was possible.

(2) The giddy feeling of a (relatively) unplanned day
Since about the age of 5, my days have been pretty well mapped out for me. Whether it was school or work, my time has been essentially spoken for over the better part of four decades. Then, suddenly, you find yourself sans occupation, and you wake up in the morning and realize the day is yours to spend as you see fit. There are some things you have to do, of course, like look for a job. But when I wanted to go to the library, I went to the library. When I wanted coffee, I had coffee. When I wanted to watch reruns of "The Beverly Hillbillies," I...well, I never actually did that during my four months of joblessness. But the point is I could have.

(3) Getting the mail
I extolled the virtues of this in a previous post, but it was such a highlight of my days that it bears repeating. I am endlessly jealous of my wife for being at home when the mail gets here. The possibilities of what you might find when you open that mailbox are manifold. Most of the time you end up disappointed, of course, but it's what you theoretically could find in there that's exciting. A check, a letter from a secret admirer, a notice from an attorney that a rich uncle has died and left you his fortune. They're ALL possible, do you understand? The mailbox is where the magic happens.

(4) My hoodie and slippers
This was the uniform of my unemployment: A black Denison University hoodie and my warm slippers. I was unemployed over the winter months, and I always found myself cold, so I would slip into these two items of clothing and instantly my body temperature would rise. Now I look at them both sitting forlornly in the closet and I get a little nostalgic. Then I think about the fact that I'm actually earning a paycheck again, and it's funny how quickly the nostalgia goes away...