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8

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#8. I have been in eight different major league baseball parks.

For the record, and in order, that’s Riverfront in Cincinnati, Three Rivers in Pittsburgh, Skydomw in Toronto, Wrigley in Chicago, Fenway here in Boston, Turner in Atlanta, Olympic Stadium in Montreal, and PacBell in San Francisco. You know, in case you’re scoring at home. (Or even if you’re by yourself. All hail the subtle wit of Keith Olbermann.)

Anyway, I’ve only seen real live in-season games in six of those parks. Two of them don’t exist any more, and a third is in serious danger of being mothballed sometime in the near future. So, nearly half of the ballparks I’ve known — in the Biblical sense, that is — are now no more. Which is pretty sad, I have to say. Plus, those two parks (the first two on the list, if you still care about such things) represent something like ninety percent of all the games I’ve ever seen live. Maybe more. So there’s really not much left in the old memory bank of ball games that’s still relevant to the rest of the world. Just another piece of evidence that I’m a doddering old coot. Bitch monkeys!

On the other hand, it just means that — assuming I’ll ever get off my lazy ass and do it — I’ve got oodles of stadia out there to visit. See, if you look at it the right way, the glass is seven-eights full, or thereabouts. So that’s cool.

Plus, Riverfront and Three Rivers were ‘cookie cutter’ parks. Boring, circular monstrosities, soulless and AstroTurfed. Yuck. So, from an aesthetic standpoint, it’s good that they’re gone, and replaced with infinitely better versions. (Well, okay, not infinitely better, of course. That would just be silly. How about lots better? Happy now?)

Someday, I’ll replace those fading memories with new ones, in new parks. Hell, I’ve already started. The combined no-hitter I saw at now-defunct Three Rivers a few years ago? Gone. Now, it’s the sixteen-strikeout Pedro Martinez masterpiece my wife and I watched from the bleachers in Fenway last year. We sat about eight rows from the top, just below where the Pedro Squad puts up the ‘K’ signs after each strikeout. And here’s something you may not know — I sure as hell didn’t when I got the seats — just before they put up each sign, a dozen or so guys in red face paint come down into the bleachers and make the fans count, en Espanol, up to the current number of whiffs. It’s actually pretty fucking spectacular. And we got up to diez y seis. How loco is that?

7

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#7. I used my middle name until I was about seven years old.

This was through no fault of my own, you understand. It was all my parents’ doing. First, they picked out my name, then they decided to use the middle one instead of the first one. If I may be so bold… what the fuck? Why not just give me the middle one first, and let it be? (Though, as you’ll find out, I’m actually immensely relieved that they didn’t do that.) But what’s with all the indecision? If they’d waffled that frickin’ much about having me in the first place, I probably never would have been born.

Plus, after nine months of thinking about it, you’d think they’d have been ready. It’s not like it snuck up on them at the last minute. I’m honestly not sure that they put any damned thought into the name at all. First of all, they named me ‘Charles’. Which is fine; it’s an alright name, and it’s served me well. I’m not stuck in the herd of ‘John’s or ‘Mike’s out there, but I’m also not a ‘Litterial’ or a ‘Elbert’. Different, but not that different. I’ve got no beef with the name.

Except — except, my father’s name is also Charles. But I’m not a junior, because my middle name is different; I’ll get to that later. So now, for no good reason that I can see, we’ve got two guys named ‘Charles’ in the same household. Phone rings — ‘Charles, please.‘ ‘Which one?‘ Always ‘which one?‘ And it just didn’t have to be that way. That’s six seconds of our lives per call that we’ll never have back. And do you know how many calls we got in the eighteen years I lived with my parents? Um, me, either. But plenty! It was plenty, dammit. And six seconds times plenty is a whole lotta time. Bitches!

So maybe that’s why they decided to use my middle name. A little pre-planning would have prevented the whole sorry mess, but maybe at least they realized their error and tried to set it right. Fine. That would be just damned peachy if I could use my middle name in public, right? Just so long as my middle name is something equally as inocuous as ‘Charles’, then I’m in the clear. But, of course, it isn’t. It’s ‘Stacy‘.

Bleh. Who are these fuckin’ people, anyway?

