January 2009

Is Facebook More Addictive than Crack?

You’re a good person. You live a good life. The invitations start coming across your email. “You’re friend Sue Yu has invited you to join Facebook.” It’s so easy. Put in your email. Plug in your forty second password of the year and you’re off. I just can’t. I’m at the office. We have deadlines and accountability and integrity. You’ve been on classmates.com and reunion.com.  Facebook can’t be any better than that. You beg off for the day escaping the peer pressure once again.

It’s the weekend. Nobody’s home. You check your email. There it is again for the twelfth time in the last two weeks. “Your friend Iona Frisbe has invited you to join Facebook.” It wouldn’t hurt to try it once. I’ve always said I’ll try anything once. Yet, the beginning is uneventful. You’re not feeling anything. I’m filling out the profile and feel nothing. It’s just like filling in the blanks when I buy some piece of crap from Target online.

Time for your first search. TJ Tech High School. Class of ‘84. Wow!! There’s Ben Dover. He was in my 9th grade geometry class. There’s a rush now. You’re flying. Oh yeah, look there’s Anna Recksiek, that skinny b$*%@ch. Who else can I find? The hours just go by…….

Before you know it, you’re passed out at the dining room table. Two empty bottles of Chardonnay and Merlot are next to you. In a fog, you stand up and trip over the pizza box. You see your eight year old watching American Idol with a big pizza stain on her dress. You’re three year old is running around naked with a pizza crust between his legs. What happened? It’s dark out. What time is it? All you can really think about is getting on Facebook to see who wrote on your wall.

The weeks go by. You’re bank account is empty. The mortgage hasn’t been paid in two months, but you do have 162 friends. When child protective services come, you don’t even look up from your laptop. The malnourishment is beginning to show. The weight loss, the pale skin. People are talking. You’re husband leaves you. Before you know it, you’re getting poked everyday just to make ends meet. What happened to the life I used to have? How can I get help? I can’t live this way anymore.

Time for Facebook Rehab!

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Hey Boo Boo! It’s Yogi Dad.

Yogi Bear lives in Jellystone Park and cruises around with his sidekicks Boo Boo, Snagglepuss and Huckleberry Hound. Unlike Yogi Dad, Yogi Bear never ages and never gains weight from eating too many “pic a nic baskets.” The one thing Yogi Bear and Yogi Dad have in common is that they’re both stiff as boards. Yogi Dad is so stiff that he came out of the womb strapped to a two by four. During his whole life, Yogi Dad has never been flexible.
Being a guest blogger on http://www.take5moment.com/ has got me watching some of the mini videos on yoga and health. I went over by the television and starting looking thru all of the dvd’s. Of course, here it is, the yoga dvd that’s been sitting here for two years and never been opened. Why not?

So I go down to the garage, back out the FJ Cruiser and lay out a yoga matt. I plug the dvd into my wall mounted tv and sit down to watch like a little kid. A nice looking fit woman of about 45 starts talking quietly and soothingly. Whoops, I need to jump up and stand raising my arms to the sky. Cool, I need some stretching.

Wait a minute, what the heck is she doing. You want me to lay on my back and put my feet up by my ears. You gotta be kidding. Have you ever heard a hamstring pop? Calm down. Don’t judge yourself. It’s all about the journey. There is no trophy at the end in this one. Okay, maybe they have trophies at the World Yoga Championships in New Delhi, but not here in my garage.

The lady with the soothing voice keeps talking. I’m in a trance as I ravel into the modified pretzel. Maybe I’m unravelling. I really don’t know at this point because my stomach is in the way of me going full pretzel. You just can’t go full pretzel with a tummy.

Whew, it’s time for a break. Here we go, reach for the sky again. Now, down to the ground so I can do an imitation of a pidgeon. Do you know I hate pidgeons? I shoot them off my roof, but here we go. This isn’t so bad. I can actually do this pose. I feel my butt muscle tearing away from the bone. Why is the garage door opening? It’s my wife and kids about to run me over. There goes the horn. I guess this work out is over.

I felt great afterwards. I slept like a baby that night. I told a friend of mine about the yoga. He jokingly told me that my wife had finally sucked the last bit of manliness out of me. Funny. Why can’t a man do yoga? I did.

Hey Boo Boo! It’s Yogi Dad.

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Every Kid Gets a Trophy???

