What's Going On In That Van?

Ever learn something about a family member that maybe you wish you hadn't ever learned, but, once you learn it, it suddenly makes heretofore disparate pieces of their lives kind of just, I don't know, click together?

Recently, in the midst of casual conversation/family banter, I learned that my eldest sister attended pre-school in a van.

Note: she wasn’t driven to pre-school IN a van—the pre-school WAS the van. Really.

Now, when I think of vans and their intended uses, an educational facility in which to house a teacher, school supplies, books, and small children doesn’t immediately leap to mind. And I consider myself to be a reasonably creative, open-minded, outta-da-box kind of thinker. And yet, still, I have my strong doubts about the whole van-as-acceptable-pre-school-environment concept.

Simply put, sending your child to pre-school makes it kind of a given that they’re going to grow up to become cult-members, door-to-door cucumber salesmen, or Molly Ringwald impersonators.

Now, granted, my eldest sister attended pre-school in 1970-or-thereabouts. People had some funny ideas back then, eating all of those funny brownies and such. If you’ve ever seen a man’s suit from 1970, you know what I’m talking about when it comes to funny ideas: lapels that stretched to Idaho, and plaid patterns that might look halfway awful on your average amateur bagpiper’s kilt—complete with Liberty Bell-diameter-sized bell-bottoms. And you might think that looks cool and retro now, but you’re an idiot. Now sit down before you hurt yourself or somebody even more special.

So, not only did my eldest sister attend pre-school in a van in 1970, she also did so in 1970 Virginia. Now, Virginia might be not too far below the Mason-Dixon Line but, to Jews, it’s basically Jim Crow-era Natchez. Throw in some kids learning how to spell their names inside a van, and we’re almost talking antebellum stuff, hon.

The thought that my mother and sister ever lived in Virginia at all is almost absurd to me. My mother got married and pregnant (nobody really discusses the order much) at seventeen and eighteen respectively (or not) and she and her husband and daughter fled to Virginia—fled from my Lymphoma-ridden grandmother and emotionally retarded grandfather. But pain and loss, destruction and fucked-up’ed-ness pursued them, and my mother and her husband got divorced a very short time later. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of his daughter attending pre-school in a van—although it’s more likely that my mother was the one who didn’t like it. What does she have to say about it these days?

“Look, it was the seventies,” she said to me, popping a forkful of salad into her mouth, “everybody was an idiot back then—even me.”

The fact that my sister is a functional human being in any sense after being subjected to God-only-knows-what inside that van (I’m sure all the windows were covered) is a Virginia-sized miracle. Maybe her experiences therein, wasting away through story and snack time on those springy vinyl seats accounts for her, um, questionable emotional status. Did they leave the engine running the whole day? Perhaps one of her many dozens of physicians ought to test her carbon monoxide levels.

Of course, come to think of it, that any of us are functional human beings is rather a miracle, isn’t it? After all, we’ve all been fucked up in one way or another by someone or other—our parents, our siblings, our bullies and our mentors, our friends and our not-so-much-friends, our lovers and our leavers. Our second grade teachers who thought we were retarded for not being able to do 64 math problems in 5 minutes.

And I didn’t even go to 2nd grade in a van.

Poang Poetry Slam

My wife and I are still dating,
Of that you may make no mistaking,

On Friday’s long nights, far away from work lights, we say to ourselves,
“Now what shall we do so we don’t sit at home and stare all night long at the shelves?”

And, last night after work I turned to my wife and when I said this I had her in stitches,
“Let’s go to IKEA and count pregnant bitches.”

---

It’s a game that we play, because we’re deranged,
With the Ektorps and Karlandas all expertly arranged,

We troll round the halls and our eyes scan the tummies of plumpy young Mummies-to-be,
We try to outfox one another and last night my wife spotted three!

But I kicked her ass ‘cause I got me five,
And that, my sweet loves, ain’t no jive.

---

I don’t know what it is about getting inseminated,
But inside of IKEA all manner of pregnant women are always congregated,

Some are shaped like pears, and some like bears,
Some are all over the Poangs, some deep into housewares,

But, no matter what, there’s nary a slut when it comes to the yellow and blue,
If you’re in IKEA, you’re bound to spot a Preggie McMilkbags or two.

