Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 224

Ocelots have a lot of sex. My daughter told me.

My daughter, Clara just told me that an ocelot mates up to 70 times each day.

My first thought: Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun to be an ocelot.

My second thought: Did my nine year-old daughter just tell me that the ocelot has sex up to 70 times a day?

My third thought: Does Clara even understand what mating (or sex) means?

My last thought: I really, really hope she doesn’t ask me to explain mating at 6:12 AM.

Empathy vs. I believe in you

I’ve been accused of lacking empathy on more than one occasion.

This accusation takes many forms, but the most common one goes something like this:

I fail to recognize and acknowledge the struggles and limitations of others, as well as the advantages that I enjoy. As a result, I often expect more than is sometimes possible from others. Essentially, I believe that if I can do something, so can you. It’s merely a matter of effort, focus, and desire.

This, according to my accusers, is simply not always true and is the result of my lack of empathy.

Perhaps it’s true. I acknowledge that my viewpoint fails to take in a host of factors that might impact someone’s personal trajectory, many of which are beyond a person’s control:

Mental illness. Intellectual limitations. Physical disabilities. Aging parents. Family illness. Depression. Financial insecurity. Unavoidable, external forces.

All true.

But couldn’t this also be true:

I simply believe in people more than they believe in themselves. I fundamentally believe that almost every human being in the world - myself included - is capable of more than they are currently achieving and possesses the potential for greatness, just waiting to be realized.

Is my problem a lack of empathy or a belief in people beyond their own imaginations?

Yellow Stripey Things

As a person who is allergic to bees, I found this chart exceptionally helpful and occasionally hilarious.

The yellow jacket description is especially apt.

A job is a job. Only a douchebag would think otherwise.

Did you hear about Fox News reporting on former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens being spotted bagging groceries at a New Jersey Trader Joes?

The shopper who spotted the actor said that she was grocery shopping with her wife on Saturday evening when she recognized Owens and took some photos.

Then the news outlet decided to purchase those photos and make it a story.

This is awful, of course. Job shaming at its finest. Though Geoffrey Owens has continued to act and appeared in guest spots on TV shows such as "Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "That's So Raven" and most recently starred in an episode of "Lucifer" in 2017, it''s certainly not news if he's choosing to bag groceries when the acting jobs aren't paying the bills.

Job shaming is nothing new, and I hate it. I’ve experienced a bit of it in my time.

When I was 16 years old, I started working at McDonald's, and by the age of 17, I was a manager in the restaurant. I continued to manage McDonald's restaurants throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut from 1987 when I finally graduated from college in 1999. 

It's how I put myself through college. 

Though I've worked many jobs before and since then, including as a elementary school teacher, a novelist, a magazine columnist, a public speaker, a wedding DJ, and the founder and creative director of Speak Up, no job has come close in terms of difficulty as managing a McDonald's restaurant. 

Motivating 60-80 people - high school students, stay-at-home moms, immigrants, retirees, parolees, non-English speakers, high school dropouts, and side hustlers - to work together for little more than minimum wage was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Add to that managing labor and food costs, scheduling, customer relations, calculating P&L statements, equipment calibration and repair, vendor negotiations, training, advertising, board of health inspections, and being the best at every position in the restaurant - made this job incredibly demanding.

Both mentally and physically.

Yet when I left McDonald’s for teaching, people would say things to me like, “I don’t know how you did that mindless work for so long,” and “Thank God you escaped that hellhole.”

Hellhole?

McDonald’s taught me to manage my time effectively. Delegate responsibility. Prioritize. Communicate and collaborate with people from background entirely different than my own. I learned about responsibility. Integrity. Motivation. Hard work.

I learned to crack four eggs in two hands simultaneously. Clean and repair HVAC units. Swear in Spanish.

I believe that every Fortune 500 company - regardless of the nature of their business - would do well by identifying the most successful McDonald’s managers in the country and stealing them for their own companies. These are motivated, intelligent, and gritty people who would serve your organization well.

Once you can manage a fast food restaurant successfully and profitably, you can do anything.

Some of the finest people who I have ever known have been the McDonald’s managers who worked alongside me.

Yet I also know what people thought of me when I managed those restaurants. Some of the customers would say these terrible things right to my face.

