Category Archives: Columns

The Complaint Department Is Open

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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The Complaint Department

Is Now Open

One of the funniest The New Yorker cartoons I can recall dates back to 1998 when it was featured in a final-season episode of “Seinfeld.” A pig is standing at the “Complaints” window in a department store and tells the woman employee, in a caption submitted by the TV character Elaine: “I wish I was taller.”

Well, I’m 6-foot-4 but I am not short of complaints…

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I wish 2020 was shorter instead of seeming to have already lasted about 18 years.

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I used to get annoyed when I would forget to bring my own reusable bag into a store, but now that I’ve gotten better my new problem is leaving my mask in the car and having to go back to retrieve it.

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I wish I wasn’t always forgetting my Internet passwords, a seemingly daily occurrence with one account or another. I reckon I reset my email password alone more often than Jeff Bezos earns another 10 million dollars.

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Speaking of Amazon, I have annoyed myself during the coronavirus pandemic by relying too heavily on the convenience of click-and-buying things online – after, naturally, re-re-re-resetting my Prime membership password first – instead of putting on a mask and going to a local store.

I vow to do better in 2021. No, beginning now.

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Speaking of the Internet, I have a complaint about websites that ask me to prove I am a person (and not a spam program) by typing in a series of displayed random letters and numbers that look like either hieroglyphics or something drawn by Picasso while he was drunk.

Worse yet is when I am presented a photograph of a busy intersection and asked to click on each of the nine gridded squares that contain portions of the five major food groups.

In either case, I usually mistake cars for apples or guess letters to be numbers.

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“Woody, you knucklehead,” you might say. “Just write down your passwords and the problem is solved.”

Well, I can’t begin to tell you how annoyed I get when I lose my list of passwords – which is a full page long, by the way, because cyber experts tell us that not having a unique password for each and every account is more dangerous than storing nuclear waste in one’s refrigerator.

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I worry about our local restaurants surviving during the pandemic, but I do have a complaint about some of them for wrapping my take-away orders in two pounds of aluminum foil, paper, cardboard and eco-unfriendly Styrofoam, which is a huge complaint all in itself, plus a bag. That’s a lot of unneeded waste for about five minutes of use.

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I have a major complaint about people who don’t clean up their dog’s messes at parks, beaches and even on sidewalks.

I wish there was an ordinance requiring such Styrofoam-brained dog owners to personally clean off the icky shoe soles for those of us who take a messy misstep.

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I similarly have a complaint about people who treat our beautiful beaches like a pigsty by leaving behind litter.

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I wish half the sesame seeds didn’t always fall off my bagel and make my place at the table look like a pigsty.

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It annoys me that robocalls and spam email are harder to stop than LeBron James.

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My final complaint for today is that the pig cartoon in “Seinfeld” was actually fictitious, although The New Yorker later ran a caption contest with the same drawing. The winner? “Stop sending me spam!”

I wish I had sent that in.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Ball Drive Remains On The Map

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive

Remains On The Map

Chuck Thomas, the longtime sage of this Saturday column space as well as my friend and mentor, wrote a novel published nearly three decades ago that revolved around a small-town newspaper and features a Norwegian Elkhound named Woody.

It remains a cherished kindness that I keep in my bookcase and heart. I bring this up not in boast, but because the novel’s title seems remarkably fitting these days: “Getting Off The Map.” I think that describes how most of us have felt during 2020 – like we’ve fallen off the map.

Some “smiles” before they were delivered to disadvantaged kids last year…

As this holiday season approaches I worry, too, that disadvantaged youth will fall through the cracks more than ever before. Which brings to mind this wisdom from Chuck, who passed away 11 years ago this month: “Help someone today because you may not have the opportunity tomorrow.”

Helping local underprivileged children is the aim of Woody’s Holiday Ball Drive that officially kicks off again today. The inspiration for the annual endeavor was twofold, beginning a quarter-century ago at a youth basketball clinic when former Ventura College and NBA star Cedric Ceballos awarded autographed basketballs to a handful of lucky attendees.

Leaving the gym afterward, I happened upon a 10-year-old boy who won one of the prized keepsakes. He was dribbling it and shooting baskets on the rough blacktop outdoor court while perhaps imagining himself to be Ceballos.

