One of the things I came across was a pair of red-handled pliers, the kind of thing you’d find in even the most basic of tool boxes. This particular tool holds a dear place in my heart which I will share a little later.

First I need to tell you a story about David.

I have mentioned before how I attended a wacky elementary school in Penfield, NY called Harris Hill. Sounds normal enough, but the school was born of the “Open School” movement popular in the 1950s and 1960s. This means every classroom is shaped like a hexagon and there are no interior walls.

This is not a typo — this 500 student elementary school has NO INTERIOR WALLS!

There was this kid named David. I have no idea what his deal was, but he had no siblings in the school, his clothes were old & worn, and he got in trouble all the time.

Mess on the floor? David did it. Bloody nose on the playground from a punch? David did it. Lunch money missing? David did it.

Looking back, his home life must have been pretty awful, because I feel like all the trouble he got into at school was attention seeking… and grown up me understands getting in trouble feels better than being ignored or neglected.

While the school had no interior walls, the classrooms were somewhat divided by strategically placed furniture. Tall bookcases, armoire style coat closets and study carrels (remember those) were placed along the hexagon segments to provide the tiniest shred of order.

At some point in my fourth grade year, some new furniture arrived at school. I’m pretty sure it came from another school, or some used furniture sale, because it wasn’t in boxes. Some workmen just rolled it into our area and left it for the teachers to sort out.

One of the new pieces was a bookcase type thing with sliding glass doors. The kind of thing you’d use to show off the winners of an art contest, or some kind of seasonal holiday display.

The new furniture hadn’t been in the school more than a few hours before one of the sliding glass doors was found smashed into a thousand pieces on the orange carpet covering hexagonal floor.

The immediate conclusion to which everyone jumped was… David did it!

Like an episode of Law & Order, David was grabbed out of gen-pop to be “sweated in the box.” Nobody doubted what happened. I mean this type of thing was sooooo David.

A couple hours went by and all of a sudden David was back in class like nothing happened. We all figured this was at least a get-sent-home level offense, if not a suspension, but there he was, sitting at his desk in a ratty t-shirt emblazoned with the faded name of a 1970s rock band.

The chatter erupted, but could be boiled down to, “If David didn’t do it, who the hell did? And whoever it happened to be was a dead man walking.”

The school day ended with no closure. The next morning we all learned it was this other kid who never got in trouble. Turns out he was just curious about the sliding glass doors, so he slid one of them, but the movers had removed some piece that prevented the door from sliding right out of the case. Crash! The kid had panicked (rightly so) and bolted. When David was fingered for it, he kept his head down hoping it would all blow over.

Turns out David was a lot of things, but he was not willing to cop to something he absolutely didn’t do. Good for him!

My affinity for tinkering, building and fixing things took root early on, but when you’re a kid you have no tools. My dad is a competent man when it comes to around the house kind of maintenance, but my greater skills definitely come from my mother’s father. This is a fact no family member will dispute.

Whenever I felt the urge to tinker with, build, or fix something my go-to tools were a hammer and the aforementioned red-handled needle nose pliers.

Kids being kids, and me being the young, male, untreated ADHD variety, I would often grab the pliers from my dad’s green metal toolbox, do whatever it was I was driven to do, and then move onto whatever caught my attention next (hey look a squirrel).

More times than I can count, my dad would find me and ask, “Hey Steve, where are the red-handled pliers?” Most of the time I would remember where I’d left them. I would retrieve them, hand them back to my dad and receive a short “you need to be more responsible with other people’s things” lecture every parent has given a thousand times.

Early one summer (just after 5th grade I think) my dad found me doing whatever it is I was doing and asked the pliers question, using that exhausted parent voice.

My response was quick and unequivocal, “I didn't take them.”

Given the “boy who cried wolf” paradigm surrounding my use of the pliers, my response was immediately dismissed as not credible. My dad and I went back and forth for a few minutes, but fairly quickly the parental judge & jury issued a sentence of, “You need to get on your bike, ride to the hardware store in town and buy a new needle nosed pliers with money from your piggy bank.”

I was about 90% certain I hadn’t taken/lost the the pliers, but the 10% chance I had was real and enough for me to decide this was not the hill I was willing to die upon. I smoothed out $10 from the pile of wrinkled bills in my white ceramic piggy bank and hopped on my bright yellow Schwinn Bantam.

When I got to Stenner’s Hardware, old man Stenner was standing behind the counter. I’d been there before buying nails by the pound and other such things for my endless “projects.” I explained my situation, and he directed me to a display of pliers. I found a very similar pair, I paid the man $8, and rode home.

I gave the pliers to my dad and as far as all parties were concerned the lesson had been learned and the issue was closed… until.

You know when summer comes to a close and you pull on your favorite jeans for the first time in a few months and you discover a washed $20 bill in the pocket?

When you live a in a full, four-season place like Rochester, NY, you have nice jackets, casual jackets, and work jackets. When you’re doing yard work in the spring and fall, you wear your work jacket, you know the one you keep on a hook in the garage.

My father’s go-to work jacket was a leftover piece of his Army uniform. It was olive green and had strip embroidered with NAZARIAN above one of the chest pockets.

Some time in late September or early October, my dad pulled his Army jacket on to do something outside. He reached into one of the large side pockets and felt something cold and hard.

It was the unaccounted for red-handled pliers.

My dad is one of the most honest people to ever walk this planet earth. He immediately stopped what he was doing, went to his green metal toolbox, retrieved the pair of pliers I’d paid for and came to find me.

“Steve, I owe you an apology. You didn’t in fact lose the pliers, I did. I just found them in the pocket of my Army jacket. So, here are the pliers you paid for. They are yours now, so you should’t ever have to borrow mine again, right?”

