Plastic People

A childhood friend recently made an unannounced visit to my house. Since Greg and I last saw each other, a couple of years have stubbornly passed. Greg and I knew each other intimately as children by invariably grew apart in adulthood as best friends never intend.

Along the walk up our double driveway, Greg explained to his son the depth of our friendship in both quality and longevity. Greg knew almost everything about me. What he did not know is whether I was home or even still lived at this address. A different vehicle than what he last remembered occupied the driveway. Adding to the mystery, the parked convertible was an odd choice for parents of four active teenagers who often confused their parents for cabbies.

“Hmm….maybe Joe moved.” Greg spoke out loud. “I don’t see Joe’s car. The house looks different too.”

Greg took a moment to decide on whether to ring the doorbell. He scoured his memory banks for all that he knew about my personality. Then he schooled his son on my eccentricity.

“Joey and I have known each other since we were kids. There is one word you gotta know about him. Plastic. That’s right, plastic. If we look around here hard enough for clues, Joe leaves a trail of plastic wherever he goes. You just got to look. When we were kids, he sealed comic books in plastic bags for safekeeping. Baseball cards he tucked in plastic sleeves. Scrapbook pages he laminated. He would make an ant geranium out of a plastic Tic Tac container. Plastic I tell you. Everything he keeps sealed airtight in some type of plastic like he is building the ultimate time capsule. He is a neat freak like you would not believe.”

Greg’s son gave his dad a quizzical stare as if there were green plastic trash bags by the curb, the homestead had to be mine.

“There!” shouted Greg in amazement. “The license plate on the convertible is protected by a hard plastic case. It’s encased in clear plastic. Joe Tornatore lives here, I tell you.”

Greg triumphantly rang the doorbell but my wife invariably answered the door. I was out buying acrylic plastic for a plaque assembly. Plastic I tell you.

Bobcat Sighting

This is a circa 1980 picture of my first car, a 1979 Mercury Bobcat. The v4 engine of the Bobcat could out race any long distance jogger. The white color attracted flying insects, dirt, and dollups of road tar. A festive bright red interior made occupants want to sing lung-emptying Christmas carols. On the road, it swallowed motor oil by the case and eventually seized the advertised removeable dipstick to the engine block. The accidental upheaval from one of my drinking binges left a permanent odor that made driving conditions unbearable in temperatures over 80 degrees. While parked, it got hit by a car then a motorcycle but those accidents did not put it out of its misery. As this car was given to me by my parents, I returned the favor and gave it to my younger brother.

I got to thinking about this Slobcat, as it was nicknamed, just the other day. You know, my brother has yet to thank me for my charitable donation.

The Notebook, A Numbers Game

On June 12, 2003, I watched my eight-year-old daughter pull books from our library shelves. Jenna turned to a group of crinkled spiral notebooks resting on a forgotten shelf above her head. The notebooks were in her wee hands before my mind could recall myself at her age.

Her ponytail swung wide. ”What are these notebooks, Daddy?”

I picture framed my daughter holding the old notebooks. I positioned her on my lap then told her a story dating back to my childhood. She listened intently. Jenna's inquiring mind was at the impressionable age when she started to acquire a sense of her father. I doubted whether she was prepared for the nugget I was about to share.

“You know that Daddy saves everything. Well, I used to write in those notebooks when I was your exact age. You know how your Daddy gets obsessed over certain tasks and projects. These notebooks represent the first tangible evidence of my obsessive nature.”

“What does tangible mean?”

“It means real proof. You see these are no ordinary notebooks. Open the notebook with the astronauts on the cover. Turn to the back page and tell me what you see.”

Jenna quietly sifted through the jaundiced pages housing thousands of numbers. She looked for purpose. I could not be sure if she found it.

Jenna whispered, “All of the pages are filled with numbers.”

I added, “Chronological numbers. One hundred and twenty six pages are filled with numbers. One summer, I wanted to see just how high I could count but once I began the task it was hard for me to stop. While other kids smeared across the pages of coloring books, I was busy recording numbers. I got to 18,704 before I could stop myself. I think I took up the game of baseball after that.”

Jenna flipped through the pages but stopped when she spotted dried blood. She looked up at her father and saw him in a different light. I double swallowed. This notebook had the x-ray capability of a personal diary under halogen lights.

I tried to bandage the open wound. “I can’t remember if I cut my finger or they bled when they were tired.”

As she turned the page, she shimmied for balance in my lap. “Now let me explain to you what an heirloom is." I said. "An heirloom is something you pass down to your children for them to cherish. It could have real value or just be of sentimental interest. These notebooks are heirlooms. It would make Daddy so very proud if you could continue this book and see how far you can count up to. You would be writing in it at the very age I wrote in it some thirty-three years ago. Wouldn’t that be a phenomenal treasure, something a father and a daughter can share like the time we saw a shooting star? If you write in it, I will give you the notebooks for safekeeping. Perhaps, you can carry on the notebook tradition with your own children one day.”

