"Grandfather Knows Best"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

Now that I am a grandfather, many people whose children have recently had children have asked for my brilliant advice on how to be a good grandparent. As a world-renowned expert whose granddaughter is not even 2 months old but is already more mature than I am, I’d be happy to comply.

For new grandparents, changing diapers is the No. 1 concern. It’s also, of course, the No. 2 concern. But more on that later.

First, you should know that my precious little pumpkin is the most beautiful grandbaby ever born. It is important to acknowledge this and to stop thinking that your grandchild is more adorable than mine. He or she may have been the most beautiful before my granddaughter made her grand entrance into the world, but not anymore. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

With that settled, here is a vital grandparenting tip: Don’t brag. Nobody wants to listen to you babble on about how alert, wonderful and beautiful your grandchild is while looking at 100 photos you have just taken of the little cutie. Fifty photos are more than enough.

Yes, you are proud to be a grandparent, but a little humility goes a long way. You might say something like, “My grandbaby isn’t as alert, wonderful and beautiful as Jerry Zezima’s, but then, whose grandchild is?”

This brings me to your interaction with the baby. As a grandparent, you will have a profound influence on your grandchild, for better (as in the case of my wife, Sue, also known as Nini) or for worse (as in the case of yours truly, also known as Poppie).

As evidence of this, I have already baby-sat for my granddaughter a few times. I fed her, changed her and played with her. I also watched baseball and hockey games with her. I even told her jokes while I held her. She looked up at me and smiled. When her mommy heard this, she said, “That was just gas.”

Now we come to the crucial part: Caring for the baby. It may have been 30 years since you were last entrusted with an infant, but it will all come back to you in pungent waves of nostalgia.

As you will recall, babies do three things: sleep, eat and poop. Nice work if you can get it.

The main difference between babies and adults is that babies not only can get away with it but are actually praised for their efforts.

“Yay!” is the typical reaction when the baby polishes off a bottle faster than you have ever chugged a beer.

“Good job!” everyone says when the baby burps.

“Way to go!” they all exclaim, coughing slightly, when the baby does his or her business.

Speaking of which, being on diaper duty is not nearly as bad as it seemed when your kids were babies. In fact, it’s a refreshing change. Well, maybe not refreshing, but it’s breathtakingly simple, even if it’s not a good idea to breathe while cleaning up.

This helps you bond with your grandchild and is the ultimate proof of your love and devotion to the little darling.

There you have it, new grandparents. This is just a primer, and I will impart more wisdom to you as your grandchild gets older, but at least now you have the basics.

So go ahead and enjoy being a Nini or a Poppie. There’s nothing like it. You can even brag a little. You can also feel free to show unsuspecting people all those pictures you just took because I know that the new addition to your family really is beautiful.

And don’t forget the most important thing: Despite what anyone says, when your adorable little grandbaby smiles at you, it’s not necessarily gas.

Copyright 2013 by Jerry Zezima

"It's About Crime"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a private eye (my other eye, I figured, would be public), but I never pursued it because I was sure I’d end up investigating myself.

Now that I am an adult who does not (as yet) have a criminal record, I thought it would finally be a good time to take a class on how to be a detective.

So I signed up at the Center Moriches Library on Long Island, N.Y., for “Jr. Crime Investigators,” a four-session course that teaches kids how to investigate crimes like those seen on the TV show “CSI.”

The instructor was Larissa Froeschl, a forensic science teacher who has worked with law-enforcement officials and has a master’s degree in biology.

The class was composed of about 10 kids, all of whom were 12, and one geezer, who was almost five times as old but only half as mature.

The first session, which like the others lasted an hour and a half, was a fingerprinting workshop.

“Your prints are hard to read,” Larissa told me as she looked at them on my personal identification sheet. “Maybe you would be a good criminal.”

Then, while wearing rubber gloves, the kids and I used ostrich-feather brushes and nontoxic powders to dust for fingerprints we put on items such as a glass tube, a soap dish, a butter knife, a hair clip and, the one I used, a fake jewel.

“I could bring it home to my wife and tell her it’s real,” I said to Larissa.

“I can see your thumb print on it,” she replied as she inspected the item with a magnifying glass. “Even though your fingerprints aren’t too distinct, with modern forensics, you’d get caught.”