---

And, last night, we were in for a shock,
We spotted three lesbian couples, mullets and all, and they, we well know, don’t like cock.

And so I'll just say, when the pressures of date-night roll 'round your merry way,
Don't fret or obsess over nightclubs, raves, craves, crazes or sultry barroom gazes,

Just get in the car, and I'm sure it's not far to an IKEA just off a quaint highway ramp,
And check out the Mommies, the frumps and the Swamis, and the chick with the lovely tramp stamp.

Be Loud

Ah, Le Blogosphere, how I love thee.

You feed into my delusions of grandeur quite adroitly, and I thank you for appropriately inflating my ego, my head, and my naughty bits to appreciable levels.

I received an email a couple days ago from a me-love-you-long-time (very long-time—as in, was-around-for-the-first-blog-long-time) reader and she referred to herself as “a fan.” As such, I suppose this e-mail could be regarded in certain circles as a “fan letter,” even though it wasn’t a letter, per say, it was an email.

So, basically, what I’m saying here is: look at me, I’m getting fan mail. Fortunately, it’s just in my inbox. If anything from a reader of mine showed up in my actual mailbox, I think I’d probably shit myself. Unless it was the complete DVD set of “Homicide: Life on the Street” or “The Carol Burnett Show.” Then I’d be pretty stoked, though I’d probably still shit myself and move to Mozambique.

This fan of mine didn’t just email me to say I was the hottest writer since Gore Vidal, and that my blog was the 21st century’s answer to Mark Twain’s travel writings of the 1860s—she wrote to me to ask me if I would devote a blog entry to an issue that was very important to her. Here’s a portion of what she wrote to me:

“I am heartsick at what is happening, and have decided to email my favorite bloggers in addition to all of my contacts in the hopes of this getting more widespread attention.
There is a woman in Iran who is going to be stoned to death for adultery. She is a widow, and a mother of two, and she has ALREADY BEEN PUNISHED FOR THIS CRIME.”

She wrote some other stuff, too, and none of it mentioned me and Truman Capote in the same sentence. Which, in the end, is probably a good thing.

I was skeptical about this request, not necessarily the authenticity of it, or the passion behind it from the writer of that email to me, but about whether or not I should get involved. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the only reason I was reluctant to say anything about it was that I felt I would come off looking like an idiot for doing so. And then I thought a little bit more about that, and I realized, “These people have listened to me talk about my obsession with porn and Victoriana and Mercedes Benz sedans from the early 1970s—what more could I possibly do to embarrass myself in front of them—let them know that, not only do I brush my teeth with kid’s toothpaste, but that I injured my finger opening the lid to said toothpaste?

There. It can’t get any worse than that. Right?

The more I thought about the incident described in this email, the more I realized how interested I was in it. Adultery has fascinated me for a long time—not the act, dirty birdies, but the concept of it. It’s the ultimate affront and disgrace to a marriage, the absolute desecration of your holiest vow—not before God, but to your spouse. I told my wife one day, “I would sooner dip my penis in a jar of battery acid than stick it inside another woman’s schnazz.”

Chivalry: it’s what’s for dinner.

Adultery has always been a mystery to me—what drives it, what facilitates it, what perpetuates it, what allows it to happen once, and again, and again, and again. The justifications people make, the lies they tell, the flagrant, offensive, abusive way in which they allow themselves, their spouses, and indeed their lovers to be treated.

I'll be as honest (and mature) with you as a married man whose wife reads his blog every day can be: are there other women out there into whose na-nas I wouldn't mind sticking my hwonk-hwonk? Sure. Am I going to do that? No. Why? Because God or nature or nurture or society or religion or what-have-you has instilled within me a modicum of restraint. Restraint isn't always easy, and it isn't always pretty, but it's there for us human beings to utilize whenever we feel the urge to go smash somebody's collection of little glass animals, or steal a bunch of toasters from homes across rural California.

When I was younger, the only person I ever knew who had cheated on their spouse was my aunt. She used to work in a retail store and she nailed the owner. Nice, huh? She and my uncle reconciled, and had two more “I’m sorry, honey” children.

Good for them.

This act of indecency and indiscretion was spoken about in my parent’s house in hushed, disapproving, disgusted tones. And I thought to myself that my uncle must be the biggest schmuck in the world for taking that alcoholic, adulterous, alliterative asswipe back.

