Random Thoughts: Drive My Car

Note: On May 29, I played the lead in a serious seven-car pileup when I was hit on my way to work at 4:30 a.m. by a stolen car driving at a high rate of speed on the wrong side of the highway.

The result was numerous broken bones in both arms, broken sternum and a few vertebrae, and a small skull fracture. I spent a week in the hospital, followed by another week-plus in rehab before coming home. Lying in bed, unable to do for one’s self, offers a lot of time for reflection.

I haven’t posted to this site since March, but I’m humbled to see people still seek it out on a regular basis. So I figured to kill two birds with one stone by laying down some of those random thoughts one sometimes gets when facing such a situation. Since these are random, they’re going to be all over the map, from mortality to anthropology to sports to what’s on TV. Definitely not saying these will be overly profound or philosophical, but as I face a long recovery, I’m hoping to clear my mind.

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I know I’m lucky. I know it could have been a lot worse. I am reminded of this whenever I chose to pick at the scab by looking at picture of my car after the accident.

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So one of the good things about all this is I get a car out of the deal. Haven’t had a new one since I got a Scion Xb in 2006 (I loved that car). When it died earlier this year, we donated it rather than spend the money to fix it up. So on that fateful day I was using the 2009 Versa my mother-in-law gave us when she gave up driving.

It’s been kind of fun, researching new models. Standard equipment sure has improved over the last decade. I don’t care much about style and color, I just wanted a good sound system and GPS.

But the question is, will I be able to drive it?

Physically, almost certainly, given that I expect to recover fully from the injuries. Plus the upcoming cataract surgery should improve my vision.

But mentally?

I never really enjoyed driving but lately I worry about getting behind the wheel again. About leaving at 3:30 in morning for the 4 a.m. shift. About inclement weather. About flashbacks to oncoming headlights. It’s more about trusting other drivers to do the right thing, to not drive under the influence, to know where they’re going. And, to be honest, I don’t. I’ve noticed a huge increase in the number of people who don’t signal (or who signal but don’t turn) and who are on their cell phones. I hope this is just a passing phase.

Random thoughts: Forget-me-not

Note: On May 29, I played the lead in a serious seven-car pileup when I was hit on my way to work at 4:30 a.m. by a stolen car driving at a high rate of speed on the wrong side of the highway.

The result was numerous broken bones in both arms, broken sternum and a few vertebrae, and a small skull fracture. I spent a week in the hospital, followed by another week-plus in rehab before coming home. Lying in bed, unable to do for one’s self, offers a lot of time for reflection.

I haven’t posted to this site since March, but I’m humbled to see people still seek it out on a regular basis. So I figured to kill two birds with one stone by laying down some of those random thoughts one sometimes gets when facing such a situation. Since these are random, they’re going to be all over the map, from mortality to anthropology to sports to what’s on TV. Definitely not saying these will be overly profound or philosophical, but as I face a long recovery, I’m hoping to clear my mind.

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Out of sight, out of mind? Or absence makes the heart grow fonder?

This is kind of apropos to the previous entry about work families. As I mentioned, in my current situation there are a select number of colleagues with whom I work all the time because we’re on the same shift. The rest I almost never see and wouldn’t know me if I fell on them.

After the accident, I received a few texts and get-well cards, which were very gratifying. I keep in touch with the store’s manager every couple of weeks. But outside of that…nothing. It would be nice to have some of these people check in on me but everyone has their own stuff to deal with. (When I started, I used to think of the place as the French Foreign Legion in that very few people talked about themselves, their past, etc.)

We all like to think we’re indispensable. Occasionally, when I returned from my days off, one of the folks might express relief that I was back because the fill-ins might not have done the same obsessive-compulsive job as me. But then I think, “They were doing this long before I came and will be doing it long after I’m gone.” A cold slap of reality.

I don’t know what awaits me when I finally return. Haven’t even thought about driving a car again and hope there won’t be some latent psychological difficulties. Will I be allowed to work the same hours? Can I work the same sections? Will it be like starting all over again, given the fair amount of turnover?

Random thoughts: Work families

I was at my first job for 22 years, my second for 12. Both were “white collar” and people tended to keep their positions for a long time. Even if they weren’t your best buds, you go to know their stories.

