Odd Man Out

The Tao of Steve

Steve Kissing — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:00:00 GMT

Winners never quit, and quitters never win. So said Vince Lombardi, anyway. It’s a tidy adage that may resonate in the locker room at halftime, but not, I would argue, in the broader arena of life. Often, quitting is exactly the thing to do, even in sports. I should know. I have bailed on a lot of things over my 40-plus years, sports included, and I couldn’t be happier. In fact, I contend that quitting has made a winner of me. And it can do the same for you, too.

In my opinion, the best thing to quit—with the possible exception of chewing tobacco—is a job. Assuming, of course, that you have another gig lined up (or that you’re independently wealthy), quitting jobs is a blast. In high school, I quit my job at McDonald’s after just two days. That was enough time behind the counter squirting ketchup and mustard on top of hamburgers, while simultaneously deep-frying fish patties, to figure out that I’d rather do just about anything else. I even took a job at a small business on Main Street that included killing rats that made their way into the store from the back alley. I may be doing battle with rats, I reasoned, but at least I don’t have to wear that dorky McDonald’s uniform with the even dorkier paper hat. Eventually, quitting both of those jobs freed me up to help man the concession stands at Elder High School’s football, soccer, and basketball games. Slinging soda and soft pretzels at the games wasn’t working so much as socializing. And this quitter scored some points of his own providing free refills to friends.

As an adult, I’ve quit five or six jobs, each one leading to something better. There’s something very empowering about telling someone to “take this job and shove it.” Or, ahem, words to that effect. I suppose that’s because many of us—at one time or another, and to one degree or another—have felt constrained, unappreciated, even abused by a job and its unique set of circumstances. Also, given that we spend the bulk of our waking hours on the clock, quitting one gig for another is a fabulous way to remind ourselves that we, not our employer, are the masters of our own destinies (though some spouses and a variety of mortgage companies may beg to differ).

Quitting a job is particularly rewarding when you’re leaving not only for greener pastures but to distance yourself from an abusive, psychotic, or deranged boss. I once reported to a guy who considered it a blessing of yours to have the good fortune to work for him. He liked to remind you how smart he was and, by implication, how dumb you were. Turns out he was a very bright guy, but only in some ways. When it came to interpersonal behavior, he had all the grace and self-awareness of a 12-year-old boy at his first mixer. And that was on his better days.

When I told him that I was leaving the company, he was floored. He assumed that I had a terminal disease. As he saw it, you could not possibly be idiotic enough to forgo the chance to warm yourself in the glow of his nearly divine aura unless you were going off to die. Even if I were leaving to work at the right hand of Steve Jobs it would have still confounded my boss, who thought himself not a demigod but, yea verily, a god. Whenever I need a little pick-me-up, I replay that resignation in my mind and smile. Big. In part because my next job not only paid more, but the guy I reported to was even smarter than the god-man, and actually benevolent.

One of my most stunning “quits” happened in high school. I was a champion cross-country runner at Elder, winning both the freshman and reserve Greater Cincinnati League championships, the latter by an 11-second margin. Neither victory was a total surprise because I had been training since sixth grade, running as much as 50 miles a week before I even arrived at Elder in the fall of 1978. Despite thousands of miles run in the hopes of one day contributing to a state championship for the Purple Panthers, I quit the team several weeks after my reserve league victory. Coach Lombardi, or at least his spirt, was disgusted, I am sure.

I actually quit the team twice, first telling the then-assistant principal and team chaplain, Father Thomas Kuhn, and then my coach, Steve Spencer. They were both shocked. While no one predicted the Olympics were in my future, I was certainly a contender on the local and state levels. Besides, sports rule in high school, and here I was, the captain of the reserve squad, quitting weeks after our championship season. I could practically see the thought bubbles rising above their heads (even Fr. Kuhn’s): WTH! My teammates were also shocked. Was I hurt? No. Did I want to try a different sport, like swimming? Nope. There were a host of reasons why I quit but the biggest was that I wanted to get more involved in my parish youth group and the Catholic Youth Organization. I began hanging out with guys and (mostly) girls from around the city, planning retreats, dances, and youth conventions. This meant an end to running around Price Hill with other skinny dudes in tube socks, but it signaled the dawning of a new era—one mostly spent staring at girls in tube tops. It was a definite extracurricular upgrade.

And yet, of the many things I have quit, one stands out above them all. In fact, I don’t expect any other future “quit” to even come close to matching the personal satisfaction and growth that this one continues to deliver. Which is why I’ve become a somewhat passionate advocate for quitting religion. That’s right, religion. I realize this will shock and even offend some of you. Reader mail quadrupled after I wrote about losing my religion in this very column three years ago. Let me tell you, hell hath no fury quite like religious nuts confronted with nonreligious nuts like me.

To be fair, many of those who wrote me were sympathetic to my position, but I also heard from more than a few true believers who were not. In their view, to say “no” to religion is akin to denying that two plus two equals four. So convinced are they that the Bible (or whatever holy book they claim) is not only right but painfully clear and self-evidently true, they get totally flummoxed when someone chooses not to take the Kierkegaardian leap of faith alongside them. And what drives them even battier is when someone—like me—makes the leap and then, after having a good, long look around, chooses to leap back to the squishier ground of atheism, where it’s more comfortable to lie back and count the stars and ponder the meaning of life.

I get the believers’ disbelief in religion-quitters like myself. Hearing someone say that they dumped your religion is sort of like hearing someone say they dumped your daughter, son, or best friend. It’s hard to grasp why anyone could possibly see anything less than fabulous in someone—or something—you adore and have invested so much of yourself in. But because it also quietly calls into question your own judgment, your own ability to see the world as it truly is, the act of quitting it is subtly, yet powerfully, threatening. Maybe that’s why no one likes a quitter.

I have nothing against religion, per se. If it works for you, as it apparently does for billions of people, then knock yourself out. While I have left this part of my life behind, I believe there is a lot of beauty, poetry, and truth in the Catholic Church. But that doesn’t mean the church is right about everything, even when it comes to such fundamental theological underpinnings as the divinity of Christ or the concept that the communion wafer really becomes, at the priest’s blessing, the literal flesh of God. Transubstantiation is a beautiful—albeit odd, and when you think about it, sort of disgusting—bit of dogma, but one I no longer choose to swallow.

Some suggest that quitting religion is certain to make the ultimate loser of me, roasting me in hell through all eternity with mass murderers like Pol Pot, scammers like Bernie Madoff, and other religion quitters like Bill Maher. Thing is, I don’t believe in hell, either. I’ve quit that, too! Having given the heave-ho to both heaven and hell, I’m much happier. Somehow, the world makes more sense to me without a God (and without a Satan, too), and that clarity helps me get through the day, particularly when absorbing the (mostly bad) news. For thousands of years the brightest minds have tried to reconcile the suffering of innocent people with a caring, loving God. The attempts have been impressive and certainly genuine, but in my estimation they come up short in every case. Rather than embrace all the excuses made for God and why it appears He gave up on us, I chose to give up on Him.

Without religion, I’m free of the burden of reconciling all the great faiths while still having to choose one over the others—or worse, while having to explain why all religions are “good” but mine is, well, clearly superior. I find the arguments people make for why theirs is the one true religion and everyone else’s is second-class, if not downright evil, unconvincing. And sort of silly. It reminds me of two people arguing over which dog breed is better; they each behave politely but clearly think the other is completely insane.

There’s something liberating about having to accept the fact that we don’t know a damn thing about what, if anything, happens after we die, despite the competing claims from competing holy men and their holy books. The upside, then, is that when we quit life, or life quits us, we’ll be surprised—assuming, of course, that we’re conscious of anything.

So, while I’m still conscious, I just wanted to tell you that this is my final Odd Man Out column. After nearly six years of sharing my perspective, such as it is, on matters ranging from the quirky (my peculiar appetite) to the mundane (my love of camping) and the farcical (my foot-in-mouth syndrome) to the monumental (my curiosity about our shared destiny and fate), I’ve decided to call it quits. Whether you’re reading this column for the first time or you’re a regular follower, I thank you. A writer without readers is a writer unfulfilled.

My byline will still appear now and then in this magazine and on its website, as I take on a new, yet-to-be defined role. Whatever it may be, I’m already looking forward to quitting.

Feeling odd or left out? Contact the author via his website: stevekissing.com.

Photograph by Kevin Miyazaki
Originally published in the May 2011 issue.

I Scream for Justin

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:31:00 GMT

The Skyline Chili restaurant at Fourth and Sycamore was packed with Reds fans enjoying dinner before the team squared off with the Cleveland Indians. Even though I find sitting through nine innings something worthy of Amnesty International’s attention, I wished I was going to the game. But no, I had something even more painful awaiting me: Justin Bieber, the 16-year-old pop phenom, performing at U.S. Bank Arena. I ate my four-way while my teen daughter, Maggie, and her friend (who I’ll call Jenny), sat opposite me, eating their cheese coneys and texting friends who were living vicariously through them. It was going to be a long night. I ordered a beer and sipped it slowly, knowing it was my one and only for the evening but fantasizing that it was the first of many.

For those not up on the teeny-bopper music scene—and as anachronistic as it may sound, I think “teeny-bopper” is the right word to describe the current crop of pop artists ululating on radios and MP3 players nationwide—Justin Bieber is a pure confection of our digital culture. He achieved stardom initially because his mother was proud (and smart) enough to videotape his at-home jam sessions and talent show appearances and post them on YouTube. From there, this cute kid with talent to burn—he can sing; he can dance; and he can play several instruments—went “viral.” His videos attracted more than a million hits, something typically reserved for established stars, or cats that can play the piano while smoking a pipe.

With such a following, Bieber soon had an agent, the mentorship of Usher, and a record contract with Island Def Jam, the label that reps Mariah Carey, Bon Jovi, and Melissa Etheridge. Four songs from Bieber’s first album, My World, released last November, made the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 before the album was even released, a record for a solo artist’s debut. His meteoric rise from online star to recording and performance artist was so swift and life-changing, my daughter Maggie informed me, that it required the hiring of a “swagger coach.” Smelling a dubious claim, I looked into it and discovered it’s true. A guy named Ryan Good helps Bieber perfect his presentation and style. Or as Bieber explained to the Kansas City Star: “[My swagger coach] teaches me different swaggerific things to do.” Hmm. I come from a school of thought that says if you need a swagger coach, you’ll never be truly swaggerific. You can’t learn cool; God knows I’ve tried.

