IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S...POP

MY dad, despite being born in a rough section of Brooklyn at the dawn of the depression, was the kindest, most even tempered human being I've ever known. And I've been all over this country and to a few pretty nifty foreign locales. I've met a lot of different folk but my dad will always sit firmly at the top of my list of “who I wanna be when I grow up.” Let me give you an example of the kind of person I observed as a young idiot trying to figure out life: My dad was a furniture salesman and a very good one. When he came home from WW11 he got a job at a stationary and office supplies store in Hartford,Ct. called Plimptons. He was there for more than a decade and after he had established himself as a top salesman, the store sold to Litton industries. Suddenly, dad was jobless with a family of 4 to support. He never changed his daily routine, though. He would wake up at 7am, shower, put on a shirt and tie and walk across the room to pick up the phone and “go to work.” He made looking for gainful employment his full time job. He did this for a few month until he realized that he had built quite a nice reputation with furniture manufacturers, so he decided to try and become an independent manufacturers rep which he parlayed into a nice business with showrooms in New York, Chicago, Hartford and Boston. It was during this time of rebuilding his life that he was shopping for a new suit at his favorite men's clothing store in Hartford. While he was looking at shirts, he spotted an old associate from Plimptons who had lost his job the same time as my dad but had not been as fortunate in the aftermath. He was still looking for work and wanted to dress appropriately. My dad was aware of his situation and saw him looking at a $100 sport coat. Somehow, my dad knew the guy only had $50 so, he pulled the salesman aside, slipped him two 20's and a 10 and said, “Tell him the coat costs $50” and then went back to looking at shirts. I tell this lovely story to show just what kind of man my dad was. This was not an isolated incident. This was how he treated everybody on a daily basis which became quite evident when too many people came to his retirement party. The room was filled to overflowing and the fire marshal had to be called. People liked him......a lot. I'm not sure anyone ever saw my dad lose his temper. For a guy who was brought up in tough surroundings, he was a lamb. For a guy who ate spaghetti with tomato sauce made from ketchup and hot water (a little more water if you wanted soup), he always understood the importance of keeping nourishing food on the table. He gave us a great life. Of course, I can say all of that now. I'm a grandfather and he's been gone for about 22 years but I didn't always know how I truly felt. That came with time. I was very rebellious and a pretty snotty and annoying teenager. On this particular Saturday, I was being my typical obnoxious self, bugging my mother for something I wanted and didn't need. She, of course, was trying to explain her reasoning when I mumbled something to the effect of, “Geez, why do you have to be such a bitch.” That was the first and only time I ever saw my dad fly. Fists balled up like Superman from the comic books, he took off from mid hallway and soared like an exquisite bird across my entire room, landing on top of me, accentuating each swing with a new word: “Don't.....you.......ever......call.....your.......mother.......that......again.” Chivalry was not dead that day but I was about as close as I'd ever been. My dad then walked into the other room, sat in front of the TV and put on the ball game, satisfied that he had let me know right from wrong in no uncertain terms. He was confident that the lesson I was taught that day would last me a lifetime. It did. I never called my mom (or any woman) a “bitch” again.....ever! And I never saw my dad fly again. But that day, I watched him glide with the grace of a swan. It was a lovely flight but the landing hurt like hell.

