We moved into our current house three years ago, and I exulted in our abundant storage space and expansive counter tops, particularly the kitchen which featured a large island. In our previous house I had railed against the piles of clutter that clogged every available flat surface – I had thought a possible solution was sloping counters such that everything would roll off, forcing household members to put away or otherwise dispose of clutter. Despite all sorts of empty drawers waiting to be filled with a “disorderly assemblage” (the dictionary.com definition of clutter), the new counter tops simply exacerbated the problem by attracting even larger volumes of clutter that could loiter around for days. Both Nick and I have home offices, and though I am mostly a solo act, Nick does have clients that stop by time to time. To get to his office above the garage they have to walk through the kitchen and mudroom, which my mother always referred to as clutter-prone “tension zones.” So Nick might call out, “Client arriving in an hour,” and together we would get into our counter attack positions and try and render all flat surfaces visible once again. This generally involves indiscriminately sweeping all the gradoux of the previous week into an empty drawer.
This reminded me of the “tings akoo-moo-late ” drawer in my parent’s household, coined by a wonderful Belgian cleaning lady who used to bring me ceramic figurines and make diminutive cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off. She knew that the cleaning lady was the obvious scapegoat for anything that went missing, so she simply put every “ting” into one “akoo-moo-late” drawer in the kitchen. I wallow in jealous awe when I enter a house with immaculate counter tops and no clutter in sight. I don’t consider myself a slob but it seems to takes almost heroic daily efforts to achieve the immaculate counter top. I feel certain that all these households must have cavernous akoo-moo-late drawers someplace.
Occasionally when I am in a new household I like to take a discrete peek into the fridge to get a quick insight into the guts of a family. For example, you could discover that the family was a Miracle Whip family instead of a real mayo family, or that they had some sort of odd food fetish, such as scads of different jars of olives, or that even the tiniest scrap of food was saved in color coded Tupperware containers. I think that a peek into the akoo-moo-late drawer might be just as enlightening. For years there was a fake throw up and whoopee cushion in our drawer, which gives you some insight on the general tenor of the humor in our household.
Once things drifted into the drawer they seemed to acquire a life of their own and were never thrown out. For example, a dented ping pong ball simply cannot be resuscitated and by any reckoning has outlived its usefulness. Basic household etiquette would demand that you pick up the ball, rotate about 180 degrees and deposit it in the garbage can behind you, but in our household this would never happen. Perhaps we secretly wanted to retaliate by inflicting the same initial heady rush of joy at finding the ball followed by swift disappointment at spotting the flaw and cancelling the ping pong game. If directly asked why the ball wasn’t thrown away, we could simply say, “Oh I thought someone was saving it for something, like for an art project.” But basically, I think that throwing anything out would violate the unspoken sanctuary of the akoo-moo-late drawer. Other items in the drawer might have included:
• A deck of 47 cards
• A pair of scissors, which would be a real find, except that they were left-handed scissors that only my mother could use
• One shoelace with no mate
• A locked padlock with no combination in sight
• A variety of batteries, many of which could be dead but who knew?
• Birthday candles, but some would be broken
• A mechanical pencil with no lead
There were other things that rightfully should have been there, but weren’t. The akoo-moo-late drawer was the only place you could have any hope of finding the pin to inflate the basketball on a Sunday when all the stores were closed, but typically when you needed something it wouldn’t be there. The same thing went for scotch tape, band-aids and non-dried up markers. Extension cords should also have been in the drawer, but if you struck out there, you could always pirate one from one of the lamps in the living room, with resultant downstream cursing and gnashing of teeth as night fell. Scissors were always elusive and it was with a heavy heart that you had to resort to using the left-handed scissors. The one thing that I will say about those scissors is that provided one of my first insights into agony of discrimination.
