On crying

If you think about it, it's the second thing anyone does on this earth. You come out of the chute, a dude in a mask slaps you on the ass, you take a breath and expel it by...crying.

As you make your way in the world, you find that crying is your first line of defense, the primary way to make yourself understood in world that uses language, when you don't. You cry when you're uncomfortable, wet, hungry, thirsty, binky-less, not sitting next to your favorite aunt at dinner. You learn that to cry is to get what you want, magically and damn near instantly.

But as you gain language skills, you're smacked with the unrealistic expectation of using them, and keeping the crying (and its only slightly more sophisticated cousin, grunting and pointing) to a minimum. Curiously, girls, who gain the dubious gift of language earlier than boys (girls: 2.1 years on average; boys: 34.3 years) are immune from the prohibition against crying to get what you want. Especially when what that girl wants is space, jewelry, the TV, or you're such a bastard for not knowing without me having to tell you that I can't even believe I'm still with you, you insensitive prick.

But since I'm a dude, I don't really have the luxury of crying when things don't go my way. Which does not mean to say that I haven't cried as an adult; when Ray Bourque finally won the Stanley Cup the tears flowed like champagne from one of those cheesy champagne glass fountains you see at goyishe weddings. But those are tears of happiness anyways - that's a whole different thing. Like every other male American boy, I was taught that crying when one was hurting physically or emotionally was a sign of weakness. Which gives rise to the following interesting dichotomy: hit your own hand with a hammer and you'll yelp in pain but take it stoically thereafter. Hit a woman on the hand with a hammer and do 18 months in the clink and when you get out, her brothers will beat you to within an inch of your life. But I digress. Bottom line: guys don't cry when they hurt. We just don't.

But let me tell you, when your father dies, all bets are off. Since dad passed about three weeks ago, there have been times even still when some spark of rememberance, a television show's offhand reference to fatherhood or death, a phrase that my father used (or overused)- anything like that is trigger enough to start me crying. Really crying; not sitting in silent remembrance as a tear falls in manly fashion down my cheek. I'm talking the trembly chin, the scrunched-up face, the whole bit. And that is most assuredly something I'm not used to.

The funny thing is, it's not like it helps. Women will from time to time extol the virtues of a good cry, as if it removed toxins or bad vapors or anything but salt and water. But there's nothing that feels particularly cathartic about me crying for the loss of my father. It's just one more suck in the overflowing cornucopia of giant suck that was my dad's death.

I don't know how long this sort of thing takes to die down, but part of me kind of expected it to have done so already. And a great big part of me wants it to. And not just the crying, but the hurt - the pain and the sorrow that comes from losing your dad that leads to the crying. That's really what I want to stop.

Whoop - here I go again.

A poignant moment

As I write this, Jon Lester has thrown a no-hitter for the Boston Red Sox and the crowd at Fenway has yet to disperse, and the only thing I could think of was, that Dad and I will have something meaty to discuss Wednesday.

Except of course that conversation isn't ever going to take place, not ever.

God, I miss my Dad.

Cyril Robert Jacobs, 1933-2008

This past May 5th, my father passed away.

Even though he'd been in delicate health for years, and on an intellectual level I'd come to understand that we wouldn't have him for a whole lot longer, when the end came it was nonetheless surprising, shocking, and incredibly painful.

The week he died was dizzying, exhausting, poignant, frustrating, neverending, and now, thankfully, over. To see my dad committed to the earth from whence my people believe he came - to be asked to take a shovelful of that earth and cover my dad's coffin with it - was almost too much to bear.

I'm not the first person to lose a parent. I know that it is nature's way, if she is kind, that one loses one's parents.

But even though I'm fast approaching 40, I find myself a little bit lost without my father. He'd long since stopped providing anything to me aside from his love and unconditional support, but I still have moments when I ask myself just what the hell I'm going to do without his steadying presence in my life. With no disrespect to my mother, who raised us well and in a house full of love and happiness, it was my dad who taught me the big life lessons - what it really means to be a man, how one should act even when no-one is looking, that kind of thing. He very much made me the man I am and now he is gone, irrevocably and permanently.

