It takes time to figure some things out

My godfather, who I always called "Uncle Stan" was quite a character. Always the storyteller. He was funny and knew how to make people smile and laugh.

One Sunday in the summer of 1964, my family (father, mother, sister - age 6 and me - age 8) drove from our house in Long Beach about 40 miles to Sherman Oaks for lunch and an afternoon visit with my godparents and their kids at their house. It was a wonderful day, not too hot, and as the sun was going down and casting a long, golden light down the street, my family got in our 1964 four-door Chevrolet Impala ready for the drive home. Dad started the engine, had the car in reverse, and was ready to back out the driveway into the street, when Uncle Stan raised his hand for my dad to stop and he ran into the house.

In seconds, he came back and walked directly to my door, the driver's side rear, opened it and gave me a copy of the 45 rpm single record of the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" with "Day Tripper" on the flip side.

Unbelieveable, and thank you, Uncle Stan! We played that record over and over -- until it must have been almost thin enough to play one side and hear the song on the other side, too.

Well, thirty years passed, and I was a father myself by that time, and one day, it just struck me. That Sunday in 1964, my Uncle Stan was not giving me a copy of the Beatles "I Want to Hold Your Hand", he was getting rid of his daughter's copy of it.

Well, he knew what he had done, and finally, I had figured it out, too. Man-to-man and father-to-father, there was no need to mention it and I smiled to think that he must have disliked it so much that he resorted to giving it to 8-year-old me to have it out of his house.

Uncle Stan died in 2000. After the services, we gathered at the new house they had moved to in Calabasas to eat and share stories.

When I told my godmother, Aunt Donna, this one, her jaw dropped, she smiled remembering the record exactly and said "That stinker! We tore the house apart looking for that record." Anne, their daughter remembered it perfectly too.

"Harrumph" Uncle Stan would say.

Advice I got from my mother

I have no idea why the subject ever came up with my mother, but sometime when I was about 13 years old, I somehow received advice from her about... unbelievably ... about the subject of girls.

Now, I could have really used some practical tips on how to chat up girls, or where to go on a date, or even something like kissing girls in the back row at the movies, but what my mother came up with ... well, it probably set me back socially about 5 years.

The essence of the advice (which, give me some credit here.... I NEVER acted on) was to "smile at them"

That was it...... just smile at girls.... thanks a lot, Mom.

So, at age 13 I thought it was the most useless thing I had ever heard.

And at age 23, it was still banging around in my head, and I still thought that Mom really hadn't given me much of a practical plan.

And at age 33, years after she had passed away, I still wondered what she could possibly have been thinking.

But, finally, just a few years ago, at 43, with a couple of kids of my own soon to be teenagers....

I could almost imagine those words rolling off of my lips someday......

The Beatles vs. the Monkees

When I was in the third grade, back at Carver Elemetary School in Long Beach, sometime in the mid 1960's, a controversy raged between 9-year old girls and 9-year old boys as to which band was "better", the Beatles or the Monkees.

What "better" meant may never be known, but the dividing line was 100% clear... girls chose the Monkees and boys were left with the Beatles. As I recall, the arguments went somethng along the lines of ".. is so" .... "is not"... and repeated.... History has proved one of the two sides correct.

For the record, I was for the Beatles, but what does the opinion of 9-year old me matter today?

Now, I'll get to the point. The Monkees at least did me the favor of putting my name in one of their songs.... albeit not a song of much passing value.

My first name is Bill and my last, Lever, rhymes with "fever"... So put the parts together and "I'm a B Lever"... "I couldn't leave her, if I tried".....

If you haven't heard it.. don't bother looking for it. If you do, it's your own fault.