Tag: writing

Involuntarily Offline

November 9th, 2025

Ten days ago, my laptop took a shit. I was kind of expecting this to happen at some point. The laptop was already six years old, which meant that it was well into obsolescence. In addition to that, I had dropped it a couple years ago creating an ugly crack at the corner near the on/off button. The crack had increased in size over time. Finally, the computer refused to allow me to type on the keyboard. I was required to do something if I wanted to go online.

I took the ancient laptop to Best Buy. I have total coverage with Geek Squad, and I planned on using it. It should be noted that it is nearly impossible to go into a Best Buy and physically talk to a Geek Squad agent without an appointment. Just getting an appointment is no easy task either. A person either has to do it online (which is not possible if the device, like mine, doesn’t work) or do it on the phone, which requires a number of long and unpleasant steps. In any case, I had an appointment, and I did in fact speak with a human being.

I turned in the computer for repair, and I was informed via text that the work was completed a day later. I went to the store to pick up my resurrected laptop. I should have had an appointment for this, but somebody handled my issue anyway. The man explained that they had not been able to replicate the problem with the keyboard. He told me this as he played around with the computer. Then he realized that, yes indeed, the keyboard did not work. The tech sighed and said,

“This always happens during check out.”

He gave the crack in the corner a hard stare and told me,

“That may be the death sentence right there. There is lot going on underneath that crack, and the mother board might be damaged.”

I asked him, “So, you are telling me to buy a new one?”

“Well, you could…”

I interrupted him, “Never mind. Where do I go to buy a laptop?”

He pointed across the room. “The salesperson will help you.”

The sales guy did help, and then he took me right back to Geek Squad, so that they could transfer the data from the old computer to the new one. The bottom line was that it would take at least two days to transfer the data from the memory. I bowed to the inevitable and left both computers in their hands.

After two days, I once again went to the store. I got my brand-new Hewlett-Packard Omni Book and proudly took it home. I plugged it in and got online. It worked splendidly for five minutes and then it didn’t. It froze up completely every five minutes.

Fuck.

I restarted it and rebooted it and I finally went to the Best Buy site to chat with a Geek Squad agent with a multi-syllable first name. He did a complete tuneup on it. I tried it again. No change. I contacted Best Buy again, and this time the agent threw up his hands in despair and gave me an appointment to visit another store.

Nice.

I had to wait two days to go to the store. In the meantime, I tried to write on my blog using the partially incapacitated laptop. That was a bitch. I had to restart the computer several times and find the page where it locked up. I finally finished the essay (my previous post on this blog), but it cured my desire to go online.

As this saga continued, I came to understand that I really only need to go online for maybe a few minutes a day. The rest of my time was wasted reading articles on the Internet that either depressed or infuriated me. I had been trying to ween myself off the computer before it quit on me. I never take the laptop with me anywhere. It stays at home. I don’t have a tablet or a smart phone. I am attempting to avoid being a prisoner of the Matrix. I actually want to be part of the physical world in all of its beauty and horror. This takes a certain amount of effort.

I took the new but broken laptop to Geek Squad. A pleasant young woman asked whether I had gone online for help. I assured her that I had already jumped through all of the required hoops before coming to her. She determined that I was right. The piece of shit was broken. Fortunately, my coverage allowed me to swap out the new/old laptop for a new/new laptop. Of course, I had to let Geek Squad transfer the data again. That took another two days and required yet another appointment.

This afternoon, at long last, I went to the store, and the young lady presented me with a fresh, data-infused laptop. I took it home. Miracle of miracle, it works just fine.

That’s why I am writing to you now.

An Abundance of Holidays

November 5th, 2025

I recently finished reading “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James MacBride. It’s a fascinating novel set in a small Pennsylvania town in 1936. The major theme seems to be about the difficulties that minorities have with becoming integral parts of American society. The book focuses on the struggles of Jews and Blacks. This is a story that resonates in our present age. We have always been a country that tries to balance unity and diversity, often with unsatisfactory results.

