Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 45

Today we celebrate 18

Today, Elysha and I celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary.

We’ll spend most of it driving north to Vermont to pick up Clara from camp, where she has been for more than three weeks. Besides a handful of postcards, we haven’t heard a peep from our girl in nearly a month, so hugging our daughter and squeezing every story out of her will be a pretty great way to spend an anniversary.

Still, on this day, I always reflect on that summer day in July of 2006 when Elysha and I were wed.

It was the best wedding.

I know I’m a bit biased when it comes to evaluating our nuptials, but I’ve also been a wedding DJ for 27 years and have attended more than 500 weddings over my lifetime—many as a guest but many more as a DJ—so I have some expertise in the matter.

Our wedding really was the best.

It started with our ceremony, of course. Our friends and colleagues, Rob and Andy, played Beatles songs.

Elysha walked down the aisle to “Something.”

I will never forget it.

We had bridesmaids and groomsmen to our left and right—all of whom are still our friends today—and our principal and friend, Plato Karafelis, officiated.

Elysha and I wrote our own vows. I don’t know if Elysha knows this, but I read them often. I’ve put them on my phone, and whenever I have a moment, I’ll open the file and read them, like I did first thing this morning.

I think I did a fine job with my vows. I like them a lot.

I think Elysha did better.

______________________________

Matt,
You are my dream come true.
There is nothing that could make me happier than marrying you,
my best friend and soul mate.
From this day forward, I promise to share with you the joys of life,
because with you, they will be that much sweeter.
I promise to help shoulder our challenges
because through them we will emerge stronger.
I promise to always encourage your creativity
because that is what makes you unique and wonderful.
I promise to nurture your dreams
because, through them, your soul shines.
I promise to try to be on time and pick my things up off the floor
because I know those things drive you crazy.
Most of all I promise to laugh with you, support you,
and to be your partner in all things.
I love you up to the sky and back.

______________________________

I used to believe that life would be perfect when all my dreams came true, but then you came along
and I realized that I didn’t know what dreaming was.

Elysha Jaffee Green, you are more than a man could ever ask for
and more than I deserve.

I vow to spend every day of my life
giving you as much as you have given me.

I promise to remember the darkness before you
so that I will never forget the brilliance you have brought to my life.

I promise to share everything that I have
and to try to give you everything you could ever want.

I promise to stand beside you,
hold your hand,
and be your strong and loving friend
through good times and bad.

I promise to always be the one to go into the basement at night
when the darkness frightens you,
to find you the best parking spots available,
and to shop with you and try to eat sushi,
no matter how much I despise both.

Most importantly, I promise to love you,
to love you like no man before,
with all of my heart and mind, and soul,
until the end of these days and beyond.

RIP Dr. Ruth

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the iconic sex therapist whose advice helped educate millions of Americans about sexual desires and practices, sadly died this week.

I met Dr. Ruth backstage at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the spring of 2016. We were both speaking at a TEDx conference. She spoke about the importance of taking risks, and I delivered my “Homework for Life” talk.

As I stepped backstage into the green room to prepare to speak, I found Dr. Ruth sitting there, reviewing her notes.

Before I could say anything, she introduced herself and said, “Tell me about you.” I did, trying to be as brief as possible. I am awful when it comes to backstage and green rooms. My lack of nervousness, cavalier attitude, and unconscionable degree of self-confidence make me chatty, carefree, and relaxed before a show, which is often exactly what a performer doesn’t want or need just before taking the stage.

While I’m asking performers about their kids, their weekend plans, or the cheeseburger they just ate, they are trying to lock in a story, memorize transition points in a talk, gain control of their nerves, and focus on the task at hand.

I’ve been told to leave the green room more than once.

But Dr. Ruth was as relaxed as me, so when I finished telling her a little bit about myself, she said, “Okay, how is your sex life?”

She didn’t wink at me when she asked this question, but her words somehow felt like a wink. An assurance of sorts that it would be okay to answer honestly.

“Fine,” I said, a little taken aback.

“Well,” she said. “That is a sad way to describe a sex life.” Then she offered me five tips for improving it.

I took notes.

A moment later, one of the producers appeared and told me to get ready. My moment in the orange circle had arrived.

