Boyfriends

     For better or worse, the thing about having five older and attractive sisters, is that there was no shortage of boyfriends and hopeful boyfriends around the house throughout their teenage and twenty-something years.  Some of them actually mustered up enough courage to make it inside the house, to inevitably face the evil eye of Dad and the rolling eyes of Mom--scrutiny that could make a clean cut, straight-A, all-American boy feel like a greaser from S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders.  Christine and Linda tended to be the jock-magnets, Diane and Joanne attracted a more diversified group of jocks, pretty boys, and older working "men".  Jackie tended to bring home (or keep away) the type who spent their extra money on cigarettes, concert t-shirts, and suping up their camaros.  I liked Ron, Jimmy, Steve, Al, and a few others.  Hell, I even liked Marlboro Man hot-rodder Lance for the most part.  But none of them came within the same stratospheric vicinity of "Best Of" compared to Neal.
     No young man ever forgets his first one.  And I was no different.  I had just turned twelve when that life altering moment of awareness and maturity came my way.  It was a Brine Superlight II.  White aluminum shaft, red head, and pearly white mesh.  My first lacrosse stick.  It was a gift given to me by Linda's lacrosse-playing boyfriend, Neal.  He may have simply liked me. Or maybe he was trying to score extra points with my sister. Maybe he was offering up to me a different and exciting alternative to my love for playing (boring) baseball.  Whatever the reason, Neal's gift introduced me to a sport that not only turned baseball into obsolescence for me, but became such a prominent part of my identity, that LACROSSE PLAYER should be listed on my driver's license next to ORGAN DONOR.  So much has the sport of lacrosse given to me, that for my entire adult life, I've repeatedly, hundreds of times, imparted upon young baseball players and young athletes this important lesson: That there are three major decisions that need to be made in your lifetime: One, what career you choose for yourself. Two, whom you choose to marry.  And three, whether or not you choose to play lacrosse instead of baseball.
     Playing competitive lacrosse every season since my first high school game 35 years ago,  I know that at least I got one of those major life decisions right.  And that's thanks to Neal--the best boyfriend of a sister a 12 year old boy could ever have.

Toughen Up (part 1)

     "We just wanted to toughen you up".  That's the justification my sister Christine would use whenever she'd make the case that the physical assaults inflicted upon me growing up were in my best interest.  Her reasoning?  It was the responsibility of she and my four other sisters to help raise more of a GI Joe than a Ken doll.  So whenever she deemed necessary, or even just for fun, Christine would full-fist me, leaving a red, four knuckle imprint upon my arm or leg.  The fifth knuckle never seemed to make an impact, simply because the girth of my arms and legs was smaller than my sister's hand.
     As a frail six-year old with legs the size of wiffle bats, Christine decided one particular day I was in need of some toughening up.  So, while I was innocently petting our dog Duke while we both lay on the floor, she punched me unexpectedly in my upper wiffle bat--hard.  So hard that somehow the pained traveled from my leg all the way up to my brain, causing me to pass out.  I regained consciousness a couple minutes later, with help from the cold, kitchen faucet water Mom typically doused me with whenever I knocked myself out falling down the stairs or running into a wall.  I'm not sure if Christine was ever punished for this unwarranted assault on me that day.  I doubt it.  But I guess it all turned out for the best, making me tougher than I would have become otherwise.  I never became a GI military man, nor did I even own a GI Joe doll.  But I did on occasion enjoy popping off the heads of my sisters' Barbie dolls or using them as target practice for my dart gun.  That's gotta' count for something.

