I don't know if you and I have the same sense of humor, but I can't tell you how much I enjoy these videos

There are things that make me laugh to the point of tears that my wife does not find the least bit funny. Like, not even a little bit.

I imagine this might be one of those things, but I derive immeasurable happiness from a series of Facebook clips called "The Same Video of the Same Guys Dancing to a Different Song Every Day." It is exactly what that title suggests.

What you see in every one of these videos is a few older gentlemen doing a kind of folk dance shuffle with a fiddle band in the background. But what you hear varies from video to video.

They take the footage of these same guys dancing and lay over top of it a different rock, rap, or pop song each time.

And it's always perfect.

Here's the very first one they did nearly 10 years ago:

A few things to note here:

• There is a community of Facebookers who comment on all of these videos. They have named each of the main characters, from "Skinny Santa" (the first guy you see dancing) to "Colonel Mustard" (guy in the mustard-colored shirt) to "Maroon Cowboy" (guy in the left background).
• The best moment of every one of these videos, almost without exception, is Colonel Mustard's enthusiastic entrance 30 seconds in. The creators of the videos always time it so that he comes onscreen just as the music crescendos or gets to a chorus. It's so perfect every time, and I laugh every time. Every. Time.
• Occasionally Lady Fiddle Player in the band will get credit because her fiddling matches so well with that day's song. She deserves more recognition.

Here's another one, this time set to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off":

My love for these videos knows no bounds. Incidentally, here's the original footage from which this is all taken, with the original music and background noise:

To browse through the full catalog of these masterpieces, you have to use the Facebook link above in the second paragraph, as that's where they're mainly posted.

Terry is probably rolling her eyes as she reads this. Maybe you are, too. I, meanwhile, am soaking in the happiness that only comes from watching one of these. Thank you, Skinny Santa and the crew!

Confessions of a Dungeons & Dragons nerd

One of the classic nerd activities of the 80s (and beyond, really) was the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

For a couple of years there—say 1982 and 1983—my friends and I played us a whole bunch of D&D.

For the uninitiated, role-playing games are what you might call "games of the mind." The action doesn't necessarily take place in any physical sense, unless you were one of those people who bought little figurines and played out each adventure on a tabletop map.

Which we were not.

In the case of D&D, players control imaginary characters through different adventures in an attempt to kill monsters, gather treasure, and generally just gain experience and become more powerful. These characters have different jobs or roles, ranging from fighters and thieves to magic users and clerics. They can also be of different races (humans, elves, halfings, etc.), each of which has different natural abilities.

The action is controlled by a person known as the dungeon master. That was me. The DM's job is to describe the settings and situations, and roll various multi-sided dice to determine the outcome of the players' choices.

It is absolutely as geeky as it sounds, and we loved it.

We spent a lot of money on D&D paraphernalia, from hardbound books describing the intricacies of the D&D gaming environment and different modules (i.e., adventures) to accessories like a DM screen and various gaming templates and tools.

I don't know whatever happened to any of that stuff, as it never turned up when we cleaned out my mom's house. But in retrospect, given how much fun we had and how much the game fired our imaginations, I'm going to say it was a worthwhile investment.

It was not exactly a chick magnet of an activity, mind you, but I have no regrets.

With some time suddenly on my hands, I'm going to do a little reading

As an officially unemployed person, my main job is of course to get a job. And I spend time each day trying to do just that. Something will eventually come along, so I'm not especially worried.

In the meantime, I'm able to engage in household chores, do a little yardwork, and even indulge in some leisure activities that never seem to fit into my daily schedule when I'm working.

An example of the latter is reading.

I have always called myself a reader, which would be fine if it weren't for the fact that I haven't done that much actual reading over the past, oh, say 30 years. I like to read, I want to read. I've just not elected to make the time for it since my college years.

Oh, I've read several books in the intervening decades, but it's not the regular sort of pastime I would like it to be.

In particular, I like to read my World War I books. I've checked several of those off my list over time, but there are still many more in the "planning to read" column than there are in the "been there, read that" column.

A good number of these books I own, but others I get from our excellent public library here in Wickliffe.

There is essentially one small section of Great War books at the Wickliffe Public Library, as shown here:

You will notice two red circles in that photo, both depicting larger books that have been on my list for quite some time.

The one on the left is called "Castles of Steel." It details the naval conflict between Britain and Germany before and during World War I. And when I say "details," I'm not kidding. It's 788 pages long, not counting the notes, bibliography and index.

"Castles of Steel" was published in 2003, and ever since then I've wanted to read it. Just never had time. Here's what it looks like up close and personal:

It's sizeable.

The book on the right is titled "Isonzo," and it chronicles the long series of wasteful battles between Italy and Austria-Hungary in the area of the River Isonzo during the war. It's a relatively pedestrian 350 pages, but given how much I don't know about the campaign, I've always wanted to dive into it.

Faced with the choice of how to spend some of the open time on my sparse appointment calendar, I went to the library yesterday and checked out "Castles of Steel." Go big or go home and all of that, you know. I'm starting it today and estimate it's going to take a good month to get through.

I do, after all, have to spend some time finding a job. I'm not a total slacker.

Many of us were home video game system pioneers

In the fall of 1977, Atari released its 2600 cartridge gaming system. When someone asks whether you had "an Atari" back then, this is almost always the unit they're referring to.

We did eventually get "an Atari" in our house, but that wouldn't be for another two years. Instead, one evening in '77 my dad came home with a Radio Shack Electronic TV Scoreboard (it looked just like what you see in the image above).

It was essentially a black-and-white console that featured a number of variations on Pong. Sure, the games you could play included "tennis," "hockey," and "squash," but really, they were all just slight reworkings of Pong.

Still, I was immediately hooked. And fascinated. Back then, the idea of doing anything on your TV besides watching Channels 3, 5, 8, and 43 was remarkable. You could control what was happening on the screen. I can't emphasize enough how novel this was.