Happily for Geoffrey Owens, his story has a slightly happy ending. In an interview, he explained that much of his financial struggle is the result of The Cosby Show being pulled from syndication because of the Bill Cosby’s sordid past coming to light.

But upon hearing about this incident, Tyler Perry spoke up, offering Owens a 10-episode deal on his own show, “The Haves and the Have Nots.”

Despite the opportunity, Owens also understands that he still may need to go back to Trader Joe’s at some point.

He explained that acting is calling. “I’m going to keep pursuing it,” he said. “I’m going to persevere. And even if that means, that eventually when all this hoopla dies down, I might need to take another job outside of the business. I’m still willing to do that.”

And no one should think there is anything wrong with that.

I can smell mustard when other people cannot, and it's probably saved my life.

I'm allergic to mustard. When I eat mustard, my skin becomes inflamed, I get sick to my stomach, and enter the early stages of anaphylactic shock. 

I've been in anaphylactic shock thanks to my bee allergy before, so I'm a bit of an expert on the matter. 

Thankfully, I've never experienced anything close to anaphylactic shock due to mustard because I am so attuned to the presence of mustard that I've never eaten it in great quantities. 

A couple years ago, Elysha served me some barbecue chicken. I took one bite and instantly knew that there was mustard in the barbecue sauce. Though she could not taste the mustard at all, I knew instantaneously. When she check the label, she saw that, sure enough, it contained mustard.

Yesterday, at the Patriots tailgate, my buddy, Tony, opened the ziplock bag that the steak had been marinating it overnight. I was sitting about six feet away, but as soon as the bag was opened, I asked if the marinade had mustard in it. No one sitting around me, including Tony, could smell any mustard, but I could. 

Tony said no. There wasn't any mustard. In fact, I'd eaten that same marinade before. 

"Okay," I said. "The smell must be coming from somewhere else. But I definitely smell mustard."

Once again, no one smelled a thing. 

Then Tony's wife said, "Wait, we used a new barbecue sauce this time as a part of the marinade."

Sure enough, that barbecue sauce contains mustard. 

Our bodies are amazing machines. I'm able to smell mustard when no one else can, and it's probably saved my life on more than one occasion.  

My friend, Tom, doubted my mustard allergy years ago. It's admitted an odd one, but still, don't doubt a man when he says a food makes him ill. Then we were at lunch one day, and I was served a slider with mustard after I had asked them to hold the mustard. I took a large bite, sensed the mustard immediately, spit it out on my plate, and still had a reaction. 

I love "I told you so" moments, but not when they come at my expense.

Elysha recently purchased the first food item that I've ever seen that acknowledges mustard as a potential allergen and sent me a photo, knowing how much I would appreciate it. Having never met another person allergic to mustard, and knowing how often people are surprised and even disbelieving of my allergy, it was nice to see. 

Perhaps I'm not alone after all. 

Busy Town update gets my enthusiastic seal of approval

I never understood Richard Scarry's Busy Town. I didn't have a lot of children's books growing up, so I missed out on the series for the most part.

But I also made no effort to get my hands on the book for one specific reason:

Even as a kid, I always thought it was stupid when animals in books and movies just did things that regular human beings already did.

Books like the Arthur series were similar. 

I would think: You're going to let animals talk and do stuff, and the best you can do is send them to school every day like me? Give them homework? Make them eat dinner at a table with their parents? Why? 

I also thought as a kid that Richard Scarry's books were falsely advertised. A guy named Richard Scarry wrote these books, but there not a single scary thing in any of these books. What gives?

However, I recently ran across to updates to Richard Scarry's Busy Town online, and these I can support. I love both, but I really love second one best. 

We don't need another ice cream flavor. Especially mayonnaise-flavored ice cream.

Simplicity. I prize it above almost all other things.

Live an uncomplicated life, and you'll have more time for the important things. For this reason, I try to limit my choices whenever possible so that my time and energy can be devoted to other, more important matters.

I wear the same thing onstage whenever I perform.

I wear the same pair of sneakers every single day.

I eat the same breakfast and almost the same lunch every day. 

I shop in the same grocery store every time. 

