I don't like the 31st of any month

This is going to sound strange (because it is), but I don't like the fact that today is July 31st.

Nor do I like January 31st, March 31st, May 31st or August 31st. (October 31st is exempt from my contempt because it's Halloween, and December 31st gets a pass because it's New Year's Eve.)

All of those 31s are superfluous, as far as I'm concerned, because they unnecessarily extend months that don't need extending.

Like January, for instance. I live in Cleveland. We don't need an extra day in January, a month filled with wind, snow, ice and general gloominess. January can end after 30 days.

And March? Same thing. The weather is getting better, but it's still cold and March tends to tease us with thoughts of spring, only to turn around and blast us with an unexpected blizzard. So it doesn't need to go the full 31, either.

May? I'm so anxious for June that May 31st is little more than annoying. Get rid of it.

As for August 31st, school has already started back up and yet we're still enjoying hot, summer-like temperatures. That mixture always throws me off. I'm already sufficiently confused in my life, so one less day of potential perplexity is gratefully received. August 31st has to go.

I realize we can't just arbitrarily lop days off the calendar, so I propose adding four make-up days to compensate:

• June 31st: I love June. It needs to last a day longer.
• September 31st: Northeast Ohio is awesome in late September, what with the leaves turning, high school football, and those increasingly cool mornings. Let's add to that.
• October 32nd: I need a little buffer between Halloween and the start of November. Thus this.
• December 32nd: Why not? Most people take vacation days between Christmas and New Year's anyway, so we'll just make this a mandatory day off and, voila, everyone wins.

You're welcome.

I never could handle getting into trouble

So this one time in seventh grade, I was standing at my locker at the end of the day putting my stuff away, getting out books to take home, grabbing my jacket, etc. All the things you do when it's 3:30 p.m. and you're 13 years old and standing in a middle school hallway.

I don't know if it had been a bad day or what, but I apparently wasn't in the mood for anything the least bit unpleasant. Which is why I did not react well when Dean Walters came up behind me and smacked me in the neck.

This was a thing at the time among we 12- and 13-year-old boys, you see. We smacked each other in the neck and then ran away. We did this because...geez, do I really have to explain? This is what the adolescent male of the species does. It's just the way it is.

Anyway, Dean smacked me in the neck and it kind of stung, and I wasn't happy about it. So I immediately turned around and started running after him. I got about four steps down the hall when I looked up and saw Mr. Bowden, one of our teachers.

I had always known Mr. Bowden to be a good guy. I never had him as a teacher, but he knew me and always said hello.

But he, like me, apparently wasn't in the mood for any shenanigans that day, because he immediately assessed the situation, grabbed us by our shirt collars, and marched us down to the principal's office.

I was terrified. I had rarely been in trouble in school, certainly not to the degree of being subjected to formal discipline. And now, for the first time, I was being taken to the principal's office.

I seem to remember Dean taking the whole thing in stride, with a smirk on his face, even. Maybe he was used to this. I don't know. All I know is that I was pretty sure I was going to prison. (NOTE: Dean is actually a good guy. I don't mean to imply he was a hardened criminal or anything.)

Mr. Bowden told the principal, Mr. Gerber, what had happened. And Mr. Gerber quickly doled out our sentences.

(ANOTHER NOTE: Am I wrong here, Wickliffe people? Was Mr. Gerber the principal or the assistant principal at the middle school during the 1982-83 school year? Because usually it's the assistant principal who handles disciplinary matters, but maybe in this case if was the big guy who did it. Not that it matters to the story, really.)

As I recall, Dean and I each received two detentions.

Detention. I had no idea exactly what that entailed. I just knew I was going to have to come to school early and sit quietly in a roomful of delinquents. Or at least that's how I pictured it (and it turns out I was pretty much right).

I was crushed. Which I realize is stupid, but I identified myself as The Good Kid....in school, at least. As chronicled previously, my friends and I tended to be a little more rebellious outside of school.

The idea of being thrown into detention was horrifying.

Of course, I served out my time and it was all fine. In fact, I got two more detentions in high school when Mrs. Coil heard me say – theoretically under my breath – that the essay topics on our Friday AP American History quiz "sucked." But after that my record was mostly clean.