So, ‘Stacy’. Not the absolute worst name I can think of for a male child. It’s not ‘Jill’ or ‘Margaret’ or ‘Boogerpants’. But it’s not good. Not good at all. Now, of course, I’m an only child, so I didn’t realize this at first. I skipped through the world — yes, skipped, goddammit; my name was ‘Stacy’, what the fuck did you expect? — happily enough, blind to the fact that ‘Stacy’ was at best androgynous, and at worst… um, well, at the time, I didn’t know what ‘androgynous’ meant, so I would have probably said that was the worst, too. It sure as hell doesn’t sound very good.

All of that changed when I hit school, of course. There, I was surrounded by Mikes and Bruces and Davids, and yes, Stacys. Two of ’em, in fact. Two other Stacys, with pigtails and dresses and cute little ribbons in their hair. ‘Hey, wait just one cotton-pickled minute!‘ (Yeah, I used to think it was ‘cotton-pickled’, all right? ‘Cotton-pickin’, ‘cotton-pickled’, whatever. Can we just get on with this?)

So, I looked around, and saw that ‘Stacy’ was primarily a girl’s name. A big, poopy, cootie-havin’, rope-jumpin’ crusty girl’s name! Ewwwwww! Get it off, get it off, get it off! Oh, and I heard about it, too. Did I ever. Where there are bullies, there are children with girls’ names being given a hard fucking time. Just the way life works.

I brought this up to my parents, with mixed results. Mom tried to convince me that Stacy was a boy’s name, too. ‘But I don’t know any boys with that name,‘ I replied. ‘Well, what about Stacy Keach, the actor?‘ ‘Um, mom, he’s a crack fiend. Which do you want me to be, a girl or a cokehead? I’ll give you your choice.‘

Needless to say, I didn’t exactly persuade Mom with that sort of argument. Dad was an easier sell, probably because all that skipping I was doing was starting to worry him. But still, neither of them would make the move to help me. So, I did it myself.

I determined one summer what I had to do. And when school started up, I did it. I told the teacher that I didn’t want to be known as ‘Stacy’ any more, and that my name would henceforth be ‘Charlie’. I think I gave my parents a couple of days of lead time on this, just so they wouldn’t be surprised at the first PTA meetings. And I cut the world some slack for about three days. If my mom would call, ‘Stacy, time for dinner!‘, or the teacher would say, ‘Stacy, it’s not polite to pick Margaret’s nose like that‘, I’d do what I was asked and politely say, ‘Okay, but my name’s not ‘Stacy’ any more. I’m Charlie‘. Some people got the picture this way.

After the three days or so, I took a harder stance. Call me Stacy, and I ignored you. I’m not Stacy. Do I look like a Stacy? No. So you must be talking to some other Stacy, and I’m gonna keep on doing whatver the hell it is I’m doing until you and that other Stacy get things sorted out. S’got nothing to do with me.

So, of course, I was beaten often that fall, both at school and at home.

Nah, I kid. I was beaten more or less the same as usual at home and school, and eventually, everyone started getting my name right. Mom was the last to fall into line, because of all that ‘Stacy’ practice she’d had, but she got the hang of it. And that’s how it’s been ever since. Not many people even know my middle name, and I was embarrassed to give it out for a long time, because of all the crap it used to get me in school.

But now, I think it’s important as an example to expecting parents. For the love of your unborn blubbering brat — er, beautiful baby, that is — please, please, please take some care in picking out a name, would you? And I do mean both names, ’cause they’ll both come up, one way or another, as the kid scrambles through life. Don’t stick him or her with something ridiculous or unpronouncable or usually assigned to the opposite sex. Really. And if you need any more convincing, just use me as an example. I had that horror happen to me, and look how I turned out.

6

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#6. I have only needed to get six stitches in my life.

I got them all in my chin, all at once, and I still have the scar. Wanna hear about it? No? Too bad.

So, I was young, maybe five years old. And like most five-year-olds, I wasn’t very bright. I was playing with another moron about my age, and we decided to have a contest. It was my idea, so I went first.

Before I go any further, I should set the stage just a bit. We lived in a two-story brick house at the time. It had a wide stone porch, with three stone (granite?) steps leading down from the porch to the sidewalk. On either side of the steps were brick bannisters with stone tops, about three feet tall. The porch looked a little like the one on this house, or this one. The houses in these pics are all wrong, of course. Just focus on the steps and the bannisters. Got it? Good. We can move on.

Oh, just one more thing. While my chum and I were playing our little game, my father was leaning against the right-hand bannister, talking to a neighbor who was standing near the stairs on the left. That’s gonna be important. Okay, now back to the contest.

