first pull

Thankfully I am physically fit.  In my 53^rd year, however, shoveling snow has lost the last threads of any luster it may have momentarily held.

I fall into the category of fairly handy as well.  My neighbor to the right, a couple of years older, meets the benchmark of being expertly skilled with tools and craftsmanship.  Even so, sometimes snags with tasks can occur that can slow us down tremendously.

A few years ago during a winter storm both of us headed to our garages to fire up our snow blowers.  Simultaneously we discovered that our gas was stale, our carburetors were gummed up and changing the spark plugs or adding doses of starting fluid was of no help.  We were quite peeved that we had to hand shovel more than a foot of snow that was lining two driveways, yards and sidewalks.

So each year now I attend to my aging apparatus in the fall for a light tune-up, a test run and a self certified seal of inspection.  Then I cross my fingers of course.

Especially crossed because I know there are many days and weeks that traverse the calendar between mid October and mid February while my machine may sit idle.  Enough time in fact to cause me to break out into an easily recognizable case of throttle anxiety as I await the real test imposed by a big drop in barometric pressure and blizzard conditions.  

Fair lady certainly sensed my fear today as I unsuccessfully tip-toed back to our bedroom to grab a pair of warm socks while interrupting her last few minutes of dreams.  

I hope you don’t plan on making noise outside before 9 o’clock, on a SATURDAY, was her phrasing.  

The new guy diagonally across the street already blew out his whole driveway was my informed response at 7:45 am. 

Yes, and that was totally annoying came the retort.

Anxiety often gains the upper hand though.  Rules or no rules I couldn’t wait until the late hour of 9am to learn my fate.  I suited up for go time.  

My elderly neighbor to the left is a woodsman.  He spends much time traveling in the far North Country and has planted evergreen tree saplings in his yard that have grown to dwarf the surrounding homes and yards.  Even in the dead of winter there is enough wildlife nesting up in his sanctuary that most days our awakenings are timed to a Cardinal or Blue Jay happily plucking a berry, seed or nut and then making a flyover outside of our hallway window.  Some days a squirrel will miss a step from high above and slide down our shingles.  

This morning was different.  Time for change I suppose.  At precisely 8:05 am Eastern Standard Time I poured a half gallon of fresh gasoline into my cold and inactive assistant in the hopes of bringing it to life.  I carefully primed the engine with nine pumps, as a friend of mine who is into Feng shui recently clued me into the goodness of nines.  

I backed off, adjusted the choke to a spot I felt lucky, and moved the red lever to the on position.  I clumsily stood behind the rear bar and yanked the pull cord while my feet wobbled on a patch of ice.  The rope snapped back sooner than I preferred and for a split second I felt doomed...visions of ice picks circled my dizzying head.  Then suddenly and magically my world changed.  

As if the engine was briefly shaken by the same patch of ice, it vibrated and transformed itself from a near stall out sounding tremor to being all revved up and then it spewed out an ironically large, healthy puff of smoke from the exhaust.  The start held.  It was solid.  I was not feeling doomed.  I felt great.

No Cardinals, Blue Jays, transplanted Orioles or falling squirrels would beat me to it now.  The rest of the block was to be awakened by my uncontrollable and glorious reaction as I proclaimed it across the driveway drifts, ‘FIRST PULL BABY…F-I-R-S-T P-U-L-L'.

© 2013 Christopher’s Views

It’s only make believe

I love Joan Jett.  Now to be clear-- she is not my girlfriend and I’ve never even met her—but I do love her music, songs and the songs of other artists she’s performed.  Her music is real.  And Joan Jett is real.

‘Fake Friends’ is one of my favorite short songs put out by this long time rock n roller.  It came to my mind when I heard about the Manti Te’o story last Wednesday and I’ve been humming many of her tunes for the past week.  

In case you are not aware of the Manti Te’o saga, it is a strange and lengthy story that was brought to light most notably on Deadspin.com here.  The ordeal begs many questions and offers few answers about the Notre Dame star linebacker’s fabricated sweetheart, Lennay Kekua, who was thought to have been in an automobile accident, slipped into a coma, then recovered to be diagnosed with leukemia and died the day after Te’o’s grandmother also died.

Problems arose when she turned up alive.  Evidently due to the contagiously high desire to attend the ball games played at South Bend, Indiana, and on the road, Te’o and seemingly no one else ever really visited her in the hospital or had ever really gone to her funeral services.  Whereas, I suppose, if they had made some trips they would have found out that she wasn’t in the hospital and she didn’t die.  It was a glitch that they figured out during an investigation a few months later, around the time the season was winding down.  

It’s pretty wild stuff…right? 

It got me to think that many of you who read my posts have never met me and may wonder if I am real.  After all some of you live in other states or other countries, so it’s plausible that ‘Christopher’ could be non-existent as well. 