Swagger aside, with talent, some street cred, and a memorable hairstyle (think a ’70s feather cut but in reverse, with the “feathers” flowing to the front and across his forehead), Bieber rules the pages of Tiger Beat—which you may be surprised and mildly appalled to discover is still around. He’s even publishing a book this month. When you’re 16 and already there is a demand for your words in book form, you must be doing something right, even if it involves connecting to the hearts of lovesick ’tweens. Whether Bieber’s career will quickly implode, like most teen idols (see David Cassidy, Leif Garret, et al.), or slowly inflate only to inexorably (and spectacularly) deflate, like Michael Jackson’s, only time will tell. I would bet on the former if only because the chances of there being another Michael Jackson are infinitesimal—which, let’s face it, is both bad news and good news.

As Maggie and Jenny and I walked out of Skyline toward U.S. Bank Arena, I heard someone say, “You headed to that Bieber concert?”

It was a Reds fan enjoying a pregame meal with his son. “Sure am,” I said, and tried to manage a smile, while Maggie and Jenny lit up and nodded enthusiastically.

“I feel your pain,” the man said. “I had to go to a Miley Cyrus concert earlier this year.” He then laughed one of those better-you-than-me laughs. The girls kept walking, their enthusiasm certainly not dampened by the remarks of an “old guy” (who was 10 years my junior).

I turned back to the man and whispered, “Take me with you.” He laughed that laugh even harder.

Our brief stroll to the arena was one of sidewalks crowded with giggling girls and side streets lined with dozens of limousines. Evidently, some parents opted to make the night even more memorable for their daughters by renting limos, which, it jealously occurred to me then, would allow the chaperones to drink heavily. The thought of renting a limo had not crossed my mind. That’s partly because I shelled out over $100 for each of our three very fine seats, which were seven rows from the floor and four sections from the stage. To pay face value would have meant camping out at a Ticketmaster location the night (or two) before the morning the tickets went on sale. Or I could have tried to out-dial tens of thousands of ’tweens that morning in an attempt to reach Ticketmaster during the seven-minute window before all the tickets were gone. I would have faced better odds playing “Horse” against LeBron James.

Once we found our seats I noticed that this event was almost entirely a mother-daughter outing. There were only a small handful of us dads and only a few more boys, some of whom appeared genuinely interested in the show, though most seemed there against their will (at least that’s what they would have you believe). One kid really stood out, and that’s because, according to Maggie, he’d won a local radio station’s Bieber look-alike contest. As he wandered around the arena, girls were actually mistaking him for the real deal. Several mini stampedes occurred as girls rushed screaming out of their seats toward the faux Bieber. At first, the look-alike seemed to be enjoying all the attention. But soon this small taste of teen idol-dom became tiresome and it was clear that he would have rather been shooting baskets, playing his Wii, or reading comic books. But maybe I was just projecting.

Maggie and Jenny had their pic taken with the look-alike and returned to their seats where they waved to friends they could see and texted those they couldn’t. The anticipation was palpable, and the arena was filled with a constant hum reminiscent of the infamous vuvuzelas that drowned out every other sound during the World Cup soccer matches. Several human “waves” made their way around the arena. After just a few minutes of that, the crowd clearly grew bored and the waves became more like splashes, then drips. But then the lights dimmed and the screaming grew so loud and the pitch so high that dogs as far north as Mason had to be able to hear it. An audible letdown was noticeable when not Bieber but the first of three—God help us—warm-up acts took the stage: The Stunners (an all-gal, Spice Girls–like group), followed by the child model-turned-singer Jessica Jarrell, and finally the “main” opener, Jamaican-American rapper Sean Kingston.

One thing that I give Bieber’s management credit for is diversity. Virtually all of the performers that night, including the Bieb’s band and dancers, were people of color. His four back-up singers are a Filipino-American band known as Legaci, who were also discovered on YouTube. I’m not sure this rainbow coalition registered with Maggie and Jenny since their world, especially their musical world, is already pretty diverse. About the most diverse thing in my childhood musical landscape besides The Jacksons was ABBA. You’ve come a long way, Bieber.

Bieber began his show around 9 o’clock, after they’d reset the stage. It felt like midnight to me, but I got on my feet with Maggie, Jenny, and 10,000 other little schoolgirls and screamed like, well, a little schoolgirl. The din from all of us screaming chicks made hearing him nearly impossible. That wasn’t that big of a deal since I wasn’t all that familiar with his oeuvre. Yet. After the show, so that I could better limn his Beiberness, I did a bit of listening. I even watched an hour-long TV special in which I learned several things, including how Bieber once stepped out of his limo to hug a fan and was shocked when she tried to kiss him. He thought it was a sign of disrespect.

Really? I thought. You were surprised that a teenage girl with raging hormones—who thinks you invented gravity and probably Skittles, too—tried to kiss you? C’mon! Consider some of the Bieb’s lyrics:

    That should be me, feelin’ your kiss
    That should be me, buyin’ you gifts

And:

    Your lips are callin’ me like
    They wanna do something

Or just read some of the comments that fans post online. Here’s one that, scarily, is not the least bit atypical, and it comes from a girl whose handle is “Future Ms. JB”: justin i know alot of girls tell u they love u but i actually mean it i love u like i have never loved anyone b 4 when i listen to ur songs and look at ur posters i tune everyone else around me out and i love u with all my heart i cant stop thinking bout u u run through my head all day and i cant get u out no matter how hard i try so i love u justin and i really do mean everything i say about u! i love u justin bieber!

He’s lucky the girl outside his limo didn’t try to rip his underwear off.

Anyway, as much as I didn’t want to like the show, I have to admit that I found it rather entertaining, particularly the dancing and the reaction of all the love-struck fans. Several times during the show, Bieber stepped into a contraption that lifted him above the crowd, carried him to the other end of the arena, and then back to the stage. In one instance, he perched in a metal frame shaped like a heart. It was pretty hokey, and I remember thinking, I can’t believe Maggie would fall for this.

One thing that I hoped she would fall for was a video PSA that played on the jumbo screens about mid-way through the show in which Bieber urged his fans not to text and drive. This was definitely music to my ears since Maggie is a recent recipient of a temporary driver’s license and I really don’t want to increase my blood pressure any more. So, thank you, Justin.

After the obligatory encore, the show ended and we made our way back to the car. My ears were ringing, but I could tell that the concert clearly lived up to Maggie’s and Jenny’s expectations. Then on the drive home, without any prompt from me, Maggie said, “That heart thing was really cheesy.” Reader, my heart swelled with pride. She hadn’t turned over her common sense to the teen heartthrob after all, even if he does have a swaggerific haircut.

“Yeah, that was pretty cheesy,” I said, my voice scratchy from all the screaming.

Feeling odd or left out? Contact the author via his website: stevekissing.com

Illustration by Kevin Miyazaki
Originally published in the October 2010 issue.

Running on Empty

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:31:00 GMT

As I find myself just a few years from turning 50, I also find myself with the very predictable mid-life interest in physical fitness. While health and longevity are my primary motivators, I can’t deny the influence of vanity. It’s not as if I’m hoping to grow six-pack abs, like The Situation on Jersey Shore; but I could do without the tire—a poorly inflated one at that—around my mid-section. To get in shape, I’ve turned to running because it’s what I know. Or what I sort of remember. Roughly 35 years ago, I started running on the track and cross-country teams in elementary and high school. Not that you would know it now.

Perhaps you’ve seen me running around town. I’m the guy who’s moving slowly while looking good in my top-of-the-line running shoes and attire. (Right, that guy.) True, I can’t buy the kind of physical fitness I enjoyed as a teenager, but I can purchase the serious running gear that makes me appear capable of running a minute or two faster per mile. (Clearly, age does have certain advantages, such as disposable income.) While my attire may not match my abilities, it does match my fantasies, in which I chase Olympic glory or at the very least a respectable showing in a local 5K.

I began running regularly again in June, my legs looking like bleached concrete and feeling about as heavy, my lungs seemingly expelling as much phlegm as air. By August I had built up enough endurance to run three to six miles every other day, though the heat and humidity made each mile feel like five. If there is ever a moment when even a fan of running will question the sanity of doing so, it’s in 97-degree heat with 85 percent humidity. That’s when it takes a Herculean effort to silence the voice of reason calling for rest, ideally at a nearby pub with an icy cold beer. And maybe some cheese-smothered onion rings.

As much as the heat can break a runner’s spirits, freeze-your-ass-off winter runs are no joy either. I’m writing this in mid-October, which offers some of the best running weather one can hope for, but I’m already anxious about staying motivated through the winter. The August heat waves and the January blizzards didn’t bother me when I was young. In fact, in my school days, I ran over a three-year period without missing a single day of training. No temperature was too high or too low, no storm was too long or too powerful to stop me from logging a few miles—though my streak nearly came to a frozen halt due to my over-heated mother.

It was the winter of ’78. Sustained, brutally cold temperatures had closed schools and businesses for days. Warnings were issued every hour on the radio to stay indoors or risk frostbite and even death. But my running streak had passed the two-year mark by that point, and I wasn’t about to let it come to a premature end because of a little inclement weather. So I stood just inside our front door and donned my gear: two warm-up suits on top of two T-shirts, a sweatshirt, and not one but two pair of underwear. I took the extra safety measure of stuffing a bathroom hand towel down my pants because there was a story circulating among my eighth grade classmates about a guy from Colerain whose penis froze off. I also had two knit caps, mittens, and gloves at the ready before I stepped outside and into the southern region of the Arctic. As I struggled to zip my outer jacket over all my Michelin Man–like layers, my mom rounded the corner.

“Where you going?” she asked.

“Bowling,” I said, knowing full well that she knew full well where I was going.

“No you aren’t,” Mom said in a voice I had come to know as the you-best-not-mess-with-me-or-I-will-ground-you-for-life voice.

“Mom, I have to!” I pleaded. “I need to keep my streak alive!”

“I don’t care about your damn streak; it’s you I want alive,” she said. “You aren’t going out there. No. No. No!” She walked away and I followed, begging and pleading, even trying to get Dad on my side. But I might as well have been asking to stay up until midnight on a school night. Mom stood her ground like the giant frozen air mass that held our city hostage.

I went to my room, sat on my bed, and stewed. And plotted. I thought about making a dash for the door, knowing that once I got outside Mom couldn’t catch me, even with a towel down my pants. Then an idea came to me. I grabbed a yardstick and a calculator and went to the basement. I measured the distance from one wall to the next and did some simple math to determine that I would need to ping-pong from wall to wall about 100 times to log one mile. In part to spite my own mother, I ran back and forth 500 times (roughly five miles) in the basement that day. That’s dedication—with a dash of teenage insanity.

