Author: Big Joe (Page 1 of 4)

Can An Old Dog Write New Books?

October 10, 2024 / Big Joe / 0 Comments

I always wanted to be a writer. Naturally, I went into law enforcement. Don’t judge. It made sense at the time. Besides I was giving back to the community, serving the public and the greater good. At least that’s how I envisioned my career choice. Things aren’t always as glamorous or exciting as portrayed on television. Not that “Hill Street Blues” made cop life look glamorous with it’s gritty, urban cinematography. Yet, somehow, it struck a nerve with me and further strengthened my occupational dream of toting a gun and badge.

Flaunting my law enforcement authority over the public never put the wind in my sails. I didn’t get off telling others what to do. I still don’t. I saw this field as an opportunity to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. I desired to stand between those wishing to inflict harm and the victims on the other side. Not to sound corny, but the notion of making the world a little bit better and safer place floated my boat. It still does.

But I’m rapidly nearing the end of my career. Like anything else, I celebrated the good times, slogged through the challenging moments, and tolerated the flat periods of monotony. Should I now find a well paying job within corporate security? That sounds like a fine plan, but not so much to me. Even though a former coworker described it as “running away from my resume”, I want to do something other than law enforcement/security work. Forge a new life far removed from the world of cops and robbers, good guys and bad guys.

Fantastic! Since you always wanted to be a writer, craft the next murder mystery or police drama series. Yuck. Remember, I’m running away from my resume. That sounds like I’m running around it and I despise jogging the oval of a track. And why do I have to run? Can’t I simply walk away from my resume? Taking a leisurely stroll into retirement or wading into a second career sounds far better to me. Don’t tell me I can’t. It’s my retirement, dammit!

Which brings me to the question bouncing back and forth inside my cranium. What exactly do I want to pursue when I retire? I always dreamed of writing for a living, but not all dreams morph into a viable reality. I’ve written one novel and lots of blog posts that meander through the jagged terrain of my creative mind. I believe my total viewership of these works can be counted on my fingers, possibly just one hand. I have to ask myself, “do I suck at writing”? Maybe I possess lackluster marketing skills, thereby missing my target audience.

Increasingly, I think I just suck at it. It happens. Plenty of people perform poorly in areas they enjoy. Therefore, I must fully consider other post-retirement career/job opportunities.

Immediately, I’m ruling out male escort. Sure the pay is swell, but how much Viagra can a 58 year man take and remain a viable work option in this field before a massive coronary or a life altering erection. Other parts of the body need blood, too, you know. Plus, there must be age restrictions, let alone weight guidelines. I’m sure there’s a niche market for old, fat, hairy guys, but somebody’s likely already corned that clientele. Then there’s the whole marriage thing. “No honey, I hate this job. You know, it’s just business, nothing more. “If you got a higher paying job dear, I wouldn’t have to objectify myself like this.”

When I was a kid I wanted to be Ringo Starr. Of course, it’s impossible to transform into another existing human being, let alone an 84 year old. However, I’m willing to be a professional rock star, even if it’s not Ringo. I don’t play any musical instruments beyond butchering select chords, I can’t sing, and I don’t own a pair of leather pants. Although the pay may far exceed my monthly retirement allotment, this may prove quite an uphill battle. Hey, it’s not like Bob Dylan’s voice made anybody forget about Sinatra. If I squint, I can see a faint glimmer of possibility with this idea.

Photography piqued my interests over the years. I received a Kodak Instamatic camera for Christmas back in the seventies. It was pretty much kid proof which was good, because I was a kid. I think that camera’s tucked away somewhere in relative obscurity, inside a shoebox upstairs with some faded photos. It was super cool because we took photographs with a thing called film. You had no idea how the pics would look until after you paid some guy to develop the film. As a grade schooler to middle schooler, this was a significant financial risk.

I own a digital camera now with a few nicer lenses. I captured as much life of the kids growing up as possible. I’ve got some great shots of Nebraska farmland and Colorado mountains. As hobbies go, it was probably one of favorite ones. Somehow after the kids went to college, I don’t seem to get so much use out of it anymore. I still enjoy taking photos, but the fire behind photography seems to have turned to glowing coals. But a new flame can get reignited in those embers.

Have you ever heard of the Rover App? It’s liker Tinder, but for hooking up your fur baby with a pet sitter. Or maybe it’s AirBNB or VRBO for pets. Either way it’s fairly slick. If you have a 14 year old dog like mine, it’s an easy gig. My dog, Gigi, sleeps, eats, sleeps, eats again, and goes back to sleep. She’ll throw in a lawn biscuit and a squirt of pee just to be well rounded. I do not know how often these folks stay booked with animals, but you basically get to work from home. Not too shabby or shaggy of a retirement option.

Besides not knowing how to make too many drinks, I believe I’d be a wonderful bartender. Pouring out and pontificating about the finer beers is right up my alley even though a lot of bad things happen in alleys. Just ask Bruce Wayne. That was a bad day. My alley will sling exotic drinks, classic standards, and all things in-between. My alley will make Batman proud. Nothing but happiness and joy, no dead parents. That really can make an alley suck.

Then there’s the geologist fantasy. It’s a fantasy because science was never my thing. Sure, it’s the study of rocks. It’s not like I was in medical school or working an internship at the Los Alamos Laboratory with nuclear physicists. Maybe geology covers more ground than just rocks. However, rocks were the only thing in this field that captured my imagination. I still have my rock collection from the grade school days. Every 5-10 years I look at them. Totally worth it to move them around the United States for the past three decades.

After watching college volleyball for the last five seasons, I’m toying with the notion of being some school’s or conference’s official floor mop guy. I’m not sure if that’s the official title for the position, but we can work out the finer nuances of the job after determining an appropriate salary. Of course, after my daughter’s final volleyball season, maybe my interest in the game will wane, and performing janitorial duties will not seem so glamorous. Either way, I’d be damn fine at it – a passionately aggressive floor sweat remover. Safety first, baby.

How about a real estate agent? Nah, that sounds to common and I understand it requires taking tests. There will be no test taking in my retirement. This was a dumb idea.

I’m out of ideas, but not yet out of days until retirement. I currently sit at 9 months, 20 days, and 37 minutes remaining. I know this because I’m writing about it and I’ve always wanted to be a writer, as you may recall from earlier. If you write a book and nobody reads it, are you still a novelist? A performer needs an audience, no matter the medium. I write because I enjoy it, but I ultimately want others to enjoy it, too. And that’s the rub, or at least that’s my rub. Maybe real writers care less if anyone reads their stuff. I suppose E.E. Cummings was right – write whatever you feel, not what you believe or think and be nobody but yourself.

The Shortfalls Of Mansplaining Coed Youth League Soccer Or Why I’m Not The Sharpest Shear In The Shed

July 10, 2024 / Big Joe

I sat inside a secured warehouse office with three other grown men working midnights, protecting influenza vaccine that nobody ever intended to vandalize or steal.

A political appointee deemed that year’s preventative flu pharmaceuticals a national asset that needed security. We watched movies most of the night. Meanwhile, an existing contracted, uniformed security force patrolled the warehouse that we were deployed to protect. Nonsensical, but not unusual. Newly appointed politicians love to play with their new toys and boys, regardless the cost to taxpayers.

