I was perusing Twitter yesterday, when I saw this trending #truefactsaboutme.

As you may have noticed, I have no problem talking about me, so here are

Five True Facts About Me

1. I’m right-handed but I throw a Frisbee left-handed. I don’t how this came about—maybe I thought it’d feel like someone else if I did it that way.

2. I was born with a birth defect. Pyloric stenosis, actually, which is a thickening of the pylorus or the valve that allows food to go from the stomach to the small intestines. It manifests itself in the first few weeks of life—lots of vomiting is usually is the first sign—and can cause all sorts of issues, including severe dehydration. Once diagnosed, it’s easily corrected with a simple surgery; even though it now is done with minimal invasion, back in the day when I got it, they had to make a good-sized hole in my abdomen. If you ever were to see me with my shirt off (you’re more likely to get hit by lightning while riding on a unicorn with Bigfoot and Amelia Earhart during the Derek Jeter Appreciation Day parade in downtown Boston), you’d see the three-inch scar on my abdomen that runs along the bottom of my ribcage.

3. I have never seen Titanic or Avatar. Nothing against James Cameron (I really liked Aliens and The Terminator), but something about those other two movies just turned me off, possibly all the hype preceding each of their releases, or possibly just knowing beforehand that [*SPOILER ALERT FOR AN EVENT THAT HAPPENED A CENTURY AGO*] the fracking boat sinks.

4. I used to collect matchbooks. I don’t when this started or ended exactly, but for about a decade (from the ’80s into the ’90s, I think), I took matchbooks from all the places I visited. What’s even odder is that I’ve never smoked (although I do have an unabashed love of fire) and never had a job or a glaring need to have fire on the spot. But yeah, somewhere in my house is a good-sized case with dozens of matchbooks in it. Weird, but true!

5. I have a personalized autographed letter from Dolores Hart hanging in my cubicle.

Who is Dolores Hart, you ask? Well, she was an up-and-coming actress in the early 1960s—she starred alongside Elvis Presley in King Creole and Loving You as well as in the original Where The Boys Are—who suddenly gave up her career and ran off to the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, for a life of secluded religious reflection. It was a stunning story at the time: a young starlet abandoning a life of fame and fortune in Hollywood to become a cloistered nun (as in “You’ll have ‘nun’ of that now!”), which seems even more remarkable in an age where everyone and anyone is trying to be a “celebrity.”

According to Regina Laudis’ site: “I just knew that this was what God wanted from me,” she said years later.

Mother Dolores continues to live at the abbey, and has risen to be its prioress. She also has stayed involved in the motion picture industry, regularly voting for Academy Awards.

So the letter you see above—yes, she misspells my last name in it—she wrote to me in appreciation for sending a message along to her. We had written an article about her, and afterward some fan wanted to contact her; rather than giving her direct info out, I just sent it along to her.

It’s a nice little souvenir, and puts me only a degree of separation from Elvis. It’s true!

As I mentioned a few days ago, this week I’m partaking in one of my favorite wife-approved guilty pleasures—traveling to upstate New York to see the opening of New York Jets training camp.

They say getting there is half the fun, and although I can’t always vouch for that most vacations, on this particular trip, I go out of my way to make it possible—literally, as I make odd stops along the way to break up the long ride a bit. It’s a great way to see a little more than just what’s within view of the highway.

Anyway, this year, there was a major storm a-comin’ while I was a-goin’, so I didn’t make as many stops as usual. Still, it was interesting getting to Cortland, and here are

Five Points of Interest From My Road Trip

1. I Have a New Love in My Life

Yeah, I’ll be just referring to her as “The Six”—hmmm, where I have heard that before? In this case, rather than a cylon, it’s a 2010 Mazda 6, and she’s rides as smooth as she looks. I’ve wanted a “grown-up” car like this for a while now, so now that I have it, I have to make sure it survives. Of course, there’s one problem—

See that—the speedometer goes to 160 m.p.h. Why would they have that number on there if they didn’t want you to drive it that fast …

2. The New Grave of the Old Leather Man

As many of you know, the legend of The Old Leather Man is something I’ve written about for Damned Connecticut (follow the link if you don’t know the story). Anyway, last year, his grave was controversially moved to “a safer place” in the Sparta Cemetery in Ossining, New York. I decided this time to head back to see the new grave and say “hi” to Old Leathery.