And, eleven days after the fact, there are still days where it all seems a little too much to bear. Everyone I hear from who's lost a parent says the same exact thing: You never stop missing them, ever ever ever. The pain might lessen but it just never goes completely away. And that seems awfully big to me - maybe a little too big right now.

My mother, my brothers, and I will all eventually normalize. I am aware of the amazing healing power of Father Time. I wish life had a fast-forward button, but as it is we're all just going to have to drag our asses through each day until memory brings a smile instead of a lump in one's throat and a tear to one's eye.

Thanks for listening. Do me a favor: if you still have your parents, give them a big hug when you see them.

The Day I Almost Got a Ball

I published this story for a site with whom I used to be affiliated, Most Valuable Network (http://mvn.com). I no longer write for them but you should still check them out - they cover a fair gamut of sports fairly well. Anyway, this took place August 14, 2005, in a rain-shortened game against the Chicago White Sox. Enjoy.

---

Sunday I was at Fenway Park, taking in a little Big Club baseball and a lot of water. But it wasn’t all rain, and the day wasn’t all wasted.

It started off pretty poorly, actually. I’ve seen a lot of baseball this summer and wasn’t feeling particularly well all weekend, and truth to tell, I wasn’t looking forward to trekking all the way into Boston (I’m a Rhode Islander) and sitting in the 95-degree heat for three hours. But the seat I had that day was just too kick-ass to pass up. FB 51, row B — three or four seats to the third-base side of the screen, four rows off the field. Closer to the action than the guy on deck. So I had to go, even though on the train and for the first inning or so I was sweating profusely and cursing baseball for taking place in the summertime.

Of course, the weather broke spectacularly when the heavens opened up, so I didn’t have to worry about that for too long. In fact, between the first and second rain delays it was quite comfortable, if you don’t mind being a little waterlogged, which believe me, I didn’t.

In the row in front of me was a kid of no more than 8 or 9 years, with blond hair bordering on white, longer than you normally see nowadays. It was obviously his first game. He brought his glove and kept pestering his dad for a foul ball, as if a word from him would be all that was necessary.

In the third inning, he got his ball. The home plate umpire took a ball out of play and rolled it to the ball boy. This kid went over to the rail and stuck out his mitt, and the ball boy tossed it right to him. The look on his face, predictably, was pure ecstasy.

A couple of minutes went by during which he looked at his trophy over and over again, turning it this way and that in his hands, pretending to throw it for the winning putout of the World Series, tossing it up and catching it. After a while he asked his father a question I couldn’t hear and saw him shrug his shoulders. He turned around to face me.

“Excuse me,” he said, which was the first good sign, “is this your first time here?”

“Umm, no,” I said with a bit of a smile - it was by my count the 32nd time this year.

“Do they [meaning the players] stay after the game and sign autographs?” he asked.

“Not really, no,” I said. “You might want to try the player’s parking lot an hour or so after the game.”

At this, the kid turned crestfallen. His shoulders slumped and his hopeful expression turned blank.

“But listen,” I said, “You’re still a lucky kid - I’ve been coming here since I was your age” — my advanced years must’ve made a suitable impression here — “and I’ve never gotten a ball, ever.”

He gets this thoughtful look on his face - I assumed that my comment had made its desired impact. But then he huddles in with his dad for a little while and turns around to face me again. This time, he’s holding out his ball.

“Here,” he says. “You take it.”

It took six or seven times before I could convince him to put it back in his glove. It’s tough to sound forceful when you have a lump in your throat. He finally did but said to me, “If I get another one, I’ll give it to you.”

I said, “If you get a second one, you can do what you like with it - but you gotta keep that first one.”

Well, he never got his second one, and unless we see each other at the make up game (the game was postponed after a ridiculous 4 hour delay) the point will forever be moot. I’ll never even know the name of the special little kid who made an impression on me that will last the rest of my life.

However, if he does show up, and does get a second ball, I will take it from him, and ask him for his autograph on it - for, as I plan on telling him, we get autographs of people we respect and admire. And that little towheaded kid earned both of those things from me Sunday with that one simple, unselfish, magnificent gesture.

Two Posts in Two Days?

Why, I never heard of such a thing.

But I was trolling someone else's blog - he was waxing nostalgic about his hometown as it was some 60 years ago, and it got me thinking of the changes that have come about in my hometown, which happens to be West Peabody, Massachusetts.

