Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) (3 page)

My point—and I admit this is pathetic—is that I am still insecure about how I look.
Deeply
insecure. And this insecurity gets much worse when there are good-looking, athletic guys around.

Which brings us to David Beckham. He is of course the world-famous former soccer star and underwear model who is considered to be the hottest man on Earth by essentially every woman on Earth, a group that unfortunately includes my wife, Michelle. I am not saying Michelle does not love me. What I'm saying is, when she says the words “David Beckham,” she gets a certain look on her face that she does not get when she says other words, such as “delicatessen.”

“But Dave,” I hear you saying, because you apparently are unable to help yourself, “it's perfectly normal for a woman to harbor a harmless ‘crush' on a handsome international superstar! It's not as though anything could ever come of it! How would your wife ever even have the opportunity to
meet
David Beckham?”

If you will be quiet for just a moment, I will tell you how. Michelle is a sportswriter. For her entire career, she has been going into locker rooms filled with large athletic naked men who are not wearing any clothes because—as I may have mentioned earlier—they are naked. I can live with that. My wife always tells me that she finds this situation to be very uncomfortable, and I believe her. I'm sure that if I were to walk into a room filled with athletic naked women, I would also be very uncomfortable, although in my case this would be because my eyeballs had fallen out of my head and rolled across the floor from staring so hard.

But here's the problem: One of the sports my wife covers is soccer. It happens that there is a business group seeking to bring a Major League Soccer team to Miami and build a stadium here. It further happens that the leader of that group—as you have probably guessed—is none other than: Danny DeVito.

No, that's who I
wish
were leading the group. But of course it has to be David Freaking Beckham. As I write these words, he has spent the last few months ardently wooing Miami. Every time you turn on the TV, there's David Beckham in Woo Mode, attending government functions, meeting with civic groups, talking with students, rescuing babies from alligators, stopping hurricanes with his bare hands and just generally being handsome and charming and hugely popular in the greater Miami area.

This wooing process included a big downtown reception, to which Michelle, as the
Miami Herald
's soccer writer, was invited. The good news was, she couldn't attend, because she was at the Sochi Olympics. The bad news was, she arranged invitations for me and our fourteen-year-old daughter, Sophie. Michelle thought it would be, quote, “fun” for Sophie to meet Beckham. That's right:
My wife
deliberately arranged for her own daughter, who is female, to physically meet the world's leading sex symbol
.

So Sophie and I went to the reception. Many Miami dignitaries were there, including the mayor, and everybody was very excited. I knew this because people actually got there early, which
never
happens in Miami. This is a Latin town, and we operate on Latin time. If you're invited to, say, a July Fourth picnic scheduled to start at noon, you are considered on time if you arrive any time before Thanksgiving. Miami people are late to their own
funerals
.

But everybody arrived early for the reception. We stood around for twenty minutes in a fairly dignified manner. Then David Beckham came through the door, wearing a suit, and suddenly the dignitaries turned into a mob
,
swarming toward him as if he were the last lifeboat on the
Titanic
. I've never seen anything like it—all these alleged adults acting like teenage girls, desperately wanting to get next to Beckham, be photographed with him, touch him, and ideally bear his children. And those were the
men
. The women were even more aggressive.

Among those swarming toward Beckham was Sophie, who managed to get next to him for a photo. I am also in this photo, sort of:

© Seth Browarnik/WorldRedEye.com

That's me, off to the left. I'm the one Sophie is clearly not even vaguely aware of. She wouldn't have noticed if I had been actively on fire. She is totally focused on David Beckham, Hottest Man on the Planet, who has his arm around her, causing her to beam with a look of ecstatic radiant happiness that I will never cause to appear on a female face.

Not that I am bitter!

In the photo I'm smiling, too, because that's what you do when your picture is being taken. Also I was happy for Sophie, because this was a big deal for her. But the truth is, when I look at that photo, this is what I see:

“But Dave,” I hear you saying because you will NOT SHUT UP, “so what if your daughter was thrilled by the opportunity to meet this handsome, charming international superstar with a much nicer suit than yours? At least your wife was safely in Russia and thus wasn't there to be swept off her feet!”

