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People have been asking me all summer why they haven't seen my column in the Mirror, and I have to be honest, it's because of my kids. That's right. I'm playing the blame game.
You see, because they've grown up, they're hardly at home anymore. How can I make fun of the strange things they do sometimes when they are out doing strange things in the community and not at home?
My wife is still at home, but since she is the breadwinner in the family, I think it would be hard to pick on such a perfect woman. I may have been only a B student in school, but I certainly know NOT! to make fun of the person who can send me off to a no-bedroom apartment somewhere outside Blair County.
The older my twins, Dominic and Vincent, get, the more they baffle me. Since turning 21, they can purchase alcohol, and there's really nothing I can do about it other than say "Can you get me a 12-pack of Pepsi Zero while you're at Sheetz?"
And their hobbies have become stuff of legend when it comes to my friends and family. You see, the two of them now play golf, Dom more than Vinny, but still, they play golf. They also both fish and have purchased ammunition to become deer hunters this fall, Vinny more than Dom.
My brothers and I did not fish and did not golf. In fact, my dad disliked golf so much that if he saw it on TV while channel surfing, he blamed us, and we weren't even in the room half the time.
I play golf, but not the golf that those two play. My problem is I rush when I play because I want to make it across the parking lot to the Meadows to get my large cup of Nutter Butter before anyone else.
And as my best friend since ninth grade says to me constantly, "Whose kids are they? You don't hunt and you don't golf. You don't fish. Your idea of fishing is going to Long John Silvers and look for a good meal deal."
I'm paraphrasing because he's not as funny as me, but that's basically the gist of his ridicule.
Vincent will show me fishing gear that he has purchased -- it's all over his room and our back porch -- and all I can say is, "Do you really need six different fishing rods?" He has knives to cut the fish, too. They freak me out. My wife has one, too, but she says it's a filet knife, and since I really don't know what that is, I have to believe her. As long as she doesn't carry it around the house, I think I'm safe.
Vinny also barters with me and my wife, saying if he gets his first deer this fall, would we pay for that thing you do when you turn a dead deer into sausage, steaks and meatballs? See, I don't even know what that is called, and he even told me what it was called, and I still can't remember. Is it called harvesting?
And because Dom loves golf, I started asking around about getting him a membership for a year as a Christmas present. Then I started hearing about what that costs in Blair County, and now I'm thinking about getting him a miniature golf membership, something more in my price range. My wife answered that question ... no!
Julianna, our daughter who is a travel X-ray technician, is on her way out of Tennessee and headed back to Denver, which is one of her favorite places to work. Since 2020, her hospital bucket list has included Pittsburgh, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Utah and Tennessee. I want her to choose something like Altoona, Roaring Spring or even Lewistown, but that's my bucket list.
Ann Marie and I drove to Knoxville for a week's vacation this past July to visit Julianna. My intention was to split the driving with her. It was a nine-hour trip and I drove three hours and she did the rest. I was never good at math. Ask my friend from paragraph seven. He sat next to me. He'll back up my story.
And if you're wondering if I would go to Denver? I didn't go a few years ago the first time she worked there. Ann Marie went with a friend. She had a good time. She would not like putting me on a plane, which I did once in 1991. But I was younger then. I'm older now and old people generally think about dying sometimes, and planes are my kryptonite.
Am I afraid to fly? No. I'm afraid to crash.
My fault, though, because of all the movies they've made about bad things that happen to planes. I've seen them all. Name a movie in which a happy thing happens to a plane, and don't say "Soul Plane" starring Snoop Dogg or "Sully" starring Tom Hanks either. That's only two.
Actually, my daughter Maggie doesn't really drive me as crazy as much as my other three do, though at times her car and her room make me think she could play the role of Oscar Madison on Broadway in "The Odd Couple." Hey! Come to think of it, I could play Felix Unger with a fresh twist ... a father-daughter "Odd Couple!"
But I digress.
That leaves me with our three cats, one dog, one long-haired rabbit and two geckos, and myself, to make fun of, and since they can't read, that makes them my No.1 targets for my next column, which hopefully will run before January 2025.