If I had company, I’d buy furniture

I don’t get much company.

My son, James, drops by once a week for Stupid Movie Night. (This week’s showing was Maximum Overdrive, written and directed by Stephen King, who must never be allowed to direct again. Sorry, Steve.)

In the summer months, my daughter visits every few weeks. Aubreii generally has anywhere from two-to-five grandkids in tow. This is pretty much pro forma when G-pa lives in a house overlooking the beach.

That’s about it. The rest of the time, I’m here alone.

I have friends, but not the kind who swing by for a beer. They’re work friends; guys I perform with in my weekend bar band. I love ‘em, but I see enough of them on weekends. I mean, there’s only so many conversations I can have about 1) girls we have known, 2) drugs we took for fun back in the ‘80s, 3) drugs we take now for high blood pressure, 4) who’s still playing the wrong damn chord on the bridge of “Into the Mystic,” and 5) other girls we have known.

Of course, this time of year I have almost no company because my house is virtually inaccessible. As I’ve mentioned before, I live atop a fairly precipitous hill; the driveway is steep and twisty and can’t really be plowed effectively. Even a thin scrim of ice is enough to make ascending it impossible.

The back entrance is worse. There’s no drive, just a long, narrow, vine-covered stairway (usually buried beneath snow and ice to the point of invisibility). Anyone attempting to approach from that direction will likely not be found until spring and heaven knows what sort of condition their body will be in by then.

There are yogis living in caves on Tibetan mountainsides who are more easily reached. I feel I should have some sort of “meaning of life” wisdom to impart to anyone who actually does make it to my front door, just so they won’t feel cheated. I’ve been debating between “Have patience with all things but first of all with yourself” and “Hang in there, baby!”

I’m fortunate in that I’ve lived my life in such a way that folks rarely expect wisdom to spout forth when I open my mouth. So I’ll probably go with the “hang in there” thing. It’s shorter and more easily inscribed onto the plastic key-chains I plan to sell at the Mountaintop Yogi Gift Shop.

You’d think I’d get lonely here, all by myself. You’d be right. I do.

But no more than a lot of people are lonely. Everybody’s got a hard luck story to tell and mine is no worse than anyone else’s, not nearly as bad as most, in fact. At least by my estimation.

Also, on the plus side, my lack of visitors means I don’t have to do anything about my furniture situation. I have exactly two pieces of nice furniture: my bed and my piano stool. Everything else is junk.

Instead of a sofa, I bought a futon. The thinking was this would give me some fold-out sleeping space when the kids visited for a weekend. The problem is, the futon is the second most uncomfortable place to sit in the world.

The first is my armchair, which was already here when I moved into the house. It’s a wing-back thing with oak trim, situated in a brutally upright position perfect for an elderly, 90-pound woman sitting primly with a cup of tea balanced delicately over her lap.

Drop a 200-pound guy with a beer and cheeseburger into that same chair on Super Bowl Sunday and you can be arrested for practicing sadism without a license. All the chair requires is a couple restraining straps to qualify as a medieval torture device. Prisoners have been electrocuted in more comfortable chairs.

Then there’s my dining room set, which also came with the house. It’s true “cottage furniture.” Circa 1966, hard, inexpensive wood and Formica with lots of loose joints and scuffed surfaces. In the 1966 Sears catalog, I’m sure this table was listed under “Shotgun Shack Home Furnishings.”

But it gives me someplace to eat my eggs and bagel in the morning, so I’m not complaining.

I should point out all this furniture is just fine for me, living here by myself. I’m not particularly fussy and despite the thrift shop decor, the place remains cute and cozy. I love it a lot.

But if I’m ever asked to host the Lake Association Formal Cotillion, I’m going to have to do a little shopping first. Maybe it’s just as well I don’t have much company.

Sports are too risky

Sports are dangerous. Football, hockey, online dating. You play long enough, odds are you’re gonna wind up hurt.

In these, my declining years, when I can injure myself without picking up a ball or hitting a puck, I don’t play sports.

As a kid, I tried my hand at baseball and football; I stunk at both. In high school, there was cross-country, but I only did that so I could hang out with my girlfriend, Corky, who was a serious runner. Once she dumped me, I dumped cross-country.

In addition to stinking at sports, I also seem to lack whatever competitive gene some people possess, that “spark” that prompts them to push themselves, to work, to “just do it,” to sweat and strain and … lordy, I’m exhausted just writing about it.

Fortunately, there are sports for guys like me. Bowling. Golf. Darts. Sports that involve beer and deep-fried food.

As with all sports, I stink at bowling, golf and darts. I play them anyway because, well, beer. It has a way of making whether I win or lose seem less important.

Also, it’s hard to injure yourself at a bowling alley or golf course. Darts, likewise, can’t really be described as high-risk. I mean, you might get unintentionally stuck by some newbie with more darts than sense, but generally speaking, it’s safer than hockey. As evidence, I’ll note here that dart players usually have all their front teeth. And if they don’t, odds are they didn’t lose them throwing darts.

That said, I’ll admit that years ago I nearly lost not only my teeth, but my life over a game of darts.

It was at a little West Side bar during the height of the dart league craze. I’d gotten involved in darts in order to – surprise, surprise – hang out with a cute brunette who played on a league. Laurie was no better at darts than I was, but it was something to do on a Tuesday night.

I’d done OK during the early evening league matches, limiting my intake to one Bud Lite per game, which I knew from experience left me able to continue finding the board with my dart right up until closing time.

Most of the league players had gone home, but Laurie and I hung out to practice afterward with a few friendly games between the two of us.

When the big guy asked me if I wanted a quick game of Cricket, I should have said no. Laurie was ready to leave, as was I. But the guy was insistent.

“Just one game,” he said. “C’mon.”

I couldn’t argue with that kind of logic.

To keep it interesting, we bet a beer on the game. I didn’t expect to win; the guy had a set of fancy darts in a leather case that looked pricier than my car.

But I did. Win, I mean. It was just blind luck, but I beat the guy badly.

“One more game,” he said, as I dropped in the last triple-twenty for a win. “Five bucks on this one.” The guy, who had a posse of buddies with him, was not going to take no for an answer. Since he was built like a clenched fist with a face designed to strike fear into any cellmate unlucky enough to share space with him, I agreed.

While he warmed up, I went up to the bar and bought another beer.

“Hey, pal,” the bartender said. “I wouldn’t be too quick to beat that guy.”

“No?”

“No. That’s Derek Newmann,” the bartender said, lowering his voice. (I’m changing the name here because the guy might still be alive and I’m still scared of him.) Turns out I was playing darts with the state’s top-ranked kick-boxer, a guy with a long history of trouble with the law, mostly assault charges.

My strong tendency toward self-preservation kicked in and I actively tried to lose the next game. Incredibly, I didn’t. Even when I barely aimed, my traitorous darts seemed determined to fly right into those doubles and triples.

Suggesting Derek needn’t pay me the five bucks was a mistake. He took it as an insult. I think he took most everything as an insult.

Derek and his crew followed us out. They stood in the entryway looking at me the way wolves look at a wounded doe, trying to decide if I were worth the effort.

I was real happy when my car pulled away with me in it, still alive, still with all my teeth. It was a long time before I went back on the West Side. After that, I gave up the darts league.

Sports are too dangerous.