The book makes me think about the city in which I have lived since 1988. I reside in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a community that is semirural, but getting less rural every day. When my family first moved here, the population was overwhelmingly white, mostly people of German or Polish descent. Now it’s very different. The demographics have radically changed.

I take my grandson, Asher, to the Oak Creek Library quite often. We go to the children’s section. He plays with the toys there and sometimes I read a book to him. The library has a prominent display of holiday books for kids. There are several shelves filled with stories about different holidays that come up during the course of the year. In total, there are probably over one hundred available for children or their parents to read.

The library has had a display like this for as long as I can remember, but as the years have gone by, the types of books have changed. Years ago, the holiday books only referred to traditional festivals, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween. Now, there are books about Passover and Hannukah, Ramadan and Eid, the Lunar New Year, Diwali, and Juneteenth /day. The number of holidays that are included on the shelves has exploded.

It would be tempting to think that perhaps some cabal of woke librarians decided to include all of these more exotic holidays among the books displayed. I suspect that is not the case. The reason for that is that as each one of these holidays approaches on the calendar, the section of the shelves that houses the books for that event empties out. This implies that people are checking out the books on that particular holiday and reading them. There is a market for these stories among the local population. This further implies that the city is a place of diversity.

I can see that reality whenever I take Asher to the library or to a local playground. He plays with children from all sorts of ethnic and racial backgrounds. A city and a country that is culturally diverse is Asher’s present situation and it is his future.

The United States government is currently fighting against diversity in its myriad forms. That is like swimming against the tide. Diversity is here to stay. We need to accept that fact, and work toward a new form of unity.

Autumn

August 31st, 2025

“Grandpa, when do I start school?”

Asher woke me up at 2:00 AM to ask me that question. He was lying in bed next to me. He had been restless for a few minutes prior to that. I roused myself long enough to answer,

“In three days.”

Asher begins kindergarten at the Waldorf school on Wednesday morning. For him it will be a seismic change in life. New schedule, new friends, a new teacher, a new environment. My wife can still remember her first day of school. She has a faded black and white photo from Germany with her smiling and holding her Schul Tute, a large cone with little gifts inside. I can’t remember my first day of kindergarten, but I can recall my first day at West Point, back in 1976. In some ways that sort of radical change could be similar to what Asher may experience. I moved a thousand miles from home and cut the connection with nearly everything I had done and learned in my first eighteen years of life. I entered a strange new world, and Asher will do much the same thing on Wednesday.

Asher laid his head on my shoulder. He twisted and turned until he made himself comfortable. Then he fell asleep again in the crux of my right arm.

I had an intense and vivid dream. It was from my time in the Army as an aviator. I was in an aircraft hangar and looking out at the sky. A storm was rapidly approaching. Heavy, swirling clouds darkened the horizon. Winds blew and whipped into the hangar. Large objects were thrown about. I dodged them as rain poured outside.

I woke up late this morning. Well, for me getting up at 6:21 AM qualifies as late. It was light already, and I didn’t get up in time to see the morning star. The sun shown through the trees. A heavy dew covered the grass in the yard, and drops of water dripped from the gutters. The kitchen window was open, and cold air blew into the house. It is still August, but it feels like autumn. A few of the trees already have leaves changing color. The goldenrod is in full bloom with tiny bright yellow flowers.

Things are changing, and they are changing quickly.

My wife went to a handicraft store yesterday. She came home a bag full of wool yarn.

She told me sheepishly, “I spent $200.”

I replied, “We have the money. Spend it if it keeps you happy and sane.”

As Asher approaches the beginning of his school year, Karin is delving more deeply into her fiber arts. She is weaving more, knitting more, spinning more. On Friday, she will go to the annual Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. She assures me that she won’t spend as much. That doesn’t matter. It matters that she feeds her creativity. She will attend a class at the festival. She can buy whatever she needs while she is there. Once Asher is in kindergarten, Karin will have a small hole in her life where Asher used to be. She has to fill it. Karin loves to care for Asher. She should fill the hole with something else that she loves to do.

New things. Exciting things. Scary things. Fun things.

A change of seasons.

