LONGWALKABOUT

I have spent much of my life in the northeastern United States. (I’m not real happy about that, but there you have it.) I don’t necessarily consider myself a “northeasterner”, in fact, when fillng out forms I prefer to say that I am from “parts unknown”, like a masked wrestler. Some people, however, proudly advertise that they are from this region, going so far as to slap a bumper sticker on their car that advertises which Garden State Parkway exit they like to vacation off of. To each their own I guess. One thing I have become aware of is that we in the northeast have a rep. Here is a conversation I have to endure from time to time when I travel to other areas of the country.

Them: “Hi, where are you from?”

Me: “Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia.”

Them: “Why is everyone from up north so mean?”

Me: “Why don’t you just shut your face?”  JUST KIDDING, JUST KIDDING.

My usual response is: (Laughing) “Things are just different up north.”

In the remaining three hundred and twenty words of this post (give or take) I would like to try to explain why other regions’ perception of the northeast is slightly misguided.

You know how some people have recurring sore throats and then eventually have to have their tonsils removed? A similar thing happens in our part of the country. We have recurring run ins with other people, leading to the removal of our patience. Twenty nine of the top fifty most densely populated areas of the country are in the northeast. There are simply too many people. We don’t have the time to stop and have a polite conversation with every one of them.

Another thing that makes us seem grumpy? The weather. People in other parts of the country have much better weather than we do. Our winter is too cold. Our summer is too short and humid. Our spring is cold, wet, and muddy, except for a two week window. Fall, or raking season, as I like to call it, is also miserable, except for a two week window when the leaves on the trees get really pretty. Like I’ve told my wife. I’d be perfectly happy to live in a place where the leaves never change. Seeing it once in a lifetime is enough. So, you see, we all continually have Seasonal Affective Disorder. We aren’t mean, we have a diagnosable environmentally-induced condition.

Our dialect up here is also different and easily misunderstood. A conversation overheard can be misinterpreted quite easily without having someone to put it into the proper context for you. I will provide an example for people from other regions.

Person #1: (Drops glass jar on the floor, shattering it into a million pieces.) “AAAGGH, what idiot left the door open, it made me drop this jar.”

Translation: “I am embarrassed that I didn’t see the door and now I’ve broken a jar of my favorite pickles.”

Person #2: “Maybe you should just watch where you’re going ya moron. What’d the door do, swat it out of your hand?”

Translation: “Are you okay? Be careful of the broken glass. Sorry I left the door open.”

Person #1: “Shut up or when I’m done cleaning this up I’ll break another jar over your head.”

Translation: “I accept your apology for leaving the door open. Could you please bring me a broom and a roll of paper towels.”

Person #2: “Whatever, moron. Here’s a broom.”

Translation: “Here’s a broom. I’ll be right back with the paper towels.”

Person #1: “Thanks.”

Translation: “Thanks.”

Do you see how someone who isn’t familiar with our dialect could have easily been alarmed by that conversation? It isn’t so much that we’re mean up here, it’s just that we are misunderstood, there are too many of us, and we all probably have psychological issues due to the change in seasons. So, as an unofficial representative for the northeast, I’d like to request that the rest of you losers to stop referring to us as mean or we’re going to have to smack you around a little.

 

It’s going to be so cold here this weekend that I’m considering adding extra insulation to my basement windows. All of this seems completely unnecessary. The cold, the snow, winter in general. Winter has to be one of the worst things about the fall of mankind. Winter and t-shirts that aren’t tagless. I don’t think there was any winter in the Garden of Eden. There may be something legitimately wrong with people who like the cold. I could be mistaken about this, but if we all got together and paid for every eskimo to take a Caribbean vacation, I bet only twenty percent of them would return home. Half of that twenty percent would only be going back to get their pets. The other half are just psychopaths like people who prefer black coffee. When I go off about this subject my wife will undoubtedly say something wise like, “It takes all kinds of people to make up the world.” Begrudgingly I have to admit that, in some areas, she’s right about this. I mean, there have to be some people who like weird things, otherwise the bottom of my freezer drawer would be full of orange popsicles forever.