I had no idea where the new stone was, and since it’s an old historical cemetery, there’s no real signage or upkeep to help you. The grass is knee-high (ticks much?), and the place is a bit overgrown. As I did start to wander around, I stumbled across this, which I thought was pretty cool and relevant to my interests.

If you click on it and embiggen it, you can see it says, “This stone was pierced by a cannon shot fired from the British sloop-of-war Vulture …” in September 1780. The HMS Vulture was the British ship that had sailed up the Hudson to aid Connecticut jerk Benedict Arnold in his escape after his treachery was exposed. Although you can’t see the river from here because of the trees and houses now, it obviously was a key spot back in the day. A fortuitous find!

Eventually, I got the idea to follow the most tramped-down grass, which led me straight to the cemetery’s most famous resident.

It’s definitely a more impressive monument than his old stone, and farther from the road; the old stone was literally five feet from Route 9, which was very scary. It was interesting that there were all sorts of little trinkets on top of the stone.

Don’t ask about the dog, I have no idea.

Anyway, I paid my respects, left a few items and was on my way.

3. The Students in Ossining May Be Getting Left Behind

I saw these two signs in the men’s room of the Ossining McDonald’s—

They both say the same thing: “NO WORK SORRY.”

NO LEARN SORRY!

4. Eat Where the Locals Eat

Cortland is a college town, the home of a satellite campus of the State University of New York, a.k.a. SUNY. Like many places with college students, there are lots of chain restaurants, which are full of Jets fans this weekend.

I don’t eat at chain restaurants at home, so why should I eat at one out here? One of the best local places is Doug’s Fish Fry (owned by a rabid Jets fan), but I’m not much of a seafood fan—actually I’m happy to see giant underwater bugs staying underwater.

The place in this picture is Bob’s BBQ—a roadside stand that on a rainy night with legitimate threats of tornadoes and severe lightning storms, was packed with regulars getting good. That’s all I need to know—I got the pulled pork and rib combo, and it was awesome!

5. Cortland Loves the New York Jets

Seriously, this little town goes all out for Jets training camp. In addition to a big welcoming event on Thursday, there are signs like this everywhere, banners hanging up in downtown, billboards on the roadsides, all warmly welcoming the team and the fans …

Oh, and their money.

And mine, too!

 

As you read this, please picture me in shorts and high black socks, standing on my front lawn and shaking my fist at the kids sitting in their houses as my mind drifts back to—

Five Things I Used to Do During My Summer Vacations

1. Stay outside – Maybe it was because we didn’t have central air or Xboxes or Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or even Commodore 64s that we were happy to spend our days out-of-doors. Usually I’d be out of the house by 9:30 a.m. and out playing around the neighborhood, come back around noon for a quick lunch, go back out until dinner around 5:30, and then go out until after dark most nights, probably around 9 or 9:30 p.m.

Yeah, that’s almost 11-12 hours outside a day—and because it was the 70s, I never wore sunblock, either! Although, having had a solar-fed precancerous growth sliced off my face, it may not have been a bad thing to have a little lotion from time to time. Ooopsie!

2. Ride my bike – From the time I moved to Connecticut at age 7 until I got my license at 18, a bike was my primary means of transportation. (I did experiment with thrashing on a skateboard a little, but it wasn’t really practical for covering long distances.) My friends and I rode our bikes everywhere—to each other’s houses, to the baseball field, to the Game Room and Milford Amusement (okay, so there were some video games, but we had to go out to play the really cool ones like Zaxxon, Tempest, Asteroids and Journey!), to the ice pavilion (a cool place to hang out in the A/C-challenged 70s, literally), to the beach and even to the legendary Wanda’s Sugar Shack. I used to treat mine like it was the Millennium Falcon—”the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.” (Obviously, an early indicator of my love of speed!)

