Where the wild things are

The family had a big day of animal watching Tuesday. We went to the Atlanta Zoo, and the Georgia Aquarium, and we went to the Atlantic Station shopping area, where there were a lot of LSU football fans walking around.

The big attraction at the zoo continues to be the pandas. We could hardly get into the viewing area because it was packed with people who wanted to catch a glimpse of the new baby panda. It was panda-monium!

(I apologize for that.)

Ling Ling or Ying Yang or whatever her name is didn’t bring the baby out, but they have a camera set up so you could see her dragging the little furball around backstage. At one point she had the baby in her mouth and I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if she ate it? They do that, you know.”

That earned me a couple of dirty looks from the moms who were nearby. Well, I thought it was funny.

I don’t really get the big whoop about the pandas. I guess they’re cute enough, but so is Lucky, and nobody comes to my backyard to see her. All they do is lie around, eat, and scratch themselves regularly. That’s exactly what Lucky does most of the time. Matter of fact, it’s exactly what I do most weekends.

In truth, most of the zoo animals seem kind of lazy. This is what happens when they have humans supplying all their food. I think it would really spice up the lion exhibit, for example, if they’d throw a wildebeest or gazelle in there once in a while.

Otherwise, there’s just not a lot of animal activity going on in the zoo. I saw a monkey pick something out of another’s butt and eat it. One of the kangaroos actually stood up and I thought maybe he was going to jump or shadowbox or something, but instead he looked right at me and dropped a load. Then he lay back down.

One exception to the lazy animal rule is the tigers. They stalk back and forth in their little enclosure, and every now and then one of them would catch my eye, and I just know he was thinking, “Dude, if I could get out of this cage for five minutes, there’d be nothing left of you but a greasy spot.” I don’t taunt the tigers.

Then it was off to the aquarium. They were having some sort of event for the Chick-fil-A Bowl, so there were a lot of Georgia Tech and LSU fans walking around. The Tech fans are easy to notice, cause their yellow sweaters and sweatshirts smell like mothballs.

The aquarium was about what I thought it would be – lots of fish, swimming in circles. The penguin exhibit was closed, which I found very disappointing. On the brochure they give you when you come in, it actually says “no fishing poles allowed.” I guess that was aimed at the LSU people.

I think I embarrassed my family a little bit when we got to the aquarium. We had pulled into the parking deck, and suddenly we had to stop behind a line of cars for no obvious reason. Then I figured out that some doofus was waiting for somebody to get in their car and pull out so he could get their spot. Keep in mind, on the next level, there were probably a thousand empty spaces.

But this guy was hell-bent on parking in this one spot. So we waited while the people walked to their car, got their kids out of the strollers, loaded everything up, put the kids in the car seats, etc. Meanwhile, there was a backup behind me that extended back out into the street. Finally the space opens up, and the guy, no doubt a Tech fan, pulled into his precious spot.

So as we went past him, and I rolled down my window and asked him, “Sir, are you retarded?” I didn’t hear his answer, but immediately afterward, I felt really bad about it and ashamed of myself, because I realize we’re not supposed to use the word “retarded” any more. If I had it to do over again, I would say, “Sir, are you mildly mentally disabled?”

See, I can be nice when I want to be.

I hereby resolve to....

Christmas Day has come and gone. As Steve Goodman once sang, broken toys and faded colors are all that’s left to linger on.

That and the 5 pounds or so I’ve put on in the past two weeks.

The period between Christmas and New Year’s is a strange time. There’s something of a letdown, but you’re still in holiday mode. I’m not going back to work until January 2, but I don’t have any idea what to do with all of the free time between now and then.

I suppose I could start working on losing some of that extra holiday weight, but come on. Everybody knows that you don’t begin any sort of weight-loss program or self-improvement project until January 2. That’s the first official day of New Year’s resolution-following. Maybe technically you’re supposed to begin on New Year’s Day itself, but don’t be ridiculous. There are football games on ALL DAY.

I make resolutions every year, and I swear it’s with good intentions. I do the usual ones – I need to exercise more, write more, lose weight, read more, pretend to like people more, kiss more behinds at work so I can get a minimal promotion and move into an even more soul-killing job.

A lot of people make similar resolutions. Have you ever been in a gym the first two weeks of the year? It’s amateur hour in there. You have to stand in line to use the equipment because there are so many people who have gotten religion and decided to start working out. But by the time MLK Day rolls around, it’s back to normal.

Some years I just make one resolution, but I make it a big one, and I try to make sure I achieve it. One year it was to run a marathon; another year, it was to finally finish my novel. Another time, it was to start a band.

I don’t want to run another marathon, and I certainly don’t want the headache of having a band again. So maybe I will write another novel. Or perhaps a screenplay. How hard can that be? Have you seen a movie lately? There’s not a lot of effort going into those screenplays. It took about, what, 20 years to make that last Indiana Jones movie, and it was terrible.

Maybe I should make a more realistic resolution, like finally getting my torn rotator cuff repaired. But that’s hardly something to look forward to. And it’s not really an accomplishment. And I flat-out don’t want to do it. It only hurts about 75 percent of the time, anyway. I can take it. What am I, a wimp?

Well, whatever I decide to resolve, I promise I will do my best to live up to my pledges. And I absolutely am going to start eating better and getting some weight off me. Later, I mean. Right now, some pecan pie is calling me from the kitchen.

Away in a manger

My Christmas acting career took an unexpected turn for the worse Sunday night at church.

We were doing a cantata, and it incorporated some of the characters from the live nativity the week before. Well, I had done a star turn as Thomas the shepherd, but then I learned that the shepherds were expected to do a dance number in the cantata, and I don’t dance. I’ve always said that if you ever see me dancing, smoking a cigar or eating jalapeno peppers, it’s time to take me home. I’ve had too much eggnog.

So I traded roles with a guy who was playing Joseph, because he wanted to dance, and all Joseph had to do was walk down the aisle with Mary, and sit there the whole time looking at the baby Jesus. This I could handle.

I wasn’t sure how to play Joseph. Did I go with a brooding, dangerous James Dean portrayal? Or maybe a quiet, strong Clint Eastwood type. Or perhaps I’d play him as a young Brando would, bristling with energy and nervous tension.

In the end, I didn’t give it much thought. I didn’t even go to the dress rehearsal. How hard can it be to walk in, sit down, and do nothing? I do that at work all the time.

The cantata started, and Mary and I began our walk down the aisle to the makeshift manger scene in the front of the church. Mary was a little young for me – maybe 15 or 16 – but since it’s a virgin birth, I didn’t feel that bad about it.

We got down to the front of the church, and Mary reached into the crib there to get the baby Jesus – and he wasn’t there. She fumbled around in the blankets for a while, but she came up empty. She looked at me with pleading eyes, and I whispered to her that she should just pick up the blankets and pretend there was a baby there. Nobody would ever know.

So that’s what she did. We sat down on chairs that were pushed together and covered by a blanket, so that it looked like a bench, and we pretended to look in awe at our imaginary Baby Jesus. It wasn’t a real comfortable seat – it was kind of lumpy – but I figured it would be over soon, and I could handle it.

After a minute or so, I noticed that Mary was looking at someone in the congregation, and then she turned to me in wide-eyed panic. She said something that I didn’t catch, so I leaned in closer and asked her to repeat it, and she said, “You’re sitting on it.”

Well, there you have it. I was sitting on the Baby Jesus. If I ever appear at the gates of heaven on Judgment Day, I may have some things to answer for, but I suspect this one’s going to top them all.

There was nothing to do then, really, but to stand up casually, and let Mary rescue the baby Jesus from under my buttocks, which she did. Thank goodness we didn’t use a real baby, like they do in some pageants.

Mary and I hoped nobody would notice what had happened, and that they would be caught up in the beautiful songs and the little kids dressed as angels and the whole spirit of Christmas, and the whole incident would be forgotten.

Then afterward, one guy comes up to me and says, “Way to pull out one out of your ass.” Another said, “You’re the guy who hatched Jesus.”

I suspect this incident will haunt me for the rest of my days at this church. No matter how much work I do or how many plays I’m in or how much money I give, I’ll always be the guy who sat on Jesus. Somebody pass the eggnog.

PLEASE DON'T DELETE

A pretty funny thing happened in my office Friday.

No, nobody got drunk at a Christmas party and Xeroxed their privates. I don’t work in that kind of place, sadly.

What happened was, some moron came across one of those chain e-mails. This one has been around for a long time, claiming that for every person you forward it to, Microsoft and AOL will send you money. Now, anybody with even one operable brain cell realizes this is a scam. It has been around for more than 10 years . Even Florida fans don’t fall for this one.

And yet, sure enough, this idiot figures, hey, what the heck? What can it hurt just to forward an e-mail? Maybe I really can get rich this way. After all, it says right there in the e-mail, “This really works.”

So, he forwards the e-mail along. Not to a few friends and family and co-workers. Oh, no. He apparently sent it to every employee in my company. That’s more than 20,000 people.

