Last night I felt like I was back in 7th grade again.  There I was trying to not let that smirk cross my face as I watched a sex ed video for 5th graders.  My daughter is ten years old and the school is having a session for the 5th graders about puberty and all the somewhat embarrassing questions that come along with that stage in life.

I don’t remember being taught about sex in school until I was in 7th grade, but I distinctly remember being fully aware of what sexual intercourse was by 5th grade.  In fact I remember one of the stranger characters in my 5th grade class asking me to pass a note to a girl for him that said he wanted to “do it” with her.  That recollection alone, makes me feel pretty good about the program my daughter is attending.

Last night the school offered parents the opportunity to view the video the kids will be shown and hear the content of the lecture.  It sounded like a quality program and has already created an opportunity to discuss the topic at home.  Of course home is where I want my daughter to learn about sex, sexual intimacy, and healthy relationships, but a quality school program can be valuable.  Even starting in 5th grade.

I still think back on the video I was shown in 7th grade that generated my smirks of embarrassment.  In the video, the son goes to his father and asks about sex.  The father, obviously uncomfortable, replies, “Well, son, it’s like this, the guy has a bat and balls and the girl has the catchers mitt.”  That’s all I remember from that class other than the fact that the teacher went to Rice University and I thought that was a funny name for a college.  Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember her talking about how her body changed when she was pregnant, which was way beyond what I needed or wanted to know.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this sex ed program, but I came away feeling very good about it.  I am hopeful that it will continue to encourage conversation about sex and healthy relationships, but for the most part this will be my wife’s job for now.  However, my son is eight, so I don’t have much time to stall.

Have any good sex ed memories?  I hesitate to ask you to share, but… go ahead.

I thought I was going to be fired for sure. I had been given a simple task and I failed to complete it properly, so I attempted to fix my mistake and only made it worse. I had scratched Diane English’s windshield on her Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Diane on the set of The Women

While most of you don’t know who Diane English is, you’ve probably heard of Murphy Brown. Well, Diane English is the creator of the sitcom “Murphy Brown” and other shows such as “Love & War” on which I was employed as a production assistant. It was my first real Hollywood job way back in 1994. We shot on the same studio lot as Seinfeld and Rosanne. And while it wasn’t the job I had dreamed of, having completed my master’s degree, it was cool anyway.

As a production assistant, I had the important job of delivering scripts, transporting actors (I had the opportunity to drive Mariel Hemingway, Dennis Rodman, and Marv Albert to name a few), getting coffee and/or lunch, and taking the Producer’s car to the wash. The latter is what almost did me in.

Diane had asked me to do the simple task of taking her Grand Cherokee to the car wash. Before I left she specifically told me to make sure they got the globs of sap off her windshield. No problem I thought considering that I had completed the same task dozens of times over the previous year.

I took the Jeep to the wash in Studio City; the one with the big hand holding the car on Ventura Blvd., and let the guys do their thing. After paying, tipping and driving back to the studio lot, I pulled into Diane’s reserved parking spot. That’s when I noticed it. How I didn’t see it before that moment, I don’t know. But there it was, a giant glob of sap just to the right of the driver’s sight line. What I didn’t notice before, now appeared to be bigger than my head. Not wanting to drive all the way back to the car wash, I decided to get a sponge and fix it myself. How hard could it be?

Let me tell you now. Dish sponges with that scatchy side to get dried gunk off of plates and glasses are not good for car windshields. I grabbed a sponge from the office kitchen and proceed to lightly scour Diane’s windshield. It worked like a charm. I removed the sap with ease and the windshield looked great… except when the sun hit it at that perfect angle and… Crap! I had just scratched Diane English’s windshield.

Now, it wasn’t a huge scratch. It was actually several tiny scratches in a circular motion covering and area of about 3×3 inches. This was one of those moments when you break into a cold sweat as you see your career flash before your eyes. I could see it so clearly. Diane would say that famous line, “You’ll never work in this town again!”

I made a couple quick calls to see if there was any quick fix for removing swirling scratches, but now were provided. I was told that there was a protective coating on the windshield to which I replied, “obviously it doesn’t protect it from dish sponges.”

All I could do was tell Diane the truth and suffer the consequences. I rehearsed my story as I rode the elevator up. Explain what I did, how I did it, and offer to buy a new windshield. What else could I do. I’d considered pretending like it never happened. Or even blaming it on car wash guys.