The car served as a moveable akoo-moo-late zone. Once I came to an abrupt stop and three different kinds of balls rolled into the front seat from God know where, one dangerously wedging itself under the accelerator. One of the balls was a golf ball, which was particularly perplexing since nobody in our family played golf. My first car in the 1970s was a green Volvo, and it didn’t get cleaned out until 1979, when I won a bet and my brother Tony was assigned the job of auto archeologist. I kept his inventory of artifacts, which included:
• An unmailed thank you note to Uncle Fay and Aunt Lootie
• A newspaper clipping about the death of a white rhino in a zoo
• One Frito, good condition
• An unpaid parking ticket
• A Cook County dog rabies tag from 1978, odd since I have never had a dog, and certainly not in Cook County
• A pin to inflate a basketball
I have always considered the car a private place, and thus have minimal compulsion to clean it out, particularly given the spirit of akoo-moo-late sanctuary. However, occasionally someone will ask for a ride. Recently, I drove to a local business meeting where I was meeting some out-of-town clients. Unexpectedly my car was commandeered for transportation to the restaurant for dinner. As everyone piled in, I realized that the back of the car was littered with fertilizer left over from a weekend project. Everyone was a good sport, but I did wonder if fertilizer detracted from their business perception of me as a top flight consultant.
Sadly, several years ago, the “tings akoo-moo-late” drawer disappeared from my parents’ house. At its peak, this house was rollicking with 6 children and various house guests - the akoo-moo-late drawer was thriving. But some 40 years later, the household has winnowed down to just my father and his caretakers, and in some sort of fit of reorganization the contents of the drawer were finally thrown away. So after over 50 years of loyal service the whoopee cushion, fake puke and dented ping pong balls met their final demise. Recently, I inspected the akoo-moo-late situation in our house, which is now spread over several drawers. I was gratified to see that I have the same array of items, but perhaps in an effort to redress some of the frustrations of my childhood, my drawers seem to be better stocked. There are several decks of cards, such that there is a very good chance that one complete deck can always be cobbled together. There appears to be a life time supply of dice. I found a ping pong ball that treads the fine line between blemished and dented, but a few test bounces on the counter suggests that it is very useable. There are several extension cords and an intact set of birthday candles. But there is also:
• A sheet of paper listing numbers that look like a combination to a bicycle lock, but no lock.
• A rubber chicken that when squeezed, exudes some sort of egg from its butt in a gelatinous capsule.
• A novelty plastic kitchen item, intact, that appears to make curly cue French fries - But since the directions are in Italian it has never been used, but certainly won’t be thrown away (regifting is possible).
• A wedge-shaped token that looks like it comes from a Trivial Pursuit game.
• An indescribable squishy plastic thing that might be related to a computer, so I wouldn’t dare throw it away.
Huzzah! The spirit of Akoo-Moo-Late lives on!
For years tidiness has - - - - - - with clutter over the battlefield of counter tops,
But “disorganized assemblage” is a stubborn foe who never sleeps or stops.
The only solution is to designate a “things accumulate - - - - - -” that you can always use
To keep those weird do-hickeys and knick knacks that you are afraid to lose.
Here’s where the whoopee cushion and fake throw up can be eternally stored
Plus enjoying this fascinating collection of family flotsam is an additional - - - - - -.
Click here for answers
Baseball, Earlobes and Running Backward
his summer, a Cubs road game scheduled for Houston got rescheduled in Milwaukee due to Hurricane Ike pounding the Texas coast. Therefore on a beautiful early fall afternoon, Nick and I spontaneously decided to breeze up to Brewer’s field rather than trying to slog our way through traffic to the friendly confines of Wrigley field.
I hadn’t been to a professional base ball game for a good 20 years, but I actually know a lot about baseball, mostly learned from grandfather in the 1960s as we sat and watched the Cubs play after big Sunday lunches. I remember that I stunned a high school baseball coach when I was able to explain the nuances of dropped third strike, infield fly rule and the fact that the batter has to make an honest effort to avoid being hit by a pitch. But I had also had learned that without a time constraint, baseball could be maddeningly slow and you needed to have other diversions handy. Typically this was a nap, waking up just in time for a dramatic ninth inning. But different strategies were needed for the live event. Before we left for Milwaukee, I frantically searched for my old baseball mitt – unfortunately unsuccessfully. Besides being eagerly ready for a fly ball, you could also buy a program and keep score professionally, which my mother had taught me many years ago (why do you suppose that a strikeout is a “K”), but there were no Cubs/Houston programs for this hastily rescheduled game in Milwaukee. Fortunately, I had remembered to bring my binoculars and knew that I could probably while the way the hours by people-watching.
