Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 50

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?

Working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation

For the past year, I’ve had the honor of working with the FBI’s hostage negotiation unit, teaching them to tell better stories and deploy some of my communication strategies in order to help them resolve potentially life-threatening situations peacefully. I’ve also reviewed their training manuals and offered suggestions, though most of what I found was remarkably nuanced, insightful, and expansive.

These people know their stuff.

Working with these men and women who work tirelessly every day to keep us safe has been a great privilege, and I’ve been humbled by the opportunity to make a small difference in their work.

It’s also crazy and shocking.

When I first told a story onstage in New York City in July 2011, I never expected to one day travel to FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, to help FBI agents with their work.

It’s just one of dozens of unexpected, inexplicable opportunities that have come my way over the past decade.

My world has become so much more surprising and interesting since I started telling stories.

In working with these FBI agents and getting to know them, I can tell you this:

Every FBI agent and employee I’ve worked with is remarkably professional, supremely knowledgeable, single-mindedly fixated on the safety of our country, obsessed with self-improvement, and absolutely apolitical.

They are a band of brave, hard-working, selfless Americans doing important work for our country.

Two other people I know who have worked alongside FBI personnel report the same.

We are so lucky to have them on our side.

Please don’t let anyone with an agenda, an axe to grind, or an ulterior motive tell you otherwise. They either know nothing or are lying to you for their own benefit.

Most likely, they are soulless, self-serving cretins.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is staffed by professionals who Americans should be proud to call their own.

On this day after Independence Day, I’m proud to acknowledge the work they do, the risks they take on our behalf, and their impressive skills and professionalism.

A singular moment of perfection

Father’s Day. Charlie and I are playing golf. He’s played maybe a dozen times and is starting to get serious about the game.

He’s hitting the ball consistently, asking good questions, choosing clubs wisely, and no longer putting nine times on a green.

He’s focused. Lacking skills or understanding for much of the game, to be sure, but he’s genuinely trying to get better.

Lessons and a new set of clubs are in his future.

Lucky him. I didn’t start playing until I was 32 when a friend bought a set of irons for $10 at a yard sale, tied them together with a red ribbon, and tossed them into my truck. I added a putter for $1 and later, a driver and a couple of woods as a bachelor party gift.

It took me another 15 years to finally start taking lessons.

I’m also a lefty, playing right-handed, which undoubtedly makes things a little more challenging.

Starting the game at an early age will help.

It’s been a great round. Charlie and I have talked, laughed a lot, told stories, and enjoyed each other’s company.

We’re standing in the tee box on the final hole – a short par 4. Given Charlie’s age and experience, we’re playing from the red tees, making the distance to the pin only 215 yards. There are sand traps to the left and right of the green, and it’s a disaster if you hit the ball left or long, but it’s otherwise not too hard of a hole.

Charlie hits his best tee shot of the day. It flies high and right of the green, coming to a rest about 20 yards short of the pin in the rough. It’s a great shot—his best of the day.

My tee shot lands just short of the green.

I chip to about 10 feet of the hole, giving me a possible birdie putt to end the round.

Charlie chips onto the fringe. He’s about 20 feet from the cup, pin high—another good shot.

Chalie putts. The ball rolls true and drops into the hole for a birdie. His first birdie ever. The boy has never had a par before, but now he has a birdie. The excitement of the ball dropping into the cup is palpable, but here is what I will never forget:

Charlie looks up at me, mouth agape. Then he smiles. He drops his putter and sprints towards me across the green, absolute joy on his face. Then he leaps into my arms, shouting, “I did it! I did it!”

The feeling of his body connecting with mine.

His weight in my arms.

His voice, shouting in joy.

The birdie was great. Unbelievable. But his reaction was unforgettable. A moment that will live with me forever.

I then proceed to miss my birdie putt, settling for a par, making it the first hole that Charlie defeated me.

He doesn’t even taunt me. Maybe it’s because it’s Father’s Day, and he, too, knows that we have just experienced a singular moment of absolute perfection.

 

“Tommy” and more

Elysha, Charlie, a friend, and I went to see “Tommy” – the Tony Award-winning musical based on The WHo’s 1969 album of the same name –  on Broadway on Saturday.

Clara is away at camp, so her usual seat was occupied by a pal.

My children have been blessed to see many Broadway shows. In lieu of taking them to ARuba or purchasing their phones, we pile into the car with books and music and drive to Manhattan, where we have seen many, many shows over the past few years.

During intermission, I asked Charlie, “What do you think so far?”

His response:

“I’m experiencing feelings I’ve never felt before, and I’m not exactly sure what they are.”

This is precisely why we take our kids to the theater. There is something about live theater, performed well, that can’t be reproduced anywhere else. When the show ended and the lights came up, Charlie immediately began talking about the show, asking questions, offering opinions, and exalting in the experience.

“Maybe the best show I ever saw,” he said. This is high praise, given that the boy has seen “Hamilton,” “Wicked,” “The Lion King,” “Six,” “Hadestown,” “Come From Away,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” and many more.

After the show, Charlie listened to The Who’s “Tommy” on his way home from New York, commenting on how well one song transitioned into another or how he had picked up on a lyric he had missed in the theater.

Upon arriving home, he headed straight to the keyboard, where his weird and wonderful musical mind began picking out the notes to “Pinball Wizard.”

I don’t know how he does it. He’s taken half a dozen piano lessons so far, but before he began the lessons, he could listen to a song and play it on the keyboard. He plays the guitar and trumpet, but still… I don’t know how he does it.

Later that night, he read about the band’s history, the origin story of their album “Tommy,” and more.

The following day, over breakfast, we discussed plot points from the show, talked about our favorite songs, and debated whether the show could’ve been improved by allowing for dialogue rather than having the entire show sung by the cast.

Days later, he is still talking about the show.

This is the beauty of theater. You see a show performed on a stage, but that performance remains with you for a long time.

Maybe forever.

A character’s voice, a plot point, a song, a narrative arc, a visual or special effect, or even just a tiny bit of dialogue echoes inside you long after the curtain closes and you’ve moved on with your life. It might bring you a smile, stir up an old memory, or make you think of your life in an entirely new way.

Movies, books, television, music, and even a poem can do the same, but watching actors perform live seems to make everything seem bigger, brighter, and more indelible.

These moments onstage seem to burn into your soul.

A song in “Hamilton” makes me feel better about being me.

I can turn to a song from “Wicked” for much-needed inspiration.

A line in “A Chorus Line” feels like it was me, standing onstage, shouting at the world.

A moment from “Jagged Little Pill” still makes me feel like I could run through a wall.

We’ve certainly taken our kids on their fair share of vacations, but I think some of our finest, most enduring memories come from our days and nights spent on the Great White Way. We’re certainly lucky to live close enough to New York to make accessing Broadway relatively simple, and we’re fortunate enough to have the means to purchase tickets for what are admittedly expensive shows, but you need not attend a Broadway show to experience the wonder, joy, and lasting impact of live theater. For every Broadway show we attend, we also enjoy just as much or more local theater – far more affordable and accessible – in venues large and small.

Elysha and I even produce and perform shows of our own, and now that the kids are older, they can attend those shows, too.

My advice if you are someone who doesn’t partake in live theater:

Give it a try. Whether it’s a famed Broadway theater or a black box on a local college campus, find a theater, pick a show, and take a seat. Not every show will be a masterpiece, and you’ll likely encounter a few duds, but the theater’s live, communal nature can’t be beaten.

Maybe you’ll even come away thinking, “I’m experiencing feelings I’ve never felt before, and I’m not exactly sure what they are.”

If so, lucky you.