Londonderry News

Joe is taking a hiatus from writing new stories for a bit, so we are offering reprints of his Tuesday morning columns. Please enjoy this one, from September 3, 2013.

It’s probably an American ritual. A rite of passage that we pass along to our children. The hallowed event at a fancy restaurant, when the whole family gathers. We eat forever and drink a little wine. And reminisce and enjoy one another’s company.

Until the bill comes – this one for $265.00. Then all bets are off. The gloves are dropped and the calculators come out.

“Who had the veal parmigiana?” offers Uncle Ted, the accountant. The posturing begins.

“Which one, the special or the regular one?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, yeah. The special was $2.00 more. Didn’t you have that one, Freddy?”

“I don’t know. Jean ordered for me. I was in the Men’s Room.”

“Who had the clam chowder? There are six of them on the bill.” Everyone looks at one another. No one remembers.

“I think I had a salad,” offers sister Pat. “But it came with my meal. I think.”

“Well, I figured ours out already. Jim and I owe $14.”

“Didn’t you guys have the Prime Rib?” questions Aunt Mary. “And four drinks?”

“Did you figure in the tip? And that 9% meals tax?”

“Well, we’re not paying for something we didn’t eat.”

“What about your kids? The four of them ate off the regular menu. Our kids just had the hot dogs.”

Tempers begin to heat up, almost as quickly as his calculator keypad, as Uncle Ted tries feverishly to make some sense of this mess. Precious minutes tick away. Grandma’s flatulence is easily detected in the quiet that envelops the room.

“Let’s just each chip in the same amount,’ offers Cousin Tony. “Then it’s a square deal.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” bellows Uncle Ross from the other end of the table. “That wife of yours ate enough for four.” That stops Tony’s wife dead in her tracks. She licks the rest of the whipped cream off Grandma’s spoon and begins to bristle. It’s getting personal now. The quiet turns into the confusion of eighteen voices talking over one another.

“Calm down everyone,” yells Grandpa, face reddening brightly. The last time he looked like that, he had a stroke, thinks Grandma to herself. She reels off a silent prayer. “We’ve gotta get through this,” he says. “So everyone shut up. Gimme the bill,” he says to Uncle Ted, who mops his brow and slouches back in his chair, relieved to have the pressure taken off him.

“I’m sending this around the table,” Grandpa instructs them. “Put your name next to everything your family ate. Don’t cheat or I’ll take you out of my will.”

And the orderly progression of the bill begins, passed from one chair to the next. Down the left side of the table, up the right side. Neat little names printed next to each meal. Except for Uncle Gustave, who can’t write. But everyone knows the ‘X’ next to the meatloaf is his.

Five minutes later, the bill returns to Grandpa. “Thank you,” he says sternly. “Now, Ted, add up what each of us owes. And tack on the tax and a 20% tip.”

A few peeps are emitted at the mention of the tip rate. Shirley elbows her husband. “The will,” she whispers. “Remember the will.”

Uncle Ted puts his CPA degree to good use. He comes up with the figures in less than five minutes. The deed is done. The figures announced. The money silently emerges from wallets and purses and is placed on top of the bill. Everyone, of course brought twenty dollar bills, but no one dares to ask for change. The waitress really makes out on this deal. She earned every penny of it, with this bunch.

“Now go home,” says Grandpa, as he helps Grandma out of her chair, nose wrinkling slightly from the remnants of her flatulence. “And thanks for the birthday dinner.”

Perhaps some family rituals should be revised.

Visit Londonderry Hometown Online News every Tuesday Morning for another one of Joe’s great columns! Holiday Time he gets moved to Wednesday.

Joe’s Two Cents – It’s Great To Be Alive is Joe Paradis’ first published book and gathers 40 of his most popular stories, enhancing them with humorous photography. The book is a compilation of forty of Joe’s best short stories.

Injecting humor into topics from everyday life, Joe answers those earth-shattering questions we all have about the beach, the bathroom, the junk drawer. From guys’ tools to girl talk. High school seniors to the senior years.

This classic collection has been updated to include pictures and a short introduction for each story. Until now, only God knew what possessed Joe to write about these things. Now you can too!

Joe Paradis is one of Londonderry’s most popular columnists and authors. Visit his web site at www.joes2cents.com today and order his latest autographed book, “It’s Great to Be Alive!”

Joe is taking a hiatus from writing new stories for a bit, so we are offering reprints of his Tuesday morning columns. Please enjoy this one, from August 6, 2013.

