Wallpapering
The most horrifying thing that has ever happened to me (and we’re talking about a guy that has been married twice, put up with three kids, and worked at Ford for thirty years) was the day my lovely wife said, “Our walls look plain.”
I should have moved to Tahiti immediately. I should have broken both my arms, but I thought, how bad could this be?
Instead, I allowed my wife to take me to Sherwin Williams, the store where leisure time goes to die. These people are way too helpful. It seems they don’t just have paint and paper and glue and all manner of applications tools; they also have books full of wallpaper samples, thousands of them. My wife looked through every one.
Just when I’d finished aligning every shelf in the store and my sanity was about to blink off, the wife had made her choices. She’d found wallpaper and border for every, and I do mean every, room in the house. There was one design meant to coordinate the paints and paper print transitions from one room to the next.
Mind you, she’d picked a single theme color that appeared in every print. I looked, but couldn’t see it. The stuff has been on the walls for 11 years and I still can’t see it. Marriage really is based on trust.
Naturally, I thought that as a woman, my wife knew instinctively how to hang paper and that she’d educate me. It would be a well-executed home decoration project. Silly me.
She thought as a guy, I’d instinctively know how to hang paper and she’d brag to her friends and family what a handyman she’d married. Silly her.
The first thing you discover when you hang wallpaper is that the paper is perfectly square, but there isn’t a straight wall, square corner or doorway, level ceiling or floor in the entire house.
There is a common language among the survivors of wallpapering. It is known as incoherent babbling. It starts when you cut an entire wall’s worth of paper too short. It happens when the seams won’t lie flat even with liberal amounts of seam rolling and Elmer’s. It occurs when you paper a stairway and every angled cut is wrong. It blossoms when you run out of paper one panel shy of completing the room so you have to buy a whole roll for 4 feet of paper.
There were moments of joy, however brief. Watching my wife move our mobile scaffold, more commonly known as dining room chairs, around a room as I hung the ceiling border was kind fun. And then there was watching my wife hold one end of slimy, water-soaked paper as the excess glue ran down her arms.
Another thing no one tells you about wallpapering is that you have to take everything off or away from the wall. Cupboards, toilet tanks, pictures, stair railing, bathroom cabinets, and towel racks must all be removed to facilitate proper hanging. The problem arises when you discover you’ve covered all the holes. This is when you do what looks like an intimate interlude will sheetrock, but is actually a search for hidden wall fasteners and picture holes.
The final trial concerns the numerous partial rolls and various tools you’ve purchased. You can’t throw the paper away because you might need it for a repair. It must be stored in a cool, dry place, which means you lose a corner of a closet forever.
The seam roller, wetting basin, wallpaper brushes, edge tools, tarps, 5-gallon tub of border glue, and the drum of wall-prep have no other purpose. They still sit in my basement, mocking me. I did have an idea or two about using a couple of these implements during foreplay, but was promptly informed there are laws against it. Oh, well.

High School Band Miscreant
Since my sports career died a merciful death before I could play varsity, my fondest memories are of playing cornet in the high school band: marching, concert, and dance. As with most other endeavors, I strived for mediocrity. I usually sat last seat of first part.
My main goal was to have fun and at that I exceeded. As a sophomore, and one of the few male band members, I got to hang around with a couple of the senior girls, but only during band period. They were sophisticated and talented. Also, they obviously had a soft spot for dweebs as long as they didn’t have to be seen with us.
In my estimation, the sexiest instrument was the alto oboe. I have no idea why. There was something about a young woman playing a double reed and sitting with perfect posture. At least, to a hormone-laden kid, they were gorgeous. Doctor-patient privilege will keep any other reasons a secret.
As any high school band member knows, performing in the band is supposed to involve a year-round commitment. My guess is that a lot of kids do not practice regularly during the summer. Speaking for myself, I hid my horn the instant summer vacation started and didn’t pull it out until the week before band practice. My lips were like liver for a few days until I got them back into shape.
The band room always reeked of valve oil and old leather. Either smell brings back memories of try-outs for seating. I was terrified since I had a pathological fear of playing in front of people. How this paradox worked is anyone’s guess. Maybe it was the anonymity of being buried in among the other members after I’d survived the tryout. Perhaps, it was a bit of masochism.
