Concert Confidential

Well…………….I’m back. After my widely read (okay at least one person read it) last 3400 word epic, it’s obvious my adoring fans have not had enough. Message received. Encore time it is. 

In a refreshing change, instead of wrestling  with the fate of humanity, I want to document my adventures and debacles going to concerts. What is truly unacceptable is I haven’t been to a concert since Covid. And the thought of going to shows again was one of the things that sustained me through 2020! I bought a ticket to see Dead and Co. last year at The Meadows but it rained late in the afternoon (remember last summer when it rained every day) so by the time I showed up they had already gone on and they had a looooooooooooooooooooooong line checking vaccine cards and I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling it and went home. This summer the few decent shows were all around the time I was moving and  I was sort of afraid of spending money. Dead and Co. again, Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews, Phish. Even Kiss. I would have totally rock and rolled all night with them if the beer was cold enough. (Or the gin). 

Next year! 

The first show I ever went to was John Mellencamp. I think he was past his John Cougar phase, long past his Johnny Cougar phase, and not yet in the mature and sophisticated John Mellencamp phase. I think it was the John Cougar Mellencamp era—the transitional hybrid phase apparently designed to not put too much on his fans’ plate all at once. This was a gift from my aunt who took my brother, my two cousins, and me to the show. I was in 7th grade. Great first show but as I was a tween and this was an adult supervised event it was a concert event minus any embarrassing moments that I can recall. Boy would that change. 

I don’t think I’ll even try to go in order because some of these were a long time ago and I’ve probably destroyed so many brain cells attending concerts it's hard to remember precisely. Let me jump all the way to the summer of 1994. I attended two shows in which I learned a lot about the karmic balance of the universe. I even formed my very own groundbreaking Puke Equilibrium Theory that I think any Buddhist guru would totally get on board with. Sometime early in the summer a bunch of us decided to go see Lynard Skynard last minute at Riverside Park. (I’ll start calling it Six Flags the minute after I start calling The Meadows “Xfinity Theater”). This was a blisteringly hot June day and I decided the only reasonable way to beat the heat was to start pounding beers early and often. I also don’t think I ate. I think I just forgot? And did I want to kill my buzz in any way when they launched into Freebird or Simple Man? Of course not. So the end of the show is a bit hazy but I was TOLD the next day that I vomited and when my friend’s girlfriend went to assist me I puked on her shoe. Accidentally. Oops. 

A month or so later a few of us took a road trip to see Pink Floyd at the old Giants Stadium. 2nd straight year there: we saw Guns n’ Roses and Metallica in the summer of ’93. Believe it or not, I didn’t get tooooooo drunk although I can distinctly remember having to pee incredibly bad as we were driving through New York City traffic on our way there. Did I end up peeing in a lidded container to stave off bladder explosion? I want to believe I didn’t. About midway through the show a kid stumbled into his seat right next to mine. He was clearly comfortably numb. Once in a while you have a moment of total clairvoyance where you can actually see into the future like a Prophet standing on a mountaintop. I experienced once of those spiritual breakthroughs in this multipurpose football stadium. I thought to myself, “Dude, you better not puke on me”. I am not making this up or exaggerating, not 5 seconds later he puked on me. On my shoes. Well set the controls for the heart of the sun. As a knee jerk reaction, I yelled, “You’re the biggest asshole!” or something like that.   

Was this all a coincidence? You must be joking. He who liveth by the puke shall die by the puke. Was he even the biggest asshole, really? Or was he an agent of karmic Justice? A Budweiser pounding Shiva? I had to go up to the Men’s Room and take off my puke soaked socks and throw them in the garbage. (Before I discovered the beauty of sandals—still sneakers and socks back then). The legend of Roger Waterless Floyd lives in. This was the only show I’ve seen that literally knocked my socks off.  

But my summer of ’94 concertgoing wasn’t over just yet. In August four of us went to Saugertees, NY to see Woodstock ’94. We might call this The Forgotten Woodstock. Woodstock ’69 is all the peace and love hippies dancing naked in the rain. Woodstock ’99 is all the Limp Bizquit bros doing it all for the nookie and breaking (and burning) stuff.  99 has earned not one but two documentaries in the last year on HBO and Netflix. ’94? Well it’s the only one Dylan performed at so there’s that. Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon put on a dress and spouted incoherent ramblings on stage before his eventual drug overdose. Green Day mudfights anyone? So my Woodstock was pretty good too!

But I got lost. Now there’s lost and then there’s 1994 lost. With smartphones I feel like getting lost has almost become obsolete. Not so then, my friends. No cell phones anywhere. After we set up our tent, one of my friends said something like, “Now everyone look around and note where we are. Especially you Ryan”. Oh I see. Single out the blind guy? My indomitable 21 year old stubbornness aside, I did take a long around and made a mental note of all these canopies they had set up with white and yellow stripes. Done.  

The problem started, like all problems, with beer. This was a non-alcohol event! But then people broke down the gates, rumors spread like wildfire that a package store down the street was selling 30 packs of Bud for the low, low price of $30 and we were just the target demo he was looking for so we went for a walk. Things of course get somewhat hazy after that as we started pounding beers like we were Lawrence of Arabia downing lemonade after trekking through the Arabian Desert on a camel. 

Things went next level apeshit when Nine Inch Nails took the stage caked in mud from head to toe. (Oh—it had poured rain and turned the field into a mudpit). Mosh pits, puddles, Budweiser patrons, and Industrial Metal collided in an apocalyptic maelstrom of mayhem. It was glorious. Two random dudes picked me up and tossed me in a giant mud puddle. I tell people this and they’re like, “Those assholes!”. No, you had to be there. It was all just good clean fun! Unfortunately, I lost my binoculars in the puddle somewhere. 

Metallica (3rd time seeing them in two years) was followed by another moonson/thunderstorm causing me to hide under these roofed gazebos they had. Then Aerosmith hit the stage at 2AM. The last notes of Dream On didn’t sound until 4AM. 

No sign of my friends anywhere. But I started walking looking for a yellow and white canopy. And I found one! Then another. Then other. Oops. I guess that wasn’t the landmark I thought it was. But I kept walking. And walking. And walking. Must have walked by the same Nobody Beats The Wiz stand 20 times. (Or was there an infinite amount of those too?). This was turning into some David Lynch nightmare. I was definitely starting to get a little worried. Also, after a tropically hot and humid Saturday the rain had brought in a cold front. Oh, and it was still raining. And I had no umbrella or hoodie. Just my T-shirt and shorts. (Jorts probably). And I hadn’t slept all night. And was maybe just a bit hungover. I actually laid down on a blanket where the owners were nowhere to be found and attempted to sleep but not possible.  

I did find a tent for all the lost sheep to go. They said put your name on a big bulletin board and maybe your friends will see it. Also they might read your name from the stage but priority wen to lost children, not lost 21 year old binge drinking idiots.  

I did meet some kids I would have never met otherwise. Some girl whose name I have forgotten. Think she had black hair with some punk rock highlights. She was actually FROM Saugerties. So Woodstock came to her hometown. But I mean how lost was she really? I was 132 miles from home. I ended up staying around this tent all day figuring I would be harder to find if I was a moving target. The girl ended up going back to her tent and invited me to go with but again I figured I should stay put. Wait a minute………….this story isn’t adding up at all, is it? Am I remembering It right? Was the lost at all!?

On Sunday night, following the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Peter Gabriel, they said they were going to take us overnight to some hostel or something and then in the morning drive us to the bus station where they would help us find our bus home. I think they might have even paid for the bus ticket? In the meantime they had a nurse on site who took my temp. I believe it was 92. She asked me when was the last time I had slept? I said not since Friday night. (With an all night rave going on—I can remember Dee Lite’s Groove Is In The Heart thumping). Have I eaten? Well I bought a slice of pizza that morning but I was worried about running out of money. She was like, “So you are hypothermic, sleep deprived and malnourished”. I thought, “Gee, I guess when you put it that way”. She told me to go get some soup and get warm in the heated tent area they had.  