Meanwhile, the real Ceballos’ Sharpie signature was wearing off.

Curious as to why the boy had not carefully carried the trophy basketball home and put it safely on a bookshelf, I interrupted his playing to ask.

“I’ve never had my own basketball,” he answered matter-of-factly between shots.

That holiday season, thinking of that boy – and other boys and girls who do not have their own basketball to shoot, soccer ball to kick, football to throw – I got a second assist of inspiration from Julius Gius. Specifically, the long-running Christmas Bellringer campaign he started long ago as editor of The Star to support the Salvation Army.

Instead of asking readers to drop loose change and bills into a kettle, I asked them to drop off brand new sports balls for kids in need. A great thing about a basketball, football or soccer ball as a holiday gift is that no batteries are required. Also, unlike most toys, a rubber ball is all but unbreakable.

In the introduction to a collection of his “Editor’s Notebook” columns published in 1988, Gius wrote: “I have had a rich and rewarding life. Everything has come up roses for me. I count my blessings every day and wish them for everyone.”

The pandemic poses an added challenge this year, like a sixth defender on the basketball court, but nonetheless I am again encouraging you dear readers to help pass out roses and blessings by dropping off new sports balls at any Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, youth club or church and they will find a worthy young recipient.

You can also drop balls off (weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Dec. 18) in a no-contact collection box outside Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon St. near Target on Telephone Road in Ventura; or have online orders shipped to the same address; and I will take it from there.

And please email me about your bouncing gifts at woodywriter@gmail.com so I can add your generosity to this year’s tally.

In closing, and in advance, let me quote the character Salena in “Getting Off The Map” who at one point says: “Thanks for the support. It means a lot.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Pencils, Pens and Rocket Science

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Pencils, Pens and

Rocket Science

In an interview discussing her novel “Song of Solomon,” Toni Morrison spent upwards of fifteen minutes discussing the opening paragraph. This was remarkable for it consists of a mere 43 words total:

“The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock. Two days before the event was to take place he tacked a note on the door of his little yellow house.”

The two sentences seem simple enough, yet in the hands of the late Pulitzer Prize-winner the writing pen is on the order of rocket science. For example, “North” in the insurance company’s name was a metaphor for the Underground Railroad and slaves fleeing in that direction. The choice of “Mercy” for the town was more evident, but to learn the deeper meanings behind “fly” and “three o’clock” and “little yellow house” was to hear a SpaceX engineer discussing avionics.

I know this because I recently visited with the Lead Build Reliability Engineer for Avionics at SpaceX. Technically, Cullen McAlpine and his team are in charge of making sure the electromechanical assemblies, wire harnesses, batteries, sensors, solar arrays and more all perform as designed.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronauts …

In other words, when the Crew Dragon spacecraft lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida (launch time is targeted for 7:49 p.m. ET, Saturday, Nov. 14) to carry four astronauts to the International Space Station, Cullen will be a key author in the sci-fi story that is now almost routine.

Cullen, a 2011 graduate of Ventura High School who earned a degree in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at UCLA, is a dear family friend of mine. As a kid who grew up during America’s Space Race with Russia in the sixties, I love asking Cullen questions about his work.

I won’t share everything that he told me the other day because you’d have to be a rocket scientist to understand much of it. More truthfully, I mostly have no idea what he was talking about so how can I retell it?

At one point, trying to give the impression I wasn’t a complete doofus, I mentioned how I found it amazing NASA spent a million dollars to develop a pen that could write in the gravity-free vacuum of space whereas Soviet cosmonauts simply used a two-cent pencil.

Cullen smiled at me like a wise professor and then gently educated his ignorant student. With the depth of Toni Morrison discussing writing, he explained that using a pencil in space could be penny-wise and mission-foolish. The tip of graphite breaking off could pose danger to equipment inside a weightless capsule. Even a tiny fleck of graphite could float perilously into an astronaut’s eye.

Cullen told me much more, but most of it sounded like a foreign language. As if in a Paris restaurant, I just nodded a lot.