WHEN IN DOUBT - ACCESSORIZE

I have to admit that, as a fashion maven, I'm a bit of a bust. In fact, I'd say my finger missed the pulse of fashionability by about a mile and a half. I wear shorts, sandals and tank tops. Every day. I own 3 pair of sandals, 5 pair of shorts and a passel of tank tops with a few t-shirts with sleeves thrown in for our “cold' days. I have stopped cutting my hair and I shave on occasion. I own no socks. Being retired in South Florida, I almost feel an obligation to slovenliness. Before I retired, I had a 50 year career where I lived in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. It was radio not TV. Not that much has changed since. My pants got shorter and I lost the socks. One important aspect of the sartorial arts has, however, not escaped me. For as far back as I can remember, which is about 2 or 3 years old with the exception of a huge gap of time in the 60's and 70's, I have been obsessed with accessories. Let me clarify that. I don't do a lot of jewelry. No plethora of rings and bracelets, no piercings, no antique brooches......I wear a wedding ring (that I got from a pawn shop for $50) and a wristwatch. But I must have, at least a dozen watches. I love watches. I have one Rolex which my daughter bought for me in Switzerland for $35 dollars. Nothing like a good knockoff from the land where they were “born.” It seems so real that it got a compliment from the guy who runs a local jewelry store. I once had a real one, years ago, that didn't look as good. I sold it, also years ago, between jobs to pay the rent. My daily watch is a very nice Fossil with Roman numerals. It's quite a handsome, everyday watch. I have a box full of watches with no bands, no batteries and even one with no hands because they fell off and are sitting at the bottom of the case. I have my grandfather's Bulova from the 1940's and, no, I won't be throwing any of them out. I am obsessed with watches. For some odd reason, I am also obsessed with eye glasses. I have been wearing them since 4th grade when it was, mistakenly determined that my poor grade performance was a direct correlation to my inability to see anything that was put in front of me. They were right......and wrong. I needed the glasses but the boredom with the schoolwork had set in long before the revelation of blindness. As the years wore on, my eyes got progressively worse and by the time I hit high school, I was already semi-fondly being referred to as “Four Eyes.” If I was going to wear them all the time, I wanted them to look decent. I grew as fond of eyeglasses as I had already become of wrist watches. I am obsessed with glasses. My obsessions with watches and glasses pale, by comparison, to the way I feel about hats. That all began when I was just shy of toddler status. My mom was waiting in line at the bank, holding me and standing near her was a family friend who was wearing a fedora. In the late 40's and early 50's, men didn't leave home without wearing one and Mr. Cobb was no different. They said hello and I immediately went for his hat. I have been chapeau obsessed ever since. One of the happiest days of my life was when the doctor told me I had skin cancer and that, after my nose was rebuilt, I should never leave the house without wearing a hat. YES - Drs. Orders! I have a lot of hats. 5 fedoras (one felt and 4 straw), 3 pork pies, 1 cowboy hat, 15 or so “driver” (flat) caps and about 40 baseball caps (5 of them identifying my Vietnam Veteran status). People are surprised when they learn I have hair on the top of my head. It is never out from under a hat or cap. I'm still a bit of a slob. Some things never change and my obsession with watches, glasses and hats has just grown stronger. That will never end. However, when I end, I want people to walk by my casket, look in and say, “Nice hat!”

HEAL THYSELF

For a good portion of my adult life, I have dealt with issues that have made feeling healthy seem like nothing more than a fantasy. When one disappears, tree more take it's place. To quote a lyric from Mick & the Boys. “Please allow me to introduce myself.” I am a 70 year old Vietnam Vet and 50 year morning radio vet who is now living the stereotype – retired in South Florida. That's the “Cliff Notes” version and, pretty much, all you need to know. In fact, even that much is somewhat irrelevant except as a point of reference. What is necessary knowledge is the fact that I have been dealing with health issues since I was 35 and hospitalized for the first time with heart issues. Over the ensuing 35 years, my health seemed to deteriorate at a faster rate than I could keep up with. More