Hitting the practice field for marching practice was the least favorite part of being a band member. Practices were always held at the height of a heat wave that caused birds to fall from the sky. Trying to maneuver in the midst of 60 other lost souls while reading the music you hadn’t memorized over the summer was a trial by fire. If you ran into someone, your liver-like lips would bear the brunt of the collision. Marching on a wet field after football practice had turned it to mush resulted in more than a few muddy bottoms. It was all made worthwhile by the bus rides to away games.
That was when the real fun happened in the back of the bus. Though an underclassman, I was allowed to enter this hallowed area by the aforementioned seniors. I’d like to say it was risqué, but the truth is we were just trying to stay warm. I believe auxiliary heaters hadn’t been invented yet. By the time the interior temperature of the bus had finally climbed above freezing, we had arrived at the hosting school. There we got to sit on aluminum or wooden bleachers, often in the rain, just to shiver again.
Naturally, the only concern of our band director was the protection of our plumes. Being soaked and smelling like wet dogs, lips stuck to mouthpieces, and bladders on high alert from cold temperatures came in a distant second to clean, fluffy plumes.
When football season ended, it was time for concert and dance band. Those were the only times I dressed up and shaved my patchy beard. The coolest thing about playing a brass or wind instrument is the spit. Everyone dumps gallons of it on the floor in the course of a single hour practice. Walking across the band room was an adventure since falling and coming in contact with the toxic mixture of saliva and food particles from braces could cause a slow, hideous death.
What I never understood was you couldn’t spit in public and certainly not in a building, but we had Lake Loogie in the band room.
Dance band was the highlight of all band venues because we got to play songs that didn’t sound like “Annabelle Lee.” “Sweet Georgia Brown” was a breath of fresh air after the adapted-for-marching-band tunes we’d endured. We also got into all the basketball games for free and had seats center court on the stage.
The grand finale for the band member was, and is, the Memorial Day parade. We had to assemble behind the school building in Birmingham, which no longer exists, and marched down Route 113 to South Street and on to the Birmingham Cemetery. By this time of year we’d completely forgotten how to march and most of us didn’t remember the music, either. Fortunately, pretending to play was easy to get away with, or you could give that music holder one more workout before embarking on a rigid and religiously followed summer practice program. Yeah, right.

My High School Sports Career
The title isn’t quite accurate. It should read “My Attempt at a High School Sports Career” We’ll go way back to junior high where my talents first became apparent.
I couldn’t climb the rope or the pegboard. I wasn’t a fast or long distance runner. The only slick thing about me was the Vitalis in my hair. I was the last picked for any game we played in gym class, except dodge ball. I was a ball magnet. While the other team was pulverizing me, my side would collect the tossed balls and go on the offensive.
I was even knocked unconscious once, but no one could tell. I showered, dressed, and went to my book locker before I woke up. To this day I’ve never been able to convince anyone this actually happened.
Sometime around the eighth grade I tried out for the football team. I was pretty good at center and guard on both offense and defense. My bulk and slowness had found a purpose. I may not have had much skill, but I was hard to move aside.
I also had an extremely hard head. I still hold the honor of being the only Fireland’s Falcon to put two of his teammates out of a single practice. The vehicle for this accomplishment was a tackling drill. One guy would lie on his back with his head toward another guy that was standing up about five yards away. The coach would toss the ball to the upright guy who would try to run over the prostrate guy. The dude on his back had to roll over, get into a low crouch, and tackle him.
Clever me managed to butt heads with the opposing fellow. After I knocked out the first player, who was second string, the coach wanted to see if it was a fluke. He had our best halfback run at me and I bonked him silly, too.
Needless to say, I was elated and had a headache you wouldn’t believe. I never admitted to the double vision either. At least I had my moment in the sun.
Sadly, I only had the “sense” knocked “out” of me. I could have used a little of that missing sense in the ensuing 30 years, but that’s another story.
I was only able to play football for a couple years before a severe kidney infection ended my budding gridiron career. Anyone familiar with the medication used to treat urinary infections will understand how I got the nickname, “Orange Pop.”
