Unaware and Don't Care

 

For a good, long time (since the late 1980’s), I’ve worn a hat.  Until recently, it’s always been a baseball cap.  I once had this grand idea that I would get 366 baseball caps, one for each day of the year, plus 1 outrageous one for Feb 29^th.  That plan never came to fruition, but I did manage to accumulate 30-40 different hats.

One of the best hats I have, based on the feel of the hat, is the Ohio State University hat given to me by my daughter. She attended school there and, knowing my hat-wearing ways, got one for me. The bill isn’t flat; it’s curved just enough. The front panels aren’t stiff with the plastic mesh; it soft and floppy all around.  It’s super comfortable.

The only thing I don’t like about the hat is that it elicits people into assuming something about me that isn’t true. I’m not really into sports and, most definitely, couldn’t care less about college sports. But, somehow, wearing that red hat with silver O encouraged people to ask me about the game and what I thought about the past/upcoming season.

“I don’t know, dude. I wear the hat because my kid goes there.”

There was this one time when I went to a doctor’s office with my 16-year-old son. He had broken his wrist and we were getting his cast removed. The nurse called for us to be taken back and he said something as we were making out way through the hallway to the exam room. I didn’t really pay attention to what he said, but it sounded like he was saying some kind of code. I assumed it was addressed to the other employees since he wasn’t speaking directly to me or my son.

After we got situated in the room and did the preliminary stuff, he looked at me and said, “Oh aitch.”

It was the same thing that he said in the hallway when he called us back. “Excuse me?”

“Oh aitch.”

I looked at my son and back to the nurse. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”

He pointed. “Your hat.”

“My hat?” I took it off and looked at it. “What about it?”

“Oh aitch.”

I was incredibly confused. “No…there’s just an O on it.”

And then, he said something different. “I oh.”

I looked at him as though he was speaking an alien language. “Whaaat?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “O-H…I-O.”

“Ohio,” I said. “And?”

He sighed. “That chant, man. Call and response. I say ‘O-H’ then you say “I-O.”

“Ohhhhhhhh,” I said. “Why?”

“Because that’s the Ohio State chant.”

“I don’t know about any of that, dude. I wear the hat because my kid goes there.”

 

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The Bread Shelf Boy

 

I began dating the woman would become my wife, L, in 1987. I was a Junior in high school. She was a Senior.

After she left my house on the night that she first met my parents, my mom said, “She looks just the same.”

As you can imagine, I was a bit stunned by this comment. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“She used to come into the bakery all the time.”

You see, way back in the mid 1970’s, my mom worked at a place called Jacob’s Bakery at 3073 Madison Rd in Oakley.  In the summer and on weekends, my mom would often take me to work with her.  I’d lay in my sleeping bag and watch a little black and white TV and run around playing on the common area floor.  I had a particular affinity for laying on and taking naps on the bread shelf.

The next day, at school, I told L that my mom recognized her as a little girl who would stop in the bakery every so often.

L said yes, she’d stop at the bakery for a donut as she walked home from church on Sundays.

I told here all about how I’d be there with my sleeping bag and TV, and how I liked sleeping on the bread shelf.

L gasped. “You’re the Bread Shelf Boy?”

I laughed. “The what?”

She told me that she would see me when she stopped in the bakery and how she told her mom about the little boy who was there that would sometimes sleep on the bread shelf.

It’s almost like we were meant to be together.

 

 

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Three Little Words

 

I HATE television shows that end with “To be continued…”

After spending approximately an hour going through the emotional ups and downs of the characters as they search for one of their friends who had been kidnapped by an elite criminal organization…and that friend is being tortured and about to be force fed raw chicken through a beer bong…there is nothing, I mean NOTHING, more frustrating than to read the words “…to be continued” on the bottom of the screen.

How’d my feeling about that come to be?

I was about 8 years old and we (my mom, dad, and I) were in Toledo, Ohio on our yearly visit with my mom’s relatives. There are 2 reasons I liked going to Toledo. I usually got to stay with my cousins at their house while my parents stayed at my grandmother’s house, and the show Ultraman was on TV in Toledo.