“There goes my criminal career,” I lamented.

I went from crook to kidnapping victim in the next class, which focused on ransom notes.

“You have to give handwriting samples,” said Larissa, who instructed each of us to write the following sentence three times on a sheet of paper: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Then she divided the class into two groups. A member of each group had to write a ransom note for the other group to solve. The note our group had to solve read: “We have your mustache! Give us two million dollars or we will sell it on eBay.”

“It looks like you’ve been kidnapped,” Larissa said.

“Who would want me?” I responded.

Possibly the cops, as I found out in the third session, for which Larissa had created a crime scene that was cordoned off with yellow police tape. Scattered over the floor were pieces of evidence, including a purse, a key and a knife with ketchup on it.

“It could be the murder weapon,” Larissa said.

“Or maybe somebody was making a sandwich with it,” a student named Jack theorized.

After we all gave hair samples and looked at them under microscopes, Larissa said to me, “You have a nice medulla. Your hair has a very distinctive structure.”

“I thought only my hairdresser knew for sure,” I replied.

I escaped the hairy situation (Larissa was the guilty party), but I was a suspect in a jewel heist in the final class.

Actually, I was two suspects because I played dual roles: the husband of the princess whose jewels were stolen and a long-lost friend of hers. Larissa played the princess, her maid and her secretary.

The kids had to use the skills they learned in the previous three classes to deduce the identity of the thief. They correctly collared the secretary.

“At least I’m not going to jail,” I told Larissa at the end of the class.

“No,” she said. “But maybe you can be a detective and get your own show.”

I can see it now: “CSI: Column Stupidity Investigation.”

Copyright 2013 by Jerry Zezima

"Car Talk"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

In the four decades since I took a driver’s ed class, I have become such a proficient motorist that I could teach a class myself except that I have two speeding tickets on my record and my name isn’t Ed.

Still, in an effort to become less of a menace to society and, in the process, reduce my insurance rates, I recently took a refresher course from a guy who not only was named New York State Driving Instructor of the Year in 2011 by the National Safety Council, but has only one speeding ticket on his record.

“I was driving my son to college and I guess I was going a little too fast on the highway because I got pulled over,” Marty Hirschfield explained. “My son was laughing at me in the backseat.”

In fact, Hirschfield isn’t even the best driver in his family.

“My wife is better than I am,” he said.

“I could be in NASCAR,” I told Hirschfield before the first of the two three-hour defensive-driving sessions, “but my SUV, which has 183,000 miles on it, can’t do 200 miles per hour.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re taking this class,” he replied.

Hirschfield, who has worked for Driver Education Consultants (defensivedriving4ny.com) for 17 years, told me and my 25 classmates that we had to remember four important things: “One, if I ask you a question, humor me. Two, stay awake. Three, pay attention. Four, I need you to laugh at my bad jokes. And they’re pretty bad.”

Example: “In one class, I asked people to fill out the form all of you got. Where it said ‘sex,’ one woman wrote, ‘Sometimes.’ I said, ‘Lady, that’s more information than I wanted to know.’ ”

Hirschfield said that a lot of people take his course every three years but that very few of them remember what he said.

“I can tell the same jokes I told three years ago,” he proclaimed. “I don’t have to write new material.”

Much of Hirschfield’s material, which I was hearing for the first time, was pretty serious, such as the dangers of excessive speed, drinking and driving, texting and driving, and talking on a cellphone while driving.

“Nobody talks on a cellphone while they’re watching their favorite TV show,” Hirschfield said. “They don’t want to be distracted. So why do they talk on the phone while they’re driving?”

Good question. He asked plenty of others, as when he said to me, “Jerry, in the real world, what does a yellow light mean?”

My response: “Floor it!”

The class laughed knowingly. Hirschfield smiled and said, “That’s right. Pedal to the metal. But what is it supposed to mean?”

“Caution,” I replied.

Hirschfield said, “That’s right. Slow down.”

It was basic stuff that most people either forget or flout. But Hirschfield told us something that all but one person in the class didn’t know.

“Can you ever make a left turn on red?” he asked.

Dorothy raised her hand and responded, “Yes, if you are coming out of a one-way street and turning onto another one-way street.”

Hirschfield exclaimed, “That’s right! You took my class three years ago. You must remember my bad jokes.”