Doing some homework for the next time I see Cullen, I discovered that early on NASA astronauts did indeed use pencils – mechanical ones costing $128 each. The Fisher Pen Company eventually stepped in and invested $1 million to create a pen that can write upside-down; in blazing temperatures (250 degrees Fahrenheit) and frigid conditions (minus 30 degrees); even underwater.

Featuring a pressurized nitrogen cartridge and gel-like ink, the “Space Pen” was patented in 1966 and first used by Apollo 7 astronauts during their 1968 mission. Soviet cosmonauts followed suit a year later.

Inspired by Cullen, I bought an authentic million-dollar “Space Pen” for 22 bucks. I’m no rocket scientist but believe me, it’s far better – and way cooler – than a pencil.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Sweet Treat Follows Halloween

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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A Sweet Treat

Follows Halloween

Out of precaution, but with small expectation, we bought a single bag of candy bars in case any trick-or-treaters came by Halloween evening. In years past we have handed out 20 bags.

Coronavirus kept our doorbell silent as a tombstone.

It’s easy to jokingly snicker, “Great! I’ll just have to eat all these Snickers myself.” But the truth is I felt empty because autumn’s annual parade of kids singing “Trick or treat!” as their goodie sacks and plastic pumpkin buckets fill up, fills my heart.

Imagine the cutest costumed child of the night knocking on your door after the porch light has been turned off and you get an idea of what happened to me. In this case, it was a day later and two young girls were dressed up as themselves – as the cutest two siblings imaginable.

I am guessing their ages to be 3 and 5 and they were at a local park with their parents enjoying a late-afternoon picnic. Meanwhile, I was on my daily run and seeing them each half-mile loop around put a smile on my face and extra spring in my stride.

I wish you could have seen them. The girls played catch with their dad and tag with their mom; played by themselves while their parents snuggled on the spread-out blanket; joined mom and dad for a snack, and a hug, before racing off to pet a dog on a leash; and on and on their fun went.

Just as Halloween is a time machine that pulls us back to our own childhoods, these two children sent my mind racing in reverse 25 years to when my daughter and son were about their ages.

Instead of on a blanket in a park, our young family of four was having dinner at a charming Italian restaurant. After the spaghetti and meatballs disappeared, and scoops of ice cream too, our waiter vanished. The kids grew antsy as we waited for the check. Ten minutes became thirty and my wife and I became impatient as well.

“Where’s the check?” I grumbled softly.

“Where’s our waiter?” my wife mumbled.

“Where’s the bathrooms?” the kids needed to know.

Our waiter remained AWOL. Eventually, finally, at long last I caught the attention of a different server and asked if he could please get our check.

Instead of the check, our original waiter brought us a heartwarming explanation: Two elderly gentlemen at a table across the room had paid for our dinner, but requested the waiter not let us know until after they left – hence the long delay.

The Samaritan pair had seen a happy young family, our waiter explained, and simply wanted to anonymously do a random act of kindness. Ever since, I have occasionally tried to repay those kind men when I have seen happy young families in restaurants.

And so it was that I wished I could have paid the dinner check for the two girls and their parents at the park. Instead, all I could think to do was stop by before I left and tell them something they already well knew – what a lovely family they are!

This led to a brief social-distanced visit where I learned the sisters are inseparable, even sharing a bed by choice, and that a third sibling is on the way.

As I jogged away into the early arriving darkness, the two girls sang out in sweet harmony: “Have a nice day!”

“Thank you!” I shouted back. “You, too!”

What I thought was this: “Thanks to you, I already have.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Quoth the Raven, “Vote Ever More!”

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Quoth the Raven,

“Vote Ever More!”

What writer better to quote on Halloween than Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote in his most-famous poem The Raven: “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering fearing / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

Below are some dark dreams that would make any mortal scream “Nevermore!” loud enough to rattle their chamber door…

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From the moment you fall asleep you find yourself resolutely standing – six feet from the person in front and behind you – in a line stretching more blocks than the eye can see.

Despite dreaming in real time during a full eight hours of sleep, upon awakening you still have not reached the voting booth.

