My fears of public speaking

I used to be very comfortable speaking in public. Did it all the time. In fact, I was a regular guest on Pittsburgh morning radio and on a popular panel TV show.

I’ve taught college classes, have spoken to writers’ groups and once addressed more than 200 people at a Manhattan awards ceremony where I was a guest of honor for a series of stories I wrote about people struggling with dystonia.

That’s why recent anxieties about public speaking left me unnerved.

Because I’m intending to do a lot more of it.

On its face, that last statement will alarm my family and my friends at the bar, my core demographics and the ones who think I never shut up.

They fail to understand a key difference between public speaking and drunken babbling.

Public speaking requires some wit, monetary incentive and an alert audience eager for entertainment or information.

For me to babble drunkenly, all I need is booze and people with ears who prefer hearing me incoherently yap at the tavern to being home and hearing a sober spouse complain about their shortcomings.

But I have a new book coming out and I plan on reaching out to every civic group in Western Pennsylvania who’ll be interested in hearing how a guy who can’t help himself is now a self-help author -- you can check out the still-evolving website, www.UseAllTheCrayons.com.

So the stakes are high. 

I want every appearance to be polished and entertaining, an oratorical home run.

It wasn’t last week on a Michigan radio show, which I’m regarding as more of a foul out. I’m friends with Michael Patrick Shiels, host of a lively program syndicated on 10 different stations across the state. Recent guests include Mitt Romney, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger and me.

Michael couldn’t have been more generous with his introduction. I remember listening and thinking, wow, this guy’s gonna be good -- and I’ll bet he’s handsome, too. It was so flattering that when he started asking me live questions about my book I responded with dumbfounded silence.

I kept waiting for the brilliant man he’d introduced to speak up and say something intelligent.

That guy was a no-show.

I was so choppy and awkward I’m convinced my old friend won’t have me on again until I heroically land a packed jumbo jet liner on the Hudson River.

The result? I had just one guy get in touch after the show asking me to send him a free copy of the book, which I happily did for reasons stated here.

It shook my confidence.

That’s why I felt relief the other night at a gathering of about 100 international journalists and Pittsburgh big shots when the microphone seemed to safely pass me by.

The Pittsburgh Regional Alliance and Visit Pittsburgh brought these distinguished journalists from as far as Spain and Germany to Pittsburgh to learn why the only color becoming more dominant than Black 'n' Gold is green.

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Consol Energy Center, and other dazzling new downtown structures have embraced green technologies in ways that are being hailed around the globe. Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens is unveiling the new Center for Sustainable Landscapes, which ingeniously produces all its own renewable energy and waters its lush gardens solely on water captured and treated on site.

It’s is among the greenest buildings on earth, quite a feat considering it earns the designation over thousands of other places that have an advantage of starting out being called “green” houses.

And I’m busting with pride that Pittsburgh is its home.

I just didn’t want to have to say it through an amplifier at the Monday evening reception.

We were on the spectacular 12th floor porch of the Reed Smith building, adjacent to the new Fairmont Hotel in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle. I was standing with fellow freelance writer Chris O’Toole, the kind of journalist I want to be when I grow up (I’ll be 50 in February so any day now)

Her credentials include bylines in many of the world’s most prestigious publications. She’s poised, classy and beloved by all.

My most impressive credential at the time was I was standing next to her.

The MC, Pittsburgh TV personality Bill Flanagan, concluded his chipper opening remarks and asked each of the visiting journalists to introduce themselves and offer a little background. Happily, he and the mic passed right by Chris and I.

I felt a huge surge of relief. I wouldn’t have to address the crowd.

And what a distinguished group it was. It included a reporter for The New York Times and representatives from many other renown publications who’ve been rejecting my inferior work for years.

I joked to Chris it was a good thing they passed us by because all I’d have to say is, “I’m Chris Rodell and I need more wine!”