As you might guess, I wasn’t quite as cool as Han Solo, but it wasn’t from lack of imagination or want.

3. Play ball – Back in the day, we played some variation of baseball every day—if we didn’t trek over to the diamond next to Kennedy School in Milford for real hardball, we would play tennisball baseball (usually in the Tartaglia’s backyard until we hit one too many homeruns into the neighbor’s garden, wrecking his tomato plants and thus shutting down the stadium) or even “off-the-cellar ball,” which consisted of throwing a tennis ball at a dormer and trying to get it to fly over a clothesline for an automatic homer—I’m pretty sure this is what ruined my throwing arm and my potential million-dollar pitching career, not the fact that I was born with a rag arm. (Yeah, that’s the ticket.)

And of course, there was lots of hours dedicated to wiffle ball (the home of which is now about a mile from my house—I’m convinced the factory is manned by Oompa Loompas, but that’s a post for another day)! We used to set up a chair as a strike zone and had different automatic hits—a hit past a fielder on the ground was a single, one on the deck was a double, off the side of the house was a triple and on the roof was a homer. We played wiffle ball well into my college years, and had some marathon games.

I would say that this also ruined my arm, but I was a junkballer and never threw hard. My out pitch was a slow, sweeping curve ball that would look like it was headed for the batter’s head and then dramatically turn in and drop into the middle of the chair. Nothing more embarrassing for my friends than striking out looking at a 2 mile-per-hour pitch that they thought was going to plunk them.

Oh, and if it rained, my buddy Milo and I would play APBA Baseball, which involved cards and dice. We would play out entire seasons and keep stats. Yeah, funny how we struggled to get girls early on …

4. Swim – As I mentioned, home A/C wasn’t as prevalent as it is today, so to cool off, we’d spend hours in pools. We had a great neighborhood for this as there were at least a half dozen pools that we’d rotate through, although the best one belonged to my next-door neighbor Rick, whose parents had installed a full in-ground pool with a diving board!

I remember how we’d try and angle for it: “Wow, my parents are at work,” I’d say, “so we can’t swim at my house.” And everyone would agree. Then Milo would say, “Well, my house is too far away.” And everyone would sort of nod. Then someone would say, “Well, Nicky’s dad just put chlorine in, so we can’t go there.” And everyone would nod again. “Roger’s parents are out, so we can’t swim there, either.” And then we’d all sit there quietly for a few seconds, looking at each and looking to Rick, watching his wheels turn. Finally, he’d say, “Hey, I could ask my mom!” And of course, we’d all agree that was a great idea!!!

Rick, if you’re reading—we also liked you for other things besides your pool … you know, like your cool toys!

5. The beach – This didn’t really become popular until we were older and could get there on bikes, but definitely by high school, Milo and I were spending much of our days at Walnut Beach in Milford, along with our buddy—and Frisbee master—Bobby, and other assorted characters. Occasionally, we’d go over to Silver Sands, although there was no fancy schmancy boardwalk between the two like there is now. Back then, we had to pick our way over rocks, garbage and sewage, and past The Chicken Lady, who was this eccentric squatter who lived in a makeshift trailer on the beach after the city knocked down her beachfront home and, yes, she kept chickens as pets.

Of course we were always interested in meeting girls, which we did on occasion. One summer I thought I had a chance with the girl who ran the ice cream truck, but that …. well, melted away like a popsicle in the sun. There were other ones—maybe a post for another day.

Ultimately, we spent much of the day just hanging out and soaking up the sun. We used to laugh at a sign on the beach that proclaimed in large letters, “NO LOITERING.” As if you did anything else on a sunny beach during a carefree summer.

So as my wife likes to say, it’s great to have a freshly minted 13-year-old in the house because now we have a being in our midst That. Knows. Everything! Who’s luckier than us, you know, other than Colorado Springs homeowners?

