Category: Reflections

In ninth grade, I won first place in the statewide West Virginia State Math Field Day. What does that mean? Let’s rewind a few decades…

DIFFERENT ERA
There were differences when I was growing up decades ago (in West Virginia) compared to modern life (in California).

Back then, there was less sensitivity in measuring children’s intelligence (against each other), and then sharing those results. For example, it was common at my West Virginia school to arrange seats in the classroom by overall grade: smarter kids sat together at the front of the room. I believe that the school thought that doing this would make kids try harder academically so they could sit up front and be acknowledged as smart.

Also, it was common to post (on the wall) standardized test scores, etc (usually, the names were masked). Even if the names were hidden, you could see all scores, find yours, and know whether you were dumb or smart compared to your classmates.

Maybe West Virginia was extra backward, or more likely it was the era – but the schools doing all this didn’t see how being labeled ‘dumb’ might impact a person for life (hey dummy, sit in the back of the classroom). Plus, sitting in the back of the classroom gives you more opportunity to misbehave…

The overall point being: in the era I grew up in, there were lots of academic competitions at various levels – with the results widely shared – because no one saw the downside to low performers learning they weren’t that smart.

Also, just to counter a thought that you may be forming about how bad the West Virginia school system was – I have two arguments refuting this:

• First, when I was young, an academic group from Japan visited my school system in West Virginia to understand and adopt our best practices – because my WV school system must have had a reputation for being quite good.
• Second, when I moved from West Virginia to Illinois (10th grade to 11th grade) my grades significantly improved. In 10th grade in West Virginia, I got maybe 75% A’s, plus B’s and C’s. In high school in Illinois, I got straight A’s quite easily. Maybe I matured some, but it seemed much easier to get good grades in Illinois.

So I think it was the era, and not West Virginia or its school system.

MATH SKILLS – WEST VIRGINIA
I’ve always been naturally good at math. Not that I’m necessarily bad at other things, but it took me longer to get my non-math skills in order. Some evidence:

• I found some grade school report cards, plus some notices sent home from my school to my parents, that show that I was behaviorally/academically challenged (or they thought I was). Some of the notices called out my behavior, plus my poor record of showing up without completed homework.
• My old report cards were interesting because I got high scores (90%+) in most everything – except spelling, which was in the 60% range. 😞
• My spelling continued (continues?) to be challenged. I’ve noticed this as I digitize some old writings (even some from college) which have multiple misspellings. (This was pre spell check.)

One other piece evidence of my academic unevenness: I got sent (along with other solid students) to a test location to take a West Virginia history test – where you echo facts about WV history, get a passing grade, and are then labeled a ‘Knight of the Golden Horseshoe’ (a term from WV history). I didn’t pass.

MATH SKILLS – ILLINOIS
In high school in Illinois, I was a (large) notch above everyone in math. There was an annual standardized state math test that we would all take, and the school would post the scores on the wall. At the top would be my score, then a big gap, then everyone else’s scores. The related high school weirdness (and I think my wife still chuckles at this) is that I ‘lettered in math’. I have a physical cloth letter with the word ‘math’ on it. Sports students normally sew their letters onto their high school jackets (I didn’t).

Also, in late high school in Illinois, I took a standardized test to qualify as a ‘merit scholar’ which indicates you are smart overall, and puts you on the path to financial help and scholarships for college. My brothers Dan and Rick made the cut – I didn’t, but was very close. 🙁

BUT, back to the Math Field Day…

WEST VIRGINIA MATH FIELD DAY
This was a tiered competition, where you had to win each competition level to advance to the next. Meaning: you had to be in the top three in your school to compete at the county level. Then you had to be in the top three in the county to compete at the region level (a ‘region’ was a group of neighboring counties). Then you had to be in the top three in your region, to compete at the state level. I was in the top three at all these levels – actually first in all levels, except one – I was third in region (I think). Being third at one competition level ‘woke me up’, and made me realize I needed to get focused and try harder to do well.

The state-level competition was many hours away at a college campus, so we participants overnighted. This might have been the first time I traveled alone without my family – my math teacher drove me there. I hung out with a bunch of similar math-headed dorks like me. It was fun. One of the guys had the alphabetical list of all 55 West Virginia counties memorized: Barbour, Berkeley, Boone, Braxton, Brooke, Cabell, Calhoun, Clay, Doddridge,… I still have this list in my head.