No, that happened a couple of weeks later. After Michelle got back from Russia she received an email from one of David Beckham's public relations people about setting up a meeting between him and Michelle. The email contained the following statement, which I am not making up:

I think David Beckham was thinking of a one-on-one with you, either in a small Herald conference room or your cubicle.

Yes!
David Beckham was
thinking of a one-on-one with my wife!
Just the two of them, in her cubicle or a small conference room!

Needless to say, this email generated much excited discussion among my wife's female friends, all of whom voted for the small conference room. They also had many non-journalistic suggestions concerning pedicures, body waxing, etc.

For her part, Michelle, who knows I am deeply insecure, handled the whole thing very sensitively. She assured me that the meeting was going to be just another routine interview for her, although she did not explain why she wore a low-cut strapless evening gown.

No, really, she wore regular business attire to her meeting with Beckham, and when she got back she told me that it had been a strictly professional business encounter and, in all honesty, no big deal. She was obviously lying, but I appreciated the effort.

Anyway, that's why I hate David Beckham. I know it's not his fault that he looks the way he does. I just wish he would go look that way in some other city. But as it stands now, he's going to be around Miami for years, and if I'm not careful, it's going to drive me crazy. I've given a lot of thought to what I should do about this, and I think the time has come for me, finally, to grow up—to get past my juvenile self-image hang-ups; to confront and overcome my insecurity; to stop obsessing pathetically over what I am not and instead learn to accept myself for who I
am
, which is plenty good enough.

So I've made up my mind.

I'm going out for the track team.

* * *

Unless I Can Get the Law Changed

* * *

Dear Sophie—

So you're about to start driving! How exciting! I'm going to kill myself.

Sorry, I'm flashing back to when your big brother, Rob, started driving. You and I both love Rob very much, and he has matured into a thoughtful and responsible person. But when he turned sixteen and got his driver's license, he had a marked tendency to—there is no diplomatic way to put this—drive into things.

This was never his fault. I know this because whenever he drove the car into something, which was every few days, he would call me, and the conversation would go like this:

ME:
Hello?

ROB:
Dad, it wasn't my fault.

Usually what he had driven into through no fault of his own was the rear end of another car. Cars were always stopping unexpectedly in front of Rob for no reason whatsoever. Or possibly—we cannot rule it out—these cars were suddenly materializing from hyperspace directly in front of Rob, leaving him with no option but to run into them. Whatever the cause, it stopped happening when he got older and more experienced and started buying his own insurance.

My point, Sophie, is that just because the State of Florida thinks you can drive a car, that doesn't mean you actually can drive a car. As far as I can tell, after three decades on the roads of Florida, there isn't anybody that the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles
doesn't
think can drive a car. I cannot imagine what you would have to do to fail the driving test here.

DMV OFFICER:
OK, make a left turn here.

TEST
TAKER:
Whoops.

DMV OFFICER:
(
Writes something on clipboard.
)

TEST TAKER:
Does that mean I fail the test?

DMV OFFICER:
Nah, she's getting back up. You just clipped her.

You may think I'm exaggerating the badness of the drivers down here, Sophie, but that's because you haven't been at the wheel of a car on the Palmetto Expressway going 60 miles per hour, traveling forward—which, as you will learn, is considered to be the traditional direction for vehicular traffic on expressways—only to encounter a vehicle, undoubtedly operated by a licensed Florida driver, going
backward
. And not on the shoulder, either.
In your lane.
This has happened to me more than once; it's how some Miami drivers handle the baffling problem of what to do when you miss an exit. When ESPN shows a NASCAR highlight in which drivers collide at 150 miles per hour and a dozen cars spin out in a whirling mass of flaming wreckage, my reaction is: “Big deal. They were all going the same direction. Let's see them attempt to drive on the Palmetto Expressway.”

