My Interview With God

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity of a lifetime. I was granted an interview with God. Now, I know what you're saying: "Yeah, right. Like God would talk to YOU." Well, he didn't talk TO me - he talked WITH me, and boy, it was nothing like I expected. I received a call about a month ago saying to meet him at Jake's Burgers, which is a local legend for, well, burgers. When I arrived, he was already finishing up a jalapeno burger and kicking it down with a chocolate-vanilla shake and crab fries. He didn't look the way I expected. I mean, the hair and teeth were right on target, but the Ray-Ban aviator shades threw me a bit.

As I walked over the gravel parking lot after getting out of my car, he gave me one of those big arm waves, like he was trying to hail a cab in the rain. I had already eaten, but he pushed the crab fries plate at me and gestured towards the paper cup of wine vinegar. As I reached for my pen and notepad, images of ZZ Top videos ricocheted through my mind. With that, I was ready for the interview of a lifetime...

Me: So...God, what's new?

God: Are you kidding me? You have a chance to talk to the creator of the universe and that's the first thing you can ask me? Why don't you ask me about my son, Jesus? Or what I think of the world's religions? How about my favorite movie?

Me: Ok, what is your favorite movie?

God: The Breakfast Club. I felt I could really relate to those kids.

Me: That wasn't really a serious ques...

God: Although I laughed my ass off watching Blazing Saddles. Do you remember the campfire scene?

Me: It was a classic. So, anyway, God, what motivated you to submit yourself to an interview?

God: I need the publicity.

Me: You? C'mon!

God: It's the truth. With so many people killing and dying in my name, there is a growing segment of the global population that is doubting that I even exist. You know the ones: "How could a wise, all-powerful God allow all of this suffering?"

Me: Well, since the question's on the table...

God: Free will! Free will, man! You think I set you bozos up so I would have to pull your strings 24/7? I have so much more on my plate than man. Ever look outside at night and see the billions and billions of stars?

Me: Yeah.

God: Guess who is responsible for all that? ME! While you're worried about your sickly 401ks and your low-carb diets, I have a freaking universe to run! Not only that, but I have hockey practice Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Me: Must be a real drag.

God: Tell me about it. Hey, toss me one of those Marlboros. I usually smoke Menthol but I forgot to stop by the store on the way here.

Me: So, is Jesus really man's savior? Is he really your son?

God: Do you have kids?

Me: No.

God: Well, let me tell you something about being a single parent. There I am, busting my ass, creating this little universe, with the light and the animals and the plants and all that business, and I basically give it to my kid and tell him to die for man's sins. I mean, it's not like I asked him to cut the grass or clean the pool, which, was a huge waste of money for me since all he did was walk across it. I guess I can't complain. He was a good kid. Never bugged me for money, kind of found his own way, but some days, whoa! it was like he was the anti-Christ...

Me: You mean...?

God: Figure of speech, Einstein. I mean, I love him all right, but's kind of tough when your only son doesn't fight back. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that I'm a pretty tough cat, myself. Here, let me roll up my sleeves. See that? Feel them. Feel those guns.

Me: I'd rather not. Hey, is that a tattoo?

God: Where?

Me: Right there! Does that say "Judas"?

God: Oh, hold on, let me roll it up more. There it is.

Me: Ah! "Judas Priest"! I didn't know you were into metal.

God: I'm not into the hair metal thing, like Poison and Motley Crue. But, I played bass and I can play "Smoke On The Water" from Deep Purple. Thinking about taking up drums.

Me: But, what about the Satanic symbolism in heavy metal music?

God: Please! Have you ever SEEN Satan?

Me: I used to date her.

God: Cut the comedy, kid. Leave it to the pros. Well, Satan doesn't look like what you think he looks like.

Me: What does he look like?

God: He looks like...oh, what's that dude's name? Deezen! Eddie Deezen. He looks like Eddie Deezen.

Me: That's hard to believe.

God: Hey, kid, nothing, and I mean NOTHING beats good PR, and Satan is with the best firm around. He uses Tom Cruise's agency.

Me: But people HATE Tom Cruise.

God: Yeah, but he still makes the cover of a half-dozen supermarket tabloids every week, doesn't he?

Me: Point taken. So, when does the world come to an end?

God: Not sure. I have no timeline.

Me: Yeah, but you're God. You must know.

God: Of course I know, but do you think I'm going to tell you? Next thing you know, you're on Oprah, or screaming about the end of the world on some city street corner wearing a sandwich board. Besides, who would believe you?

Me: Well, I have this interview right here.

God: Ok, Sparky, you're going to tell people that you interviewed me on the deck of Jake's Burgers? Get real, man!

Me: Well, does the world end the way Revelation says it is going to end?

God: Man thinks he knows how the world is going to end. He thinks he knows his future in the afterlife and what it will be like. I think that man is in for a surprise. A BIG surprise.

Me: Care to share a little bit more?

God: No. C'mon, man, help me eat these crab fries.

Me: Do you have a message for mankind? Anything I can pass along?

God: Nope. You're on your own. After all, you people wouldn't have it any other way. I gave you free will. I have no interest in controlling mankind. I'm God, not George Steinbrenner.

Me: What about the...

God: The meaning of life? This old chestnut again. The meaning of life is to have a life of meaning, which means, yes, that the meaning of life is different for everyone. Want a tidy answer? There it is, sport. Slap a bow on it.

Me: What do you think of George Carlin saying you don't exist?

God: I hate to beat on the free will drum again, but, y'know... Anyway, I kind of wish I had his audience.

Me: But, don't you have billions of worshippers?

God: Yeah, but he attracts a hipper audience. You won't find the American Gothic crowd at one of his shows. I still get a kick out of his "Seven Dirty Words" routine.

Me: What...

God: Look, Ken...

Me: Kevin

God: Kevin. Whatever. Instead of asking me these tired old stuffy questions, why don't you ask me something fun? 10 questions. Quick, off the top of your head. Go!

Me: Um, what's your favorite color?

God: Sea foam. Did the downstairs bathroom in that color.

Me: Favorite cereal?

God: Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch. Now you're getting the hang of it.

Me: Favorite album?

God: Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here"

Me: I would have thought "Dark Side of the Moon"

God: "Dark Side" is nice to chill to, but, I just learned how to play the opening to "Wish You Were Here" on guitar and I'm wearing out that CD right now. I usually just download off of Limewire, but, you don't get the same fidelity.

Me: Favorite food?

God: I'm a meat and potatoes kind of God, but sometimes all I want are chicken wings. Not too hot, though. I'm also not against eating Beefaroni straight out of the can.

Me: How about..?

God: Oh, and Godiva chocolate. Have you tried the chocolate raspberry?

Me: Favorite TV show?

God: Oooh, that's tough. We only get basic cable, but I just picked up the entire Sopranos series on eBay.

Me: So, do you know how it ends?

God: Of course I know how it ends - I'm God. I can't BELIEVE they copped out with that ending. I thought Tony was going to get whacked, but then I didn't want him to, but part of me still did. I'll never be able to listen to "Don't Stop Believing" without kicking my Playstation across the room.

Me: Ok, last question, but it has five parts: If you could have dinner...

God: With any five people throughout time, who would they be? You know, I always liked this question. Ok, here goes: Spike Lee, Rachael Ray, that Burger King dude, Jimmy Smits and Justin Timberlake.

Me: You've GOT to be kidding me.

God: Nope. Swear-to-Me. Look, I have to roll. Marshall's is having a sale on cargo shorts and we're almost into summer. Anything else you want to ask me?

Me: I'm sure I'll have a lot to ask you in the afterlife when I'm in Heaven.

God: Yeah, ok. Remember what I said about a "BIG surprise". Here, chief, you can pick up the tab. Nice chatting with you. And stop picking your nose in the car. I can see when you do that and we both know you don't wipe it on a tissue.

Me: Thanks, Lord. You're a real peach.

God: Don't mention it. Ever.

April Fool

It's Friday night and here I am, happily filling my gullet with Coke and beef jerky - or petrified horse anus, if you prefer. I was reminded today that I completely took a Mulligan on February, hence ending my consecutive month string of at least one entry. Now I have to start from scratch if I'm ever going to pass Anais Nin for most consecutive months of blogging. I'll also probably need to live far into the 21st century when the polar ice caps will be no larger than the par-4 at your local miniature golf course.

The pressure. It's unbelievable.

As many of you know, we are on the cusp of one of the most useless "holidays" on the calendar. No, I'm not talking about Valentine's Day or Bring Your Mother to Confession Day. I'm talking about April Fool's Day. A little history here...nah, forget it. Suffice to say that we've all fallen prey to some knucklehead screaming "April Fools!" in our faces. The shame registers long enough for them to escape before you can organize your head in order to say, "Ok, now I must kill you." With kids, it's a little trickier. They giggle and snort their way through their joke, and before you can reach for the Ritalin bottle, they drop the punchline and squeal in triumphant delight. Since they're kids, all you can do is smile patronizingly and think, "Ok, I'll wait until you reach 18 and THEN I must kill you - or send you to college on the other side of the country." Then you head out to Barnes & Noble and buy up all the S.A.T. study guides for your precocious 3rd grader.