The competition itself was a wide variety of math-related items – anything from written math problems, to physical math challenges: See that long piece of string randomly dropped on the ground? Don’t touch it, but estimate how long it is. Essentially, it wasn’t just a measure of who is best at paper math calculations (for example), it was more – who has the best overall ‘math head’?

There was one physical estimation problem that I still think about to this day (because I was a dork, and didn’t get it right). There was a pot of water on a table, and you had to stick your hand into it, and estimate its temperature. I stuck my hand in and thought: huh, this feels kind of cold, so it must be NN temperature (colder than room temperature). But it WAS room temperature (water has faster heat conduction than air, so water feels colder). I should have taken a logical, mental step backward and realized that the effort to continuously heat/cool the water to something other than room temperature wasn’t small – so the water almost certainly WAS room temperature. 😞

At the end of the competition, they summed up everyone’s scores across these various math problems to determine who won. And I did.

SUMMARY
So you might think that winning a competition in a relatively-small, backwards state might not be that big a deal, BUT it was multilevel (school, county, region, state) and required broad math thinking – so it was a genuine accomplishment. I essentially had the best math head of everyone my age in the entire state.

The modest trophy that I received for winning first place got broken over the years, so I recently bought a similar trophy to have an intact reminder of my win.

I’m what some call a ‘natural engineer’.

What does that mean? Some people have the ability to look at something and understand how it works, and/or envision a solution for a physical need. That’s me. Even as a child, I could look at a machine and understand it – or, if it wasn’t obvious at first, I would stare at it for a bit, and maybe look from other angles, and get that understanding.

Logically, I probably should have studied mechanical engineering in college – but I couldn’t understand how becoming a mechanical engineer would pay that well, given that it seemed a talent that I already had. I instead straddled electrical engineering and computer science, which to me built better on my ‘engineering head’ and math talents. It also fed well into my career in Silicon Valley.

The problem-solving side of me is interesting. Maybe I’m just full of myself but, when I look at a physical problem that needs a solution, I come up with maybe ten answers – and have to weigh them against each other, and weed each out, to choose the best. I think some people just can’t come up with any path forward (but maybe I’m wrong).

Part of my ability to solve things comes from experience. I’ve tried different solutions in the past (for things around the house, for example), and have identified the best one – and I keep those in mind. Maybe this is where the mechanical engineer path would make sense – where experience (and schooling) would have allowed me to solve bigger and more complex physical problems.

My wife has mixed confidence in my engineering ability. I’ve done lots of good, but she remembers the bad. One example is when I was tweaking the washing machine hoses to explore allowing us to move the machine closer to the wall. I un-did, then re-did, the hoses – but apparently didn’t fully screw them on, and they leaked over time, and got the floor wet. Nowadays, I fix things without letting her know – for example, I recently fixed the patio arbor to stop it from sinking and leaning against the house. I told her about it after I had fixed it – because she was more keen on paying someone to fix it, or having it torn down. We now have less urgency in getting the arbor redone.

Anyway, the net is that I have a natural ‘engineer head’ and can envision how things work, and how to fix things, just by looking at them. It’s a good thing – as long as I don’t screw up (and ruin the floor…)

This is a weird topic, but…
There are songs that make me ‘misty’, and sometimes even shed a tear or two. Why? I’ve been trying to analyze this but, I’ve come to the conclusion that songs with lyrics that describe deep emotional feelings – especially when the singer recounts getting unexpectedly emotional – make me (an empathetic person) emotional. Also, for some songs, the whole song story is moving/emotional. Below are five examples:

Walking in Memphis | Marc Cohn (1990) – This is a very good song musically, which describes a memorable (almost spiritual) trip by the singer to Memphis. The part that ‘gets me’ is when he talks about being encouraged to perform at a local Memphis venue (called The Hollywood, where Muriel plays on Fridays):

And I sang with all my might
She said “Tell me are you a Christian child?”
And I said “Ma’am, I am tonight”

That part about him being so moved emotionally by his performance (and Muriel’s reaction) that he’s OK with being labeled religious (when he may not be) gets me emotional.

City Hall | Vienna Teng (2006) – This is also an amazing song musically. Vienna Teng has a phenomenal voice, and makes great songs (if you haven’t listened to her, you should). This entire song makes me emotional/misty. The concept of people being deprived of everyday rights (getting married) because of something they can’t control (sexual orientation) makes me so sympathetic and sad for them. It’s like real-life stories of black people in the US being harassed (and sometimes killed) just because they’re black.