Back on Brady Street

August 25th, 2025

Asher starts kindergarten at Tamarack Waldorf School on September 3rd. This is obviously a big deal, both for Asher and for Karin and me. Going to school will open up a whole new world for Asher. He will get to know his teacher, and he will make friends. He will have to learn how to follow a schedule. He’s never had to do that before. Asher has mostly done what he wants when he wants, and for the most part we, as his guardians, have been okay with that. That all changes in a little over a week. He is going to have to get up early, eat breakfast, get dressed, and go to class for the morning every morning. I’m almost certain he will balk at this, at least until he gets comfortable in his class and starts looking forward to doing things with the other children.

I will mostly likely be driving Asher to class each morning. I am a morning person, unlike my wife. The Waldorf school is close to downtown Milwaukee, which means Asher and I will have a half hour drive to get him to class by 8:00 AM each day. Traffic will suck. My wife did this kind of thing with our own kids twenty-five years ago. We know the drill. Since Asher will only be there until 12:30, it is kind of iffy as to whether it is even worthwhile for me to drive back home once I drop him off. I might as well stay in area around the school while he is in class.

Tamarack is located on Brady Street on the lower eastside of Milwaukee. It’s close to Lake Michigan. Tamarack uses the old school building from St. Hedwig’s Catholic Church. The steeple of St. Hedwig’s towers over the other buildings on the street. It is the anchor for the neighborhood. The school building is ancient. It has classrooms with high ceilings, tall windows, and hardwood floors. The school has a feeling of solidity and durability. If you listen closely, you can hear the voices of previous generations of children laughing and yelling in the halls. For me, there are ghosts in the school. Even if I am surrounded by the new parents and their kids, I can still feel the presence of the people who taught and learned in that place a quarter century ago. The school contains echoes of the past, but it is also vibrant with the energy of the latest generation. It’s like life is coming full circle.

Brady Street is an interesting neighborhood. It always has been. Early on, it was an immigrant community of Germans, Poles, and Italians. St. Hedwig’s is named after a Polish saint. There is still an Italian grocery store (Glorioso’s) a few blocks away from the school. Peter Sciortino Bakery is across the street from Tamarack. During the 60’s and 70’s, Brady Street was a hippie hangout. Now, it’s a narrow road lined with bars that cater to a mostly hipster crowd, young people with money. But the neighborhood is still quirky. The community is very LGBTQ friendly. The area is ethnically diverse. Brady is a good street for walking and browsing. There is a paradoxical sense of permanence and simultaneous upheaval. It’s a neighborhood that is alive.

I came to know that area in the 1990’s. I used to go down the block from the school to the Brewed Cafe for coffee. Sometimes, I went there by myself, and sometimes with my wife. Brewed is not there anymore. They closed down a few years ago, and now the place is a Brazilian coffee shop. The new coffee house is nice enough, but it’s not Brewed. The Brewed Cafe had this scruffy, working-class, antiestablishment atmosphere. Once a person managed to get through the front door, which never really opened and closed very well, they would see numerous pamphlets and posters advertising upcoming shows by local bands or political events or art exhibits. The front counter was small and cramped. At busy times of the day, customers lined up almost all the way back to the door. Once at the counter, a person could order coffee or other beverages. They had beer (it’s Wisconsin-almost every establishment serves beer). There was a tiny kitchen in the back where people made vegan sandwiches and other dishes. The folks working at Brewed all had more than usual number of tattoos and piercings. I’m sure they worked for minimum wage, but they got to pick what music was played in the coffee shop.

Even when there were only a few customers, Brewed seemed crowded. Space was at a premium. The tables were small and wobbly. If you ordered coffee, you got that immediately. If you ordered food, it showed up eventually. The walls were covered with works by local artists. The bathrooms were microscopic in size, and the walls were plastered with graffiti and stickers for bands that I had never heard of. The place was clean, but cluttered. Over the years, it had accumulated a variety of objects that somehow lost their purpose and meaning, but remained there, nonetheless. Brewed was oddly comfortable. Going there for coffee or lunch was kind of like going into somebody’s home.

I miss that place. I will have to find another hangout on Brady Street.

Are You from Here?

