The Daily Stain

The Silly Season

I refer to the weeks at the end of May and first few weeks of June as the 'The Silly Season". It's akin to pro golf during the months of December and January before the PGA tour season begins. During that time frame there's all sorts of funky golf tournaments going on. There's the Skins tourney, usually some sort of mixed doubles tourney that features the top men and women golfers yucking it up for the camera as they play some golf course in a climate 50 degrees warmer than where I am. It has no bearing on their tour ranking, it's just a bunch of silly tourneys to give these guys a chance to puff up their already bloated bank accounts through obnoxious appearance fees.

Well, my silly season is all about the end of the school year for my kids. Because this is the time where the "last school meeting for this that and the other thing; the spring vocal and band concerts; the field trips where we have to fork over $25 to $30 or more a clip PLUS provide a bag lunch; the playoffs for softball and the after softball season party, the final school project that requires the full square footage of my SUV to haul to and from the school. And for some reason it all seems to take place on a Wednesday night starting at 6:30 p.m. requiring both my wife and I to be in two places at the same time.

But, as quickly as it started, we hear that famous melody played and sung by a true American icon of the Arts, Alice Cooper; "school's out for the summer!!!..." and the Silly Season comes to an end. Thank God because it always makes me grumpy.

So to all parents with school aged children, I wish you a happy end of the silly season and here's to a summer full of ....day camp. I'm beginning to think that I just live in a perpetual Silly Season.

The Daily Stain

Several years ago I use to send an email a day to my friends called "The Daily Stain". The title comes from a long standing joke I have had with my wife starting when we first got married. I worked at a bank where we had to wear suits and ties. I always wore either an all white or all blue pin-point oxford shirt and they were always starched to the gills. I would start the day with a clean shirt, but somehow, somewhere during my work day I managed to get a stain on it. Pens, pencils, tomato sauce, mustard, my own drool, you name it and it would find a way onto my shirt.



At first my wife would get a bit upset if with my daily stains because sometimes they were hard to get out. But after years of my slobish behavior, it just became a joke as I came home with some sort of lunch produced blob smushed down the front of or on the sleeve of my shirt. So, when I came home from work the first comments from my wife typically went like this; "How was your day? Let's see the stain."



So, The Daily Stain is intended for just that...a daily laugh at something. Some times it will be a joke, sometimes it will be something around what's going on in my life, current events etc. Some will be funnier than others, I'm sure but the bottom line is that I enjoy good humor more than anything else.