“So, Chris, why don’t you take them on a tour of the town? I think Joanne would like that!” No mention of me… And with that introduction, we were off to peruse the quaint town of Sandwich on Cape Cod, which my mind told me was going to include a bit of “leisurely walking”, primarily from gift shop to gift shop. I was feeling tired already.

But first our ‘tour’ encompassed the natural sites – the beaches, the Cape Cod Canal, the Coast Guard Station, and a beautiful historic section of town. Then came the walking tour among the gift shops along Main Street USA. We went to the first one, only to discover that it didn’t open until noon. That schedule proved the same for all of them – and there were quite a few. I silently said a prayer of thanks. Until I realized that it was 11:30. I’m sure the girls would want to wait this one out for that half hour. I wasn’t wrong.

Now I love gift shops as much as the next guy. Which is to say that I’m perfectly happy to sit on a bench in front of the shop and watch the world go by, as the womenfolk slowly investigate every little item on the shelves inside. And I’m fine with that. This time, my brother-in-law and I sat outside on a beautiful Sunday morning, discussing our timeshares and the confusing aspects of the Points Program. We then moved on to cars and had a challenging conversation with two five-year olds, whose mothers felt it best that they too remain outside (with their dads, of course), while the ladies entered this particular gift shop. Their dads pretty much ignored us, as they leaned against their car, looking a bit steamed. And there we were, two young kids and two old kids, sitting on a bench, watching the world go by. Except they had lollipops and we didn’t.

And before you knew it, we were off to the next gifts shop. And the next. And yet another. The last one intrigued me. Standing in this huge store front window was a carved foot-high figure of Uncle Sam, gazing upward with his arms raised. For some reason, the shopkeeper had draped a string of Christmas lights across his upraised arms. To his left and hanging from the ceiling, was a replica of one of those carved female figureheads that you often see hanging off the bow of old wooden ships. Many of these carvings depict a woman who is usually, well… well-endowed. This replica was no exception.

So in the midst of the onset of boredom that usually attacks me after the third or fourth gift shop, I had a thought. I went inside this shop and very stealthily turned Uncle Sam to the left so that he and his upraised arms were gazing up into the bosom of the well-endowed figurehead. This is what guys do when they’re bored… I’ll bet the next guy with money to burn, who looks in that window, will buy both of those carvings – maybe the string of lights too – and place them in his front living room window.

Luckily, this trip to the gift shops proved not to be detrimental. A few pieces of jewelry. A couple of bucks spent. Everyone’s pride intact. A win-win for my wife, the shop, and me.

“Our” shopping hasn’t always been that frugal. In the past, we’ve have had a lot of purchases come out of these shopping jaunts, much – but certainly not all of it – feeding our annual yard sales. And I’ve met a lot of nice people as I’ve waited outside. One time, I even made friends with someone’s dog – a pat on her head gave me a friend for life last month, as my wife shopped for bras at the Maidenform Store in North Conway. Lots of guys were waiting on the benches outside of that store, probably, like me, too embarrassed to enter a shop that sells only bras – although half of them were looking through the windows. Maybe they have a changing room…

And that’s the life of a guy on the shopping circuit who has no problem waiting outside, while the wife checks out nearly every item in a store. Just give me a bench. And maybe a lollipop…

Visit Londonderry Hometown Online News every Tuesday Morning for another one of Joe’s great columns! Holiday Time he gets moved to Wednesday.

Joe’s Two Cents – It’s Great To Be Alive is Joe Paradis’ first published book and gathers 40 of his most popular stories, enhancing them with humorous photography. The book is a compilation of forty of Joe’s best short stories.

Injecting humor into topics from everyday life, Joe answers those earth-shattering questions we all have about the beach, the bathroom, the junk drawer. From guys’ tools to girl talk. High school seniors to the senior years.

This classic collection has been updated to include pictures and a short introduction for each story. Until now, only God knew what possessed Joe to write about these things. Now you can too!

Joe Paradis is one of Londonderry’s most popular columnists and authors. Visit his web site at www.joes2cents.com today and order his latest autographed book, “It’s Great to Be Alive!”

Joe is taking a hiatus from writing new stories for a bit, so we are offering reprints of his Tuesday morning columns. Please enjoy this one, from July 23, 2013.

A drive out to the beach is a summer ritual for my wife and me. We try to make it every weekend, packing our chairs, blanket, towels, and lunch into the trunk of our trusty little 1999 Miata and zipping out to Hampton Beach in the early morning. Just to get away from civilization for a little while and enjoy some peace and quiet by the seashore.