Tired of staring at the television, I walked outside the office and meandered through the aisles of palletized warehouse medical goods. My wife called as I gazed up and down the racks of seemingly immeasurable materials. I listened as she caught me up with the family world 1700 miles away. Then she snuck in a shocking bit of news. She signed me up to coach my son’s soccer team. My previous exposure to soccer lasted about seven minutes in an elementary P.E. class in the late 1970’s.

I gently explained I possessed no qualifications to coach any level of soccer, including youth league. She aptly replied that the city parks and recreations department required no prerequisites other than a pulse and an absence of a violent criminal history. Solely based on these two cornerstone requirements, I fit the bill. However my lack of coaching experience and scarcity of soccer knowledge seemed like a recipe for athletic disaster.

“They’re 5. What do you need to know?,” she replied to my concerns.

I’d seen 4V4 soccer games. No goalies, a small open net, and 8 kids chasing a ball up and down the field. I called it “herd ball”. The team with the fastest runners usually won the games, even though parks and recreations recorded no scores for these matches. It was really just a cardiovascular event for pre-schoolers and kindergartners and something to discretely wager between other parents. If only we had Jamie Foxx and BetMGM back then.

The 4V4 soccer league was coed. Our team consisted of 5 girls and 4 boys. I noticed other teams did not adhere to quite the same even dispersal between the genders. One team consisted of 8 boys and 1 girl. I suppose that’s technically coed. Maybe some of the boys were “transitioning”. Other than us, nobody’s team comprised more girls than boys. Little did I know that this would prove to be a significant advantage.

With our freshly assigned Little Tykes black soccer t-shirts (jerseys, if I may) we actively debated on a team moniker. I recall pony and pegasus names on the table, but the team majority voted for dragons. More specifically, the Black Dragons. Black to match the shirts and dragons because they’re fearsome and ferocious. More likely though, it was because there is a dragon in Shrek. A female dragon. No misogamy here.

In case nobody clued you in, girls and boys are different.

No, really, they are. This goes well beyond the obvious. Our team had competing alpha males with some serious wheels. These little dudes screamed up and down the field far faster than almost all of the competition. Normally, this is a good thing. However, I described them as alphas. As soon as they reached a dribbling player, the fight was on to gain control of the soccer ball. Once again this is normally a good thing, unless the dribbling player is also a teammate. Oops.

We routinely outscored the opponents even though our boys consistently fought with each other in front of an open net while the other team looked itty bitty in our rearview mirrors, nowhere near the goal. Quite often this resulted in a failed opportunity to score. I started thinking they purposively did this just to keep the games closer.

The girls on our team possessed equal amounts of athleticism and some of them had solid speed as well. However, teamwork set them apart from the boys. They did not sprint downfield and overtake teammates in an attempt to steal the ball. They shared the ball by using the novel sports concept of passing. The girls ran to open space, making themselves available to receive a pass. And fascinatingly, their female teammates kicked the ball over to them. And even more amazing, this tactic worked!

Befuddled by the boy’s ineptitude at passing, I experimented.

In the second half of a game, I sent in an all-girl lineup. They faced an all-boy opponent lineup. This opponent was second only to our team. Our Black Dragon all-girl squad marched up and down the field and scored at will against the all-boy squad. I quickly explained to our boys on the sidelines why the girls were destroying the other team. Luckily, a lightbulb came on for our little boy ball hogs.

Instead of beating each other up and fighting for possession of the sacred soccer ball, they learned to pass to each other, which resulted in more goals. The phenomena of teamwork finally came together for our young lads. Interestingly, this concept seemed more innate with the girls. I never needed to coach them on how to share and play together as a team. Alpha females battling it out on the youth soccer field wasn’t really ever a thing for us.

However, the girls never questioned anything I said either.

This may sound like a Godsend, but it’s still healthy to ask questions when you don’t understand. I learned years later the term “mark up” for guarding your opponent. I simply told the team to cover a player on the other team. In the last game of the season, one of the girl’s asked what “cover” meant. I’d said it all season, but never explained it because I thought it a universal concept.

I quickly explained the technique before the ball was thrown in from the sidelines. I wondered how many other players had no idea what I meant, but never asked for clarification. Nice job, coach. This same girl later told me that I had hair in my ear. I thanked her for the observation and made a mental note to work on personal grooming. Girls like sharing, even when you’re not prepared for their opinions.

My wife suggested that if only women ruled the world, there’d be no wars. Perhaps she’s correct. I wonder if primitive man found teamwork difficult when hunting Wooly Mammoths. Perhaps they experienced a primordial epiphany after watching Grog get trampled and gored by an enormous, tusked creature. Meanwhile the cavewomen created prehistoric scrapbook projects on stone walls and stayed warm by the fire.

I have no idea if any of that is historically accurate.

I do know that if hunting Wooly Mammoths, I’d want to be on an organized, cohesive team. And apparently, I’d likely want about a 50-50 male to female ratio if youth league soccer is any kind of a barometer for success. This is probably why years ago I sat inside a warehouse office with 3 other men while another group of men sat 100 feet from us in another warehouse office, all performing the exact same pharmaceutical protection assignment. By the way, the political appointee who created this mission was a man. My wife and our five year-old youth league soccer team would never had done something so dumb, no matter how much mansplaining they heard.

Say “Hi” To Hoda For Me. I’m Trying To Find Me On Wikipedia.

June 5, 2024 / Big Joe

Fun fact. I went to high school with Hoda Kotb.

Me and about 1200 other hormonal teenagers. I was a lowly underclassman, while she was the senior homecoming queen. Hoda successfully navigated high school and attained royalty status after four years. I represented the underclass, a serf freshly flushed from the bowels of middle school, just beginning my high school odyssey. She sat atop the food chain while I was lower than whale poop at the bottom of the ocean. Actually, it’s quite serene down there.

I perused the alums from Hoda’s graduating class. A couple of names stick out in my mind, but I cannot definitively say why they’re familiar. Maybe we played football together. If it wasn’t for the Today Show, I likely would not remember Hoda Kotb anymore than she’d know me. Regardless, it’s neat to see somebody from the old neighborhood making the big time. That’s assuming fame trips your trigger, which you know it does.

Commoners do not typically intermingle with the noteworthy people.

If we did, we wouldn’t be common. I scanned Hoda’s X account and ran across another familiar name from Fort Hunt High School, Mike Novogratz. I remembered him immediately as a wrestler, but that’s about as far as my memory took me. Upon further internet inspection, it appears Mike killed it in the financial world after graduating from Princeton. My wikipedia page is yet to materialize. How common of me.

Hoda and Mike graduated in 1982 or thereabout. By the time I donned the cap and gown in 1985, Fort Hunt High School ceased to exist. As a member of the final graduating class, I witnessed firsthand the death of the 22 year-old school. Zealous politicians, busy pushing their personal agendas, murdered Fort Hunt High School all in the name of community progress. Now the campus is an oversized middle school complete with a massive parking lot for all of those 13 and 14 year old drivers. Well thought out, councilmen.

But that’s basically it for all of the famous people I know, except for a few former NFL players I lost touch with. Once I hung up my cleats midway through college, that life stayed in the rearview until I recently looked up William & Mary. They recruited me for football, but I didn’t consider them because I thought it was too small of a school. Without the modern conveniences of the internet, I made a hasty collegiate judgment from high school guidance counselor pamphlets. Shrewd, very shrewd.

Fun fact. William & Mary’s green and gold school colors matched my high school.

