Who wears the shorts in your family?

It WILL NOT make you a better father. But it is kind of fun....

Who Wears the Shorts in Your Family?

The Rep from MS doesn't fare too well in this one

John S not too happy about Sandy response

Click on the link to see what Daily Show front man thinks about House response to Sandy.

Yikes!

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You doing the Tweeting thing? I hate to admit this but it is kinda fun. If you come follow me you will not be smarter, you won't be richer, probably not going to be better looking, but we'll see if we can dig out a laugh or two. @charleswdowdy . See you in the Twitterverse, I kope.

Going Commando

“Stop right there, mister.”

Wilkins has his hand on the doorknob, and I know the quick calculation that is raging in his head. Should he run outside and claim waxy ear buildup, or turn around and face the music?

He takes a deep breath and turns. 

“Well?” I say. Then I just stare at him.

His shoulders slump. “Are you serious? I’m just going out to play.”

“Yes, I’m serious.”

“Fine!”  Then he plods back toward his bedroom as he mutters, “Underwear is such a waste of time.”

I have to constantly check the twins before I let them out of the house as they are fond of going “commando”, or sans undergarments. This is not a comfort issue or a personal statement. They simply don’t like having to go through the whole process of securing a pair of underwear that is their own and putting it on.

When they were six years old, going commando wasn’t that big of a deal. They’re almost eleven now, growing like weeds, and sometimes a lack of underwear can look a tad obscene. Like the time one of them was pitching and nothing was left to the imagination through his skin tight baseball pants.

Jacks, the smaller twin, will sometimes wear a pair of my boxers because he is too lazy to find his own. The underwear, which is way too large for him, will bunch between his shirt and belt line like a ballet tutu. Jacks doesn’t care. He says that technically he is “wearing underwear,” so no one can complain.   

Don’t even get me started on the other twin, Wilkins. We have a hard enough time just getting him to wear something… hell anything. I’m sure there is a shy bone in his body, we just haven’t found it yet.

A few weeks ago my wife and I were hiding in our bedroom. She was doing homework for graduate school. I was pretending to write while playing Solitaire. The twins were taking turns in the shower and I was so focused on listening to see if they actually got in the shower, that I failed to anticipate what would happen next.

One of my daughter’s friends had come by and let herself in.

The water shut off. There was humming. A door opened.

Then there was a shriek. “Oh! My! God! Beetttttthhhh! Your brother is naked! And hideous!”

There was the sound of running feet. Somewhere at the other end of the house, a door opened, then slammed shut.

I could hear Wilkins in the hallway, talking to himself now that he was alone. “It is called a butt cheek, sistah!” That was followed by the unmistakable slap of flesh against flesh as he gave himself a “giddy-up”. Walking down the hall, he yelled, “Anybody know if we got any clean underwear?”

No one responded.

“Nope? Well, that settles it then. Watch out people! This little soldier is going commando!”  

Ice Skating in Texas

The State of Texas does a lot of things that leave me scratching my head. George Bush and Rick Perry? Ranches bigger than states. And a Capitol taller than the US Capitol. (Why is everything about size in Texas?) But this takes the cake. Ice skating in Texas? Putting something like that in the South is borderline cruel. And yes, that's my kid face planting on the ice.  More photos if you click...

Truth be told we had a wonderful time in Houston. Nice folks and a nice place. The ice skating, though, that was rough. Although he clearly enjoyed himself.

Dead people for Breakfast

The cars traveling my direction are backed up on the two lane highway. I run the wipers again, smearing the light rain and grit on the windshield as I try to see why we are all going so slowly. Like I even have to look. I know he is up there somewhere, and we are all piled in behind him. Twenty other people in twenty other cars, all with somewhere to be, and he is putting along, taking his sweet time, smelling the damn roses. Except it is raining in the middle of winter. There are no roses.

I glance down at the clock. Some people can walk into the office five minutes late and it isn’t that big of a deal. Not so with me. In this instance, even the dead people won’t wait.

You see, every morning, I have my first cup of coffee with dead people. At least they don’t hog the conversation. No, I get to do all of the talking, although I am talking about them.

I am a radio host on a small station near New Orleans. I start my day with the morning obituaries. That’s right. Every weekday. Maybe other parts of the country get their juices flowing by finding out what the weather is going to do, or where the stock market might go. Down in the nether region of the country, we like to know who kicked off the night before.

That’s a shame, too, because obituaries aren’t what they used to be. Imagine the wedding section of the Times, where they make an effort to be flippant about money and success. “Amy’s father was from San Francisco where he prospered in dry goods.” “Carl heads up the technology department at a smallish company that starts with an ‘I’ and ends with an ‘M’.” “For their honeymoon, Jody and Frank plan to see the world, from the deck of their 78 foot sloop ‘The Bounty and the Harvest’. Frank works in the financial industry.”      

