Hand Lotion Should Not Be Something You Can Be Allergic To

Can you think of anything more ridiculous than being allergic to hand lotion? I wouldn't even use the stuff, but as I get older, my skin has turned into a battlefield in which the weather has gained the upper hand. The way I notice this so-called skin lotion allergy is that when I use it, it knocks me out. Makes me tired and listless, prone to sleep in way past normal. That and hot chocolate has grown too heavy as my daily driver. I need something stronger to kick my a** into morning gear. Coffee.

For the first time since giving up coffee back in October, I drag the dripper and the grinder out of mothballs. I had to give up coffee, because it was causing me to jump through the ceiling every time somebody pulled into the drive-thru at CapEd Credit Union. Now that I'm no longer there, I can jump through whatever I want, so hello coffee!

I like to do things my way, meaning complicated, so I weigh the beans and measure the water to a 16:1 ratio of 500ml water and 30.4g beans. I grind the beans at an "8" setting on the OXO burr grinder. Pour the water into the OXO dripper. They're not paying me, by the way. The scale? OXO, of course. And the can opener I use on the dulce de leche? Also OXO.

Here's what I do once the coffee's brewed. I measure a coffee spoon each of dulce de leche and sweetened condensed milk into my red YETI ridiculously oversized insulated mug. A teaspoon of Guittard Chocolate Company cocoa rouge (hey Gary Guittard, your cocoa powder is da bomb!). Then I pour some of the brewed coffee into the mug—not a lot!—and mix it all together so I don't have dulce lumps or cocoa powder grit. Nobody taught me this recipe, I just figure it must be good. I learned a thing or two about measurement with my hot chocolate experiments. If the proportions aren't right, I'll just tweak them tomorrow.

The proportions are just fine. I might try it with more or less cocoa powder, but this way it's not espressified hot chocolate. I like the mix. Maybe a pinch of salt. I think it'll work either way.

A side note. Dulce de leche straight out of the can is heavenly. Have it for breakfast instead of ham and eggs. Don't skip the pancakes.

My Grandma Died, and it’s All My Fault

By the time I was fourteen, I decided to do something with my life. Joel Kirsch, my 9th grade Health and Safety teacher, the one who was super cool with his out-to-here ‘fro, said, “you can do anything you want, as long as you’re willing to accept the consequences.” What a revelation! So I quit Hebrew High, which made my mom very unhappy, considering it was my idea to attend in the first place. My bobbe (grandma) and zeide (grandpa), who lived with us, tried to talk me out of quitting in their Yiddish-broken English. But I was stubborn. “I can do anything I want, as long as I’m willing to accept the consequences.” In this case, no more buying lunch at school till I paid off my debt. Bobbe had a heart attack soon after I quit, and she was gone the day of New Year’s Eve. My fault? Maybe.

Bobbe wasn’t the first family member who died as a result of my actions. When I was four, I used to like to play in the garage. I had a refrigerator box I’d fashioned into a rocket ship by cutting a door into it. One day, out of nowhere, our pet canary showed up. We never had real pets like dogs and cats, because my mom didn’t like them. We had a series of canaries that mostly lived inside the house. But this one, for whatever reason, was now in the garage. So I blew on it. Hard. Repeatedly.

The next day, out in the garage, there was the canary. Lying on its side. Dead. I didn’t know what to do, other than to not tell anyone. My dad had recently gotten rid of the Chrysler, which was costing eighty dollars a month in gas, a lot of money back then. Now he had a Toyota Corona, a much more efficient vehicle that could very easily fit into the garage. A four year old’s not cunning enough to put two and two together, but it occurred to me that what I should do next is let the air out of the new car’s tires. So that’s what I did.

When my dad saw the flat tires, he didn’t say “what the hell did you do to my tires,” he called AAA. They showed up in a big old tow truck and inflated them, and nobody asked me what happened or why. Not about the flat tires, and not about the dead canary. I didn’t understand yet how karma works in asymmetrical ways.

Three years later, at the age of seven, I was diagnosed with a hernia and spent nearly a week in the hospital. Justice served.