Many of the City Hall lyrics are emotional (I’m getting misty just reading them):

Made our mamas cry.
Seen a lot of friends, after giving it all they had
Lay down and die.

My baby’s looking so damn pretty with those anxious eyes
Rain-speckled hair
And my ring to wear.

(This part she slows down – which increases the impact)
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won’t change.

All these lovely lyrics combined with her amazing voice just get me.

Beyond | Leon Bridges (2018) – This is also a pretty song. (I’m realizing that there is an overlay that all these songs are slow, pretty, and emotional. If these same lyrics were performed by a heavy metal, head-banger group with the singer growling out the words – it wouldn’t have the same impact.) The part that gets me in Beyond is his fear of deep emotion and commitment:

I’m scared to death that she might be it
That the love is real, that the shoe might fit
She might just be my everything and beyond

Again, as I mentioned in the intro – what’s emotionally moving to me is often the singer getting unexpectedly emotional.

Vincent | Don McLean (1971) – I like Don McLean a lot. He’s best known for the song American Pie, but this song about Van Gogh has arguably more emotional impact. Similar to City Hall above, Vincent is moving because of the whole underlying concept, and not just a few emotional words. The tragedy of someone so talented and impactful as Vincent Van Gogh being so internally troubled that he committed suicide – is truly moving and sad:

How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free

(McLean slows down the lyrics here, which increases the impact)
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you

The above lyrics capture the internal struggle of Van Gogh, and a sort of farewell message that his choice to end his life was understood and OK.

Morningside | Neil Diamond (1972) – Here is another ‘whole concept’ sad song. The story is: an old man built an amazing wooden table, carved the words ‘For my children’ into it, but none of his children wanted the table after he died – which likely indicates how insignificant he was to them:

The old man died
And no one cried
They simply turned away

And truth is sad
For not a child would claim the gift he had
The words he carved became his epitaph
“For my children”

The sadness is: despite the old man’s substantial, targeted effort – his kids didn’t care.

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So in summary – songs hit me emotionally: either when the overall story behind the song is sad, or there are lyrics where the singer tells of unexpected and deep emotion.

from Storyworth

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TEA
I’m a tea drinker. I drink bag tea (when I’m pressed for time) and loose leaf tea (mostly oolong which I got from a former coworker, when I have enough time). Actually, it’s kind of funny – because, now that I’m working from home, I drink a lot of liquid in the mornings – including tea. I’ve found that drinking a lot of liquid (not surprisingly) makes your need to visit the bathroom more frequently.

Since I drink tea as my last morning drink – after coffee, a protein shake, and some water – I associate my need to dash to the bathroom with drinking tea. It’s interesting, because I don’t know if it’s a ‘working from home’ thing or a ‘getting older’ thing, but my body seems to want a sooner bathroom visit (after recognizing the need) than previously. It makes me mildly worried that, if I ever find myself working in an office environment again, I might find myself ducking out mid-meeting to visit the bathroom.

BEER
I like beer. (It makes me a jolly good fellow…. This is a great song by Tom T Hall.) But seriously, I do like beer. It’s fortunate that recently the number of beer varieties has significantly expanded, and many stores carry a wide variety – which allows fun at-home sampling.

I generally like darkish, flavorful beers – browns, reds, stouts, and porters. It took me a while to get OK with IPAs – I can now drink most hazy IPAs, and other IPAs that aren’t over-hoppy. (Forget those double and triple IPAs.) We are within walking distance of Lagunitas brewery – which to me is only now a good thing because I’ve gotten OK with IPAs – and that’s about all they have.

On the downside, I think my tasty beer preferences are somewhat unique – and it has become common for the beers that I like to no longer be on the store shelves. (Some local examples: Drakes Amber, Fort Point Westfalia.) Also, recently IPAs have pushed aside many other beers on the shelf. To me, it’s crazy to see the beer section of some grocery stores be 80%+ IPAs.

WINE
My wife and I are wine enthusiasts. I think we’re slightly moving in the direction of my next older brother who (per my understanding) for a time felt compelled to join, and/or buy a case of wine from, each winery he visited – to the point where he ensured the house he was (at the time) shopping for had sufficient wine storage. We’re members of only a few wineries.

We are always in search of a good drinkable wine. I would like to have: a favorite cabernet, a favorite merlot, etc. I’ve found though that my concept of finding a tasty (but affordable) cabernet, and a tasty (but affordable) merlot, etc might be unachievable – because certain wine varieties (cabernet is a good example) are either not very tasty, or the tasty ones are incredibly expensive. We are fortunate to be members of Rombauer (an hour from us) who has amazing zinfandels and chardonnays – which covers most bases.