And that was true. When the wine is free, I could just stand there and drink myself into a giddy little puddle. Free from concerns about having to speak, I was having a splendid time.

That’s why I almost dropped my glass when Flanagan said, “And, finally, we’d like to introduce two outstanding local journalists, Chris O’Toole and Chris Rodell!”

If we’d have just been about four stories lower, I’d have jumped off the building and made a run for it.

I don’t recall a single word she said, but I’m sure it was brilliant.

And I don’t recall a single word I said either, which is a pity because it, too, was apparently brilliant.

I was the last speaker, the clean-up hitter. As fate had it, mine were the valedictory remarks of the evening and I somehow pulled it off.

The reaction couldn’t have been better. Prominent Pittsburghers kept coming up to me to thank me for my heartfelt gush. Fellow reporters sought my acquaintance. 

I tried to think of why the results of these two episodes of public speaking differed so widely; one a failure, the other a success.

For one, I was prepared and had a list of talking points at the ready.

For the other, it was completely extemporaneous. 

After careful consideration, I blame the apparent sobriety of Michigan residents who listen to the radio at 8:30 a.m. Tough crowd.

It wasn’t like that on that scenic Pittsburgh porch. 

You see, I wasn’t the only guy there enjoying lots of free wine.

The results have me considering altering my business model for selling my book. To heck with rubber chicken dinner talks before Western Pennsylvania civic groups.

Napa Valley, here I come!

Mark Zuckerberg's amazing weekend

When I saw Mark Zuckerberg got married the day after FaceBook’s IPO earned $20 billion, my first thought was, “And someday those kids are going to be fighting over money.”

And I’m not talking about divorce settlements, although that romantic Trump is.

“They get married and then for some reason over the next couple of years they get divorced and then she sues him for $10 billion and she hits the jackpot,” he told CNBC. “I think if she made $1 million, that would be very good.

A romantic indeed, but only about things that stir the pulses of people proficient in accounting.

I’m talking about whether one is maybe a coupon clipper while the other is extravagant. Many couples agree on the great moral issues of raising children yet spar over whether the breakfast waitress deserves an extra quarter.

Money’s just an evergreen source of conflict with every couple.

A friend of mine forewarned me of this on the eve of my marriage. He said it was absolutely essential my bride and I run all our finances through the same bank account.

“Trust me on this,” he said, “having a joint bank account will eliminate all the arguments about money. It’s one of the things that helps my marriage succeed, that and mutual respect.”

Back then he was utterly sincere.

Fifteen years later, he’s divorced. He busted his wife cheating on him with their kid’s karate instructor and now he sits in the bars and advises singles as to why they should never marry.

Of course, I wisely ignored him. My wife and I have joint accounts for savings, but we have separate accounts for individual spending loot. We argue about big decisions but we arrive at our points through positions of fierce independence.

And it’s worked out well. Through 15 years of marriage we’ve rarely fought over money.

The skeptics will point out we never fight over who gets to drive the Lamborghini either, which is something else we don’t have, so the point may be moot.

But we did nearly have a fight over Facebook this weekend. It’s free so that we have.

Our 11-year-old asked Val to check something on Facebook and said, “I know you’re always on there anyway,” to which she responded indignantly, “Not as much as your father!”

For some reason, them’s fighting words.

Neither of us wants to admit we’re on Facebook more than the other.

Why is that? Has there ever been an institution in which we’ve participated with almost compulsory dedication that as a whole we enjoy less?

I mean besides high school.

I felt good when I learned economists deemed his $106 billion IPO “a disappointment.” It seemed like a healthy development.

And I felt relief, too, that those same honest brokers haven’t taken the time to examine my finances.

I still don’t know what to make of Zuckerberg and Facebook. Of course, my opinion of him is colored by the exaggerations of his portrayal in “The Social Network.” That and, like R2D2, it is said Zuckerberg doesn’t blink.