I handed Jenna a pen. She went to diligent work next to me writing on a desk. Jenna rattled off a half page of sequential numbers. I was so proud. A few minutes later, her finger strides came to a screeching halt. She lifted the pen from paper.

“This is stupid!” claimed a disinterested Jenna before tossing the notebooks back on the shelf.

-As much as life is an open notebook, it is a crapshoot within a numbers game.

First Kiss

As they walked through the department store, the mother prompted her sassy daughter into action with a blanket permission slip.

The mother invited, “Go ahead, do your thing, honey.”

“Do I need more lipstick, mommy?” the daughter asked.

“Nah, you look all dolled up for the camera.”

The ten-year-old girl led the younger boy by the hand into the department store photo booth. The mother removed coins from a pocketbook that had seen better days. She dropped ever-ready quarters into the corresponding metal slot in the booth. She shuttled the children inside then closed the black velvety curtain where she stood magnificent guard. The boy did not know it yet but he would soon be paying the price for admission.

Not to mention the mother’s role as an accomplice, the daughter was three years older, bigger, and stronger than his lanky frame. The girl held his peanut arms down to the side for reasons he could not understand until she pressed her lipstick lips against his. There was nothing tender in her territorial advance. He fleetingly wondered if her roughness were by design or inexperience. As he tried to resist, she absolutely smothered him with tangled limbs and eager lips.

When the arms of the mother appeared through the jostling curtain, the boy thought he would be saved from the photo booth horror. In a flash, the mother smirked at his compromising position then issued a congratulatory nod to her daughter. The only adult in sight repositioned the curtain then returned to guard duty at the lone entrance. Her daughter followed suit by aggressively pushing him back down on the bench. His back slapped against the bench seat. She menacingly towered over him and pointed a single digit finger. He could not figure out how he could be left in the company of this evil woman and her maniacal child. Oh, how he wanted his mommy.

“Don’t move!” barked the bad seed of a girl as she threw back her shoulder length hair with actress quality.

The girl did not need to threaten him anymore for he knew there was no way out. Her firm lips spread wet slobber across his nose-scrunched face. The camera flashed. The frightened boy wanted to scream but inexplicably did not. She lunged her body forward to kiss him again. He heard more money drop into the machine. She positioned her body to show for the camera that she had her sadistic way with him. Other pictures snapped. She continued degrading him until the photo shoot was over. He watched the mother snatch the developed pictures from the carousel then place them into her pocketbook. Like a contrast in the maternal instinct, the mother handed him a tissue to clean himself up.

I would like to forget the mother daughter team who gave love a bad name but that boy grew up to be me. My only souvenir, I still have saved a mental picture of the stolen moment. I just cannot seem to spit it out because my first kiss turned out to be my first taste of women.

-Joe Tornatore as a child no more

When Life Was Before Me

At thirteen years old, I was a big drop of water.

Short Verses Tall Orders

I backtracked to a family operated deli that I frequented as a hungry teenager. I recognized the middle-aged woman behind the counter who took my sandwich order. With her apron covered wide back to mine, I remembered that I knew her from high school. She was the daughter of the shop owners. A quick study determined that she had not aged gracefully. Assuming she was just filling in for the day, I decided to catch up on old times. There was so much to talk about.

I inquired for openers, “I haven’t seen you in eons, what have you been doing with yourself?” She turned around and looked up at me from a bed of shredded lettuce. Her face changed to a pathetic look. “Making hoagies six days a week for the last 25 years leaves little time for anything else. How about you?”

She summed up her life with shreds in her hands. I did not know what to say. I lied and answered, “Nothing, really. Same old, same old.”

While waiting for my hoagie to be made, I started to think about the meaning of life. I carve my life with an ice pick to shape it and get the most out of it. She looked like she wanted to take the knife slicing tomatoes in hand to her throat.

A few minutes later, I paid her the money due with a tight smile. I picked up my brown-bagged order and before hitting the doors I squeaked, “You sure make the best hoagies here.”

Someone famous recommended inventing yourself every seven years. It was a tall order that she could not fill.

Burying the Past

Before the ground froze and winter arrived, I went on a treasure hunt. After thirty years of separation anxiety, I went back to try and find a personal diary that I packed in Ziploc bags and buried in shallow ground as a confused teenager. All you Geo cache hunters eat your heart out. I only remember writing my innermost thoughts in the diary but do not recall details of what I wrote. What did I write as a hormonal misunderstood and troubled teenager? What high octane underlined grievances laced the pages? What burgeoning fantasies undermined my developing sexuality would I unearth? I could not wait for my eyes to lace the pages.

