Jenny, Jenny. Who Can I Turn To?

My wife sent me an email the other day informing me she had signed us up for the First Ladies’ Walk for Life to benefit breast cancer research. This is at least the 10th year we’ve signed up—I’ve got the XXL t-shirts with the pink ribbon logo to prove it. But since heartbroken Jenny barreled out of the Governor’s Mansion last month, I’ve noticed something a little hinky in the advertising.

The commercials airing now no longer call it the First Ladies’ Walk. They have pulled a little switch and are calling it the Palmetto Health Walk for Life. Jenny said she was going to maintain her responsibilities as first lady of the state. Perhaps, though, she has another Vogue cover to pose for. Or maybe she’s planning her next “spontaneous” news conferences in the driveway of her beach home so she can tell us again how committed she is to saving her marriage, yada, yada, yada…

So I say we trash this whole “First Ladies’” thing—City of Columbia First Lady Beth Coble has been noticeably absent from the commercials, too—and go in an entirely different direction. I propose we rename the event the First Mistress’s Weenie Walk for Cancer.

Think about it. It would be a PR person’s dream. For the first five days of advertising, we could swear up and down we were going to have the walk on the Appalachian Trail. Then we’d confess to having it in downtown Columbia after all. If we could possibly persuade Governor Sanford to participate, he could step out bold and strong and say he’d take no donations to the event unless he could fire and replace the committee who planned it (if that’s too local a reference, Google Sanford and the SC Employment Security Commission). Then he could file a lawsuit threatening not to take any donations unless the planning committee agreed to cut its budget by that same amount of money.

We’d enforce a rule that you have to walk with a partner called a “sole” mate. Whoever could elude security and pop back up at the mansion unannounced would be declared the winners.

Then the guv could apologize over and over and over for whatever.

After the walk, we could all meet back at the mansion to eat some crow, roasted weenies, and “Im- peach” cobbler. It’s making me giddy just thinking about it.

When the actual walk happens, Jenny, I don’t know where you’ll be. In your individual news conferences, you and the guv both have begun sentences with “The Bible says…” I get the feeling that both of you believe you’re closer to God than the rest of us. I’m pretty sure the Bible says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Maybe you could put aside your pathetic marital difficulties, and your obtuse pontifications on them, for two hours to help save some people who are DYING.

Just a thought.

The Dog Ate My Homework...Or Something Like That

I knew I was in trouble the first day of school this year. On the way, both kids were excited, and a little bit nervous. You can tell Nikki’s excited because she talks—constantly. She talks constantly anyway, but Monday, she was talking like a squirrel on helium—a sort of high-pitched chatter. When she gets this way, I always think about lending her out to the CIA to help break high-level al Qaeda operatives.

I would do it, too, but they probably couldn’t have her back by bedtime, unless they have one of their secret prisons in West Columbia. Which they very well may. There are a lot of inexplicable things over in West Columbia people don’t know about like a knick-knack place that also sells fresh peaches and tomatoes. No other produce—no okra, or green beans, nothing, but I digress.

As a lawyer friend of mine from Memphis says when he meanders from his main thought, “So, anyway…” Nikki brings home her math homework. She does it. I check it. Now granted, I ain’t exactly Pythagoras, but I seem to remember that 14 minus 9 does not equal 15. I’m thinking she may be the next Bernie Madoff or perhaps the next Cash for Clunkers Czar.

We erased. And erased. We put 9 in our heads and counted up to 14. We got it right.

Then today there was a note from her math teacher in her agenda (that’s what my kids’ school calls its assignments book): “Nikki needs to turn in her summer work.”

I cringed. I had thrown it away when we were done!

When the report cards come out for the last day of school, they come with a packet of summer assignments: reading and math. The reading comes with specific instructions on whether or not book reports are required, and if so, they are due on day one the following year. Ironically enough, the instructions for the more specific of the two disciplines, math, are more ambiguous.

The kids get one math problem per day to complete over the summer. Our general “M.O.” is to do a week’s worth in one sitting. I distinctly remember asking my son, Alexey, on the first day of school last year whether the teacher had collected his summer math work. No, was his answer. I remember it because I felt rather bitter—not at having them take the time to complete it—but at having held onto all summer for the purpose of turning it in.