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In another dream, you finally reach the front of the line only to find that you must unlock your high school locker before you can cast your ballot. Taking a wild guess, you spin the dial – clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise – and give the lock a quick yank.

“Wrong! I’m sorry,” the lock tells you, “your signature does not match the squiggle we have on file from when you signed for a FedEx package using your index finger on a touchscreen, so your ballot will not be counted.”

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You walk to your familiar voting place but it has been shut down; so you drive to the next nearest poll but it, too, has been shuttered; so you drive further still and finally arrive at the only open poll in your county only to be greeted by a 10-hour line – which you find yourself standing in naked.

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Your wise subconscious has decided to skip the long lines by using a vote-by-mail ballot. Alas, this results in a different nightmare as you put your ballot inside a security/privacy envelope before putting that envelope inside a second envelope specified for mailing …

… and then, like Russian nesting dolls, you put that envelope inside another, and another, and another until you wake up screaming in frustration.

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In a similar dream, you have mistakenly used your security/privacy envelope to jot down a grocery list on and thus mail in your naked ballot inside the mailing envelope only. When you learn your ballot was invalidated by this technicality, you wake up screaming in anger.

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Again you dream of using a vote-by-mail ballot, but to avoid nesting doll-like envelopes or having the Postal Service deliver it too late to be counted, you take it directly at an official ballot drop box – but are faced with two identical looking ones.

One box contains a tiger that will bite your hand off when you drop your ballot inside while the other box will count your vote correctly. To determine which box to use, you must solve a Rubik’s Cube in 30 seconds or recall your Netflix password on the first try.

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In your final dark dream, your polling site in an affluent suburban neighborhood and you have flown through the line in 2 minutes and 43 seconds.

However, inside the voting booth you realize you have forgotten your election crib sheet. Looking at the propositions you suddenly find yourself again trying to open your high school locker; while standing naked in the hallway; and running late for class to take a final exam you need to pass in order to graduate.

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You awaken each time thinking “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’ ” but then vow, “No, that is wrong. Vote, vote, vote always ever election more!”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Three Winks From The Universe

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Three Winks From

The Universe

Whether the glass is half full or half empty, sometimes it gets knocked over. And sometimes when this happens the universe laughs at you, but other times it smiles and gives you a wink.

Last Sunday, the glass in question was a nearly full bottle of maple syrup waiting to be poured over pancakes. Reaching for the syrup, I carelessly knocked the bottle over …

… with its lid already off …

… the bottle toppled onto its side …

… its mouth coming to rest hanging over the edge of my plate …

… and the syrup poured onto my pancakes …

… in the perfectly desired amount …

… without any sticky syrup spilling onto the table or floor.

It was all a one-in-a-million shot and a playful wink from the universe asking, “How Did You Like That Trick?”

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My luck appeared to change the next day with a half-full mailbox.

In order for a card I was mailing to arrive on time, I needed to get it out on Monday. Our postal carrier usually comes by in the afternoon, but to be safe I strolled to my neighborhood’s community mailboxes at midmorning.

My mistake was dropping the letter into the outgoing slot before checking my own box. Alas, the mail had already been delivered so my card would not go out for another day. Had I looked first, I could have instead mailed the card at the post office for timely delivery.

As the universe giggled at me, I gently chastised myself for not mailing the card an hour earlier.

Then the universe’s laugh grew louder. As I was walking back home, the postal carrier rounded the corner to exit our neighborhood. I suddenly wished I had come out to mail my letter two minutes later than I did because then I could have flagged down our mail carrier and handed her the letter directly.

Quick as a wink, I decided to wave frantically anyway …

… the postal carrier stopped her truck …

… listened to my tragic tale of being a bonehead …

… and promised to retrieve my card from the outgoing box.

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If the universe wasn’t laughing at me the following evening, my wife surely was when my reading glasses disappeared. Fifteen minutes earlier I had been reading on the couch and now I had all the cushions off, searching the crevices, with no luck.

I retraced my steps from earlier that evening, from the entire day, even checked rooms I hadn’t been in for days.

As my frustration grew, I expanded my search to the kitchen trash and counters, cabinets and drawers that made no sense. I turned the couch inside out a second time.