After a twenty-mile drive, I pulled curbside near the spot. I got no further than a few feet from the curb in my excavation efforts. Decades gone by, I looked around to be certain that my coordinates were correct. My internal compass indicated that I was in the right place. In this still undeveloped property below my feet, I buried my personal diary. Although thinned out, the clump of woods remained standing on its own. Everything looked the same except for a staked sign at ground zero where I buried my diary. Unmistakable in its warning, a NO DUMPING sign prominently faced the road. I would not be surprised if the person responsible for digging the hole that now staked the sign actually unearthed my diary. The thought of my private thoughts made for public consumption simply ate at me. Thirty years had passed since my last entry. My children are as old as I was when I penned those diary thoughts.

It is not good to be caught digging up the past nor be accused of dumping it on private property. I strangely left this mystical place without my packed shovel ever leaving the car. The past would have to wait some more.

A Testy Situation

As difficult as this may be to understand, going to the bathroom is a waste of time for an obsessive-compulsive personality type. Bathroom business is unsanitary and it disengages any compulsive act going on at the time. I am ashamed but relieved to admit that I wait until the very last moment to stop what I am doing to toilet. Although it defies sensibility and pain management, I have been doing this bad habit since childhood.

As a teenager, I remember going outside to play in the summer time with the bathroom on my mind. About an hour later, my friends had no idea of the trouble I placed myself in. By waiting until the last moment, I put myself about a quarter of a mile from home and the nearest toilet. I am speaking from experience when I say that running with flapping buttocks may be the worst activity to engage in while holding back the inevitability of a bowel movement. Running for home, my stomach churned as my legs galloped.

Closer. Closer. I could see my house now but everything wasteful lined up for an immediate exit. I plowed through the front door and hustled for the downstairs bathroom with reckless abandon. I slammed the toilet seat down, hoisted down my pants, and eliminated with the proficiency of a laxative running its course. Afterwards, I exhaled and relaxed by leaning on the back of the toilet with my head back in a semi-supine position. I barely made it to the bathroom but all was again right with the world.

When I felt a hitchhiker crawling on my testicles, I suspected more trouble. I lifted my head from its tilt back position to check out the odd sensation. My worst fear was realized. Prancing around on my testicles was a menacing looking black wasp. If I had not defecated before, I would have voided at that precise moment. Bullets of perspiration eeked out of my body from every pore. Incapacitated in abject fear, I counter intuitively struggled to not flinch or move. The wasp had the cajones to stop walking, look up at me, then dug its stinger into my right testicle. I screamed and clawed myself silly trying to rid that insect from my possession. I believed I literally jumped out of my clothes there on the toilet. Counting two sultry honeymoons, I have never felt that much heat in my midsection. In a matter of minutes, this swell guy earned elephant balls. In what has turned out to be a lifetime war against stinging insects, I lost my first battle as bad as one can lose.

Call it the process of elimination but going to the bathroom when you are suppose to can take the sting out of waiting.

Head Over Heels

There was nothing better than putting in a good day’s work as a paperboy. Throwing that last folded newspaper from my carry bag onto a covered porch was a feeling of accomplishment. All of about fourteen years of plenty, I pedaled into the proud sunshine one afternoon after my run. Riding my bicycle with no hands, I started to twirl my empty denim carry bag over my head. It made a cool helicopter blade noise that occupied my adolescent attention. Not satisfied with life unfurling in the moment, I increased the speed of my bike. Catching the varied directions of the wind, I spun that bag in every direction with my free hands. That is until the bag wedged between my bicycle spokes and I felt a violent jar. In essence, I inadvertently slammed on the brakes at 15 mph. I actually left my bike behind me as I dove overtop of my handlebars damn near in front of the house of a hot-blooded Italian girl who caught my fancy. I traveled such a great distance in the air that I actually had time to ponder my cruel landing or wave tragically to the girl I was smitten with. Flying headfirst without the safeguard of a helmet, I had little choice but to land on my arms and elbows. I slid harshly across the blacktop and the road ate my flesh with hardcore efficiency. I laid prone, a bloody mess with gravel touching bone.

When you are happy and you know it and you really want to show it clasp your hands. Temper your emotions on a paper route and around women or risk going head over heels.

Glory Days

This past weekend, I played in a touch football game on a sun-drenched field. Despite absorbing the indignity of being picked last to play on a team, my heart pitter-pattered and my jaw chomped at the bit. During the opening kickoff of the football game, my legs buckled in their arduous quest forward. About ten steps downfield into the first play of the game, I realized a great detraction. I cannot string strides together. I cannot open my strides to a gallop without my knees cog wheeling or giving out. I am functionally unable to run.

