Behind the Mike

When I recently learned that my hips were shot and needed to be replaced, I immediately began to search for ways to beat the rap. My philosophy in life is simple: All I want out of life is an unfair advantage!

I quickly found what millions of others have found– Mother Nature and Father Time will have things their way whether you like it or not. Ironically, I could stand on my feet and deliver a three hour speech as I did at my daughter-in-law’s school in November and not be terribly affected. But when you can’t put together more than an hour of sleep without pain, you simply cannot function as a human being.

So I met with Dr. Michael Karr, who is said to be the best in his area of expertise in our county and he gave me two choices. You can do it now or you can do it later. It’s not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when” you will have your hips replaced. Old football injuries and old age are getting even with this old man.

My brand new book, “It’s The Customer, Stupid!” (John Wiley & Sons) officially hits the shelves on February 14, 2011. The promotional tour is coming up in early January so I needed to buy myself some time.

I opted for the quick-fix option of shots in both hips. It took about an hour of time and five grand to accomplish. My left hip was the so-called bad hip of the two and the shots were amazingly successful. But the right hip did not respond and within three weeks, I had completely lost all use of the right leg and literally had to lift the leg by hand to put it in bed at night. So we decided to do the deed, replacing the right hip almost immediately.

So I’ve pretty much ruined Christmas for my wife and family this year to get a new set of wheels. I was thinking of ways to make the most of this gig. One of my many shortages is the absence of a butt. All my weightlifter sons have these ghetto booties because they lift everyday of their lives and their buns are huge. My fanny looks like a large family departed the premises. Maybe I’ll put in for a wide-body replacement. The fact is… worrying about the size of my bum is such a useless waste of time and effort. Sometimes you have to come to certain conclusions in your life. For instance, if at first you don’t succeed, maybe skydiving is not for you.

Accepting the thing in your life that you cannot change is difficult for control freaks like yours truly. You may think you’re Super Man but there’s too much evidence to the contrary.

Before he died, I visited my old high school football coach J.W. Ingram in his nursing home in South Carolina. He told me about a little old lady was going up and down the halls in the nursing home. As she walked, she would flip up the hem of her nightgown and say “Supersex! Supersex!”

She walked up to an elderly man in a wheelchair who had just had his hip replaced. Flipping her gown at him, she again said, “Supersex!” He sat silently for a moment or two looking up at her. He finally answered, “I’ll take the soup.”

The good news for me is I can finally qualify for one of the disability parking passes and when I get out of the car I won’t be faking the limp. The bad news, the pass is good for only six months.

My hope now is to get the wheels rolling again in time for next fall’s football season. My favorite avocation is being the ball boy at my son Cory’s freshman and varsity football games as St. Cloud High School. It’s not often that you can spend time with people you love doing what you love but that’s what happens twice a week during the fall for yours truly. That’s when you know that God has truly blessed you when your fondest dreams are fulfilled.

The older I get the more Eulogies I seem to be delivering. My dear friend Charlie Barcio is 106 years old and his lovely wife, Dorie, asked me to do the honors if I manage to survive him.

Despite the fact that Charlie has 46 years on yours truly, it could still be a horserace to the finish line, a fact of which I am not entirely proud. Charlie rides his bike eight miles a day and is clearly sharp as a tack. I do not even own a bike, but I do suffer through four miles a day on a treadmill down at the local sweat factory.

Funerals should be celebrations of the life of the person being memorialized. The best of those celebrations involve a lot of humor and camaraderie.

Though death is a solemn event, the death process is sometimes very funny. Over the years, I have had the honor of addressing scores conventions of funeral directors, insurance agents, lawyers, florists, actuaries and a variety of others that are in the business of providing for the grand sendoff.

At a recent speech before a group of actuaries, a fellow speaker, himself an actuary, observed that the latest data just in tells us there is still a 100% likelihood you are going to the dark side of the dirt at some point in the not too distant future… so why fight it?

With the graying of America and the baby boom turning to eternal doom, I suspect I will have many other ample opportunities to send others to their grand reward.

In speaking to a group of estate planning lawyers recently, one of my fellow speakers, a barrister by trade, suggested that a Will was nothing more than a dead giveaway. Bah, dah, boop!

In speaking to a group of cemetery directors, they were complaining about having to raise burial costs, pointing to the high cost of living, which I found to be a bit of a contradiction.

A man had 50-yard line tickets for the Super Bowl. As he sits down, another fan comes down and asks if anyone is sitting in the seat next to him. “No,” he says, “The seat is empty.”

“This is incredible,” said the man. “Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the Super Bowl, the biggest sporting event in the world, and not use it?”