The State of Florida also does not seem to have a problem issuing licenses to drivers who are very elderly.

Q. How elderly are they?

A. Their first vehicle was a chariot.

I once had an eye exam during which the ophthalmologist was telling me about some of his older patients, who according to him were basically blind. He said: “I ask them, ‘How did you get here?' And they tell me they drove. And I tell them, ‘You can't
drive. You can't
see
.' And they say, ‘How else am I supposed to get here?' And I say, ‘I don't know, but you can't
drive,
because you can't
see
.' And then they drive home.”

I believe him. I once had a short but terrifying ride on the streets of South Florida in the backseat of a car driven by an elderly man. He was a perfectly nice person, but he had basically the same level of visual acuity as a corn dog. So he outsourced the actual
seeing
part of driving to his wife, who sat in the passenger seat and did her best to keep him posted on what was going on out there in the mysterious region beyond the windshield.

“You have a green arrow,” she'd say. “Go. Go. I said GO! No! Wait! Stop! STOP!!”

I believe this Seeing Eye wife arrangement is not uncommon among elderly couples on the roads of South Florida. And if you're wondering why, if the wife can see, she doesn't just drive, the answer is:
The man drives
.

So to summarize, Sophie: Many people who lack the judgment and/or physical skills needed to safely microwave a burrito are deemed qualified by the State of Florida to operate a motor vehicle. When you get out on the road, you will be surrounded by terrible drivers. And guess what?
You will be one of
them.
Yes, Sophie: You will be a bad driver, and not because you're careless or irresponsible, but because you're a teenager, and it is a physiological fact that at your stage of brain development, you are—to use the term preferred by researchers in the field of neurological science—“stupid.”

There is no shame in this. All humans start out stupid, then gradually become more intelligent as they get older (with a few setbacks along the way) until they reach a certain age, after which they start becoming stupider again. Here's a scientific chart illustrating this phenomenon:

SOURCE: AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC ACADEMY OF SCIENCE

What does this chart tell us, Sophie? It tells us that according to science, even dead people are smarter than teenagers. Teenagers are barely capable of forming sentences. Allowing them to drive—especially if they are males—is insane.

“But Dad,” you're thinking, “didn't you drive when you were a teenage male?”

Yes I did. I got my New York State driver's license in 1963, at age sixteen, and I spent many hours cruising on the highways and byways and occasionally the lawns in and around Armonk, N.Y. But that was different, Sophie, because I drove safely. I don't mean “safely” in the sense of “carefully.” I was definitely your standard male teenage idiot. But I was a
safe
idiot, because I was driving the safest vehicle ever built: my mom's 1961 Plymouth Valiant station wagon. It did not have modern safety features such as seat belts, air bags, antilock brakes or a computerized collision-avoidance system. What the Valiant had, which was better than any modern technology, was:
Inertia
. I would stomp violently down on the accelerator and basically nothing would happen for several lunar cycles, because the Valiant was no more capable of acceleration than a fire hydrant. This was the only car ever manufactured that traveled faster on the assembly line than under its own power.

You could not hit anything in a Valiant. Fully mature trees moved quickly enough to get out of its way. So it couldn't do any damage even with me at the wheel. If I were in charge, today's teenagers would be permitted to drive
only
if they drove Plymouth Valiant station wagons. Also I would require these teenagers to tune the Valiant's AM radio to New York station WINS and listen to the late Murray the K play hit 1963 tunes such as “Da Doo Ron Ron” because THAT WAS MUSIC, DAMMIT.

Unfortunately, Sophie, I am not in charge, which means you're going to be driving on roads teeming with modern high-speed automobiles operated by incompetent idiots such as (no offense) yourself. To prove that you're qualified to do this, the State of Florida will make you take a test based on the information found in the official
Florida Driver's Handbook
. For example, the test may ask you to identify the Florida “standard” speed in business or residential areas. According to the
Handbook
, the “correct” answer, the one you should mark on your test, is 30 miles per hour.