It’s true. Interviewers and confidants say he spends his waking hours staring like a birddog fixed on a pheasant.

I guess he scares me. He’s got so much money and power earned through something so trivial I feel compelled to resent.

I guess I’m looking forward to his second act, something that will define him better than just a guy with massive brain power who seems oddly incapable of mastering the common Windsor knot.

So of the twin Facebook news bulletins -- the IPO and the wedding -- I believe the surreptitious nuptials will be the more pivotal.

It’ll be up to the new Mrs. Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, to use her matrimonial influence on her husband, something she’s already done by convincing him to use Facebook as a force to transform how we donate life-saving organs. Bravo.

She needs to encourage his philanthropy so in 10 years we’ll all think about how wrong we were about Zuckerberg and Facebook.

She’ll need to do it with guile and logic. She’ll need to be persuasive and perseverant.

And she’ll need to understand in matrimonial arguments, it’s not always about who blinks first, especially when it comes to Mr. Z.

Re-runner: Cock-a-Doodle Don't!

I just woke up from a really great night's sleep. Hope you had one, too. But I thought I'd re-post this June 2009 piece about back when I didn't. The rooster's gone. I don't know what happened to it and I swear I didn't kill it. I wish I slept great every night, but I know I wouldn't appreciate it as much if I did as I do.


I don't miss that rooster even one little bit.

I haven’t enjoyed a really good night’s sleep since I first became ambitious about girls and having reckless fun far from the confines of the crib.

For many, many years my lack of sleep could be blamed on unwise decisions regarding liquor consumption and late night diversions.

Lately, those interests have diminished. I’m usually tucked away at 11 p.m. in time for the 110th viewing of a Seinfeld episode I first watched in 1996. After that, I close my eyes ever hopeful the next sound I hear will be Al Roker alerting me about what’s happening in our neck of the woods.

The full slumber never happens and I blame the rooster.

Understand, the rooster is not some metaphor for sleep deprivation. It’s not some spectral dream creature stalking me through the twilight. It’s a flesh and feather creature that nests just down the winding road from our home.

The rooster is my neighbor.

I hear it most every morning now at 4:30 a.m. Whomever coined the reveille onomatopoeia for this alarm clock bird never heard my neighbor. If they did it would be spelled -- oooock-a-oooodle-woo-wooooooooooo!

Or maybe my neighbor bird just has a speech impediment.

Either way, in farm vernacular, that bird’s a real cock.

If I lived in the city, I would understand the sound of gunfire is part of the background ambiance. Same goes for rooster crows if I lived in farm country. But we live amid a sparse cluster of homes in the mountain woods.

The rooster is owned by a dour German immigrant who apparently enjoys fresh eggs. Maybe a half a dozen chickens are clucking around the place. It’s jarring because the home is spiffy and looks sort of like the one Mike and Carol Brady raised their brood. And did The Brady Bunch ever do a rooster episode? It sounds like it might make for funny situational comedy.

Just not when it’s happening to you.

Each trumpet blast -- it’s piercing clear even through closed windows and about 500 feet of woods -- lasts about 12 seconds. Then there’s a peaceful lull of about 45 seconds where you can delude yourself into hoping maybe a pack of sleep-deprived coyotes are ripping the bird apart with their powerful jaws.

But that prayer goes unanswered. The shrill siren without fail returns and continues for hours to come. My wife and kids can sleep through it. But once I’m awake I start thinking about the meaning of life, how I could earn maybe a dollar, and why sometimes my tee shots rainbow to the right while others pull dead left.

My mind is just too restless to achieve sleep more than once a day. So I go to the couch and read or watch TV.

We even hear its raucous call in the afternoons. It made me wonder if it, too, is so sleep deprived that it can no longer function like a normal rooster. Really, 4:30 a.m. strikes me as awfully early for even a rooster.

I told a friend about it. He said, “Well, I once saw a chicken play tic-tac-toe at a county fair, but I doubt even one that won most of its games could adjust to the concept of daylight savings time.”