The hostel (or homeless shelter or what was it?) was like this bunk bed setup—but without the beds. They were these almost cubicle looking things made of wood. Was there mattresses or even a sleeping bag? I can’t remember for sure but I’m thinking no. But two days without sleep caught up with me so I slept anyway. I called home from a pay phone at the bus station and told my brother I was lost. By this point, word had got out. My friends were already home and told him I was MIA. My mom picked me up from the bus station in Springfield. I think I horrified her. I had dried mud on my clothes. I hadn’t showered since probably Friday morning? I looked like Martin Sheen coming out of the mud before going to kill Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now. The horror.  

But it wasn’t boring! I was weirdly happy about how the whole weekend had gone actually. Saw some good music and had managed to get myself home on my own—well, with the help of the festival staff and a spirit boosting Green Day loving girl who was lost in her hometown.  

Oh, I also got lost a few years later. I went to see the Allman Brothers at the Meadows when I lived in Vernon in the late 90’s. I went by myself and took the bus. Plan was to take a cab home but when I went to the McDonald’s across the street where they had pay phones inside I discovered they had just closed. So I was stranded in the North Meadows of Hartford at around midnight on a Sunday unless I could find a phone. Finally a guy saw me wandering lost and confused. I think he was in an all night warehouse? Or maybe an all night security guard? He let me use his office phone and this midnight riding rambling man found his way home. 

Wait……………there are actually a lot of lost stories come to think of it. I went to see The Police’s reunion tour at Rentschler Field in 2007. So in 2007 I would have had a cell phone. So how the heck did I get lost? I think I decided there was too much post show traffic right outside the stadium so I needed to find another spot for the cabbie to pick me up. Only I don’t know Silver Lane like the back of my hand so I aimlessly wandered around there at night until I found some bar and called a cab. 

Oh I was also violently shoved at Dave Matthews show at The Meadows. This was also the summer of ’07. That was a challenging time as my apartment AC broke, the awful management staff never fixed it, annnnd the building got a bedbug infestation. So I was maybe a bit edgy. I heard this older, creeper looking guy talking to a girl who looked like she was 17 or something. He said something like, “Have you done any modeling? Would you be open to doing nudes?”. I’m like great so this guy running Porn Hub from section 400. Again………..common theme here….but I had been drinking. I think I said something like, “You’re a fucking creep!” and he shoved me back hard. Actually fell off my feet and landed a couple seats back. So I just walked away and found a spot at the other end of the row. Was I going to lose my teeth over this guy? Would I really rescue this damsel in distress? I always wanted to be the savior. I’m basically Don Quixote. Obiouslyv it was up to the girl to basically decided for herself whether to ignore the guy or not. Well I meant well. I think. 

I was also blatantly ripped off at a show. Guns n’ Roses was supposed to play Lake Compounce in the summer of ’91. But it was cancelled. Then the promoter filed for bankruptcy and in doing so somehow got out of having to pay us back. My frugal, raised during The Depression in Fall River, MA grandmother literally never got over this. She would bring up how “you kids got ripped off!” for years to come. Me? I was over it. I had gotten to see G n’ R three times on the Use Your Illusion tour anyway and I was really more disappointed about not getting to see them than losing the $45. 

I went to a Phil and Friends show in about 2006 and had my one and only mind bending mushroom experience. Folks, magic mushrooms are illegal and you shoudn’t touch them. But some bad kids I was with offered them. My prior shroom samplings had been non-events. I took such small tabs out of paranoia of having a bad trip and seeing dragons and mastodons or something that I didn’t get any buzz from them. Not so this time. Ohhhhhh boy was everything groovy all of a sudden. I couldn’t stop laughing for an hour straight. At nothing. Life was just completely hilarious and I had never realized it before. I also couldn’t stop staring at my hands. From six inches away. This must have looked pretty normal. I realized that it was so weeeeeird to have hands. I mean these things are just hanging off us like this. They’re so bizarre looking! Why is no one talking about this? Unfortunately, the shrooms combined with—reader, you will be shocked—copious amounts of beer caused one of the worst hangovers of my life the next day. Spent. Like someone hollowed out my insides. I remember going down to my building’s parking garage and just sitting there hanging out. Why? Reader, I just don’t know. 

I will have you know that not ALL the shows I’ve gone to involved alcohol and (occasionally) other things. I went to see Nine Inch Nails again in the early 2000’s at The Meadows. This was nothing like the insanity of the Woodstock show. I did not drink a drop of booze. Okay. Full disclosure: I didn’t have the opportunity as there were no sales of alcohol. Unbeknownst to me! It seems their liquor license was suspended after they sold to an underage girl a month earlier at a John Mayer show. Your body is a wonderland boy does it again. Fathers be good to your daughters because I’ve decided any girl who rejects me must have daddy issues and it can’t possibly be because she’s just not that into me. That freaking guy. NIN was good but let’s just say March Of The Pigs doesn’t have quite the same visceral impact when you’re not blitzed and caked in mud and wondering where your binoculars just went. 

I can recall one incident of feeling kind of scared at a show. Again, back to Lake Compounce. This was CT’s makeshift answer to an outdoor concert venue after the industry was shifting that way but The Meadows hadn’t opened yet. Great Woods in MA was open but we are slow to get everything. There were no seats. We went to see Motley Crue in about 1990. As the band was getting closer to going on stage the rowdy, largely teenaged crowd started pushing to get closer to the stage. It was slightly suffocating. Started to feel like I was getting crushed. And of course, people have been crushed to death at concerts. Maybe it was because I had watched the episode of WKRP In Cincinnati when they all went to see The Who in Cincy and fans were crushed to death. (An actual real life incident). Johnny Fever was inconsolable. Don’t even talk to Venus Fly Trap right now. Gordon Jump was nonplussed. So having watched this chilling cautionary tale, I thought to stave off death by suffocation I should move back, so I had to enjoy Shout At The Devil from a safe distance. The devil probably couldn't even hear me shouting I was so far back. Satan wins again.  

I already wrote a blog about another completely insane thing that happened at a Bruce Springsteen show in Hartford so let me just give you the Cliff’s Notes. I had a seat in the second row in the 100 section area. I stood up as soon as the show started because I mean it’s Bruce and it’s rock and roll baby! The people behind me motioned and asked me to sit down. A lady said, “My mom can’t see”. But I mean…..this isn’t the symphony orchestra, am I right? They even narc’d on me but I heard the usher say, “I can’t make him sit down”.  Halfway through the show Bruce crowdsurfs his way down the floor and up to my section. He was standing 2 feet from me! He tells the crowd of 16,000 adoring fans, “This is Max’s mom! She turned 90 years old today!”. Max Weinberg. The drummer. Conan O’Brien's band leader. National treasure. Awkward. But she was a youthful looking 90. Probably drank a lot green tea. How was I to know?! But it gets worse. During the encore Bruce always has the arena lights turned on as they play Born To Run. They started to leave and I see one of the ushers bringing out a wheelchair for Mrs. Weinberg. In conclusion, I’m the worst person in the world. But I do want to pitch this to Larry David because this is totally an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm waiting to happen.

Another time I took a cab to a show and I was basically openly mocked by the cabbie. I think this was the summer of 96? I went to see Hootie And The Blowfish. Look, I was super bored! I actually wasn’t even a huge fan. I mean they are okay but they’re the reason CVS background music was invented. So the cabbie is on the phone (I considered people with mobile phones pretentious douches back then—that stance didn’t age well) and he says, “I’m driving someone to see Hootie And The Blowfish. You know that fake rock band”. Buddy, I’m right here. 

In the summer of ’91 I took my longest concert road trip. A few of us took a bus organized by WCCC (or WHCN?) to Old Orchard Beach, Maine to see AC/DC. They were supposed to play here but I think it was another Lake Compounce promoter disaster so they let fans either use their tickets to the show in Maine or get a refund. We chose to pack up the coolers and ride the highway to hell up there! We got back to Ellington at maybe 4 in the morning and all the cows had organized the kind of jailbreak even Bon Scott would have admired by breaking through their pen and taking a little pre-dawn stroll around the neighborhood. They created a massive traffic jam at the corner of Hoffman Road and Muddy Brook. Post script to this story: the first class I ever took at UConn was a Com Sci 101 class in the auditorium at next door E.0. Smith High School. (Strange feeling taking your first college class and walking through a hallway of  high school kids to get there). The professor actually started with “Did anyone go anywhere nice this summer?”. A kid raised his hand and said Old Orchard Beach, ME. Another raised his hand and said Old Orchard Beach. A third raised his hand and said Old Orchard Beach. I was sadly too shy to raise my hand. The professor finally said, “Wow! I guess Old Orchard Beach was a real hotspot!”. Of course I think it’s also a vacation spot but I wanted to say, “Hey did you guys check out Angus and the boys too? Was Whole Lotta Rosie sick or what!?”.   