I tell you this to explain in part why I am how I am. I am inordinately motivated by what other people think of me. Mostly by what people whom I love and/or respect think of me. This isn't a great life blueprint, but it's how I am.

If someone who falls on that love/respect list criticizes me, gets angry with me, or otherwise raises their voice to me, I feel as terrible as I did that afternoon in Mr. Gerber's office.

I try to teach my children not to be like this. To be self-respecting and not be slaves to others' opinions of them.

I want them to be this way because it's a better approach to life, and because I am incapable of being that way and therefore want to live through them. If I can't do it right, maybe they can.

I will, however, smack Dean Walters in the neck the next time I see him. And I won't care one bit if he gets mad at me.

So there.

5 toys I used to have that I now miss

Stretch Armstrong

You could pull on Stretch's arms and legs and they would, of course, stretch. And that was fun. But not nearly as fun as cutting Stretch open to see what was inside of him. Which I once did. Only once, though, because after that, Stretch was ruined. For the record, while my memory may be failing me here, I seem to remember that he was filled with a reddish goo.

Electronic Battleship

This took longer than regular Battleship because you had to spend time before the game even started entering the positions of all of your ships (one slot at a time). But it was cool because it made these awesome shooting noises once you actually began playing. Alas, though, this was another toy that fell victim to my urge to see what was inside, as I believe my friend Matt and I ripped open the game console one day and were disappointed to find only a small circuit board and a few wires. Did it not occur to me that the game would be unplayable after that? Apparently not.

Spirograph

Aw, who didn't love Spirograph? I was (and remain) a terrible artist, with no drawing skills to speak of. But with Spirograph's cool system of plastic rings and gear wheels, you could make all sorts of professional-looking designs. None of which looked as good as the ones on the packaging above, but still, pretty neat. I think I got my Spirograph at a garage sale. I bought a lot of my toys at garage sales. It never occurred to me until just now that my childhood apparently resembled that of a character in a Dickens novel.

Evel Knievel Crash Car

So what you did was you put the car onto that red and white cranky thing on the left side of the photo, and you started turning the wheel really hard, faster and faster. And eventually the car would take off and run into the nearest wall (or dining room table, or refrigerator, or dog) and it would break into a million pieces. Well, actually more like four pieces. You had to use your imagination to make it a million. Theoretically, the little Evel Knievel guy inside the car would survive every crash, because that's what the real Evel Knievel did in a series of Saturday afternoon stunts on ABC's "Wide World of Sports" in the 70s. Seriously, kids, look this guy up on YouTube. He was certifiably crazy.

The Millennium Falcon

I received the Millennium Falcon for my 11th birthday in the fall of 1980, at a time when I looked not too dissimilar to the boy in the picture above. Eleven is a funny age to get something like this, because you're really right on the edge of not playing with stuff like a plastic space ship anymore. But "The Empire Strikes Back" had just been released six months earlier and Star Wars Fever was still raging with me and my friends. Among us, we had almost every Star Wars action figure imaginable, all of which we placed into my Millennium Falcon at one time or another, and all of which inevitably suffered violent deaths in the Millennium Falcon. Because every time we played with the toy, we concocted a scenario that ended with the ship crashing, being blown up, or otherwise coming to no good. That, in a nutshell, is 11-year-old boys for you.

I can't get over how much I dislike meetings at work

A former co-worker, Debbie Thornsberry, once informed me that during particularly long meetings, I developed a look that she dubbed "The Meeting Face."

The Meeting Face was (and, since presumably I still break it out from time to time, is) a mixture of boredom, fatigue and frustration at the inefficiency of the meeting process.

I've always thought of myself as a pretty patient person, but increasingly I'm starting to think I have some form of attention disorder that renders me uncooperative and disengaged about 27 minutes into any given meeting.

Please understand, this is not a reflection on any of my co-workers, who almost across the board are bright and talented people. They're not the problem.

The problem is that I have a hard time seeing the majority of meetings on my calendar as productive uses of my time.

Not because I think I'm some big shot, but mostly because meetings in my experience are repetitive, lacking in clear objectives, and mentally draining.