But of course that is not the case, for I am Christopher, real and a realist.  All along I thought that fabricating someone’s existence and their death while deluding a large group of people was reserved nearly exclusively for sitcoms like Seinfeld.  Yet truth trumps fiction once again and we learn that such a grand hoax can be developed using electronic messages, a few pictures, the media and either an extremely clever or extremely inept target. 

Few in the media seem to know what questions to ask because the events are so bizarre it’s difficult to relate to or approach with sincerity.  I’ve only seen snippets from Katie Couric’s interview with Manti and from what I’ve seen Katie hasn’t uncovered much.  Making the headlines is that she asked him if he is gay.  

Forget about being gay or not I want to know how all the other people in his life were fooled down the line as well.  In my world, no matter who dies if I tell my mother she calls me back in two hours asking where she can send flowers and a donation.  Besides crying on Katie Couric’s set, what did Te’o’s parents do in the aftermath of Te’o’s and their loss?  There is more missing here than being presented.  

And the voice mails that have been released are ludicrous.  I genuinely hate to try to get inside the head of a person thinking irrationally.  But why, when Te’o himself is at least the one person who knows he never met Lennay, does he not run for the hills after Lennay leaves a crying message wrought with anxiety over another girl possibly being with him?  They had never met, she’s crying and jealous and he’s not scared?  And he’s willing to go back for more?  I vote guilty by reasons of insanity or guilty by come on already. 

If I were sitting across an armchair from Manti Te’o I would want to know why he waited until after the Crimson verse Clover BCS Title Game was played on Jan 7^th to address any of this to the public when it had actually been known back in December, as reported here and he now admits. 

Does he hate himself for loving her? 

Or does he want us to believe he was just a victim of circumstance.

 

Will he need to keep ever more focused on football and not give a damn about his reputation?

  
Maybe he even needs a break from love, for love is pain.  

Would he have liked it if someone in the studio offered to provide him with a tour and remind him that love is all round, no need to fake it?  

I really did hope that writing would provide me the distraction needed to clear my head of the tunes, but still I feel the beat.  At least I can look forward to a fresh round of melodies between my ears as I set off to get some sleep.

Can you hear it too? 

…I kiss and you kiss…and la de da de da de da…I’m in love but it’s only make believe to you…oh yeah…..

© 2013 Christopher’s Views

…anything but fine

Often times when I’m about three-quarters through my cool down after a long run I am most at peace with myself and my environment.  My mind is clear, my body is strong yet relaxed and I haven’t answered a call or an e-mail in an hour.  I feel recharged, self-assured, confident, and newly ready to focus and take on constructive challenges.  

It’s therapeutic for me and I’m thankful for those times. 

There are other times when I’m not confident and not relaxed.  I don’t like being tossed in with crowds of people and lots of chatter.  I become unfocused and uneasy.  Perhaps it has something to do with having grown up in a large and loud family.  In any case I accept my shortcoming and am grateful for my awareness.  

I also don’t like when the world around me is spiraling downward.  I can only detach so far.  Major events in society affect me because I’m not good at putting up walls and I don’t see the point in assuming things will get better.  Some things get worse before they get better.  

Since the nightmarish massacre in Newtown, Ct. almost ten days ago much has been said.  We hear the daily talking points about mental health, personality disorders, autism and Asperger’s syndrome in the media.  We are provided this information in a manner similar to getting our Dow Jones Stock Index report as if it credibly explains what’s really going on in the financial world.

We hear about allowing teachers to carry guns in school verse gun control laws needing to be tightened and all the while knowing the ideologies have been clashing and at odds for years.

We hear people speak.   We have heard President Obama speak and seen him cry.  We’ve heard from Governor’s, Senator’s, Congressional leaders and Mayor’s.  We’ve read editorials, seen guest psychologists and priests.  And we’ve heard from the N.R.A., courtesy of Wayne LaPierre.

Fingers are pointed.  One group blames another.  News anchors may call invited experts ‘stupid’.  Self appointed experts may polish up their retorts and call another host ‘obtuse’. 

Perhaps the silver lining is that the horrific events that unfolded at Sandy Hook Elementary have made it clear to nearly everyone that big changes are needed.  However, I’m less sure that nearly everyone realizes that working together provides for a greater probability of success than working separately.  

There is no single answer to thwarting or preventing a crazed gunman’s delusional carnage whether in a school, in a movie theater or at a shopping mall.

Prevention is not singularly about mental health.  It’s not singularly about gun control.  It’s not singularly about violent video games.  It’s not singularly about security.  It’s about all that and more.

And where do our rights fit into the puzzle? Of course we all have rights under the constitution and rights to our own opinions as well.  The tricky part is working together so that everyone’s rights are in harmony.  Giving and receiving, strangely novel concepts, may be worthy of further exploration.

Gun control is vital and I hope it materializes.  Maybe the N.R.A. will one day move away from its worn adage that ‘the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’.  The mom (Nancy Lanza) was their good guy.  The son (Adam Lanza) was their bad guy.  If the ‘good guy’ didn’t have a semi-automatic assault weapon capable of rapidly shooting hundreds of rounds and inflicting maximum bloodshed that would ultimately fall into the hands of a ‘bad guy’ living under the same roof, the Sandy Hook atrocity may never have happened.

