A Happy Birthday update on my condition

(775 words)

It’s been one year and one day since a brusque tech with no time for blow-softening small talk told me test results indicated I have Parkinson’s Disease and that there is no cure.

I asked what I could expect next.

“Well,” she said, “are you still capable of feeding yourself?”

I told her I’d heroically downed a donut for breakfast but some of the pink Valentine sprinkles fell into my lap. Was it time to summon hospice angels?

That was a low.

The highs? I’ve been the welcoming recipient of numberless hugs, prayers and more than a few offers for free bucket-list fun.

One buddy wants to take me to Scotland to carouse. Another well-heeled gent wants me to pick my itinerary of the top three golf courses I’ve always dreamed of playing. And an old friend with a deep expense account and casual ethics about how it’s disbursed thinks we should roll the dice in Las Vegas.

He knows a houseful of showgirls!

Lesson: people are extra nice to you when they’re convinced you’re not going to be around to be such a pain in the ass much longer.

Given this outpouring of concern and lush largess I’ve struggled to find a logical reason to to tell people, sorry, I’m not dying.

Not yet. I hope. 

Oh, and today is my 56th birthday.

Part of me worries that if I tell people I could be around another 15 to 20 years they’ll be disappointed. And I’m sorry to disappoint people by persisting to exist.

Don’t you hate when that happens?

It appears, alas, that may be my fate.

“The great misconception about Parkinson’s,” one doctor told me, “is when you tell people you have it they think it means you’re going to die and you’re going to die soon. It’s the best incurable disease you could wish to get.”

And isn’t that a perfectly charming way to convey bad news?

People ask me how I’m feeling.

“I feel like I’m living life perched atop a trapdoor with a rusty hinge.”

The docs say that’s a poor analogy. I say they’re wrong. It’s a wonderful analogy.

It’s just not in my situation an apt one.

Any downturn in my condition won’t be as dramatic as disappearing through the floor. It’ll be gradual.

My doctors say my PD is slow progressing and that I’m high functioning. That’s good. The worst part for me is the virtual uselessness of my left hand when it comes to typing. 

It’s a detriment to productivity — as if I need yet another one of those.

Along those lines, some people have asked if I’m going to stop drinking alcohol. 

I should note that none of these people tend bar at the Tin Lizzy where they spend their entire shifts ensuring the inebriation of me and my drunken friends, the ones who’d never dream of asking silly questions about my drinking.

In fact, I don’t drink near as much as you think — or as much I’d like — but lively saloons have been my native habitat since, gee, about the 4th grade. 

I excuse this habit because I tend to be a gregarious person toiling in a very solitary endeavor. Solitary that is if you don’t count the 1,000 ceaseless voices raging in my head. At the end of a long day (usually about 2 p.m.) it enriches my soul to stop working and go out to be amongst the folks.

And the left hand doesn’t mind pitching in when it comes to raising a glass so I count it as part of my physical therapy!

Some PT sessions did wonders for my attitude. My enthusiastic therapist says I’m in a great position to keep symptoms at bay for many years. She said my eagerness to exercise will play a pivotal role in ensuring I will have many quality days in the years ahead.

My goal is to exercise with such fervor that years from now many of you will seethe with suspicion that I faked the whole diagnosis just to get hugs, attention and free golf.

And that one of you will be so incensed you’ll shoot me to death in my sleep, a much tidier demise than ones I’ve darkly envisioned during low points of the past year.

What can I say? You have your bucket list. I have my kick-the-bucket list. 

And I hope I am deserving of any kindness you extend to me as I continue to lurch bewildered through what’s left of this sweet life. I will be happy to reciprocate.

Because I intend to live for as long as I’m not dying.

Related …

So, okay, I have Parkinson’s

My left arm is dying

Latrobe’s best hugger is …

My history of drinking at/near work

Deep sixing my heart attack plans

Black face & "The Legend of Tyrone Stone"

(852 words)

I didn’t start paying attention to the Virginia blackface scandal until I read that one of the minstrels admitted to donning shoe polish to impersonate Michael Jackson, an African-American who at the time was contemplating skin lightening measures that would make him appear more white faced.