But time passes and some of us grow wiser. If that kind of weather returns this winter, don’t look for me outside. Or in my basement. About the only thing that would get me outside in a blizzard now is a one-pump, extra-hot, extra-whip mocha from Starbucks.

Regardless of the weather, the thing I think about most when I’m running these days are the old days. Like in eighth grade, when I won the Catholic Youth Organization’s city championships in the mile run, finishing in 5:07. Or when I won the freshman and reserve Catholic high school cross-country championships. These memories of youth and speed keep me going now that I’m old and slow. When trudging along Montgomery Road in Pleasant Ridge, I fantasize about being in, say, a 10-mile race, and winning my age group by finishing in less than one hour, just as I did 30-plus years ago. When I’m feeling particularly good, I up the stakes considerably and imagine myself running in an Olympic marathon—coming in first, of course, and setting a new Olympic and world record in the process! This I do despite the fact that I’m running only a few miles (versus a marathon’s 26.2) and that my pace is nearly four minutes slower per mile than would be required to win a gold medal (meaning I would finish almost two hours behind a real Olympic champion). So, Chariots of Fire it’s not.

This sort of athletic fantasy is particularly helpful when actually racing, which I have begun to do again. I use the term “racing” loosely because I’m not a threat to the top-notch guys in my age division. When I first started running, races were nowhere near as commonplace as they are today. Now hardly a weekend goes by, at least from early spring to late fall, in which there aren’t multiple races to choose from. The larger, more established ones typically attract the better runners across all age groups, making the smaller, less competitive ones better for my delicate ego.

My return to racing began in August with a 5K (3.1 miles) run through, as the race flyer put it, “the rolling hills of Amberley Village.” That must have been written by someone who drove the course because those so-called rolling hills felt more like ski slopes, creating a most unpleasant experience in the suffocating heat and humidity that accompanied the 6 p.m. start time. About a mile into the race, it occurred to me that the half-dozen or so guys running right in front or alongside weren’t moving fast. It took a few more strides for my oxygen-deprived brain to surmise what that meant: I wasn’t moving fast either. I finished well behind the leaders, including several women, and even a guy pushing a baby stroller—with a real chunker inside, I might add. My glory days felt like distant history.

A few weeks later, I ran another 5K, this one in Loveland on a mostly flat course. Again, I finished way behind the leaders, but my chief nemesis was not a fit dad pushing a fat baby but a scrawny 12-year-old who quickly got 50 yards out ahead of me. I simply couldn’t catch him. I thought about all the 30-, 40-, and 50-somethings I beat when I was a finely tuned 12-year-old and wondered (as I had not then) if that pissed them off the way this kid was getting under my sweaty, flushed skin.

About a half mile from the finish, I noticed a sudden surge in the energy level of the few spectators along the race route. For a moment, I thought they were cheering me on, hoping to see this middle-aged man catch the fleet-footed punk. I felt a rush of adrenaline, my legs a bit lighter, my lungs not burning quite as bad. I’ll catch that kid, I thought. Not just for me, but for the other AARP’ers and near-AARP’ers cheering me on. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of someone about to pass me with considerable ease. It was a woman, the lead female in the race. The applause was for her, not me. My energy level plummeted, my legs stiffened, and my lungs burned. She motored on by and I tried to find the silver lining: she wasn’t pushing a stroller.

I ran a few more races in September and October, including a 5K on the University of Cincinnati’s campus sponsored by the Junior League. It was an absolutely stunning fall morning and I felt ready to run. Thanks to the small turnout—and the fact that the really fast runners were competing in other races around town—I sensed I had a chance to do very well.

My instincts proved to be spot-on. Almost immediately, I found myself in the lead, following a campus motorcycle cop who was supposed to guide us. In my mind, I was leading the New York City Marathon with police cars and TV news crews blazing the way. Unfortunately, the cop must have been in a hurry because he sped away and I soon lost him—and then my way—on the poorly marked course. I had to guess which way to go. I guessed wrong. By the time I got back on course, I was so far behind the other runners and so frustrated that I quit and walked back to the start/finish line to complain to one of the race organizers. That’s when I learned that it’s hard to be pissed at a bubbly Junior Leaguer who’s devoted to raising money for good causes, in this case the eradication of childhood obesity.

I told her that I would be back again in 2011. And I meant it. Give me another year to train, I figure, and I will be one year closer to who I used to be.

Feeling odd or left out? Contact the author via his website: stevekissing.com

Illustration by Kevin Miyazaki

Originally published in the December 2010 issue.

To (Not) Tell the Truth

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:29:00 GMT

In my dealings with strangers, I sometimes deviate from the truth. Telling fibs is, for me, something of a nervous tic. When I’m put on the spot or find myself at a loss for words, the, uh, inventive part of my brain sometimes takes over. I’m not a premeditated liar with an agenda. No, as I see it, I’m more of a “spontaneous storyteller.” I am not out to hurt anyone. That’s not to suggest that such white lies aren’t at times wrong. They are. Or that they can’t have painful consequences. They can. Believe me, I know. Thanks to my fibs, I can no longer visit my neighborhood Skyline.

As a big fan of the four-way-bean, I used to visit my local Skyline two or more times a week, enough that the staff recognized me. Then my routine changed, and for a year or so, I got my lunchtime fix at a different location. When I eventually returned to my home court Skyline, all seemed as I had left it. I enjoyed my meal and approached the counter where a woman I will call Linda stood ready to take my money, as she had dozens of times before.

“How’s your dad getting along these days?” Linda asked.

“He’s doing well, thanks,” I said. I knew that Linda had never seen my father, but I thought she was asking about my ex-father-in-law who does frequent the same location now and then.

“That’s good,” Linda said. “We were so sorry to hear about your mom. How long were her and your dad married?”

This is when I realized that Linda had definitely confused me with someone else. My mom and dad are still very much alive, as are my former in-laws. A more reasonable, calm-and-collected person would have paused and politely told Linda that she must be confused. After all, these sorts of misunderstandings happen all the time. No harm done. But in awkward moments like these, I’m not reasonable, nor calm-and-collected. I panic. And I keep talking.

“They were married for decades,” I said, not wanting to be too specific.

“That’s a long time,” Linda told me. “Speaking of which, remember when you used to come in here as a kid?” (Note to reader: I was never there as a kid.)

“Sure do,” I said, wondering what “my” name was and whether or not “I” liked four-way-beans back then.

“Well, don’t tell him I said so, but your son comes in here real late the way you used to. I guess he’s a partier like you were.”

Not only do I not have a son but I’ve never been a partier. I panicked more. I worried that Linda might ask a simple question that I couldn’t answer. Or worse, that a light would go off when she realized I wasn’t who she thought I was. And then she’d wonder what kind of freak would spontaneously appropriate the identity of another person, one he didn’t even know. I needed to find the exit, and fast.

I handed Linda a twenty and told her to keep the change, as I turned and walked toward the door.

“Tell your son I said hello,” she said.

You would think I, with one foot out the door, would just let it go. But I didn’t. I turned and replied, with a smile, “If he ever stops partying, I’ll give him your regards!”

I got into my car and took off. I haven’t been back for six months. Now whenever I get a hankering for Skyline at home, I have to drive miles out of my way. It bears repeating, kids: Lies have devastating consequences.

I’m particularly apt to make up stories when strangers attempt to engage me in conversation in waiting rooms or on airplanes. That’s largely because I’d rather read a book and be left alone, but I can’t bring myself to be flat-out rude.

On a recent trip to the auto repair shop, I found myself sitting in a telephone booth-sized waiting room with another customer, both of us flipping through eight-month-old magazines and sipping coffee that tasted even older. The other guy broke the silence first. (I wasn’t going to.)

“What line of work you in?” he asked.

“Blacktop sealant,” I said.

“No way,” he said. “I work for The Brewer Company.”

I don’t know a thing about the blacktop industry, but that’s a brand I recognized for sure. The waiting room felt suddenly smaller. In this case, I didn’t think I could “spontaneous story-tell” my way through a conversation. And since my car was up on the rack, there was nowhere to go. So I came clean. Sort of.

“Well, I don’t actually work in the industry—at least not now—but maybe someday I will. I just haven’t had enough coffee? I’m always saying random things until I get well-caffeinated. I must have had a dream about blacktop or something. I’m not much of a conversationalist, I guess. If I were, I would go into sales, I suppose. I have friends in sales. You can make some really good money doing that...”

I would have kept talking until quitting time, but the guy seemed a bit taken aback by my nonstop babbling. I think my little rant scared him. Hell, I was scaring myself.

“Just curious,” he said, and returned to his magazine.

I lowered my head and pretended to do the same but immediately remembered another instance when I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. A few years ago, while backpacking with a friend at Natural Bridge State Resort Park in Kentucky, we paused at a magnificent overlook alongside another group of hikers and quickly got lost in the moment. Then one of the hikers, breaking my nature-inspired Zen-like state, asked where we were from. For reasons I couldn’t explain then or now, I replied: “Idaho.”

Had I ever been to Idaho? Of course not. But boy was I in luck. The other hikers’ faces lit up. “Us, too!” one of them said, turning around to show me what I took to be the Idaho state flag emblazoned on her backpack. “What town you from?”

My friend turned and looked at me with a smirk, waiting to hear what sort of tale I would weave. I drew a blank. I couldn’t think of a single town, not even Boise. I stalled with a cough. I thought of taking a stab and saying something Idaho-esque, like “Spudsville,” or something generic, like “Middletown.” Instead, I just said, “I’m from the capitol.”

They looked at me with deflated expressions and my friend laughed out loud. “Funny, real funny,” one of the Idahoans said, as they marched down the trail and out of view.

“You’re an idiot,” my friend said.

At least one of us spoke the truth.

This nervous fibbing of mine has been going on for some time, and Skyline isn’t the only Cincinnati retail icon from which I have been self-exiled. Growing up in the ’70s, every Saturday my best friend Johnny and I would take the Price Hill D Metro bus to the Western Hills Shopping Plaza, where we would basically just walk around and stare at or otherwise annoy pretty girls. We always made time to stop at Graeter’s, where Johnny always got an ice cream cone, and I always got three chocolate chip cookies.

There were several older ladies who worked the bakery counter at the shop and one was particularly unpleasant. We didn’t know if she just found kids a pain in the ass or despised all people, no matter their age. We sensed it was the latter. Yet I was so enamored with Graeter’s chocolate chip cookies that I would have bought them from a known serial killer.

One Saturday afternoon something decidedly wrong happened. As I approached the counter, this gray-haired witch smiled. At me! I looked over my shoulder but no one was there. She smiled again and said, “Did I wake your dad last night when I called?” I had no idea what she was talking about, and I was certain she didn’t know my dad.