August 8th, 2025

We were at the playground with the big sandbox. Asher likes to go there. He has a plastic bin full of beach toys that he insists on taking to the park. There isn’t a beach, so he plays with his shovels and trucks in the sandbox. Sometimes other kids are there. Asher is a good sport about letting the other children use his things. Most of the time the other kids ask before they use his toys, especially if their caregivers are nearby. Sometimes, they don’t ask. Asher doesn’t seem to mind, and I don’t either.

After a while, Asher got tired of playing in the hot sand. Even though we arrived at the park early in the morning, it was still quite warm in the sunshine. He had a drink from a cold smoothie, and then he decided to go on the swings. A group of children had just come to the playground from the Salvation Army center down the street. The kids were part of some kind of summer youth program that the Salvation Army sponsors. There were a couple chaperons with the group. One of them was a Muslim woman. She wore a hijab and a long abaya that went down to her ankles. She sat down under the shade of an oak tree close to the playground.

A little girl came over to the swings and tried to make friends with Asher. He wasn’t interested. The girl was sturdy looking. She had a very round face and a page boy haircut. She was wearing a dress with lavender unicorns on it. Asher likes unicorns, and he likes lavender, but not so much this time. It should be noted that for reasons that are obscure to me Asher is a babe magnet. He has the uncanny ability to attract girls, usually older than himself. Admittedly, he has a winning smile and a dimple on his right cheek that can melt hearts. However, he wasn’t smiling at the girl. He just stared at her as she spoke to him nonstop.

Eventually, the girl moved away and climbed on to the monkey bars. She hung on them for a bit and then she asked me,

“Are you his grandpa?”

I nodded.

She asked, “Does he talk a different language? Or is he too young to talk?”

Little did the girl know that Asher can be a relentless chatterbox. His verbal skills are very strong. I know from experience that it is sometimes almost impossible to get the boy to shut up when he is on roll.

I told her that Asher didn’t speak to her because he’s a bit shy (that’s kind of a lie, but whatever). She asked,

“How old is he?”

“He’s four-and-a-half.”

She replied, “I’m six-and a half. It’s kind of like being halfway six and half seven. He’s half between four and five. We got that in common, I guess. Is he in school yet? I’m in first grade, almost in second grade. I can only hang on to two of the bars on the monkey bars, even though I’m six-and-a-half.”

Then she told me, “I don’t worry about falling off the monkey bars. I’m tough. I don’t cry if I get hurt.”

She showed me her ankle and said, “I scraped my foot here. It was bleeding a little, but that’s because I scratched at it, but it’s better now and I didn’t cry or anything.”

I forget what all else she said. She rambled on for a while. Then she went back on to the monkey bars and swung unsteadily from one bar to the next. The Muslim woman got up and shouted to the girl,

“Be careful! Don’t go so far! You’ll fall!”

Ah, the voice of a mom calling.

I turned to the woman and said, “You have a very brave girl!”

She looked at me and said, “But she must be more careful. She could get hurt.”

At that point, I said to her, “A salaam alaikum.”

She blinked for a second, then smiled and replied, “Wa alaikum asalaam.”

I told her, “I know a little Arabic.”

She asked me, “Where are you from?”

I looked around for moment and said, “I’m from here.”

I need to mention that I grew up in the local area, but I was far away for twelve years of my life. I almost never ask people where they are from anymore, especially if they have a foreign accent. In today’s political environment, with all of the fear and xenophobia, I am reluctant to pry into somebody’s history. My wife is from another country, and I lived overseas for three years. I know how it feels to be “from somewhere”.

I told her, “I studied Arabic in the Army, but I don’t remember much.” That’s true. I took Arabic for four years at West Point, but that was many years ago. I am not fluent in the language at all, but having studied Arabic makes me relatively comfortable with Arabs and other people who are Muslim. I helped tutor the children of a Syrian refugee family for several years. My extremely limited Arabic was helpful at times

I talked to the mom about Asher. She talked about her tomboy daughter. She told me that it must be hard for me and my wife to care for the boy. I replied,

“Sometimes it is, but Asher is also a blessing.” I fumbled for the Arabic word. I said, “He’s a baraka.”