Anyway, despite what my son likes to think, I believe there’s a thing or two that he just might *not* know yet. To help, here are

Five Things I Wish I Knew When I Became a Teenager

1. Very few people are good at keeping secrets – I always come back to something I heard at the Spy Museum in Washington: “We’ll never know who the world’s greatest spy is because they’ll never spill any secrets.” As someone who has earned the nickname “The Vault,” I have learned the hard way that the majority of people out there are incapable of keeping secrets. Not that they don’t want to—I’m just saying it’s human nature to share stories and secrets, and they can’t help themselves.

And if you think other 13-year-olds can keep secrets, well, trust me, they absolutely cannot. For example, you may want to believe that when you tell your friend Milo what classmate you have a crush on in 8th grade, he’ll never tell anyone, yet when he writes “Ray loves [Name of girl who sits behind you]” on the brown paper cover of your math book and Mr. Betzig walks by and sees it and shouts, “RAY LOVES WHO?!!!” and the whole world hears it and the Earth doesn’t instantly swallow you up no matter how badly you wish it would, you learn that … well, the best way to keep a secret is to keep it to yourself.

You will also probably always take the dust jackets off your books for the next 33 years or so.

2. People don’t really change; situations thankfully do – I know this might be a pessimistic world view, but as much as you want to believe it, very few people are capable of true change—in other words, those kids who seem like the popular kids but are jerks to you in middle school and, say, make fun of your large nose in 3rd period English class, will pretty much be jerks who make fun of other people’s noses when they grow up, too.

The good news is that middle (and high) school isn’t forever, and when you get to college and the world beyond your educational enslavement, you have more freedom to choose who you hang out with as well as the opportunity to make new (real) friends who generally don’t care about the size of your nose because they’re not clueless inbred jerks who probably sniff their sister’s underwear when no one is looking.

Chances are that most of those panty-sniffing losers’ best days will have been in high school, and when you’re reaching your stride in Life, they’ll be thrice-divorced and looking how to make the payments on their van down by the river.

3. Do it the right way – Right now, it might seem like taking short cuts or cheating are the easiest ways to succeed, but trust me, the only person you’re cheating is yourself. Not to go all “After School Special,” but putting in the effort and time to actually learn things and do assignments correctly will only benefit you in the long run. (Really. No jokes here. … move along.)

4. “Friends come and go, but family is forever” – My grandmother actually told me this when I was about 13 and wanted to go somewhere with my friends rather than hang with them, and I laughed at her. Turns out she was right, sort of. I mean, yes, there will be relatives who turn out to be douches and you never want to see again, and you will also certainly have very good friends who you will probably know for the majority of your life, but in general, your family will be around you from cradle to grave, like it or not. That means figuring out how to deal with them, how to love them and even how to survive them in some cases—I always think about how as kids my sisters used to kick the crap out of each other and now that they don’t share the same room any more, they’re besties. I’m not saying that always happens, just that if you work at it a bit, it can, which means you have someone to torture for decades.

5. Love at 13 isn’t forever – You know that brand-new $50 video game that you *have* to have? Yeah, in two weeks, it’ll be on the shelf with the other 23 you *had* to have. Ditto that person you meet in middle (or high) school that you don’t think you can possibly live without. Sure, they may seem like the most amazing thing in the world right now, but life isn’t lived in middle or high school, and when you get beyond that, relationships (and situations—see No. 2) change, as will your tastes. Crushes will come and go, and you owe it to yourself to keep an open mind and heart until you reach an age (probably over 20) where you are capable of finding “true” love … although chances are you’ll still have to kiss a few frogs until you find the right person …

And even then, you might kiss a few more because when you ask them out the first time (after they’ve been flirting with you for a week), they’ll tell you that they’re suddenly dating someone else. Then you’ll have to wait a few months before they lose that loser and realize that you’re the right person for them, too! (No really, this can happen. Ask anyone *cough cough* your mother *cough*)

 

Okay, in honor of Father’s Day—another phony greeting card-store invention to guilt you into spending money to buy unnecessary crap for your dad, who really doesn’t want anything other to be generally left alone to read the paper while on the toilet, fall asleep while watching the ball game and have someone else cut the lawn (the right way, dumb ass!)—I thought it only made sense to give some love to my favorite fake dads.