And yet, people do.

I’ve only had one other experience with adultery. A partner of mine at my old ambulance company. Every day, for a long, long time, we sat next to each other in the truck, ran calls, ate our lunches, took care of patients, joked around, made small-talk, listened to the radio, met each other’s wives, sat side-by-side, not one foot away from each other day in and day out. And I knew. And he knew I knew. And we never spoke a word about it. Never. Never ever. And I remember feeling this terrible sense of dread that, following a customary silence in the ambulance that he, or far worse, I might say something. Might dare to say something. I was terrified of those silences; I was so afraid that my mouth could not be trusted. And I’m amazed even still that I got out of that truck every day for so long having protected the secret I knew.

And for what? What was I protecting? A shameful act perpetrated by a desperate man? Was I protecting my glasses and my teeth from an enraged fist? All I was really protecting was the status quo.

And, in remembering this little lesson from my past, I came to the conclusion that, if I stayed silent about this woman in Iran, I would be doing nothing but rising up as just another defender of the status quo. And I can’t afford to be that guy again. Sure, adultery is yucky and selfish and cruel, but it doesn't warrant a sentence of death-- and I don't think that's just ethnocentric Western society morals talking-- though maybe I'm wrong. I guess that's for you to decide.

I’ve done, and certainly said lots of things in my life that I’m not proud of—but much more than that has been the shame and dishonor brought upon me by things I have not said. And there’s been a miserable shitload of those, which is a surprising statement for a man with an impossibly large mouth to make, I admit; but it’s true.

Do I think that my signature or yours on an online petition is going to sway the Iranian government from stoning this poor woman to death, when their regime has carried out countless acts of barbarism and torture on countless others without batting a swarthy eyelash? No, I don’t. But what does that matter? Sometimes we do things not because they are guaranteed to lead to the desired outcome. Look at the Hindenburg. Look at Pickett’s Charge. Look at “Herbie: Fully Loaded.” Look at most attempts at meaningful human connections. Let’s… look at ourselves and count our innumerable failures and foibles and falterings. But let’s not dwell on them. Let’s pick ourselves up and take a stand for something, for someone, whether it matters in the end or not, well, it will matter to you. You’ll feel better about adding your name to that petition, and you’ll feel better about yourself.

Being loud is a hell of a lot better than being quiet. Just ask any lion.

An Open Letter to the Heatwave

Dear Heatwave,

You've been hanging around Philly for a while now, haven't you? You've forced summer camp and school-related activities to close at 12:30, sending children home to nasty, filthy, overcrowded, ancient rowhomes-- most with no air-conditioning. I'm sure the Philly crime-rate has spiked in the last few days, because all the toughie bastards are hanging out on the street corners with their sawed-offs hanging out of their baggy, oversized denim shorts that are as big as parachutes.

You killed some 92-year-old grammaw, found dead on the second floor of her sauna-like rowhome. Way to go, asshole.

I'm not impressed.

See, I have an Emerson Quiet-Kool window unit, and a motherfucking Power Miser that can kick your ass forty ways from Sunday, bitch. Sure, the Power Miser was manufactured during the Woodrow Wilson administration, puts out an obscene amount of BTUage, and it's approximately the size of a Renault LeCar, but I'm pretty satisfied that it can kick your hot ass any day of the week.

Just bring it on, fuckstick.

And another thing, if you think I'm intimidated by a little notching up of the temperature gauge, just know that I've got two words for your sorry hide: Tank. Tops. Yeah, that's right. Your heat waves only make my married, genteely-restrained sexuosity that much more, um, awesome. That's right, Heatwave, you're only adding fuel to the fire, and there's still a fire burning, make no mistake about it.

I will say, however, that your presence has brought about a marked increase in the phenomenon known as I.T.T., which is roughly translated to "Inappropriate Tank Top." Cases of I.T.T. are being reported to local authorities at alarming rates. Just this morning, a call came in to the I.T.T. Command Center about a seventy-four-year-old woman pushing a granny-cart filled with groceries while wearing a red tank-top. The arm-skin-flapping was appalling. The pock-marked side-boob was degrading. And the dimpled sternum-skin was, well, regrettable. Anyone who spots a confirmed case of I.T.T. is urged not to take any action in the situation other than immediately telephoning the proper authorities. Remember, I.T.T. is a felony in 37 states, and your state might be one of them.