A speed merchant on my team living out his glory days left me in the dust. My younger brother passes me on my left. The rest of my teammates surged ahead of me in the downfield pursuit. Lady in cement passed me at the thirty-five yard line. High-speed shutter aspirations turn into slow motion gnashing of moving joints. The opposing team’s thirteen-year-old ball carrier broke free of the pack. For lack of a better action word, I give chase. Only NASA could scientifically explain the gravitational pull on my body trying to move my weight forward. My gimpy legs skidded laterally but they could not even touch the ball carrier. In my gasp for air, I grasped only air. Middle age rendered me a worthless football player. I could not effectively backpedal, sidestep, jump, run, or block. I turned around at the action only to see my entire sports career in a rearview mirror of sorts.

In a sedentary alternate universe, perhaps there are 44-year-old couch potatoes, who while reaching for another beer and the chip and dip bowl, know they cannot run anymore. Personally, it came with as much surprise as humiliation to learn that I cannot run anymore because I am able to tenuously sprint from point to point in tennis and racquetball. If my life depended on it, I could probably exit a house on fire with only second-degree burns although nobody would call my plodding escape running.

An hour later, the pickup game mercifully ended with my clothes soaked in cold sweat. Reddened of face, I walked off the field a defeated man left wondering where all the years of my prime went. If I knew nothing about football, I knew something about my future. The tennis clinic promised to be coming my way for Christmas will be returned for an Ipod.

Leap Year

In 1972, our family migrated to Big Stone Gap, Virginia. My parents purchased a sprawling rancher on the affluent side of an otherwise impoverished rural town. We owned the only in the ground swimming pool in town. Although we thought the pool was no big deal, it caught the animal kingdom by surprise. In the dead of a memorable summer night, family members awoke from sleep to hear strange movement traveling across the rooftop. Not resoundingly peaceful with the night hours in a strange land anyway, the odd commotion right above my head caused a boy scare.

I fretted to myself, “Dear God, who or what could be on our rooftop?”

Other than my parents settling their children back into beds, I do not remember any further action taken by my parents. I only remember being scared until the sandbags of slumber superseded fright.

The next morning we discovered that our swimming pool became a watery grave to many frogs. As my father and I circled the pool, we noticed that the recently departed were by no means garden variety frogs. Huge bullfrogs sporting muscular Olympian legs littered the chlorinated water. As a wide-eyed ten-year-old boy, I remember being astonished by their stature. When frogs the size of squirrels can scale a tall building by leaps and bounds, something may have gone askew with the natural selection process. Trying to arrange extradition for the frogs, I lacked the strength to lift a single water-logged frog from the pool using a pole net.

A logical explanation never surfaced to remove this incident from the Tornatore X-Files. I can only imagine that our property was in direct line with the migration of frogs. The deafening noise heard on the rooftop must have been an incredible breed of frogs that could jump right over our single story house. I don’t like to jump to conclusions but...never move to Virginia during leap year.

The Una Plumber

While thrusting a plunger into a clogged toilet, my son stood behind me. As he watched my epic struggle plumbing, the scene reminded me of a childhood memory. I remembered standing behind my father as he tried to get a clogged toilet back on line in the 1970’s.

Like stair steps, my brothers and I were all born a few years apart. It should be known for the purpose of storytelling that there was more sailor in my father than there are Popeye cartoons. I can still hear the echo of his baritone voice rattling the clogged pipes in our downstairs bathroom. With frustration and his sailor’s tongue occupying cramped quarters, it made everyone's life miserable.

Father’s instincts suspected hanky panky from the first gurgling sound. With plunger shaking in hand, father gathered his four children for a confessional. He gave us his evil eye, a glaring stare that had a way of silencing staunch critics let alone scared children. When nobody admitted to any culpability, father returned to the bathroom wielding the plunger. Water could be heard sloshing around the dirty toilet bowl like an angry miniature sea. After a strenuous exercise workout, father reached down into that wasteful bowl. To almost everyone’s surprise, father lifted a mangled 8 inch Amazing Spiderman action figure from the murky recesses. Understandably, father’s face erupted to piping mad. He looked to his sons for a straight answer to explain away the crooked doll that had been wedged in a defacatorium. Short of paradise but knowing my own innocence, I looked to my three brothers trying to spring the culprit from the lair.

Father started a usual rant as he held Spiderman with a death grip. “What the %^&&? Who the %^$#? What the #$%$ is wrong with one of you?”