April Fool's Day is such a slippery beast. If you're like me...God help you. If you're like me, you get up on a typical April 1st, greet the sun with a soft, warm middle finger, go through your routine, get in the car, flip on the radio where the hosts are playing grab-ass with each other and hitting on every female caller when they announce that the listener with the best April Fool's Day story will win backstage passes to whatever members of the Doobie Brothers are alive and playing at the local VFW hall the following weekend. Good times. Then, you get to work, flip on the computer and...completely forget it's April Fool's Day. You log onto you favorite sports chat forum and see a thread entitled, "Cincinnati Reds moving to Havana". Still not aware of the cloud of idiocy that has invaded the weather system above your desk and completely ignoring the ironic Cold War reference to the "Reds" relocating to Cuba, you click on it, ready to throw your mighty two cents into the fray when you discover some wise-ass kid completely owned you the second you clicked on the link. Immediately following the mental wedgie you just endured, you begin to take inventory of all your academic and intellectual awards, scores and platitudes and conclude, "It's official. I'm getting stupider." This, of course, sets off a chain reaction of self-doubt triggered by the question of whether or not "stupider" is a word or if you should have used "more stupid" instead. Naturally, a Battle Royal erupts in your brain, with neurons and synapses and such being cut down like grain. Eventually, a regal, almost Zen-like calm overtakes your senses and you realize it's 11:30.

Maybe April Fool's Day would be worth celebrating if people actually put a little thought into their tricks.

Instead of: "Hey, the boss called and he said he needs the reports by noon instead of next week"
Try: "Hey, a guy on the night cleaning crew was fired today. They just found out he pissed in the coffee maker last night. What's that, your third cup?"

Instead of: "Dude, your mom was hitting on me yesterday"
Try: "Dude, you do realize that you had a snot hanging in your nose the entire time you were talking to that chick, right? Seriously."

Instead of: Telling your buddy you have a tape of you and his girlfriend having sex.
Try: Sending him the tape

Any one of these suggestions is a sure-fire way to lose old friends, make new enemies, and generally make you one of most reprehensible people on the planet.

But, hey, at least you'll have a shot at seeing the Doobie Brothers next year.

Holmes

About 30-some-odd years ago, my brother, Dave, and I were a couple of relatively well-adjusted kids whose parents just so happened to be hippies. Now, if you think THAT sentence was a train wreck, try this on for size: In the early 1970s, Dave and I shared a bedroom and would goof off at night, jumping on the beds, telling stories to each other and plotting each others' demise. The only time Mom or Dad would enter into our room would be to clean it or mete out some home-spun corporal punishment. Well, on this particular night, we heard a knock at the door. From beyond, we could hear our mother ask, "Can I come in?" Dave and I looked at each other incredulously, as if we had the option of saying, "Um, no, come back later and bring the Cherry Hi-C with those cocktail napkins with funny jokes we can't understand." Mom entered gently and elegantly, as only Mom could, and sat down between us on Dave's bed. Then she asked us,

"If you could have anything for Christmas, what would you want?" Dave and I looked at each other behind Mom's back, with big eyes, ready to yell, "A puppy!" But, before we could get the words out, she added,

"..besides a puppy."

Well, hell, woman, why don't you just crush ALL our dreams in one evening? Dave and I just sat there like drunken gargoyle statues. Then she hit us with the whammy:

"You're going to have a little brother."

Hold the phone. I had held the mantle of youngest, and thereby through default, cutest kid in the family. I still had a few years of milking this to go. I'm not giving this new punk a free ride on my coattails. Just who the hell does he think he is? I'm sure Mom offered other dollops of motherly wisdom before she left the room, but I don't remember much else about that night. I do, however, remember that my free ride was about to end.

My grandfather, on Mom's side, went overboard buying things for the soon-to-be-newborn critter, with one major glitch - he was dead-set that Mom was having a girl. You see, my grandfather had four grandchildren - all boys, and he desperately wanted a granddaughter since we boys were a dime-a-dozen. My folks were trying to decide on a name, and for the longest time, I was damned sure they were going to name him Jeremiah, which sent visions of bullfrogs and elderly Mennonites through my 7-year-old brain, or Jeremy - later to be immortalized by Pearl Jam in a song of the same name where a kid loses his crackers and guns down his entire classroom. When the dust settled, it WAS a boy, my grandfather was devastated, and his name? Jason. Aside from being an Argonaut, a Robards and a machete-wielding killing machine from the Friday the 13th movies, what was there not to like?

When we brought him home, he just laid there like a bruise-colored lump in the basinet. But, he had that powdery new-baby smell. You know the smell I'm talking about. There he was, so helpless and tiny...and getting all of the attention from others that had rightfully been mine! As much as I wanted to plot his doom, I simply couldn't because even fresh from the hospital packaging, he was damned adorable.

And it didn't get any better for me. I will go on record as saying that my younger brother, Jason, was probably the single cutest kid in the history of this planet. Please, save yourself the trouble and embarrassment of showing me photos of your kids or grandkids. Stop it. Just stop it. I’m telling you the truth here, so take my word for it – Jason was the cutest kid in the world. You wanted to pick him up and squeeze him like he was going to give juice. Squeeze him hard enough and he would. He had the softest, smilingest cheeks, and great big brown cartoon anime eyes that laughed from across the room as you stuffed your paycheck into his piggy bank. And the hair! The curliest, whispiest collection of brown curls – hair that could have stuffed the bucket seats in God’s dune buggy.

As he grew older, Dave’s interests and my interests tended to veer away from Jason and back onto and into our own lives. Heck, we were adolescents and moving into our teens; by law, we were ordered to be self-indulgent and selfish. Playing Candyland and Sorry! with your little brother wasn’t big on the teenage hit parade. We had more important things to do like throwing crabapples at cars, smoking cigarettes and walking the streets at night complaining about how bored we were. I never knew if my little brother looked up to me. I just knew that he was disappointed when I couldn’t play a game with him. Jason always wanted to learn something new from me and show me new things that he learned himself. I had Dave and Dave had me, if you come right down to it. Jason had no one. Sure, he had some friends in the neighborhood, but on a rainy night, or any night, really, he had no one to play with. That always ate at me. I always wanted to tell him I was sorry, and maybe I did once or twice, but I don’t know if I really knew what I was saying. Dave blazed trails for me as far as meeting new people, playing Little League, getting into some light mischief, but Jason had no one to show him the ropes. I always hated myself for not taking the time to be more involved in his life in his grammar school years.

On the flip side, he was as loyal as the came. Any time we needed a goalie for street hockey, we would put Jason in front of the net as Dave, Ray, Scott and I would drill slap shot after slap shot at him while playing 2-on-2. Invariably, we would have to stop a half dozen times while calming Jason down after a shot would zap him in the coconut or knock him in the ding-ding. After promises of candy afterwards, he could be counted on to wipe the streaks of tears into his dirty cheeks and play on. Another time, Dave received a telephone call from his friend, Fred. Yes, Fred. Like a lot of households, at least back then, parents would think it was cute for the younger kids to answer the phone. It was absolute misery for anyone who happened to call, but you just had to bite the bullet. Jason answered the phone in the kitchen while Mom, Dad and I were in the living room watching television. The next thing we heard was,

“David’s not here, you motherf***er”

I froze. Besides being absolutely hilarious, I knew I was only one little brother confession from being grounded for the rest of my life. You know the drill: Younger child says swear word, parents (correctly) assume child learned word from older sibling. Said sibling never sees light of day again. They pulled Jason into the living room and drilled him mercilessly on where he learned THAT word. Divine providence must have smiled upon me that day – either that or Jason saw my face peering beyond that of my parents, looking like Munsch’s “Scream” character before he offered up his friend, Jackie, as a sacrifice to the foul-mouthed alter. They asked him if he was sure, but Jason stood tall, and said he was sure. I knew I owed him one.

Yes, I owed him one, but time and the fact I WAS an older brother tend to distort things, and being that I was an older brother, when entertainment was lacking, I volunteered the services of my younger brother to steer me through those moments of boredom. There were many times when our folks would go out at night, leaving the three of us to our devices. One of our favorite things was to turn off all the lights so the house was pitch black and wait to hear Jason walking into the room calling for us. Then we’d leap out behind him and scare the caca down his leg. Other times, Jason and I would take turns tying each other to a chair in the basement – the unfinished basement, I might add – I would always easily get out of the knots (believe it or not, it’s a talent I’ve always had), but I could tie the most sadistic knots. After helping him out a few times to gain his trust, I would fashion a particularly nasty set of knots and watch him try to get free. When he gave up, I would walk up the stairs, turn off the lights and make sure he heard me locking the basement door. The screams would be deafening.

But, sadly, that wasn’t the worst thing we did to Jason. The worst thing was when Dave and I went into the washroom with an old t-shirt a butcher knife and some ketchup. Jason and I would be in the other part of the basement – maybe making knots, who knows – while Dave was pouring ketchup all over his shirt and the knife. Then Dave called me to the washroom where we engaged in a mock argument, the result of which was Dave screaming and stumbling out of the washroom with “blood” all over his shirt and collapsing at Jason’s feet after which I came bursting out, “bloody” knife held high, looking at Jason and yelling, “You’re NEXT!”

Folks, I’ve never seen someone lose gravity like I saw my little brother at that moment. After some near-aerobic laughter from Dave and I, we finally let Jason in on the joke, but we never scared him again. We figured he’d had enough. I still feel bad about it today, but only after laughing for a little bit first.

Although his name is Jason, I haven’t called him that for over 25 years. To me, he’s always been “Holmes.” It all started in 1978, the first year of desegregation of the public schools in Delaware. We had African-American kids in our schools already, but we were to have a greater percentage of minorities in our population than we ever experienced. It was a learning experience, and one I’m glad I went through, in retrospect. One of the first things I picked up was how every inner-city kid would call each other “Homes” with the same nonchalance white kids would say, “Dude” or “Man” today. Being white and tragically un-hip, I thought they were saying “Holmes." For some reason, it struck me as hilarious. So, one day at the dinner table, I turned to Jason and said, “Hey, Holmes, pass me the gravy.” He laughed and said, “My name’s not Holmes.” I said it was. Then, he hit me off guard. He said, “If I’m Holmes, who are you?” I said he could call me “Hoss,” like that guy from Bonanza. I have no idea why I said “Hoss.” I have never even seen an episode of Bonanza and probably never will. Well, he called me Hoss from then on and I’ve called him “Jason” probably a half-dozen times since then. He’s always been Holmes to me after that.