Now, getting back to you, Heatwave, I've got another beef with you. Shorts. Yeah, that's right. I've been wearing shorts since Tuesday, and I'm pretty pissed off about that. What business have you creating an envirnoment where I am forced to look like a police officer from the Bahamas all day? Not fun, not fair, not fucking right. At all. I don't know what to say to you. After all the delightful tank-topptedness I thought we were friends but, evidently, you are just another bully out to shame me-- no different then the bullies in high school who relentlessly peppered me with homosexual epithets and pointed at me while I was eating in the cafeteria, prompting a life-long obsession with not eating in front of people.

Seriously, I was having a crab rangoon appetizer at a wedding reception last month and, the moment someone came up to talk to me, I hid the appetizer in a plant. A couple moments later, I took another appetizer and people kept coming up to chat with me (I don't know why-- this doesn't happen often) and I held the mini egg roll in my hand for at least twenty five minutes.

"Are you going to eat that thing?" my wife asked me once the agitators had departed in search of more normal, less stilted conversation.

"I don't think so," I replied, and hid that in another plant.

So, I guess the moral of that little story is, if you ever invite me to your wedding, after everything's over, make sure the help checks out all the plants before closing up shop for the night.

Now, back to you, Heatwave, you ornery motherfucker. I know this is just a plea for attention, and I also know that I'm just feeding into that whole schtick by writing you an open letter on my blog which is read by exactly seven people (I think this whole 189 followers thing is pretty hilarious-- I check stats, people, you would be disappointed) but I just can't help myself. You have assaulted the people of my homeland, and you must be exposed for the infidel that you are and then summarily destroyed with a penknife or a buttered roll or something possibly even more lethal-- like schtick!

Yes. I will schtick you to death, Heatwave. So watch. Your. Ass.

I'm comin' for ya, boy.

The Glass Table

On Monday, the day that most Americans had off from work, I was put through the paces at home. Not in my grown-up man home, but in my little boy/pained adolescent home. The home of my remembering.

It’s changed a bit, but not much. My childhood home isn’t a strip-mall now, like my father’s childhood home is in Israel, and it isn’t some other family’s home, like my mother's childhood home is in Northeast Philadelphia either, that I have to drive by, wondering who they are, what they are doing as they peter out their little lives in the rooms where we all laughed and cried together.

My parent’s house was built in 1955, and the contractor who built it lived there for two years until my grandparents came along and bought it. Those walls have ensconced fifty-three years worth of the same family’s bullshit and love.

My family, as full of love and bullshit as the next.

The interrogation room, some people call it the “living room” is exactly the same as it was when I went away to college, and when I came back four years later until I couldn’t take it anymore, moving out after a few months. The peach carpeting is still there, the gray leather couch is still there. The enormous Ben Shahn painting that my eldest sister was convinced would make us all rich and maybe even sane is still there, hanging on the wall, looking down on us with its own palpable Jewish austerity. Some new pictures have been added in the last ten years—notably among them are photographs from our wedding, and pictures of my nephew, undeniably the biggest, and smallest, force of good in the entire brood.

It is because of my nephew that the circular glass table has been removed from its unforgiving metal frame. The round circle of thick-beveled glass, easily four feet in diameter, sits inert against the wall, and a huge space in the middle of the room exists now, and, on Monday afternoon as I waited for my parents to arrive at the agreed-upon meeting time, for the first time ever I walked through the space where the glass table used to reside. The carpet was absurdly fluffy under my feet, for it had never been walked on before. We’d had that table longer than the peach carpet—it used to be white with yellow borders.

My middle sister almost blinded herself on that glass table when she was a child—doing handstands on the sofa, she fell backwards and smashed her face against either the glass or the metal supports that held it up, slicing a gaping hole above her eye, and the scar that interrupts her eyebrow is there for all to see. I don’t know how you clean blood out of a carpet, but my parents did it.

I stood, for a moment, in the center of the interrogation room, where I had never, ever stood before, and I checked my watch.

2:59pm.