The scariest part, aside from the 10 short films we saw, involved the penalties for drunken driving in other countries. In Malaysia, for example, a DWI offender is jailed, and if he is married, his wife is jailed, too.

“If that doesn’t get you to stop drinking and driving,” Hirschfield said, “nothing will.”

All in all, the class was terrific, and our witty and insightful instructor was, of course, the driving force behind it. I even have a certificate to show I graduated.

“Drive home safely,” Hirschfield told me on the way out. “After all, you don’t want to get a speeding ticket.”

Copyright 2013 by Jerry Zezima

"This Guy Really Delivers"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

With apologies to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who is dead and can’t sue me, I live in the House of the Three Gables. When the vent in the main one, the Clark gable, was gone with the wind after a recent storm, my wife, Sue, asked me to fix it, to which I replied, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

So we hired handyman extraordinaire Arnie Larsen, who happens to be our mailman. In addition to his day job at the U.S. Postal Service, Arnie is a carpenter who also does roofing, flooring and all kinds of other work.

“I can pretty much build a house except for major plumbing and electrical,” said Arnie, who has even worked on a clamming boat.

“You’re a man of many hats,” I said, “although it would probably be difficult to wear them all at the same time.”

“Especially in the mail truck,” said Arnie, adding that he enjoys his job as a letter carrier and has worked hard in the 14 years he has been with the post office.

“Do the people on your route ask you to stop bringing them bills?” I wondered.

“All the time,” he said. “They also want to know if it’s cold enough for me or hot enough for me.”

“So it’s true that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays you from the swift completion of your appointed rounds?” I asked.

“Yes,” Arnie said. “Except if there’s a blizzard like the one we got this year. It’s tough to make it through three feet of snow.”

“At least you didn’t bring me any bills,” I noted.

“Most people are very nice,” Arnie said. “On really hot days, they’ll bring me bottles of cold water. Or they’ll leave one in the mailbox. Some of them tell me the neighborhood gossip, like who’s having an affair and stuff like that. Then there are the women who shop online or order things from a catalog and don’t want their husbands to know how much they bought, so they ask me to leave their packages next door. It doesn’t matter because a lot of guys don’t even open the mail.”

“How about dogs?” I asked.

“They don’t open the mail, either,” Arnie said. “I like dogs, but I did get bitten once. I made friends with this cute Jack Russell terrier and petted him every day. One day he decided to see what I tasted like. It was only a nip, but I guess he didn’t like the flavor because he left me alone after that. There was also this boxer that chased me. I had to hide in the bushes.”

Arnie’s adventures haven’t been confined to his postal career.

“When I was a young man,” recalled Arnie, who’s 42, “I was on a home improvement job when the homeowner’s wife came downstairs naked to do the laundry. I had to hide behind a wall. I sat on a spackle bucket until she went back upstairs. I told my boss and he laughed. The homeowner laughed, too. When it came time to collect my money, the boss said, ‘You already got paid.’ ”

Another homeowner tried to help Arnie and fell through the ceiling.

“He came down in the kitchen,” Arnie said.

“You won’t get any help like that from me,” I assured him. “I couldn’t even fix the gable vent.”

“I bet you could have,” said Arnie, who climbed up to the roof and replaced the vent in no time. His work was so good and his fee was so reasonable that we may hire him to put a new floor in the living room.

“Don’t worry about paying me right away,” Arnie said. “I’ll just leave a bill in the mailbox.”

Copyright 2013 by Jerry Zezima

"Spaced Out"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

I didn’t major in physics in college, though I do have a BS in life, but I know that one of the principles of this fascinating science is that any space will be filled — except, of course, the one between my ears.

So it is no surprise that practically every nook and cranny of my house is filled with stuff. This includes drawers I can barely open because they are crammed with things like pots, pans, pot holders, hot plates, sandwich bags, aluminum foil, socks, T-shirts, pajamas, sweaters, sweatshirts, sweatpants and underwear. The sandwich bags and the underwear are not, you should know, in the same drawer.

A couple of closets are bursting with coats, jackets, windbreakers and parkas, most of which aren’t mine.

Then there are containers spilling over with pens and pencils and a large receptacle loaded with spatulas, potato mashers, soup ladles and wooden spoons. If I even tried to fit a toothpick in there, the whole thing would explode.