I stepped off the elevator and headed to Diane’s office. But before I could get there, someone told me that my wife, Elisabeth, was on the phone for me (this was before everyone had a cell phone). I quickly took the call and responded to Elisabeth’s question of, “how’s it going?” with “I scratched Diane’s windshield… I’m going to get fired.”

I was off the phone pretty quickly and again headed toward Diane’s office. I asked Chris, her assistant, if Diane was in. She had just left. “What do you mean left?” Chris said she was gone for the day. I ran down to the parking lot to see if I could catch her, but she just driven off the studio lot.

I figured I tell her first thing in the morning. By then she would have seen the scratch already thrown a fit and maybe cooled off a little. I came in that morning early waiting for Diane to show up. The morning hours started passing, but she never stepped off the elevator. I went and asked Chris when Diane was coming in and he said that she had decided to work from home that day.

I couldn’t wait another day to tell her. I had to get it out. I knew Diane had a fax machine at her house (email wasn’t common place yet), so I did the only thing I could think of. I sent her a fax explaining every thing and offering to purchase her a new windshield. And for the rest of the day, I waited for a response which never came.

Those were a couple long nervous nights of preparing my resume before I saw Diane again. The next morning I was hanging out at the front desk when Diane entered. She came right up to me and asked the others who were around to give us some privacy. My heart moved into my throat. What was she going to say?

“I got your fax,” she started, “and you don’t have to buy me a new windshield. Actually, I didn’t even notice it until I got your fax. I had to go out and check for it.” I started breathing again. “What I want to know is,” she continued, “how did you do it?” I gave her my condensed story and again said how sorry I was and expressed how much I appreciated her graciousness.

Several times over the years I would tell people that I worked for Diane English as my first Hollywood job. Many of those people would say that they had heard she was horrible to work for; that she would berate her staff. I would always relate this story to those people.

I’m sure that my honesty went a long ways towards staying employed (if she had actually seen the scratch), but the experience taught me some humility and gave me a good feeling for grace.

Also, from that point forward, I don’t do windows.

When I was in college, I worked as a production assistant on John Mellencamp’s film Falling From Grace the summer between my junior and senior year. It was a grueling, thrilling, exhausting, somewhat empowering experience. Working on a film is not what it is cracked up to be, but makes for an interesting experience and some interesting stories.

For the last week of the shoot, my girlfriend, Elisabeth (now my wife) came to visit the set. We were in between shots, and Mellencamp was sitting on his motorcycle in the driveway of the house where we were shooting. I was also there with Elisabeth. Prior to this moment, I think Mellencamp had only said one thing to me which consisted of, “I want grape popsicles.” So I was a bit surprised when he looked at me and asked, “Is this your girlfriend?” I proudly responded, “yes,” because Elisabeth was and still is a beautiful woman. Mellencamp nodded and dryly said, “Too good for you.”

I smiled and laughed. What else was I going to do? He was right. To this day, I wish I’d had a better response, but to this day, I still know he’s right. Elisabeth has endlessly challenged me to be better and to push myself. I’ll never deserve the endless fountain of love and affection that she pours on me. I can only hope and pray that I serve her better each day.

So thanks, John. Thanks for making me aware of how fortunate and blessed I am. I like to think of myself as an overachiever.

Louie Anderson

When I worked for comedian Louie Anderson, I once traveled with him to Seattle where he was scheduled to do a brief show at a wedding reception. It was the wedding of one of the big shots at Microsoft. I think Louie thought is was a corporate event for Microsoft when he agreed to do the show. If he had known it was a wedding, I’m pretty sure he would have declined. The last thing Louie wanted was to be thought of as the wedding comedian (similar to the “wedding singer”).

Bill Gates

I don’t remember too much about the show, other than one joke Louie told because Bill Gates was in attendance. Noting that Bill was there, Louie asked the bride and groom what Bill got them as a wedding gift… “A billion slice toaster?”

What does a billionaire buy a friend as a wedding gift? We didn’t have any billionaires come to our wedding, but Elisabeth and I did get a lot of Pyrex. The gift of champions. It was certainly not flashy, but has been very handy, and most of it has lasted for our 17 years of marriage. If only people made their marriages as durable as Pyrex. I think more marriages would survive.

From 1992-1994, Elisabeth and I lived in Virginia Beach. We weren’t the biggest fans of Virgina Beach, but the Tidewater area as a whole really wasn’t that bad. One of our favorite places was Portsmouth with its historic houses and scenery.

