You know you’re not a kid anymore…

Well, it’s official. I'm old. Last week a student asked me for help filling out a scholarship application. I was happy to oblige, thinking they needed help writing an essay, or maybe just my recommendation. That wasn’t it. They needed more practical help than that. Their entire life, they'd never had to use an electric typewriter!

I have a cousin who once told me that he didn’t take anything I said too seriously because no one in their twenties knows what they’re talking about anyway. Three years ago I passed into my thirties and he may take me more seriously now, but for some reason, I can no longer get anyone under thirty to even listen to me anymore.

It is for this reason, that I am pleased to present you with this week’s column, sort of an homage to Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Know You’re a Red-Neck If…” routine, if you will. It’s dedicated to those of you born after the baby boom, but before Star Wars.

You know you’re not a kid anymore if…

…some kid asks you how to use a typewriter.

…if ANY music that teenagers play is too loud.

…if all the music YOU listened to in school can now only be found on radio stations with names like “Lite, Mix, Star, or Classic.”

…if you listen to more and more Country music and less and less of the music you used to listen to.

…Country music sounds more like the music you USED to listen to than what kids call Rock and Pop these days.

…if two of your favorite Country music songs are "Nineteen something" by Mark Wills or “My next thirty years” by Tim McGraw.

…if more of your hair is in your brush than on your head.

…if more of your hair is on your back than on you head.

…if your what hair you have comes in more than one shad, and you didn’t put anything on it to make it that way.

…you tape Leno, Letterman, or Saturday Night Live because you just can’t stay up that late.

…you really do drink Diet Coke “just for the taste of it.”

…you remember that ad campaign.

…you don’t want to sleep on the floor or the couch because you won’t be able to walk the next day if you do.

…you don’t get excited about buying alcohol, tobacco, or adult materials.

…you don’t bother buying alcohol, tobacco, or adult materials because you can’t afford them.

…instead of fantasizing about the sports cars, clothes and stereo equipment you’d buy if you won the lottery, you fantasize about paying off your debts, getting a mini-van, and doing some repair work on your house.

You know you’re not a kid anymore when…

…the one time you stay up late enough to watch Letterman, you realize that “Ferris Bueller” has more grey hair than you do.

…you accept the fact that you’ll never be as thin as any of the members of the cast of “Friends,” and you’ll also never see as much money in ten years as each of them make per episode.

…and you can live with that.

…you remember when you had to go to an arcade and pay a quarter to play a video game.

…you probably won’t have to worry about being drafted if the Iraq and Korea things turn into WWIII.

…you remember what Michael Jackson looked like before his “two” plastic surgeries.

…you remember the FIRST Space Shuttle launch.

You know you’re not a kid anymore when…

…your class reunions are into double-digits.

…you’ve noticed that the styles of clothing you wore in school are coming back!

Alternative Holiday

So, tomorrow night’s the big night. Did you get your special someone a special something? Good for you, P.T. Barnum was right, there’s one of you born every minute. Never has there been a more overly commercialized holiday in America, and Americans know how to over commercialize their holidays.

I’m sorry, maybe it’s because in high school I was always the guy girls’ mothers approved of but the girls themselves all wanted me as “just friends,” but Valentine’s Day always brings out the curmudgeon in me.

What do you think you’re celebrating exactly anyway? A massacre? In Chicago in 1929, seven men from mobster "Bugs" Moran’s gang were lined up against a wall in a garage and riddled with bullets by “Machine Gun" McGurn and other members of Al Capone’s gang. Capone was lounging around lavishly in Florida, while McGun and his boys drove to the garage in a stolen police car and wore police uniforms.

In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honor Juno, Queen of the Roman gods and godess of marriage. On Juno’s Day the names of Roman girls were written down and placed in jars. Each boy in town would get to draw a girl's name out and would have to be “partners” with that girl during a festival that took place the following week. Emperor Claudius II thought that the reason he had a hard time getting recruits for Rome’s army was that they didn’t want to leave their girls so he cancelled all marriages and engagements.

Saint Valentine was a priest at Rome at the time and secretly married couples. He was arrested and condemned him to death by being beaten with clubs and decapitated. He was executed on February 14th, 270 A.D. What a lovely thing to celebrate with a Hallmark card.

Legend has it that he left a farewell note for his jailer's daughter, and signed it "From Your Valentine". As if! Please, you don’t think some Hallmark junior executive down at their HQ in Kansas City didn’t make that one up?

And what’s up with the whole Cupid thing? He was a Greek god, the son of Venus. Or was it Aphrodite? I can never keep straight what the Romans renamed their Greek gods. Cupid’s other name was Eros- as in erotic. There’s a myth that says he fell in love with a human girl named Psyche, as in your mind, your powers of reason- see this is why I think most Greco-Roman myths were really allegories.

Anyway, I guess Venus was jealous of Psyche’s beauty, and ordered Cupid to punish her. Instead, he fell in love with her and married her. There’s a family that could get on Rikki Lake or Montel Williams! I guess interspecies marriage was a no-no for the gods so as a mortal she was forbidden to look at him, maybe because he looked like a tiny little baby with wings. Who marries someone without ever seeing them? At least they couldn’t say it was love at first sight.