As I sit here bundled up, I’m looking out the window and wishing that I could hibernate like a bear. Seriously, do you know how skinny I’d be when I woke up in the spring? Right in time for swimsuit season amiright? One of the things I do to deal with the fact that I can’t hibernate is listen to lots of music. All kinds of music. I enjoy finding a new band and listening to them until I’ve literally driven them into the ground like I did our first Subaru Outback. (If I’d only changed the timing belt I might still be driving that thing.) Music is an area where my wife’s wise “it takes all kinds” point is definitely true. I’ve reached the point in this rambling post where I will drop some good advice of my own. Music is completely subjective. Never read anything written by a music critic. Listen to the music. If you like it, like it. Dave Grohl once said, “I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, you know. I believe you should be able to like what you like.” He’s right. And I don’t even like the Foo Fighters. It takes all kinds of people to make the music world go round. Most art is like this. Subjective. (Except for modern art which is complete and utter nonsense.) It’s healthy to form your own opinions about music and how it makes you feel.

In Conclusion.

• If you prefer the cold, you are still probably a psychopath just like people who don’t watch sports.
• Music is a good way of passing these dreary days.
• Don’t let anyone tell you what kind of music to like.
• Orange popsicles are kind of gross.
• Wegman’s Romano is my new favorite shaky cheese.
• My wife is wise.

Whew. There was a lot in there today. Now I’m going to sit by the fire with my coffee and listen to Taylor Swift, Metallica, John Denver, Mandy Moore, Def Leppard, P.O.D., Good Charlotte, and Bob Seger. In that order.

Now that we are past Christmas (the best holiday of the year) it’s time to gear up for New Year’s Eve (the worst holiday of the year). That’s right. New Year’s Eve is officially the worst holiday of the year in my Indispensable Guide to Life. There are other bad ones too, and I am here to make a countdown of the five worst. I realize that I already gave away my number one worst holiday and that was probably poor planning on my part, but if you’ll bear with me, when we get to number one I will give you some ridiculous reasons why it’s the worst. Let’s begin.

THE FIVE WORST HOLIDAYS OF THE YEAR

5.  Groundhog Day– This will be an unpopular opinion in my state of residence. While I will acknowledge that rodents are more qualified meteorologists than the ones on TV, I don’t need them to tell me that the weather is going to continue to be awful every February 2nd. I already know that simply because I live in Pennsylvania. If rodents really wanted to share useful information they should have spoken up in 1346 and said something like, “Hey I just saw my shadow, that means the fleas that I’m carrying are going to kill somewhere between 100 and 200 million people. Oh, yeah, there will also be six more weeks of winter.”

4.  Boss’s Day– Really? If you’re the boss, isn’t every day boss’s day? Just seems a little redundant.

3.  Valentines Day– I’ve already done a big write up on Valentines Day and its links to the Greeting Card industrial complex. I almost put Labor Day here because it is the unofficial end to my favorite season and I’m pretty sure it has something to do with communism. (I’m right about that by the way)

2.  Black Friday–  Yes. In 24 states it is actually an observed holiday. The only good thing about Black Friday is that every year we get to watch new Youtube videos of people fighting and being trampled at Wal-Mart. These are obviously the only people left on earth who haven’t heard of Amazon.com. I would like to suggest that we keep them in the dark because I could watch people throw punches over a Power Wheel all day.

1.  New Year’s Eve–  This is the biggest let down holiday on the schedule. 5-4-3-2-1, yay, the ball that they claim is brand new but looks exactly like the one they’ve been using for the last twenty years has reached the bottom of the flag pole. What now? Do I get a present? No? So you’re telling me we went through all that build up just to welcome Monday? And it’s still bitterly cold? I should have gone to bed hours ago. I’m going to fall asleep watching the bowl games now. Great. This has totally messed up my meal schedule. Who gave the kids noise makers? New Year’s Eve is the worst.

 

Watching Stranger Things with my wife and her grandmother was really fun. (I’m pretty sure that if you asked Granny what the show was about she’d say there was a monster in the woods and then ask you if the little bald kid was a boy or a girl.) The storytelling was good, it was perfectly cast, and it was set in a time that people my age remember fondly. I grew up in the eighties and early nineties. The days before the internet. The good old days. If you drove somewhere, you needed to know how to read a map. If you wanted to argue about politics, you wrote a letter to the editor of your local paper. If you wanted to know what an acquaintance you made in sixth grade had for dinner that evening, you had to go to the phone, which was attached to your kitchen wall with a cord (gasp!) and call them. There was something nice about all of that. But was it better?