So I’d say we’re again nearing peak absurdity on race issues, but every time I say that escalating circumstances make me do an about face.

And with race in America, it’s all about face. 

This madcap trio are rough contemporaries of mine. Gov. Ralph Northam is 59. I’ll be 56 next Friday — go ahead and tell the boss you’re taking the day off to celebrate.

But I gauge past scandals of powerful men through the blurry prism of my own youthful hijinks.

Was the offending episode something I’d done? Did I object when I observed others doing it?

And this was key: was the now-reprehensible act back then funny? Did it make me laugh? I give gargantuan leeway to anything or one that gave me the giggles. I wasn’t PC.

Heck, with casual study habits like mine, I was barely even C.

But I excelled at having raucous fun. I had a crew of like-minded rogues I could rely on to ensure nothing serious was ever allowed to flourish. 

Not once in four years of drunken debauchery did any one of us ever say, “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s put some shoe polish on our faces and entertain ourselves by pretending we’re stereotypical blacks. Who’s game?”

It wouldn’t have been funny. It would have been offensive. We somehow knew without having to have been told that putting shoe polish on our faces was wrong.

Putting shoe polish on our faces would have made us, er, what?

Heels?

That brings us to The Legend of Tyrone Stone.

That became the name of the cement stable boy I stole from the front porch of an affluent South Hills Pittsburgh home that happened to be between our family homes and the Carnegie saloon we’d go to get inebriated when we were back on break.

Bob K. and I saw it first. It looked very similar to the picture I found and posted above. I have no doubt in my mind it was intended to mock blacks. The realization kindled outrage in me before I’d ever become aware so much racial injustice existed.

We thought it was a deliberate racial affront. We thought it was intended to taunt.

We thought it would look better in the beer room at our Ohio University fraternity house!

So one drunken night with Bob behind the wheel of an idling station wagon, I crept across the well-manicured lawn and seized the lawn jockey.

Man, it weighed a ton. A real Kentucky Derby jockey weighs about 114 pounds. This thing felt like it weighed as much as his horse.

But I was trim and motivated and succeeded in our merry mission.

The prize was warmly greeted at his new home where one of the brothers dubbed him Tyrone Stone.

I felt smug about my role in removing an obvious racist symbol from public view and transferring it to a place where fewer racists could mock it.

And that’s the way it was for three days. Then one of the fraternity brothers thought it would be funny to put Tyrone up on the roof.

It took about two days before the brothers showed up. And I mean brothers not in the fraternal sense, but the ethnic kind.

There were three of them; there were about 15 of us.

Yes, we were badly outnumbered.

“We’re here to talk to you about that stable boy on your roof,” said the leader. He spent the next 15 minutes articulating to us why it was offensive, its dark history and the divisiveness we were fostering by displaying it on our roof.

He was righteous. He was genuine. He was persuasive.

Oh, how I wish I could conclude this fable by saying he was Barack Hussein Obama.

But he convinced us we were wrong. We felt bad and apologized for our thoughtlessness. And we were genuinely apologetic. It was more than the realization they could kick our sorry candy asses.

But they were men of real character. They’d forthrightly marched into a forbidding element and with just reasoning prevailed. They were not men to be mocked over skin color.

It’s a goddamned shame it’s still an issue in 21st century America.

Whatever happened to Tyrone Stone?

We took turns smashing the racist symbol to smithereens with empty beer kegs.

And every time I tell a story like that I marvel at the fickleness of life where Brett Kavanaugh and I could lead such parallel lives and one of us wind up on the Supreme Court and the other atop the Tin Lizzy.

Maybe one day we can take one another at face value when we value all faces without the anchor of prejudice.

Until then, the whole ordeal will leave me feeling red-faced.

But we’ll have to save the Elizabeth Warren discussion for some other time. 

