Matthew Dicks

I will marry you.

From a New York Times piece entitled The Officiant Among Us:

FOR generations, getting married meant solemnly standing before an authority figure charged with upholding the rules of civil society or religious traditions.

But when Amity Kitchen wed Matthew Saucedo in January, a gregarious family friend, Chris Coughlin, officiated. Mr. Coughlin’s credentials for performing the ceremony? He clicked his mouse at a site offering ordination as a Universal Life Church minister, joining the ranks of Web-blessed clergy who are becoming an increasingly popular choice to preside over weddings.

“Neither Matt nor I are very religious,” Ms. Kitchen said. “The thought of just randomly picking someone to perform this meaningful ceremony, that just didn’t make sense.”

I became an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church thinking that someday there might be a client of my DJ company also in need of a wedding officiant, and I might be able to fill this role for them as well.  To be honest, I thought the chances of me being hired as a minster were slim, but since becoming ordained in 2002, I have presided over a dozen wedding ceremonies, including the ceremonies of two close friends and three baby naming ceremonies.

One family actually considers me their family minster.  

And when Elysha and I were married in 2006, a friend also ordained by The Universal Life Church married us.

So I fully support the shift from traditionally ordained religious folk to less formal but more personal officiants, but I also advise using caution when choosing a friend or relative to preside over your wedding ceremony. After providing the music for more than one hundred ceremonies over the past decade, I have seen some less than stellar performances.     

When choosing your officiant, I believe that three important qualities should be considered:

1. The volume of the officiant’s voice:

As a DJ, I have seen far too many ceremonies marred by a minister or justice of the peace who cannot be heard by the guests.

Sure, the officiant could use a microphone, but then you suffer the disparity of volume between the officiant and the bride and groom and anyone else speaking or reading.

You could also provide a microphone for everyone speaking at the ceremony, bride and groom included, but this adds a level of complexity that almost guarantees a problem. Either you are placing a lavaliere microphone on the bride’s dress (never a good idea), shoving a microphone in her face as she speaks (even worse), or she is holding a microphone during her ceremony. All bad options. 

There are plenty of people who can officiate a wedding. Why choose a wizened old man or a grandmotherly old lady?  Instead, choose someone like me who can speak in a voice that can be heard loud and clear.

2. The ability of the officiate to speak extemporaneously:

Too often I have seen brides and a grooms choose a friend or relative to officiate a wedding, only to see the officiant bury his or her head in the  the book, never to be seen again. You want an officiant who can speak to an audience with a level of comfort that allows for frequent eye contact, an occasional smile and a relaxed disposition.

As much as you might love Cousin Henry, if he can’t get his head out of the book, it won’t matter if he is officiating your wedding since no one will ever see him.

3. Experience:

Choose an officiant with a modicum of wedding experience, even if that experience is as a guest at many weddings. I have seen people officiate ceremonies who have attended so few wedding in their lifetimes that the basic structure and flow of a ceremony is a mystery to them. Not only does this often make for a stilted, uncertain performance, but it does not allow the officiant to act quickly with good judgment when something goes wrong, as it often does.

It’s one of the most important days of your life. Don’t trust it to a complete amateur. 

I think I have finally found the perfect catchphrase to use when signing a reader’s book.

Since publishing my first two novels in 2009 and 2010, I have been searching for the perfect catchphrase to use while signing a reader’s book.

I wanted something short, clever, memorable and apropos to me that I could use in addition to my signature, but I had yet to find the right sentiment. I have even put the question out to my blog readers and Twitter followers without any success.

Instead, I have been writing arbitrary phrases like ‘I hope you enjoy my story’ and ‘Thanks so much for giving my book a chance’.

Meaningless drivel that caused me to suffer a great deal of disappointment and self-loathing with every signature.

But after years of searching, I think I have finally found the perfect catchphrase.

When signing a reader’s book, I will write:

I know we’ve only spent a few moments together, but you remind me so much of the spirit found on page 86 of my novel. 

Except each time I will change the page number to a different, arbitrary page, leaving the reader to analyze and scrutinize the page in an attempt to bring some meaning to my purposefully random, intentionally amorphous statement.

Can you imagine the look of consternation on the readers’ faces as they read and re-read the page, searching for a hint of themselves amidst my prose?

It would be priceless.