I was also asked to sit down at a Rolling Stones show at the Civic Center. By an usher! A woman behind me had ratted on me. Wow. We are a looooong way from Altamont here, aren't we? Another time we went up to Foxborough to see the Stones in the Patriots’ old stadium in the early 90’s. So….I missed half the show. Not sure what got into me. Was it just the long car ride? But I passed out. But the second half of the show rocked on this rainy night! 

Probably the hottest show—literally—I ever saw was Blind Melon at The Sting in New Britain. A very hot summer night and no AC in what was maybe some sort of converted sweatshop or something? Also up there in the heat department was another Bruce show at The Meadows—the only time he’s played there—in 2010 or so. A scorching hot night and I was in The Pavillioin in the middle of one of those long rows. Obv cold beer solved that. There was one of the most awkward group actions at a show I’ve ever seen. Let’s see…just looked this up…..they opened with Sherry Darling, Badlands, and Out In The Street. The crowd was in a frenzy! Then the opening notes to Outlaw Pete hit—the dreaded “new stuff”-- and thousands of people sat down simultaneously like they were in a Catholic Church and the priest just said, “Please be seated”. Ended up getting picked up as I was walking downtown by a kid from school and his buddy—a boisterous gentleman with a thick Irish accent I had met at UConn basketball games. Having planned to go into work the next day, I was not aiming to drink more. They had other plans and stopped at The Half Door before dropping me off in West Hartford. Incredibly, I still made it to work the next day. I would never in a million, billion years be able to do that now. 

Have I ever walked in the wrong bathroom at a concert? I have. At a Phish show at Madison Square Garden. This might have been New Year’s Eve of 1998/99. This has happened to me a couple times in life and the first reaction is always, “Wait, where are the urinals. Oh……no. I’m in the wrong place”. But a very nice girl with one of those long dresses hippie girls always wear just kind of laughed at me and said, “You look lost”. Of course at concerts the Men’s Room often become unisex anyway so I guess it all evens out.                    

Loudest show? Cinderella at the Springfield Civic Center in 1990. Actually won these tickets off the radio. A few songs into their set the sound died completely for a few minutes. Yeah probably because it was a bazillion decibels. The only time my ears rang, like really rang, afterwards. I mean for a few days I would hear this ringing sound. I thought I was going deaf for sure. But then it went away. Good thing. You don’t know what you got till it’s gone. Now I know what I got it’s just this song.

Lest this whole thing seem like a long rant about problem drinking, I would like to note that I have attended some concerts where I voluntarily abstained from drinking. Lately I’ve become more of a seasonal drinker where I pretty much take the winters off. The lure of an ice cold beer is just stronger on a hot summer night. Plus dealing with any sort of hangover when it’s gray and 23 degrees or raining and 39 degrees is just an experience I decided I wanted out of. So a few years ago at the XL Center, which was literally across the street at the time, within a 2 week span I saw Mumford And Sons and Fleetwod Mac (without fired Lindsey Buckingham). Alcohol was on sale! But I didn’t drink. And it was still pretty enjoyable I must say. And I kind of felt proud of myself. Concerts have been my Achilles heel for awhile. Generally I can drink in moderation these days, but some of the biggest slip ups have been at shows. Partially because the band hits the stage and you think, “This is great! Life is great! Who cares about tomorrow!? We’re

going to live forever! Let me go grab another $17 24 ouncer!”. Also there’s the cutting off of sales where you don’t always know when it will happen thing. I would always overcompensate to avoid a dreaded horrifying outcome like sobering up by the encore. Of course I have no funny stories to tell about these two shows. But actually that’s become more common for all shows. Middle age FTL. 

Well I’ve taken up quite a bit of your time. In summary, I’ve been shoved, thrown in the mud, I’ve sweated, I’ve frozen half to death, I’ve gotten lost, I’ve been ripped off, I’ve drained my bank account—but I would do it all over again! Concerts make no logical sense. You fight crowds, you stand in 100 lines, you pay through the nose, you risk heat stroke, hypothermia, and lighting strikes. Half the time your view of the stage isn’t great and the sound definitely isn’t great. It makes a lot more sense to stay home and listen to your favorite band on Spotify! Maybe get a turntable and listen to them on vinyl from the comfort of your own home. No lines to the fridge or the bathroom! But there’s still that excitement when they hit the lights and everyone starts screaming and the band hits the stage. It’s a communal experience you can’t duplicate at home. Or a Catholic church. Makes it all worth it. 

I think. 

 

     

All The Kids They Hold A Grudge, Their Minds Are Logged On To The Net

Well so here we are again. Everywhere you go people are constantly screaming, “What we need more of in 2022 is blogs!”. Okay, so maybe blogging is about as hip as My Chemical Romance, but 280 characters just doesn’t cut it for this guy. And Vlogging? That’s a hard no. 

I was telling myself to get back into writing so this is my way of getting back into shape. This won’t be so much a blog as a guy who’s been eating Fritos on his couch for a year wheezing his way through a 5K.   

I was thinking about….the Internet. The biggest event of our lifetime is probably not the pandemic, or Donald Trump, or 9/11, or Monica Lewinsky, or even a late middle aged Tommy Lee posting drunken dick pics to promote a reunion tour, but the Internet and all the ways it has changed life. It’s the automobile of the 21st Century. Cars created suburbia, highways, and Sammy Hagar’s I Can’t Drive 55. The Internet has created….well everything. 

It's become commonplace for people to say the Internet ruined life as we know it. You see it all the time: people posting comments on social media over the Internet saying the social media and the Internet destroyed society. Guess they are trying to bring the enemy down from the inside? Yes, it's kind of ironic, maybe a little hypocritical—or maybe it’s not. Maybe it just shows that it’s become such a ubiquitous force, it’s pointless to even try to live an offline life anyway. Remember when hipsters all were going back to flip phones? Have we heard much about that lately? I entertained the thought several years ago myself. Then I thought, “What if I get lost?”. And “Why do flip phone screens suck so bad?”. End of my retro hipster phase. 

And yet none of us felt so ambivalent if not hostile toward it in the 90’s when it started. I was totally into it. Guitar tabs posted for free online! No more $20 tablature books to buy. Emailing people. So cool! Er……are there any naked online pictures you can find of celebrities or other girls gone wild? (The bandwidth for actual videos was still at least a DSL connection away). I never found out the answer because this would be wrong and just sad! So did we think AOL was a harbinger of societal collapse? Helllll no. 

And yet now it seems common for people to say life changed for the worse and everyone seems to have buyer’s remorse and feel like we were lied to somehow. Or maybe not even lied to. Maybe everyone telling us The Information Superhighway was going to make us all smarter, better people believed it themselves. Maybe both the sellers and the buyers drank the Kool Aid. Did they know it would just become The Opinion Superhighway? The Tik Tok Transit Station? 

Now this is really tricky because how can you know it’s not just middle-aged nostalgia? Are people really yearning for the offline world or just their youth? Or a bit of both?

I will say there’s one example I think about. My job. I’ve been working in the same office for 19 years this September. There have been two major technical shifts in my time there: one happened in the first couple of years, the other happened in the last couple of years. The first was switching from paper cases to an all electronic system. I mean we weren’t COMPLETELY in the Stone Ages when I got there. There were computers. And you would use them to track cases and do certain things, but the cases were paper, the medical evidence and forms were all paper. But we underwent a (very painful) transition to all electronic case processing. (It’s the government---they can screw up a two car funeral. Usually by summoning a committee of 23 to design 39 different routes the two cars are to follow. And are we sure the deceased is dead? We’re going to need a death certificate before we can move forward).  

Also, when I got there, the place was pretty lively. Lots of socialization, lots of shall we say eccentric, sometimes alcoholic, occasionally insane people. But a lot of people seemed to know each other. There were semi-regular happy hours and a lot of people actually showed up. At our summer picnics and The Christmas I mean Holiday I mean Winter Party was always well attended. The place was kind of fun. But slowly things seemed to change. The place got more cliquey. Fewer people seemed to know each other. Happy Hours stopped since people just wouldn’t show up. And our summer and winter events became a little more sparsely attended even though attendance meant a free Thursday afternoon off from work. 