I felt trapped. Paralyzed with fear, even. What rough beast would burst forth from this momentarily kind woman if I told her that she was mistaken? A nasty one, no doubt. But I desperately needed my beloved chocolate chip cookies. So I decided to roll with it. My assumption was that she thought I was a member of the Graeter family and that she had to get a hold of “my” dad, Mr. Graeter, about some store issue.

Just then Johnny stepped out from around the corner near the ice cream counter, licking his cone. His eyes lit up and his jaw dropped the moment he saw me engaged in friendly chitchat with the Keeper of the Counter, a woman who normally grunted in our presence. It was too late to fill him in, so I kept talking.

“No, you didn’t wake my dad,” I said. “He was still up.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “I hesitated before calling; I was really worried about disturbing him, you know?”

“I get it, but you did the right thing,” I said. “He would rather know.” She was clearly overcome with the good news that I brought her. I decided to lay it on a little thick. “Dad actually told me that he was glad you called.”

My gamble paid off. Clearly on the verge of a wellspring of happy tears because of my artful fibbing, the woman responded, “Well, what can I do for you?”

“Three chocolate chip cookies, please.”

“Sure thing,” she said, and handed me a dozen.

“I can’t pay for these.”

“No, no,” she said. “These are on me. I insist.”

“Well, if you insist, then thank you,” I said, and Johnny and I made a bee-line for the door.

We feasted on our good fortune and reveled in our vindication: After all those times we had to look into the sour, pickled puss of the Kraken’s grandmother, we were rewarded with a dozen of the best cookies ever. But I quickly realized that I couldn’t walk back into that store as long as she lived, which I assumed would be for a long, long time, as is almost always the case with witches and demons. Henceforth we would have to take another bus to the downtown Graeter’s store to get our sugar fix.

Johnny wondered aloud what different flavors of ice cream they might have. I wondered silently if I would be confused there with the owner’s son. And what I would say. And more important, how many cookies I could make off with.

Feeling odd or left out? Contact the author via his website: stevekissing.com

Illustration by Kevin Miyazaki
Originally published in the August 2010 issue.

The Bliss Doctor Is In

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:27:00 GMT

Since June is one of the most popular months for getting hitched, I thought I would offer some advice to all the new brides and grooms around the tri-state. A caveat: While I’m not a counselor or a therapist, I’ve been very observant of other people’s marriages, as well as my own. Both of them. Yes, my first marriage fell apart. But that only makes me wiser, since nothing educates quite like failure. While I can make no guarantee that these tips will keep you out of the doghouse, let alone divorce court, I believe they will increase your odds of finding and retaining wedded bliss across the long haul by a full 37.5 percent (give or take 37.5 percent). Though there is one other caveat that overrides all the advice that follows: None of this will matter much if you consider Tiger Woods’s multiple infidelities no more offensive than jaywalking.

Read Maxim and Cosmopolitan. If you’re young and newly wed, you’re probably reading one of these magazines already. But regardless of your age, you should be reading them. Both of them. It’s a great way for you and your mate to stay up on what’s important to the other gender when it comes to careers, fashion, pop culture, and, yes, sex. For instance, men who read the May issue of Cosmo learned, among other things, that there’s a cute pair of pumps for only $25 that they can order for their wives at gojane.com; that guys with flat asses should wear jeans with flaps or buttons on the rear pockets; and that there is an app that can turn your spouse’s smart phone into a smooth-talking vibrator.

On the flip side, women who read the May issue of Maxim learned that Psycho Donuts in Campbell, California, is a top 10 donut destination in America; that the 911 Turbo Coupe from Porsche is the new male fantasy car (with a sticker price of $132,800); and that men are pretty much clueless when it comes to performing oral sex—which, come to think of it, is probably something you already knew.

While talking about current affairs and family matters comes easy to most couples, Maxim and Cosmo help get the conversation started when you’re exploring sensitive topics. Like if your spouse’s body odor is interfering with your social lives. Or whether or not the “backwards cowgirl” sexual position is going to, uh, work for both of you—or frustrate someone into looking for that iPhone app.

Don’t deny science. Just because men and women are—or at least should be—equals when it comes to respect, responsibility, and “power” within a relationship, that doesn’t mean that we’re cut from the same cloth. There is something even more strikingly different about us than our genitalia: our brains. Guys, your suspicions are right: Our brains are bigger than theirs. But gals, your suspicions are right, too: Your brains are just as powerful as ours. Maybe more. According to science, female brains apparently are smaller but they contain just as many cells as male brains. In other words, women have done a better job packing their gray matter, which will come as no surprise to any guy who has traveled with a woman.

So the differing size of our brains isn’t the issue. It’s how they work. And, boy do they work differently! Women have 11 percent more neurons in the language centers of the brain, which may explain why they often like to talk more than we guys do. And women do talk more. On average, women speak 250 words per minute, while men come in at half that. So, husbands, be patient when your wife seems to use every word in the dictionary when talking about how her sister is spoiled by her mother. And wives, don’t be too hard on your guy when he doesn’t have much to say about a promotion or a funeral. Words come slowly to us. Except when those words are football or boobies.

Oh, and that thing called a woman’s intuition? Well, it’s for real, gentlemen. The areas of the brain that respond to gut feelings are larger and more sensitive in the female brain. Which means that when your wife tells you that she thinks one of your best friends is a closet racist, or that a colleague at work is trying to take your job, or that if you don’t stop spending so much time with your model train set you’re going to be very sorry, believe her.

Look in the mirror, oddball. We all have our own idiosyncrasies. Yet those of our mates seem to imply pending insanity, while our own seem to indicate advanced intelligence. A husband who insists on having guests remove their shoes before they step into his tool shop should not raise an eyebrow at his wife for refusing to eat off of paper plates. Live and let live, otherwise your marriage will collapse over something as silly as breakfast cereal, like one of my friend’s did.

This couple argued, on and off for several years, about the merits and demerits of eating Cap’n Crunch for breakfast every morning. The wife was addicted to the sugary breakfast “food,” which the husband found horribly annoying. For him, it wasn’t so much the cereal’s lack of nutrition than that a grown woman would unapologetically eat kids’ cereal every single morning. This silly “debate” of theirs wouldn’t go away, and on one particularly stressful morning it turned into a major battle. The husband drew a line in the sand, decreeing that the Cap’n was no longer welcome to drop anchor and come ashore in their house. For both of them, this fight came to embody everything that they grew to dislike about each other. They’re divorced now. Moral of the story: Before you shine a spotlight on one of your spouse’s annoying eccentricities, you might first want to step back and ask why, for instance, you insist on having exactly four different shampoos in the shower at all times. Freak.

Get away from each other. You just got married and you feel like you can’t spend five minutes apart without feeling lost and lonely. Well, get over that—and fast. Hopefully, you have another 50-plus years ahead of you, so now is the ideal time to start getting away from each other before you tire of one another. You need to not only encourage guys’ nights out and girls’ nights out, but long weekends, too, so guys can golf, or whatever, and talk about women, and the gals can golf, or whatever, and talk about men. The point is: If you don’t ever get away, even the most entertaining and lovely of people can grow tiresome, some of us faster than others. Just ask my wife.

This advice is particularly important for those “enthusiast couples,” the ones who met because of a shared interest, like dressing up and performing in Renaissance fairs or something even weirder. If you continue to share the same special interest after marriage, you’ll need to work even harder at healthy separation. That’s not just for your own benefit; it’s for friends and family who are sick and tired of hearing about the spiritual enrichment you both garner from pioneer re-enactments, ballooning, or archery ’n such.

Wish yourself luck when it comes to money. Survey after survey suggests that the primary reason married couples fight and divorce is money: how much is needed; how to get it; and how to spend and invest it. Do you bolster the 401(k) or buy that new BMW X5? Do you send the kids to private school or go on that privately guided European vacation? Do you invest aggressively in pork belly futures or buy into a BBQ franchise? Money is such treacherous territory for couples because there’s often no clear-cut right or wrong, because we are so shaped by our own upbringing on these matters, and because no one has a crystal ball but we make money decisions as if we do.

I knew a couple, each of whom had very different ideas about money. The wife saw no issue with the two of them eating out every night. The husband saw this as a gargantuan waste of money. After a year-long fight over the matter, the wife relented and agreed that they would eat at home every night. In fact, because she got home earlier than he did after work, she volunteered to prepare all the meals. What she didn’t tell him was that the only thing she would later claim to know how to cook was rice and beef tenderloin. Which is what they ate, every single night. Both of them sat at the dinner table chewing—and waiting to see who would crack first. Three weeks in, he did. He left the house in a huff and went to a pricey restaurant and ordered a seafood dish. The next day, the divorce proceedings commenced. Now these two both eat when and where they want, though they each have less money to spend on food and, well, everything else.

Which brings me to the best advice I can give you on the financial front: Whatever your perceived money problems and differences may be, remember you’ll have less dough after the divorce.

Don’t let your kids play soccer. Your marriage will suffer and perhaps even come undone if you always put the kids first. I’m not suggesting that kids shouldn’t be the top priority, but they shouldn’t be the only one all the time.

This is why I urge you to try to steer your kids away from playing soccer. It’s now a year-round sport with so many damn leagues and tournaments that, if you’re not careful, you’ll soon find yourself a soccer mom or dad spending as much time on the sidelines as you do at your job. And that’s not taking into account all the time spent shuttling the kids around to all the games and practices.

I’d like to know: When did parents come to believe that this arrangement was smart, necessary, and desirable? Exercise and the lessons of competition and teamwork are, of course, very beneficial for every child. But kids need not be on four different teams or a member of the USA Gymnastics squad to reap those benefits and lessons. Send the kids out into the backyard and let them run in circles chasing squirrels so you and your spouse can tend to the laundry, the financial planning, and perhaps your sex life, which I would advise against doing on the soccer sidelines unless you bring a tent.

Marriage is a beautiful, delightful thing. I’m so happy to be married. But marriage takes a diplomat’s willingness to compromise, a politician’s ability to choose battles carefully, and most of all, a Woody Allen–level of self-loathing and deprecation. Because for every shortcoming you come to spot in your spouse, you have at least two. Probably more. Here endeth the lesson. Now go kiss your honey.

Feeling odd or left out? Contact the author via his website: stevekissing.com

Illustration by Kevin Miyazaki
Originally published in the June 2010 issue.

Nature Boy

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:26:00 GMT

For some of us, music is the thread that seems to stitch the highs and lows of our lives together. For others, it’s family gatherings or movies or current events. For me, it’s our city and county parks. In my life they have been a steady, invigorating, character-shaping presence—one that, paradoxically, I only recently came to recognize. As another spring settles in and soothes our cabin-fever-weary bones, and the parks come alive again with walkers, bikers, and bench sitters, I feel compelled to write this ode to our green spaces and all that they have taught me—from the versatility of the female breast to why smoke jumpers need excellent eyesight. Sound strange? Let me explain.