Let’s not kid ourselves though about getting to work on the needed mental health reforms, developing real awareness and bringing forth meaningful results.  This will take much time.  It won’t get better overnight.  In the short term, having police in our schools may not be such a bad idea.  Certainly no prevention methods are perfect.  But we do need the police involved to figure out what more can be done on the security front.  Doing nothing more on security seems foolish.  Certainly I wouldn’t want mere armed security guards.  They lack the training and supervision of active duty police. And I think arming teachers and principals on such a large scale would be a step, two or three backwards.

At the moment, the carols are fully piped into our surroundings.  Reindeer antlers pass on the left as they protrude from SUV side windows.  The festive meals and pies are being prepared.  The liquor has been delivered.  Someone in each town is waiting to win the holiday light show contest.  

The guns, high powered rifles and ammunition sales are soaring.  

Twenty first-graders have just been laid to rest.  And several wonderful teachers and staff will no longer be sharing hugs with their loved ones anymore either.   

Merry is out of step.  I all but exclusively use the word ‘holiday’ as I feel the best messages of the season grow more and more fleeting, even among folks with religious connectivity. 

Maybe next year will be different.  When trying to get somewhere new, having clarity on the current position is helpful.

The starting point at present is a society that is anything but fine and the most appropriate gift under everyone’s tree would be 52 weeks of psychotherapy.  Anyone who’s been lighting more than seven strands of blinkers from their home this past week may want to double down and splurge on 104. 

Or, an alternate plan could involve boosting the sale of sleep aids in the hope and quest for visions of sugar-plums dancing in our heads.

© 2012 Christopher’s Views.

Irving…we have a problem

For the second time within 30 days, a food (for lack of a worthy synonym) I was attempting to purchase had been wiped clear from store shelves here in NY.  And I feel a need to share some thoughts about this upheaval, while I simultaneously attempt to move away from the hard and sad realities of my last few posts and speak to a lighter topic.  

Contrary to what you are about to hear and may not read between the lines, my diet has long been mostly Mediterranean and in the year since I have given up chocolate I have brown bagged and packed considerably more fruit, vegetables, granola, and whole grains into my life.  I can certainly attest to a daily fiber intake that is up in the 90 percentile range.

Hidden amongst all the eggplant and olive oil though are the experiences of a boy who grew up just blocks from a Hostess/Wonder Bread outlet in Brooklyn.  Yankee Doodles and a glass of milk were a foundation of existence.  There is no mystery as to why I am a recovering chocoholic.  For almost as long as my memory permits recall my chocolate dependency caused me to stop whatever I was doing at 3PM each day, then find and consume something, anything, whether it was a natural or man-made cousin of the cocoa bean.  Sometimes, in my youth, a ballgame or chore would cause me to get to the bread factory a bit late.  My favorites might have been snatched up already.  But the sweet smell of freshly packaged artificial flavoring was too comforting to pass up.  Surely I would walk away with at least a box or two of Devil Dogs.  

As an adult one of my longest periods of destructive behavior, one that I would estimate at about 5 years, put either two chocolate CupCakes or Yodels in my digestive tract everyday…rain or shine…winter, spring, summer or fall.  In time my addiction spilled over the aisles.  I weathered a Dove Bar era, ushered in by the large size dark chocolate variety.  I’m grateful to be past a Hershey’s Malted Milk Ball chapter, plus an M&M’s stage that was maybe the roughest of all as I would crave those smooth and brightly colored, glistening candy coated morsels at mid-afternoon and then again at 10PM.

Occasionally I would try to wean myself off the brown sugar by making a different choice.  All that did was to make me a professional sampler of various brands of Coffee Cake’s and Fruit Pies.  If you were to cut up the pie treats and blindfold me I could tell the difference between a Hostess, Drake’s or Entenmann’s fruit pie, whether cherry or apple.  If you were to ask me my favorite: the two Drake’s squares have the best overall texture, glaze and close to real fruit flavor.  And if you were to dangle the rarely found blueberry pie snacks in front of me, you would have me at hello.    

But mostly I want to know where is the next businessman or woman who wants to take a crack at peddling these finely refined frills.  Every once in a while I want to be able to dunk a Twinkie into my coffee.  And I stand ready and willing to pay an additional 25 cents per serving to get myself off the newly forming long lines of sugar deprived refugees who are too frazzled to quickly open up a flattened plastic bag, pull out a glazed donut from the bakery display without blocking the tongs and the wax paper and, in effect, creating a big kink in the whole process of pulling off the road and into 7-Eleven.  

World peace?  I just want short, no-nonsense lines when I get my gas or when I slip into a craving for a cup of coffee along with a synthetic pink, coconut sprinkled, and expertly preserved cream filled core of compressed Doodle-like chocolate hidden beneath a tangy marshmallow ball---in a twin pack of course.  

Any questions?

© 2012 Christopher’s Views