Did all the fun people just retire or leave? Was it management changing? Possibly that was part of it, but our switch to an electronic, Internet driven case filing and medical records system may have changed the place more than anything. In the paper case world, you had to move the cases between medical consultants,  supervisors, quality assurance, the clerical staff. Back and forth. Cases—and people---were constantly on the move though the office. So you might bring a file to someone but find yourself asking about the kids or telling them about your weekend attending a Maxim model search at The Brickyard, whatever the case may be. But once we went fully digital, there was rarely any work related reason to get out of your cubicle and social activity seemed to gradually decline accordingly. It’s not like everyone stared straight ahead and never spoke a word, but I think a lot less. And the cold convenience of technology might have driven all of it. 

But if our office community had become more splintered than before, it’s become almost non-existent now. It’s now a mostly remote job. People are only required to be in the office one day per week—and many seem to often use their time on days they are supposed to be in the office. We say this was driven by the pandemic, but Covid really just accelerated it. It’s really driven by the Internet. Covid or not, without being able to get online, remote work would be impossible. Most people seem to love working from home. I (mostly) like it. It’s the 21st Century’s answer and apology to the 20th Century’s biggest downer: commuting. There hadn’t been too much commuting before cars since everyone just lived where they worked. But if there is one thing that seems to unite us a country and a world, it’s our universal hate of commuting. A century of car commuting has raised blood pressures, bored people to tears, polluted the environment, caused endless amounts of car accidents, and subjected people to endless phony phone call skits from wacky morning drive DJ's.  Telework is the antidote to that poison. Whenever I hear people say they hate the office, if they talk further they usually bring up the commute. I don’t know if we actually do hate the office per se all that much, it’s just that the commute required to get us there and home spoils any redeeming qualities it might otherwise have. I myself have wasted COUNTLESS hours and days of my life sitting on some cruddy two seater bus with my leg rubbed against a big boned stranger’s leg because they actually require two seats or waiting for a bus in sub-zero temps or pouring rain. Which is why I can’t be anything but pro-telework and thank the creators of the Internet for bringing this bounteous gift to humanity. It’s this century’s white-out to last century’s grammatical mistake.  

And yet……can I be honest with you? Do not tell my bosses this. I actually have kind of mixed feelings about working from home. I love the zero commute, but it’s kind of lonely some days. I listen to music, I listen to podcasts. That keeps me company. I call my claimants and they are always an absolute delight! But after the Internet chained everyone to their desk in the office, now it’s chaining us to our desk at home, miles away from each other. Only a Skype away! But that’s still not real life. So it just seems the more technology advances, the further it drives away a lot fo face to face interactions with each other. Am I the only one a tiny bit sad about this? Maybe people with more of a life than me don’t care. Especially the ones with kids. Or the ones who kept all their friends growing up. Those folks  probably have very little need for the office as some sort of social town square. This is why office management’s talks about preserving “culture” rings hollow. I assume many offices are similar to mine where much of the culture and community had already pretty much gone the way of paper case filing systems anyway. Work form home is only the final phase of a computer and Internet driven separation of office staff from each other that’s been going on for a few decades.     

And is the office just a microcosm of society? I saw a Facebook post the other day asking about going to the mall back in the 80’s. This of course triggered a flood of nostalgia about how great the mall used to be. I kind of agree. I used to love the mall. Record stores, bookstores, Orange Julius, how could you not love it? Or video stores. I watched the Netflix doc about the last Blockbuster where they ran through the history of video stores. So I went online and found a blue and yellow Blockbuster T-shirt. Strangers compliment me on this shirt almost every time I wear it. I’ve never had a shirt that drew such praise. Is this because everyone kind of misses the social setting of a video store? I guess we should be happy that any smart TV or Roku or Apple TV is the biggest video store you could ever imagine right at your fingertips. You never have to leave your home! And no worries about snotty judgmental clerks questioning your rental choices! (Clerks? What are you a degenerate? The Mask? What are you mentally challenged?). It’s more convenient and convenience seems to win every time. But it’s lonelier. You don’t have to leave your house to work or watch any movie you want. Is that good news or bad news? 

But maybe all this is stupid. Okay so you can’t find a record store in the mall anymore, but you can still see live music. You can’t find video stores, but you can still go to the movies (if streaming doesn’t kill movie theaters). Work and shopping may be far more confined to home, but people still go out. They go to sporting events, they play sports, they join yoga classes. They get sunburns and alcohol poisoning in Cancun. They go to bars and restaurants. Lots and lots of things are still basically like they were in the offline world of the 80’s and mostly offline world of the 90’s. Could both the statements that computers and the Internet are going to save the world and that they are destroying the world be hyperbolic and basically wrong? 

Young Steve Jobs constantly used a metaphor about computers. He said humans aren’t very fast and can be easily outraced by any number of animals. But put a person on a bicycle and they can beat most animals in a race. So computers are the bicycle that will make us faster and better. 

I’d say that hasn’t hasn’t aged well. Is a crutch a better analogy? Do smart machines make us dumber? You could learn how to spell or you could let spellcheck do it for you. You can learn how to sing or let auto-tune do it for you. And did people before the computer age have no ability to enrich themselves? They did have things called books. And newspapers. And magazines. And encyclopedias. And evening TV news—which was actually probably a little better when it was more information driven instead of opinion driven ratings bait. That magical bicycle was kind of always available to anyone who wanted to ride it. And of course, it's still available today for people who still want it. So maybe the biggest insult you could actually give computers and the Internet isn’t that they have destroyed society, it’s that they haven’t maybe mattered? There were smart people and dumb people then. And there are smart and dumb people now. And the smart people are still smart because they read books—not Yahoo News. (Full disclosure: I read both so maybe flip a coin here).  

But maybe here’s the difference: you once needed to at least be semi-smart to get your voice heard. Most people in print and TV journalism are at least reasonably smart, as are people who create movies and TV shows. But social media, as opposed to the old media, has opened the floodgates to everyone. You can be a complete idiot and be on more or less equal footing in the comments section of Facebook or Twitter with any MIT professor or Yale graduate. On the Internet a PhD from Stanford is of equal value to The School Of Hard Knocks. 

So has the Internet made smart people smarter? Doubt it. Has it made dumb people dumber? Doubt it. But maybe it’s legitimized and popularized dumbness and meanness in a way like we’ve never seen before. Ignorant and dumb people have never had more company than they have now. So they can get together and egg each other on. Al Quaeda was organized online. So many mass shooters belong to forums where they can have their feelings reinforced by other angry, alienated young men. The January 6th insurrections were from many different states, but they organized it all online. (They probably got help turning their computers on). 30 years ago, that would have almost never happened because the Internet wasn’t around. Also white supremacy went into remission for a long time probably because the gatekeeper media didn’t talk about it and there just wasn’t a community many racists could find to share views and receive encouragement from others. Now Sleepless in Shreveport can pour out his hate filled heart about how much he hates black people to  all his semi-literate soulmates the world over.  

In other words, the Internet has democratized everything. And this is the real conflict because don’t we say we want things democratized? It’s just that the Internet has created a megaphone that has allowed the lunatic fringe to not be on the fringes anymore. Again, The Information Superhighway just seems to incredibly naïve now. In hindsight, we actually should have seen this coming. In the 20th Century, television and newspapers became the glue that helped bind society in a way it had never been before. We were really always the Divided States Of America but for a while we were actually pretty unified. Economic prosperity and a non-divisive, more bipartisan media helped create that. (In our divided times we don’t believe that: liberals say it was lies from the corporate media, conservatives say they were always stealth liberals imposing their agenda in sneaky ways through the mask of impariality but let’s move on). If the old media was like the world with its clothes on—often designer clothes at that---the new online media is life stripped naked. In many ways it’s more honest, less polite, less vetted. But as they said on Seinfeld, there’s good naked and bad naked and what we see is definitely naked while opening a pickle jar. Or it’s like what they say about nudists: it’s always the ones you least want to see naked who are first to take their clothes off. 

