I have once again been bullied into better habits

I like to tell the story of why I began drinking black coffee after years of pouring cream into it.

The date was September 15, 2022. My family and I were at Pine Ridge Country Club in Wickliffe, Ohio, for the Wickliffe Schools Athletic Achievement Hall of Fame induction ceremony. (Someone had scammed the organizers into inducting me. I still can't explain it.)

After the meal, I poured myself a hot cup of coffee to cap off what had been a very enjoyable evening. As I reached for the small pitcher of half and half, my daughter Elissa looked at me and said (in a tone of undisguised condescension), "When are you going to grow up and start drinking black coffee?"

I replied to her, "Right now, I guess." And I did. I drank that cup free of additives, and I have not drunk anything but black coffee ever since that moment.

I have said many times that Elissa bullied me into what is undoubtedly a healthier habit when it comes to coffee drinking.

Fast forward to about a month ago, when Elissa and her boyfriend Mark presented me with a card for a personal trainer named Kirk Simmons. As a reward for coming to their house and taking care of their pets while they were on vacation, they had paid for four training sessions for me with Kirk.

"You'll love him," Elissa said. "He specializes in cranky dads."

Well, sign me up!

I hadn't expressed any interest in personal training, but everyone in my family knew of my longstanding intention to start doing more than just cardio-based exercise. I knew I needed to lift, and deep down I knew I probably needed some sort of kick in the butt to start doing it.

Two days after presenting me with the card, Elissa and Mark were at our house. A very persistent Elissa told me, "We can sign you up with Kirk now." I promised I would do it myself within a day or two, and I did.

Once again, my low-level fear of incurring the wrath of Elissa had pushed me into making a better lifestyle choice.

Here's the funny thing, though: I'm typing this post on May 31st. As of today, I haven't had a single workout with Kirk. I did meet him at the gym for my initial assessment yesterday morning at 5am (yes, 5am, which didn't seem to phase Kirk because the man is an ex-Marine and could probably conquer a small island by himself on three hours sleep).

All he did was conduct a body scan to assess my muscle mass and prodigious fat deposits, and some movement tests so he could get an overall idea of my flexibility, stability, problem areas, etc.

My first workout with Kirk is still four days away, but by the time you read this, he will have put me through my paces several times already.

How can I be so confident this is going to work out? Because I know myself. I'm excited to do this, and when I'm excited to do something, I do it no matter how difficult it is or what obstacles life throws at me.

I don't know that I'm ever going to be a true gym rat or anything, but by the time you read this, I will have at least transformed into a "gym guy."

Which is saying something for me, a lifelong runner/walker and formerly avowed non-lifter.

The upshot of today's post? You need to have a loving bully like Elissa in your life. Or maybe just hire out Elissa herself to threaten you into making better choices.

Trust me, she's very good.

The AI Blog Post Image Generator did a nice job creating the photo you see at the top of this post. But it also produced this image, which makes me laugh no matter how many times I look at it.

I am the only 54-year-old man who tears up when he hears "Dark Blue" by Jack's Mannequin

By any measure, I am not the intended or expected demographic for "Dark Blue," a song by the American rock band Jack's Mannequin.

When the song was released in 2005, I was a father of four with a fifth child on the way. It was understandably much more popular with 15-year-old girls at the time than with 36-year-old suburban dads.

Yet it's a tune that resonated with me then and still does today. And the reason is my daughter Elissa, who was 11 years old when "Dark Blue" came out.

I don't think Elissa got into bands like Jack's Mannequin until she was a little older, but at 11, she was clearly already on the path to teenagerhood. Her interests and attitudes were changing, and being our oldest, she was the first kid with whom we navigated that tumultuous period of adolescence.

One thing I remember from those days is that every time Elissa said or did something that was more "older kid" than "younger kid," my heart would hurt a little. You know your child is going to change and that she is inevitably going to experience the universal (and sometimes painful) process of maturation, but part of you clings to the time when she was young and innocent and strongly attached to you.

You want your child to grow and become independent, of course, but those sentimental links to early childhood are strong in parents. It's so hard to let go, even when you know you should.

I remember Elissa playing "Dark Blue" in the car when she was a young teen. Listening to the chorus of the song made me realize – painfully, abruptly – that the little toddler I used to dote upon was gone forever. The angsty, somewhat melodramatic teenage lyrics were a world apart from the songs with which she used to sing along as a 4-year-old watching "Barney."