I moved it from one pile to the next, mixed it in with my papers, and unmixed it again. I attached it to the fridge with a magnet, only to have it fly halfway across the kitchen every time I opened the door in search of the queso dip—all just to by “psyched” by the math teacher in some great game of “arithmetic” chicken.

Only it appears this year, I am the one who flinched. Like the final scene of “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark,” I can hear the ominous dirge in my head. I can envision zooming in on the wind-blown, sun bleached, missing math papers in some large anonymous landfill. Scribbled in No. 2 pencil in the answer block for June 26 is the equation, “16 + 21= 8.” The papers are covered with caramel candy apple goo, crumpled, and anchored to the dump by a large clod of dirt. Never to be seen again.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation by Sam Morton

My wife and I like to watch Criminal Minds. She records it and we settle onto our plush little corner of the couch, remote in hand, to watch it after the kids go to bed. Each episode begins and ends with some obscure quote by Yeats or Coleridge or some other literary figure we avoided studying in college. It sets the philosophical tone of the episode.

Here’s an example: “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” Joseph Conrad said that.

I’d like to offer my own quote to set the tone for today’s blog: “Any man who does not embrace death has never been on vacation with his in-laws.”

I’m not talking about my wife’s immediate family: mom, dad, sister, two brothers and their wives and kids. I’m talking about all them plus close to 50 more relatives. As people all over the world have said, “There ought to be a law.”

My wife and I have had this discussion a number of times. Granted neither one of us is a trained sociologist, but here’s the point I’ve made to her repeatedly (usually during or right after a family vacation): You spend the first 18 years of your life trying to get away from these people. Why then, do you spend the next 40 trying to “get the family together?” It’s like a forced marriage.

Her counter is that I’m male, and therefore stupid, and should just shut up. “It destroys one’s nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.”—Benjamin Disraeli.

The vacation rules were, as I understood them, that we (since Myra set up and administered the Yahoo group site for the trip) would say, “Tuesday at 10 a.m., we’re going to the Washington Monument.” Or to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the “shining phallus on the hill.” Then others could join us or not. The choice is theirs.

Now, I’m not a trained sociologist, but it seems to me if you’ve thrown the plan out there and all 50 billion of your relatives have traveled from their home galaxy to be with family, ah...we most likely gonna have a crowd. So here, my friends, is the salient question:

How do you get 50 trillion Fraileys (yes, they’re like bunnies. Every time you turn around, there’s more of them) to move at the same time, in the same direction, toward the same destination?

The answer: The same way you divide any number by zero: It is a mathematical impossibility. IT CAN’T BE DONE!

My family gatherings are much simpler. First off, as my daughter summed up one day, “So, Daddy, let me get this straight. Other than you, Uncle Mike, and Aunt Cathy, pretty much everybody in your family is dead?” Bingo, kid. It’s called heart disease. Other than about a dozen aunts, uncles, and cousins, she hit the nail on the head.

I have one cousin who “don’t take to people.” The last family reunion we had, he climbed up a tree and “throwed up.” That’s why we don’t have family reunions anymore.

When I was a kid, they were fun because we had this older relative who had Tourette’s. In the middle of a sentence, he’d throw his head back and let out a sound like a whooping crane. Everybody called him “Whoop.” The reunions were simple affairs—Big K Cola, big bags of generic Kroger cookies, potato salad, and ham and cheese roll-ups (“the hardest part is takin’ the plastic off the cheese!”).

Even Whoop probably wouldn’t come to a reunion with people throwing up from the trees. And he damn sure wouldn’t come to one with 50 gazillion people trying to be at the same place at the same time. Just an observation.

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” ~Erma Bombeck

Hamster Wars--The Final Chapter

In all the sound and fury in the saga of my daughter’s hamster(s), a good story got lost. My son got a hamster on the same day. His hamster, Gibbes, never got out, never got away, and never bit. He played on his wheel. He would let you pet him. He was great. My son cleaned his cage, played with him, and bought him little hamster toys.

