My life as the world's oldest sign-spinner

Time to add another job to my LinkedIn profile: Sign-spinner.

There I was, on the sidewalk in Concord, becoming possibly the first-ever sign spinner born during the Kennedy administration. While I usually don't usually brag about my dexterity, I only dropped the sign a few times (more on that later) and my knuckles only got a few injuries from the cardboard.

Kind of a success.

Yes, sign-spinning. On a busy street corner. By someone who has a grandchild.

It was Easter Sunday and I was "greeting" at the church where Mrs. Brad and I now attend. It's an awesome, energized, growing place and we're thrilled to be a part of it. I regularly help greet people anyway, so when asked if I could jump in to help on the "Super Bowl Sunday of Christianity," (apologies to Jesus) I was all in. Easter greeting!

I went to the pregame meeting and got my assignment. Along with Chris and S.J. (both millennials), I was sent out to hold a sign and wave at people who drive on the busy thoroughfare next to the church campus.

The sign had a friendly phrase and S.J. mentioned that I should cover up the part that said, "Happy Mother's Day" (which, to be fair, was in small print. And isn't Easter kind of a better version of Mother's Day? And really, shouldn't every day be Mother's Day?).

I was there.

Me. A gray-haired man whistling an Eagles song while holding the sign. And feeling awkward. Because of the second sentence in this paragraph.

Until . . . I thought about spinning the sign. Chris and S.J. were bouncing their signs and waving at friendly motorists – many of whom pulled into the church's multiple parking lots. But I starting spinning the sign. I was a sign spinner, like the young people who dance and spin signs along busy roadways. All I needed were ear buds and some hip-hop on my phone.

I twirled the sign. I rotated it 360 degrees. I went faster, wondering if I could get the sign spinning fast enough that it would lift me off the ground.

People honked and waved, most likely at Chris and S.J., but possibly at me ("Mommy, is that grandpa spinning the sign?" "No, dear, Grandpa is dead. But bless that man's heart. He probably doesn't know where he is.")

I got better at it. I checked my watch a few times, seeing how much longer I needed to stay out and I dropped the sign a couple of times and picked it back up. Nobody noticed.

Then I went for a spectacular spin and . . .

Dropped the sign, which slid into the street.

I bent down to pick it up, stepped out and realized that . . . I stopped traffic.

The sign-spinning old man clumsily dropped his sign in the middle of a busy street just as the traffic backed up. How sad!

The driver in the first car smiled and waved at me. I waved back, staggering back to the sidewalk.

And thought, "I have a grandchild. I am spinning signs."

Then I thought more about it.

It was Easter. I was spinning a sign that invited people to hear the most important message in the world: The resurrection of Jesus and the opportunity for new life.

So I kept spinning. And waving.

But frankly, I may avoid sign-spinning next Easter. Because I'm a grandfather who was born during the Kennedy administration, for crying out loud. Let the kids do that.

I'll get a rocking chair and shout at cars to slow down.

And reminisce about my old days as a sign-spinner.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Is strategic grocery bagging wise?

Who knew there is a right way to bag groceries? Other than "don't put eggs under a gallon of milk," I've long insisted that there is no correct way.

Friends, however, disagree. Unfortunately, they have support from the grocery-bagging community.

I do virtually all of our shopping for groceries and have done so since Mrs. Brad and I married, despite the fact that I am a terrible cook. A grocery list and willingness to navigate a grocery store will get you places.

Anyway, I have always insisted that it doesn't matter how you bag groceries, as long as nothing breaks.

I openly make fun of baggers who want to put toiletries in a separate plastic bag inside my paper bag. I argue that it won't hurt the vegetables if they touch cough syrup–or even a cereal box.

I take the groceries straight home and put them away. I don't need similar groceries to be in the same bag and in fact, I secretly believe that is a way to create food ghettos.

Right? Isn't a policy of only allowing canned food to be next to other canned food similar to the disgraced former policies in Central and Eastern Europe? (Pay no attention to how we store food. That's a different issue. This is about transportation from the grocery store to my home.)

