Rant #2,409: Daydream

Today is a big day in my life.

No, make that a huge day in my life.

Today is one of those days that stay with you your entire life, a day you never forget, a day that changed your life forever.

And today is part of my personal cycle of stupendous days that I told you about a couple of Rants back, which begins with my birthday on April 28 and ends with the 50th anniversary of my bar mitzvah party on May 24.

(My bar mitzvah ceremony was on May 9, 1970, but we had the party two weeks later. Another story for another time ... .)

Anyway, what makes today such an important date in my life.

Today is the day, 32 years ago in 1988, that I became a father for the first time.

If you are a parent, I don't have to tell you the joy that childbirth and parenthood brings to you, and it certainly brought that to me, and still brings that to me all these years later.

I liked it so much the first time around that I even had the audacity to do it again seven years later.

And like my own birth, my daughter's birth represented a lot of firsts in our family: my first child, my parents' first grandchild, and my grandparents' first great grandchild.

And my daughter was extra lucky, because she got to know not only her grandparents, but here great grandparents--three of the four on our side of the family--as she grew up.

Her great grandparents are now gone, but on my side of the family, her grandparents are still with us, still vital, and love her to the max.

It hasn't been easy to either me or them over the past 32 years, what with divorce, separation and a lot of inner tumult, but my daughter has persevered. She and I don't have the greatest relationship--and I really wish it was better--but zI guess it could be worse.

Due to the pandemic and other factors, we have not seen each other since December, but we talk on occasion through messaging. I did speak to her one-on-one on the phone for a few minutes on my birthday, and I will call her today, and give her my best regards.

And in an eerily parallel universe that we share, today this year is also extra special for both of us, or at least definitely extra special for her and potentially extra special for me,

On her end, this is the weekend she earns her masters degree, so I guess I can say that she is a "chip off the old block," as I earned the same degree 37 years ago. Her degree is in special ed, I believe, and will help her at her job as a teacher at a residential center for at-risk young women. Maybe it will help her get an even better position there or elsewhere, but I am proud that she earned it.

Of course, this year, the ceremonies will be virtual, and she has given me the address to tune in, and I will do just that.

On my end, today is the day I find out if I won the contest that I entered my novel into. I read yesterday that the contest received 50 or so submissions, so I have a one in 50 chance of winning.

I know, the odds are not in my favor, but let's remember that the odds probably were not in my favor--and were probably much worse--when I won the trip to South Korea a few years back, so as they say, "you have to be in it to win it."

May 15 is always a special day in my life, and this year, I can say that it is even more special than it normally is.

Again, I want to congratulate my daughter on reaching another birthday, and also for obtaining her masters degree. It is difficult to reach each of these accolades, and she did it!

I am a proud papa today, and I hope that she knows that.

Speak to you again on Monday. Have a great weekend.

Classic Rant #1,258 (July 30, 2014): Lost and Found

For me at least, this has certainly been the week of finding lost items.

As I have told you for the past few days, my mother found my first grade class photo.

I am still amazed that she found it, and I am still mesmerized by its beauty as sort of the missing piece of my life that has finally been found.

Yesterday, I found something very different. It wasn't a personal keepsake that had been lost, but heck, it made my day.

Without going into a long story, let's just say that I was looking for something on the dresser in my bedroom.

I was looking and looking for this document, which related to my new car, and I simply could not find it.

Well, I found the document that I was searching for, which was great, but in searching for it, I also uncovered something that I didn't even know that I had.

Let me preface this by saying that this is the first time that something like this has happened to me in probably about 30 years.

I found money. And I won't tell you how much, but heck, it was enough to really, really make me happy.

It was stuffed in an envelope on my dresser that dates back to December of last year.

I don't know why or how I didn't realize that I had this money, but when I saw it, my eyes popped.

Oh, we're not talking about thousands of dollars here, just a couple of bills that would have still been buried had I not been looking for something else.

I remember that about 30 years ago, I was in a florist shop, for whatever reason, and I found a $50 bill on the floor. I quickly pocketed it, and I was happy.

The next time anything like this happened to me was probably about 20 years ago, sort of.

While at work, I found a whole wad of checks wrapped up in a rubber band. I remember that visions of a reward were dancing in my head, as it was probably a payroll drop that somebody dropped.

I contacted the company on the checks, they told me to discard them, they didn't even thank me, and that obviously led to nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The next time was about 10 years ago, also at work.

