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Originally published in May 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Our older daughter knows the rule because my wife has repeated it over and over and over: Wash your hands when you come in from outside. Do it with soap.

The reasons are endless. Our girl has touched dirt that sheep have walked on. She has handled swings previously gripped by nose-pickers. She has picked up trash. She has petted strange cats.

My wife is crazy, I think, her priorities out of whack. She loses her keys four times a day, but never forgets to make sure our kids have clean hands.

The rule I make for myself is more relaxed: Run my fingers under a cold tap when I get a chance. No big deal if that has to wait until after I make myself a sandwich.

But a visit to a public men’s room makes me rethink that.

Unlike my Lisa, it seems countless mothers (not to mention fathers) fail to teach their children the most basic rules of personal hygiene.

Without fail, if I step into a restroom with three men at the urinals, at least one of them will finish up and head straight out the door without so much as glancing at the sinks. Of course, he’ll touch the door with those unwashed hands on the way out, which inevitably means someone else – maybe someone who did wash his hands – will touch that same spot and something will rub off.

It’s almost like every time you touch a door, you also touch everything everyone who has ever gone through that door has touched. Such realizations inspire me to use my shoe-protected foot to shove open doors whenever possible.

The unwritten rule of the men’s room is that you don’t look directly at other guys at the urinals, particularly if you’re at one yourself. This limits what you can do with your eyes; you can examine the wall, or you can kind of glance around the room.

Once, when I had chosen the “glance around the room” option, I saw an unusual sight in one of the stalls (no unwritten rule about looking at those, as long as there’s a door and it’s closed): A pair of shoes with feet in them, dark socks, and bare legs from there up to where the door cut off my line of sight. There were no pants bunched around the socks.

While washing my hands, I saw those legs stand up in the stall, then heard the sound of something being taken off the coat hanger in there. A pair of pants legs lowered into sight, and the fellow slipped them on, removing his shoes for the time it took to put his legs back into the pants. So, basically, he had chosen to hang up his pants rather than risking wrinkling and soiling them on the bathroom floor – which is more trouble than I’d go to, but I respected the effort.

The fellow stepped out, and I knew right away he was a white-collar, on-his-way-up-in-the-world professional, very neat and crisp. Wearing a tie. But I only actually saw him for about five seconds, because he headed straight from the stall to the exit.

I was flummoxed. Astounded, even. This guy worried about keeping his pants pristine, but didn’t consider his own skin? Man, that’s weird.

Maybe it’s a sort of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” thing, except that instead of being taken over by outer space pod people, we’re being infiltrated by post-potty soap scorners. Look around any populated room and they’ll be there, taking snacks from the same tray you are, drinking from the same water fountain, shaking your hand when you meet them. But you won’t know who they are unless you end up in the bathroom at the same time.

Girls, don’t forget to wash your hands when you get back to the house.

Originally published in May 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

It came out in summer 1977, a long time ago, but to many of us “Star Wars” has never been far, far away.

C’mon, fellow imaginary Rebels against the Empire, admit it: Your cars are X-wings, your speedometers are targeting computers and the road is a Death Star trench. You’ve probably been tempted to shut your eyes and use the Force to parallel park, and you’ve fired the occasional blaster at middle-finger-happy Stormtrooper pilots who cut you off in their TIE fighters.

My big sister and her husband took my little sister and me – I was 12 – to see the original “Star Wars” the day it opened in Colorado Springs. For me, like millions of others that summer, the two hours in that shopping mall theater were a life-affirming experience. I laughed when Obi-Wan Kenobi mind-controlled the Stormtroopers looking for the droids at Mos Eisley, cheered the first time the Millennium Falcon jumped into hyperspace, cheered even harder when Han Solo shouted “Yee-ha!” as that same Falcon joined the climactic battle, and cheered hardest of all when the Death Star blew apart. Woo hoo!

Then, during the final ceremony scene, I was grateful for the theater’s darkness because it helped me hide the happy tear in my eye.

In the weeks, months and years that followed, “Star Wars” shaped so much of what I did. At least four posters hung in my bedroom. Drawings of the gigantic Imperial Star Destroyer chasing the rebel ship at the beginning of the movie decorated my school notebooks. There’s no telling how many broom-handle light sabers I splintered while battling the Dark Side of the clothesline posts in our back yard.

The sounds of “Star Wars” have stuck with me as much as the images. John Williams’ glorious soundtrack gets my heart racing every time I hear it. I sometimes imagine Obi-Wan’s voice encouraging me to “Use the Force” and “Let go” to summon the TV remote to my hand from across the living room when I’m chairbound while my baby girl sleeps in my lap.