I grew up in the 1970s, just a short walk from Rapid Run Park in Price Hill. Its hilly topography made for excellent sled riding in the winter, and its two-foot-deep concrete pond made for some treacherously fun bike riding in the summer. My friends and I would remove our socks and gym shoes and pedal around in the pond, laughing as, inevitably, our tires lost traction on the scum-covered bottom and we slid into the water. Good times, to be sure.

Being a city park, Rapid Run also had ball fields, playground equipment, and a small swimming pool. On the baseball diamond, I learned definitively that I couldn’t swing a bat and hit anything as small as a softball. Mad about striking out for the umpteenth time, I once took a swing at the trunk of a mature oak tree. And missed. On the playground, I learned to play tetherball, my sport of choice for several summers. I am not ashamed to say that I played with all the enthusiasm of Napoleon Dynamite, with even less grace. In the pool, I learned to swim, earning my “green duck” beginners patch, which Mom sewed on my swimsuit. I also swam on the swim team, earning a couple of construction paper ribbons, mostly for just making it across the pool without drowning.

This being the ’70s, before anyone seemed to pay a lick of attention to water-borne pathogens, Rapid Run’s pool didn’t have a filtration system. Instead, every afternoon at 1 o’clock, the lifeguards blew their whistles signaling everyone to get out. Then they would pour chlorine powder directly into the pool and blow their whistles again. This, we knew, was our call to sit on the pool’s edge, dangle our tan legs in the water, and begin kicking as if we were throwing tantrums so as to dissolve and disseminate the chlorine. We would kick for about 10 minutes straight. I assumed that this is how all pools worked. On a rare visit to Sunlite Pool at Coney Island, I was surprised to learn that there was no group kicking session. Perhaps it was just my imagination run amok, but from that point forward, it seemed that all the kids in my neighborhood had larger thighs than the kids from, say, neighboring Delhi.

Whenever my friends and I were bored and looking for a little adventure, we would walk the mile and a half to Delhi Park. It had a covered wooden bridge that spanned a crawdad-infested stream, and a snack shack with my favorites: Mounds candy bars and cherry Slush Puppies. We also enjoyed the large, fenced-in playground with all the equipment painted in happy primary colors. It made the bare, rusty metal swings and slides at Rapid Run seem, well, sort of depressing. It was an early lesson in economics: The people in Delhi were better off than the people in Price Hill. Not only were the houses bigger but they could afford to paint their playground equipment. Playing there was a nice change of scenery, I’ll admit, but Rapid Run was still my park, despite its lack of paint, candy shacks, and filtration systems.

No matter what other parks had and had not, visiting them was always a welcome treat since they each had their own personality and charm. A one-time visit to Sharon Woods really wowed me because of the cascading tailwater of the lake; compared to the mostly stagnant streams I was accustomed to, it seemed like a wild, raging river. And one of the more memorable park experiences of my childhood was traveling with my dad on his Kawasaki motorcycle to the Winton Woods campground, where we pitched a pup tent and camped out under the stars.

Out of all our local planned green spaces, Eden Park always felt particularly exotic. That’s partly because of Krohn Conservatory, the old reservoir wall-turned-climbing wall, and the Natural History Museum that used to stand nearby. But for me, the main appeal of Eden Park was boobs. I was completely enthralled by the Romulus and Remus statue, with the two boys crouched beneath their wolf mother, mouths open, ready to latch on to a teat. I didn’t take this for mythology but fact. Why would anyone bother to make a statue honoring something fake?

When I was a kid, my parents took me to a number of “hippie festivals” in Eden Park where a collection of artisans and merchants sold their wares around Mirror Lake. I remember rock music, vegetarian food, and lots of people with flowers painted on their arms and faces. I also remember the boobs. Though I was too young to understand the socio-political act of bra burning, I was old enough to tell that a lot of ladies weren’t wearing any under their T-shirts. At one such festival, my mom lost track of me and later found me in one vendor’s “booth”—a tepee. Inside, a woman was giving breast-feeding demonstrations. According to Mom, I was all too eager to be a part of the appreciative audience. These days I’m more of a leg man than a boob man. Perhaps I was overexposed at a tender age.

In my teens, our parks were the scene of both triumph and heartbreak. As a skinny, uncoordinated kid, I figured the only chance that I had at athletic success, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, was running cross country. My line of reasoning went something like this: I may not be able to swing a bat, but by golly, I can put one foot in front of the other. As it turns out, I could do that rather well. I not only made Elder High School’s cross country team but won more than a few races. Our home course was situated over the hilly terrain in my old stomping ground, Rapid Run Park, which is where I won the Greater Cincinnati League championship as a freshman and a sophomore. Eventually, I ran races in parks all over town, including Mt. Storm, Lunken Airport Playfield, and French Park. I came to view my medals and trophies as redemption for my pathetic performances at home plate and at the hands of girls half my age around the tetherball pole.

Thanks to this athletic success, my legs and lungs felt liked they owned our parks. My heart? Not so much. Several attempts to score my first real kiss while walking hand-in-hand through a park failed. I thought the fresh scent of flowers and pine would make my advances more welcome. I guessed wrong. In hindsight, I think the natural, romance-inducing scents of Mother Nature were overpowered by the Aqua Velva that I doused myself with, thinking it could magically make me as sexy as Burt Reynolds. Like I said, it was the ’70s.

As a high school sophomore, I felt for the first time the head-spinning, stomach-churning, world-changing thing called love. Her name was Marilyn, a blonde, blue-eyed cutie who was near the top of her class at McAuley High School. I was turned so inside-out emotionally that even as a horny teen it took me a good month to build up the nerve to try and kiss her. To increase my odds of winning her over, I chose not to wear my glasses in her presence, afraid that I looked dorky and un-kissable with them on. Thing is, sans glasses, I could barely see anything near, and any meaningful detail beyond a seven-foot radius was reduced to a troublesome blur.

The perfect set-up for a charming walk in the park, no? While taking a stroll through Mt. Airy Forest with Marilyn on a dazzling bright October afternoon, I spotted a dozen or so small fires about 100 feet away.

“What are all those fires about?” I asked Marilyn.

“What fires?” she said, sounding alarmed, since “fire” isn’t a word you typically want to hear in a forest.

“Right over there.”

“What are you pointing at?”

“There,” I said, pointing again in the same direction. “Don’t you see all that orange?”

“Uh, those are flags.”

Marilyn spoke the truth. As we continued walking and came within a few steps of what I thought were fires, even I could see that they were bright orange survey flags flapping in the wind, all aglow in the afternoon sun. Within a week of that walk, Marilyn dumped me.

If only I could have seen that coming.

Over the years I have experienced many, many wonderful park days: Spotting a newborn deer while trail running in Shawnee Lookout; learning the art of casting a fly rod on the grassy lawns of Ault Park; family camping at Winton Woods and Miami Whitewater Forest; attending fall festivals at Mt. Airy Forest; skipping stones on the Ohio River from Fernbank Park; watching the sun rise over the city from Mt. Echo.

One of my fondest memories to date involves my two oldest daughters, Maggie, 15, and Gracie, 12. When they were each around 5 years old, I would enjoy some father-daughter alone-time and take one of them for a walk on a wooded trail in Sharon Woods. I had convinced Maggie (and later, Gracie) that I had befriended a bear in the woods, one we might encounter on our walk if we were lucky. We never did, of course, but on each hike—wouldn’t you know it?—the bear was always kind enough to leave candy for us on a log or on the handrail of a wooden bridge.

The girls loved it and would squeal anytime I told one of them that we were going to see my friend the bear. They talk about it to this day, just as I continue to talk about Rapid Run, which I had the chance to visit not long ago.

The place had definitely changed. The jungle gym sagged like an old man bending over to pick up his cane. The basketball rims drooped like the halos of fallen angels. And the pool where I learned to swim and appreciate that which is tanned and bikinied was no more. It had been filled with dirt, which was now covered in crabgrass and cigarette butts. I stood where once only mayflies and Jesus could—on top of the deep end—and soaked myself in memories, glad to be a park kid then and now.

Feeling odd and/or left out? Contact the author via his Web site: www.stevekissing.com

Illustrated by Kevin Miyazaki
Originally published in the May 2010 issue.

Mr. Sleepy Head

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:23:00 GMT

I was an oddball high school kid for many reasons. Chief among them is that I went to bed every night at 8 o’ clock, sometimes earlier. Even though my older and younger siblings stayed up an hour or two later, I often retired while the sun still sat above the horizon and the best TV programs had yet to come on. Some 30 years later, my deep affection for sleep remains. Yes, I now stay up later than 8 p.m.—but not much. I’m usually asleep by 9:30 on weekdays. On weekends, if I’m not out, I may make it to 10:30. I’ve rarely seen Late Show with David Letterman or Saturday Night Live at their regularly scheduled times. In fact, I’m not sure I ever have. And now thanks to a DVR, I’m not sure I ever will. Even if Jesus himself were scheduled to make a special guest appearance on one of those shows, I’m not sure I could stay awake until then. That’s the kind of hold sleep has on me. Fortunately, I’m not a narcoleptic. I only sleep when I want to. Thing is, I always want to.

In high school my friends didn’t understand my sleeping addiction. For most of them, staying up as late as possible, particularly on Friday and Saturday evenings, was a commonly understood teenage right, one earned after being unjustly forced to go to bed early while in elementary school. For these friends, staying up until well past midnight made them feel more adult because it exposed them to more mature things like racier movies on TV, or if out and about, drunks and hooligans stirring up trouble. For me, unless there was a better than 50-50 chance that I could be making out with a cute girl, I couldn’t think of another worthwhile reason to remain awake after 10 p.m.

In college, when staying up and out late was more than an expectation and something closer to law, I continued to doze off early, not concerned in the least about what I was missing. I did, however, worry a bit about what others thought about my early bedtime, which is why I would almost always leave bars, parties, and other gatherings without saying goodbye. My exit strategy was simple: I would step away, ostensibly to go to the restroom or to grab another beer, and then keep walking until I fell forward into my bed. This is how I avoided having to lie when, inevitably, friends and acquaintances asked why I was leaving so darn early since, clearly, all the really good times were still to come. Since “I’m going bed” would have sounded about as lame as “I want to be sure I wrote my name inside all my textbooks” or “Are you kidding me? T.J. Hooker is on,” the vanishing act seemed the best course to take.

