I couldn’t find a seat on the train, so I stood in the vestibule with some other passengers. They appeared to be acquainted, as they were chatting about Chicago politics but punctuated each sentence with a polite chuckle, as if to say, "yes, I agree with you, but I still don’t feel comfortable around you.”

"You work for the city, right?"

"Nah, I'm with the county. Less work, same benefits." [Chuckle.]

"I hear ya!" [Chuckle!]

Given the subject matter, the conversation grew inevitably and increasingly negative, first about Cook County Commissioner Todd Stroger specifically, then about how Blacks hypocritically still play the race card even though “they’re in the White House.” And the voices and chuckles grew louder and louder as the subject turned to Muslims and the inherent insanity of their religion.

“I know—they’re so hypocritical, with all their talk of God while they go killing people. They’re like the anti-abortionists.” [CHUCKLE!]

 A beat.

“You mean the abortionists?”

Still clueless: “No, the antiabortionists, the way they kill the doctors.” [Chuckle?]

“No, that’s like one or two people. Abortionists kills thousands of babies.”

Rapid, mumbled qualifying and backtreading, shorter and shorter sentences. Within fifteen seconds, the two passengers were standing back to back in silence.

I chuckled.

For the past few years, E’s had an inguinal hernia on her left hip. An inguinal hernia is when a hole appears in the abdominal wall between your skin and your intestines, and the latter start to—well, fall out. Women don’t often get this problem, but because of all the moving we’ve done recently, it’s probable that she lifted one box too many. The hole has been slowly (and pretty painlessly) growing, so we decided to get the surgery this morning.

This was E’s first surgery (other than dental), so she was a bit nervous. I did my best to keep her calm, though, channeling my dad’s wit and nurturing. But there was no need for her to have worried. For one thing, the structures being operated on are very close to the surface, so only twilight anesthesia was needed. They wheeled her away, and I set up my laptop, opened my pathology notes, got out my notecards, memorized the definition of lymphadenoma—and they wheeled her back in, all fixed. She doesn't even need stitches--they superglued her teeny scar back together. After another half hour of being entertained by her anesthesia-induced antics, I brought her home and tucked her into bed.

She’s now chatting away with her sister, Sara, and I’m about to bake some gluten-free corn bread to go with all the soups that a) E had made over the past few days and b) that kind friends & family keep dropping off.

Today, I am utterly and undeniably in my mid-forties. One can argue, albeit pathetically, that forty-three belongs to the early forties, but forty-four is incontrovertible (thank you, The Wall). Now, I have no trouble accepting the demographic in which now I find myself, except for one wee thing.

I’m middle-aged.

That’s just so wrong.

I’m boyish, dammit! I’m spritely! My friends call me Puck!

Well, they haven’t actually called me Puck since undergrad, which was more than twenty years and fifty pounds ago. For most of my life, I’ve been more of a Falstaff, and as I continue to age, I’ll strive to become a Fezziwig.

So, middle-aged. Regrets?

I’m still financially unsound, and I have been for most of my adult life. Although I’ve become used to poverty, I feel ashamed not to be providing for my wife, ashamed to be indebted to my elderly parents. Ashamed to have accomplished so little in forty-four years.

And yet, I like my life. And I like the man whom I’ve become. I’ve taken my dad’s intellect and wit, combined them with my mom’s frankness and integrity, and made them uniquely my own. In peaceful moments, when I listen to my mind, I enjoy hearing what it has to say. Maybe someday, I’ll direct those resources into a novel or two.

But that’s for a future BD post.

I was a lonely kid. I was fat, four-eyed, and foreign (yes, being Canadian in a suburb of Waterbury, CT counts as being foreign). I was asthmatic, allergic, and socially retarded. I was therefore one of the legions who took to Dungeons & Dragons like a fighter to a flaming sword.

I discovered D&D  in a magazine that I'd picked up while visiting my sister in L.A. in 1978. The article described the game as one that took place almost entirely in the imagination, a necessary requirement given that the game at the time consisted only of a rulebook, blank paper, a pencil, and dice. D&D was a sort of guided storytelling in which players took on the roles of some of the story's characters, and their free will partially determined the story's outcome.

My mind was fully blown. I ran out and bought a copy of Basic D&D the next day.