When I found the pliers in my parent’s garage a few weeks ago, I held them up to my dad and said, “Oh I’m keeping these, and I’m sure you remember why.” He had zero recollection of the story I’ve just told. Not because he had memory problems, but because it was just one of thousands of parenting moments he had raising me and my siblings.

To me it has always been a top-ten learning responsibility lesson.

There is a philosophy referrred to as “Occam’s Razor” which basically states, “Given more than one possible explanation for a given situation, the simplest is most likely to be correct.”

• David did it was the simplest explanation.
• Steve lost the pliers was the simplest explanation.

Both were likely… both were wrong.

Happy Memorial Day Folks!

The North Carolina aspect of my job produces a whole different set of daily hurdles, from chasing friendly snakes off the playground (and dispatching the not-so-friendly), to clearing snow/ice in the “winter” with little to no equipment, and dealing with the current “dustbowl” of pollen which appears this time every year.

On any given day I can be found fixing toilets, replacing lightbulbs, adjusting desk heights, and (more often than you’d expect) removing/plugging nails/screws from the tires on the cars of our 60+ faculty and staff.

Like I said… no two days are the same.

Until yesterday, the Catholic detail of my job had yet to confront me with anything approaching an obstacle, but as they say… “Man makes plans and God just laughs.”

For the past several weeks, our 100 fifth graders have been rehearsing a live performance of The Stations of the Cross, which chronicles fourteen different chapters of Jesus’ conviction, crucifixion, and resurrection. In full costume, the kids portray each scene while narrators describe the action, and further details are shown on overhead screens. Between each event, a choir sings emblematic songs. The entire time, the church is in total darkness, with specific lighting showcasing each component.

The lighting, audio, and overhead projection are my areas of responsibility.

As is often the case when an army of volunteers are working hard to achieve a goal with a hundred kids, some details get left until the last minute. I received the content for the screens by email as I slept the night before the performance. An hour or so before we were to get started, I transferred the seventeen slides to a flash drive and made the 200 yard trek up the hill from the school to the church. I passed by the parish Communications Director and the Head of Security & AV as I entered the building.

The lights in the sanctuary were out, but I made my way in the dark to the raised AV booth from memory alone. I climbed the three steps into the booth, pulled out the flash drive and bent down to insert it into the USB slot of the computer mounted under the desk. As I moved my arm towards my target, the drive slipped from my hand and fell into a narrow slot through which wires come up from the floor… Shit!

Grabbing my phone, I turned on the flashlight, and sure enough, three feet down in the hole I could see my flash drive. I rolled up my sleeve, but as I inserted my arm into the slot, it came to an abrupt halt when my elbow proved to be solidly 50% wider than the space I was attempting to transit. After trying a few angles and various wiggle approaches it became clear I needed a different approach.

I looked around the booth on the off chance there was a 3-foot grabby thing just lying around… no dice. I figured I’d have to go back down to the school, get a stick of some kind and put a wad of double sticky tape on the end. By now my eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I was seeing pretty well. As I turned to stand, I noticed two access panels in the floor, about 14" square each. Of course there are access panels, how else would they run more wires or troubleshoot anything?

I grabbed the edge and the lid popped off with little effort.

Again, engaging my flashlight phone, I peered into the hole and looking a few feet over I saw my flash drive, sitting next to a long forgotten, unopened packet of fruit snacks. Simple, all I had to do was lean into the hole, reach my spindly arm over and grab the drive. I threaded the top of my 6' 2" frame diagonally across the square hole, sliding in while contorting my left arm towards the drive.

I nearly had it, when my center of gravity crossed the edge of the opening and my full weight flopped into the hole.

So, there I was, upside down, my head resting on the bottom of the false space under the booth. My left arm was with me, but my right was somehow still outside. I was stuck, and substantially so. All you could see from above was my keester, my legs, and what must have been an uncomfortable to look at twisted version of my right arm.

I tried unsuccessfully for more than five minutes to free myself from my inverted predicament, but no matter how I tried, I simply didn’t have the angle or latitude to free myself. I began to feel large volumes of blood gathering in my head and I decided to call for help.

I did have my phone with me, but the way my left arm was wedged, screen navigation was comically bad. I finally was able to call the head of Security and AV… ring, ring, ring, ring, voicemail. Damnit. I spent the next minute or so navigating to the number of the Communications Director. Ring, ring, answer!

I asked her to send the Security/AV guy in to, um, “help me out of a pickle.”

He came in but remember the church was dark. He called out my name; with constricted lungs I wheezed “over here.” He climbed the stairs into the booth but was clearly looking where he’d expect to find a person. “Naz, where are you?!?”

Weakly again… “Look Down!” It was then the laughter began.

It only took a few minutes to extricate me from my gravity prison, we all had a good chuckle, and it was then I discovered the files on the flash drive were in an incompatible format. Grrrrrr. I was running out of time.

I ran back down to the school, grabbed my personal laptop, threw my “Vomit Kit” in the back of the golf cart and sped back up the hill. You NEVER take 650 kids into a church without the Vomit Kit.

I sat down and started converting the slides to a usable format. I finished with moments to spare. The lights went down the choir began to sing, and for the next twenty or so minutes, the program unfolded as written.

A little more than halfway through, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to find one of our counselors with a look of concern on her face, “Naz, where is the Vomit Kit?” I directed her to the golf cart.

As the program continued, I was able to see the upchuck situation across the sanctuary. I was told the emesis had been contained, but would need to be cleaned up when the program was over. When I was finally able to get to it, I found the largest patch of hurl I’d ever seen at the job, and possibly in my life… produced by a first grader no less.

The rest of the day flew by, and as I loaded my bruised body into my car, I thought to myself… “That was a lot, I wonder what tomorrow will bring?”