After being downsized from the newspaper writing/editing gig, I moved to retail work for the first time since I was 13 at a mom-and-pop fruit stand in Brooklyn. Considering the type of work I do, things are pretty stable. There are about 200 people at my store. I imagine the turnover is fairly low, although I have no basis of comparison.

During the height of the pandemic, people could be away for long periods. At the early point of Covid, I was under quarantine for two weeks and then took off two more, just to be “safe.” It wasn’t uncommon to come back even from your “weekend” (mine was Tuesdays and Wednesdays) to learn that one or two people had left, either of their own accord or due to some transgression (the store has a “zero tolerance” position for some behaviors).

So who knows what it will be like when it comes time for me to return, perhaps sometime in September, according to my recovery prognosis.

Crew members set their own schedules. For most of my three-plus years, I was on the 4 a.m. to noon shift. Unlike the rest of the day, when you open, you’re assigned to one of a handful of sections and you’re usually working with the same same people day after day, so you do develop a certain relationship. Because of the responsibility and time pressure involved, these are almost universally conscientious, fine folks and I consider myself lucky to know them.

Let’s be clear: I’m old enough to be the parent — in some cases grandparent — of most of my colleagues. That alone excludes me from a lot of the bonding that goes on. Totally understandable, but that used to bother me, making me feel isolated.

One of reasons I’ve been reluctant to move up to the next level is that it would mean having to be available for any shift (the store closes to customers at nine, but locks up at midnight in order to stock the shelves). Another reason is that I would almost certainly have to go to another location, which means leaving these people behind.

Random thoughts: Time

Note: On May 29, I played the lead in a serious seven-car pileup when I was hit on my way to work at 4:30 a.m. by a stolen car driving at a high rate of speed on the wrong side of the highway.

The result was numerous broken bones in both arms, broken sternum and a few vertebrae, and a small skull fracture. I spent a week in the hospital, followed by another week-plus in rehab before coming home. Lying in bed, unable to do for one’s self, offers a lot of time for reflection.

I haven’t posted to this site since March, but I’m humbled to see people still seek it out on a regular basis. So I figured to kill two birds with one stone by laying down some of those random thoughts one sometimes gets when facing such a situation. Since these are random, they’re going to be all over the map, from mortality to anthropology to sports to what’s on TV. Definitely not saying these will be overly profound or philosophical, but as I face a long recovery, I’m hoping to clear my mind.

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I’m not a huge Twilight Zone fan, but one of my favorite episodes is “Time Enough at Last.” It’s the story of a bookworm who works at a bank and is eternally belittled by his co-workers and shrewish wife. One day while he’s having lunch in the vault, his town is hit by a some sort of cataclysm that leaves him as the sole survivor. So what does he do? Goes to the library and starts piling up all the books he’s wanted to read. But this being the Twilight Zone…

When you’re a kid, time goes by so slowly. You can’t wait until you’re old enough to do something you can’t do now, like drive a car or drink. But once you get to middle age, time, indeed, seems to fly. I noticed that a lot at work.

I was part of the crew that opened the store, so that meant being there at 4 a.m., to get the products from the delivery trucks and either put them on the shelves or in storage in preparation for an 8 o’clock opening. Take off a half hour break and that means I was only “working” for three and a half hours with rotating duties, that is, I wouldn’t be doing the same thing for all that time.

Prior to the accident, I would say I spent 95 percent of the shift working in a giant refrigerator. There was no view of either the front of the store or the majority of my colleagues. I would occasionally refer to TEAL, saying a bomb could go off and I wouldn’t know about it.

But getting back to the original theme…

Prior to the accident I would occasionally do a fatalistic mental countdown: At my age, all things being equal (no unforeseen incidents or grave illnesses), I estimate I have “x” number of years left. And that’s just quantity, not quality. Every hour that goes by where I’m not do something is just time thrown away. The phrase “killing time” makes me laugh. Why would anyone want to willingly get rid of such a precious and limited commodity? And “saving time” only works if you use what you’ve saved for the good.

And then I go back to Buddha Take the Mound, which I have mentioned here before. For me, the two main takeaways from that book were the temporariness of everything as well as the uselessness of ego, by which I mean, no matter what you do in the world, who will remember after a certain amount of time has passed by? Movies like It’s a Wonderful Life or Goodbye, Mr. Chips praised the impact the main characters had on scores, if not more, of people. and there are certainly real life figures like Lincoln, Jesus, and Hitler who have had influence on generations that followed. But in the long term, does any of it really matter?