We settled into our seats along the third base line along with about 20,000 other Cubs fans, all presumably joining us in playing hooky. The man sitting next to us looked a bit sheepish as he arrived straight from his office wearing his coat and tie. As I scanned the crowd for good people watching, I was transported back 30 years to a Cubs game that I went to with my younger brother Tim. We were in the midst of a summer long discussion about ear lobes – which Tim had generally categorized as either “droopers” or “connectors.” For example, statues of Buddhas all have exceptionally long droopers, since this is supposed to symbolize a wise man who is “all hearing.” As a modern point of reference, Lyndon Baines Johnson had pendulous lobes that seemed to get droopier every year. Another prototypical drooper is John Madden, although I must warn you that you have to catch his lobes at the beginning of Sunday night football game because they are swaddled in headphones for the rest of the game. But if John put his chin into his hand, it looks like both his thumb and index finger could touch his lobes. There are no celebrity connectors that I know of (it turns out that droopers are a genetically dominant trait), but connectors are characterized by an ear lobe that is fixed to the face along the length of the jaw line. At that particular game, Tim and I could hardly contain our excitement when right across the aisle from us we spotted a spectacular set of droopers sitting next to equally spectacular set of connectors. I have no other memories of that game, but that is often the case with baseball games – there is plenty of time to do other things and the baseball game becomes an occasionally entertaining backdrop.
How would you categorize that useless blob handing from your - - -?
Does Johnsonian or Maddenesque come to mind, or even chandelier?
- - - they so long that they swing and sway as you begin to dance?
Or could Lilliputians host a picnic on this vast and fleshy expanse?
Look at a Buddha statue from a bygone - - - do your lobes look the same?
If any of these are true, you’re automatically in the Drooper Hall of Fame.
Click here for answers
Baseball
The people watching was mostly unsuccessful, so I turned to the baseball game. There was not much going on – scoreless in the third inning – so I decided that I would intently watch one individual player. In a prior Cubs game, I had decided to focus my attention on the second baseman Ryne Sandberg. It must have been a low scoring game, since even though Ryne batted near the top of the batting order, he was only up to bat 4 times in the entire game. He never got on base. In the field, no ball was ever hit to him, so for the entire game all he did was stand around and swing the bat a couple of times – he never had to run and I doubt if he cracked a sweat during the entire game, all the while earning tens of thousands of dollars. For this game, I chose to focus on the Cubs’ left fielder, Alfonso Soriano. He ran around a little bit, mostly to and from the outfield, caught a few balls, and maybe got a hit, but the captivating action was how many times he adjusted his crotch – in fact he did it constantly. It wasn’t as if “things” had gotten disorganized because he had sprinted or made a dramatic slide, he felt compelled to rearrange even if he was standing perfectly still. In the business world, this would be akin to the presenter squirming and tugging on his crotch before every new power point slide. The other notable quirk was that Alfonso, as well as most of the other players, were constantly chewing or spitting - tobacco, gum, sunflower seeds or liquids – baseball players are truly oral folk. I spent some time looking at the dugout with my binoculars and was horrified to see how untidy and slippery it looked.
It was now about the 6th inning, the Cubs were ahead, and the Cubs pitcher, Ryan Dempster, even had a no hitter going, which was quite remarkable since his team mate Carlos Zambrano had pitched a no hitter the night before. But still there was plenty of time for pleasurable day dreaming. I have never cared that passionately about baseball one way or another – but there are certainly many that get all misty eyed talking about how baseball is American’s favorite pastime. The word “pass time” would seem to undermine the image of baseball of a demanding sport, but it is probably America’s oldest organized sport and as such has contributed to the English vernacular:
• Can of corn (easy fly ball)
• Texas leaguer (short fly ball that falls in for a hit)
• Frozen rope (hard hit line drive)
• Ducks on the pond (base runners)
• Dying quail (similar to a Texas leaguer, but droopier)
• Ball park estimate/figure (based on the fact that baseball parks are all different sizes)
• Can’t hit the broadside of a barn (incompetent pitcher)
• Stick a fork in him (similar to testing meat to see if it is done, to assess whether or not the pitcher should be removed)
• Ride the pines (be a bench warmer [in itself a baseball expression])
• Throw someone a curve
• Step up to the plate
• Out in left field/come from left field
• Play hard ball
• Be a switch hitter
• Touch all bases
• Right off the bat
• Keep your eye on the ball
• Out of your league/bush league
• Bat one thousand, etc, etc.