OK, that was dumb enough, but not that big of a deal. Everybody just had to delete his stupid e-mail and move on, right? But oh, no, nothing is that simple. Instead, his e-mail begat a flood of stupidity that kept some of us entertained all day long.

If you work in a company of any size, then you’ve had to deal with people who don’t understand how to use the “reply to all” feature. You know, somebody will send an e-mail to a large group about something, and somebody will send back what they think is a witty reply, but they send it to the whole group, and somebody else joins in, and before you know it there are 50 pointless e-mails in your inbox. This should be a death penalty offense.

So when an e-mail goes to 20,000 people, it’s really a bad idea to “reply to all.” But that didn’t stop folks at my company. At first, three or four people wrote to let us all know that this e-mail was a hoax, don’t fall for it. Really? What are you going to tell me next? There’s no Easter Bunny?

Then, there began a spate of people who were so irritated that people were replying to all, that they were moved to reply to all, saying “please stop replying to all.” Some were kind of nasty about it – “STOP WASTING MY TIME.” Some replied to all, threatening to report those people who were replying to all. One guy wrote 3 or 4 sentences detailing how he was too busy and had too much to do to be deleting these e-mails, so stop sending them. I figured you could delete 5,000 e-mails in the time it took him to write that.

It finally slowed down a little bit. Our IT department had to send out an e-mail that told everyone to never forward an e-mail like that to the WHOLE FREAKING COMPANY (I paraphrased that a bit), and to please stop replying to all. But a few people kept doing it anyway.

The funny thing is, it happened on a Friday afternoon just before Christmas week, and a lot of people weren’t even at work. Some won’t even be back until after the New Year. Imagine the surprises their in-boxes are going to hold.

Did I mention the guy sent the initial e-mail to every single executive in the company as well, including the CEO? I don’t know what’s going to happen to him, but perhaps he should be hoping Santa brings him a new job this Christmas.

In the spirit

I have done a few things this week to get me into the Christmas spirit. Perhaps eventually I’ll go try and buy some presents.

First, I was a shepherd in my church’s living nativity play. I guided people through the streets of Bethlehem until we came upon the baby Jesus. I had several lines, and I mostly remembered them. It was one of my best acting jobs. There’s some early Oscar buzz about my performance. Or maybe Tony buzz, since it wasn’t a movie, though some people did bring along their video cameras.

It was my first performance in a Christmas play since I was about 4 years old and going to the Nazarene Church in Griffin, Ga. We all had to wear little costumes and recite Bible verses, but I was having trouble with mine.

Now, a popular song at the time was “Harper Valley PTA,” which was pretty racy for 1968. I used to entertain my aunts and uncles by singing along every word. I couldn’t memorize that little Bible verse, but I had “Harper Valley PTA” down pat.

As I heard my mother re-tell the story years later, my big moment came in the pageant, and I froze. Apparently I couldn’t recall my verse. So I said “I can’t remember what I was supposed to say so I’m going to sing a song.”

My mother, of course, was mortified, as I began to sing that song. I believe somebody got me off the stage before I could get to the part about the man having sex with his secretary, but the damage was done.

The second Christmasy-thing I did this year was to work at the Empty Stocking Fund, helping to pass out presents to the parents of the poor chilluns. No matter how I feel about how some of their parents have gotten to this situation, in the end, it’s not the children’s fault.

We finally decorated our tree a couple of days ago, and threw some Christmas lights up on the trees and bushes out front of the house in the tackiest way possible. We always cut our tree down from a tree farm, and a large portion of the ornaments are homemade by the kids. We came across a Michael Vick ornament my son had bought a few years ago, but we didn’t put it on the tree. We threw it out back for Lucky to play with.

Thanks to the miracle of the DVR, I haven’t had to miss any of my favorite Christmas shows this year. One great thing about having kids is you can watch Rudolph and Frosty and Charlie Brown and not feel like a weirdo.

When they were younger, we would all get up on the bed, turn the lights off in the room and watch every Christmas show that came on. Now that they’re teen-agers, they think it’s a little creepy to get on the bed with dad, so we watch from the couch.

The best Christmas movie of all is, of course, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I have that one on DVD now so I never have to miss it. Some other good ones are “A Christmas Story,” “Elf,” and the version of “A Christmas Carol” with George C. Scott.

That’s what I’ll do this week. Watch some of my favorite movies, then head out to buy some presents. I mean, the stores won’t be crowded, right?

Ho, ho, ho

My wife was vacuuming the living room the other day and she complained to me that the vacuum cleaner was not doing a good job, and we needed a new one.

“Well, keep your fingers crossed,” I told her. “Christmas is coming.”

I can’t repeat what she said to me, but it won’t get her on Santa’s “nice” list, I can tell you that.

I’m normally a pretty good gift-giver, as much as I hate shopping. If it were up to me, I’d take her to Wal-Mart, hand her a $100 bill and say, “I’ll be back in an hour. Merry Christmas.” But I know I can’t get away with that.

Christmas has lost a good bit of its magic since the kids have gotten older. I used to be dragged out of bed by two little urchins in pajamas so we could go downstairs at 5 a.m. and see what Santa had left.

Now on Christmas morning, we have to go and drag two grumpy, mute teen-agers out of bed so they can come look at the things they already knew they were getting, mumble something that sounds like “thank you” in Wookie language, and then they crawl back upstairs and resume hibernation.

I remember the excitement of Christmas when I was a kid, but I guess it’s easier to get excited when you don’t have to go to malls and fight traffic and get flipped off in the parking lot by maniacal women. Kind of saps the old Christmas spirit.

Like most kids, I loved Christmas. I always wanted to leave Santa milk and cookies, like normal kids. But my parents insisted that, no, Santa would prefer some fruitcake and Pepsi-Cola. That is ridiculous, I thought. Who likes that? The only person I knew who liked either fruitcake or Pepsi-Cola was my father and he – waiiiiiiiiiiiiitttt a stinking minute!

So I went to my 4th-grade teacher, Miss Thelma Davis, who was very wise and old and vibrated when she talked, like Katherine Hepburn. She would know the answer, so I asked her: Is there a Santa Claus?

She studied me thoughtfully, and she said, “Well, Santa Claus is really the spirit of Christmas. He’s not an actual person.” A-ha! The truth was out. My parents had been lying to me for years!

Oh, I had my suspicions for a while. I once asked my mother how Santa got in our house, since we didn’t have a chimney. She said, “He comes in the door.” But we lock the door. “He has a magic key.” But wouldn’t the dog go crazy barking at him? “Shut up, son.”

After learning the truth, I had a dilemma. Do I confront my parents with my knowledge of their treachery? Or do I keep my mouth shut, since revealing that I knew what the deal was might jeopardize my future volume of presents? Sadly, keeping my mouth shut has never been my strong suit, and I told my mom that I knew what was going on.

When my kids were small and I became Santa, I spent a few years putting together things such as tricycles and the Barbie Doll House and the @#$%@$%&@ Hot Wheels Garage. The space shuttle doesn’t have as many moving parts as Hot Wheels Garage. That REALLY sapped me of my Christmas spirit. I made The Grinch look like Andy Williams by the time I finished putting those things together and crawled off to bed for a solid three hours of sleep.

But for all my grumbling at the time, I miss those days. Now I ask the kids for a Christmas list, and they just write “Cash” on a piece of paper and give it back to me. I say, is that all? And they take it back and write, “Lots of it.”

At least I can go to sleep earlier now. Merry Christmas.

Dancing up a storm

I was watching a History Channel show tonight about the decade of the 70s, and it reminded me what a truly horrible time that was in many respects.

I was a child when the decade started and a teenager when it ended, so some of my memories are a little bit hazy. I thought Watergate was a big dam somewhere. I would stay up late during the summer and watch Johnny Carson and I’d laugh at the Richard Nixon jokes, even though I didn’t get them.

Rich Little appeared on TV shows all the time and did a bad Richard Nixon impression. I thought he was the worst impressionist ever, until Dana Carvey came along.

I recall a few landmark moments in the 70s. I remember Elvis dying, and the Jonestown massacre, and President Ford being shot at twice, and the big Bicentennial celebration, and the biggest disappointment of my entire childhood, Evel Knievel’s aborted attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon on a souped-up rocket motorcycle. My friends and I talked about nothing else for 6 months, and then the event itself was a monumental letdown.

Anita Bryant was a big deal in the ’70s. You remember her – she was a runner-up in the 1959 Miss America pageant, then was an orange juice spokeswoman, but mostly became known because she didn’t care much for your homosexuals, and she made a big deal about it.

I had a brush with fame, sort of, when I danced with her daughter at a party. Apparently her family was friends with the family of a girl I was after in high school, named Nydia. I went to a party at Nyrdia’s house, and she didn’t want anything to do with me, but I wound up chatting with Anita Bryant’s daughter for a while, and we even danced together a few times. I never actually caught her name.

After that party, I never saw her again. It’s just as well. Things would have never worked out between me and her, because I doubt her mother would have approved of me. While I had a fondness for Miss America runners-up, I didn’t particularly have anything against your homosexuals, and I didn’t care for orange juice.

