It started in a clothing store

Name Endorphins • Constant Editing • Mispronunciations • An Unexpected Graduation

Name Endorphins

While living in Cincinnati during part of my high school and college years, I worked as an assistant manager at a now-defunct clothing store called Sir’s Big and Tall. My boss, Nick, was one of the best employers I ever had, mainly because as long as I got my work done, he had no issue with me doing homework, reading, or generally slacking off in the back room.

In the front of the store, Nick always had a radio playing easy listening hits from a local station for the customers, some of whom included regional sports celebrities like Oscar Robertson and Anthony Muñoz. Both of their wives regularly came in to buy sweaters for their husbands.

In the back of the store, Nick had another radio that was always tuned into The Big One - 700 WLW.

A majority of WLW’s focus was sports, which wasn’t of great interest to me at the time. But the evenings aired talk shows with the likes of bombastic Bill Cunningham and Mike McConnell, both of whom pretty much just answered phone calls and let locals like me prattle on for 90 seconds before they’d hang up and move to the next call.

When I was nineteen and moved into my own run-down apartment, on some lonely evenings I’d sit at the card table in my tiny kitchen and call into WLW, wait on hold, and offer my nonsensical opinions about whatever topics held court on the radio that night. In the next room, I set my boom box to record the phone call as it was broadcast over the airwaves so I could listen back to it later.

“Greg’s calling in from Silverton. Greg, welcome to the program.”

“Thanks, Bill. I don’t really understand the topic and don’t have a fully formulated opinion, but I wanted to call just to hear my name said over the air.”

“At least you’re honest, Greg. Thanks for the call.”

Years later, when my wife and I would end up hosting The Catholics Next Door for three hours a day on SiriusXM’s The Catholic Channel, I’d often think of the WLW folks once I discovered that listener phone calls were not only the source of much radio gold but also made my job much easier as they were the ones doing the talking.

At 11 PM I’d flip over to 94.9 - The Fox, Cincinnati’s classic rock station at the time. Leading up to midnight was The Moondog Matinee hosted by Dave Barone. It was a full hour of call-in requests and deep-cut tracks.

I called in so often that not only did Dave Barone start to recognize my voice, but we discovered he lived about a mile away and he actually stopped by for a few beers after work. He even recorded my voicemail message for my answering machine.

Years later our good friends Mac and Katherine Barron started their own show called Catholic in a Small Town. It’s good stuff. They’ve added a lot of inside jokes into the Catholic pod-o-sphere.

“Moving furniture.”

“Tropes.”

“It was a de-light.”

If you listen to their show, you get it.

One of the best phrases which I’m fairly certain can be attributed completely to them is “Name Endorphins.”

Name endorphins is the phenomena of feeling tingles and a little head rush of excitement at the sound of hearing your own name spoken in some sort of media by some other person.

When I called into WLW and the Moondog Matinee? Totally seeking name endorphins.

Even still, after thousands of hours of radio and podcasting over the years — if I hear another podcaster say my name, even if I’m the only listener to the program — name endorphins.

Is this desire to be acknowledged some form of narcissism? I don’t think so, any more than a pat on the back from a teacher would be. It simply feels good when someone says, “I see you, and I hear you.”

Last week I launched “Greg Takes a Risk!” and it was a bit of a nerve-wracking experience to toss myself out into uncharted waters.

Over 100 people — including YOU — subscribed in the first few days.

Amazing.

I’m so grateful.

But I’d like to give special name endorphins to the first nine people who signed up as paid subscribers (as of Monday 9/12).

So to those special nine - Sally, Angie, Rudy, David, Stephanie, Pat, Greg, Daniel, and Rosie - there’s your name endorphins. I see you, and I’m very grateful.

By the way, I’m originally from Atlanta and every time I’ve moved away, I end up moving back. It’s been thirty years since I spent time in Cincinnati. But even now during winter months, once the sun goes down I can still tune my truck’s stereo into AM 700 and listen to talk radio from hundreds of miles away.

I’ve never called into the station again since those nights in my apartment, but if you’re in North America somewhere, I encourage you to tune your radio to AM 700 as you drive around some evenings and see if you can pick up a signal.

I might be listening at the same time.

Apparently, Bill Cunningham is STILL on WLW, and you can listen online. But really, where’s the fun in that?