I don’t have many memories of these times, but I do know not many of my earliest adult relationships survived very long.

As we move up in school, we are given the agency to choose our friends, and slowly we discover proximity and convenience are poor criteria for choosing the people with which to spend your time.

When I got to 8th grade there was a new kid who had moved from Cincinnati, his name was Jeff and he was pretty cool. On paper we didn’t have a lot in common, he was a baseball guy and I was a runner. He thought the Beach Boys** were the greatest band of all time, and 8th grade me didn’t agree, but there was something about him that just said friend.

When I went to his house for the first time, I began to understand.

His family was very much like mine. His parents were kind, smart and really seemed to like each other. They had fun as a family, they ate dinner together every night, and every Sunday they went to church. I hadn’t been in his home for more than fifteen minutes before I knew I’d be hanging out there a lot… because it felt just like my own.

Jeff’s dad was a fascinating guy. He’d started his career in government as a regulator for a federal agency, using his science background to keep companies accountable for their actions. As he began to grow his young family, he jumped to the corporate side helping companies abide by many of the regulations he played a role in creating. He was a wonderful balance of mission and pragmatism.

Unlike many other adults I encountered, Jeff’s parents always took the time to talk to the kids visiting their home. They asked questions, they listened to the answers, and they were truly interested in the lives of the friends their kids brought home.

Some of my earliest memories of having truly grown-up conversations were at Jeff’s house.

Because his parents knew us kids so well, they knew what we were into and what we were good at. I was an unapologetic audio and electronics nerd. I loved anything that plugged into the wall and made music, and Jeff’s dad knew it.

One day was at their house and he asked me to come into the dining room. He said, “Hey Steve. I recently got these used speakers for the dining room, but for some reason, they only play low end sounds, no treble. Can you have a look at them.

I immediately noticed they were pretty high end speakers, but when I turned them around I immediately saw the problem. These speakers were designed with the option of being bi-amped. This allows you to use separate amplifiers for the high and low sounds, but you don’t have to. If you want to use them like regular speakers, you simply use the provided jumpers.

Jeff’s dad’s speakers had no jumpers.

Not having any tools or gear with me, and knowing Jeff’s house I asked, “Do you have any paperclips?”

Jeff’s dad walked over to a desk and replied, “How many do you need?”

“Four, please.”

I proceeded to twist the paper clips into makeshift jumpers for the speakers. Within five minutes I had them all installed, and when the stereo was switched on, high-quality, full-frequency music flowed into the room.

Jeff’s dad was blown away. “This has been bugging me for weeks and you just walk in here and fix it with four paperclips. Wow. I’m impressed.”

The paperclip incident took place in the mid 1980s. All through high school and college, I would visit Jeff’s house every so often and with predictable regularity, Jeff’s dad would make some comment about the paperclips.

In the mid 1990s, I worked for five years on the equipment side of the music business, basically working with big sound systems for rock-n-roll shows. I saw Jeff’s dad over a holiday and he asked what I was up to. I explained my job and his immediate response was, “Well, any kid who can fix a speaker with a paper clip is probably well suited for that!”

In 2002, my wife and I bought a house down the street from Jeff’s ancestral home, and for more then fifteen years, I was neighbors with his parents. I didn’t see them often, but I took great comfort knowing they were close by.

Yesterday I learned Jeff’s dad passed away. I’d known he was struggling with the physical difficulties that come with old age, but knowing someone is old, is a data point. Learning they’ve passed away is something else entirely.

Think about the people in your past who took the time to get to know you. The people who really saw you, and understood you. Think about how those relationships formed who you are today.

People who know the version of me who has zero fear of trying to fix something broken, never knew the kid who wasn’t sure the paper clips would work. Thank you Jeff’s dad for knowing what I was capable of… even before I did.

**I now understand Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was one of the greatest musical minds ever. 8th grade Jeff was way ahead of his time on that one!

Turns out I was wrong.

So, after helping a few friends with some home improvement projects, I decided to hang out my own shingle as a handyman.

I called my service Charlotte Taskmaster and rather quickly I was busy filling the gap between what homeowners felt was too much, and what contractors considered not enough.

From the outset, staying busy was never a problem. The difficulty lie in the challenge of staying profitable.

For example, if I quoted a job for some built-in bookshelves, customers struggled paying for the time it took me to acquire the materials, and the time spent in my home workshop prepping the job for installation.

Bottom Line… people don’t like to pay for time you work they can’t see.

After several months of being busy, I noticed another trend. Many of my regular customers were financially stable elderly folk who would hire me for very simple jobs, like putting up a shower curtain rod, or adjusting a sliding glass door. The work would only take twenty minutes, but then they wanted to sit and chat… for an hour or more.

I ran Charlotte Taskmaster for the better part of a year, but then I was offered a two-year contract with a major bank. Forty-Eight year old me was happy to hang up the tool belt for a desk job with built-in profitability.

It was easy for me to walk away… not so much for some of my clients.

Even after I officially closed the business, some of my regular customers would continue to contact me for mundane little jobs… the most consistent of which was Becky.

Becky and her husband Mike lived only one street over from me, so it was easy for me to pop over when she texted requests like:

• Any chance you could come change my furnace filters?
• It’s nearly Thanksgiving, I need someone to go up in the attic to bring the holiday decorations down

At first she insisted on paying me to do these little five minute jobs, but over time the pay evolved from money to a glass of wine and an hour of my time.

Eventually, Becky stopped asking me to help with things around the house, and we just got together to talk. Her husband’s failing health landed him in a home and, about two years ago he passed away, leaving Becky all alone in a big house.