Or perhaps I will choose half a dozen different pages from the novel that are especially suited to this purpose. Pages that are emotionally charged or perhaps devoid of emotion completely. Pages so inscrutable as to have the reader wondering about my comment for years and years.

I think this might be perfect. It would give me the chance to personalize every book that I sign and infuse it with some meaning (albeit false) while staying true to my own nonconformist, occasionally jerky self.

It might even work out well for some readers.

The narcissist will undoubtedly find a way to transform my comment into a sincere and meaningful compliment.

The introspective soul will have the opportunity to examine the page with careful thought and reflection.

The self promotional office braggart will have a new and fascinating topic of discussion for the next day of work, perhaps even photocopying the page and distributing it to his or her coworkers in an attempt to crowd-source an analysis of my statement.

Either way, I will have a little fun with the reader, and it will almost guarantee that he or she will share the book with others in an attempt to ascertain the meaning of my statement. this process might even lead to a few more sales as well. 

Not bad. Right?

Pandering or positivity?

I do not like being repeatedly told that a question I asked is a good one. I find this unnecessary, condescending and disingenuous.

I told this to a friend and she said that she felt exactly the opposite. When someone tells her that a question she asked is good, she feels validated and encouraged to ask another.

I think this illustrates the difference in our personalities perfectly.

When it comes to a pregnant woman’s size, ladies, please just shut the hell up.

New rule:

No more commenting on a pregnant woman's physical appearance.

If my wife comes home with one more story of some idiot woman (and yes, it is always a woman) commenting on her size, I’m going to personally hunt that woman down and compose a treatise on every one of her physical imperfections.

Most recent was the woman in Starbucks who asked Elysha how many weeks along she was and then remarked that even when she was pregnant with twins, she didn’t think she was ever that big.

The woman should be forbidden from ever entering a Starbucks again. She probably shouldn’t be allowed in public anymore. 

But there have been plenty of others.

There was the woman who asked Elysha if she is much larger during this pregnancy than her previous one.

There are the hordes of attention-seeking narcissists who love to tell pregnant women about how little weight they gained during their own pregnancies and how quickly and easily they shed those extra few pounds after the delivery.

There are the women who mistake pregnant women for walking, talking carnival games, trying to guess how far along they are and always guessing too far.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Elysha averages about one insensitive comment per week, and these can come from friends, coworkers, family members and even complete strangers, who for reasons that escape me see a pregnant woman and feel the need to immediately engage in conversation.

My advice:

Just shut the hell up. All of you. Stop commenting on a pregnant woman’s physical appearance completely. I’d like to say that compliments are still permitted, but I feel like you’ve exercised such poor judgment already that you cannot be trusted to offer a compliment without accidentally insulting the woman at the same time. 

So just shut up completely.

And yes, I am certain that in all of human history, men have made these type of dumbass comments as well, but of the eight recently pregnant women who I polled over the past two days, all reported that comments like these, while entirely too frequent, are never made by men.

Men learned a long time ago to never comment on a woman’s size.

Take a page from our playbook, ladies, and shut the hell up.

Seriously.

Pole vaulting, mailbox baseball and going to the prom are just a few of my ideas.

I was a pole vaulter in high school, and a fairly good one at that. I was a district champion my junior year, but my senior season was wiped out by a serious car accident.

As a result, I was never able to take note of my final vault. When I walked off the pitch at the end of my junior season, I thought I still had another season of pole vaulting ahead of me. 

Sadly, pole vaulting is not a sport like basketball or baseball that you can continue playing well after high school. Pole vaulting is one of those sports typically relegated to a vaulter’s high school or college career.

Nevertheless, I want to vault again. One more time. And I want to do it before it’s too late. At 41, I am in excellent shape, but I know that my window on pole vaulting is closing fast. There will come a time in the not-so-near future when pole vaulting will be a physical impossibility for me.

I have to try it one more time before that day comes.

This got me thinking that my window of opportunity is probably closing on other things from my past as well, and that perhaps this might make for an interesting book:

A 40-something man attempts to recapture and relive moments from his youth one more time before it’s too late.

Pole vaulting would be a perfect subject for the book. I could spend the spring working out with a local high school track team, relearning and re-mastering the skills required to execute a successful vault. I would gather amusing anecdotes about interacting with kids half my age and coaxing my body to do things it probably shouldn’t be doing, and I could recount stories from my own vaulting past, all while attempting to successfully clear opening height, which was 8’6’’ when I was vaulting. 