Toughen Up (part 2)

     "Can't you just be an uncle, and not a coach?" Christine snapped at me harshly.  It was at her son Gabe's high school basketball game.  He had just played a terrific game, leading his team to an upset victory over the league's first place team, with 28 points, eight assists, and a bunch of steals.  His mom beamed with pride while accepting all sorts of compliments from other parents and spectators in the stands.  But when it came to my opinion, she wasn't real appreciative.
     I pointed out that Gabe had made two critical mistakes in the final three minutes of the game, which could have turned the outcome around.  "That pass he threw away, then that missed lay-up..." I told her.  Christine wanted me to extol compliments upon her baby boy, but she wasn't going to get it from this guy.  Visibly angry, she turned away from me, not wanting to hear any more.  But separating my surnames, "uncle" and "coach", would be like separating a car from its wheels.  Christine wasn't willing or just wasn't able to understand that.  Family or not, when it comes to sports, blood certainly is not thicker than sweat, not in my mind anyway.  And as a coach, mistakes are never acceptable, regardless of the game's outcome.  As well as Gabe played on the court, I always wanted him to play better.  And tougher.  Physically and mentally.  The irony here is that when it came to mental and psychological toughness, Christine gave me my first lesson in it years before.
     I was 10 years old and the neighborhood had a co-ed pickup softball game at East Mountain Road Playground.  Forget that she was a girl, Christine could hit the ball like Ted Williams.  So as one of the captains, I picked her first.  But Chris was unflattered by her #1 selection, and lit into me about my decision.
     "Oh c'mon, Johnny!" she barked in hostile disappointment. "Pick someone else!"
She shunned me in front of everybody. I was embarrassed beyond belief, scolded by my older sister in front of all my friends and neighborhood kids.  But her message was clear:  Don't be a girly-man.  Play with the boys and learn to play like a man.  And if that meant my being criticized and humiliated to achieve that goal, then so be it.
     In that basketball gymnasium a few decades later, I was only passing along the lesson of mental toughness I had learned from big sister that day at the playground.  To Gabe's credit, I know he understood that.  But Chris, not so much.  I do however, remember and appreciate that wonderful tutorial given to me many years ago, which I've used a thousand times as a coach and uncle.  Even if as a mother, my sister no longer subscribes to the idea.

Tongue Lashing

     Even at a young age, I never quite understood the point behind two physical gestures: Sticking out your tongue or sticking up your middle finger at someone.  Now, I do understand that the latter is considered sign language for "Bleep-you!"  Sisters Jackie and Dianne led the six of us in flip-offs behind the backs of our parents.  And as best as I can tell, sticking out your tongue is probably some sort of G-rated version of that.  To me, both just seem so random and inane.  I mean, if Anne Sullivan decided that flipping the bird or sticking out the tongue actually could be translated into proper English vocabulary, then I'd be all for it.  But childish is as childish does. Not that I've never dabbled in the derogatory gesture game myself, mind you.
     Back-and-forth, me and my sisters used to stick out our tongues at each other all the time.  Typically to express some contempt and disdain over behavior that didn't reach fista-cuff status.  Plus, compared to physically fighting one another, we could do it without any potential punishment from out parents.
     Maybe he made me shut off a TV program I was watching.  Or maybe he forbade me from eating any more Carmel-cremes from the two-pound bag of assorted candy he used to buy weekly from Pudgy's Variety.  Whatever the reason, I deemed it warranted that my dad endure the disapproving admonishment of an 8-year old.  So I stuck my tongue out at him.
     "Do that again"  Dad said stoically while sitting on the couch, without looking away from his newspaper (his peripheral vision was Cousy-like).
     Not fully grasping this was a dare with potential consequences, I obliged.  With cat-like reflexes, Dad's left thumb and forefinger went from The Daily News to my protruding tongue in mach speed.  I yelled loud in agony, as much as a yell can be heard when your tongue is being squeezed like a lemon rind.  After about ten seconds Dad finally let go, leaving my tongue pulsating and my entire body in residual shock.  He returned his attention to his paper.  I sat still, my hands over my mouth, fighting back tears.
     "Do it again" he said.  This time not as a dare, but as a warning for any thoughts I might have of ever attempting this again in the future.
     Fast forward a couple decades later.  I was stopped behind a school bus of elementary kids.  Behind the the protection of the bus and the back windows, two boys looked at me and decided for some reason, that I was in need of some sort of admonishment.  So they stuck their tongues out at me.  I shot back my hairy-eyeball look, complete with squinty eyes and furrowed brow.  The blond-haired boy decided to take it up a notch.  He pulled the sides of his mouth apart with his thumbs, and stretched his eyelids up, exposing the insides of his orbital cavity.  His brown-haired friend followed suit, both of them with tongues waggling.
     That was it.  I had had enough.  Too far away from implementing Dad's do-that-again technique, I had to resort to my rarely used R-rated counterattack.  I pulled out my version of  Dirty Harry's Magnum 357:  my right middle finger.  I stuck it up and pressed it against my front windshield.  Right there, you little punks, I thought.  Instead of backing down from my obviously superior response, the two young hooligans were unfazed.  They shot back at me their own middle fingers, using double-fisted action no less--four middle fingers flashing my way. I briefly thought of resorting to both a middle finger and a stuck out tongue, but then I thought maybe I had reached my level of childishness for the day.  Either that or the streetlight turned green and the bus pulled away.         