Dark blue, dark blue, have you
Ever been alone in a crowded room?
Well, I'm here with you, I said
The world could be burning and burning down

Your children have to go through the same heartbreaks and trials you did if they're going to grow into well-adjusted adults, but you sometimes wish it didn't have to be that way.

It should be noted that Elissa got through her teenage years pretty well, all things considered, and is now one of the smartest, funniest, most passionate 30-year-olds you'll ever meet. Her siblings also grew up successfully with relatively few scars, visible or otherwise.

But when I hear "Dark Blue," my mind still goes back to the time when I was the father of little ones who hadn't yet experienced heartbreak. And I admittedly get a little misty.

It's a strange mix of sadness, sentimentality and pride in what they've each become. All wrapped up in a 20-year-old song.

This is the 1,000th post in the history of this blog

Except it kind of isn't.

I mean technically, yes, there are now exactly 1,000 posts on the blog covering a span of more than 17 years. In that sense, yay for a cool milestone!

It's just that the first 26 posts chronologically, from late 2006 and early 2007, weren't really written for this blog. They appeared on a separate, short-lived blog from that time in which I chronicled my experiences as a contestant on The Price Is Right.

That blog, like this one, was constructed on the Blogger.com platform, so a couple of years ago I decided to migrate those 26 posts over to this space, which is relatively easy to do on Blogger. It was a nice way to ensure that little bit of history didn't get lost in cyberspace, since the old Price Is Right blog is now long gone.

Anyway, technicalities aside, 1,000 is a nice round number, and it provides an occasion to say thank you for popping in and reading these little essays. Whether you're someone who reads all three new posts every week or are just an occasional visitor, your patronage is greatly appreciated.

Since I started this blog in late 2011, my pattern has been to post regularly for a time, then to put the whole thing on hold for extended periods while I attended to other parts of my life.

This latest stretch of regular writing has lasted almost exactly one year. I started my current three-times-a-week blogging cadence on June 23, 2023, and here we are, still plugging away with new content on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.

It's difficult sometimes to come up with topics about which to write, but I'm able to brainstorm just enough material – and sprinkle in the occasional "Blog Rerun" – that this one year of posting is probably the longest uninterrupted stretch I've had.

Again, though, none of it matters if there's no one on the other end of the line to read it, and to engage with the posts on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. And so I say once more, thank you.

Let's see if we can get to 2,000 posts now.

At this point, I would settle for people not randomly capitalizing words

If you're someone who writes for a living or as a hobby, people often assume you're a stickler for grammar, punctuation and all the things your English teachers tried to get across to you.

I'm a writer (of sorts), but that isn't true of me. I don't go around judging people's spelling or word usage, mostly because I don't much care anymore.

While I understand the value of good grammar for clarity of communication, I am well past the days when I would carry around a virtual red pen and mentally edit every bit of writing I came across.

Part of the reason is the natural mellowing that often occurs with age. There are more important things to worry about, I find.

There's also the constant battle I wage against becoming a cranky old man. It's easy to find reasons to be angry and annoyed if you go around looking for them. I simply choose not to.

Then there's this question I often ask myself: How much does it really matter?

Again, yes, we have rules of usage and syntax and so forth for a reason. It's not about wanting to appear smart or trying to turn everyone in Shakespeare. It's about making sure we, as English speakers, are able to get our point across clearly and effectively whenever we speak or write.

Can I do that while still ending my sentence with a preposition? Yes, I can.

Can I do that while not understanding what a subordinate clause is and its role within a sentence? Yes, I can.

Can I do that without getting into a heated debate with a British person over whether collective nouns should be treated as singular or plural ("And the crowd are loving it!") ? Oh yes, I most certainly can.

The book pictured above sits on my desk at work, but I'll be the first to admit it's more decorative than anything else. As you might expect, "Warriner's Handbook of English" goes into great detail about parts of speech, sentence elements, phrases and clauses, pronoun cases, verb usage, modifiers, composition, spelling, and every aspect of punctuation you can think of, including the proper use of that pesky semicolon.

It was published in 1948. The preface to the book suggests it can be used as a teaching tool for 9th or 10th graders.

Maybe in 1948, sure. Nowadays, I don't think most adults could work their way through it.

Is that a bad thing? I'm not so sure it is. The way we communicate inevitably changes over time, regardless of what you and I think.

