What do you get by combining a glass vase packed with 600 jelly beans, a folding card table, and three 5th graders posted on a busy street corner? A heavy — and maybe healthy — dose of city living. 

The boys arrived at the appointed hour yesterday morning. Descended upon the preagreed Chestnut Street staging point. Pumped and ready to cajole unwitting passersby into gobbling (collectively) 50 gooey chocolate chip cookies, washed down (collectively) with five gallons of lemonade. In this induced hypoglycemic state, folks were then brow-beaten and propagandized (in a good way) about the merits of micro-finance. Bellies distended and brains overwhelmed, they were then forced to perform mind-bending mathematical calculations in a pressured attempt to surmise how many jelly beans sat encased in glass before them. 

These dynamics produced an interesting array of outcomes. There was the red-faced homeless gent, apparently attracted by all the hubbub, who elected to sit cross-legged a few feet from where I sat. A little too close for comfort, I supposed, given the Norman Rockwellian lemonade stand scene we were working to curate. The boys’ well-rehearsed “would you like to donate” pitches intermingled with some barely coherent mumblings from my new sidewalk buddy.  Upon closer aural inspection, I realized the fellow wasn’t talking to or about the boys, wasn’t referencing the fact that he and I were seated close enough to hold hands, and probably remained more or less unaware of his surroundings. I even came to appreciate his stream-of-consciousness ramblings. 

There were the obligatory gaggles of painstakingly coiffed and costumed Millenials, prepared for a very meaningful “Sunday Funday.” In truth, a depressingly large percentage of these people literally ignored the earnest inquiries from my son and his little buddies. Speed-walked right past, eager to get to their waiting pitchers of mimosas or whatever, I guess. Maybe I did the same at their age, but still. You don’t need to donate, people, but you might want to consider upholding your end of the social compact with an 11 year-old. If he is polite and thoughtful in his question, return his eye contact and appreciate for a moment or two what he is up to. He’s cool with a simple “no, thank you” with a smile. And ultimately, his dad is cool, too: with your giving me an excellent example to share with my son about how not to behave in these sorts of circumstances. Harumph. 

Fortunately, there were also tons of families. Plenty of couples and groups of people who were not in a rush to get somewhere. An older homeless woman whom I have seen asleep in various store entryways over the years but never heard speak. She, as much as these many others, represented the overwhelming majority of smile-inducing, faith-in-humanity-restoring people. Who listened intently to the boys. Read their handmade poster (which, admittedly, was not easy to read). Did not remark on the boys’ unintentionally funny use of exclamation points (Donate!). Asked thoughtful, substantive questions which were (amazingly) met with thoughtful and substantive answers. And for the most part, totally ignored us parents standing or sitting on the periphery — a much-appreciated show of respect for these kids and their serious school project. 

How the boys managed to fit 600 multi-colored and different-looking jelly beans into that corked jar, I’ll never know. But perhaps more impressive was the way they chatted up, mixed with, and maybe even inspired, a couple hundred different-looking people on a busy street corner one Sunday afternoon in 5th grade. 

Thanks for reading. 

“Food coloring’ll kill ya.” This would have been my immediate conclusion had I studied Mandarin at any point. A man or woman posted a comment overnight on a recent blog entry of mine. In Mandarin. So I turned to an “expert” — my earnest 15 year-old who has studied the language for several years and spent a month in China this past summer. He both solved the mystery and inspired today’s blog post. Alas, no good deed goes unpunished. Oh, and he will likely demand that I delete this post in its entirety. But I shall persist. 🙂

So to summarize —

1. I need better code names for my confidential informants. 
2. Resist the urge to be helpful to your Luddite dad when he texts you a Mandarin translation request during school hours. A lose-lose situation. 
3. Lay off the midnight eating of the bright red, cancer-causing, braces-gumming candy. The authorities are not above rifling through recycling bins in search of contraband. 
4. Digging is admirable, even in Mandarin! 

Thanks for reading. 

Eleven years. Eleven years I’ve waited. Patiently, more or less. Eleven years I’ve sat idly at a plastic table, watching some other San Francisco Little League coach win the draft lottery. Blindly and serendipitously grasping the folded paper ticket granting its holder the first pick in our annual player draft. “A unicorn,” I confess I’ve pondered. “I’m going to graduate two sons from this league all the way through, never once getting that first pick.” Blink. Blink. Blink. 

Well all that changed on Monday night. My heart actually palpitated a bit when I withdrew my hand from the envelope and saw that I had, at long last, pulled the “1.” I’m not much for cards, but I imagine this was like drawing a royal flush or handful of aces or whatever the mustached (mustachioed?) World Series of Poker pros aim for on ESPN. Or Charlie’s Golden Ticket, folded into a candy bar’s wrapper. Yeah, felt like that. 

With a little whiff of hand grenade thrown in, too, if I’m being completely honest. 