Related … 

Sen. Reid, race & Nat X

Blacks in prison & the odd time I saw Johnny Cash

Random thoughts on race, Ferguson & Three Dog Night

What California Chrome teaches us about race relations

Black men can’t kick

A hometown funeral & "The Art of Living Suddenly"

(667 words)

I’ve been at this fatherhood thing long enough I figure I can BS my way clear across any vast canyon of factual oblivion.

Merely appearing wise conceals authentic foolishness — and that utterly pointless 6-word statement practically proves the point of the whole daddy baffle.

But my high school senior stumped me the other day when she asked me to help her with something that had been troubling her sweet soul: What does she say to her friend whose Mom just died?

Gee, I’m sorry? Tough break? Hang in there?

Which godforsaken cliche might Band-Aid a tender heart that is exploding into a million tiny pieces?

I didn’t know the woman.

Everyone else in town did.

Val and Josie waited in line 2 hours at the funeral home visitation service on an afternoon that was as sunny and cheerful as the 52-year-old mother of two they were all there to mourn. 

That right there fulfills one of my bedrock lessons of a life well-lived. It’s no. 42 in “Use All The Crayons!” and one I always share with audiences who are there to — and it sounds crazy to me, too — hear my thoughts on colorful living:

“Try and do something each and every day that’ll ensure parking at your funeral will be a real bitch.”

It’s great advice, really. Want people to show up at your funeral and comfort your loved ones with honest stories of how much you mattered?

Make your own list, but include things like …

Make eye contact. Be optimistic. Be generous. Laugh easily. Avoid petty political fights on Facebook. Treat the guy who works on your car the same as you treat the guy who works on your heart.

And, c’mon, treat everyone nice.

I’ll bet doing all that was second nature to Mrs. S.

This all happens at a time when I’m immersing myself in thoughts of sudden death, legacy, and the elusive meaning of it all. I’ve spent the last few months constructing a book proposal I’m calling “The Art of Living Suddenly: How to Deal with a Parkinson’s Diagnosis (and other things that suck).”

Losing your ever-loving mother in high school certainly qualifies as something that sucks.

It is my contention that anytime we hear of anyone dying suddenly, we need to commit to living suddenly.

What’s living suddenly? Well, it may be self-defeating for me to say so, but if you’ve read this blog this far you’re probably not doing it.

I’m kidding! Your reading and encouragement gives real meaning to my life — no real income, but real meaning.

I’m still not sure what it means to live suddenly but for me it involves laughter, conversation, family, friends and other priorities that keep professional stability an unattainable goal.

But living suddenly is something you need to define for yourself and I suggest you do so right away.

Because you just never know when your time is up.

I was talking about all this to a bartender friend of mine — and that is redundant; every bartender is a friend of mine. His father was killed when he was in high school. He was riding his motorcycle when a senior citizen without a license ran a red light and wiped him out.

He was 55. My age.

“I was just devastated,” he said. “He was the greatest Dad in the world. I miss him every single day. It was just so senseless.”

He meant the death was senseless, but the same could be said for life. It rarely makes any sense to me.

I audaciously believed by the time I got this far I’d have conceived something truthful I could tell my daughter to share with her friend, something that would bestow profound clarity to her grief.

I was mistaken. 

Instead, all I have are questions: Is life ever fair? How do we help the hurting to heal? What’s the point of so much pain?

And if we’re not living suddenly, are we really even living at all?

Related …

Small town funeral etiquette

Hire me to ensure a memorable funeral

Death to boring dinner deaths

RIP Arnold Palmer: A lucky local says goodbye

The day I staked out Charles Bronson’s Mom’s funeral

Church rules on cremation & what we did with Dad

Was Jan. 2 tweet already year's best?

I won’t be surprised if the tweet of the year was composed at 6:57 a.m. on January 2. It’s the one right up top about tangents with tan gents. I just love that one. But who knows? I could be within mere moments of composing a tweet so profound, so monumental that the whole rest of twitter just gives up. Yeah, even Trump. 

I wonder if there’ be some sort of prize for that. You’d think, wouldn’t you?

