Adding a Little Levity

  PRAISE FOR ADDING A LITTLE LEVITY

  “In today’s world of uncertainty and weighty decisions, Adding A Little Levity, is the perfect bedtime read. A chapter a night will leave you smiling, as you drift off into a peaceful sleep. The problem is—you’ll be chuckling in your dreams.” —

  Sally Fernandez, Author of the “Max Ford Thriller” Series.

  • • •

  “I see a lot of wit bubbling away here and an eye for the farcical nightmare.”

  Arthur Plotnik, Best Selling Author of Spunk & Bite

  • • •

  “Having a tough day? Adding a Little Levity is just what the doctor ordered. Bob’s essays showcase his observational humor and dry wit about a kid from Queens and his escapades (and cringeworthy blunders) in corporate America and beyond. Sure to put a smile on your face and a spring in your step.”

  Erin Moran McCormick, Author, Year of Action

  Copyright © 2018 Robert J. Licalzi

  Published by Blue Star Press

  PO Box 5622, Bend, OR 97708

  contact@bluestarpress.com | www.bluestarpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieal system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

  ISBN 978-1944515553

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Diane, and my four children, Roberto, Diana, Daniela, and Carolina, whose laughter at some of the earlier essays spurred me on to compose a few more.

  ROBERT J. LICALZI

  ADDING A

  LITTLE LEVITY

  ESSAYS TO LIGHTEN A TOUGH DAY

  CONTENTS

  SECTION 1

  GROWING UP IN QUEENS

  Adventures in Dining

  The Interview

  Anchors Aweigh

  Drill Baby Drill

  Late to the Altar

  Marathon Man

  Culture Shock

  A Few Good Men

  Punitive Damages

  SECTION 2

  LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

  Going Up?

  Joy of Traveling

  Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

  Jet Lag

  Hotel California

  National Service for All

  Thanks for the Memories

  Misophoniacs Unite!

  Take a Hike

  Speechless and Unbowed

  SECTION 3

  WHEN THE GOING GETS WEIRD, THE WEIRD TURN PRO

  Waiting Room

  School Daze

  Get Shorty

  Where’s the Beef

  Thank you, Rachel

  Holy Guacamole, Batman!

  Gender Jollies

  Latte Salute

  Fast Break in Pyongyang

  Profiles in Courage

  Through the Looking Glass

  “Higher” Education

  Cold Turkey

  Yale Bulldogs Poodles

  EU Can’t Be Serious

  PREFACE

  Make a person smile and you have done well; but make a person laugh out loud and you have achieved something. This book started as a single, light-hearted essay, Hotel California, which extracted a few spontaneous laughs, causing those who read it in public places to appear batty. After hearing that, how does one not continue? I recognized that real-life experiences and observations, leavened with a helping of hyperbole, often produce the most humorous results.

  So, I wrote a few more essays. Not everyone thought they were funny, but enough people did, spurring me on to fill up this book. My goal is a modest one: to have every person, patient enough to read the entire book, experience, at least once, the enjoyment of unintentionally and heartily laughing out loud.

  At home, my dad would always look for opportunities to keep things light, kidding, but never wounding all those around him. He had a special skill. He would defend his playful actions saying that he was trying to “add a little levity to the situation,” and unknowingly provided me with an easy choice for the title to this book. Hopefully, this collection of essays will do what its title promises.

  -RJL

  SECTION 1

  EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT GROWING UP IN QUEENS VILLAGE, NEW YORK, BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.

  Some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple. I was born in the bleachers and was thrilled I had snuck into the ballpark.

  ADVENTURES IN DINING

  I grew up in a family of modest means; my brother, sister, and I learned that nothing was to be wasted, particularly food. Even the hungriest dog would be disappointed looking for food scraps in our garbage. For us, “leftovers” was the name of a meal, no different from a bologna sandwich or a meatloaf (and we all fervently hoped the “meat” in the loaf was beef). We accepted that our low-priced chopped meat contained 35 percent filler—ground bones, cartilage, knuckles generously seasoned with aged offal. It was the 65 percent labeled “meat” we feared.

  I remember that by my early teenage years, the quality of our chopped meat improved, perhaps because my father received a salary increase. Although the “meat” portion was as mysterious as ever, and the percentage of filler was the same, it was now ground up more finely. After that, we chewed our meat with greater confidence, knowing that those more-than-occasional, pebble-sized, tooth-chipping, bone fragments were no longer lurking.

  We had difficulty containing our excitement surrounding the semi-annual trip to a restaurant. We never knew precisely when this momentous occasion would occur, but my brother and I could deduce that it was a couple of weeks away when our meal portions at home were reduced by half. And when the half-portions were replaced by gruel, we knew it was just a matter of days.

  Not wishing to waste his hard-earned money, my dad made sure we were sufficiently hungry so as to fully appreciate our dining-out experience. Because my mom and sister never finished their restaurant meals, and my father had a no-leftovers policy, my dad, brother, and I knew we would have to clean their plates as well. For my father, a doggy bag was not an option. As a matter of honor, we had to eat everything we ordered. He would no sooner skip out of the restaurant in a tutu with a tulip in his ear than he would walk out of there with a doggy bag. “And besides,” my dad would say, putting a finer point on it, “We don’t own a dog.”

