Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 528

Wedding reboot: Talent discovered off the coast of Bermuda

My wife and I are celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary today. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

In light of our anniversary, I’ve decided to re-post some of those wedding memories here as a means of preserving them as well as sharing them with readers.

Today’s post was written during our honeymoon in Bermuda.

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Elysha and I went snorkeling this morning.

One of the ways to prevent your mask from fogging up is to spit in each eyepiece, wipe it around, and then rinse it with seawater. It actually works well.

I was watching Elysha as she was bobbing up and down in the Atlantic, trying to spit into her mask and said, “You’re not a real good spitter, are you honey?”

She then spat at me instead.

Turns out I was wrong.

I will use The Force if necessary. Or the humiliation of a Star Wars plush backpack.

I might buy the Yoda Plush Backpack (light saber not included) just because wearing it to school every day would make my students crazy.

After fifteen years of teaching, I have discovered that kids don’t like it when their teacher acts like a geek or a weirdo and will often say things like, “Why can’t you just be a normal teacher?” or “You’re embarrassing us! Stop it!”

I wouldn’t normally sacrifice my dignity in this way, but there are days when I’ll take any form of revenge available to me.  

 

Wedding reboot: Even happier than a verbal victory

My wife and I will be celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary tomorrow. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

As our anniversary approaches, I’ve decided to re-post some of those wedding memories here as a means of preserving them as well as sharing them with readers.

Here is the next of these posts:

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During Sunday brunch on the morning following our wedding, friend and groomsman Tom told me how much fun our wedding had been and how happy I appeared during the festivities.

“It’s the second happiest I’ve ever seen you,” he said.

“What was my happiest moment?” I asked.

About a year ago I had a run-in with a co-worker, and some bad decisions on my co-worker’s part and some quick thinking on my part made my co-worker look like a fool in the eyes of several colleagues. It actually became quite a scene for a few moments, and Tom was eventually pulled into the fray as well, albeit disoriented and confused as to what was happening.

I managed to pull Tom away at just the right moment, and as we extricated ourselves from the scene, he looked at me and said, “Whoa, that was bad.”

You should have seen his face. He was like a deer caught in headlights.

“No, Tom,” I said. “That was great. The best.” Apparently I appeared quite happy at this moment, since he claims to have never seen me happier.

And I was. It was what leadership gurus might call a win-lose scenario, and I find these situations eminently more satisfying than those boring win-win kinds. I always find it more fun to win when you know that your victory came at the expense of a deserving jackass.

Of course Tom is wrong. I can honestly say that my wedding day, and the wedding ceremony in particular, was the happiest moment in my life.

But that encounter last year remains a close second.

Have you ever seen a better looking burrito?

Difficulty staying Faithful

I finished reading Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season by Stephen King and Stuart O’Nan, and while I enjoyed the bo0k, I have a few quibbles with it as well.

As a Yankees fan, I knew that reading the book would be difficult. The 2004 baseball season was the worst in Yankees history. After taking a 3-0 lead over the Red Sox in the battle for the pennant, the Yankees became the only team in baseball history to lose the next four games and thus lose the series.

This would be heart wrenching regardless of the opponent, but the fact that it was the Red Sox made it exponentially worse.

Still, I wanted to read this book. I’ve read everything else that Stephen King has ever written, and I adore the man.

While I haven’t quite read everything Stuart O’Nan has written yet, I like what I’ve read so far. More importantly, he was my professor for a writing class at Trinity College, so I got to know him a little bit and liked him a lot.

Even though I knew it would be hard to listen to these men describe the events of that 2004 postseason, I thought that I would be happy for them as well. As a native New Englander who grew up near Boston, I understand the suffering the Sox fans had endured. They deserved to win. At least this is what I had convinced myself of when I dove into the book.

I have three complaints about the book, and they all pertain to O’Nan.

