"You like me, right now, you like me!"

While not nearly as momentous as my 300th post, I just noticed my counter rolled over and stopped on 20,000 hits. I know I don't rack up the hits as much as some other bloggers, but it's kinda amazing to me that on 20,000 different occasions people have stopped by this little corner of the e-world.

For the record, the 20,000th visitor came by here all the way from Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. Shout OUT! to my brothers and sisters from the north. (Fist bump!) OK, they're both sisters, but the feelings are the same.

Thank you all for your time and patience. I may not be posting as often as I once did, but it's not because I don't love you anymore. I just have a much more involved job now and a lot less time for blogging.

Anyway, to keep this from being a complete navel-gazing post, take a look at this article from today's NYT. That's fine, I'll wait. The gist of the article is this: The kids who got picked on in school 'cause no one had their back, and who're now all grown up and working as school counselors and psychologists now believe it's a bad thing for kids to have “best friends.” And I quote:

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.

“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”

Or this worthless drivel from a psychologist at a NYC private school:

“When two children discover a special bond between them, we honor that bond, provided that neither child overtly or covertly excludes or rejects others,” said Jan Mooney, a psychologist at the Town School, a nursery through eighth grade private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “However, the bottom line is that if we find a best friend pairing to be destructive to either child, or to others in the classroom, we will not hesitate to separate children and to work with the children and their parents to ensure healthier relationships in the future.”

What garbage. Oh, and this crap from a summer camp is even better:

As the calendar moves into summer, efforts to manage friendships don’t stop with the closing of school. In recent years Timber Lake Camp, a co-ed sleep-away camp in Phoenicia, N.Y., has started employing “friendship coaches” to work with campers to help every child become friends with everyone else. If two children seem to be too focused on each other, the camp will make sure to put them on different sports teams, seat them at different ends of the dining table or, perhaps, have a counselor invite one of them to participate in an activity with another child whom they haven’t yet gotten to know.

“I don’t think it’s particularly healthy for a child to rely on one friend,” said Jay Jacobs, the camp’s director. “If something goes awry, it can be devastating. It also limits a child’s ability to explore other options in the world.”

Seriously, do you think anyone signed Christine or Jan or Jay's yearbooks? OK, maybe that's the kind of situation these morons are trying to avoid for their charges but, seriously? Friendship coaches? WTF is up with that noise?

I went to a large public high school. It was uber competitive, uber stratified and pretty much everyone was in one clique or another. I, believe it or not, was not in one of the popular ones. Yes, yes, it's true, I was not always the strapping vision of robust manhood I am today. I'm not saying it was Lord of the Flies in my school, but there was the usual pecking order of athletes/cheerleaders on top, down to the burners. I was probably somewhere in the middle a ROTC/band geek/theater geek. Neither here nor there. Nothing to see, all copies of year books have been destroyed. Move along.

You know what though? Two of the guys I met back then, one the last week of eighth grade and the other when we started ninth grade, they are still my absolute best friends today. When the shit hits the fan, I know they'll be there for me and I'll be there for them. I've been in both their weddings and they'll both be in mine.

When you aren't strong enough to stand up for yourself, or have been knocked down so many times you can't count, you're friends are there to hold you up if necessary.

People say family is the most important thing. Well, that may be true for most people (I'm also lucky enough to have a great family, but that's a topic for another time), you don't get to pick your family. What happens if, and I know people for whom this is true, you don't like your family? What happens if they're assholes? Who do you turn to when the skies are cloudy and the storm's a coming?

Your best friend, that's who. The person you've chosen and who's chosen you.

Yeah, sure, it's nice for these kids to have a big group of people who like them - or who don't particularly hate them reason. But can they count on any one of these "friends" when they need to sneak out of the house? Or sneak back in? Or call for a ride home because they're too wasted to drive? Or who'll physically kick their ass to the ground, take their keys and keep them from driving drunk? Who'll take the ugly one? Or who'll say, "I know you love her man/girl, but are you absolutely sure you want to marry her/him?"

The bonds of best friendship aren't loosely woven through play dates and coaching. They're forged in the fires of shared experience of joy and sorrow.

