A Mid-Life Cuppa 'Joy'

Middle age becomes me – like it or not, ready or not. I knew it had laid its claim on me a full moon and change ago, after sampling a cup of Starbucks “Joy” tea. “Didn’t take,” I informed the barista, “You must’ve slipped me a cup of Jaded.”

Standing there, basking in my emotional foo foo tea take, I felt mid-life’s grip … or was it youth’s kiss goodbye (more of a peck really, nothing long, slow and rapturous)? Whatever it was, it sounded a lot like a slurp. I discerned this rather immediately upon observing the collective raised eyebrow of the other Starbucks zombies, who interrupted their regularly scheduled texting to make deer-in-headlights eye contact. I stared back, unfazed. I drink Jaded now. Nothing rattles me.

I wasn’t like this a decade ago. Nope. I was the guy with dilated Y2K pupils – stockpiling nonperishables, going Chicken Little over crashing computers, oil spills in the North Atlantic, midnight nukes, wondering who did the math when the fateful hour had passed.

What’s changed in 10 years? My nerves, I think. They’re either shot or settled – not sure which. Doesn’t matter. Unlike the Roaring 20s and the Depressing 30s, I’m a new man: an emerging Gibraltar, no longer on a roller coaster carved by circumstance. Still, every so often, I have my moments – like when it’s 7 p.m. and I still have 3 glasses of water to drink to get my 8 in for the day, or when I suddenly realize that I haven’t had a leafy green vegetable in weeks. Horror-stricken, I punish myself the next few days with raw spinach and steer clear of everything that tastes good: everything with hydrogenated oil – cookies, cakes, peanut butter – basically everything that makes life worth living.

Though a bitter pill to swallow, I have also attained a Nirvana-like state of self-acceptance about my failed Ronco pipe dreams: Enya won’t be cutting an “Enya Face” CD; there may never be a That Was Stupid Button (a must-have for meetings); no facial Rogaine for men like me who couldn’t grow beards if their life depended on it. It’s okay. I don’t need the spotlight. I’ve found something better. I found my middle-aged cup of “Joy” … thanks to those magical creatures who call me daddy.

“I’m thankful for blankeys, monsters and aliens – oh! – AND omelets!” they said as we went around the Thanksgiving table this Holiday Season.

Later, during a “Home Alone” commercial break on the eve of Black Friday, my 6-year-old remarked (with a taxed look on his face), “This buy-one-get-one-free stuff sure is getting old …”

Then came Christmas.

“Christmas goes too fast when you’re a kid,” a friend said the other day, “and waaaaaaay too slow when you’re a grown up spending the Holidays with in-laws.” We laughed about the latter, but it was the former that gave me pause.

This Christmas break, my kids and I squeezed all we could from our time together: gingerbread houses and hot chocolate, a horse and carriage ride, holiday lights, the Christmas Eve bell choir, stories, board games, the whole nine. There was one tense moment – when shouts of “Mine!” and “No! Mine!” erupted. It seems that the kids had unevenly divided the wise men and were spatting over dibs on the baby Jesus nativity figurine.

Parenting classes did nothing to prepare me for this. Confiscating Jesus – taking Christ right out of the Christmas scene – just didn’t feel right. So there I stood, ogling my little devils, trying to form words.

“Fighting over baby Jesus? At Christmas? This is sooo wrong … on so many levels,” I scolded. Thankfully, before I could figure out what came next, baby Jesus was quickly bartered for a stable camel and an ox – a crooked trade according to at least one 6-year-old.

But this is what I cherish about middle age: the memories in the making. Later that night, my daughter provided two more: drawing hearts on a piece of scrap paper, handing it to me and saying, “For you, Daddy, because I love you,” then adding before bed, “I think about you when I dream.”

I lapped up her words, feeling my 40-year-old heart grow at least three sizes. Starbucks got nothin’ on my little cuppa’ Joy.