One thing you should know about Peabody is that, like any other town I suppose, it's very much a product of the time during which it came into its own. For West Peabody, that was the late '60s and 70s - which is the exact epoch of my pre-pubescent youth.

West Peabody, situated as it was 18 miles north of Boston, was thought of as the sticks. When my parents moved there from the much more sensible city of Everett, complete with its zero-lot-lines and double- and triple-decker houses, the sprawling ranches and 1/3-acre lots must have seemed one step away from farms. Over everything, West Peabody was quiet. My father recalls vividly that the two things he had the hardest time getting used to was the lower ceilings of the house they'd bought, and the eerie, everlasting quiet that was the suburbs. He, after all, spent most of his adult life living on the same corner as a bus stop; the difference must have been startling.

In a lot of ways of course that kind of suburbia still remains; my little corner of it has changed very little. Most of the houses are still the same color as they were; indeed of the five houses that comprise my parent's closest neighbors, three are occupied by the same people that occupied them in 1970. But there were a few differences, which serve as a quaint reminder of how things used to be:

• There was a guy who would walk a pushcart down my street, clanging a triangle. He was the knife sharpener; what a way to make a living. He was not a young man, either, and he had a lot of ground to cover. He was one of the first casualties of the throwaway society to which the US transitioned in the middle '70s.



• There was a grand total of one Chinese restaurant, and that wasn't even in Peabody: The Bali Hai in Lynnfield. To this day it remains my favorite Chinese joint, to the eternal disgust of my wife, who, as they say, ain't from here. When another restaurant opened in Peabody, the now-offensively-named Oriental Jade, we wondered why on earth anyone would open a Chinese restaurant so close to the Bali Hai.



• The main street that connects West Peabody to Peabody proper, Lowell Street, was at one point such a quiet sleepy street that one could walk -- hell, one could saunter -- across the street with complete confidence that nobody was coming any time soon. Now (and for the last twenty years) it's choked with traffic and crossing the street against a light or not in a crosswalk is beyond folly; it's outright suicide.



• One of my most amusing memories is looking out my window at the garbagemen coming up the street - and my 5-year-old self would (remember this was 1972 or 3) flash them the peace sign, and they'd flash it back at me. The stop signs in our neighborhood all had the word "War" spraypainted at the bottom. My dad would use that as an excuse to run the stop sign. I remember protesting one day and he said "It says 'stop war,' not stop the car." I also remember being satisfied with that rationale. And even in deepest suburbia, there were hippies: Our neighbors three doors down, the News (you out there, Danny? We all hated you), had an odd relation who would show up in an ancient blue Saab and would, on early mornings, lean against it and play the flute. I remember liking him, thinking that the rest of his stuck-up douchebag family could stand to be more like him.



• And of course, my Dad was a hale, strong, funny bastard with an ever-present twinkle in his eye and a shit-eating grin on his face that made you think he had the world by the short-and-curlies, my Mom was young and pretty, and my biggest responsibility was coloring inside the lines - and you can bet your ass that I miss those things way more than the knife sharpener guy.

I've been so long away...

...for which I must apologize to my faithful readers, both of whom are probably dead or wholly apathetic by now. Same old excuse, I guess: work is occupying most of my cranial real estate lately, as Your Humble Scribe has received a promotion. I'm particularly proud of the monetary negotiations that took place therefrom:

Big Cheese: I'm sorry to say that we can't offer you a raise at this time.
Me: Well, how about an increase in my yearly bonus?
BC: Sorry.
Me: A spot bonus?
BC: No can do.
Me: An extra week of vacation?
BC: No.
Me: Can I go to this year's incentive trip?
BC: No.
Me: Very well, I accept.

So for precisely no remuneration whatsoever, I inherited a great big vat of responsibility and a company cell phone that quite conveniently keeps my work tethered to my hip 24 hours a day, seven days a week, interrupted only by sporadic periods of fitful sleep during which I dream about - you guessed it - work. In short, I have turned into the precise type of corporate joyboy that I hold in quiet contempt for having no sense of work/life balance.

Nevertheless, there are some quiet corners of the ol' pumpkin that are occupied by things other than work. Forthwith then some of the mighty ponderables that poke up from time to time when I'm on the crapper.