One cabinet is jammed with literally dozens of pieces of Tupperware, which I could swear are engaging in intimate activities and are reproducing at such an alarming rate that when I open the doors, half of them rain down on my head. It’s a good thing we don’t keep crockery up there.

I could buy a barrel the size of a Volkswagen in which to store paper clips and within a week it will be filled to overflowing.

And don’t even get me started on the garage, which is filled with too many things to mention, much of them belonging to my two daughters, who don’t live at home anymore. The one thing that’s not in the garage is a car.

To find an explanation for this frightening phenomenon, I called Alain Brizard, a professor of physics at my alma mater, Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt.

“There is a saying in physics that nature abhors a vacuum,” Brizard told me.

“I abhor a vacuum, too,” I replied. “It’s in one of the closets with all those coats and jackets. I can’t even close the door.”

“That’s because of the second law of thermodynamics,” said the good professor. 

This law states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases. Entropy, according to Brizard, is a sense or measure of disorder.

“Teens and toddlers are masters of entropy,” said Brizard, noting that his 17-year-old son, Peter, an otherwise fine and upstanding young man, is a prime example.

“His room is filled with stuff,” the professor told me. “There are clothes all over the floor. If there is a piece of the floor that is exposed, it will soon be covered with clothes. The only spot that isn’t covered with clothes is covered by the bed.”

While entropy could be blamed for the disorder in Peter’s room, another scientific explanation is that he is a chip off the old building block of matter.

“My office is a mess,” Brizard confessed. “There are papers all over the floor. But if you ask me for a specific piece of paper, I will find it. Chaos is not all that it seems. Sometimes there is order in chaos.”

Brizard’s wife, Dinah, a professional chef whose kitchen is spotless (“I help by doing the dishes,” Brizard said), and my wife, Sue, a teacher and a fellow St. Mike’s grad, are both orderly.

“This must fall under the first law of marriage: Opposites attract,” I said.

Brizard agreed, adding: “Entropy can be defeated. One way is to clean out your drawers and closets once in a while. But the best way is to be married to someone who is orderly.”

For this theory alone, Prof. Brizard deserves to win the Nobel Prize. I just hope he can find it under all those papers in his office.

Copyright 2013 by Jerry Zezima

"Picasso and Me"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

As a painter, Pablo Picasso had nothing on me. Sure, he had a Blue Period, but it lasted only three years. My Blue Period has lasted almost 25 years, and every time I’ve had a painting project, it’s made me blue, which is the color of the master bedroom and the adjoining bathroom.

It’s also made me green (downstairs bathroom), yellow (upstairs bathroom), white (family room), sea foam (hallway) and rose (living room and dining room, which puts me one up on Picasso’s Rose Period).

A few years ago, when I announced to my wife, Sue, that I was retired from painting, she said, “You’re not retired. You’re just on hiatus.”

My hiatus ended recently when I got a request to paint. But it didn’t come from Sue, who has been after me to repaint the hallway, which would be the 21st such project in the 15 years we have lived in our house and approximately the 30th if you count our nine previous years in a condo.

The request came from my son-in-law Guillaume, who asked me to help him with his first painting project, a bedroom in the house where he and my younger daughter live.

I had haunting flashbacks to my many painting misadventures. Like the time I painted the kitchen in the condo. The trickiest part was painting around the ceiling fan, where the lights were situated. I worked with the lights on until I smelled something burning. It was my hair, which had come in contact with a hot bulb. I pulled one of two cords — the one I thought would turn off the lights — only to discover that I had turned on the fan, whereupon a whirling blade hit me in the head.

It should have knocked some sense into me, but I kept on with the painting projects, including a particularly awful one in the living room of our house, which had huge ceiling beams that Sue wanted me to remove. I initially used a crowbar that punched holes in the ceiling. Then I used a rope to yank the beams down. One narrowly missed my skull. It took me a week to complete the project.

As I told Guillaume, the worst part of painting isn’t the painting, it’s the prep work. This includes using a mile and a half of masking tape to cover areas you don’t want to paint. Then you have to prime the walls and the ceiling. When you paint, you have to put on two coats, though if it’s a hot day, you can wear a T-shirt.