Girl Next Door

     Sheila lived three houses away growing up, and spent most of her time in the company of my sisters, Jackie and Joann.  Family birthdays, holidays, and days ending in a Y, she was usually around, and considered an extended part of our family.  Take away the fighting and teasing, Sheila treated me like her own brother.  Like the time she left me stranded in a windstorm, laughing from the safety of our house, as a metal trash barrel knocked over my scrawny six year old self in the middle of the street.  Or when she banned me from playing in that odd dollhouse shed of hers in her backyard.  No matter.  It was contaminated with a powerful batch of cooties anyway.  Just a year older than me, Sheila certainly was pretty enough to meet the superficial standards of my hormone-inflamed teenage years.  But unlike the teenage movie genre of the John Hughes era, girl-next-door romances rarely unfold.  And she was like my sixth sister anyway.  Plus, she was a redhead.
     Had Bruce Springsteen written "Red Headed Woman", an X-rated song about his wife, earlier in his career, then I may have reassessed my perspective on the attractiveness of redheads.  But brunettes were always first on my list, blondes were second, while redheads never made it on the same page.  I admit I paid close attention to Tawny Kitaen's body-waxing of a Jaguar in that Whitesnake video on MTV in the '80s.  But that was about it.
     During a ten day hospital stay five years ago, I awoke to someone gently squeezing my foot.  It was Sheila, R.N.  It could have been the painkillers.  Or maybe it was her in her nursing scrubs.  Or maybe it was just the sight of a welcomed, familiar face.  Whatever it was, Sheila looked ten times better standing at my bedside than Tawny Kitaen ever did sprawled out over a car.  She didn't look like a sister to me at all, but someone who, as Bruce would say, I could have my tires rotated by.
     Recently I sat at the kitchen table of Sheila's parents.  Bob saw and heard my disbelief when he described Sheila's sense of humor.
     "It's true. She'll do anything for a laugh" Bob says.  "She's subtle about it, but she really is a total goofball."
     Goofball?  Sheila?  No way, I said.  I love that, I thought.
     Mary's pride focused on Sheila's compassionate and altruistic side:  The hundreds of sick patients who considered her their "favorite nurse".  How she made all her patients' hospital stay comfortable and fun.  The time she arranged and granted a terminally ill man, held bound in his hospital bed for weeks, one final wish. He attended his grandson's college graduation, while sitting in the front row.  He died three days later.
     "And she did it all on her own" Mary says.  "On her own time, without any recognition."
     Charitable?  Humble? Caring?  Sheila?  The girl who left me to to perish amongst the flying trashcans? That Sheila? Wow.  Simply awesome.
     Damn Springsteen, I thought driving home afterwards.  If only he had married Patti the first time around.          
    