Much of what we accomplish in meetings could be solved quicker and more easily through one-on-one, face-to-face conversations, or sometimes (though this is obviously less personal) a simple email or two.

Maybe it's because, at any given time, I have a LOT on my to-do list. I need desk time. I like my co-workers, but every hour I spend with them is one fewer hour I have to get stuff done. If I don't get through my to-do list, I don't go home. And if I don't go home, I don't see my family. And if I don't see my family, I get cranky. And if I get cranky, I'll just drag down your meeting anyway.

Sometimes meetings are vital, I get that. But can we collectively agree to pick up the pace a little? And come in with a clear objective or two in mind? And keep things moving along without getting sidetracked in the manner of easily distracted woodland creatures?

Because if we can't, then I'm just boycotting the whole process. Want my opinion? Stop by my office. I would rather not sit in another beige conference room talking in circles with 11 other people.

I have much more to say on this subject, but I have to get to a meeting.

Think twice (or three times) before giving a nasty reply

Just wanted to throw something out there:

One of the wonderful things about the Internet is the ability for people from all around the world to come together in one place and discuss relevant issues.

Or at least it would be one of the wonderful things about the Internet if people weren't so horrible. But they are horrible, and the result is that online chat forums and comments sections under news articles are infested by nasty types spewing hatred and ignorance.

Sorry, that's just the way it is. Even Facebook is infected with folks spouting off on topics about which they know almost nothing.

The Bible, as usual, has good advice here. Throughout the book of Proverbs and elsewhere, you'll find admonitions to listen a lot more than you speak. Holding your tongue can be a wonderful thing.

So the next time you read something online that irritates you (which for some people is apparently every 38 seconds), before you reply, just stop for a second. Hold off. Come back to it five minutes later, if you can. And if you still feel the need to reply, then go ahead. Your response is likely to be more rational and, hopefully, more courteous.

I'm telling you, you'll be a lot better off if you do this. That Abraham Lincoln quote about it being better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt is spot on.

OK, please go on with your day. And be nice, OK?

Remember when kids used to have their summers free?

(NOTE: This is our once-a-month "Blog Rerun" post. This one originally ran on June 12, 2013, and it still resonates with me. Let kids be kids. Let summer be summer. That's what I say.)

I will try my best not to turn this into a "hey, things were a lot better when I was younger" post. Because I'm not someone who generally thinks that way.

But I will say this about the experience of being a kid now vs. the days when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s:

Back when I was a lad, summer vacation meant...well, it meant "summer vacation." It meant you had half of June and all of July and August to yourself. To do with as you pleased.

Apart from family vacations and the occasional little league baseball game (which occurred, what, twice a week maybe?), you were on your own.

And it was glorious.

Of course, being a kid, you absolutely took for granted the whole concept of waking up on a warm summer morning and having nothing but a blank slate of a day ahead of you.

Only when the first day of school rolled around did you really appreciate what you had just lost.

And that first day of school, by the way, was always after Labor Day. Always. Now, I'm fairly certain my kids start a new school year about 20 minutes after the previous one ends.

Anyway, we had gigantic chunks of unstructured time in the summer months, and we used them to engage in what was, for me, a lot of fun stuff.

We played sports and games outside. We played our Atari 2600 systems inside.

We rode our bikes. We went to the city pool.

We set up failed lemonade stands. We set off firecrackers that one of us had somehow (illegally) gotten our hands on.

We watched TV. We played some more Atari.

You probably have a similar list from your own childhood.

The point is, we did a lot of things without interference from (or really the need for) adults. And both the kids and the grown-ups were just fine with this system.

Then two things happened that started the whole thing spinning out of control.

One was the specialization of sports. And by that I mean the drive to make kids better at their chosen sport through an influx of summer camps, clinics, practices, conditioning sessions, etc.

Doesn't matter what your sport is: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse. Whatever. If you're a kid and you play it, there are programs designed to expose you to that sport year-round.

With that also came the creeping influence of club sports, travel programs, Junior Olympic teams, and so forth. And those have become all-consuming for families across the nation.

