Trying to Be Funny

I’m tall—76 inches tall to be exact. People love to remind me as if I’m somehow unaware of the last quarter of my life. I meet new people every day, and I’m reminded of every single inch.

Wait, you didn’t play basketball?! Boy, what the hell is wrong with you?

What’s in that water in your town?

How in the world did you fit in that car, door or chair?

OK, so I didn’t play basketball. Sue me. Two things that don’t correlate: lankiness and coordination. I’m that guy who keeps the whole white-men-can’t-jump stereotype alive.

I’m pretty sure it’s just water. Although, I wouldn’t put it behind my mother if she knew a guy who knew a guy that put something in our home water supply. She’s been such an advocate of my slender frame since birth.

Believe it or not, cars, doors, chairs and all other things in life can be altered to fit us tall folk. The only exception is any Honda Civic. I just can't seem to enjoy when my knees and chin are fused into one body part.

* * *

I wasn’t always gargantuan. I was at the same eye level as my peers until about eighth grade.

I tried out for the basketball team three years in a row back then. Spoiler Alert: I never made it. Like I said before, length does not equal success, well, I’m just going to limit that to basketball…

High school hit—coincidently so did acne, which I have yet to forgive—and I grew about seven inches in an 18-month span.

Dances were always fun then, especially the selection process. Ladies five feet and a half or shorter: I’m sorry but you never had a chance with me. I could use you ladies possibly as arm rests, but when it comes to “grinding” on the dance floor—the national teenager dance craze that should have never caught on—during Flo Rida or Jay-Z just isn’t the same when I have to crouch into a catcher’s position for our bodies to meet.

I can dance. Just wanted to put that out there for the rest of my kind. It is possible.

* * *

So, yes, the air is fine up here. The altitude is not too hard on my lungs. I’m surviving.

At least I can reach things rather well.

That fiber-loaded box of cereal on the tippy top shelf at the grocery store you eat every now and then? I’m your man.

The energy efficient light bulb that needs changed above your elegant mantle? Just give me a call.

And you know I’m the guy to volunteer when the gutters outside your homey home need unclogged. My more than six-foot frame has no problem doing a job you can complete on your own with a simple purchase of a ladder.

I like to think I’m more than just some outstretched human. Maybe I’m not.

Anyway, I’m done here. I’ll see you at the nearest Casual Male Big & Tall in the quadruple XL section. You’ll see me, just look up.

Keep Your Tweet Game Strong

Twitter understands me, at least I think it does. I'm certain I understand it.

I say what I think in 140 characters or less. Every thought I think must now be expressed in 140 characters or less. It's an iceberg. My tweets are just the tips of the icebergs buoyed above the surface, hiding the good and meaty stuff hundreds of feet below where the color is more black than blue.

I'm still able to get my point across.

Followers want to know what I'm doing. No, seriously. Each clicked the button, all 347 of them. I'm sure some felt the need to click the button to be nice, but I'm going to estimate that's a small percentage, minimal, minute, microscopic ... (probably the majority).

But where else can the Twitterverse follow the Pittsburgh Pirates through the eyes of a 21-year-old fan who has never seen a winning season of baseball, unless you count the time when I couldn't control my own bladder or bowels (I was one). What a glorious time, but I have digressed. By the way, the answer to that: any other 21-year-old living in the greater Pittsburgh area who happens to tweet about the Pirates.

My 9,154+ tweets contain something enjoyable for everyone. I'm confident. One tweet is all it takes to get hooked. One out of 9,154. So you're saying there's a chance ...

Enough with the funny.

Twitter sends information around the world in the quickest way possible, most notably when involving some type of death (i.e. Joe Paterno, Osama Bin Laden). However, how many times have you seen the hashtag #RIP next to a celebrity who is most definitely still alive. It's a slippery slope when it comes to credibility, but nonetheless it's great at spreading information.