Mrs. C

     If it takes a village to raise a child, then my village consisted of just one other person outside the family.  Mrs. C was the best.  She was my best friend Mark's mom, which mandated she act as my surrogate mother whenever I was around.  Her face always seemed to glow with her big bright eyes, high cheekbones, and wide smile, which always reminded me of oh-so-pretty Olivia Newton-John.  And she was as sweet and nice as Olivia's character Sandy in the movie Grease.  She fed me all the time, allowed me all-access to her pool, and let me sleep over often.  Asking her Trivial Pursuit questions while she cleaned the kitchen was an easy trade-off for her after school snacks and homemade eggnog.  Although uncredited, I'm certain I was the first to shorten "Mrs. Cavallon" to "Mrs. C", lifting the nickname Fonzie gave Mrs. Cunningham during the Happy Days years.
     But like Sandy in her out of character, leather-wearing last scene, Mrs. C could play the tough, kick-ass role also if need be.  Like the time she poked Mrs. Cassin, the neighborhood grown-up bully, in the shoulder several times, while defending Mark's brother David from Mrs. Cassin's bully son after they had gotten into a fight.  Mark and I were laughing in the background, both impressed and humored by it all.  But motherly kindness and protection was Mrs. C's strongsuit.
     I must have been eight years old.  I woke up alone in the 2:00 a.m. darkness on the living room couch.  I had been sick, so my faculties weren't firing on all cylinders.  Without checking any of the other rooms in the house, my clouded mind somehow concluded that I had been abandoned and left home alone.  And I was scared.  So I walked out the back door, ran down the pitch black street, and banged on Cavallon's door until a puzzled Mrs. C turned on her carport light and saw me standing there in my pajamas.
     "Nobody's home.  They left me all alone"  I tried to explain to her in all my panic.  Olivia Newton-John turned immediately into Florence Nightingale.  Mrs C calmed me down, and then tucked me in on her couch.  A few minutes later, Mom came and retrieved me. The pending 911 call for a missing child intoxicated on Robitussin wasn't necessary.  Not this time anyway.             

Television Wars

     The kitchen in our house was off limits after dinnertime.  It had nothing to do with one of us kids stealing a cookie from the cookie jar, or taking a swig of forbidden Coca-Cola from the fridge, reasons which would have been justifiable.
     In the 1970's the standard 19" black & white model television set resided in most living rooms, ours included.  Inevitably, additional features usually included a bent, wire coat hanger serving as a makeshift antenna replacing a broken one.  The circle-shaped loopy thing in the back seemed to last a little longer, but not by a lot.  Three channels were available.  On some days, we were able to get four.  But no matter that manual adjustments to tint, contrast, and vertical hold were a daily necessity, or that a windy day affected its reception, or that cable TV was still a decade away. It was one reason above all others that was responsible for the poor picture quality.
     "Who's in the kitchen?!" Dad would yell when static distorted Walter Cronkite's voice.
     "Get out of the kitchen!" He'd bark when Archie Bunker's face would repeatedly flip on the screen.
     Whoever was in the adjacent kitchen was responsible for the bad reception of the TV in the living room.  I never quite understood the causation there, and my guess is that the electrical engineers at Sony wouldn't have either.  But apparently my father understood it, understood it well, and understood it emphatically.  Whatever issue the television was having, whoever was milling around in the kitchen was the guilty party.  And nobody was immune to Dad's verbal wrath either.
     "Damnit, Duke, get over here!" he'd yell at the dog whenever he crossed from carpet to linoleum.  Duke would turnaround, walk back, head down, tail between his legs, apologetic for his thoughtless behavior.
     The funniest times were when Dad's Pavlovian response to the television's shoddiness would be directed at nobody.
     "Who's in the kitchen?" (no response)...
     "Damnit, get outta the kitchen!" (no response)...
     "Who the hell is in the kitchen?" (no response)...
     "Dad, no one's in the kitchen"  one of us would inform him from a few feet away in the living room.
     He'd then get up off the couch and fiddle with the makeshift antenna and the circle-shaped loopy thing.  "Well...someone was in the kitchen."   

