A More Serious Blog

Around the age of 11 or so I became fascinated with the story of Anne Frank and the seven people who hid along with her in the attic of a merchant house in Amsterdam for two years during World War II. Much like my obsession with the Challenger explosion when I was in 3rd grade, the plight of Anne Frank was pushed to the back of my mind until recently. Last night I watched a film version of her story. My soon-to-be four year old son joined me halfway through the movie and began firing off one question after another.

My maternal grandfather spent five years in the United States Army’s Third Armored Division, 36th Infantry. He was a great shot but drove halftracks instead because he could speak German. Growing up in a town once known affectionately as “Little Germany” and having parents who could read, write, and speak German, my grandfather could communicate with German POWs. That is how I became interested in the Second World War, though I am careful with the questions I ask him because I have no idea what it is like to live with the memories he has from combat and from seeing a death camp.

When I came across the plight of Anne Frank I was instantly attracted to the story of a young girl living in fear everyday. Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees never scared me, nor do the M. Night Shyamalan movies. The original (and best) version of The Shining freaked me out. Living in an attic without being able to go to the bathroom or move unless absolutely necessary for eight or nine hours a day because it might mean you will die a horrible death is the ultimate horror story. I cannot imagine what the eight in that Amsterdam attic went through everyday. The sound of a siren, the clanking of boots against the streets, a scream somewhere off in the distance, this had to be torture and the worst part arguably was the inability to tell when it would end.

My four year old son fired away with the questions. The people hiding in the attic were the first topic. They had to hide from the bad guys because the bad guys did not like the church of the people hiding. In spite of his distaste for church, my son understands what it is and that is why I described the movie that way. He also learned a bit of German--one sentence, actually--when two German soldiers investigated a burglary at 263 Prinsengracht.

Es ist eine Katze.

He and I went over those words over and over. I would say it and he would try to say it and then I would say it again and he would mispronounce it again. His attention would return to the screen and the questions would resume. Then I would ask him to tell me the German phrase he had just learned and I would have to refresh his memory.

Es ist eine Katze.

Of course, the focus of the film for him shifted from the people hiding in the attic to the two German soldiers. He wanted to know all about them. That is when it occurred to me that the German soldiers were the reason I was so interested in Anne’s story. I have never read her diary, though it was probably assigned me in school at some point in the past. I probably browsed through it, skimmed some pages, got the general ideas for discussion (it is possible to make it through college using this method, I am not lying). The Nazis were what scared me. The guys in the loud boots with the helmets whose metal dropped down behind the ears. The guys who looked awfully austere and possibly constipated in old films of Nazi rallies. The kind of guys who tried to kill the man responsible for bringing my mother into this world. The kind of guys who were supposed to have blond hair and blue eyes and didn‘t know lucidity from a plate of schweinsbraten. The kind of guys I want to kick in the nuts for scaring me as a kid.

I have contemplated my first tattoo and although I am not a tattoo bearing kind of guy there is one that I want to get. It is the 3rd Armored Divisions logo consisting of a yellow, blue, and red triangle with a “3” and a black tank/halftrack with a red lightning bolt cutting diagonally through the tank/halftrack. Below that with a yellow background is the word, SPEARHEAD. I am tempted to get these words added below that: Don’t Let The Spearhead Catch You Schlafen.

I believe the Germans are truly good people who had to be taught a lesson.

Someday, when the squiggly, awkward lines of rosacea map my nose and hair the size of eyebrows grow from the outer rims of my ears I will pull out a red flag with a white circle in the middle that holds the place of a disjointed and crooked black figure known infamously as the swastika. It is then that I will tell my grandkids or whomever will listen that a guy I knew had brought this thing back from a far off place full of people trying to kill each other in the name of something that I still believe no one understands completely. And the story of the people hiding in the attic will come up and the bad guys will get a lot of attention because they are scary despite being scared themselves from living in a country gone mad.

Then I will teach them a simple German phrase.

Es ist eine Katze.

Drunk Jeopardy

While watching Beerfest this morning I was reminded of something.

This all happened by chance one night with a few friends, some beer, and a Playstation. I doubt we invented this game but if we did history will never remember us. When I think about it it’s amazing that I remember it. There were four of us and an infant. The little guy must have gone to bed by that time because it is difficult to do much serious drinking when diapers need to be changed. Thinking about those Playstation graphics of the late ‘90s and early 2000s is all the more humorous if you can recall thinking back then that Nintendo graphics of the mid ‘80s were so much fun to laugh at. These days it is all about Wii and Playstation 3, but some things are more important than evolving technology that I could never afford.

Here is the fundamental reality of Drunk Jeopardy: You are going to suffer the following day. Losing requires a rematch, mainly for men because we are highly competitive by nature and cannot handle defeat nor admit to losing. Hangovers are a way of the good life but this gets ridiculous. Like a shot to the nuts after stepping on a rake or sticking your tongue to a metal object during winter, it isn’t pretty. Or as you might say at the end of the bonus round of Drunk Jeopardy: Ist intint petty.

I don’t recall any rules other than drinking the entire time you were playing. The highest score is the obvious winner but Drunk Jeopardy itself does not have rules like Beer Pong or Speed Quarters. Bud Light and Budweiser were my poisons at that time and I supported my home town well. I was 23 or 24 years old and did not know any better but I do know this: alcohol increased my knowledge of Leonard Bernstein, among other subjects I had no frigin’ clue about previously. The drunker I got the better I did, but doesn’t that apply to many things in life? My sister and I once did some skeet shooting at a family Thanksgiving gathering. With two glasses of wine and two Heinekens in me I hit two out of three targets. Completely sober I could not hit the side of a barn with a soccer ball from five feet away. That is an exaggeration that begs for no explanation. My sister, who is too thin to ever claim to be a drinker, did not hit any. Not only that, she fired with the butt of the shotgun at her waist, making it nearly impossible to aim the weapon. She is a licensed gun owner. If anyone ever breaks into her house I fear for everyone but the burglar.

One instance of Drunk Jeopardy found my friend/teammate and I with a paltry $625 at the end of the game. A few beers later and one more game and we finished with over $10,000. If I had taken the Law School Admission Test completely drunk I might be making a hundred grand a year right now. Probably not, but one aspect of being drunk is regretting things about the past.

Drunk Jeopardy eventually gave way to playing other games drunk. The college football series for Playstation 2 was a long time favorite of mine until my PS2 stopped working. I miss that. Notre Dame won many national titles and when that grew old I moved on to Madden. In my late twenties I could stay up drinking beer and playing video game football until six in the morning. These days I could not make it anywhere near three without digging down deep for the will to survive. The days of my wife waking up for work and finding me and my buddy drunk and playing football and smelling of stale cigarette smoke are over. Maybe those days were not as much fun as I like to thought they were, but everything was hilarious when my wife was yelling at me right about the time the newspaper guy had finished his route for the day.

Today I drank some Schlafly’s and played the video game version of “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?”. I am not smarter than a fifth grader and I wonder how smart I actually was when I was in fifth grade. At that time Super Mario was the king of the make-believe world where mushrooms and coins were like beer and pizza and that theme song got stuck in your head for an eternity. After two shots at being smarter than a fifth grader I gave up in favor of SMACKDOWN vs. RAW 2010. Pretending to be steroid freakish monsters with attitude is more my speed. My goal at this point is to smash a metal folding chair or even a table over my opponent’s head. Wish me luck, this could take awhile.

I am in the process of creating rules for Drunk Jeopardy and hopefully resuming play after a decade’s absence. When thinking about how to train for this I imagine myself holding a college textbook of some sort to my face with one hand and a beer bottle to my mouth with the other.