Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 500

I’m going to be quite grumpy in my old age

Bad news for me (and Elysha), at least if Harvard’s famous longitudinal  study on happiness is correct: 

“We found that contentment in the late seventies was not even suggestively associated with parental social class or even the man’s own income. What it was significantly associated with was warmth of his childhood environment, and it was very significantly associated with a man’s closeness to his father.”

Tell me everything? I’d rather you stick a fork in my eye.

Is this a difference between men and women or just a difference between me and my wife?

Elysha gets on the phone with a pregnant friend who is living out of state and says, “Okay, tell me everything.”

I consider these to be three of the most frightening words in the English language.

Conversely, my phone rings. I look to see who is calling. It is my nearest and dearest friend. Someone I genuinely enjoy taking to. Someone who I have not seen in a month. Someone who I actually need to speak with. 

And at the moment I have absolutely nothing to do. I am sitting on a blanket in the middle of a field with twenty minutes to kill. No book. No computer. Not even a pad and pen.  

Nevertheless, I let the call go to voicemail and hope that if my friend chooses to leave me a message (and I hope he doesn’t), it is 15 seconds or less.

Is this a man thing, or is it just me?

Unfair assumption #8

The grown men in the audience of the Glee: The 3D Concert Movie, who were overjoyed and in some cases genuinely euphoric over performance taking place on stage, are not likely friendship material for me.

First, let me make it clear that I did not watch the Glee movie. I was flipping through the HBO channels when I stumbled upon the concert and stopped only because I saw one of these grown men, fist in the air, tears in his eyes as he sang along with Glee’s version of Don’t Stop Believin’.

I had to stop. I couldn’t help myself.

 

I’m also familiar with Glee. My wife and I watched the first season of the show, but I did not like it. I thought that the music was highly overproduced and inauthentic within the context of the show, making it unwatchable for me. Still, I know many people who watch Glee and like it a lot (including my wife). I have no qualms with someone appreciating the show. 

I can even understand a grown man attending this kind of concert. In 1989 I brought my sister to a New Kids on the Block concert, and though I was not a fan of the band, I had to admit that they put on a good show.

Ten years later I brought a niece to a Britney Spears concert, which was expectedly atrocious. Spears lip-synced the entire show and oftentimes seemed disinterested and distracted on stage. On my way to the men’s room, I passed the father of one of my former students. We stopped, made eye contact, and I said, “Let us never speak of this moment.”

“Agreed,” he said and we went our separate ways.

Still, there’s nothing wrong with a father taking his daughter to a concert.

There’s even nothing wrong with a grown man wearing a “Gleek” tee-shirt and jumping up and down, screaming the songs at the top of his lungs at a Glee concert.

I won’t even criticize the tears in the eyes of some of these men or the sheer euphoria that some of these men experienced during the five minutes that I was watching the concert.

It wouldn’t be my reaction to this kind of performance, but to each his own.

I just can’t see me and any of these men being friends someday. At best, I would be required to make fun of them for their obvious obsession on a  daily basis, and while many male relationships are rooted in constant ribbing, this would probably be too much. 

Ironically, they might make great characters in the kinds of books that I write. While I can admire their willingness to be themselves and brave the mocking of jerks like me, it’s just not enough to make me want to play poker or golf with them anytime soon.

The power and ubiquity of the Twitter

My wife and I are listening to Jeffrey Toobin’s THE OATH: THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE AND THE SUPREME COURT. In learning about former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s views on gender equality, I found myself wanting to ask her about her position on the military draft.

A moment later, I was annoyed, realizing that it was unlikely that she was on Twitter.

It’s remarkable how the lines of communication have shrunken in today’s world. Thanks to Twitter, I now expect to be able to reach out to almost anyone in the world without any trouble, and oftentimes I have.

I’ve chatted via Twitter with authors like Margaret Atwood and Jennifer Weiner, celebrities like Mindy Kaling and Sarah Siilverman, television broadcasters like John Dickerson and a number of political figures, just to name a few. Twitter is a great melting pot, where the known and the unknown can rub shoulders and exchange ideas with relative ease.

As a result, I’ve come to expect that I can reach just about anyone I want via the medium, even though the great majority of my real life friends and colleagues do not use Twitter. And for the most part, this has been true. Even though the people to whom I am closest are unreachable via Twitter, most of the newsmakers of the world are, and I’ve been able to reach out to them repeatedly throughout the past two years. 

But a 79-year old former Supreme Court Justice?

I thought the odds were extremely low.

But when I checked, I found an account for Ginsburg under @RuthBGinsburg. It’s not a verified account, so I have no way of knowing if it’s actually her, but the tweets seem to suggest that they might be coming from the former Supreme Court Justice. They are tempered, reasoned and express ideas that you might expect from her. 