There are some good arguments to be made in favor of life before google maps and social media. When I was a kid, I couldn’t text my friends. There was no instant connectivity. The closest I came to that was a barely audible walkie talkie connection with a friend who lived across the pond from me. The result was that we spent more time outside. We got together and did things. Rode bikes, built forts, went camping, caused mischief. It was nice. I also do not remember getting any Candy Crush requests in the mail when I was a kid. Back in the day people talked smack face to face. This meant that there was a real danger of a fight breaking out, so the smack talking had to be worth it. Today if you want to  run your mouth you can grab a hot drink, get comfortable in your favorite chair, grab your phone, and type. Everybody’s brave when they’re separated from their opponent by a hundred miles and a fake screen name. We were more civil to each other back when we were less connected. (On a side note, back then Hollywood lacked the technology to constantly assault us with soulless superhero movies. We didn’t know how good we had it.)

But what about the positives of modern life? I’m glad you asked. First off, social media has enabled me to keep in touch with my family. I can share pictures of my kids and in turn see what they are up too. Secondly, I can now run a background check on anyone who wants to befriend me. It no longer takes three or four outings before you figure out that a potential new friend is completely nuts. Now you can meet someone, friend them on Facebook, check out their page, and immediately go “Nope, nope, Noooooooppppe.” Turns out, people are more than willing to expose their insanity for the world to see. Our new interconnectedness can also be motivational. How many times have you gotten online and seen that a friend ran three miles that day? I would guess that it happens a lot, because people are really proud of themselves when they work out. Then you go grab your running shoes and begrudgingly run a couple miles because there’s no way you’re going to let Joe look better than you at this year’s reunion. Later you’ll realize you have nothing to worry about, though, because Joe will post a picture of himself eating a giant cheesesteak all by himself.

My general conclusion is that life is no better or worse because of our constant state of connection. It’s just different. This spring I am going to plan a few 80’s weekends with my family. We’re going to unplug, watch John Hughes movies, break out my old Nintendo games and teach the boys how to blow into them to get them to work, and then we’ll actually leave the house to do something. Don’t worry, I’ll post pictures on Monday to let everyone know how it went.

 

I have two boys. One of the most fun things about having kids is that you get to dispense important life advice. Here are some of my pearls of wisdom.

• “Never play with bear cubs in the wild.”
• “If you’re speeding, make sure there is at least one car going faster than you.”
• “Don’t ever put fruit on a pizza. That is a sin.”
• “When you go to college, pick a major and see it through. You know, like your mother did. Your father is still picking a major.”
• “Never befriend anyone who prefers Hunts ketchup. They’re probably a psychopath.”
• “You get more guacamole at Chipotle if you ask for it on the side.”
• “Always be kind. It will never come back to haunt you.”
• “If someone says ‘trust me’, it’s because there is a reason that they shouldn’t be trusted.”

As you can see, I have gained a lot of wisdom that I am more than willing to pass along to the next generation. That’s not really true. I’m winging it like our parents did before us and their parents did before them. That reminds me of another piece of advice.

• “Always act like you know what you’re doing.”

All of that aside, there are two rock solid pieces of advice that I will give to my kids that I know they can count on.

1. “If you anchor your life in Christian principles, the storms won’t shake you.”
2. “A good attitude is essential in life.”

They’re good with number one. Number two I have to keep reinforcing. A good attitude changes how problems are approached. It increases your likelihood of solving those problems. It increases your likelihood of being successful in general. People who say, “Oh no! We’ll never make it” usually don’t make it. Attitude is fifty percent of life. Have to clean the bathroom? Do it with a good attitude. Have to do a job you hate? Do it with a good attitude. Have to eat your veggies? Do it with a good attitude. Found your passion in life? Pursue it relentlessly, with a good attitude. I recently went to see Sammy Hagar in concert. That guy has a great attitude. He’s seventy years old and still doing what he loves. You never hear a negative thing come out of his mouth. (Unless it’s about the Van Halen’s, who he referred to as “the devil and his brother”) His career has had ups and downs, but he’s still here. Attitude is fifty percent of life.

One last piece of advice that I almost forgot.

“Always eat one less piece of pizza than you actually want to.”

Christians have a funny relationship with Halloween. Some are dead set against it.  “It is the devil’s holiday and I will spend it watching reruns of Highway to Heaven and Touched By An Angel.”  Some are all in.  “I’ve been planning my costume for six months and I’ve spent three hundred dollars to look like Thor.  I even contacted a costume department in LA to get some tips.”  A lot of people are in the middle.  “Yeah, so, I’ve gotta get the kids dressed up to go trick or treating.  They’ll get a bunch of candy, then I’ll go through it after they go to bed and pull out all the Sweet Tarts and Butterfingers.”  I find myself squarely in the last group.  This makes for awkward conversations with the first group.