Maybe Steve Jobs was right. Maybe the digital age has given people a bicycle—it’s just that it’s not to the fast and thoughtful ones. They already had one. Instead it’s given the lowest common denominator one. Not one they can use to become smarter and faster, but one they can use to broadcast and celebrate and encourage ignorance. The bicycle is not knowledge or invention or creativity, it’s attention. A voice. So it’s not like humans racing a cheetah as he predicted, it’s smart and decent humans being chased by Proud Boys on their brand new 10 speeds. (Okay, souped up Harleys but trying to stick with the bicycle metaphor here).  

And this is why I say the biggest story of our time, almost the only real story of our time is the invention of the Internet. If the world hasn’t been destroyed in 100 years or 200 years, I’m sure that’s what the history books will talk about first. And those of us who are old enough to remember the offline world and yet have lived through the online world have been alive though a unique time in human history. The vast majority of people never saw the online world and the vast majority of future people will have no direct experience or memory of the offline world. So many other big recent historical events seem more of a symptom of this tidal wave. Again, 9/11 may not ever happen if those radical Muslims from different countries weren’t able to come together online. Trumpism likely never happens either. Again, it’s all from a voice a segment of the population now has thanks to the Internet that has fueled a movement that he was smart enough to exploit all the way to the White House. But in many ways Trump and his buddies have been along for this ride as much as the rest of us.  

So I don’t know. Maybe the Internet will destroy society after all. It certainly seems to have split us into factions much more. It’s become such a depository and dumping ground of opinions that it almost seems like facts have become less important. Is it going to kill any idea of an objective reality itself? John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things” but what if they aren’t as stubborn as we might hope? What if facts are like a religious faith: they draw all their power from people’s belief in them. If everyone stops believing in God, then God is dead. (In the sense of having relevance down here on earth, not necessarily in the sense of whether God exists). Zeus and Aphrodite, and Athena weren’t just names in books, they were gods with shrines people visited to worship. Now they are dead because no one believes in them anymore. They don’t believe Zeus can do anything to help them in their life. If people don’t believe facts help them, will they just stop believing them and does the Internet provide an unprecedented forum for new distorted realities to form? If someone’s Alternative Facts are all I choose to believe, does an actual fact matter?

So the Internet just seems like this monster whose taken on a life of its own. Dr. Frankenstein had the noblest of intentions when he created him but the monster grew a mind of its own and the doctor lost control of his own creation. But whats’s amazing about technology is there are no rules, no laws that seem to govern it. Was legislation ever passed approving the Internet? Was there a Supreme Court ruling? Nope. We tightly monitor abortion rights, gay marriage, gambling, how fast you can drive on the highway, what drugs you can put in your body, but something like the Internet which has arguably impacted life at least as much as those things was never subject to any real review, sign-off, or permission slip. Same thing with the 20th Century’s big invention: cars. Don’t think the Supreme Court gave the green light there either. It just happened. People heard how fast they could get from Point A to Point B and no one thought there was any reason why we wouldn’t rush into it. We now know that cars have caused thousands or millions of deaths from driver and pedestrian accidents, that they have caused skyrocketing carbon emissions which could end up creating a climate all but inhospitable to humans…..so yeah. Someone probably should have reviewed this. They were spending more time worrying about prohibiting alcohol and never even considered any downside to cars. Not saying cars shouldn’t have existed, just pointing out that new tech exists on its own privileged, basically above the law plane that almost nothing else in society does. 

Holy crap this is long. I could probably go on but…………….I won’t. Here At Blog You Like A Hurricane we have a staff of one. Budgetary constraints just don’t allow more staff members I’m afraid. So Tom Cruise does his own stunts and your humble blogger does his own editing. 

What have we learned? Probably nothing. Bye!   

PS--And I didn't even talk about distracted driving. Thanks Apple! Another reason Steve Jobs' metaphorical bike rider won't be outracing any cheetahs any time soon. The cheetah isn't texting that smokeshow he met at Cross Fit training in the middle of the race before crashing into a tree!

  

Apartment Confidential

 

Hi. Well I’m hitting that time of year again when I move or think about moving. I’m turning into a drifter. No wonder it seems like Trump has been President forever: for me his Inauguration is 3 towns and 4 apartments ago. But I thought I would offer an exciting tour guide through all the apartments I’ve lived in since adulthood drove its tentacles in me.

 

First stop on our tour guide is 33 Windermere Avenue in Vernon, CT. This is the only place on the list I saw for the first time the day I moved in. My dad found it for me. I probably should have been independent enough in my activities of daily living to find my own place but………... Not having a car was a contributing factor so let’s go with that. I had been living back in Storrs for a year even though I had graduated and I hadn’t talked myself into enrolling in grad school so I worked in a sheltered workshop for the blind in the Elmwood section of West Hartford and drank heavily on weekends instead. Over 2 hour commute to work each and every day just so I could still go to Ted’s and Spring Weekend. Adulthood won the war, but I fought that battle with pretty dogged determination.   

 

But as my friend and I were set to have to give back the apartment we were subletting for the summer, homelessness was a semi-realistic possibility so my Dad went apartment hunting for me.

 

I was pretty scared moving there. I had to fight back tears saying goodbye to my friends when I moved out. I wanted it to be college forever and I had never lived by myself before and I was afriad I might slide down a downward spiral of loneliness and despair. But, like most everything else, it worked out and wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared.  

 

The place wasn’t bad. Bedroom in the front, living room in the back. A balcony! And a big sliding glass door! Unfortunately, I mostly used the balcony to smoke. But it was on that balcony one winter night when I decided to give up smoking for good. I thought, “I’m sitting out in the cold breathing in poison!”. I would put my ashes into a giant plastic cup because I never bought an ash tray—because an ash tray would symbolize a commitment to smoking. I tossed that cup which had become rather disgusting with ashes in the garbage.

 

Unfortunately, the walls in this place were PAPER THIN. I was the proud owner of a neighbor enraging giant Sony stereo which included a sub woofer. Because it’s all about dat bass. And I had my Fender Stratocaster with a Crate amplifier (good clean tone with built in chorus, distortion sounded like a hive of very angry bees). There was a gray haired gentleman living next door who was clearly not a big Rage Against The Machine or The Beastie Boys fan. At first, he played nice. I got a polite friendly reminder from the office staff. Then one night I slipped up again and heard pounding on my door. Of course I couldn’t hear everything he said what with the music and everything but after turning it down I caught, “………………………PAIN IN MY ASS!!!!!!!!”.

 

So I kept it pretty quiet after that.

 

But my neighbors downstairs weren’t quiet little mice either. They were a couple who fought frequently and I could hear every single argument. But their relationship appeared to be built on an endless cycle of fighting and making up. And I could always hear them making up too. Sunday mornings seemed to be a favourite time of the week for loud, passionate let’s-never-fight-again reconciliation.   

 

I watched the UConn men win their first national championship over Duke in this apartment (wishing I could be on campus getting obliterated in celebration and watching idiots burn mattresses because that’s what school spirit is all about). I watched Pedro Martinez strike out 17 Yankees while I drank a bottle of wine that had been given to me by my boss the previous Christmas. But I was so poor I didn’t have cable most of the time I was there. Once in a while I would splurge and rent a movie form the video store down the street and that was it. Fight Club, The Blair Witch Project…all the hot new releases. No computer either! No Internet, very little TV. It was glorious. I walked down to the Rockville library and checked out books and read a lot. I also (quietly) practiced my guitar a lot. The simple unplugged days.

 

I lived there for 2 years. I might have stayed longer but---story of my life---transportation issues surfaced. Another thing my Dad had done before I moved in was hook me up with a ride by posting an ad in the paper offering payment to someone to drive me to Hartford every weekday. (I did pay myself—for the record). I still had to take a bus from downtown to Elmhood, but this cut my commute time tremendously over taking a bus from Vernon—which took a long scenic route through beautiful Manchester. But my driver was a bit crazy. He drove people with disabilities for a living and I’m convinced people’s driving skills erode the more they drive. They lose ALL patience on the road. First incident was in a snowstorm where we hydroplaned and did a 360 spin on a Jersey barrier. By some miracle no car hit us--probably because they were actually driving slow in the snow! My man thought because he had an SUV he could drive like it was 75 and sunny. I decided to give him one more chance but promised myself I would fire him if anything else happened. The following summer he hit a girl in front of us who stopped at a red light. Just a fender bender but still. He blamed her for stopping too quickly but I think he was tailing her too close. Admittedly, I took the cowardly way out of firing him: I left him a voice mail. But this forced me to take 2 long buses. I probably plowed through One Hundered Years Of Solitude and Love In The Time Of Cholera and Catch 22 on the bus in three weeks flat. Plus I had gotten promoted and now had money to burn so might as well move to place with more entertainment options to walk to than Video Galaxy and Kahoots. A gentleman’s club. I might have gone there a couple times…..don’t judge. I didn’t have cable. So it was on to…………………..  