First and most surprising, O’Nan engages in conspiracy mongering several times in the book, implying with all seriousness that baseball might be fixed. A remarkable confluence of events seem (in his mind) to be too dramatic and convenient to be anything but orchestrated, and he says as much more than once. King actually dismisses these claims at one point in the book, and rightly so. Like King, I find this kind of conspiracy theory nonsense to be exactly that:

Nonsense. But I know there is a small but vocal minority of sports fans who feel this way.

Yet when the long haired, loose-lipped Cowboy-up Red Sox of 2004 overcome a 3-0 deficit against a corporate team with twice the payroll that has embraced the moniker of the Evil Empire with enthusiasm, there is not a single mention of conspiracy theories to be found.

This annoyed me. If you’re going to imply that the fix is in several times over the course of the baseball season, you can’t ignore what would seem like one of the most orchestrated moments in the last 100 years of baseball.

Second, O’Nan is less than magnanimous when it comes to the Yankees. King has no love for my beloved team, but he is not mean-spirited about the team, either, He does not call them cheaters or question their character. O’Nan does so repeatedly, and it is not necessary.

Lastly, the nicknames that O’Nan uses when discussing the Red Sox players in the book made me bonkers. Nicknames have always been a part of baseball, but O’Nan takes it to an entirely new and truly bizarre level. Most of my friends are Red Sox fans, but I never heard them refer to Mark Bellhorn as Marky Mark, Pedro Martinez as Petey or David Ortiz as El Hefe (especially since Ortiz already has the often-used nickname Big Papi). It makes no sense. Was O’Nan inventing these nicknames himself, or did he hear some inebriated bleacher creature use these names and co-opted them for the book.

A good nickname is a thing of beauty. Naming your utility infielder after a former Boston-based hip hop musician turned serious actor is an act of stupidity.

Then again, I’m a diehard fan of the New York Yankees who died hard in October of 2004, so perhaps I am biased.  

Wedding reboot: Perhaps my wife owns a crystal ball

My wife and I will be celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary on Sunday. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

As our anniversary approaches, I’ve decided to re-post some of those wedding memories here as a means of preserving them as well as sharing them with readers.

Here is the next of these posts:

__________________________________________

Before Elysha and I started dating, we had been talking on the phone a lot and hanging out together. Those pre-dating rituals that many couples experience.

Late one night we were chatting on the phone and the topic of us getting together came up. We work together in the same school, so Elysha asked me what our principal might say if we started dating. Since I had previously been dating someone in the school, I told her what he had already said to me a few months ago:

Dating is fine. Just be sure that when and if it ends, you are still able to work together.

Being the master of the break-up, the previous relationship ended just fine.

Still friends to this day.

When I related what our principal (who would one day marry us) had said, Elysha responded with, “Oh, that won’t be a problem for us. If we start dating, we’re never breaking up.”

Most astonishing, she didn’t say this to be cute or coy. She said it like it was fact. We had yet to kiss or even hold hands, but somehow she could already see our future together. My heart fluttered a bit and I asked her why she thought this to be true.

“I just know,” she said. “I just know that we’d be together forever.”

I think about that night quite often, particularly this week as I find myself lying in bed beside my wife of less than a month.

I don’t know how she knew, but she did. And I couldn’t be happier.

My wife is one smart cookie.

Subtle and specific and possibly effective

My daughter picked up a pink notepad and told my wife that it was her book. She said that she was going to read it to her.

This is what my daughter claimed it said:

“Clara Susan Dicks need a present after her dinner.”

I’m both appalled and awed at her powers of manipulation.  

I am launching a podcast and I need some advice. Best of all, I have prizes to offer.

I will be launching a podcast within the next month. Sooner if someone wants to come over my house and set things up for me. 

My vision is a 15-30 discussion about writing from the perspective of an author with some experience in the industry who still has a lot to learn. My goal is to provide content that will appeal to both writers who want to hear from a fellow author (something we don’t get to do often enough) and readers who might appreciate a peek behind the publishing curtain.

