Proof of Life Volume 3: How Did I Miss All That?

By Jack Sparacino

This third volume in the Proof of Life series further expands our outlook on and philosophy about being truly alive, as opposed to simply going through the motions. Doing the things and associating with people that bring you joy, from your family to your vocation and everything in between.

Far too many Americans find themselves in debt and living in a dead end, working dull and sometimes extremely stressful jobs with no particular future. All of us can take at least a few steps in a better direction that will bring us far more satisfaction with our lives and those we truly care about. Being truly alive in our core and living life to its fullest, even under extraordinarily difficult conditions at times, is what binds us all together as human beings. We always have a choice between a life that no one will remember after we are gone and one that is filled with spiritual and emotional richness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889823803

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

1: Harry Ain't David

2: Sympathy for the Driver

3: Barking Up the Right Tree

4: Where the Heck Was I All That Time?

5: Count Your Lucky Stars

6: Count Your Blessings

7: Mastering Beauty

8: Email to Eloise

9: Feminine Beauty: The Final Word

10: The Ultimate Scale of Human Attraction

11: How to Succeed in Life While Trying Your Hardest

12: Street Signs

13: Looking for Happiness

14: Sara

15: Prince Edward and Ronnie: Tales from the South to South Boston

16: Southbound

17: Southern Belles

18: Welcome to America (or Not)

19: Work at It

20: They've Got a Bridge to Sell You

21: Bibbity Bobbity Booyah

22: Is There Any Real Hope for Men?

23: When the Pain Stops

24: Kaleidoscope

25: Thirty-Six Oysters

26: Star Pants

27: Pies or Pajamas

28: Nurse Firebrand

29: Bart's Standout Career in Marketing

30: One Clarinet

31: More Great Peeps, Even after Easter

32: Tobin Bridge Blues

33: Ciao, Isabella

34: Searching for CAVU

35: Adventures in ER Land

36: Dates and Nuts

37: Faces in the Crowd

38: Undercover America

39: Balancing Acts

40: In for a Dime, in for a Dollar

41: Till Corn Bread Do Us Part: Valentine's Day Reflections

42: Lead Us Not (into Too Many Comedy Zones at Work)

43: Better Days

44: You Gets No Bread with One Meatball: America Then and Now

45: United We Can Still Stand

46: Karen versus Sharon

47: Nice Winners and Losers

48: Chain Gang

49: Infinity: Backing into God

About the Author

cover.jpg

Proof of Life Volume 3

How Did I Miss All That?

Jack Sparacino

Copyright © 2024 Jack Sparacino

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2024

ISBN 979-8-88982-379-7 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88982-380-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Introduction

I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent back a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

—Rodney Dangerfield

This is the third, and possibly last, volume in my Proof of Life series. In it, I have tried to broaden my lens a little more, well past the conventional definition used in kidnapping cases, and bring perhaps a bit more joy into the world.

This is not a work of fiction, although there are sections that are fictional or drawn directly from my real-life experiences, or those of my friends, family, and colleagues, and then elaborated and embellished. Writing is something I have always loved doing. It gives me satisfaction and focus. As a corollary, I long ago recognized that I only write books when I feel good. My doctor smiles in recognition when I tell him that. I suppose as a senior geriatric specialist, he's probably seen it all.

Proof of life is probably different for virtually everyone. But the real name of the game is to determine as early as possible in life what makes you the happiest and most fulfilled. The people and things that give your life pleasure and satisfaction, help you leverage each new day as an adventure and hopefully filled with the joy of work and play. Punctuated forever by love, zeal, and success, however you may define those states of mind. That journey is seldom easy or necessarily straightforward, but it is always worth the effort.

Above all else, I hope you enjoy this volume. Little else in life would give me much greater pleasure.

1

Harry Ain't David

Life is short. Why not spend it mired in regret? Why not spend your - evenings sitting side-by-side at the dining room table with your spouse, trying to determine whether your downstairs neighbors' ceiling fan is making the floor tremble?

—Cora Frazier, the New Yorker magazine, January 23, 2023

John Harry lived to be seventy-eight damned years old. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and died after what felt like a half a light-year and a few hundred cases of Corona in Queens. During those seventy-eight years, he produced fifty-two thousand bowel movements out of seventy-five thousand two hundred total trips to a bathroom to relieve himself. Had he lived there, this would have been the all-time high for the state of New Jersey and second place for Oklahoma according to closely held county documents and state certification boards.

He graduated from high school as a reasonably good-looking eighteen-year-old and proceeded to enlist in the US Army. He served three years without distinction and was discharged as a private first class. He married Betty Lou Gleason when they were twenty-four, and they produced three unremarkable children. One of them, their son John Jr., always got his dad a tie for a gift. The occasion didn't really matter, from Father's Day to Christmas to the Fourth of July. Always a tie, almost always on sale. Hey, buy one, get one! John just figured that his dad liked ties, and who doesn't?

John worked most of his career as a low-level insurance adjuster. He never expected to have much fun in the job, and this proved prophetic. Coworkers, friends, and neighbors seldom heard him laugh or witnessed him crack much of a smile. He just showed up every day and started chopping down trees, whether they needed it or not. That was his life, one meaningless repetition after another. Remarks at his funeral were appropriately inflated and yet also boring enough that a group of six of his surviving classmates from high school decided to try snorting cocaine for the first time that night. They stayed at it for three days straight.