 

Downtown Hartford! Way easier commute. Walking distance to UConn games and concerts. The Brickyard was still open! Heaven had a name and it was Hartford. 

 

But like seemingly every move I’ve ever made, it was a tradeoff. Gone was my lovely balcony. My sole window offered a breathtaking view of a dumpster in the back parking lot. My reasonably spacious 1 bedroom Vernon apartment was replaced by a tiny studio. And, you know, Hartford ambiance. My Dad—former Hartford cop---read me the riot act about NOT letting panhandlers take advantage, about NOT walking up Garden Street….. All in all, this very non-street smart country boy managed fine in my seven years in Hartford. 

 

Well……there was one glaring exception. In 2003 I had been laid off and was out of work for 7 months. Being a bit depressed over this situation, I was smart enough to mostly avoid drinking—both alcohol and coffee. One Saturday I bought a six pack but decided to not even drink it! But by Sunday it was just screaming my name from my fridge so I drank a few and then ventured to the bars. Hartford bars on a Sunday night………..kind of scary territory here. No lightweights or college freshman with fake ID’s on this night. Hard core alcoholics, Suge Knight acolytes……that sort of clientele. I decided to have a nightcap in the heart of darkness itself: The Federal Café. Established 1934. HOW do they stay in business? I’ve probably just seen too many movies, but they’re a money laundering front for the mob I just know it.  

 

As I was walking out, a woman probably late 20’s/early 30’s approached me and asked if I lived nearby. Foolishly, I said I did. She said she had to go get her kids who were with their father but she had to call them but she didn’t have a phone (still semi-plausible in 2003) so could she just use my phone and she’d be right on her way? I wisely said no. Then I said no again. Then I said okay sure. Did I mention I had been drinking since mid-eafternoon?

 

So of course she makes herself at home. Asked if I had any I had anything to drink. I think I still had a beer or two but I can’t remember. She tells me she worked at The Meadows and has met all the stars. Dave Matthews? Moody. Of course starts to flirt. Asks why I don’t have a girlfriend “as cute as you are”.

 

Finally she left. I woke up the next day with a SCREAMING hangover. Maybe getting daydrinking till 1 AM after having not drank anything at all in a few months was a bad idea. But I heard a call coming in on my answering machine. “Hey Ryan, it’s Sheila! I was wondering when I can come over today?”. I didn’t recall inviting her over. Then another voice mail. Then another. Each one getting a little angrier about me not picking up the phone. Feeling slightly freaked out, I took the bus to Buckland Mall and bought my very first cell phone. Suddenly landlines with their scary answering machines seemed like the spawn of Satan. Shortly after I get home, I got a call from the building security guard saying there’s someone there to see me! I go downstairs and she gives me a big hug like she’s never been happier to see anyone in her entire life. She had a book in her hand about depression. Asks if she can use my bathroom. Again, I think I said no but she knew by now that no meant yes. I said okay but you have to leave RIGHT AFTER. She promises. She goes to the bathroom and then says “Do you mind if I close the shade? I want to show you the new underwear my mom bought for me”. Not really sure if I even answered. She pulls down her pants and shows me a pink pair of panties. Also noticed that she was really, really skinny. I’m probably lucky I was so hungover and just wanted all this to go away or I MIGHT have made a poor decision and succumbed to the charms of this likely junkie? Prostitute? STD sufferer? Home invader? Instead I said, “You have to leave right now!”. So she starts leaving and I said, “And don’t come here unannounced again!”. She said okay. I was a jerk but at that point I felt like I had no choice.

 

But it wasn’t quite over. About a week later I get a call on my landline. “Is Sheila there?”. A guy’s voice. I said no. “She told me she’s staying there”. I said, “No she’s not staying here!”. He said, “She fucked up?”. I said, “Yes”. He said, “She always fucks up”.

 

Next day I called and cancelled my landline phone account.

 

But poor Sheila proved to only be the second most troublesome pest that entered my first Hartford apartment. One night I woke up itching. Soon after I noticed these creepy tiny black bugs on me. You could easily smoosh them and you would see this trace amount of red blood on your finger. Don’t even go there animal rights activists….come back and see after you’ve lived with, you guessed it, bedbugs. This. Was. Awful. Kind of hard to sleep. I would itch and scratch like a manic until I developed these big blotchy red marks all over my legs. I started thinking what if it’s not bedbugs like it seems and I have some awful medical condition?? I went to the ER and they gave me Prednisone. This did help reduce the itching tremendously. For a while. Because a new army of bedbug reinforcements was ready to do more damage. I went back to the ER and got prescribed a SECOND course of Prednisone. I think I reported the problem to management but my AC was broken that summer and they wouldn’t even fix that so an exterminator was out of the question. God was good, though. My lease was up at the end of August and after 7 years, I finally took everyone’s advice and moved to West Hartford Center. To free up quick cash for rent and security deposit, I even sold one my guitars—allowing Guitar Center to fleece me since I didn’t have time to do Ebay. So long Hartford, we’ll always have the Pig’s Eye Pub.

 

My first WeHa apt was pretty nice. It was very bright and sunny as it faced south with no trees blocking the light. And while relatively small, it was a 1 bedroom palace compared to my Hartford studio. Even the Peapod delivery girl was impressed. She said, “This apartment is much nicer than your old one”.

 

I moved two months before Blue Back Square opened. I was shocked to discover there were no bars! There were restaurants with bars in them but the days of McLadden’s and World Of Beer were still a couple years away. They were still pretending to be a quaint little village or something. But this was good. I had drank quite my share in my Hartford days—block parties, Great Band Slams, concerts, games, staying out till last call! I almost welcomed the quieter, more boring life of not drinking much and going to the newly opened movie theatre every Saturday night.

 

Oh…..but I took the bedbugs with me! I must have taken them along when I packed. They are truly evil. The outbreak wasn’t as severe but I actually had to hire an exterminator to come two different times the following summer before they were finally gone. (Why do I feel like getting rid of Trump will proceed in a very similar fashion?).  

 

Not really proud of this but one of my fondest memories of this apt was waking up one Sunday morning in my sunsplashed bed to a dream where I was at The White House during the Kennedy Administration and I was chatting up Jackie and she seemed to think I was one devilishly charming SOB so I found myself getting a bit handsy shall we say? Not quite in a Trumpian way….but…. never mind. Listen, Jack was a serial cheater so this was a victimless crime! But I started looking around hoping the Secret Service wasn’t looking and getting ready to gun me down for getting way, way too familiar with The First Lady. Then I woke up. I mentioned this was a cool dream, right?

 

But like every other apartment I’ve lived in, problems arose. Namely, an upstairs neighbour that moved in. He wasn’t a fan of my guitar playing. Or even of music I played out of my computer speakers. He pounded on the floor a few times. One night he called the cops! I had already turned off the music when the cop showed up so that was a non event. But---and isn’t this always how it is?---he was loud himself! He had the heaviest foot of anyone I’ve ever met. Yes, the walls were thin. But he would walk (stomp?) around his apartment literally all hours of the night. I swear he slept 2 hours a night. And thanks to him, so did I. I tried earplugs. I tried a fan. I tried leaving the TV on. I bought noise cancelling headphones. Nothing helped. Finally I moved to another unit in the complex just to prevent slipping off the precipice into total madness. They had no 1 bedrooms on the second floor (after this I would rather die than take another 1^st floor unit) so I took a much more expensive townhouse instead.

 

This place was BLISSFULLY silent. My first night going to bed and hearing not a sound coming through the ceiling might have been one of the happiest nights of my life. Another amazing benefit I later discovered: I could set up speakers strategically so that I could play music as loud as I wanted without anyone complaining!