I played that Radio Shack game a lot. Then, the following year, I received a color gaming system for Christmas. While it was made by Atari, it still wasn't the 2600. It was this:

You could play four different kinds of pinball as well as Breakout, Break Away, and Basketball. Those knobs on the side controlled the pinball flippers, while the dial moved your paddle in the other games.

I would come home from school for lunch almost every day and play that thing to death.

Then came The King, or at least The King of its time, the Atari 2600. That was my big present for Christmas 1979. It was a huge part of my life for the next four years until I got my Commodore 64. Like my friends, I amassed a pretty big collection of cartridges. We would go over each other's houses and play all the time.

All of these systems were extremely primitive by today's gaming standards, but as I said, for the time they were revolutionary. My dad being an early adopter of a lot of electronic gadgets, we actually had a whole bunch of things that could be characterized as "revolutionary" (or at least "extremely neat").

None of it was Call of Duty or Fortnite, but then again, at the time, it didn't need to be.

The Amazon van makes frequent stops at our house

I registered for my Amazon.com account in 1999, the same year I also logged on to eBay for the first time.

If back then you would have asked me which of the two would have the biggest long-term impact on American shopping habits, I would have said eBay, hands down.

Amazon was, after all, primarily a place where you could get books and/or CDs. Or at least that's what my first several purchases were limited to.

eBay, on the other hand, offered everything. I would have assumed that, rather than brick-and-mortar retail stores, product manufacturers would just start putting their wares on eBay and selling through that model.

And many do, of course. This isn't to denigrate eBay at all. I still make a purchase or two per year there, particularly if it's a hard-to-find item.

But it's no Amazon. Nothing is Amazon except Amazon itself.

In many ways, Amazon has become Walmart, but in a much better way than Walmart was ever Walmart.

We have a huge Amazon distribution center near our house. There are times when I will order something and it gets here in far less than 24 hours, almost certainly because it was in stock at that facility in Euclid.

This is stunning to me, a person who grew up in the 70s and 80s when, if you ordered something by mail and were told it would arrive in 4 to 6 weeks, by gosh, they meant 4 to 6 weeks.

That perspective alone makes me appreciate the speed of Amazon transactions all the more.

I do understand there are legitimate concerns with Amazon, not the least of which is the threat it poses to local mom-and-pop businesses. And I really do try to patronize those businesses when they have what I need.

But the reality is that, thanks to its convenience and wide selection, Amazon has a devoted customer base within my house.

Like many people, we serve as a regular stop on the Amazon person's delivery route. We have a stockpile of Amazon boxes and envelopes.

It won't be long before Amazon will start delivering stuff before we even realize we need it. Then we'll know we're really in trouble.

We're in that stage of life when the driveway is always filled with cars

Obviously not our house, but this is sometimes what it felt like when I was growing up.

For a long time—from 1992 when we were married and bought our first house until 2010 when Elissa got her license—I never thought much about the way in which cars should be arranged in our driveway.

Because, of course, we only had two cars at any given time during those years. And both our old house and our current house have two-car garages, which meant both cars were always safely tucked away and our driveway generally clear for whomever needed it.

In subsequent years, as other kids turned 16 and bought cars, things got a little trickier.

It was, however, never as challenging as it could have been. We are blessed with a two-car-wide driveway. I grew up in a one-lane driveway home, which meant that the first person out every morning (usually my dad) either needed to be the last one in the driveway lineup, or else my mom—and later me—would have to back cars into the street to allow him to exit.

Even nowadays, though, with two kids out of the house and Jack still not driving, things can get a little funky when it comes to the driveway traffic report.

This is usually the result of one (or more) of the kids' significant others or friends coming over, parking in the driveway, and potentially blocking the way for someone who wants to exit.

Let's say, for example, me.

But really, I can't complain. If nothing else, this part of our lives has given me great appreciation for the person who designed the layout of our property and included that 19-foot-wide driveway.

God bless you, sir or ma'am. You have given the gift that keeps on giving.

I'm trying to figure out a way to use the word "perfidious" in a blog post

I'm one of those people who love words in general, but there are certain words that are particularly high on my list.

One of those is "perfidious." It's used to describe someone who is disloyal or treacherous. If you do something that demonstrates perfidiousness, you can be said to have performed "perfidy."

These are wonderful, delicious words.

Yet this is not a blog that lends itself to perfidy of any kind, unless you count my children's habit of leaving crumbs on the kitchen counter and not closing cupboard doors the way they're supposed to, in which case, yes, they can accurately be described as perfidious.

Or the times when they're told to keep the door to the kitchen bathroom closed because Fred's special cat food for his urinary tract problems is in there and his brother George, among others, will tip over the container in an effort to eat this expensive food, and they fail to follow even that simple instruction.

That's pretty perfidious.

Speaking of the cats, any time they poop or pee in a spot other than their litter boxes and I have to clean it up, "perfidious" is probably the gentlest word I use to describe them.

Now that I think about it, there seems to be an abundance of perfidy happening all around me every day.

I will be sure to report it here on the blog regularly.

And you can bet that, when I do, I will most certainly use the P-word.

Moving on to a new adventure

After an eight-year run that can only be described in the most positive terms, today is my last day as Director of Communications at Vitamix.

It was my first experience in a corporate setting, albeit a little different than most, coming as it did at a mission-driven, fourth-generation, family-owned company. I was afforded a wide range of opportunities to solve big problems, help set organizational direction, and work closely with the highest levels of leadership.

I sharpened skills I already had and developed a host of new ones, all while earning a master's degree in Integrated Marketing Communications for which I'll always be grateful.

On a personal level, though, the impact was even greater. If I started to name all of the Vitamix people from whose example and encouragement I benefitted, this post would take an hour to read. Suffice it to say that I took far more from these eight years than I could possibly have given to others at the company.