Them:  Hey, what are you guys doing this week?

Me:  Well, Monday is Halloween, so I guess we’re going trick-or-treating.

Them:  (Judgemental pause   1,2,3,4,5………)  Doesn’t it make you a little uncomfortable, you know, because of the origins of the holiday?

Me:  Nah.  I’m not sacrificing goats, I’m just dressing the kids up like Obi Wan Kenobi and The Karate Kid so they can get some candy.

Them:  (Another judgmental pause)

Me:  (Just an awkward pause)  Well,,,, I guess we’ll see you next week.

It’s okay.  I understand people who don’t want to participate.  To each their own.  We can all live in harmony.  Who we can’t live in harmony with is the person who spends three hundred dollars on a costume, that’s just nuts.

Every year when I take the kids trick-or-treating we inevitably come the house where people hand out apples, or small bags of pretzels, or, GASP, a toothbrush.  Look folks, I know that handing out apples may make you feel really good about yourself, but at my house they will not get eaten.  We have principles.  Trick-or-treating is not about you feeling good about the things you hand out. It’s about my kids collecting candy that we otherwise wouldn’t have in the house. (Again, Sweet Tarts and Butterfingers are much appreciated.)  The clue is in the word “treat.” Pretzel people.  No.  Stop doing that.  The kids are looking for treats, they are not on a Southwest Airlines flight to Denver.  Pretzels are a last ditch snack.  When you’ve consumed all the good stuff in the pantry, there is always one lonely bag of pretzels left saying, “Please eat me.”  Last but not least, toothbrush guy.  We get it, you’re a dentist.  All that we ask is that you stop looking at Halloween as the enemy of teeth and start looking at it as job security.

I know I’m two weeks early for a Halloween post.  Sorry about that, but I just wanted to give the people above a chance to make things right by running out to pick up a couple of those mixed bags of Hershey’s miniatures.  That way, they can avoid my wife and I egging their houses.

Happy Halloween.  ?

 

I love James Bond movies. All of them except those abominations starring Pierce Brosnan. As a kid and young adult, I would watch each adventure unfold in a different exotic locale. Sometimes multiple exotic locales. And when the credits rolled, the phrase would scroll down the screen, Filmed on location and at Pinewood Studios in England.  Filmed on location.  I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Someday I was going to be James Bond. I would travel the world with a beautiful woman on my arm and have adventures in service of Her Majesty.

Fast forward.

I am now a somewhat older adult.  I have been blessed in my life to be able to travel some. Not as much as I would like, but hey, if I actually traveled as much as I’d like, I wouldn’t have a real home. I have also been blessed to do this traveling with a beautiful woman on my arm. I have not, however, had any adventures on behalf of any spy agency. (The ball is in your court, CIA) So I feel I am falling short of the true James Bond experience. Just once I would like to be chased around the pyramids at Giza by a giant with metal teeth. Unfortunately, recent considerations have led me to question if I’ll ever be Bond material.

• I really don’t like to wear suits. This seems to be a requirement in the spy world. While it’s nice to dress up and pretend civility once in a while, pretending is all I’m really doing.
• I have been unable to get Pennsylvania to issue me a License to Kill. This license is much harder to get than a fishing license. When I call Harrisburg to inquire, they like to pretend that it doesn’t even exist.
• My hair. Unless I pay attention to it every twenty or thirty minutes, my hair will end up looking like I’m a toddler who just woke up from a nap. This is not a good look for a spy. My oldest son could swim in the ocean, wrestle his brother, go through a car wash in a convertible, and still look perfectly styled. But he can’t drive yet, so no spying for him.
• I get jetlag. On a recent trip to Europe, my wife and I hit the ground running after our overnight flight. We took an hour’s train ride from our arrival city to see a Unesco World Heritage site. It was great, but on the train ride back, I fell asleep hard. Head tipped back, mouth wide open hard. My wife reported that during my nap, local teenagers found my sleeping pose hilarious. This would also be unacceptable in the spying world. I’m guessing that vodka martinis would make this problem worse, not better.

So, regretfully, I’ll probably never realize my secret agent dreams.  Guess I’ll have to go with my backup plan.  Fighter pilot who likes to play beach volleyball.

