Learning From Lucy

I am not making this up: Dave Barry has a new book out.

That's not news. Dave Barry is always releasing a book.  For a while, it seemed like he had a new book every six months. Dave Barry Slept Here. Dave Barry Talks Back. Dave Barry Does Japan. Dave Barry's Complete Guide To Guys. Dave Barry Forgets His Wallet, Dave Barry Does The Dishes, Dave Barry Explains His Haircut.

Okay, the last three titles I made up, but the point is Dave Barry has written a lot of Dave Barry books and Dave Barry sells a lot of books because Dave Barry is one of the funniest people on this planet.


Dave Barry's book is called Lessons From Lucy: The Simple Joys Of An Old Happy Dog.

The premise is this: Dave Barry is 70 years old (actually, he's 71). His dog, Lucy, is 10 years old, which means Lucy is the same age as Dave. (Note: for this to work, you have to accept the 1 dog year equals 7 human years theory. Therefore, a 10-year-old dog would be 70 years old because  10 x 7 = 70. I went to Cobb County Public Schools.  However, a quick check on something called "the internet" shows that it is not that simple. The breed and size of the dog are now used to determine the age equivalency of the dog. For example, a 10-year-old small dog would be 56 in "people" years. What's interesting Lucy is a fairly large dog and would be 66 under the new Dog Age math.


Dave Barry learns 7 lessons from Lucy.

1. Make New Friends (And Keep The Ones You Have)

2. Don't Stop Having Fun (And If You Have Stopped, Start Having Fun Again).

3. Pay Attention To The People You Love (Not Later, Right Now).

4  Let Go Of Your Anger, Unless It's About Something Really Important Which It Almost Never Is.

5. Try Not To Judge People By Their Looks And Don't Obsess Over Your Own.

6. Don't Let Your Happiness Depend On Things. They Don't Make You Truly Happy and You'll Never Have Enough Anyway.

7. Don't Lie Unless You Have a Really Good Reason Which You Probably Don't. 

Each of these lessons is presented with Dave Barry's explanation of how Lucy taught him the lesson.  Of course, each lesson is laugh out loud funny.  Nobody can write about a dog like Dave Barry.  In the next to last chapter, Dave Barry gives himself a grade and he's pretty tough on himself. Here are mine.

1. I give myself a B+ if you count people I meet using social media.  I've made several friends on Facebook with people I've never met in my life.  In person, I give myself a C-.  I'm not rude, but I have to "warm up" to new people. Plus, and this is a fact, some people are jerks.

2. B. It depends what you mean by having fun.  If you mean staying up all night, nope, I'm not having fun.  But if it means watching a good TV show, like Bosch, then I'm having fun.

3. A-  I work remotely at my house 5 days a week and my wife works 2-3 days a week at home It's like that line from the John Prine song  "If I get lost I can always find her standing right beside me in the rain."  I think I  pay attention to the people I love and as soon as I remember my wife's birthday, I'm going to buy her a present.


4. A-  I'm slow to anger mainly because my anger doesn't work because I either get red-faced (due to my hypertension) or I act like a rabid chihuahua. I've never heard the statement: "Don't tell Alan, it might make him mad".  Now, I get irritated and ticked off. But not angry.


5. C-  I judge people by the way they look.  For example, if a guy has multiple face tattoos, gages, and a nose ring, I tend to believe he's not a neurologist. I also judge people, if they are from Cobb County like me, where they went to high school. I held a prejudice against one of my son's football coaches because he went to Sprayberry High School, which was Red Neck Central when I was in high school.  I might have some work to do.

6.  B+  For a center-right Republican voting almost old man, I'm not very materialistic.  I just traded up my TV set from a tube set I bought in 2002 to a snazzy smart flat screen tv. That's how I know Bosch (a show recommended to me by a Facebook friend I've never met) is such a good show. But, and this is the truth, I generally don't care what other people have.

7  B-   I generally do not lie and I don't go around telling what I know to be untrue.  But, I always don't say what I think.  My family tree has a lot of people proud of the fact "they said what was on their mind".  I've found, during my not as long of a life as Dave Barry, people really don't care what is on my mind because they are too busy telling me what's on their mind.

In Lessons From Lucy,  Dave Barry has written another great Dave Barry book and you should buy it.  I am not making this up.

My Advice To Newlyweds

We went to what will probably be our last wedding for a while.

You know how it is. When you are young, it seems like you are going to a wedding every other weekend.

There was one Saturday we had two weddings. We had to go to both.  For real.

One, in the afternoon, was when my sister-in-law married my other brother-in-law named Bill. My wife was the Matron of Honor.

The other, which was in the evening, was a couple who broke their necks (figuratively) coming to ours.

Oh yeah, it was on my 27th birthday.

I doubt I could do two weddings on the same day anymore.  I'm not sure I could do two weddings in the same year.

For the past couple of years, we've been going to our friend's children's weddings.  The one yesterday was the youngest child of a friend of ours.  We went to his brother's and sister's weddings. Most of that young man's friends are friends of ours and we went to their weddings.  I think it is the last of the bunch.

The Groom is a tall, handsome lad. The Bride is a petite, beautiful young lady.

As I watched them exchange vows, I thought of this line from John Prine:

"Love gives, love takes.
 It takes a lot of lucky breaks."

In this case, it was very true. The Bride, just ten years ago, was in a Nicaragua orphanage.  As a teenager, she was adopted by an American couple that just happened to live in Woodstock, Georgia. They happened to be involved in the church. The Bride shares their faith and she just happened to meet The Groom, who happens to share the same faith.

It takes a lot of lucky breaks.