Time went on, and Jason grew up…and kept growing and growing, until he could pick Frisbees off the neighborhood roofs. He eventually grew to be 700 feet tall. Swear to God.

Along the way to becoming a teenager, then a young adult, then a man, and now to a father in his mid-30s, he’s gone from being the cutest child in the history of the world to the frail and fragile kid just looking for someone to play with to the cynical young adult with a deep, deep creative streak to a man looking for happiness to a father of three who, despite the otherwise normal harsh realities of the world, has found his happiness in his wife and family.

I remember how I would always try to give him advice in his teenage and young adult years. He didn’t want to hear it. Just because I made certain mistakes didn’t mean he was going to make them. I was trying to help him out the best I could, but, I suppose the best thing I could have done was let him make his own mistakes and just be there if he ever needed me. It turns out he did just fine on his own. He’s going to be all right.

Still, not a week goes by that I don’t wish I had played a game of Candyland with him. Maybe, just maybe, I could have learned something from him instead.

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader

You've probably all been wondering where the heck I've been lately. I can hear the chorus of questions now:

"How come he hasn't posted anything lately?"

"Did he forget about us?"

"Just HOW many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"

Well, unbunch your undies, I'm here. Usually a topic just pops up and grabs me then pulls me to my computer and demands I start writing - at gunpoint. Since I last wrote, Thanksgiving, Christmas and various other holidays have come and gone and New Year's Eve is tomorrow. In other words, there's been nothing to write about. However, I DID find something that caught my eye and it's currently holding me here at my computer - at gunpoint, no less.

Have you ever heard of the Uncle John's Bathroom books? If you haven't, get your narrow behind to the book store and quickly buy up every copy on the shelf. Uncle John has been putting out a new volume every year for the past 18 years or so, full of wild stories, anecdotes and my favorite of all - fun facts. He's also put out many other titles covering a similar style on history, weather, science, Hollywood...well, you get the picture. I currently have a metric ton of his books in my bathroom, so there is no room to shower. The sacrifices we make.

One book that I can, and have, read several times over is Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts and Bizarre Information. It's virtually perfect save for the fact the title could have been a little longer. For the Tidbit Maven, the Baron of Useless Information and the Cliff Clavin in all of us, let's have a look-see at some of what Uncle John and the gang at The Bathroom Reader's Institute have prepared for us:

Women have a keener sense of smell than men - Well, they didn't have the benefit of pulling each others' fingers or being in a car in the dead of winter with their drinking buddies as everyone unloads a blast of beer farts at each other. Such things can render your sense of smell legally dead.

The average American develops his or her first phobia at age 13 - How unlucky can you get?

Ernest Hemingway's rules for manhood: plant a tree, fight a bull, write a book, have a son - Well, three out of four ain't bad as far as my life is concerned. I've fought a tree, planted a book and written a lot of bull.

The ancient Sumerians had a goddess of beer - Little known fact is that the entire Sumerian civilization was made up of frat boys.

The world's longest earthworms...can grow to as long as 12 feet and as thick as a soda can - In other words, he's your typical AOL chatroom male.

The average office chair with wheels will travel eight miles this year - Constantly having to move the office eight miles down the road is the biggest expense in the modern-day business world.

Sixty-one percent of American students find school boring - Ninety-one percent of American teachers agree.

In July 2004 Colin Powell sang and danced to "YMCA" for foreign ministers at an Asian security summit in Indonesia - There is nothing I can add that would make this more humorous.

The Pentagon uses up 666 rolls of toilet paper on an average day - Finally, something I have in common with our government.

Charles Darwin's cousin invented the IQ test - The idea came to him from a burning bush.

There are six pounds of pennies in the average American home - And they're all wedged under your couch cushions.

Spiders can eat their own weight in one meal - Just like Britney Spears.

When asked to name the odor that best defines America, 39 percent of Americans said "barbecue" - 38 percent said "new-car smell". 10 percent said "beer farts".

Three percent of all photographs taken in the U.S. are taken at Disneyland or Disney World - In 1978, my dad accounted for 50% of those photos.

An alligator has a brain the size of your thumb - Just like Britney Spears.

Three percent of all English surnames are derived from animal names - So, if your name is Calvin Rhinoceros, Edwina Cuttlefish or Reg Llama, you're probably the only one in the history of this great planet. Unless you're a "Junior".

If you feed beer to a laboratory rat, it will live six times longer than a rat that drinks only water - And it will never move out of his mother's basement.

Difficult, Tennessee, gets its name because its residents couldn't agree on a name for the town - "Screw You, Buddy, Tennessee" and "Up Yours, Tennessee" came in second and third place, respectively.

Leonardo de Vinci figured out that the rings of a tree reveal its age - Only years later, did scientists think of just asking the tree for some I.D.

Cats sweat through their paws - So does the average interview candidate.

Christopher Columbus' fee for "discovering" America: about $300 - And worth almost every penny.

Americans eat 4 million pounds of bacon and 175 million eggs every day - Just like Britney Spears.

Peru's Inca Indians were the first to cultivate potatoes, around 200 B.C. - Finally someone to blame for curly fries.

J, the youngest letter in the English alphabet, was not added until the 1600s - The hazing it received from the letters "I" and "K" was legendary.

Ice covers about 15 percent of the earth's landmass - Just like...well, you know who.

And that's just a small sample of the most amazing, mind-blowing useless information you'll find in Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts and Bizarre Information. Amaze your friends! Bore co-workers! Initiate your divorce! It's all there for you, and if that doesn't work, don't worry - there'll be another one next year! Not one of my better efforts, but I was under the gun to get an essay out this month. Speaking of which, just remember that the United States is first in the world in gun ownership per capita. Finland is second.

Well, nature calls and I have an Uncle John's book in hand. It's gonna get ugly - quick.

Just like Britney Spears.

Shoe-Be-Doo-Be-Doo

Shoes. The mere mention of the word and women the world over break out into an ecstasy that men equate with their team intercepting a pass and returning it for a touchdown. To win the game. In overtime. In the Super Bowl.

Hey, women don't understand our preoccupation with The Three Stooges, explosions and porn, so why should the absence of an extra X chromosome give us any insight into the magical world of shoes? They're shoes, for Christ's sake! They go on your feet. They protect you from damage when rounding the corner into the living room and slamming your foot on the coffee table. They allow you into convenience stores as long as you're also wearing a shirt. They enable the police to conduct the proper forensic tests after you flee the crime scene.

The point is that the average man (and let's face it, all men are average) owns about five pairs of shoes. He owns shoes for work, a pair or sneakers, shoes for formal occasions, another pair of sneakers, and a third pair of sneakers. Women, however, own approximately 400 pairs of shoes, 390 of which she'll wear once or maybe twice, depending if it's a Leap Year.

I decided to do a little bit of sleuthing in the women's shoe department (since sleuthing in the women's undergarment section was a bit too dangerous - and full of other men). I discovered that there is a different shoe for every woman. Some women shape their daily personality depending upon which objects they put on their feet. And yes, I did say "daily" personality. So, without delaying you much further, let's take a look at some of the fruits from the shoe tree, shall we?

PUMPS



A sensible shoe with just a hint of "Banker by Day/Bacardi by Night." Full leather uppers with a rogue-ish chunky heel says, "Bartender, make it a double" while checking your Blackberry in between fingerfuls of Bloomin' Onion at the Outback Steakhouse.


Part ergonomic foot friend, part jawless fish from the late Devonian Period. Made from the finest synthetic fibers, it's as soft as an infant's head when rubbed top to bottom. Rub in the opposite direction and it can smooth the rough edges of a diamond.



Ah, the garden-variety pump. Every woman possesses at least several dozen, in just as many colors, and has several dozen outfits to go with each pair. Don't try to do the math, it won't be on the final.




BOOTS

What would you get if you combined the 1980's fashion sense of Madonna with the torture sense of the 15th-Century Spanish Inquisition? Why, you'd get this charming little demon of the Devil's footwear. The razor-sharp heel and toe combo demands you convert, while the double buckle shows your flirty side and that you're not afraid to lean into your semi-circle of drunk girlfriends to sing Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" for the 500th time on the bar patio.

Nanook of the North? Forget it! You're Nanette of the North! Be the envy of the ice floe with the latest in Arctic foot fashion. Made only from synthetic bunnies who died of old age, you'll be mockin' the moccasins at the next whale blubber-carving shindig.



Don't have blonde hair and blue eyes? No worries! You'll be knockin' them over at the Reichstag with these sexless beauties! Made from only the most boring cows, you'll be goose-stepping in no time to your favorite Teutonic tunes, frau-Valkyrie!



EVENING

Let's be honest here. How the hell does this shoe stay on? What is that paisley-looking knick-knack on the grill? Why does this shoe have a halo? For the woman who has everything and decides she wants a pair of stupid-looking shoes, too.



"Luke, you're going to have to sell your Speeder (before we can fly with Han Solo and Chewbacca to Alderan)" Equal measures sailboat prowl and Star Wars desert glider, it's warp 10 to the future in this snazzy foot conveyance object. Just don't transport yourself between Memorial Day and Labor Day, starship trooper. Roses not included. Yeah, we knew you'd ask.