Still, despite the penchant for ridiculous understatement when it comes to wedding announcements in the Times, they do manage to tell a good story.

Obituaries used to be like that, too. They used to tell the story of a life well-lived, and often times they didn’t let something like the truth get in the way. And why wouldn’t they do this? I mean, the person in question did die. They are gone. Forever. Can’t we throw them a bone or two on their way out the door to eternity?  

Apparently not.

Nowadays most obits are formulaic and boring. The person died, the date they passed, a little bit about what they did, but told more in job interview fashion instead of a real story. The obit will talk about who they left behind, what times to come by and say something awkward to those who were left behind, and what to give in lieu of flowers as one last generous act by the deceased, proving that even dead they were a bigger person than you are.

More often than not, today’s obits force us to read between the lines to understand the life the dead person lived, like anyone has the time or energy to do that.

Except me.

Something about reading the obituary of a total stranger at the dawn of a new day fills me with regret and curiosity. These are “hot off the press” deaths. It is something I do for the radio station because it is sponsored by a local funeral home, and what a great way for our typical listener to start the day. “Good morning! Here’s who died last night.” But, let me miss the obits and the phone starts ringing. So someone is listening. Someone is keeping the eternal score. 

Generally, in order to soften the blow of what I am about to deliver, I will start the obit break with something fluffy about celebrities. To me, it is easier to go from ridiculous to death than it is from something more concrete, like the weather. Or worse yet, going from who won last night’s ball game to who was simultaneously grabbing their chest and keeling out of their Lazy-Boy. You also have to be careful about the song selection leading into what I call the commercial break of death. Black Eyed Peas getting the Party Started might be a little uppity for an intro into who just kicked the bucket.

“That was Pink right here on the Lake 94.7 with Blow Me One Last Kiss. Speaking of blowing, you hear about this blow up between Nicki and Mariah on the set of American Idol? Keith Urban says he feels like the UN trying to keep the peace. And Nicki was heard in another recording saying if she could get her hands on a gun she would use it on Mariah. Sounds like Idol is headed for ratings gold this season. Anyway, time for your morning obituary report.” 

And then it begins.

A fresh list of the newly dead.

For the sake of airtime we try to keep our report down to the bare minimum. So we take the bad writing of today’s obits and cut it even more. Who died, when, the funeral arrangements, the times and places. And then what you can give in lieu of flowers. (That’s the big thing now, instead of a big floral arrangement, they ask you to deliver a final donation on behalf of the deceased to some worthwhile charity, which has got to really piss off everyone in the flower industry.)

Even though airtime limits what I report on the deceased, I still find myself wanting to know more. A lot more. I feel like it is someone I’ve just met and we are having that first conversation where even the basics are exciting. And today’s obits always leave me hanging. Yes, Rebecca died October 2^nd in her Mandeville home. What else? This obit tells me next to nothing, other than she is dead. Was her family there? Was it sudden? Did she suffer? What did she accomplish in life? Why do I want to know these things about a total stranger? It is mainly so that I can measure her life against my own, and explore her manner of death to see if it will be a suitable ending for me.

Eleanor passed away on October 10^th. No birthdate was given. There is a service in Louisiana but the burial is in Missouri. What was in Missouri. What brought her down here? Love? A job? Was she running toward something, or away from something? Ahh, in lieu of flowers the family requests donations to cancer research. A nugget of information hidden in the list of common facts. So, I don’t know how old she was, or why she ended moving halfway across the country when she obviously still had roots elsewhere, but I do know what got her in the end. 

Ditto with Randy. How old was the guy? No date was given. It lists some survivors, but I can see his wife went first and I don’t see anything about kids. Uh-oh. In lieu of flowers the family requested donations to the Center for Bleeding and Cutting Disorders. Yikes! Randy was a cutter? Was that what did him in? Dear Lord! Was his cutting what did his wife in? Like, maybe with a chainsaw? I race through the obit again. No, I misread it. The Center for Bleeding and Clotting Disorders. Hmmm, that didn’t sound good, either, but it was a hell of a lot better than the cutting. So Randy would start to bleed and they couldn’t stop it? That sounded like a messy way to go.  

A lot of times the detail involved in the obit, and the speed with which that detail is shared, will tell you more than the words themselves when it comes to the manner of death. A slow lingering death usually provides a quick posting and a relatively well written obit. Not always. But, usually everyone has time on their hands and someone has tended to this detail. However, there are the questions to be asked with the exception. Inquiries should be expected if something like Alzheimer’s brought about the death and the obit is slow in coming and poorly written. Are the descendants uneducated and lazy? Or maybe the genetic manner of death is already spreading through the family? Or were they simply in denial and didn’t want to own up impending loss of a loved one?   