Not that I think there's anything intrinsically wrong with these things, mind you. If you choose to participate in them, and if it makes your child happy, by all means, go for it.

But the unintended side effect of these leagues and programs is that kids who just play sports for fun, who will never receive college athletic scholarships, suddenly find themselves pressured to join. You either participate in the travel program in the summer or else you don't play when the actual sports season rolls around in fall or spring.

Well, that's OK, you might say. Kids like that can just join a no-pressure rec league.

Which would be fine, except cities and leagues everywhere have taken their limited resources and directed them toward the travel and premier-level programs, leaving rec programs to rot on the vine with inferior equipment and few trained coaches.

That is, if the rec-level sport still exists at all. Many have just disappeared altogether.

The result is an all-or-nothing, travel-league-or-bust approach that alienates the average kid. So, rather than be left out, youngsters will often submit to the pressure of travel sports, and suddenly their calendars (summer and otherwise) fill up with practices, games and skill sessions that leave little time for any real relaxation or creative play.

The other thing that precipitated this trend is that overworked parents have started implementing structure in the lives of kids who didn't necessary need more of it.

Parents have always felt some degree of guilt over the amount of time they spend (or don't spend) with their children. But nowadays, with magazine articles, TV psychiatrists and authors constantly reminding them just how slack they are in the parenting department, moms and dads try to compensate by exposing Junior to a wealth of new experiences through lessons, classes, and seminars of every kind.

Every. Kind.

Many kids today need an admin assistant just to keep track of their schedules. I had two things on my summer schedule when I was growing up:

8 a.m. - Get out of bed. Go find friends and commence day's activities.

9 p.m. - Come in when I was called and go to bed. Repeat cycle the next day.

And I guess I turned out OK. For what that's worth.

You don't hear many kids complaining about this turn of events, and I'm guessing that's because they don't know any different. They've never had unstructured summers, so they don't know what they're missing.

I'll tell you what they're missing.

A lot.

But maybe that's just the product of the undisciplined mind of a guy who spent his childhood summers playing in his friend's backyards. What do I know?

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?

Welcome to your mid-40s, where every bump is automatically a tumor

At some point in the last couple of years, I crossed a bridge from being youthful and carefree to being a hypochondriac.

The upshot is that I assume every little symptom, slight pain, and innocuous bump is a sign of some terminal disease.


ME: What's this thing on my hand? That wasn't there yesterday! Oh no, I have hand cancer!

TERRY: That's a callous.

ME: Oh.


This was going to happen eventually, but I figured I had at least 10 more years to go.

It doesn't help that I read a lot of "how to take care of yourself and achieve perfect health" books, all of which are well-intentioned but also fill me with fear and dread over the things I'm not doing to maintain my body.

That list of neglected activities includes, but is certainly not limited to, stress management, strength training, eating salmon, and exercising every day.

So part of me assumes that since I'm not doing everything I'm supposed to be doing, I'll be dead inside of five years.

I liked it better when I was 25 and had only a vague inkling that that second piece of cake probably wasn't a good idea.

Why do I feel guilty touching the thermostat?

It may be difficult to comprehend as you read this post in July, but I'm writing it in late May whilst sitting in my house and freezing.

The outside temperature is something like 57 degrees. Inside it's 66. I'm wearing a long-sleeve shirt and jeans, but I'm still awfully cold. My hands and feet are numb, and I'm pretty certain my nose will soon turn black and fall off and I won't even notice.

One potential solution to this problem, I realize, is to turn up the heat. But that would entail messing with the thermostat, and I never do that.

Why? At least two reasons:

(1) Turning on the heat means the gas bill will go up, AND WE MUST NEVER INCREASE THE GAS BILL.

(2) Terry has a system for determining what the temperature should be in the house, and as near as I can tell, that system is called the Whatever-Temperature-Will-Feel-Uncomfortable-to-Scott System.

Since it is July and all, I should mention this also extends to when we turn on the air conditioning.