The Memo You Better Not Miss

It happens to everyone: that jolt that instantly awakens the Linus Van Pelt inside. For some, it’s the economy, a milestone birthday, a Chicken Soup book, a funeral, a reunion. It’s always something we didn’t anticipate. For me, it was 30 pounds of innocence. (CLICK HERE for Sky-Hi Daily News link OR read below)

Flashback: 3 weeks ago …

I hammer away on my laptop while my 3-year-old stacks blocks. Suddenly, by stealth, after sneaking a swig of my iced coffee, she sidles up in her Ugg-boot-clad (happy) feet, cups her hands, whispers “daddy” and waits for a reaction she does not get.

It’s my loss.

Her tiny voice fails to penetrate the spreadsheet-induced fog I’m in – the one hijacking my senses. Despite my pent-up, inappropriate seriousness, the fire within her cannot be quenched. One thing she knows: some things in life are more important than spreadsheets. She inches closer, targets my right ear, and percolates again.

“Daddy,” she whispers, louder, sweeter, with urgency this time, sort of like Enya turning a new page and cutting an “Enya Face” album.

“Huh? Oh, hi honey! What is it?”

“Daddy, I have a secret.”

“A secret. Well now, that sounds delicious. What is it?”

“I know all about letters,” she says pointing to the tower of blocks.

This was news – bigger and more salient than the stimulus package, and delivered with panache … consistent with her M.O. Not a week earlier, she cornered me with her doctor kit and gave me my yearly physical: pulse, blood pressure, stethoscope, the whole nine. Turns out, I needed a shot. As she readied the plastic hypodermic needle, she rolled up my sleeve, eyeballed me and said with drummed up seriousness, “This won’t hurt, daddy.”

I’d be lying if I told you that the twinkling in her eyes, the sweetness in her voice and that toothy grin didn’t say something more: something sobering, something like, “Daddy! You in there? Hello? Life is happening. I’m all over it. Follow my lead.”

This was my wake-up call – prematurely delivered some might say, since my 40^th birthday, the official beginning of “Era of Second Thoughts,” is two months and change away. No doubt, like those who have gone before me, as I blow out the candles, I shall contemplate things anew – things like I’ve got a decade or two (tops) before the Oatmeal and Polyester Years lay hold … like maybe I should guzzle a bottle or two of Oil of Olay to stave off the wrinkles … like I’d give anything to have her whisper in my ear just one more time.

For now, I’m still digesting, “Daddy, I know all about letters.” After she whispered it, I snatched her up onto my lap, intrigued by this waist-high creature with a heart full of all things worth exploring. We laughed. We squeezed. And from somewhere underneath the skin, the Longfellow within me sprang to life: “Daddy, I know all about letters” – the ins, the outs, the ups, the downs, the loops, the sounds … ALL about letters. That’s when I remembered she had “Life” (cereal) for breakfast. I vowed to try a bowlful the next morning.

“Tell me about the letters, honey,” I said.

As her eyes beamed back at me, her thoughts were laid bare: THIS is what it’s all about! You got the memo, daddy. I’m so happy.

email: ifguyscouldtalk@hotmail.com

Introducing Dr. Phil's Next Project

Funny how things turn out. Me, author of "The Manly Man's Dictionary," now a fixture in "Inspired Woman" magazine. My Dr. Phil-like plan to take over the world and establish a cultish female following is sooo working ... mWaa-ha-ha-ha-ha. This development, naturally, gave birth to this month's freshly edited (including a few new bells and whistles): "Introducing Dr. Phil's Next Project." Enjoy!

Can anger really be “managed” with deep breathing exercises, laps around the block and articulating feelings? No doubt, Dr. Phil is itching to squeeze another book out of the topic, especially if fate puts him on a collision course with my friend Chad.

Chad who? you ask, eyebrows raised, eyes suddenly jaundiced. After all, we’re surrounded by Chads – friends, neighbors, coworkers, infiltrators of the helping professions, lovers of horror movies. They’re out there right now, running around without warning labels, speaking before thinking, plotting your demise with smile-plastered faces. Know a Chad? ‘Tis of itself cause for concern. Even so, outing this Chad is completely out of the question. Revealing his surname would only result in more pointless bloodletting, of which I have vowed not to abet.