Things didn’t work out with Nydia, either, perhaps because I realized she wasn’t very pretty. Of course, I didn’t realize that until she turned me down for a date, but I look back at it now, and I’m like, Whew! Dodged a bullet there!

My voice cracked a lot in the late 70s, and I was introduced to acne, but by far the worst thing to happen the entire decade was disco music. Here’s the deal with disco music – it all sucks. Every single song. It all sucked then, and it all sucks now.

I was dragged to an actual disco one time. It was around 1984, well after the disco era supposedly ended, but it lived on in a few clubs around the country. One of those was a place called The Limelight in Atlanta, and I was convinced to go there by, of course, some girls. It is amazing what a hormone-crazed young man can be convinced to do by pretty girls.

I walked in the place, and I realized that I had died, and I was now in hell. The music was loud and horrific, the people all dressed funny, and I suspected that I was part of the 1 percent of the crowd not under the influence of cocaine. I wanted to leave so bad I felt like crying.

There was a big dance floor, and around it were there huge speakers, and some of the more exuberant dancers got on top of the speakers and shook-shook-shook their booties. I looked up and there was a guy I knew from high school, in tight pants, his shirt unbuttoned to his navel, doing all the John Travolta moves and having the time of his life. Anita Bryant would not have been pleased.

Discos, I hope are dead now. So is Nixon, and Ford and Evel Knievel. I don’t know where Anita’s daughter is now, but I hope she’s still dancing. But not on top of the speakers.

All in a day's work

I went to a luncheon this week where Rick Bragg was the guest speaker, and he said something that really made me think.

Bragg, as you may or may not know, is a journalist and author. He used to work for The New York Times, but I think they finally figured out he’s from the South so they got rid of him. He’s written a few books about his upbringing in north Alabama, and I relate pretty well to his stories, though I think his family was a good bit rougher than mine.

His first book, "All Over But the Shoutin’", is a great story about his childhood, focusing a lot on his mama, who sounds a lot like mine. His daddy, apparently, was a rowdy drunk, so he was nothing like mine. I think I got a better deal.

Anyway, Bragg was saying that he’s sometimes embarrassed when he’s around men who do hard work for a living – men like the uncles he grew up around – and they ask him what he does, and he tells them that he’s a writer. It just doesn’t sound very manly to say to somebody who works on an oil rig or a farm or as a mechanic, or any job where you’re going to get grease under your fingernails.

I’ve never really had an actual hard-working job, either. About the only thing I ever got on my hands was newsprint when I’d grab one of the first papers off the press in my journalism days. Not exactly backbreaking work. There was a summer in my youth when I had to pick apples in an orchard, but that only lasted two weeks.

My father worked at two places his adult life – a textile mill, then a General Motors plant. I’ve had about a dozen jobs so far, and counting, and rarely have I ever actually broken a sweat. It makes me feel a little bit guilty.

When I used to work in public relations, I always hated it when people asked me what I did, because it was kind of hard to explain. That makes you feel really important, when you can’t make people understand what you do. Hell, most of the time I didn’t understand what I did. Mostly just BS’d people. Amazing that you can get paid for that.

I have worked at a grocery store, at a candy maker, at a department store, at a state agency, at two newspapers, at two PR firms, at a bank, and three great big Atlanta companies. I have been fired three times. I have worked hard, but never done hard work.

There is no dishonor in writing for a living. It’s not like I could follow in my dad’s footsteps, anyway – the cotton mills are gone, and it looks like the General Motors’ plants may soon follow. I am thankful just to have a job, even if it’s one where my hands stay clean and my shoes don’t get muddy and I don’t come with any aches and pains, other than the occasional crushing headache.

Just don’t ask me what I do. It’s kind of hard to explain.

I got steamrolled

When you are married, or are a parent, there are things you do and places you go, things you would not ordinarily do, but you do them for your loved ones.

For example, I saw every animated movie released between 1994-2005, including some really bad ones (Ice Age 2, anybody?). I have been to Chuck E. Cheese and birthday parties at skating rinks, and I once saw “Barney Live” at the Atlanta Civic Center. We had front-row seats. We were so close, you could smell the sweat on Baby Bop.

I have endured a few things for the sake of marital happiness, as well. You know, chick flicks, arts and crafts shows, pottery stores. A few years ago I took my wife to see a Dan Fogelberg concert, and just the other day I promised her that I would take her to see him again the next time he was in town.

I swear to God, I didn’t know he was dead.

A while back, Susan asked if I would go with her to see Manheim Steamroller. Great, I thought, I love monster trucks, so of course I’ll go. So I said yes, but then she told me that it was not a monster truck, but it was a concert at the Fox Theater.

Well, that’s cool. I’ve seen some great concerts in my day at the Fox – REM, Elvis Costello, Squeeze, Jason and the Scorchers, John Prine. It’s one of my favorite places. I love the live Lynyrd Skynyrd album that was recorded there, where Ronnie Van Zant keeps saying stuff like “Look a’here” and “Bring all my mules out here, kick ‘em one time.” Maybe this would be like that.

This would not be like that. Manheim Steamroller is, well, I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like if Emerson Lake and Palmer let Yanni join them and then he took over and insisted they only play Christmas music.

But hey, I’m not against broadening my horizons, so I went in with an open mind. I paid $15 for two thimbles-full of white wine, and settled into my seat among 2,500 other white people in sweaters, and waited to get my world rocked.

These dudes came out on stage in resplendent white coats. There was a keyboard player, a solo violinist, a bassist, and they had both a drummer AND a percussion player, like The Grateful Dead. There was a small orchestra over to the side. And a groovy light show in the background, like you used to see when a band like Jefferson Airplane or The Doors would play on The Mike Douglas Show.

They started playing their music, some of which I sort of recognized and some which I didn’t, and after about 45 minutes they stopped and a big movie screen came down over the stage. Well, that wasn’t so bad, I thought, and I stood up and got ready to go – but it was only intermission. Intermission? What is this, a hockey game? Skynyrd never had an intermission.

So I left my seat and finally found a concession stand where they were selling beer, and I got myself two. I came back to my seat and my wife asked me if one of them was for her, and I said no.

“Why did you get yourself two beers?” she said.

“Because I couldn’t carry three,” I replied.

The last half of the show was a little odd. The movie screen stayed down, and there was some sort of medieval scene being shown, which didn’t make sense, and then a long shot of a guy riding a horse across a field to a castle, and I missed the Christmas connection, but a lot of the people around me seemed to get it.

I was a little disappointed, because they didn’t play any of MY favorite Christmas songs, like John Lennon’s "Happy Christmas", or "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer", or the theme from "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas", or “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” You know, the classics. About the only song I recognized was “Carol of the Bells,” which drives me INSANE every time I hear it.

So, I have done my Christmas penance. I thought about trying to get even with my wife, but considering that I went with her to that show AND to a Richard Gere movie the same year, her debt is too big to repay.

Just know that for at least the next year, I have a get-out-of-jail-free card. Any time she asks me to go shopping, or to watch some house renovation show on TV, or anything unpleasant, all I have to do is say two words: Manheim Steamroller.

She will know exactly what I mean.

Head for the hills

Just got back from a nice little two-day excursion up to the North Georgia Mountains. I came back with a nice sack of apples, a hacking cough and a greater loathing for the Metropolitan Atlanta area.

We stayed in a cabin on top of a mountain, a really rustic place with authentic foosball, air hockey and pool tables, satellite TV and a four-person hot tub. As I sat in the hot tub, sipping a glass of cheap wine and looking out over a peaceful valley, I knew exactly how the Indians who used to live in those hills felt. You know, before my ancestors chased them out.

The cabin had a nice gas fireplace, which I could never figure out how to work. What kind of a fireplace comes with a remote control? Every time I tried to get the fire going, I wound up changing the channel on the TV. So I finally gave up.

It is quite beautiful up there near Blue Ridge, Ga., and the surrounding areas, though some of the inhabitants are a little bit sketchy. I saw a lot of Confederate flags, which seems unnecessary. The war is over, boys. We ran out of bullets.

It rained harder than a cow peeing on a flat rock all day Monday, so that limited our outdoor activities. I didn’t see much wildlife, though I did spot what I believed to be a giant peacock outside our cabin one morning. But then it spread its wings and went soaring off the mountainside, and I changed my mind and decided it was a wild turkey. As God is my witness, I didn’t know turkeys could fly.

The mountains weren’t too crowded this time of year, which is the number one reason to go there. And it was too cold for all of the Harley riders who take over that region in warm weather, which I don’t mind, except they’re so damn loud it’s like you’re vacationing on an airport runway when they go rumbling past.

The rain stopped Tuesday and we ambled our way back, stopping for a few minutes in Helen, Ga., which looks like a town built by Disney. The town has an “alpine” theme, with all sorts of Bavarian and German-sounding names, like Edelweiss and Hofbrau, and polka music blaring over loudspeakers. We were hungry, so naturally we spent the first 30 minutes looking for a good old “country cooking” restaurant. Believe it or not, we found one, and I had a country-fried steak that would make Heidi proud.