The good thing about this latest project was that we didn’t have to paint the ceiling. And Guillaume bought a new kind of paint that contained primer. Also, the walls needed only one coat.

The best part was that Guillaume proved to be a natural.

“When I painted for the first time,” I told him, “I barely knew which end of the brush to use.”

“It could have been a brush with disaster,” he replied.

“I am so proud of you!” I exclaimed, knowing this project would be enjoyable because I’d be sharing it with a fellow punster. “This is going to pan out.”

“We can put it on our bucket list,” said Guillaume.

“It’s a good thing our wives aren’t here,” I said. “They’d bristle at our jokes.”

“Yes,” Guillaume responded, “but we’re on a roll.”

It went on like this for most of the day. When our wives got back from shopping, they marveled at the nice job we did and approved of the light pink color.

“I’m going back into retirement now,” I told Sue.

“How about the hallway?” she replied.

Unlike Picasso, I have a terrible feeling I am about to enter my Sea Foam Period.

Copyright 2013 by Jerry Zezima

"Now That's Italian!"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

As a nice Italian boy, as well as a former runner-up in the Newman’s Own & Good Housekeeping Recipe Contest for a dish I called Zezima’s Zesty Ziti Zinger, I have many remembrances of things pasta.

Aside from being a flash in the pan, however, I can barely boil spaghetti.

So I recently took a class in which I learned how to make ravioli.

The class, at the Brookhaven Free Library on Long Island, N.Y., was given by Richard Kanowsky, whose last name isn’t Italian and whose immediate family is as culinarily challenged as I am.

“My mom is horrible in the kitchen,” Chef Richard said. “My dad, too.”

But his maternal grandmother was “a really good cook,” he said. “I learned from her.”

Although Chef Richard’s ethnic background includes Russian, German, Dutch, French and Czech, his grandmother was half-Sicilian. “It qualifies me to make ravioli,” he said.

“My ethnic background includes Martian,” I told him. “Otherwise, I’m Italian. My mom is a great cook. My wife and my mother-in-law are of Italian descent. They’re great cooks, too. Unfortunately,” I added, “it doesn’t qualify me to make ravioli.”

“We’ll fix that,” promised Chef Richard, who was impressed that I beat out all but one person in a field of thousands in the national recipe contest. “What was your secret?” he asked.

“Red wine and vodka,” I responded. “Paul Newman loved my dish. I told him I fed some to my dog to see if it was all right. He asked if my dog was still alive. When I said yes, he wolfed the stuff down like he hadn’t eaten in a week. That he and my dog have since passed on is merely a coincidence.”

After going over his professional background -- he has cooked at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston and at Carnegie Hall in New York City and co-owns Kanobley Catering on Long Island -- Chef Richard told the dozen class members that we would be rolling in dough.

“That,” he explained, “is why I asked you to bring rolling pins.”

Although Chef Richard had already made the dough we would be using in the class, he demonstrated how it’s done so we could do it at home. The ingredients were flour, eggs, olive oil, heavy cream and kosher salt. The process involved making a well, or a large hole in the middle, and using a fork to stir the egg mixture into the flour and collapsing the well walls.

“You knead the dough,” Chef Richard noted.

“No kidding,” I said to Toni Anne, who was sitting next to me. “I ought to play Powerball.”

After Chef Richard gave us eggs, cheese, flour and bags of dough, he handed out powdered rubber gloves and showed us how to roll pieces of dough, cut them into smaller pieces, squeeze a small mound of cheese onto each piece, use a pastry brush to apply the beaten eggs to the edges and fold over the dough, using our fingertips to push air out of the ravioli.

“If there’s an air pocket,” he said, “the ravioli could explode in boiling water.”

Chef Richard went around the class to inspect our work. When he got to me, he said, “Your ravioli could be served in a restaurant.”

“Tell the Ritz-Carlton I’m available,” I said.

Then I took my dozen ravioli home to cook for myself and my wife, Sue.

I plopped them into a pot of boiling water. They didn’t explode. I drained them, put them in a bowl, covered them in tomato sauce and served a ravioli to Sue.

“Delicious,” she said. “It didn’t break apart. You did a good job.”

Coming from a great Italian cook, it was the ultimate compliment. Paul Newman would have loved it.

Copyright 2013 by Jerry Zezima