I could have attended Bill & Mary without having to adjust to a new color combination. If I had been good enough, maybe the Green Bay Packers would have drafted me, too. Green and gold throughout high school, college, and the National Football League! Sure, that’s a bit presumptuous to assume the NFL loomed as a possible career choice. It would have been a great wikipedia storyline, though.

I closed the door on college athletics for what seemed like really good reasons over three and half decades ago. When I decided not to return to Wake Forest for my third year, I had just turned 20 years old. The WFU road looked dauntingly difficult and I allowed the passion for the game to slowly ooze out of me. At the time, leaving felt like a relief. However, the weight of reality quickly replaced my athletic scholarship burden. Ah, the freedom of naïveté.

It turns out the game wasn’t a heavy lift.

Motivating myself to play football was the heavy lift. In the spring of 1987 a new head coach unexpectedly moved me from the defensive line to the offensive line, which left me feeling totally unprepared and ill-equipped to succeed. I could have stepped up, put in the work, and seen where that took me, but I chose to quit. Of course I used different verbiage like, “leaving the game” and “pursuing academic interests without football”. A good rationalization can go a long way if you say it convincingly enough.

I watched teammates languish on the bench, their whole college career spent in the scout team trenches. My freshman season of this was enough. Additional seasons spent on the scout team appeared as pure, unadulterated torture. The prospect of forever sitting as a failed offensive lineman terrified me. Not to mention, I hated playing offense and I was no fan of the new coach, freshly fired by Virginia Tech. I hit the campus in July 1985 with high personal expectations. By May 1987 I wanted out. If only a transfer portal existed way back when.

Feeling utterly defeated and lost, I decided to throw in the towel rather than swing another wild, inaccurate punch.

It’s hard admitting this, even three and a half decades later. I buried it because it brought shame. I was there. I played. But I didn’t finish strong. Truthfully, I didn’t finish at all. At least not football. The year after I left, Wake Forest beat North Carolina in Chapel Hill. On TV I saw my former teammates, exuberant on the sidelines, jumping up and down. Nothing felt better than beating the reigning in-state powerhouse, particularly when you’re the conference cellar dweller. At least that’s how it looked on ESPN.

I felt proud for the Deacs, but a big smattering of envy sat on my plate as well. I opted out of my 1987 fall semester and worked a blue collar job. Seeing Wake beat North Carolina while I sweated and froze my tail off on the Ronald Reagan Airport tarmac didn’t sit well. The grass wasn’t greener on the other side and “real” work was far less glamorous than playing college football, even though I got to wear a new uniform. A puke green shirt with my name above a breast pocket and matching pants became my occupational polyester nightmare. I started to miss the concussions.

I can’t piss and moan too much.

I went back to school and graduated from George Mason University. For 33 years I worked a job that I dreamed about in my younger days. And I still haven’t quit or retired! And I’m doing it in one of the most beautiful states in the union, Colorado. None of this would probably have materialized if I stayed in Winston-Salem, NC. And if I hadn’t quit back in 1987, the three most important people in my life would forever be lost to me – my wife, my son, and my daughter.

I hope Miss Kotbe and Mr. Novogratz don’t think too poorly of me for walking away from the adversity I chose to side-step and the new positional assignment I so passionately dreaded. If they do, oh well. Fear can be debilitating and it’s a daily challenge still. But I suppose celebrities and billionaires understand and are real people, too. Nah! That can’t possibly be true. That never gets mentioned on their Wikipedia pages.

One Game, One Dad

May 28, 2024 / Big Joe

My father only saw me play in one football game.

Not that my gridiron career spanned decades. We’re talking roughly 50 games, give or take a few. His absence also included youth league basketball, as he missed all of those games. He never attended a band recital either, so it wasn’t an anti-sports sentiment. I hear it’s difficult to juggle a wife and kids when you also live with your girlfriend on the other side of town. Considering that perspective he probably performed admirably with his time management skills.

In my younger, elementary years I loved tossing a ball around with a friend. Honestly, I loved doing that with anyone and any type of ball. Just show up and bring your arms. After my parent’s separation, every other Saturday my dad did just that. He brought his arms and threw a ball back and forth with me for about an hour. I don’t know who allotted that time block, but I enjoyed it. For some reason when our 60 minutes passed, he left. Time management, I suppose.

At my birth both parents hit their mid-40’s while already raising an 18 year-old, a 15 year-old, and an 11 year-old. Quite likely, my unplanned arrival caught dad by surprise. Growing up, I had no idea this age gap wasn’t typical. Alas, I’m sure my moment of conception was a romantic rendezvous dear old dad wished to reverse. It was a bad time for my mom not to have a headache, too. Hey dad, didn’t you have to mow the backyard or wash the VW Bug, you frisky little fornicator? Oh mother, where’s menopause when you need it?

Years later I learned my father sought a divorce far earlier, but his older brother, Daman, forbid it. Keep in mind, my father was a grown man and needed no such approval. However, this was 50 some years ago, so maybe the eldest sibling held some kind of sway over his little brothers. So he stayed in a dead marriage and fathered one last kid he never intended to raise, just to assuage Daman. I’m not trying to dis dysfunction. Growing up in an orphanage, my dad likely relied on Daman as his surrogate paternal role model. Families get so complicated and messy.

My father was a federal judge and Daman was a Georgia redneck.

Daman possessed nothing my father needed, such as an inheritance of land or money. My dad forged a life and a career far from the Georgia backwaters. But nonetheless, Daman held him at marital bay. By the time Daman passed away, my father began crafting his exit strategy. By 1980 my parent’s separation officially morphed into a divorce. My dad and his new wife moved across the country to sunny, southern California. New wife, new life. And less complicated time management, I imagine.

I hate saying this, but in complete fairness (what a dumb concept, nothing is fair), my father stayed married to the “other” woman for longer than the 32 years he spent wedded to my mother. As far as I know he remained faithful, which was not a skillset he mastered after his first “I do”. I wonder whether my mother knew of his infidelities and just kept the the family chugging along. Perhaps she never knew. Without modern day technologies, indiscretions remained discrete. No answering machines, 4 television channels, and the term social media had more akin to fascist newspapers than digitized networking.

Since mom and dad both passed away, such questions will likely remain unanswered. If my mother knew, how lonely and rejected did she feel? I remember her attending counseling after the divorce. She seemed to carry an immeasurable burden in those days. Oddly, she never took off her wedding ring. She wore it for the next three decades and most likely carried it to her grave. My mom raised me in Virginia, but she lived in denial. The ex isn’t coming back, so sell that damn thing and move forward!

My sister cremated our mother shortly after her death.

In a stroke of brilliance she combined our mother’s ashes with some of my father’s ashes and interred them together inside a memorial bench’s leg at a Danielsville, Georgia cemetery. I know. I, too, cringed upon hearing how my parents got unwittingly reunited in death, forever trapped together in the base of a concrete graveyard loveseat 36 years post their divorce. It’s kinda like a Hallmark romance movie filmed through the lens of an insane asylum. Maybe someday your children will bury part of your ashes with your ex or former lover. It’s just so damn heart warming and unsettling.

As I aged, I understood that relationships take hard work, raising children gets tough, and all marriages harbor some issues, disagreements, and letdowns. As humans we tend to foul things up from time to time. So when I found myself in southern Georgia for work in my late-30’s, I thought it wise to bury the hatchet. I planned a visit with my once philandering father at his retirement home near Savanah.