Twitter seems to be everywhere. Cell phones make it even easier to take advantage of Twitter. Almost every student I see on campus with a smartphone uses Twitter to keep track of friends, celebrities, and anyone else worth a follow. It helps with staying updated on different current events and news in general.

The brevity of tweets may not be the best for those interested in more thorough reading, but many like the quickness of reading only 140 characters. It gets the point across right away without the fluff. I guess the only problem for me is that sometimes I don't want to know when my friends walk their dogs or decide to use the bathroom. I'm not really interested in the personal side of things.

All in all, Twitter is my key to everything and anything I would possibly want to read. In a couple of minutes, I'm aware of what's going on locally, nationally and throughout the world. 

Twitter allows users to post their thoughts--the thoughts they want others to know. With my phone, I can say I carry the thoughts of more than 400 people in my pocket, all because of Twitter. Whether or not that's considered a good or bad thing is up for debate, but the pros definitely outweigh the cons in my opinion.

Jones/Heinz

Both pieces focus on a death, but each are vast opposites.

Chris Jones' three-part series on the death of Sgt. Joe Montgomery is much more personal, at least in the first part of the series. Jones is able to intertwine a great narrative along with highly detailed scene work easily. While the reading flows nicely, it's also hard not to stop and think about certain elements of the story. These moments grabbed me emotionally and acted as a blockade to reading further. For me, it happened twice.

The first instance was at Sgt. Montgomery's funeral, when it was noticed by Micah that his ring was missing. When Jones writes that Micah took the ring off his own finger and placed it on his brother's, only to fold in on itself, I could not rid that scene out of my head. Jones is able to place the reader directly into the action. The other instance was the folding of the American flag. As Jones explained how the widow clutched the flag to her chest, I knew exactly where the flag and corners were in accordance to her body.

While Jones' structure and style seems to place the reader so close to the action, I noticed the opposite for "Death of a Racehorse" by W.C. Heinz. I felt almost elevated while reading this short piece. I was no longer in the action, but instead watching above. The quickened pace and short length of the piece did not give me enough time to connect with this particular death. Because I didn't know all that much about the horse or the characters around it, I was missing the connection as a reader. I was still somewhat emotional to the death, but nowhere near to the extent of the Esquire piece.

The brevity of Heinz's article does not hurt the story entirely. I think there are some stories where readers aren't meant to know absolutely everything. Instead of an extensive three-part series digging into every little detail, Heinz is able to elicit emotion without holding readers down against their will.

I do prefer Jones' writing over Heinz's, but I don't mind looking at alternatives. They may be different, but that's how writing goes.

Hiroshima -- Detail

John Hersey jumps right into the story, going into the lives of six survivors of the Hiroshima bombing. A lot of past readings take a bit too long to get into the main action of the story -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing -- by including too much background into the situation at hand, but Hersey goes directly into their lives. I think it's just a matter of preference as to what readers like.

Specifically about Hersey's use of detail, one of my favorite sentences was on page three about Mr. Tanimoto:

"He wore his black hair parted in the middle and rather long; the prominence of the frontal bones just above his eyebrows and the smallness of his mustache, mouth, and chin gave him a strange, old-young look, boyish and yet wise, weak and yet fiery."

I enjoyed how the detail narrows as the sentence finishes. It's not particularly specific, but allows the reader to have a vivid picture of his own interpretation. I have my own idea of what an "old-young look, boyish and yet wise, weak and yet fiery" may look, but others probably have a wildly different outlook on Tanimoto.

I couldn't find much of a pattern in his detail. For some, they were very concise and short, while others like the aforementioned quote trails on and on. The one consistent piece was that he tells it like it is, never really digging too deep into the historical or scientific background.

"Both he and Mr. Matsuo reacted in terror -- and both had time to react (for they were 3,500 yards, or two miles, from the center of the explosion). Mr. Matsuo dashed up the front steps into the house and dived among the bedrolls and buried himself there. Mr. Tarimoto took four or five steps and threw himself between two big rocks in the garden ... He felt a sudden pressure, and then splinters and pieces of board and fragments of tile fell on him. He heard no roar."