I shook Dr. Ruth’s hand and waved goodbye. I took the stage and delivered my talk. I sat in the audience a little while later as she delivered hers.

Now, she is gone, having left an enormous impact on the world in a brave, bold, unique, and important way.

She zigged while everyone else was zagging.

I hope to have a tiny fraction of the impact on this world that Dr. Ruth did.

Rest in peace, Dr. Ruth.

Carlos O’Kelly’s

I’ve driven by this restaurant every time I visit the FBI at Quantico, and I cannot help but wonder:

How did this happen?

How did a Mexican restaurant end up with an Irish name? Or a partially Irish name.

So I went searching and found a few other oddities:

First, Carlos O’Kelly’s is a franchise. The first store opened in Marion, Iowa, in 1982, and despite the sign, it’s not a Mexican restaurant. It’s a New Mexican restaurant featuring cuisine from New Mexico, which is apparently different than Mexican and even Tex-Mex cuisine.

The restaurant was founded by brothers Darrel and David Rolph—whose names seem neither Mexican nor Irish—who were also instrumental in the early franchising of Pizza Hut. They owned one of the world’s first ten Pizza Hut restaurants and served as leaders in the company as it expanded before leaving the business to open Carlos O’Kelly’s.

Before Pizza Hut, Darrell Rolph was a science teacher. When he heard about the potential of Pizza Hut, he left teaching, bought a franchise, and partnered with his brother.

It’s kind of sad to think we lost a science teacher to pizza, but pizza is undeniably profitable.

The Rolph brothers have since passed away. The company is run today by their nephew.

There are nearly two dozen Carlos O’Kelly’s restaurants operating today in Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Virginia, including one about a mile down the road from FBI headquarters.

As for the name?

I still can’t find an explanation, and it’s making me crazy.

Angry at nothing

I occasionally see a person wearing a mask while driving their car.

I’ve also seen people wearing masks walking down an otherwise empty sidewalk.

Recently, I saw someone wearing a mask while watching a Little League game.

I never question anyone wearing a mask in an indoor space. They may be sick and wearing it for my protection. Their immune system may be compromised in some unfortunate way. They may suffer from a heart condition that would make contracting COVID especially dangerous for them. They may simply be trying to avoid long COVID, which can be devastating to those who are dealing with it.

I can envision many reasons for wearing a mask indoors.

But admittedly, wearing a mask alone in your car, outdoors on an uncrowded sidewalk, or the sidelines of a baseball game seems a little silly.

But “a little silly” is as far as my mind ever goes.

Wearing New York Jets paraphernalia or carrying a handbag emblazoned with its brand name seems more ridiculous than wearing a mask alone in a car.

I’m also a person who believes in personal liberty and leaving people the hell alone when their behavior does not impact my life negatively or unjustly.

I think most of us feel this way.

However, a certain type of human being exists who becomes irrationally angry when they see a person wearing a mask in a car, on a sidewalk, or at a baseball game.

They see this unexpected mask-wearing behavior and, for reasons that escape me, lose their damn minds.

It’s weird.

It’s also incredibly stupid. Wearing a mask in a car has no discernible impact on anyone other than the driver, yet some people—thankfully a minority—become offended, upset, annoyed, or even angry at the sight.

I feel terribly for these angry little monsters. It can’t be easy being so small-minded, prickly, insecure, irrational, and illogical.

Closed captioning all the time

I see the words people say. When someone speaks – and especially when I am speaking – I see the words being spoken like closed captioning.

For a long time, I thought everyone did this.

Then, one day, I asked a colleague if she was as annoyed as me by an administrator’s speech pattern. The administrator in question tended to stop midsentence and begin a new sentence, making her words appear jumbled and filled with ellipses and em-dashes in my mind.

Punctuation can be difficult if people constantly stop midsentence to begin a new idea.

I explained this to my colleague, who thought I was crazy.

“You see her words? What are you talking about?”

Then I checked with others, and they thought I was crazy, too. No one saw the words being spoken like closed captioning.

I couldn’t believe it.

Then, a few years later, I found someone who does. He sees the words being spoken just like me.

I was so excited. I was no longer a lone loon.

Then I discovered that it has a name.

“Ticker tape synesthesia” is the automatic and involuntary visualization of words that appear like subtitles when listening, speaking, or thinking. Scientists speculate that tickertaping derives from atypical brain functioning akin to dyslexia.

