Fast Food

Seventeen years ago I stopped eating fast food. I had a quarter pounder with cheese, super-size fries and Coke for dinner with my mother-in-law. My wife was in the hospital with our four-day-old daughter. I was tired and in no mood to cook. McDonalds seemed the right choice. We ate at the restaurant that used to be on the university hill near the hospital, visited my wife and baby, and went home to sleep. By eight o'clock I knew something was wrong. By ten I was camped on the bathroom floor.

At about 1:30 on the morning of the 29th I told myself, "I will never eat fast food again." By three or four I was able to shower and sleep a few hours before returning to the hospital where they discharged my wife but kept our daughter one more day. Leaving our daughter was even worse than food poisoning. I was still recovering from that and remembering what I had told myself.

It's no surprise I would swear off fast food when I was on the bathroom floor unable to move six feet away from a toilet. The surprise is that I've never gone back to McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, or Wendy's. Not even for a french fry or Shamrock Shake. I stopped cold and I don't miss it.

I'd like to tell you I'm super-healthy now but I try not to lie here. I'm still twenty pounds overweight, still likely to finish a bag of chips once I open them, still drinking more alcohol than I should, still eating too much sugar. I'm no paragon of virtue. I've just quit fast food for so long I can't imagine eating it again.

Years ago I bought Twinkies, not having had one in years and remembering how I had loved them. I bit into the first one and chewed a couple of times before it registered: this thing is terrible. I swallowed that bite with a question mark on my face and took another. I couldn't remember ever having not finished a Twinkie. My school lunch bag always held knock-off snacks. When I got hold of real Twinkies, I damn well ate them. But the second bite was disgusting too. It wasn't stale or moldy — I doubt Twinkies can grow mold. It simply didn't taste like food. I spit out that second bite and threw the second Twinkie away still wrapped in its package. I've no desire to try again.

After seventeen years, it's the same with fast food. I just don't want it any more.

I need to figure out what day I dropped Facebook. My guess is that seventeen years from now I'll have little taste left for social media. I hope that I'm healthier for it. I really thought I'd shed a few pounds without all those quarter pounders, super size fries, and super size Coca-Cola. Damn.

80th Birthday

It is my father's eightieth birthday though he's no longer here to celebrate. He died in 2015, so we won't have cake, the girls won't make cards, and we've bought no present. Yesterday Mom said, "tomorrow will be a hard day. It's the thirteenth." Dad's birthday, as if I could forget. Dates matter to me. There was no way I wouldn't remember his birthday. I've been thinking about it for weeks, but I've been looking forward to it.

The day will be difficult for Mom as are the anniversary of his death, their wedding anniversary, and even her birthday, the milestones of him being gone from her. I think of him on the anniversary of buying his business and at the start of Syracuse Women's Basketball season. For Mom these days are filled with sadness. They play out differently within me.

I'm grateful today. As the years pass Dad's memory takes up less and less space. This sad fact is inescapable: the dead pass away. All the calendar days still occupied by my memories of him, these are chances to come back to Dad, to have him come back to me. I'll spend much of today thinking of my kids and wife, the weather, my job, my brother and mother, and whatever is in the news, but I'll have Dad with me and smile because there's one thing about his death that comforts me.

Dad forever remains for me as he was. Aside from the heart attack that felled him, he was healthy and whole. His eyesight was being restored. He got around well and could drive. He was strong and able if not so much as he once had been. He took care of himself and others. All of which is to say that he never suffered a decline, something he would have hated. Dad was able and capable for all his life. Were he here now to reflect on things he would nod and call his a good ending.

Still, I miss him and wish he was here to celebrate, but my wish is mostly selfish. I want him to behold my daughters and hear the sweet voice of his beloved daughter in law. I want him to have a few more hours at the garage with my brother and their cars. I want him at home with Mom doing the simple, routine things of their lives, the ordinary magic of life together. And I want to take him to a basketball game, sit beside him, and not need to say a damn thing, just cheer and be together.

These are my greedy dreams. They fall apart when I consider having to again say goodbye to him. Instead, today, his birthday, I say hey, Dad. He doesn't need to say anything back. He never had to. Though often enough the words he said to me sounded exactly like, I love you, son and they still do.