After that, I had to stop somewhere and get a sack of boiled peanuts, because I don’t feel like I’ve been to the mountains if I don’t do that. I washed them down with a nice, cold Peach Nehi, and then we were on our way back to hell, I mean, Atlanta.

Specifically, Atlanta traffic. It was brutal. I knew better than to try to go through town, but when I was coming down Ga. 400, I picked up a traffic report on the radio and the woman said, and I quote, “Not much going on out there, except much lighter than normal volume.”

Two hours later, as I passed through downtown, a scant 10 miles from where I heard that volume was light, moving slower than the speed of smell, I decided that I would hunt down this traffic woman someday and make her pay for her sin. I began to believe we would never get home. Every way I tried was backed up – 1-75, 1-285, 1-675, Highway 138. I felt like Griffin Dunne in “After Hours.”

Finally we made it, and I began plotting some way to retire early and move away from this madness. To keep from sitting in that traffic again, I would fly a Confederate flag in my yard, listen to Harleys all day and even learn how to work a remote-control fireplace.

Skinny jeans

I heard a co-worker the other day talking about buying some “skinny jeans.”

I asked her what those are, and she said they are jeans that make you look skinny. Wow, I thought. That’s pretty awesome. What kind of voodoo magic is that? And where can I get a pair?

But she told me that they aren’t for men, only women. That doesn’t seem fair. Don’t I have the right to look skinny in a pair of jeans?

Then the more I got to thinking about it, I realized I probably don’t want to wear skinny jeans. For one thing, they are bound to be tight, and I don’t wear tight things. I hate being constrained. I’m the kind of guy who unsnaps his pants after a big meal, which causes quite a furor in the catfish restaurant.

I will stick with my “relaxed fit” jeans, which are the greatest invention for middle-aged men since the recliner. I don’t know who came up with this idea, but he or she is a genius. We all know who Eli Whitney and Robert Fulton were, but when’s the last time you used a cotton gin or rode on a steamboat? And yet the inventor of relaxed fit jeans lives in obscurity. Don’t seem right.

Like many men my age, I fight the battle of the bulge. Well, OK, I don’t really fight it, but I think about fighting it. Just the other night, as I watched a football game and looked down at the empty bag of barbecue potato chips at my side, I said to myself, I gotta do something.

So I brushed all the crumbs off my shirt, finished off my beer, and went upstairs to come up with a plan of action. Then I saw my bedroom, and I figured I didn’t want to tackle a drastic life-change like that without the benefit of a good night’s sleep, Luckily, when I woke up, I had forgotten the whole thing.

I don’t really want to get skinny, I just want to avoid getting too fat. I’ve been wearing 34-waist pants for about 20 years and I don’t want to move up to 36. That would be admitting defeat, plus I would have to buy a whole new wardrobe, and I don’t buy clothes. I make an annual sojourn to a place called The Sock Shoppe down in Griffin to stock up on socks, T-shirts and boxers, and then I hope I get a couple of pairs of pants for Christmas, and that’s about it.

My wife and daughter have made a couple of attempts to spice up my wardrobe, but I have resisted. My wife is currently threatening to buy me a white linen shirt with some sort of embroidery on the front of it. She said it looks like something they wear in Mexico. That’s exactly what I want at this stage of my life, to look like Ricardo Montalban.

But back to the weight issue. I suppose there are many options out there to consider. Sadly, they all include eating less food, and that’s a big stumbling block. There’s no magic pill. I remember not long ago reading about some fat-blocking pill that allegedly worked, but it also caused “anal leakage.” There’s a word combination you never want to see.

And diets? They’re too restrictive. Almost all of them prohibit you from eating large amounts of cheddar cheese, and that, I can’t abide. I used to work with an older guy at a newspaper, and one day a shapely advertising girl walked through the newsroom, and he stood up and said, “Boys, if I ever get too old to want that, I want y’all to kill me.” That’s how I feel about cheese.

So I guess I’ll just exercise a little more, skip the late-night potato chips, avoid Little Debbie snack cakes, and before you know it my size 34 relaxed fit jeans will be comfortable again, and I keep them snapped even after dinner. The waitresses at the catfish place will thank me.

Arrested development

I’m sure that everyone who has ever had children has at some point thought to themselves, “Wow, kids are sure different these days.”

Case in point: They don’t seem to be as eager to be able to drive a car. My daughter is nearing 17, and still does not have her license. My son has been 15 for nearly two months, and has barely cracked the driver’s manual that he’ll need to learn to get his learner’s permit. I took him practice-driving once in a school parking lot, and I am still recovering from an acute case of whiplash.

I got my driver's license the day I turned 16, which was necessary, because I began working my first job the next day. I equated driving with being grown up, and freedom, and infinitely improving my odds of impressing someone of the female persuasion. Never mind that my car had no air condition, no power steering, and only a crackling AM radio. It wasn’t just a car, it was independence.

You had to have a car as a teenager when I was coming up, because the number one activity was riding around. The number two activity was parking, but you needed that member of the female persuasion for that one to be any fun. Not that I ever did such a thing (my kids read this).

After school, Friday nights, Sunday afternoons, riding around is what you did. You’d ride around with a buddy or two in the car, and hopefully you’d run into some other friends who were out riding around, and then you’d pull over and talk, and then ride around some more.

If you were lucky, you ran into some girls who were also out riding around, and if there was one you liked, you’d try to convince your buddies to walk home so you could get the girl to get in your car. Then you’d go park. General rule: If the car was moving, it was more fun to have your friends in it. If it wasn’t moving, then you preferred a girl.

Again, I’m talking about for other guys. I spent most of my time in Bible study or down at the Amish mission, preparing meals for the needy. When I wasn’t home studying, that is.

I suppose I should be in no hurry for my kids to drive. I doubt a parent ever has one peaceful moment while their child is out driving a car somewhere, and they don’t know where they are. I won’t miss leaving the house at midnight on a Friday night to go pick them up after a high school football game, but I doubt I’ll be resting easy when they’re driving home.

And I will have one advantage my parents didn’t have. I saw an ad on TV the other day about a GPS locator you put on your kids’ car. This is a great idea. Assuming they ever actually drive one.

Sure as shootin'

A friend of mine at work the other day expressed surprise upon hearing that I don’t own a shotgun, being a good Georgia boy and all.

I didn’t find it that strange. I don’t own a gun of any kind, and it’s probably for the best, considering how agitated I get in traffic, or going through the drive-through at a fast-food restaurant. Every time some lethargic teen-ager gets my order wrong, I’m half-a-heartbeat away from being Michael Douglas in “Falling Down.”

I had a BB gun when I was a boy, of course, but I found it only provided limited fun. There were so many restrictions – don’t shoot it in the house, don’t shoot the dog, don’t shoot at passing cars – that it severely limited the options.

Not only did my mother warn me I would put somebody’s eye out, she claimed to know somebody it happened to. She also claimed to know of a boy whose face was disfigured because he kept making a popping noise by putting his finger in his mouth and pulling it our really quick (all boys know how to do this.) And she claimed to know of somebody who dove in a nest of water moccasins in a pond and died.

I’m not saying she didn’t always tell the truth. I’m just saying that the veracity of some of her claims is in question. Perhaps she regarded them more as parables than actual true stories.

My next-door neighbor Mike and I would shoot empty cans, though the BB gun wasn’t even strong enough to put a hole in them. One day we were shooting at the cans, stacking them in a pyramid next to the ditch and trying to knock them down. Mike was bending over in the ditch, re-arranging the cans, and I thought it would be funny to shoot between his legs and hit one of the cans, giving him a good scare.

Well, William Tell I was not, and my aim was a bit off, and the BB grazed his calf. He went off howling to his house, crying like he’d been shot – I guess he HAD been shot, but I still thought he was being a bit of a sissy about the whole thing. I went in the house and awaited my punishment, sure that I was going to get in some serious trouble, but I suppose my parents also thought he was being a sissy, because all they made me do was go and apologize.

We moved to a more rural setting when I was 15, and I got a .22 rifle, but the issues were pretty much the same. I just got no kick out of shooting. I was actually a pretty decent shot – we had to shoot rifles in my ROTC class at school, and my scores weren’t bad. Those were the good old days, when you could fire a weapon in school and not have somebody make a big deal about it.

When I got out on my own, I just never thought to have a gun. Then I had kids, and I had read too many horror stories about children getting hold of guns, so I wasn’t tempted.

I don’t really have anything against guns. I’m kind of ambivalent when it comes to gun control, though I do agree with the assault weapons ban. Are there really going to be occasions in your life when you need an AK-47? If so, you probably need to move to a better neighborhood.

So here’s hoping I never actually need a gun. If I do, somebody’s going to get hurt. Just ask my old next-door neighbor.