I have a wine website that I’ve created that lists the hundreds of local wineries and ranks them based on visitor ratings and wine quality. It’s very useful. I’m looking to expand the site to provide guidance to wine novices – I need to bring a bottle of wine to an event, what varietal should I buy and how much do I need to spend to get a good one?

OTHER
In general, I find that drinking a certain drink is a habit, and habits can be broken. For example, as a child I used to drink things that weren’t good for me – like soda. I don’t anymore. (BTW, I had lots of cavities as a kid – duh.)

For a time recently I was drinking soy milk, but my wife learned that too much soy can cause health issues – so I’ve transitioned to oat milk. Really not a big difference flavor-wise. I’m interested in moving from half-n-half to oat milk as a coffer creamer – we’ll see how that goes.

I don’t drink a lot of alcoholic mixed drinks. I find that drinking beer (since it’s not very high in alcohol) is a good way to enjoy oneself in moderation.

SUMMARY
Overall, I’m pretty broad in my drink preferences. Every day, I have coffee, tea, and water. Every week, I’ll also have beer and wine. I have tea, beer, and wine preferences, and I’m fine trying new things – but I’m likely to fall back onto the varieties and brands that I’m accustomed to.

All my life, there is ongoing confusion with everyone I meet on how to pronounce my last name: ‘Lewczyk’. The name is Polish, and different languages have different ways to pronounce letters – plus some languages even have different letters that other languages don’t have. Also, when your name is from another country, you need to find a sensible balance in the local language between: having your name be pronounced correctly vs having it be pronounceable (consistently).

I was born in the Buffalo NY area, where there is a sizable percentage of people of Polish descent – so the likelihood of someone pronouncing my last name correctly around Buffalo is higher than where I live now (California). In Buffalo (and other east US cities) there are even streets with Polish names.

I remember only one time in my life that someone new pronounced my last name correctly. It was a teacher in school who was (I believe) married to someone with a Polish last name similar to mine – so the teacher knew how to pronounce my name.

Because of Polish pronunciation, my last name is tricky for two reasons:

• the ‘cz’ is said like a hard ‘ch’ – essentially like a ‘tch’
• the ‘w’ is said like a soft ‘v’ – essentially like an ‘f’ when next to a consonant

So the correct name pronunciation is ‘Lef-chick’. I sometimes write it phonetically as ‘Left-chick’ since this combines two common English words, and gets the ‘cz’ said more correctly as ‘tch’.

Most people can understand that the ‘cz’ is said like a ‘ch’. This is true in many surnames, and even the country Czechoslovakia (or the Czech Republic) have this ‘ch’ pronunciation.

The bigger challenge comes with the ‘w’. In English, ‘ew’ has a definite pronunciation – like ‘oo’. So many people look at my name and want to say ‘Loo-chick’ (or ‘Loo-check’). Beyond that, what’s even more interesting is – even within my family, there is disagreement on how to pronounce the’w’…

The disagreement within my family stems from my Dad saying that the ‘w’ is pronounced like a ‘v’. This is true when the ‘w’ is surrounded by vowels, but when it is next to a consonant, the letter softens to (almost) and ‘f’. How do I know this? Three reasons, which I’ll provide below:

• Polish Professor – The first reason I know the ‘w’ is said like an ‘f’ is because I took a Polish class in college. (I’m the only one of my siblings that took a Polish class.) The professor teaching Polish said that the ‘w’ softens to (almost) an ‘f’ when next to a consonant. (Further, with the ‘cz’ being said like a ‘hard ch’ – it is awkward to say ‘v’ then ‘tch’ one after another.)
• My Dad – The second reason I know the ‘w’ is said like an ‘f’ is because… I asked my dad! This was a funny exchange between him and me, because I found myself years ago telling my dad how I had learned in school that the ‘v’ is said very soft – like an ‘f’ when next to a consonant. He disagreed, and said “No, it is said like a ‘v’ – as in ‘Lefchick'” When he heard the pronunciation that came out of his mouth, he had a very surprised look on his face – because it absolutely came out as an ‘f’. 🙂
• Multiple 3rd Parties – Here’s an example of a Polish person who agrees: link.

