Autism makes jump from dads to granddads

One in eight. That is the statistic now for kids. One in eight has autism. Crazy. They tied it to the father. Old sperm. Seems the DNA mutates in older dads. Mom is off the hook. But dad who decided to sow his wild oats and then have a family is dealing with a stacked deck. The autism odds shoot way up. And now they have a co conspirator. Granddads.

Seems autism jumps a generation. And it's the granddads fault for holding out and having kids later. And it shows up in the next crop of kids. So that would explain why little Johnnie has autism when dad was twenty three. Granddad went off to the war and started a business and then had a kid. And his grandson has the affliction. Biology is brutal in this way. We really were designed to replicate and do it early.

As if older dads and granddads didn't have enough on their plate. They are huffing and puffing and trying to be that young cool dad but those years have a funny way of calling their marker. And like most old parents the bet is you can have it all. And then you realize you cant. Women get menopause and the men throw out damaged sperm.

And the kids get in a one in eight chance.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Sit Down Dinners Good for You ?

We all remember the sit down dinners. Dad and mom at the ends with you lodge somewhere in the middle between sisters and brothers. Mom is usually stressed and dad is preoccupied and you scarf that food like an Olympian. And the dinners were MANDATORY. In my house they were. You did not skip the sit down dinners. Your only hope was to eat fast and vacate but even then you couldn't just leave. You had to sit until mom or dad were finished.

Well it turns out that those dinners were good for you. A new study shows that families that eat together are healthier. They eat more healthy food. They get sick less. Their kids are more well adjusted. Less depression. Able to interact more effectively. All this from those hellish meals where you had to recite what you learned at school or what you did or have it pointed out that you spoiled your appetite with that cereal you ate before.

But yes. It is true.  The family that eats together eats more fruit and vegetables and less junk food. Makes sense. Home cooked meals are better than Big Macs and pizza. No revelation there. But the sociability of the sit down dinner apparently translates across the board. Teenagers feel more support. Younger children learn how to interact. Information is conveyed. The family unit is strengthened. The tribe is stronger.

I remember a woman coming over while we are all eating. How cute. A family dinner she said. We looked at her like...this is cute? To us it is just normal. Good to know normal has some benefits.

 

Rocket Man...the American Dream upside down

http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Man-William-Elliott-Hazelgrove/dp/1938467582/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359822181&sr=1-4&keywords=rocket+man

 

 

The High Point of the Day

Driving my daughter to school is the highpoint. After that it is all downhill. Maybe it would seem strange that taking a second grader to school in the morning should bring such joy but then we are still children. Do you have your lunch? Your backpack? Do you have your boots, your coat, your gloves, your hat? Yes dad Yes dad Yes dad. Alright lets go.

And then of course the inevitable question. So...what's today? Wednesday. And what happens on Wednesday? Hmmm...well daily five. Math. Library. Science.PE...and lunch. And what  is for lunch? Peanut butter and jelly and an apple an chips. All this while driving the same route day after day behind the same minivans of parents in pajamas and in coats and mothers and fathers dropping off their charge in the circular drive.

And what does it do? It takes us back right? I remember sitting with my father at the end of the drive waiting for a bus in the darkness. Or he would drop me off on the way to work. And the questions were the same. So what happens today? What's for lunch? These are the brilliant little nuggets of parenthood. These moments that are way too short and end way too quickly.

And now we are rounding the drive and it is time of the drop off. Ok. Have everything. Yeah dad. Alright...have a great day and have some extra ketchup with your fries. And she turns and smiles. Dad. We aren't having fries. But the joke is there and we do it everyday and then you watch her turn and walk into that school and with her goes a little bit of your heart.

Rocket Man...the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man...Chicago Sun Times


 

Talking About Age

Some people just cant get over that they have gotten older. You know who they are. The same people who went into a bar when they were thirty five and complained everyone was younger. No shit. Gee I guess people do age don't they. Hope I die before I get old has not worked out for the boomers. Now they are being chased down by commercials galore for getting it up to wearing diapers and not shitting themselves in public. The whole youth culture thing has gotten really nasty now that the whole country has gotten old.