My reading went by not as quickly as I'd like. The use of detail was sporadic throughout, not in any bad way, I just couldn't grasp the complete thought process Hersey had while writing about these six survivors. It was a highly informative piece that wrote about the Hiroshima bombing in a much different angle and perspective.

The Voice

Jake stands near the kitchen island waiting for his father’s response. Jake’s brother, Zach, waits as well, while sitting at the dining room table, about to ask his father the question again.

“So, are you going to answer or what? Who are you taking to the Pirates game with you.” Their father, who was normally a very still and calm man, squirmed with irritation at his sons’ redundant questions.

“What’s the hold up, pops?” Jake added.

The father, about to respond, was overtaken by another inquiry.

Zach asked what it was going to take for his father to pick him. He laid out his reasons. Jake rapidly recoiled by listing his own qualifications to make up for the brief silence.

The 56-year-old father, soon to be 57, rose from the couch, glared at his two sons with a hint of agitated anger and walked outside to find some kind of reprieve.

The two sons followed, each trying to be the first one to reach their father. The Pirates were playing the Philadelphia Phillies that night and competing for first place in its division this late into the season for the first time since 1997. It was only July.

“I’ve made up my mind,” the father said. “I want to let you two know that I will be taking neither of you.”

Each son looked at the other, a bit perplexed.

Minutes later, the mother of the two sons walked past them confidently loaded with a sly smirk.

There was the other ticket, snug in the back left pocket of their mother’s cargo shorts. 

How They Met

My mother was never afraid to meet new people. She preferred if they reciprocated her emphatic enthusiasm but had no trouble filling the gap for a lack of energy.

She was popular in school, but not the kind of popular that others felt threatened to introduce themselves. She grew up in a small rural town, was a “pretty damn good” majorette in high school she said—although that hobby ceased once she stepped foot on Clarion University’s campus as an undergrad studying to be a teacher—and stood behind a cause to keep peace alive.

My father may have not received the best accolades in high school, but he likes to call himself a professional in the school of street smarts. As a young child, he would walk outside of his urban home and fill a wheeled cooler with beer bought from his mother Mable the day before. He would drag the cart through nearby construction sites selling the ice cold drinks to the workers for double the price. Everyday he would come back with the cooler empty, but his pockets quite the opposite.

He knew college was a possibility, but never felt it was absolutely necessary. In the fall following his high school graduation, he had a few choices but landed as a Golden Eagle, sharing the same mascot as my mother.

The two met in the bedroom of a mutual friend sophomore year. My mother had noticed my father as soon as he walked in, not for his charming looks, as he likes to think, but rather because of the large black eye he received the night prior from a friendly squabble turned ugly with one of his fraternity brothers. They barely talked all night, aside from a brief introduction, but found each other alone in the same bedroom when their friends left to get more drinks.

My mother asked about my father’s life. She held back her enthusiasm; she said she wanted him to start the conversation. My father was reluctant at first. He made sure he was never too confident, past experiences proved it to be a failed strategy. He made a joke. She laughed. She made a joke. He laughed. A mutual interest sparked.

Their friends returned with the drinks. Their exclusive conversation stopped, but the two kept staring at each other all night. The party ended but not before my father wrote down his apartment number on a scrunched up gum wrapper. They each left with a smile.

They began to talk more, which led to the two of them running into each other at the campus gym and cafeteria, which led to lunch and dinner at formal restaurants, which led to my father’s attempt at asking my mother to attend his fraternity’s formal at a nearby cabin secluded in the woods of central Pennsylvania, which led to them “going steady,” as my father likes to say, a term my mother hates.

Time went by, their dates grew in number. Marriage was next. You know the story.

PG on Western Psych Shooting

The Post-Gazette has an emotional piece out today about the Thursday's events and how they shaped the lives of those involved.

Click here to read the full article.