cardiac problems, high cholesterol, “screaming” triglycerides, Diabetes and a blood pressure that I just assumed was that high because of my Jewish genetics. By the time I hit 60, I was taking about 15 pills a day, splitting them up between morning and evening with a few that I had to take twice a day. This is where I was up to about a year ago when I passed out at home and had to be taken, by ambulance to the hospital. I had been dealing with atrial fibrillation, an erratic heartbeat, and its accompanying medications, including heavy blood thinners, for more than 3 decades so a cardiac ablation was suggested and I had it done. They went in through both sides of my groin and froze a few “trigger” areas of my heart so it could go back to a normal beat, which it did with the exception of occasional rogue palpitations. I will preface the remainder of the story by telling you that I smoked my first joint when I was 19 years old and stationed outside of Nashville. It was 1966 and I had a date with a girl from one of the colleges in town. She pulled a joint out of her purse and I started to panic. I didn't, really, know what to do and I didn't want to embarrass myself, so.......I did everything she did. It worked and I really liked it and have been a proponent ever since. But, it was always purely recreational with no thought of medicinal value until recently. I smoked the way I smoked – that was that. While, in my younger years, it served as an adjunct to booze, it eventually became a fitting substitute when I stopped drinking altogether. As a diabetic, a sip of wine can put me under the table and, at 70, that's not where I want to find myself. It's just too hard to get back up. The cardiac ablation was a relative success and the doc told me I could go home the following day. There was just one problem. My blood pressure was extremely high at 200/103 and the only way they would release me was if we could bring it down with the top number below 160. They tried a pill which didn't work. Then they tried an injection of a different BP drug to no avail. For the next three days they gave me pills, shots and combinations of both but I was still hovering around 175 to 190. That's when I became completely fed up and told them that I wanted to release myself and go home. As much as they tried to convince me of the folly of my request, I insisted until the cardiologist said, “Fine, just make an appointment to follow up in a week.” When my wife came to pick me up, I already knew what my course of action would be when I got home. I had recently discovered medicinal strains of cannabis and was beginning to understand how different strains were being bred for different ailments and how curative it actually is. I got into bed and filled my little stone pipe with medicinal weed. I took a few hits and closed my eyes and took a nice, relaxing breath. After a few minutes I pulled out my BP cuff. I took my blood pressure and, for the first time in weeks, it read 118/74. I did the follow ups with my cardiologist and my primary who, now, both reflect in their records that I prefer cannabis to control my blood pressure. I have come off all BP meds except 1 and all of my cardiac meds. What was a 15 pill a day regimen is now about 7 pills a day and those include pills for diabetes and cholesterol which I have in control. Medicinal marijuana is now legal in 22 states including Florida. What was a pure joy for 51 years is now a necessary medicine........and sill a pure joy! I'm feelin' pretty good on a daily basis. Fantasy fulfilled.

IRMA

I like rain. Especially living in South Florida where it can cool down a hot day and keep the landscape lush and gorgeous. This is a tropical climate and storms come and go in a matter of minutes. It's almost always a very refreshing experience. I say “almost” because, occasionally, a storm comes along that completely disregards the rules of decorum as regards rain in SoFla. Those are hurricanes and even during the “rainy season” they have their own agendas. They are not here to refresh and delight. Their sole purpose is destruction and they are scary as hell We got our first warning about the possibility of a “gobsmacking” from Hurricane Irma more than a week before the fact. Within days, they began evacuating people from the beach to about 2 miles inland. We live 1 mile from the evacuation area which meant we were on our own. My wife and I took heed and by Wednesday evening, we were making our own evacuation plans. We would get up early on Thursday and drive to Atlanta to stay at a nephew's house. That would keep us out of harms way and we'd get to take a short trip