The woman laughed. “Yes, exactly. He is a baraka.”

It was hot. The kids were wilting. The group from the Salvation Army lined up to go back to their building. The little girl went to her mother.

The mom waved to us and yelled, “It was good to meet you!”

Yes, it was.

Too Tired to Live, Too Busy to Die

August 5th, 2025

I have a t-shirt with a picture and quotation on it from Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I have always been a fan of Thompson, especially since I did a short stint in the Las Vegas jail back in 2017. I won’t describe that episode in this essay. I have written extensively about it elsewhere in my blog. You can find those articles if really look for them. Instead, look at the quote on the t-shirt. (See above).

I was wearing this t-shirt a couple days ago. I was sitting at the dinner table with my wife, Karin. We were both exhausted from a busy day. She stared at the t-shirt for a while, and then she said,

” ‘Too tired to live, too busy to die’. That’s us.”

Indeed it is.

We care fulltime for our grandson, Asher. He’s four-and-a-half years old. He is smart, active, and bursting with energy. Karin and I are not. Karin is seventy years old. I am sixty-seven. There are many days when we feel our age quite clearly, especially if we have been chasing Asher around nonstop. We can keep up with the boy, but just barely. As is fitting for his age, Asher is headstrong, and he tends to oppose our wishes. We grow weary of fighting with him. We were able to deal with willful kids thirty years ago, but now it can be an overwhelming challenge.

I pray each day. I don’t long recite prayers from a book. My petitions are straight and to the point. God literally placed the Asher in our home. As far as I am concerned, God gave us the job of raising him. Karin and I made an open-ended commitment to do just that when Asher was just a little baby. It is our spiritual calling. We have been conscientious about fulfilling our duty as his guardians, but it gets tough at times. I figure if God wants us to do the work, He/She better give us the strength to do so. When I pray for strength, it is often more of a demand than a request. I need the resources to keep going.

I also need the gift of discernment. I am a mere mortal. I can only do so much. I need to know my limits. God is only going to give me the strength that I need, and maybe not even that. If what I think I need exceeds that allotment, then I have a problem. I have to understand what I need to do, as opposed to what I want to do. I have to know how hard I can push myself.

I have a friend, Ken, who I know from the synagogue. He’s an Orthodox Jew. I go to his house almost every week for beer and conversation. We discuss our respective struggles. Ken likes to say that each person has a “peckla” (that’s a Yiddish word that could mean a backpack or a burden. Imagine a “peckla” as a load that a person carries on their back). Each person has a particular peckla that is specific to them. God knows every person’s strength and each individual carries a load that only they can manage. The burden I carry might crush another man, and the load he bears might be beyond my strength. I sometimes think of this load as a cross that I carry. Ken probably would not use that analogy.

The peckla that I carry is like my wife’s. We bear the burden of caring for Asher and bringing him to adulthood. We carry this weight voluntarily. We could set it down and say, “That’s enough. No More.” But we don’t. We won’t get rid of the peckla until we are unable to walk any further with it. We carry it because we love Asher, and he needs us. Love gives us the power to continue the journey with the peckla on our backs.

Love is sacrifice, and it is also strength.

A Hero of War

August 3rd, 2025

He said “Son, have you seen the world?
Well, what would you say if I said that you could?
“Just carry this gun, you’ll even get paid”
I said “That sounds pretty good”

Black leather boots
Spit-shined so bright
They cut off my hair but it looked alright
We marched and we sang
We all became friends
As we learned how to fight

A hero of war
Yeah, that’s what I’ll be
And when I come home
They’ll be damn proud of me
I’ll carry this flag
To the grave if I must
‘Cause it’s a flag that I love
And a flag that I trust

I kicked in the door
I yelled my commands
The children, they cried
But I got my man
We took him away
A bag over his face
From his family and his friends

They took off his clothes
They pissed in his hands
I told them to stop
But then I joined in
We beat him with guns
And batons not just once
But again and again

