A 4th of July Reminder

TV Land is showing the greatest made for television movies this week. I have been watching “The Day After.” For those of you too young to remember, this movie is about a nuclear attack on the United States after an escalation in the Cold War over East and West Germany.

In 1983 I was only 12 at the time, and my bed time was nine o’clock back then, so this was my first time seeing the ending of the film. While I was rather young, I still recall that most schools had large discussions groups about the movie, the Secretary of State answered questions on television that week, children were sent home with pamphlets for families to talk about the movie, and of course the biggest news – half of the US population watched the event.

That last little fact, half the US population watched one movie at the same time, is still an amazing point. Before cable had saturated the public or news bounced off the satellites in real time coverage, “The Day After” scared the crap out of everybody. For years we were certain that the emanate engagement of the Cold War would end by the fiery streaks left from Minute Man Missiles.

This last Sunday the final installment on a social experiment took place. It was hosted by Matt Lauer. Since last January a group has been crossing this great nation trying to decide who the greatest American was. If you had not heard, President Lincoln was second, and President Reagan was named first. Several complained, others were shocked, but most didn’t even know it had taken place.

Movies during the 70’s and up through the 80’s were so depressing and anti heroic. Crystal balls predicted a future that was dark, full of disease, and the average citizen made very poor fashion choices out of an assortment of garbage bags and camouflage. And as goofy as it sounds, when Reagan claimed it was morning in America, I believed him. When people speak of how he restored faith in our country and made it alright to be patriotic again, I’ve got to agree. He earned that first place position.

The Day After was a worst case dramatization of America; but I don’t like to think about the worst in America, I’d rather focus on the best we have to offer. For example, rather then focus on how sad “The Day After” was, I like to think about what a great movie “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn” is, both written and directed by the same man, Nicholas Meyer. Whether your hero is Kirk or Reagan we can agree to stay optimistic about The United States of America. Our best days are ahead of us, our worst behind.

Saying goodbye before security 

There was a time

A thirty something father explained to his seven year old son, about to take his first flight, that mommy used to come to the gate and say good-bye to him for every trip he took.

I thought back to 1981 for my first flight. It was achieved after the stepfather and my younger sib ate enough boxes of Chex cereal to collect the box tops needed for a free airline ticket on Republic Airlines.

Detroit to Atlanta on a business trip with the parental unit was that first flight. In the business section of the plane, looking out a window behind the wing we were served a hot meal of steak or chicken, with metal fork and knife. When we arrived at the new airport, I was amazed by the tram that sped people from one terminal to the next. At each stop the robotic voice of the future would sound a semi-understandable announcement of the next location. In a rented Chevy we went a long way past the city to a brand new hotel. It seemed huge and magical with the glass elevators and sky light ceilings.

Of the few things I remember most vividly that week was the introduction of cable television to my life, paying far too much for ordering room service, getting caught watching the “R” rated “Gong Show the Movie,” and marching up and down Stone Mountain.

Two summers ago I was in Atlanta for the day checking on some exhibit properties the company was wasting money on for storage. It happened that the warehouse was one exit past where we had stayed. I dropped by the hotel only to realize, again, that my years on the road had made me a snob. These days it is a run down old place that has just changed hands in the middle of everything suburban. Atlanta had grown around the once remote location to gobble it up. That new airport is overcrowded and the tram speaks seven languages in three different voices.

There was a time when DB Cooper could pay cash for his ticket to walk on board his flight, when everyone got drinks and a meal for little or no extra charge, the stewardesses were not surly and “there for our safety,” when cereal box tops could buy a ticket on an out of business airline, and there was a time when a wife could kiss her husband good-bye at the gate to remind him just what he was coming home for.

I think I may have spotted the perfect woman

I think I may have spotted the perfect woman at Logan International Airport. She is forty-ish, brown hair about shoulder length, pale skin, blue eyes, dressed very well. The way she works the laptop and cell phone at the same time leads me to believe she is rather savvy with the technology.

What kept me from talking to her? The huge wedding ring and matching diamond earrings with a bit of bling on the wrist. Sure, she may have been nearly perfect for me, but she was completely perfect for someone else already.

I am sure she has noticed me. In fact it is obvious. I have a cold and keep blowing my nose – oh how unsexy I am today.

She moved seats – not closer, but facing me. Maybe there is a chance.

Ah – no, just a better angle at the television in the bar. Wow! Soaps are sure showing a lot these days. It’s nearly as bad as Skin-O-Max.

That’s my flight, let’s see if she follows.