*****

David Applebaum died two days after his seventy-fifth birthday from complications surrounding atrial fibrillation. He left behind his wife, Gladys, and four grown children scattered around the country. They all showed up at his funeral, leaking sorrow in David's hometown of Queens, New York. The sun looked down reassuringly on the trees that day while high clouds pinkie waved on their way past.

David was a reasonably good, if not great, student growing up in New York City. He was polite and respectful, but never particularly creative or acutely insightful. At least this was the impression he gave off. After finishing four years at a public high school and then getting his bachelor's degree from New York University, he earned a master's in engineering from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

He spent most of the rest of his career as an engineering entrepreneur. He made three hundred and fifty-two friends (not counting Monica Daley, unfortunately, as she remained out of range; perhaps he had not worn enough cologne) and close acquaintances surrounding work. He loved his children and dogs beyond any expression and accumulated a modest fortune along the way. One of the inventions he was most proud of was a vaping pen that looked much like a conventional cigarette. He figured anything he could do to get people off tobacco was a good thing.

David had a way of finding the essence in things. The source of laughter in an infant or an old man; the inherent, transcendent beauty of a painting; the intoxicating smells and tastes of a new ethnic restaurant in the neighborhood.

Above all else, he was a good person. He could honestly say that he thoroughly enjoyed 78 percent of his life, and another 21 percent was a learning experience. The 1 percent left over was gas and mild bloating. He usually smiled and felt good about it, keeping away the riffraff.

2

Sympathy for the Driver

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

I've been around for a long, long years

Stole million man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ

Had his moment of doubt and pain

Made damn sure that Pilate

Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Stuck around St. Petersburg

When I saw it was a time for a change

Killed Tsar and his ministers

Anastasia screamed in vain

—Sympathy for the Devil, Mick Jagger/Keith Richards

After happily agreeing to meet an old friend in the south side of Boston for dinner recently, I got an Uber from my place in Quincy and headed into the city. The driver, Anastasia, got my attention right away, starting with her lovely name. I wondered if she knew Jagger. Laying aside any potential prejudice, at least for the moment, she just didn't fit the profile. Most of these drivers are men, at least 80 percent. And they are overwhelmingly non-Caucasian with relatively poor English speaking skills. Don't blame me, I'm just the messenger on this. Comprendez? Bueno.

Anastasia spoke very rapidly, and I was able to get a correspondingly quick impression of her. She was twenty-eight years old, although she looked like she was still in college. I learned that she was born and raised in Russia, here in the United States only six years so far. Blonde and pleasant looking, English was her third language, and it was absolutely flawless, not to mention the high-speed delivery. She told me that she could learn a new language from scratch in three months, and I didn't doubt it. I would need at least a few years. Or decades.

Our trip took about twenty minutes. We chatted the entire way with my dinner date somehow also on the line. The entire way. In addition to a nice tip, I wanted to leave Anastasia with some personal thoughts about her future. I told her that with her brains, education, verbal facility, and social skills, the sky was the limit. I told her never take a back seat to anyone, keeping in mind that we were, of course, in a car. I gave her a friendly wave goodbye and received one in return.

If she minded receiving a little friendly counsel, it certainly didn't show on her face. And if that was the case, maybe she's got a career ahead of her working as a spy. Their ability to hide their true feelings is one of their most effective weapons. Anastasia, double agent maybe. Yeah, that could work. I can just hear her now: Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a woman of wealth and taste.

Move over, Mick!

3

Barking Up the Right Tree

With vast experience behind me I believe that, unless a dog is unapproachably savage or mentally unsound, it can be made a decent member of society and a joy to own. Thus was coined my school motto, which is there is no such thing as a difficult dog, only an inexperienced owner.

—Barbara Woodhouse, No Bad Dogs

Are you sitting somewhere reasonably comfortable, sipping at least someone's favorite beverage? Well, feast your eyes on perhaps the premier creatures from heaven, dogs. A recent issue of National Geographic magazine had a canine face on the cover that could melt a brass heart. The title of this issue was simply The Genius of Dogs, and it was beautifully written by Brandon Keim. If the photos alone don't blow you out the door and through the back pasture into a forest, you might consult your physician's advice.

Keim takes the reader through some detailed material on the genetic background of dogs and their descent from gray wolves. By all means, try to get hold of this issue and, if nothing else, just bathe in the heart-rending photos.

I have a two-year-old Lhatese named Jodi. After living with many dogs over my life and having met countless others, it is with great confidence that I nominate this little whirlwind as my all-time favorite.

Perhaps a peek into one or two of our recent conversations will help here. A typical situation involves me lying on my heating pad to get some additional relief from chronic back pain and reading the newspaper or a book. Maybe some mail, even listening to Dire Straits. My thirteen-pound tornado will either just plow into my side and look up at my face for some attention and reinforcement.

Oh wow, you brought me your new toy and a chewstick! Thanks, sweetie! or just get right to the point, Hey, Dad! How about we go out on the scooter now? You can rest later!

Jodi has several other cute habits. One of her unwavering favorites is to cuddle up on my shoulder and rest her head on top of mine. This works out reasonably well until she adjusts her position and I'm suddenly left with a face full of thick white fluff.

Mmff, I say. Can you mhff fmm my face for a minute, little girl?

She gets me every time. We are bound at the hip—and hippocampus too, I suspect. For my fellow nerds and nerdettes out there, Hippocampus is a complex brain structure embedded deep into temporal lobe. It has a major role in learning and memory. It is a plastic and vulnerable structure that gets damaged by a variety of stimuli.

Sounds lovely. What, me worry? Heck no, I've got this here dawg.

4

Where the Heck Was I All That Time?

Like most of my fellow undergraduate students, and especially those