I'm proud of what my team and I were able to accomplish in that time. When you're a professional communicator, you seek out ways in which you can apply your craft to achieve large-scale business goals and resolve important issues. I got to do that almost every day, which simply isn't the case in many communications jobs.

A recent infusion of new leadership led to a restructuring that resulted in the elimination of my position, and to that I can only say, it happens. It obviously isn't what I hoped for, but I firmly believe the company is in excellent hands and is going to make great strides in the next few years to fulfill its purpose and mission.

And really, what do I have to complain about? I am blessed in more ways than I can count, and I have no doubt my next professional move will be an opportunity to make a similar impact on a new organization.

Vitamix will always hold a special place in my heart as the longest-running and most enjoyable position I've held over a 30-year career that has been almost nothing but enjoyable.

But now it's time to move on. I honestly can't wait to see what comes next.

The youngest child gets his first real job

My 15-year-old son Jack recently began working at the local Chick-Fil-A. It's a good first job for someone his age for all of the reasons you would expect: You build a work ethic, you learn to do the job even when you don't feel like it, you gain experience working with people (for better or worse), and of course you develop a much better appreciation for the value of money.

There's also this: When that first job is in fast food, you learn one of life's most painful lessons, which is that you really never want to know how the sausage is made.

This lesson applies to more than just fast food, of course, though I learned it literally when I worked at Wendy's in the mid-80s and vowed never to eat their chili again when I saw that the meat for it was just burgers that had been sitting on the grill too long (I have admittedly broken that vow several times since.)

More broadly, though, you learn that the actual process by which the goods and services we purchase daily are made is often surprisingly messy, painful, and in the case of food, disgusting.

Anyway, I say this is Jack's first "real" job, but it's not his first time earning money. For the last few years, he has earned $25 a week cutting grass for our neighbors Joe and Lisa. Over time they have afforded this opportunity to earn a modest summer income to four of our kids, I believe, and we're all grateful for it. They're great neighbors.

Still, this is the first time Jack has had to work within a place of business, learn skills he didn't previously have, and be accountable for every minute of his time during work hours. It's all part of growing up, but I'm a little torn by the fact that it's happening.

On one hand, it's obviously a positive thing. Anything that helps prepare your child to navigate the world of work is a helpful experience in my book.

Conversely, it's little Jack (little in the chronological sense...the boy is, after all, pushing 6-foot-2). He's the baby of the family, and as is always the case when he hits a certain milestone, it's the last time we'll go through that process as parents. To use a 19th-century word, it makes me feel a little melancholy.

But I'm still not going to abandon those Chick-Fil-A grilled chicken sandwiches, no matter what he tells me about how they're made.

You have reached a certain age when new basement flooring makes you giddy

 

We're undertaking what I suppose you could call a basement renovation. The two main projects are repainting the walls and replacing the flooring.

The flooring part is already finished. We pulled up the vinyl flooring and stone tile that were there previously and replaced them with Nature Stone, which is an interesting mixture of rocks and epoxy that looks beautiful and makes the whole basement look lighter. We love it.

And that's the thing. There's nothing inherently cool or lovable about flooring.

And yet...there kind of is.

But apparently you have to be middle-aged before you can get truly excited about it.

The guys who installed it did so in two separate sessions, each lasting just a few hours. As our Nature Stone sales guy Larry D. described it, it's "the consistency of a milkshake" when they put it in. I didn't watch, but I think they just pour it onto the floor, smooth it out, and 24 hours later it's completely dry and you can walk on it.

This is amazing to me. I don't know how amazing it would have been to my 20-year-old self, but 51-year-old Scott is gobsmacked by it.

I also don't know whether to mourn my lost youth or celebrate the perspective that comes with getting a few years under your belt.

I'm going with both.

I am, and long have been, an incurable goody two shoes

I want to start by assuring you happy potheads out there that it is pure coincidence I'm writing this post on 4/20. You will see why that's relevant in a minute...

Quite often I see people post "Never have I ever" or "Give yourself 1 point for everything you haven't done" memes on Facebook. These are generally lists of dangerous, illegal, or what are considered to be just plain "bad" activities.

I'm not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed by this, but I always score really high on those lists. While I've written before about some of the stupid stuff my friends and I did as pre-teens, if I'm being honest, I rarely did much of anything morally questionable after that.

Never once in my life have I:

• Smoked anything, whether it was a cigarette, a cigar, a joint, or anything similar. Like, literally, I've never actually performed the act of smoking (and I can't imagine doing it).
• Taken any illegal drugs. No pills, no injections, nothing snorted, and as noted, nothing smoked.
• Been arrested.
• Skipped school.

Not that it's "bad," but I never went clubbing, either. And as far as drinking, yes, I've been drunk, but nowadays I average maybe one drink every month or two, and it's usually a very tame light beer.

Now that I think about it, I'm proud of all of this. Not because I'm " better" than anyone else (I'm most certainly not), but because, for the most part since my teen years, I've always stuck to just being me, and not what anyone else wants me to be or thinks I should be.

I know a lot of people who tell stories about their younger years and the things they used to do, and I think it gives them a certain perspective on life that I lack. I could never write novels, for example, because I can't relate to a significant part of some people's lives and therefore could never convincingly write about them.

Part of the reason for all of this, of course, was that I got myself a good woman early on, and she pretty well kept me in line. But also, like I said, none of that is really "me." It would have felt disingenuous for me to indulge in any of it.

Still, I wonder if I should spend some time now sowing my wild oats. There's nothing more attractive than an obnoxiously drunk 51-year-old being pulled out of a bar and thrown into jail for disorderly conduct, right?

Yeah, on second thought...

Dear Game Show Network programming people: More of the oldies, please

For many decades, I have been a fan of game shows. I grew up during what I would say is the golden age of game shows in the 1970s and 80s, when the best (or at least the best versions) of the classic shows were on the air.