The serious shoe for serious women, who like things serious. Don't mess with women who wear shoes like this. They'll kick your ass and then light their cigarettes with matches struck off your bleeding forehead. Faux-decorative binding ring can be activated with big toe, releasing deadly neuro-toxins. A serious shoe.


MULES and CLOGS

You're sassy! You're sporty! You like your Britney and you like it loud! You pine for the days of toe-socks and designer jeans. Desperately hold onto your youth with a pair of these hellions. Excellent for taking off and putting back on...and then taking them off again! Available only up to size 5.




Five cups of coffee and you still can't get started in the morning? We hear ya! When you can't be bothered to bend over to put on your shoes and don't even care if they're on the proper feet, try a pair of these on for size. Engineered by the finest chaise lounge scientists, this low-maintenance little number is perfect for those days when you feel like you just can't finish what you...


Feeling bold? Like taking chances and risking public humiliation? Then ease on into these puppies! Made on a dare by armless apes, they're perfect for pretending to fly or shocking the local gentry into passing a law to outlaw you showing your face on Main Street during business hours.


SANDALS



They're flip flops. They cost $29.00. Twenty-nine freaking dollars! Apparently made from the rarest Styrofoam and pipe cleaners, they're not sandals - they're SCANDALS!



Look, folks, I can't make heads or tails out of these things. Something about a ridiculous blocky sole, material clipped from your grandmothers sofa - the one under the plastic - and apron strings. I have to say, though, they look pretty comfy. Not that I would wear them. Just sayin'. All I mean is if I was a woman...forget it. Moving on...



Enjoying retirement? Just ordered a second copy of your AARP card because the first two wore out? Taken to wearing sun hats the size of a kiddie pool and sunglasses so big they border on novelty items? Then this sandal is for you! Complaining about the wait at the buffet will be a thing of the past while this little number cradles the cracked skin of your well-weathered wheel.

FLATS

Out to kick some ass? Protesting the abuses of a male-dominated society? Going to pick up the latest Indigo Girls CD? You'll be posh in the mosh pit with these steel-toed ambassadors of violence and anger. Accessorize with white socks and cuffed jeans, because, frankly, that's all you own.


Dude, you'll be totally groovy with the latest in asexual hippie footwear. Made from only natural fibers, you'll be bogarting the attention of everyone in the room. Secret panel under the heal allows for easy stash of your stash when The Man comes a-calling to hassle you.




Salute that flag! Bake that apple pie! Wave to your neighbor from behind your picket fence, because you wear the true All-American shoe! Classic, practical and durable, it's the shoe for every woman from Eve to Evening.




So, that's my mini-review of women's shoes. Tune in next time when I review women's underwear. I'll just have to wait until it's not so crowded.

Clothes to the Edge

I'm a slob.

No, I'm not one of those beer-commercial bozos who champions his maleness by going to the grocery store in his pajama bottoms, scratching rude parts of his body and unleashing wave after wave of lunch meat belches so foul they part the hair of the person ahead of him. Instead, I'm the guy who slowly devolved into waking up amongst the McDonald's wrappers, ATM receipts and orphaned pen caps asking, "Where did all this crap come from?" Hey, I'm not proud of it. I survive amongst it, I manage around it, but I'm surely not proud of it. I am anything but metrosexual. The closest I come to being Metro is the fact I've seen Fritz Lang's classic movie, Metropolis, a half dozen times. Toss in the fact I've taken public transportation to and from New York City and enjoy the occasional bagel with my coffee and you have the sum total of anything in my life even remotely resembling "Metro."

Why am I telling you this? For the obvious fact that I went clothes shopping today. Wait, let me amend that. I bought a shirt and a pair of khakis. I don't "shop" - I buy. I see something I like and buy it. No trying it on, no waiting around for sales, no driving around to different stores to compare prices. Nope. It's get in, get out and go the hell home.

"Will you just get on with the damned story?!?!?!?!?!"

Yeah, ok. So, there I was in the store, and I'm sizing up some polos when an odd thing happened. I noticed that the only shirts I was even considering were dark. I asked myself why that was. Then it hit me. I'm not buying shirts for how they look; I'm buying shirts based solely on their ability to cover up food stains.

A little history here:

I am the world's messiest consumer of food. I'm a full body-contact eater. If you can cook it, I can wear it. I am the unofficial record holder for the greatest variety of foods worn in a lifetime. Now here's the part where you chime in and say, "Well, I always seem to be wearing white when I have pasta and I never fail to get some little spots of sauce on me." Amateur. I wore a personal pan pizza WITH crazy bread down the front of my shirt. I got french toast in my hair. And once, I ended up with the entire Country Buffet salad bar in my front pocket - even in the useless little mini-pocket. One day at work, a co-worker came up to me and said, "Hey, Chief, you've got some mustard on your shirt." I looked all over and couldn't see anything. "No, it's right there." He pointed to my shoulder. I looked over and there it was. How the hell did I get mustard on my shoulder? ON MY SHOULDER! Like Sherlock Holmes, I reconstructed my lunch. I had a ham and cheese sandwich on a kaiser roll. Apparently, when I bit into the sandwich with the force of a 100-megaton bomb, a fissure in the top part of the roll opened up just enough to allow a stream of mustard to gracefully arc its way into the air and crash land onto my shoulder. I have ruined more shirts, trousers, suits, ties - you name it - than any 10 people you could name. You're probably asking, "What are you, a complete idiot?" No, I'm still paying on the installment plan.

Anyway, back to the clothing store. Look, I know I'm nowhere near the shape I was in the salad days of my life, but the clothes racks were so close together I felt like I was stuck in the gears of some evil puppet master's voodoo clock while trying to navigate my way through the store. I'm not joking. Had it not been for the sales staff, I'm sure I would have been taken down in the 20% Off aisle and by daybreak my bones would be whitening beneath the Dockers display.

All in all, though, I seem to have escaped relatively unscathed. No more buying clothes for their style. For me, it's function over form, and that function is to not be walking through the hallways at work with the soaked-in remains of an errant spoonful of chili in the shape of Greenland visible on my chest.

I must say, I like the new shirt. I just put it on and it fits, so I'm happy and all is right with the world.

Hey, gotta run. The pizza's here.

Raisin D'Etre

When I was about 11 or 12, I bit into a Chocodile.

Not familiar with Chocodiles? Basically, they are Twinkies covered in that industrial chocolate only Hostess knows how to make. And they are good. Damned good. But, on this occasion, after I bit into this particular Chocodile, I was met with a spectacular, mouth-gasming...nothing. No cream. Nuttin'. Nada. "That's odd," I thought. So, in typical Bobby Brady fashion, I shrugged my shoulders and went in for another bite. Again nothing. By now I was a good 1/3 of the way through my treat and the sugary, brain-shocking cream was nowhere to be found. I ate my way all the way through that damned thing and the scoreboard read:






Bogus Chocodile - 1
Unhappy Boy - 0






I was steamed. I didn't have enough money to buy another Chocodile, but even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered. Someone was going to have to pay. So, I broke out the #2 pencil, a sheet of lined paper and went to work writing the company a letter saying how displeased I was to have been duped out of my cream filling. I mentioned that since I was so young, if they planned on having me as a customer into my disposable income years they had better hop to it and right this wrong. About a month later, I received a letter from the company apologizing for the error along with a coupon for a free box of any Hostess product I wanted from my local store. Justice was served, birds were chirping, and songs of "Kumbaya" spread across the land.

The Chocodile story was actually the last thought that came to my head as I sat down to write this, however, but in the grand scheme of things, I suppose I didn't skid off tangent as much as I originally thought. It all started the other day when I picked up a pack of Raisinettes. There I was, happily chowing down on a box when I noticed than one of my Raisinette pebbles didn't have a raisin in it! It was void of raisin! It was a raisinless, anti-raisin, raisin-lacking Raisinette! I was crushed.

Immediately, I started to go through my mental Rolodex in hopes of finding other food disappointments to help me put this whole charade into perspective. I thought about how befuddled I was as a youngster when I found a Cheerio inside a box of Franken Berry. I'd look at it like a primate eyeballing a radio knob, periodically sticking it in my mouth and pulling it out to see if it was edible. I was certain that the Cheerios silo didn't cross streams with the Franken Berry silo, so I chalked it up to aliens and popped that sucker into my mouth.

Don't tell me you don't get the same mental hiccup when you order the Whopper Jr. meal and find an onion ring in your french fries. You stare at it, try to communicate with it, reason with it, all in all ignoring the fact that it probably just fell into your fries while under the heat lamp. If you ordered onion rings, you'd just shoot it into your maw before you could say "Jack Robinson." Of course, it's inevitable in the reverse scenario that you would find a renegade french fry in your order of onion rings and resume your ballet of primitive head tilts.

It's probably no surprise to you that I, like many Earthlings, enjoy the occasional packet of M&Ms. Yeah, yeah, I know I mentioned Raisinettes earlier, but put away the floss and the clucking tongue for five minutes, ok? Anyway, back to the M&Ms. The M&M thing is usually divided into two camps - those who prefer plain and those who prefer peanut. I'm firmly entrenched in the Plain M&Ms tent. However, from time to time, I'll get a wild hair up my cinnamon ring for Peanut M&Ms. Now this next part is for the Plain M&Ms folks since the Peanut M&Ms people are already very familiar with what I am going to say. There is a certain way to eat Peanut M&Ms, and that is to bite into the candy around the middle and gently chew the chocolate around the peanut and lift, leaving the exposed, denuded peanut half. Then, you chew the remaining chocolate off the peanut and flick the goober into your mouth. Pretty simple, right? Well, it is. And I am certain the world's population of Peanut M&M eaters would be happy eating their candy until rapture if it wasn't for one thing. That's right, you guessed it - the booger peanut. You know what I'm talking about, partner. It's that one sort of dark peanut that, when you bite into it, all sorts of terrible nastiness overwhelms your mouth. You're reaching for napkins, wiping your tongue on the sleeve of your shirt, swallowing fire - anything to get that knee-buckling taste out of your mouth. At that point, the party is over, the keg is kicked, and you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. It's the food version of farting on the first date.