I found a wad of bills tied up in a rubber band. I remember that I made a broadcast at work at what I had found, and one of my fellow employees came forward, saying that it was money he had made from another job, and it must have fallen out of his pocket.

He worked at a local hotel at night, off the books, so he got paid in cash. I had no reason to doubt him, so I gave him back the money. He said he would take me out to lunch for returning the money.

He never did.

I remember as a kid, walking to school, my friend Howie and I found a wallet, and scattered about it were various identification cards, such as a driver's license, and what they used to call charge plates, which today we know as credit cards.

Based on what we found, we located the person it belonged to. Evidently, the person had been mugged, the crook(s) stole all the money in the wallet, and left everything else strewn about.

Again, visions of a reward danced in my head, and my friend's head.

After school, we both went over to the person's apartment.

We rang the doorbell, and the person barely poked his head out the door after we announced who we were.

We saw the person was pretty banged up, and was probably in his 70s or 80s or perhaps even older.

We gave him back what we had found, and left, not even expecting anything being given back to us because of his age and how he looked.

And that brings me back to the present day, where it was I, myself, who lost this money, only to retrieve it myself.

Again, it would still be sitting there if I hadn't been looking for something else.

What else will I find this week?

Who knows, but it will be hard to top what has been uncovered thus far.

Rant #2,408: Rise

I just read that supermarket prices have risen at unprecedented levels since this pandemic struck us, and thus, supermarket sales are going through the roof, too.

This doesn't surprise me at all.

I have found that my weekly grocery bill has risen at least $50 since this thing began.

Now, on my part, a lot of it can be attributed to where I am now doing my shopping.

I used to do my shopping at a discount grocer, which was further away from my house than the local grocers, but I more than made up for the drive with the prices I was paying for goods.

I could still shop at that particular grocer if I wanted to, but like most people, I have cut down my driving considerably--85 percent might be a fair number--and I have stayed local for my shopping in recent weeks--

Which means, since I supposedly live in a "high rent" district, an area greatly made up of upper middle class and wealthier residents, I am paying through the nose for my groceries right now by shopping the local supermarkets.

For instance, let's look at TV dinners.

When I shopped the discount supermarket, I paid about $2.50 for one of these dinners.

Now, these dinners are costing me upwards of $5 or so.

I don't often buy them, but that is really the tip of the iceberg, and we are not just talking about lettuce.

Everything has gone up sky high. Even chicken, which I buy for my wife and son, has shot up as processing plants cope with the coronavirus.

I am paying at least $2-$3 more for each package of chicken, and I can say the same thing for beef.

The one place we can't stay away from is the supermarket, so we just have to grin and bear it, and pay the prices because we really do not have any alternative.

And I also heard that staying home means other areas are booming, and some aren't.

For instance, I read that online grocery shopping is predicted to rise nearly 50 percent by the end of the year, and we are talking about dollars here.

Yes, people need the supermarket, but they don't actually have to go into one to do their shopping.

Me, I could never shop that way. I need to see what I am buying, not just a picture of it, so online grocery shopping is not for me.

But for real shut-ins, or people who feel they do not have the time to shop, or for people who are so paranoid right now that they don't trust going out anywhere, I surmise that online shopping is perfect for them.

And then we have other areas that aren't doing very well, and they are directly linked with people staying home, and namely, women staying home.

I read that purchases of makeup are going down the tubes, simply because many women are either out of work or working from home, so why should they gussy themselves up if they aren't being seen by anyone other than who they live with?

It makes sense, I guess. Unless a woman is so attached to their makeup that they can't even proceed during the say without wearing any, why would a woman put on makeup if all the people she is seeing are her husband and her kids?

And along the same lines, we have bra sales, which are also drooping.

Again, along the same lines, women don't have to dress for success if they are home, and even if they are working from home, they want to be comfortable.

I guess wearing a bra constricts them, so if they just want to put on a T-shirt and some pajama bottoms while at home, that is fine with them, and who am I to argue?

Plop, plop ... .

Classic Rant #1,257 (July 29, 2014): Class Photos

Yesterday's entry about my mom finding my first grade photo sparked my renewed interest in class photos of mine, and I started digging.

I know that I have all my class photos. Most of them were sent to me by former classmates, because my mother claims that she has nothing of mine or my sister.

Of course, what she found over the weekend kind of says to me that if she has time to dig, she will probably find everything.

But that being said, I have found some class photos of mine from days of yore.

But finding those photos also has allowed me to rediscover myself, to a certain extent.

I feel that I haven't changed at all.