TTS was first reported in 1883 by Francis Galton, Darwin’s polymath half-cousin, who stated that “some few persons see mentally in print every word that is uttered, and they read them off usually as from a long imaginary strip of paper, such as is unwound from telegraphic instruments.”

That’s not exactly how I see the words people speak, but it’s close.

Ticker tape synesthesia is rare. It seems to have a slight propensity to run in families. It doesn’t hinder a person in any way except those with difficulty focusing in a room full of speakers.

Happily, this is not a problem for me. Though it requires no effort to see the words being spoken (or, as Charlie recently pointed out, being sung, too), I can sort of push them away a bit, too, when desired. Move them into the background. I can still see them, but they can be made less prominent. Also. when I focused on another task, like driving, they tend to move into the background on their own.

TTS has no discernible advantages that I can see, and scientists have found none, so it’s just something I do, absent any meaningful impact on my life.

A superpower of sorts without any actual use.

Figures.

Except it made me feel a little odd for a long time. Different from humanity and curious about why I do something that no one else seemingly did.

Happily, that is no longer the case. As rare as TTS may be, fellow captioners exist. I’m no longer a singular oddball.

Admittedly, even this wasn’t much of a problem since my real superpower is a general lack of concern over what others think of me.

I hit another birdie.

Birds play an oversized role in golf.

A birdie occurs when a golfer finishes a hole one stroke under par. It’s a difficult feat but not exactly rare. I’ve scored at least five birdies this year and witnessed many more.

An eagle indicates a golfer has finished a hole two strokes under par. For example, an eagle on a par-4 hole is achieved with two strokes, and on a par-5 hole, three strokes.

I scored my first eagle this year after hitting a tee shot on a short par 4 to within 110 yards of the hole and then miraculously rolling my approach shot into the cup.

An albatross, also known as a double eagle, is a rare and impressive feat in golf that occurs when a player finishes a hole three strokes under par. This can be accomplished by making a hole-in-one on a par-4 or sinking the ball in two strokes on a par-5.

I have never scored nor witnessed an albatross firsthand. It is a rare bird indeed.

Also, actual birds sometimes play an oversized role in golf, at least when it comes to me.

I killed a bird midflight about a decade ago with a tee shot. As my friend Tom described, the bird first seemed to hang in the air momentarily, as if to say, “Goodbye, cruel world!” before plunging to its death.

About a year later, I hit a duck on a hill. The duck seemed to roll over before returning to its feet and flying away. My friend couldn’t stop laughing for the next two holes.

A couple of weekends ago, while playing with my friend, Andrew, in Rhode Island, I hit a tee shot onto the left edge of the fairway in the vicinity of a flock of crows. As my ball came down, the birds took flight.

“Did I…?”

“Yes,” Andrew said. “You hit another bird. I think it’s okay.”

It was.

Last weekend, I hit a tee shot so close to a bird that my friend, Jeff, shouted, “Look out!”

Presumably to the bird.

The bird – a swallow – actually changed direction to avoid the ball, which might have clipped its wing.

Lest you think I am the only golfer hitting our winged friends with golf balls, Charlie hit a goose in the ass last year. A flock of geese was scattered on the fairway, well beyond what I thought was his range, but he somehow managed to hit his best shot of the day, smacking the goose hard enough for it to produce a honking sound before taking flight.

Charlie and I collapsed in hysterics.

The father and son who were playing with us walked away. Completely abandoned us with two holes to play. We never saw them again.

They apparently did not find the incident as amusing as we did.

 

Clara and Charlie’s Commandments

As Louisiana begins violating our separation of church and state and displaying a set of arcane religious laws in its public classrooms—a list containing a handful of meaningless rules ignored by even the most observant Christians, plus some glaring omissions—I was reflecting on a time when my kids were studying the Ten Commandments at Hebrew School.

June of 2017. Clara was eight years old. Charlie was five.

As part of the lesson, they were asked to develop their own commandments.

Clara’s commandments are beautiful. Possibly better than the Bible’s Ten Commandments.

Here are Clara’s commandments—nine in all.

Have fun!Let me tuck and kiss my brother at night.Eat good food.Have friends!Have a good education.Get good helf care. (healthcare)Do not bother me when the door is close (except at night).Be kind, respectful, and responsible every day.Let me have flowers in my room.