In fact, the most recent 2008 edition of Dickson’s Baseball Dictionary has expanded their listings to 10,000 baseball expressions. I just ordered a copy.
With linguistic musings exhausted and the no hitter gone by the 7th inning, I looked for new entertainment. I began to further ponder on my great idea to improve baseball. I first began to think about this when I was a slow moving right handed batter in our ladies softball league. I was always jealous of those left handers who were at least two steps closer to first base, and thought this could possibly account for the fact that I was routinely thrown out as I lumbered down to first base. Our genial coach pointed out that I could best address this situation by becoming a switch hitter. Given my limited right handed skills, I knew that this wasn’t going to work, so I came up with a plan to have a game where you would run the bases in reverse. Let those left handers run that extra distance to third base!
This did not seem to be that much more preposterous than the designated hitter discrepancy between the American and National league, which has many subtle, but major impacts on the way baseball is played. In the American league, pitchers are not pulled for pinch hitters and the line up of batters is much more formidable. Why not throw another curveball and run the bases clockwise for a change? While left handed pitchers are at a premium, there are limited opportunities for left handed infielders – with the exception of the first baseman. Left handers are mostly delegated to the outfield. This would all be changed if you ran to third base first. Both the short stop and the 2nd baseman would almost have to be left handed in order to have the optimal angle to throw it to third base for a routine ground out.
This also lead me to consider that in the right handed dominated world, the natural tendency is to run counterclockwise – for example, all races in the Olympics are run counterclockwise, which disadvantages left handers/footers in general. So maybe every four years they should run the races in the opposite direction. Whoever invented the clock made the seemingly arbitrary and counter-intuitive decision to have the clocks run from left to right. And then why do we write from left to right – certainly there are many languages that read from right-to-left, notably Hebrew and other Middle Eastern languages, but clocks all run the same direction.
So many unanswered questions, but I ran out of time. There it was, the last fly ball to Soriano and the Cubs won, essentially burying the Houston Astros on their way to winning the pennant. We stood up, brushed the peanut shells off our clothes, kicked the drink cups under the seats and made our way to the exits. Can’t beat a beautiful afternoon at the old ball park!
- - - - - - - me a place in the baseball Hall of Fame,
Because I have a great idea to spice up the game,
This year, why not run the bases in - - - - - - -,
Run clockwise instead and get to third base first!
Even the fan who - - - - - - - the game knows it is an idea worth trying,
Because baseball is slow and boring and fan interest is dying.
Click here for answers
My Brother Charlie
y parents were married in 1950 and three and a half years later they had three children, my older brother Ralph, me, and my younger brother Charlie. When Charlie was around two years old he developed a very high fever and was rushed off to the hospital. The doctor told my parents he had polio. Sometime around that time it also became apparent that he was not learning to talk and everyone seemed to assume that even though he no had no other physical problems, his inability to talk was related to polio. Throughout my childhood and into adulthood when asked about my family I would say “my brother Charlie had polio and that’s why he doesn’t talk.” I remember my mother saying in retrospect that she was always so grateful that Charlie was undemanding as an infant, and could sit in his own world for hours in his playpen. Although it seems so obvious in retrospect, I never heard my parents mention the word autistic. I had been so ingrained in the polio/doesn’t talk scenario that I didn’t realize that he was autistic until several years after I had completed medical school. The sad truth was I never really thought about it.
Part of the reason that I never questioned Charlie’s polio is that when I was about 8 or 9 Charlie moved to Lochland, a residential facility in Rochester, New York, and there was probably a good 20 year period when I never saw him. I have very hazy memories of Charlie before he moved out; I don’t recall wondering why he didn’t go to school with me, why he didn’t have friends over, or what he did all day. Recently we got our old family movies turned into DVDs and I was surprised to see Charlie totally mixing in with the rest of us. (Of course the movies had no audio). There was Charlie looking for Easter eggs wearing shorts pants, a sport coat and a bow tie, Charlie riding a tricycle, and blowing out candles on a birthday cake. I cannot even imagine the growing anguish of my parents as they realized that even though Charlie was so normal in many ways, he would require life long care.