to unwind a bit but when we got up and turned on the news, we noticed that everyone else in the state had the same thought – before we did. There were lines at gas stations, which were running out of gas, lines at grocery stores, which were running out of staples like bread and water and lines on the highways to “get outta Dodge.” The trip to Atlanta was off. We figured that if we could make it to Orlando, we could stay with either one of my daughters who live in the area but that too was out of the question. We had a half a tank of gas which would have gotten us about half way there. Not the optimal situation as gas stations pumps were drying up and people waiting in lines were running out of the precious commodity. For our second choice to save our asses from the ever growing Irma, we decided to get a hotel room. Our assumption being that even with the loss of power, hotels have generators so they would be safe and relatively comfortable given the circumstances. For the ensuing few hours, with the storm still days away, I called every hotel between South Florida and Georgia. Every single one was booked solid. Once again, my ideas proved to anything but original and I was, obviously, too late again. Now I was beginning to panic. We would start feeling Irma's opening salvo on South Florida by Friday evening. “Let's find a shelter.” I said to my wife, “We'll be safe there.” She agreed and we decided that, once things started to pick up, we'd pack a few things and head to one of our local shelters. Once again my timing couldn't have been worse. They kept opening shelters and they would fill up before we could even find out where they were. There were lines to get in and people were being turned away. I was beginning to feel hopeless and desperate. We were finding ourselves with no place to go and no way to get there. For me, panic was setting in. We were sitting smack, dab in the path of, what was then, a category 5 hurricane and we had no options. I told my wife that, even during my tour in Vietnam, I hadn't been that scared. Shit was getting real and I was getting ready to cower in my closet in the fetal position for the next few days until the memory of the war brought me another fleeting thought. One that allowed me to calm down and look at things through much clearer lenses. I realized that in Vietnam we were never alone. We faced the enemy as a “Band of Brothers.” We had each others backs at all times and forged bonds that, 50 years later, are stronger than even some familial ties. I approached my neighbors, most of whom were in the same boat as we were and realized that, in them, I had my “Band of Brothers”to face the storm with. My wife barbecued for all of the neighbors and we all agreed that if there was any flooding downstairs, they could come up to our place and if the roof got blown away, we could go downstairs to them. We had come up with a nice little system to watch out for each other. It was right about then that my cousin contacted me to, a.) check on our status and b.) remind me that it was the “Yarzheit”(Anniversary) of my mom's death and that he had recognized that fact at the last religious service he had attended. We always light a candle of remembrance on the anniversary, so I got ours out and plugged it in. Within minutes, the TV began reporting that the storm had shifted west and that we were no longer in store for the absolute worst that Irma had to offer. It seemed to now be heading straight for every place we initially tried to escape to. I looked at the candle and uttered, almost to myself, “Thanks, ma.” The storm winds began to blow on Friday evening, By Saturday, we still had power but the cable, which is bundled with our internet and our landline, went out. There was no way to communicate or stay informed but we still had lights and refrigeration. My next door neighbor had also lost the cable but was watching the storm coverage. I asked how they were doing that and her daughter said, “I'm from the Bronx. You got a paperclip?” She came in and hooked up our TV which was now picking up 44 digital channels so that if we got tired of the coverage, we could find a movie. By Saturday night it was getting worse. Heavier winds and more rain but still nothing compared to what was on it's way for Sunday. I fell asleep and woke up to find.......we still had power. The lights were on and the AC, which had been malfunctioning all summer, was keeping us cool. “Thanks, ma.” Sunday it started to get worse and by late afternoon things were downright scary. In my 70 years I had never experienced anything like it and it seemed like it was never ending. This was