Fat chance last weekend… Not only was it prime vacation time, but the recent heat wave seemed to have propelled everyone to the beach. We were surprised how many people were there at 9:00 on a Sunday morning, since the heat wave had finally passed and it was only 76 degrees. Usually, it’s just us, a few seagulls, and some other older folks who realize that if you plan, you can beat the Saturday night party crowd and the families with five kids to the sand before they’ve even stirred from their beds – or whatever floor they crashed on at 3:00 a.m. that morning. Most of them generally limp to the beach around 11:00 a.m.

But not last weekend… We were able to find a parking space, albeit a few lots down the road from our usual location. And there was plenty of room for the blanket. But the sand around us filled in rapidly, so we slathered on our SP-30 Anti-Aging Sunblock (I don’t think that aging part works for me…) and lied down on our blanket. Gotta get those rays before the sea of umbrellas blocks the sky.

Now here’s what happens when I lie on my back on the sand. My spine begins to stiffen after 10 minutes – lying on hard sand is like lying on a cement slab. So it’s difficult to relax. To get through that discomfort, I tune my ears to every conversation around me. I could clearly hear the bikini- and Speedo-clad French Canadian family of eighteen not too far away, with their brood of ten kids, all less than 3 years old. Oh, I couldn’t understand them…but who really wants to. The sound of the kids, who apparently coordinated it so that at least two of them were whining at any given time, was plenty proof for me that they hadn’t taken even one stroll down to the bathhouse.

In the other ear, I caught a conversation between two 20-something young ladies, who felt it necessary to drop the “f-bomb” every few sentences. I think the French Canadians even picked up on that one – they just prattled on regardless. I hope they weren’t representative of the next generation.

I caught a very serious conversation between two seven-year olds involved a discussion on sand castle strategy. Whether they should build up on the dry sand and truck water in, or whether it was best to use the wet sand down by the high tide line. It was deemed silly by the boy to make sand balls as the young girl was suggesting. “We’re making a sand castle, not a snowman,” he reminded her…and me. Then they headed for the high tide mark.

Another kid came running up from the shore, exclaiming – apparently to anyone listening – that the water was “just awful” and that he couldn’t feel his feet. He headed back down to the water five minutes later…

From behind us I caught the distinctive accent of a Revere girl. The Revere accent is so unique that even others from the Boston area can detect it – especially in women. I later confirmed by asking her if she was from Revere. She looked at me surprised and asked, “How did you know?” Duh…everyone knows!

The guy on the blanket to our right didn’t say anything, but I happened to catch him out of the corner of my eye as he lied flat on his back and then arched his back up, actually turning himself into a table. A hairy one to be sure, but he had the form. I was almost tempted to lay our lunch out on him…but then he collapsed the table and went into the lotus position. Just another human pretzel looking to “pick up chicks”, we surmised. He looked a lot like Saddam Hussein. No one dropped by.

There was the poor guy who keep yelling “Aaargggg” every ten minutes. He had a disability of some sort, but it may have been the French Canadians who bothered him – those Speedo bathing suits, so many of them…who knows.

My last sound of the sea, before the spine finally gave in, was the seagull who landed a few blankets down, where a potato chip had slipped from Miss Revere’s hand and hit the sand. Once this advance scout made the confirmation, the rest of the flock zipped in, devouring every morsel left unattended on every blanket, populated or not.

I’d had enough of the sounds around me by then. I rolled over on my side and crawled to my beach chair where I decided to switch to a little people-watching behind my dark sunglasses. First thing that caught my eye was a fairly large butt cracked, gaping above the waistband of a loud swimsuit that belonged to a guy who easily weighed 350 lbs. That “tipped the scales” for me…

“How about an ice cream?” I quickly asked my wife. Thank God, she accepted. I’d had enough of the sights and sounds of the beach for one day.

Visit Londonderry Hometown Online News every Tuesday Morning for another one of Joe’s great columns! Holiday Time he gets moved to Wednesday.

Joe’s Two Cents – It’s Great To Be Alive is Joe Paradis’ first published book and gathers 40 of his most popular stories, enhancing them with humorous photography. The book is a compilation of forty of Joe’s best short stories.

Injecting humor into topics from everyday life, Joe answers those earth-shattering questions we all have about the beach, the bathroom, the junk drawer. From guys’ tools to girl talk. High school seniors to the senior years.

This classic collection has been updated to include pictures and a short introduction for each story. Until now, only God knew what possessed Joe to write about these things. Now you can too!

Joe Paradis is one of Londonderry’s most popular columnists and authors. Visit his web site at www.joes2cents.com today and order his latest autographed book, “It’s Great to Be Alive!”