 

But……………………………and why do all the apartments I’ve lived in have a but?.......this place was kind of lonely feeling. It was on top of a large upward slopping quadrangle removed from the street. And it was off on the far left of a back row of apartments. And it wasn’t nearly as bright. There were light blocking trees all around. Winters started to feel pretty depressing there. It was starting to feel time to get a change of scenery from West Hartford after almost ten years.

 

My new property manager Mike did me a favor by providing the push I needed to finally move on. Early in the winter, I noticed my heat was barely working. I made a service request. He said the maintenance guy showed up with a temp reader and said it was 68 so there was no problem whatsoever. I said maybe on a sunny day at 3PM it was 68 but by night time and early morning it’s cold. He had him go back….same response. So he was refusing to fix my heat?? I decided to go over his head and call corporate headquarters. They came back, did something to open the vents and it worked better the rest of the winter. Why did that have to be so hard? Apparently not willing to accept this emasculating defeat, he sent me a nasty, vaguely threatening letter saying my apartment wasn’t clean and he would be back to inspect it on December 20^th. I hired cleaners to make it super clean. He came back---with the maintenance guy. Was he planning to evict me and wanted a reinforcement if I went postal? Anyway, he agreed it was much better. But I knew it was time to GTFO when my lease ran out a couple months later.

 

But…..Brooksyde Apartment still had a parting gift in store for me. One early spring day I came back from running and a neighbor’s loud yapping dog was out unsupervised on a leash in the ground. I came too close and he bit me on the left butt cheek! I politely noted this to the owners a few days later and they were incredulous. Not their adorable little pooch! One day soon after I was again coming back from jogging (this time sticking to the other side of the quad) but the dog was on a leash in a different spot and he got to me again and bit me on the leg! I complained to my frienemy property manager but God knows if he did anything. It was time to move on to………………..

 

Glastonbury. This was a really nice apartment. 2 bedroom again—they didn’t have 2^nd floor 1 BR’s at the time so I said screw it. Beautiful hardwood floors instead of the horrible beige carpeting I had been living with for nearly 20 years. A pool! A gym! Two wall AC’s! All amenities my WeHa apartment lacked but they still charged slightly more in rent. The property manager Kristen was actually nice and responded to maintenance calls!

 

I even kind of befriended a couple neighbors—a rarity in apartment land in my experience. Then again I’m not a social butterfly with strangers. But an Indian family lived below and they had two grammar school aged boys. One liked to play 20 Questions with me. “Is your bathroom the same as ours?”. “Are you single?”. Many other rather random questions I’m forgetting. But it always seemed like he was breaking the rules by talking to me since he would run if he saw his mom—who I’m guessing was stranger danger wary.

 

But by between West Harford and Glastonbury I had been taking two buses to get to work for 11 years. Occasionally getting rides but mostly busing it. I was feeling burnt out on that and yearned for the blissful one bus commute only possible if I moved back to Hartford. My last night there was Halloween two years ago. My downstairs neighbors and their friends knocked on my door Trick Or Treating. I was so sad because A) I hadn’t prepared with candy and B) I was moving to an apartment building in Hartford the following day where I knew there was no chance I’d ever see a Trick Or Treater. The cold and scary city awaited me!

 

My first place back in New England’s Rising Star was pretty nice—a corner unit, reasonably big for a one bedroom, hardwood floors, laundry and dryer in the unit. But darkness was an issue again. Not trees, but the monstrosity of the XL Center across the street. I might have just lived with it for more than a year but by this time I had a cat. I felt so guilty moving her there. She loves to sit in the sun and there was very little sun. In GBury she loved to sit at the windowsill and stalk birds but nothing but concrete out the window now.

 

So I moved to my current abode: south facing, much more sun, facing Bushnell Park with trees out the window. And $200 cheaper. I thought I had hit the jackpot. This place sucks. The carpet has stains that were there the day I moved in and my attempt to get them cleaned fell on deaf ears. There’s a water fountain in the hallway but there was something someone threw in there the day I moved in that no one had bothered removing. The washers and dryers don’t work half the time. It took 3 maintenance calls to get my toilet fixed and 4 to get a broken blind fixed. And it’s just a bit too small. Has the layout of a glorified studio. I’m too old for this shit. And recently a neighbor moved in one side who complains about the slightest noise and another neighbor moved in with an obnoxiously loud German Shepherd and they play obnoxiously loud music. Knock on wood, they’ve been quiet the last couple weeks after I made multiple complaints to management. I can’t win! Every apartment I move to has pros and cons but is never any sort of dream home. Have I become too picky? I don’t know.

 

But my lease is almost up and Covid complicates my choices. I have an option to go to a place on Arch Street on just a six month lease. This would let me continue going into my office—almost everyone is working from home but I realized I hated my apartment so much I would go insane spending all my time there. The other option……………..move back to my old apartment complex in Glastonbury. Who moves back to the same complex they already lived in? Maybe this guy. It’s familiar, now’s not the time for apartment hunting, it would also only be a six month lease, it might make a great Covid winter quarantine shelter from the storm….. So I might do that. Only problem…..after not having switched to teleworking from the beginning I’m afraid I will hate it even in a much bigger, nicer apartment. But I might find I actually love it and when will this chance come again………………? It occurs to me I’ve come full circle and my work from home fear mirrors my fear of living alone in my first apartment.

 

When this is all over I need to find a condo or small house! All this wandering is making me tired.   

This Concerns Kidnapping! Read Immediately!

Wow. No, you are no­­­t dreaming. It’s time for another installment of Blog You Like A Hurricane. (You didn’t remember it existed? You never knew it existed? You faintly recollect it showing up on your News Feed one day in 2011 but never bothered to read it? You don't fool me!). 

Today let’s talk about……..child abductions! It’s February. I’m currently wintering in the historic waterfront city of Hartford, CT. If anyone has a more cheerful topic, I’m all ears.

Actually let’s talk about fear of abductions. This week a coworker said her 10 year old son is having training on how to steer clear of potential pedophiles. This seems crazy to me. I don’t think anything like this was ever thought of when I was that age. Fire drill procedures were the only training against a potential disaster I can recall. Rather than getting scared half to death, I’m hoping the kids will just treat it as a big joke. (Like we treated fire drills. The school might catch on fire and we could all die if we don't learn to walk single file? OK, Boomer). And I know that’s how everyone treated sex ed too—which, if I remember didn’t take place until high school. Um, the cat was kind of out of the bag by then. I mean we didn’t have the Internet but we did have cable TV and magazines and older kids who were actively dedicated to corrupting the impressionable minds of their juniors.

Part of the kidnapping fear may lie in misleading headlines. There is a difference between “missing children” and abducted children. Most missing children are teen runaways and most abducted minors are abducted by a family member who doesn’t have legal guardian rights over them. But most people’s primary fear is about strangers kidnapping kids, isn’t it? Those cases are 0.1 percent of missing children cases. There’s about 100 kids under 17 abducted by a stranger per year out of 84 million kids. And most are teens. and 90 percent of them come home. Children under the age of 12 are practically never kidnapped by strangers. By comparison, 4,000 kids aged 18 and under die in car accidents per year. 2,500 kids die from firearm injuries. Cancer kills 1,800 kids.  

So as a threat, stranger kidnappings barely register on the radar screen. I don’t want to say parents are being irrational and paranoid. It’s not unreasonable to say that unless you can know that zero kids are kidnapped, you can’t feel safe. But it is interesting, isn’t it? We haven’t raised the age for kids to get driver’s licenses or banned kids from riding in cars. We haven’t passed laws banning guns from being in any home with a child. But it almost seems we have completely reorganized childhood around the fear of strangers kidnapping children.  

Of course movies and shows probably don’t help. I love the show Stranger Things but what was season 1 about? Children getting abducted by strangers! Andis whole widespread fear apparently has its origins in a 1983 made for TV movie called Adam. Adam is kidnapped and murdered. Based on a true story. It was watched by 38 million people on its first airing and rebroadcast in 1984 and 1985. Each time a list of missing children was listed with a phone number to call with any info. Adam’s father was John Walsh---later the host of America’s Most Wanted. The only thing I really remember about that show was John's habit of referring to any criminal as "this punk" like Dirty Harry. 

Then beginning in 1984 there were the milk carton kids. Have you seen this child? But for all of that campaign’s attempt to raise awareness of stranger danger, many of the missing milk carton kids were abducted by estranged family members, not strangers. But the milk cartons somehow didn’t cause people to fear their family more, only strangers.  