• In many ways, The Beatles' Norwegian Wood stands head and shoulders above the rest of their catalog, especially their catalog up to that point. This was 1965, mind you, when the Hollies were warbling ditties like "Look Through Any Window" and the British Invasion pretenders were still teenybopping. John created this masterpiece, blending a haunting, complex chord progression with angry, bitter lyrics about women who tease in general, and his first wife in particular, who he always thought cornered him into marriage ("I once had a girl; or should I say, she once had me.") Words like masterpiece are too easliy tossed about these days, but it's high time this song get the credit it deserves.



• Are you familiar with The Flying Spaghetti Monster? It's a brilliant counter-argument to Intelligent Design. There's not enough space here to describe it fully, but essentially, some guy said that the world began when an omniscient being that looked like a plate of spaghetti and meatballs created the world and everything in it. If you believe that Intelligent Design is ridiculous pseudo-science bullshit, read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_spaghetti_monster Highlight: A letter to the Kansas Board of Education which reads in part "..."I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence." Brilliant. Just Brilliant.


• If you are in any way interested in Military Intelligence campaigns, you owe it to yourself to read everything you can regarding Operation Mincemeat. There are many web-based treatises about it; there's a pretty complete Wikipedia entry. From
  a 1995 article in WWII Magazine:
  
  

  
  When the campaign in North Africa was drawing to a successful close, the Allies'next strategic target was painfully obvious to anyone who could read a map. "Everyone but a bloody fool would know it's Sicily," said Winston Churchill.
  
  Sitting in the middle of the choke point of the Mediterranean, Sicily was the shortest route from North Africa to Adolf Hitler's Europe. It was also the base from which the Luftwaffe had pounded Malta for many months, as well as any convoy that tried to reach the beleaguered island. Sicily had to be taken, but its rough terrain favored the defender. Any attack against a well-entrenched force would be very costly, or might even fail. If the enemy only could be misled as to where the Allies intended to strike next, the attacking force might encounter something less than a fully manned defense. But how were the German general staff and intelligence service to be duped on such a grand scale?
  
  The solution to that problem came from two relatively junior British officers: Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu, a reservist who represented naval intelligence on the interservice XX Committee (XX for double cross), and Squadron Leader Sir Archibald Cholmondley, Montagu's Air Ministry counterpart. It was Cholmondley who first suggested planting false Allied documents on a dead body and letting it fall into German hands.The XX Committee was initially skeptical of the bizarre plan, but in the end Montagu made it work.
  
  Before the war Montagu had been a successful barrister, and after the war he would become judge advocate of the fleet and one of England's greatest jurists. In the early months of 1943 he used his lawyer skills to blend an intricate and massive hoax into one of the most phenomenally successful deception operations in the history of modern warfare.

  
  
  If it tickles your fancy pick up a copy of the book "The Man Who Never Was," written by one of the principal architects of Mincemeat, Ewan Montagu himself.



• My brother Ross and his wife Tara are having a baby! Join the virtual baby shower here.

Well, that's about it for now, I reckon. I promise, more to come. Peace, Love, and His Noodly Appendage.

The Black and Gold are BACK!!

Last night was one of the happiest days of the year for Your Humble Scribe. For hockey returned to the Boston Garden when the Bruins, fresh off their 3-2 road trip, finally had their home opener. Besides the second period, when they went nappy time for a while, it was a decent enough effort, with plenty of grit and scoring, and it culminated in a 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.

I was originally to have gone with Smitty but he decided instead that he'd rather have a kidney stone. No accounting for some people's taste. Me, I'd have rather gone to the game, but tomato/to-mah-to, I guess. Taking his place was DB, aka Mrs. Smitty, for whom this would be only her second hockey game.

It was, perhaps surprisingly, a good time, despite me having to explain to her, yet again, how offsides worked, and enduring conversations like these:

DB: They're just fighting?? Why don't they stop it?
CS: And how do you presume they do that?
DB: Um...blow the whistle?

She was at least attentive to the game itself and we both had a really good time. I thought when Smitty's kidney stone kicked in, my evening was blown. And though going to a game with a neophyte can sometimes suck, it didn't in this case. I'm glad she came. And I never thought I'd end up saying that!