I don't have time to watch much TV these days, but when I do, I like to flip to the Game Show Network to see what's on. GSN is always entertaining, though I used to like it better when it concentrated more on the old shows.

I realize the need to move on and create new classics (and cultivate a younger audience), but I kind of wish there were more old episodes of "Joker's Wild" and "Tattletales," or even some "Price Is Right" from when Bob Barker had dark hair.

I looked over the GSN schedule for one 24-hour period recently. There were a lot of new games that are probably decent if I gave them a chance, but I focused on the three legacy shows on the grid:

• "Family Feud" hosted by Steve Harvey: Don't get me wrong, I like Steve Harvey. He's a Cleveland guy and does a good job hosting Feud. But, through no fault of his own, he isn't Richard Dawson. This show hit its absolute peak when Richard was wearing a tuxedo and kissing all of the women (and occasionally the men) on each team.
• "Match Game": There is no such thing as an unentertaining episode of "Match Game." Gene Rayburn was a master. And speaking of Richard Dawson, he was the best panelist in terms of actually playing the game. Throw in Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Sommers, Fannie Flagg and the others, and it's television gold, Jerry. I have a good Richard Dawson story at the end of this post, if you're interested.
• "Whammy!/Press Your Luck": This is a new version of one of my favorite 80s shows. If you're not familiar with the 1984 Michael Larson "Press Your Luck" scandal, this is a good recap, or you can search for it on YouTube. The whole thing was bizarre and, ultimately, tragic.

I would like to have seen some "Newlywed Game" and "Tic Tac Dough" thrown in there, but again, I get the need for new programming to reel in new audiences.

Still, today's young people will never quite know the joy of watching Peter Marshall host the "Hollywood Squares" or Dick Clark guide "The $100,000 Pyramid" at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning when they're home sick from school. That was paradise.

MY RICHARD DAWSON STORY: I've managed to get through an entire post about game shows without mentioning that I appeared as a contestant on two of them. Although I guess I really didn't get through the whole post without mentioning it. Anyway, this is my Richard Dawson story: In October 2002 when I taped my appearance on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," one of the people with whom I was playing was a grade-school teacher from Tennessee named Shirley. She once dated Don Henley, apparently. Anyway, she had also appeared as a contestant on "The Match Game" in something like 1974. She won the game that day, and when it came time for the bonus round in which you selected one celebrity with whom you would try to match, she like many others picked Richard because he was so good. The producers hemmed and hawed and tried to get her to select someone else before finally revealing that Richard was so drunk that day there was no way he would be coherent enough to participate in the bonus round. So Shirley picked Betty White. The clue was "Planet <BLANK>." Shirley said "Earth." Betty said "of the Apes." I'm positive Richard, had he not been imbibing that day, would have said "Earth" and won Shirley some more money. Oh well, it makes for a great story.

Marrying young...however you define "young" nowadays

On this day 70 years ago (April 18, 1951), my parents got married.

Mom had just turned 19 a week earlier, while Dad was all of 21. At the time, it was not unusual to be married at those ages.

Fast forward 41 years to June 6, 1992. That was the day Terry and I were married. She was 23 and I was 22. I had just graduated from college a few weeks earlier. That's us in the photo above.

Again, while we were probably younger than most people becoming husband and wife back then, it's not like we were inordinately young for the early 90s.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average age for a first marriage in 2020 was 28.1 for women and 30.5 for men. What's more, fewer than 30% of Americans ages 18-34 are now married, vs. nearly 60% as recently as 1978.

Clearly, young people in this country are not in a rush to put a ring on it. At least not any time soon.

I'm not saying this is good or bad. It just is.

By the time Terry and I tied the knot, we had been together for more than six years. I had decided long before that she was The One, and she had clearly decided that, for all of the warning signs of what lay ahead for her, she was willing to tie her fortunes to me.

It's not like we met when we were 20 and got married a year or two later, which was common in our parents' generation. We knew each other really well and were great friends in addition to being a couple.

As we approach our 29th anniversary, I would say it worked out pretty well for us. I know others our age with similar stories.

All of which is to say that whatever the demographic trends are, being "too young" to marry is a pretty subjective thing. I got engaged when I was 18 and had people tell me that was nuts and that we should wait a bit. I knew they were wrong.

Others are clearly not ready to enter into a long-term commitment when they actually do, and more often than not, those unions end in divorce.

Maybe it's good that people are waiting until they're more financially and emotionally stable before taking the plunge nowadays. All I know is, I was basically a kid when I got married and it's still the best decision of my life.

Your results may vary.

I am easily impressed, but our new "smart" washer is incredibly cool

Terry and I are not, it must be said, early adopters when it comes to appliances.

Until recently, we had the same, old-school, analog washer and dryer. And admittedly they worked just fine, especially when you consider how many loads of laundry we put them through each week.

Recently, though, we bought a brand-new LG washer and dryer, and let me just say that the technology that goes into cleaning clothes has advanced a tad since our last purchase.

As the person who does most of the laundry in the house, I am suitably impressed by the fact that the washer:

• Weighs the clothes you put into it and decides how much water to use.
• Takes that information and calculates the exact duration of the washing cycle (and displays that information for you in a countdown timer)
• Has a much larger capacity than our previous washer despite taking up slightly less space
• Can be operated remotely through your phone

This last point is, admittedly, silly. Or at least it is to me. I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I would need to operate my washer from 1,000 miles away. BUT...if the need arises, I'm able to do that.

As for the dryer, it hasn't yet arrived as I type this, but I expect to be equally impressed.

My dad, a gadget guy if there ever was one, would have bought these appliances years ago if he were still around, but we held out.

Now I'm glad we essentially have the same washer and dryer as the family in "Lost and Space."