the longest lasting storm I had ever seen. A small tree hit our window, a large tree in the area near the pool snapped in two and palm fronds and branches were flying everywhere. The wind was literally whistling and it was raining sideways. We have double paned, high impact hurricane windows and they held up beautifully. We were now heading into Sunday night and things started to begin to calm down a bit. The rain and wind started to ease and so did my stomach. Throughout the entire ordeal, we never lost our electricity. Every time I would walk past my moms Yarzheit candle, I would say, “Stay with us, ma.” She did. At about 10pm, the cable, internet and landline just popped back on. We made it. “Thanks, ma!” We got up Monday morning to a bright, sunny, hot South Florida morning. There was damage all around us. Trees down, roofs blown to pieces, debris everywhere and, yet, we came through it completely unscathed. All of the people who waited in all the lines to escape to other areas, hotels and shelters were now waiting in lines trying to get home to assess the damage. We went out to see if anyone was serving breakfast. We found a bagel shop a few blocks away that was serving food. There was, as expected, line but we waited. We had just come through a major hurricane with virtually no issues and we were hungry. I got a bagel with cream cheese and lox. I guess I should have taken into consideration that the place may have had refrigeration issues during the storm because the fish was bad. I got food poisoning. I guess it served my ass right for gloating. Thank goodness there was no line to the bathroom.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Let me tell you about one of the dumbest decisions I ever made. My favorite sport is boxing. I'll take boxing over baseball any day of the week. Yes it takes strength to be a good boxer, but, it's much more like a chess game where each participant has to anticipate his opponents next move and make the proper decisions in order to not get hit while attempting to slip his glove through the other guys defenses to try and knock him out. It's about finesse and movement. It's like chess meeting ballet. I love boxing. My love for the sport goes back to all the boxing I watched with my Dad in the 50's. Great names still resonate when I think boxing. Archie Moore, the undefeated Rocky Marciano, Rocky Graziano and the fighter that I consider to be, pound for pound, the greatest ever; Sugar Ray Robinson. I love boxing. I kept following the game as I got older. I lost money on the first Cassius Clay/Sonny Liston fight. Some clown in High School was taking Clay and giving odds. Who knew? I think I lost 6 dollars on that one. By the 70's I was living in Philadelphia and one of my best friends was the WBC Light Heavyweight Champion of the World. I got the picture of the uppercut that knocked him out at the Meadowlands in his third title defense........with HIS camera. I love Boxing. Boxing is a wonderful union of mind and body. The mind has to be strong enough to be able to control your strategy as you defend, anticipate your opponents next move, try to hit him and come up with your own next move. The body has to be able to to withstand extreme punishment while providing the stamina and power to go from beginning to end. The strength of mind has to be equal to the strength of body. I love boxing. I've taught my girls to Box. My oldest was at a party with her now husband (they were engaged at the time) and her ex kept bothering her. She made a number of attempts at resolving the issue, but he made the mistake of touching her in some way. She broke his nose. Good girl. You've learned well. When I first arrived in Dallas, nearly 30 years ago, I was in great shape and was working out at the North Dallas Boxing Gym.  One of my workout buddies was another disc jockey from the network where I worked. He was doing Heavy Metal and went by the name Mad Maxx, but I knew him as Dave, a friend, a workmate and another boxing fan. We lifted weights, worked on the heavy bag and the speed bag, did some calisthenics and jumped a little rope. A terrific workout. One day I decided to venture off the beaten path a little and I asked Dave if he wanted to spar for a couple of rounds. He said sure and we laced up and started to go at it. I threw a right cross. That's about all I remember……until I found myself being dragged to the corner and hearing a voice ask, "Didn't you know that Dave has had 12 professional fights and spars with heavyweights in Forth Worth?" I did now! I never got in a ring again. I try not to even WEAR a ring these days.………..I love Boxing.