Here is the one thing I will ask of my contemporaries, though: Let's agree, collectively, to stop randomly capitalizing nouns. We are not German. Unless it's a proper noun (a specific name for a particular person, place or thing), and unless it's the first word in the sentence, it doesn't need to start with a capital letter.

Yes, there are exceptions in formal legal or business writing, but for the most part, keep 'em lower case.

If we can do that, I promise to scroll past your dangling modifier without saying a word.

A year later, I finally turned off phone notifications from my now-graduated son's track coach

One of the advantages of being a parent in the 2020s vs. the 1980s, I imagine, is the ease of communication with your child's teachers and coaches.

When I was growing up, the authority figures in my life would usually depend on me to ferry important information about school, sports and other extracurricular activities to my mom and dad. It was almost always printed on mimeographed pieces of paper.

I was invariably the weak link in this system.

The teacher/coach would put much thought into their communications, taking the time to type it all out and making hard copies. More often than not, I would then proceed to lose the piece of paper they gave me, or else I would stick it in my backpack and forget about it.

Either way, Ma and Pa often didn't get the memo when school fees were due or important events were coming up.

Nowadays, however, schools use elaborate digital systems of communication, including phone apps through which the teachers and coaches of the 21st century can instantly send important bits of news directly to parents.

We've taken the 15-year-old boy out the equation, which (believe me) is a good thing.

Even though our youngest child has graduated, I continue to receive phone notifications related to the Wickliffe Swing Band because these are often still very relevant to me. I'm entering my 11th year as the band's announcer, so changes to performance times and other such details remain useful.

But as recently as a month ago, I was also still receiving texts from Jack's track coaches. These really aren't relevant to me at all, beyond the fact that I remain a fan of Wickliffe track and field.

All spring long I read news of practice times, bus pick-ups and other minutiae that had no connection to me or my family anymore. Yet I resisted turning them off and deleting the associated app from my phone.

Why?

The answer is perhaps obvious. Terminating those notifications and sending the app to the digital trash can is a symbolically final act. It severs the last connection we have to the high school track program after years of our family's involvement.

Continuing to receive those texts and knowing the details of practices, meets, fundraisers, etc. somewhat cushioned the blow of separation. Even if they had nothing to do with us, they were reminders of the fun times we had when our kids ran track.

But all good things really do have to come to an end. Jack graduated 13 months ago. It's time to move on.

And that's what I'm doing. I may still be processing the whole thing for a while longer, but I'm moving on.

Memories of sleeping on the floor in my parents' air-conditioned bedroom

I've lived in just three houses my entire life. The only one that has had central air conditioning is the one I live in now.

Not to get all "back in my day" or anything, but when I was growing up, I don't think central air was a thing. At least not among the middle class people I knew.

When it got hot in the summer, we would usually just sleep on top of the covers with the window open. It wasn't the most comfortable arrangement, but when you're a little kid and don't know any better, it does the trick.

There were times, however, when it was so hot in the evening that even that approach didn't work. That was when my parents would invite me to sleep in their bedroom, which had a luxurious window air conditioning unit.

(I say "luxurious" because it was a powerful 70s-era model designed to cool a space much larger than their bedroom. My dad would crank it way up, too, resulting in meat locker-equivalent temperatures.)

Mom would arrange a little nest of blankets at the foot of their bed for me to sleep on and under. Many times I remember laying there curled up with a smile on my face, happy not only to be comfortable but also to be in the same room as my mom and dad.

It was a level of security and contentment that I have seldom known since.

Not that I don't feel secure and content in my life. I do. But once you become a parent, your job is to provide security and contentment more than to experience it. It's a responsibility those of us with children embrace willingly.

Still, even now when we have the AC on and I'm nestled in bed next to Terry, I often think about those times when I happily slept on the floor in my parents' room.

I can't explain it, but on those nights, I knew I was loved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just because I go into the office five days a week doesn't mean anybody else has to

This is my office at Materion. I spend a lot of time here (and I like it).

Back in December I had a post here about how much I enjoyed my company's hybrid arrangement of working three days in the office and two days at home each week.

Let's pretend I never wrote that.

Actually, I still stand behind every word I said, particularly how smart it is for companies to give their employees flexible working options that make life a little more manageable, at least when compared with the old non-negotiable approach of five days in the office for those of us in the white collar world.

For the last five months, however, I have been coming into the office every day, Monday through Friday, of my own volition.