I arrived on Saturday morning and planned to stay as long as possible into Sunday with him and his wife, Kelly. Imagine my surprise on Saturday night when he relayed that they planned to hit a flea market Sunday morning, followed by him watching a televised tennis match in his den. Their plans did not include me, be it the shopping excursion or watching television. They indirectly invited me to leave. Our extended father-son hour was up. Time management, baby.

My visit checked a box for both of us.

We filled our proverbial 60 minute session. I didn’t see him again for about 9 years, shortly before he passed away. By this point his memory faded in and out. Sometimes he knew who I was, other times he asked who my father was. Exactly, I thought.

But on a chilly October Friday night in 1984, the only thought coursing through my un-matured prefrontal cortex centered on why is my dad here. He stood by the track with his hands atop a chainlink fence as we ran off the football field into the locker room. I cannot say whether he saw the whole game or just the final few minutes. It didn’t matter. He showed up once and ruined his perfect absence record. Way to blow an unblemished mark.

My wife and I only missed our kid’s events for work trips and conflicting children’s schedules. We maintained this during youth league up through high school. I can’t imagine just not showing up when it’s completely feasible to make the event. My daughter will play in what is likely her final collegiate volleyball season this fall. My wife and I plan to make every game. Even if there’s a super neat flea market or inane pro tennis match to watch from a BarcaLounger.

I don’t remember who we played that Friday night, or how well I performed, or if we won or lost the game. I just remember dad showed up out of the blue, without any advanced warnings or notifications. Maybe that’s how he saw me 57 years ago in the delivery room. Assuming he managed to carve out the time to be there. Thank God mom made it!

Lovers, Fighters, Brothers, & A Kid A Bit Lighter

April 23, 2024 / Big Joe

I’m not a fighter. I’m not a lover, either.

At least not in the romantic, conquering the female gender sort of way. My family is so relieved hearing this admission, I’m sure. If I attached a photograph of myself, you’d immediately understand.

I’ve thrown a few punches in my day, though. But not enough to earn a title belt or even know how to lace up a pair of gloves. Seriously, do fighters get help putting those things on?

In a high school friend’s basement a pair of boxing gloves sat on a random shelf. Apparently her father sparred in the gym and danced around the ring in his younger days. Us guys would sneak beers into that basement and occasionally don the mitts. One guy got a left glove and one guy got a right one. Nothing was quite as entertaining as drunken, unskilled, one-handed boxing from a right-handed teenager wearing a left-handed glove. Hold my Schaefer and watch this.

My brother, Bill, shadowboxed me on a regular basis.

He threw punches that landed fractions of an inch from my face. l felt the air push past my nose and eyes, leaving me slightly unnerved. He even accompanied the punches with sound effects in case I was unaware of what knuckles sounded like when crashing into cheekbones, noses, and teeth.

I had no defense for his truncated attacks. He never hit me in the face, but he came close enough for me to feel genuine fear and concern of a potentially, fatal fraternal blow if he miscalculated his punching distance. At eleven years my senior he possessed far more masculine physicality than my sixth grade self could muster. However, I still oddly enjoyed the brotherly attention and thought this may also be a learning opportunity.

I convinced him to teach me some basic self defense techniques, since I clearly had no answers to his audible, fake fisticuffs. He agreed to help his little brother, who was visibly no physical threat to him at this point in our lives. Besides, our dad was out of the picture, and teaching a kid how to fight did not fall into the realm of motherhood. In my house that was more like learning how to cook cornbread, pork chops, and okra in cast iron skillet. Ah, Georgia women.

I learned how to hold my fists. He showed me how to throw a punch. I learned how to stand. He showed me how use combos. I learned how to fake one move and counter with another. He showed how to prepare for that moment of confrontation. I absorbed it all.

This involved no sparring. After all, I didn’t have a death wish to battle my older brother so he could pound me into oblivion. That would have been negative reinforcement and I’d likely have become a pacifist raising baby Red Pandas in the Nepalese mountains far away from wilds of American suburbia. I just did what he did. I practiced the moves by shadowboxing. Not against him or even my mirrored reflection. Just exchanging blows with an imaginary adversary, wondering when I would employ my new found skills in an actual fight.

Bill was an athletic guy. He did many things well besides his boxing antics. He swam and he dived. He could throw a ball with both hands and bat right or left handed. He taught me how to throw a football and actually gave me my first basketball for Christmas one year. I didn’t see a lot of it, but he was a solid ice skater, too.

One icy winter night he strapped on a pair ice-skates with his friends. They also polished off a fair amount of alcohol and I’m sure smoked their share of weed. This was a typical weekend occurrence. The ice skating was their next logical step in furthering the entertainment.

With liquid courage on board and floating on a cloud of marijuana confidence, Bill wowed his friends with his skating prowess. He could go slow or whip around the other skaters. He easily rotated on the ice and moved forward and backwards with grace and agility. The crescendo for the evening was him skating backwards on one leg, bent over at the waist with his arms stretched out like a pair of wings. Pretty damn impressive.

Until he fell. On his face.

More specifically, his upper front row of teeth. High as a kite in reverse mode, bent over a single set of toes, and arms as useful as T-Rex’s upper appendages. Once again, hold my Schaefer and watch this.

All that natural athleticism probably looked damn fine, until it didn’t. His figure skating Olympic dreams abruptly ended with a dental consult for emergency bridgework. On the bright side, the replacement teeth looked better than the originals.

But I digress. Back to my new found, raw, pugilistic skills.

I didn’t dance like a butterfly or sting like a bee, but I most certainly made progress. I particularly liked the counter move – fake a jab with the left and strike with the right. I keenly recognized the benefit of faking out an opponent. Lord knows, I’d been on the receiving end on the basketball court and the football field. Now I could be the one busting a move.

Months went by and I kept practicing my new skill. I felt eager to show Bill my progress. Then one day on the staircase heading up to the second floor bedrooms, he threw a couple of punches my way as I was about to pass him. Instinctively, I faked with the left and gave him my signature right jab.

I’m not sure if it was the unevenness of the staircase or my lack of game time experience, but my right went a bit farther than intended.

As a matter of fact, I punched Bill square in the mouth. There I stood, staring down my imminent demise. I just punched my older brother about as hard as possible. A panicked flow of apologies erupted from my mouth, hoping to abate the inevitable volley of return punches.

We never really worked on defense. I was inadequately prepared for a retaliatory response. We stood on a staircase. With limited maneuverability I possessed few good options. Encapsulated in fear and dread, I immediately knew my only recourse – the fetal position. Ironic, as a fetus represents new life and I was about to die.

But he didn’t even get mad. He just slowly turned around and walked upstairs without making a sound, let alone a counter move. Elated at the reprieve, I did not follow him to find out why. I have no memory of how the ensuing hours unfolded. I did later learn that I knocked out his newly installed dental bridgework. Not bad for an 11 year-old with one move.

Interestingly, Bill never shadowboxed me again. I kinda missed it. We never spoke of the “incident”. Probably for the best, as I’m still surprised by his restraint, even decades later. I shouldn’t be, though. Bill was born in Norfolk, VA. As the state slogan goes, “Virginia Is For Lovers”. Fighting is not mentioned. By birthright, perhaps I am a lover, too. And for at least one miscalculated moment, a fighter.