Whistling past the graveyard

Please don’t bury me down in the cold, cold ground
I’d rather have them cut me up and pass me all around
Throw my brain in a hurricane and the blind can have my eyes
And the deaf can take both of my ears if they don’t mind the size – John Prine, Please Don’t Bury Me

I went by the cemetery where my mom is buried and visited her grave for a few minutes Saturday.

It’s in a pretty non-descript spot, on high bare ground near the back of the cemetery. There’s really not much of a view. A few feet away from her grave there’s a chain-link fence surrounding some ramshackle house. Not far from the cemetery there’s a train track, but I don’t believe trains run through there anymore.

I’m not sure why we visit the graves of our loved ones, except to put some new fake flowers there, and make sure the headstone hasn’t been vandalized. I really don’t feel anything when I stand there. I guess I should feel sad, but I don’t, because I don’t associate her with that place. It represents nothing about her life, or who she was. She’s not there at all.

I think we feel and remember our loved ones in everyday experiences. If I walk into a house and smell turnip greens cooking, I remember her. If I hear one of the old gospel songs she loved, I think of her. If I hear a new joke that I think she would like, I regret not being able to tell her and hear her laugh.

But standing in front of a concrete slab surrounded by hundreds of other concrete slabs? It just seems odd to me. I guess I’m somehow missing the intended experience.

The grave next to hers was decorated for Halloween. What is that about? Were they expecting trick-or-treaters? Nearby, there was a headstone that featured a picture of the Winnie the Pooh character Tigger, with the inscription “Bouncy bouncy, fun fun.” Must be a child, I thought, but then I looked closer, and the man died at 37. I guess he really loved Tigger.

People memorialize their loved ones in all sorts of ways these days that are strange to me. I’ve seen plenty of the “In Memory Of” inscriptions in the rear windows of pickup trucks and other automobiles. Last week I saw one, and underneath it listed the birth and death dates of the person, and the person they were commemorating had died at the age of 91.

Some people have T-shirts made in honor of the deceased, with a silkscreen picture. Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned, and I guess people can grieve any way they want, but it all seems too much to me. I mean, where does it end? What’s next? Bumper stickers? Key chains? Bobblehead dolls?

My mother didn’t even have a funeral, just a graveside service, because that’s what she made my dad promise he would do. Knowing her, she didn’t want to “put anybody out” by having them come to a fancy funeral. Sure, it would have been nice to have a ceremony, with some of her favorite songs, and maybe a eulogy or two, but that’s not what she wanted. And none of that would have made the memory of her any more special.

I hope I don’t die for a long, long time, but when it happens, I want my family to make me some promises. No T-shirts, nothing on the back of the car, no decorations on the headstone, no roadside memorial if it happens in a car accident. No cartoon characters on the headstone, and I don’t really care where you bury me. Just make it someplace that’s easy to get to.

I don’t want to put anybody out.

Hip hip hooray

I spent pretty much all day Saturday at a cheerleading competition in Columbus, Ga., thereby earning my spot in Heaven.

Have you ever been to one of these things? It is madness. Hundreds of teenage girls screaming and dancing and cheering and doing backflips, while the people in the stands go crazy.

Well, the moms go crazy. The dads just sit there with a blank look and think, “What in the wide wide world of sports is a’going on here?” That, and “Why is my daughter’s cheerleading skirt so short?”

It’s mostly good clean fun, though occasionally a team will come out that looks like it’s been practicing its routine around a stripper’s pole. All that’s missing is a guy named Axl in the DJ booth saying, “Let’s show these ladies some appreciation,” as he spins another Motley Crue tune.

Lest you think I’m a pervert, I was there because my daughter is on one of those competition squads. This is a new concept to me. When I was in high school, our cheerleaders didn’t compete in anything, except maybe to see who could ignore me the most. But this stuff is a big deal.

A couple of my co-workers expressed surprise when I told them I would be at the competition. It seems my alma mater, the University of Georgia, was playing some sort of football game against a school from a neighboring state that afternoon, and they thought I would be watching. Luckily, I don’t really follow college football that closely, so I’m not even sure how the aforementioned event turned out.

(Sonofa@#$#$^%@#%^@blanking#%^@#!@#@!#bullsh^*&$%^&#$^!!!).

But I really didn’t even consider not going to the competition. I have probably been to 99 percent of the soccer, baseball, basketball and football games my kids have played in, plus every honors night banquet or All A's breakfast. I don’t think it makes me a better dad than those who don’t go. I go because I want to. It probably means more to me than it does to them.

I try to be a well-behaved parent, because I don’t want to end up on one of those YouTube videos, being pulled off a referee with my short torn and my lip bleeding and a redneck mama from the other team throwing a lit cigarette at me. But it’s not easy.

I was at one of my son’s basketball games last year and one of the dads from our team got mad at the refs, and went a little crazy and started yelling, and then the other team’s parents were yelling at him, and I thought, here we go. He’s going to get in a fight, I’m going to have to come to his aid, and my mug shot will be on the Nancy Grace show with the words “Middle school parents go berserk” scrolling underneath. But luckily he calmed down and I could sit there and continue to pretend I didn’t notice any of it.

I guess the closest I came to an incident was when my daughter was about 7, and her soccer team was playing one of those traveling teams, where the parents are all insane and they make the kids practice five times a week in the hopes that they’ll get a college scholarship, ignoring the fact that they’re SEVEN YEARS OLD.

Anyway, this team was up on ours about 20-0 and just pouring it on with two girls who must have been the twin daughters of Pele’, so I sauntered over and with a friendly smile said to their coach, “So, are you going for a world record?” One of the coaches got really angry and called me a loser and told me that his girls were winners, and he was not going to stifle them just because a loser like me was whining about it.

Whoa. Them’s fighting words. But I didn’t fight him. I just walked away, and later on he came over and apologized, and said he just got so intense during the games that his emotions got the best of him. I imagine he’s somewhere in a straitjacket by now.

There’s no such danger of anything like that happening at a cheerleading competition, partly because I really don’t know what’s going on. I watch my daughter’s team, and I think she does great, and I’m so proud of her, and as long as nobody falls from one of those human pyramids they do and gets hurt, I consider the event a success.

I guess that’s just my loser’s mentality at work.

Rock the vote

I voted this morning, and despite the dire warnings about long lines, I was in and out of there in about 10 minutes.

While I’m pretty informed on the national issues, I had no idea who I was voting for in some of the local races. I had about 5 choices for a seat on the appellate court, and I just eeny-meeny-miny-moe’d it and picked some guy. I hope I didn’t vote for some crazy liberal judge who wants to set all the child molesters free, or some crazy conservative judge who wants to give the death penalty to pot smokers. Hopefully I picked a level-headed, moderate jurist, like Judge Judy.

There was quite a commotion outside my polling place, with several Atlanta TV station trucks parked nearby, and a huge semi-trailer with “Respect My Vote” written on the side of it. The hubbub was being caused by the presence of T.I., who is a rapper/actor from Atlanta. I believe his actual name is Clifford. I don’t blame him for changing it.

“Respect My Vote” is a campaign run by something called the Hip Hop Caucus, which says it is a non-partisan group. That reminds me of an episode of All in the Family, when Archie and Edith were watching the TV news and there was a story about Richard Nixon voting in the 1972 presidential election, and Edith says, “I wonder who he voted for?”

Isn’t this nice, I thought, this young man giving back to the community like this. He’s a big star, and here he is on a cold morning in a sleepy little Georgia town, urging people to vote. Of course, he was doing this in the parking lot of the voting precinct, so it would seem he was preaching to the choir. Everybody was already there specifically to vote.

I was so impressed by this that I went back and did some research on T.I., since my knowledge of rap music doesn’t extend beyond Run DMC, and I discovered that he does a lot of community service. Yes, it is all court-ordered, but that’s just nitpicking.

T.I. apparently originally thought he was not going to be able to vote, because he is a convicted felon, stemming from a conviction in a 1998 drug case. He had some more trouble a year ago when he was arrested for trying to buy illegal guns in a Publix parking lot. In downtown Atlanta. In the middle of the afternoon.

He was buying, according to the police, machine guns. With silencers. Something tells me these weren’t for hunting. But who am I to question?

Anyway, the young man says he’s turned his life around, and he wants to be an inspiration to young people. According to his lawyer, as quoted in an Associated Press story, “Until he is sentenced in the federal case, he doesn’t have a conviction yet. Even though he is a convicted felon, he has a right to vote since he is not serving probation and hasn’t started his prison sentence.”

I wonder who he voted for? I assume whichever candidate favors less gun control.

Some women in the polling office were wondering if they should go out and get his autograph for their kids. Seems like maybe a bad idea, since he doesn’t appear to be a great role model, but hey – we all deserve a second chance, right? He’s done with the bad stuff and now he’s all about a positive, self-affirming message.

He has a new CD out, but I don’t have it, so I went online and randomly picked one of the song’s lyrics, just to check it out. Granted, it doesn’t have the same effect without the monotonous drum pattern and the music stolen from another song in the background, but here’s what I found (I’ve redacted certain parts, since my kids read my blog.):

Hey I'm so raw, and I'm so rich
And you so flawed niggaz ain't 'bout sh*t
I'll take yo' broad, I can f*ck yo' b*itch
Know that I'm gon' ball every chance I get
Every chance I get, real talk, no sh*t
Every chance I get, make money on this
I'll take yo' broad, I can f*ck yo' b*tch
Know that I'm gon' ball every chance I get, every chance I get.