Since we quit accepting that people become adults somewhere back in the fifties when Elvis started gyrating we now are a people at sea. We have committed the ultimate sin by aging. In America no one ages or haven't you heard? Except for Judy Dench or Maggie Green or Helen Mirrah. They have aged and done it magnificently but for the rest of us it is a dirty sin. And the whining is disgusting. I now have to listen to people say...WE"RE OLD. Gotta love the way they include you in their sweeping declaration.

But it happens all the time. People who feel old figure everyone must feel the same. And it is simply not true. But our culture shames people when they age. They have betrayed our culture and have passed from youth into something dirty and unspeakable. An adult. Whoa. Stand back Jack. Once  upon a time people were allowed to be adults. But since Roger Daltry said he hoped he died before he got old we are all screwed. By the way Rodger did not die. He sang at the Super Bowl. But we are left now with the whiners.

And it is pathetic. People age. People don't stay young forever. People die. Get over it and enjoy the ride.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

What if We Didnt Keep Track of Our Age

Been feeling something heavy lately. Oh yeah. My birthday. Funny how that goes from when you were a kid and you were all about it to carrying this heavy piece of sludge. Yeah. Another year and all that means and purports. Look we aren't wine. We are not getting better. But isn't the whole digit thing what really brings us down? Wouldn't we be better off as an arrow shot from nothing to nothing with no one measuring the arc? I mean, really,what is age but a way for other people to get a handle on you.

The old people love it. I don't mean the old people chronologically, I mean the old people. You know the people who started talking about being old when they were twenty. They love being old. They love talking about their back or the feet or their sight or their private parts. They were the ones who started going to bed in college at ten o'clock and talking about the "kids" staying up. They really take pleasure in aging and nailing all the people who stayed up all night and then went jogging in the morning.

The old people send you those cards. You know. Hey, sorry to hear your penis just fell off. Guess age gets everyone eventually Ha Ha. And they comment on those kids (thirty somethings) who are habitually doing foolish things. Sometimes they call each other mom and dad. But imagine if these same people never knew their own age. They would still act old but they couldn't point to you and go. Ha! Your the same age as me! You're old! They would have no idea.

Imagine that. If you felt young then you would be young. In fact you wouldn't have any idea how to age because you would have no idea how old you were. So if you felt like acting twenty your whole life then that is what you should be. Why shouldn't you be twenty to the day you die. Or if you wanted to be sixty you could be sixty. Right up to the day you kicked. No more obnoxious cards. No more obnoxious cakes. No  more disingenuous people saying, oh how do you feel now that you are blah blah.

No. I think I'm going to go for that. Eighteen. Cool age. Guess I'll stay there. Until I decide I want to be nineteen.

www.billhazelgrove.com

The Unforgivable Sin in America

It's not yourself that you see getting old, it is everyone around you. Somehow that mirror doesn't cut back to you but it is there if you bother to look. But the point is everyone is guilty. In America there is really only one thing you don't want to do and that is age. Lose your mind, become a coke fiend, shoot up a McDonalds and who knows you might end up with a book deal or a made for TV movie. But get old and you are done.

Probably the boomers. Yeah, blame it on them. Watch Woodstock or Spinal Tap again and see the the crappy rock and roll culture that can really only hold up one thing although our King  Rockers are sixty something but somehow they get a pass. They're rockers! Rockers don't age. The rest of us it is every man or woman for himself. And the sad thing is there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

Lets say you pull a Joan Rivers and turn into a plastic doll. Everyone says, wow, there goes a really old plastic doll. Or maybe you are Demi Moore who figures she can keep Ashton around by just being Scotch voiced Demi but the bitch of turning fifty is you turn fifty and Ashton had that annoying habit of looking like he was twenty. And so he dumped Demi and Demi can says she dumped him and they had differences...yeah, like twenty five years.

But we paddle on. How come Humphrey Bogart never was considered old? Or Frank Sinatra? Or Clark Gable or Spencer Tracy or all the film noir guys in long coats and fedoras.? Was it they had a heater in their coat or was it the fact our Justin Bieber youth culture hadn't kicked in and made everyone into adults who look like children.