The Greatest Halftime Football Speech I Never Remembered Saying

November 7, 2023 / Big Joe

It’s fall semester of my son’s eighth grade year. I coach his youth football team’s offensive line. Several other player’s dads comprise the remainder of the coaching staff. My son and I joined this team a season ago. Since 7 years of age, I coached his football teams in some capacity. This will be the final football season coaching my son. Next year he and his teammates will progress to the high school level and get instructed by their coaching staffs. For a middle aged man, this is quite a milestone.

We fellow coaches invested significant time and effort into coaching our boys these last several years. Because of this, our head coach suggests participating in an end of season youth football tournament in Las Vegas, NV. He billed it as the final blowout before turning over the football coaching reins to the high schools and taking our places in the stadium seats. We unanimously agree that this is a good idea. What could go wrong?

We roll into the first tournament venue comfortably seated on our private, chartered bus. Our opponent came from Bakersfield, CA, where they most likely carjacked their way to Nevada. However, this conclusion only became evident by the end of game. At this point I know nothing about Bakersfield other than it’s a desert town way east of L.A. As we drive past our opponent warming up, I feel unsettled.

Immediately, I reference the football tournament rules. Nothing in the literature suggests that this is a father-son tournament. The Bakersfield team looks enormous. And that’s without pads on. How could these behemoths all be eight-graders? I’m certain some of them are shaving on a daily basis. I think a couple of them have small children, too. We coaches take notice. So do our boys.

Naturally, we played teams that out-sized us before. We were never the biggest squad, but we emphasized game preparation and positional technique execution. In football size looms large, but it does not independently determine gridiron success. I remind myself of this personal postulate while staring at Goliath. Unfortunately, we couldn’t scout Bakersfield before the contest and nobody on our roster is named David. But we still have technique, right?

On the first snap of the game our offensive backfield has more Bakersfield players in it than we do. Instead of tackling our running back, a Bakersfield player lifts him off his feet, drives him backwards, and plants him in the turf. The situation does not improve. Not only does Bakersfield play with great speed and physicality, but they possess just a plain mean and nasty edge. They land punches in the piles, throw elbows after the play, and literally kick our boys when they are down.

As our team exits the field, they gaze at us with a “deer in the headlights” look. Fear emanates and spills out from their helmets. Their bodies appear unstable. They look like they just saw combat for the first time and held no desire to see it again. As the game progresses, the referees seem oblivious to the Southern Cal late hits and Bakersfield sucker punches. Murmurs of forfeiting the game out of safety arises amongst our parents. If something doesn’t change, one of our kids will get seriously injured they say.

We manage to make it to halftime without a single death, dismemberment, puncture wound, or any other game ending injury. But the boys still look shell shocked. If they are to survive this contest, we coaches need to find the right words and motivation to snap them back into the team we believe they can be.

The first thought that runs through my brain is our guys are in a street fight and the only logical response is to fight back with the mindset to fuck up the other team. Hell yeah, fuck ‘em up! However, these are eighth grade boys. Saying that would be inappropriate. I change gears and shift my paradigm to our guys are in a street fight and just got punched in the mouth. The only logical response is to pick themselves up and punch those Bakersfield boys right back in the mouth. Yes, right in the mouth. This is much better.

When it comes my time to speak, I provide my simple, succinct halftime message. It is brief, but I believe it delivers what they need to hear. The boys quietly head back to sidelines, ready to face the third quarter. As I watch them, the offensive coordinator leans in close to my face. He is burley man with a thick, full beard. He speaks quietly through the corner of his mouth, as if imitating a ventriloquist.

“That was best fucking halftime speech I’ve ever heard,” he softly shares.

My head jerks back, attempting to peer into his eyes, but instead catch my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses. Is he busting my chops for my somewhat cliched speech? Did he find it so lame and uninspiring that he needs to give me crap about it, right now?

I give him a quizzical look and ask, “What do you mean?”

In exactly the same manner, he repeats, “That was the best fucking halftime speech I’ve ever heard.”

I now understand he is serious and not pulling my leg. I felt I relayed a useful point to the team and hoped to instill some fight back in the boys, but I don’t think my words would make anybody forget about Knute Rockne. It was just something I thew together about 30 seconds before the words crossed my lips.

Hesitantly, I ask, “What do you think I said?” He lowers his sunglasses so I can now see his eyes while he also points to the football field.

“You told them to go out there and fuck them in the mouth.”

Horrified, I stammer, “I, I did, I did not say that! There’s no way I said that!”

His expression never changes. It feels surreal. It is as if I no longer hold a grasp on reality. Could I have said that and not realized it? Maybe he misheard me, imagining something far more provocative than what I said. As I process the scene, this appears like the most plausible of explanations. Except for one damn, irrefutable reason. Witnesses.

I gave a short, albeit profane, speech in front of players and other football coaches. My words were heard by everybody except me. On the upside, we played far better in the second half.

Fortunately I never saw a member of our team attempt to perform oral fornication on the Bakersfield bad boys. I wonder whether those words shocked our team into playing better or was so off the hook that they completely forgot about the ass kicking they were receiving.

“Did you guys hear what coach said?”

“I know, right. Fuck ‘em in the mouth. Who thinks up shit like that?”

“Coach is whack. Hey, we’re lining up kick return. I guess it’s time to go fuck them in the mouth.”

“Yeah, let’s go bang some braces!”

It’s difficult to feel pride or shame for something in which I draw no recollection. I never consulted with my son to see if that was his memory as well. It would likely have been an awkward and confusing moment, as I never included that topic in the “facts of life” speech to him. Well, at least not that I recall.

Papa Got A Brand New Bag And It’s not Eco-Friendly

October 26, 2023 / Big Joe

We’ve got this. It’s in the bag.

A former neighbor, upon getting asked “paper or plastic” by a grocery store cashier, replied she preferred to use a credit card. And no, she wasn’t half in the bag. Her scattered mind centered on payment methods, not conveyance modalities. Although I’ve called credit cards plastic, I never referred to cash as paper. Drinks are on me boys! I’ve got deep pockets stuffed with paper! Yeah, that doesn’t work at all.

Way back in the day when stores even offered bags, paper was the sole option. Paper bags got over-stuffed by the pimply faced bag boy, thus making them difficult to carry. If so equipped, some bags had perilously unstable handles which proved useful if toting something equivalent in weight to loose leaf lettuce or a small box of Saltines. They possessed the practicality of securing a giant wind turbine to a flatbed rail car with a shoe string. Double knot all you want, it ain’t gonna hold.

My mother shouted prophetic warnings, such as “carry it by the bottom”, or “don’t pick it up from the top”. Paper grocery bag ruptures always happened at the most inopportune of times, as if an opportune time was a thing. Not surprisingly the heavier the bag, the greater the likelihood. This usually happened with the bag crammed full of glass jars and a dozen eggs foolishly set on top of the pickles, jams, and jellies. What could go wrong?

“You weren’t carrying it by the bottom of the paper bag, were you?”

“No mom, I sure wasn’t.”

And then came the wonderful world of plastic. Bags, not debit devices. We now had checkout choices, paper or plastic. Could I do both, paper and plastic? Or is this a one or the other option? Paper was so ingrained in my inner psyche, I felt like I was cheating on it if I opted for plastic. However, those easy to grip plastic handles on a more manageably sized bag felt so enticing. But deep down, I remained loyal to paper. Especially when passing around a shrouded bottle on the street corner with my crew.