But, let's not give ALL the grief to George Washington Carver's favorite legume. Does anyone remember Upton Sinclair? Anyone? No? Oh, ok, you in the back there.

"Um, he wrote that song "Upton Girl" for Billy Joel or something?"

"Sit down."

Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle," which, while taking on such topics as Socialism and poverty, he tells of meat packing factories where animal parts and people (PEOPLE!) fell into the tanks and were sold to the unsuspecting public. The book came out in 1906 and since that time the Food & Drug Administration has done a better job of keeping Chuck from being Ground Chuck. Why am I telling you all this? I am telling you this because every time I bite into a damn sloppy joe, I inevitably find something small and bony NOT named Kate Moss bouncing between my molars. It's stultifying (go ahead, grab your dictionary; I'll still be here) and gives me the full body gross-out shake. After that, who wants to go tucking into the rest of the sandwich? And dammit, I LOVE sloppy joes...at least until I get to the shin bone or whatever the hell it was I bit into. Ever have chicken salad? Great stuff, huh? How about when you hit that piece of rubbery gristle or whatnot? I've given the biggest girlish yelps when I hit that sandbar in my sandwich. Not only is the sandwich ruined, but, I'm walking away from the chips and the pickle spear, as well.

It's just as well. None of the foods I mentioned above have any real nutritional value. Some of them have negative nutritional value, as far as I'm concerned. But, hey, if I didn't eat sloppy joes, Franken Berry and Raisinettes at least at some point in my life, then you wouldn't have such neat stories from me. I need SOMETHING to write about.

After all, it's my Raisin d'etre.

I'd Like a Word With You

We've all heard the expression, "A picture is worth a thousand words" many times in our lives, but I've never really subscribed to the math. I suppose it all depends upon the picture. For example, if you show me a picture of a corn chip, I might max out around 600 words. 800 if it's barbecue. On the other hand, show me a picture of a monkey wearing a Def Leppard concert T-shirt while trying to pick up nerdy chicks in the hotel corridor outside of a Star Trek convention, and I'm fairly confident I could pump out 1,500...2,000 if he's wearing "Vulcan" ears and giving the "live long and prosper" hand jive.

But, you know, maybe all of those cliché-hounds should take another look at that expression. Maybe, just maybe, a word is worth a thousand pictures.

Now, don't try to get me in trouble with the Picture Lobby. I have nothing against them and their pork barrel word worths. It just seems to me that a thousand words was too tidy a sum. A hundred words would be selling it short. With the exception of Jessica Simpson, Bluetooth technology and reality programs, practically everything is worth at least 100 words. Saying a picture is worth 500 words is a little too precise, like you're getting a bit cutesy and should be shaved down and have someone put cosmetics on your ass. A thousand words just FEELS like the right amount. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Too cumbersome to say. A million words? Now you're sounding like Dr. Evil. How about a billion words? Well, hell, if you're going to say a billion, why not say a cajillion? An ecky-ecky-ecky-swoomvillion? Infinity? I swear, if someone said that to me, I would have jacked them up and given them the mother of all Indian burns.

Think about it. Mention the word "grandmother." Tell me you don't immediately get the impression in your head of sweet little grandma, scuttling around her kitchen trying to stuff one last meatball into your gullet, rehashing stories of the Old Country, and teaching you how to play Keno. For those of us lucky enough to have known our grandparents, whether they are still with us today or not, just the word "grandmother" or "grandfather" can let loose a deluge of shimmering memories. Like someone on a 1970s game show, you reach out and grab as many memories as you can while they all fly and swirl around you in the money tank. Only this time, you're not stuffing dollar bills into your terrycloth tube top or your Rayon silk shirt. Remember when your grandfather would tell you stories about guys he knew in the war? How about helping him pick the tomatoes in his little corner garden? Or when you went to or watched the ball game together? And honestly - could anyone lay on a hug like your grandmother?

Try it yourself. There is an endless ocean of words, in every language known to mankind. Words like "marriage," "vacation" and "family" can generate a multitude of positive images (or negative images, depending upon which stage of your life you are in). Maybe something as innocuous as the word "key" can light the fuse for you. You imagine a key in your mind. Maybe it's to your first house. Maybe it's to the beach house you used to share with friends during the summer. Maybe it's a car key. Maybe your first car. After flashing on that moment for a while, maybe you get to thinking about your friend's car, and how cool it looked. Remember when you and your friends went driving in the valley that one night, and you parked by the big rope swing that hung from the oak tree? Remember everybody taking turns swinging on the rope and splashing into the creek? Remember that guy or gal you really liked who showed up with their friends too? Remember the tunes playing from one of the cars and the sound of aluminum cans being crushed after consumption? Remember having that first kiss that night from someone you used to daydream about during social studies class? A thousand pictures, right? Probably more. All from one word that doesn't even play a part in the end memory - "key."

Here's another exercise for you. Try following the same string to a different destination with an abstract word such as "love." You're more apt to imagine examples of love. Maybe an image of a little boy giving a girl a daisy or two senior citizens walking in the park still holding hands after all these years. You might even conjure up a past relationship or two in your mind; however, it's just not the same, is it? A word of something tangible can click the tumblers in motion from the inside, and the images you get are fuller, richer and much more meaningful than an abstract word like "love," which then forces you to find definition rather than uncovering a heartfelt memory.

And these memories are all around you. You don't have to look far. Maybe you hear a name on television or the radio that reminds you of a friend you had in school that you haven't talked to in years - someone who used to be your best friend. Follow the "key." Follow not the picture, but the frame. Hell, follow the damned toaster! Reach back and remember from time to time. They're YOUR images. You're allowed.

For you see, a word can be worth more than a thousand pictures - it can be worth a thousand memories, as well.

Getting Your Point Across

I was watching a show on The History Channel earlier this week. I mention that because I would like to give the impression that I am somehow more intellectually-inclined than I actually am and impress the 0.00001% of you who actually give a damn. That's right, the same percentage of people who actually work for The History Channel. Anyway, I was watching a special on drugs and their history in America. Fascinating stuff. We made it into the 1980s and there it was - THE commercial. It was the "This is your brain on drugs" advertisement. Next to Clara Peller's "Where's the Beef?" Wendy's commercial, this had to be the most hilarious thing on TV. Somewhere in the 1980s, a conference room filled with barrel-bellied, balding men and priggish women with tightly screwed-on hairdos trying to hammer home a message "that kids will understand." Right. Let me tell you something about kids in the 1980s that is pretty much true of kids today - you're not going to scare them away from drugs with ads like that. When I saw that commercial, I was in my early 20s and after the voiceover said "This is your brain," showed an egg, then fried the egg in a skillet and finished with "And this is your brain on drugs. Any questions?" I said, "Yeah, can I get a side of bacon, a large orange juice and a couple of slices of unseeded rye toast? Oh, and maybe throw a couple more eggs on there, too, since I'm stoned and have one hell of an appetite."

One of the more humorous aspects of that commercial is that, chances are, those very same upstanding citizens who created that campaign were probably the very same flower children we saw on grainy 16MM film at Woodstock, painting peace symbols on their asses, dancing like frogs in a blender and smoking joints made with banana-flavored rolling papers. Hell, some of them were probably doing lines of blow off their daily organizers in the bathroom stall. Remember, folks, this was before drug screening was commonplace in corporate America.

Look, if you're going to try to put fear into your intended targets, do it the right way, the old school way. Take LBJ, for instance. He was a bully par excellence. He would zero in on some other politician and buttonhole him into submission so badly that the other guy would leave a puddle on the floor. And speaking of which, Johnson would often hold meetings while he was on the toilet taking his morning "constitutional." Could you imagine suppressing the gag reflex with the presidential waft hanging in the air? He was big on eye contact, too. I don't know about you, but looking a person in the eye while they bear down and turn apple-red is the time to start working on that resume for something a bit more uplifting, like, say, inseminating a steer. Yet, he made sure he was able to get his points across. Who, in their right mind, is going to forget one of those meetings?

Speaking of presidents, let's not forget the wife of another one. Nancy Reagan, the undisputed Diva of the White House, made a guest appearance on one of the most popular shows of the early 1980s - "Diff'rent Strokes". Her message? "Just Say No." Well, hell, if that's all it takes, why am I bothering to have a good time when I could just say "no"? Think of all that could have been avoided. Don't get me wrong, it's a great message, but it's also incredibly naive. Maybe she should have said "Just say 'In Moderation' or "Just say 'I'd like to, but if my folks found out, they'd kill me' ". And what better show for the former First Lady to appear? After all, "Diff'rent Strokes" was the pinnacle of wholesomeness. Of course, Dana Plato went on to abuse drugs, get arrested multiple times, posed nude and died young. Todd Bridges also became an alleged substance abuser and arrested for weapons charges and vehicular assault - not to mention the worst crime of all: appearing on Celebrity Boxing with Vanilla Ice. Oh, and Gary Coleman? His crime was being Gary Coleman.

If you're going to have any kind of impact at all, either speak to the individual at his or her own level (and I'm not just talking about parents talking to kids here) or at least, swing the axe of advantage, be it by denying privileges, year-end bonuses, or using the Vulcan Mind-Meld, just as long as it's not for selfish or damaging reasons. Slogans and laugh-out-loud "messages," such as the fried egg commercial, are as productive as bong hits in the boardroom.