Over the past five years, Becky and I managed to get together every 6–8 months. Two years ago we moved, but Becky is only 2.5 miles away.

Two weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, I awoke to snow falling from the sky. Before it was done, Charlotte, NC received over a foot of the fluffy stuff.

North Carolina is spooked by the threat of snow, over twelve inches of actual snow is paralyzing.

I texted Becky to make sure she was okay and asked if I could come for a visit. She was safely at home with no plans to do anything. I said I’d be over at 11:00.

At 10:25 I pulled on my boots and ventured out into the white. Sidewalks were covered and there were only a few cars sliding down the road. I made the 2.5 mile trek in 35 minutes.

Becky met me at the door, she made me a cup of coffee and we sat down at her kitchen table.

Becky is the same age as my mother, making her children the same age as me, more or less, but we talk about our “kids” like they’re all the same.

Parenting thoughts and feelings are universal, transcending age and time.

We sat and talked for more than two hours, discussing things both broad and narrow. My phone buzzed and it was a text from my wife offering to come get me… I accepted, expecting her about thirty minutes later.

As our time wound down, Becky began to tell me about the day her husband died. I could tell she needed to talk about it.

He had passed away in the middle of one of those eight month periods between our visits, so I hadn’t heard any of the details. Looking at my watch, I was worried my wife would arrive before Becky was done.

Then another text came in, “I’m going to be 15–20 minutes later because I have to clean off my car.”

I leaned back in my chair and listened intently. The story she told was so beautiful, layered with love, affection, and reverence for a life well lived. She was honest about the hard times, and wistful about the sublime aspects of her marriage to Mike. She laughed as she shared absurd moments from his final day, and she cried as she described the harder details. Before long I was wiping tears from my own snow chapped cheeks.

She finished her story and we sat silently for a few minutes. She reached across the table, taking my hands into hers and said, “Thank you for hiking through the snow to visit today. I always feel better after our talks.”

Moments later I heard the “toot-toot” of my wife’s car horn.

At the door Becky gave me a big hug, and like we always do, we discussed how we MUST not let so much time pass between visits.

• I have a lovely wife
• I have amazing parents
• I have great siblings
• I have five extraordinary children
• I have good friends
• I have kind and supportive coworkers
• I have two beagles

I only have one Becky.

Everyone Needs A Becky!

Just over nine years ago, we moved from Rochester, NY to Charlotte, NC. From a government, taxes and general administrative perspective, I was happy to leave the Empire State behind, not to mention the six months of snow.

When one moves three cars and three drivers to a new state, there is an expectation of some time standing in line at the DMV. However, the ordeals I was to endure I could not possibly have predicted.

For starters, the NC DMV has TWO different types of offices.

• One is for licenses, permits, testing and the like
• The other, entirely different place is for titles, registrations and related details

They are always miles apart. So, before I’d even begun, the number of required trips to bureaucratic hell had been doubled.

The two cars we brought from NY were paid for, and had clear titles in my name, so getting them registered and re-titled in NC was not terribly difficult. Of course if you’re foolish enough to think showing up a few minutes before they open is early enough… think again.

Lines and NC DMV offices are part of the deal. The third car mentioned above was a 2004 Volvo I’d purchased on eBay, and had it delivered to our new home. I took the Maryland title and the receipt from eBay and headed off to the NC License Plate Bureau.

It is important to note… the NC Driver’s License offices are run by the state. The License Plate and Title offices are run by a third party, contracted by the state.

I arrived an hour before opening and was twentieth in line on a cold January morning in 2017. Once they let us in, it took an additional ninety minutes before my cryptic letter/number combination was called. To the sour-faced woman behind the glass I presented:

• My newly acquired temporary NC License
• Proof of insurance
• Maryland title for the Volvo
• Transaction details from the December 2016 purchase of the vehicle

Turns out, North Carolina requires title transfers to be notarized. Mine was not. Furthermore, the eBay transaction did not qualify as a “bill of sale.” So I was sent away with nothing but a burned 2.5 hours and a sense of defeat.

Also the employees of the third party who run the License Plate Bureau are coincidentally all notaries, so when you need some part of your process notarized, they can do it, but you have to pay them cash for the notary service they are providing, not as representatives of North Carolina, but as private citizens. There’s a high fee ATM available for your convenience. What a racket!

I reached out to the guy from eBay, but he took two days to get back to me. After a little back and forth, he agreed to put together a bill of sale using his used car dealership letterhead. When it arrived by email later that day as a PDF attachment, I saw the address was in Pennsylvania, not Maryland. I hoped that would not be another snag.

Not having a clue how to sort out the notarization issue, I called the state DMV information line, waiting the better part of an hour before speaking to a human being. The individual was both pleasant and knowledgeable, and I was told if my bill of sale had the number of a registered out of state dealer and included the VIN, I would not need to have the signature notarized. Whew.

The next morning I arose even earlier, arriving at the poorly labeled strip mall location an hour and a half before opening… I was tenth in line. When they opened, it was only forty-five minutes before I was again face-to-face with the same maudlin, and emotionally defeated civil servant.

She began to look through my paperwork and went as far as picking up a stapler to seal the transaction when she stopped and said, “Uh-oh, the date on the bill of sale says December 2017, that’s not for eleven more months!”

Pivoting I replied, “Can’t we just correct it and initial it? I think we can both agree I did not bring this car and its documents back from the future.”

She was not amused.

“Go get a new bill of sale with a proper date. Goodbye!”

I left once again, my anger growing with every step. As I drive home I dreaded reaching back out to the eBay seller, but by the time I pulled into my driveway, I had a better plan.

I went up to my computer, loaded the PDF of the bill of sale into Photoshop, and changed the date, printed a new copy and got back into the car.