The same holds true for ice cream. I've identified six kinds of ice cream that I like a lot:

Chocolate. Strawberry. Cookie dough. Mint chocolate chip. Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra Core and Strawberry Cheesecake. 

I'm sure there are other delicious flavors in the world (and I've even tasted some of them), but these six are delicious. Why risk ruining a visit to the ice cream shop by trying a less-than-ideal flavor?

I made this mistake this summer, deciding to give a shop's fat free, sugar free option a try. I tasted a tiny spoonful and was surprised to discover how good it was, so I ordered a whole scoop on a cone. 

Turns out it was only good in tiny amounts. I lamented my decision for the entire visit.

Which brings me to the latest flavor of ice cream to come out of a Scottish ice cream shop:

Mayonnaise-flavored ice cream

Yes, it's true that alongside Ranch dressing and pickles, mayonnaise is my least favorite substance on earth.

And yes, it's true that just about everyone on the planet agrees that this is a vile and disgusting decision on the part of the ice cream shop.  

But even if all of that wasn't true, did we really need another flavor?

A couple summers ago, Elysha took me to a Momofuku, a shop that sells ice cream that tastes like the milk at the bottom of a sugary cereal bowl. 

I hated it. 

As a kid, I loved slurping up the last bit of sugary milk from the bottom of the bowl, but cereal milk atop an ice cream cone?

No thank you. Too damn sweet and not how and where I want my cereal milk to reside. 

Someone recently told me about bacon-flavored ice cream, assuring me that it's delicious. "You'd love it!"

Maybe I would. I love bacon, so maybe bacon-flavored ice cream is delicious, but I don't need bacon-flavored ice cream in my life. I don't need it to exist. We don't need it to exist. Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors. Ben & Jerry's has more than 60 flavors. Carvel has two dozen. Blue Bell has 66 flavors. 

If the ice cream industry has resorted to bacon and mayonnaise, two products normally found on a BLT, something is wrong. We've reached the limit of our ice cream flavors. We've reached peak flavor. 

We have enough choices already.

Yes, it's true that on occasion, I will try a sample of a new flavor, and on a very rare occasion, I will order that flavor, but it's almost always a mistake. It's hard to beat chocolate or strawberry or cookie dough. Mint chocolate chip always kicks ass. If I love these flavors, why dabble with uncertainty. Why add unnecessary choice to my life? Why risk ice cream disappointment?  

My son, Charlie, almost always orders vanilla when we go for ice cream, which has been a lot this summer with our family's ice cream adventures. With every possible flavor available to him, he chooses vanilla because he likes it. Every time. 

He gets it. Simplicity. Vanilla is a solid flavor. Hard to beat. 

And infinitely better than mayonnaise-flavored ice cream. 

The people in Louisiana don't suck

This week, Louisiana became the 16th state to file an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to rule that it is legal to fire someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Louisiana joins Nebraska, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming, Kentucky, Maine, and Mississippi in seeking to make it legal to fire gay people.

Seeing this list, my initial thought:

Those states suck.

The majority of people in those states suck.

What a bunch of amoral bastards.  

Then I read this:

An recent LSU poll found 76 percent of Louisianan residents think gay, lesbian and bisexual people should have protections from workplace discrimination.

It was a good reminder that the people in power do not necessarily reflect the will of the people.

After all, we have a President who didn't receive the majority of votes and has a approval rating of 38%. 

Yet I'm certain that there are many people in other nations who look at Trump and think, "Americans voted for that ignorant, racist, sexist hobgoblin? They suck."

And with 62 million Americans voting for him, they wouldn't be completely wrong.  

Wife: Emoji Master

I don't use emojis.

It began as a purposeful rejection of them, thinking they were a silly fad, but now it's become one of those ridiculous stands that has been going on for so long that I can't stop now.

Honestly, I also don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. 

But I must say:

Sometimes I think my wife's use of emojis is brilliant. Like this one:

 

 

Seinfeld gets it

Jerry Seinfeld explains with perfect clarity why I'm constantly standing on stages, telling stories, delivering talks, and performing standup. 

I wouldn't go so far as to call the writing and publishing of books the "definition of hell," but he's correct about the lack of immediate, specific feedback from your readers. 

When I stand on a stage and perform, I know how I did immediately, in real time, and that is a beautiful thing.