Summer starts with lofty goals.  I’m going to do educational things with my kids.  I’m going to replace half the windows in my house.  I’m going to make our summer look like a sitcom, where everyone is always laughing and having a good time, and everyone learns a valuable life lesson approximately every thirty minutes.  I’m going to write a lot.  I’m going to be in such good shape that I’ll be able to become an Instagram model.  I’m going to take an army and sixty elephants across the Alps and invade Italy.  But what happens?  At the end of the summer you feel like three weeks have passed and you haven’t accomplished half of what you set out to do.  The past two years I have started the summer season with a simple five item attainable bucket list.  Well.  That became depressing. At best, I would accomplish three of the items on the list.  They were simple items too.  Things like, Keep The Car Clean All Summer.  Was I successful?  The french fry I found under the seat says no.  So, instead of making over the Alps with my elephants, I end up in exile on the proverbial island of Ephesus, wondering what went wrong.  This year I didn’t make a list.  I started, but left it unpublished.  That way I couldn’t look back and be disappointed.  But today, a week from Labor Day, with the weather already reminding me that the Devil’s Season is only months away, I found myself evaluating my summer and being depressed by lack of progress in certain areas.  Well,,,,, being depressed sucks.  So I have chosen to accentuate the positive. There were plenty of good things to celebrate about the best season.

• We took a beach trip to my favorite place on earth, St. John.  While there, I saw a shark, a spotted eagle ray, and took my family on a marathon swim across a bay which could have ended badly but didn’t.  High Five.
• I gave the fireplace room in our house a complete makeover.  This sounds mundane, but during the cold months I rarely leave this room so it is actually very important.  Thumbs Up.
• I put in overhead lighting in the office upstairs.  This is a plus because now my boys won’t be afraid to go into the room when it’s dark.  Double high five.
• My wife and I performed a tango routine at the anniversary party of the dance studio we go to.  I don’t like to brag,,,,, but we nailed it.  Fist pump.
• I finally installed the invisible fence for the dog in our backyard.  Then I subsequently set the perimeter setting so wide that he was afraid to go near his food dish inside the house.  Oops.  But hey, he could stand to lose a few.
• My oldest took a computer coding class.
• We kayaked at the lake a few times.
• We went to the family reunion.
• We did the solar eclipse thing with the kids.  Lets just say they weren’t impressed.

The more I think about the positives, the longer the list could get.  I still haven’t been to an outdoor movie with the family, or made it to Fort McHenry, or replaced a single window, and the kids played entirely too many video games.  But overall it was a successful summer. Looking forward, there is still enough warm weather left to accomplish a few more outdoor things.  As is always true, there is no time like the present.  I’m off to liberate some elephants from the Philadelphia Zoo.  I plan on marching over the Poconos and invading northern New Jersey.

My twelve readers will be happy or somewhat dismayed to learn that I am back.

For a period of five years when I was younger, I made it my mission to take an annual trip to West Virginia to go whitewater rafting. Each year I would round up as many of my friends as I could to accompany me. We did the New River in springtime and if the trip happened to come in the fall, we did the world class Upper Gauley River.

One year I was only able to get one friend to go with me. It was October and the weather was great for tent camping. Our plan was to spend the night at one of the nearby state parks and then take a trip down the Upper Gauley and its five class V rapids.

Due to what I’m sure was poor planning on my part, our trip unknowingly fell on Bridge Day weekend. Bridge Day is the one day a year when people who may be described as “adventurous” by some, or “crazy” by others, or “people who probably work in the HVAC field and have nothing left to lose” by me, are allowed to BASE jump, rappel, and bungee jump from the 876 foot high New River Gorge Bridge. It’s a big deal. The first one was held in 1980 and attracted around forty thousand people. Now, the nearly forty year-old festival brings in about one hundred thousand people. When my friend and I arrived in the area, we discovered that half of those hundred thousand people were camping, and the other half were making sure that every hotel we passed had a no vacancy sign lit up. For two hours we tried in vain to find somewhere to stay. Eventually we ended up at a gas station somewhere in the city of Beckley. Tired and out of options, we decided to ask the gas station attendant if there was a reasonably priced, reasonably clean motel in the area. He gave us the name of a place nearby.