The deaths that were sudden, the shocking ones, those obits often read like it, coming off the paper like the written summary was thrown together when emotions were way too raw. These notices consist of simple declarative sentences and little more, like even this summation of life is only the beginning of the long journey toward coping with the sudden, devastating loss.

There’s the suicide, which leaves the largest holes in the obit. The manner of death in a suicide obit will not be directly referenced, but will usually incorporate words like “tragic”. “Senseless” is often reserved for a murder victim, but not always, as it can also be used in an auto accident where someone else was at fault, which would cue the drunk driver story until just recently; now it is as bad with the texting driver and pretty hard for the reader to determine what precipitated the death, Bud or Twitter.

You can assume the death was prolonged if they thank caregivers by name. If they simply thank the organization that provided the caregivers, then the death was quicker, or the caregivers weren’t very good. If they refer to the caregiver by a first name, then you know they almost became family.

Is that what I want? An obit where I can thank people for their care as I died? In theory it sounds good, but in reality I would prefer a really crappy obit, right? Except then that would mean I went before my time. It’s not like I can write “Charles Dowdy died while sitting on a beach with his wife of sixty-four years and a cooler of beer. He was fine when she left to refresh her glass of wine. When she returned, Charles had passed.”

In the end, you can cheat on your taxes, but death is going to affect us all. Given how I start each day, it is hard not to think about death, even in the best of times.

It is on my morning drive where I begin to wonder what dead people I will soon be talking about. That’s because before I deliver my report on death, I drive eighteen miles on darkened two lane highways. Without fail, every morning, I have to be on the lookout for that cockeyed, older model Lincoln. Like clockwork, somewhere on the drive, I will come up behind the older automobile, or rather a slew of other drivers behind this automobile. The posted speed limit is fifty-five miles per hour. I’m lucky if this guy is going thirty-five. So I always have to be paying attention. I know he is out there each morning, somewhere in front of me in the gloom, or the fog, or the rain, as is the case on this morning. It is like clockwork. I know he will be waiting for me. We are travelling the same path, only I am moving that much faster.

It is just like death. In the end we’re all on a drive toward eternity, some of us are just going a little faster than others. Either way, we will all end up in the same place.

With that cock-eyed Lincoln safely in my rear view mirror, I arrive at work in time to take a sip of coffee and prepare for the break of death. I’m leading into the obits with an entertainment piece about the Rolling Stones, which I deem totally appropriate since they look like they should be dead. After that, there are eight obits to be read. A busy night for the guy with the scythe.

I check one last thing before cutting on the mic. Oops, Katy Perry and what she did last Friday night, will not do coming out of the death break. I select an Eagles tune. Hotel California. Under my finger the mic cuts on. I take a breath. And now I will talk to dead people for breakfast. I do not know them, although I want to. And I will do my best to read between the lines as I try to understand who they were, what kind of life they lived, and why they are gone.

Today's writing buddy - Forrest Gump

I can't believe it, I've become a yappy dog person. A nappy yappy dog... who is content to sit and silently wait for hours. Unlike my soccer players who come into the room every five minutes to see how much long until we leave for their game.

Standing at the Edge of Something Huge

            Opening the car’s hood was an exercise in futility, unless a little leprechaun was going to pop out and tell me how to fix a broken transmission. He didn’t. I looked over my shoulder. There were no happy leprechauns in the neighborhood, either. It was not the best place to break down.

            “What’s up with that dude’s shorts?” one of the twins said from an open car window.

            “He does it like that on purpose,” the other twin said.

            “What for? He’s tripping on those things. It’s stupid.”

            I glared the look of death around the hood, which is exactly what we would all be facing if they talked just a little louder.

We had been headed to the beach for the annual family vacation. In my mind, I had already made a beeline for the water’s edge. My mind drifted there as an antidote to my predicament. My toes tried to dig through shoes and hard concrete. It was what relaxation was all about. Wet sand beneath my feet. A cold drink in my hand. My cares tossed somewhere over my shoulder.

Then a detour.

I had been trying to avoid a clogged up interstate in Mobile when the car stopped moving and stranded us in what can best be described as a sketchy neighborhood. 

I was already a stage in life where impotence really doesn’t need to assert itself. 

My leprechaun ended up being a friendly Mobile police officer who seemed as intent on getting out of that neighborhood as I was.

So, before my vacation could officially start, there was the driving around Mobile in second gear at twenty five miles per hour while it sounded like World War 3 was being waged under our car. There was the mechanic who got a serious case of the giggles after I told him about the problem and asked if he thought it was something bad. Then there was clerk who rented me the last car at the airport, for an exorbitant rate; a car that was so short I had to sit in it sideways or steer with my nose.