I was the manager for the basketball team during my sophomore year. Manager is a fancy term for the lackey cum go-fer. I sorted sweaty towels, lugged the players’ personal effects, and kept the stats during the games. As exciting as being a manager was, I declined the honor the next year because the stink on liniment and moldy jock straps still hadn’t dissipated from the first.
I confined my athletic prowess during my junior year to the marching band. I was a passable coronet player, but enjoyed the bus rides to away games the most. Band busses are the true source of the notion that getting there, and returning, is half the fun.
My senior year was spent working after school and trying to date girls from Amherst. I have no idea what dating has to do with athletics, but it can be brutal, and you learn to accept rejection and criticism. You also learn how to run when the boyfriend you didn’t know about shows up.
So, what have I have taken from my high school athletic career that has helped me be a better person in the real world? That’s easy. Always wear a helmet and make sure there’s some decent padding in there.

My Childhood Friend
I grew up in Birmingham, Ohio, which is just on the other side of the Lorain County line. However, most of my waking hours were spent in Lorain County. Firelands High School is in Henrietta Township, my first real job was in the city of Lorain, and all the young women I dated, whether they knew it or not, lived in Amherst.
The point is, this being one of those rare occasions when I actually have one, is that growing up I roamed freely between the two areas as an accident looking for a place to happen. At least I was out in the sticks where the damage was mostly trees.
My accomplice in mayhem, he knows who he is, was as bad an influence on me as I was on him. The fact that we survived growing up together was more a matter of dumb luck than anything else. We were both of average intelligence, but became unerringly stupid in one another’s company.
Our favorite pre-teen death-defying act was to take long bike hikes along Routes 60, 113, and 20. Those days in the mid-sixties, all three roads were major truck routes traveled by truckers whose pastime was running over targets of opportunity on bicycles. I can’t prove it, but I believe the rider and bike silhouettes under a big X stenciled on the doors of those 18-wheelers meant something nefarious.
To make matters all the more exciting, the occasional farm dog, a euphemism for crazed beast looking for tender young flesh, would unerringly nip at our heels just as several tractor-trailers came roaring passed us. There’s nothing to compare with the sensation of spinning rubber nudging by your left foot at 70 miles per hour and snarling fangs on the right.
Finding we could cheat death, we became emboldened enough to swim in the Vermilion River. Since the Vermilion was usually a trickle in the summer, what we really did was wallow around in algae and muck. We knew it was muck because that’s where leaches live. Leaches love the human body and are especially fond of certain crevices and unreachable hindquarters.
With this picture in mind, now imagine us naked removing those pesky buggers the only way we knew: burning matches. You might have thought the first time we raised our voices an octave or two we’d learn to stay out of the water.
Nope. We found other reasons to into or near that water spider resort. We drown worms, threw rocks, bought a leaking rowboat, and hiked the woods always managing to find an excuse to fall into the river.
After we outgrew the river, we went on to more lethal high jinx. We took up smoking, but that takes forever to do you in.
We tried hunting a couple times with a shotgun that flew open every time it was fired. The rabbits survived that one, too.
Still having breath in our bodies, providence provided us with another possible form of self-annihilation: he got his driver’s license.
My old bud obtained an abused Bonneville. It was the largest car you’ve ever seen, and despite a lack of brakes or tire tread, flew like the wind. This is where the 8-track and “Suzy Q” came in. We were so cool, smoking, windows rolled down, and music blaring as we slid off the road sideways. Fortunately, it was a shallow ditch and we all emerged unscathed.
We were still the best of friends so we finally decided, without saying a word to each other, that if the world couldn’t to do us in, we’d take a shot at it. We had our first and only fight. Neither of us landed a punch, but we did wrestle one another to the ground. In the process, we broke a sandstone sidewalk with his head and my elbow. Again, we were both unharmed.
In a final, futile act of self-destruction, we did the one thing that does most young men in, we noticed girls. How could a girl be fatal, you ask? Well, my good buddy sort of dated the girlfriend of an out-of-town tough guy, but no one told us.
