No Good Deed
Sometimes you just can’t win. You do a nice thing for one person and it gets you into trouble with someone else. This is where Clare Boothe Luce’s adage, “no good deed goes unpunished,” becomes an existential law.
What did I do this time? Well, I attended my niece’s Toledo University graduation ceremony, which should be a good thing, except it was held on Mother’s Day. You can see where this is going.
I haven’t done a lot for my niece, but I had been supportive and did what I could to get her through five years of study, poverty, and partying. Mission accomplished; she has her baccalaureate and I wanted to witness the award, just as a reality check.
Mother’s Day started for me before the sun came up so I could drive the 90 plus miles to Toledo to make the 10 a.m. ceremony. Contrary to the popular notion of old guys getting up to kick the rooster awake, I enjoy a later hour to force my gnarled body out of bed. So, I started the day out of kilter.
Commencement was well executed, but the celebratory lunch afterward went a little long, getting me back home after 5 o’clock.
Then, I had a lot of computer work to do and the time just slipped by. I reminded myself several times to call my mother, but I just had to get one more thing done first.
Well, now I’m in the doghouse and my inheritance has been earmarked to support an ant farm in Iowa. How upset was my mom? She called later that week and talked to my wife, not me, and carefully explained to her how hurt she was. All mothers out there will know what this means. I was a schmuck.
All men will recognize this situation, too, since we all blunder into it at one time or another. The very last thing a man wants is his wife and mother on the same side. We guys do everything we can to keep these forces of nature from combining into the perfect storm. Once the two most important women in your life figure out what a doofus you are, there’s no going back. You have to spend the rest of your wretched existence on earth taking responsibility for every hare-brained screw up, because you can no longer blame your wife or mother.
I shouldn’t give this secret away, but I need some company in my misery.
When we behave badly around our wives, we guys excuse it by saying our mama didn’t raise us any better. If we delay doing something for our mom, we plead that our wife needed something first. They both believe us and we scoot away clean.
Forget you mom’s birthday, wife’s fault. Have an annoying habit; mom’s rearing caused it.
That is until they start talking to one another. Once your mother and your wife are on the same frequency you become a pariah and are shunned by all other men. They avert their eyes and shake their heads knowing your shame and your fate. They know about you because mothers have a communication network more insidious than the defunct KGB and they’re using you as an example of how not to behave for their sons.
You can’t weasel out of anything ever again. Weaseling is what we men do.
I had this down to an art form and now it is gone, all gone. I am a broken man.
There’s a lesson here, somewhere. It isn’t about acknowledging your mother on her special day. It’s not about being punished for doing something nice. It isn’t even about being male and a weasel. The one important thing here is to never ever let your mother and wife discuss you.
Get caller ID and screen. When mom calls and asks for your wife, tell mom she’s in the tub eating bonbons. Mothers like that image of the girl that married her baby boy.

Small Town Childhood
My family moved into a house on the corner of Route 113 and Second Street in Birmingham when I was about six. It was an old building that was originally a store and had been rehabilitated into a home. It still had an old converted coal to natural gas furnace, affectionately known as the “Monster,” in the partially completed basement.
That basement scared the b’Jesus out of me, which meant that as the eldest child, I had to retrieve things from “down there.” My protests fell upon deaf and disbelieving ears. The most terrible part of it was that the light switch was at the bottom of the steps. After I flipped the switch to off, I had to run up the darkened steps to keep whatever dwelled in the pitch-blackness from getting me. Honestly, I even had nightmares of hitting the switch and then falling. I’d wake up screaming just before a rapidly approaching and menacing presence grabbed me.
Maybe I shouldn’t have watched all those Ghoulardi hosted horror movies on Friday nights.
Back in those leaded gas and asbestos underwear days; we had something known merrily as a “party-line” for our telephone service. This meant families had to take turns using a single line for phone calls. Or, you could listen in to hear what the neighbors thought of you and your rotten kids.
One of the neighbors we shared that line with for a time were great friends and they had four kids, just like us, and weirdly close to us in age. In fact, all eight of us were within 6 years of one another. I was the oldest. Then, there were four girls within four years of one another, two of them my sisters, and twin boys the same age as my little brother.
Over a period of several years this allowed for ready-made playmates and we did so with a vengeance. From spring to late fall we were outside engaged in freeze-tag or hide-and-seek. When we tired of that, we would create and stage mini plays for our parents, usually our mothers, on their front porch. (The “Little Rascals” was our inspiration.) In the winter there was sledding.
The strangest game we played was called “oomagummy.” It was loosely based on the premise of a tribe of bad guys chasing and catching their intended lunch. A mutation of hide-and-seek with more than one “it,” we thought we had invented the word until the album “Ummagumma” by Pink Floyd came out in 1969. Wherever the name originated, we were using it in the very early 1960s.
We had a few other games that are more accurately defined as unstructured play. One favorite was just after a rain in mid-summer when the pavement was partially flooded with large puddles of warm rainwater. We’d don our swimsuits and run up and down Second Street splashing and occasionally lying down in the little asphalt ponds.
