Weird Habits, Announcements, and a Birthday Bash

More Weird Stuff
According to daughter #2, another weird thing about me (in addition to having a special bowl and a special coffee cup) is that I have a specific place that I sit on the couch and that place belongs to me, so if someone is sitting in the spot, I will make them move out of that spot so I can sit in that spot. Okay, so I guess this is true, and I guess it is kind of weird, but I also eat the same thing for breakfast just about every morning, do all the puzzles on the puzzle page every day, and recently downloaded “Raise Your Glass,” onto my IPod. I never claimed to be normal, so what can you do?

Heard on the Announcements
Every once in awhile, there’s actually something said on our morning announcements at school that I find worth paying attention to. Today, there were two such somethings. The first was during an announcement about the baseball game yesterday afternoon – apparently, one of the dramatic moments occurred when the shortstop drove for the ball (can’t you just picture him jumping in his car and peeling out?). The second was during a warning about a “Stranger Danger” situation (which is not a laughing matter, and which shouldn’t be seen as amusing in any way, because “Stranger Danger” is scary and dangerous and not funny at all) when kids were told to make sure that they, “Don’t touch strangers.” Hmmm. Definitely good advice, that I believe I will be incorporating into my own life immediately.

My Inbox Runneth Over
Birthdays are kind of funny things when you think about it. I mean, it’s not like you, personally did anything all that special on that day, other than happen to enter into the world – it was your mom that did all the work (in my case, apparently that was a whole lot of work – and after watching my lovely wife birth three children, I can honestly say that the whole birthing thing seems like an awful lot of work and not particularly comfortable, and I’m glad I was the one fetching ice chips and telling her when to breathe as opposed to being the one who… well, you know). And when you reach a certain age, maybe in your twenties or thirties, the whole birthday thrill kind of gets toned down (at least it has for me) and it becomes, in the immortal words of my father, “Just another day.” So I don’t get all that hyped up about birthdays anymore, other than the ones where I get to change age groups, but a couple of things did come up on mine (which was yesterday, in case you missed it).

First, apparently, I’ve “beaten the curve” when it comes to the degeneration of my near-vision ability according to my eye doctor. I told him I was starting to have just a little bit of blurriness in one of my eyes when I’m reading, so he checked me out and said there was a little bit of degradation of vision, but it’s still not bad enough to have to do anything about it (other than hold things farther away – and since I’m a “pretty tall guy” that shouldn’t be a problem) and what’s more, most people start having a problem with this in their early forties (hence the “beating the curve” comment from earlier). I think it’s only fair that this is so since I started losing my vision when I was 7 years old and I have pretty awful vision overall and can’t see a darned thing without my contacts or glasses (definitely didn’t beat that curve).

Second, when I opened up my email yesterday afternoon (and again this morning) instead of the usual three or four messages waiting for me, there was an entire page-full – and all of them from Facebook, announcing that someone had posted on my wall or left a comment. As I opened up the multitude of messages, I discovered that all of them centered around the theme of, “Hope you have a happy birthday.” I have to say that all these messages from friends, family, colleagues, former classmates, former students, and other miscellaneous people wandering around the internet landscape (hopefully, though, no strangers that I need to avoid touching) warmed this old curmudgeon’s cold, cold heart just a wee bit, and I was tempted to race to the tip-top of Mount Crumpit so that I could save the presents from being dumped into oblivion and go sledding down into Who-ville, where I would join all the Who’s, tall and small, for a glorious rendition of, “Happy Birthday to You,” before carving the roast beast.

Third, I realized (actually realized this a couple of weeks ago) that I have now been married for more than half of my life. That’s right, and if you doubt me, you can do the math just like I did. Take my age (which is now 47) and divide it by two and what do you get? Twenty-three and a half – which translates to 23 years and 6 months. And I was married when I was 23 years, 3 months, and a handful of days old, which is, if you’re doing the math correctly, less than 23 years and 6 months. So I’ve now been married for longer than I’ve been unmarried, which is actually kind of overwhelming and a little surprising to think about – as well as, of course, heart-warming and romantic and all that junk since every single nano-second of that 23 years, 8 months and 21 days has been nothing but pure, unadulterated bliss. Rock on.

Fourth, I realized that I will now be able to shoot lower than my age in mini-golf without too much cheating, I can still easily bowl my age, and what’s more, I can run more miles in a day than my age (sorry, I just had to add a running reference to this post – I’m jonesing bad after two posts in a row with no mention of running whatsoever, dudes).

That’s all I can think of for now, so until next time, may your weird tendencies be interpreted as endearing rather than creepy, may your curves remain beaten into submission, and may your vision remain unsullied by blurriness or those strange little floaties that float around in your vision every once in awhile.