One balmy, ninety plus degree, late summer day we were driving over to Portsmouth, and we noticed that the traffic was beginning to back up. We looked ahead and could see that they were lifting the drawbridge. It had happened to us before, so we knew what to expect. About a ten to fifteen minute wait while they raised the bridge, the boat passed through, and they lowered the bridge.

As we continued to move forward with the traffic we noticed that several cars in the right lane were merging over into our lane. Already a little ticked off; I became a little more annoyed that everyone wanted into our lane when we couldn’t go anywhere anyway because the bridge was up. But as we continued to roll forward we realized why everyone is merging. Something bright yellow with a hint of red was scattered all over the right lane. At first I thought a truck had dumped its load of yellow flowers, and I wondered why people were afraid to drive over top of them. For a moment I contemplated changing lanes and moving up in the order of cars by driving over them myself. Then I realized what was really dumped all over the road. Those weren’t yellow flowers. And the red? Well that was blood. Yes, blood and other slimy things associated with blood.

So what were those yellow things scattered on the road? Chicken feet. Some truck which was no where to be seen, had dropped its load of chicken feet. Bright yellow chicken feet oozing red, bloody parts. Now remember, we’re stuck at the drawbridge and have come to a stop next to thousands of severed chicken feet in the heat and humidity of the middle of the day. It smelled like something had died or some thousand things had died. And as the air conditioning blew at full blast, the smell was filling our car. We tried turning off the air but it was way too hot, so we kept it on low hoping to minimize the smell and not sweat to death. We wondered if a stench so bad could kill a person.

Of course the bridge was still at least seven minutes from being lowered, so we were stuck. Fortunately, we were next to the feet and not driving or parked on top of them. After a while, we could see that people were getting impatient though with no way to escape the sight or smell. So when people started driving over the endless trail of feet, all we could figure was that they hoped they could get past them. What were they thinking? Yes, it smelled bad, but now it was getting slung onto the bottoms of their cars and up onto the hoods and windshields of the cars behind them. Now they were going to take that smell with them. I could only imagine what it felt like to drive over the crunching and squishing feet. We couldn’t help but laugh as we watched chicken feet goo sling up off the tires and dangle from the under side of cars. As tires rolled over the feet, the skin was peeled from the bone. It was a festival of flying and oozing chicken feet that temporarily distracted us from our own misery.

Finally the boat had passed, the bridge was lowered, and we were able to drive away from our nightmare of all those footless chickens. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for the smell to dissipate from our car, but I always wondered about those people who chose to drive over the chicken feet. How many washes did it take to remove the dried and crusty goo from their cars?

So next time you’re at a drawbridge, train track, or extra long stoplight, which is making you late for your next appointment, be glad that you’re not next to a dumped load of chicken feet… or worse.

I read that the oldest person in the world, Gertrude Baines, just died.  She  was 115 years old.  I’ve noticed is that it is very dangerous to be the oldest person in the world because whoever gets that designation dies.  I haven’t done a study, but the mortality rate seems very high.  Of course, all you have to do is read a little further in the story and you find out that Gertrude enjoyed eating fried chicken, bacon, and ice cream.  Holy crap, woman, you’ll do yourself in eating fatty foods like that!  Let’s just hope the “new” oldest person in the world, Kama Chinen of Japan, tries to take better care of herself.

For the longest time, every polo/golf shirt I bought would be ruined after only a few washings.  With each washing, the collar would get an annoying crease in the wrong place.  Surely this has happened to you.  That little annoying crease would prevent the collar from laying flat and made the shirt look sloppy.

I could not figure out a way to stop this from happening.  I had imagined a special clip to attach to the collar and keep it from folding while being washed and dried.  It would have been a perfect product for Billy Mays to promote.  But not being an inventor, I decided there had to be a better way.  Well, I think I’ve found it.

After searching on the internet for ideas, I came across one that seems to work.  When I take off my shirt, I turn it inside out and then pull the collar out and button the top button before tossing it into the laundry basket.  After washing and drying, I just pull the shirt out of the dryer immediately and fold it.   I don’t really know why this seems to work, but shirts that I had sitting on my shelves and not worn for over a year because of the bad collars have now returned to their original glory.  I’m actually wearing one right now.

I also found suggestions about drying the shirt in the dryer for only a short time and then laying it out to air dry the rest of the way.  But I’ve found that drying it all the way works fine as long as you get it out of the dryer pretty quickly.

So now I’ve have solved another of life’s mysteries.  I will be moving on to bigger and better problems now like getting my kids to turn off the basement lights before coming upstairs (this would also apply to bedroom and bathroom lights).