By the time I returned, the line was pretty small and it took only thirty-minutes to finally get my plates and registration. What a journey!

As children two, three and four learned to drive, I endured multiple bouts of waiting in the pre-dawn chill, perched on a folding chair. I’ve learned to accept the state of things as just part of the cost of all the other things I love about North Carolina.

COVID took the already dysfunctional DMV and hobbled it further. Lines got longer and appointments became nearly impossible to get, even three months out. Things got so bad, the governor declared a two-year grace period for expired licenses. So, when my license expired on December 12th, 2025, I didn’t worry too much about it.

And before someone tells me “you can do it online!” When you have both Real ID and glasses… no, you can not!

Everything was fine, until I went to pick up my son’s ADHD meds.

Turns out, North Carolina’s grace period does not carry over to the federal law requiring you to present your “valid” ID when purchasing a “controlled substance.”

So last Friday my school had a half day, ahead of the MLK three-day weekend. I figured showing up mid-month on a Friday before a holiday weekend, my chances were good. I was right.

I sat patiently with my folder of required documentation, and fewer than ninety minutes later I was standing in front of a comparatively friendly (according to her shirt) NC License Examiner. She looked at exactly NONE of my documentation, and asked me to look into the little machine for the eye test. She then pointed to a monitor on my side of the glass:

“This is your new license, can you please check all the details for accuracy?”

I scanned it line by line, confirming my personal facts, and then I saw it.

“Ummmm, who decides my hair is no longer brown, and is now gray?”

“I do.”

“I feel like at worst I’m on the line here. Are you sure you have to say gray?”

“I can make you bald in a single click, if you’d prefer that.”

“Thank you, everything looks correct.”

I paid the fee and walked away happy to have another five years before I need to do this again. Perhaps by then things will have improved at the DMV, but I’m not holding my breath.

While I’ve spent more than three decades in marketing and sales, and I’m now the Facilities Manager for a Catholic elementary school; my degree is actually in English and theatre. I have been performing on one stage or another since the first grade.

The film is called Grace in Training, and we shot it over a weekend at a diner in northwest Charlotte, NC in 2019.

Small independent films are the cinema equivalent of a bunch of kids in a neighborhood getting together in the woods to build a fort. Everybody brings what they have, and you build what you can with what you’ve got.

Nobody has any money for anything.

I was given a script, and a vague description of what kind of wardrobe I should purchase at Goodwill. My hair and makeup were to be self-administered. It was a collectively young group of actors and creative professionals, but we all arrived on time and got right to work.

Even a small, nine-minute movie is slow-going on set. There is a lot of sitting around waiting to shoot your scenes. I spent a good bit of time preparing for my role, doing a backstory exercise I learned in college. This process gave me details and depth upon which I could build my character and performance.

Toward the end of the first day, It occurred to me the director had been giving notes to every actor, but he’d not said a word to me about the scenes we’d already shot. At the first opportunity I pulled him aside:

“Andy, you haven’t given me any feedback so far. Has my performance been okay?”

“Dude, you’re really the only grownup here, and it’s clear to me you’ve done extensive prep. I only bother to give notes to performances I feel we need to improve. If I say nothing I’m happy, and your stuff has been rock solid. In fact, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind jumping in as an acting coach. I’m sure you can see where we need help.”

We wrapped for the day, having finished a long list of technical shots, but not much running time at all. I drove home knowing Sunday would be where the performances needed to shine.

The day started off smoothly and we ripped through the shot list at a good pace. We broke for lunch knowing the biggest scene of the film was still ahead of us.

You can see it in the embedded video below, but the action of the story reaches a peak, when our main character Grace, gives an impassioned monologue to my character Greg but she delivers it straight into the camera.

We set up the shot and started rolling. The first few takes were okay, but not great… then things started to get worse. After take five, Julia (the actor playing Grace) said, “This isn’t working. I can’t talk to Greg if I can’t see Greg. Can Steve stand behind the camera please?”

The director looked over at me, “Come over here Steve. We’re going to have to move a few things around, but sit on this stool and we’ll reset the camera around you.” I did as I was told and we got back to shooting.

We did five more takes, and while not horrible it was nowhere near what we were after. Andy the director was just over my shoulder and I could feel him getting more and more frustrated. He tapped me on the shoulder, “Okay folks, let’s take five. Julia, you and Steve go outside and see if you can figure out why this isn’t working.”

Julia and I exited the diner and sat on a picnic table. I asked her what she was using as personal motivation to give Grace something to dig into. She didn’t have much to say, so I started hammering her with questions about her past, her upbringing, her family and relationships. After twenty minutes, I felt like we’d rounded up enough emotional ammunition for Julia to feed Grace what she needed.

We went back in to try again.

The first take was the best one yet, but instead of shouting “cut” the director simply said, “Keep rolling, let’s go again.”

We did four takes back to back, each one better than the one before. As we finished the fourth, I could feel the director’s stress melting around the camera. I was convinced he was about to cut, thinking he had the best we were going to get, but Julia had more.

From our twenty minute conversation, there were wounds, scars and history she hadn’t yet given to Grace. I could see it, but even more so I could feel it. As she delivered her final line of take four, and we moved into the five second hold before Andy would call “cut,” I raised my right hand into the air, indicating we should keep rolling and go one more time. Andy followed my lead, quietly stating “ok, one more.” Everyone performed their resets, Andy called “action!”

It was then the dam broke.

Julia locked onto painful parts of her own past, and Grace came alive. Not only was it the best take by several orders of magnitude, it elevated every other performance with it. When she thrust the final line straight into the camera, the room was silent. None of us could quite believe what we’d just seen. Our little fort in the woods was suddenly a castle.