Why Chad and I are tight is beyond the scope of this character study. Suffice it to say that our friendship is my own therapist’s Stonehenge – an in-your-face reality that defies explanation but, nonetheless, cannot be ignored. After scrutinizing the phenomenon, one is reduced to the most elementary of explanations.

“It is what it is,” I say, sprawled out on the couch.

In the end, after consulting the ghosts of Freud, Jung and the masters of shrink, my therapist can only shake her head and grunt. But don’t take my word for it; judge for yourself.

This is the Chad that fate dealt me:

“She asked me what color to paint the bedroom,” he fumed, referring to a recent conversation with his wife. “Anything but yellow, I told her, then left for an out-of-town meeting and came back to – what else? A yellow bedroom.”

Furious, he hit speed dial.

“Why am I standing in a yellow bedroom?” he demanded.

“It’s not yellow. It’s goldenrod.”

“Oh, goldenrod. Well, that’s nothing like yellow now, is it?”

“Gotta’ run, Honey. Bye.”

“Not under my watch,” he mumbled.

After a quick trip to the hardware store, he buried the goldenrod under a coat of black latex. Before his wife returned home from work, he was gone – traveling to the next conference, picking black paint specs from his fingernails.

Fifty miles down the road, she called.

“Vincent Van Gogh,” he answered, then set the cell phone on the passenger seat, turned up the “Poisen” CD and let her vent. They would kiss and make up later, he knew, like always, like the week before.

That day, while she spent the lunch hour catching up on soap operas, he spruced up the sedan with Windex, Armor All and Tire Foam. Half an hour later, the Olds sparkled.

The next few minutes were a blur. While he scrounged through the fridge for a worthy leftover, his wife powdered her nose, grabbed her car keys and pecked him on the cheek.

“See you later,” she said, rushing out the door, jingling her keys like a sleigh bell.

That’s when the real soap opera began.

After filling up on a questionable burrito, Chad opened his car door unprepared for what he saw: there, on the passenger seat that he had meticulously cleaned only moments ago, lay a mound of fast food cups and wrappers, and a sprinkling of French fries. Protruding from the trash heap was a lipstick-stained straw.

“What the … ?” he screamed.

Counting to 10 was the last thing on his mind. The offense transcended the marriage vows. He promptly drove to his wife’s office, unlocked her car and returned the favor – stacking the trash in a 2-foot pyramid on the passenger seat. If only he knew that she would be giving her supervisor a ride home after work …

That night, the couple had words. During the fray, Chad threw out the book on anger management, refusing to: contort himself into the lotus position, find his “happy place,” empathize or back down. But he did take one small step.

That night, for the first time, he openly discussed his feelings. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t sugarcoated. It would have sent chills down Dr. Phil’s spine, but afterward, Chad felt like a new man.

He redeemed himself several weeks later, adorning his wife with diamond earrings.

“For putting up with me,” he said.

They hugged. They kissed. They gazed into each other’s eyes and felt something that words could not express.

The REAL Story:

• A Little Music with That Column (spot on, methinks)?
  CLICK HERE
  
  
• Chad Who?
  They hung in the Bush-Gore election. They have their own republic: a landlocked country (which Chads refer to as "the hinterland") in Central Africa. The Chads, like greenhouse gases, can no longer be ignored. This Chad, the Chad in question, granted me the surname green light on the blog only (just not in the magazine). He is Chad Reisenauer - one of the elite whom I could follow around with a pen and pad and never suffer for things to document and expound upon ... without need for embellishment.
  
  
• About Dr. Phil
  Dare I open my mouth? I am jealous - all those fans, mostly women, hanging on his every word ... like Barry Manilow, like Michael Jackson. For Dr. Phil groupies itching for an alley scrap (to mete out punishment for anyone who DARES speak ill of him), please take a couple of deep breaths. I mean no harm.
  