Our friends still possess a 8mm movie, which includes me at around the age of 10 wearing my father’s swim trunks pulled up to my chest. I’m getting spayed with a garden hose and acting very girlie. I am teased to this day.
We grew up long before video games and television with more than three channels, so there wasn’t a lot, other than reading, to do in the house. The truth be told, we weren’t allowed to play inside unless frostbite or wild animals threatened. The last thing our mothers wanted was a slew of maniacal children under foot when there was a perfectly good neighborhood to run amok in.
It was wonderful having playmates like our neighbors and my siblings to grow up with. Now as mature adults, except me, we remember the laughter and joy a small town, a simpler time, scary basements, and mothers that wouldn’t let us in the house except for food and the facilities, offered.

The More Things Change
My present barbershop is a modern reconfiguration in an old setting (notice the possessive pronoun; it’s a guy thing). The building has been the home of a barber for decades. The sisters who man the chairs (I don’t think “person the chairs” works) and keep the heads of men old and young looking neat continue the tradition started by their father. It’s reminiscent of my old barbershop, but it’s just not the same.
I had told my former barber he wasn’t allowed to retire until I died; he just wouldn’t listen to reason.
He was a legend in the city so he’ll remain unnamed since he’s sure to recognize himself. He cut the hair of judges and scofflaws, police and firemen, professionals and the rest of us. He could take the most miss-happened head and make it look normal (I speak from experience, here). He could do five cuts in an hour and simultaneously entertain us all with the latest news, scandal, scuttlebutt, and the occasional ribald joke.
It was a manly hangout. There were Playboys and Penthouses, Guns and Ammo and Bass Fishing magazines. Women rarely entered unless they were looking for a lost husband or accompanying their sons who were too young and impressionable to hang around with us grumpy old men.
When we’d heard all the stories he had, we would engage in stimulating conversations sprinkled with the wisdom of age, the bravado of youth, and sans the worry our significant others would find out. Now, I shouldn’t let the cat out, but I shall now reveal what men talk about when there are no women around and we’re sober. (Sober is the key word here).
We complain about the things women can’t do and we magnanimously do for them. We reveal the twisted tales of our idiot neighbors and there seem to be an awful lot of idiot neighbors. The depths of auto repair are plumbed and tips shared. (You would not belief the things one can do with a can of “3 in 1” oil and a wrench.)
And we talk about the weather a lot. I guess there is a male fascination with climatic phenomena since this was a constant topic. Every bad storm in the last two centuries was fair game. All storms, and hot or cold waves in the past were always far worse than anything in recent memory. I was fascinated by the 12 foot snowdrifts, baseball sized hail, and temperatures so extreme farm animals cooked in the field and the great lakes froze solid.
Then there was politics. Now, I realize most women think that the same guys who only read the sports section of the newspaper and think beer drinking is a sport are politically ignorant. Well, you’re right, but that didn’t stop us. We would hash and rehash, debate and speculate. At one time or another a hand full of us in that barbershop have single-handedly solved every problem facing mankind. Why Congress never caught on to this forum is beyond me.
All good things must end, of course. My old barber was seduced by thoughts of retirement and he left us. I still fondly recall the hair covered floor that contained way too much gray, the toilet with a jury rigged handle, the television that used rabbit ears and occasionally got one channel clearly, the razor strop worn with age, the electric heater that never got the temperature above freezing in the winter, and the big-hearted man who wielded his scissors and clippers with the skill of a surgeon and enthralled his grateful audience.
Some of this atmosphere exists in my new barbershop. The gossip is good and the haircuts outstanding. I just miss the ability to scratch whatever itches, to use a toilet that would give my mother a heart attack, and being a member of an ever changing, male bonding escape from the limitations and expectations of modern life.

Health and Diets: Only for the Strong
Now that the weather is finally turning into some semblance of spring, we residents of the temperate latitudes are making a reality-shattering discovery. We got fat. I don’t know about you, but I’ve developed a more oval body shape since fall went I went into hibernation mode.
I’m guessing my version of the ursine behavior of storing up fat reserves for the long winter is more common than most people would like to admit. In my version, I burrow my bony butt in front of the television with a plate stacked with pizza slices and potato chips to wait out the cold winter weather. Sound familiar?
We citizens of the ever-longer winter climes pad our midsection as the nights lengthen and the rusting snow blower beckons. Of course, we need to wash down those nice slices with an order of Romanburgers and a side of KFC chicken.
The outcome of this caloric orgy is a pale, swollen physique that no longer fits inside the full-length mirror. Now, we have to shuffle side to side so we can see the extent of our dimpled selves and curse the lite, as in now we have to live on diet foods before anyone else notices our barn-sizes hineys.
Diets are the hardest thing in the world to begin and stick with. Crack, smack, and alcohol are just wee itches compared to the gut wrenching, gnawing desire for a sizzling steak and a mountain of fries.