If our 22-month-old granddaughter had been visiting, I would have been convinced she carried them off somewhere while playing and laughed it off. Instead, as I continued looking high and low and every height in between, the thought that I was losing my mind crossed my mind.

Alas, like Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” or the last Easter egg often to be found, my reading glasses proved to be in plain sight …

… in the same room across from the couch …

… resting on top of a typewriter …

… that sits on a table I had checked at least a couple times.

On that keyboard is where my wife claims to have found The Purloined Glasses. She didn’t wink, but I’m convinced she conspired with the universe to prank me.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

80th Birthday is a Superspreader

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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80th Birthday is

a Superspreader

Sharon Martin recently turned 80 and her milestone birthday celebration turned into a superspreader. There wasn’t an outbreak of coronavirus, however – it was kindness that proved widely contagious.

“At my age I have enough stuff,” the longtime Simi Valley resident says, and thus asked family members and friends to each do a “Random Act Of Kindness” in her honor in lieu of a gift-wrapped present.

“I could hardly wait until the big day to open my birthday cards and see what RAOK people had done,” Sharon further shares. “I was like a 5-year-old waiting for Christmas Day.”

Her virtual Christmas tree had more than 50 “gifts” beneath it, including monetary donations to food banks, rescue missions and other charities while food and blankets were given to an animal shelter.

The RAOKs benefited the young and old alike. One woman donated an American Girl Doll to a foster child while several friends “adopted” senior citizens to visit by phone and drop off meals to during the pandemic.

One woman rallied her coworkers and put together 75 back-to-school backpacks filled with supplies for an inner-city elementary school. Similarly, two friends made donations to For The Troops to send “We Care” packages.

“My great-niece joined with others to help clean up the beach,” Sharon said and similarly noted that a 90-year-old nun has started picking up trash on her daily walks as a birthday gift.

“Some were small things,” Sharon continued. “My brother was at a health clinic and when he was leaving he found a pen on the floor. The pen had a special inscription about a nurse and he knew it was important to someone. He spent quite a bit of time interviewing all the nurses and finally found the right one. She was so appreciative as it had been given to her on the day she graduated from nursing school.”

One friend baked homemade bread and delivered it to a neighbor recovering from surgery, along with a good book to read, and another woman made gallons of apple butter to help raise money for families in need.

Another woman tallied up how much money she had NOT spent getting her hair done during the pandemic and sent an equivalent check to a family that is struggling.

“Residents at the Simi Valley Care Center will soon have a pretty gazebo to sit under,” Sharon happily reported, “thanks to a donation to the Eagle Scout project by Josh Hoover.”

One friend saw a man at Costco unsuccessfully trying to squeeze a large piece of furniture into a car that was too small. He brought his pickup truck around and then followed the man home with the special delivery.

Sharon proudly noted that Bill, her husband of 59 years, “is always doing random acts of kindness” and for her birthday celebration this included helping a friend take 5,000 pounds of donations to a Catholic food share.

Naturally, the couple’s three sons honored their mom with RAOKs: Chris went out of his way to make sure a food delivery got to the right person; Greg found a baby quail with a damaged wing and rushed it to a rescue hospital for successful care; and Tim cleaned out the rain gutters for the widow of a victim in the 2017 massacre in Las Vegas.

Turning 80 is a big deal, but how can it compete with the childhood excitement and cake-and-sugar rush of a fifth birthday or eighth or tenth? By giving, that’s how.

As Sharon concluded: “I can truthfully say that this was my very best birthday.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Making Friendship A Fine Art

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Making Friendship

A Fine Art

My friend Kurt phoned out of the blue the other morning for no other reason than to say “hi” and catch up. His timing was perfect as I was in need of a little pick-me-up. By the time he said “ciao” my socks were filled with helium.

After hanging up, my mind drifted to Coach John Wooden – whose birth date, coincidentally, is this coming Wednesday – and some lessons on friendship he taught me during the two decades I knew him.

The first time I joined Coach on his daily four-mile morning walk some 30 years ago, he gave me a laminated card featuring his father’s “Seven-Point Creed” that includes “Make friendship a fine art.”

