Koop's Birthday Blog Bash
How Did I Get So Old?
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
In a little over two hours, it will be my birthday. Forty-nine years old, or NOT-YET-FIFTY as I prefer to think of it. A time for retrospection and introspection, but not any inspections I hope!
"Ya say its yer birthday, well happy birthday to you!"
I was born on September 30th, 1955, the day that James Dean died. I was born in Da Bronx, Nu Yawk and lived there until I was thirty. My earliest memories are of those streets. It was always cold in the winter, the boiler in our building would often fail at the worst possible time. My family would bring mattresses in to the kitchen and we would use our gas stove for heat, praying that the pilot light wouldn't go out during the night. It would be sweltering hot in the summer and we would run under the spray from open fire hydrants, dodging cars. But, man, those days were fun! There was stick ball and Johnny-on-the-pony. We would skate the glides ripped from the legs of school chairs across boards drawn on the streets. If you had a pink Spaldine ball and maybe a broomstick bat, you had a game. A broken skate and a wooden milk crate would make a race car. Games spilled from the streets into alleys strewn with broken glass. What did we care? We were young and going to live forever!
I am always amazed and grateful that I didn't die on those streets, or in a jungle in Southeast Asia. Both were real possibilities.
I was terrified by Khruschev's speech ("We will bury you!) at the UN and I remember air raid drills in grade school. (If the Russians had dropped a nuclear bomb on our city, my classmates and I would have been safe behind our wooden desks.) I remember John F. Kennedy standing up to him.
Then there were the Yankees. I lived on 167th Street and Walton Avenue. The House That Ruth Built was walking distance away. In 1961, we watched with awe as Mickey (the Mick) Mantle and Roger (Rajah the Rapper) Maris fought for the Home Run crown. Roger won it and never got the credit he deserved. But Mickey...ah, he was one of us! I can't explain why we felt this way, but we did.
I never forgave the Dodgers and Giants for leaving Nu Yawk, but I also remember as a kid when the immortal Sandy Koufax refused to pitch in a World Series game that was played on Yom Kippur. Bless you, Sandy.
I am fortunate, one might even say blessed with good fortune. I have two wonderful kids, (koop sends a shout-out to Jon and Lauren!,) an amazing collection of friends from all around the world and what might well be the greatest job I could hope for. As Sales Manager for Stardock, I get to work with the biggest and coolest companies in the world. I tell the gang at the Widget Factory (my pet name for Stardock) that we get paid to do what most people would get fired for doing at work!
"Ya say its yer birthday, well happy birthday to you!"
I was born on September 30th, 1955, the day that James Dean died. I was born in Da Bronx, Nu Yawk and lived there until I was thirty. My earliest memories are of those streets. It was always cold in the winter, the boiler in our building would often fail at the worst possible time. My family would bring mattresses in to the kitchen and we would use our gas stove for heat, praying that the pilot light wouldn't go out during the night. It would be sweltering hot in the summer and we would run under the spray from open fire hydrants, dodging cars. But, man, those days were fun! There was stick ball and Johnny-on-the-pony. We would skate the glides ripped from the legs of school chairs across boards drawn on the streets. If you had a pink Spaldine ball and maybe a broomstick bat, you had a game. A broken skate and a wooden milk crate would make a race car. Games spilled from the streets into alleys strewn with broken glass. What did we care? We were young and going to live forever!
I am always amazed and grateful that I didn't die on those streets, or in a jungle in Southeast Asia. Both were real possibilities.
I was terrified by Khruschev's speech ("We will bury you!) at the UN and I remember air raid drills in grade school. (If the Russians had dropped a nuclear bomb on our city, my classmates and I would have been safe behind our wooden desks.) I remember John F. Kennedy standing up to him.
Then there were the Yankees. I lived on 167th Street and Walton Avenue. The House That Ruth Built was walking distance away. In 1961, we watched with awe as Mickey (the Mick) Mantle and Roger (Rajah the Rapper) Maris fought for the Home Run crown. Roger won it and never got the credit he deserved. But Mickey...ah, he was one of us! I can't explain why we felt this way, but we did.
I never forgave the Dodgers and Giants for leaving Nu Yawk, but I also remember as a kid when the immortal Sandy Koufax refused to pitch in a World Series game that was played on Yom Kippur. Bless you, Sandy.
I am fortunate, one might even say blessed with good fortune. I have two wonderful kids, (koop sends a shout-out to Jon and Lauren!,) an amazing collection of friends from all around the world and what might well be the greatest job I could hope for. As Sales Manager for Stardock, I get to work with the biggest and coolest companies in the world. I tell the gang at the Widget Factory (my pet name for Stardock) that we get paid to do what most people would get fired for doing at work!
