At three o’clock this morning I propped myself up on my elbows, removed my ear plugs, looked directly at our dog and delivered the following ultimatum:
This has to STOP.
My wife turned to me and quietly said I’d need to speak up if I wanted to be heard over the dog’s snoring. Admittedly, it was my bright idea to have Stanley sleep in our room. That’s because, when he was a puppy, he was prone to chew up things we might leave out overnight.
Such as the living room or kitchen.
However, at nine years old, his snoring now sounds like a 250-pound man sleeping-off a three-day bender. Part of Stanley’s problem is genetics. Being half Shar-pei, he has a lot of loose skin and wrinkles. He essentially looks like a chocolate Labrador in need of ironing. In desperation, we took him to the vet, who told us that the loose skin around his face causes him to snore.
Yep, that’s me, learning about the dangers of smoking . I come from a long line of alcoholics. Truth be told, the roots of my family tree are probably located in a beer garden. For this reason, I was determined to break the cycle and be the first member of my family to remember most of his 20s and 30s, not develop a beer gut and actually know who all of my kids are. I was genuinely frightened of carrying a gene I assumed had its own alcohol content — which is why I didn’t crack open my first beer until I was 20; in a moment of weakness; working under the blistering Texas sun; because there was no water or soda; and I had just read about spontaneous human combustion.
The second drink of my life came a year later when I was given a shot of peach Schnapps on my 21st birthday. It was quick, painless and not noticeable on my breath when I left for my second job. It was also the last drink I had until I was 30, when a friend started making strawberry lemonade spiked with Absolute. It was the third drink of my life, and the first time I had more than one in single night. I went from sitting to crawling, and eventually lying on my back laughing before falling asleep. Looking at the big picture of my life, I can only hope that’s the way things eventually play out for me: Sit, crawl, lie on my back laughing, then just fall asleep.
It wasn’t until my 30s that I began to understand how, in spite of my efforts to the contrary, alcohol had still become a factor in defining me — through my nearly obsessive efforts to avoid it. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I feel like I missed out on something by not becoming an alcoholic. But I’m well aware there is an entire right-of-passage experience I was not a part of and can’t really relate to because of the fear I had of opening Pandora’s six pack. The drunken parties, crazy nights waking up with someone else’s pants on, singles bars and dance clubs, as well as the bonds created through those experiences — I have no frame of reference. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t seen The Hangover and American Pie, but I’m still left with a certain level of naiveté when it comes to conversations of “the old days” among friends, not to mention what to anticipate from my teenaged kids.
God help me.
Or them; I’m not really sure which.
What I do know is that I can hear the “phssst” of a bottled beverage from 50 yards away. So kids: good luck sneaking a Dos Equies out of the fridge. That’s right. I eventually overcame my fear of drinking, right about the time my oldest daughter became a teenager. By then, I had been divorced and a single father for two years; if I hadn’t become an alcoholic by then, I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to. I also recognized that other fears I had carried with me — based on the mistakes of my father — weren’t coming to pass. I don’t smoke or do drugs; I’ve never been to jail; and I’ve never struck my wife or children. It’s with no small sense of irony that, after 47 years, I am becoming the person I hoped to be by following my father’s example… to the contrary.
I honestly can’t say whether my father did things with absolute purpose or recklessness. I can tell you he was a heavy smoker, yet I credit him for being the reason I never picked up the habit. Not because he preached against it, but because he started telling me light his cigarettes for him when I was 11. Admittedly, I thought that was pretty cool at first. And by “at first” I mean the first time I lit one up, inhaled, and then threw up what seemed like everything I’d eaten since graduating to solid foods. He had me light him a few more that day, just for good measure.
I wouldn’t even touch candy cigarettes after that. The illusion of coolness associated with smoking had effectively been snuffed.
Was that his intent… with everything?
I’ll never know for sure; he passed away long before I had the courage to pose the question.
While I spent a long time resenting him, I’ve begun to realize — like my fearful and obsessive avoidance of alcohol — the end result is a two-dimensional life that only offers a reflection of what you don’t want to be. To live three-dimensionally, you have to be more than a reflection: you have to cast your own image.
My alarm clock went off the same as it always did back then, coming to life with the morning news — my preference over the annoying, high-pitched alternative of chatter. Instinctively, I swatted the snooze button and bought myself another seven minutes of sleep.