Speaking of lucky breaks, this wedding was a day after our 33rd wedding anniversary.

When I was single, I never thought I'd be married 33 minutes, much less 33 years.

33 years is a long time. It was so long ago (how....long...ago....was....it?), nobody had ever heard of Bill Clinton, much less of Hillary Clinton. It was so long ago, Donald Trump was still married to his first wife.  It was so long ago, American's favorite dad was Bill Cosby.

Things have changed. Back then, you still had pay phones.  Nobody had computers in their homes unless they were super rich or a super nerd.

Now I have friends who married around the same time.  Some of their marriages lasted. Some of theirs didn't.  Some of them have married multiple times, with the same results. I have learned some lessons from all of these marriages, including my own, and I have formulated my Keys to a Long Lasting Marriage.

1. Do not have sex with other people.

2. Do not be a jerk.

3. Try to listen.  The proudest day of my marriage is one time my wife was telling me something as I was attempting to fill my plate in a buffet line.  For those of you that know me, multi-tasking is something  (walking, chewing gum)  I am only marginal at best.  She was pregnant with our son at the time and occasionally was more sensitive than usual. She suddenly accused me of not listening to a word she said.  My response?  I quoted what she just said word for word. The truth?  Boy, I was lucky I was listening to her that time.

4. Have specific duties in the marriage.  For example, my wife handles "the books".  I'm just eye candy.

5.  Remember your spouse is a human, too. They have feelings and you do not have the right to hurt their feelings.

6.  Take your spouse seriously, but do not take yourself seriously.

Teaching Uncle Joe New Tricks

When we last looked at The Democratic Party, there was only, oh, 485 people running for the party's Presidential nomination.

This included California Senator Kamala Harris who proudly exclaimed to Charlamagne Tha God (Remember when politicians proudly exclaimed things to Larry King?) that she smoked marijuana in college while she was listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac. It must have been some powerful weed because neither Snoop Dogg or Tupac had albums out while Harris was in college.

It includes Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth "High Cheek Bones" Warren, who I think we have all concluded is not of Native American ancestry.

It includes former Congressman Robert Frances "Beto" O'Rourke who is basing his candidacy on the fact that he can't beat Ted Cruz.

The candidate getting the most buzz this month is Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg happens to be a Navy veteran and happens to be the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, which happens to be a mid-sized Midwestern town that happens to be the home of Notre Dame University. Until now, being the mayor of South Bend, Indiana would not be enough for a candidate to be taken seriously in the Democratic Primary. However, Buttigieg, who happens to be white, also happens to be gay. I guess that is enough for the Democratic base.

Of course, how could you forget Bernie Sanders?  Bernie is still out there, yelling like he wants you to get off his lawn because, let's face it, Bernie is 300 years old.

The biggest name, that hasn't announced yet, is former Vice President Joe Biden.

Like Sanders, Biden is old. How old do you ask?  When Biden was first elected as a Senator from the great state of Delaware, I was in the eighth grade at East Cobb Junior High School.

Yes, Biden has been around a long time. In fact, he has run for President two times before. Once, in 1988, he was considered a leading contender when it was discovered he gave a speech that was originally given by Neil Kinnock, who was the bass guitarist for The Kinks.

Yikes, Neil Kinnock was a British Labour Leader ( in England they spell "Labor" with a "u" because it makes them look snooty).  Biden really liked the speech.

 "During an event at the Iowa State Fair, Biden mimicked entire portions of Kinnock's speech from earlier in the year. At one moment, Biden repeated the line that he was the first "in a thousand generations" to graduate from college, gesturing to his wife in the exact same way Kinnock did  while also saying the same line about her education and lineage."

Then in classic Joe Biden style: "Biden would later acknowledge that he, in fact, did have relatives who attended college, directly contrasting the Kinnock lines." 

This caused Biden to drop out of the 1988 race, with the Democratic nomination being won by Neil Kinnock Governor Michael Dukakis, who if I remember right, had the charisma of cottage cheese.

All of this goes to show Biden has a problem with running his mouth. He made some odd comments in 2007 when he ran against Barack Obama. When Obama selected Biden to be his running mate, Biden said: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.”   What is great about this comment is that he got two historical facts right. One, the stock market did crash. Two, there was a person named Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Other than that, nothing about the comment is accurate because the crash happened in 1929 and Roosevelt wasn't President. Television was also not around for Roosevelt to get on.

He was our Vice President during the Obama years and basically, he was okay. He said Republicans wanted to put minorities in chains. He also said Obama care was a "big (really bad word) deal". Besides that, Biden was just your Uncle Joe.

However, Uncle Joe had a habit of massaging women's shoulders, giving them hugs, and smelling their hair.  Now all of this was done out in the public at swearing-ins and campaign rallies. But that was back in the wild and crazy age of 2014.

Now, it is 2019 and we are a year and a half into the #MeToo movement. A man can't just go around sticking his nose in a woman's hairdo, doesn't matter whose Vice President he was. Uncle Joe has gotten in trouble with the "conversation police"-the people who always say we ought to have a "conversation" about a topic but what they really want is to lecture and hector.

So, Uncle Joe has released a Twitter video, like the hip kids, stating that he "gets it" and will now allow women their own personal space.

Of course, President Trump responded with his usual grace and charm by retweeting a meme that shows Joe Biden coming up from behind to sniff Joe Biden's hair and giving Joe Biden a shoulder massage during Joe Biden's statement. New York magazine quickly advised its readers that "The leader of the Free World tweeted a doctored video of Joe Biden fondling himself".

For a second I thought it was real, thanks to New York magazine for letting me know the video was "doctored",

This is going to be a fun couple of years.