"Hi guy!" Did your hometown (like mine) have its own unique catchphrase?

Recently, my old classmate Bob Risko posted something on a Facebook group of which I'm a member called "You know you're from Wickliffe if..."

Wickliffe is, of course, the city where I've lived my entire life. I'm sure there are plenty of these types of FB groups where people who grew up together share memories and experiences common to their particular town.

Bob's post, completing the sentence "You know you're from Wickliffe if..." simply said: "If you have used the words 'Hi guy.'"

99.99999% of the world would look at that post and rightly ask, "Huh?"

The other .00001% of us grew up in the 1970s and 80s in Wickliffe, Ohio, and those words made us all smile.

"Hi guy!" was just something we said to each other. In my time, it was in response to someone who said or did something stupid or weird. Some of the comments under Bob's post suggested that, in the years before my time, it was used as more of a noun (someone could be a "hi guy") and was considered more of a direct insult.

It was fascinating to read those comments. Many Wickliffe-ites who hadn't uttered the words "Hi guy!" in decades were suddenly waxing nostalgic about them.

What intrigues me about this phrase was that it was entirely a Wickliffe thing. We never met anyone from a surrounding city who said it.

Conversely, it wasn't just a small, isolated group of Wickliffe kids who used it. It was clear from the comments that it sprang up in the 70s and was used through the 80s and into at least the early 90s.

And now it's dead. No current Wickliffe kid has any idea what "Hi guy!" is all about.

One of the big revelations in this discussion came from Terry Jo DeBaltzo, who revealed the origins of "Hi guy!" It was a phrase used in TV commercials for Right Guard antiperspirant, including this one from 1972 and this one from 1978.

So here we have a peculiar little phrase that someone took from a TV commercial and began using. It gained greatly in popularity only within one particular city, evolved in meaning over time, and died away two decades after it sprang up.

You could have lived your entire childhood and teen years in a neighboring city like Willowick or Euclid without ever hearing the words "Hi guy!" whereas it was a regular part of the vocabulary of the similarly aged Wickliffe kid whose house was maybe 100 yards away from yours just across the city line.

I am no linguist, but I find this fascinating. Have you experienced anything similar in the place where you grew up?

My wife and I have been sitting in the bleachers since 1999

All five of our children have participated in sports of one kind or another.

The result has been that, over more than two decades, Terry and I have watched countless soccer, t-ball, baseball, and football games. And don't forget all of the freezing cross country meets and rain-soaked track invitationals.

I coached many of those events, which meant that in addition to the natural nervousness that comes from hoping your own kid does well, I also had to worry about equal playing time and securing post-game snacks for other people's kids.

I wouldn't change any of it, of course, but lately I've marveled at how big a part of our life it has been.

It started with Elissa as the cutest little 5-year-old t-ball player you'll ever want to see, and it's likely to end in a couple of years on a high school track just before Jack graduates.

In between there have been some truly incredible moments. There have also been a few lowlights, including the time I told a portly soccer referee to "lay off the doughnuts" after I watched my son get viciously fouled with no call. (There should have been a whistle, but I wish I hadn't said that.)

Jack is our last student-athlete, and his specialty is distance running. He runs cross country and does the middle- and long-distance events in track. I think he's crazy, but then again, as a former sprinter, I think all distance runners are crazy.

I keep telling myself to savor every race and appreciate every moment we have left watching him compete. Everyone says it ends sooner than you'd like, and I can see how that will be true.

But I'll admit that sometimes, when I'm shivering my way through an eight-hour, 35-degree track meet, I allow myself to think for just a second that maybe it would be OK if we could fast-forward to Jack's senior year.

Then, of course, he zooms past us on the track and we cheer for him as loud as we can and it's all good again.

It's amazing how fast you warm up when you have the increasingly fleeting opportunity to watch your formerly little boy do his thing.

I have a telescope. There are maybe four cool things I can see with it.

Saturn isn't quite this big in my telescope, but it's still awesome.

A few years ago, a church friend gave me an old Jason telescope from Sears that he wasn't using.

It isn't exactly the Hubble Space Telescope or anything, but it's certainly more powerful than anything I've ever had.

I've figured out how to do the following things with it:

• I look closely at the craters of the moon. I never tire of doing this. For whatever reason, the view seems better when viewing a crescent moon vs. a full moon. Or at least the craters appear to be more sharply outlined on the crescent moon.
• I zero in on Saturn and can clearly see its rings. This is also extremely cool, though it's still not much larger than a sharply defined dot in the viewfinder. Still, you can see those rings, which on average are about 800 million miles away from Earth. Given how long it takes light to cover that distance, it means that what I see in my telescope is how Saturn looked more than an hour earlier. I think that's pretty amazing.
• I train the scope on Jupiter and can see its four largest moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto). I can barely make out the bands of Jupiter itself, but those moons are all very visible, if still pinpricks.
• I have also taken a look at both Mars and Venus, and while they're definitely bigger in the telescope than when viewed with the naked eye, there's really not that much to see in terms of detail.

I could probably see nebulae, other parts of the Milky Way, and maybe even a larger galaxy or two(?) if I took the telescope to an area with less light pollution and knew where and how to find these things. 

But really, just seeing a few planets and the sharply defined features of the moon from my driveway is more than reason enough to haul it up from the basement once or twice a week.

Fond memories of youth sports in the 70s and 80s

The photo above is not, it should be noted, one in which I or anyone I know appears. My little league softball/baseball career had just about ended by 1983.

But the one thing I share with the young men in this picture is the experience of having played dozens (maybe hundreds) of games wearing jeans. Not baseball pants, just good old Toughskins from Sears.

And, I should add, we were brilliant.

Or at least we thought we were. I played on some pretty good teams over the years and could hit the ball a fair distance, which is a good thing considering I had such a weak arm for an outfielder.