He says, “Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the first Super bowl we haven’t been to together since we got married in 1967.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. But couldn’t you find someone else-a friend or relative, or even a neighbor to take the seat?” The man shakes his head. “No… they’re all at the funeral.”

A young preacher was asked by a local funeral director to conduct a graveside burial for a man who had no family or friends. The preacher left early for the cemetery but quickly got lost, having made several wrong turns.

Eventually he showed up a half hour late and saw a backhoe and its crew, but the hearse was nowhere in sight and no one was there. Nearby a few workmen were eating their lunch. The diligent young pastor went to the open grave and found the vault lid was already in place.

Taking out his bible, he read a passage and proceeded to deliver an impassioned sendoff. As he returned to his car moments later, he overheard one of the workmen say, “I have been putting in septic tanks for 30 years and I ain’t ever seen anything like that before!”

Some of the funniest people on the planet are funeral directors. I love their one-liners. How is business? Dead! Or…laid-back. Their favorite saying: “We are the last to let you down…” and on and on and on. 99% of all funeral directors give the rest a bad name.

One man observed, when I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep — not screaming… like the passengers in his car.

There I was sufferingthrough another visit to Wal-Mart when I bumped into my old buddy Charlie Barcio and his lovely wife Dorie. When I say my old buddy, I really mean my “old” buddy.

Charlie is a chipper 105 years young, and he can do twice as much as folks a third his age. I’m sixty years old on August 15, 2009 and I’ve decided who I want to be when I grow up…. I want to be Charlie Barcio!

Centenarians are just not that uncommon nowadays. In 1950, there were reportedly 350,000 people 100 or older worldwide, with the US and Canada leading the way. Their numbers are projected to grow at more than 20 times the rates of the total population by 2050. It’s estimated that there could be as many as six million people worldwide who are 100 or older. The last official census in 2004 estimated about 65,000 centenarians in the US alone.

Of the folks who have reached age 85, only 44% of them are men. That answers the age old question about who is driving who into a grave.

Interestingly, the population of older people is about to surpass that of children, which means we’ll have more people riding in the cart than we’ll have pulling the cart. The good news is we’re living longer. The bad news is we’re living longer. Thanks to medical science, life expectancy is increasing at drastic levels.

It’s estimated that Florida’s leads the country in people over 65 with 17% of our population. Geezers are at about 3 million and counting in the sunshine state.

Charlie Barcio was born March 22, 1904. He was too young to partake in World War I and too old by the time World War II rolled around. His dad died when he was but three years old so he was raised by loving grandparents in his native Erie, Pennsylvania.

“I went to 17 different schools,” said Barcio as I interviewed him recently before 10:00 a.m. Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in St. Cloud, Florida. His goal was to pursue Electrical Engineering but life deals you different cards and they don’t always fall like you want them.

Charlie and his first wife had three kids and more grandkids than he can count. “It’s easier to keep up with the great-great grandchildren,” chuckles Barcio. “I only have two of those.”

Charlie’s second wife, Dorie, was a widow who was married to one of Charlie’s closest friends. The pair knew one another for some 26 years before they married in 1990. They are dedicated servants to St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church.

Charlie was the custodian at the church from 1992-2002 until he got “canned” when the church’s insurance company caught him changing light bulbs on a ladder at age 98. The bulbs are nearly 40 feet above the floor. “It broke my heart to lose that job,” says Charlie.

Charlie is in remarkable shape. I accused him of speeding as he was pushing a cart around in Wal-mart. When asked how he stays in such great shape, the charming Barcio shrugged his shoulders as if to say “there’s nothing to it.”

He rides his bike six days a week for up to 15 miles per day. When I asked him about his favorite meal and he quickly said, “Put it on the table and I’ll eat it.”

In addition to his daily bike ride, Charlie mows most of his one acre lawn. “My neighbor has been feeling a bit sorry for me,” explained Charlie. “For the past few months, he’s been mowing my front yard, but I still do the back.”

A Fourth Degree Member of the Knights of Columbus since 1944, Charlie still goes to council meetings each month and even sells tootsie rolls during the spring of the year to raise money for the mentally challenged.

His proudest achievement took place back in Erie, Pennsylvania. For some 32 years, Charlie narrated weekly Mass on WLEU Radio in Erie.

Charlie called back in 2004 to complain that another insurance company was forcing him to take the payout of his policy. Turns out it matured at age 100 and the cash value and death benefit are the same. That’s the kind of thing that happens to you when you outlive the actuarial tables.

His bride, Dorie, is the love of Charlie’s life. While she’s 23 years his junior, one has to take into account that the pickins’ had to be kind of slim for women his own age. “I married an angel,” quips Barcio, “and I’m in no hurry to leave.”

Yeah, I’m sure of it… I want to be just like Charlie Barcio when I grow up!