Still, with Twitter, you never know.

I posed my question anyway and await a reply.

Consistency, people.

It’s a pet-peeve perhaps, but the seemingly random capitalization of words makes me crazy.

Think about it: In order to produce this sign, someone had to purposefully hold the shift key down while typing three of the words in the sentence but (for reasons I will never understand) release the shift key for the fourth.

It makes absolutely no sense. It’s crazy-town. Truly.   

You’re Whole

This Michael Ian Black infomercial parody is exceptionally funny and well worth watching, but my favorite thing about it is that it airs in the middle of the night, when the infomercials that he is parodying are also airing.

Clever. 

I like you

If a girl admits that she likes you, know that it took her every ounce of courage she has. Don’t take her for granted.

I saw this on Twitter today and it reminded me of how stupid I was when my wife first told me that she liked me.

We were sitting in my car after a night out with mutual friends. She and I had been friends and colleagues for almost three years, but over the previous couple months, our relationship had begun to change.

At least I was hoping it was changing. Honestly, I could not imagine this amazing woman finding me anything but pedestrian (I still find myself thinking this today). Despite the late night phone calls and the amount of time we were spending together, I was still holding back hope, assuming that she was just a good friend and wanted nothing more.

Not to mention I thought she might still have a boyfriend. Though it was clear that her relationship with him was ending, I was not entirely sure that it was over yet when she made her declaration.

So while sitting in my car at the end of the night, Elysha told me that she liked me. “I like you, you know,” she said, and she reached out and touched my hand.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m flattered.”

I know. I suck.

What I should have said was, “I feel the same way, and probably more! Much more! I can’t believe it! I like you, too!”

But instead I told her that I was flattered my her statement of affection and let he leave without another word.

Four seconds after she had pulled out of the parking lot, I was screaming at myself for my stupidity. I pounded on the steering wheel, castigated myself for my incomprehensible insanity, and wondered if I would get a second chance to correct my mistake.

Unable to wait a second more, I called her. I was standing in the parking lot outside my apartment complex,pacing back and forth, when I dialed her number and was immediately transferred to her voicemail. I left a rambling, semi-incoherent message, explaining my stupidity, declaring my mutual affection for her, and begging for her to call me back as soon as possible, regardless of the time.

I received no return call. The next morning she entered my classroom,  handed me a note and left. In the note, Elysha apologized for the previous evening and assured me that we could still be friends.

She had not listened to her voicemail.

If we were living inside a romantic comedy, this scene would have been followed by a musical montage of gauzy scenes in which Elysha and I walked down long garden paths and bustling city sidewalks, heads down and alone. We would be seen eating TV dinners in front of the television while TV couples like Sam and Diane and Jim and Pam finally connected and found true love. Eventually we would be  reunited at the end of the film through some grand gesture, likely brought about as the result of a miraculous confluence of events.

But I did not want to spend another minute apart from this woman.

Instead, I immediately found Elysha, told her I rejected her letter, and assured her that I liked her as well. I explained that I had been a stupid, frightened man who was attempting to respond like a gentleman in light of the uncertainty surrounding the end of her possibly previous relationship.

But mostly I had been stupid and cowardly. 

Things between Elysha and me were awkward after that for about nine seconds. Less than three months later we were living together, and less than three years later we were married.

It was an inauspicious start to our relationship, but it worked.

I honestly still can’t believe it sometimes.

Unfair assumption #7

People who fight over merchandise in Walmart on Black Friday are clearly the scum of the Earth.

But after watching these videos, I have to ask: Is this assumption really unfair?

 

I have no idea where I bought this sweater, and I have no idea why you even care.

I know that my sneakers were purchased at Dick’s Sporting Goods.

I know that my Ask A Ninja tee-shirt was purchased online from the Ask A Ninja online store.

These are the only two items in my wardrobe that I can definitively identify their origin. I could guess at the origin of others. but I can’t be certain where anything else was purchased.

This is partly the result of my wife doing much of my clothing shopping.

It is also partly the result of my refusal to wear any clothing item that features a brand name or a stupid little alligator.

Still, I am always baffled when someone asks me where a particular sweater or shirt or pair of jeans originated.

“Nice sweater? Did you get it at Banana Republic?”

“Is that jacket J. Crew?”

“Where did you get those jeans?”

Did people really keep track of where each item in  their wardrobe originated?

More importantly, why do they care where I got mine?

Shake Shake Shake.

Clara has a new dance move. Guess who she credits for teaching them to her?

Watch the video to find out.