9/11 was the closest thing my generation has experienced to the JFK assassination

Today marks 61 years since President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas. Every year on this day I go back and read old news accounts of the assassination, and I watch Walter Cronkite's coverage of the event, including his emotional confirmation that the President had died.

It would be six more years before I was even born, so I of course did not experience JFK's death firsthand. But I've heard enough about it from my parents and siblings to get a sense of just how shocked the nation really was.

My brother Mark tells a story of having to play outside by himself later that week because so many families were keeping their kids inside, apparently as part of some unspoken, quiet and respectful mourning process.

Talk to any American who was a child on Friday, November 22, 1963, and they will likely have a story of being in school when the news broke. For many, it was the first and only time they saw their teachers show emotion, let alone cry.

The only point of reference I have as a Gen Xer is September 11, 2001, though I wasn't in school at the time but rather a 31-year-old father of four toiling away at my job in marketing communications at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for Rehabilitation.

One of the nurses came running down the hall past our office that morning saying, "They bombed the Pentagon!" While that wasn't strictly true, it did get my co-worker Heidi and I to turn on the TV to find out what had happened.

The first of the two World Trade Center towers had already come down, and we watched live as the second one fell, shockingly and unexpectedly.

Then we heard about the plane crashing into the Pentagon. That was quickly followed by rumors that another hijacked plane was flying near or above Cleveland, prompting the Clinic to shut down and send us all home.

That night our family attended a prayer service at church, then we waited in a long line at a Shell gas station amid speculation that the price of gas was going to spike above $5.00 the next day (it never did).

The parallels between JFK's assassination and 9/11 are somewhat obvious. In both cases, if felt like the world had changed forever.

But I get the sense that JFK's death was a bigger collective shock. Kennedy's election had brought a fresh new spirit to the United States. The aura of "Camelot" made him and his family objects of adulation by millions.

There hadn't been a presidential assassination in 62 years, since William McKinley was gunned down in Buffalo in 1901. There was no template for people on how they should react, how they should mourn, how they should speak.

Not that 9/11 wasn't horrifyingly unique in its own right. But we had been dealing with lower-level terrorist attacks for many years, both inside and outside of our borders. It was horrible, but it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Not that it matters either way. Both events are seared into the brains of those who experienced them, and few will ever forget where they were and what they were doing when they got the news.

It's not the kind of thing you ever want to carry with you, but if you were there, there's simply no getting around it.

BLOG RERUN: One unfortunate side effect of full-time work is feeling disconnected from the day-to-day reality of your home

True to form, the AI Blog Post Image Generator created this surrealistic tableau when I prompted it with the phrase "busy household." Yet somehow I think it fits.

(I originally posted this on November 27, 2015. It still rings true.)

We are a single-income family. I go to work five (sometimes six) days a week, while my wife Terry stays home and runs the house. This is no small feat, considering that seven of us live there, but she does it well.

Or at least I assume she does it well, because I am rarely a witness to the daily operations of our household. I leave for work at 7 a.m. and am usually not home until somewhere between 6 and 7 p.m. In between, there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens without any input from me whatsoever.

Well, except the money. The money I earn funds the operation. But that's OK because I like it that way. As I always say, I am in charge of Accounts Receivable. My wife – who pays the bills and manages monetary outlays – has complete jurisdiction over Accounts Payable. This system works for me.

But on those days when I happen to be off or working from home, I get a glimpse into how one goes about helping to manage the lives of two college students, two high schoolers and a middle schooler. Terry is constantly running to and fro, packing lunches, helping with homework, reminding kids to do this assignment or practice that piece of music for band.

She spends much of her days driving to various schools to drop off forgotten soccer socks and misplaced trumpets. She runs errands and cleans the house. She serves as the Uniform Mom for the high school band, a never-ending job that requires gobs and gobs of hours and effort. 

She goes to daytime school events, emails teachers when there are issues to be addressed, and takes kids to various doctor and dentist appointments.

It's like this day after day after day after day.

And all the while I get only a glimpse into it. I hear about what's going on through hurried texts and quick afternoon check-in phone calls.

A typical conversation between Terry and me goes like this:

ME: So how was your day?

TERRY: <proceeds to rattle off 147 different things she did involving the kids>

ME: You did all that? Today?

TERRY: Yes.

ME: This Melanie person you mention. That's our ninth-grader, right?

And so on.

Don't get me wrong, this approach to life is a good one for us. Or at least it is for me, as I'm not the one having to serve as cook, maid, chauffeur and administrative assistant for six other people with crazy schedules. But I think Terry is OK with it, too.

It's just that all of these things happen without my knowing it, which makes me feel a bit disconnected from the reality. It's as if the family lives a separate life that I get to participate in for only a few short hours every night and on weekends.