This song comes to mind whenever I get into these moods.

A very good friend of mine
Told me something the other day
I’d like to pass it in to you
‘Cause I believe what he said to be true

He said
We’re here for a good time
Not a long time
So have a good time
The sun can’t shine every day

And the sun is shinin’
In this rainy city
And the sun is shinin’
Oh, isn’t it a pity
And every year, has it’s share of tears
And every now and then it’s gotta rain….

Which makes me sad when I think of all the people in the world who have to spend their limited time on the planet living under a cloud of war or poverty or other deprecations and appreciate what I do have — despite temporary setbacks.

Random thoughts: Why write?

Note: On May 29, I played the lead in a serious seven-car pileup when I was hit on my way to work at 4:30 a.m. by a stolen car driving at a high rate of speed on the wrong side of the highway.

The result was numerous broken bones in both arms, broken sternum and a few vertebrae, and a small skull fracture. I spent a week in the hospital, followed by another week-plus in rehab before coming home. Lying in bed, unable to do for one’s self, offers a lot of time for reflection.

I haven’t posted to this site since March, but I’m humbled to see people still seek it out on a regular basis. So I figured to kill two birds with one stone by laying down some of those random thoughts one sometimes gets when facing such a situation. Since these are random, they’re going to be all over the map, from mortality to anthropology to sports to what’s on TV. Definitely not saying these will be overly profound or philosophical, but as I face a long recovery, I’m hoping to clear my mind.

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I have been writing “seriously” in one form or another since the early 1990s. It began with book reviews, since I found out you could get the books for free if you had a legitimate outlet to publish them. No money, but it did get me a byline.

The early pieces were well received which led to more assignments. Eventually I had enough to put together a portfolio and the confidence to seek paying gigs and move beyond reviews. One of the outlets I was most “proud” of was Mental Floss in the early period of its existence in the early 2000s. Still no pay, but as a national glossy magazine it had a much wider readership.

Over the past 30-some years I have written on a variety of topics for sport and non-sport print and on-line publications such as the American Book Review, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, The Mystery Review, Verbatim Magazine, Baseball America, Irish America, Elysian Fields Quarterly, BookPage, MultiCultural Review, ForeWord Magazine, E: The Environmental Magazine, January Magazine, and Bookreporter.com. All-in-all, probably close to 1,000 articles.

Then there are the blogs: this one, born out of the problems faced by print journalism following the 2008 financial crisis, and the Baseball Bookshelf, published in one form or another for about 20 years. There used to be a third — Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports — which I started while working for the New Jersey Jewish News. That one actually won an award: Best Blog of 2014 according to the New Jersey Press Association and probably gave me the most satisfaction, making me an “expert” on the subject and a minor celebrity for a time.

But once in a while, especially when it came to blogging, I would ask myself “why bother?” What’s one more voice in the universe? That’s why I gave up the Korner (technically on permanent hiatus), which I maintained on my own after leaving the paper in 2017. I foolishly thought that my niche would protect my employment, but no.

I can be a lazy SOB. I began to write books simply because someone asked me to do a compilation which turned into 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. That was probably was the only project I was “passionate” about since it was in my wheelhouse. The next one — The Jewish Olympics: A History of the Maccabiah Games — was handed to me when the writer who was originally approached to do it declined and suggested me. The most recent — Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadows of War — was requested by the same publisher as Maccabiah, so I was a known quantity.

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So getting to “why write?” There are those who have a burning passion to tell their stories, be the subjects fiction or non. They spend years on their ventures. The most time I ever spent on a book was six months. I just don’t have the patience for five or ten drafts. Plus I was extremely lucky when it came to publishing. (There was a failed attempt with a book about the New York Mets disappointing 1992 campaign. Two other ideas that never took flight considered baseball during the Korean War years and the “death” of the Montreal Expos.)

Another part of the “why” was the self-depricating/low-ego periods I went through, believing that no one really cared what I had to say, even when I was writing for the paper and winning awards, I would question the process (“I’m not interested in any club that would have me as a member.”).

But, again, these most recent ramblings are products of the accident. They serve multiple functions: the physical typing is occupational therapy to get my hands and fingers back to work and giving me something to do during the long days when most activities are still weeks away; and keeping the mind busy for better or worse.