Coming back to when I was fourteen, what I really wanted to do with my life was alter it, so I approached my buddy Jim and asked him where I could score some pot, since my sister wouldn’t help me. He got me some, and I have a vague recollection of rolling it without the aid of a rolling machine. I didn’t get high that first time, or the next, or the next, but eventually I did, because I’m no quitter, at least not when it came to smoking pot at that time.

What I thought being high would be like, and what it was actually like were two different things. I assumed it would be pleasant. It wasn’t. It made my muscles twitch uncontrollably. And then even when I wasn’t high, it made me walk all stiff and funny, completely self-conscious. But I’m no quitter, so I stuck with the program, eventually falling into a weekend-only groove, which in my mind meant Thursday through Sunday, alone in my bedroom. Not sure how I didn’t get caught, but I didn’t. I also started growing my own plants, three in total, which grew all the way up to the ceiling before one of my classmates climbed through the unlocked window and stole them one afternoon. That one was tricky to explain, but by then I was so used to spinning odd circumstances I barely raised an eyebrow.

Sophomore year, I tried out for the cross country team, but it interfered with my pot smoking, so I quit. My friend John down the street didn’t smoke, so I got him started out in my garage, the night I dropped acid for the first and only time. Again, what I thought it would be like, and what it actually was like were two different things. It was fun for a while, till the thought crossed my mind that I might never come down. That ended the fun. Trying to get into my pajamas that night was an hour-long ordeal. Nothing wanted to go where it was supposed to. What I was hoping for was colorful visions, but that didn’t happen, either. You can have way more colorful visions watching cartoons.

I eventually did come down, and with $40 I borrowed from my cousin, I started a new business, selling weed outside the gym. I got caught and hauled down to the dean’s office, and from there off to Alhambra jail, where I contemplated hanging myself with my jacket. I wanted to teach them all a lesson and avoid being locked up with a murderer they brought in after me. I stood there for what seemed like a couple hours, when my parents showed up and dragged me down to the barber to get a haircut.

My pot bust earned me a one week suspension from school, along with an endless parade of visits from concerned relatives. That was also the day my dad took me with him to go buy a new car for the first time in ten years. Not sure what that was supposed to teach me. I decided to go straight, which lasted till they released me on Friday, and I got to go hang out with a friend.

What finally did get me to go straight was the following summer, my best friend, Jason, convinced me to give cross country another try. Way more fun once you get past the shin splints. After about forty days of not smoking pot, my head cleared up, and the world seemed brighter than it had for a long time.

I wasn’t done finishing off family members, though. Now sixteen years old, with a fresh driver’s license and a Datsun 710 I shared with my sister Annie, I was flying down the freeway like I wasn’t supposed to when the news came on that Elvis had died. I wasn’t a big Elvis fan, but I felt sure that driving on the freeway when my dad said not to might have something to do with it. Elvis wasn’t a family member, but my pet lizard was. A birthday gift from my friend Doug. I figured the lizard might want some sun, so I took him and his glass bowl out to the backyard so he could sun himself that morning in late July. I left him there to enjoy the day, but when I came back, he was all dried out and dead. Too much sun. This is what happens when the only pets you’ve ever known are canaries.

I never ended up doing anything with my life. I eventually graduated from college with a double major in Political Science and Spanish. Took me eight years just to do that, and then I didn’t do a thing with either degree. I became a freelance graphic designer and ditched that to start an IT business right after our baby was born. Stuck with that for twenty-three years before I quit to become whatever it is I am now.

We’ve all got to pay our dues. Sometimes that means breaking our bobbe’s heart and offing our pets along the way. That’s how we learn. The point is to stick with your values and persist till you either make it or die trying. You can do anything you want in life. As long as you’re willing to accept the consequences.

Once a Quitter

I'm standing at the edge of the pool, too scared to move. Elaine's in the water, her arms stretched out to catch me. Never been in anything but a wading pool up to now. Those are fun, sitting and splashing in the water, with my mom and my sister. Annie's a year older. She's not afraid to go into the big kids pool. I’m afraid of everything.