No matter how much I try, I can’t get that remote to jump into my hand the way Luke Skywalker got the light saber to jump into his in “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Most of all, “Star Wars” and the next two movies stuck the threatening hiss of Darth Vader’s mechanical breathing forever in my brain. I can summon the memory of that sound at a second’s notice, just as I can the opening beat of the Who’s “Eminence Front” and the whistling theme to “The Andy Griffith Show.”

So “Star Wars” meant something to me right from the start, before Lucas made his first of many changes to the film by adding the “Episode 4 – A New Hope” to the opening scroll when the movie was re-released to theaters a few years later.

Next week, sci-fi fans of all ages will line up for “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.” I probably won’t be among them, not so much because I don’t want to see it (I do, even though “Episode II” was a disappointment), but because I’m simply not curious enough to go. Maybe I’ll try to get there after the crowds have died down, maybe I’ll wait for the DVD.

Whatever happens, I know the movie can’t possibly thrill the 40-year-old me as much as the original thrilled this 12-year-old almost three decades ago. In fact, judging by the previews I’ve seen, I’m likely to find the prequel depressing, and it’s certainly not a movie I can share with my 4-year-old.

But I still hope it has the Force to fuel my imaginary small, one-man fighter a few more years, and allow me to see the blue glow of a hero’s light saber when I pick up a broom.

Originally published in May 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Maybe they’d known each other since high school, which they might have finished all of five years ago. Maybe they’d only met recently and found a lot in common. Whatever, now they were friends.

These two women, they were pretty and healthy, talking happily as they walked. Both punctuated sentences with gestures they made with one han

When they were girls, these women, they’d been popular. Parties, restaurants, dates – they had options anytime they wanted to go out. But now they were parents and had responsibilities, so they’d come to view the restaurant – with its indoor plastic playground – as a place of leisure.

For less than 10 precious dollars apiece, they could feed themselves and the little ones, then release the kids into the giant Habitrail hamster cage. In that play area, the kids might spend an hour bouncing off each other while their mommies sat and enjoyed some nearly uninterrupted, sympathetic adult company.

I saw these two young women and their two little children through the windshield of my pickup while navigating the restaurant’s drive-through. All I really witnessed was the four of them walking across the parking lot, so I can’t be sure the play area was truly their destination. However, I’ve seen enough parents headed that way to bet it was. I’ve even been there with my own daughter a handful of times.

Seeing the freedom such franchises had come to represent for those two helped me recognize the shackles we can shape for ourselves over time with those same fast-food chains.

Convenience became a problem for me some years back. During the most “convenient” periods of my life, I’d go out of my way to pick up fast food two, three, even four or five times a week. I went so often that I developed strategies to quickly score my bags of food and that 32-ounce tanker of soda (filled with sugar, one of the most addictive white powders). I learned the best time to head to the joints, early enough to beat the high-schoolers rushing to get their own noon-hour fixes but still late enough to legitimately call the meal “lunch.”

I don’t want fast food because I enjoy the restaurant “experience,” and in fact I avoid going inside. I’m a drive-through veteran, with well-considered opinions about the best possible menu arrangement (there should be two, one where you place your order and another about 20 feet farther down the line so you can figure out what you want while you’re waiting) and proper etiquette (people who don’t have the cash out of their pocket and ready to hand it over immediately at the window, thus delaying the line by as much as half a minute, are unspeakably self-absorbed).

It’s a defeat for me if the drive-through line is so long when I arrive that it would actually be faster to park and walk inside to order. In fact, I’m likely to head somewhere else rather than go to those extremes.

Once I’ve scored my meal, I often eat while I travel so I can hide my habit from the world. Sometimes it’s hard to find a free fist to shake at the idiots driving while holding cell phones at their ears.

I don’t know exactly when I started jonesing for an over-the-counter burrito when a quick sandwich from home should be enough, but it’s time for a change. Last year I resolved to limit myself to one soda a day – instead of the three or four I was used to – and dropped about 20 pounds without much noticing. I could stand to lose 30 or 40 more, and might go a good way toward that by cutting out the remaining cola and most of the fast food … which, really, doesn’t even taste all that good.

So why does writing about it make my mouth water?

Originally published in April 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Even a person of my obvious limitations can grow vain. When I put too much steam in my stride and know the world is lucky to have me, my merciless memory reminds me of the boy I used to be:

When you were probably 13, you thought it would be fun to shake up a bottle of Pepsi. And shake it. And shake it. Soda bottles were made of glass way back then, and for some reason you didn’t know glass isn’t the world’s strongest material.