  
• "Inspired Woman" Subscriptions
  You can get your annual subscription by mailing $18 (printed every other month) to: Berget Publishing, 311 S. 8th Street, Bismarck, ND 58504.
  

email: ifguyscouldtalk@hotmail.com

Leaving Candle-Naming to the Ladies

It began without fanfare, when I overheard a coworker divulge that she forked out $200 at a weekend candle party. Miraculously, I quelled the beast within that wanted to react as men often do: speaking before thinking. $200 on candles? No doubt, astronauts can identify her house from space when the lighting mood strikes.

The voice belonged to Colette Weber – soft-spoken (except when it came to candles), unassuming, “normal” by all other accounts. Her other vice is cats, though she seems to have that one under control. She owns just three, or, to be more accurate, they own her. But the candle thing … I had no idea. It cudgeled my tiny brain.

Prior to her admission – before I was exposed to the lunatic fringe – I would have pegged ‘majestic sunrise’ for a nature reference made by someone keeping Ben Franklin hours (all that ‘early to bed-early to rise’ nonsense) or, perhaps, the title of a piece of art. But I was naïve about the flippant name-calling practices of the candle industry: combining wax, perfume and Monet-like titles.

Hundreds of dollars spent on candles with ridiculous names! There was no letting it go. Several days later, I found myself in the Hallmark store, picking up over-priced candles, taking a whiff and christening them aloud. Time and again, what I thought should be called “Grandma Emptied the Perfume Bottle” was instead labeled something meaningless like “Heirloom Pearls.”

I was doing humanity a service, I told myself – doing Ralph Nader-like work for consumers falling prey to the candle industry equivalent of the Hindenburg. Heirloom Pearls? Puh-leeze.

The store owner gave me the jaundiced eye. Why wouldn't she? A man spending more than 5 minutes in the candle isle. Judging by the must-be-a-sicko look in her eye, it was time to go. After one last sniff, I mumbled “pitiful” and weaved my way through the teary masses (who were digesting five-stanza poems in the greeting card isle) and left the Hallmark patsies to their own devices.

The next day, my newfound hobby surfaced again, most unexpectedly, at work, just down the hall from Colette in Lori Martin’s cubicle. I picked up the white candle on her desk – entitled 'Cotton' – inhaled, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Hotel bed sheets,” I announced.

Lori ogled me in horror. Until then, our relationship had been professional – discussing advanced paper-shuffling techniques, corporate ladder climbing and how to look and sound intelligent at business meetings.

Hotel bed sheets changed everything.

The look on her face tested my deodorant and highlighted the need for fast and brilliant words. ‘Hotel bed sheets, I repeated the foible in my mind. Now there’s a picture, you idiot! Quick, say something! Save yourself!’

“Clean ones!” I shouted.

Her laughter was volcanic, causing a groundswell of inquiries from curious coworkers. By day’s end, my reputation was beyond salvage.

Thus ended my candle-naming fling. The memory of it lingers – forever burned into my brain as the day I opened my mouth and leaped into the sea of idiocy. Truth be told: for a short while, I did inhale.

The silver lining? My $200 is still in my wallet.

The REAL Story:

• A Little Music with that Column?
  CLICK HERE
  
  
• Where to Find a Hard Copy of This Column
  Bismarck's "Inspire Magazine", Jan/Feb 2009 issue; email: inspire@btinet.net; phone: (701) 255-3422.
  
  
• Keystone Candle-Naming and ...
  The truth in candle naming issue will forever toy with my scruples. Another equally disturbing scam: lotion naming. No telling how much trouble that one would get me into.
  
  
• Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Teary Masses
  Soapbox issue #21: Hallmark greeting card 5-stanza poems. Too sappy. Too over-the-top. Too much like a bad novel. Please! How 'bout a little truth mixed in, like: You're a pretty good guy. You need to work on (insert character flaw). Happy birthday, nonetheless.
  
  
• Hotel Bed Sheets
  Mark my words! Pick up that cotton candle, head to the nearest hotel, toss back the sheets and take a whiff. My nose does not lie.

email: ifguyscouldtalk@hotmail.com