Speaking of my family, if you see them, tell them I said hello. I miss them. And I'm fairly sure I know all of their names, too.

The chick magnet that was my 1984 velcro Men at Work wallet

 

My first wallet was very much like the one pictured above: an all-fabric, velcro-closing affair with the logo of the Australian band Men at Work prominently displayed on one side.

While Men at Work were a very, very big band in, say, the 1982-85 range, they were never a cool band in any sense. Nor, it must be said, were Velcro wallets ever particularly fashionable.

That wallet was an undeniable (almost defiant) confirmation of my dorkiness.

Yet I loved it. I really did.

Besides the fact that it touted my favorite musical group, it also suggested I was grown-up enough to need a wallet. Which, in fairness, I probably did. I would usually have a few bucks to put in it, thanks in part to my dad's continued generosity and in part to my job as a dishwasher at Tizzano's Restaurant.

That job, my first, paid $2.50 an hour. All under the table. Oh, and the owner of the restaurant, Mike, would make you anything you wanted to eat during your breaks.

I didn't have credit cards at the time, of course. And by the time I got my driver's license in November 1985, I had ditched the Men at Work wallet for something in plain black faux leather (i.e., the kind of folding wallet I still carry around today).

So my Velcro treasure keeper was never especially full.

But it was mine, and it told the world about my favorite band, which was good enough for me.

By the way, I took the image at the top of today's post from eBay, where as of this writing you had two choices if you wanted to buy your own vintage Men at Work Velcro wallet. One was going for a reasonable $19.95, while the other was priced at a somewhat overblown $49.96.

All of which goes to show that you can buy absolutely anything on the Internet...even if, by any standard of good judgment, you probably shouldn't.

Smaller pets are eternally babies, even when they're getting on in years

 

The feline in the photo above is Ginny, the oldest of our three cats and also – by a considerable margin – the smallest in stature.

Ginny (named after Ginny Weasley from the Harry Potter series) joined our family nine years ago this month. According to one online source I found, this makes her about 52 in human years.

Not a senior citizen, by any means, but a lot closer to old-cathood than she is to kittenhood.

Yet I still often think of Ginny as our youngest simply because she's so small. She just seems very kitten-like.

By the way, it's commonly thought that calico cats like Ginny are smaller than other cats simply by reason of being calicos. That's not true, though. It turns out calicos can range from small to large. The reason calicos tend to be smaller is that 99.9% of them are females, and female cats are naturally smaller than males.

Whatever the reason, Ginny will seem forever young any time she is near her two siblings: fat floofy Molly and svelte-yet-undeniably-masculine Cheddar.

When those three are physically close to one another (which isn't often, given their mutual distrust), Ginny always looks like the little kid tagging along with the big kids.

We are in a period of relatively good cat health in our house right now. We lost three of our kitties in one 16-month period between February 2022 and June 2023, so it's nice to have everyone looking and feeling good, especially when I realize how much we pay in vet bills when they're not looking or feeling good.

Still, whenever I see Ginny and realize she's going to be a decade old next fall, I remember what it's like when they start going downhill.

Not at all fun.

Which is why I choose to continue fooling myself and believing Ginny is in fact a kitten who will live forever.

It's better that way.

That smell when you first turn on the heat in your house

We've reached the point on the calendar (at least here in Northeast Ohio) when our long-dormant furnaces have come to life in order to keep our homes feeling somewhere between "livable" and "inferno," depending on your personal temperature preference.

It should be noted, though, that as I type these words in early October, this has not yet happened. However, I imagine that by now your furnace has awakened and, as you read this, is now working around the clock to keep you comfortable.

Which means that, at some point recently, you likely experienced the "Smell When You First Turn on the Furnace."

My fellow Clevelanders and those living in similar climates know what I mean. When you haven't used your furnace in months then switch it back on, there's often a certain smell that permeates the house while everything heats up for the first time.

Scientifically, at least from what I've read, this smell is nothing more than several months' worth of dust and dirt accumulation in the furnace and ductwork burning off.

Emotionally, though, it has a very specific meaning.

It means that summer – even of the Indian variety – is officially dead and buried.

It means Thanksgiving is right around the corner, to be followed startlingly soon after by Christmas and New Year's Day.

It means the long, cold, gray slog toward spring has commenced, and there's no turning back now.

That smell is the passage of time.

It is, like all distinctive smells, associated with a very specific situation. It is the smell of mid-November, and it carries more weight and meaning than you may have realized.

Or it's just the dead mouse that got into your furnace in July finally being cremated.

Either way, it's going to be a while before you can take a dip in your backyard pool.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

On this Veterans Day, I hope you'll take a minute to read about my Uncle Dan

Several weeks ago we lost my Uncle Dan. He was 99 years old and the last of many aunts and uncles from both sides of our family. His was, by all accounts, a life extremely well lived.