Big Mouth Strikes Again 

A Parade of Freaks Marches on

The exhibit floor was nearly empty except for the few stragglers. She was very noticeable as she walked to me wearing the stretchy waistband khakis all the trendy moms wore a decade ago. Her left hand was full of the white taffy she had just bought from the sweetshop on the second floor.

I greeted her with a good morning and asked if she was looking for anything. She proceeded to take a wad of the taffy like a baseball pitcher with tobacco and place it in her right jaw. Wiping the bit of drool that dripped from her chipmunk cheek she replied something forgettable. “Don’t look away” I told myself, “it would be rude.” Then, with sweet release, her hand went back in to her mouth and pulled out the semi-masticated morsel of white chew and replaced it in the wrapped. She smiled, stuck out her hand to shake and said, “Silly me, where are my manners?” She shook my hand with a gooey grace, and then proceeded to smack her lips as she sucked the sweetness off of each finger tip.

“What am I thinking?” she continued “I have to get to the next session” then turned and walked away.

A good present to buy P2 this year – hand sanitizer.

Boston Skyline 

Boston Beauty

As the ambassador of software, I should tell you that most of our target audience is made of middle aged men. Ninety percent of the places I go are full of well behaved family men who enjoy an occasion drink. Most live a pretty conservative life, exercise regularly, watch what they eat, just well rounded boring middle aged guys.

Then there are these smaller less targeted events I attend. Some for bankers who strut the show floor in twenty year old suits and a trophy wife two years older. Others are the annual escape of the bean counter that drinks like he should have in collage but didn’t know anyone old enough to buy for him.

I was at an event in Boston recently where the most curious of things happened to me. A woman of mature years approached me during a very slow evening reception. Polite as always I started with small talk and chit chat (my specialty.) She told me about the number of years she had been coming to this event, the tradition of a few groups to stay up all night drinking, skip the daily sessions, and get as many free dinner and drinks from sponsors as she copuld. Her Virginia accent kept me guessing at every other word. The longer she lingered the more annoying it became. She flagged over an old comrade of the conference scene who filled me in on what room the parties were going to be in each night of the week, and she wrote them down for me on her business card so I would remember.

When I Stepped from the exhibit area after the night had finished she spotted me from her bench outside one of the corporate suites. Well past her allotted three drink ticket maximum from the exhibit area bar she made it well known that I was her kind of man. It has been so long since I was anyone’s man that I almost considered her offer.

There was a game I used to play – invented it myself, and shared with others at times. I called it Binary Love. The rules were simple, but absolute. When you see someone of the opposite sex, you must admit your immediate reaction of a “yes” or “no” to the question “would you ever have sex with them?” You might say “you didn’t invent that P2. That is just human nature.” But read the rule again – it’s absolute “Would you ever?” Ever? Well, I suppose if I were in a fall out shelter, if I were stuck on an island, I we were the last two people…. Well, that is a different question. It would have to be an awful situation where a person more then rubs you the wrong way to say no. Wouldn’t it? While I never did any test marketing of this question on my female friends, it usually boiled down to men think they will have sex with 75% of women they see in an absolute situation.

After years of training for this moment the offer came out in a less then casual slur of drunkenness. I kindly declined. My life is not that absolute, but her breath was pure Absolute.

Third Time Charm

I think back to the show “Doogie Howser, M.D.” At the end of every episode the child prodigy writes in his computer journal about the situation he has just gone through. After striking the keys in his smooth summery of the half hour we just spent watching, he stops, pauses in deep reflection, and types out the moral we should have walked away with. If life were only that easy.

In the last few years I have had friends who have gone through the loss of one of their parental units as I had. It is an expected thing – earlier then I thought, but expected. Never easy, but will happen to all of us eventually.

This weekend one of the remaining parental units will now re-commit to another person; this will be the third time. People I know in this same situation find it a bit difficult to see their unit date and move on. Lord knows the siblings are having a hard enough time in my family.

But there is this guy I work with who has helped me to put things in perspective. He doesn’t know it, and I never bring it up. Great man, terrific dad, loving husband, unfortunately lost his wife in the last year. If anyone deserves a good life and someone to be with, it is him. With the loss of a spouse, people often feel the obligation that they need to hold on tight before the memory of the love escapes them. For others, moving on to find a new life is more important then wallowing in the dark reflections of what might have been.

There are two certainties I have discovered – the more I think about love, the more I realize how little I know about intimacy. The same is true for writing – the more I write, the more rules I break that I had no idea were out there. Life is the same way. When I spend time exploring this world, meeting new people, going to new places, it makes me think of how little I have accomplished with my life. How, if that parental unit, mine or other, were to stay the same, never date or commit, how small their world would become. Or maybe how small their world had become in just a short time – and now it’s time to explore what is out there again.