As she is the person who handles our finances, I understand that Terry is sensitive to the way in which operating our home heating and cooling system will impact us monetarily. But I can't tell you the number of times the rest of us have been dripping with sweat and my wife has advised us to just open a window. "Please," we beg, "can we turn on the air conditioning? Even for just an hour or two?" But this will only happen when Mrs. Heat Miser decides it's time, which may be never.

The result is that when I do venture over to the thermostat in the hope of making it more bearable in our house, I do so only when Terry isn't home, and I do it with a sense of guilt I can't shake. Yes, technically I earn the money that heats and cools the house, but I have no more control over how the system actually works than any of our pets do.

So you know what? I'm going to go turn the heat on. It's my house and I'll turn the heat on when I darn well please. Hold on a second...

<I'M WALKING OVER TO ADJUST THE THERMOSTAT. PLEASE AMUSE YOURSELF FOR A FEW SECONDS UNTIL I GET BACK.>

There. In 15 minutes or so, it's going to be nice and toasty in here and I'll be happy. I am master of my domain.

The fact that Terry isn't home (this is true) has nothing to do with it. Nor does the fact that I'll almost surely turn the thermostat back down to where it was the minute I hear her car pull into the driveway (also true).

Parenting fails that keep me awake at night

I used to consider myself a pretty good parent, but in recent years I've come to realize how often I've failed my children. And it kills me inside. A few examples:

• My 9-year-old son really isn't all that comfortable riding a bike. I taught him to ride a couple of years ago, but we didn't practice much and there aren't sidewalks in our neighborhood and he never got very confident and...seriously, this just tears me up. I'm going to rectify it this summer, but he's 9! Geez, he should be riding all the time, but I think he's still afraid of falling. Big time fail on my part.

• We never got our 14-year-old daughter into softball when she was little and now she wishes she could be playing summer ball with her friends. Which I guess she could, but it would be an awfully big skill gap to overcome. Melanie was so shy when she was little and never seemed all that interested in softball, and her older siblings were only lukewarm about the sport, so...I don't know. Maybe we just didn't want to be bothered with signing her up, taking her to practices and games, etc. I really wish we had gotten her into softball.

• My 16-year-old son wishes he still played hockey and the only reason we made him quit was for our own convenience. Well, in our defense, it would have been awfully tough for him to maintain full hockey and soccer schedules every fall, so we made him make a choice. He chose soccer because that was his established sport, but he was really starting to like hockey. And I love hockey. The problem is, once you stop playing it, your skating skills diminish rapidly, and in hockey if you can't skate you don't rate. We should have sucked it up and let him do both sports.

• My kids are sometimes rude and disrespectful to their mother and I've just let it go too many times. They all do it on occasion, but I notice it especially with one child in particular, who needs to be smacked when he/she does this. I yell at him/her from time to time, but I'm not sure it does much good. I gotta man up on this one.

• My kids don't go to each other's events enough. From an early age we should have made them attend each others' games, concerts, school plays, etc. to show support, but it has always been easier to let them stay home or go to grandma's house or whatever. And now they have no tolerance/desire for going to a sibling's event, which doesn't feel right.

• I do too many things for them instead of making them learn. The right thing to do is to make them stop whatever they're doing and, for instance, come into the mudroom and pick their stuff up off the floor. But it's so much easier for me to do it myself. "Next time I'll make them do it themselves," I say. But I never do. And as a result, they'll never learn to do it if they know Daddy will do it for them. Not good. Back to parenting school for me.

GUEST BLOGGER - Mom-bod: Hot or Not? By Lilia Lipps

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in what I hope is a series of guest blog posts by, well, guests. People who aren't me. This particular one was written by my former co-worker and current/future friend Lilia Lipps. She is as awesome as her name, trust me. Thought you'd enjoy this. And if you would like to post something on the blog, email me at scotttennant@oh.rr.com. Would love to hear from you!)

Hey guys, my name is Lilia Lipps (not a porn star, I swear) and I had the good fortune of working with Scott once upon a time. He and I “get” each other, and that is why I often enjoy reading his blog. When the idea for this particular blog post came to me, I thought hey, this would work well on Scott’s blog. Thanks for indulging me.

As I walked into the bathroom at work the other day, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and had a strange thought. “If Todd were to leave me, I’d have a hard time getting a man the way I look right now.”