Sure, in those photos I have hair, I am a lot lighter in weight and certainly have a different spirit than I do now.

But I really haven't changed much.

I am really a kid in adult's clothing. Sure, I have grown up in age, but I am still a kid at heart.

I never liked ties, never liked liverwurst, and I still don't.

I loved baseball and music and TV, which I still do.

I believed in family, my country, and although I was never religious, I do believe in God, and always have believed in these things.

But it is nice to have these keepsakes of another time, because they have etched in sort of a permanent memory where I was way back when.

And that is the real beauty of class photos.

They bring you back to another time, perhaps the most important part of your life, when you were growing up and learning about the world around you.

You learned a lot of what was going on not only from the teachers in those photos, but from your peers, the kids who were also in these photos.

Many of them were your friends, some of them were simply classmates of yours, but you learned through them, whether you realized it or not, through osmosis, if nothing more.

And that learning experience, coupled with many others, made you what you became.

Anyway, without getting too metaphysical, I just love these photos, and I also love to see other people's photos too.

They are visual time capsules, and that makes them so much fun.

And if you have kids, don't ever lose these photos. They are really prizes of your kids' childhoods, and when they become adults, these photos will have even more meaning to them.

Put them in a safe place!

And again, a shout out to my mom, who found what I consider to be the mother of all my class photos.

One question--was a class photo taken during kindergarten?

I have no idea, but if one was taken, and I could see it, that would really be extra special.

Rant #2,407: Tutti-Fruitti

I would not be doing my duty if I did not mention some prominent deaths that occurred during the past couple of days.

First we have Little Richard, one of the true architects of rock and roll. He died of bone cancer the other day, and with his death, her left a legacy that certainly earned him a spot on rock's Mount Rushmore along with Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

His music was raucous, fun, and short and to the point: "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Tutti-Fruitti," "Long Tall Sally" ... you could literally go on and on and on with the great music he created out of his own mix of blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz, which he turned into the seminal brand of music called rock and roll.

His influence on everyone from Paul McCartney to Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson and Prince is so obvious that those that imitated him readily admit it, and he was proud of his "children," but he always said that he, "was the prettiest one of all."

Like most early rock and rollers, he often had his name in the newspaper more for his off-stage hijinks than for what he did on stage, but even though his life was filled with controversy, he became so mainstream by the 1980s that nobody cared much about whatever controversies there were.

Like Liberace in the 1950s, he was the one gay guy that you loved ... or was he gay after all? He went from being gay to not being gay seemingly as many times as you change your socks, but he finally settled down to a non-gay lifestyle ... let's just say that he lived the life, and leave it at that.

This guy was the real deal, and the world will miss him.

Seemingly on the opposite side of the pole was Jerry Stiller, one of our great comedic talents who died of natural causes a few days back.

His life was not steeped in controversy ... or was it?

Stiller--a Jewish man--married Anne Meara--a Catholic girl--in the 1950s, when this thing simply wasn't done, and with it, he formed a comedic partnership that broke down many barriers in the 1950s and primarily the 1960s, when Stiller and Meara were one of the hottest comedy acts on television, including 36 must-see appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

At the time, appearing on the show meant you had "made it," and Stiller and Meara "made it" three dozen times. Their humor revolved around their mixed marriage, made them appear as normal as your next door neighbors, and kind of softened the stance for such unions.

And they were funny ... not funny by today's raucous, nasty comedic standards, but funny because while you laughed, they made you think, even if you did not fully buy-in to their union.

Sullivan loved them because he, too, was in such a marriage--Sullivan was Catholic, his wife, Syliva, was Jewish--and he saw a mirror image with Stiller and Meara.

But Jerry Stiller was more than just part of this comedic duo. He was in several Broadway shows, he was in numerous films, and he truly was ubiquitous on television through at least the early 2000s, on shows like "Seinfeld" and "The King of Queens."

He and Meara were also the parents of two kids--a daughter and Ben Stiller--and they were certainly among show biz's happiest, most successful couples until she passed away a few years back, after more than 60 years of marriage.

So, you don't think that Little Richard and Jerry Stiller could ever be considered to be in the same boat as controversial figures--for their time--who went on to lasting success, but they certainly were the strangest of bedfellows.

But in the straight-laced 1950s and early to mid 1960s, they were really breaking serious ground on our senses and beliefs, and you cannot take that away from either of them.

R.I.P.  Richard and Stiller. You will both be greatly missed.

Classic Rant #1,256 (July 28, 2014): Go To the Head of the Class

This weekend was as dry and as boring for me as possible.