Uncle Dan was a veteran, so I thought today was an appropriate time to share both the photo above and my cousin Donna's tribute to her father, which was so well done.

Before I let Donna tell that story, though, here is a quick summary of Uncle Dan's military service from his obituary, which published over the weekend in the Houston Chronicle: "He enlisted in 1943, serving with the U.S. Army's Anti-Aircraft Artillery in WWII. He trained with the U.S. Air Corps, but later was transferred to the Army Signal Corps...During the Korean Conflict, Dan served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force."

I'll let Donna take it from here. She posted the following on Facebook on October 6:

I am sad to share that my father, Dan Tennant, left us on October 2. He fell on August 24, had a partial hip replacement the next day, and ten days later went to rehab despite an infection they couldn’t diagnose. Dad did well for about ten days, then began complaining about pain in his abdomen. We went back to the hospital, where a CT scan revealed issues with a previous hernia surgery, as well as a bacterial infection. It was downhill from there. 

On September 30, Dad returned to his beloved Parkway place, where he was cared for by the many people who loved him, including his caregivers Jasmen and Cici. There was a steady stream of visitors in those final days. There were the many friends he had made since moving to Parkway after my mom passed away five years ago. There were current Parkway employees and past employees who came back to see him. There were flowers, balloons, and many, many cards. There were prayers and tears and laughter. 

Dad would have been 100 years old on January 1, 2025, and we were already planning the celebration. At 99, he was still driving (a little) to get groceries and a haircut. He became quite a good cook after my mother got dementia. He had always made waffles for his beloved grandson, Daniel, but now he was making cherry and apple pies from scratch, meatloaf, chili, soup, etouffee, and much more. He loved the exercise classes at Parkway and did his time nearly every day on the NuStep machine while reading large-print books. He enjoyed chair volleyball, called bingo, hosted happy hour with margaritas, and played bridge (the ladies told me he was the best bridge player at Parkway by far). He walked everywhere with his walker until he finally bought a used scooter. He liked it so much that he got the VA to buy him a shiny new red one. 

Dad loved his family dearly, as well as his seven brothers, who preceded him in death. He took care of our mom until she passed, and five weeks later, he moved to Parkway Place. My sister and dear friend Nancy have been with me this past week as we began sorting through his belongings, and we were constantly being told what a special, amazing man my father was. One lady who was visiting her Godmother made a point of telling me that he could remember everyone’s name. His door was always open, and I have been told how everyone is sad now that it is closed. Dad was a Parkway “ambassador,” welcoming the new residents and helping them get settled. 

Dad retired from Tenneco at 62 and bought a camper so that he and my mother could travel the U.S., visiting friends and relatives, playing different golf courses, and visiting national and state parks. Dad could fix anything my two sisters and I brought him. He was an excellent golfer, and he always told us that “it never rains on the golf course.” My mother took up golf in her 50s so she could spend more time with him. After he finally gave it up, he would watch it on TV. He loved football, especially the Steelers, and he liked the Astros, of course. Over the years, Dad worked thousands of crossword puzzles, and he always had a nice car. 

My sisters and I are so grateful for all the expressions of love and sympathy. I could go on and on, but I guess that is enough for now. Dad was part of the greatest generation, and we will miss him terribly. He was indeed one of a kind.

One good thing about social media is that you can find your tribe(s) more easily than ever

For all the bad that social media has wrought in our society – and man, there is a lot of it – one area in which it seems to have fulfilled its potential is connecting us with our personal communities.

The Internet is really good at helping us find people with common interests, hobbies, jobs or otherwise defining characteristics.

Whatever you're into, you can bet there are a lot of other people who are into it, as well. Whether it's stamp collecting, gardening, genealogy, crafting, travel, the music of John Denver, or even something as self-damaging as rooting for the Cleveland Browns, it's simple to find folks who occupy (or want to occupy) the same niche as you.

I am, for example, a member of two Facebook groups for sports public address announcers. We share our experiences, seek and offer advice on sound gear, complain about team rosters not being listed in numerical jersey order (a cardinal sin that all coaches and athletic directors should avoid), and even debate the pronunciation of words such as the "libero" in volleyball.

For the record, I use the common American pronunciation of that word: li-BEAR-oh. But there are many who adhere to the European pronunciation: LEE-bear-oh. I love and respect these fellow announcers, so it pains me to have to inform them how wrong they are.

The point is, while social media has created or exacerbated real societal issues, it's at least good at helping us find others with whom we share something in common.

That's not to say this didn't happen in the pre-Internet age. Not at all. Hobbyists have been meeting together for centuries in clubs and societies.

