Month: May 2011

As it happens sometimes in my family, we have a very busy summer ahead without even really trying. A couple of graduations, a wedding, the annual beach trip. It all adds up pretty quickly.

Which means we have to find time when we can for other activities. We combined the two things a couple of weeks ago as Maria took advantage of a trip to my nephew’s graduation party to take me shopping so she could utilize my greatest skill as a husband: calculating the price of sale items.

I don’t think I exaggerate when I call this talent vital to my success as a spouse. I can’t really fix things too often. I have been banned from helping with painting projects. My cooking talents are largely relegated to grilling.

I don’t blame my wife. She just does a better job at all these things. I wish we had enough money to let other people take care of all these things for us, but life doesn’t work that way so she ends up carrying more of the burden.

These means I have to look to contribute in other ways. I drive both ways to almost all family events so she can relax for the ride. I find a way to take Bridget somewhere fun when Maria needs to just sit back and relax in peace and quiet. And I easily calculate the 30 percent discount for a blouse she might want when she finds a good sale.

Twenty-five years ago, I wanted to move on more than anything. I had just a few weeks before I graduated high school and looked forward to the next challenge in life.

I can’t say that I had a horrible time in high school. I took part in a number of activities, did well enough in the classroom and have lots of fond memories. But I never really created a solid core of friends.

Most of the time, I hung out on the fringes. I could blame the distance between my home and the school – I commuted from one side of Baltimore to the other – but grade school classmates of mine had no problem finding their place in the social scene.

By the time I got over my fear of getting in trouble, the time had pretty much come to leave for college. So I just had what fun I could, then went off to the wilds of western Pennsylvania to start over.

I’m getting a little nostalgic about all of this because I went to my 25-year high school reunion the other week. Actually, I passed on the formal reunion event for a number of reasons and attended the more casual Happy Hour event with 25 or so guys.

I remember coming home one day as a teenager to a deafening roar inside the house. Puzzled, I walked into the kitchen to find my mother, basically nonplussed by the noise. I looked at her quizzically.

“Your father has a new toy,” she said.

For some reason, Dad decided we needed surround sound for our television. Mind you, this was the mid-1980s so the technology was fairly primitive. Dad didn’t care and felt he needed to turn the sound all the way up to make the proper adjustments to the system.

Part of me found his ideas pretty kooky, but I have learned over the past 30 years or so that he had the exact right idea when it came to gadgets. You can never have enough of them.

Even with this mindset, I have resisted the siren song of one particularly fun item – a fancy cell phone. Well, that is until a few weeks ago.

I finally upgraded from my pre-paid, no-frills phone to a low-cost monthly plan which includes a touch-screen phone. I didn’t go for the full-on smartphone, but I have enough fun things to play with now.

That’s the problem.