My philosophy was foolproof. What rational person would disagree?

How about Alex?

We had a discussion about grocery shopping at work recently (I'm sure it had to do with our job. Probably.) and my friend Alex revealed that not only does she organize her grocery list by category (all produce together, all meat together, etc.), she has a strict strategy about bagging groceries.

Similar foods go together. They have to go together, according to Alex. She will put her groceries on the counter in a way to make it clear how they should be bagged.

The sound of my eyes rolling may have been audible. Until . . .

Alex said that cashiers and baggers have complimented her on her strategy.

My immediate reaction was to do what I always do when someone disagrees with me: Make fun of them, then check on the internet to confirm that they're crazy.

Alex isn't crazy.

An article on a website called Insider (presumably about people who never go outdoors) revealed that a survey of people who bag groceries for a living showed that they agree with Alex. Put cold food with cold food. Produce with produce. Put toiletries in their own bags. Bag delicate items (bread, eggs) separate from everything else.

I've spent my life considering that an obsessive-compulsive disorder ("I must have my groceries bagged in a certain way. Don't let the toilet paper container touch the potatoes!") is in fact the correct strategy, according to experts.

It's like when the football statistical experts first suggested that it would be smartest to never punt or baseball statistics experts said a walk was indeed as good as a hit.

Crazy, right? Except for one thing: Apparently, most of the world already knew this. My philosophy that it doesn't matter how you bag groceries as long as you don't break the eggs is outside of mainstream thought.

You should organize your groceries for the ride home. Keep similar items together.

Maybe I will do that. Maybe I'll change decades of behavior. Maybe I'll be like Alex and organize my shopping list and my grocery bag, to ensure that everything stays pure.

Or maybe that's a conspiracy to keep vegetables from mixing with cereal and canned goods, so they'll never realize how powerful they are.

Diversity forever!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Pilgramage to labyrinth falls short of a-mazing

It sounded worthy of a pilgrimage: A labyrinth!

Since Mrs. Brad and I moved from Suisun City to our new home last summer, we've explored the region. Not only have we visited nearby cities and attractions (anything with the word "reservoir" in it has been hiked), but we've looked around the community immediately surrounding our home.

We like to walk, so we've visited hiking trails. We like to read, so we've visited the library. I love to play basketball, so I've gone to the gym. We've checked out the golf courses and the swimming pools.

But a mysterious labyrinth kept cropping up in the community newspaper, with directions  ("To get to the labyrinth . . .").

It had to be cool, right? Maybe mystical? The fact that the directions weren't simple (they involved a few turns and several estimated distances you needed to traverse between them) made it even better. If you went 0.2 miles past a sign and turned on a fire road? Awesome.

I envisioned something like the Cool Patch Pumpkins  maze in Dixon. Except this was a labyrinth, which seemed more . . . zenlike . . . than a simple maze. There would be something spiritual about it, something otherworldly.

The difficulty to reach it made that more likely, right?

On a recent Saturday, we decided to check it out. We knew it wasn't too long a hike and I took a photograph of the directions from the newspaper, so we'd have in my phone. We headed up the hill across the valley from our home.

The walk wasn't too steep and we pushed on. Our excitement built. We were going to see the labyrinth!

Twenty minutes, 30 minutes. Not bad.

We walked through neighborhoods we didn't know existed . . . the mystery was deepening. This was like a hike to another world! I checked my directions.

"It says in two-tenths of a mile, there's a sign on the right," I told Mrs. Brad. "The sign says . . . 'labyrinth.' "

We pushed forward, up the hill and saw the sign. "Labyrinth." Almost there!

We walked on the fire road. We could feel the pull. "A sign!" I shouted. "It says labyrinth, 240 feet."

The labyrinth was just up the hill.

Excited, we headed up the hill, looked under the trees and saw it.

A labyrinth.

Of small rocks.

On the ground.