For several years when Charlie was first at Lochland he would come home for summer vacation. This was great because my mother always rented a trampoline for the summer that we could all use. I remember Charlie jumping by himself for hours, sometimes suddenly yelling the syllable Geee (with a hard G)!! and then laughing at some secret joke. He was also a good singer and could wordlessly sing various show tunes my mother would send him. This was also the time when we would watch the Ed Sullivan show on TV, which often seemed to feature odd circus acts from Eastern Europe. One that I remember was a bunch of guys wearing white stirrup pants with suspenders, who balanced spinning plates on the tops of long poles. Well, Charlie seemed to have the same skills. He could jump on the trampoline while twirling a wet washcloth on his index finger. No one else in the family could do it. He could also do the same thing with a Frisbee, and I think that he was pretty good at a hula hoop. Charlie was also an enthusiastic eater. I remember that he would grab a canister of Redi-Whip from the icebox, squirt it directly into his mouth and then laugh. It was obvious that he had a pretty good sense of humor.
One of the great mysteries of Charlie’s mind was that although he could not communicate he understood everything and was perfectly capable of doing household chores, such as emptying and loading the dishwasher. One day my mother asked Charlie to take out the garbage. We had two garbage cans outside; one was an incinerator at the edge of the driveway and the other one was a regular garbage can right out the back door. Charlie seemed to mistake the incinerator for the garbage can and lit the garbage can on fire. I remember the day distinctly. I was getting dressed for school, and in fact was wearing a pink and yellow candy-striped pair of culottes that I had made myself that perfectly matched my pink sweater. I looked out the bathroom window to see the fireman raising an axe as the flames licked up the side of the house. There were pools of water in the driveway. My father was wearing his going to work clothes which included his felt hat and my mother was standing in the bathrobe she used to wear while she made us all breakfast. Although they were standing with their backs to me, I could see their body language of deep sorrow.
After this incident, my parents decided that coming home to visit was too disruptive for Charlie. While they visited him four times a year, I don’t think any of my siblings saw him for decades. Now I wonder why my parents did not take one of us on each of their visits to Charlie, but on the other hand I am also ashamed to say that I never asked to go. Charlie moved to different residential facilities along the way and spent some time in Florida. When that facility collapsed, my parents even tried to set up their own facility in Florida, called “Great Days.” I noticed these efforts with only passing interest, and I am even more ashamed that I did not pitch in to help on a daily basis. It was very clear that my parents loved Charlie and that he was part of our family, but I think that my parents were trying not to burden us with his care. Perhaps they knew deep in their hearts that it would be our turn soon enough. Ultimately Charlie ended up back at Lochland. Finally one August about four years ago I made my first visit to see Charlie at Lochland. It was the last visit for my mother, whose heroic efforts to compensate for her eroding mind were beginning to show cracks. Shortly after this visit, Alzheimer’s disease overwhelmed her and she never saw Charlie again.
Lochland is housed in a magnificent estate overlooking Seneca Lake, one of New York’s Finger Lakes. As we walked up the steps, I began to hear odd noises - some yelling, inappropriate laughing and then Charlie’s characteristic Gee! Charlie came up and hugged my mother briefly saying, “Muma, muma, muma.” I said, “Hi Charlie, I’m your sister Bobbie,” and gave him an awkward hug, in part because I was startled to notice that Charlie and I are virtually identical twins. This was something that I did not appreciate in all the photos that we had of Charlie, and it was eerie looking into his faraway eyes to see a sort of warped version of myself. Charlie was clearly pleased to see my mother since he knew that he would get some treats, but he soon he wandered off, retreating into his own world. We were left standing in the huge living room of this old mansion surrounded by other residents and staff of the house.
I took a deep breath. Glancing at my watch, I realized that our visit was less than 15 minutes old and it was already clear that we had to start killing time. I turned to the woman next to me and struck up a conversation. I had a such pleasant chat with Cameron that I assumed that she was one of the staff people. All of a sudden she leaned over to me and said, “Wait right here, I want to give you a present.” She rushed back and presented me with a load of hangers that she had decorated (sort of) with different colored yarn. Oops, first mistake, turns out that she was a resident. There was another sloppily dressed man standing awkwardly in the corner who looked like a resident. Later on I realized I was making dangerous assumptions when I saw him driving the Lochland van.