Oh….and of course abduction fears seem almost inextricably linked with pedophile fears. Here too the risk is often misplaced. Children are far more likely to be molested by—you guessed it-- a family member than a stranger.   

But again, does anything I’m saying matter? The fact that these cases, however rare, do happen instill such a terror and panic in parents that there’s just no fighting it? But it's undeniable: if we are guided by the facts, we will start to fear family members more and strangers less. 

But fear of the latter seems to have changed the way we raise children. I know this much: when I was a kid a kidnapper would have had ample opportunity to nab me. I walked to and from the bus stop from as early an age as I can remember. I would ride my bike around the neighborhood often by myself, sometimes with other kids. We would go for walks through the neighborhood and wander through the woods. Are you sitting down? Sometimes we got lost in the woods! All without a single adult to be seen. And not a single adult had any technological way to contact us. If we went to the mall, I would go my own way and meet my mom at an agreed upon time from a pretty early age. I was into the record store and the video store and the bookstore as opposed to, you know, women’s clothing stores and flower shops. I can remember my brother and I seeing Return Of The Jedi in the theaters while my mom went to see Flashdance I think. I was 10. But what was going to happen to you in a movie theater? Innocent times indeed.

And during adolescence, it was all about the parties in the woods for many Gen Xers. These were sophisticated grain alcohol tastings. At night. The bonfire providing the only light. Again, zero adult supervision—unless the cops showed up and broke it up. That peppermint schnapps or Purple Passion wasn’t going to pour itself out.

But I was never once scared by any of these things. As a kid I was more afraid of ghosts under the bed than getting kidnapped. As a teenager I was scared of rabies after reading about it for biology class, but zero stranger fear to speak of. And why would I? I lived in Ellington, CT. A town with a ridiculously low crime rate. Obviously, nothing was going to happen to me. In "bucolic" Ellington, the most famous story of a child coming to a bad end involved Samuel Knight: run over by a wheelbarrow. Stay away from wheelbarrows and you would live happily ever after. 

And I think most parents across America believed the same thing. Yes, the made for TV movies and milk carton brigades were slowly beginning to erode confidence, but mass panic hadn’t sunk in yet. The Suburban Dream was still alive. This is why you lived in the suburbs. Good, safe schools and a safe town where you could let your kids play and wander freely without any worry. Just be home in time for dinner. The way my parents raised me and the way most kids of my generation were raised would lead to a Facebook mob engaging in mass shaming and/or an arrest for neglect today. What is now called “free range parenting” was how everyone parented. Sometimes my mom would go in a store and…………ready for this…….we would wait in the car. Scandalous!

All I can say is I think I’m glad I grew up when I did. I grew up without the slightest fear that walking down the street was dangerous or even walking through the woods alone was risky. With parents seeming so hypervigilant today, I have to imagine some of that rubs off on kids and the outside world seems like a more dangerous, scary place even if you live in a quiet little town. Or even if kids aren’t afraid themselves, they still have to live a life in relative captivity. That can’t be as fun. And what must parenting be like? Always a hard job, is it now 10x more anxiety inducing? No wonder the birth rate is at record lows!

Fear is almost impossible to avoid. We’re hard wired for it. Goes back to our caveman days when we had to be vigilant against hungry lions and panthers. But the key is to be afraid of the right things. I’m not much better at this myself. I went on a lot of trips growing up but I haven’t boarded a plane since I was 18. If I actually had somewhere to go or someone to go with, I might do it but the thought of it makes me scared. It shouldn’t. The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5 million. You’re not only more likely to die in a car crash, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning or killed by a shark. Drive your kid to school because it's safer than letting them walk to school or the bus stop? Nope. It bears repeating: they are more likely to die in a car crash on the ride to school than to get kidnapped walking to school.     

Or am I wrong to say parents fear the wrong thing? There’s one obvious big difference between my generation and today: the Internet. We were told it was an Information Superhighway that make us all smarter and better people. Meanwhile the blog has been reduced to the meme. No one reads articles before commenting. No one proofreads their posts. (Or, even worse, they do proofread). And…………….is the Net a Creeper Superhighway? Clearly it does give strangers with bad intent a better avenue to earn the trust of kids. Before you needed to join the priesthood or become a schoolteacher for that, but now you can work any old job! (Sorry—bad joke). There was a case in Farmington about a teenage girl and some 40 year old married dude just a couple of years ago—they met online. So a case can be made that the freedoms we enjoyed as kids can’t exist today. If that’s the case, it’s just one more reason the Internet sucks. Seriously, has it done far more harm than good or is it just me?       

Also it seems no matter what method of parenting one embraces, there are always going to be critics. Pay too close attention to your kids? You’re a helicopter parent who is preventing your kid from developing independence. Raise your kids with a loose leash? You are neglectful. I just saw an article about the 35^th anniversary of The Breakfast Club. Crap I’m old. It was released on February 15, 1985. John Hughes was just about the spokesman of my generation and he built an entire movie career around the concept of parental neglect. Molly Ringwald’s parents forget it’s her birthday in Sixteen Candles. In The Breakfast Club when we get the big reveal of what Ally Sheedy’s parents did to her, she says, “They ignore me”. Ferris Bueller’s parents had absolutely no clue he had been absent NINE TIMES. Macauley Culkin’s parents go on vacation and oops! They forget him and leave him home alone to fend off burglars. That was just life in the radical 80’s, man!

Life is hard. Too much of something is often bad, too little of something is often bad. Do we now live in an over parented world? Did we used to live in an under parented world? And if life was so perfect the old way, why were all these movies in the 80’s focused on absentee parents and teachers? Again,  I’m glad I grew up with the relative freedom I did, but I do sometimes wish I had been involved in more structured activities. Like I wish I didn’t quit the band in junior high (because it was uncool and for some reason they refused to play a single Motley Crue song). Or I wish I had joined the drama club. Or the school newspaper. All those nerdy things! Maybe today’s kids are pushed a little more into after school and summer activities and that’s an advantage over us more aimless wandering latchkey kids?

As it was at the time, I was a true child of the 80’s because my regret upon graduating high school was completely different from what it is now. I regretted not going to more of those aforementioned parties in the woods. Who wanted to be rehearsing for a production of Our Town in a world where there was underage drinking  in the woods in February? Anyone who thought differently wouldn’t know cool if it hit them in the face.

In the Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections, he wrote about how kids often try to live their lives in polar opposite ways to their parents because they are correcting what they saw as the flaws of their character or their parenting methods. But sometimes maybe you overcorrect. And maybe that’s what we see today in parents. They are overcorrecting because maybe, like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club, they felt like they were ignored or forgotten so they want to guarantee their kid doesn’t feel the same way. As a kid are you always parented in ways that prevent problems you never yourself experienced?

But how much of all this is rooted mothers’ working? For most of human history, mom stayed home and took care of the kids while dad worked. Even by 1970, only 31 percent of households featured both parents working full time. Today it’s 48 percent. I actually can’t believe it’s that low. All that free unsupervised time we had might have been the byproduct of two parents working being a new thing and society not fully adjusting to it yet. Did women’s liberation lead to children’s liberation?

And is freedom over? I read cops now go on social media looking for posts which tip them off to any underage parties  go and bust them up. That’s cheating. I heard some moms join their grammar school kids for lunch in the cafeteria every day! Or stories about moms who do their college aged kids’ laundry. Me? I went to the school of hard knocks in the laundry game. I was taught before leaving for college. But I probably didn’t pay full attention because I nearly burned down my dorm on my maiden voyage after getting to college. The washer started to smoke and two girls told me they had to stop it. I didn’t realize you couldn’t jam ALL of your clothes in there. But us Gen Xers learned things the hard way and moved on with our lives!

Oh and it seems like if a kid gets a bad grade, the parent blames the teacher! In my generation, parents and teachers always seemed to be in collusion with each other. As it should be 99% of the time. Some teachers were better than others, but I really don’t remember a teacher that was so bad or so unfair that I felt there was no way I could do well if I tried my hardest.

So there you have it, folks. Words of wisdom about parenting form a non parent. You’re welcome. For my next blog I will provide expert tutelage on how to fly an airplane, win a Mr. Universe contest, and swim the English Channel.