Father returned to the bathroom where he flushed the faulty toilet. To his surprise, the water level remained in the bowl. Like a defeated man plumb out of luck, father knew that one of his sons was responsible for drowning the super hero in this live caper. The Una Plumber was prepping to kill one of his own. But who? My younger brother Jim approached my father from behind to face the gauntlet. In a few decisive words, Jim summarized the watery depth of the problem in boyish tones.

“Don’t worry, Dad. I sent Aquaman after Spiderman.”

Dam the throne of parenthood.

How the Ball Bounces

-Joe Tornatore in over the calf matching tube socks.

The 1979 Washington Township Intramural basketball All-Star team had already been announced and I wasn’t selected. I dreamed of making the All-Star squad but I understood the numbers game. Clearly the best team in the league, we went on to win the championship without really being tested. Two of my teammates could have played high school basketball in a smaller town. We averaged 70 points a game and with 22 Wins and only 2 Losses we were nearly unstoppable. I was only the fourth best player on my team and our top three players had been named to the All-Star squad. A hard working forward with a few skills, I was still the odd man out of the coronation.

We were playing our last regular season game, a meaningless contest before our team geared up for the playoffs. One of our guards had been battling the other team’s top guard all game. They had been jawing at one another and trading points on both ends of the hardcourt. A couple of hard fouls were called during the game. It seemed like an innocent private competition until things turned ugly.

With only a few minutes left in the game, the two players simply had no interest in the bouncing ball between them. They started slinging fists at one another like two boys fighting over the same girl on Valentine’s Day. People left the stands. Some stormed the court to help and some had other intentions. Family members too spilled onto the court shouting instructions to their sons. Coaches tried to seperate the engaged players.

Other hyped up basketball players, including myself, moved closer to the scrum. They say in a bench clearing brawl to pick out a person on the other team to tangle with. If they make a move, it is your responsibility to stop them from piling on. I kept my eye on an opposing player, who looked eager to join the fracas. With the exception of some minor pushing to let my presence be known, I was not directly involved in the fighting. After a few tense minutes, the coaches and referees restored order. The referees saw fit to call the rest of the game off. They blew their whistles and ordered everyone to go home.

I remember walking off the court amidst the disorder. Out of breath, my coach rushed up to me.

“Joe, are you doing anything Saturday afternoon?” he asked.

“No. Why?”

“You are now. Billy just received an automatic one game suspension for fighting. Joe, you just made the All-Star team. You were first alternate. Congratulations.”

Making any All-Star team takes hard work. Sometimes it even constitutes the blood, sweat, and tears of others.

All In the Cards

As a kid, I found collecting baseball cards a wondrous hobby. Long before baseball cards were issued in numerical order complete sets, baseball card collecting was a mind boggling and time consuming hunt. Card collectors could wind up with 37 cards of an over-hyped rookie whose major league career lasted for a cup of Sanka coffee. By the same token, collectors could spend a lifetime chasing an All-Star player on a quality conditioned card that never reached your best friend's bicycle spoke.

My childhood featured familiar treks to card shops whether I walked, bicycled across town, or bummed car rides off of my mother. Like chasing the heels of heroes, every card added to my prized collection felt like it moved me closer to the Holy Grail. I used to memorize the statistics on the back of the cards and spent what seemed like an eternity playing with cardboard. Regrettably, I haven’t done anything in the last two decades to add to my baseball card collection. Life makes a habit of getting in the way of what we take for granted.

Low and behold, the wizardry of Ebay has made completing baseball card sets possible without ever leaving the home. Everything a collector needs is a fingertip click away. So I scouted for the lone card needed to complete a 700 count 1972 Topps baseball set valued at approximately $2000.00. High number cards are commonly scarce and this set had a limited high print run. In my day, finding star cards in a high number series of the 1972 set used to be as easy as setting out to uncover a dinosaur bone in the backyard. No bones about it, I have been looking for card #686 Steve Garvey since I was ten years old. In 0.02 seconds I found 23 quality 1972 Steve Garvey cards to choose from. The market was saturated with virtually any baseball card imaginable and the only thing missing was the stale bubble gum the cards might have been packaged next to.

After only a few minutes of online shopping, I found the right card to complete my set. If waiting 34 years constitutes an impulse purchase, I double clicked on a BUY IT NOW option for a pristine Garvey with four razor sharp corners. I didn't care too much about the cost factor. I longed for this card before my first girlfriend, before my first wife, before my firstborn. Nah, this wasn’t an impulse purchase. This was a middle-aged man reclaiming a piece of his rightful youth before his first mid-life crisis.

Kodak Moments

-Joe Tornatore, age four

I have to embrace the optimistic people left at work. They came up with this wonderful bonding activity of inviting colleagues to bring in a childhood picture. The pictures were posted anonymously on a bulletin board to garner dartboard guesses in a Whose Who of Social Work. Anything that can depressurize a think tank is worth its weight in gold bullion. Most people brought in black and white dinosaur pictures. I singled out this 1966 colorized gem from Christmas morning to help conceal my age and identity.

While scanning the bulletin board of baby pin-ups, it reminded me that we were all glorious human beings before being tainted by bureaucracy. All of these people with their whole lives before them wound up in the same vocation. I marveled at the commonality. The bulletin board provided a time stamped photo essay. I saw white picket fences and intact families, porcelain smiles and glass slippers, dreams of success and hopes for Prince Charming.

As I stared at my bike riding picture among the flock, the future seemed brighter than what it turned out to be. The world was innocent as the driven snow and I wanted it back. Dark shades have long replaced my rose-colored glasses. Only faint glimpses of this person emerge when I drop my guard. Tarnished by age, stress, and experience, this picture makes me long for simpler times in a less complicated world.

As writers will do, I sat down to explore this jaded feeling about life. There are times that my strength has less air than the compression in my bike tires. A deflating thought, that pretty much sums it up. After typing this analogy, a stranger awkwardly riding a bicycle stops in front of my house. My head turns to the side as I quizically watch him dismount off of a rather large bicycle. He pinches each bike tire in a check of the air pressure. The bicyclist then leaves my windowed field of vision as quickly as he came. I exhale. My trembling hands return to a normal typing position as I wonder about a pipeline to a collective consciousness. My analogy was poignant enough before the theatre arrived! There was no need to send in the clowns.

Irony aside, it was tough terrain riding a tricycle through a bi-level house. From this unleveled first ride, I became a participant in this challenging existence we call life. I can only conclude that life is a tough road to travel and that we must constantly strive to do our best. Just peering out my window at the world...it appears no easier of a ride for anyone else. Tired or not, sometimes we need to pause to appreciate the very air that we breathe. Otherwise, life would become only disconnected strings of Kodak moments until we aren't part of the big picture at all.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

This story is about three minutes of innocent driving in 1980.

I couldn’t wait to burn rubber out of the parking lot at Washington Township High School following graduation ceremonies. Goodbyes have never been my forte. I couldn’t even stick around for all that cheeky yearbook signing and impractical plans to always keep in touch. Despite good intentions, I realized that diametrically opposed circumstances were going to prevent seeing most of these people ever again. I hopped in my car ahead of most graduates. I defiantly threw my cap across the front seat, cranked the radio, and set sail for destination parts unknown.

Washington Township was a growing metropolis. Our graduating class alone had over four hundred seniors. The steady influx of transplants made it next to impossible to know all of your classmates. With that being said, a strange thing happened when I went to leave the parking lot. Everyone and I mean everyone waved goodbye to me. Friends, classmates I barely knew, and some people whom I never met all waved bon voyage to me. It is hard to put into words their heartwarming send off. Maybe they were just being polite but I was loving it. I waved passionately back to my suddenly friendly classmates. What a whirlwind day! The last minute attention surprised this recipient. I had my own friendship click but never before have I been so popular. The car moved along. I waved to admiring frock like the grand marshal of a parade. A curvaceous classmate walking single file gave me a look. She waved wildly at me. I made kissy poo to the wide-eyed girl, who never gave me the time of day before. My exodus through the parking lot had so much love. I returned the favor by pointing, winking, nodding, smiling, and waving. With all of the grandstanding going on, it was taking my attention away from the road. Ah, I felt a sense of triumph leaving the high school for the last time. No good at reading lips, I imagined what the onlookers were saying.

“There goes cool cat Joe Tornatore. Let me say hi. My, what a guy!”

I arrived home. I realized the miserable wretched source of my soaring popularity curbside. I actually closed the car door without reeling in my long graduation gown. My classmates were enthusiastically trying to alert me that I was dragging my gown on the road. I rubbed my hand over my depleted gown hoping that I could make the whole incident go away. In my embarrassment, the irony did not escape me. I was a high school graduate entering the real world. If this freaking folly was any indication on probability of success in life, the world was going to chew me up much like my gown. My mind raced. The faces of the onlookers returned in picture quality playback.

“There goes that idiot Joe Tornatore. He thinks we’re saying hi. Laugh until you cry.”

A Man of Principle

It boggles my mind to hear people admit that they don’t know what they are going to do with themselves when they retire. The bottle of my retirement glass is three quarters full. I do not want to stay indentured longer than I have to. If there exists a deal to opt out for an early retirement package a decade from now, I will be all ears. Don’t get me wrong. My vocation as a social worker is important but I want to retire while relatively healthy. I dream of a golden parachute buffering my landing for a new chapter of life. I don't invision retirement as a stare in the mirrow until I can figure out a clever way to re-invent myself. Instead, retirement for me means playing tennis, going to the gym, devoting block time to writing, more social time with friends, uninterrupted sleep, expanded hobbies, and vacation getaways.