A Little Easier

Sat last night with four guys sipping whiskey late into the night talking politics. We're mystified how anyone could vote for the awful orange liar, but mostly discussed how Democrats should support a simple proposition: It should be just a little easier for all Americans to realize economic security. We weren't talking about wealth. Every one of us has kids who are about to go to college. We just want to be able to make that happen without burdening them with crushing debt. None of us feel like we can make that happen. This is a huge part of what's wrong with our country.

One guy referred to an Aaron Sorkin West Wing episode in which a character suggests things should be a little easier:

I never imagined at $55,000 a year, I'd have trouble making ends meet. And my wife brings in another 25. My son's in public school. It's no good. I mean, there's 37 kids in the class, uh, no art and music, no advanced placement classes. Other kids, their mother has to make them practice the piano. You can't pull my son away from the piano. He needs teachers. I spend half the day thinking about what happens if I slip and fall down on my own front porch, you know? It should be hard. I like that it's hard. Putting your daughter through college, that's-that's a man's job. A man's accomplishment. But it should be a little easier. Just a little easier. 'Cause in that difference is... everything. I'm sorry. I'm, uh, I-I'm Matt Kelley.

Matt apologizes because it's unseemly to complain in America. If you're not succeeding, you haven't worked hard enough. That's the National Anthem of our economic country.

Hogwash.

The Democrats' message must be relentlessly positive and absolve Matt Kelley, my friends, and me of guilt. The message must be that if we work hard and save honestly, the game will be made more fair for us and, more importantly, for our children. Every human being in this country deserves a fair chance of reaching for the American dream, no apologies necessary.

Democrats don't need to oppose the tribe of liars across the aisle. They need only work toward restoring fairness, demanding equity, and helping us provide for our own. The United States has sheltered the wealthy for so many years, it is time to take care of those on whom the wealth has been built.

I'll keep thinking about this.

Theft

Following in the lost and found, we lost something else Thursday nigh because some punk took it. What an asshole.

A little after ten at night our daughter texted that she was done with play practice. I went downstairs, opened the garage, and drove to get her. Twenty minutes later, we were home when a neighbor texted that she had seen four tough-looking boys who had been in our garage. Uh oh.

Our other daughter just got her license and doesn't like to carry her wallet. She leaves it in the glove compartment of the car in the garage, the one that is unlocked, the one the kids went through. Her wallet was gone.

This wasn't too terrible. In her wallet were four dollars, her driver's license, a school ID three years out of date, two gift cards, a couple slips of paper, and her bank card. She cancelled the bank card while I went out to see if the thieves had dumped the wallet. A block away I found the empty wallet. She said, "at least I don't have to buy a new wallet."

This morning, walking the dog, my wife found the slips of paper. While we were at school a stranger found the license and left it in our mailbox. This afternoon, walking the dog, we found the gift cards. In total, our girl is out four dollars and an old high school ID. She doesn't even have to wait for a bank card. The phone app still works.

I told her, you lead a pretty good life. She nodded.

Last night, around midnight I found the clip on our Wyzecam of the boys walking down the street. A big puke of a kid peels off and goes into our garage. He waddles out a minute later with the wallet. I stayed awake imagining happy endings such as him getting arrested, shot in a driveby, or somehow having his nuts sliced off. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the father.

I see how people turn to a hard kind of politics. I wanted that lard ass on a platter. My daughter figures he's from her high school just like the kid who broke into our house a few years ago. I think that kid is in jail and I'm okay with him rotting there. I debated the proper fate for this new kid for an hour last night, but it's a bad idea to make decisions when feeling hurt, angry, and unsafe. Better to respond than react. Locking the car in the garage and closing the door at night even when I'll be right back, these are wise responses. Getting lost in revenge is a bad reaction that gets in the way of my living a good life.

I had revenge on a kid like this once. In middle school, Robert was a prick who bullied the hell out of me. I imagined every pains I wanted to befall him. Fifteen years later, at a traffic light, I saw him in a shitbox car, a cigarette in his mouth, a grimace marring his face. He looked old and rundown. I'll admit that made me happy. Living well may be the only real revenge.

The moron who took our daughter's wallet got four dollars but it won't be worth even that much. Our girl will keep going, onward and upward. That piece of shit is likely already circling the bowl. My final thought of him last night was that he probably has only a fifty-fifty shot of surviving the next ten years.

With all our daughter's stuff restored, with a new understanding of keeping ourselves safe, and with the notion that the thief doesn't matter much to me, I bet I sleep just fine tonight.