After a long wait and plenty of coaxing, I jump in, and Elaine catches me. Not so bad! Look, daddy, I’m swimming! I learn how to kick and stroke, and before too long, I'm making my way up the ranks at the Y, earning patches with names like guppy and minnow. Did I make it to porpoise or shark? Who knows. My favorite lifeguard is a man named Mark. He’s 19, about to join the Navy rather than get drafted.

The diving board was a blast. There were two low ones and a high dive. My early favorite kind of dive was the belly flop, which was discouraged. I gathered up the nerve to jump off the high dive once. Only once. That was enough for me.

Once I reached a certain rank, my dad switched me to swim team. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my idea. He didn’t want me to be a quitter, and this was his way of showing me how. He drove me to the Y for practice at night, unplugging his hearing aid while I listened to rock n roll on the AM. He’d plug back in every top and half of the hour to listen to the news, which was boring for me as a kid.

Swim team was mostly okay till we got a new coach who hated children. At least it seemed so to me. All I remember is that he was tall and skinny, with long, stringy brown hair, and he was mean to us, don’t ask me how. He was standing by the pool one day, and I was standing behind him, silent. He didn’t know I was there. So I pushed him in. Everyone thought it was funny, except him. When he got out of the pool and started heading towards me, I scrammed up the stairs into the locker room with him running and yelling right behind me. I spent the next ten minutes darting from here to there, trying to stay out of reach. But he was bigger than me, and eventually he cornered me, picked me up, and dragged me back down to the pool, kicking and swinging. Then he threw me in the pool, which was no big deal since I was already dressed for it, not like him, his clothes soaked head to toe. He probably had a wallet and keys on him, too. No wonder he was mad.

We had an uneasy truce after that. I didn’t get into trouble, and pretty soon he was gone. Like I said, he didn’t like children.

At some point, my dad decided there was a better swim team for me to be on, but it involved my mom dragging me and Annie all the way to El Monte by bus, which required transfers and what seemed like an hour just to get there. I don’t remember how we got back, but it was probably my dad picking us up after he got off work. Sometimes we ate ice cream at the Tastee Freez. That was before anyone ever worried about whether it’s good for you to eat ice cream.

I was a decent swimmer. I could do freestyle, breast stroke, and back stroke, no problem. Butterfly was tricky. I don’t think I ever won anything for butterfly, though years later, I became quite fond of it. I gathered quite a few ribbons and trophies, mostly blue ones and red ones, an occasional white one, tall ones and short ones, with the event engraved on it. I still wanted to quit, but by then they’d opened a brand new swim stadium by our house, so my dad joined me to that team, instead.

Finally, they let me quit. I joined the Boy Scouts, instead. My idea, and not a good one. I was the only one of me in our whole troop, and even the Scoutmaster thought the boys themselves should be in charge of my character building program. He had two sons, the younger of which, Warren, was someone I already didn’t like. I don’t recall the older boy’s name, but he was even worse. We went to camp for a week that summer, and I slept with one eye open, afraid someone would dip my hand into warm water to make me pee in my sleeping bag.

After that, I joined another troop where the boys were all really nice, but by then I just wanted to quit altogether, so I did.

I’m sure my dad was disappointed. He didn’t want me to be a quitter, but that’s just who I am. I’ve barely scratched the surface of everything I’ve quit along the way. Swim team, Boy Scouts, college. I eventually went back and got a degree in Political Science and Spanish, but I never did anything with those. Even now, after 23 years, I quit my IT business. I quit keynote speaking before barely getting started.

The one thing I haven’t quit is storytelling. I’ve been doing it in one form or another since me and Elston wrote that novel about Jed and Stefia, the talking dogs, back in fifth grade when we were supposed to be paying attention in class. I suppose you could say that’s when I quit paying attention to what everyone else said I should be doing. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

I probably should have listened to my dad and not been such a quitter. Who knows where I’d be. Still in the pool, no doubt.