A Grown-Up Halloween that’s Fun, and Spooky, Again

It takes a kid to put the fun back in a holiday. Thanks to my kid — a dainty 2 1/2 -year-old who will be going trick-or-treating tonight as a home-made mermaid — Halloween is spooky and exciting again. Not that it wasn’t ever fun, but the meaning of it changed there for a while. As an adult, Halloween is usually about drinking too much in order to block out the reality of the insane and overly-revealing costume you chose to wear. Did I really go out in public as a Richard Simmons look-alike complete with ankle weights, a head-band and shorts so short that people still won’t look me straight in the eyes? Um … yes, I did. One year I went as Captain Duct Tape in a suit completely made out of the super adhesive including a cape, a mask and a duct tape codpiece. I learned quickly that night that duct tape doesn’t breathe, and my wife had to cut me out using garden shears. I had lost about seven gallons of water and at least 80 percent of my body hair. But again, very memorable.

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What’s this Strange Sensation? Rays Baseball Cravings?

It was stunning. There I was, glued to the couch, flipping the television from my Tampa Bay Buccaneers — a team I love, even though they caused me the kind of agony as a child that can only be matched by SUV-sized kidney stones — to watch a baseball game. Baseball? Are you kidding? What’s happened to me?!? I’m not a baseball fan. I never watch baseball. I’ve watched tricycle races and world championship ice fishing, but I can’t ever think of an occasion where I’ve flipped on a baseball game. It’s not my sport — too slow, too much spitting, not enough action, and I don’t really like any sports where you have to button-up your uniform. That’s far too sophisticated for me. My two sports are football and futbol (aka. soccer), and I rarely watch anything else. But as a Tampa native, my interest was piqued when the Tampa Bay Rays made the playoffs. Suddenly I was interested in this sport, and this young, ragged, bottom-dwelling team that had dispatched giants all season. So I tuned in. And daggonit if I’m not hooked. Maybe it’s my Cuban roots. Cubans will give up air before they’ll give up baseball, and I’ve heard relatives tell me doctors will use catchers mitts when delivering babies. Baseball is a passion in Cuba — a religion. On my first trip there as a journalist several years back, I took a bunch of baseballs to give away to kids. You would have thought I […]

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Surviving Without the Dishwasher

What in the world did cavemen do before the dishwasher was invented? Their stone bowls likely stacked up in the sinks, and bones must have been strewn about in disarray. How uncivilized! Nothing like us modern-day appliance addicts. And while I’ve always thought of myself as a relatively simple guy, I learned a bit about my dependence to this one modern convenience last week when ours came down with a case of the intestinal death. The motor went to the great junkyard in the sky where it is now drinking pia coladas and laughing at me. In dishwasher heaven you use all the cups and plates you want and humans have to wash them. I always thought of dishwashers as rather silly devices. To me they were made for people who were either incredibly lazy, or just terrified of suds. Do we really need them? Would life be so bad without them? After a week of waiting for the new motor to arrive and the repairman to come install it, I can tell you that I have seen life without dishwashers and that life doth sucketh!

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Just Call Me Dora

It’s role-playing time at my house. Pretend-time. We’ve all been assigned new names and personalities by the house’s resident toddler, who saunters about rooms pointing at people and telling them who they are. “You are Dora,” she tells me, and suddenly I’ve switched genders altogether. Forget that I’m a guy, or that I don’t want to be a little pint-sized cartoon character. I plead for something else. Anything! “No,” she says sweetly, the word trailing on in a squeaky singsong like it has to hit every note on the scale. “You are Dora.” So, now I’m Dora, the Explorer. “Dora,” she is saying to me right now, tugging on my arm as I type, “play with me.” Who am I anymore? I’m confused. It’s been that way in my house recently. We’ve all become cartoon characters. My wife is now Diego from “Go, Diego, Go!” and my daughter has ditched the name we spent so much time coming up with and adopted Alicia, the name of Diego’s sister. Neighbors walking by call out, “Hi Amelie,” only to have her call back, “No, I’m Alicia!” They stare, scratch their heads and wonder if they’ve been mistakenly calling her the wrong name for almost three years. “I could have sworn that kid’s name was Amelie,” they must wonder to themselves. “And his name I’m certain wasn’t Dora.”

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Fall and Memories of Sandspur-filled Soccer Fields

Something about the onset of fall, with those post-summer dips into the mid-80s and that tantalizing realization that the seasons are changing, always takes me back to my childhood. That occurred to me while on a run the other day. The air was just a bit crisper, the temperature beautiful and the sun sagging low in the sky like a fat man testing the limits of his hammock. The sun seems to get tired this time of year — like it just can’t radiate heat like it used to. And thank goodness. A feeling came over me — maybe the way the air felt as I gulped it down, or the fact that I wasn’t drenched in sweat like I was underwater. It triggered vivid memories of being a kid and playing outside this time of year. It was my favorite time of year. When you grew up in Tampa, there was nothing better than the start of October. It signaled you could finally go outside without risking heat stroke, or worse, spontaneous combustion. “Dang, Johnny just lit up like a Roman candle again,” was never uncommon to hear. “Get the fire extinguisher.” But the first inkling of fall was a wonderful time, and as I ran, I remembered soccer practices on a sandspur-laden field that sat next to the crosstown expressway. The sandspurs seemed meaner that time of year, and they all stood at attention like toy soldiers, just daring you to slide through them. Any kid who did […]

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