So for these reasons – my Polish professor, my dad’s pronunciation, and random googled 3rd parties – I’m certain that the w in my last name (the ‘v’) is said essentially like an ‘f’. What’s interesting is that my siblings all say our name with a hard ‘v’ sound (‘Levv-chick’) which doesn’t roll off the tongue that well. (And can also lead to some odd pronunciations – like my wife’s sister’s family who call us the ‘Love-chucks’.)

Whatever. It is too late to change my siblings’ minds on pronunciation – even if I point them to this post. 🙁

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It was interesting walking into my Polish class in college for the first time. I entered the room, and looked around – and the students were all in a similar situation as me: non-Polish-speakers of Polish descent. Everyone looked Polish (pale, tall face, big forehead, wide-set eyes), and it was like walking into a family reunion. Shocking, but I guess not surprising.

Other note: the title of this post is a line from a play that my siblings and I wrote and (audio) recorded when young.

from Storyworth

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I’ll give this as a two-part answer – with the first part being part-time jobs during school, and the second part being my first full-time job.

PART 1 – During School
I didn’t work in high school – in part, because I changed cities/states mid high school – so I never got any jobs in motion. In college, I mainly worked for my dad during the summers (I had one summer where I wrote software for an actuary). I did not work during the school year when in college.

Getting a summer job with my dad was easy – he hired me. I was a fully-grown man, and was able to do a manual labor job at the FMC Corporation chemical distribution center that he ran. I wrote in another posting how I needed to double my calorie intake for those summers because of how physically demanding the job was – and how, when I worked for the actuary, I got (relatively) fat – because I naturally ate more, but burned fewer calories. Also, when I worked for my dad, part of my job was sweeping up the floor at the end of the day – so I joke to my wife that I used to be (in part) a ‘professional sweeper’.

PART 2 – Post School
Getting a job out of college should be easy, but for me it wasn’t. There were a couple of factors: 1) it was pre-internet, so it wasn’t as easy then to find suitable open positions, and 2) I screwed up a bit in college: I took huge class loads, but failed to take all the classes needed to graduate – so I needed to go an additional semester – to take one additional class. (Overall in college, I ended up taking the equivalent of 6 years of classes in 4 1/2 years – sometimes needing dean approval for large class loads. Plus I took extracurricular classes like Ameslan and Esperanto.) Graduating mid-year got me out of sync with any on-campus recruiting, and with company hiring cycles.

So after college graduation, I ended coming home to live with my parents in the Chicago suburbs for a couple of months, and applied for scores of jobs from there (with some help from my mom). I still have the written notebook tracking all the jobs that I applied for. It’s interesting that the resume I used to apply for jobs had a photo of me in the corner (since it was pre-internet, I mailed in my applications). I don’t know how common a photo on a resume was at the time, but I still have copies of that resume, with moppy-haired Tom in the corner.

I applied for a job with FMC Corporation in Minneapolis MN, but ended up with an interview with FMC in San Jose CA. (It’s amazing for me to think that I could have started my career working in Minnesota.) FMC flew me to San Jose, interviewed me, and subsequently made me a job offer. (Remember, I had already worked for FMC when I worked for my dad.) At the time, Ronald Reagan was president, and defense spending was a priority. FMC in San Jose was a defense contractor that built ‘armored personnel carriers’ – sort of scaled-down tanks.

I hired in along with a dozen other engineers – and we worked hard, and played hard. We all socialized together, and had a great time. FMC moved me out to California, with all my belongings, including my ten-year-old Ford Mustang II – a slightly sporty car.

When I hired in (mid 1980s) software technology was just getting going. One of our early tasks was to replace a bunch of analog electronic circuity with a microprocessor running software. I had to learn a new (DoD-approved) software language, but we made it happen. I worked at FMC for four years, then moved on to work for an airline. Part of my motivation for leaving FMC was that I eventually felt guilty contributing to the ‘war effort’ – that killed people 😒

So in summary: I worked for my dad most summers in college (plus one summer for an actuary), but my first real job was for a defense contractor in San Jose, which I landed a few months after (late) college graduation.

from Storyworth

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We had lots of toys as children. All the toys my siblings had were passed down and shared – so, by the time I showed up (5th of 6 kids), there were already lots of toys to play with.

But what is a ‘toy’? We played a lot of board games together: Monopoly, Risk, Probe, Clue, etc. Are these toys? If so, Risk was probably my favorite. Risk is a long, strategic game with heartbreaking and significant results. I’m sure I lost most of the time, but the process and interaction with my family was fun. Also, even though Risk has a simplified world map, it does give you basic geographical/cartographical knowledge. My older brother Rick used to beat me in chess all the time, enough that I didn’t really get interested in playing chess regularly – though I was on the chess team in junior high or high school.