Though the format is not set in stone, I am envisioning three or four segments, looking something like this:

Segment one would be a peek into my life as a writer via a monologue on the latest issues surrounding my career. This past week, for example, I could have discussed a debate over a foreign book jacket, a translation issue with my Italian publisher, the struggles with my current manuscript and the pressures of a multi-book deal, the difficulties finding time to write with a six-week old infant in the home, my trouble in finding a satisfying end to a picture book that I am writing and much more. I would never be at a loss for topics for this first segment, as each week presents new and interesting challenges for me as an author.

The second segment would deal with a broader topic related to writing, reading or publishing. I might discuss a specific book that I have read, an opinion on the state of publishing, a commentary on a proposed writing strategy, and perhaps an interview with the many authors, agents, editors, film producers, sales reps and bookstore owners who I have gotten to know over the past five years.

The third segment would be one in which I answer questions posed by readers related to the industry or my work. I receive these kinds of questions almost daily, ranging from understanding the finances related to publishing, finding an agent, working with an editor, starting or finishing a book, and more.

This is just a proposed format. I am open for any suggestion that you may have to offer.

Here is my challenge to you:

First, I need a name for this podcast, and thus far I have come up with nothing.  

Second, I’m looking for any feedback in terms of my proposed format or content. Is there anything you would like to see me add, remove, or alter in any way?

Best of all, I have prizes to offer.

Anyone who offers a suggestion of any kind will be entered into a drawing. Three randomly chosen winners will receive a signed copy of the UK edition of my novel MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, which will go on sale in the United States on August 21 of this year.

Even better, if I actually use the name that you have recommended for the podcast, I will send you a signed copies of all three of my books: SOMETHING MISSING, UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO and the UK edition of MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND.

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You can send me suggestions by commenting on this post, by contacting me through Facebook or Twitter, or by sending me an email at matthewdicks@gmail.com.

The drawing for the books will be held on July 28.

Thanks for your help and good luck!

Best two sentences ever

As an author and a teacher, this message from a reader in the United Arab Emirates about MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND might be the best I have ever received in regards to my WORK:

Thank you for this book. Your book was the first book I ever got, and because of it, I love reading.

Nothing can ruin this day for me.

Universal acts of parental stupidity

TIME magazine asks:

Does This Baby Bikini Onesie Go too Far?

Of course it does.

While I believe that there are many acceptable ways of parenting (and one best way), I also believe that there are some things that parents do that are universally stupid.

These bikini onsies are an excellent example.

These universally stupid parenting decisions are the ones that 99% of all human beings think are stupid, but because parents are exceedingly sensitive when it comes to the way they raise their kids, we rarely speak about the stupidity of their decisions aloud.

I have a list of such parenting behaviors, totally five items in all (and now six with the addition of overly sexualized children’s clothing), but because I am wary of offending my readers or upsetting close friends, I am reticent to share this list. I may find a reason to make the list public someday in the future, but until that time, I  keep it locked away on my computer.

I also routinely examine my own parenting decisions for acts of universal stupidity, wary of making my own list. Thus far the closest I think I have come is in the frequency that I would like to bathe my daughter. If my wife wasn’t around, I think Clara would be taking a bath twice a week. This seems reasonable to me but I have yet to find someone who agrees with my position.

Still, even twice a week is probably not egregious enough to make my list.

Okay, I’ll share one from the list, hoping it’s so indefensible as to avoid reader backlash.

Universal act of parenting stupidity #4: Putting a child to bed with a sippy cup of juice. 

I’d go into the reasons why this is a universally stupid decision (and there are many), but 99% of us already know why. 

In fairness, I have also found that many of the parents who are guilty of these acts of universal stupidity are aware of their crimes but unable to correct their behavior, usually because of an unwillingness to say no to their children (which amounts to little more than selfishness of their part).  

These are the parents who are often heard saying things like:

“I let me daughter drink juice from a sippy cup in her crib and she turned out just fine.”

Sure, she did. Children are remarkably resilient. But just because your child managed to survive your lousy parenting decision doesn’t make that decision any less stupid.