I hope I got my point across. Any questions?

They Say It's Your Birthday!

There's been a lot of talk about birthdays lately. Actually, there hasn't, but I needed a way to open this story. A while back, I wrote about turning 40. As the year moves along, more and more of my college friends are falling under the black curtain of a new personal decade, and with it, the lament of "I was just 25 yesterday! What the hell happened???" Well, I'll tell you what happened. Tomorrow happened. And it's going to happen again. And again. And again.

I'm not much of a student of the Bible or any other religious literature. I know enough to get me by, however. For example, I know that Charlton Heston WAS Moses, that Noah forgot the unicorns, and that Pulp Fiction's Jules Winfield was a "Bad Mutha-F*r" when he'd recite Ezekiel 25:17 before popping a cap in yo' ass. I also know that Adam lived to be an old man. A VERY old man, like 900-years-old old. I also know that some cat named Methuselah was supposedly the oldest living man - ever! What was he, 969 years old? Thanks to the folks at Wikipedia.com, they have information that Methuselah actually only lived until he was 78 years old. Not bad, considering the life expectancy of a man in Sierra Leone is only 44 these days, but a few days short of 969 years. Now, I'm no mathematics genius, but 78 is roughly 8% of 969. Now, if Jesus was supposedly 33 when he was crucified, if the same math was applied, he'd have been a little over two and a half years old upon his death. I don't know about you, but, from all the paintings in my grandmother's house, he looked a little older than his classmates.

But, enough of all that. Before you know it, I'll be accused of being something I'm not. Instead, I'd like to focus on that time-honored tradition of birthdays - or more specifically, birthday parties. I remember the birthday parties from my youth. Funny hats with elastic string, cartoon animal napkins, and presents that were far more enjoyable back then than they would ever be today, such as coloring books, Super-Elastic Bubble Plastic and Silly String. And tell me you didn't used to press Silly Putty onto the comics page and try to stretch Beetle Bailey's face in a thousand directions. Back then, you weren't self-conscious about opening gifts in front of people. You just tore into them. The gifts like socks and underwear from some tuned-out relative were met with the miserable "Thank you, Aunt so-and-so..." that your mom used to whisper into your ear. And money. Nothing beat money. I don't care if it was a dollar bill or the crisp ten-dollar bills my great-grandmother used to give me, money was a win-win gift to give and receive. I'll always take cash, thank you. And speaking of my great-grandmother, those bills were so crisp and so sharp (she said she would always insist on a "new" $10 bill from the teller) that you could use it to cut a hole in the fabric of the time/space continuum.

As we grow older, we become a bit more selective and demanding about our birthday parties. We insist on having them at places away from the home and we pester our folks for the REALLY expensive stuff. Placating us with cake, ice cream, and those damned trick candles that would always light back up wasn't going to do it for us anymore. In addition, being invited to a "cool" kid's birthday party did more than just put you in esteemed company for the day, oh no. What it effectively did was elevated you to the "in-crowd" that so many of us longed to belong to when we were young. Of course all of us now say, "Oh, I didn't belong to any specific group. I kinda got along with everybody." Right. Pinhead.

As I got older, the parties kids my age had subtlety changed. There was always at least one kid whose parents were of the mind set, "What's a beer or two going to harm?" as they upended another bottle of Jack Daniels into the punch bowl. These parties were the social event of the season until summer came around and peoples' parents went away on vacation and left the teenagers home. But that's another story. Many people's first kisses happened at these parties and more than a couple of lucky jerks went to sleep that night knowing what a girl's boob felt like. Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Capture the Flag, and Duck, Duck, Goose were replaced by Spin the Bottle, Post Office, and Puking in the Azaleas.

It's of little use to go into the typical person's 21st birthday party, because the only way you truly remember it is when other people told you how much fun you had until you woke up the next morning with one of your eyebrows shaved off and peanut butter on your scrotum. After that, there were no more birthdays to look forward to. Now came the inelegant slide into meaningless birthdays. The dreaded 29th birthday, where you said, "That's it! I'm not having any more birthdays." Well, of course you did, sunshine. There just wasn't much more to celebrate. Jack Benny made a career out of poor violin playing, effeminate mannerisms, and being 39. Life goes on, amigo. With modern science and medicine, we are now effectively living twice as long as we were 150 years ago. Hell, at the rate we're going, the average expected life span for a human being will soon probably be over 90 years old.

I'm 40 now. In another 40 years, I'll be 80, which, if my math is right, would make me older than Methuselah.

And I'll still take cash.

Food for Thought

Let’s get everything out in the open here. We’re friends, and as friends, we are not only entitled to being truthful with each other, we’re sort of obligated. So, I’m baring my soul to you in order to strengthen our bonds of friendship – either that or disgust you to the point of frantically dusting yourself off like a homecoming queen walking face-first into a giant spider web. Here we go:

I’m a pain in the ass when it comes to food.

Like any typical human, I have an attraction to being alive. Part of that equation is the consumption of food and drink. Not only is it a necessity, but, like sleep, it’s one of my favorite things in life. It’s right up there with reruns of The Simpsons.

I wasn’t always a fussy eater. When I was young, if you laid something marginally digestible within arm’s length of me, I was at least going to have an exploratory taste. I had no biases. Applesauce and pudding were just as likely to be on my menu as dog hair and pencil erasers. Then, one day, having discerned that, yep, I sure do love the taste of sugar, I decided to help myself to a titanic amount of it. So, I grabbed the container, tilted my head back, and proceeded to pour a heroic portion into my gullet. One problem – it wasn’t sugar. It was salt. I felt like I was on an episode of the 1960’s Batman series, with a voice-over saying, "What’s THIS?" I don’t remember much except getting violently sick at the foot of the stairs and making a mental note to not try this in the future. It was the first time food had been bad to me. I felt like I had been betrayed; however, there’s not much you can do to exact revenge on food. You can’t short-sheet broccoli, jump vanilla extract for a fight after school behind the Woodshop building, or give ice cream a wedgie. No, you just have to ball your fists and shake them at the sky like the hero of some great Nordic saga. Oh, and read the label next time.

Whereas my first negative rumble with food was an all-around disaster and loss for the home team, my second negative experience with food had a somewhat more satisfying conclusion. It was dinnertime, circa 1970-something. Mom, who has a black belt in cooking, made some sweet potatoes, or candied yams or some such thing. I don’t know the difference now and I certainly did not know the difference then. Anyway, the smell…well, have you ever smelled sweet potatoes? I mean really shoved your honker into the abyss and taken a good whiff of that stuff? Sewage! Raw, unprocessed sewage! It smells like the stink of a thousand middle school bathrooms. It smelled so foul that I almost lost my balance. Mom, ever the one to encourage us to try new culinary paths, told me to try some. Risking the violation of one of the Commandments, I emphatically declined. The more I declined, however, the more insistent she became. It became a battle of wills, and if common sense (i.e. avoiding being grounded) hadn’t prevailed, I’m confident that it would have become so violent that it would have made a monkey knife-fight look like a retirement party dance by comparison. I relented. So, I took what basically amounted to a gnat’s-weight of the stink on my fork and put it into my mouth. Imagine not only my surprise, but the surprise of everyone at the table when, about two seconds later, I vomited all over the kitchen table – you know, the kitchen table that, up until that time, sat my entire family happily enjoying their meals. And, oh no, this was no mere vomiting. This was projectile vomiting at its best. This was projectile vomiting that would have knocked Linda Blair down to the silver medal. I never did get to finish my dinner, and that was just fine by me. But, two inimitable universal truths were born that evening – when it comes to food, with me, no thank you means no thank you and mom never again forced me to eat anything I didn’t want. I went to bed triumphant.

Fast-forward more years than is your business, and I’ve compiled an impressive list of foods that I consider stable mates of sweet potatoes/yams. For the sake of brevity, I’ll give you my top three:

Onions – Onions are probably the most versatile of foods that I don’t particularly like. It’s the cooking staple of almost every Mediterranean cookbook. Open up to a recipe for homemade oatmeal and it will begin with, "Dice five fresh onions…" I cannot say exactly why I don’t like onions, but my best answer is the taste. I don’t like the taste. There are those who will say, "But onions don’t have any taste," but they’re fooling themselves. They most definitely have a taste – a bitter onion-y taste. Not only that, but the texture is aggressive and intrusive and it dominates the taste of everything else currently being shredded in my mouth. It’s the gunslinger of tastes that announces, "while I’m here, we’re gonna be doin’ things MY way. Anyone don’t like it can answer to me." Meanwhile, perfectly upstanding tastes like steak, chicken, rice, or whatever, cower behind the molars. Unfortunately, there are no tastes willing to play Gary Cooper. Now for the strange part: I love French onion soup. Maybe because there is no crisp texture to the onions or maybe because the taste is muted, but the fact I love it boggles my mind. Still, onions don’t get a pass for me liking French onion soup.
I don’t mind onion rings, either, and I have no explanation for that, either. I guess everything gets a pass when it’s deep-fried.