This one trip to Toledo was going to include a visit to Cedar Point Amusement Park on Friday, so I had to stay with my parents at my grandmother’s house. Thursday morning, I watched Ultraman, as I had all week long. It was a good episode, too. Ultraman was fighting some kind of monster and he lost his beta capsule. That’s the thing that gave Ultraman his power. So, Ultraman is getting weaker by the minute and the monster thing is really beating up on him. But this little kid finds Ultraman’s beta capsule and runs to the battle. Ultraman is on the verge of collapsing when the kid shows up with the beta capsule and then….TO BE CONTINUED! This is high drama! It doesn’t get any better than this. I just have to wait until tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning came, and my mom woke me up to get ready to go to Cedar Point. We were going to leave at 8am. But Ultraman didn’t come on until 10! I begged and I pleaded with my parents to let me watch Ultraman. We could leave at 10:30. But they wouldn’t hear of it. I started crying, screaming about how unfair the situation is. I was really upset. I wanted to see what was going to happen. Was it going to be the last episode of Ultraman? Or was he going to be saved? And how? These were questions that BEGGED to be answered. Finally, my parents told me that Ultraman would be at Cedar Point. Well, that’s all I needed to hear. I was ready to go. All the way to the park, I was thinking about seeing Ultraman. If I couldn’t see the episode, at least I could ask him what had happened. At the park, I kept asking where Ultraman was. I kept being told things like, “He’ll be here later” or “Let’s go through the mirror maze first.” But ya know what? Ultraman wasn’t there. I had been duped. And the worst part about it, in my 8-year-old mind, was that I had missed Part 2 of the show. I didn’t get to see the end.

And that’s why I hate “to be continued.” I don’t want to risk being that disappointed again. Of course, I could just plan on being in front of my TV same bat-time, same bat-channel next week, but I don’t want to feel I’m being held hostage by a stupid TV show. So, I’ve generally stayed away from hour long dramas that have ongoing story-arcs. I know that, with the advent of TiVo and DVR’s, the disappointment factor has pretty much been addressed. But I still don’t want to invest that kind of time in an ongoing show such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Blue Bloods,” “NCIS: Wherever” and “Yellowstone.”

Just in case you feel pity for me for not ever having seen Part 2 of that Ultraman show, you should know that…a few years ago…a couple of good friends from work who were aware of this tragic childhood trauma of mine, called upon the Internet and the power of eBay and presented me with 4 DVD’s that include all 39 episodes of Ultraman. ALL 39! Yes, even PART 2! After almost 35 years, I was able to see how Ultraman survived, how he gets the Beta Capsule back, and how he defeated the monster and saved the day.

It wasn’t anything that spectacular. Ultraman simply retrieved the beta capsule from the kid, recharged his power, and won the fight. Bit of a letdown, really, after building up the suspense in my mind for all those years.

But something quite unexpected happened after that. I had sort of an identity crisis type thing. I had been “the guy who hadn’t seen part 2 of Ultraman” for most of my life. And once I saw it, part of me wasn’t sure who I was anymore. Similar to Inigo Montoya (from the Princess Bride) telling Westley, “I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.” It took about a week for me get over that feeling.

I still can’t stand “to be continued…”, though. I won’t watch streaming series that release episodes once a week. I’ll wait until all episodes drop, and then binge it over a couple of days.

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Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

A good number of years ago when my daughter, S, was in third grade, her school had a technology fund raiser. These particular funds were raised by students selling items from the Sally Foster Catalog. Of course, there were incentives designed to motivate the students to sell. If a student collected X dollars, that student got to choose a prize from X level. If a student collected Y dollars, then that student chose a prize from Y level. S immediately saw what she wanted: A plastic coin-sorter/bank in the shape of a combination lock. So, she sold what she needed to sell to meet the prize eligibility requirements.

A couple of weeks after the fundraiser was over, she picked up her prize. When I got home from work that day, she showed me how it worked and showed me how to do the combination. She was just so excited about it. About 8:00pm, her brother, Z, got hold of it and attempted to open it without using the combination. He succeeded but broke it in the process. S was devastated. Cried and cried and cried. Now, S is a worrywart. She frets and worries about things and works herself up to the point where she’s crying…usually about things that MIGHT happen tomorrow or next week. I knew that if I didn’t tell her something, she’d be up all-night fighting back tears. So, I told her that we’d take the sorter-slash-bank back to school, tell Mr. C (the guy who is in charge of the incentives) we discovered it was broken when we opened it, and ask if another could be ordered. This calmed her down and she was able to get a decent night’s sleep.

The next morning, I was thinking about it some more and, on our way to school, we talked about lying. I told her that I really really wanted her to have her sorter bank, because she worked so hard for it and it wasn’t fair that her brother broke it. But I also told her that I was afraid I would be teaching her a wrong lesson by lying about the circumstances of the damage to get what we want. What’s more, I told her that if we told Mr. C that it was broken though carelessness, there’s a chance that he’d refuse to order another one because, hey, we didn’t take care of the one we had. She looked me right in the eye and said, “Dad, I know lying is wrong, but it’s just this one time.” Right away, my fears about her being taught a wrong lesson were solidified and it hit me like a hammer.

“Honey, is killing someone wrong?”