A mile later we pulled in to the _____ __ ___ ____ Motel. I will withhold the name and savage them anonymously on Yelp later. It was one of those places where you get your key and park right in front of your room. You know, like the place in Psycho. We entered the room and immediately discovered that some people’s definitions of reasonably clean were way different than ours. There was a double bed, a dresser, on top of which sat an ancient TV, and a bathroom that was cleaner than a gas station bathroom, but still dirty enough to make you consider going outside to pee in the woods. To get from the front door to the bathroom, you had to turn sideways and shimmy between the bed and the dresser. The bedspread was dark enough and the lighting dim enough to hide all sorts of stains. Reminiscing on this, I also remember sleeping in a barn one night when I was in high school. That barn was probably cleaner, and much less likely to have been a murder scene. All of this was pretty funny to us at the time. Not wanting to touch the bed, we spread our sleeping bags on top of the bedspread and spent the next three hours wondering if the guys sitting in their car two doors down were eventually going to break in to our room, rough us up, steal the TV, and maybe clean the bathroom. Eventually we fell asleep. Just two guys in sleeping bags on a Korean War era double bed, dreaming about bed bugs.

The rafting was epic. It always is. Luckily, adrenaline makes up for energy lost to a bad night’s sleep. This is the part of the post where I recommend whitewater rafting in West Virginia. Bridge Day is a sight to behold. If you want to do Bridge Day right, sign up for a trip on the Lower New River that ends beneath the bridge. That way you can watch all the HVAC technicians leap out into thin air and what could be, but probably won’t be, certain death.

“It has been said that you should never try to meet your heroes, lest they be found to have feet of clay.” Madison Magazine, volume 31, part 2 (1989).

I’ve heard this before, and I have to say, I disagree.  If you meet your heroes, and are truly disappointed, the problem is more likely with you than it is with them.  The pedestal that you put them on was simply too high.  You built them up into a superhuman whose shoes they could never fill.  By all means, meet your heroes, but go into the encounter with no expectations. That way you’ll most likely be pleasantly surprised.

In the early 2000’s my wife and I, and my friend and his girlfriend, went to see Jekyll and Hyde on broadway in New York.  At the time the lead role was being played by Sebastian Bach, formerly of the band Skid Row.  He was the main reason that I had wanted to see this particular play.  If you are my age and aren’t familiar with Skid Row your youth was not what it should have been.  How could you be a teenager without hearing 18 And Life or Slave To The Grind or, most importantly, Youth Gone Wild?  I’m sorry you missed it.  You can still jam to Youth Gone Wild now but when you’re rapidly approaching forty something, songs about being “another misfit kid” in “another burned out town” just don’t carry as much weight as they did when you were fifteen.  Anyway.  We went to the play and it was awesome.  Sebastian’s larger than life vocals were a perfect fit for the composition and subject matter.  During the closing applause my friend and I caused enough ruckus that the elderly woman behind us had to lean in next to her husband and explain to him, “He’s a rock and roll star, dear.”  The theater patrons emptied out onto 45th street and most of them went their separate ways.  We chose to stick around with a group of about thirty other people to wait and see if we could meet the cast.  One by one they came out.  Autographs were signed and hands were shaken.  Finally Sebastian came out.  And,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,  He was the nicest guy you could ever meet.  He signed every autograph and posed for every picture.  I told him that I had taken my wife to see him at the Birch Hill Night Club in New Jersey and that it was her first concert.  He asked if we had seen the play.  My buddy emphatically told him, “Sebastian you never turned your back on rock n’ roll.”  To which he excitedly replied, “That’s right brother.”  He then got into a limo and, in true rock n’ roll fashion, popped out of the sunroof as it drove away.

I’ve met other well known people whose work I enjoy.  They haven’t all been personable.  Take Tom Ridge, former head of the Department of Homeland Security, for example.  Most of them, though, have been really nice. Especially former Phillies first baseman, John Kruk.  He was great.  That same buddy that I went to the play with and I met him at a Philadelphia Eagles game.  He was shorter than I expected and slightly inebriated.  John is from a small town in West Virginia called Keyser.  I told him that I was also from West Virginia.  He signed my ticket stub and told me that his brother still lived there and wished me “Good luck down there in West Virginia.”  I hadn’t lived there since I was eight, but I really appreciated the sentiment.

Legend has it that once upon a time, the great Jimmy Stewart was staying at a hotel, and when the bellhop brought his bags he said,  “Mr. Stewart, this may not mean much to you, but I really enjoy your movies.”  Jimmy turned to him and said, “No, you’re wrong.  It means everything to me.”

Your heroes are just people, like you.  Meet them.  More often than not, it will be a good experience.  Unless your hero is Michael Jordan.  I hear he’s a real piece of work.