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Teeth of the Sea

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I was in my gym Saturday morning when I saw the chyron running across one of the TV screens. The words “Woman injured in apparent shark attack” floated over my head, and immediately I heard John Williams’ famous movie theme playing in my head. “Here we go again,” I thought. Of course, I had recently seen Jaws , Steven Spielberg’s epic shark attack movie for the first time in 50 years, so that might explain my frame of mind. Yes, let’s pause for a minute and acknowledge the mind-numbing passage of time. Fifty years, a half-century, since the film credited with creating the summer blockbuster came bursting into movie theaters. I was 18 freaking years when I first saw this water-logged monster movie, back when Gerald Ford was president, eggs were going for 61 cents a dozen, a gallon of gas cost 57 cents and the median home price was $39,300. Jesus, I gotta lay down… My sister and I had gone to see a VHS screening of Jaws at Hi-fi Provisions, a funky record store located...
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Back to Schoolin’

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Sometime back in the Seventies, I had a whole lotta love that suddenly turned into a mountain of heartache. I was a student at Hunter College, and I had a serious crush on a woman that I had met through an after-school job. We’ll call her Kate. I was always hoping Kate and I could move beyond friends and start dating, but I felt awkward, and I was worried I’d lose her friendship if I tried to take things further. So, I did nothing, except sit back and hope that my dreams would magically come true all on their own, something I still do far too often. Kate had recently returned to Brooklyn from Los Angeles where she had been visiting her sister. We got together shortly after she got back, and I immediately sensed something was going on. “I’m in a bummed-out mood,” she said, using a popular expression of the day. After a little more prodding she told me that she was moving to L.A.—and now I was in a bummed-out mood. I finally blurted out my feelings for her, and, what a surp...
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Blessed Event

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One night back in the 1980s, I came home to find my brother Peter and his wife had stopped by our house for a visit. They were sitting in the living room with my parents and when I walked in, my brother loudly called out, “hey, it’s Uncle Wimp!” Peter and I had a long history of relentless ball-busting, so I shrugged off his latest sophomoric insult and tried to move along. But he wasn’t letting it go. “Hey, Uncle Wimp,” he said. I was about to tell to shut his trap when I realized that the key word in his two-word insult was “Uncle”—meaning my sister-in-law was pregnant, and that I was indeed going to be an uncle. Well, I forgot all about the “wimp” business and gave my sister-in-law a hug, I was just so damn happy. The time flew by and the next thing I remember I was sitting at my desk at the Bay Ridge Home Reporter when my phone rang. “Robert,” my mother said urgently. “You’re an uncle!” “Boy or girl?” I shouted. “Girl!” “All right!” I hung up the phone, ran r...
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Freeze Out

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"What stands in the way becomes the way.”--Marcus Aurelius There, I said it again. The words popped into my head on Sunday, and I immediately asked myself, “hey, isn’t that the name of a song?” Yes, in fact, it’s a 1941 tune written and published by Redd Evans and David Mann. Vaughn Monroe and his Orchestra recorded a version in 1945 that reached No. 1 on Billboard's chart of “Records Most-Played on the Air”. Bobby Vinton’s version, the one I know and don’t particularly care for, spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard Chart in 1964, before being ousted by The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” But I wasn’t thinking of the song when the phrase came to me. I was thinking about how many times I’ve said some version of “I wish Peter were here” since my brother left this world three weeks ago. I said it on Saturday when I was helping my auntie defrost her refrigerator, a job we’ve both been putting off for weeks. It’s an older model and probably should be s...
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17 Seconds

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I wonder what I was doing on December 23, 2023. It was two days from Christmas, so I probably cranking out those last few holiday cards and looking forward to dinner with my family. It was a Saturday and the most popular song in the U.S. at that time was Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”—I still like that song, damn it--while “Last Christmas” by Wham!—which I wrote about in my blog the following day- was top dog in the U.K. In the post entitled " Moments of Wonder " I talked about how I had regained my Christmas spirit, after my listless response to the most wonderful time of the year 12 months earlier. The reason I’m so fixated on 12/23/22 is because that’s the date of the only voice mail message from my brother Peter, who’s been gone for about two weeks now. It’s just 17 seconds long and rather mundane, to be honest. “ Hey dude what's going on? ” he says, sounding a little disoriented. “ Got confused for a second…I just called to say Me...
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Breathing Underwater

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“You may leave this life at any moment: have this possibility in your mind in all that you do or say or think.” — Marcus Aurelius One night, many years ago, when I young and foolish, I got seriously drunk and became violently ill. As I hovered unsteadily over the toilet puking my guts out, my brother, Peter, stood right behind me and coached me through this intestinal nightmare. “Breathe through your nose,” he said quietly. “Breathe through your nose.” It was good advice, and I find myself employing it now, eight days after Peter’s death, when the grief becomes too much for me to handle. I turned 68 years old on Saturday, and I had gotten used to getting his phone call each year wishing me a happy birthday. Such a strange time, when I get both a birthday card and a sympathy card in the same day’s mail from my Aunt Sara, who became a widow in January when my Uncle Joe died. Talking about Peter is the past tense is eerie. I pray each morning that my parents will rest in...
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Hey, Dude

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“A brother is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit.” -- Unknown I keep waiting for my brother to call me for one our nearly daily chats, but the phone isn’t ringing. Peter, two years my senior, would call from his job or on his evening commute, or on his way to Tai Chi class. He’d always start off with his greeting: “Hey, dude, how’s it going?” and then we’d talk about movies, TV shows and politics—especially politics. I hadn’t spoken to him in a few days and so I fully expected to hear from him on Saturday morning. When the phone did ring, it was his daughter, my niece, Kristin, calling to tell me that my brother had died. He was about a month away from his 70th birthday. The details are slim. He had been complaining about his blood pressure earlier in the week, but it seemed to be getting better. Then on Saturday morning my sister-in-law found him in bed unresponsive and called an ambulance, but there was nothing they could do. I still can’t believe he’s gone, ...
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