“Sure it is, Dad.”

“OK, but what if we did it just once? Just this one time?”

“No. Killing is wrong.”

“That’s right. So how is that any different from lying…just this once?”

“Because lying isn’t the same as killing someone. Besides, we’re talking about a plastic bank, not someone’s life.”

“True, but the idea is the same. It’s wrong to lie/kill/steal/cheat, but it’s ok if we only do it just this one time. Does that sound right to you?”

“No.”

“So, we’ll tell Mr. C the truth. That your brother broke it.”

“But what if he won’t order another one?”

“Then…we’ll kill your brother. Just this once. Honey, I don’t know what we’ll do. Maybe we’ll make Z give you his allowance until we can go buy another one on our own.”

We arrived at school and she went to her room, while I made my way to Mr. C’s office. I told him the truth about what happened, and asked if it were possible to get another one. He said, “Sure. I’ll return this one as “damaged upon receipt” and order a new one. Fill out this form and you’ll get it when it comes in.” I thanked him and left.

I remember how that got me thinking about the role that that lies play in our society. Clearly, there was no thought involved in Mr. C’s choice to mark the item “damaged upon receipt,” even though he knew that wasn’t that case. Just as there wasn’t any thought involved when I initially told S that we’d tell Mr. C that the sorter bank was broken when we got it. Reflexively, the instinct was to lie to get what we wanted. Lie to win. If lying is so ingrained…so indoctrinated into our culture…why is so much time and effort spent trying to tell children that lying is wrong? Aren’t they just going to grow up and make decisions about what’s “OK” to lie about and what isn’t anyway?

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Jansky Is A Baby Chocolate Cake

 

This content was previously published in May, 2009.

 

Did anyone ever give you a nickname that upset you?

When I was little, there was a kid who lived up the street from me. His name was Donald. Donald and his little brother, Nick, were good friends of mine. It’s weird, but I can’t recall much of anything that we did TOGETHER, except for football or wiffle-ball in the front yard.

I spent time with Nick, pretending to be a DJ as we listened to rock n roll records, swimming at the Cincinnati Recreation Commission’s pool in Oakley, or shooting pool in his basement. I spent time with Donald playing with Star Wars figures, playing on the same baseball team (go Tom-E-Hawks) or pretending we were the band and singing along with the albums The Monkees and More of the Monkees.

 

I can’t remember the circumstances that led up to it but, one day, Donald called me a “baby chocolate cake.” And I swear you could hear the scratching sound of a record needle as the entire world came to a sudden and abrupt halt. There was about 3 seconds of complete and utter silence. And then I started crying. Somehow, this was so much worse than “dork” or “idiot” or “dumb bell.” Me? A baby chocolate cake? Really? Oh no! No no no NO!!!!!!!!

 

I don’t remember Donald leaving, although I’m sure he hightailed it outta there. I don’t remember how long I cried, but it felt like hours. I do remember that I was inconsolable as I sat in my mom’s lap and cried into her shoulder. It took some time for me to be able to explain what had happened because I would completely fall apart before I could get the words “baby chocolate cake” out of my mouth.

 

“And then he…::sniff::…and the he called…::deep breath::…and then he called me a babbbbbbwwaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

 

Eventually I calmed down. Eventually I told her what happened. And eventually I got over it because, after all, it was just an isolated incident, right? But that’s not how kids are. Despite how good friendships are, kids know how to push other kids’ buttons and they’ll do it with or without any reason.

 

Over time, Donald’s insult graduated into something more than a simple name-calling. It became a taunt, whose sole purpose was to get a rise out of me. The singsong lilt of “Jansky is a baby chocolate caaaake” never once failed to make me cry my eyes out.

 

In 1980, when I was 10 years old and in the fourth grade, the movie The Empire Strikes Back was released. I spilled the beans to Donald that (SPOILER ALERT!) Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father. He hadn’t seen the movie yet and he was mad at me. And rightly so! After all, that revelation eventually landed on Premiere magazine’s list of the 25 Most Shocking Moments in Movie History.

 

I don’t know if that what was caused it but, after that, Donald and I didn’t hang around much anymore. “Jansky is a baby chocolate caaaake” it seemed, had simply disappeared. A couple years later, Donald graduated from 6th grade and moved on to 7th at Walnut Hills Jr. /Sr. High School. I moved onto 6th grade and, upon graduation, went to St. Mary for Junior High.

 

After completing 8th grade at St. Mary, I attended Purcell-Marian High School. It was there, in my freshman year, that I first met Dave. A fellow freshman, we became acquainted through a mutual friend that I knew from St. Mary. I initially found him to be a bit odd due to his intelligence, but a sense of humor and a shared appreciation for Star Trek helped us become friends.