Mushrooms – Well, almost everything gets a pass when it’s deep-fried. Mushrooms wouldn’t get a pass even if they were the only source of food on earth. I guess I just don’t get it. Why would anyone, by his or her own volition, voluntarily consume a fungus – A FUNGUS! – that grows in manure? MANURE! A FUNGUS that grows in MANURE! Ever drive past a mushroom farm? You’d think they were exhuming bodies from a septic pipe. When the wind is right (can’t believe I’m using the word "right") in the morning, and a mushroom farm is within 30-40 miles of your location, you, too, can enjoy the sweet smell of animal turds, as thick as peanut butter soup, without having to go through the trouble of actually smashing your face into a steaming pile of animal poop. I don’t care if you wash them 100 times over or sand-blast the filth off of them – I’m not going near them. Besides, they’re a FUNGUS! We all eat mold, in some quantities, just by accident, but…well, I’ll leave it there. On the other hand, I have tried magic mushrooms once, and only once. A few things happened that I remember:

1. My voice sank about 10 octaves. I made James Earl Jones sound like Betty Boop.

2. I laughed constantly. I laughed so much that I was getting annoyed with myself. I was so annoyed at myself that I actually started to find it amusing. Of course, then I laughed some more.
3. My friend, Tim, and I went to a Phillies game at Veterans Stadium when the mushrooms began to kick in. We bought the cheapest tickets and sat in the upper deck. We had practically the entire upper level to ourselves. There, I decided to perform what I imagined to be the play-by-play of the immortal Philadelphia announcer, Harry Kalas. Tim probably wanted to throw me over the railing.

Peppers – Peppers just might be the most enigmatic of the top three. I don’t like peppers. Sweet peppers, hot peppers, Peppermint Patties, table pepper…I don’t like any of them (okay, I lied, I like Peppermint Patties. Taste the sensation). Again, it really begins and ends with the taste. Let’s get past the sweet peppers and just say that I don’t like the taste, but I’ll get back to that later. The hot peppers, however, well, jumping Jesus Jemima Junior, someone tell me the joy in eating something that has so much capsaicin (the "hot" element in hot peppers), that it’s the equivalent of eating broken glass. You know the people I’m talking about; we all know at least one person who prides him/herself on being able to eat food so hot it could light a cigar. These people make Charles Manson look like George Will. And yet, there was a summer in 1992 or 1993 where I suddenly became obsessed with peppers, and not just sweet peppers. I was downing hot peppers like crazy, too. I have no idea how this craze generated, but there I was, ordering every type of food with peppers on it. I was sailing along, nicely, perfectly at peace with my new gastronomic family of friends when I went to breakfast one morning at The Starboard Restaurant in Dewey Beach, Delaware. A woman was wheeling a cart with various peppers around the dining area (don’t ask) when I decided to strut my newfound pepper-eating bravado. "So, what’s the hottest pepper you have?" She showed me a habanera, or scotch bonnet, pepper but warned me that it was very hot. Tossing my head back theatrically and laughing at the warning from this mere human, I proceeded to pick up my prey by the stem and gently lowered towards my mouth. I bit the pepper in half and before my teeth were even 1/4th of the way into the bite, my brain was saying, "you are in big time trouble, son." I yelled loudly. By the time I had swallowed what I had bitten, I was in what can only be described as biblical agony. My eyes were gushing with water, so, of course, I did the sensible thing and wiped them dry…with my bare hands. Yes, my frighteningly capsaicin-drenched hands. More screaming and yelling. I actually walked out of the restaurant and back to my house, completely blinded because my eyes were swollen shut. I only lived a block away. But it took me a half hour to get home. I spent the rest of the day with ice cubes and wet wash rags on my eyes, laying on the couch and dying a thousand deaths. So endeth my dance with peppers.

Oh, there are still other foods out there that I cannot stand: almonds, pistachios, cashews, sunflower seeds, bleu cheese, feta cheese, goat cheese, peas, chickpeas, raw carrots, red cabbage, pine nuts, lima beans, oregano, garlic, cilantro, mint leaves, rosemary, capers, scallions, basil, and pretty much every type of food the typical American family serves for Thanksgiving (including the pies). I could go on, but, including the top three, that represents pretty much 95% of the foods I cannot stand and could happily live without.

Yes, that does mean I could live without onion rings.

Not so sure about the French onion soup, though.

All Dressed Up, But Nowhere...

I recently was engaged in conversation with the mother of a friend of mine when we began to talk about writing and writing topics. I explained to her about the most recent entry and, without so much as missing a beat she asked, "Why don't you do one on Garanimals?" Now, this struck me as funny on several levels, least of all was the word "Garanimals." I was born too early in life to be able to experience the giddy joy of this line of clothing. To the uninitiated, allow me to give you a brief explanation: Garanimals are sets of clothing, both tops and bottoms, for children of all genders (no need to discriminate against budding hermaphrodites). Each article of clothing had a certain animal affixed to it. Now dressing your kid is simple; just match the giraffe-labeled top to the giraffe-labeled bottom and bingo - one less Xanax to pop that day.

Because they are designed for children, the animals are drawn all cute and cuddly and have precious names like Charlie Chimp, Pamela Panda and Geraldine Giraffe. I thought about this whilst still in the conversation above - nattily attired in ragged khaki shorts, rumpled-collar polo and sneakers looking like they were forcibly rescued from the spider gears of an axle off an old Ford. I also noticed that something happens to men right around the time they hit 30. Just like ants are selected to be workers or soldiers as soon as they are laid (don't say it), men get shuttled into either the "metrosexuals" or "regular guys" group. We've all read the oh-so-witty articles about metrosexuals in magazines, seen how they have kept two Bruno Magli strides ahead of the rest of us when it comes to neatness and fashion, and marveled how their hair remains perfectly motionless, as if forged by mountain dwarves deep below the Earth's mantle. Even nature allows passage and reverence to such hair:

Air Molecule #1: "Hey! Hey fellas! Would you get a look at that? That's one hell of a head of hair!"
Air Molecule #2: "Maybe we should angle away from it, just in case."
Air Molecule #3: "Yeah, I don't wanna mess that up."
Air Molecule #1: Are you kidding? You could fire a machine gun at it and he wouldn't even notice it. That's not hair, boys. That's SUPER HAIR!"
All: "Wow...."

The rest of us - the regular guys - don't have the problems of the metros. We're not going to invest any effort on such time-wasting activities as exfoliating, feng shui and flossing. No, we have to put up with the eye-rolling of spouses, fiancees and girlfriends who are just waiting for us to fall asleep so they can go to the kitchen, grab something sharp and dangerous, reach down, and cut to hell our favorite T-shirt, shorts, and sweats that we've had since college. Never mind they don't fit anymore, or have lost their shapes, or are so blasted with rips and holes that they are more gas than solid, we're men! And dammit, despite what Cosmo says, we ARE emotional and we ARE nostalgic. We remember wearing that shirt doing our first beer bongs, we remember those shorts because of that one late night at 7-11 when we put a hot sandwich bagel into the left pocket and it burned so badly it left an oval-shaped scorch mark for a month; and, dammit, we remember those sweats for when I was talking with cute little Michelle Napravnik after a game of touch football and my bastard friends snuck up behind me and yanked them down - shorts and all - in front of her, thereby certifying having no chance in hell of ever having sex with her. You see, gals, it's not just because the clothes are comfortable. They are. The reason we hold onto those clothes is because of the memories they hold. Well, that and the fact they're comfortable - and we non-Metros HATE to go shopping for clothes.

I suppose I could always come up with my own line of Garanimals for regular guys. We could call them GarMANimals, or something equally uninspiring. Instead of all these cute names for animals, we could use more utilitarian labels. Try these on for size:

Ernie the Engine - Boy, oh boy, like painters caps and coveralls in the 80s, this could be a burgeoning fad right out of the gate. Ripped jeans were in fashion in the 1980s, as well as acid-washed fabrics. For some stupid reason, they are back in fashion. Why can't oil and other automotive fluid stains climb aboard? This GarMANimal label would even offer a jumpsuit product. A sure-fire winner amongst the shade tree mechanic crowd.

Parma-John - Made from industrial strength polymer fibers, it comes in as many colors of red or black as you want. For wear at Italian restaurants only. Clip-on ties are available in the "Trying-To-Impress-Your-Date-Just-Enough-To-Get-Her-into-Bed-Without-Dropping-Too-Much-Cash-At-the-Restaurant" package. Buy two and get the two-toned pocket hanky to close the deal while pouring her a fourth glass of Asti Spumonti. Visible stains from the sauce? "That's somebody else's problem!" you laugh to yourself as the valet pulls up in your 1986 Cutlass Supreme.

Chicken Wing - The only animal on the list, well PART of an animal on the list. It's also the most versatile as far as color, size and style, as its target consumer is basically every "regular guy" in existence at a time when he is in his fullest glory - the weekend. It's clothing that serves basically two purposes: - The first is to answer the door when the pizza/chicken wing/cheese steak/hoagie/Chinese food delivery person arrives either before kickoff or at halftime. If the delivery person comes at any time during the game, it never fails that something big just went down on TV and your friends are either high-fiving or cursing at the screen while you stand there like a dork asking, "What did I miss???" The other purpose for this line of clothing is that you can basically say you didn't spend the entire day naked or in your underwear. As tempting as that sounds, it's really sort of creepy - even if you're with a woman. At least put on a robe. Or a cape. I tried the stay-naked-for-an-entire-day thing once a long time ago. By the time the next day came, I was so disgusted with myself that I couldn't look people in the eye for a month.

So, there it is. My first line of fashions in time for Fall. Maybe, with the blessings of the good people at Garanimals, I can extend my line more into the animal kingdom and come up with such characters as:

o Paulie da Piranha - for when you wanna look good when youse sleep wit' da fishes. Capiche?

o Shep the Sheep - for those morons who will wear whatever we tell them to wear because they can't think for themselves.

o Randy the Rabbit - for those lucky bastards who get laid in biblical proportions without any rhyme or reason. This label is for those guys who can sleep with the best looking woman at the club that night while wearing a T-shirt that reads, "Yes, I AM looking at your tits!" ($14.95 + shipping).