Now, who wouldn’t be inspired by that? Well said, Clifford. Well said.

Veni, vidi, vici

Well, it is done.

I hobbled across the finish line at the Silver Comet Trail half-marathon Saturday in a sizzling 2 hours, 16 minutes and 19 seconds. In fairness, I started near the back of the pack, so it was probably more like 2 hours, 16 minutes, and 9 seconds.

Among men in my age group, I finished 98th out of 120. Out of 696 men overall, I was 548th. I was also beaten by 452 women, which means I finished exactly in 1,000th place. They don’t award prizes when you’re down that far.

However, in the 65-and-older female group, I was the winner! Eat my dust, ladies!

At the end, they gave me a nice long-sleeve T-shirt and a finisher’s medal, sort of like what Special Olympians get. I got a lot of pats on the back and sympathetic looks, sort of like what Special Olympians get. Then I went and stood in line for a school bus to take me back to the starting line. Everybody’s a winner.

The day before the race, I got an e-mail from the race organizers which very adamantly stated that headphones and earphones would NOT BE ALLOWED. There was a very reasoned explanation for the ban, and an admonition that this rule would be strictly enforced.

Well, I thought, this sucks. I have gotten used to running while listening to my iPod. I even put together a nice playlist of songs that would fire me up and keep me motivated, heavy on the AC/DC and ZZ Top, light on The Captain and Tennille. I didn’t like the prospect of having to run with nothing to occupy me but the voices in my head.

I toyed with the idea of being a rebel and sneaking my iPod up to the start line, then slipping it on once the run started and daring them to come pull out my ear buds. I was discussing this plan over dinner Friday night and my son says, “How can I get in trouble for misbehaving in school when I have a role model like this?” Very cute. Now I know why people keep dropping their teenagers off in Nebraska.

But in the end, that stayed with me, and I decided not to take the iPod. Johnny law-abider. Of course, I got up to the start line, and approximately 80 percent of the runners had headphones and ear buds in their ears. This is how anarchy begins, friends.

The run itself was fine. I had the normal excruciating pain, but you can get used to anything and I didn’t let it bother me, though I did almost pop a hamstring jumping over a tree limb when I had to duck off the course to answer the call of nature. I reached the halfway point and thought, yeah, I’m halfway through! Then I took about 10 more steps and I realized, holy crap, I’m only halfway through!

With about three miles to go, I was beginning to struggle, so I tried to keep my spirits up by telling myself over and over, “only three more miles, only three more miles.” After a while I realized that I wasn’t just thinking this, I was saying it out loud, which probably made me seem like a mental patient, only nobody around me heard me, because they were all listening to their freaking iPods.

So now, what? There’s a full marathon in Atlanta in March. Perhaps I’ll train for that. I’m more motivated when I have a goal. I also want to run my age (in terms of minutes) in a 10-K race, which means I either need to get a lot faster or a lot older.

Either way, look out, all you 60-year-old women. I’m gunning for you.

No pain, no gain

Sunday was my last training run before the half-marathon, which is coming up Saturday. I went out to the running trail and did 12 miles, 6 miles out and 6 miles back, with only a couple of quick breaks to use the bathroom, stretch, and ask Jesus to please take me now.

I can sum up the experience with, as Joe Biden would say, one little three-letter word: H-e-l-l. For about the last half-mile I was fighting a leg cramp in my right calf, so I had to do that sort of shuffle run that you see old men do (don’t say it.).

I’m having the ongoing problem with chafing, which has not abated. Somebody told me to try putting baby powder on my legs, and I did. It didn’t help, and when I finished the run I smelled like a sweaty infant. For about the last 20 minutes of the run I experienced an excruciating pain and burning sensation in my thighs, not unlike what Pamela Anderson probably felt on the boat with Tommy Lee.

You may be asking yourself why I am doing this. I ask myself the same question every time I run. Before I began my run Sunday, I told myself that this was going to be unpleasant, and very likely quite painful, but it would all be over in a couple of hours. I gave myself the same pep talk recently just before I took my wife to see the movie “Nights in Rodanthe.” Let me tell you, I’ll take cramps in both legs and burning thighs any day over watching another Richard Gere movie.

Pain is something we cannot avoid in life. I have suffered from migraines for years, which is a pain that can’t be described. I have had innumerable tooth problems, including three root canals. A couple of years ago I pulled a groin muscle while I was playing softball. I watched the whole first half of the Alabama-Georgia game. I sat through the entire presidential debate the other night without changing the channel.

I know pain, my friends.

Women say the pain of childbirth is something that men could never tolerate, and I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ll have to take their word for it. The only pain I experienced related to the birth of my children was seeing the hospital bill afterward. $50 for a warmed blanket? $12 for two Tylenol?

Anyway, I’m prepared to be in a world of hurt for the last few miles Saturday, but if you know that going in, it doesn’t seem to be quite as bad. And as I old-man-shuffle my cramping, burning self across the finish line, I’ll have a look of satisfaction on my face.

That, or I’ll be having a heart attack. Either way, I’ll let you know.

97 and counting

I went to see my grandmother in a nursing home the other day. It is almost painful to write that, because I didn’t think she’d ever end up there.

She is 97 years old and still very sharp, but physically she can’t take care of herself any longer. Her eyesight is failing, her legs are unsteady. She didn’t want to move in with one of her daughters, because, she said, “They’ve already raised their kids. They don’t need to be going through it again with me.”

I never knew my grandfather, since he died when I was a baby, so I don’t know if I’m much like he was. But I’m a lot like my grandmother. I got my sense of humor from her, for better or worse. Almost every time I talk to her, she has a new joke for me, and I try to have one for her.

We used to always have a family Christmas gathering at her house, and we would all gather around to watch her open her presents. If she ever got anything in a big box, she would say, “Oh, I hope somebody got me a man this year.”

The first time I ever drank coffee I was at her house. My mother had told me I couldn’t, but you know how grandmammas are. I was about 12, and she fixed me some, and put some sugar and evaporated milk in it, and I loved it. It was our little secret. It’s still the way I like to drink it to this day.

She was born in 1911. It seems almost impossible that I know and talk to somebody who was alive that long ago. And even though she can’t see me clearly, it is always enjoyable talking to her. We talked about the upcoming election a little bit, and she told me that she believed that Hillary Clinton is not going to run for president again, because her real ambition is to be on the Supreme Court. She might have a point. But she hopes not, because she doesn’t really care for Hillary.

When her daughter – and my mother – died a couple of years ago, we did not think that grandmamma would make it to the graveside service. But we got word just before it started that she was on the way, and when the car pulled up and she got out and began walking slowly to her seat - well, anybody who wasn’t already crying started at that moment.

I suppose she seems happy enough in the nursing home, though I don’t know if anybody would ever really enjoy being there. Every time I go in a nursing home, I tell myself that I will never let anyone put me in one. But I know that’s just big talk. When and if that day comes, I doubt I’ll have a choice.

I just hope somebody comes by every now and then to talk to me about the election.

Oh deer

I just completed my corporate new employee training, and I spent the last week of it in the company of men who wear hard hats and work outside and spit on the ground a lot. That last thing is discouraged in the office building where I normally work.

After a week of this, I will never complain about my job again. When I got back to the office, I felt like George Bailey when he realizes he has his life back. Hello, you wonderful old coffee machine!

I respect the work these guys do and I did my best to fit in, but I was sorely out of place with most of them. Part of the problem is I didn’t get to do any actual work, I just stood there and watched, and asked an occasional question so I would appear interested. It’s not that different from some days in the office, except I didn’t get to sit down as much.

I would have fit in more and been more accepted had I been a hunter. Pretty much every non-work-related conversation revolved around hunting. Apparently, it’s currently hunting season, so they had a lot to talk about.

I don’t have anything against hunting, and I don’t oppose it on moral grounds. I oppose it on comfort grounds. I went once and I had to get up very early, it was freezing cold, and I sat on a piece of wood in a tree for about three hours, waiting for some unlucky deer to walk by so I could shoot him, or her. This was no way to spend a Saturday.

I’m not even sure why they call it “hunting.” The deer hunters aren’t really hunting, they’re just lurking. They’re hiding up in a tree, planning their sneak attack on Bambi. It doesn’t seem sporting. Maybe if they had to chase the deer down and kill them with a hammer, or if the deer were given guns to shoot back, it would be more interesting.

And I have to tell you, deer aren’t that hard to find. I see them all the time. And they’re not hard to kill. My mother once killed two in the same week using nothing more than a Plymouth Valiant. I think hunters should instead hunt something that’s really rare, like an honest politician, or a reasonable woman.