That morning I met with Charlie’s psychiatrist and for the first time I formally heard that Charlie was autistic. Later that day we met Charlie’s “advocate” a woman named Charlene who was supposed to be especially attentive to Charlie’s needs. My parents had been singing the praises of Charlene for several years since she would frequently take Charlie to her home for dinner or even on vacation with her family. Now that I belatedly knew that Charlie was autistic, it didn’t make complete sense to me to change his routine and environment. Sure enough, Charlene would report that they had a great outing, but that Charlie had broken something, like her computer, and then Charlene would send my parents a bill. Charlene suggested that we take Charlie out for dinner to the Sizzler steakhouse. This seemed equally crazy – why would you take someone with virtually no impulse control and an infinite appetite to an all-you-can-eat buffet? This was my first initiation into the sandwich generation and it was the most stressful meal of my life. Charlie would continually try to slip out of the booth and hit the dessert line again and again, and then yell when I tried to stop him. My mother wasn’t sure where she was either; she would get up but then not remember where we were sitting and I would lead her back to our booth. At one point I was retrieving Charlie when he startled another diner by grabbing his lemon meringue pie off his plate and then laughing mischievously. Charlene was trying to show off how well she controlled Charlie by continually jabbing her index finger into her forehead to get his attention but this strategy clearly wasn't working. It was merely incidental that the food was predictably wretched.
The next day was Charlie’s birthday - I think that it was his 50th birthday. Charlene had arranged a birthday party at her house, inviting all the residents of Lochland plus a variety of other disabled adults. Charlene’s husband was one of these enviable guys who could fix anything, but the consequence of this great talent was that his yard was strewn with appliances – there were dishwashers, lawn mowers, cars and an RV all in various stages of repair or disrepair. Charlene had really gone all out and made many different casseroles, all of which seemed to have mayonnaise as the principle ingredient. She had laid them all outside and as the bright sun relentlessly beat down I began to see oil pooling everywhere and the mayonnaise getting that nasty gelatinous look. The yard was now filled with people either in wheelchairs or staggering around, Charlie had no clue that this party was for him and just wanted to eat the dripping and drooping cake that was on display, I had lost track of my mother and I didn’t want to make the same blunder of mistaking a staff person for a resident.
I was utterly exhausted when we finally reached the soothing, relaxed atmosphere of the airport. We happened to fly over Buffalo and I got my first glimpse of Niagara falls. I leaned over to point this out to my mother, who only noticed the fluffy clouds and commented that she thought it was odd that there would be so many snow drifts this time of year. I also saw that when she tried to do the crossword puzzle she just added extra boxes if her word didn’t fit. I thought about all the times that she had made this trip by herself and how she had somehow assimilated all this sadness into her life, and how she had spared the rest of her children from this burden. I vowed that I would not view my care of Charlie as burden, but consider it an opportunity to spend time with my brother in a beautiful part of the country.
I have had some missteps in the past five years, but by and large I would have to say that I am learning visiting Charlie, if you don't mind having your heart broken from time to time. I have discovered a National Wildlife Refuge some 20 minutes away that has fabulous birdwatching. I took Charlie on a walk there on my last visit, and even though he peed in the middle of the trail, I was actually happy to realize that he was smart enough to know that was acceptable in the woods. There is a great yarn store in downtown Geneva that I always stop by. We no longer take Charlie out for dinner, but go to the grocery store and let him pick out something special to have back in his apartment. One time we made a cake together and he did a masterful job of licking the bowl, then washing it and putting it back on the shelf. Charlie loves watching the movie “Sound of Music,” and occasionally when he sings you can catch snippets of “Edelweiss.” One night as we were watching he curled up on the couch and put his head in my lap. I gave my 55 year old look alike brother a head rub just the way our mother did so many years ago.
What's in a Sandwich
When someone says sandwich, I used to think of peanut butter and jelly,
Or maybe pastrami on rye from the corner - - - -.
Or the Earl of Sandwich who spent - - - - days in luxury’s comfortable lap.
His friend Captain Cook made him famous by putting his islands on the map.
But now mostly I think that sandwich is the generation that I'm currently in.
And I - - - - if I told you that sometimes this doesn't stretch me a bit thin.