The game turned my life around. It gave me something to talk about with the neighborhood kids. As the DM, I was even in a position of authority. And as a player, I learned how to think critically, how to look at any given problem, lay out my options, and devise a solution. It didn’t take long for me to become the biggest D&D geek in town, a title I bore proudly. At last, I was really good at something, even if it did happen to be imaginary, and I'd earned a sort of respect among the neighborhood kids.

D&D was the center of my life from about 1978 to 1984. As happens to the fortunate players, I eventually learned how to talk to girls, and D&D lost all appeal. Reality had finally become more pleasant than fantasy. I packed up my manuals, modules, maps, magazines, and miniatures and rarely looked back.

But I couldn’t get rid of them. I’ve moved fifteen times since college, and those boxes have kept following me around. To throw away all that junk would be to throw away a crucial part of my past. The game introduced me to my best-buddy Rob, who introduced me to Wayne, who introduced me to my wife.

Last week, though, I learned how to let go. When I met the boys of my buddy Laurent (with whom I gamed many years ago), I realized that they had the same creativity, passion, and intellect that Laurent and I had at that age, and they’re just about old enough to take the plunge. I’m therefore mailing them the basic components of D&D, and if they take to it as I hope they will, I’ll ship them the remaining supplies.

It won’t be easy, finally letting go of such an important part of my past. But it warms me to know that I might be introducing a couple of kids to some of the greatest times of their childhoods.

For those of you unfamiliar with Facebook, it’s a social-networking web site that lets you see what all of your friends are up to on a single page. I was sucked into it in DO school because it was how all of my classmates communicated—very few checked their email regularly. If I didn’t sign up for Facebook, I’d be left out of the loop on impromptu study groups, links to useful sites for research, etc. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I realized just how risky the use of Facebook can be.

My buddy Thor posted in his status that he’d just awakened from a dream in which he’d run over a platypus. “I wonder what that means?” he asked.

Alluding to the classic Paul Rudd-Seth Rogan dialog of The Forty-Year Old Virgin, I typed my reply: “You know how I know you’re gay?”

Right as I hit Send, another of Thor’s friends posted. Her post now appears immediately between Thor’s and mine. What she said is irrelevant; unfortunately for me, she’s an out lesbian.

I met Laurent in nursery school (what they call preschool nowadays). I don’t clearly remember much about that era of my life, but I do have a photo somewhere of Laurent and me “graduating” from nursery school into kindergarten.

The grade-school era is much clearer in my mind. In kindergarten and first grade, Laurent and I were exponentially ahead of our classmates. While they were learning how to write their names and draw numerals, Laurent and I studied books on paleontology and collected fossils. Everything the teachers threw at us seemed ridiculously simple, and we were often frustrated with how slowly others learned. It’s not that we thought they were stupid; we just didn’t understand what the hold-up was.

Example: toward the end of the year of kindergarten, the teacher asked each of us if we remembered how we had felt on the first day of school. I said that I had felt humiliated, a word I had just learned from reading Peanuts. Testing to see whether I was merely parroting, the teacher asked me why. I replied that I had felt humiliated for being in such a low grade in school.

The decades wung by, the internet was born, and Facebook arrived. Laurent and I recently reconnected, and it turns out that we’re still into pretty much the same things—Disney movies and D&D have been replaced by prog rock and NPR. And we still laugh at the same weird stuff.

Laurent just moved back to Ann Arbor. I’ve often heard tales of what a great town AA is, so when he invited E and me for a visit, it felt perfectly natural to accept, even though we hadn’t seen each other or really communicated much since the Carter administration. Besides, E and I love road trips together and exploring new cities.

The nite before the trip, E and I both had insomnia. I’m a chronic insomniac, but not so E. After fidgeting at her desk for an hour, she said, “To hell with it—let’s just go.” I couldn’t think of a reason why not, so we did, watching the sun rise along Lake Michigan and enjoying traffic that, ninety minutes later, would become a nauseating snarl to the rest of Chicago.

We arrived in AA at about 1:00. The first thing we noticed was that just a single block on Main Street contains a dozen restaurants of totally different cuisines--Greek, Celtic, Thai, etc. I love that kind of condensed diversity! A very sweet friend from DO school had lived in AA and recommended several coffeehouses and restaurants. Sweethouse was a pleasant welcome, and Vault of Midnight made me wish I were bringing home paychecks. At this point, it was check-in time, so we went to the hotel and slept for about a half hour. (Thanks for the discounted rate, MJ!)