It might actually make a decent book in its own right, but I think it could also serve as the heart of a book that deals with my attempts to foolishly recapture other meaningful moments from my life as well as I fail to come to terms with getting older.  

Coming up with those other subjects for the book is the next step. So far I have two:

1.  Marching and playing the drums in a competitive marching band.

I played and marched with my high school’s drum corps from seventh grade through my senior year.  In that time, our band won a number of Massachusetts state championships and two New England championships. We also marched in the Rose Bowl, the Macy’s Day Parade, halftime at several Patriots home games, and down the streets of Disneyland. Marching competitively again would require that relearn to play the drums at a proficient enough level, which would probably mean spending a full season with a local marching band. I could document my struggles and successes as I attempt to integrate myself into a marching band filled with people half my age, and at the same time share the plethora of amusing, heartbreaking and even tragic stories that I have from my days with the marching band.

2. Mailbox baseball

While my wife is supportive about most things I do, she has made it clear that this would be a non-sanctioned activity. Growing up, a friend and I played a lot of mailbox baseball. Though I realize how destructive and dangerous this game was, it was incredibly thrilling at the time. To hang out of a car window just one more time with a baseball bat and obliterate just one more mailbox with a single crushing blow might make my life complete.

I have a few other ideas as well, but none nearly as good. 

Attending one more prom is a possibility (I attended many of them while in high school), but there might be a serious creep factor involved with taking some high school girl to the prom (if I could even find one willing to go).

If you have ideas or suggestions that you think might work well, please let me know.

The positive, vicious circle of weight loss

When trying to convince a friend who wants to lose weight that exercise (not diet) is the most important part of any weight loss plan, I explain that exercise initiates the most positive vicious circle that I know.

When you begin exercising, two things happen:

Your appetite goes down.

Your energy level increases.

I didn’t believe it when I started exercising on a daily basis, but it’s true.

The reduced appetite causes you to eat less and crave healthier food, so this unintentionally and almost unconsciously contributes to additional weight loss.

In many cases, regular exercise will be enough to initiate a significant change in diet. 

At the same time, your energy level increases dramatically, which sounds counterintuitive but is nevertheless true. In addition, you sleep more soundly, meaning you are suddenly able to sleep less. This means that any time spent exercising is almost immediately recouped by a reduction in the overall amount of time spent in bed.

Can’t find the time to exercise? Start exercising. You will suddenly have the time.  

Can’t reduce the number of calories consumed in a day? Start exercising and burning calories and you will eat less.

None of this sounds like it makes sense, and but’s true.

If you are looking to lose weight or (even better) simply improve your overall health, ignore dietary changes and start with exercise.

Initiate this positive, vicious circle.

Raising my daughter is a piece of cake, and there’s a good reason why I say this as often as possible.

Maybe people find pleasure in complaining.

Maybe they need to justify their own problems by projecting them upon others.

Perhaps some people simply lack perspective.

I’m not sure.

But when Elysha was pregnant with Clara, we were repeatedly told about how difficult and exhausting parenting would be.

For reasons that I still fail to understand, it seemed as if it was the mission of the great majority of parents to destroy any perception that we might have that our child would be a blessing in our life and parenting would be a joy.

We heard stories about lost sleep, mounting expenses, the loss of basic adult freedom, the inability to see a movie or spend time alone, the stress on our marriage, the tantrums of a toddler, the never-ending string of dirty diapers, the cries in the middle of the night, and more.

Much more. 

For every positive comment made by a person about our future as parents, there were at least ten comments describing parenting in a negative light. This is not an exaggeration. Nor is it uncommon. I hear comments like these made to expecting parents all the time.

This is why I make it a point to tell expecting parents about how easy it has been to be a parent. How ridiculously easy and utterly joyous it has been to raise our three-year old, and how it seems to get easier day by day. 

And it’s true. Compared with all the struggles and difficulties that I have experienced in my life, parenting has not been hard. 

It has not been hard at all. It has been easy. 

And it is not because my wife and I are exceptional parents or because our daughter is an uncommonly good child. It’s simply because the blessings of parenthood kick the ass of the struggles of parenthood.