We also played card games frequently – are cards a ‘toy’? We played rummy games (like canasta), poker games (lots of variants), and other card games (like spades, oh pshaw). At one point, each kid had a container of M&Ms in the freezer that were their ‘poker chips’. We would pull them out, gamble with them, sometimes eat some of them, then put them back in the freezer for next time. All these card games were fun. At some point, I should try to remember all the simplified poker games we played, like red dog. My parents used to go to a (monthly?) bridge night – a social event with friends.

One thing worth mentioning about these indoor games is the room and table at which we play them. The house I grew up in was originally a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house, with a garage in the back. The owners before us converted the garage into living space (tiled the floor, added a bathroom and closet) and built a large connecting room between the house and the garage that we called the ‘breezeway’. The breezeway was a big room, with a door at each end with louvered windows. We used it as our family room, and it was where we played table games. The table we used was a converted telephone cable spool. My mom converted it. She cut down the bottom circular end so that we could get chairs closer, and she added paneling to the top. It worked well.

Back to ‘toys’ – how about sports equipment, are they toys? We had a basketball hoop, darts, a pool table, pingpong table, rubber horseshoes, plus our backyard was big enough for things like wiffle ball. We played with these each other, but when your siblings are older than you, they are going to be better at games requiring strength – like basketball, wiffle ball, etc. I got pretty good at pingpong – enough to be a practice partner for our school pingpong (doubles) champion in college. Some of the outdoor items we played with – jarts, darts, even archery – were fairly dangerous. I remember some close encounters that some of my siblings had – that could easily have been injuries.

One other story about sports equipment – we were playing pingpong one day in the back driveway (with the stakes for rubber horseshoes embedded into drilled holes in the driveway) and I hit one my toes on a horseshoe stake. I badly hurt that toe – probably broke it. I remember crying and running/limping around the yard. My mom just taped my hurt toe to my other toes (maybe with a stick, too?). We didn’t go to the doctor. Her logic was that – what she did was all a doctor would do. My toe is crooked to this day, though it hasn’t slowed down my running, etc.

Final ‘maybe toy’ mention: we were very early in the rollout of video games. There weren’t home computers when I was young, or cellphones – but in the early 1970s Magnavox started selling a video game console called Odyssey. It was the first video game console and, for some reason, we bought one. It cost $100 dollars (which equals about $700 in today’s dollars). Not sure why we got it, we were not rich. I remember driving to the state capital, Charleston, to purchase it. The funny thing about it was – it was mostly just two controllers that could move a dot, or paddles, around on a blank screen. So you could play video pingpong, for example. There were no video graphics. When you wanted to play a different game, you would grab a new plastic sheet with a different picture from the box and tape it to the screen of the TV. For example, there was a haunted house game where you would travel from window to window (to collect points?) and you pretty much just moved a dot around behind a see-through, taped-on haunted house illustration. Crazy.

If all of the above are not toys, then I would say that my favorite toy as a child was Legos. I’m sort of a natural engineer, and having easily-connectable blocks to create things is great. I like the challenge of envisioning and building something out of standard rectangular legos – to the point that, when we buy legos today as a gift for kids, I want to buy basic lego sets – and not some pre-designed lego kit based on a movie or TV show that should only be assembled one way.

We always had a lot of legos (and tinker toys – another building kit). One of the things we did with legos was create tracks – essentially ‘roads’ where we would hang one end off of a table or shelf, and have the other end on the ground, and make sleds to slide down them. Thinking about legos makes me want to pull some out and play with them.

At the end of the day, I played with a lot of things – many of which might be considered toys. (Did I mentioned art above? We also did a lot of art when I was young. Are crayons and play-doh considered ‘toys’?) But probably my favorite indisputable toys were building kit toys – like Legos.

from Storyworth

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I never knew either of my grandfathers. They both died in their 60s – when I was a very young. I believe one may have died even before I was born. (Which might suggest bad genes, but my dad lived until 94 and my mom is still alive at 90.) Being Polish, we called our grandpas ‘Jaja’.

I did know my grandmothers. They both lived in the Buffalo NY area – from which we moved away when I was a baby – so I didn’t see them that often aa a child. Again, as Polish, we called our grandmas ‘Busia’ (‘boo-sha’).