But it was a little more difficult back then to seek out the members of your tribe. You had to reach each other through some common and non-electronic means of communication, whether it was an ad in a newspaper or magazine, or a notice pinned to the bulletin board at the public library.

It happened, but it didn't happen nearly as efficiently and rarely at the same scale it happens today.

The next time you complain about these kids and their damn phones, understand that sometimes, those phones are their only connection to people who "get" them.

Even if getting them involves wearing brown and orange on fall Sundays and supporting the Browns...something I can say from years of personal experience you should never do.

It's already to the point that I can't clearly remember when the kids all lived at home

I used to live with all of these people. Just don't ask me about the details.

It's not like Terry and I are 80 years old or anything. We're not even officially empty nesters yet.

But to my surprise, I have trouble remembering the days when all seven members of our family lived together at 30025 Miller Avenue. The last time it happened, I think, was 2015. Maybe 2016.

Which for the math-impaired isn't even a decade ago.

Yet things get blurry when I try to recall what the mornings were like, or how we all squeezed in around the kitchen table for dinner. I was at work quite a bit of the time, of course, but I was there enough that I should be clearer on the details.

What I do remember is general chaos most of the time. Sports, band, church activities, movie nights, sleepovers, vacations. It was great, but it has all run together in my increasingly addled mind.

It's the small-but-important details that have escaped my brain. Who slept in which room? Who left the house first in the morning? At what age did they start spending more time with their friends than with us? Were Terry and I the only ones who woke up for late-night infant feedings, or did the newborns also awaken their siblings?

It's all a jumbled mass that has separated itself into two broad periods of time: the years when Elissa, Chloe, Jared and Melanie lived with us (1994 to 2022) and the years when it has just been Terry, Jack and me in the house (2022 to the present).

The particulars are increasingly fuzzy.

Naturally, this effect is most pronounced with my 30-year-old daughter Elissa. I know she lived with us for the first 20 or so years of her life, and I remember many individual moments and milestones, but the day to day is indistinct.

What did she eat for breakfast? How often did she hang out in the living room and talk with us? Where did she do her homework?

You got me. I was there, but I just can't recall much of it.

I would feel much better if other middle-aged parents consoled me with tales of their own kid-related amnesia. Otherwise, I can only conclude that my cognitive decline is accelerating and I am that much closer to being a drooling mess who can't even remember yesterday, let alone 10 years ago.

I go to the gym to experience regular doses of misery...and that's OK

I'm not sure "misery" is even the right word, but there's no doubt my most productive gym workouts involve bursts of discomfort.

Like, for example, leg days often include walking lunges. I carry a dumbbell in each hand and take elongated steps from one end of the gym to the other, then I turn around and lunge my way back to where I started.

If done correctly, this exercise makes my hamstrings, quadriceps and calves burn. And my legs invariably feel like jelly for some time after I finish.

But then I do another set. And another. And usually another.

The same holds true for any exercise. When it comes to strength training, if you can comfortably perform a particular movement, you either need to add more resistance or more repetitions to make it more challenging.

Or both.

While I am in no way a workout veteran (I'm still adapting from being a runner/walker to being primarily a lifter), I have learned to "embrace the suck," as someone put it.

In other words, there not only have to be times when you say to yourself, "Man, this is no fun at all," you also have to figure out how to enjoy that feeling.

I'm getting better and better at it.

I go to the gym five times a week. Two of those sessions are done under the supervision of my trainer Kirk, while the other three are entirely on my own.

It never fully escapes my notice during those solo sessions that, should I choose to put down the weights and walk out of the gym at any point mid-workout, no one would stop me. Nor would/should anyone even notice or care.

I am 100% responsible for my own motivation and for pushing myself to muscle failure, which is the point where you really benefit physically from weightlifting.

While I've never actually quit in the middle of a workout, early on I found myself backing off effort-wise when things got tough. I might do fewer repetitions than prescribed, or I might ignore proper form in favor of just getting the weight into the air.

But as I've built physical strength these past 5+ months, I've also built mental strength. I continue to need Kirk to set my workouts and ensure I'm performing exercises correctly, but I don't need him there in person for my one-man workouts to be beneficial.

I am slowly learning to embrace the suck, a point I never thought I would reach.

The application to life outside of the gym is readily apparent. Whatever you do, the only way to get better is to apply yourself in a way that's not always going to be enjoyable. "No pain, no gain" has some truth to it, though it doesn't necessarily have to hurt.

It just needs to be uncomfortable for you. Sometimes very uncomfortable.

I find myself these days with more muscle on my frame than I ever had (or thought I had) when I played football as a high schooler, but the real benefit for me to this point has been mental.

I just wish it hadn't taken me more than a half-century to learn.

I can drive 55, but can I live it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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