It was a surprise when that bottle exploded with a big POP, wasn’t it? How close did that shard come to your left eye? Don’t pretend you can’t remember. You get a reminder every time you look in a mirror and see the scar where the cut was stitched an inch above the orb.

And that’s not the stupidest thing you ever did, not even close. Get too cocky and we’ll spend a few moments reliving the months after you turned 16 and got your driver’s license.

All it takes to straighten me out now is to spend some time with my past.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I’ve always believed I’m an intelligent person. Now, though, fatherhood has at long last forced me to reach a reasonably adult level of maturity, and I fear I’m truly only intelligent enough to be ashamed today of things I should have been ashamed of – and learned from – decades ago.

Or perhaps I’ve developed a more introspective aspect to my personality in middle age, one that turns the focus away from myself and sees the two beautiful girls growing up in our house. That part of me knows, just knows, I was never that wonderful and never will be.

Man, the biggest way I could ever fail is to make a mess of being their dad the way I made a mess of being a driver when I was a teenager.

So I now recognize that from time to time I’ve screwed up even though I knew better. Nothing epic, not at the level some of my friends did and I’m grateful. Part of this I credit to luck and part to the girls I knew, who didn’t cooperate with my lame efforts to do some wrongs I really wanted to do.

Happily, I can also recognize I wasn’t a total idiot. For example, I figured out within a year of my 21st birthday that it wasn’t impressive to empty beer cups so fast the liquid ran down my neck into the fabric of my shirt, despite the example of such cinematic classics as “Revenge of the Nerds.”

Plenty of 40-year-olds still haven’t learned that lesson.

My wife is Lisa. I met her when I was 24 and living in southern Arizona, where I ended up after completing a five-year trek to the bachelor’s degree I suspect Colorado State awarded me just so I’d go away.

I’d love to be able to claim I was finished being stupid at that age, but I wasn’t. I was, however, finished being alone because for some reason Lisa forgave the stupidity, which started with our first real date.

On that occasion, I was too busy showing off to pay attention to where I was driving and got my neat new truck stuck in the sand at a Gulf of California beach not once, but twice. Yep, it took getting stuck TWO TIMES to teach me not to travel where there was no road.

Friendly beachgoers helped dig me out both times while I sputtered and tried not to look even more like a jackass. On the way home, Lisa figured out a way to laugh with me about it, instead of at me like I deserved.

Even though I wasn’t a brainless boy anymore, I did plenty of stupid things during the years we were dating, and I’ve done more still in the years since we married.

In fact, that merciless memory is revisiting the last couple of months and reminding me that even now I frequently have occasion to thump my forehead and make apologies.

Maybe the best I can hope is that my kids don’t have to deal with my screw-ups, or that I at least don’t wait too long to recognize where I’ve gone wrong and do something about it.

Originally published in April 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

The sun warms our backs and the scent of blooms is in the air, moving with breezes that also carry the music of songbirds. Blues and greens – my favorites – dominate a spectacular display of colors. The great outdoors is moving into the year’s most glorious time. Oh, spring! When did I come to dread you so?

My eyes water, aggravated by the hayfever sneezes constantly growing in my sinuses. Yellow jackets build nests everywhere they can find an inch of sheltered space.

Neighborhood skunks have awakened from their winter rest, and most nights they perfume the area. This aggravates our dog, who puts up her hackles, growls and stomps around the house. The clacking of her toenails on the floor interests the girls and makes it harder for them to get to sleep.

Unreliable memory tells me spring was a glorious time in my childhood, involving bicycle adventures with friends, picnics and a new Gayla Baby Bat every year. The Baby Bat was my favorite, a black kite with stick-on bloodshot eyes. I could get Baby Bats airborne in the slightest wind and keep them up as long as I had the patience to hold onto the string. I wonder if they’re still available.

My first car – a 1966 Mustang I never should have been allowed to touch, much less drive – comes to mind when I recall teenage springtime experiences. Some may not believe this, but I was in great shape and had a generally cheerful disposition back then, possibly because I had that neat car. But I also behaved like a dork and so that’s all I want to say about the teenage me.

Spring remained fun in early adulthood. It meant swimming, hibachis, late-night walks or rides … and, starting in my mid-20s, it meant sharing these things with Lisa, who became my wife. Can’t beat that.

But springtime changed for me. Now when the weather warms, I start thinking about water hoses, mowers, weather-loosened shingles, light-bulb-singed bug corpses piling up under lamps. Worst of all is the weeds, weeds, WEEDS, growing in our lawn and driveway, under our decks, hugging up against the house, climbing fences.