There have been a couple of exceptions, but the most part, I commute to work five days a week like it's still 2019.

This is completely my choice. I do it for me and not as an attempt to suggest to others that they, too, should be back in the office full time.

They shouldn't be. They should be doing whatever works best for them and their employers.

It's just that, for me, the office is the one place where I am most focused on the task at hand. It's not that I can't be productive from my home office, but that, on balance, I get more done at Materion corporate headquarters than I do working upstairs at 30025 Miller Avenue.

The one person I supervise, Courtney, knows I do this, and more importantly, she knows I don't expect her in any way to follow my lead. She has a little boy at home to take care of. It's just easier and better for everyone involved when she can work from home at least a few days a week.

(It doesn't hurt that she's very smart and talented and would be just as productive if we gave her a laptop, a rechargeable battery and a tent and sent her out in the middle of the woods to work.)

The point is, my Materion office is my favorite place to work. I love it on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays when my co-workers are in the office with me and I can collaborate and converse with them, and I love it just as much on Mondays and Fridays when the parking lot is nearly empty and only a few of us are onsite.

My work schedule, my choice. Your results may (and really should) vary.

When I was growing up, this was about the time we would get out of school

It was only when I became a parent that I realized how amazingly short our kids' summer break from school really was.

At least in our district (though I think this is common), they don't even have 12 full weeks off before they're right back in the classroom.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, by the way. Indeed, during my time working with The Cleveland Foundation, I came to see some advantages to having year-round school with extended breaks between quarters/semesters.

It's just that, when I was a kid, summer vacation seemed to go on forever. It was great. We would get out in mid-June and not be back until after Labor Day.

I don't remember a single summer ever flying by or seeming too short, which may suggest that my friends and I did it right and made the most of our vacation time.

Later on as a parent, however, those 11 1/2 weeks would fly by in an instant. That's probably a function of time in general passing more quickly once you become an adult, but I could never reconcile the fleeting nature of my kids' summer vacations with the seemingly longer breaks I had as a kid.

In any event, as today's headline suggests, this is about the time of year in the 1970s and 80s when we would have our last day of school. That seems quaint now because, as far as I know, no local school district has been in session for at least a week, and many for longer than that. The kids almost universally get out in mid/late May or early June these days.

I don't know that that's any better or worse than the way we did it in my youth, it's just different.

Even with my kids grown, I still can't get used to it.

To the Great White North we go, this time without the guy on stilts

A street performer very similar to this one
almost cost me my marriage in 1994.

My son Jack and I will be taking a weekend trip to Toronto, a wonderful city that is conveniently situated a mere 4 1/2-hour drive from our home.

I love Toronto, but more generally, I love Canada. This probably has to do as much with my passion for hockey as anything else, but there are many things to embrace about our neighbors to the north.

The first time I traveled to Canada was in 1985, when my dad took me and my friend Mel to Niagara Falls for a few days. There was something exotic about getting into the car and driving to a foreign country.

Because, let's not forget, Canada is its own nation. Many Americans, while acknowledging all that Canada has to offer, see it merely as the 51st U.S. state. This is both insulting to Canadians and ignorant of the fact that they have their own unique culture and worldview.

That should go without saying, but sometimes it feels like it needs to be said.

Over the years I have often returned to Niagara Falls (probably 10 times since that first expedition in '85) to go along with half a dozen trips to Toronto, five visits to Montreal, and one memorable-but-short stay in Ottawa. I've never been to Western Canada, but I hope to get there eventually.

The memorable day in Ottawa occurred in 1994. Elissa was only a few months old at the time, and Terry and I took her with us on a week-long driving vacation with stops in all of the cities named above.

When we got to Ottawa, Terry was feeling a little sick, so she tasked me with finding a drug store and getting some medicine while she stayed in our hotel room with infant Elissa.

Without an Internet to rely on, I asked around for a local drug store and got directions to a place a few blocks over. On my way there, I came across a street performer on stilts. He was very talented, so I stood for a while watching him.

I watched him longer than I realized, because by the time I reached the pharmacy, got Terry's medicine and returned to the hotel, an undeniably lengthy period of time had passed. She was understandably well shy of pleased at how long I had been gone.

For all she knew, I could have been dead.

But no, I was just watching the guy on stilts. Did I mention how good he was?

Anyway, I had just gotten into hockey around the time we visited Ottawa and decided I needed an NHL team of which to be a fan. The Ottawa Senators had come into the league a couple of years before, so I decided they would be my team, no matter how horrible they were at the time.