If you’re as irritated with all the cutsie-wootsie ness of this so-called holiday, or if you’re just cynical about throwing all kinds of money into a more-or-less made-up holiday, then I have an alternative for you. Arizona Statehood Day. That’s right, my home-planet became the forty-eighth state on February 14, 1912. Before you poo-poo this idea because you weren’t born there, just consider a few things. Wyatt Erp was from Iowa. You know, shoot-out at the O.K. Coral Wyatt Erp. So, see, our two states have sort of a natural connection. Arizona has produced the likes of Barry Goldwater, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and John McCain, so that should appeal to all the Republicans we have here in Iowa’s Fifth District. And let’s face it, when people decide to retire somewhere warmer than Iowa, where do most of them go? Uh-huh, that’s right, Arid-Zone-a.

What better way to warm you and your sweetie’s hearts than with sunny thoughts of the land of cactus and sand. We could even celebrate with Mexican food and margaritas instead of those stupid candy hearts. You know that spicy food would be just the thing to fight off the February freeze we have to put up with in Iowa. So join me and all my fellow “Zonies” tomorrow by celebrating Arizona Statehood Day instead of that other, out-dated, over commercialized, sappy excuse for a holiday. You’ll be glad you did.

Hold on, before you all start sending my wife sympathy cards, I want you to know that I already got her some very nice, even romantic gifts. She’s covered. Besides, she knows I love her 365 days a year, not just one, like the rest of those saps’ wives who celebrate that OTHER holiday.

Happy Presidential Birth Month

We’ve made it to February. The almanacs are telling us that this month will bring us some of the worst weather of the winter. The national media have been telling us that the 2004 Presidential election race has already begun. Since our Iowa Caucuses are slated for Jan. 19 of next year, we’re already being visited by a bevy of baby-kissers.

This may be jumping the gun a little, so I thought I’d jump the gun too. President’s day may be a couple of weeks away, but I thought this was as good a time as any to spend some time thinking about Presidents.

Of course President’s Day is a combination holiday commemorating two of our greatest leaders George Washington, born February 22, 1731 and Abraham Lincoln February 12,1809. Congress made third Monday in February became President’s day in 1968. In 1972, President Nixon proclaimed that it was it recognition of all past Presidents. Personally, I think Lincoln and Washington deserve a holiday, but Nixon doesn’t. Whoever you are, whether Republican or Democrat, can you imagine Bill Clinton getting his own holiday?

That’s not to say that George and Abe were saints. Lincoln was prone to bouts of depression, not that you could blame him. Lets face it, if TV were around in 1860 there’s no way Americans would have given this guy a chance. Some historians are suspicious that one of Washington’s lady friends may have been more than just a friend and some people who met him thought he was very aloof, even snobby. We honor them not for everything that was wrong with them, but for the legacies they left us.

They were human and if they were around today they’d each be the first to admit that. One of the legacies that Washington left us was leaving office after two terms. He knew he was human and that no human should have too much power for too long. Wise man.

Did you know that February is also the birth-month of two other Presidents? The ninth President, William Henry Harrison was born Feb. 9, 1773

He was the first president to die during his term of office, which lasted exactly one month. Seems he gave a two hour inauguration address in the rain and developed pneumonia. He was a hero from the Indian Wars. Turns out that when Harrison was elected President in 1840, the Indian leader Tecumseh placed a curse on him, saying that every president elected in a year that ends with a zero will die while in office.

Harrison died while in office, as did Lincoln, elected in 1860, Garfield, elected in 1880, Mckinley, elected in 1900, Harding, elected in 1920, Roosevelt, elected in 1940, and John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960. Reagan, elected in 1980, broke the curse, but was almost assassinated while in office. Ronald Reagan was born on February 6, 1911.

Henry A. Wallace was born October 7, 1888. He was President Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice President from 1941-1945 but the Democratic Party ditched him for Harry Truman, which is too bad. I think he would’ve made a pretty good President and he was from Iowa. But we’ll never know. Maybe the actual week of President’s day I’ll devote a column to people who coulda-woulda-shoulda been president.

Bess Truman was born in February. February 13, 1938. Come to find out that her maiden name was Wallace, but was no relation.

Neither John Adams or John Quincy Adams were born in February, but Henry Adams was, Feb. 16, 1838, but he decided to become a teacher and writer instead of going into politics. Smart move, politics has a way of becoming fatal.

Teddy Kennedy was born on Feb. 22, 1932. Needless to say, he ran for president a few times but never even won his party’s nomination. I wonder sometimes what America would’ve been like if either of his brothers hadn’t been assassinated, but you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to hear about that.

Maybe Michael Jordan should run for President. He’d get Chicago’s vote. He was born February 17, 1963, but again, that could be a whole other column.

I sometimes wonder what it would’ve been like if Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles had ran as the Republican’s candidate against John Kennedy in 1960 instead of Nixon. He had an airport named after him until they renamed it after President Reagan. Dulles was born on February 25th, 1888. I graduated in 1988 and my birthday is on the 25th, but I’d rather be a teacher and writer than go into politics. I’m sure you’re all relieved