So, I bet this other little kid that I could jump off a higher step than he could. He said I couldn’t, and the game was on. I started off the action, and hopped up onto the first step. I hopped back off. That’s baby stuff. Just a warmup. Easy peasy. He agreed, and did the same. It was my turn again.

So, I climbed up to the second step. No problem. I jumped off, landed solid, and shot him a whaddaya think of that, mister poopyhead?‘ smirk. Unfazed, he matched my jump, and shrugged at me. I could see this was going to get ugly.

I clambered up to the third step. This was a little trickier. I worked hard not to show any fear, but we were getting pretty high up now. I steadied myself, and leapt. I stumbled a bit on the landing, and had to catch myself, but I made it. I thought that might scare my opponent off. I was serious here, and I didn’t really expect him to stick around for more. But I’ll be damned if that little pecker didn’t make his way up there and jump off himself. And, he stuck the landing. Bitch. Clearly, I was going to have to show him who’s house this was.

And so, I scaled up to the porch. This was the real shit, here, folks. This was high up there. I had a little trouble breathing; birds were buzzing around my head. But it was my turn, and I had something to prove. I took a deep breath, and pushed off towards solid ground.

This is when my father — deep in conversation — decided to shift positions. Just as he was making some point or other, he decided to cross his legs. So, he’s talking — ‘…well, yeah, the interest rates are up there, but if we can amortize over…‘. Blah, blah, blah. Adult shit. Anyway, he’s talking, and he swiiiiings his leg out to cross the other one just as I jumped. And he must’ve hooked my ankles with it, because my jump suddenly became an awkward, face-first swan dive, and I went careening toward the pavement. Leading with my chin, which struck the sidewalk. Hard. And skidded for a few more inches, before the rest of me caught up and landed in a heap behind it.

Now, my father denies all involvement or participation in the incident. He admits he was there, talking with the neighbor, but says that he never touched me. Shyah. Like I tripped over something in mid-air, or I’m just such a klutz that I couldn’t jump from a porch nearly as tall as I was without permanently maiming myself. Or… well, yeah, I suppose it is kind of plausible, when I see it written down like that. So I guess you never know. But I choose to blame him for it, anyway. Why ruin a good thing?

Anyway, I picked myself up and shook myself off. I was stinging, but not terribly hurt. I took stock — my chin hurt, my hands hurt a little, I might have banged my knee. But I’d live. No biggie. So I turned around to see what the other kid was gonna do. That’s when I saw the blood, and lost it. I cried like a baby, which I still was, more or less. My dad came over to check me out, and eventually my parents cleaned me up as best they could and drove me to the hospital. And I cried all the way there, and through the stitching, and apparently for a couple of days more. (Okay, I’m a little skeptical of that last bit. Mom, are you shittin’ me, here?) But it turned out okay, and now I have my one little scar to remind me of the ‘accident’. (And to remind me to keep an eye on Dad. I’m still not sure I trust him…)

But most importantly, I won that contest. Sure, I looked like hell, but the other kid never made his jump. So I won! I never mentioned it to him, of course, in case he could really do it, thereby making me look like a (bigger) jackass. Plus, I didn’t want to try it again myself anytime soon after. So I celebrated my win by default quietly, and in private. Hey, it isn’t an Olympic medal or anything, but I’ll take what I can get. I took one on the chin — literally — for this contest; I deserve something for that.

5

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#5. My wife and I own five computers between us.

Actually, it used to be more. We cleaned out a couple of crappy old paperweights-with-floppy-drives when we moved, and ditched an old monitor while we were at it. We seem to just accumulate useless techno-junk. I’ve got two machines I’m not really using, and she’s got a Man laptop that’s collecting dust. Unless I can talk her into letting me hook them up on a LAN for a kick-ass Quake Arena party, then we’re just wasting space with these crap-boxes.

Still, I’m a computer programmer. And the first thing you’re taught in a technical job is, ‘Never give up hardware‘. There’s this feeling, however wrongheaded, that someday, you’ll be able to use that old box, or switch, or antiquated Jaz drive. Forget the computers — I’ve got two boxes of peripherals and internals just taking up room. Cables, disk drives, Zip disks, adapters, boards, mice… you name it. If you can install it into a computer, or hook it up, or plug it in, then I’ve probably got three of them, in various shapes, sizes, and colors. I could daisy-chain serial cables to the corner store and back. I could build a serial-to-USB-to-serial-to-parallel-to-serial-to-USB-to-FireWire-to-seral adapter, using male or female adapters at any point in there. I could plug a monitor in in my attic, and string cables down to hook it up to a computer in my basement. Okay, I don’t know why I would, but I could, and that’s what’s important. We have the technology.