My wife worked the entire weekend, so really nothing much happened at all.

I did whatever chores I had to do, went to the eye doctor--I need new lenses, which are going to cost me a pretty penny--and basically watched TV--baseball--the entire weekend.

Yes, I did nothing.

I saw my mother on Saturday, and she gave me something that really brought everything into focus, something that I had not seen for probably 30 years--

My class photo from first grade.

I thought that this thing was forever lost, but searching through various things in her house, she managed to find this photo, buried away for decades.

I put it right up on Facebook, it got a good reaction, and now is preserved for posterity both there and here, as well as on my computer.

Here is what I put up with the photo on Facebook:

"My mother found this photo buried somewhere in her house.

It is my first grade photo from P.S. 165, Flushing, New York, way back in 1963-1964.

This was taken when I lived in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, and I am barely noticeable. That is why my mother said years ago, she drew the arrow on the photo. I am sure it can be removed, but I figured I would leave it on for posterity, I guess.

Anyway, the teacher was Mrs. Gold, but I don't think that is her in the back, leading me to believe this photo was taken in 1964.

I was in an experimental class, where they took kids who had shown that they were a little advanced educationally for their age and put us in a class where we were taught work from not just first grade, but pretty much through third and fourth grade.

Mrs. Gold was an older woman who had never taught grade school before our class. She was a college instructor, and was chosen to be our teacher because of her background in higher education.

She tripped over a wire from a film strip machine one afternoon, and was never seen or heard from again.

The woman in the back must have been her successor, so I am guessing this was taken in March or April of 1964, after Mrs. Gold hurt herself.

This was the class where we all grew up quickly, when we were told that JFK had been assassinated.

I don't remember too many of the kids' names. A boy named Hal was the kid sitting up front, and I believe that another boy named David Kosloff was in the back, five kids from the right.

Another interesting boy I think was the kid standing next to me on my right. His last name was Marx, I think, and he was the son of the doctor who claimed that he could "create" children with genius intellects with the proper learning environment. He proved his point with his children, who both graduated college when they were 16 years old or so. His work created a lot of controversy 50 years ago, but I do know that he was successful with his own kids.

I hadn't seen this photo in literally about 40 years when my mom gave it to me today, and it obviously brought back lots of memories."

Since then, I have had a chance to really look at the photo, and a couple of things came to light.

The kid I called Marx, his last name was actually Marcus. I do not remember his first name. I think his sister actually graduated college when she was 12 or 13, and he graduated when he was about 16. What happened to either one of them since ... I haven't a clue.

The kid I called simply Hal, I believe his last name was Kessler.

And no, I cannot remember a single name of any of the girls in the class.

Heck, I was six or seven years old here, so I guess I still hated girls at this point in time.

Anyway, I do wonder what happened to all of these kids, and even the teacher in back, whose name completely escapes me.

How many are still alive? How many went on to have families, nice careers, and good lives?

The school is still standing, by the way, although it goes under a different name now--I can't remember what that is, either.

So during a dull and boring weekend, this was a highlight, as it would be for any weekend.

I just love class pictures, and this one has risen to the top of the class as my favorite of all time.

I wonder if my mother has any other hidden treasures like this stored away somewhere.

I sure hope she does.

Rant #2,406: Every 1's a Winner

I finally won something late yesterday.

No, I did not win the lottery, nor did I win a job.

And no, I did not win against the coronavirus, which my sister still has, and still is suffering from, but supposedly it hasn't reached anyone in my house, so maybe, all of us here have won out against it.

No, I won something that proved that even during a pandemic, you have to open your mouth, voice your concerns when things are as dire as possible, and you must let people know when things aren't done the right way.

Several months ago, late last year, before anyone knew what the coronavirus was and how it would impact our lives, I woke up one morning and could barely get out of bed and walk.

I was hoping that it would go away, but it didn't, and one day, I decided to go to an orthopedist to find out exactly what was the matter with me.

I chose an orthopedist based on having used one several years ago, when I somehow got a pinched nerve in my neck. The pain that I had from that was substantial, but after a few months of therapy, it lessened to the point that I only barely felt it anymore ... so why not use the same orthopedist?

Like chain fast food restaurants, there are chains of orthopedists, and this office happens to be part of that chain. It is right in my neighborhood, so I went to them, was diagnosed with sciatica and spinal stenosis, among other things, and I was given a regimen of physical therapy sessions to attend.

I did, and after a while, the considerable pain and discomfort I had from these things was lessened to the point that I could actually move around with a minimum of distress.