A hero of war
Yeah that’s what I’ll be
And when I come home
They’ll be damn proud of me
I’ll carry this flag
To the grave if I must
‘Cause it’s a flag that I love
And a flag that I trust

She walked through bullets and haze
I asked her to stop
I begged her to stay
But she pressed on
So I lifted my gun
And I fired away

And the shells jumped through the smoke
And into the sand
That the blood now had soaked
She collapsed with a flag in her hand
A flag white as snow

A hero of war
Is that what they see
Just medals and scars
So damn proud of me
And I brought home that flag
Now it gathers dust
But it’s a flag that I love
It’s the only flag I trust

He said, “Son, have you seen the world?
Well what would you say, if I said that you could?”

Lyrics to Hero of War from the band, “Rise Against”. Released in 2008.

I just played that track again on the stereo after not listening to it for a long time. I don’t particularly like the song, even though it is well done. I guess it’s because it’s just too accurate and it cuts too close to the bone. Hearing it makes my heart hurt. It really does.

I can’t listen to the lyrics without thinking about my oldest son, Hans. Hans enlisted in the Army in 2009. He knew when he enlisted that he was going to be deployed either to Iraq or Afghanistan. That was guaranteed. My wife and I did not want him to go to war, even though I am a veteran myself, or especially because I am a veteran. He joined anyway. Hans went to Iraq in 2011.

Hans did lots of things in Iraq. He went on patrols. He cleared buildings. He kicked in doors. He got wounded. He killed people. He came back different.

Hans texted a few weeks ago about his war. He said, “I’m actually grateful for my army experience.” He told me that it made him grow up in a hurry and it taught him what was important in life. I’m sure that’s true, but at what cost?

I’ve written numerous essays on this blog about Hans and things that happened to him in the Army. A few of his stories are funny, but most of them are not. The accounts of his experiences in Iraq are harrowing, at least they are to me. There are things that a father probably does not need to hear, although I am grateful that Hans trusted me enough to tell me.

If you’re curious, you can look up my essays about his war. It’s all here in the blog.

Hans was a hero of war, whatever that means.

The First to Leave

August 3rd, 2025

Mike died on the evening of July 25th. That’s what I was told anyway. I have been thinking about Mike since I heard about his passing. We weren’t close friends, and I last saw him in 1980 or maybe in ’81. During the intervening forty-five years, I have connected with him three or four times, and all of those interactions were relatively recent and brief. They consisted of a couple emails, a snail mail letter, and an aborted attempt at a phone call. We haven’t had an actual conversation in decades. I have no idea what he looked like in the last months of his life.

Mike was in my West Point class. We graduated together in June of 1980. We were in the same company at United States Military Academy. The Corps of Cadets at USMA consists of four brigades, and each brigade has nine companies. Mike and I were in the same company, B-4 (B Company of the 4th Brigade). We joined that unit in the fall of 1976 as plebes (freshmen) and stayed there until we graduated and became 2nd lieutenants. We spent nearly four years in the same barracks, day in and day out. Upon graduation, our paths diverged, and they never really crossed again.

B-4, like the other companies, was in many ways a fraternity (even though there were a few women in each unit). Over time, a cadet gets to know his or her classmates. You make friends. Some people are close, and others not so much. Eventually, a common bond is formed, and in some cases that bond remains intact for years, even decades. I’ve maintained contact with maybe half a dozen of my comrades from B-4. Mike wasn’t one of them. Once we graduated, we separated and stayed that way, that is until I learned that Mike had cancer.

Mike was a stranger to me when he left this world a week ago. I know nothing of his time in the Army or of his career in the civilian world or of his family. That’s why I grieve. I missed out on most of his life. He only died a few days ago, but he has been missing from my life for a long, long time.

I have never gone to a class reunion. Now that I am the legal guardian and a primary caregiver for a four-year-old, I doubt that I will ever go to one. I know that some of my classmates want to attend one of these events, because people are starting to check out of the net. If we don’t reunite now, we might never do so. I don’t know if Mike was the first to go. However, his passing is a wakeup call.