Dean Martin had a hit called “It’s a great big beautiful world” and I would have to agree. And here is where I wish that I were Doogie Howser, M.D... That my few brief words could summarize years of happiness together to make us all sigh and relate to the major characters who have now grown, ready to move on. But that’s now how it works. It takes a little time to move on, make good choices, or mistakes, and explore the great big beautiful world.

Second Wife to Be 

My Second Wife

Originally Published November 10, 2004

I really need to get this "first wife" phase of my life over and done with so I can move on to the "trophy wife" phase. While I am here in the Northwest Executive Lounge at the New York La Guardia airport, I notice that aside from my fellow businessmen who are flying somewhere today, there is a creepy level of older men with younger women who are wearing very large, and I do mean huge, diamond rings and tennis bracelets. Ladies, as an aside, would you really wear a wide band bracelet full of diamonds to play tennis?

A few years ago, when our company had a vertical target of banks, I would attend conferences filled with notably older men walking the exhibit isles with their significantly younger wives on their arms. These women were my age but married to someone of the stature and bladder control of George Burns. These bankers love to golf. It made for great conferences in Phoenix or Hawaii during the coldest of winters.

So, in estimation, my second wife, while I have not even met the first, would be about ten years old this year and just beginning to wear make-up and notice boys are there for more then hitting. But these are important years for her, where she gets caught up in the importance of money and objects over things like love and good looks. Her father is very important and wrapped around her finger. Hopefully she will be as shallow as I am and only be interested in taunting me with the idea of intimacy in exchange for things that really make her happy like a club membership or gloating over a circle of her friends, whom she never really liked any way.

Please first wife, find me and get rid of me quickly so I can get on with the enjoyment of looking like I am escorting my daughter all over the world or get the senior discount at the movies while buying her a child's ticket.

How I long for the good times to come.

The first story, from Chicago

Originally Posted June 29, 2004

I was in Chicago this week, where drunken Paul went to the Taste ofChicago and smoked a half a cigarette under extreme peer pressure under the influence of misguided Canadians, and remembered the last time I was there.

There are a few women I wish I still kept in touch in life, and the last time I had seen them was that last summer in Chicago, 1992. The ones that come to mind are Megan, Amy B, Becky Burns, and of course Barb. REM had the popular song "Calling to Wake Her Up" from the "Out of Time Album," which I though was "Calling Chuck Gaidica." From Detroit, it only made sense to call the channel 4 weather man. While it was the last time I had spoken with many of them, the last time I was at my fighting weight of 175, and the last time I had a good sense of humor before becoming so cynical – it was not the last time of thought of my one night with Barb.

It all centers around this one night in 1984 when I was ending the eighth grade. It was about this time of year, one of those warm June nights in Michigan, when we had our eighth grade dance. Probably the first dance I had ever been to, and my expectations were high. In my knit tie, and best "break dance" moves for a white kid in Birmingham, the greatest slow song of all time came on half way through the night, Careless Whisper, by Wham. "Time can never mend" it starts "the careless whisper of a good friend." Ah, words that meant so much back then and so little now. I tapped Barb on the shoulder, asked her if we could dance, and she agreed. With her elegant grace and sway to the music I was confident no one saw me fumble about. We talked about the class trip to Cedar Point that week, how I wished my "best friend" of the time had not forced me out of the seat on the bus next to her from "the point", and her plans for the summer.

In hopes of getting in those summer plans, I noticed something change in the situation. Maybe because I could feel the ruffle of her dress under my hand, the smell of that Hello Kitty perfume young ladies worn then, or the fact that I was finally with her, the worst thing that could happen to a developing youngman began to rise. An enormous, raging errection grew under my khakis, and there was no escape. Attempting to get my mind off of the topic (baseball, religion, mangled baby ducks) I couldn't draw her closer to cover the problem; it would only make the matter worse. I couldn't let her go, because that would reveal the problem to my peers. As the next song started,Phil Collins, "Against All Odds" from the movie of the same title, she said thank you for the dance, and began to turn away, I held on tight and asked for one more. The music played on, we danced, I slowly positioned us closer to the boy's bathroom. When the DJ crossed over to something funky from Prince I was able to slip away, unnoticed, to a splash of cold water.

So when I hear one of these two songs, I think of this time. I ask myself why didn't I keep up with her? Ask her out? Keep up with anyof those friends who came to Chicago for a long weekend one summerto visit? More importantly, I wonder if she knew what was happening? Or was she too young to figure it out? I know that women find it funny when this sight pop's up in public. Most guys do too when it's not them. Funny what pop's up in your mind walking through the lobby of a hotel hearing these silly songs.