We were well informed after we were both sucker-punched in the face on the boyfriend’s home turf. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but the roll of pennies in his hand nearly did kill my friend.
Though he spent a week or two in the hospital he fully recovered. I only had a fat lip and may have been protected by my inordinately thick skull.
We gradually parted ways in high school. After graduation, he joined the Navy. I went into the black hole of Lorain Ford to re-appear 30 years later, nearly comatose.
I haven’t seen him in years, but I wonder if he remembers all the fun we had and somehow, in spite of our best efforts, managed to live to tell about it.

Visit to the Dentist’s Office Has Changed
When we hear the words “tooth” and “drill” in the same sentence, most people get a pained look and winch as they suck air through their teeth. We all have memories of nerves getting “hit,” the smell of burning enamel, and the sight of those pointy instruments on that suspended sterile tray waiting for us.
Well, things have changed a lot since I watched my father get a wisdom tooth pulled. His dentist was a jack-of-all-trades and actually allowed me in the room while he stood on my father’s chest. He cleaned, drilled, filled, and pulled teeth himself, and even made his patients’ dentures on site. I remember being about 7 or 8 years old was enthralled by all those chompers on shelves or locked in a clamp on a bench.
Watching the dentist get that tooth out of my dad’s head was really exciting. The doctor had to change positions a few times and tried a couple different pliers until he got a good grip and popped it out. I even got to look at the tooth. I remember asking my father (I was clueless) if I could see the hole in his jaw.
(Now, you may also begin to understand why I was not my father’s favorite kid. Remind me to tell how he taught me to swim.)
My experiences with dentists have been positive, except for that flossing thing. I try to floss as often as possible, especially the week before an appointment, but as big as my mouth is, my hands are larger. (That thing about guys with big hands is a lie. We just have heck of a time flossing and finding gloves that fit.) I have all my teeth, including those pesky wisdoms. Getting that fragile string back there as it cuts off the circulation to my fingers and my gag reflex kicks in, is like ramming stuffing into a turkey without taking it out of the box, first.
I’m doing well getting into the Listerine routine. I just pretend it is really bad whiskey and then don’t swallow. The two are very similar; they burn like hell and leave a weird taste in your mouth, until you’ve destroyed all your taste buds. Then, it isn’t too bad.
I go for the novacaine, now. I used to be macho-man and refused numbness until my dental cavities bottomed out around my socks. My last two dentists have been good “stickers,” but I still remember the ortho-dude from long ago that popped the needle into my gums and, I swear, the thing went all the way up to my eyeball.
Some things haven’t changed much. Those cardboard x-ray thingies they stuck in your mouth still have no flavor and are sized for alligators. The people with their hands in your mouth still ask you questions and your answer is still, “Gnnnn gug muff, gaaa.” They still place a leaden apron over your internal organs and goodies even though you’d really like to be sure you’re sterile.
Some of the better changes in dentistry are really great. For one, there are the flavored tooth polishes. I prefer the rum and coke.
They’ve replaced the Inquisition-inspired plaque scraper with a state-of-the-art water pick. The only drawback is all that water makes you need to visit the little boys’ or girls’ room.
The exam chairs are a great improvement over those converted barber’s chairs and they now come with a little motor-assist to make up for the abs you no longer possess. It’s a common affliction; your six-pack has turned into a kegger.
Everybody wears latex gloves and everything is germ-free. I’m waiting for the hygienist to boil me and slip me into a body condom. It would be understandable. I don’t even know where I’ve been.
The best improvement in the twice-a-year dental exam is the magazines in the waiting area. You don’t have to sift through old copies of “Guns-n-Ammo,” “Field and Stream,” or “Highlights” anymore. While the number of ways you could field dress a deer, shoot your own toe off, or get through that damn maze were endlessly fascinating, the present selection in the modern dentist’s office is vastly better. Now, you get to know which “Friend” has an extraterrestrial love child and the exact number of dimples in Kirstie Alley’s thighs.
So, make sure you see your dentist twice a year, brush often, gargle a lot, and try bribing someone with tiny hands to floss your teeth.
Whatever you do, don’t show this article to your dentist and his or her staff until you take my name off of it.