Activist groups and vocal minorities swayed many a politician with their rhetoric and vilified the use of paper bags. They branded us tree killers, no friends to our treasured forests. Undaunted, my wife still used paper bags in conjunction with plastic ones. Did she hate the woodlands? Was she an enemy of the eco-state? No. She used the paper bags to collect old newspapers and other paper items headed to recycling. You can’t get any greener than that, bitches.

For those too young to know or remember newspapers, they were a printed medium that arrived almost daily on our doorsteps and was sold almost anywhere before we fully conceptualized the worldwide web existing everywhere. And they used these gigantic machines called printing presses, passed down from Johannes Gutenberg. It was quite revolutionary. Let’s take a moment to lament this loss on the ink industry while also celebrating clean fingertips.

Fast forward to present day Colorado.

Paper bags disappeared from the checkout lines. Plastic bags exist, but we must pay for them. That new alternative to paper was no longer the eco-friendly version originally touted by the environmentalists. Although not killing the trees, depleting the forests, or damaging the atmosphere, we’re dumping single-use plastic bags into landfills. These bags take one thousand years to degrade and they don’t completely break down, but instead photo-degrade, which pollutes the environment even further. Thank God we stopped using those awful paper bags.

As Americans, we use approximately 100 billion plastic bags yearly, which requires 12 million barrels of oil to produce. Did the activist groups that said paper bags were killing the forests get funded by Mobil, Halliburton, and Exxon? Perhaps Dick Cheney and other politicians giggled their way to the bank on that one. Thank you for all of your political fund raisers, dinners, and economic support. Apparently the green movement actually referenced dollar bills, not eco-friendly options.

But hey, we’re saving the world, one billionaire at a time. These plastic bags that are so harmful to the environment still exist at the store’s checkout lanes and counters. We can purchase these harbingers of death for an affordable ten cents in Colorado. 60% goes to the municipality or county to pay for administrative and enforcement costs and recycling or other waste diversion programs. The stores pocket the other 40%.

Thank goodness, because I was concerned the grocery chains weren’t making enough money with their inflated food prices.

Pretty soon we’ll get charged to use their carts, wifi, and oxygen while shopping. Of course I plan on keeping the carts and reselling them to the highest bidder, so that could still pan out for me. The oxygen part could prove problematic. You corporate minimalists keep cutting back services while hiking up the prices. It’s like I’m paying for the date and they take the girl home. I thought college was over.

Now bag ladies became the models of recycling and environmental awareness. Their plastic bags are definitely more than single-use items. By June 2024, Colorado will completely ban the sale of single-use plastic bags and we will be left with our multi-use bags that we repeatedly tote inside the supermarket. Plastic bags are horrible, but so are empty political coffers not getting filled by oilmen. Fortunately, there’s lots of other plastic products to produce.

The last time I looked, a gazillion plastic products floated and laid around the great state of Colorado. Where’s the fervor to stop this proliferation? Why aren’t we tearing holes through the plastic trash bag industry? Aren’t those trash bags subject to the same laws of chemistry when it comes to their degradation in landfills? Not to mention, shouldn’t the government immediately investigate that evil empire known as Tupperware? Those damn satanic bastards. Friend to fiendish homemakers, yet environmental enemy number one.

I’m all for the great outdoors.

If you’ve traveled abroad, you recognize how well the U.S. actually protects the environment. I spent time in the slums in Nairobi several years ago. There’s not really a functioning waste management system in place and plastic bags litter the landscape. And I mean they were everywhere. Sometimes filled with trash and often times overflowing with human bodily waste. I don’t even know where they got the bags. It’s not like the Kenyans could run down to local Piggly Wiggly. Maybe British Petroleum donates them to third world countries. BP’s almost as rotten as Tupperware, which ironically keeps my food fresher for longer.

I bet leading scientists will one day prove that multi-use grocery bags actually cause intense uterine spasms, testicle shrinkage, taint cancer, or some other unforeseen malady that nobody ever dreamed of catching. But that’s O.K. I’m certain a greedy crew of corporate curmudgeons will wistfully devise a devilish scheme to bleed us for every nickel they earn on these multi-use bags we stuff into our car door pockets and shove under our seats.

So now my new first world issue is remembering to carry one of these potentially deadly multi-use bags into the grocery store. This isn’t really a big deal, but I naturally forget every time. At least I have bags crammed somewhere in my car that I can race outside and retrieve before hitting the checkout lane. I’m environmentally aware and doing my part, albeit through forced state regulations. We recycle and we don’t purchase or use single-use plastic bags. Of course I make my purchases with a credit card which is made out of…plastic.

Dirty Drug Dreams & The Unattained Aspirational Abyss

October 17, 2023 / Big Joe

I dreamt last night that I was doing heroin with Matthew Broderick.

To be clear, I do not partake in opioid consumption, be it with celebrities or otherwise. Regardless, Ferris and I measured out a predetermined number of doses. Sitting at a bar with drinks lined up like airplanes awaiting takeoff at Laguardia would have been more my style. I can’t speak for Matty. I’d figure him to be more of an oxycontin guy than a dirty old smack abuser.

I have no affinity for drug use nor would I ever attempt to glamorize it. Why my subconscious mind partnered me with Matthew Broderick and an illicit substance, I cannot say. However, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of the best movies of the eighties and a generational favorite of mine. Who didn’t want to fake being Sal Guzman, the sausage king of Chicago? Who didn’t want a hot girlfriend named Sloane or a goofy sidekick named Cameron? Fuck Ed Rooney. Ferris was a righteous dude.

Fortunately this was only a dream, yet another incongruent storyline with seemingly no correlation to anything existing in my conscious world. I had another dream immediately following my escapades with Mr. Broderick, but for some reason that one fell by the memory wayside. It seemed just as memorable, but the only retained recollection emphasized that I should remember it. I’ll have to do better when remembering to remember…in my sleep.

But a guy can dream.

As a young kid, I consciously and ardently dreamed of being one of The Beatles. If “A Hard Day’s Night” or “Help” appeared on one of our four local television channels, I surely watched it. “Yellow Submarine” never quite piqued my interest, though. After all, the Beatles were real life musical heroes and pop/rock stars, not poorly animated cartoon characters!

The fervor and excitement surrounding The Beatles exploded a bit before my time, but they still captivated me. I possessed no interest to pluck the bass like Paul McCartney, strum chords like George Harrison, or write songs like John Lennon. For some reason I wanted to hammer on the drums and cymbals like Ringo Starr.

Because fifth grade loomed in my not too distant future, I ruled out joining a neighborhood garage band and cutting my teeth in the local club/live music venues of Northern Virginia. But an alternative tickled my fingertips. I could pick up a pair of drumsticks and join the school band. Maybe that’s how Ringo earned his percussion chops. I couldn’t wait to perch myself behind a drum set and wail away.

Instead, I received a practice drum pad.

This was basically a block of pine with a thick piece of leather glued to the wood. It did not look like a drum and it did not sound like a drum. I’m uncertain if I can accurately incapsulate my disappointment level with this cow-skin draped hunk of dead tree. I never saw Ringo pound out a beat on one of these idiotic things. I could barely hear the drumsticks striking its banal surface. Was this some sort of band hazing joke?

No. The band teacher expected me to learn on this piece of modestly cushioned crap. It was similar to picking the strings of an unplugged electric guitar, but not quite as audibly rewarding. However, Christmas was just around the corner. I no longer believed in Santa Claus, but maybe that fictitious merry muse, or whoever acted on his behalf, would deliver a snare drum under the tree and I’d be on my percussion path.