Sadly, our faithful servant, Gibbes, bit the dust last week. I guess the ceremony we’ve gone through in the last few months with grandparent funerals has had some sort of effect. Alexey, 11 years old, planned and executed a grand funeral for his furry friend.

Last Thursday, Gibbes was interred at, ahem…”Harlington” National Cemetery on a hill overlooking Gran and Pop Pop’s house. His flag draped coffin (a wooden cigar box. The flags were the kind you wave at parades. Alexey removed the sticks) was borne to the graveside by a remote control tank. He was awarded the honor of a “flyover” by an Air Hog remote control helicopter, a 21-firecracker salute, and the firing of four skyrockets from Pop Pop’s barbecue pit. Alexey eulogized his friend, placed him in the grave and covered him with dirt.

Aside from the humor, I’m truly proud of the way my son reacted to losing his first pet. It’s not an easy thing. There were some tears, but almost immediately, he began formulating a way to honor his fallen friend. That’s respect, and that’s a good thing.

Because Gibbes was so small a creature, I suppose the mourning period is as proportionately short. Yesterday we went (at my peril) back to PetSmart to look at guinea pigs. Yikes!

Anthony Labrozzi. A Man's Man

We lost another hero Tuesday. Col. Anthony Labrozzi joined his beautiful wife, Anne, in Heaven. He, battle-worn; he, who answered his country’s call to honor; he, whose life was riven by the plowshare of not one but three wars, has reported in to the angel of angels, the Prince of Peace.

For us, the tears flow. Our eyes are blurred by the moisture of grief, though we know the Colonel is in a place of everlasting grace. And once again, he is with his beloved.

He was a man of action, a soldier’s soldier; a man of spit and polish, and above all, order. The Colonel and Anne blessed this world with four children—Scott, Steven, Tina, and Cara. I was not privileged enough to know his sons. I only know that they are men like their father, stout of faith and strong in the love of their families.

It has been my honor for more than 25 years to know his daughters. I have been to his house at most once in my life. It is a house carpeted with love. His kitchen table is infused by the gentle perfume of tens of thousands of baked cookies and roasted turkeys, absorbed through year after year of family time. His hallways echo with the laughter of his children as they grew up and now with the peals of chatter from his grandchildren. And who can forget the endless summer splash of the pool? This is the life for which he fought, and it embraced him in thanks and goodwill.

Men of the Colonel’s generation use words like honor, liberty, freedom, justice, compassion. For them, these words had tenor and meaning. He and his compatriots took enemy fire for them. Like many of his breed, he was a quiet man—stoic and proud. Yet at the same time, he found a way to be immensely selfless.

If a man’s legacy is judged by the children he leaves behind, then the Colonel’s is secure. His daughters are by no means stoic. I’m rather certain neither one knows what the word means. They are just the opposite—effusive, loving, demonstrative, compassionate to a fault. And these…these are the lives the Colonel fought for. May God bless him.

No one truly leaves this world until there’s no one around who remembers him. We remember Colonel—though our recollections may come to us amidst a flood of tears or through the gauzy haze of time—we remember. We bid you peace now, peace and gentle slumber. Your battle is won.

Oh Governor, My Governor!

My publisher tells me that because I have a young adult novel coming out in October, and because this blog is a mechanism to promote the book, I should veer more toward topics that appeal to tweens, teens, and their parents and away from more “adult” topics and language (i.e. my rant against KFC a couple of months ago).

I agree; however, I have gotten call after call asking me when I am going to blog on Governor Sanford and his revelation of his affair. Karen, I promise to be a better teen blogger, but really, the phone is burning in my hand. It is less personal than it is political, so here it goes:

If you’re keeping score, Mark Sanford has slept with his wife and a woman from Argentina, but that’s in addition to the 3.4 million South Carolinians he’s screwed. I don’t know if he has had an erection that has lasted more than four hours, but he really should see a doctor.