What's In A Name

     I'm a fan of nicknames.  I've doled out my share of them over the years, several of which have stuck.  Three friends from the old neighborhood each had their own.  Jeff Beach was "Beacher", Brian Woods was "Woodsie", and Mark Cavallon was "Cav".  I didn't have a nickname based on my last name like these guys did.  "Funner" or "Funsie" didn't pass the poetic-sounding test apparently.
     I did achieve nickname status during my sophomore year of high school however.  Kyle was a senior on the lacrosse team and took a liking to me.  My guess is that it had a little something to do with my sisters Joann and Jackie, both of whom he either dated or tried to.  He also seemed to like the fact that I had a predilection for hanging around the prettier girls in the hallways between classes. 
     "Hey, Johnny..." Kyle said to me one day in the locker room before practice.  "That cute girl I saw you with today...  So, you get your noodle wet yet, or what?" he asked laughing.  My shy and embarrassed reaction in front of the whole team only fueled Kyle's comedic harassment.  Every day from then on, I'd hear "Hey, Noodle...!" from him, and most everybody else for the rest of my high school years.  Of course, I shied away from it as best I could, never acknowledging it as my own.  But no matter.  When I became captain of the team my senior year, my nickname earned a status upgrade as well: Captain Noodle.
     Thank goodness some things shall pass.  Exit high school, exit Captain Noodle.  Enter college, enter Johnny Izzo.  Johnny and I became instant friends as freshmen laxmen.  But two Johnnys on the same team brought communicative confusion, so new names were needed.  On the field, Johnny liked to isolate offensively from the midfield, easily earning the nickname "Johnny-Iso".  As much as I liked and appreciated Johnny as a great guy and terrific teammate, it was the nickname he gave me that I'll always appreciate most: "Johnny-Fun".  I liked it a helluva lot better than "Noodle".  And it's lasted for thirty years and counting.  I've managed to avoid seeing Kyle for just about that long, which is a good thing.  'Cuz I'm sure he'd attempt to end that streak.            

In The Closet

     Inflicting physical, emotional, and psychological harm upon your siblings, if not a genetic predisposition, is certainly an acquired skill of necessity.  Being the youngest and scrawniest, I was at a disadvantage both physically and mentally.  So most of my battles were of the hit-and-run variety.  A smack to the arm or back, and a sprint to the nearest exit.  Jackie was the opponent in most of my altercations, probably because she was closest in age.  That she had the cunning brutishness of Nellie Olson from Little House On The Prairie  more than made up for any limitations she might have had as a girl.
     Sitting on top of my chest with my arms pinned to the floor was a favorite tactic of hers.  She'd then follow that up with the unbearable pre-teen's version of waterboarding:  The sounds of a mouthful of accumulating saliva, followed by the torturous anxiety of seeing a gob of spit between a pair of puckered lips directly above you, gravity inviting a splattering descent upon your face.  That Sun Tsu never wrote about the effectiveness of this combat strategy is beyond me.
     Now one night after watching Stephen King's Salem's Lot on television, I made the mistake of mentioning how I was creeped out by the chauffeur character in the movie.  He had an eerie look about him.  All dressed in black, he had a sly grin, an evil sounding laugh, and dark sunglasses which no doubt covered a pair of lifeless, dark eyes.  Of course Jackie seized the opportunity to take full advantage of my fears, and went into psychological warfare mode.  After I went to bed that night, she cracked open my bedroom door.  In her best Vincent Price-like voice she whispers, "Watch outtttt!.....watch out for the chauffeur....he's hiding...in the closet!"
     Now at age 13, I was too old and too macho to admit that she was scaring the hell out of me.  I casually told her to stop being stupid and go away.  But she knew.  Like a dog senses fear in an unwelcomed visitor, she knew I was scared.  So from then on, Jackie would remind me every so often about who it was lurking behind my closet door.  Readying himself to chauffeur me into the depths of unknown evils.  "Lookoutttt, Johnny....he's there...in the closet...the chauffeur...!"  I could withstand the years of our fistfights, verbal spats, and saliva-boarding.  But the man behind my closet door--he stuck around way longer than I could tolerate.
    