Whenever I actually tried to excuse myself for a valid reason, everyone would give me those I-don’t-believe-you looks and start drilling me about what I was really up to. They assumed that I was headed somewhere better and they didn’t want to miss out. Or they figured that I had a rendezvous planned with a secret flame. Even now, I still leave parties and other social events unannounced. My friends have taken to calling me “Houdini” since I just seem to disappear. The nickname makes me laugh because I know that I could fall asleep in a straightjacket. In fact, I nearly have.

For me, sleep isn’t just for beds. Once in high school, while attending a youth group retreat, my buddies made plans to sneak out for Skyline after the adults went to sleep. I told them I would stay back and keep an eye out for any chaperones making the rounds. My pals knew better than to rely on me as a nighttime scout of any sort, so around 1 a.m., they insisted that I make the getaway with them, figuring that my nearly comatose state would provide entertainment. I didn’t disappoint.

They carried me out to the car, where I immediately fell back to sleep, of course. Once we arrived at Skyline, I revived long enough to make it into the chili parlor on my own power then quickly fell asleep at the table while they ate. I also slept on the drive back to the retreat center and remained completely unconscious while they carried me back to my bunk. The next morning, I had to be convinced that I had actually gone along for the ride. I didn’t remember much, until one friend pointed to the crumbs in my hair. Evidently, my pillow at Skyline had been a pile of oyster crackers. A similar episode happened a few months later, but that time I woke up with the word “Vacant” scrawled across my forehead.

Skyline isn’t the only unusual place I’ve fallen asleep. I’ve done so at Reds games. (Granted, this isn’t so unusual, since many fans and even a few players seem to do it.) I almost always fall asleep while getting my hair cut, which, it bears noting, comes with certain risks. First and foremost is the possible loss of an ear due to excessive and uncontrollable head-bobbing. Then there’s the whole issue of hair stylist diplomacy: When you snooze, you can’t tell the stylist to stop cutting before it’s too late. Nor can you explain that by “texture” you did not mean “spikes.”

I have fallen asleep on park benches, in church (also not unusual, I know), and even in the dentist’s chair—with his hands and instruments in my mouth. Now that’s impressive. I have also snoozed on my open laptop and woke up to find the keyboard imprinted on my cheek. I once even fell asleep in a tree. I had gone to Ault Park to enjoy some fresh air and to read, and found a low, broad branch jutting out from some sort of evergreen. It made for a cozy, shady reading spot—and an even better makeshift hammock. Less than 10 pages into the book, I was catching some Zs. Knowing all of this, it won’t surprise you to learn that I fell asleep on one of those miniature demo beds at the Macy’s furniture store while my wife, Angie, looked at dining room tables and armoires...which I probably could have fallen asleep on, too.

Part of the reason that I am able to sleep and nap virtually anywhere is that I have the uncanny ability to doze within seconds of my head resting on the pillow, the oyster crackers, the tree bark, the what-have-you. I never have trouble falling asleep. Angie has told me that I often drift away mid-sentence. I think she suspects that I might sometimes just be trying to disengage from certain conversations. She’s a smart gal, Angie. But honestly, I’m usually down for the count before the count reaches 10.

While I don’t sleepwalk, I do “sleeptalk.” Not long after falling asleep mid-chat, I often start talking again. Thankfully, my wife says that I don’t speak so much as jibber-jabber. That’s a very good thing because the thought of me unwittingly providing an intelligible audio track to my usually whacked-out, richly Freudian dreams is enough to keep me up at night. Well, almost.

I can pretty much sleep through anything, too. Storms, leaky toilets, and erratic air conditioning units rarely wake me up. When we lived on Liberty Hill, I would often take a book and a glass of wine out to our backyard patio hammock. If Angie wasn’t around to wake me up and bring me back to the house, I would spend the night out there, the sounds of the city—the traffic, the gunfire, the Air Care helicopter buzzing to and fro—all but a delightful lullaby for me.

Beyond alarm clocks, about the only other thing that will wake me up is a bomb. Literally. While in New York in March 2008, I was rudely awakened when a bomb exploded across the street from my Times Square hotel at a military recruiting center. I just rolled over and went back to sleep, despite what I assume were plenty of sirens wailing. I would have forgotten all about the episode had it not been all over the news the following morning. I was pleased, of course, to learn that no one was injured but a little disappointed that something other than an alarm clock could wake me. Needless to say, I would make the world’s lousiest night watchman.

You may logically assume that one so in love with sleep as I am must miss many a morning appointment, wear down the raised piece of plastic that is the snooze button, and require buckets of ice water on the head to get out of bed every morning. But the truth is that I never have any problems waking up to an alarm. Even when I have to get up at, say, 4 a.m. to catch a 6 a.m. flight for a business trip, I typically don’t even hit the snooze button once. It’s not that I wouldn’t mind sleeping in, mind you, it’s just that when I have to get up, I do get up. I can recall oversleeping in any sort of problematic way only once, and that was for a philosophy final in college. In my defense, I was up really late—like, nearly 11 o’clock—studying. And the exam started at 8:30 a.m.

One of the joys of being a sleep fanatic is rolling over and waking up, checking the time, and realizing that I am hours away from actually having to get up. Just knowing that I have two more hours to sleep is akin to an alcoholic learning that the keg has just been refilled and last call postponed. So great is this pleasure that for about a five-day period I deliberately set my alarm for the middle of the night just so I could wake up and appreciate that I still had hours of shut-eye ahead of me. I was so giddy that it took about 45 seconds to fall back asleep. I abandoned this practice when Angie, who doesn’t return to sleep so easily after being startled awake at 2 a.m., threatened to choke me in my sleep with the alarm clock cord.

My wife thinks I’m a little too crazy about slumber. I find that akin to accusing Tiger Woods of caring too much about golf. Or illicit affairs. But I remind Angie that it’s not as if I read books about sleep, try to befriend the staff at sleep labs, or contemplate forming a sleep lovers club or dance troupe. Nor do I talk ad nauseam about my love affair with sleep the way fans of Jersey Shore can’t seem to shut up about “The Situation.” There are some things better than snoozing, even for a sleep jockey like me. Sex comes to mind, of course, as does hiking through gorgeous backcountry in, say, Yellowstone or Yosemite. But as with most of life’s great pleasures, they sure tire you out, don’t they?

Feeling odd and/or left out? Contact the author via his Web site: www.stevekissing.com

Illustration by Kevin Miyazaki
Originally published in the April 2010 issue

Oh, Shut Your Pie Hole

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:22:00 GMT

You’re holding in your hand my least favorite issue of this magazine: the annual review of the best restaurants in town. When this issue arrives in our mailbox, my wife, Angie, tears into it as if there were a $100 bill hidden inside. She oohs and ahhs at the beautiful photography, dramatically licks her lips, and even kisses a page here and there. These theatrics are for my benefit. That’s because Angie’s a big-time foodie. I am not even a small-time foodie. Angie enjoys cooking gourmet meals and trying new restaurants, while I regard food pretty much the way I regard oxygen: I know I need it to survive but I have no interest in talking about it. This month, however, I’m making an exception because I feel morally obligated to stand up for my kind: the non-foodies. We’re mad as hell and not very hungry and we’re not going to take it sitting down anymore!

I see that look on your face—don’t try to hide it. Foodies are dumbfounded by non-foodies. So much so that foodies will sometimes react with shock and horror if you inform them that a steak from Ponderosa isn’t that bad, or that much different from a similar cut at Morton’s. They take it personally! As if you just verbally assaulted their beloved grandmother or something!

At first they think you’re joking. Then they think you somehow mistook Ponderosa for Jeff Ruby’s. When they realize that you were neither joking nor mistaken, they will try to convert you. They’ll ask: Have you ever had steak prepared in such-and-such a way? Or served alongside this-or-that? Have you ever eaten a steak here or there? When you answer in the affirmative but continue to claim that food worship is way overrated, they wonder if you have some sort of medical condition. Could it be that your taste buds don’t work, giving everything the flavor of tofu? When I explain that my taste buds and olfactory nerves work just fine, thank you, the foodies get really agitated and assume that the problem must be mental. My in-laws have come to this conclusion.

Whenever my wife’s family gathers, food is the honored guest. Weeks before the actual event, e-mails begin to bounce back and forth as each person shares a lengthy list of dishes she is thinking about preparing so that the others can weigh in and help her make the decision. This triggers other suggestions and dozens of links to various recipe sites. Then the delicate negotiations begin as each person tries to steer the others in a specific culinary direction. One may write: Julie, instead of whipping up that beef tenderloin with gorgonzola, how about making that Cajun beef brisket? We all remember that from Easter ’94 and would LOVE to savor it again! If my in-laws put as much time into, say, studying foreign languages as they put into their menu planning, they would each be fluent in six different tongues.

I mostly stay out of these e-mail exchanges, but I can’t resist the urge to speak up now and then. I like to suggest fancy-sounding pizzas, and in lieu of a recipe place the phone number to the neighborhood Domino’s. When the group seems to be gravitating toward a chicken dish for the entrée, I hop on the meal wagon and suggest KFC, reminding everyone that we can eat off of paper plates and won’t have to bother with washing the dishes. Mostly, my in-laws ignore me; occasionally, they tell me—despite all the previous failed attempts—that whatever dish they’re going to prepare will so delight and amaze me, that (finally!) I will become a foodie, and a die-hard one at that. Within minutes of this culinary conversion, they suggest, I will start raving about glazed ginger-soy chicken or East Indian roasted rack of lamb. Not likely.

When feeling really pressured, I jokingly tell them that I have embraced a new faith that strictly forbids the eating of anything prepared by one’s kin. As irritating as they find this, it’s not until we actually gather for the event that their real displeasure emerges. That’s because I rarely eat their food. It’s not that I have anything against them or the dishes; usually, I’m just not in the mood.

When the in-laws ask what I am in the mood for, they don’t like my answers. Snacks are my primary food source, which means my diet mostly consists of soft pretzels, chips, and candy. (I’m a big fan of Sno-Caps.) When I do sit down to the table for a real meal, my favorite dishes are pancakes, ham and Swiss sandwiches, and pizza. For dessert, I mostly eat ice cream, though cookies will also do the trick.

This rubs foodies the wrong way because they want everyone to love their dishes and rave about them. Oh, Natalie, I don’t know what you could have possibly done with these deviled eggs, but they are out of this world! Out of this world!

I don’t have such enthusiastic responses. In fact, I’m well known for having no response. The family foodies take my silence personally, as if it’s an indictment of their cooking and their character. They feel compelled to probe, to pull a comment out of me in much the same way that, say, someone who got their hair cut may ask a spouse who didn’t notice what they think.