Even when I finally got to the beach I wasn’t really there. It took two days to bring my heart rate down. To actually be able to sit down.  But, by about Wednesday, I finally reached that point a vacation is supposed to provide. The deep breaths. The relaxation of muscles I did not know existed. The empty mind. I had finally reached the edge of the ocean. My toes were in the sand, mentally and physically. I was standing at the edge of something huge. Now, unlike a mountain canyon, and the sense of vertigo it inspires, this empty void brings me peace. The ocean was a gently undulating horizon of nothing that in its very scope reduced my problems to insignificance. The waves going in and out were almost like breaths from the planet, both hypnotic and soothing.

Then something drifted into view. Something that floated between my rendezvous with an empty sea, and an emptier mind.

It was a boat.

No a raft.

A life raft?

No, it was a blow up raft.

The boat was a tangle of elbows, knees and screaming mouths. It looked like some kind of plastic tenement for short people. Just as this tiny Titanic came into focus, a massive wave rose behind the boat and swamped it in a white, frothy curtain of salt water. Boat and elbows alike vanished from view.

Instead of sand between my toes, it was water to my knees as I took two quick steps forward. My heart began to race. My eyes swept the churning surf, seizing on the orange plastic of the upturned boat. Then a head popped up. And another. And another. Until, one by one, every passenger was accounted for. They were laughing as they spit out saltwater and used words like “awesome” and “let’s do it again”.

The majestic power of the sea was best treasured without a plastic raft, or any other item that allows children to enter the water. My peace of mind had been hijacked.

Still, wasn’t there was enough empty sea for childhood chaos and parental peace to co-exist? I turned myself twenty-five degrees starboard, and the little Titanic and its rowdy crew were on my periphery. This would work. I would “kind of” watch them.

Except two members of that crew were mine. And I was related to all of them.

Had we gone to the mountains instead, I would not have let my kids climb the edge of a cliff. Yet there they were. Swimming too far from shore. Straying too far away from one another. And battling wave after wave, getting knocked down time and again, and always getting up and always going back for more.

In my dreams, the act of standing at the edge of the sea is best experienced alone. Or with my arm around my wife, my free hand holding some kind of drink with an umbrella in it. In reality, those soothing waves were accompanied by thrown sand, sunburns, seaweed in the crotch, screaming, fighting, expensive Boogie Boards caught in the wind and cart wheeling down the beach, jellyfish stings in strange places, phantom shark sightings and much, much more.

A vacation was supposed to be a chance to lose myself. And maybe an opportunity to lose my children, at least for a small portion of the day. All I’m talking about a little personal space that allows some peace. Not that pulling that off was such a great challenge. Perhaps pulling it off in paradise was a different matter.  

I have proven time and again that if I really wanted to get some personal space from my family then a shopping mall makes it easy enough. All I had to do was duck and weave through the “Intimates Section” of the local J.C. Penney. The daughter would start hunting inappropriate undergarments, the oldest son would stare at the floor so hard he might as well go blind, and the twins would laugh themselves into a fit. The whole crew would be as good as gone. The ocean was a messier way to ditch the kids because by its very nature it kept spitting them back.

Only what if it didn’t?

I mean, I’m sure someone has drowned among the intimates at a J.C. Penney, come to think of it, that doesn’t sound like the worst way to go, but intimates are fluffy and soft. These waves were loud and powerful. They announced their presence as they approached the shore with little whitecaps dancing at the top, then enforced their will on anyone who managed to get in the way.

So toes in the sand gave way to seaweed in the crotch. I found a board with a Disney princess on it and paddled out to where my children toyed with nature’s awesome strength. We bounced in the waves, swallowed saltwater, and wondered which one of us the sharks would find the tastiest.

As we played in the surf it occurred to me that the space I was seeking would be granted in a relatively short time, whether I wanted it or not. Only a few years before, I would have been relegated to the water’s edge as these same children tottered around my feet. Now they were in the water over their heads, battling the occasional wave that broke too soon and swimming against currents I could not see. 

I decided then that whether we were in the water or on the shore, I knew I was standing at the edge of something huge. A place and time for looking at the horizon and enjoying the infinite beauty of nature. But it was also powerful, and I had to pay attention to what was right in front of me. It was a place that would rush you toward the shore, then slowly drag you back out, pushing you further down the beach, until the spot where you went in the water would soon be a distant memory.

This was a place where I could easily lose everything I had. 

It was my vacation.

Although I was bobbing in the water, I was standing at the edge of something huge, only I wasn’t altogether sure what it was.

Desperado Waiting on a Train

 OK, actually a middle aged Dad late for a soccer game. Love me some Jerry Jeff though.

Like Desperados waiting for a Train

My daughter was NOT happy about this

By all accounts she rocked it pretty good at the NYE Bash, then rocks it another way for the cameras. 

How Long till a Song?

Does it say something about me that I got my kicks watching Anderson get uncomfortable? The guy is a serious journalist. Why does he agree to this? And better yet, why did I watch it and laugh?

From Katrina to Kathy, which was worse for Anderson?