And then, the highlight of the trip: visiting Laurent. As soon as he opened the door, he gave me a huge hug, as if we were brothers, as if we were coworkers, as if we’d been college buddies, as if we weren’t now strangers. And it felt wonderful and totally genuine. Click here for pix.

His boys are very much his boys, especially the elder. Emmet looks shockingly like a brunette version of the kid I grew up with.

Laurent and his wife, Jill, treated us to dinner with a couple of their friends. The conversation flowed as freely as the mojitos and Glenmorangie. (This scotch, by the way, was twelve years old, which means it was distilled the year I was actually in Scotland and discovering this marvelous single malt.) Naturally, our omnibars were a big hit, especially with the kids.

I like Jill. She’s a straight talker, shoots from the hip. I wish more people were like that.

I like the boys too. They get tons of affection from their parents, and they’re at least as smart as them. In fact, I decided to donate my old D&D collection to them, which has been sitting in a basement storage locker for years, yet is of too much sentimental value just to chuck it out.

I’m glad things worked out well for Laurent. I often introduce him in conversation as The Smartest Guy I’ve Ever Met. But I’ve found that those kind of painfully smart people often live miserable lives. It must be hard being surrounded by…well, idiots, relatively speaking. Genius and depression are often inseparable. But somehow, maybe because of his upbringing, Laurent seems to be quite happy and well-adjusted. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Once we sobered up, E and I were claimed by the fatigue of the very long day. We said our goodbyes and promised not to wait another twenty-nine years to meet again.

We arose next morning at the crack of noon and grabbed coffee from Espresso Royale. Their brownies looked quite good, but I wanted to save myself for lunch at Zingerman’s. Good call, J. Stuffed to the gills, we staggered around the neighborhood, taking in the charming atmosphere that included brick-laid streets and an art fair. You can easily tell that Ann Arbor has a rich community of artists simply by looking at the fliers posted around town by students plugging this & that event. In Evanston, all such fliers are nearly always text-only; in AA, they're full of illustrations and stylish photographs. I guess all the creative types in my area are confined to Chicago's Art Institute, so none would be at NU.

Heading home, we took turns sleeping off our hangovers. I awoke when E pulled off the highway prematurely. “Nothing’s wrong,” she explained. “I just want to pick up some blueberries.” We then spent the next hour picking our own blueberries at a roadside farm. They’re the biggest, juiciest, sweetest blueberries we’ve ever had, and we paid only a buck a pound—vastly inferior blueberries are available at Trader Joe’s @ $3.00/6 oz.

So that was my summer vacation, condensed into the span of forty-eight hours. It was well worth the wait. And now, two weeks of delicious staycation...

In 1983, us guys tried to be macho.

Yes, it was mostly because we were teenaged boys, but a big part of it was in reaction to the increasing emasculation of pop music in what was still a deeply homophobic era. Boy George epitomized the trend toward androgyny, but even hitherto hard-rockin’ Van Halen had become girlie men. In that pre-Internet age, with little else to occupy our vast leisure time, we channel-surfed, and when we inevitably reached MTV (because there were only around thirty channels back then), we became Beavises and Buttheads, mumbling bon mots of evisceration to defend the music industry's crimes against rock. To this day, I can’t listen to “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” without hearing Rob’s reply in my head: “Yes, I really do.” 

And then, Michael Jackson (of all people) accomplished something that even the head-bangingest, denim-jacketedest, devil-horn-flashingest metallurgist had to grudgingly admit was, in spite of its pop, pretty damned awesome:

http://i-mockery.com/minimocks/thriller/default.php

With the occasional exception of a Canfield’s diet chocolate, I don’t drink soda. I don’t like high-fructose corn syrup in any of its presentations--soda, ketchup, candy, you name it. To enjoy soda, I have to cut it with gin or rum or something.

Which is why I've always tried to look on the upside of subsidized ethanol: with demand for corn skyrocketing (albeit due to artificial stimulus), its price is now around the same as that for sugar. Happy sodas are here again!

http://www.bevindustry.com/Articles/Cover_Story/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000514065