And then I thought about what type of man I might be able to attract in my current physical state.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not reality show-worthy ugly or fat. But, I am carrying some extra baby weight. My “baby” will be 18 months soon.

Anyway, back to the men. For some reason, the cast of Seinfeld is what I’m picturing. Money and fame aside, Jerry, George and Cosmo aren’t exactly aces in the looks department. But I feel like that’s where I’m at right now.

Which sucks because I’m more of a Beckham, McConaughey, Ian Somerhalder kind of girl. Or at least Putty. I could work with Putty.

Then again, you see unattractive men with pretty girls all the time. Like Rod Stewart and any of his three wives. Jay-Z and Beyonce. Borat (Sasha Baron Cohen) and Isla Fisher. For god’s sake, Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman herself, was married to Lyle Lovett. And of course, the ultimate, Paulina Porizkova and Ric Ocasek.

But it usually is the unattractive man who gets an attractive partner. Rarely is the role reversed. The closest example I can think of is Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness. And while she doesn’t match up to the perfection that is Hugh (who could?), she’s not exactly a woof.

Maybe I could land the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio. But the dad-bod version. Although even that pasty, doughy version gets Victoria’s Secret models.

And I get it, I am talking about famous men so of course their fame and money can be alluring enough to a beautiful woman that it clouds her vision. The Hollywood version of beer goggles. But this happens with regular guys too. I think it is because men have this innate sense of confidence that lets them believe that just because they’re 5’4”, balding, pasty, a bad dresser and have shitty jobs while living in mom’s basement, they are a gift to us, the females that are lucky enough to cross their path.

So, I either need to start thinking like a man….or stay married to my husband.

And while I have been occasionally accused of the former, I much prefer the latter.

I suppose I could lose weight, put make up on, or dig out my high heels. Meh. Maybe Jerry wouldn’t be so bad. ;)

If you want to read more of my stuff, check out my blogs:

www.1shotatatime.wordpress.com
www.liliawritenow.com

This is the quote by which I want people to remember me

I've always wanted to be one of those people who says something really wise, and then my words get passed around through social media and everyone says, "That's great advice! I'm showing this to my kids."

The problem is that you have to come up with something that is both profound and original.

I think I might be able to do "profound." But everything I come up with that can be described as profound has, in almost every case, been said before by someone else.

I realized I was probably trying too hard at this, and that if I ever had something to say that was quote-worthy, something you would want to make into a poignant Facebook meme, it would have to come to me spontaneously. It would need to be natural, a product of my own experience and accumulated wisdom.

So I waited.

I waited for years. And then a few weeks ago it came to me.

I was trying to think of ways in which to inspire my son Jared to keep working out and preparing himself for the upcoming high school soccer season. I wanted to convey the idea that hard work and dogged effort are responsible for most success in the world.

And this is what I came up with. This is – I think – my one original quote. This is the one thing I want people to read and think to themselves, "That's so true. I need to share this."And when they share it, I want to have my name attached to it.

Here it is:

"If you're not going to expect a lot from yourself, you can't expect a lot from life."

Huh? Huh? What do you think? Not bad?  I mean, it's not on the level of Teddy Roosevelt or Wilson from "Home Improvement" or anything, but I think it's tweet-worthy, no?

So there it is. At the age of 45, I have found my quote. I'm not good enough to have more than one, so this is going to be it.

I see all sorts of uses for it. I want it on my headstone, of course, and as mentioned I want it plastered on social media. But there are other possibilities beyond that. It could be included in a cheesy paperback compilation of inspirational platitudes. Or printed on a t-shirt you get at the Hallmark Store. Or tattooed on the arm of a kid who places sixth in the 100 meters at some state track and field meet and who suddenly sees himself as an Olympic athlete.

I have found my place in immortality. Feel free to share.

They're not doing fireworks in my little town, and I'm OK with it

For all of my 45+ years, I have called the suburb of Wickliffe, Ohio, home.

Wickliffe is a place of traditions. Like many cities, there are certain things we do every year, and in some ways our calendars revolve around those things.