In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about those seven minutes, and how the simple push of a button postponed a bitter reality for just a little longer. When the news came on again, word of the first airliner crashing into the World Trade Center stopped my hand just short of another seven minutes of blissful ignorance — a time span that now seems like an eternity.
Lying there, listening to the details, I regretted not pushing the button one more time.
The Door (of Shame, Blame and Brilliance) is both sentinel of sacred journalistic history, and protector of commode users. Since last week’s posting of The Door (of Shame, Blame and Brilliance), I have received hundreds of emails from concerned readers asking if we followed up on the tip, which was about a potential murderer staying at a local hotel, brought to us by a woman who said she heard “murdering noises” from the room above her, and that, as our office girl Misty noted: “I think she was hearing them again while standing in our office lobby.”
And as it turns out, all 358 emails were from NBC Dateline’s Keith Morrison who, like countless other television correspondents, is seeking an exclusive to The Door in our newsroom. It was actually Misty who made the realization that Morrison was behind all the emails when, while checking our general voicemail box, she heard the message: Just checking to see if you got all the eeeemails I sent. This is an anonymous call by the wayyyyy.
“Hey,” said Misty, “isn’t that the creepy guy from Dateline Mysteries?”
So as it stands, The Door remains safe from Morrison, as well as Barbara Walters, Geraldo Rivera, Morley Safer and Anderson Cooper, each of whom has taken a crack at getting the exclusive to what Diane Sawyer described as “An awe-inspiring body of journalism… which reminds me, where’s Chris Cuomo?” Continue reading Keith Morrison, Barbara Walters and others continue to seek… The Door
(Because you’re here, I can assume you haven’t woken up in a jail cell, someone’s yard or a truck bed in Tijuana, Mexico. What better way to celebrate than having a flashback? And just because Flashback Sunday is a weekly feature regardless of where you happen to wake up, it does’t make our celebration any less special. As always, we’re going to roll up our sleeves and dig into the archives, back to a time when — in my innocence — I thought “blog followers” was just another name for adult film groupies…)
The typical school lunch … at least in the eyes of your child. Kids today are lucky.
Their school cafeteria experience will never include Mrs. Kidzyak’s “creamed tuna surprise,” which is still sitting in the shape of an ice cream scoop somewhere in my digestive tract.
Thirty years from now, they won’t be getting up from the couch and suddenly burp tuna, peas and what I’m pretty sure was Elmer’s Glue. And they will never have to explain why they can’t go into a deli because of an irrational fear of anyone in a hair net.
The reason today’s kids won’t have to experience these things is because a recent study suggests canned tuna contains traces of mercury, which experts agree is potentially hazardous if consumed in large doses — which is always a concern when it comes to kids and their love of tuna. Continue reading Getting tuna off the school lunch menu is every kid’s dream
At age 14, my son is beginning to understand a fundamental truth regarding the complex nature of the male/female relationship, which he summed up with the following conclusion:
Girls make boys act stupid.
He then offered irrefutable evidence to support his theorem:
Brittany told Joey to act like a monkey at lunchtime. And he did. Until Mrs. Flipendorf caught him stealing someone’s banana.
There was no debating his conclusion since it was clearly air tight. Instead, we discussed the ramifications of this groundbreaking sociological insight and how, as a man, he essentially had two options in catching a girl’s attention. The first is to act cool; the second is to act like a monkey. As his father, it was my responsibility to break the news to him that, as my son, he better start working on the monkey thing. Continue reading Son, going ape for girls starts early
If you’re reading this, Congratulations! You are part of a selective group of individuals who, like yourself, have met a basic standard for visitors to this blog, which is that you must be irrefutably awake. Around here, Sundays are for Flashbacks. This has nothing to do with tequila, getting older or this morning’s proximity to Saturday night — and everything to do with the combination of all three. In addition, it also has to do with a Flashback Sunday tradition that began almost a year ago… assuming I’m not having a flashback right now. Either way, join me as we dig back into the archives to 2002, back when I thought “blogging” was slang for something inappropriate between loggers…
There are certain things all males must learn before they can become a man. This knowledge is passed from father to son, and includes fundamental life skills such as shaving, car repair, burping the entire alphabet, and making fart sounds with your arm pits.
However, there is a crucial first step along the road to manhood that every male must eventually make alone. In a cruel twist of fate, this usually occurs around age three, when fluid intake is high, and hand-eye coordination is equal to that of a wild chimp.