  Finally, the day arrived. My brother and I were assisted by my mom and younger sister, weakened as we were by the previous period of undernourishment and unable to walk unaided. As we arrived at the restaurant, they helped us to the table, propping us up in our chairs, hoping we wouldn’t embarrass them by tipping over. At this point, we followed to the letter, the restaurant routine set by our dad years before. Before any conversation commenced, the first order of business was to consume the entire bread basket. This was perfectly okay for my brother and me, given that we lacked a sufficient amount of stored glycogen to power the mouth and throat muscles required for speech.

  Partway through appetizers, though, our ravenous appetites were unleashed. Our pallor was erased, and we gazed covetously at the plates of my mom and sister. Dad ordered a third basket of bread and another family-sized dish of vegetables. Appetizers finished, we were giddy with anticipation as we watched the generous main courses being served to tables around ours. At last, our meals arrived, and we were not disappointed. Huge chunks of fish or meat were accompanied by GMO-sized baked potatoes hidden beneath an improbable amount of butter and sour cream. With a predatory eye on my sister’s plate, I told her that she couldn’t finish her meal in ten sittings much less one. Dad ordered a fourth basket of bread. We dug in.

  About three-quarters through m
y meal, common sense and a pronounced ache in my stomach told me I’d had enough, but not willing to disappoint my dad, I dared not slow down. With the knowledge that I would also have to eat whatever my sister left, I stopped taunting her and instead began to encourage her to eat more. After a few more agonizing bites of my own, I resorted to begging. I offered to carry her book bag to school every day for two weeks.

  Feeling like Joey Chestnut at hotdog number sixty, I finished what was left on my plate, my sister’s plate, and the remaining rolls in the fourth bread basket. The ensuing state of gluttonous lassitude was not going to be eased by loosening a belt or unbuttoning a button or two. Involuntarily, conversation stopped, movement ceased, and even breathing abated as our brains shut down all bodily functions not directly related to the digestive challenge at hand. When my sister expressed a possible interest in ordering dessert, which she was unlikely to finish, I had just enough energy to whisper to her that such a decision would put her collection of stuffed animals in grave danger. She passed on dessert.

  As we struggled to lift our distended bodies from the table, rising unsteadily, toppling our chairs as we stood, my brother and I once again leaned on my mother and sister for help getting to the car, which now seemed much farther away than I had remembered.

  • • •

  THE INTERVIEW

  At last, I secured my first interview with a Wall Street bank, Irving Trust, a renowned presence in finance at the time. Never mind the long odds of a red-blooded Italian American gaining entry into a blue-blooded WASPy company. I wasn’t even sure how I got the interview. Something on my résumé must have caught their eyes, so it appeared that the extra time I spent preparing it had paid off. I had a hard time deciding whether to feature my education (an economics degree from Queens College, which would appear at the top of the Princeton Review of College Rankings if the list started from the bottom), or my primary work experience (a summer newspaper-delivery route).

  I figured the Ivy League human resources director sifting through the résumés did not know anything about either one and would be intrigued enough to grant an interview to find out. I also had been careful to beef up my activity list to highlight a second-place finish in softball intramurals during my sophomore year of high school and the trophy I won for bowling a 150 in sixth grade. In the skills section, in an attempt to convey my competence with electronics, I mentioned that I was pretty good at jiggling the vacuum tubes in the back of the family black-and-white TV set in order to steady the picture. I ended the résumé with a list of my interests, including shuffleboard and Bingo.

  My first order of business for the interview was to select one of the two suits I owned: the blinding, lime-green, flared-bottom stunner or the light-brown, large-glen-plaid, executive look with the more modestly flared bottoms. I chose the brown plaid for two reasons: I thought the conservative bell-bottom would be a more appropriate match with Wall Street’s orthodoxy, and the suit better complemented my clay-brown shoes with the reserved but unmistakable platform heels.

  The John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever culture had long since petered out throughout the country, but it lingered in the remote corner of Queens, where I lived, which was always a disco twirl or two behind the mainstream in nearly everything.

  A couple of days before the interview, I was advised that it would be conducted over lunch at the bank’s officers’ dining room. Now, I was convinced that the brown plaid suit was the right choice for this setting. I couldn’t figure out what warranted such VIP treatment, though. Could it be that the human resources director liked Bingo, too?

  Soon the day arrived, and I met the two gentlemen from Irving Trust who would lunch with me and conduct the interview: Thaddeus Lodge III and Nathaniel Poindexter IV. Or was it Lodge IV and Poindexter III? What’s with these numbers, anyway? I thought names only contained letters; nobody I knew in Queens had any numbers in their names. The dining room was an elevator ride and a walk down a long corridor from where we met.

  The three of us struggled to make small talk, quickly realizing the impossibility of finding anything in common. What I most remember is that the corridor wasn’t carpeted, so my wooden-heeled platforms, chirping like crickets, announced my arrival to all the bankers nearby. Thad and Nate’s Gucci loafers, on the other hand, glided noiselessly down the hall. I arrived at the dining room with a stiff neck. Lodge III was six foot two, while Poindexter IV was six foot four (or was it Lodge who was six foot four and Poindexter six foot two?).