In the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story At Your Age he gets his hand around age with a story about a fifty year old man pursing a twenty year old girl. In the end when the man loses her to a younger man, he goes to visit the home where he grew up. Fitzgerald eloquently sums up what he really lost out against.
"He was just trying to break his tired old heart before he was too old to care. What he really had done was  to commit  ages unforgivable sin...refusing to die. "

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...the funniest serious novel since Straight man...Chicago Sun Times

Imprisoned in McMansions

I haven't paid my mortgage for three years the woman said outside foreclosure court. I had gone for my normal three month meeting over an investment property short sale and the woman had sought me out in the hallway. You look like you know what you are doing she said. I didn't but I listened to her tail of McMansion woe. She had bought in the boom and ran up a mortgage to about 450k with a second tacked on. Her house was now turtle to the tune of about one hundred grand. Her job imploded and she went into a loan modification that never happened and started going to foreclosure court staving off the inevitable. Three years later she had not paid a dime.

But it sucks. I feel like such a loser still living in my house, but I cant afford to move, she went on. It's like I'm in prison. True. Her four thousand square foot monster is her prison. McMansions became pretty standard in the boom for the most egregious debtors in the move into upper middle class mobility. And why not? Money was cheap and the houses were amazing but now these Tyrolean haunted houses are prisons for thousands of people who cannot afford to move.

I can't afford to downsize because obviously I cant sell and I wont have a down payment and my credit is shot the woman said fearfully. All I can do is keep coming here and hope they wont foreclose. And they probably wont with foreclosure projections sixty two years in New York to clean up the mess and ten years in Illinois. The McMansion prisons start to fall down because people cant afford the maintenance, but like the golden handcuffs of a job we hate ,the person simply cannot afford to move.

It's schizoprhenic. I pull up to this big beautiful house everyday and I'm so broke I couldn't afford a bungalow. She paused and shook her head.  I'd like to afford a bungalow. That would be heaven to live in a small house.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man comes out July 26th

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man in July

Be Glad You Aren't Retired

Grooving with the Greatest Generation makes me glad I am not retired. Retirement is an antiquated term. It brings up the thirty year job and thirty year mortgage. It brings up death. You should be glad you are not retired. In Florida the ritual is one of steady dementia. Rise and shuffle to breakfast with your oxygen and take your dog for a walk and sit by a pool and read the local paper. The world goes on while you drink your coffee and have your bagels and orange juice and you read and read because this will kill the morning. Clean up your dishes and get ready for your mid morning nap after a fist full of drugs so you can keep breathing.

Then it's off to play cards or bingo or shuffleboard. Maybe swim in your small pool. Probably not. Take your dog for a walk in your complex in your golf cart. The dog runs along side of you. You come back and have your lunch and take your afternoon meds and then it's nap time again. Get up and head for a blue light special or start your dinner. Food is the thing. Food is your drug now. That and the glass of wine or the martini that puts you on your ass because you have very little resistance to anything. But you get  buzzed and eat whatever the hell you want because you are already on blood thinners.

Then its Jeopardy. Back to back shows. You have already finished the days Crossword Puzzle to keep the noodle rolling. Jeopardy is your final intellectual excercise. Then maybe Cash Cab. CSI. Who Wants To Be Anything. Then it doesn't matter because you watch it all at rock concert levels because you are stone deaf. You watch hours and hours of television because there is simply not much else to do. Finally you decide to go to bed. Roll your oxygen into the bedroom, take your meds, let the dog out. Then its goodnight Irene to start all over again the next day. You have been parked in the boot of a country that hoped it would die before it got old. Be glad you aren't retired.

www.billhazelgrove
Rocket Man will blast off April 26th

The Forgotten Generation--the 1964 baby

We are seeing all sorts of articles now about the Boomers turning sixty five and what this means and how aging will be redefined and by the way we are talking about a group of people born in the range of 1946 to 1964! Ok. So, someone who was born in 1964 has the same generational characteristics as someone born in 1946. I don't think so. Someone born in 1946 grew up in the fifties and came came of age in 1964. They were ready to go to college and rebel and burn their draft card and listen to Bob Dylan and watch Kennedy, King, Wallace, then Kennedy again get assassinated. They were all set to watch man walk on the moon after seeing the Beatles hit the Ed Sullivan show four years earlier. They went to Woodstock and maybe participated in the Democratic Convention riots in Chicago and tried every drug under the son and actually bought the albums of Hendrix, Joplin and the Doors while they were alive! Then they watched themselves twenty years later in The Big Chill.