Here's what I remember about youth sports in the late 70s and early 80s:

• We were always coached by dads, many of whom smoked during practices and games.
• We wore those jeans but did have sweet matching t-shirts and hats.
• If you weren't a good hitter, no one on the other other team had any qualms about yelling out that fact when you came to the plate ("Move in, move in! He can't hit it out of the infield!") I'm not saying this is necessarily good, but it's pretty how much how it was.
• We got ice cream after games, but only if we won.

And I remember having fun. The whole thing really was a lot of fun.

I'm not saying it's radically different now, though I don't see the kids wearing jeans while they're playing. I spent more than a decade coaching and organizing youth soccer, T-ball, and baseball leagues, and the one thing kids of the 2000s shared with us Gen Xers is that they were just out there looking for a good time.

So that was always my philosophy as a dad-coach. Yes, I was going to make you work to get better, and yes, we were going to try to win. But if you're 9 years old and you're not out there having fun, then some adult (in this case me) has failed pretty badly.

You can go on your Old Person Rants about keeping score and participation trophies and all of that, but I'm not too inclined to listen. All I know is it's possible for young athletes to improve while still enjoying themselves. And if you're not doing both, you're not going to get much from the experience.

Of course, I still say sweating your way through a doubleheader in a pair of jeans in 85-degree weather builds character, but maybe that's just me.

It's like we're a family of 11, really

My four oldest children each have longer-term significant others. This means that, whenever we all get together for any occasion (birthdays, holidays, backyard fires, etc.), what used to be just our family of seven becomes a group of 11 people.

And it's awesome. I love when we're all in one place and it's loud, chaotic, and fun. We'll play a game. We'll just talk. We'll tell jokes and stories. It's wild, headache-inducing stuff.

I wouldn't trade it for anything.

At some point, when one of these kids manages to start producing grandchildren—and please note that I am in no way trying to rush this process along—we will become a group of 12. Then 13. Then who knows how many?

That will be even better.

Imagine the Christmases!

Even when there are piles of dishes to wash afterward and you're dead tired once everyone goes home, you still realize you've made another bunch of great memories.

It's exactly what you sign up for when you have multiple kids.

I'm not sure it gets any better.

Time rolls on even after we're gone, and that's really OK

I am far from the first person to consider this, and I won't articulate it especially well, but it's rolling around in my head on this, the day when my mom would have turned 89.

Insightful News Flash #1: Some day, you are going to die.

Insightful News Flash #2: When it happens, the world will not suddenly grind to a halt.

Insightful News Flash #3: This is the way it has always been, and it's fine.

Like I said, nothing new here, but still something to consider.

Of course, you already know the lesson we're all supposed to take from this set of facts. Something about not sweating the small stuff. The things that cause us the most stress are also often the least important, least consequential things. In the grand scheme, they really don't matter much.

Many people worry about leaving behind a "legacy," whatever that means. But the vast majority of us will be all but completely forgotten less than 100 years after we're gone.

That sounds harsh, but again, it's OK. It forces us to focus on the smaller scale and the day-to-day.

Love people. Tell them you love them. Work hard. Do things you enjoy. Give to others even when you think you may not have a lot to give.

And honestly, that's about it. My mom lived that way, and as I've been saying since her passing last summer, hers is the best legacy I can think of leaving.

Heavy stuff today. This coming week I promise we'll get back to topics such as my terrible handwriting or why my children are incapable of cleaning up crumbs on the counter when they make toast.

The Flintstones and Looney Tunes: Cartoon perfection when I was growing up

 

The image above is a little distorted, but what is NOT distorted is my certainty that Looney Tunes and The Flintstones were not only the two greatest cartoons of my childhood, but likely ever.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s as I did, both were originally produced well before my time. It's not that I didn't like contemporary cartoons. I just gravitated to these two series, as both were smart, funny, and unfailingly entertaining.

I can, for example, watch Daffy Duck as Robin Hood over and over and over, and I will never not laugh. It's just perfection.

Similarly, every episode of The Flintstones contains at least a few LOL moments for me to go with an engaging series-long story arc. Watching the Flintstones and the Rubbles go from childless blue-collar neighbors to parents of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, respectively, was actually, well, kind of heartwarming.

I also loved the Stones' incorporation of what were then modern-day TV and music celebrities, from Ann Margrock to Rock Quarry to Ed Sullystone.

Mel Blanc was one of the common threads between the two series, as he voiced both Barney Rubble and Bugs Bunny (along with other Looney Tunes characters).

This is not one of those cartoons-were-better-in-my-day posts, since honestly, neither of these 'toons was a product of "my day" in the first place.

But I am saying that you would be hard pressed to beat either of these classics when it comes to short-form animated entertainment.

"Sleeping in" for me is now 6:00 AM

I have almost always been an early riser.

When I was in 3rd grade, my mom was still making me go to bed at 9:00 PM even though I usually needed no more than 7-8 hours of sleep. So it was common for me to be wide awake by 4:30 in the morning, just looking for something to do in my room until it was time to get ready for school.

Often I would listen to the old WWWE 1100AM radio station, which back then featured music on its overnight show (something that may have been unusual for an AM station even then). The hosts were local, and I would sometimes call in to request a song.

Having this little 8- or 9-year-old kid calling to request a song in what was essentially still the middle of the night for most people must have been hilarious, but they usually humored me...as long as the song I requested fit their mostly mellow format.

One time I asked for "Rock Around the Clock." It was the first song I could think of. The DJ, whose name I believe was Vicky, laughed and told me she couldn't play that one, but she would play the theme from "The Goodbye Girl" and dedicate it to me.

And she did! All 17 people listening at the time heard it.

Anyway, other than a stretch during my teen years when I would stay in bed until nearly noon on the weekends, I've continued my early-rising ways for decades. On the mornings when I exercise, I'm awake before 5:00 AM.