One of the guys on the crew I was hanging around with last week said that he liked killing young deer, because they have the best meat. I gathered this was illegal, but the old boy didn’t care. He said “I’ll shoot one while it’s still suckling on its mama.” Well, ok, I guess that’s one way to get some tasty meat. I’d prefer to just go to Wendy’s. It’s easier on my conscience.

The problem with shooting an animal is, then what? I guess you have to take a knife and skin it and pull its guts out and cut it up. How is this fun? I didn’t even like dissecting frogs in biology class in high school.

When I was living in Milledgeville, Ga., I was in a convenience store one day, and there was a redneck girl and her redneck mama working behind the counter. This young couple came in, dressed in camouflage, and they were very excited. She had gone hunting with him, and he had killed a deer, and she was so proud. She even took the knife and helped him dress the carcass, which made him proud of her.

They were grinning from ear to ear, covered in deer blood, and buying some beer to go home and celebrate. When they left, redneck girl turned to redneck mama, heaved a deep sigh and said, “That was so sweet. I wish I could find me a man like that, mama.” Mama assured her that, someday, she will.

I don’t know if she ever found true love, but if not, I know some guys I can introduce her to. They might even let her cut out the deer’s liver, if they’re the romantic types.

Dressed to thrill

I am getting older, which I guess beats the alternative, but I can’t say I’m enjoying it all that much.

I guess with age comes wisdom, but then your memory gets so bad that you forget all this great stuff that you’re supposed to know. So what good does it do you? I’m only 44, but many days I feel like I’m only one step away from buying a metal detector, wearing black socks with Bermuda shorts and yelling at neighborhood kids to stay out of my yard.

There is one thing I admire about old guys, though, and that’s their “I don’t give a crap” attitude when it comes to what they wear. So what if it looks stupid? At some point, it appears their wives just give up trying to tell them what to wear. It’s not worth the fight anymore.

It is liberating to stop caring about what you wear, and what people think about you. I haven’t quite abandoned all of my fashion sensibilities just yet, but I have once again embraced pajamas.

You know, you wear pajamas when you’re a kid, then at some point you figure you’re too old to wear them anymore, so you stop. And then one day, you’re old enough to wear them again. In between, we sleep in boxers and T-shirts and occasionally, in our younger, wilder days, our clothes. You never feel good when you wake up still wearing your shoes. Nothing good has happened that night.

My dad is a big pajama-wearer. This is probably because I gave him pajamas for Christmas for about 25 straight years. I’d ask my mom what they wanted, and she’d tell me to get him some pajamas, and just get her some bedroom shoes. And don’t pay too much for them. K-mart has some nice ones for $10.

I only wear the pajama pants. Usually for Christmas, or maybe Father’s Day, the kids get me some nice new ones. I have quite the variety – I have Atlanta Braves pajama pants, Georgia Bulldog pajama pants, “Caddyshack” pajama pants, and even a special Valentine’s pair with hearts on them. I am one suave dude.

Dads often get unusual boxer shorts as a present, too. I have a pair with SpongeBob SquarePants on them. I have some fancy green ones covered with shamrocks, and a pair with zebras on them. But you have to be careful when you wear such, um, unusual underwear.

I found this out one day when I went to the gym where I work and was getting ready to work out. I was standing in front of the locker, about to change into my running shorts, and then I remembered that there had only been one clean pair of boxers in the underwear drawer that morning – a pair that featured Scooby Doo in a Santa’s hat. There was a picture of his tail in the back, and the words “Berry Brismas.”

Rut-roh.

Well, I couldn’t be seen in the locker room wearing such a thing. Sure, the droopy old men love to walk around in there butt-nekkid with stuff flapping all over the place, but I haven’t quite reached that level of “to hell with everybody else” yet. So I just kind of milled around the locker room for a while, got a drink of water, used the bathroom, and when the coast was finally clear, I changed clothes faster than Clark Kent in a phone booth.

I wonder if they make Scooby-Doo pajama pants? If so, I have something to look forward to this Christmas!

Guilty pleasures

I went for one of my long training runs yesterday, and it was pretty ugly (two words: chafed thighs).

I ran the whole way listening to my iPod, and I realized that I need to arrange my playlists so I can only listen to music that’s suitable for running. As it is, I put it on shuffle, which means it picks songs at random.

That’s fine as long as the song is something upbeat, like “Cadillac Ranch” or “Walk of Life” or “Rip This Joint,” something that gets your blood pumping and your heart racing. But then it will select something along the lines of “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” or “Sing Me Back Home,” and it doesn’t fit the mood. It’s hard to run when you just want to sit down somewhere and cry.

I don’t think I could even run now without my iPod, because I’ve gotten so used to it. And I have to admit, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the iPod generation. Hell, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the compact disc generation, many years ago. I still have about 500 albums in my bonus room, collecting dust. I’m not a guy who likes change.

But I finally got an iPod, and after my teenagers showed me how to use it, then made faces at the songs I put on there (I’m not ashamed to like Simon and Garfunkel), I was ready to go.

I have some guilty pleasure songs on there that I should probably be more embarrassed about than Simon and Garfunkel. I was cutting the grass with the iPod on the other day when one such song came on, “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes.”

I can’t describe or explain how much I like this song, or why, but I just do. It’s one of those things you can’t put into words, like how much Coldplay sucks. Every time I hear that song, my spirits lift and I wish I was somewhere doing a karaoke version.

“Rosemary” was recorded by Edison Lighthouse, which wasn’t even a band, just a studio session singer and some backing musicians. It was written by the same guy who wrote “Up, Up and Away In My Beautiful Balloon,” which is hard to believe, because that song really sucks.

But that happens a lot in music. The person who wrote “Take Me Home, Country Roads” also wrote “Afternoon Delight.” The guy who wrote “Wichita Lineman” also wrote “MacArthur Park.” The brothers Gibb wrote “To Love Somebody,” which is great, and “How Deep is Your Love,” which is not.

Back to the iPod. It has other uses, as well. The other day, I drove the kids and one of their friends to school, and all three teenagers had their iPods in their ears and were silent as mimes the whole way. It was quite nice.

And it can be a useful noise-blocker. You can come in the house with it on and if it looks like your wife is complaining about something or giving you something to do, just point to the earphones and shrug your shoulders. I tried this the other day and it almost worked, but I had my back to her, and as I was pretending not to hear her she said something about supper, and I turned around, and I was busted. She knew I’d heard the magic word.

But I played it cool. I just kept on going, and let Edison Lighthouse take me away. I’m a lucky fella, and I just gotta tell her…..

Training Day

One thing they like to do to employees in the corporate world is to train us, as if we were circus animals.

I have all sorts of training certificates buried somewhere in the rubble on my desk. I have been trained in CPR, safe driving, ethical behavior, even diversity (Did you know we’re not all the same?).

For the past week, I have been undergoing new employee training. Keep in mind, I have been working here since 2002. But, it was only a year ago that I was made an official employee, after being a contractor. Hence, I am a new employee.

The first day, I was kept in a room and made to watch a lot of Power Point presentations. Nothing stimulates the mind like a good Power Point. Or seven.

Then, I went to safety training. This was also a positive experience, as I got to watch a number of videos, including one entirely about ladders. OK, I’m being facetious. It was about stairs, too.

Did you know that there are 17,000 ladder-related accidents annually in the U.S.? Neither did I. A couple of nuggets I gleaned from the video were “never use a ladder as anything but a ladder,” and “each trip up and down a set of stairs is a new adventure.” I take the elevator every day, so I’m not sure how much this is all going to help me. But I have scrapped my plans to use my ladder as a sailboat.

We saw a video on automobile accidents, which reminded me of when I was in ROTC in high school. On days when outdoor activities got cancelled, they would show us uplifting movies with names likes “Mechanized Death” and “Wheels of Tragedy” in order to scare us to death for when we actually started driving.

One of the safety trainers really kept me off balance, because I never knew when or if he was joking. He told us that he had never rented a DVD or a VHS movie, and the last movie he saw at the theatres was “Jaws.” Not relevant, but interesting. He didn’t really explain his reasoning. I suspect he’s a Mennonite.

He showed us one picture of a van that had been in an accident on Interstate 16 in Georgia. He told us that the van had careened off the road, and gone into a field, and somehow had hit the only pine tree for miles around. If that wasn’t irony enough, then he said, “And do you know what this guy did for a living?”

I didn’t.

He said, “He was a forester.” Wait, am I supposed to laugh? What are the odds? Then he said, “Of course, this was a fatality.” Oh, so I don’t laugh. I don’t think Mr.-never-watches-a-movie would like me laughing. He’d already scolded me once for checking my Blackberry during a video, saying we could all go “check our little e-mails during the next break.” I bet he’s never read one of those, either.

Later on, we learned to use a fire extinguisher. I’m not sure all this safety training was necessary. Nobody is going to die in the office where I work, except of boredom.

The rest of the week wasn’t nearly as interesting. One day, I toured a big call center where they sit and listen to people who haven’t paid their bills on time bitch and moan all day. It was one of those excruciating tours where they show you, for example, the water fountain, and say, “This is our water fountain.” And so on.