 

During my sophomore year and by way of my girlfriend at the time, I met Paul. He was a junior and quite possibly the tallest person I’d ever met who was also within my peer group. Possessed with creativity that I’m still somewhat envious of to this day, Paul had a sense of humor unlike any I’d experienced before. And he looked like David Bowie.

 

Paul, Dave, and I spent many a day discussing a variety of topics ranging anywhere and everywhere from Monty Python to Japanese swordplay to Star Trek. One day, during my junior year, we were at Paul’s house when Paul told us of a computer game that he was having some trouble with. He couldn’t get past a certain point in the text-based adventure game Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy and suggested we work together to try to figure it out.

 

We gathered around the computer and took turns being the captain, meaning the one in control of the keyboard and entering any commands. Paul was first, since it was his game and he had to familiarize us with the game. He got to The Troublesome Point in which the Enterprise is being attacked by a Romulan vessel. No matter what we tried, the enemy got the best of us, and the Enterprise was destroyed. Game over.

Dave was next. Again, everything was fine and dandy up until The Troublesome Point where, despite several more suggestions from Paul and me, the Romulan enemy was victorious (again).

 

Finally, it was my turn. We wasted no time in getting to the Troublesome Point. The three of us reviewed past actions taken and didn’t thoughtlessly react to the events on the screen. During the battle, Spock reports the presence of a “data image” moving in conjunction with the enemy vessel. Paul suggested we fire torpedoes at the mysterious image. I typed the command into the computer and Lo! And Behold…the Romulan enemy was destroyed. From our excitement, you would have thought we had just cured cancer.

 

About a month or so later, Dave and I were sitting next to each other at work passing funny notes and drawings back and forth. The movie Spaceballs had recently been released and had us in the mindset of creating parodies of Star Wars and Star Trek. I liked the Eagle 5 (Winnebago Spacecraft) from Spaceballs and I asked Dave, who was artistically inclined, to draw a picture of my car, a Volkswagen Beetle, with Star Trek warp engines attached to it. He did and gave it the following caption: Commanded by B.C. Cakes, the USS Entropy boldly goes where no man has gone before.

 

I don’t ever remember telling Dave about “baby chocolate cake” but, clearly, I must have. At first, I was all, “Dude! What the fuck, man? Baby Chocolate Cakes?” but he thought it was fun and that I should get over it.

 

“Sure!” he said. “Make it something other than some sort of dirty label.”

 

So that’s what I did. Paul and Dave and I created an entire Star Trek parody universe, complete with short stories, several illustrations, and even a soundtrack, revolving around the crew of the USS Entropy under the command of B.C. Cakes.

 

The name has branched out into other areas as well. B.C. Cakes is my login name on many website forums and blogs. It’s also my I.D. on the Playstation Network.

 

Almost 40 years ago, Dave was right in re-saddling me with that name. With the help of some good friends, I was able to take ownership of it and define it instead of it defining me. It’s funny how a name that once made me cry has become a name that I’m rather proud of.

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35 Random Facts About Me

I once crammed an entire jumbo-sized Moonpie in my mouth.

I have been licked by a giraffe.

I've seen the movie Star Wars well over 1000 times.

When observing passers-by, I pretend I'm Johnny from Stephen King's The Dead Zone and come up with some downright AWFUL things about each one.

Every time I walk through the automatic doors a Kroger, I make the "Star Trek Door Noise" (Schwip).

When I was a kid, I spent a summer agitating spiders in my back yard and letting them bite me so that I could gain the powers and abilities of Spider-Man.

I wet the bed until the beginning of my 7th grade year.

I add the words "motherf*cker" to the end of commercial slogans/jingles. Easy-Off makes oven cleaning easier, motherf*cker."

I cried when Spock dies at the end of Star Trek II.

At home, I climb the stairs on all fours, pretending to be Spider-Man.

Sometimes, my pee smells like Flintstone's Chewables.

I ruin the image and the style that you're used to.

I look funny.

I'm making money.

I hope you're ready for me.

I'm the new fool in town.

My sound's laid down by The Underground.

I drink up all the Hennessey you got on your shelf.

My name is Humpty (pronounced an an Umpty).

Yo laidies, ho I like to hump thee.

I like to rhyme.

I like my beats funky.

I'm spunky.

I like my oatmeal lumpy.

I'm sick with this straight gangster mack.

Sometimes I get ridiculous.

I'll eat up all your crackers and your licorice.

I'm a freak.

I like the girls with the boom.

I once go buys in a Burger King bathroom.

I'm crazy.

I'm ugly but it just don't faze me.

I'm still getting in the girls' pants.

I even got my own dance.

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