Charlie’s commandments are fewer in number but much more like those his father would write.

Do not die.Love.

They also say it all, at least for me.

And brevity is the soul of wit. Right?

Itching for a fight

I was dropped off by an Uber driver in Scottsdale, Arizona, well after midnight, in a dark, sketchy place about a mile from my hotel. The driver pointed at a building that appeared to have a lobby, but when I got close, I could see it was an office building with locked doors.

I turned to tell the driver we were in the wrong place, but he was already driving away.

I quickly looked on Google Maps and saw that the hotel was about three-quarters of a mile away.

Then I thought:

It’s a set-up. He dropped me here intentionally, in this dark place behind an office building, with no sight lines to any road, where his confederates are lying in wait.

I’m about to be robbed.

Then, I became momentarily excited—almost ecstatic—about the prospect of fighting off a small handful of bad guys because I’m a big, stupid idiot.

But when you grow up fighting a lot, liking to fight, and being surprisingly effective at fighting, the desire to engage in combat never entirely leaves you. I’m always kind of wishing that I might find myself in a fight someday, even though that desire is so very stupid.

I punched a man outside of the Big Sky gym about a decade ago to stop him from beating up another man, and I was disappointed that my one punch dropped him to the ground.

I had been hoping for more, which was also so very stupid.

But I’m not the only one dealing with a similar issue. Little parts of our former selves often remain behind—rightfully neutered, dormant, and silenced—but ready to emerge at the right moment.

That’s me, always waiting for the right moment.

Waiting for the next chance to fight.

Also—and this occurred to me that night in Arizona—my opponents could very well have weapons, significantly reducing my chances of victory. Fighting is stupid for many reasons, but one of them is that you never know what might be hiding in someone’s pocket.

Having been faced with a switchblade and a gun in my past, I know what I’m talking about.

That moment in Arizona turned out to be much less nefarious than I suspected. I eventually discovered that my hotel had just recently opened, so the driver’s GPS was confused. It wasn’t a set-up—just a bad set of directions.

Instead, I only had to survive the 95-degree walk to the hotel.

Less exciting, for sure, and a lot less satisfying, but much safer.

Charlie and his pal

The boy loves the cat.

The cat loves the boy.

I’m not sure who loves who more, which is probably precisely how every relationship should be.

Either way, it is a beautiful thing to see.

I want less Chipotle

Customers have recently been accusing Chipotle of skimping on food portions and have started a trend of filming Chipotle employees as they built out their burrito orders in an effort to get larger scoops.

The trend – dubbed the “Chipotle phone method” – went viral on social media, but some employees have resisted it, saying customers filming them was “stressful and dehumanizing.”

I agree. It’s a jackass move. A lowlife bit of nonsense committed by monsters who have never worked in the service industry or are afflicted by insufferable entitlement syndrome.

A common ailment these days.

Chipotle’s CEO Brian Niccol addressed the issue:

“The portions have not gotten smaller. We always want to give people big portions that get them excited about the food.” He added that if a customer wants a little more of any ingredient, they can simply ask an employee.

In response to the allegations that portion sizes are decreasing, a Wells Fargo analyst recently purchased 75 identical bowls from eight Chipotle locations in New York City and found a wide variance in portion size. Some locations served bowls that weighed 33% more than others, with one bowl topping out at 27 ounces and another weighing just 14 ounces.

The median weight was around 21.5 ounces.

So perhaps some standardization at Chipotle is in order, but when you’re scooping food, it’s impossible to be precise.

Here’s my complaint:

I wouldn’t mind smaller portions from Chipotle.

I love their food, but their burritos and bowls are enormous. If I eat a Chipotle burrito or bowl for lunch, I’m often finished eating for the day. And though leftovers are fine, a Chipotle burrito or bowl is not nearly as good the next day.

Instead, I would love for Chipotle to begin selling half-size bowls and burritos.

Less food, please. Smaller portions.

Give me a lunch-sized burrito. A snack-sized bowl. Big portions are exciting when you’re preparing to summit a mountain or battle a grizzly bear, but otherwise, a more reasonable portion would make for an outstanding option and bring me to Chipotle more often.

Brian Niccols, are you listening?