He was making a joke at my expense.

I’ve read all the nagging studies that say we’d all function better if we could get 8-10 hours of sleep each night.

That seems excessive. I think I’d be in tip top mental condition with about six hours a night. Ten hours of sleep isn’t going to make me any smarter. Don’t blame the potter for the inferior quality of the clay.

I suppose I could storm down there one day and confront the old German about the offending bird or make an example of the offending fowl by showing him how one neighbor keeps the peace in the rustic woods.

But I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t have that kind of angry nerve.

When it comes to those kinds of situations, I’m basically a common chicken.

I don’t feel too bad about it. The woods, at least where I live, are full of those.

My strip club history

I told my wife it had probably been about 15 years when she asked me about the last time I’d been in a strip club.

“Will you ever go again?”

Gee, I don’t know. I was never the instigator. They kind of bore me, I said. You know -- seen two, seen ‘em all.

“Would you ever not go out of respect for our marriage?”

Now, this is the point at which I busted out laughing. Hard. I laughed for a good four seconds until I looked up and saw my laughter had caused her to seethe.

She was serious.

She told me she’d been listening to a Cosmo Channel radio program where women were discussing the tastelessness of men going to nudie joints. One woman said men gazing lustfully on naked women who are not their wives demeans holy matrimony.

She was eager to hear my righteous affirmation and, boy, did I whiff on that one.

So now as an unintended consequence of her attempt to gauge my morality, I’ve spent the past 24 hours recalling all the naked pre-med students I used to ogle for two-drink minimums.

I wasn’t kidding either. I was never the hey-let’s-all-go-to-the-strip-club! guy. But every guy is friends with one of those guys. 

Truly, some men are indeed pigs. I can vouch for that because I’m good buddies with bunches of them.

We’d go to baseball games all summer and one of our friends didn’t think the night was complete unless we toddled into the notorious Edison Hotel, ironically, an establishment that is, well, cheek-to-cheek with Pittsburgh’s cultural district.

I’d go, but it was mostly boring. I understood most of the girls wouldn’t have been dancing naked if they could have earned as much money through other artistic endeavors that involved wearing things like smocks.

They treated us with a sweetness so mocking it felt like contempt.

In fact, I could recall during my trip down -- and this one’s unavoidable -- Mammary Lane just three strip club visits where I really enjoyed myself, and one of them involved one of the rare times when I was acting like a professional journalist.

The headliner was the fabulous Keisha. She was a famous porn star from the mid-90s.

I never saw a single film of hers, but I’ll bet I know more about her than her most ardent fan.

That’s because at the end of her show she grabbed a mic and opened up the floor to questions.

As always, I was with my buddy Paul, a fellow reporter. For some reason, we’d ended up on exact opposite sides of the stage from one another.

Without anyone knowing we were friends, we took turns asking questions. With her in her G-string, I guess you could say we were crack reporters.

I remember Keisha turning her head back and forth like she was watching a long tennis volley. And she answered every question.

What was her greatest role? “Pretty Peaches III”

What would she have been if she hadn’t gone into porn? “A veterinarian.”

How does she like to unwind after a hard day at work (the adjective was deliberate)? “Watch soap operas; ‘All My Children.’”

I’ll bet to this day when recalls her days of barnstorming the country without any clothes on she remembers Pittsburgh as a place where the men were polite and exceptionally curious. 

I recall having a really good time in a Myrtle Beach strip club once when I was an innocent and an older, more experienced friend took me to my first biker strip club, a place called “Smugglers.”

He was very savvy and he told the manager we were part of a scouting party for 50 rich, horny men and that if we didn’t have a good time we weren’t bringing any of them back.

He told one of the girls, “Here’s $20, now take my young friend here back and give him a lap dance. And if he doesn’t enjoy it, we’re not coming back.”