  I had been looking up the entire time since I met them. As if I weren’t making enough noise, walking while craning my neck added a decibel or two to my platforms’ recital.

  We arrived at the dining room, hushed-toned and funereal. Everyone was dressed in dark gray or black pinstripes with odd folds (which I would learn later were called cuffs) at the bottom of their pants. I strained mightily to spot some plaid, but to no avail. I also noticed quite a few bankers straining to see me. Yup, I thought as I sauntered in, you guys might be seeing a lot of me around here after I nail this interview. But now, it was time to enjoy a free gourmet meal in an upscale dining room.

  To show my interviewers that I was health-conscious, I ordered fish, and because I was hungry, I ordered a whole flounder—I didn’t want just part of one. I only learned several years later what the word “filet” meant. As it turned out, the meal was the most challenging part of the interview. No matter how carefully I removed the spine from the fish on my plate, each mouthful of flounder was riddled with bones.

  I faced a Hobson’s choice. Should I pick the bones out of each bite, piling up several fine linen napkins next to my plate, or should I simply chew and swallow the bones, hoping that the two self-absorbed nabobs at my table would not notice? I chose the latter. Despite my masticating with abandon, the bony detritus in each gulp scratched their way down my throat and esophagus, setting both on fire.

  Desperate for relief, I downed glass after glass of water. The waiter grew so tired of refilling my glass that he finally brought two pitchers and simply sat down and joined us. I sensed that the banker with the aquiline nose (who had been looking down it at me since we met) was beginning to suspect my attempt at deception. With my discomfort increasing with each bite, I found that I could not remember the interviewers’ names; I began calling them Nathaddeus and Thaniel. (Who has names like those anyway? The kids I grew up with were named Stewie, Mikey, and Gino.)

  By this time, though, my bladder, overwhelmed by the onrush of water, was giving me a clear signal of distress. I tried to act nonchalant, but concentrating on the questions of Hideous and Neanderthal (I no longer had any idea what their names were) was a challenge. I would have excused myself to go to the men’s room, but that required a perp-type walk across the entire carpet-less dining room. By now, even I had figured out that my unique attire was of great interest to the homogeneous collection of Irving Trust funeral directors dining around us. I wouldn’t exactly be presenting them with a “Where’s Waldo” challenge. So, I remained at the table, where the more I tried to ignore my distended bladder, the more everything around me resembled a urinal. The Righteous Brothers ran out of questions and began to converse with each other about their favorite sport: polo. I was thinking about joining their conversation to talk about mine—stickball—but sensed that it might be too difficult to explain.

  Mercifully, lunch ended quickly. I said goodbye to my hosts and disappeared into the nearest elevator. Fortunately, it was empty, so I was able to begin extracting the remaining bones still lodged in my throat. Now, all I needed was a bathroom.

  • • •

  ANCHORS AWEIGH

  I was born and raised in Queens Village, New York, a long way from the ocean’s edge. Maybe once a summer, my father would stuff our family of five into his compact car and drive the twenty miles for a day at the beach. You could say that we were not “water people.”

  Fast forward years later. At age twenty-nine, having never been on a boat and having barely m
astered the dog paddle, I moved to Puerto Rico. A couple of years after that, while I was courting my future wife, Diane, her father, Vic, invited me on board his fifty-foot sailboat along with ten other family members for a weeklong trip around the Caribbean islands.

  If there was one person to be marooned with on a deserted island, Diane’s father would be a hands-down choice. Tough and with boundless energy, he knew how to fish, farm, sail, and he could fix or build almost anything—he was modern-day Tarzan at home in any of nature’s settings or circumstances.

  Vic spent his youth collecting outdoor experiences and wrestling with Mother Nature. I spent mine collecting postage stamps. I hoped opposites would attract.

  We all met at the marina, unpacked our cars, and walked to the docked sailboat. Everyone carried their belongings in soft, stowable backpacks and duffle bags. I wheeled my gear in a hard, Samsonite suitcase. With many people to impress, I boarded the sailboat with my mouth exceptionally dry and my forehead and underarms sweating more than was warranted by the outside temperature. Because there was little in my stamp-collecting experience that prepared me for the operation of a sailboat, I met Vic on deck for a briefing.

  First, I learned that nearly everything on a sailboat has a special name. Concepts like right and left, front and back—universally understood by man since he emerged from a cave, needing to be able to communicate location to his fellow caveman as they stalked the main course for their Paleo diet—are not good enough for a sailboat. Instead, right and left are starboard and port (or is it port and starboard?) and front and back are bow and stern. I looked up stern in the dictionary; the aftermost part of the vessel. I thought dictionaries were supposed to help. Aftermost? Nobody I know on land has ever used that word. Getting on a crowded bus, does the driver tell you, “I think there are some empty seats in the aftermost?” When describing a car accident, does anyone ever say, “I was stopping for a red light when the car behind me smashed into the aftermost part of my car?”