The fast food industry uses its secret weapon to defeat the most dedicated of dieters; the smell of bubbling lard vented into the air. They know you insides are grumbling like parents at a Marilyn Manson concert. The delicious smells of chicken nuggets and bacon, lots and lots of bacon, waft into your nostrils and savagely attack your willpower.
And what have we to combat this temptation while we try to shed the extra chins and spare tires? Food that tastes like cardboard in portions so small you need reading glasses to see them. We get dill-flavored woodchips, baked cotton balls, and steamed blue grass in place of real food.
Then, they try to fool our highly tuned taste buds into accepting basil and thyme, garlic and oregano, and endless types of peppers as flavorful substitutes. It’s like giving your grandkid water in his juice cup and then wondering why he pitches it at your head.
Would anyone like to bet that the persons who invented ‘low fat’ and ‘no fat’ foods and their attendant substitutes and additives, weighted ninety pounds soaking wet and never actually tasted the stuff? I certain they are laughing they non-existent buns off all the way to the bank. I hope a stiff breeze takes them away.
It’s an unfair fight because we’re genetically predisposed to have grease running down our chins from a rack of ribs. We’re born to slather butter on ears of corn; innately drawn to lapping puddles of lard from plates that held chicken fried steak with extra gravy.
There must be a pond of melted butter at the bottom of the movie theater popcorn trough. It is natural law that double bacon cheeseburgers come with fries and onion rings. The universe is ordered when everything on your plate is fried in a generous coating of salt.
So, what is the answer to this dilemma? Heck, if I know. I think I’ll just wear my t-shirts over my jeans and learn how to hold my breath for extended periods of time. It has to be easier than dieting.

Kid Stuff
The most satisfying aspect of watching kids grow up is observing the way their minds work. There’s a sweet and unassuming nature to how their minds put two and two together and inexorably come up with nine.
Recently, my 28-month-old grandson and I were entertaining my parents and wife in the kitchen. Logan and I were on the floor arguing about whether we should go upstairs or down, when he decided to remove the fireman’s helmet from my head. (Don’t ask.)
Since he’s vertically challenged, this was the first time he’d seen my Yul Brenner inspired pate. A serious look complete with wrinkled brow possessed his face as he pondered the fleshy landscape before him. Recognizing a chance to learn what he thought of the shiny spectacle known affectionately as where my hair used to be, I asked him, “What happened to Papa’s hair?”
He gazed at my head, then into the helmet. In a serious tone only a child can pull off he replied, “I don’t got it.”
This brings up a story my mother-in-law has told me once or twice.
A quarter century in the past her youngest child, who was about 4 or 5 years old, had built a pint-sized snowman in her front yard. A neighbor child of about the same age spied the frozen figure and decided it would look better in his yard. The neighbor kid merrily freed the frosty guy and hauled him a few houses down the street to his new home.
I’m not certain, but I believe the neighbor’s child went on to a successful career with the Internal Revenue Service.
(Mom, no more snowman stories.)
Going back further into the dark ages before color television, my most vivid memory is of my nightmares. During my family’s yearlong residence in a trailer (oops, manufactured home) and when I was no older than four, I had two great fears. They were of being chased by non-stereotypical natives with spears and falling off a cliff. I have no idea why the natives and spears, but I’ve had a life long problem with heights, so at least that much made sense.
As the eldest sibling, my sleeping berth was the top bunk. It couldn’t have been very high, but it seemed so to me. Several times I had the same terrifying dream. A group of vicious, spear-tossing guys would chase me toward a cliff. One of those evil men would get me with a spear and off the cliff, and the edge of the bunk, I’d go.
It’s not true that if you don’t wake up from your dream before you hit the ground you’ll die. It’s just a truly rude awakening. The thud also scares the heck out of your family until they discover it’s only you taking another header off the bed. Naturally, I had to go right back into the top bunk. At least my parents put something down to soften the next landing, a rag rug.
That brings us back to the grandson, who is the smartest kid to ever live, of course. He’s taught me newly discovered uses and alternative states of being for common objects that had escaped my thought processes up until his birth.
For instance, disc drives are great for storing paper clips, boogers can be flicked for distance by tiny fingers and then blend perfectly with dark-colored carpets, dog biscuits are “kaa-kaa,” plastic guys with their feet chewed off won’t stand up, the television and the CD player sound better played loudly and simultaneously, cooked rice is really difficult to find on faux wood linoleum when flipped over one’s shoulder, you can’t take a dump in your drawers without someone noticing, grandparents will offer bribes rather than force grandchildren to do anything, bouncing down steps on your bottom is infinitely more fun than walking, sharing food after you’ve already chewed it isn’t just for Eskimos, any key can be made to fit any lock if you push hard enough, grandfathers can be talked into anything and they have lots of real tools that they’ll let you play with, and puddles are unavoidable.
You’re never too old to learn. I could have passed on the booger lesson.