Here’s how these culinary investigations typically unfold:

“Steve, did you try my Belgian egg rolls?” one of my sisters-in-law will ask.

“No, but they sure look great.”

“Go ahead and try one; you’ll love ’em. There’s a hint of cinnamon in them.”

“No, thanks. But, again, they sure look great.”

“You’re not even going to try one?”

“No, I’m not interested, thanks.”

“C’mon, try one. Just one—it won’t kill you.”

“I’m sure it won’t, but I’m full.”

“All you ate was turkey and potatoes.”

“That’s all I wanted. I had three helpings.”

“You’re not even going to eat Uncle Matt’s Szechuan green beans?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t get you.”

“That’s OK. Would you like dessert? I’m headed to the fridge for a Klondike bar.”

“But what about your wife’s New York-style cheesecake?”

“No, I don’t think so. Ice cream sounds better to me.”

“You are a freak.”

When it comes to my disinterest in food and my unconventional eating habits, it’s not just family that I need to manage, it’s my colleagues and clients, too. My work in advertising frequently takes me to New York. After a day of meetings or shooting a television commercial, everyone else is eager to relax over a fine meal in one of the town’s countless stellar eateries. I couldn’t care less. While they debate where to eat, I zone out. I can follow the conversation, really, but they might as well be speaking in Finnish.

First foodie: “The Garlicky Gnome has outrageous pork tenderloin. Let’s go there!”

Second foodie: “Sounds yummy, but I heard Freddie Newsome’s Café has a new chef and he’s taken the place all fusion—Hawaiian and Eastern European.”

Third foodie: “We can’t be in New York and not eat at that new Russian place.”

Once, a conversation went on so long I stepped out of the hotel and bought a soft pretzel and Coke from a street vendor and returned, only to find my colleagues still debating. Making matters worse, they had invited the concierge into the discussion, which only resulted in another 25 options being placed on the table for consideration. I told them to get me when they made up their minds; I’d be at the bar.

From my point of view, dining out with work friends becomes even more frustrating when the handing out of the menus at the restaurant initiates another 30-minute round-robin about what looks good, who recommends what, and which items on the menu remind anyone of anything else they have ever eaten in their lives. I do my best to redirect the conversation, usually to little avail. I’d rather talk about the wallpaper. Which makes sense, since I’m usually hungry enough to eat it.

Early in my career, I felt pressured to participate in the “Where shall we dine tonight?” debates and felt compelled to order one of the fancier dishes on the menu. I worried if I played it safe with, say, a straight-up filet or a club sandwich, that I would be perceived at best as not adventurous, and at worst, uncivilized. I mean, after all, isn’t the ability to prepare and enjoy duck breasts with peaches and tarragon what separates humans from apes?

I also used to pretend that I liked golf and that I enjoyed sports. But I finally matured to the point where I could accept myself for who I am: a happy vulgarian. Besides, my colleagues and clients look to me (hopefully) for my advertising talent, not for the caliber of my palate. So now I just order what I want. Sometimes that’s something fancy enough to be the cover shot on a gourmet magazine. But most of the time I choose to go heavy on the cocktails and stick to bread and pasta, or bread and steak, or bread and more bread—never a bad choice, if you ask me.

A few years back, I so enjoyed the pumpkin soup at a five-star restaurant (whose name I can’t remember) that when it came time to order dessert—and, I must say, they had an impressive selection—I ordered another bowl of the pumpkin soup. The waiter assumed I was kidding. He chuckled and asked again what I wanted for dessert. I told him I wasn’t joking. My colleagues, by that point used to my oddball eating habits, nodded and shrugged as if to say, He’s not kidding—and don’t ask us to explain.

When the waiter came back with our desserts, he ceremoniously placed my soup in front of me, smirking, while several other waiters and one of the chefs looked on. I have no idea how many rules of fine dining etiquette I violated, but you would have thought I was eating through my ears. One of the waiters even snapped a picture with his cell phone. I ignored them all and ate my soup—which I enjoyed as much as any cheesecake or crème brûlée I have ever had.

So, all you foodies out there: Give us non-foodies a break! We don’t begrudge you your tomatillo gazpacho or your chicken Florentine artichoke bake topped with a homemade glaze made with Nepalese cucumbers. So please don’t begrudge me my simple cheese sandwich.

And finally, a note to my in-laws: Next time we get together, I’ll be fasting—for religious purposes, of course.

Feeling odd or left out? Contact the author via his Web site: stevekissing.com

Illustration by Kevin Miyazak
Originally published in the March 2010 issue

Bringing Up Babies

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:20:00 GMT

I’m sure it will surprise no one to learn that parenting twins in their first year is a monumental task. It turned out to be even tougher than I had imagined, and I already had two other wonderful daughters under my parenting belt. Don’t misunderstand me. My wife, Angie, and I love our twin girls, Mica and Zella. We feel blessed beyond words, and we would do it all over again, even if the first year were five times as tough. Well, three times as tough, anyway. As joyful and, at times, entertaining as twin babies can be, the fact remains that year one is a real kick in the butt. Times two. Thing is, in my case it was often my own foot doing the kicking.

Ironically, these self-administered fits of frustration were born of the desire to make things easier on Angie and me. Even the smallest of attempts to save time or simplify child-rearing are magnified greatly with twins. For example, after going without sleep for nearly two weeks, I suggested to Angie that we hire a nurse to care for the twins a couple of nights a week. “A good night’s sleep now and then will make us better parents during the day,” I reasoned. She wasn’t so crazy about having a stranger care for our babies at night, but the very concept of sleep to the sleep-deprived is so mesmerizing that it can overpower even a new mother’s instincts. Angie agreed to give it a shot.

The day of our night nurse’s first stay-over, I was full of childish anticipation. You would have thought I was expecting a visit from Bono. This nurse, who I will call Stacey, had great referrals, which helped reassure Angie that this was, indeed, a brilliant idea of mine. But when Stacey showed up, my idea immediately began losing IQ points. While I honestly don’t think that Angie and I are shallow people, we were nonetheless stunned to see that Stacey had no teeth, hobbled as she walked with a cane, and spoke with a thick accent of an undetermined origin, one that was further garbled because of her toothlessness. I hid my own discomfort, helped Angie instruct Stacey, and then hurried Angie upstairs to our bedroom. Before I could even shut the door, Angie began to cry. “I can’t do this,” she said over and over while wiping her tears. I held her hand and told her that we should give Stacey a few nights before making any rash decisions. The only hasty thing we needed to do, I suggested, was fall asleep. Which is exactly what I did. Angie, I learned the next morning, not so much.

Two days later, Stacey returned for her second night. Before Angie and I retired she shared a few stories about her ferrets. That was enough to make Angie cry herself to sleep again despite my reasoning that anyone who’s good with ferrets is most likely a loving, trustworthy being, even if she resembled an octogenarian Shrek.

In the wee morning hours, Angie and I were awakened by a storm. The power was out, so we went downstairs to check on Stacey and the twins. The girls were sound asleep but Stacey was in the kitchen on her hands and knees—a position I wasn’t sure she could manage to get out of on her own—fumbling around in the cabinets for a flashlight. Turns out, besides not having teeth, she didn’t have decent vision either. We helped her to her feet, found her a flashlight and told her to take it easy. After the storm passed, we led her to her car, which had empty ferret cages in the backseat. Though only about 2 a.m., we promised to pay her for the entire night, and she drove off. I could tell by the look in Angie’s eyes that there would be no appeal on Stacey’s behalf. She and her abundant, ferret-loving heart would not return. Nor would regular sleep for another four months.

As Mica and Zella put on the pounds and began sleeping through the night, they had ample energy and ever-increasing attention spans. Entertaining one infant with a game of tickle bug or peek-a-boo can be tricky enough, but with twins you have two audiences, each as fickle as the other, and both wanting your full attention. Complicating matters is that their interests were (and remain) very different. Physical comedy, such as tossing a wooden block in the air and letting it hit the ground—or, better still, your head—thrilled Zella. Mica preferred more sophisticated entertainment, such as rubbing a plush animal against her cheek. When my wife and I were both around we could each take a baby and entertain her, then trade off. But when one of us was alone, we faced a divided and competitive audience. So I hatched another plan, one that turned out to be even less successful than Stacey the night nurse.

I drove to Target and bought one of those automated baby swings, one with soft dangling animals for Mica to touch and some hard plastic shapes that Zella could kick. This way, I explained to Angie, whenever one of us was alone with the twins, they could take turns being entertained by the machine or a real live parent. Unlike my night nurse strategy, this plan seemed to make some sense to Angie. The Father of the Year award was back within my grasp. Though not for long.

Even the occasional reader of this column will know that I am I not the least bit handy. So I chose the swing I did because, by all outward appearances, it seemed easy to assemble. Yet when I cut open the box and turned it upside down, enough pieces tumbled out to assemble a working particle accelerator. How the manufacturers of such baby gear expect tired, distracted parents to find the time or patience to build their contraptions is beyond me. One look at the instructions was all I needed to arrive at the conclusion that I didn’t need them. I quickly put the swing together, thinking to myself that too much in life gets needlessly overcomplicated. I even thought of writing the company and describing the easier, faster way I found to put their swing together (while using fewer parts), thereby saving them lots of money, and saving other parents diaper bag loads of frustration.

With Angie looking on, Mica took her maiden voyage on the swing and seemed to enjoy it. Just as I had predicted, Zella got a big bang out of kicking the plastic pieces that dangled in front of her while she rocked back and forth, on a faster setting than Mica’s of course. Seconds later, the swing collapsed and Zella got an even bigger bang right on top of her head. The bump was significant enough, and her screams loud enough, to warrant a trip to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center satellite location in Mason.

I felt absolutely horrible that my creative assembly technique may have hurt our precious Zella. Thankfully, she checked out just fine. There was no concussion or, as I had feared, brain damage. However, when the nurses and doctors heard the story, they shot me looks that could be interpreted only one way: You are an idiot. Under the circumstances, I had to concur. And now I worry that the mechanical and parenting moron in me is a genetic trait I may have passed on to my kids. Only time will tell.

Juggling two babies becomes particularly challenging at bath time. One night, when Angie was out with friends, I had another brainstorm. (Yes, this should have been a warning sign.) I decided that rather than place one kid in the tub atop a soft cushion—made expressly for that purpose—while the other waited her turn in a bouncy seat, I would wash both babies at once. This would not only save me time, I figured, but also make the experience more fun for all.