In an effort to be such an artist, the next time I visited Coach I brought along a small gift. Knowing his love of poetry, I selected a hardback collection by Rumi. Shortly thereafter, I received a handwritten thank-you note and a copy of a poem authored by Coach titled On Friendship:

At times when I am feeling low, / I hear from a friend and then

My worries start to go away / And I am on the mend

No matter what the doctors say – / And their studies never end

The best cure of all, when spirits fall, / Is a kind word from a friend

More prized than the signed poem is that over the ensuing years Coach turned those stanzas into curing words, and deeds, when my spirits fell – particularly after my mom passed away and later when I was nearly killed by a drunk driver.

Coach also had a gift for raising my spirits when they were already high. For example, when I next visited him he recited a poem from the gift Rumi book. I must confess I did not know who he was quoting until he told me. Fittingly, the selection was titled “Love” which Coach insisted was the most important word in the English language.

The poem recital was a thoughtful gesture of rare grace and a lesson through example that saying “thank you” is nice, but to show thanks is far better. In other words, wear a new sweater or necklace the next time you see the person who gave it to you; put a gift vase on proud display before the giver visits; memorize a poem or line from a book given to you.

Another life lesson put into practice was how Coach always gave his full attention on the phone and never seemed in a hurry to hang up. Indeed, if he was too busy to talk he would simply not answer in the first place rather than risk the prospect of having to be in a rude rush.

I fondly remember visiting Coach once when the phone rang and he let the call go through to his answering machine. It was his way of telling me I was his guest and merited full attention. This unspoken kindness became even more meaningful seconds later after the “Beep!” when a very familiar voice could be heard leaving a message.

“That’s Bill Walton!” I said, excitedly. “You’d better answer it!”

Coach Wooden did not reach for the phone and instead told me with a devilish smile: “Heavens no! Bill calls me all the time. If I pick up he’ll talk my ear off for half an hour and then you and I won’t get to visit. I’ll talk with him later.”

I’m glad I did not have a visitor when Kurt phoned the other day while making friendship a fine art.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Ticking Off a List of Complaints

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Ticking Off List

of Complaints

“You know what really ticks me off?” Grandpa Earl says to his friend Clyde as they sit on a park bench in the comic strip Pickles. “Old people who sit around and complain about things.”

“But you’re an old person, and you sit around and complain about things,” replies Clyde in the second panel.

“I know,” concludes Earl. “And that really ticks me off.”

Well, if I were sitting on a park bench with Grandpa Earl – at opposite ends with both of us wearing masks, of course – here are some of the things I’d complain about . . .

People not wearing masks who don’t respect the six-foot social distancing cushion.

When someone rushes ahead of me in the grocery line and then stalls at the register while waiting for their child or spouse to arrive with an armload of items.

Self-checkouts because then I’m the one holding everyone else up with my befuddlement.

Speaking of lines, I’m forever grumpy at drivers in the front at a stoplight who need a wake-up honk when it turns from red to green.

Also, drivers who straddle halfway in a turn lane instead of scooting all the way over.

And pokey freeway drivers who clog up the left lane so a string of cars has to pass them on the right.

Speaking of speed, when a mom or dad runner pushing a baby stroller passes me. Such show-offy-ness just seems uncalled for.

When bad things happen to good people really ticks me off.

When I forget to take the trash out to the curb the night before pickup and then hear the garbage truck the next morning without enough warning to get my barrels out in time.

Forgetting passwords has me muttering quite often.

Facebook posts that confuse “they’re” and “their” and “there” as well as “your and “you’re.”

But it ticks me off even more that I never know whether to use “whoever” or “whomever.” Oh well, whatever.

When someone’s mask droops down below their nose. Nobody asked me, but in these situations I suggest we all adopt the phrase “Your fly is down” – even for women.

Heck, I’ll even accept, “You’re fly is down.”

Basketball telecasts that insist on showing a close-up of whoever (whomever?) just made a shot and meanwhile we miss the fastbreak going back the other way.

I don’t like Lakers’ home jerseys that are now brighter than a yellow highlight marker.

Long before last Tuesday’s unPresidential Debate Debasement, I have been complaining about political debates not having kill switches on the mics to prevent Thanksgiving dinner-like free-for-alls.