It was so… odd. It didn’t feel natural, or right—- it was like I was standing on the surface of the moon, or on somebody’s face, or their dog, or their country. It almost made me laugh because it was all so stupid. There I was, in my old house, in the room where I had done battle with my parents countless times, where I had cried out for help on so many occasions, where I had passionately defended my beliefs and my desires and my, well, my own particular, peculiar bullshit, and everything was the same except that the glass table had been upended and there were a couple of new pictures, and yet I felt like I was in a foreign place. My head started to spin as I saw my mother’s car pull in front of the house. Instinctively, I rolled my eyes inside my head and schlumped down into the sofa. My mother walked into the foyer first. She glanced down at her wristwatch.

3:02pm.

“I’m sorry we’re late,” she said with a small smile.

The Fourth of Jew-ly

Don’t worry, loves, I didn’t forget to write about Independence Day. The early-onset dementia hasn’t progressed that badly, though, when my mother asked me on the phone what I did the day before, this was my answer:

“Um… (very long pause) …hmmm….. yester… day….”

I’m sorry, Alan—what were we just talking about? Oh, right—no cheddar, please. Goes right to my tits.

So, I didn’t write about July 4th on July 4th because, well, I just wasn’t feeling it. Independence Day is hard on us American Anglophiles. It’s like if they invented a Self-Hating Jew Day. I mean, sure, I’d march in the parade, but I’d feel guilty about it.

Sometimes I feel like maybe I don’t deserve July 4th. I mean, I was practically suckled on John Cleese’s teat (no cheddar, please—his family’s last name was actually “Cheese”—honest to wikitits. Wow, sorry about all the breast humor thusfar…) and we all know about the G&S fetish, and so Independence Day has always been a little tricky for me.

You remember what July 4th is all about, right? Poppin’ caps in the asses of the fuckin’ redcoats. Shovin’ corncobs in their bagpipes. Calling them fags an’ shit.

Well, excuse me if I just kind of, you know, don’t join in with your little fag-calling holiday.

I tried, of course. We tried to buy a new oven, but, like, the store wasn’t open. We’ll get it soon, though. It’s a GE Hotpoint. Hot. Point.

I go to fireworks, of course, because I’m basically twelve, but, really-- I’d rather be at home on the couch with my wife, eating a box of Hobnobs (“with oaty nobbly bits”) watching an episode of “Father Ted.” Maybe even without wearing… you know… trousers!

I know it’s not especially popular to be a britter-lover these days, you know, since that annoying company kind of ass-raped the Gulf, but disclaiming my love for Merrie Olde Englande simply because of BP would be like cutting off Volkswagen because Hitler GE Hotpointed my people.

And I just won’t do that. In fact, just today, I purchased four vintage VW print ads to hang up in our office. I’m pretty sure the seller is American, though, if that makes you feel better.

It’s hard to believe we were ever at war with England, isn’t it? It’s even harder to believe that we were English. Well, my people weren’t—but your people may have been. There is no HP Sauce in my bloodline, and I know that makes me an errant poseur, but what can I say? Can you tell when you sit across from me on a blanket at the fireworks? Can you see it in my face? The… Un-Americanism?

It’s hard to be all schnazzed up about being American. I think we got pretty close on the 4th, though. Even though we failed at buying a large kitchen appliance, which would have made us very American, my wife wore a red-and-a-white striped shirt with blue shorts. I, um, didn’t, but I did eat a rib-eye steak for dinner—and, even though I was supposed to eat grilled hotdogs and hamburgers, a steak is pretty fucking American, isn’t it? A friend of mine who is a farmer in Vermont gave it to me when she came down for a visit, and I was so scared of cooking it that I hid it in the freezer for five months. Finally, on the 3rd, I bravely emailed her for instructions.

I'm not one to get terribly excited about holidays like this one. I always get labor day and memorial day confused-- can't keep them straight at all. When I was dating a Catholic girl in college, a whole new collection of strange holidays got thrown into the mix, and I was very fucked up for a while. I mean, who knew that Holy Thursday and Maundy Thursday were the same thing?

Not I.

As you may remember, I was relatively ambivalent/depressed about my own birthday, so if you think I'm going to get all slick in the shorts about America's birthday, well, you're just a silly goose. Go take a green shit by the lakefront.

I remember many 4ths of July as a child. I think that was where I honed my antisocial tendencies. The next town over would hold a fireworks display that was pretty decent, and people came from miles around to congregate on the local baseball diamond, smell each other, sit on each other's blankets, drop corndogs and shit on each other, and get burned by the black ash that would fall from the heavens because the people running the fireworks didn't really know what the fuck they were doing.