• It could be damaging to a woman's reputation if she gets off on too many tangents with too many tan gents.

• I wonder if temperature in heaven is individualized or if some old ladies complain it's always too cold & bundle up in sweaters.

• If heaven is all it's cracked up to be then shouldn't we feel foolish telling survivors of grisly events, "Man, you're lucky to be alive." Kind of by comparison makes heaven sound like a Motel 6.

• It should be in the Constitution that nobody should be allowed to hold elective office unless he or she can prove they once held a job that required them to wear a name tag.

• I was just in my mind listing the 5 most influential people from my life; 4 of them are bartenders. It’s all starting to make sense.

• Time for my annual Super Bowl prediction. Here goes ... Los Angeles 61, New England 39. Remember, those aren't scores. Those are the forecast highs for both cities at kickoff.

• Thrilled, humbled to have been invited to deliver the commencement address for Adelphoi Village School here in Latrobe. Know what this means? I touch the future! Tomorrow's leaders will be relying on my words, my ideas! I say that while acknowledging I don't remember who spoke at my commencement, what he or she said or if I even attended …

• Go ahead & vent. To hell with your neighbor. To hell with  tact. I'll not judge you ... I'll leave that to Winston Churchill: "I have often noticed when political controversy becomes excited persons of choleric dispositions and limited intelligences are apt to become rude."

• Reading is maybe the one passion that’ll ensure you’ll never need friends while assuring you’ll always have as many friends as you wish.

• Optimists understand phrase "familiarity breeds contempt" is not absolute. Often is the case that familiarity breeds family.

• I’d like to see how a Geiger counter reacts if you take one to a Geiger family reunion.

• I’m intelligent enough to appreciate the contradiction of being a man who fancies himself an intellectual while simultaneously becoming furious at the failure to successfully complete the marshmallow maze on the back of the Lucky Charms cereal box.

• I’m confused about suggestions that Coast Guard personnel host garage sales to minimalize shut-down inconveniences. Coast Guard vessels have garages?

• New neighbor told me she loves it here. "Everyone is so nice," she gushed. Told her if that's the way she feels she’s yet to meet everyone.

• I find some lies too soul-enriching to resist. For instance: Carly Simon told me I was the inspiration for her hit, "Nobody Does It Better." But that's not a lie. It really happened. It did! Right @CarlySimonHQ? Right?

• Teaching your children to seek out the insights of interesting people is easy. The challenge is teaching them that EVERY person is in some way interesting.

• I’m on the verge of proving once and for all my office plants are talking to one another. But every time I get close enough to record the conversation the bully ficus says, "Shut up! Here he comes again!" I'll not rest until I get conclusive evidence. Won't work either.

• I remember seeing a story that asked prominent writers to name works they wish they'd written. Answers included "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Grapes of Wrath," etc. Me? I wish I'd coined the phrase "Butt dial.”

• Astronomers calculate Earth is 92,960,000 miles from the sun. I stepped outside today and I swear it feels more like 92,960,002.

• My devotion to recycling is so emphatic I hope to one day create a sweater made entirely of warm belly button lint.

• I’m so cheap I wish Latrobe had a Dutch restaurant so I could invite my wife to dinner and say, "Let's go Dutch!" and get out of paying.

• I haven't been following the news very closely. But all I hear is cave, cave, cave. Is that in addition to the wall? I don't see how caves are going to help border security, but it's very confusing.

• What kind of emoji will you ask them to put on your tombstone when that becomes customary?

• I vow to continue saying 'Happy New Year!' right up thru July 5 when it'll once again become seasonally appropriate to resume saying, "Merry Christmas!”

• I hate it when I fake a mild cold to get out of some petty obligation and people look and me and say, "Yeah, you look terrible! I'll call 911. There's something really wrong with you. You oughta be quarantined! Medic! Medic!" Makes me sick.

Related …

Tweets of the Month ‘13

TotM ’14

TotM ’15

TotM ‘16

TotM ’17

TotM ‘18