Truthfully, I couldn’t care less about his dalliance. Didn’t care about Clinton’s. Don’t care about this one. As a matter of fact, The State newspaper has patted itself on the back so much about its “investigation” and WIS-TV has covered this situation so thoroughly that I’m praying for a category 4 hurricane to form off the coast just to give them, and us, a break.

This bizarre episode began when people began questioning Sanford’s absence. He, according to them, abandoned the helm of state government for six days. Here’s a news flash people: we haven’t had a governor at the helm for six-and-a-half YEARS. This guy couldn’t give two hoots (how’s that for PG-13?) about the people of South Carolina and he’s done his level best to prove it over the two terms of his office. We’re just too stupid, too good-ol’-boy, too backward, too set in our ways to try it Mark Sanford’s way. As Conan O’Brien said, “he even outsourced his mistress.”

And while he’s been maneuvering politically, espousing his libertarian philosophies, waxing poetic on the sovereignty of the state and the executive branch of government, we’ve managed to acquire the 2nd highest unemployment rate in the nation, an Employment Security Commission too distracted by Sanford’s power grab to be effective, a 39th-in-the-nation education system further threatened by his refusal to take stimulus money, and rising tuition costs eroding our access to higher education.

I know I’m going to tick off a lot of people by saying this, but right now if Mark Sanford could make any of those situations better, he could “dally” with a barnyard full of monkeys every night for all I care. But the point is he can’t. If everybody else (with the exception of your total of 17 friends) says the sky is blue and you say it’s purple, insist it’s purple, threaten to replace people who claim that it’s anything but purple, and yet people still say it’s blue, governor, then maybe you—you, you, you!!—are the one who needs to re-examine his premises.

Sanford was politically emasculated long before Jenny Sanford’s statements to the Associated Press. So my take? If you’re not going to resign, then go sit in a corner somewhere and shut up. Go to a ribbon cutting or two, host a Christmas reception at the mansion, go violate a few more environmental regulations at your mama’s Coosaw plantation, REALLY go hiking along the Appalachian Trail, preferably after the bears are done hibernating, or follow your heart and move to Argentina, but leave us toothless, cousin-marrying, moonshine drinking, fiscally irresponsible, heftily unemployed South Carolinians alone! Have a nice day.

Not That I'm a Perfect Parent, But...

My son is going to baseball camp this week at the University of South Carolina. Ray Tanner coaches the team there and I doubt you would find anyone, even among his toughest opponents, who would say anything less than complimentary about him. Alexey scored a run and caught a pop fly today. Pretty good for a kid who had never held a baseball bat in his hands eight months ago.

There are so many kids in camp they have them divided into eight squads. Toward the middle of the day, the counselors will pair the squads for scrimmage games. In the one closest to me, one kid hit a ball he obviously thought went foul because he stopped running midway to first base. The counselor said it was a fair ball and by that time the first baseman had retrieved it and stepped on the bag. The hitter was called out.

The ball may not have been foul, but the kid was. He looked all of nine, but he took off his batting helmet, slammed it on the ground, and began arguing with the counselor who promptly benched him for the remainder of the scrimmage.

At the end of the camp, the kid came toward his grandfather who asked why he had acted so poorly. The kid screamed at the man telling him it was a fair ball. When his grandfather said, “Well the umpire called it the other way,” the kid, again screaming at the top of his lungs, said, “Well he’s a LIAR. He’s nothing but a LIAR!” And then, bat bag in hand, he stormed off.

I’m not praying that the kid won’t show up tomorrow. I’m praying that he can't. If there is a shred of discipline in this kid’s family, his ass will be redder than a stop sign and he’ll be pulling belt leather from between his butt cheeks for the next six weeks. Either that or his parents need to take the kid to psychologist for some anger management. Passion for the game is one thing. Disrespect is another.

I’m glad Alexey got to witness it, though. From his wide-eyed look, I could see that he knew this was unacceptable behavior. And as unfortunate as the incident was, I’m glad I saw it, too. It makes me appreciate the wonderful young man and young woman who are my children.

(Okay, that’s too cheesy an ending…I would liked to have seen grandpa beat the kid’s ass from one end of the stadium to the next. I bet Ray Tanner would've liked that, too. I’m just sayin’.)