When is a chapter finished?

Have you been reading my serialized novel, Eighty-Sixed? The prologue and first chapter are available now.

I finished the first draft of this story in 2016 and immediately sent it out to agents. Unlike my previous attempt at getting a novel published, several agents asked for more but ultimately decided against the story.

Interestingly, since then there has been a resurgence of interest in the 1980s in pop culture. Stranger Things, The Goldbergs, and a whole slew of movies have brought 80s interest to an ever-increasing high.

This plays a small part in making me want to try something different by releasing the novel in serialized form, mostly because I want others to enjoy it.

The difficulty for me now is knowing when I’ve edited and re-written each chapter enough to release them.

One of the things I heard from one potentially interested agent about six years ago was that she wanted me to jump into the story faster (spoiler alert: it involves time travel).

She suggested I move all of the actual time travel stuff to the front of the book and all of the setup stuff to the middle.

At first, I thought it was a good idea, but after six years of trying to figure out a way to make that agent’s idea work out (without any guarantee that she’d eventually represent me), I decided that I think I had it right the first time.

That, of course, doesn’t minimize my desire to keep re-writing and re-writing and re-writing and on and on and on to the point that I end up not releasing at all.

And there’s something liberating in that. There’s something liberating in the idea of just getting it out there, and knowing I birthed the dang thing — chapter by chapter — even if there are mistakes that may sneak their annoying ways in.

Some day, most likely after I’ve released it all in serial format (or at least finished re-writing it all for serialized installments), I’ll most likely give the agent route one more try before just tossing the thing up on Amazon and publishing it myself.

What were your thoughts on the Prologue and Chapter One, and on the overall serialized nature of this project? Leave a comment and let me know. How often would you like a new chapter? My plan is weekly (most likely on Fridays). Given that this tale has upwards of 100 chapters, do you want a chapter more frequently?

This early in the game, the possibilities truly are unlimited.

One. Two. Three.

We recently passed the seventh anniversary of the passing of my father-in-law, Hector. I loved that man, and miss him more and more as time goes on.

Since he died we’ve watched as my mother-in-law, Guddy, has slowly fallen prey to dementia. She came to live with us about a year after Hector died, during our short time in Indiana. Our entire family was constantly befuddled by her erratic behavior. She started sneaking out the door with a bag in her hand and headed down the sidewalk as if she was running away. She refused to get food for herself, even though we put a stocked mini-fridge in her bedroom.

When we moved back to Georgia, Guddy went to live with my wife, Jennifer’s, brother for a while, but it became quickly evident that she needed full-time assistance and we moved her into a memory care unit just a month before Covid hit.

Surprisingly, while her mind continued to grow dim over the last two years, her body seemed to strengthen. While she lived with us, she took every step with great hesitancy, as if she was going to topple over. Earlier in the summer when we visited her, she was like a speed walker, taking constant laps back and forth, up and down the hallway.

“Miss Guddy likes to race,” one of the nurses told us.

In the last several weeks, Guddy has fallen multiple times. A trip to the ER in July failed to detect a hairline fracture in her hip. Subsequently, she fell many more times in the ensuing weeks.

A week and a half ago we got a call from the nursing home telling us that she’d hit her head on a side table while falling, and Jennifer spent most of the night with her in the hospital. A few nights later, it happened again. Again, Jennifer was at the hospital.

Jennifer and I talk all the time about how strange it is that both of my parents are 85 years old and in fairly robust health. My mom even bought a new car this week, goes line-dancing twice a week, and drives hundreds of miles at a stretch by herself to go visit friends.

Meanwhile, Guddy turns 80 this week and doesn’t even remember her name, what year it is, and possibly even her own children. Sometimes she looks like she knows who we are, but many times she doesn’t.

Last week at the hospital, Jennifer and I were amazed when Guddy suddenly looked at her fingers and said, “Uno. Dos. Tres.”

Those were the most words we’ve heard her speak in a few years now. She’s primarily spoken English since moving to New York from Puerto Rico back in the 1960s, but lately, if she does mumble out anything, it is as if she’s reverting back to her native language.

It’s hard to love and be frustrated all at the same time, and sadly that’s been the reality of our relationship with Guddy since Hector died. It’s no fun being part of a “sandwich generation,” trying to care for our own children and parents who are becoming more childlike all at the same time.