On the days like today when I "sleep in," I roll my lazy bones out of bed at the advanced hour of 5:30 AM.

I am a wild man, I know.

You tend to need less sleep as you age. So if I'm like this at 51, I figure I'll be waking up around 3 in the morning by the time I hit my 70s.

No wonder old people want dinner at 4 in the afternoon.

When your niece or nephew may as well be your sibling

There are two people in the world to whom I could text the words "goony goo goo" and get a laughing/crying emoji in return.

One is my high school classmate and track teammate Ken Beavers.

The other is my nephew Mark, who as I've documented before is only five years younger than me and thus has always served much more as my surrogate little brother than as a nephew.

Mark turns 46 years old today. He would immediately recognize "goony goo goo" as a line from Eddie Murphy's "Delirious" comedy special, which came out 38 years ago when Mark was a grade-schooler, but which he and I quote back and forth endlessly.

It doesn't have to be an Eddie Murphy quote in these random texts we send each other, by the way. It can be almost anything that strikes us both as funny: a comedy bit (often from Eddie or Norm MacDonald, but we draw from a wide range of comics), a line from a movie, or just something funny one of us has said or done at some point.

We have similar comedy and musical tastes along with our shared last name and ancestry. Mark and his wife Tiffany are expecting their second child this year, which means that increasingly, we also share parenting stories.

I don't know if you have a niece or nephew who is very close in age to you—I've known a few to be older than their uncles and aunts—but it really is fun. Mark has been a blessing in our lives from the moment he was born way back in the Dark Ages (1975).

So to my little nephew, I have only two things to say today. One is Happy Birthday!

The other, of course, is goony goo goo.

My mom used to give me a dollar to go and buy a loaf of Italian bread at Fazio's. I got to keep 25 cents.

It was the early 80s, I guess. And when she was between shopping trips but the family needed bread, my mom would send me to the grocery store on my bike.

This bread was always Italian bread, mind you. Sliced with seeds from Fazio's, where she did most of our shopping. I don't have a drop of Italian blood in me that I know of, but that's virtually the only kind of bread we ever ate.

Anyway, the store was, I don't know, maybe a 5-minute bike ride from home if I hurried? No more than 10 minutes, for sure.

Once I got there, I would enter, take a right and cut through one of the cashier lines, then another right followed by a left to get to the bakery. I would order the bread, which would be placed in a see-through plastic Fazio's bread bag and handed over to me.

I would take the bread, get into a 12-items-or-less line, and pay for it using the crisp dollar bill Mom had likely gotten from the bank when she cashed Dad's last paycheck. The bread cost 75 cents. That left me with a quarter, and that quarter never made it home.

I would always insert it into the video game stationed at the store entrance. The game changed a few times over the years, but the one with the longest tenure that I can remember was Defender.

I loved Defender. I once wrote an article for a middle-school English class on how to succeed at the game. Mrs. Crow gave me an 'A' on it, God bless her.

I would stand there playing Defender for however long I could hold out before losing my allotted three ships. If I had done well enough (which occasionally happened), I would enter my initials into the game as one of the high scorers.

Then I would grab the bread, go outside, get back onto my bike, and ride home.

The whole process rarely took more than 45 minutes.

I would pay a large sum of money for the chance to go back and do it once more.

It was a simpler time, you understand.

This is the best song about green smoothies you will ever hear

Trust me when I say it will be three minutes well spent if you watch this video:

Admittedly, a song about green smoothies patterned after an ABBA song may not be your thing, but it's catchy, no?

The woman in the video is Victoria Boutenko, an author who has written about the health benefits of green smoothies. She is also a big Vitamix fan, and I've worked with her awesome son Sergei on a few smoothie-related projects during my time at Vitamix.

Sergei, by the way, put out his own green smoothie rap ("Green Smoothie Hustla"...really) a couple of years after his mother's chart-busting ditty.

I drink a green smoothie just about every day. It's a simple recipe: water, some sort of frozen fruit (I've been alternating between a mango/pineapple mix and berries), and some leafy greens, and then blend that puppy up.

Those leafy greens for me usually include some combination of kale, spinach, chard, collard greens, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

The flavor is excellent and the health benefits vast.

I guess what I'm saying is that, if you're not already a smoothie person, you might consider becoming one. It will make your doctor very happy.

Or at least keep singing that smoothie song. I feel like the world's a better place with that tune on our collective lips.

I read the obits now. Every day, in fact.

I've heard it said you know you're old when you start reading the death notices in the paper every day.

This assumes you read a paper, which I do but most people don't. And it assumes you're old enough to have friends and classmates passing away in significant numbers.

I am not yet of that age, but I do regularly spot the parents and grandparents of my peers on the obituary page. I'm also just generally fascinated with the lives people have led as summed up in those few paragraphs.

The creatively written obits are my favorites. Oftentimes these are inspirational and true celebrations of the person's life.

When I wrote my mom's obit last summer, I did it in a pretty straightforward way. In retrospect, I wonder if I should have put in a little more effort to let people know how incredible she was.

On the other hand, the people close to her already knew that, so maybe that's all that mattered.

I also read the death notices because, well, statistically speaking, I am probably on the downhill side of life. Very high up near the peak, hopefully, but still...I've likely lived more years already than I'm likely to live still.

So in the back of your mind are all of the things you want to make sure you do while you still can. I may have 40 or even 50 years still to do these things. Or I might have 5. Or I could have a single day.

You don't know in advance your own expiration date, and that's a good thing as long as you live your life in the most satisfying way possible, whatever that is for you.

So yeah, I read the obituaries. And no, I'm not 85 years old. Yet.

Sooner than I think, though, I will be.

How much you push your kids to participate in extracurriculars vs. how much you back off

I am of the mind that we should all live life with no regrets. And so far it has served me well. I can't imagine I would change much of anything when it comes to how I've lived my first 51 years.