Delayed Vacation

     I get it.  When you're the mother of six children within the age range of only seven years, a houseful of kids 24/7 could stress out even Mother Teresa from time to time.  So creative parenting is essential to getting a few moments of peace and quiet.  Like the time one summer day Mom offered a dollar to anyone who could find a four-leaf clover.  After spending the entire afternoon looking everywhere within a hundred yard radius of home, I decided it would be easier locating a Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card in mint condition.
   So in early September one year, Mom no doubt had been counting down the days until school started up again.  When that morning finally came, I wasn't feeling very good.  I tried telling her that my first day of 2nd grade may have to wait.  I've never been a very good liar, so I'm guessing at age seven my lies were about as believable as Jon Lovitz saying that his wife was Morgan Fairchild.  Even so, Mom wasn't hearing any of it.  Three hot vacation months out of school is great for kids, not so much for mothers.  This was to be the first day of Mom's "vacation".  Free at last!, free at last! is my guess of what went through her mind as she all but pushed the last one of six out the door to the bus stop that morning. That was however, up until she saw my abrupt stop on the front lawn, followed by a bend at the waist, a pale hue covering my face. Next I unloaded an amount of vomit that would have made Linda Blair proud.  The front door opened back up and I came back into the house.  Back to school would have to wait for me.  School vacation would have to wait for Mom.  

Quotable Quotes

     Some of the funniest memories growing up were those that surrounded what came out of Dad's mouth.  Decades later, a quote of Dad's would be mused about at any given family gathering.  "He's dead today" we'd hear repeatedly over the years suffering through an old movie starring Gary Cooper or Humphrey Bogart or Tony Curtis.  "You're grounded...INDEFINITELY!" made our eyes roll.  When my always-antagonistic sisters received phone calls from their fanclub of boys, even I couldn't see much practical sense in my father's command that the call last "Two minutes!"
   But without a doubt, Joann was the #1 target of the funniest quotable quote: "Chicken-hopper! Chicken-hopper! There goes the Chicken-hopper!"  Now, I never quite understood what exactly was meant by being a "chicken-hopper", but I do know the scenario that elicited its characterization: a mini-tantrum accompanied by stomping about uncontrollably in seizure-like fashion, half-crying and half-yelling from room to room.  All my sisters were infamous for their own chicken-hopping antics, but Joann was by far Queen of the Chicken Hoppers.  

Beware The Basement

       Linda used to lure me down into the basement.  I must have been three or four years old.  Maybe she had a special surprise for me down there, I thought.  Maybe she said she would let me play with her pet gerbils.  Whatever it was, her sweet and caring voice enticed me every time.  My big sister beckoned for me, and I gladly came running.  It turned out it was a surprise, a surprise she gave to me and me alone. Time after time.  She'd hold me still, arms length away, and here it was...Whack!  It was a slap right across the face.  I'd look at her bewildered, and my lips would start to quiver.  Then I'd cry.  Next she'd immediately wrap me up in her arms and give me a big hug.  I think she laughed each time.  Actually I know she did.  Every so often now, she'll ask if I remember the self-amusing ritual she had at the expense of her baby brother.  I'm not sure.  But over the years I've yelled in ire at a ballplayer of mine during practice for no justifiable reason, only later to give him a proverbial hug or pat on the back.  So yeh, I think I do remember.  And I've passed that experience on along the way.