Andy yelled “cut” and we took a moment to gather ourselves before moving on to the next shot. We were all afraid talking about what had just happened would ruin the magic.

We worked all afternoon, wrapping the final shot just as we were losing the light through the west facing windows. I gathered up my things and walked Julia to her car. “Tell me what you were feeling in the last take of the monologue.”

“Honestly Steve, it was like I blacked out. I heard Andy say we were going to go again, and the next thing I know he’s shouting “cut” and you are all staring at me like I’m some sort of monster. I assume it was good, because we didn’t do another one. What was I feeling? Julia felt nothing, because for those sixty seconds or whatever, Grace took over my body. I guess that explains why I don’t remember one bit of it.”

I explained how she’d achieved something few actors ever do, a true transcendence, and how her performance just took the film from a little project to something pretty special.

I’ve had the opportunity over my many years to experience what Julia did that day, both personally and walking alongside others. The magic comes when you are able to connect, and tap into real pieces of your own experience and serve it up to whatever task is at hand. Some people call it “flow.” In the sports world they call it being “in the zone.”

The only way to get there is to dig deep, expose the ugly parts of your past and use them as fuel to make something beautiful. It is literally the opposite of overthinking. Digging deep and letting go is what transports thought into art, and it may be my favorite thing on this earth.

So, without further delay, I give you Grace in Training. I hope you enjoy the nine minutes of watching it, half as much as I did making it.

I planned on one… I got three.

Let There Be Music — When we moved into our house two and a half years ago, I noticed some ceiling speakers in the family room and kitchen. The family room ones were a no-brainer solution to the “where am I going to place surround speakers?” question, and I quickly traced the wires and hooked them up.

Thirty months later the kitchen speakers were as quiet as the day we arrived.

As the primary purveyor of sustenance in the House of Nazarian, I spend a great deal of time in the kitchen. I am also a great lover of music. Every moment I have been chopping, sautéing, prepping or serving while listening to music through the tinny speakers of my phone, the installed yet acoustically impotent speakers in the ceiling have mocked me from above.

So, on the first day of my sixteen days off, I committed to improved tunes in the kitchen.

I already owned most of what I needed, amplifiers, wiring, wall jacks, etc. I purchased a new little network streaming box and got down to business. I won’t get into the hairy details, but let’s just say identifying, tracing and running these two little wires tested my patience, as well as my willingness to spend time on my back in the crawlspace. Start to finish this job took more than eight hours.

Once it was all hooked up, I fired up Apple Music on my phone, made a selection and then clicked to switch from “iPhone Speakers,” to the new streaming box I had aptly named “Bitchen Kitchen.”

I was immediately pleased with the results.

For the rest of the holiday season (and every day thereafter) we’ve had high quality music in the kitchen.

The Lucky Leak — In our old house I had installed the Rolls Royce of garbage disposers. This thing was super quiet but it could obliterate a handful of lime rinds without breaking a sweat. When we moved into our new house, the disposer was immediately declared to be weaker than the acting in a Hallmark Christmas movie. I committed to replacing it the first time it gave me any trouble.

On the second day of holiday break, I was told there was water under the sink, and sure enough the disposer we’d be purposely been abusing since day one was leaking. Oh well, time to go get the good one.

Now, our sink is in the kitchen island, so the disposer switch was down below in the under-sink cupboard. A pain in the ass, but a first-world problem to be sure. With the entire sink area taken apart, I decided to add one more feature to our new brute of a food scrap shredding machine… an air switch.

Those little button switches you see on counters aren’t actually electrical switches. When you depress the button, it squeezes a rubber ball which in turn sends pressurized air down a tube. At the other end of the tube is a pressure-sensitive switch which turns the disposer on and off. This is both effective, and completely eliminates the chances of being shocked when you place your wet hand near 120 volts.

Installation is tricky since you must drill a 3/4" hole through the countertop, which in my case is engineered quartz. Such a hole requires a specialized diamond hole saw, and a guide for holding it in place. I already owned the tools, and after only fifteen minutes of searching I was able to find them.

Start to finish the air switch installation took under an hour, and now every time I need to send potato peels or eggshells down the drain, I can do so without bending over, nor risking minor electrocution.

The Water Cycle — We have what’s called a Superautomatic espresso machine. You give it water, beans and milk, and with the touch of a button it will serve up an espresso, cappuccino, latte, Americano, or any combination thereof. As the first Nazarian to rise most mornings, I come downstairs, turn on the coffee machine, and go feed the dogs.

By the time our two beagles are gobbling kibble, the machine has completed its startup routine. I place my favorite Red Sox mug and press “Americano.” Less than a minute later it’s done, but almost without fail it begins to beep and presents me with a screen demanding I refill the water tank. After filling the tank at the filtered water station in the fridge door, I replace it and direct the machine to place an espresso shot atop my Americano.

One day I asked my wife, “how often do you have to fill the coffee machine water?” She thought for a moment and replied, “Can’t remember the last time I had to.” You can see what was happening, right?

Not long after we got this machine several years ago, I saw a YouTube video showing how to rig a generic float valve inside the water tank, and then hook it up to a water line so you never have time to fill the tank again.

I purchased the valve and promptly forgot about it.

With the counter drilling tool out for the disposer switch, I decided it was time to eliminate water tank filling from my morning routine.

I dug out the still unopened float valve, found the long neglected video, and got to work.

Lucky for me, the water line for the fridge runs directly beneath the location of the coffee maker, so once I’d drilled the counter hole, the rest of the plumbing was straightforward plastic push connections.

After running the line up from the crawlspace, I decided to install a shutoff valve, so when we leave town I can kill the water supply. I’ve heard way too many stories about a failed water valve flooding a kitchen floor.