In the comments tell me about your best friend, or tell me I'm totally wrong and all the kiddies should learn to get along with everyone so no one's feelings get hurt.

So if you've a date in Constantinople...

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul

I met a new friend recently, back around, say, oh, March. hannah's smart, witty, fun and, in general and particular, just a great person to spend time with.

Sadly, the federal government is deporting her tomorrow.

OK, OK, OK, she's not being deported. It only feels like that to me. But she is leaving the country for a while for points in the mysterious East as a representative of the Red, White and Blue.

Istanbul! It even sounds mysterious. And Turkey! ... OK, well, not so mysterious. But still it's the crossroads of East and West, the home of the Hellespont, Troy, two of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and Istanbul, a city that governed not one or two empires, but four.

I wish you the best of luck in your posting hannah, and offer you one of my favorite sentiments as you begin your journey: Fair winds and following seas, my friend.

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when

But I'm sure we'll meet again some sunny day

Keep smiling through, just the way you used to do

Till the blue skies chase the dark clouds far away

A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean

I want to go back to the island,
Where the shrimp boats
. .tie up to the pilin'.
Give me oysters and beer
. .for dinner ev'ry day of the year,
And I'll feel fine, I'll feel fine.

Two hundred and two days ago my friends and I all went online to TicketMonster and started clicking away like test rats beating on the food bar trying to get a treat. It’s an annual ritual for us and this year, unlike last, we were eminently successful.

Last year, when we tried to buy tickets only one out of six of us got through and we were forced to get our tickets to the show on the aftermarket. This, of course, sucked major monkey balls since the price automatically doubles.

This year? Well this year all of us got through and we found ourselves with 36 tickets to tomorrow’s Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band show at Nissan. The bus to the show starts loading at 1:30. Yeah, I said "bus." Four years ago we all decided we all made enough money to rent a bus to take us to-and-from the concert eliminating the need for a DD. Also, it gave us our own private bathroom. A much treasured luxury in the parking lot of Nissan Pavilion.

'Cause I want to be there,
I want to go back down and lie beside the sea there.
With a tin cup for a chalice
Fill it up with good red wine,
And I'm-a chewin' on a honeysuckle vine.

I’ve lost count to the number of Buffett shows I’ve been to, but this year is either 13 or 14. Every one is different (even though many of the same songs are played), and every one is special. Special because I’m there with my best friends, some of the people I love the most in the world.

So, if you too are headed out to the show tomorrow, I’ll see you there and maybe we can share a beer or two. If you’re not, well, the pirate has looked at 60 and if you’ve ever wondered why he sells out all his shows you’re running out of chances to see why.

Yes, and now you heard my strange proposal;
Get that pack gear on and let's move.
I want to be there before the day
Tries to steal away and leave us behind;
I've made up my mind

- selected lyrics from the song Tin Cup Chalice, one of my favs.

Time in a bottle

A couple of weeks ago, one of my best friends asked me a simple question, “Why aren’t you on Facebook?”

I answered her question with one of my own, “Why would I need to be on Facebook?”

“Well, it’s fun. You can find out what everyone you knew back in high school is doing,” she said.

“I really don’t care what the people I went to high school with are doing today.”

I don’t think she quite understood my response.

Seriously, I couldn’t give two farts in a stiff Texas breeze about 652 of the 654 people I graduated from [insert name of rich, suburban Rust Belt high school here] with back in nineteen garble garble. The two who are left, you ask? Well, I’d drop everything on less than a moment’s notice if they called and said they need my help, as I’m sure they’d do if the situation were reversed (right boys?).

Everyone else can get bent as far as I’m concerned.

How can I dismiss out of hand 652 people? It’s not like they were bad (well, at least most of them were nice). It’s just that over the years those bonds of high school friendship that seemed so, so very important have not stood the test of time.

One guy, who I was as close to as the two who are left just kinda-sorta drifted out of my life after he got his girlfriend pregnant about three years after we graduated. His life got different, and we stopped having anything in common. The conversation ended there. It just petered out.

I’m not a Luddite, resisting some new-fangled Internet thingy just for resistance’s sake. The digital camera and souped up Mac I received this week prove that.

But perhaps, as I think about it, there is a bit of resistance to the idea of Facebook in my actions. Maybe I am old fashion in my thinking that a friendship is something that goes further than a few short sentences on a wall or posting a new picture or two every once in a while.

I used to love writing letters to my friends. During the 13 weeks I was at Parris Island I must have written 50 letters to family and friends. While I was in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War I wrote letters back to the complete strangers who’d taken the time to write to Any Marine. Some of these started correspondences continuing long past the time I returned home.

I can’t remember the last time (aside from Christmas cards) I put a pen to a clean sheet of paper to just say hi to a friend. How about you?

For me, friendship involves the breaking of bread, a shared bottle (hopefully something distilled by Mr. Jameson) and tales of mischief, woe or love told face-to-face. A hug goodbye as you leave a party is so much more satisfying than clicking “sign out” when all is said and done.

I’d like to think the time I don’t spend on Facebook is time I can spend with you ITRW.

Batter Up!

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today!
We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.
A-roundin’ third, and headed for home, it’s a brown-eyed handsome man;
Anyone can understand the way I feel.

- Centerfield by John Fogerty

The world famous Durham Bull. When he gets hit,

his eyes flare and his nose snorts streams of smoke.

Now I’m not that big of a baseball fan. But, every since my first game at Chicago’s old Comiskey Park, there’s just something about the start of the new baseball season that screams “SPRING” in my ear. [Note: Even though my first game was a White Sox game, my sister quickly rectified any potential fandom for the Southsiders by taking me to the North Side cathedral bounded by Clark and Addison streets and Sheffield and Waveland avenues. And while my first love is and always will be for my dreadful hometown Pirates, the Cubbies are a very close 1A.]

And while you won’t catch me watching more than five or 10 minutes of a game on TV for the next six months, I can think of few things finer than a summer evening at the ballpark. The laughter of friends (including those who couldn’t give a damn about the game) surrounds you as you gaze down toward a field of grass so green it almost hurts your eyes. The pitcher’s wind-up and delivery. The crack of the bat hitting a 94-mph fastball. A player hustling around first, stretching a single into a double and a play at second base.

I’m not a passionate baseball fan, but I am a fan of the time I spend at the ballpark each year with my friends.

And now, two of my favorite baseball movie quotes.

“Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”
- Crash Davis in Bull Durham

And, despite all the times baseball players and owners have disappointed us, I think these words pretty much say what we all feel about baseball:

“Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”
- Terence Mann in Field of Dreams

Play ball!

Thanks or TMI?

I was trying to decide if I wanted to go with something TMIy today or, in the spirit of the holiday tomorrow, be thankful for something, anything. And, I figured, since I have to come to work on Friday I'll save the TMI until then to entertain y'all.

Lessee, what am I thankful for?

Family. I've been pretty lucky when it comes to family, gains have exceeded losses. Considering the fact I and both of my brothers were Marines, that's saying something. Also, come next month, there'll be two new additions to the family unit when my brother and his wife welcome children three and four (girls two and three).

Friends. I'm lucky enough to have not one, but two best friends: the Doc and the Director. I've known them each 25 years now and really don't remember when my life didn't include them. Add in my friends from college (in order of acquaintance): Sarita, Anderson, Liz, Lawyerman and Disaffected Scanner Jockey and that makes me kinda like Lou Gehrig.

Other things I'm Thankful For:

I've loved and lost and loved again (and lost, again) You can't have the sweet without the salt.

I'm employed.

I have two invites to dinner tomorrow night.

Psycho T came back for his senior year.

Chocolate.

I live in a city with great (free) museums.

My Williams-Sonoma rolling pin.

I don't have to drive on 95 tonight.

Random, stream of consciousness blog posts.

Those little things holding the ends of your shoelaces together so they go through the holes.

The coming Festivus season.

Sundresses in the spring and skimpy tank tops in the summer (to look at, not to wear).

Turkey. Stuffing. Cranberry sauce.

The hope of better days to come.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.