Of course, I anticipate our biggest mover to be the Hugh Heifer line, which are basically men's pajamas with Gary Larson's "The Far Side" cows all over them. Chicks must dig guys who spend all day in their pajamas. Hell, it works for Hef, it can work for me.

Right?

Who can take a sunrise...

This one has been brewing and fermenting for a while, and lucky you, you get to read it. So strap yourself in while I take you on tour of a place so magical, so wonderful, it can only be the worst place in the world - the land of candy.

I was first moved to thinking about writing of candy when Easter jumped out at us from behind the vernal corner. No warning, no postcards, just BAM - there it was, all resplendent and covered in pastels. I asked my friend if she made Easter baskets for her kids and she said "of course!" Immediately, the abacus stones in my brain were thrust violently to one side and I was sent tumbling back to 1973 (or 1974 - all the years in the 70s were the same. Until disco). I found myself staring chocolate-brown eye to brown chocolate eye with a hulking behemoth of a bunny. It was enormous and it weighed as much as a pair of wet dungarees. Back then, chocolate bunnies were made of SOLID chocolate, not this fake-me-out hollow business that couldn't withstand the grip of a two year old and collapses more easily than a South American government. I remember those old bunnies because you could never break through and just snap off a piece. Oh sure, the ears were easy prey, but that was like pretending your hot breath on a cold day made you look like you were smoking - anyone could do that. The real challenge was getting to the heart of the beast, namely, when all protrusions and distractions like feet, ears, head, tail had been conquered and you were left with something that resembled a chocolate pancreas brick. And oh what stories that brick could tell: The ridges on all sides gouged by your teeth in thick corduroy fashion desperately looking for a weakness; The fingerprints deeply embedded as you fought and strained to siphon off a chunk; the strangely flat and concussed part where it hit the kitchen floor after your teeth slipped and you accidentally bit a hole into your tongue, your cheek, or both...

But, Easter was more than killer chocolate bunnies. There were other candies, as well - and other candies for other moments. Back then, saying you were going to get a Hershey Bar meant that you were going to get a Hershey Bar - a nice, long flat bar of chocolate that you would happily devour for no reason at all. If you were haute couture, you'd buy the Hershey Bar with almonds. Today, no one just goes into a store and buys a Hershey Bar. And if you do, you don't just sit back in the bean bag chair and eat the whole damned thing. No, today, you break off the conveniently sectioned pieces of a GIANT Hershey Bar and put the rest in the refrigerator or hide them in your desk at work. This, of course, brings me to the miniatures. Now, don't put this all on the shoulders of the hard working folks at Hershey - there's plenty of blame to go around - but, who in the hell decided to call the little pieces of Krackle, Three Muskateers, Mr. Goodbar, etc. "Fun Size"? Are you having "fun" when you eat one? I sure as hell am not. Watching a good chick-flick "weeper"? Don't reach for that candy bowl - you're liable to have "fun" and blow the entire mood. Having the gang over from work and everyone just kind of stares awkwardly, shifting their stances and pushing crackers around on paper plates while you wheel out the half-empty bags of whatever potato chips you had in the cabinet over the stove? Break out the "Fun Size" candies and turn your monastery of a bachelor pad into a roller disco!

Back in the day, there were some great candies that either are not being made anymore or are only available in that one place your sister went with her husband about three summers ago or online from some sketchy guy who also sells "Keep On Truckin'" and "Stoned Again" T-shirts. Let's see if any of these ring the old memory bell:

Marathon Bars - The marketing department nailed this one. Imagine a foot-long link of caramel in the shape of interlocking pretzels and covered with a fragile coating of what passed as chocolate and you have the Marathon Bar. After unwrapping one end and sinking your teeth into a section, the caramel would change properties, converting into some type of evil epoxy that ripped fillings from your teeth, sprained the muscles in your jaw, and left your communication abilities to frantic arm-waving. By the time the enzymes in your saliva freed you from confectionary death and you could finally collect yourself after breathing deeply for a minute or two, what did you do? That's right, you took another bite. Dumb ass.

Charleston Chews - I don't remember much about this candy bar except that it fell in line with the Marathon Bar in the "size matters" category. I think I might have had it once and developed lock-jaw. I also remember the television commercial for it showing some jittery hooligan doing the Charleston dance with his fringy flapper gal. Laugh now. Today, kids are buying candy that looks and feels like snot.

Mallo Cups - Yeah, yeah, I know, they're still around. But, they were never around where I used to buy and steal MY candy. I had to go visit my grandmother in Pennsylvania just to be able to buy Mallo Cups. Talk about a candy that was so sweet and overbearing - it would make the insides of my ears sting. I loved them - well, the idea of them, anyway. Difficult to find in most places that hadn't already been carrying them since the rise of the Ottoman Empire.

Razzles - Is it a candy? Is it a gum? Why, it's two things in one! Razzles MUST have been the result of some maniacal candy scientist trying to come up with some other type of candy and accidentally "discovered" this. I can see it now, the scientist, up all weekend, existing on cigarettes, garden hose water and powdered gravy. After a series of explosions in the lab, all the police find the next day is a shredded lab coat with multi-colored candies stuck to the inside. After a furious game of rock-paper-scissors with his partner and the lieutenant, one officer puts a piece in his mouth while the other policemen and detectives point and say "Ewwww!" He realizes that, hey, this is more than just candy! It's...it's...it's bubble gum, too! Legend has it that every piece of Razzles to this day came from the inside of that lab coat.

Chunky - Imagine if you will a cement trapezoid. Cover it in chocolate. Imagine the rapid increase in emergency room admissions from kids trying in vain to bite through this monstrosity. Imagine being a fat kid being caught by your classmates buying a candy bar with a name like this. Prozac was invented for these kids.

Candy Cigarettes - Oh, here's a great idea. I suppose it would go great with ginger ALE and root BEER that you would drink whenever mom made POT luck dinner and HASH browns. Of course, I drank COKE instead. Gotta admit, though...it did make you look cool when you were seven years old.

Pixie Stix - Sugar. Pure sugar - but worse. Feed this to a monkey in the morning and you'll be digging a grave for it before lunch time.

Hell, today if I take a bite of candy, my whole body becomes stiffer than a teenager riding the school bus (trust me on this, girls). I end up unbalanced and reaching for a solid structure to steady myself like I was caught in an earthquake. My teeth feel fuzzy and I'm already bequeathing all of my possessions to loved ones as I slam onto the couch in a dizzying heap. Then, a tingling euphoria floods over me - kind of like when someone lightly scratches the back of my neck. It feels like a roller coaster ride. I look down at the wrapper that fell on the floor next to me and see that it was a "Fun Size" candy.

Hmmm. Maybe they were right.

Cinnamon

My best friend lost her best friend today. No, it wasn't me. It was Cinnamon, her sweet puppy dog. I thought it over many times what I would say to eulogize this wonderful little guy, but I was never satisfied at how my words could convey just how special he was - so I'll just write whatever comes out of my mind. You see, like most pets who are loved by their owners, Cinnamon - or "Cinny," as he was called - was never just a pet. He was a part of the family.

I never had the opportunity to have a dog while I was growing up, and while I look back with regret at not having a four-legged friend to call my own, I also look back with relief - a coward's relief that comes with not wanting to risk loving an animal because of the simple knowledge that they live much shorter lives than humans. I would struggle with thoughts of balancing the imaginary joy of my dog's company with the heartrending despair of losing him to accident, disease, or Father Time. Cinny was as much a part of my best friend's family as her children. In fact, he was her third child. He was only six years old and had his whole life ahead of him, but disease brought an end to this special little guy much too soon. He had recently become sick and my friend was growing increasingly concerned. I felt helpless because there was nothing I could do for her or Cinny. I prayed for him, I prayed for her and her family, but it wasn't enough.

Dogs are wonderful creatures. They give their love to their owners unconditionally, and Cinny was no different. He lived with another family for the first two years of his life - a family that didn't want him. Cinny found a home that loved and adored him and he gave that love back to them in spades. Whether he was barking frantically at people when they walked by the house, carrying back generous clots of snow stuck to his fur when he would answer nature's call in Winter, or leave his little squeaky toys all over the living room floor for people to step on, it was impossible to get mad at him. He loved to have his tummy scratched and he had boundless energy. The only thing he didn't have was the voice to tell the family just how much they meant to him. When he started getting sick, he was scared. He was just too young and naive to understand what was happening to him. Closing my eyes, I can see him looking up at my friend and asking, "What's happening to me?" and she not knowing what to tell him - saying over and over again that he's going to be all right while in the back of her mind knowing it probably is not. It must have been frightening to him to not know what was happening, to not have an ability to be told that you are sick and understand those words. His only comfort was feeling the warmth and love of the family - a warmth and love that he played a large part in helping create himself as a member of that family.

Her children have known Cinny their entire lives. They don't know what life is without him. They could always count on him to meet them at the door after school and feed him scraps under the table. Some day, when they are older and have the benefit of a few more years on their odometers, they will look back and reminisce about Cinnamon with loving remembrance. They all will; and not just the immediate family, but everyone who ever knew this mercurial (in the best sense) little guy and experienced him racing around the living room at top speed whenever someone new walked in. He didn't have an enemy in this world. How many humans can say that about themselves? And here, we're supposed to be the superior creatures.

I would have gladly given time off my life to give to Cinny, even if it was only one extra day so my friend and her family could spend just a little more time with him and Cinny could feel just a little more love before he passed beyond this world. After all, isn't time the greatest gift to receive? It wouldn't have just been a gift for Cinny; it would have been a gift to the family and all who knew him. It's the least anyone could have done for him.

For wasn't his unconditional love the greatest gift he gave to us? We all miss you, little guy. Thank you for letting us share in your life.