At Hector’s funeral, I told her, “We’ve got you.”

I meant it. We, as a family, would take care of her.

But it didn’t work out the way any of us expected it to, and we often have to battle the erroneous feelings that we’ve failed her and that we’re letting her down.

The other day Jennifer and I went to the nursing home to install a bedrail for Guddy’s bed. After setting it up, Jennifer brought a nurse to Guddy’s room to make sure it worked.

I sat with Guddy and spent the most one-on-one time with her than I have in almost four years.

When Jennifer and I first started dating, Hector normally worked the second shift. I’d head over to their house in the evenings and often would arrive before Jennifer got off work. I spent a lot of time getting to know my future mother-in-law during that time.

She’d make some coffee for me and fill me up with rice and beans (and let me tell you — Guddy made the BEST rice and beans).

When I sat with her last week, Guddy started crying. She was just plain worn out.

I rubbed her back and held her hand. She wanted her sandals off and I helped her with that, and she mumbled something while pointing at the shoes, and then acted like she wanted me to help her put them back on. None of it made sense. But even though she wasn’t able to respond with words, there was something about sitting with her the other day that took me back to the summer of 1995, waiting to marry her daughter.

Interesting, that’s not what I intended to tell you.

I was going to tell you something funny that happened while sitting with Guddy.

One of the staff — a nice, young, and very recent college grad — was giving a presentation to the residents to help with their memory care.

The presentation was all about the island of Tortuga, just north of Haiti.

She repeated the presentation three times, going through several slides. I sat with Guddy and we both watched the screen together.

The young woman giving the presentation kept accidentally mispronouncing words as she read them.

Instead of saying, “The motto of Haiti is ‘Union makes strength’,” she would say the “Moe-toe of Haiti.”

Moe-toe. What is a moe-toe, I wondered?

It took me a couple of times to realize she was trying to say motto.

She then talked about pirates and “Pill-aughers” invading the land.

Again, it took me a couple of times to realize she meant pillagers.

I don’t tell you that story to make fun of that well-intentioned staff member. Other than those mispronunciations, I was amazed at the level of enthusiasm she was able to maintain.

The reason I tell the story is because it made me chuckle to myself when I finally understood what she was saying.

And when I laughed, Guddy laughed, too.

I know it was just a mimic response, but I imagine I’ll associate the words “motto” and “pillagers” with Guddy for the rest of my life because of those few moments I shared with her last week.

My moe-toe going forward is to laugh in the face of pill-aughers.

This Amused Me.

Both Jennifer and I graduated early from high school. I graduated as a junior, she finished up about halfway through her senior year.

It should be no surprise that at least one of our kids would follow suit.

Last week, our fourth kid graduated high school, just one month into his senior year.

You read that correctly. Here we are at just the mid-point of September and we already celebrated graduation.

What’s funny is that it all happened very suddenly. We didn’t know from day to day when or if he’d finish.

He learned at the end of the last school year that our county has a self-paced night school and that he could finish up his classes as fast or slow as he wanted.

He literally completed his entire senior year of English in one week. Not kidding.

Over the next couple of months, he knocked out his last requirements in economics, government, science, and math. As soon as he passed his last test, Tommy stopped by the office, they checked his grades, and gave him a cap, gown, and fake diploma to hold while they took his picture.

He then sent this to Jennifer.

Our son graduated without us knowing and we found out via text.

A couple of nights later we took him out for dinner and Jennifer picked up a cake.

“What should we put on it?” she asked.

Because of all of our moving the last few years, Tommy really didn’t have a connection to any one school and isn’t planning on heading to college, so we didn’t want to put a mascot on the cake that he wouldn’t care about.

So instead we did this (inspired by Dwight Schrute):

And this amused me.

Media Created This Week

We’ve been building a studio and painting up a storm. I’ll share more on this soon.

In the meantime, if you’d like to hear more about Tommy’s graduation and our recent travails of dealing with dementia, you might enjoy the episode of Adventures in Imperfect Living that we released this week.

You can listen to it here or wherever you find your favorite shows.

Final Thoughts

I said last week that I was going to share three key rejections with you in this newsletter. I’ll save that for an upcoming edition. Let me know your thoughts on this week’s Wednesdays with Greg.

Thanks for being here and taking some risks with me.