Here’s the thing. On any given day, not one of these three projects would ever rise to the top of the list, in fact they would have likely stayed near the bottom for years to come.

However, in the weeks since the work was completed, all three have proven to be meaningful “quality of life” improvements.

• Every time I begin to make dinner and put on some music, I smile
• Every time my wet hand presses that little button, I smile
• Every time my Americano finishes without a water warning, I smile

That’s a minimum of three smiles for me alone, every day, 365 days a year… and if that isn’t one of the most important things, then I don’t know what is.

Then, on May 25, 1979, American Airlines Flight 191 fell from the sky.

The long and the short of it was, over time, cracks formed in the dull aluminum pylons which held the engines. The planes were popular, safe and reliable… until they weren't.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of a high school friend. This was not a close friend, but someone who I always liked, and with whom I got along well. His passing was by every measure unexpected.

When I heard the news last week, I was at first confused and unbelieving. My internal monologue was resolute, “This must be a mistake, or a joke.” Every logical part of my brain resisted what I was being told.

Over the next several hours the report became increasingly real, until I had no choice but to accept it as true, and I was devastated.

Along with the news came the details of the remembrance to be held. Normally my busy life would not allow for a six-hour drive to a three-hour event, but being in the midst of the two weeks my school is closed for the holidays, I quickly pivoted from “I couldn’t possibly” to, “how can I not.”

Thursday afternoon I took a suit from the closet, packed a bag, and charted a course from Charlotte NC, to Fairfax VA.

As I drove, I vacillated between an audiobook and chatting with friends on the phone, all the while contemplating the situation in which I found myself.

At the hotel, I met up with two old friends and we stayed up late telling stories, and sharing memories of both our shared past and departed friend.

The service was standing room only and as we walked out, I turned to another friend and said, “That was as lovely as it possibly could have been.”

We then decamped to a local Moose lodge where food was consumed, beers were drained and (more than anything) stories and memories were told and shared.

I reconnected with a dozen other friends from that four-year swath of life we call high school, which for me is nearly four decades in the rear-view mirror.

The six-hour drive home gave me further contemplative time to process this unforeseen episode.

As busy humans, we have a tendency to focus on, and in turn attend to the loudest and most present details in our lives. The foundational layers from our formative past, lumber along like unremarkable slabs of aluminum holding up an aircraft engine. They are quiet, safe and reliable… until they’re not.

As sad as the loss of my friend has been, for me and some of our mutual kin, his departure from this earth has been somewhat of an awakening. While I am not typically one for new year resolutions, I will be making a greater effort to reconnect, and stay in touch with more of the quiet “foundational layers” of my past.

Every day henceforth I will be doing everything I can to check for the cracks in my world, doing everytning I can to shore them up before anyone else falls from the sky.

• If the car broke, we took it to Rocky & Tony down at the 4-Corners
• If an appliance broke, we called a guy
• If something needed to be built, we found a competent craftsman to get the job done

In my adult life, I have blazed a different trail. My mother’s father fixed and built everything, and it seems his genes took root in me.

When my first car (a $100 Post Office Jeep) needed a new starter, I figured out how to fix it all by myself… at the beach on a weekend no less. When my first new car, (a 1993 Saturn) needed a brake job, I bought a book, the parts, and did it in the driveway of my rental house. With the car all apart, I only had to ride my bike to the auto parts store twice. YouTube was years away, but figuring out how to fix things yourself was still possible, if you were bold enough and too cheap to pay someone else.

If you start counting adulthood at 21, I just began my thirty-seventh year in the club. Over said time I have amassed an absurd collection of tools as I have fixed and built my way through more than two dozen vehicles, five houses, one wife, five dogs, five kids and more appliances than I can count.

My one daughter, and four sons have watched it all, and for them the idea of calling someone before trying to fix it yourself is heresy.

My three oldest children are now out in the real world with real jobs. Number four is in college and number five is in 8th grade.

Not long after all the chicks had returned to the nest for Christmas 2025, I heard some activity in the garage. I came out to find #3 and #4 fully involved in making cutting boards. This is a skill they have both developed over the years. They’ve learned making three or four at a time is way more efficient than just one.

They had managed to get just about every tool out and running, from the thickness planer to the table saw and everything in between. There were planks of wood and sawdust everywhere.

By the time I was calling the family in for dinner, they had accomplished quite a lot.

They Trashed My Garage (and I couldn’t have been happier). By Christmas Day, the woodworking was done, and to their credit, my boys cleaned up every bit of their mess.

Once Christmas had come and gone, the garage activity shifted to things automotive. Our 2006 Toyota Tundra affectionately known as “Little Boy” was in need of a new timing belt. I won’t go into what it is and why you need to change it every 100,000 miles, but if you’re curious you can click here. For this particular vehicle a timing belt replacement runs $1,500-$2,000. Sounds like a lot, but not replacing it is substantially more expensive if it breaks.

The truck normally goes to NC State with my son Lawrence, but he was in Europe this fall, so it has been home here in Charlotte since August. I purchased a kit for $186 and we set aside a day to basically take the front half of the engine off.

Man makes plans and God laughs.

In several sessions over three days, Lawrence and I worked on taking the engine apart.

We took our time, documenting every step and labeling every one of the parts, nuts and bolts we removed. At the turning point we’d removed more than 100 individual pieces.

This morning I arose at 6:30am and ventured into the 29 degree driveway to finish the job. When we called it quits in the dark last night, we were half way through the putting back together.

At 8:20am, Lawrence turned the key and the mighty beast roared to life with a 100,000 mile reset on a critical part. We had to make a few tweaks, but all in all the job was successful, saving us at least $1,000 but probably more.

Some might argue the time spent was wasted, but for my money, there is no better way to connect with your kids than working together to build and fix things.