When emails that I want wind up going into spam and robocalls that are harder to keep blocked than ants materializing in a kitchen.

When I have a discount code for an online purchase and then forget to type it in before hitting the “Complete Purchase” button.

I have been complaining like an old-school curmudgeon for months about Major League Baseball’s experimental rule this coronavirus-shorten season of putting a runner on second base at the start of each extra inning’s at-bats.

But it really pains me, Mr. Traditionalist who still grinds his teeth at the Designated Hitter, that I actually find myself liking the bonus runner rule and the different strategies – Play for one run? Go for a big inning? – it creates.

So now I’m complaining that the extra-runner rule is not being used in the playoffs!

I thought of a couple more really good things to include in this column, but forgot what they were. Like Grandpa Earl, sometimes I really tick myself off.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

 

Pandemic Can’t Derail Paris Trip

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Pandemic Fails To

Derail Paris Trip

Gloria, my dear friend affectionately called “Mama G” by loved ones, dreamed of celebrating her 70th birthday in Paris with her daughters. Plane tickets had been bought, hotel rooms reserved.

The coronavirus pandemic had other ideas.

Mama G’s four fabulous daughters had other ideas as well and made the Parisian celebration a reality – with an asterisk.

The asterisk: if they could not take their mom to Paris, they would bring Paris to her.

And so it was on her milestone birthday last weekend that Mama G, wearing a dazzling evening gown and stylish hat, enjoyed dinner al fresco at a bistro with lace tablecloths and candlelight, fine wine and gourmet food, and a view of the Eiffel Tower.*

Parisian “bistro” with a view of the Eiffel Towel in Southern California.

Asterisk: a poster of the iconic landmark and an elegantly decorated table were set up on Mama G’s backyard patio. Stephanie, Beverly, Jennifer and Jessica – the Fab Four – filled the seats along with one spouse and two fiancés, all safely quarantined beforehand.

Before dinner, Mama G spent the day sightseeing. Indeed, there are pictures of her in front of the Eiffel Tower and Cathédrale Notre-Dame; at the Arc de Triomphe and the Palace of Versailles; visiting the Louvre and more.*

Asterisk: the pictures were Photoshopped surprises.

The photographs taken at dinner, however, needed no Photoshopping to add in smiles as wide as the River Seine. Still, a faux Parisian party could not fully measure up to the real thing.

Again, the Fab Four had other ideas. The actual trip to The City of Light would have been a small private affair, but for the amended celebration they invited friends and loved ones from across the country, and beyond, to come along.*

Asterisk: thanks to Zoom, more than 60 people attended the birthday party in “Paris.” Scrolling through numerous computer screens was required to see every attendee.

In an actual bistro, it would have been too crowded to clearly hear the toasts given. But on Zoom, everyone in attendance simply took turns sharing their love to Mama G. It was wonderful. No, better than that: Gloria-ous.

The toasts and memories and stories came from people who have known Mama G for more than 50 years, those who entered her life five years ago, and even more recently.

One of the wonderful sentiments came from Deb, who tearfully offered in part: “Happy birthday to Mama G! To my second mother, I wish you another happy and healthy 70 years. You have raised four amazing, brilliant, beautiful women and took me in as your own. I am forever grateful to have you as me second mama.”

As you can imagine, like the champagne in the “bistro,” Mama G’s tears flowed freely. Dabbing her eyes near party’s end, she said: “It was fabulous walking down memory lane and celebrating in ‘Paris’ ”.

Speaking of tears, a second dear friend of mine also celebrated her 70th birthday in the past month’s span. Again, the pandemic led to a different kind of festivity than originally hoped for.

Instead of a large party, Barbara, affectionately known as “Mama Mac,” had a virtual gathering that featured 70 toasts – one for each candle on her cake – from 70 different family members and friends.*

Asterisk: this was not a Zoom party, but instead the toasts – intimate notes and short letters sharing why each person loves Mama Mac – were collected and published in a keepsake book. She cried. It was wonderful.

All the same, I hope 71 is the new 70 and Mama G can fly to Paris and Mama Mac has a big birthday bash in 2021.

 *   *   *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …