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Ask anyone upstairs at the Mirror, and they will tell you that I love to tell everyone what happens in the Franco household.
Now, whether they love to hear it or not is up for debate. Basically, I just talk until I can't talk anymore -- people who have known me these 55 years will confirm that little tidbit.
What I am getting better at is listening, which you can all thank one Ann Marie Franco for because I was always terrible at that.
My problem was I didn't really listen when people talked to me. I just waited for them to get done talking so I could get back to talking. That's probably why my parents, my teachers, my co-workers and my family have to tell me something more than once. More like 100 times, actually.
Which leads me to this: I finally have arrived in the 21st century by allowing my wife and kids to purchase for me some modern technology in the form of gifts. For instance, earlier this year, I let them buy me this thing called an MP3 player and a Bluetooth speaker to go with it. When I called to tell my good friend John Dibert the news, he told me the phone call was about 17 years too late.
So OK, the MP3 player has been around for a while, but why get one when I had two reliable pieces of technology in the form of my cassette player and my headphones with AM/FM radio capability?
In fact, when I go walking seven days a week around Hollidaysburg, I can be seen with either my headphones, which look like something guys on a tarp at an airport wear, or my MP3 player.
There are times when my 17-year-old boys wish I would go for a walk in, say Harrisburg, instead of Hollidaysburg, but I am what I am. I've got to have my AM radio.
My wife recently bought me a contraption for the kitchen that plays CDs but only has FM radio. How am I supposed to listen to baseball at night on an FM radio station?
And, oh, my cassette player. I love my cassette player.
Since the radio went out in the van, which is what I usually drive, I had to go around town in silence. I grew up in a household where there were six people having 13 different conversations at one time. I was actually longing for my four children to bicker with each other, tape record it, and put it on my cassette player. Quiet is not a part of my vernacular.
I was going to wear my headphones in the van until the Mrs. thought that was dangerous -- and illegal, too.
So recently, she bought me a cassette player for Fathers Day. Now I get to listen to my cassettes, which I have about six small suitcases full of, from the 1970s and 1980s.
And then there are those who tell me to just listen to music on my phone. This is another moment where my children wish I would enter the 21st century, because I am still the proud owner of a flip phone, which I have owned since 2003. You know what I love about it -- it calls people and it lets people call me!
But people tell me about all the wonderful things a phone in 2020 can do. I have a radio. Don't need a phone. I have a camera at my disposal. Don't need a phone to take pictures. In fact, one friend of mine said Fred Flintstone had a more modern phone than me. You know, the one where the bird pops out of the camera, chisels a photo and then hands it to you and says, "Voila!"
And I can text with my phone, it just takes a little longer to type with one right finger while holding the phone with my left hand. And you want to talk about power … if I need my kids to listen to me out in public, all I do is take it out of my pocket in front of them and their friends and it's like magic.
If you want to feel bad for me, don't feel bad because of what I have. Feel bad for what I don't have -- money, the money I use to pay for five cellphones on our monthly plan. And that's another story for another day.
Scott Franco, a sports copy editor, writes a monthly column for the Mirror.