Our son began taking this important step soon after we discovered we did not actually have a leaky toilet. Unfortunately for my wife, she was on the receiving end of this discovery after walking into the bathroom and startling our “man-in-the-making.” And I’m pretty sure I don’t need to explain what he was making. Suffice it to say, I was immediately informed of the situation. Not in so many words, but in a sudden scream that, in my opinion, really didn’t help things.
Education Secretary Arnie Duncan promises no child will get left behind when it comes to getting a Pee Chee folder. When I was a kid, our school supply list consisted of a Star Wars notebook and a Pee Chee folder. The notebook helped us organize our assignments; the Pee-Chee folder was used for entertaining ourselves during class by drawing thought balloons for the athletes on the cover.
Football Guy: (Getting tackled) “Oh sure — run the old L-42 play, THAT always works…” Tennis Girl: “If my skirt gets any shorter, I’ll be playing Olympic volleyball…”
You get the idea.
Just about everyone remembers this folder because, like Al Sharpton’s hair gel, it has remained virtually unchanged since 1964. What has changed, however, is the growing list of items parents must provide throughout the school year. This comes in addition to rudimentary things, such as clothing, snacks and a recent urine sample. The reason is simple: The government is tired of wasteful spending, particularly in the educational system, where a special task force has discovered that schools routinely get bilked into spending thousands of dollars on paper alone.
The Door in our newsroom: preserving journalistic history, as well as restroom privacy. As predicted, after posting last week’s edition of The Door (of Shame, Blame and Brilliance), members of the media are once again hounding us for an exclusive to what Geraldo Rivera called “Possibly the most important contribution to journalism since I opened Al Capone’s Vault. Except this time we already know opening it will lead to the toilet.”
In short, things are back to normal here at Siuslaw News.
Morley Safer has resumed the relentless faxing of his booty, threatening to continue until “YOU CRACK and I am given the EXCLUSIVE! Or my next scheduled proctology appointment, whichever comes first.” Barbara Walters is once again leaving angry phone messages, including just a few minutes ago when she whispered, “I will Bweak you, and that’s a pwomise.”
And as I mentioned, Geraldo Rivera is now after an exclusive and has been attempting to infiltrate our newsroom by using his investigative journalism skills. In one attempt, he disguised himself as a construction worker to gain access. He would’ve made it if not for “Misty,” our observant receptionist, who stopped him for an autograph when she thought he was one of the Village People. Since last Tuesday, we have thwarted no fewer than six attempts by Rivera to reach The Door — including trying to tunnel in from the sewer. Frighteningly, he made it to within only a few feet of The Door but came up short, breaking through the restroom floor while “Joe” was on the commode. Being trained journalists, we quickly surmised that two men screaming in the bathroom meant something was wrong. Continue reading Geraldo Rivera can’t reach The Door fast enough
It’s Sunday, which God reserved for rest, reflection and — I’m pretty it’s in the Book of… something — “Sunday Flashbacks on Ned’s Blog.” The fact that I am still typing proves He has a sense of humor. Or is quite possibly reading someone else’s blog. Either way, I’ll take it as an affirmation to reach back into the archives, to a time before Creation — at least in terms of this blog — when he looked upon what had been made and said in a mighty voice, “Meh.”
Today’s post is a column from 2004, when I was having some computer issues on a regular basis. On an unrelated note, I also got my gun permit about that time…
As a last resort, you may chose to place you computer on top of a trash receptacle and threaten it at gunpoint. Remember: Threatening the monitor is a waste of time. (And yes — sadly, this is a current photo of my computer system) Today, we will be covering basic troubleshooting techniques for your computer. By the end of this column, you will know how to identify a problem within your system, and then determine whether you can:
a) Fix it yourself, or
b) Save yourself the trouble by taking your computer somewhere and shooting it.
To begin with, most of us have absolutely no idea how a computer works. This is illustrated by the fact that, when there’s a problem, we get really mad and yell at the monitor. This is sort of like yelling at the refrigerator because the container we thought was “Cool Whip” actually turned out to be refried beans left over from last year’s Cinco De Mayo party. Continue reading Computer acting up? Backhand it with an anti-static wrist strap
At three o’clock this morning I propped myself up on my elbows, removed my ear plugs, looked directly at our dog and delivered the following ultimatum:
Ned's Blog 