What changed? Has one of the joys of my life dissipated because I’m growing older and nastier?

That’s possible, but I’d guess it also has something to do with being a homeowner instead of a renter. These days we have to handle our own problems instead of complaining to a landlord, and it’s no fun cleaning mouse turds out of a shed when I’d rather be playing softball.

Luckily, our daughters are working on teaching me how to enjoy spring again, and they’re doing so in the most ingenious way: by enjoying it themselves.

Donning shoes on a Saturday afternoon is a source of excitement to our girls, because they know it means we’re heading outdoors. So far, they don’t much mind whatever Lisa or I want to do once we get out of the house. Helping Mommy work in the garden, throwing a ball for the dog, taking a walk, checking out the fruit buds – it’s all good with them.

It furrowed my brow when I found out our older girl has adopted a bushy weed in our front yard, and has even watered it. But you can be sure I’m going to let that thing grow until it breaks out in foot-long thorns.

A trip to the swing set – that big piece of metal and plastic that’s so flipping hard to mow around – is always a source of fun. The girls get busy, chasing each other, having a ball. They’re willing to let me sit in a lawn chair and watch if that’s all I’m up for, but so much the better if I join in.

“Push me, Daddy!” our 4-year-old calls from her swing. Her little sister, 1, in the baby swing right next to her, echoes the call as best she can (a squeal that sounds something like “Pish, Dah-dee!”). Their faces flush pink and they smile in the spring sunlight. Smile at me.

Pull the weeds? Ah, heck, let ’em grow. We’ve got better things to do.

Originally published in March 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Things drop at our house.

Open a cabinet, a plastic 32-ounce Taco Bell cup tumbles out, deflects off the counter and skitters around the kitchen floor.

Pull out a dresser drawer, a T-shirt unfurls and flops onto the carpet.

Reach for the Ibuprofen in our cabinet, the Tums bottle that strikes my brow worsens my headache.

Canned peas dive like lemmings. Neckties slither off hangers. Frozen chicken breasts thump the linoleum. Model kit boxes. Play Dough. Paintbrushes. Screwdrivers. Tennis balls. Videotapes. Books. CDs. Pencils. They all topple defiantly from their perches.

Is our place sitting at an angle? Are mice or gremlins at work?

Sometimes I fear I’ve grown so fat I’m creating my own gravitational field, one strong enough to pull items toward me until Earth’s slightly greater mass takes hold of them.

If no one’s around to see me do it, I blame faceless entities and say words I shouldn’t. As often as not, the item that dropped gets kicked, stomped or otherwise mistreated by my feet. For a few seconds, I’m convinced the object has consciousness and wants to aggravate me, so I take my revenge in a way I never could with a person.

In other words, I behave like a child. No, wait, that’s not true, because when such things happen to my 4-year-old, she says “Whoa” or “Oopsie,” picks up the item and moves on. It’s more accurate to say I behave like a jerk.

A part of me would love to call my little girls the source of chaos in our home, but they’re not. In fact, they’re pretty predictable. They’re just not doing things exactly the way I want them to.

The baby books tell me infants will start sleeping through the night after a few months, and so every night for the last year I’ve gone to bed certain that our toddler will “sleep like a baby.” There’s gotta be some reason for the cliché, right? Except every night, our baby girl wakes up at least twice and demands attention.

Every night she does this, and every night I go to bed presuming she won’t.

Our 4-year-old is an aspiring artist. She works with paints, construction paper, glitter, coins, ribbon … no one can guess where her artistic vision will guide her next, but it’s a sure thing it will take her somewhere, and it will involve scissors and glue.

Every day she asks for the tools she needs to create her works, and every day the rejected bits of her efforts scatter on the kitchen table, her desk and other surfaces. She picks up what she can, but it spreads almost as fast as the hair our dog sheds around the house.

The blunt fact is, I am the source of chaos in our home. Being totally unwilling to deal with the predictable uproar that comes with having two small children, I’ve thrown basic organization right out the window.

If I’m the one to empty the dishwasher or straighten up a room, instead of placing things where they belong, I shove them all over creation. My only rule is to make sure plastic ends up on top of glass.

Laundry? Sure, I’m willing to do it. I’m even willing to fold it. But precarious piles atop the dressers are as close as I’ll get to putting it back into the drawers where it belongs.

Obviously, then, I shouldn’t be surprised when these things head south at the first opportunity, and if I’m going to kick anything, it ought to be me.