Unfortunately, we sometimes get what we ask for.

There it stood on Christmas morning. Silver stand with a slightly canted drum positioned atop with a pair of drumsticks crossed over the surface. Thin chains stretched tight to the bottom of the instrument to produce its definitive snare drum sound. A lever could release these chains, producing a more hollow sound. This sounded fine, but not the rocking drum beat I hoped to hear. Unfortunately, the snare didn’t sound right either.

It resonated a tinny and rattled noise. There wasn’t the tight, pounding thump I hoped to hear when my sticks struck its surface. My mother found that laying a towel over the drum’s top helped alleviate the problem. I got more of the sound I wanted, but the towel reduced the drumstick’s ability to bounce off the drum top. How could I emulate Ringo Starr with these displeasing reverberations. No rock band draped absorbent cloths over their drums. Sadly, it looked and sounded pathetic.

The padded wooden practice drum gave that bounce, but there was no enjoyment in hearing the thud of the drum. The snare drum without the towel sounded like crap. Did other drummers have these issues? Had Ringo, himself, suffered through this milieu? I just wanted that damn sound.

To make matters worse, the band instructor insisted I implement a traditional drumstick grip.

With this style the left hand held the stick palm up while the right hand held the stick palm down. Maybe band geeks thought this proper, but Ringo never drummed like this nor did any of my other musical idols. It felt like marching into a 18th century battlefield instead of knocking out modern, rhythmic beats.

I just wanted to pound that drum skin, holding the sticks like a rockstar. What do you mean you’re not going to teach twirling the sticks or snatching them midair while hammering out a pounding rhythm? I thought playing in a band was going to be fun, not antiquated, pre-modern musical dogma. If I was to hold my left handed stick palm up, please wrap a bandage around my head and accompany me with a fife player and a tattered American flag.

However, I possessed enough talent to make the regional band squad, but that’s where the journey ended. I loved the idea of drumming, but lacked the dedication to attain my percussion paradise dream. Bottom line, I was good enough to make the team, but not good enough to start. Alas, I was never meant to be Ringo Star. This of course sounds silly, but that realization filled my heart with much sorrow.

When you’re younger, all dreams still feel possible.

But what’s a dream, anyway? No kid who ever played cowboys and indians insisted getting put into the role of the local accountant. However, many a successful number cruncher lived fruitful and fulfilling lives even though they never dreamed of achieving that accomplishment. So I wasn’t Ringo Starr. Apparently, only he was. At least I didn’t end up doing drugs with famous people. Hey, wait a sec. Didn’t Ringo do that?

A Rapid Deceleration On Whatever You Truly Deemed Important 3 Seconds Ago

August 11, 2023 / Big Joe

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. – Bill S.

My name is lackluster. It’s about as interesting as John Smith. If you’re John Smith and this offends you, my apologies. Hopefully, though, you’re self aware and understand the banality coursing through your first and last name. But take solace, Juan. At least John Smith was a famous explorer who may have single handedly saved Virginia’s Jamestown Colony in the early 1600’s. You learn these things when you grow up in the Old Dominion’s public school system.

However, what’s any Joe Davis done? Apparently play snooker and English billiards, according to Wikipedia. So there’s that. A Joe Davis is well known within the Boston Red Sox farm system. We’re getting cooler with each key stroke. A Joe Davis currently works as a major network sports announcer. By internet standards and fame based modalities, the Joe Davis crowd has a celebrity footing, though not incredibly stable.

But what’s in a name, really? I’ve renamed our french beagle, Gigi, dozens of times. None of them officially stuck with the family, but many a goofy canine nickname lingered long inside my head. And they all make me giggle, aloud or otherwise. She’s been Gigi Bagel, Gigi Beagle, Beagie Weagie, Beauges, Weagles, Francesca Alyse Bonturkin (FAB), Jubilee Bergman, and most recently Berklyn Chordlehops. I know. I should have chosen Barklyn for a dog. However, my favorite is Hoover Bastogne. Good ole, Hoovie B!

My sister-in-law’s family owned a dog named Trixie. Trixie was a good dog. Friendly, gentle, loving, and above all else, hypoallergenic. Without this latter attribute, specific relatives may have succumbed to anaphylactic shock. The Trixster (rebranding) was always happy to greet us when our travels brought the family to Nebraska. In fact, she would get so excited that she consistently peed on the floor when she first saw us. Fortunately she kept this practice quarantined to the kitchen tile and not the family room carpet.

Due to this welcoming technique, I decided to rename her Peebody. That one stuck. Not with their family, but definitely in my silly name bending mind. What can I say? Trixie was a Peebody. Maybe because it conjured up childhood memories from watching Bullwinkle in my footie PJ’s, Peebody rang a nostalgic note in my mind, if not a present day emergency cleanup protocol. Through artistic license, I spelled Peebody with two “e’s”. Hopefully Professor Peabody understands. I’m certain Sherman is down with it.

My wife and children have not dodged the nicknaming. I tagged my wife as Klavicle after not knowing how to spell her last name when we first started dating. Yes, I figured it out, but that’s no reason to abandon Klavicle. Then my daughter got stuck with Anna Pi Pie Poo Pum and its conjugates – Poomeranian, Poomie, Poomers, Pi Pie…you get the idea. I gave my son several trailers off of his first name, such as Cole Bear, Cole Train, Cole Man. However, his more infamous alter-ego, Dwight, has remained over the years. And I snicker at all of them, albeit in a one man, private chortle-fest.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be. – Bill S.

Name alterations are common throughout history. Abraham and Sarah were originally Abram and Sarai. Not a huge change, but ordained by God. When God tells you to switch names, it’s go time. Jacob became Israel. Historically and biblically, that’s a biggie. Casius Clay and Lew Alcindor both acquiesced to Muslim monikers. If I had the choice of Eldrick or George, I might consider the switch to Tiger or Babe. A logical move within the Woods and Ruth families. But love him or hate him, Chad Ochocinco is still the best.

In the 1980’s, a former football teammate divvied out nicknames taken from the ranks of professional wrestling. I never got to be the Junkyard Dog or the American Dream, but at least I didn’t have fellow ballers calling me the Iron Sheik. Stone Cold would have been cool, though. Maybe even Sgt. Slaughter. It would have fit nicely on the defensive line.

For whatever reason, the sports world is loaded with nicknames. Fans latch onto them like rabid dogs. Sometimes they stick in a locker room, too. The true test of a perfect nickname occurs when the people closest to you stop using your actual birth name and switch to the newly handed-down handle. Hopefully Ryan Fitzpatrick’s “Fitztragic” didn’t follow him too far. I think some sports reporters were just jealous of his beard. I know I am.

The Witness Protection Program takes it to whole new level. New names, new birthdates, new social security numbers, total new life. Except the problem that you brought yourself along for the ride. Wherever you go, there you are. Damn baggage. New city, new state, new job, new car, new house, same old me. Wait, what’s my name again? Nothing like an east coast mobster living in Spearfish, South Dakota. I hear their Italian cuisine is exceptionally marginal.