I attended about a dozen sessions, and when that was over, I was pretty much given a clean bill of health by the doctor there, and told that it was up to me to keep my exercises going, at home, which I have done since then.

That was at the beginning of this year. In January, who knew what was awaiting us as February and the succeeding months came upon us?

I had received one bill from the orthopedist. It was a large bill, but I did not blink in paying it, even with me using unemployment money, which was less than half of what I was making when I was working.

But OK, bills have to be paid even when one is out of work, so I managed to pay it.

Then a few weeks later, I received a bill that I found so incapable of me understanding that it truly was "the bill of all bills."

Evidently, unbeknownst to me, I was being charged piecemeal for every service that was rendered during physical therapy. In other words, if I went on the bike, it cost me $5 if I had heat therapy, it cost me $9, etc.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but if you understand that every piece of the therapy was being charged to me piecemeal, and I had probably at least a dozen pieces to my therapy each time, well, you can see that each session of physical therapy was costing me big bucks.

(And no, this was not the way my physical therapy was handled when I went there several years ago for my pinched nerve, further lulling me into thinking that I would be treated the same way this time.)

And the bill was for big bucks, probably the largest bill that I had ever personally encountered that I was being told to be out of pocket. The bill was actually itemized, so I could see that each and every procedure I had done was costing me money.

I was enraged. In fact, I was even more enraged, because not only wasn't this explained to me, but when my initial six sessions were over, they pushed me to have six more. The pain I had had pretty much ceased to be a problem, but they pushed me to take six more sessions, "as my insurance allowed for it."

I called my insurance, which said it had to do with the particular physical therapist and how they charge for their services--which my insurance very minimally covered or did not cover at all--and then I called the orthopedist, which led to a cat and mouse game of tag that probably lasted at least another month.

I continued to call and demanded a proper resolution to this situation, but in the meantime, I went into my savings and simply paid the bill. On top of a few other medical bills that I had at the time--including one from my skin doctor that was also a bit absurd--I nearly cleaned out my entire savings, but I felt that these bills had to be paid, and the arguments would come later.

Anyway, having paid the bill, I persisted with the orthopedist, who I felt had led me down the wrong path, and actually bolstered their own pockets, lining it with my money by not being upfront with me about their services.

For that exercise in futility, I was told that another bill was coming ... and that information made me fight even more about these bills and how I had been charged for services, some of which I did not need.

Yes, they told me I could set up a payment plan to pay off everything, but why do so? Let me fight from strength--let me pay the bill and then argue about how wrong they were.

And that is what I did.

I ended up speaking to several people there, all of whom handled the case in what I thought was a professional way, but the thing was dragging, and I ended up filing with an organization that handles bad business practices, because although the people were nice--and yes, they eventually used the coming of the coronavirus as an "excuse" for their tardiness--nothing was getting done on my behalf.

I eventually spoke to some higher ups who said the matter was being looked over corporately, and I called at two-week intervals when I heard nothing back from them.

I persevered, made my calls to check up on things, and when the third bill never came, I kind of knew that things were definitely looking up for me.

But there was still no action being taken, and this thing had pushed through January, February, March, April, and eventually May.

And then we came to yesterday, May 11, and still no action had been taken.

I was planning to call again this Thursday--a one-week interval this time--to find out what was going on--I have been very patient, but my patience was wearing thin--and as the workweek began, I simply went about my business on Monday.

Well, late Monday afternoon, I received the call I had been waiting for.

I was told that I would be receiving a nice check in the mail to re-compensate me for the money I had spent, and that I would be receiving the payment in about two weeks time.

Sure, I do not have the payment in hand, so I can't fully rejoice yet, but David does beat Goliath at times, and I certainly did just that here.

In the meantime, every week for the past several, I have gone to the bank, and put in some money into my savings, trying to boost it up to where it was before I got hit with these monstrous medical bills.

Now, I can just put the check I will receive into the account, and everything will be hunky dory.

Yes, sometimes it does pay to open up your mouth. Maybe I missed my calling, maybe I should have been a lawyer, but whatever the case, I knew I was in the right here, and I learned a great lesson: have whoever you are doing business with explain how a bill is being handled before you agree to it. I wasn't told anything, and that is where the problem was. I would never have agreed to such an arrangement if I was told about it, and I certainly would not have agreed to more sessions if I knew I would be charged piecemeal for every thing done there.

So, to sum it up, I proved my case, and I won my case.

Hooray for me!