I enjoyed these fireworks, but, after one year experiencing them with the rest of the mouth-breathing masses was enough for my family. Moved my my zeal for patriotism and exploding things, the next year, and every subsequent year of my youth thereafter, my father would drive us to the parking lot of the John Wanamakers, spread a blanket on the roof of the Oldsmobile or the Buick or the (once he got a clue) Camry and he would seat my sister and I up on top of the roof and, in that vacant department store parking lot, we would get a clear, unobstructed, crowd-eschewing view of the fireworks. And then we would go home and I would watch "Life of Brian" on VHS in the basement.

Of course, we all know that July 4th isn’t about stabbing British people through the head with bayonets or about cotton candy, or fireworks or parades with pretty fire-engines or painting big banners that say, “FUCK YOUR CORNHOLE, CORNWALLIS!” And it isn’t even about kitchen appliances.

It’s about three-day weekends.

Oh, and drinking lots of alcohol. But I’m cool with just the three-day weekend, thanks.

I wish a three-day weekend was long enough to go to England. I also wish we could drive the Volvo to England.

Happy 4th, America. God bless you and stuff.

Nerd in the Alley

When I was in middle school, I discovered sarcasm, and instantly I knew I had turned from a sweet boy to an asshole. Puberty’ll do that to ya. Just look at Haley Joel Osment.

In high school, I knew I was a schmuck. I quoted George Gobel in my senior picture, for Christ’s sake. Like that was going to get me pussy.

Later, in college, I was pretty sure I was just a loser—with a little bit of theatre fag thrown in for good measure.

When I met my wife, I was nearly convinced that I was a doddering idiot.

Then, when it came time to drive up to Providence for the first extended stay with the rest of her family, I was sure of it.

Certain members of my wife’s family may be socially retarded (Mrs. Apron’s terminology) or bizarre or dubiously-gazed-at in public, but one thing is for sure: when it comes to intelligence, they’ve all asked for, and received, seconds. And heaping portions, at that.

Ask my father-in-law a simple question and you will get an answer that may span the course of eleven minutes' time and you’ll need several advanced degrees to understand maybe a third of his response. Sure, he won’t make eye-contact with you while he’s giving you this answer, and you may lose some of it in mumbles, but it will be… um… really smart.

Really.

My brother-in-law is, well, not particularly worth conversing with. I once rode a bus with him and his attempt to flirt with a beautiful Asian girl he had been chatting up ended briskly when he turned to me and said, in a tone-of-voice approximately 96 decibels too loud:

“DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE CHINAMAN AND THE JEW?”

But he’s seriously “intelligent” in that traditional sense of the word. Physics and whatnot. Whatever.

When I met my wife’s family for the first time, almost eight years ago, I was very much intimidated by their combined intelligence. My mother never went to college. My two sisters barely graduated, for different reasons, and I am… well… hovering somewhere above the average helipad.

Or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with actual or perceived intelligence. Maybe it was the geek factor. Or is the dork quotient? Or the nerd number? Well, whatever it is, or was, they had a lot of it, and I was worried that I perhaps didn’t have enough.

“I don’t think I’m dorky enough to be in your family,” I said, forgetting for a moment that I steadfastly refused to wear shorts until I was seventeen.

Musically, there is no question that I have no business being a member of this family. Her father is a bassoonist and clarinetist. Her mother is a harpist. Her brother is an almost savant-like pianist. Her sister plays trumpet. Before her neurosurgery, my wife played bassoon as well.

Me? Oh, um, I took piano lessons from a drunk lady for three years and learned nothing and I know five chords on the banjo. Pass the veggie burgers.

“You sing and act in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas,” my wife reminded me in a reassuring tone, “what could be more musically dorky than that?”

On Friday night, as we were out driving, I found myself explaining the meaning of the sea shanty “Bully in the Alley” to my wife.

“Well, you see, when the whalers would be off the boat on shore they would go drinking, and, invariably, one of them would get too drunk and would harass passing women and such, and his friends would say, ‘Fuck this,' and shove him in an alley, and so that’s where the song comes from—he’s the bully in the alley.”

My wife stared at me. And, with that stare, I knew I had finally achieved the zenith of dorkdom.

I belong.