For the record, I’m pretty disgusted with the general way dads are depicted on TV—the majority of them (from Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin to Tim “The Toolman” Taylor and Ray Barrone to every dad on every Disney sitcom)—are portrayed as absolute boobs. Really, flip through the channels some day and watch—almost 99 percent are some sort of helpless, clueless, bumbling idiot that no one in their right mind would’ve decided to start a family with. Okay, I get that it’s exaggerated for entertainment’s sake, but still …

Thus, all my favorite TV dads actually have brains (to some extent), have an air of authority and are guys who you’d actually want to raise kids.

Quick disclaimer/honorable mention: Cliff Huxtable and Andy Taylor almost made my list, except Cosby’s Cliff might as well be a unicorn: A doctor dad with FIVE reasonably intelligent and active kids yet has countless hours to hang around the house (did they have a fleet of nannies and chauffeurs we never saw who carted the kids around to their separate schools and activities?); and although Sheriff Taylor is a lot more realistic and compelling, I just never really loved the character or the show—I blame Goober.

Also just missing the list: Jay Pritchett of “Modern Family,” who I do like but sometimes I feel like he’s Al Bundy with a second chance. Go figure.

Anyway, here are:

My Favorite TV Dads

1. Howard Cunningham, “Happy Days”

Heyyyyyy, how could I not have Mr. C on the list? Hard-working, even-keeled, full of wisdom and confident enough to handle both the womanizing motorcycle thug who lived over his garage and the crazed sex kitten who shared his bed. (Please, like Mrs. C never snapped on the latex to diaper and spank Howard!) Granted, he never seemed to notice (or even miss) his oldest son Chuck, but he certainly was an emotional rock for Richie and Joanie, although I wasn’t under the impression he cared all that much for Chachi.

2. Mike Brady, “The Brady Bunch”

Long speeches, hair styles and fashion sense aside, here was another TV dad who was well grounded in reality who often made sure that he and his kids always strived to do the right thing. Here was also another guy who had to handle a sex-crazed wife (like Mike and Carol never swung with the Dittmeiers) as well as a womanizing thug who lived in his attic (Johnny Bravo? More like Johnny Horndog—heck, he even tried to bang his step mother and adopted sister!). Still, Mike was reliable, consistent and a zen presence in a toiletless house of chaos.

3. Jack Bristow, “Alias”

Who wouldn’t want “Spy Daddy” as their daddy? A hardcore, kick-ass super special agent who would do *anything* to protect his daughter, be it torturing or killing others, or using a spork to remove someone’s eyeballs. (Okay, he didn’t do the actual removing, he just talked someone else through it—close enough.) And for reasons that I will never forgive J.J. Abrams for, Jack made the ultimate sacrifice to save his daughter (and the world), although he was pretty hardcore right up until the end. (Sorry, hard to call spoilers for a show that’s been off the air for six years.)

4. Burt Hummel, “Glee”

Although I’m not the Gleek I was, it wasn’t because of anything that Burt Hummel did. An immensely likable blue-collar working stiff who never wavered in his love for his son, even after Kurt came out (still one of the better scenes in TV history—skip to 4:20 mark) and then continually acted like a little bitch. Still, he was at center of this scene, which still chokes me up and has ruined my favorite Beatles’ song forever. (Sort of.)

5. Red Forman, “That ’70s Show

My inspiration, which comes as no surprise to my wife, who has repeatedly heard me mutter, “I’m going to put my foot in your ass!” Seriously though, Red is another working class guy but has that angry edge I find myself embracing more and more as I get older—and which finds itself closer and closer to the surface when I’m dealing with my almost-teenage son, who I have referred to as a “dumb ass” on multiple occasions, like just last week when he carelessly left a bunch of papers home and I had to run from New Haven to Shelton back to New Haven in under 60 minutes, all during rush hour. Granted, Red wouldn’t have done this, but in my mind, I like to pretend I didn’t …

Anyway, enjoy the holiday—and that goes for you, Dad!