The Day and Night I Tried To Be a Grown Up – Part One

I went on a business trip to Minneapolis with Len, my boss.  He was one of the partners in the CPA firm I worked for right out of college.  In fact, I was only one month into the job, and two months out of college when we went on this trip.  I was still in “real world” denial.  This was my first business trip.

When we met at the airport, Len asked if I had lunch yet, which I didn’t, and since we had time, he suggested we have lunch at one of the restaurants in the terminal.  We each got a steak sandwich.

Len and I had nearly nothing in common.  We were both Caucasian males, and from there, the differences branched dramatically.  He was in his fifties which, to me at the time, was pretty old.  He loved elevator music on his office radio all day, he loved wearing suits even when he didn’t have to, and his idea of a wild day at the office for employee morale was showing us slides of his trip to Hilton Head. 

And he was rich.  Filthy rich.  He made a lot of money from the partnership.  When his father passed away five years earlier, he left Len half a fortune.  When his mother died three years after that, he got the other half.  He bought his new Mercedes Benz W123 luxury sedan on a whim when he passed the dealership, and paid the full price with his checkbook.  He also loved to tell people that.

As we ate our steak sandwich, Len kept talking as I was trying to watch the White Sox highlights on the TV behind the bar.  “Mark, as far as airport food goes, this steak sandwich is good.  Not great, not bad, not even average.  Yes, I would say it’s good, and I would bet that 9 out of 10 people would agree that it’s a GOOD sandwich.”

“Um… Yeah Len, I’d say it’s a GOOD sandwich.”

“See what I mean?”  He enjoyed his next bite proudly.

“Mark, have you ever had the Prime Rib at the Winnetka Yacht Club?”

When I looked at his face, I was surprised to see he wasn’t kidding.

“You know, Len, I don’t think so.”  I realized he grew up going to places like yacht clubs while, for my siblings and me, the great treat was going to White Castle in Blue Island on Sunday afternoons.  I considered asking him, with the same tone as his, if he has ever had Ham and Swiss at Arby’s, but I couldn’t even imagine him laughing at a comment that wasn’t his.

We got on the plane, and our seats were together.  I tried to look out the window and enjoy looking at Wisconsin, while Len told me about the great mistake he made two years ago.  He booked a trip to Colorado, a group trip where you explore old silver mining trails throughout The Rockies.  The passenger truck that took the group up these very rugged roads had wooden seats with seatbelts.  Len underwent hemorrhoid surgery less than three weeks before that trip, thinking that this was enough time to heal.  It wasn’t.  He told me many details about the pain and the practical difficulties of taking this trip much too soon.

All at the same time, I wanted to laugh, to throw up, to jump out of the plane, and/or to throw Len out of the plane.  But mostly, I thought about how the people in the seats behind us would be able to tell their friends for weeks about the weirdo in front of them on their flight to Minneapolis.

<<< Part 2 later this week >>>

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Reach me at thinwizzyfit@gmail.com, and feel welcome to link up with me through Facebook (Mark Wierzbinski).

The Fine Night That Big Ray Didn’t Kill Me

I had a random thought today from 30 years ago, and I thought I’d share.  I thought about  Big Ray.  I wouldn’t say he was a close friend at all – he was just a guy I knew in college – Northern Illinois University.  He crosses my mind from time to time because he was unlike anyone else I’ve ever known.  And believe me, I’ve known some strange ones.  Yes, I know, birds of a feather and all that.

He was on another floor of our dorm.  About  6’7″,  310 pounds.  Scary.  He wore a t-shirt that, in very large letters, said F-CK OFF, only with the “U”.  I think it might have been against dorm rules, but nobody had the courage to tell him.  Now, usually, I like to be liked.  But in Big Ray’s case, it actually scared me a little that he liked me.  He’d call out my nickname “Wizard” and punch me in the shoulder…hard.   I felt like you might feel if a local grizzly took a liking to you…you go through each day hoping not to make a mistake that pisses him off.  But I made it through the year without bear claw wounds, and we parted ways.

Two years later I was staggering past an apartment building late on a Saturday night.  I’d had a couple of beers…well, a little more than the literal “couple”.  I was a Stroh’s guy back then.  There was a party going on in the little patio area of one of the apartments.  I slurred out a little “Hello” as I walked past. 