Allow me to digress. Before I had hair on my chest, I used to work in an elementary school as a night custodian. A lesson in life, the least important person on a job carries all the keys. The school principle was an older man who carried with him in some circles the nickname of Hoyt. Hoyt ran the show and he could be considered Old School in his managerial style. It came as a surprise to everyone the day that Hoyt announced his retirement because he often bragged that he would never retire. Slinging mops and hauling trash for just enough to get by, well I didn’t really understand that mentality coming from a seasoned principle who logged enough years in the pension system to retire.

Nevertheless, retirement was a dirty word to Hoyt. A man of principle, the school was his life. While his retirement was not based on reduced competency, Hoyt still viewed retirement as surrender and banishment by a society rendering him useless. The faculty learned that Hoyt’s wife felt like her husband was now stealing quality time from her. Hoyt described bowing down to his wife to join her at home for what he negatively perceived to be mindless chitchatting over tea and crimpets.

As his last day on the job approached, Hoyt went kicking and screaming. To celebrate his career and retirement, the Sunshine Club purchased a young cherry tree in Hoyt’s honor to be planted on school grounds. The custodians planted the sapling in the school’s courtyard for all to admire. The eager roots barely had been afforded the time to spread out in their burlap sack before the tree was stolen. That was sad enough but Hoyt didn’t fare much better than his stolen tree. Hoyt died weeks into his muddled retirement.

For the life of him, Hoyt told us he didn’t know what he would do with his retirement. Hoyt knew this about himself and stated as much in so many words. I, for one, should have believed him. On less than hallowed ground, there grows a stolen cherry tree once planted in Hoyt’s honor. I often think of Hoyt in the same tragic sense as the uprooting of that dedicated tree. I suppose it is because I know now what I didn’t then. Some people aren’t meant to retire and need to work to feel alive. I just may not be one of them.

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou Screwdriver?

-Tornatore brothers in arms.

There are sentinel events in my life that I consider to be crossroads. One of these life altering episodes happened on a particular summer day. It gives me pause to reflect on what transpired that day and how it could have changed the course of my life.

As a sports-minded teenager, the backyard basketball court was a focal point for my brothers and I. While standing on the top rung of a ladder, I fumbled to adjust a basketball backboard. The bold sun seemed rude in its stare. Its rays caused the sweat to glisten off of my shirtless back. My struggle with rusted hardware convinced me that I needed a better tool. My youngest brother stood below me. As did I, he wondered if a game of hoops was in our near future.

I requested, “Go get me the biggest screwdriver from the garage.”

Be careful what you ask for in life. While I expected to be handed the tool, the screwdriver arrived by air mail before I knew what hit me. Let me explain. From the side yard a great distance away, my brother threw the screwdriver end over end high into the sky. For the precious seconds that the screwdriver propelled through the air, my future hung in the balance. I felt a conk upside my head and almost blacked out. I still do not know how I even managed to stay atop the ladder. I figured that something had fallen from the sky. I felt my head for blood, a gash, or an impaled attachment. Nothing. I looked around. The screwdriver that I requested lay by its lonesome on the concrete court.

Thankfully, the screwdriver’s wood handle clobbered me and not the pointy end. By the grace of God or the luck of the draw, it could have been worse. One half revolution more or less might have changed the course of my life. The other end of the screwdriver could have killed me or fractured my skull resulting in brain damage. If I even looked up at the wrong moment, the projectile could have pierced my eye and blinded me. I could have fallen awkwardly from the ladder to my death. A lesson to be learned, there are no positive outcomes from throwing screwdrivers like javelins towards people.

My brother came rushing to my side. “Joe, are you okay?”

I held my throbbing head, where a knot was quickly forming. Piecing the events together, I seethed.

I screamed, “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Geez Joe, I never thought the screwdriver would hit you.”

“It only goes where it’s told, you bleeping $#%&!”

Apparently, the loose screw on the backboard paled in comparison to my brother’s momentary lapse of reason. It took me awhile to completely forgive my brother. No matter how much tooling, that is the part of being hard-headed that I don’t relish.

Teeing Off

-First hole of Pitman Golf Course June 4, 1989 9:20am tee time

On a wooden bench by the first hole, sat two middle aged women sporting touches of grey. One woman looked vaguely familiar. While I stared, I scanned my memory banks.

“Mrs. McLeester?” I asked. “Is that you?”

“Joe Tornatore?” the woman replied.