Joe is taking a hiatus from writing new stories for a bit, so we are offering reprints of his Tuesday morning columns. Please enjoy this one, from July 9, 2013.

I guess I just don’t get all the hoopla about the “Royal Baby”… I mean I’m as ecstatic about the coming of Kate and William’s first child as I am about anyone else’s first child. Which from me sounds something like this: “Oh, their having a baby – that’s nice.” Then I move on to the ballgame. Or washing my car.

I mean, kids are born every day. It’s a truly beautiful experience – one of those joys God provides us all. And that’s just my point. Everyone has kids, not just the “Royal Couple.” Why is it that paparazzi need to follow them around every day, snapping pictures of Kate’s waistline to gauge how close she is to dropping the package, and placing bets on the delivery date, the gender, and the name of the child? It’s all a bit too much.

Now I know this Royal Line of Succession is an important thing for the British. After all, the world really needs to know who will be presiding over the next state dinner for some unknown politician in Botswana. Or who will ride in the next national parade, or knight the latest rock star or actor. These are weighty issues for the Royal Lineage, most of whom have nothing productive to do with their days, if we want to be truthful about it. At least William and Harry have military professions to fall back on, which is fortunate for William, since he may wait a long, long time before assuming the throne that his grandmother just doesn’t want to let go of…

Tonight’s nightly news brought more pictures of Kate’s waistline – and Diana Sawyer really needs to put a sock in it. She gushes way too much about this kid. There was also speculation about the child’s name – the public is betting on George for a boy and Alexandra for a girl. I vote for Dweezle or Moon Unit – Frank Zappa knew how to make headlines when he named his kids. There was additional speculation last week about which 40 rooms in the Royal Couple’s castle would be set aside for the child’s nursery. And for some ungodly reason, the Royal Engineers were also blowing out one end of the castle to accommodate that expansion. Thank God for the Royal Treasury…

Now I understand that the Royal Family provides an endless source of entertainment for the British public. Every president we have provides us the same too, I suppose. But the difference is that even Time magazine wouldn’t dedicate four pages to Obama’s ties or his wife’s hairdos. They’d stick to more substantive issues like the state of the economy or forcing people to eat less to reduce obesity. Meanwhile, the British press is dwelling on the Royal Embryo’s shoe size.

So to sum it all up, I’d say that Kate needs to get this all over with for the sake of the Kingdom, give the press a nice picture of the kid, and, I suppose, hibernate for a while so she can raise her child as normally as possible. After all, the last thing we need is the Royal Couple parading their child around with a bag or mask over his/her head a la Michael Jackson. Look how wonderfully that worked out.

In the meantime, my neighbor’s dog just had a litter of five pups. None of them has a name yet, no one speculated on their gender, and who knows where they’ll be living in six months. But they’re cute and lively and healthy – and no paparazzi came around to investigate any of that. Sometimes it ain’t bad to be less than Royalty.

I just don’t get it…

Visit Londonderry Hometown Online News every Tuesday Morning for another one of Joe’s great columns! Holiday Time he gets moved to Wednesday.

Joe’s Two Cents – It’s Great To Be Alive is Joe Paradis’ first published book and gathers 40 of his most popular stories, enhancing them with humorous photography. The book is a compilation of forty of Joe’s best short stories.

Injecting humor into topics from everyday life, Joe answers those earth-shattering questions we all have about the beach, the bathroom, the junk drawer. From guys’ tools to girl talk. High school seniors to the senior years.

This classic collection has been updated to include pictures and a short introduction for each story. Until now, only God knew what possessed Joe to write about these things. Now you can too!

Joe Paradis is one of Londonderry’s most popular columnists and authors. Visit his web site at www.joes2cents.com today and order his latest autographed book, “It’s Great to Be Alive!”

Joe is taking a hiatus from writing new stories for a bit, so we are offering reprints of his Tuesday morning columns. Please enjoy this one, from June 25, 2013.

I think I was about eight years old. That’s when I said to my Dad, as he was about to give me my nightly off-you-go-to-bed kiss on the cheek, “Dad, I think, from now on, we need to shake hands like guys before I go to bed. Kissing is for little kids.”