I have two more weeks of this stuff. And then, hopefully, I’ll be prepared and ready to take on the job that I’ve already been doing since 2002. And if by chance I have to climb a ladder, I’m ready.

Hair-raising ordeal

I got my haircut today, which should be a pretty boring event, but it turned into something of an ordeal.

I’ve been rocking this same hairstyle since I was about 10 years old. I figure, if something works, why mess with it? There was one brief period in high school when I flirted with the “part down the middle” look that was popular at the time, but I have since burned every picture of me from that era, and destroyed the negatives. The ’80s were a pretty horrific time.

Many years ago, when I lived in Griffin, Ga., I got my hair cut at an old-fashioned barber shop. There were two men there who cut hair, and I never paid more than $7 for a haircut. They didn’t shampoo it, they didn’t blow-dry it, they didn’t put gel in it, they just cut it. It took about 15 minutes, and they talked about hunting and fishing the whole time. You paid them, gave them a $1 tip, and you were on your way.

One of the guys was named Vern, and you had to be careful with him, cause he didn’t ask how you wanted your hair cut, he just took out the scissors and went to town (“Vern’ll skin you,” my mama used to warn me). They finally let a woman join them, and after my initial trepidation, she turned out to be my favorite, since she cut my hair in about 5 minutes, with no small talk, and she always did a good job, and she called me “Baby” when she was finished. I tipped her $2.

I have to get my hair cut pretty often, because it grows fast. If I go more than a month between haircuts, I look like a Chia pet. I’m not complaining, as I know men my age whose hairlines are retreating like the French army. It may be turning grayer than a Confederate uniform, but it’s yet to show any sign of turning loose.

Anyway, today, I went into a local Fantastic Sam’s, which is always a crapshoot, because they have a turnover rate of about 100 percent per week, and you never know who you’re going to get. I went in, signed my name, and waited my turn.

As I was thumbing through the latest issue of Working Mother magazine (A new plan to shrink belly fat!), my attention turned to the center of the salon. There was a redneck woman there, waiting on her mama, who she had brought to get her hair fixed (when women reach a certain age, they don’t get their hair cut anymore; they get it “fixed”). Then the redneck woman got a call on her cell phone, and the conversation grew quite contentious, and all of us in the barber shop got to hear it.

I didn’t take detailed notes, but it seems the gist of the problem is someone named Rebecca was making demands on the redneck woman’s time, and she didn’t like it. Apparently, Rebecca was trying to arrange some plans that would enable her to catch the latest episode of “Survivor,” and redneck woman was feeling a bit put out.

“I’ll tell you this, Rebecca, I’m getting there at 1:30. You ain’t gonna rush me. You can just miss "Survivor" one time, it won’t kill you.” She was carrying on this conversation at roughly the same decibel level as a Deep Purple concert, and it just went on and on. “Now, I’ll tell you one thing, you ain’t gonna mess up my vacation. I’m on vacation that week.”

As I wondered what sort of job this woman could possibly be on vacation from, her mother (let’s call her Redneck Grandma) chimed in with a few “I know that’s rights”, and I knew I had to leave. I got up and told the poor woman who was about to come call me back for my haircut to take my name off the list, as I could not handle anymore of the trailer park soap opera. She looked at me a little surprised, but I’m sure she understood.

Here’s what we have to do – we need to ostracize and shame public cell-phone talkers the same way we did smokers. Give them little designated areas where they can carry on conversations, but prohibit them everywhere else. Just as smoking laws are designed to protect people from second-hand smoke, we need to protect people from second-hand conversations. It’s a matter of public health, because eventually, somebody is going to get killed by an irritated bystander.

All’s well that ends well. I went to another Fantastic Sam’s, and got a nice haircut, but only after waiting 10 minutes as the guy sitting next to me was immersed in a long business call on his cell-phone, something involved an order of white cheddar cheese

There oughta be a law.

Running on empty

I did something kind of dumb the other day – I went ahead and registered to run a half-marathon.

Since the race is only about 5 weeks away, I suppose it’s time to ratchet up my training. By “ratchet up”, I mean start.

I have one of those training schedules I printed off the Internet and it calls for an 8-mile run this weekend. I can do that. Depending on your definition of “running.”

Why do I do this sort of thing? I don’t know. I’m one of those people who needs motivation to exercise. Since I eat like a feral hog, if I didn’t exercise they’d put a picture of Snoopy on my side and fly me over sporting events.

Also, my cholesterol tends to get higher than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The last time I had blood work done, the nurse called me and said, “Whoo, boy, you got a lot of things wrong with you.” So I decided right then and there to exercise more. And to not ever get blood work done again.

The last time I trained for a long race, it didn’t go so well. It was about three or four years ago, and I saw a notice in a local gym that there was a running group getting together a few nights a week to train for the Chicago Marathon. I didn’t want to run the Chicago Marathon, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt me to go run with this group and improve my overall physical fitness.

So I get there, and I’m the only man in the group. I remember telling my wife later that I was running with a bunch of younger women, and she just said, “Don’t pull a muscle.” This is what happens when you hit 40. You lose your air of danger.

We were going to do about a three-mile run, and I thought, great. I’ll have to jog really slowly so I won’t embarrass these girls. Then we got started, and they ran off and left me like I was hitting on them in the singles bar. That was embarrassing enough, but then about halfway through one of them doubled back to come check on me and see if I was OK! I explained to her that I had an old Vietnam War injury that was flaring up, but I’d be all right.

I finally got to where I could sort of keep up with them, but then I missed a couple of weeks, and joined them one Saturday for a long run on the Silver Comet Trail, which is west of Atlanta. It’s a long, flat trail, perfect for biking and running, and the girls were going to do a 15-mile run. Well, I knew I wasn’t in shape enough for that, so I figured I’d just go about 10, and wait for them to finish.

On that trail, you run out to a certain point, and then you turn around and run back. I got to about the 5-mile point, and I thought, hey, I feel pretty good. No need to turn around. I can’t get these girls outdo me. I’ll do a little bit more. Hit the 6-mile mark, and figured, what the heck? I can do this. So I ran all the way to the 7.5-mile mark and turned around, meaning I was going to do the whole 15 miles. The male ego is a wonderful, yet terrible, thing.

With about five miles to go, I realized I had made a huge mistake. It’s probably the same feeling Paul McCartney had the first time he heard himself singing The Girl Is Mine with Michael Jackson on the radio. I was in trouble.

My legs felt as if they had been encased in concrete. My head hurt, my stomach hurt, my pride hurt. And, there was no way out. There are no places to stop along the trail, nowhere to go for help. You just have to get back to where you started from. The last two miles, I would drag myself for about 100 yards, stop, then do it again. I looked like Jack Nicholson toward the end of "The Shining".

The girls gave me looks of pity mixed with impatience when I limped back to the parking lot. One of them suggested perhaps we should ride up in separate cars the next time. I assured them there would be no “next time.”

So, wish me luck these next five weeks. I don’t even have a running group to embarrass me this time. But I’m perfectly capable of doing that all by myself.

In search of Bubba

So I heard somebody on TV the other day talking about the “Bubba” vote, and I listened with disinterest, until my wife pointed out that they were talking about me.

Now hang on a minute. I’m not a Bubba. Am I?

I went and looked it up. Apparently, the Bubba vote refers to white (check), working-class (check), mostly rural (not so much) voters. But those are really code words. I think what they mean by the Bubba vote is the redneck vote.

They mean the kind of guy who walks out of a Larry the Cable Guy concert and says, “I wish I was as smart as him.” They mean the kind of guy who takes his wife to Wal-Mart for a chili dog for their anniversary dinner. They mean a guy who wears sleeveless shirts to church.

That’s a Bubba. And I’m not one of those.

I’m not saying I’m not related to some. And I might do a Bubba-like thing here and there. I know all the words to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” I’ve been known to bark at a football game. I consider Chili’s a fancy restaurant. I have a tan-line that stops just above my elbow. I’ve eaten potted meat for dinner.

Jethro Bodine? He was a Bubba. So were Junior Samples and Gomer Pyle and pretty much everybody on the Dukes of Hazzard except for Daisy (she was a hubba-hubba, not a Bubba). But I’m not a Bubba. I’m pretty sure about this.

I did get called a dumb hillbilly once, in Boston, when I was negotiating with some fellows on the street for some Red Sox tickets. The guy didn’t want to tell me exactly where in the stadium the tickets were located, so I told him what he could do with them, and what I said wasn’t nice, so he called me a dumb hillbilly, and I called him a stupid Yankee, but cooler heads prevailed and order was restored. I wound up getting in the game for free anyway, so who’s the dumb hillbilly, huh?

Don’t answer that.

Frankly, the whole “Bubba vote” thing is offensive. I don’t think we’d stand for using a stereotypical name to group other categories of voters, like women, or black people, or Hispanics, or strippers (you never hear about the “Diamond vote”).

Whatever. Call me what you will. I’m secure in my non-Bubbaness. As Popeye once said, “I yam what I yam.” Or maybe that was Jethro.