Category: Nostalgia

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The 257

cover-bowlingWhen I was a teenager I was more known for being my sister’s brother than for anything else, and I didn’t do much to dissuade people from the assumption that I wasn’t much more than that. Call it lack of self-esteem, or maybe it was that I played way too often to expectations. In school I would get teachers the year after my sister did, and they would always tell me they expected great things, so I gave them great things. Of course my efforts were never applauded because they were expected. It was only when I did something unexpected that I got noticed, which always seemed ironic to me.

So, by junior year I had done a grand total of one thing others hadn’t expected, which was shaving my head on the coldest day of the year. But that convinced me maybe I was on to something. If I wanted to stop being known as merely “Joy’s brother what’s-his-name?” I had to do the unexpected. So I did. I joined the bowling team.

Now, when I saw the signups on the bulletin board outside the office I was intrigued. I had never voluntarily tried out for a school sport. Sure, freshman year I had signed up for an intramural volleyball tournament with two other guys who never bothered showing up for the actual games. And I had played well during recess class when we did badminton and table tennis, but that was about my entire experience with sports to that point. So signing up for the bowling team tryouts was a big step, and I did all I could to get ready for it. For a solid two weeks before tryouts I went to our local bowling alley after school and bowled until my arm was sore. I tried every technique there was (and believe me, I did, because I read all the books in the school library and the public library on bowling techniques), and when I stepped into that bowling alley for tryouts I thought I was ready.

I was wrong.

-4977343e216bb47cEvery boy in there to try out for the team had been on the team the previous year except me and this one scrawny kid who seemed like a nice puff of air would blow him over. Every boy who was trying out had a big weight advantage over me, too, and supposedly the power to go with it. Picture me back then, a tall, lanky kid with a box haircut, wearing corduroy pants and an over-sized sweatshirt. I almost walked back out of the door, but the coach noticed me and made me sit down there with the other guys who obviously knew each other. There was one boy there, Stanley, who I had classes with, and that’s the only thing that made the wait somewhat bearable. We talked about class, and how we were the smartest two in our math class, which took up some of the time. But by then our names were being called one by one and the butterflies began again. Continue reading “The 257”

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Unnecessary Proposal

Bruzzy's ReceptionI never actually proposed. There was no getting down on one knee, no ring in the jacket pocket, no sweaty palms in my lap waiting to pop the question and wondering what her answer would be, and definitely no long engagement where we grew old before we even got married. Instead, there was a tacit understanding between us from the beginning, actually, regarding where our relationship was going. It was almost zen-like the way we operated from the beginning, knowing each others’ thought processes and just relying on that in order to make those plans without even speaking our wishes. In fact, at one point I turned to Heidi and I asked her:

“So, we getting married or what?”

And she looked at me like I had gone out of my mind, then she smiled and said:

“Don’t be silly.”

That was it, at least until we actually went to get the marriage certificate. What might have constituted a proposal was when we both said, virtually at the same time, after she had gotten us tickets to Ireland:

“Want to get married while we’re there?”

Seriously, too, it was almost at the exact same time, like a pastel pink lightbulb had gone off over her head at the same time that another one in matching pale blue went off over mine. And that was it. We were getting married. Continue reading “Unnecessary Proposal”

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The Joy of Cooking

I make some mean toast. No, seriously. I actually know where the toaster is, and I can press down the lovely button that engages the heating element and in less than two minutes makes perfectly browned toast. Not too brown, and not too white either, but a great combination of the two, making for a flaky surface that reminds me of good quality biscuits. Yes, I make some mean toast.

When I was young I remember on a particularly interesting Mother’s Day my sister and I deciding we were going to make my mother breakfast in bed. It seemed so cliche we just had to be a part of it, creating a meal for my mother on a day that was not her birthday. It was my sister’s idea, really, but I chipped in with some random ideas that were summarily dismissed by the main chef. We got up early in order to create the masterpiece without my mother’s knowledge, both of us donning aprons that had seen better days, intent on getting the combinations just right.

It started with an omelet, which my sister claimed to be the best at making, and the only thing we made that really turned out okay. From there it got rather dicey, however, especially with what I was responsible for: the spicy fries. Now, my mother loves some spicy fries, like the kind you can get at nice restaurants everywhere, but at home we hardly ever ate fries. So, not only was it going to be a delicacy for her, but they were also designed to be a reminder of times and memories of us eating out at nice restaurants. It ended up being neither, and all because I got a bit heavy-handed with the spices. Continue reading “The Joy of Cooking”

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Hearing Sammy

Heavy Metal

The first time I heard Sammy Hagar I was in the stacks of the Temple University library in 1996. I had my old-style, drug store, $6 dollar headphones plugged into my imitation Walkman, and his voice took me by surprise when it bore itself into my brain that fall. You see, back then I listened to the radio a lot, but I did it in unconventional ways. There were no podcasts, no digital radio like Pandora, and no satellite radio. There was just good old AM, good old FM, and an antenna to listen to either.

I wouldn’t often get the chance to listen at home, so I would get out blank audio cassettes, put them into the stereo, and press record. Then I would go back later and listen to them, trying to figure out who the singers and bands were that sang the songs I liked. There was no Shazam back then to figure it out, and the DJ didn’t always give the information, so it was a fact-finding expedition that often led to dead ends since I had no contacts to explain it all to me. But it didn’t stop me from loving the songs I loved from those tapes, from those radio days, some of which I still have no idea who sang to this day.

In those days I would also get caught up with those radio concerts, you know the kind that were edited so they could be on the radio, so they cut out all the good parts and a lot of the crowd noise too, plus even some of the show so it would fit in the alotted time the radio had planned for it. But back then it was the only way I got to listen to shows so I would copy them too. One time I found out there was an STP concert coming on, so I set the tape to copy it. I found out later, though, that it was one of those back-to-back show nights where they played two concerts in a row. The first show was STP, and the encore was a Sammy Hagar concert from 1983. Continue reading “Hearing Sammy”