“Yes. How are you? You haven’t changed a bit” I greeted. “What on earth is your son Byrone up to? I haven’t seen him since high school.”

She rose from the bench like an old Judge. “Byrone and his male lover moved to Washington State.”

Her reply came from the warning track of deep left field. Coupled with the crisp air and the serenity of the golf course, I failed to recognize the shrewdness behind her choice words. From someone who last saw me when I was fifteen years old, her confidences in casual conversation came unexpectedly. Could she be looking for shock value? Standing on the raised tee box, it had the trappings of the fool on the hill. So I walked towards her but it did not make for an even playing field.

I replied, “That is cool.”

“Cool?” She walked closer to me wielding a golf club. “That is all you have to say about the situation?”

A thousand thoughts ransacked my brain at warp speed. Although I did not know about Byrone’s lifestyle, the little she said finally made sense to me. I was Byrone’s close friend for four impressionable teenage years. Never in my presence had Byrone mentioned or placed himself in the proximity of girls. Moreover, Byrone often talked about moving far away. All that had to count for something. To Byrone, Washington State must be a shiny apple.

“What would you like me to say about his life?” I asked miffed.

“I’ll tell you, Joe. I didn’t spend my whole life raising him proper to turn out this way. Byrone had to move clear across the country to hide the ugly truth. What kind of life is that? Living in sin with a man! You know that he was my only son. I am devastated. Do you have any idea how empty my dinner table looks around the holidays? Byrone robbed me of the opportunity to be a grandmother. I will never see Byrone raise a family. I may never see my son again.”

Mrs. McLeester reminded me of Beth Jarrett, the mother in the movie Ordinary People, whose only surviving son failed to live up to her expectations. She felt justified in her rant but she was completely out of turn.

I heard the sound of a sweet golf swing behind me. My friend Mark timely summoned me to the first tee box. “Joey, you’re up.”

My turn on the tee box prevented Mrs. McLeester from continuing to tee off on me. She left me, however, at a complete loss for words. All I could muster was a tight smile and a retreat back to the tee box. With the landscape of the first hole before me, I settled into my golf stance. I put my best foot forward. With a perfect swing, I guided the ball out of my fold. I spanked that little dimpled ball, which spent so much time in the cozy comforts of my pocket, out in the world. Despite my best intentions, the wind took my ball over one hundred yards wide left. I felt powerless in the grip of circumstance watching the ball sail away from the hole. The flight of a golf ball has been known to drift irregardless of center. The fool on the hill concluded that the same limitations are true about parenting.

The Numb in Numbers

-redemption as a twenty two-year-old

While driving to the mall in 1984, I inherited a strange notion to look to my immediate left. My sight locked onto a 7-Eleven convenience store. Its triteness made me wonder why I even bothered to take my eyes off of the road. As I passed the 7-Eleven, however, one of the more unusual experiences of my life took root. A voice in my head shouted out a three digit number. The voice spooked me because it wasn’t mine. It was a disembodied male voice. He spoke with an authoritative quality, as if every number mattered. Every hair on my body stood at attention. Call it the numb in numbers.

I turned the car around to investigate the immediate area and any significance to the three digit number. Was I going crazy? Driving myself to a mental hospital seemed like a future sentinel event. I reasoned that the voice couldn’t have been a ghost because it took place in my head.

Nevertheless, I parked the car in front of the 7-Eleven store to observe my surroundings. I started to feel at ease which did wonders for my mental health. The loony bin would wait but I still needed to unravel the mystery. While patrons came and went in ordinary commerce, the LOTTERY sign in the window drew my attention. For all intents and purposes, it seemed to be a personal marker and not just an advertisement for the general public. I turned away to view other things in my environment but my gaze kept settling on the lottery sign. Since my mother had recently been receiving winning lottery numbers through osmosis, I decided to test second generational luck. I waltzed into the store and approached the cashier behind the counter.

“I normally don’t do this sort of thing.” I admitted.

“What spend this much money?” wisecracked the snickering cashier.

“I meant play the lottery.”

I went out to a bar later that night to wager the medicinal effects of alcohol on a rattled psyche. Bar side, my thoughts occasionally returned to the voice. For all the mental energy I exerted, I still couldn’t make sense out of the X-File incident. When I left the bar short of inebriation and broke, the lottery ticket remained the only parcel in my wallet.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I learned that the lottery number hit in the exact order that I received them. Hocus Pocus these numbers weren't bogus! For reasons I’ll never know, a voice from beyond made me several hundred dollars richer. Even stranger, I have never heard that strange voice again. Whenever I am short on money, I actually long for that voice to resurface to scare the bejesus out of me. Hell, I’d take Adolph Hitler’s voice if he could cough up a Swiss bank account.