Because suddenly, now, we got us some pressure. If our ringer-stacked little league roster doesn’t reach the stratosphere this season, it’s on us. The coaches. On me. The head coach. If our players’ on-field heroics don’t cause the capital “L” capital “L” Little League officials in the Williamsport home office to decree moving the home run fences 50 feet back, I have failed. If our season doesn’t conclude with a ticker tape parade down Market Street, I will be hung in effigy. Or maybe stuck with voodoo pins, also in effigy. Or beaten with a broomstick as a piñata, once again in effigy. 

It’s difficult to imagine the upcoming spring little league season not culminating with me in one or another state of effigy. 

Opening Day looms a mere 24 days, 1 hour, 9 minutes, and 30 seconds hence. But who’s counting? 

Thanks for reading. 

I love the smell of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Order and Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer heavy duty hair gel. Throw in the waft of a large Phil’s “Turkish” coffee, and call me Robert Duvall. Sitting here on this soggy, green Rec & Park bench, sporting a Civil War-era colonel’s hat and one of those mustard yellow ascots festooning my puffy jacket collar. No apocalypse now, at least not right at this moment. 

Instead, this morning I feel a little lighter. Some small measure of relief from a month of predictably unpredictable madness. The world feels a tiny bit less malignant for my 11 year-old. Maybe we’ve suddenly stumbled upon the antidote: Mix one measure Rule of Law with one measure of Hilarious Parody. Shake vigorously. Or maybe pound it and grind it with mortar and pestle. Cover and let it sit in the fridge overnight, chilling. Or maybe leave it wide open on the kitchen counter, open season for all the recently-hatched fruit flies. Let the flies get in on that action. 

I confess I am a little fuzzy on the exact proportion of ingredients in this potent paste. But I am reasonably certain that POTUS woke up this morning feeling as if he had downed a half dozen mason jars of Red State Moonshine last night. And the Press Secretary, I bet, is wondering if his own little hands are as little as Melissa McCarthy’s. Probably Trump is pondering the same question, truth be told. 

As for me, I love the smell of three branches of government and late night comedy sketches in the morning. Smells like…victory. 

Thanks for reading. 

My wife turned on the bedroom TV this morning. For the past month or so, such occasions are few and far between. We watch the pixels come to life peeking warily through the gaps between our fingers. Half-expecting an image of an overnight mushroom cloud. Holding our collective breath until no such cloud image appears during Matt Lauer’s first 30 seconds in our bedroom. 

Instead of End of Days, this morning we got the prognosticating rodent, Punxsutawney Phil. Phil’s weather forecasts once held some meaning for us when we suffered through unbearably long, East Coast winters. Desperate to leave the sidewalk snow banks and biting windchill behind, I’d cling to any hint of imminent relief. “What did he say?! What did he say?! He saw his shadow?! Oh thank God, Winter is almost over!” I don’t remember which is which regarding the causation between shadow-seeing and jet streams. I just remember being so grateful to our woodchuck savior. 

So I guess I had a little bit of this lingering around somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious when NBC streamed the beaver’s shenanigans live this morning. Probably not fair to accuse the hamster of “shenanigans.” I’m sure he is as nonplused and bewildered about this whole thing as I. Still, I found myself straining to hear Phil’s mumbled little answers to the existential questions being posed by a town official wearing a stove pipe hat. I think guinea pigs only appear to be speaking, when in fact they are actually instinctively grinding and sharpening their rodent teeth. I ignored this inconvenient fact, however, convinced that Phil was issuing predictions covering topics far broader than the change of seasons. Pretty sure I even loudly shushed my 5th grader, who had migrated by now to our room en route to the bus stop. He only saw on TV a chubby groundhog surrounded by mostly old people dressed in weird costumes. But I was looking for more. “What’d he just say?! Wait, what?! Shhhh! Damnit, daddy can’t hear what the beaver is saying! Shhhh!” 

So I don’t actually know what ancient wisdom Phil shared with the human race this morning. I suppose, too, that I will search in vain for a transcript of the proceedings. Whatever Phil said, though, I’m sure it was brilliantly prescient. Reassuring, hopefully. Salvation is just over the horizon, or words to that effect. 

Some folks will scour this morning’s papers for clues as to what the future holds. Me? I’ll take the muskrat. 

Thanks for reading. 

So early this morning, my mother delivered devastating news via text message: I may well be on the hook for 34 years-worth of overdue fees from my high school library. Here’s how this horrifying prospect revealed itself —

So how should we interpret this stunning discovery? Please allow me to summarize the key points:

1. There are not enough spaces on my iPhone calculator to quantify my epic late fee. I suspect it will, however, be sufficient to cover the expense of building Trump’s Wall. 

2. My step-father, Jim, is likely never to speak to my mother or me. We probably deserve that. 

3. Finally, and most importantly, I think I can answer the “How in the hell did we get here?” question of the hour: Only one plausible theory, really — Our country’s current predicament is all my fault. Had I returned 1984 on a timely basis, lo those many years ago, none of this would have happened. None of it. Mea culpa. I only hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me. 

Thanks for reading.