DESIRE UNDER THE BIG TOP

I've always loved to make people laugh but the true object of my desire, for as long as I can remember, has been to don the greasepaint and run into one of the Ringling Brothers 3 rings as a bona fide clown. I discovered the talent to amuse at an early age. I was 6 and, as was the normal course of my school day, cutting up in my first grade classroom in the hopes of eliciting a giggle or 2 from my friends and fellow students. The teacher was, as expected, the one person who was not amused and had finally had it with my hijinx. Livid, she jumped out from behind her desk, realizing, in all the wisdom that she could muster up in her 24 or so years, that the best way to deal with me would be to embarrass me by treating me just like I was acting. “Bobby B,” she yelled, unable to pronounce my then 14 letter last name, “if you are going to act like a 5 year, then there is no place for you here. Pick up your things and go back to the kindergarten where you belong.” Semi dejected, with shoulders bent and head bowed, I found my way back to the kindergarten classroom, opened the door and saw, to my delight, that it was somebody's birthday and they were having cake and ice cream. It was right then and there that I realized that comedy pays. My course was set by the ripe old age of six. I maintained, to the best of my ability, my status as class clown for as long as I possibly could, occasionally going toe-to-toe with Billy, the spitball king or Eddie, the 3rd grade poet whose “The cow went up the drainpipe” piece made me scramble for anything remotely funny to counter with. If nothing else, they kept me on my toes and my creative juices primed. All through junior high and high school, which I was thrown out of for flushing plastic cherry bombs in the boys room, and, eventually 3 years of boarding school and 6 months of college, I worked on my “chops.” I got into trouble all along the way, of course, but always attributed it to a sadly lacking sense of humor among any and all authority figures. I was determined to be a clown. As I got older, I continued to pursue my passion and ended up doing a morning radio show which allowed me the luxury trying out new material every day but I still wasn't satisfying the initial desire to paint my face, put on a big red nose and baggy pants with giant, floppy shoes and run around the big top. Then, one day while I was doing a morning radio show in Philadelphia, the circus came to town. I was beside myself when I got the call from the Ringling representative who said, “We like to use local celebrities as guest clowns when we are in town and were wondering if you'd be interested?” I could barely contain myself. This was my dream come true and it was actually going to happen. I had a few weeks before the performance and I used that time to become a fairly astute student of the art of clowning. I read up on the master clowns like Emmett Kelly and Felix Adler, read all about the Feld family and everything they had done with show since buying it from the Ringlings, everything I needed to know to fulfill my lifelong desire with aplomb and grace. Finally, the day came. I was so excited I could barely contain myself and hadn't slept a wink the night before. I went to the circus and brought my oldest daughter, who was about 5 at the time, knowing she would have every bit as much fun as I would. As we were sitting in the complimentary box seat provided by the Ringlings, my daughter mentioned that, being about 3 feet tall, she was having trouble seeing the animals so, being the good dad I was supposed to be, I hoisted her onto my shoulders, immediately pulling a muscle in my neck and rendering me unable to turn my head. “Let's go,” I heard a voice behind me say, “you're up next.” I wanted to cry. I just couldn't do it. I could barely get back to my car for the drive home. I never DID get to be a real clown. My daughter is now a 42 year old chiropractor in Orlando and a very good one. She also teaches chiropractic at UCF. If she had only decided to pursue that profession when she was 5.

KICKS CHANGE

“Some get a kick from cocaine I'm sure that if I took even one sniff That would bore me terrific'ly too Yet I get a kick out of you.” In 1934, Cole Porter wrote these lyrics for the Broadway musical, “Anything Goes.” It was sung by Ethel Merman. 2 years later, the film version was released with a new lyric because of, what was known as, The Hollywood Production Code of 1934. It, too was sung by Ethel Merman. In 1886, Dr. John Stith Pemberton of Atlanta used cocaine to create his own concoction, which became known, based on it's most active ingredient, as Coca-Cola. By 1903, Middle-class whites started to worry worried that soft drinks were contributing to what they saw as exploding cocaine use among African-Americans. Southern newspapers reported that “negro cocaine fiends” were raping white women, the police powerless to stop them. “Coke” took coke out of it's recipe and replaced it with sugar and caffeine. By 1904, it was illegal. The thrill was gone and so was the lyric. In the mid 70's, I decided to see if the original lyric was correct and found that, for me, it was, except, it did more that “ bore me terrific'ly,” it hospitalized me – twice, before I was able to focus on the fact that it was Sigmund Freud's powder of choice that was