I was once driving in San Diego with my sons after leaving the hotel. I had to wake them up “early” so we could check out of the hotel on time. They were half asleep when we piled into the car.

We had spent the day before at the beach because, “How could we go to California and not go to the beach?” As I was drove away from the hotel, I saw a sign that said, “Old San Diego District.” My sons weren’t interested in seeing much of anything since I woke them up so early. They weren’t enjoying the scenery at all. But I continued my sightseeing tour.

Suddenly, I smelled some delicious Mexican food. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I knew it was Mexican food. Since I was hungry, I followed the aroma and arrived at a Mexican restaurant that looked like it was transplanted from Mexico. It looked so Mexican!

However, my sons didn’t want to eat there. They would rather sleep than eat! I tried to convince them that they would never have an opportunity to eat a restaurant like this again. So I drove around the restaurant once and we left San Diego. I’m sure that was the best restaurant that I never ate at.

When I attended Gage Park High School, I was on the school chess team. I even lettered in chess! I remember one day I was pulled from one of my classes and told to go the assembly hall. I saw my other teammates from the chess team there. We were attending the athletic awards ceremony where all the school athletes were brought on stage and given the school letter to put on the school jacket. When they called the chess team on stage, the whole assembly burst out into uproarious laughter because no one thought of the chess team as athletes. We chess players didn’t think of ourselves as athletes either, but we really enjoyed receiving the school letter. We were officially school jocks!

When we weren’t playing chess at school, we also played at a chess club that met every Tuesday at the Marquette Park field house. After we played there a few weeks, we were required to join the chess club that was called the Mar Par Chessmen. I’m sure I still have my membership card around somewhere. I really improved my chess skills by playing there and I met quite a few characters there.

I remember the room was always filled with cigar smoke. For some strange reason, no one smoked cigarettes. I remember one player would occasionally blow cigar smoke across the chessboard to try to psyche me out. The winter meetings truly taught me to develop my concentration because a recording droned on monotonously, “Danger! Keep off the ice! Danger! No skating! Thin ice!” even when the temperatures were above freezing and the water in the lagoon wasn’t even close to freezing. Sometimes I hear the voice to this day whenever I see a frozen lagoon or a chess set.

The character I remember the most was Spans. I never learned his full name because everyone called him Spans, just Spans. I thought he was Lithuanian. I also believed he was a retiree. I was 16 at the time so I could have been wrong. A few times, I saw him sitting alone, so I offered to play him, but he told me he was waiting for someone. I only ever saw him play this one player whom I no longer remember because Spans was the more memorable of the two.

Once his partner showed up, Spans would liven up and become a whole different person. He was like a tiger on the prowl. I’m not sure how strong a player he was, but I was always impressed by his demeanor and focus during the game. He always looked like he was just about to checkmate his opponent even before the game began.

However, I don’t recall that he ever won a game. He really wasn’t interested in winning. He just wanted to play a good game. From observing him, I gathered that a good game for him was placing his opponent’s king in check as many times as possible before losing the game. Since this was his favorite part of the game, everyone knew when Spans was on the attack. He would slam down the attacking piece with all his might and yell at the top of his lungs, “CHECK!” The room would tremble slightly and his “CHECK!” would reverberate in the room and his breath would actually clear some of the cigar smoke from around his chessboard. When Spans was on a roll delivering check after check, he would actually drown out the “Danger! Keep off the ice! Danger! No skating! Thin ice!” announcement.

In a good game, he would deliver about ten “CHECK!”s before finally losing the game. And he would play to the very last move and make his opponent checkmate him. “Checkmate!” his opponent would yell at Spans, but with no enthusiasm or emotion compared to Spans’ delivery. Spans would say, “It doesn’t matter that you won. Did you see how many times I checked you? I hope you learned your lesson!”

Okay, I wasn’t ready for it today. I was caught completely off guard today by the mail. I opened my mailbox and there it was: AARP, The Magazine.

I really needed someone to hold my hand at that moment, but I was all alone. I still can’t believe I’m old enough to belong to AARP. Even scarier: Somewhere along the line, I became a dues-paying member. However, I don’t remember writing a check to AARP, much less mailing it out. This qualifies me to be a member of AARP. WOW! I guess I went on the road to senility when I wrote out the check.

I am now fifty-one. That’s 11 Celsius. (I stole that joke from George Carlin.) I have now lived longer than my mother who died of cirrhosis of the liver. Unlike my mother’s final years, I have been extremely happy these last few years. I’m not sure why, but I attribute it to the fact that I never thought I would live to see twenty-one. That in itself is a very long story for various reasons.

I don’t usually celebrate my birthday because to me it feels like just another day. There are no significant milestones for your birthdays after you turn 10, 13, 18, 21, and if you’re a male, 25 because then you auto insurance rates drop. I must admit that I was initially nervous about turning 30, but when my thirtieth birthday came, I felt no different than the day before.

More than a year has passed since I turned fifty. But I will never forget it as an important milestone since I had an unusual fiftieth birthday party. As a police officer, I worked with Vinny and John as regular partners. One day, Vinny told me he was having a surprise birthday party for John. I said it was a great idea and that I would help him arrange everything. Then Vinny asked when my birthday was and how old I would be. Well, John’s birthday was in July and mine was in May, and we were both turning 50. I told Vinny that I didn’t want a birthday party, but he insisted on including me in the party. I reluctantly agreed.

Well, Denise and Margaret, two other police officers we knew well, helped with the party arrangements. Denise took charge of ordering the cakes. Everyone was surprised when she unveiled the cakes at the birthday party. Denise and Margaret were so proud of themselves. One cake was topped with a pair of breasts and the other with a vagina. I’m proud to say that mine was the vagina cake. It was pure, unadulterated pornography! Denise knew of a Mexican bakery that specialized in custom cakes. I truly believe that only a female could think of something as creative as this because we lesser male beings would have come up with something as lame as, “Happy Birthday!” Everyone, male and female, loved the cakes!

When the party ended, we had leftover cake. No one wanted to take any home, so I volunteered to take home the leftovers to my sons. When I looked in the cake boxes, all that was left of the cakes was the breasts and the vagina. “I can’t take that home to my sons!” I said.

I could just see my sons waking up, opening the fridge, and looking for something to snack on. Somehow, I didn’t think I could come up with a satisfactory explanation. So Denise scraped off the female genitalia from the cakes and I felt safe taking them home. That was certainly my most memorable birthday party.

One day, my son Alex told me that his friends thought I was, “Cool!”

Oh, yes, the “Cool” factor! I’m often surprised when someone, anyone really, considers me cool. I don’t try to be cool. I guess I just am.

So I asked my son why they thought I was cool. His friends said I was cool because I watched professional wrestling with my sons. This may sound strange, but it’s actually my way of bonding with my sons.

What else made me cool? I loved riding on roller coasters with my sons! Well, it’s the only amusement park ride that doesn’t make me nauseous so I took them to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, where they have the most roller coasters of any amusement park in the world.

Likewise, I liked the fact that I was having fun and being cool simultaneously. Oh, yes, I also took them to Skatopia, a skateboard paradise that appears in a Tony Hawk video game. Okay, I had fun going there, too. And I have the pictures to prove it!

I was cool for buying my sons an X-Box 360 before anyone else had one. However, I lost some “Cool” points because I don’t play any video games with my sons. That’s because being cool is so demanding. I’m sorry, but I can’t be cool 24/7/366! (I’m so cool, so often, that I pack in 366 days of cool into every year, not just leap years!)