That is not, however, a blanket statement. There are a few things I wish I had done while I was still in school:

• I wish I would have taken more seriously the job of being an officer for both my class and for National Honor Society. I did relatively little work in either position (though, in my defense, the class president Jodi and I end up organizing reunion get-togethers every five years, so I feel like that's my penance).
  
  
• I wish I would have actually put real effort into losing weight after football my junior and senior years. I really, really should have been a 21-foot long jumper.
  
  
• I wish I would have learned to ask for help earlier in my academic career. It took until 11th grade or so before I started doing that. Could have saved myself a lot of trouble, and I wouldn't have had to take algebra twice.

Which brings me to the subject of my kids. They have all been fairly involved in school as class officers, athletes, band members, etc. For the most part, they made the most of their time in high school and college.

But there are times, like with 15-year-old Jack, that I really think they're going to regret not having done something at which I know they would be good. I see 20 years in the future when this realization dawns on them and they end up with a bullet-point list like the one above, but they of course cannot see that. They don't yet have the benefit of years and the perspective that gives you.

Most of the time, it's not so much about the activity itself, but the skills and discipline you learn that can be applied later in life.

Melanie sometimes asks us why we didn't sign her up to play softball when she was young. We tell her she didn't seem the least bit interested, but should we have? A lot of her friends played softball through high school and I think she feels she missed out on having that extra bond with them.

Putting your kid needlessly through an activity they hate seems counterproductive, but then so does watching them waste natural talent and ability, too.

Five kids later, I'm still not sure what the answer is.

My wife is the family CFO, and I like it that way

I don't know how it generally works with other couples, but my impression is that in every relationship/marriage, there is one person who handles most of the finances.

And by "finances," I'm talking the day-to-day, month-to-month cash flow that keeps a household operating.  Not so much the long-term, save-for-retirement decisions (though the same person may also have that job).

Sometimes it's obvious who should handle this chore. Like, if you're an accountant or a financial advisor, there's a good chance you're better with money than your significant other, and the responsibility for making sure the bills get paid almost inevitably falls on you.

As I've mentioned before, the chief financial officer in our house is Terry. It has been this way for nearly 29 years. It is extremely rare that I end up paying any of our bills, as I'm only there to supply the income.

Many of you are single and have to take care of everything by yourself, and I salute you. You are smarter and overall more capable than me.

I have absolutely no problem with Terry keeping this role until the day I or both of us keel over. I don't know that she "enjoys" it any more than I would, but she's good at it and is extremely organized. Things get paid.

More importantly, she has steered our financial ship such that we recently got to the point that our mortgage is our only debt. No car payments at the moment, no loan payments, no credit card payments, etc. That's all her doing.

We have been a single-income family for more than 20 years. Nowadays it works out just fine, but I remember when we really had to pinch those pennies. I am not too proud to say that at one point, we gratefully received assistance from the government's WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program. Those were some lean days.

Of course, we were in a privileged position in that we made the choice back then to live on one income. We survived because we could. Many others have dual incomes and still can't get by, which is why I very gladly support WIC and other such programs with my tax dollars.

Anyway, the point here is that I have almost nothing to do with our short- and medium-term finances and am fine with that. It's something like Reason #58,714 that Terry can never die.

I'm not kidding, breakfast is one of the highlights of my day

About five years ago, I took a business trip to Europe. My daughter Elissa, being the adventurous traveler she is, decided to tag along (and paid her own way, to her credit).

That trip took us to some very fun places, including London, Frankfurt, Southern Bavaria, and Barcelona.

The food was all around very good, but we had a special culinary fondness for the two German destinations.

Actually, what we had was a fondness for was German breakfasts. The morning spreads at our hotels were full of delicious, carb-laden treats, fruits, outstanding coffee, and even various meats. We always walked away from breakfast feeling satisfied.

The German word for breakfast is "Frühstück." It's pronounced with that semi-breathy 'r' that comes from the back of the throat, and of course the 's' sound is pronounced as 'sh."

We never bothered saying the 'r' correctly, but the 'sh' part was easy enough, so we always referred to it as "froo-shtuck."

One evening when we were in our room, Elissa sighed and said, "I wish it was froo-shtuck now." And I did, too. That's how much we looked forward to those breakfasts.

Breakfast remains my favorite meal by a wide margin. And as I have recounted here before, I eat the same thing every day, virtually without exception: A cup of cooked plain oats, a banana, and coffee with half and half.

Somehow I never get bored of this breakfast. If I happen to be having breakfast in a restaurant and/or am traveling, I order the closest equivalent off the menu.

I know it sounds bland, but it's what I like. And it makes me happy.

Which in large part is the point of food, right? Many of us develop unhealthy relationships between food and comfort, but seeing it merely as fuel doesn't feel like the right approach, either.

Somewhere in between is a fulfilling mental, physical, and even emotional connection between what we eat and the happiness it gives us.

My non-descript little breakfast routine never fails to make me happy, so I stick with it. Even today, thousands of miles away from the ancestral home of my German grandma Bertha Spitznogel, I still sometimes find myself wishing it was Frühstück in the middle of the afternoon.

We take Easter seriously (and violently) in our house

 

For years, my wife has gone all out on Easter. She puts together amazing baskets for the kids and prepares an elaborate egg hunt in and around our living room.

I did not grow up with anything like this on Easter (though my baskets always had great candy), so I am continually in awe of the work Terry puts in for this holiday.

The video above, shot a few years ago, depicts one of our Easter morning egg hunts. In it, you will see my oldest daughter, Elissa, aggressively take out her sibling Chloe, all in the name of getting to one of the plastic, treat-filled eggs before her sister.

No one was hurt in the making of this video, but the possibility of injury always looms large in our family this time of year.

Here’s hoping my Christian friends have a spiritually fulfilling and physically safe Easter weekend!