I know for certain, these skills will continue to grow in them and hopefully someday in their children. Shop class may have left many of our schools, but it is alive and well at Casa Nazarian.

I recognize the title is odd, but I assure you the story I am about to tell involves a honeydew melon, terrorism, and is (shamefully) completely true.

This week every year we are reminded of the very best episode of a 1970s-1980s TV sitcom called WKRP in Cincinnati. The episode to which I refer, originally aired on October 30 (my brother Doug’s birthday) 1978. IMDB.com describes the episode as:

Feeling left out by all the recent changes, Mr. Carlson decides to launch his own Thanksgiving promotion. With the aid of Herb and Les, the Big Guy, he turns a routine turkey give-away into a comic catastrophe.

What ends up happening is this. In an attempt to make an annual turkey giveaway more exciting, the station owner arranges to drop turkeys from a helicopter flying 2,000 feet above a shopping mall. If you’re not familiar with the show or the episode, the clip is just below.

The lesson here is simple… ignorance (of even the smallest detail) can lead to unintended consequences.

It is with this in mind I bring you today’s story.

________________________________________________________________

Let’s get the definition out of the way. According to Dictionary.com:

terrorism

[ter-uh-riz-uh m] — noun

1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.

Once I tell the tale, I will let you determine the guilt or innocence of the parties involved. I think we all know what a honeydew melon is.

When I was three years old, I attended the Penfield Village Nursery School. I was a student there for the two years preceding my entry into Kindergarten. Our first child was born in June 2000, so when 2003 arrived we enrolled her in PVNS as well.

As is normal for a preschool, PVNS is run by a loving staff, supported by substantial parental involvement. From the moment you sign your child up, you are enthusiastically encouraged to “get involved.”

By this time I have spent the majority of my career in marketing and business, so I did eventually join the PVNS board of directors, serving as chairman for the last of a three-year term. However, as new parents to the school, they were interested in more “boots on the ground” parental involvement.

My wife Emily is an Critical Care Pediatrician, so the teacher suggested she could come in one day and talk to the little three-year-olds about the importance of wearing a bike helmet. Having seen first hand what can happen when a child does not wear a helmet, she agreed this would be a good idea and committed to the presentation.

Of course a medical degree does not a presenter make, so as the day of her preschool debut drew closer, she involved me in the composition of the program.

As my readers know, I like to tell stories, but I also like physical demonstrations, especially when the audience has a hard time focusing. I dare say you’d be hard pressed to find a less focused audience than a group of three-year-olds.

My idea was simple. We would take two honeydew melons. On one, we would draw the face of a happy child and on the other the face of a slightly mean looking kid. The happy kid melon would be strapped into a child-sized bike helmet, while the other melon would be (let’s just say) unprotected.

Emily was to go to the class, talk a little bit about how important it is to protect your body from things that can hurt you. She would use examples like using a potholder to remove a hot pan from the oven, or sunglasses to protect your eyes. Eventually she would arrive at the subject of protecting your head.

The plan was to show the friendly kid in the helmet and then drop it from three feet to show how the helmet protected the head (err melon). The helmet would bounce off the floor, the smiling honeydew would be removed and the point would be made.

This is exactly where the demonstration and lesson should have ended, especially given the age of the audience.

All parents (especially new ones) regularly do things to make them believe they are the worst parents in the world. This mostly comes from having to make things up as you go along. Keanu Reeves said it best (no joke) in the 1989 movie Parenthood:

“You need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car, hell you need a license to catch a fish… but they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.”

That day at PVNS, I became the guy Keanu described when I sent my wife in to the school with part two of the demonstration. Once she successfully illustrated how the helmet would protect a melon, she was to drop the unprotected, not so friendly looking melon, from the same three-foot height.

As the architect of this exhibition, I was worried the second melon might bounce seemingly undamaged, giving the students the opposite idea. They might conclude the helmet really made no difference. So, in preparing the two melons, I made certain the melon number two would sustain some damage on impact.

The plan was for the un-helmeted melon to crack, and show a subtle but meaningful injury.

As I said, I was concerned, so the morning of the big event, I took our sharpest kitchen knife and compromised the integrity of melon number two. I kissed my wife and children goodbye, wished her luck and went to work.

The first half of the presentation went exactly as planned, and the kids squealed with delight when the helmeted melon was dropped, and was then unstrapped to show no damage at all. Then Emily said, “Okay, now let’s talk about what would happen if the melon didn’t wear a helmet.”

She raised the second melon three feet off the floor, and much like WKRP’s turkeys, she let it fly.

Since I was not in the room at the time, I can only go by the stories I have been told, but in an attempt to illustrate the complete awfulness of what happened next, I reenacted the second melon drop, in 240 frames per second super slow-mo:

Several of the students shrieked in horror, while others looked away. A few of the more sensitive kids simply wept silently for the violent loss of the “melon.” The teacher jumped right in and changed the subject. My wife was politely thanked for her time. She was never asked back to discuss the importance of bike helmets or any other safety topics.

Perhaps I should not have personified the melons by drawing faces on them? I definitely over-engineered the second half of the presentation, which I now know was completely unnecessary.

Were we terrorists?

Our intent was to coerce the children into wearing bike helmets

• We used violence (albeit fruit-based) to achieve our goal
• I’m no UN analyst, but I’m pretty sure the definition fits.

There was never any formal fallout from this incident, but I’m willing to bet there are now nearly two dozen twenty-five-year-olds out in the world who never ride without a helmet… and probably prefer cantaloupe.

Parenting is never perfect, but without trying there can be no learning. I have tried to learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before me, but at the same time I have managed to come up with my own new, and unique set of missteps. Maybe I should just wear a helmet all the time.