To help me manage both babies in the tub, I placed each inside a Bumbo, a cushy, Nerf-like, wrap-around seat intended for the floor. This would allow them to sit upright and the snug fit would keep them secure. The babies’ weight, I reasoned, would keep the Bumbos anchored to the tub. I turned out to be wrong on that score. The foamy Bumbos, despite their precious, chubby cargo, floated. Still, they appeared to be relatively stable, so I forged ahead with my plan. The Bumbos wobbled a bit but Mica and Zella giggled and seemed to enjoy this infant-size version of White Water Canyon at Kings Island. What neither they, nor I, knew then was that the real ride was a day away.

Knowing that I would have a chance to demo my exciting new baby bathing technique to Angie the next day, I kept this little discovery to myself. As we prepared to give the twins their evening bath, I unveiled my new approach.

“Look at this,” I said. “I found a cool way to make this easier. The seats are really soft on their skin, and they love it.”

“Those aren’t meant for the tub,” Angie said, clearly uncertain. “I don’t think we should do this.”

“It worked liked a charm yesterday,” I said. I put the Bumbo seats in the tub and Angie watched them float, nonplussed. “Give it a chance,” I said, as I placed one baby, then the other, into their floating seats. They smiled and splashed.

“See,” I said, “this works great!”

As if on cue, Zella tipped so far forward her Bumbo capsized and her head dipped under the water. Angie panicked, and so did I. I picked up Zella so fast that I don’t think she spent more than a half second, at best, upside down, but that was enough for Bumbos to be forever banned from the bathtubs in my house. And from the look on Angie’s face as she dried off Zella while I took Mica out of her Bumbo, I would soon be banished—or waterboarded. Maybe both. The Father of the Year Award was permanently rescinded.

I bathed the twins (sans Bumbos) on the morning of their ?rst birthday last July. Later, friends and family came to our house to celebrate with us. We had a cake for guests and two small ones for each of the babies to make a mess with as they sat in their high chairs. Not surprisingly, Angie would not let me anywhere near the candles and matches. “I want them to see their second birthday,” she said.
“Me, too,” I said, even as I was mentally puzzling out how I was going to tie the brand new wagon the girls had gotten from my brother and sister-in-law to the back of my bike so I could take them for a little spin around the neighborhood.
What—bad idea?

Feeling odd and/or left out? Contact the author via his Web site: www.stevekissing.com

Illustration by Kevin Miyazaki
Originally published in the February 2010 issue.

Don’t Be a Jerk

Steve Kissing — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:18:00 GMT

Let’s talk turkey. No, not the Butterball variety, but the turkeys you work with. You know, the unpredictable monsters that make life miserable for everyone else. I’ve had many a sleepless night, and countless hair-pulling moments, thanks to these workplace bullies and blowhards. I bet you have, too. Because they sit in positions of power, turkeys (a.k.a. jerks, egomaniacs, sad little men/women, etc.) are nearly impossible to behead and stuff. We can hope that in the grand scheme of things—in a karmic sense, that is—they’ll get their comeuppance. Until then, we’ll grin and bear it for as long as we can, and make ourselves feel better by talking about them behind their backs and out of earshot. That seems to relieve the pressure, even if for just a short while.

It is in this spirit that I share with you a couple of stories about workplace jackasses I have known. And I have worked with plenty. That’s because my whole career to date has played out in the service business—advertising, to be exact—which means I’ve not only had my fair share of power-hungry bosses but also abusive clients who seem to delight in the knowledge that they can pull their account from you (well, me) at any time.

Jackassery knows no gender line, of course, which is just one of its many charms. One female client of mine, an executive with a retail chain, would go on unprovoked and irrational tirades every few weeks. “I told you that I didn’t want the report in a three-ring binder, but in a four-ring binder!” she shouted at me once, as if I had just committed a felony. I couldn’t recall ever having had a discussion about what kind of binder the report would go in. I didn’t even know four-ring binders existed. (In fact, I still don’t. Do they?) But under the guise of being “all about the details,” this client would explode over stuff that seemed to matter to no other living being but her. Naturally, it was always someone else’s fault. And the barrage would always follow the same pattern. “Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?” she would inevitably say after an outburst. “If I’m talking too fast, I’d be happy to slooooooow down!”

After that she’d stomp out of the office, leaving you to cool your heels until she returned 10 minutes later. You would then finish the rest of your business with her and, when you left, she would wish you a good day. When I look back on these surreal encounters, I wonder where she went during those 10-minute absences. I assume she popped a pill, swallowed some booze, or stepped out into the parking lot and shot pigeons to release her unjustified anger. Whenever I left her office, I know that I felt like shooting something.

What made this lady all the more aggravating is that she would always call the next day and apologize for her behavior. That felt genuine the first time, but not the fifth and certainly not the 10th. After her “apology” she would say infuriating things like, “I still think four-ring binders look better.” What she never did was offer up an explanation as to why she lost her cool. Nor would she make any promises to stop, which may have been the only honest thing about the whole experience, because she never did. I think of her every time I see a binder. Or, you know, some crazy street person shouting at a lamppost.

Another client I had the displeasure of working with was the leader of a major local company. This turkey loved to belittle people in meetings. “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard. How did you manage to get past junior high?” was one of his favorite lines. As was: “I don’t know who should get fired first, you for being so stupid or me for being so damn dumb and hiring you in the first place.” Jerks like this put everyone on edge. And when they’re at the helm, it’s way too easy for them to get away with this sick behavior because the culture of fear they cultivate keeps people from speaking up—which, you have to assume, is their ultimate goal. It worked, at least in his presence. But after meetings with this self-important prick, I and my colleagues would curse him and spend no small amount of company time analyzing what made him the bully he was. Something genetic? Perhaps. An incident in his childhood? Maybe so. But I typically put my money on demonic possession. That or irritable bowel syndrome.

Though it’s impossible to know what self-deception and mental gymnastics they employ to reach this conclusion, workplace bullies seem to believe they improve the companies they work for. If any jackasses are reading this now, let me disabuse you of that notion: You don’t.

On the contrary, in his surprisingly helpful business book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, Robert I. Sutton tries to calculate a company’s “TCA,” or Total Cost of Assholes. It’s impossible to add up with any specificity, but common sense says that office jerks impact productivity (and profitability) through distraction, added stress, absenteeism, legal costs, and the like. Companies that tolerate such malevolent turkeys end up paying higher salaries, too, as workers demand “combat pay” for having to collaborate with or report to those whose verbal guns are always fully loaded and cocked, their mental hand grenades dangling perilously from their ammo belts.

What made him the bully he was? Something genetic? I typically put my money on demonic possession.

I know of what Sutton speaks. I myself earned combat pay from my boss’s boss once when I worked with an A+ A-hole who I’ll call Francis, though I called him everything but that at the time. Francis graduated magna cum laude from Jerk U., and there’s little doubt he took continuing education classes to maintain his certification. He was that good—meaning, consistent—in his workplace abuse. He was so unpredictable, moody, and volatile that I and my fellow minions would draw straws to determine whom among us would do a daily “temperature check.” If you drew the short straw, you had to concoct a reason to speak with Francis’s personal assistant, who sat right outside his office. Just by lingering there, we grew quite skilled at reading the signs: Was Francis ripping someone a new one on the phone? Was he chastising an employee or threatening to fire him? Did his personal assistant have watery eyes and runny mascara? Or...were his feet up on his desk? Was he laughing and bouncing his stress ball playfully off the wall?

Such reconnaissance helped us to shape our day. If Francis was in a bad mood, we found reasons to go meet with clients—ideally clients who were several hours away. If he was in a good mood, we would seize the opportunity to report unpleasant news about clients, such as a downward change in our forecasts. This was still something of a crapshoot because his mood could change in seconds, usually for the worse, and always because of someone else. According to Francis, he would always be in a great mood if it weren’t for his employees constantly disappointing him, aggravating his heartburn, and ruining his day. In his mind, we were the spoiled, idiotic kids and he was the all-knowing, all-loving parent—one who clearly believed that harsh punishment builds character, not criminal rap sheets.

It’s always someone else’s fault. That’s the office jerk’s mantra. Blind to their own blatant shortcomings, they seem to have a gift for spotting tiny cracks in other people’s personalities. Francis was amazingly adept at finding your weaknesses, calling them out, and exaggerating them. For him, it was sport.

This gave all of his employees complexes. If you stuttered, he would talk so often about it—and remind you how off-putting it could be to clients—that you were bound to stutter more, not less. This meant yet more badgering, creating a self-perpetuating cycle. I once witnessed Francis give an employee grief for coming off as “too smart.” That’s the way it was with him. You were always either too smart or too dumb; too tall or too short; too polished or too casual. But what he especially hated was anyone who was too popular, anyone who diverted the spotlight of attention off of him. Francis was the center of the universe, and he didn’t mind reminding you of that at least once during every rotation of the Earth. He referred to himself as the nucleus and the rest of us as the protons and neutrons that circled around him.

Whenever we attended client meetings with Francis we had to choose our words very carefully. If during the meeting we said something smarter than he did, we knew we would pay for it later. And God forbid anybody said anything that challenged his point of view. That meant a guaranteed tongue-lashing later. Now, this is exactly the kind of environment any rational manager would not want to foster because it stymies ideas, poisons morale, and stunts personal growth amongst your team. But insecure Francis, who was by no means an ignorant guy, couldn’t seem to grasp this nor the fact that his idiosyncratic behavior was more frightening than endearing in a so-called leader.

What made his arrogant, despicable behavior all the more maddening for those who had to suffer through it was that he was a devout Catholic. He kept a tiny statue of the Virgin Mary on his desk, and he put a nativity scene on his office windowsill every Christmas. How Francis reconciled his mean-spirited approach to others with his allegedly love-centered faith I would have loved to know. He spoke as if he were an ambassador of the Church, as if people would flock to it based on how he conducted himself and the example he set. In reality, it made everyone feel worse about organized religion, Catholic or otherwise. We did, however, make ourselves feel better one year when we stole the jackass figurine from his nativity scene. We drew devil horns on its back and later flushed it down the toilet. Immature? Sure. But boy did it feel good! And that’s the thing: Workplace jackasses bring out the worst in everyone.

Eventually, the combat pay wasn’t enough to compensate for the headaches associated with working under such a spirit-crushing egomaniac. So I left that job and moved on to another where, you guessed it, I encountered another jackass. The sad truth is that these tyrants are everywhere. There’s no escaping them. As long as there are people who over-estimate their intelligence and self-worth while simultaneously underestimating everyone else’s, there will be jerks at work. And as long as there are passive-aggressive types like yours truly, we will find ways to vent, while waiting for the jerks to get what they deserve: a day in our shoes.

Illustration By Kevin Miyazaki
Originally published in the December 2009 issue.