by the Better Choice Chair. What’s next, the “Don’t Eat Paste Whirlpool”? How about the “Stop Running in the Halls Full Body Massage”?
The problem I have with the Better Choice Chair is is it really all that different from sitting a kid in the corner with a dunce cap on? Do you think any kid is going to feel good about sitting in the penalty box while his friends play around him? I’d rather have a teacher give my kid a little smack on the butt than sit him in the Better Choice Chair.
So I looked back over the last week and thought of some other people who could maybe benefit from the BCC.
Serena Williams: Tennis used to be a game of class and elegance, I think once the words “I’m going to shove this @##%ing ball down your %$#%ing throat” echo off the walls at Flushing Meadows the class and elegance ship has sailed and when I say “sailed“ I mean sailed like a Miami Vice cigarette boat.
What I thought was interesting was the only excuse I heard her give was a shoulder shrug and then she said something to the effect of “Hey, I’m from Compton.” Now can you imagine what would happen if an announcer said that? “John, can you believe what we just heard!” “Well, she is from Compton.”
That guys career would look like the Hindenburg.
Kanye West: Kanye must have forgotten that he was somebody ten years ago. In case you’ve been in a coffin for the past week and missed it, Kanye hopped up on stage and grabbed the microphone away from country singer Taylor Swift and announced that Taylor didn’t deserve the award for best video of the year (the fact that the person singing in the video has NOTHING to do with the making of the video is incidental) because Beyonce had the greatest video of all time. I’m trying to imagine what would have happened if Garth Brooks would have jumped up and grabbed the microphone away from Beyonce and announced that Taylor Swift deserved the award. I suspect there may have been violence. In any event Kanye could use some chair time.
Mike Illitch: The Detroit Tiger’s owner who decided to pay Magglio Ordonez $18,000,000 next season. Magglio was once one of the most feared hitters in baseball. “Once” being the operative word. Now he’s a slap hitter who, at best, is a double play waiting to happen. Mr. Illitch, have a seat.
Rep. Joe Wilson: “You lie!” That may be true, but you should still have more class than to yell it at the President. If someone decided to yell out every time a sitting president, this one in particular, said something shaky the frickin’ speech would last well into the first part of CSI: New York. Now you, as a Congressman, should know that people don’t want to hear such nonsense. They’d much rather live in a dream world and watch our country get dismantled before their very eyes. Joe, get in the chair but don’t stay there very long.
Kate Gosselin: How did this woman’s name get in my head? I’ve never seen the show “John and Kate Plus 8”, I have no idea what it’s about and I don’t care about her or her husband. So why must she spend time in the BCC? Have you seen the woman’s hair?
The list could go on, I suppose., but these five sort of separated themselves from the pack. I don’t feel sorry for any of them, they’re all grown-ups, they all know better, and when it comes to their actions I guess they got what they de…served.
Boys to Men to Boys
By Tracy K. Lorenz
Okay, here’s a pop quiz: You’re taking a little twenty-five mile bike ride with your friends down the Hart – Montague trail. One guy gets a flat tire a hundred yards from a service station, one guy gets a flat tire in the middle of absolute frickin’ nowhere. One of these two has a spare inner-tube, guess which one.
If you guessed Dave “I’m prepared for anything and even calibrated my odometer by putting chalk lines on the road” Schaab had the spare inner tube near the service station (and had the tire changed like he was pitting at Talladega) you win! If you guessed Matt “POP! Ssssssssss” Bosma was the one stranded then you win twice! But it wasn’t Matt’s fault, he borrowed one of my bikes and I’ve never owned a spare tube in my life.
Which brings up an ethics question,; Matt was on my bike when the tire popped, who should stay with the bike and who should ride ten miles to get the truck to pick up the stranded rider? There was no discussion, Matt stayed, I rode, Matt walked to some mysterious party store hidden behind a bush, got some beer, and sat in the shade while the rest of us rode like maniacs to get back, get the truck, and rescue our stranded friend. Apparently Matt is significantly smarter than I.
But that’s the beauty of having life-long friends, you just do stuff and figure it all balances out over time.
And time is one of those concepts that seems to bend when you get together with people you’ve known since Little League. Anyone who happened to look down by the lake at night would’ve seen five middle aged men sitting around a fire listening to the Tigers game. But I was inside that circle and when I looked around I saw a kid who set the woods on fire and then ran home and pretended he was asleep. I saw the teenagers I rode around with when we bought our first crappy cars, and I saw the kids I spent hours with walking the dunes like Bedouins. There may be some gray hair and maybe a double chin or two but for some reason I can’t help but see the kid inside.
We’ve known each other so long that conversation is just a formality, it would really make things easier if we just numbered the stories. Matt could yell out “Three!” and everyone would laugh. Mark could yell out Fifteen!” and everyone would laugh. And then Glen could yell out “Twenty-two!” and no one would laugh because Glen can‘t tell a joke.
That was my weekend; bikes, kayaks, fishing poles, fire and guns. No fish died, no clay pigeons were injured, beer cans were melted in the fire and everyone returned safely from kayaking. There’s a certain peace that comes with familiarity, from having a touchstone, a “ghoul”, a place you can go where nothing bad has ever happened. What makes that place “that place” is the friends you choose, whether you’re eight years old or almost…retired.
The Roof
By Tracy K. Lorenz
My son Q (age 4) is what I’d call a playground connoisseur, he appreciates and ranks them like fine wines. He’s pretty much used up every playground in Grand Haven so last week I took him to Lincoln Park School in Norton Shores, the playground responsible for most of the scars I carry around today.
When we got there I wasn’t surprised to see the archaic instruments of gravity defiance I knew as a child were gone, replaced by the generic, brightly colored but exceedingly safe, “play stations” that have taken over today’s playgrounds and turned them into the thrill equivalent of string cheese.
One piece of equipment I wasn’t surprised to see gone was the Maypole. The Maypole was a twenty foot tall steel pipe with a swivel on top. Four chains hung down from the swivel and provided the soundtrack for our neighborhood because they clanged like a fire engine when met with the slightest breeze. On the bottom of each chain was a hand grip. The idea was to grab a grip, run a round in a circle, and let centrifugal force carry you momentarily up and away.
As we grew older we discovered an even better way to rip out your shoulder sockets. You needed four kids, one for each chain, while three of the kids stood there, kid four would walk around them so that his chain overlapped the others. That way when everyone took off running the kid who overlapped would actually fly OVER the other three kids which was good in theory but never ended well. Kid four was pulling about ten G’s and would invariably lose his grip and be sent flying into Lincoln Park’s cash crop of sandburs. If you see an adult walking around and his arms appear disproportionately long there’s a pretty good chance he grew up somewhere near Castle Avenue.
Lincoln Park also had the worlds most dangerous basketball court because it was always covered with a thin layer of beach sand. Going in for a lay-up was like running down polished wood stairs in a new pair of socks.
But there was one area of excitement that the powers-that-be forgot to address. The school’s