MY SUN DAY NEWS
December 17, 2015
My wife and I adhere to a pretty strict āno shoes in the houseā policy. Mainly because, well, the ground is gross. Just stand at a urinal in any menās room and look down. Men, you know what Iām talking about. Ladies, you can imagine.
I hope you will forgive me; Iām going to talk about Starbucks again. But it isnāt what you think.
Like most of the world, I watched the events unfold in Paris with grief and horror.
With Halloween over, whatās the next holiday to which we can look forward? (Spoiler: Thanksgiving is the day before it). Oh, thatās right ā Black Friday. Because what is a better way to conclude a day of being thankful than focusing on what you donāt have? One large retail chain might have the answer.
It’s really a wonder to me how Halloween has become so successful as a holiday. Halloween is the one time of year where we encourage each other to be hideous.
At about 8:15 p.m. on Sunday, September 27, I sat down to write this column for what seemed to be the millionth time. I was in a very distracted mood. Unsurprisingly, I was swiftly interrupted by yet another distraction, this time in the form of a text message.
I’m going to be blunt. Under very strict parameters, I believe in assisted suicide and human euthanasia. More in human euthanasia than in assisted suicide, in fact, but unless you’re a death-row inmate, human euthanasia isn’t a remote possibility in this country, so assisted suicide is the next best option…I guess.
I will confess; itās my second year out of college and I still go back-to-school shopping.
The biggest mistake a writer usually makes when writing about personal grief or an experience that produces heightened emotions is writing about it too soon. What flows is usually deeply personal and doesn’t make much sense to readers in general. Moreover, the spilling of emotions can make people uncomfortable. At the time of writing this, the hurt of losing our dog is still fresh, but I strapped on my journalist cap and did my best to keep the experience of euthanizing our dog as “journalistic” as possible.
I reluctantly came to terms with my Starbucks habit when I earned my āfree drink for every twelve purchasesā twice in one week. But honestly, I think my obsession might have been brewing for a while.
I’m 37, and I’m growing increasingly more terrified to get older. There, I caught your attention, and you probably cracked a rueful smile. However, the joke’s on you because I’m not worried about getting older for reasons you might suspect. (That’s coming, I’m sure.)
Iāve decided to quit Facebook (again). I know Iāve said this before, and I know it sounds like breaking up with a significant other or quitting an addiction, and in many ways, it is.
I was on the phone with Sun Day advertising representative Kurt Kuehnert the other day, discussing a client’s ad copy, and he said, “They want either red, white, or blue.” He immediately interrupted himself with, “Wait, that’s wrong. They want red, white, or blue….” Can you see the difference? Let’s clarify it.
The other day, when I was browsing the Internet instead of sleeping, I came across a quote on a blog that goes like this: āEvery introvert alive knows the exquisite pleasure of stepping from the clamor of a party into the bathroom and closing the door.ā (Sophia Dembling). Boom.
The window was always there. He knew the window was there (it wasn’t covered by a dresser or armoire or even veiled behind a curtain for ages), and he saw it every day. But one day, he saw it differently. How a stranger might view it.
I remember when my grandparents first moved to Sun City. This was back in the day when there wasnāt even a Jewel-Osco across the street.
When I started last April, it was a schedule that, on paper, looked doable. I figured with leniency at my full-time job in Evanston that I would have the adequate amount of time to dedicate to Huntley.
On my gravestone, it will read āAndrew Steckling, killed by the second āgolden ageā of television.ā
I’ve written a lot of different material that covers a broad spectrum of categories, during my career. I’ve dabbled in everything from fiction to non-fiction, including ghost writing a chapter on China’s copper usage and how it impacted the stock market for a book on market analysis, which, by the way, was way outside my area of expertise, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I pulled through, as I usually do on writing projects because I’m pretty decent. Not great, but decent. What I’m not decent at is writing jokes.
I’m almost 37 and my feet are becoming pickier than a toddler’s eating habits. Shoe shopping is a Goldilocks state in which I can be found standing in an aisle, slightly adjusting my weight on mismatched shoes, with a look of severe consternation on my face. Picking the right shoe has become a tight balancing act of comfort, style (which I care little about), and budget (which I care a lot about).
āThirteen-month-old baby, broke the looking glass / Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past.ā The answer was right there, but what was it? I knew I heard those lyrics before, but I couldnāt just name the song. The right circuits in that portion of my brain werenāt connecting.
I admit it. I’ve had my nose buried in outside writing projects the past week and haven’t been paying much attention to news beyond Sun City and the Huntley area. Maybe not even beyond Sun City. Perhaps I should count myself lucky I’ve been bundled up in a world of fiction; otherwise, my said nose might have caught a serious case of frostbite when the Siberian Express cold front swept through, which I missed entirely.
Change is weird. I mean, itās something we all go through, since itās a natural part of life, but itās still weird.
There are very few things out there that make me want to crawl out of my skin. The oddest among them is running a hand over wallpaper. To me, it’s the equivalent of running a fingernail over a chalkboard. Until a month ago, worms were not my list of Things That Make You Go Ugh. But one intestinal parasitic infection later, and the idea of worms makes my skin crawl.
Heartbreak is never easy.Ā It’s even worse when you witness it firsthand.Ā But that’s exactly what I saw occur this last Saturday.
For somebody who writes fiction and is addicted to reading, I find character arcs mostly phony. They’re a necessity, sure. But no matter how many times I get tingly seeing Ebenezer Scrooge drop that coin out the window, I ultimately think character arcs are fluff. Who changes their entire outlook on life in the space of night, pushy ghosts or not? I’m certain if the story kept going, by March Scrooge would be back to penny-pinching Cratchit once he put the ghost of Christmas Future safely in the past.
This year has been a roller coaster, to say the least. New jobs, new friends, loved ones lost and gained. The list goes on and on and on and on. Since this column represents my last piece in 2014, and given that Thanksgiving has just come and gone, what a better way to encompass this year and thank those who helped me get here.
I was in my early 20s, working as a manager in a restaurant, when I first heard the concept “perceiving is believing” or said differently “perception is reality.” It was part of our management training booklet, in a section that discussed quality of service. Although the concept was new to me and had its appeal, I, forever the idealist, sort of rejected it because there’s always an impregnable truth.
I am completely unprepared for it to be cold. I mean, I know itās going to happen. Itās Illinois and itās November, but I still want to hold on to what warm weather we have. I am a winter baby and do look forward to the season every year, but for some strange reason, I just donāt want it to come. At least not yet.
I think if you’ve been reading Happy Trails for any length of time, you’ll know I’m pretty vanilla in both my writing style and subject matter. I basically write stuff that’s suitable for any age to read, which, for the most part, is good advice, if not for any other reason than it’s more marketable. But I’m going out on an editorial limb in this edition and am writing about swear words. I’ll mask them (It’s Halloween soon, after all), but no matter how many of these @#!% I put in, we all know a swear word when we see it.