“Hi,” I heard back.  “Wanna beer?” said the gentle voice of a long haired guy with a cowboy hat on.  He  convinced me. 

So I grabbed a cup, pumped the keg, had a seat, and grabbed the guitar that someone had left out on the patio.  Some chords are easy to play when you’ve been drinking, some aren’t.  The chords to Neil Young’s “Sugar Mountain” are fairly easy, so I started:

♫ Oh to live on, Sugar Mountain,

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can’t be twenty, on Sugar Mountain,

Though you’re thinking that you’re leaving there too soon,

You’re leaving there too soon. ♫

I didn’t know these people but, when you start singing and playing guitar to a bunch of people who have been enjoying Cuervo Gold and fine Colombian… or beer… all night, you become popular very fast.  I liked it.

♫ It’s so noisy at the fair, but all your friends are there,

And the candy floss you had, and your mother and your dad. ♫

Then everybody started singing:

♫ Oh to live on, Sugar Mountain,

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can’t be twenty, on Sugar…….♫

All of a sudden I heard a voice that blew out my eardrums, rattled my bones, and almost made me break the e-string.   “WIZZZZAAARRRRDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!”

I looked inside the apartment and saw, standing haloed in front of the bright kitchen light, the silhouette of a Frankenstein.  I knew the voice.

“Big Ray?”

He walked over and gave me a hug.  Luckily I handed over the guitar to the cowboy just in time to save it from becoming an armful of splinters.

“Come inside, Wizard.  I want you to meet my girlfriend!”

Yes, you know exactly what I was anticipating.  A lady with in a flowing robe, with an ashen white face and blood colored lipstick, with gravity defying hair on her head.  But, much to my surprise, she was quite attractive.

Big Ray put one of his huge arms around her, and one around me, and with a big smile and an intense stare, asked me “So Wizard, what do you think of her?”

I felt the moment coming at me that I had avoided two years ago…the moment I would piss off Big Ray.

My best survival skill, cleverness, rescued me.  “Big Ray, she’s beautiful, and I can tell how much she’s into you.  You two are a perfect couple.  Right on, man!” and I high fived him.

“You wanna kiss her, Wiz?”

Gulp!

 ”You said she’s beautiful, so you wanna kiss her, right?”

 ”Well, Big Ray, no, because she’s your gir….”

 ”You don’t like her!”  

I began to sweat.  ”Sure!  Sure I do, Big Ray.  But…”

 ”Then kiss her.”

 I looked at her and she gave me a little nod that told me it would be ok with her if it was ok with me.  Actually, I told myself at that moment that I should enjoy the kiss, because there was a better than average chance that Big Ray was testing me, and that kissing her would be the last thing I would do in my life.

 I kissed her.  It was nice.  I didn’t feel a giant fist come crashing down on my head.  Instead, I heard Big Ray’s happy voice behind me blurt out “F-ckin’ A!”

 After that, all was happy, but my survival instincts were still whispering to me “Wiz, get out of here.”

 ”Big Ray, I gotta go, but this was a great party.”

 ”Wiz, wanna beer for the walk home?”   Yeah, I said, that would be great.  Since they were out of cups, he dumped out a half jar of pickles, washed the jar out, and filled it with beer.

 On the walk home, I had to throw the jar of beer away.  It’s not that it tasted like pickles, but I saw a car coming and I knew if it was a cop, I would get busted.  Turns out that it WAS a cop, but the jar was safely disposed of, and home I went. 

So, if you’re sending your kids to college, share this story with them, let them learn to be just like me!

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Reach me at thinwizzyfit@gmail.com, and feel welcome to link up with me through Facebook (Mark Wierzbinski).

A Gym Rat’s Proposed Amendment to the Ten Commandments

I’ll begin this post with an apology to those readers who may be offended  by my comments.  But, as many people have shared their beliefs with me over the years, I hope you’ll just see this as one personal trainer, not a preacher by any stretch, taking a few moments to share his.  And even if parts make you smile, as I hope they do, I’m not mocking anything or anyone, because although presented light heartedly, I’m dead serious about my conclusions.