I called one of my brothers Slicker for years. I heard it used during the Saturday morning Abbot & Costello movie classics during my childhood. My brother didn’t play baseball so that ruled out many other options coined by the comedic duo. The Tarzan Saturday matinee followed Abbott & Costello. Johny Weissmuller was the only real Tarzan for me. Me Tarzan you Jane. He really pulled it off because English wasn’t his first language. And that little vixen, Jane with her British accent. It’s hard to believe nobody ever named their firstborn son, Boy. Cheeta, ungawa!

Somewhere along the line, people thought carving names and nicknames into trees a good idea. Nowadays these people would be labeled as ecoterrorists and duly prosecuted under local, state, or federal statutes. But don’t worry, now we have tagging, also known as urban art. Unfortunately most of it is graffiti, an urban eyesore. But we do like to put our names, images, and symbols on things, wherever they may be. Just ask Donald Trump. Gold everything, baby!

I went to summer camp as a kid once. Maybe it was twice. Either way, my underwear was marked. Thank God, because I don’t know how many times I’ve worn another man’s boxers because there wasn’t a name scribbled on the inside of the elastic waistband. Of course when I was a kid, maybe we all wore the same tighty whities, the only differentiation being size. Get your hands off my huskies you dork! Can’t you read drawers?

Regardless, Joe Davis has the punch of a 83 year-old prize fighter. I can’t give myself a nickname and if left up to others, the end results could be regrettable. My daughter named me Hubert McGee. Originally that sounded goofy, but I definitely like it now. A friend refers to my wife as the Czech princess and to me as the giant dwarf. Like my daughter, he said they just came to him. I actually get it. It’s an unexplainable process. I really can’t put a name on it.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one in his time plays many parts. – Bill S.

Geisel’s Cultural Arts, Hoarding, & How Popcorn Forever Ties Them Together In My Cluttered Mind

May 18, 2023 / Big Joe

I’m not as young as I used to be.

Technically, all of humanity can accurately make this statement. When I look at it that way, it doesn’t seem so bad. Rationalizations rock.

Recently, though, time snuck up on me and smacked me in the face. I didn’t discover a new gray hair, replace an arthritic joint, or lie prone in a cardiac catheterization lab. A far more insidious insult to my age occurred. I saw a device that I remembered from my youth, now displayed behind glass, memorialized like a museum attraction or a bygone social artifact.

I stood inside the University of California San Diego Geisel Library. In the middle of a display showcasing African American music and art from the sixties, seventies, and eighties lay a yellow Sony Walkman Sports AM/FM Radio/Cassette player. An identical Sony Walkman sits inside my nightstand. I actually thought it was mine for a second. It felt surreal, like Charlton Heston’s character, George Taylor, seeing his fellow astronaut, stuffed alongside primitive humans in a Planet of the Apes curation.

But there it sat.

A Sony Walkman, untouchable behind glass like an Australopithecus jawbone or a woolly mammoth tusk. Do people look at this and ponder, “Geez, what’s that thing? It’s so yellow.” C’mon peeps! It was the best way to listen to your mix tapes while at the gym, jogging down the road, or sweating to the oldies with Richard Simmons. Richard who? You know, “one day I may be meeting you and hearing how you’ve changed your life by saying farewell to fat.” No? Deep sigh.

I suppose undergraduates breeze by it and comment that they’ve seen one before crammed inside a weathered cardboard box in their parent’s basement, attic, or garage. Maybe an aging family member will bequeath it to them. Nobody ever bequeathed anything to me. Perhaps proceeds from the sale of a family house, but that’s not really bequeathing. Regardless, without an official reading of the will inside a stuffy lawyer’s office, sibling infighting could erupt over who gets the neon banana colored antique music machine.

When I was a kid, my mother’s house was chalk block filled with antiques. Furniture, tools, trunks, radios, clothes, and even Confederate money. What’s a Georgia woman to do? Outside of Jefferson Davis’s cash, I considered this old paraphernalia as junk. Partly because my mother wasn’t much of a home keeper and we lived in a constant state of clutter stacked upon mounds and mounds of previous clutter, antique or otherwise. She threw nothing away. I don’t think the ashtrays got dumped unless I did it. How this responsibility fell on a non-smoking twelve year-old, I have no idea.

When I say she threw nothing away, I literally mean she kept everything.

I think she refused to clean the kitchen skillets for fear of parting with bacon grease and dried egg yolks. Her flavor town express skidded off the road straight into a botulism ditch. Old mail, newspapers, and random magazines constituted approximately 17 national forests worth of paper inside our home. Every time I tried to toss them out, I heard the same response. “Oh, no honey, I need to keep that. There’s a recipe in there.”

A fine response, but I don’t have too many memories of my mother cooking. Not that she could actually fire up the kitchen due to the logistical constraints caused by the clutter. The stove top was stacked with dirty pots and pans and the oven was more akin to a storage cabinet. Honestly, if we cleaned all of that stuff, along with the overflowing sink of dirty dishes, no space existed to shelve it. Remember, nothing was thrown away. We added items, but we never removed anything.

My mother loved hitting all of the neighborhood yard sales. I think our next door neighbor, Betty Embry, took my mother on these mini adventures just to get my mom moving and outside of the house. And my mother certainly enjoyed Betty’s company and their bargain hunting expeditions around the surrounding communities. Where else would she buy used popcorn machines? I wouldn’t say my mom necessarily liked popcorn machines. A deep seated, irrational infatuation best described it.

Mind you, we had microwave popcorn by this point in history.

Nobody popped corn kernels on the stove top, heated up their jiffy-pop, or, you guessed it, fired up a popcorn machine. These contraptions were not movie theater sized monstrosities. However, her yard sale popcorn machines sized up bigger than a breadbox and sucked up a significant amount of counter space, which we already sorely lacked. But that’s not the kicker.

It was our glut of this commodity that really initiated some serious head scratching. We probably owned about seven popcorn machines at one point in time. They all sat on the dining room table, the dining room buffet, or on the dining room floor. No, we did not eat that much popcorn. I didn’t even particularly care for popcorn. I still don’t. I wonder why? No head scratching on that one.

When another popcorn machine entered our home and found its final resting place in the dining room, I’d ask my mom the same question. “Why did you get another popcorn machine?” Her reply was always roughly in the same ballpark. “I got it for a quarter!” Great. How much will it cost to get rid of it? Apparently our surplus did not factor into the final purchasing decision for an identical product. Supply and demand? Never heard of it.

Seven machines sat idly with an estimated expenditure of $1.75.

We couldn’t afford not to buy them. Technically it cost her just shy of two dollars to gallivant around with Betty, which ultimately made her happy. And two bones is small price to pay for years of personal entertainment and camaraderie. The popcorn machines just added to the existing decorum – late 20th century American rustic hoarding. Hey kid, put that damn ashtray down! Those butts and ashes are family heirlooms!

I really thought I’d have seen one of those antique popcorn machines behind glass at the Geisel Library before I saw an exact replica of my Sony Walkman. However, that would not have melded within the creative context of how Grace Jones, George Clinton, and Parliament or Funkadelic shaped American culture. Even if James Brown insisted on its inclusion, outside of the glass it would stay. Not even the ambassador of soul could receive diplomatic immunity on that one.

Maybe I’ll craft a mahogany shadow box at home and hang my iPod Nano inside of it. And it’s wired earbuds. We can’t forget those. Kids, once there was a time when Bluetooth didn’t exist outside of dental journals chronicling aberrant molar decay. And to think I sold all of my vinyl records. It’s so damn hard to find Monkees’ CD’s. Oh, yeah. A CD was a media device that we…