It was very cunning. I remember her grabbing me by the belt and dragging me back to a private room where I went to plop down on the nearest couch.

“Don’t sit there!” she scolded.

Why not?

“The boss might see us.”

Let me tell you, I’ve dated women for six months and not enjoyed the kind of ready intimacy she showered upon me for the next 15 minutes. I remember at once feeling pretty cheap and feeling pretty good.

That’s why I felt so bad that my friend lied to her. We never did go back to Smugglers. It’s a pity because I think Brittney and I could have lived happily ever after.

I say I wasn’t the guy who instigated the strip club visits, but my wife’s question had me recall the night the Edison Hotel, Pittsburgh’s most historic strip club, threw a party in my honor.

It’s true. It was the mid-1990s and I enjoyed a minor city celebrity due to my having been a staple on local morning radio for my swashbuckling work with National Enquirer.

Edison management heard me on the radio and said they wanted to have a private party in my honor, one that would be catered by the Edison chef.

How could I refuse? They sent me about 50 tickets to distribute to my friends. I was surprised to find I still have the souvenir (note the typo in dancer Jeanette “Litle” Dove’s name).

And it was great fun. We had the place all to ourselves. They gave us free drinks and the surgically-enhanced girls seemed relaxed and extra friendly.

But my most vivid memory of the night had nothing to do with nudity, but instead with dinner. As the party wore on, my guests began asking me about something to eat.

I asked the manager about the promised feast prepared by the Edison chef.

He pointed to a nearby folding table. On the table was a bowl of strawberries and a bowl of pretzels.

We wound up ordering pizza.

So I’m sure I’ll never go back to a strip club ever again because I now realize what an affront it would be to my marriage.

Plus, I’m convinced the more time men spend panting after fake boobs the more likely we are to behave in ways that convince others we’re real ones.

Related . . .

Cigar store ambiance enhanced by breasts

The $45 million ATM withdrawal

What I think about when I think about Dolly Parton

Breast facts by the book

Where are all the Olympic breasts?

Fake boobs to confound real ones

Warning: My first adult-content post!

When all-you-can-eat ain't

It’s eerie just how much a nearly 20-year old episode of “The Simpsons” parallels the gluttonous crusade of Bill Wisth, a Milwaukee-area man whose gargantuan grudge is only exceeded by his appetite.

Wisth was dining at Chuck’s Place restaurant where he took the “all-you-can-eat” fish sign written in chalk on slate with the same gravity Moses took the 10 Commandments.

The 6-foot-6, 350-pound Packer fan had eaten 12 fish filets when beleaguered waitress Elizabeth Roeming refused to serve him more. Management agreed to give him eight more fish if he’d vamoose, which he did.

Now as hungry for justice as he was for cod, Wisth summoned the police and two days later was back at Chuck’s Place walking the sidewalk with a picket sign -- and that’s the last evidence of healthy behavior you’re likely to read about the episode.

The reaction’s straight out of the Homer Simpson playbook. It’s the B-plot in the 1992 “New Kid on the Block” episode where Homer gets tossed from the “Frying Dutchman” seafood restaurant for the same reasons that infuriated Wisth.

He hires attorney Lionel Hutz of “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm!” Hutz tells him it’s the most blatant case of false advertising since he sued the film, “The Never-Ending Story.”

The eventual trial hinges on key testimony of Marge Simpson who breaks down in tears on the witness stand after Hutz asks her what the Simpsons did when they were thrown out of the restaurant and unable to find another all-you-can-eat fish restaurant.

“We went fishing!” she wails.

An out-of-court settlement is reached and Homer is allowed to eat all he wants, as long as he does it for freak show promotional purposes in the restaurant window where he is billed as “Bottomless Pete, Nature’s Cruelest Mistake.”

One patron speculates Homer’s really a shaved ape.