Each summer, we would do an annual trip from West Virginia to Buffalo – where all the kids would be packed into a station wagon, and we’d drive for 8-10 hours along pre-interstate roads to spend a week or two in Buffalo. So I got to see my grandmothers (plus aunts, uncles, and cousins) once a year. Eventually, interstates were built – so the later trips were quicker. Since the station wagon was full of children – including some without seat belts lounging about in the back (perfectly legal, different times), we packed most of our luggage onto the roof of the car. I remember one trip, some of the stuff strapped to the roof of the car came loose – and I can still remember my mom jogging away down the shoulder of the highway gathering fallen items.

My dad’s mom died when I was maybe ten years old. I remember hearing the news, and crying in my bedroom – I believe I was the only one of my siblings who cried. I think I was old enough to appreciate the loss, and young enough not to be able to control my emotions. (Or maybe I was just a crybaby.) I assume she died from complications from diabetes. She had previously had the lower half of one leg removed from a circulatory diabetes issue. It was interesting (and slightly scary) to see her for a few visits missing her leg below the knee. She was a nice woman, and I have nothing but good memories of her.

My mom’s mom (other Busia) was also nice, and we would sometimes stay at her house when we visited Buffalo. Most times we would stay at my aunt’s (my mom’s sister). Busia’s house was vey old school. For example, I remember she had a clothes ringer next to (instead of?) a clothes dryer. A clothes ringer is a crank-driven squeezing device that you feed wet clothes into, and it removes most of the water. Then I guess you hang them out to dry on the clothes line. She may not have had a powered clothes washer, and may have cleaned clothes in a tub by hand. Busia’s freezer was one of those chest-shaped ones – wide and low to the ground, where you open the top to access.

It’s interesting that Buffalo had very different weather form West Virginia. West Virginia was pretty mild – occasional snow which melted quickly, and warm summers that were not too hot. Occasional rain all year round. Buffalo summers were fine, but Buffalo winters could get nasty. One winter, they had to haul snow out with train cars because it had snowed so deep, and the temperature didn’t rise to melt the snow – so they decided to reduce the amount of snow on the ground by hauling it away – I guess to make it easier to get the roads drivable. Another (sad) Buffalo snow story is: my mom’s youngest brother Uncle Matty died running into a snow plow when he was driving. I don’t know whether he had been drinking (possibly), and my memory includes him getting (almost?) beheaded – but this may have been speculation by my siblings. Uncle Matty used to live on a farm with horses, and one visit he occupied us kids by asking us to collect and kill flies (there were a lot on the farm). He offered us a penny for each fly we killed. The downside he didn’t think through was that he had to count them all when we delivered hundreds of flies to him. It was kind of funny. I learned on the visit how to catch flies by hand, and kill them by throwing them at the ground.

Busia (my mom’s mom) eventually came to live with us in West Virginia. She must have done so when it became difficult for her to live alone. Thinking about it now, it’s surprising that she came to live with us. The reasons why it didn’t make sense were: 1) we were about 450 miles away and Busia had other children much closer, and 2) we were a family of eight in a small house. But I’m guessing that it fell to her two daughters to take care of her, and my mom must have ‘lost the coin flip’ with her sister. Also, by the time Busia came to live with us, some of my older siblings had already flown the coup – so we had enough room. Busia must have driven back home with us from one of our Buffalo trips.

Busia must not have lived with us that long – we moved away from West Virginia when I was 16 – but our house worked well for her. We lived on a low-traffic street with an alley behind, so it was easy to take walks. I remember Busia collecting fallen apples from the tree next door, and making apple pies. Busia was very religious, and we were a block away from the church (where the kids all went to elementary school) – so it was easy to wander over there and go to mass.

When you live with a grown child, there is always some disagreement/conflict – and my mom can be pretty challenging sometimes. My oldest brother’s wife, who is also very religious, was part of a prayer group at church where they prayed for people in need. They used to pray for Busia, whose daughter ‘treated her badly’. This was before my sister-in-law married my brother, and knew the connection. Kind of funny, because I’m assuming (hoping) that the ‘abuse’ wasn’t that true. It’s possible that Busia had a similar personality to my mom, and there was unpleasantness in both directions.

One religious Polish tradition that Busia followed was getting the food blessed at Easter. She would show at church with a basket of food ingredients, and get the priest to bless them. To the priest, it was probably interesting and unexpected. One overlay that just occurred to me now, is – our priests were mostly of German heritage, and the Germans and Polish have a bad history – which my grandmother lived through. I wonder if this was an issue for her.