 

Yes, I had to change six diapers yesterday, and yes, at least one of them was exceedingly disgusting. But this meant that I was able to spend some uninterrupted, one-on-one time with my favorite person in the world, listening to her tell me about her shadow on the wall or the book in her hand or the mobile over head or her plans for the afternoon.

And yes, diapers are expensive and we have considerably less discretionary income than before our daughter was born, but in exchange, we have Clara.  Did anyone actually think that raising a child would save you money? Were the expenses of childrearing a surprise to any of these naysaying parents? It’s simply a tradeoff. Less discretionary income in exchange for an amazing, hilarious, loving, joyful human being.

I advise expecting parents to ignore the rising tide of negativity that will inundate them as their due date approaches. At the very least, smile and nod while reminding yourself how insufferably miserable people can be, regardless of their circumstances. 

Even better, I encourage them to inquire as to why these nattering nabobs of negativity would want to ruin the excitement and anticipation of an expecting parent. I urge them to challenge these parents' assertions and question their motives. I tell them to keep an open mind and ask questions of these parents who insist on describing parenting as a miserable experience.

You haven’t slept well in five years? Were you a parent who refused to allow your child to cry herself to sleep? Was your toddler was still sleeping in your bedroom on her third birthday? Are you and your husband one of these couples who keep score of the time spent with and without your child or subscribe to the “If I am awake, you are awake” philosophy?

Not every child will become a good sleeper, but a lot of parents screw this part up royally and then whine about it for years. 

Or how about this one:

You haven’t seen a movie in five years because it costs a fortune to hire a babysitter?  You own an enormous house with a three-car garage. You have a 50-inch television mounted on the wall in your living room. You own an iPad. You drive a brand new car. You subscribe to HBO, Showtime and Netflix. Your child owns every trendy toy under the sun. Your handbag cost more than Patriots season ticket. Not every family has enough money to hire a babysitter on a regular basis, especially in this economy, but oftentimes their inability to afford a babysitter has more to do with financial decisions unrelated to their child.

None of the warnings that parents imposed upon me prior to the birth of Clara have ever come true.

NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM.  

Now that my wife is pregnant with our second child, the naysayers have returned, finding time in their miserable and harried lives to explain to me that one child might have been easy but two are not. They use trite and overdone expressions like “One plus one does not equal two when it comes to having kids!” and “Watch out! You won’t outnumber the kids anymore!” and take great pride in doing so.

But I know better now. I tell them to go to hell. Yes, another child will increase my level of responsibility. Yes, another child will cost more. And yes, perhaps this next child will not be quite so easy as Clara. 

But in the end, I will have another amazing, joyous, wonderful, hilarious, loving human being in my life, and that will kick the ass of additional responsibilities and added costs.   

I have made it my mission to go through life telling expecting parents that they are about to enter an exciting, joyful and unbelievably exciting time in their lives. I tell them that parenting will be far easier than most people describe it. I encourage them to ignore the army of jackasses who, for reasons that will always elude me, insist on stripping expecting parents of their hopes and dreams.

My daughter is three years old, and raising her as been as easy as pie. I sleep more than I ever have before. I see about a dozen movies a year. I play golf and attend Patriots games and go to the gym regularly. My marriage couldn’t be stronger. We couldn’t be happier.

So there. 

Pirate ship/In-law apartment

We spent yesterday morning celebrating the birthday of one of Clara’s friends at an indoor gym filled with outdoor play equipment.

It’s actually a clever concept. All of the equipment that the children can play on is also for sale, so the business makes five bucks for allowing a kid to play indoors, and in return, the parents have the opportunity to playtest some of the equipment, including this enormous pirate ship which Clara adored.

And at $3,700, I thought the pirate ship was a steal. The only problem:

What do you do with your enormous pirate ship in five to ten years when your children outgrow it?

No one is going to buy it, since it can’t feasibly be transported to a new location, and it’s unlikely that you’re going to want to leave it in the backyard when your kids are teenagers.

Can you just imagine the kind of illicit and unspeakable things teenagers might do with access to something like this?

Then I came upon a solution:

An in-law apartment.

Yes, the interior of the pirate ship is small, and yes, it would require a little insulation and perhaps an extension cord or two to make livable. 

It might also be a little strange to have your in-laws living in a pirate ship in your backyard, but if you buy them a couple pirate hats, an eye patch and a parrot, they could make it work.   