making my heart seem like it was about to jump out of my chest. Not only did it screw up my heart, pretty much for the rest of my life, but I never really liked it. In the world of rock & roll radio in the 70's, it snowed constantly, not just in the winter. It was everywhere you wanted it to be, so, in my case anyway, I just did it because it was there and everyone else was “playing.” It was the second hospitalization that reminded me of the question my dad had asked me often growing up, “If Billy Hart jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, are you gonna jump off the Brooklyn Bridge?” It was at that point that I was able to pick up the phone, call my dad and give him the answer he had been looking for throughout my formative years - “No.” My short lived cocaine use did, however, lead me to a new source of kicks – meeting characters during the numerous ER visits and hospital stays over the years. A couple of years ago, as I was being moved from an ambulance to an ER bed, I couldn't help overhearing the lady in the next bed. She was 82 years old and had, apparently, had an episode of very low blood sugar and had fallen getting out of a car. She had a huge gash in the back of her head that had to be stitched up and had broken her neck. It was a fracture in a spot where it had broken before. I heard them talking about how she was hit by a trolley car when she was a teenager and how her leg had never been the same, but, she hobbled through life and faced one challenge after another. She was told that she would have to wear another “halo” to allow her neck to mend, but she was having none of it. The doctors said that if she didn’t wear it, she could be permanently paralyzed. This was obviously not the entertainment portion of the show. That came when she would doze off, reacting to the morphine they had given her for the pain. That’s when her daughter and her daughter’s best friend would start to chat and it always seemed to be about booze. Every conversation involved who could hold what liquor, how to mix drinks that wouldn’t give them a headache, how many bottles of wine it would take before they became totally useless and, in one particularly enjoyable segment, how a guy had given one of them a gift of a wooden box with 2 bottles of Sutter’s Home Wine, which she perceived as the ultimate insult. She was worth a more expensive wine than that. During my most recent visit, I had a roommate who had broken his hip while stepping off a cruise ship. He was 72, his name was Bob and he had Alzheimers so, every three or 4 minutes, he would be buzzing the nurse to get help peeing, pooping, standing up, lying down, turning on the TV, changing the channel, turning off the light......you name it, Bob was asking for it. He kept saying, “I can't.” He said that a lot. He seemed pretty depressed so I loaned him my i-pad, on which I recorded a number of old movies. He watched “Topper Returns” and seemed to enjoy it. When he gave my my i-pad back, I realized that he had watched about 23 minutes of the film. Bob was gay and his husband made it a point to stay away as much as possible. It seemed to be his only respite from the incessant demands and having to cater to Bob's every whim. I, finally, while struggling to be understanding, had had enough and as I heard him trying to get out of bed right after hip surgery, I yelled, “DUDE, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” To which he yelled back, in a moment of lucidity, “WHO DO YOU THNK YOU'RE TALKING TO?” I explained that I was concerned and I didn't want to see him hurt himself and I told him a story: When I was about 5 years old, my parents took us to the annual 4th of July Parade that wound down Main Street in my hometown, Manchester, Ct. My mom looked down and I was gone. They couldn't find me and had begun to panic. That's when they saw me marching along the parade route playing a drum with one of the marching bands. When my parents addressed the fact that I didn't play the drums, I responded that, “Nobody told me I couldn't.” That was the day I removed the words “I can't” from my vocabulary, Earlier, Bob and I were chatting about our respective lives and he told me that he was impressed with many of the things I had done and told me that he thought it took a lot of talent. I reminded him of the earlier conversation and told him that it much less to do with talent and everything to do with the fact that nobody ever told me that I couldn't. I told him to get the words. “I can't” out of his head and off his lips. He listened and seemed to perk up at the suggestion. He said that was some of the best advice he's heard in quite a while and he was grateful. Then, within about 40 seconds, he was buzzing the nurse's station and telling them, “I can't change the channel,”as he was pushing all the buttons on his phone, thinking it was his remote. Bob will be fine but a little concerned for the mental well being of his partner, Richard. He was pretty frazzled. I still get my kick from doing drugs......all of which have now been prescribed because of the maladies caused by earlier experimentation. Metformin, Amlodipine, Lisinopril, Eliquis......I could go on but my keyboard is getting writers cramp. I'm sure there's a pill. Bottom line – new kicks caused by old kicks – and yet, those “kicks just keep getting harder to find.”