Anyway, I look at this crap, and I know that in the end, I’m just gonna end up chucking ninety-eight percent of it in the trash, once it’s obviously obsolete. It’s just that I don’t know which two percent to keep. There’s simply no way to predict or determine which of the cables is going to come in handy when we buy a new printer, or which drive will actually fit in an old case to let me stock up on MP3s. And so, I keep it all, banking on the slim but real prospect of needing something — anything — in the tangle of wires and chips, and finally being able to say to my wife, ‘Aha! See? And you wanted me to throw this away! Tsk.‘

In the meantime, I’m still working the Quake Arena angle, or maybe multiplayer Half-Life. Then all that shit will come in handy. It’ll just be a shame when I get my guts scattered while I’m playing in the basement, and I gotta go all the way to the attic to see my fragged self. That’s gonna be a bitch, man. Talk about lag time. Those stairs are hell.

4

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#4. In high school, I had a denim jacket with four band names airbrushed on the back.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I say this not because it was ‘cool‘. Which it was, of course. But I bring it up mainly because I’m amazed at the trouble I was willing to go to to have it done. And the fact that I wore it. A lot. It was my music that set me apart in those days, and sometimes I forget just how damned proud of myself that I was.

See, back in high school — this is the mid-’80’s we’re talking about here — I had different musical tastes than most of my friends. I’d graduated from the Huey Lewis and Survivor and Heart crap back in junior high, and had moved on to rock with more personality. Rock that was innovative, and unique. Rock that had a soul.

So, instead of worrying about fitting in, as I’d pretty much done up to that point in life, I said, ‘You know what? Fuck it. My shit is better than their shit, and I don’t care who knows it.‘ So, I talked about music. I played my favorite bands for people. And, somewhere along the way, I had the jacket done.

It must have been around 1986 or so that I had it made. I found lettering, just the way I wanted, from LP sleeves and cassette inserts, and carried them to the airbrush place at the mall. I remember my mom helping me out with it, and probably paying for it, as I’m sure it wasn’t all that cheap. The artist at the store was a little iffy on the idea — apparently, denim doesn’t take ink well, and the colors would tend to run and jumble. Luckily for me, he liked a challenge, and promised to give it a shot. So, I left him with my instructions, and the text I wanted, and several dozen dollars of mom’s money, and hoped that it would turn out okay.

And it did. Oh, there were a couple of piddly little places you could pick over, but nobody was going to notice those. Not when faced with the blazing coolness of the thing. Not that anybody but me ever gave a damn, of course. But still, I wore that jacket around like a suit of armor. It was my shield against all that was formulaic and stale in the world. And, I’m happy to say, while the bands I chose didn’t universally maintain their ‘coolness’, they did remain innovative and different and special through all the years. And which bands were they? Well, I’m glad you asked:

U2: cool at the time, then very cool, then less cool, then cool again, and then just sort of sad and preachy

REM: pretty cool at the time, then way cool, then cool and preachy, then just preachy, and then just old (though still preachy, and kind of sugary-poppy)

The Cure: sort of cool at the time, then cooler, then broken up, then cooler, then broken up again, less cool, and then ‘are these guys really back together?‘

Husker Du: really cool, and then cooler, and cooler, and then messily broken up. And therefore super-cool.

So, that was my jacket. I spent a lot of time talking about those bands, and others, and listening to their music (back when they were all cool), and telling people to stop calling me a frickin’ dork. But still, it was fun, and I sort of liked wearing my allegiences around on my back for a while. And if you can believe it, I still have the jacket. Well, the back of it, anyway. The thing was falling apart a few years ago in my parents’ storage space, so my mother cut the back out and had it mounted in a frame for me. Which is pretty cool, even if I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to hang it anywhere, being married to a woman and all.

Maybe one day, I’ll have a rec room or something, and I’ll put the thing up there. And I’ll stock the stereo with songs from Candy Apple Grey and Head on the Door and Reckoning and October. On MP3, of course. Hey, just ’cause I’m nostalgic doesn’t mean I don’t keep up with technology. I’m a big boy now.