He gave me one of those fatherly smirks that we all give our kids when they surprise us with a new revelation. “Okay, son…let’s shake on it.” And we did. That was my first introduction to the gentlemanly art of sealing a deal with a handshake. We never kissed each other again until he turned 80. That’s when my inner French came back, I guess…

Throughout my life, it’s just become a natural thing for me. You meet someone; you shake his or her hand. With guys, it’s a solid shake – although sometimes you get caught unaware. Your hand might not lock completely into the other guy’s hand, so he gets in a good handshake, but only to your fingers. And you come away looking like a wimp. Other times, you end up shaking hands with a guy that has a really firm handshake and doesn’t want to give up the pressure until you do. Those could go on forever. I just give in and let up first. No pride there. It’s a handshake, after all – not arm wrestling.

With women, of course, I shake hands more warmly, if that can be. But truthfully, I’d rather hug, if I know the woman even a little bit. Handshakes between men and women just seen stilted. It’s okay, I suppose, between Angela Merkel, the Prime Minister of Germany, and probably almost anyone. And it’s certainly proper in a business setting. But my preference is the hug. I’ve hugged Senator Kelly Ayotte and even the former Administrator of TSA, two powerful women who go with the flow in these situations, because I know them. But even then, I detected scowls from people around us, usually their staff members, who were probably professional stick-in-the-mud handshakers… Formality, no doubt, has its place in their circles. Not so much in mine, particularly as I close in on my 60th year on this planet.

Last week, I was in the drive-thru line at Dunkin’ Donuts and a young kid, who has regularly been at the window, gave me a handshake – as if he hadn’t seen me forever, except that we crossed paths the previous morning too. He started to go from just the standard shake to one of those more elaborate multi-faceted handshakes that kids always seem to know. But I resisted – primarily because I don’t know how to do that.

Next time I went through though, I was prepared. I launched into what we, as kids, called ‘the black guy’s handshake’ – a regular handshake that turns into the clasping of hands as if you were about to arm wrestle, and then slides off the fingers and ends with a top-over-bottom fist bump. Pretty cool stuff that first impressed me when I saw it on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, way back when God was a child. My Dunkin’ Donuts buddy learned something new that morning, and we do it all the time now.

I am a fan of the arm wrestling handshake too. We use that a lot among veterans and it usually concludes with a bear hug and a few solid pats on the back, as we maintain the handshake. It’s a comradely thing, first made popular among Vietnam vets. But it seems to have extended down to more recent generations of those who’ve served too. My son and I use that one all the time. Now vets certainly don’t have a lock on this. You’ll see it a lot among bikers, at wakes, and between guys who haven’t seen each other for a while. But it is a guy thing. Ladies generally stay with the hug.

I’m proud that the Catholic Church is a big fan of handshakes. Every Sunday we give each other the “Sign of Peace”, which is a warm handshake for most, but a big hug for many. Except during severe flu seasons when we’re advised to use less contact. Lots of peace signs are flashed instead during those winter warnings. But those with True Faith continue the handshake tradition anyhow – and I’ve not heard of any casualties. Someone’s looking down on us!

Now I realize that, like anything else, the handshake will evolve, even if slightly, over time. I’ve gotten pretty good at the fist bump over the last five years, primarily because I work with so many younger folks, who’ve probably experienced few handshakes. A good fist bump makes me feel really cool – like I’m in on something no one else knows. My Dad wouldn’t know what to do with it. Neither would my brother. It’s just too revolutionary, sort of like the high five was twenty years ago.

Of course, some cultures haven’t let these new ways destroy their affectionate embraces. I still find myself doing that double-cheeked European air kiss with some of my Italian in-laws. It’s a handshake adaptation I haven’t totally adapted to, especially with other guys. But, when in Rome…

Yet, all in all, I guess I’m still just an old-fashioned handshaker-of-men and hugger-of-women. It’s certainly better than being a recluse. Or one of those fanatics who have to bathe with hand sanitizer every time they touch someone. And I’ll probably always be that way. So let’s shake on it, buddy. Or hug, if you’d prefer, ma’am.

Visit Londonderry Hometown Online News every Tuesday Morning for another one of Joe’s great columns! Holiday Time he gets moved to Wednesday.

Joe’s Two Cents – It’s Great To Be Alive is Joe Paradis’ first published book and gathers 40 of his most popular stories, enhancing them with humorous photography. The book is a compilation of forty of Joe’s best short stories.

Injecting humor into topics from everyday life, Joe answers those earth-shattering questions we all have about the beach, the bathroom, the junk drawer. From guys’ tools to girl talk. High school seniors to the senior years.

This classic collection has been updated to include pictures and a short introduction for each story. Until now, only God knew what possessed Joe to write about these things. Now you can too!

Joe Paradis is one of Londonderry’s most popular columnists and authors. Visit his web site at www.joes2cents.com today and order his latest autographed book, “It’s Great to Be Alive!”