But listen very carefully, Sophie: If you're driving in Miami and do not wish to be the target of small-arms fire, IN THE NAME OF GOD DO NOT GO AT A “STANDARD” SPEED OF 30 MILES PER HOUR. Miami drivers go faster than that in a car wash. Likewise, the
Driver's Handbook
will tell you that if you're approaching a traffic light as it turns yellow, you should attempt to stop. But in Miami, doing that would cause your car to be instantly converted into a large sheet-metal origami sculpture by the seventeen cars immediately behind you.

My point, Sophie, is that there's a big difference between how the
Florida Driver's Handbook
says you should drive and how actual humans drive in Florida, especially South Florida. So to help you understand the mind-set you will encounter on the roads here, I've prepared this:

REALITY-BASED FLORIDA DRIVER'S Q & A

Q. If I arrive at an intersection at the same time as another motorist, who goes first?

A. You do.

Q. But what if . . .

A. There IS no “what if.” YOU GO FIRST.

Q. Florida law strictly prohibits texting while driving. Does this law apply to me?

A. Ha-ha! Of course not.

Q. If I stop at a red light, how will I know when it turns green?

A. You will hear honking behind you. This is your cue to start wrapping up your current text, unless of course it is important.

Q. I have noticed that some roads have more than one lane. What is the purpose of the extra lanes?

A. To provide a place for you to swerve into while texting.

Q. When I come to a stop sign, do I need to stop?

A. You personally?

Q. Yes.

A. No.

Q. How is the turn signal used in Florida?

A. It is used to indicate to other motorists that you do not realize your turn signal is blinking.

Q. Could it also be used to signal your intention to turn or change lanes?

A. Interesting! Nobody has ever tried that.

Q. What is the best kind of food to eat while driving?

A. Any food—such as a sandwich, turkey leg, oyster or Ding Dong—that can be eaten one-handed, so you still have a hand free for texting.

Q. What if an emergency situation arises that might require me to operate the steering wheel?

A. Use your forehead to honk the horn until the emergency has passed.

Q. My car's engine seems to have stopped and I hear a “burbling” noise. What could be causing this?

A. Are you a senior citizen?

Q. Yes.

A. You have driven into a swimming pool.

Q. I am a young male idiot who prefers to drive at a high rate of speed in densely populated areas while texting. How loud should my sound system be?

A. It should emit individual bass notes capable of killing a dog at 50 yards.

Q. I'm a middle-aged male, and I like to put on skintight, junk-displaying Lycra® cycling shorts and a skintight Lycra® cycling jersey covered with logos for corporations that don't actually pay me anything, then ride around with a large clot of other middle-aged pretend racers screwing up traffic. I don't have a question about driving, but I HAVE JUST AS MUCH RIGHT TO BE IN THIS Q & A AS ANYONE ELSE.

A. Everyone hates you.

Q. I've had a few drinks. How can I tell if I should drive?

A. Take this simple test: Are you wearing your underpants on your head?

Q. Not MY underpants, no.

A. Then you are good to go.

Q. What is all that shouting?

A. Are you a senior citizen?

Q. Yes.

A. You have struck a pedestrian.

Sophie, I know you think your old man is just kidding. I am not. Ask anybody who drives here: This Q & A reflects the actual situation on the roads of Florida far more accurately than the so-called
Florida Driver's Handbook
. But I didn't write this letter to make you nervous about driving here. I wrote it to make you
terrified
about driving here. Because I love you a lot, and I don't want anything bad to happen to you. I will do everything I can to make sure you're really ready to drive. I'm going to keep coaching you until the day you finally get your license and are allowed to drive alone. Even then, as you leave our driveway, I'll be standing next to the car, giving you last-minute instructions. When you finally drive away, solo at last, you're going to feel as if I'm still right there next to you, guiding you.

In fact I
will
be right there next to you, walking at a leisurely pace alongside your car.

Your 1961 Valiant.