Give Me Your Arm

July 29th, 2025

Our young grandson, Asher, is a restless sleeper. He’s only four-and-a-half years old, but he has already seen more than his fair share of trauma. He sleeps in my bed. I don’t necessarily want him with me, but he can’t go to sleep unless I hold him. When he is tired, Asher crawls into the bed and nestles in the crux of my left arm. It takes him only moments to doze off once he is comfortable there. He doesn’t want me to cuddle with him. He just wants to be held in my arm.

Lately, Asher has been waking up in the middle of the night. He likes to sleep crosswise in the bed, which means I have little or no room. Last night, around 3:00 AM, he woke up and looked at me. He said,

“Grandpa, give me your arm.”

I did.

He touched my arm and found his sweet spot on my bicep. Asher fluffed it up like a pillow. Then he rested his head on my arm. He grasped my arm with both hands and held on tight. Slowly, gradually, he relaxed. After a few minutes, he calmed down and his breathing grew quiet. Then he was asleep, still holding onto my arm.

I waited half an hour, and then I carefully wrested my arm from under his round head. Asher slept on. I got up to take a piss.

This morning, I took Asher to the playground early. We stayed there until it got too hot for him to play anymore. Then he wanted to go to the library.

We drove to the library. Asher drank a smoothie in the back seat. When we got close, Asher told me,

“I can see the library! We are almost there!”

I replied, “I know.”

“Grandpa, we are there. We can park the car.”

“Yeah.”

After I parked, Asher got out of his child seat and climbed out of the car.

He said, “Give me your arm.”

I said, “I have to lock the car.”

I did. Then we walked toward the entrance of the library.

Asher grasped my right hand. I squeezed his little hand in mine.

He told me, “I’m only holding on to your pinkie.”

I told him, “That’s good enough.”

Fat

July 27th, 2025

I try to take my grandson, Asher, to a playground every day. Sometimes the visit is brief. Sometimes we are at the park for an hour or two. The point is that he is a four-year-old boy, and he needs to be outside and active. He needs to be moving.

I read an article about Dr. Oz, the man currently in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. He recently went on a rant about the nation’s obesity epidemic. It is a bit hard for me to take Dr. Oz seriously considering that his boss in the White House is almost as wide as he is tall. However, Oz has a point. Americans are fatter than we were in years past. It’s a fact.

A couple days ago, I took Asher to a local playground near a Salvation Army center. The Salvation Army has ongoing summer youth programs. Asher and I were at the park when a column of kids and their chaperons walked from the center to the playground. There were probably twenty or thirty children coming toward us. They were of various ages, both boys and girls.

In that group I saw that about 25% of kids were overweight, a few of them morbidly obese. That really kind of bothered me. Once the children arrived at the playground, most of them went directly to the swings and the slides and the monkey bars. They started organizing games among themselves. They were loud and rambunctious. They were doing exactly what kids are supposed to do when they are outside. They were in constant motion and generally having a good time.

Most of the heavier kids did not participate in the horseplay. They found a place to sit or lie down. Asher played with a few other children in a big sandbox. They took turns excavating a buried toy. One overweight older boy helped, but he remained prone the entire time. He laid on his belly while digging in the sand with a small shovel. He didn’t even bother to sit up. When he was done playing, it took enormous effort for him to get back up on his feet.

I was a fat kid. In grade school I was chubby, so I know how it is to be an overweight child. My folks took me to the “husky” section for boys’ clothes at the department store. I often felt embarrassed about my weight. I usually was one of the last kids to get picked for a team in gym class. Life sucked. I know how the heavy kids at the playground feel.

Somehow, once I got into middle school and high school, I became more physically active and I “thinned out”. I was actually in good enough shape in my senior year to get accepted into the U.S. Military Academy. Honestly, I don’t know who or what helped me to get in shape, but I did change. Now, I’m old and I could stand to lose five to ten pounds. I probably won’t, but at this point in my life it might not matter so much.

I think obesity does matter for these children. They are going to have serious health problems in the future, if they don’t already. I don’t blame them for their condition. I’ve been there. They need their caregivers to help them get fit. They need adults to help them get moving.

Asher is fit. He’s strong and agile. I am going to help him to stay like that.