It’s a pity that kind of Solomonic solution is likely to evade Wisth and Chuck’s Place, and I invite you to check out the restaurant website. Seems like a great neighborhood restaurant. It seems like the kind of place unlikely to try and poison a customer, although I’m sure that’s been considered.

Wisth doesn’t have a website, as far as I can tell.

I wish I had a way to glean more information about the man. What I know is uniformly unflattering: he’s gluttonous, belligerent over petty issues, rude to waitresses. Roeming told local reporters that the restaurant has tried in vain to accommodate his demands and even gave him a tab which he never paid.

It’s a cinch he’s a cheap tipper, that in itself a hell-worthy sin in my book -- and Hell’s going to be mighty crowded if I ever get to decide who dwells there.

That we live in a society where such wanton rapaciousness is encouraged is another matter, but who among us can dispute the tyrannical wisdom of his position?

“All you can eat” is a gastronomic statement without concluding punctuation. It applies to both the svelte and spacious. Clearly, Wisth is a man determined to eat the ocean empty of fish and then maybe floss with squid tentacles.  

Really, the Homer solution makes perfect sense. The restaurant could seize on Wisth’s gluttony and build a “Man vs. Restaurant” reality show around its thinly -- and I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d read the word “thin” in this story -- veiled attempts to culinarily kill their nemesis. 

They could set him up in a custom-made and reinforced booth and dare him up to eat multiple servings of high-caloric meals zoo vets forbid animals like rhinos from consuming.

I’d watch.

Sure, some people will be fearful about the effects such tastelessness will have on our culture. Others will fear the legalities. And restauranteurs will fear the precedent of standing so boldly behind the all-you-can-eat ethos.

Me, man, I guess I’m just fearing for all the fish.

May Twitter storm

Maybe it’s all due to climate change, but the Tweet harvest seems mighty slim lately. But it’s been almost two months since I’ve compiled some of my favorites from 8days2amish.com. Time’s ripe to post a another bunch.

• It’s impossible to calculate how much time I’ve wasted waiting in vain for people to make the next move after I without fail put an X in the center spot everytime I see a # symbol.

• It’s been 20 years since anyone used the phrase “perfect storm” in reference to anything involving meteorological conditions.

• I admit to feeling more manly walking into Houston airport restrooms that included the bi-lingual designation HOMBRE.

• I understand basic physics, but I defy even Sir Isaac Newton to explain why the Coyote always without fail falls faster than the anvil.

• I know I shouldn't be surprised, but Daffy has precious little humanity -- even for a duck.

• Surprised Conservatives angry about global warming proponents haven't demanded Beach Boys renounce their "Endless Summer" album."

• I dreamt Arnold Palmer offered to teach me how to fly a plane. I said I'd rather he teach me how to putt. In my dream, Palmer began to weep.

• Soon, "dodged a bullet" won't be a quaint phrase about evading a challenge, it'll be the answer to the question, "So, what'd you do today?"

• Sure, you could update the classic 1973 Bob Seger song, "Turn the Page" for the Kindl crowd, but I suspect it would lose a lot of punch.

• Art critics who with no sense of irony describe statues as "moving" should be sentenced to six months of Adam Sandler film reviews.

• People who get prominent back tattoos ought to be required to also include behavioral instruction. For instance: "Feed donuts when cranky."

• My great fear is that some arch-villain is creating a machine that will convert wireless into wire, ensnaring humanity in hopeless tangle.

• Anyone care to guess the identity of the favorite Stooge the girl Billy Idol sings about in "Rebel Yell?" That's right. It's Moe! Moe! Moe!”

• Just heard Pat Benatar singing "Heartbreaker" on Classic Rewind. I think I prefer the version George Steinbrenner sang on "Seinfeld.

• Listening to the 2009 Springsteen song "Surprise Surprise" and wondering how it would sound with Gomer Pyle on the vocals.

• CNN report that says Secret Service "prepared for anything" on POTUS trip to war zone now has randy connotations.