OK, here we go….

For many of us in our beliefs, God handed down to us, in sometimes painfully clear language, ten rules (or commandments) to let us know exactly what is expected of us.  Why did He do this?  Because He created us, He knows us well, and he knows our propensity to break them.  It’s human nature to break the commandments.  We never have to tell our kids “Don’t you dare eat the rest of that broccoli, leave some for the rest of us.”  But those brownies?  Oh yeah!  So, because I am very interested in human nature, I’d like to look at the commandments with human nature in mind.

And it struck me that one of these just doesn’t belong with the other nine, because following it is right in line with human nature.  You’ll see.  So at the end, as a personal trainer, I will propose another commandment to take the place of the questionable one.

Let’s take a brief look at each of them, in a slightly non-traditional order.

You shall have no other gods before Me.  You know, these other gods are all the little voices in our heads that Freud told us about.  The voices that can’t deal with the fact that we are bad and hurt someone, so they convince us “It’s OK in this case, because…”  – To break this commandment is Human Nature.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image–any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  Not so much totem poles and dashboard statues… but the material things in our real lives.  Cars.  TV’s.  Bigger houses.  And of course…Money!  - To break this is Human Nature.

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.  My father swore a lot when I was little, and so I thought this commandment was going to get nail him come judgment day.  But now I see it differently.  I see it as us claiming that God is on our side against their fellow man/woman.  I smile when baseball players look and point upward in a thank you gesture after a home run.  We need to know that the ultimate Dude is cheering for us to beat other bastard.   - To break this is Human Nature.

Honor your father and your mother.  Have you ever been a teenager?  Do you have one now?  Oh, once we young ‘uns find ma and pa’s hot buttons, “honoring” doesn’t always rule the day.  – To break this is Human Nature.

You shall not murder.  All I’ll say here is look at human history.  – To break this is Human Nature.

You shall not commit adultery.  - Waaayyy too often – the old grass is greener theory… – To break this is Human Nature.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.  My hunch is that this is why so many people are unhappy and frustrated all the time.  This “covet” thing is like high blood pressure — it’s a silent killer.  We always want more, it’s rule number one in economics and behavioral psychology, and the people around us are constant reminders of what we DON’T have.  This one is SO Human Nature that I think our species could reasonably be named Homo Sapiens Covetus.  – To break this is Human Nature.

You shall not steal.  Not a real big leap from “covet” to “steal”, huh?  – To break this is Human Nature.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.  ”Hi neighbor.  Listen, adulterating with your wife was great.  And you know that hundred dollar bill that’s missing from your wallet?  At first I just coveted…but then I figured since I already broke THAT commandment, I just went ahead and took it.”  So, when you break another commandment, this one kind of becomes the lime after the tequila.  – To break this is Human Nature.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  If everybody at birth was told by God “You only have to choose and follow ONE commandment”, could you imagine the line at this booth?  It’s a commandment that says relax, take it easy, enjoy the day, put your butt on the couch and whatever you do… DON’T work.”  Sure, we break this one from time to time, but usually because we HAVE to, not WANT to.  We LIKE relaxing.  So it makes me wonder, how did this one get in there?  Human nature tells us to conserve energy, right in line with this commandment.  So it doesn’t belong.   – To break this commandment is NOT Human Nature.

THEREFORE, I propose taking the Sabbath commandment and attaching it to the first one, resulting in “You shall have no gods before me, and you shall remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

This frees us up for a new tenth commandment.  As a personal trainer and gym rat, I propose:

“You shall show your appreciation to God by honoring your body, which was a gift from Him.”  It is written that we were created directly by His hands, in His own image.  If the body is entrusted to accompany the soul during its stay in this material world, and to carry out His will…then I have to believe that we’re supposed to honor it and take great care of it.  And to do otherwise would be wrong.

Eat healthy, stop your unhealthy addictions, manage your stress, and exercise regularly.

The late Olympic runner Steve Prefontaine said “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”  Now, he didn’t offend anybody with this quote, because he didn’t say this should be one of the ten commandments.  I went ahead and made that my job.

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Reach me at thinwizzyfit@gmail.com, and feel welcome to link up with me through Facebook (Mark Wierzbinski).