And for many people (and I’m not necessarily saying me), it would be considerably better than having your in-laws puttering around your house all day, leaving dirty dishes in the sink and blasting the talking heads of MSNBC from the other room.  

 

The problem with karma and my proposed solution

This is the problem with karma:

It offers no confirmation that the people who have wronged you in the past have been paid back sufficiently.

There are people in the world who deserve exceedingly harsh treatment from karma based upon actions they took against me in the past, and even though karma may have punished them already, I have no way of knowing. 

Instead, I am left hoping that they were punished while I continue to plot my revenge.

I am a very patient man. 

In addition, my oppressors have no way of connecting karma’s punishment to the crime. When their house burns down or they inexplicably gain 90 pounds, they have no way of knowing that these unfortunate occurrences are the result of their past treatment of me.

This kind of satisfaction is essential when getting even with someone, yet karma offers no mechanism for this to take place.  

What we need is a machine in every household that issues a receipt when karma has evened a score.  A slip of paper with the date, time, reason, and description of the punishment.

My receipt would let me know that karma has gotten even for me.  It would be something tangible that I could stick on my refrigerator and enjoy every time I reach in for a glass of milk or a piece of fruit.

My oppressors’ receipt would let them know that their suffering had been handed down by me via proxy. It would serve as a tangible reminder of their cowardly, underhanded and despicable actions and would make that all-important punishment-crime connection clear.

That would be the kind of karma that I could support.        

5 rules to follow when you find or steal a wallet or handbag

In an ideal world, wallets and purses would never be stolen and lost wallets and purses would always be returned to their owners in perfect order.  Sadly, we do not live in an ideal world. Wallets and purses are routinely stolen and frequently lost. 

With this in mind, I would like to broker a compromise between the thieves of the world who steal these items and the Good Samaritans who find and return them.  This is not an ideal nor entirely moral solution to the problem, but it is one that I feel like everyone can agree to.  My goal is to arrive at a point in which a person could lose a wallet or purse and be reasonably satisfied in terms of getting some of the contents back.   

To this end, I have created a list of five rules that I believe would achieve this goal.  They are rules to which thieves and Good Samaritans could both abide without much trouble, and they would leave all parties involved fairly satisfied with the outcome. 

In the event you find or steal a wallet or purse, these are the five steps that all people should follow:     

1. The cash is automatically yours regardless of who you are or how much there is. Keep it all.  It is the last thing a person is concerned about when his or her wallet or purse turns up missing and the most tempting thing to keep when a wallet is found or stolen.  if you are a thief, consider it your profit.  If you are a Good Samaritan, consider it your reward.
2. If you want to use the lost or stolen credit cards in order to purchase flat screen televisions and train tickets to Florida, you may do so, but keep in mind that you risk prosecution in the process. Thankfully, credit card companies protect consumers from the majority of these losses and they are exceptionally efficient at issuing new cards and getting them into the hands of consumers in record time.
3. Keep the wallet or purse if you so desire.  Though I realize that some handbags can cost thousands of dollars, you have to be a crazy person to spend that much on a handbag in the first place, and you have to be even crazier to allow it to be lost or stolon. You don’t deserve to get it back. Let this unfortunate incident serve as a lesson to you:  Spending thousands of dollars on handbag might garner the attention of similarly insane individuals, but it also serves as a clear indication of the depth of the pool in which you swim.   
4. Leave the debit card behind. Even though you will never be able to guess the PIN in order to access the cash, the rightful owner will still have to close their old checking account and open a new one, just to be safe.  This is annoying since it necessitates a trip to the bank and requires the owner to forget an old checking account number and memorize a new one.  Not an easy task.
5. Return everything else contained within the wallet or purse by either dropping it off in a US Postal Service mailbox or handing it over to the police.  Driver’s license, passport, library card, gym membership card, AAA card, customer loyalty cards, photographs and anything else one might find in a wallet or handbag.  While cash and credit cards are technically the most valuable items that you are likely to find, it’s the other items found in a wallet or purse that are most difficult (and sometimes impossible) to replace.

Think of it this way:

If your wallet or purse were stolen today and I could guarantee the safe return of everything inside except for the cash, credit cards, and wallet or purse itself within two business days, would you take that deal?

I think most people would. 

We either agree to abide by my rules or you risk losing everything.