• Has the straight to-the point pick-up line "Hello I love you. Will you tell me your name?" ever worked for anyone besides Jim Morrison?

• Advances in meteorology mean Weather Channel forecasters will soon be able to pinpoint brainstorms, sure to change the way employers hire.

Bird watching in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

Those of us who raise our children in small towns feel superior to the uncouth louts raising theirs in big, rude cities.

This is particularly acute with me because we live in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

It’s true. My mailing address is Latrobe, Pennsylvania, but in fact we live in tiny Youngstown, pop. 981, birthplace of both Arnold Palmer and Fred Rogers, two international icons renown for sportsmanship, kindness and proper manners.

I understand it’s unbecoming of the legends, but the association makes me feel snobby.

But along with that social cache comes responsibility. We residents need to live up to these stellar examples. Thus our sons and daughters will be polite, mannerly and kind to strangers -- at least until they’re 16 and start driving in traffic when all bets are off.

That’s why this was such a disturbing weekend. Our youngest -- she’ll be 6 in June -- expressed a cheerful eagerness to give the finger to a neighbor with whom my wife had a nasty public parking dispute.

It happened four doors from the town stop light where someone subversive has altered the pedestrian crossing sign so “don’t walk” appears to be permanently giving everyone the finger.

Yes, birds are flying all over Youngstown.

All this takes place days after I coined a new parenting guideline that came to me when my wound-up daughters were hoochie-cootchie dancing around the living room.

“Girls! Girls!” I beseeched. “How about a little more class and a little less ass!”

As child-raising homilies go, “More class, less ass” isn’t exactly the kind you’d hear Mr. Rogers share, but it rhymes so I find it irresistible.

The parking incident took place on Thursday at the school bus stop. My wife parked along Main Street in a perfectly legal manner. No paint. No signs. No meters.

The girls got off the bus and dashed into our arms. It was a scene of wholesomeness worthy of “The Waltons.” That’s why it was so jarring when the elderly lady came out on her porch and began screaming at Val.

“You can’t park there! You think you can park anywhere you want? I oughta call the cops!”

The girls were alive with interest. They’d never seen anyone shout at Mommy before.

Val responded admirably by pointing out we were only there five minutes and there was no need to be so mean.

I remained quietly alert. I noted the woman’s roof had a satellite dish, which meant she had access to cable news programs. I sensed by her irrational hostility to gentle things like Val she was a Fox News viewer.

That meant she was well-versed in the “Stand Your Ground” laws and would have felt well within her rights to gun Val down in front of her family two days before Mother’s Day.

I began searching the driveway for heavy rocks to chuck in case she drew her Glock.

Val wisely de-escalated, said she was sorry for ruining her day, and we left.

As this is a small town, Val realized on Sunday from her prominent seat at the church organist bench that the crazy woman is a fellow Lutheran who sits about 15 pews from the pulpit.

What we small towners gain in quaint, we sacrifice in anonymity.

The incident occurred during an interesting time in the lives of our daughters. 

The 11 year old, the one who’d never dream of helping her little sister learn things like basic arithmetic, is an avid educator when it comes to teaching swear words and gestures she’s learned during 5th grade recess.

Just last week she taught her how to flip the bird and told her do so whenever anyone makes her angry. I expect I’ll see it tonight when I tell her having a third Oreo might diminish her appetite.

What’s odd is how something that comes so naturally to any adult with a driver’s license is actually a motor skill that requires childish practice.

She intently holds her little right hand up and with her left hand gently pushes the middle finger out. If you saw it from a distance, you might think she’s cradling, not flipping, a different kind of baby bird.

I don’t know who’s strategically applying electrical tape to the cross walk sign, but it’s becoming a local tourist attraction. People gather on the side walk to point and laugh.

You could argue it’s not very classy, but I prefer to think of it as a harbinger of cultural migration.

The big city birds have winged their way clear to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.