They have remained my team ever since. I have seen them play in person eight or nine times over the years in a variety of cities, though never in Ottawa itself.

I hope to get back there someday. And this time, if my wife is again sick, you can be sure I'll ignore the guy on stilts and focus on my mission of getting her medicine.

Probably.

32 years later, here we are

 

This shot was taken many years after we were married, but it was a re-creation of a photo we took on our honeymoon in 1992 at Universal Studios in Florida.

This post should technically appear here on the blog tomorrow, seeing as how Terry and I celebrate our 32nd wedding anniversary on June 6th and not today. But my Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule yields to no milestone or special occasion, thus making me 24 hours early in wishing my bride a very happy anniversary.

However long you've been married, you can't help but notice, as the number creeps higher and higher, that the years pass impossibly fast. Father Time is, without a doubt, undefeated.

And he's running up the score on some of us.

I am grateful for everything and everyone I have in my life, but my wife is at the top of that list. I don't necessarily deserve someone as wonderful as she is, but I take some small amount of credit for recognizing that fact and being grateful for her.

Thirty-two years ago tonight we had our wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. I look back at those grainy old videos and realize we were just kids at the time. I was 22 years old, having only graduated from college a few weeks earlier. Terry was 23.

And here we are now, somewhat older than 22 and 23.

Our kids marvel at the fact that we were married so young, and even more so at the fact we were the parents of three children before either of us had turned 30.

It was a different time. Everyone lives life in their own way and at their own pace.

Our chosen pace, in those early years, was "frantic."

As I type this in mid-May, I have no idea what Terry and I will do tomorrow night to mark the passing of 32 years. Probably dinner out and an early return home to watch TV. (EDITOR'S NOTE: It turns out we'll be attending a playoff hockey game...at the insistence of my awesome wife.)

Happy anniversary to the best wife a guy could ask for. Without her, this blog could only be called "5 Kids," and well, that just wouldn't be as exciting.

Five ways going to our local library now is different from what it was back in 1981

(1) I now take a car to get there instead of a bike

My visits to the Wickliffe Public Library these days require a short car ride of only 4 minutes. When I was growing up, the library was located clear on the other end of the city from me, which usually meant I would have to ride my bike all the way down Euclid Avenue to get there. It was only a few miles, but it seemed farther. On the way home, as I carried the books I had selected in a plastic bag with the drawstring wrapped around my wrist, the bag would constantly bump up against my front bike tire and start to tear. I remember at least one time when it burst open and the books fell out before I reached home. I think I like the car trips better.

(2) Computers

There are probably a dozen computers at the library that are free for public use. When I first started going decades ago, there were zero. And even a few years later when the first few green-screen models were installed, I recall them being coin-operated and time-limited. Nowadays it's difficult to imagine a library that aims to serve its surrounding community to the fullest not offering free computer use.

(3) The card catalog has gone away...

Speaking of computers, that's how you look up materials at the library now. When I was a boy, you had to go the card catalog, pull out the appropriate drawer depending on the first letter of what you were looking for, and find the card that would tell you where in the library it was located. If it was a book, you had to memorize the call number. One time when we traveled to the library for a field trip in 6th grade, I ripped the card out of the file drawer and took it with me as I searched for the book. I wasn't exactly a genius back then (or now).

(4) ...so has the old checkout machine...

The only loud sound I remember in the library growing up was the "chuh-CHUNK" of the little machine they used to check out items. They would insert your library card in a little slot, then place the card that was kept in a sleeve on the inside cover of your book into another slot, and that would cause the "chuh-CHUNK" sound that meant the due date (and I think your library card number) had been printed on the book card. Now it's just an innocuous little beep when the circulation clerk scans your title. I miss the "chuh-CHUNK."

(5) ...and so have the ethnic jokebooks (I think)

Back in the 1980s, the Wickliffe Public Library offered a whole shelf full of jokebooks aimed at various nationalities and ethnicities. I remember a Polish jokebook for sure, and I'm pretty sure there was an Italian one. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were books of off-color jokes about Black people, White people, Chinese people, Eskimos, Antarcticans, etc. The culture ethos was...a little different in the 80s. I assume these books are now off the shelves, but as a 12-year-old I would happily check them out, read them, and laugh uproariously.

As I often say, it was a different time, you understand.