One has always been the annual Fourth of July celebration at Coulby Park, traditionally capped off by a brilliant fireworks display at dusk.

The fireworks at Coulby are what my family does every year on Fourth of July. Or at least they're what we used to do, because this year city council decided not to have fireworks. Instead, we're combining with two other communities to hold a fireworks display at a local baseball stadium.

And let me say that I totally support this decision. For one thing, our city has a $1.5 million budget deficit, and it turns out fireworks (and the attendant overtime pay for police security) are expensive.

Also, if I'm being perfectly honest, I'll tell you that our Fourth of July celebration is no longer the Wickliffe-only thing it once was. A number of local cities have cancelled their fireworks displays in recent years, and their residents started coming to Wickliffe in large numbers. (I don't blame them...our fireworks have always been pretty good.)

The reason I know that people have been coming in from other cities is because Wickliffe is mostly white and the new people at our Fourth of July celebrations mostly aren't. That sounds like overt racism, but believe me when I say that's really not the case. I think most of us just wanted to keep it an event by and for Wickliffe residents, and the large infusion of outsiders (white, brown, black, yellow, whatever) has been frustrating.

So now we have to make other plans, and I'll admit to being a little sad about that. Things change, I know. Life goes on. But we made a lot of memories on those July 4th evenings at Coulby Park, and now I'm not sure we'll ever have the chance to do it again.

But you do what you have to do, and as I said, I support council's decision. Most of those council members are lifelong Wickliffe residents, and I'm sure it was painful for them to make what was undoubtedly the soundest fiscal choice.

It's just that there are certain things in life you assume will last forever. And when they don't, you mourn a little.

C'est la vie, my friends, c'est la vie. If nothing else, I reserve the right to be a little sad over it.

You know who are nice people? Canadians.

In my experience, some stereotypes are truer than others.

Like the idea that men won't ask for directions. I know that's not necessarily true because I always ask for directions. In fact, I may be too quick in asking for directions. Sometimes I should probably just trust myself more, but honestly, I hate being lost, and I have no qualms about telling someone I'm clueless and need their help.

But you know one stereotype that I've found to be spot on? This idea that Canadian people are nice. Oh sure, there are exceptions. Watch any given National Hockey League game and you'll find some mean SOBs from Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia. But by and large, they're good people.

Today is Canada Day, which for the uninitiated (i.e., 95% of Americans) is kind of like our Independence Day. It marks the date in 1867 in which Canada officially became a nation, albeit still part of the British Empire.

And those kooky Canadians still maintain certain ties to the Brits today, like having the Queen on their money and putting wholly unnecessary u's in the middle of words like "colour," "favour" and "honour."

Still, for the most part, Canada has forged its own identify in the world, and I would characterize that identify as "nice." Which I know sounds bland and unexciting, but I don't mean it that way. These are, collectively, good people. You can trust them. They don't trust us, of course, but honestly, I'm not sure I would, either.

I do love Canada, though. Or at least Eastern Canada, which is the only part of the country I've actually visited. I've been to Niagara Falls and Toronto countless times, and have also visited Montreal and Ottawa.

Speaking of Ottawa, here's a true story: In the summer of 1994 when Elissa was just an infant, Terry and I packed her into her little car seat and did a week-long Canadian driving tour. I loved it all, but I really loved Ottawa. It had a nice charm to it, and the Ottawa Senators have been my NHL team of choice ever since.

Anyway, Terry for whatever reason wasn't feeling well when we got to Ottawa, so she asked me to get her some Pepto Bismol. I set off from the hotel in search of a pharmacy, and along the way I came across these really cool street performers. There was a guy on stilts and acrobats and, I don't know, break dancers or something. The point was, they were doing really cool things and I stood there transfixed by them.

I stood there a long time. A really long time. An especially long time if you're someone who is waiting back in the hotel room for your husband to arrive with medicine that will help you feel better.

I don't know how long I was gone, but by the time I got back, Elissa had visibly aged. And Terry was, how shall I say, not pleased with the length of my journey.

She still reminds me of that sometimes. But seriously, those acrobats were so cool!

Yeah, so Canada. Good people. We should all visit. Bring your own Pepto Bismol, though.