 Lets take our 1964 baby. While the Beatles played on Ed Sullivan he stuck his toe in his mouth. While Dylan sang Change is Blowin in the Wind, he worked on trying to walk. When the men walked on the moon he watched the fuzzy images and wondered what happened to Mickey Mouse. He heard the Beatles played by his big brother and didn't even know what Woodstock was until he saw the double album in his brothers room with the couple in the blanket. When he bought his first album Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, and Janis Joplin were dead and the Beatles had broken up. He heard about the Kennedy's and confused them with Ted Kennedy. He thought everyone was pretty mellow in the seventies but Madonna, U2, and the Go Gos were better than Zepplin, Kansas and Areo Speedwagon. He joined a fraternity because Animal House was hilarious. The Vietnam war was settled when he was eleven and he didn't know anything about the draft. He remembers going up to his older brothers room in the attic with the black lights and the posters and large boots and the mattress on the floor. His only  thought of the sixties was a puzzlement that people were so upset. He became a yuppie after college and still had the Apple IIC he bought in highschool.

In my novel Rocket Man I paint the picture of this 1964  man. He is now overwhelmed in debt, kids, too much house, no job and he is forty six. He is a Blackberry toting man who is going down fast and who never bothered to rebel, but bought into the American dream hook line and sinker. He never believed the world would pass into a Utopian bliss and was much more worried about making a million dollars and having a great time. He is of the forgotten generation, that baby of 1964.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man Paper Back or Kindle

Writing about people you know

A lot of authors get very nervous about writing about people they know. There is the feeling that people will recognize themselves or worse be offended. Writing about one's family is especially taboo to a lot of people. When my second novel hit the stores I was surprised my mother took offense to some of the scenes in Mica Highways. There was insanity in the novel and in my own family there had been some cases. No surprise huh?

But I was amazed she would draw the line and it would bother her that people long dead might be inferred to have had mental problems. There were several very terse letters and then it sort of just blew over. Siblings weighed in and words were exchanged but the book was out. And I as pointed out many times, the story was fiction.

Of course when we write we must put all these ideas aside and just write. Easy thing to say, hard to do for some people. But characters cannot be copyrighted even by family. The minute we breathe we all become potential characters for some novelist or short story writer somewhere. As long as he or she has the will to tell it like it is.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Hope I Die Before I Get Old

You have to love our boomer inheritance. If you watch David Letterman then you know a standard question of his for his older guests is how old are you? Does it matter? Very much to the boomers who coined don't trust anyone over thirty and of course the famous Who line, "hope I die before I get old." The people who brought us the youth culture of course are reinventing themselves and yes the new fifty is the old forty and so forth. But the real irony of the Boomer youth culture which has become a colossal pain in the $#@#@ for everyone is that they are ageists. Age is still their yardstick. David Letterman had Clint Eastwood on the other night. Clint is a very cool guy, funny, affable, very self deprecating. But then David, smug in his twenty years younger, let's fly...."So, Clint, how old are you?" Clint pauses then tells him his age and David shakes his head and the audience applauds. So, the question is, why ask? Well people are interested in other people's age. Bull. Did anyone ask Humphrey Bogart or Frank Sinatra or Clark Gable how old they were? I don't think I ever saw Carson ask anyone how old they were. That would be because there was an adult culture then. People were allowed to be adults. The hilarious thing about the youth culture is everyone is old now because you have twelve year olds becoming rock stars. That moves the bar down pretty far and those old rockers of twenty nine are grinning down at those sunny pubescent faces of the latest Hanson twins. You really can't win. What's really behind the whole age thing anyway? It's a derivative roll out from the generation that said Fyou to all the institutions and put the entire world into two camps: who is cool and who isn't. Simply put, if you are old then you are uncool. If you are young you get an automatic entrance into the cool camp. As long as David Letterman has octogenarians on his show then he and Paul Schaeffer can stay in the cool camp. I suppose the problem will be when Dave hits eighty and he has to start digging up people who are hundred. But everyone wants to be on television and Dave will still be able to cackle...."man, one hundred...are you old!"

http://www.billhazelgrove.com