Family

Why do all these people look so familiar?

I Can't Wait To Be A Grandpa

Do you remember when you were a kid, and you just finished doing something spectacularly stupid, and then your mom would say, "You just wait, Buster. Some day you'll have children of your own, and then you'll get yours..."

As with most things, my mother was right. My son spent the better part of his childhood doing heroic duty to her memory, picking up and channeling every one of my childhood sins so that they could wash back over me in a giant dose of Kiddie Karma. Now that my son is grown and married, I've decided that I’m going to raise the ante.

You see, as parents it was our job to teach our kids to say, "Thank you" and to keep their pants pulled up when we had company. We had to convince them that it is generally a good idea to flush the toilet. It was our responsibility to mold them into future doctors, lawyers, astronauts, politicians, armed robbers, or televangelists.

A grandpa is free to be nothing more than a kindly old coot with an endless lap and a bottomless wallet.

When The Lake Freezes Over

This past weekend Whitmore Lake hosted an organized “Pond Hockey” tournament. Dozens of teams came out and everyone had a great weekend, especially in the beer tent. All the organization brought a different simpler sort of pond hockey to mind. Here’s a column I wrote a couple of years ago about that.

When my son was a lot younger, I coached his ice hockey teams. This meant that several mornings every week, at about 5 AM, I would join a bunch of other dads carrying our lifeless little bundles of kid across frozen parking lots and into the rink, stuffing them into miniature hockey pads and skates, then chucking them out on the ice.

Playing hockey on a Zamboni-groomed indoor rink is great for a kid. You always have decent ice, the lines and nets are regulation, and you have those Plexiglas-topped walls to smash into when you want to scare your mom. You have benches where you can sit between shifts and have squirt-fights with the water bottles. And afterward, there’s juice boxes and brownies in the locker room, so you can have a food fight while you’re taking your gear off.

My Latest Girl Car

In this column I have talked from time to time about "guy cars" and "girl cars." I have pointed out that there are a few fundamental differences in how most men and women view their automobiles. 

The typical guy wants a car that is an expression of dominance over his personal universe. He wants it to project an image of his status and virility to the world. He wants it to be a four-wheeled extension of his ideal self, looking and sounding as powerful and in-charge as he (comically) imagines himself to be.

Most women are happy with a car if the engine starts when you turn the key.

Harold

I consider myself a really lucky guy. In my career I've had the opportunity to write all kinds of things, most of them silly, and writing them has usually been fun. But every now and then I have had to put the silliness aside and say goodbye to a friend.

Just a little over seventeen years ago our family threw all our stuff in boxes, threw the boxes in a truck, and headed up the road from Ann Arbor to move into a house on the shores of Whitmore Lake. The house came with nice carpeting, a great view of the water, and a neighbor named Harold Lemon.

Harold was about 75 years old when I first met him. He was hobbling around his back yard with a cane, and in our first conversation he told me that he was just about to go in to have a hip replaced. My impression was, "Wow, what a nice old guy. He's just a little bit older than my dad would be if he was alive. I guess it's gonna be pretty quiet next door."

Wrong.

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