I don’t exactly remember when Busia died, but I assume it was before we moved to Chicago – or maybe we dropped her at my aunt’s when we moved? My parents never made a big fuss about the deaths of relatives – I don’t remember going to any funerals. Even recently when my dad died, my mom didn’t have a ceremony 🙁

So in summary: I don’t remember my grandfathers; I do remember my grandmothers, especially the one that lived with us. My Busia’s were very nice, and it would have been good to live closer to them when growing up, and see my relatives more often.

from Storyworth

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I met my wife Ann through mutual friends, but the actual events leading up to our relationship are interesting and humorous. We had a mutual connection through Phil Jachowski who went to the same college as Ann, and dated one of her friends. Phil worked at the same company as I, and we did social things together.

One of those was a camping trip that Ann didn’t go on – I think her female friends purposefully didn’t invite her to have better odds of connecting with the guys. I was there. We partied the whole weekend, including smoking weed – which I brought. Back then, acquiring marijuana was complicated and illegal. I remember meeting our ‘supplier’ in various store parking lots to do the ‘deals’.

After the trip, Ann heard about how fun I was (including being able to get pot) and wanted to meet me. She was part of a large happy hour get-together at the 94th Aero Squadron – a bar and restaurant at the San Jose Airport with an aviation theme – including being able to listen at the tables to the air traffic controller communications. Much of the core of our social group was me and my coworkers: a dozen engineers fresh out of school that the company moved to California. Phil, being local, brought his local friends.

I was already seated with the gang when Ann arrived at happy hour, so she ended up sitting at the opposite end of the group. Ann was wearing a drapy dress that, to me, looked like a maternity dress. I thought she might be pregnant. This was the same year that Ann’s mom had died, and she was fresh from a trip to Mexico. I don’t think we interacted (much) during that happy hour, and Ann ended up dating one of my coworkers, Dan, for a month or two. Dan had a girlfriend back home in the midwest, and wasn’t interested in a serious relationship with Ann. Ann and I saw each other often during that time at mutual social gatherings, including at my townhouse in Campbell, CA.

It was at one of those gatherings at my townhouse that Ann made it obvious that she was interested in me. I don’t know whether she had an ongoing interest in me while she was dating Dan, or whether she just concluded that the relationship with Dan wasn’t going anywhere, but she eventually made her move. Guys can be dumb, and I’m probably dumber than most when it comes to women, so she may have tried to give me hints previously that she liked me – I don’t know. I do know that, when she nudged me over to share a chair with me at the table (we were playing cards, or doing card tricks, or something) then I finally realized that she liked me.

From then on, our relationship built – and it didn’t take long for us to conclude that this was a long-term thing, and that we should consider marriage. Within a year of when we first met, we were driving to or from somewhere – Ann’s dad’s or my brother’s – and I asked her hypothetically whether she’d be interested in getting married – and she said yes. We didn’t formalize it for several months, but we considered ourselves more or less committed at that point.

Ann’s dad was very old school, so we didn’t live together before marriage (not officially). We did do a trip to San Diego before marriage along with a bunch of other people, and slept on the living room floor with them – and Ann’s dad gave her a hard time about overnighting with a guy she wasn’t married to. We eventually got formally engaged, married, and had children. Her dad was civil to me, but I was not his favorite son-in-law.

So that is the story of how I met my wife, and how our relationship began. Ann is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

from Storyworth

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Personality-wise, I think I am more like my father. He was a relatively quiet, level-headed man. Easy to interact with. He was also fairly handy — he had a workshop with tools and hardware, and was able to take care of small repairs — though my mom also was handy. Both my parents were smart. These are all characteristics that I have.

My mom was quite creative. She had a great voice, and sang all the time. She used to be a singer in a band — I think formed by (or containing) some of her brothers. It’s interesting that I learned the words to many songs that were popular long before my time because my mother sang them during my childhood. I once found myself at a social event where the songs performed were those older songs — and the only people (besides the singers) who knew the words were an old grandpa and me. My mom also drew and painted quite well, and helped her children spend time creating art. I have these creative aspects that my mom has: strong interests in music and art.

Appearance wise, I do look like my dad. We were of similar height and weight. There’s a phone app that ‘ages’ a photo of you — and the result when I did this to a photo of me could have been a photo of my dad.

So in summary, I believe that I have characteristics of both my mom and dad. From my dad: appearance and personality; from my mom: creativity; and from both: intelligence.