A good friend of mine just signed up to coach a little league baseball team and it brought back some funny memories for me. When my son was nine years old, I volunteered to coach. They gave me the old bait and switch. They had tons of coaches, but no one who wanted to be a team manager. I took the bait and became the manager of a team.
The things I learned coaching little league baseball are also things that I observed as a dad just watching youth soccer games. When the kids are small, the leagues don’t keep score or track of wins and losses. The purpose is to put the emphasis on the fundamentals and not on winning and losing. However, the kids keep score themselves. Whether it’s half time or the top of the fourth, they all know how many runs or goals have been scored. They know without us telling them whether they’re good or not.

I have to admit the first year of coaching I didn’t take seriously. I just thought we’d pick a few kids and have some practices and win a few games. My lack of experience and effort showed on the field. The results showed in the win/loss column. I stunk. The kids stunk. We knew it and so did everyone else.

At the end of the season, they always have what’s called “closing ceremonies.” On this day, all of the teams show up to pay homage to the first place team as they collect their trophies. To my surprise, every single boy received a trophy that day. Every kid on my last place team received a trophy for participating. I felt sorry for the first place team which performed so well all season because their trophies were only about an inch taller than ours.

This is what really hits home. During the ceremony, two of the boys from my team started smashing their trophies on the ground in the outfield grass. Afterwards, on my way to the car, I saw a couple of trophies in the trash can. The kids know they didn’t deserve it without anyone telling them. Why do we as parents collectively let this kind of thing go on? The real message from us to the boys that didn’t win should be that if you want to be the best, then you need to work and strive for it. Learn from what you did wrong and do better the next time.

The topper of them all was when I was at my daughter’s competitive dance recital. Immediately afterwards, they give out the awards. Two girls I didn’t know were called up and received a trophy for fifth highest score. What’s that?

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Death to the Goodie Bag

Picture this. It’s your son’s 16th birthday and he has a handful of friends over for bar-be-que and playing some games on the Wii and maybe some xbox live. Every one has a great time. The tangy bar-be-que sauce is still tingling between the teeth. Another teenager just dominated in Wii tennis and has bragging rights to all of his friends. We have a nice birthday cake and sing. When its time to call it an evening, I stand at the door and hand everyone a goodie bag containing a Maxim magazine, a pack of condoms and a tall boy of Budweiser. What? Is he crazy? Don’t let my kid over to their house. Easy everyone! This never happened and will never happen at our house. I just want you to keep that gut reaction and take 5 minutes to mull over what you consider to be a birthday goodie bag.

Let’s go back in time for a minute. In the 1970’s, I probably went to quite a few birthday parties as a boy. You usually got together in someone’s backyard or went to the park. You usually played hide ‘n seek or kick the can or maybe smeer the queer. You brought a small present, had some birthday cake and called it a day. I do not recall ever being handed a goodie bag upon leaving a party. So this means that sometime between 1980 and 1995 this horrible idea was born.

I’m going to surmise how this came to be. It was little Johnnie’s sixth birthday. It was the end of the party and he was opening his gifts. Now, little Eddie walked over and grabbed a gift and started to open it. This is obviously inappropriate behavior and needs some kind of parental response. So Eddie’s mom, pulls him back and tells him not to touch the presents. Five minutes later, Eddie goes over and does it again. Now, Eddie’s mom is flustered and doesn’t know what to do. Oh my goodness, the party is unravelling. Johnnie’s parents don’t want their boy’s moment in the spotlight to be ruined, so they decide to appease Eddie. Johnnie’s mom finds a small little used toy and gives it to Eddie to appease him. Here we have it, the first version of the goodie bag. I would say that if little Eddie couldn’t behave after being told not to touch the presents, then he should have been restrained or removed from the party. This would teach everyone to keep their hands to themselves and birthday parties could have gone on as they always have.

Instead, the goodie bag has had exponential growth in meaning and style since the first one. The mantra now is that every child needs to be special and not feel left out by not receiving some kind of present. It comes in colorful bags full of beanie babies and candies and pencils. Somebody had to drive around all afternoon to buy all of this stuff and then sit around for an hour to assemble the goodie bags. The great thing for me is when I pick up one of my kids from a birthday party, as we drive off, all three of my kids start to fight over the contents of the goodie bag. Should I turn around and drive back and ask for two more goodie bags? Usually, about fifteen minutes after we get home, the contents of the goodie bag usually ends up in the trash. Death to the goodie bag!

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Hello Everybody and Happy New Year!!!

Well, here goes nothing. I’ve been contemplating about doing some writing for awhile now. I would like to thank all of the people that have given me great feedback over the years and I am now ready to put the pen on the paper.

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