It was a maze laid out on the ground, with large gravel. You could walk through it, I guess, although it would be easier to just step over the rocks.

It was a labyrinth, but it was a labyrinth in the same way that the puzzles in the "Highlights" magazine for kids are a labyrinth.

I felt like Ralphie  in the "A Christmas Story" movie, when he drinks gallons of Ovaltine to get his Orphan Annie Secret Society decoder pin in the mail. Excitedly, he works to break the code . . . and it turns out that the "secret message" is to drink more Ovaltine. "A crummy commercial?" he asks.

A crummy labyrinth?

There's nothing wrong with the labyrinth. It's a perfectly fine layout of rocks. I'm sure people took plenty of time to get the rocks to the area and to create the design. I'm even sure the labyrinth has some spiritual meaning for someone (the person who sells rocks?).

But one of the mysteries of where we live is no longer a mystery. Our community labyrinth, the subject of frequent newspaper articles and discussion between Mrs. Brad and I, isn't that special.

The views from the labyrinth area are great. The hike was a challenge.

The labyrinth? It was like a commercial to drink more Ovaltine.

Time to head out to hike around a reservoir.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Not to create an atomspheric river on your parade, but . . .

Years ago – before the Internet – the Daily Republic had a  service where readers could phone in and hear a recording with winning lottery numbers, local sports scores, weather reports and more.

It was (kind of) interactive and it was the responsibility of those of us who worked on the news and sports copy desks to update the recordings every night before we went home.

I was the sports editor, but I often persuaded the copy desk folks to let me report the weather. I would do a parody of a TV newscaster or morning drive-time radio host, using a fake voice and breaking out neighborhood-specific references while making chatty references ("if you live out in Green Valley, it's not quite time to put away the umbrella. We expect a few spatterings of showers starting around the evening drive time Thursday. And of course it should get a little nippy again Friday morning up in Allendale . . .").

Here's what I wish I knew then: The term "atmospheric river."

That is, if you don't know, the weather term du jour for rain.

Read any newspaper or Internet article about rainstorms and you likely get to hear that "an atmospheric river will soak the Bay Area  Thursday . . ."

It's dreadful.

It's fantastic.

The phrase might be appropriate if it were only used for crazy storms. Perhaps "atmospheric river" would be an appropriate description for a series of storms that result in flooding and loss of property. But that's not how it's used. If we have a looming storm that will bring a half-inch of rain,  the weather people want to talk about an atmospheric river.

I love it, because it's colorful. Phrases that create a mental picture are the best: Cauliflower ears. A gullywasher. Hand caught in the cookie jar.

An atmospheric river.

But I hate the phrase because it is an exaggeration. Atmospheric river means that it's going to rain.

I guess I'd be OK if we just decided to describe all weather phenomena in the same way. A snowstorm would be an atmospheric avalanche. A windy day would be an atmospheric vacuum. A hot day would be an atmospheric oven. Summer would be an atmospheric desert.

In that way, I could justify – maybe – the use of atmospheric river.

But now? This is just a silly phrase. This the weather equivalent of "at the end of the day" or "if you build it, they will come" (a phrase I banned from the Daily Republic when I was a sports editor, because I had already used it about five times. Nobody else could do the same).

Whether "atmospheric river" will open the door to a series of imaginative weather descriptors or will be banished to the trash heap of  history remains to be seen, but I love it.

And I hate it.

However . . . I know how I would feel if I could go back in time and record more local weather reports on the Daily Republic phone service. I would be all in.

That's because I  understand it might get a little chilly over toward Elmira, so keep the scarves available. And don't be surprised if you see a little bit of frost on the windshield when you head out to work in the morning. And be ready for the evening commute, because it looks like we'll have an atmospheric river coming our way!

Man, I miss those recordings.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Social media videos, baseball predictions and more

We're heading into April, which means its time for spring cleaning – a chance for me to empty my metaphorical notebook filled with thoughts that aren't enough to complete a column, but are too important to ignore.

Well, maybe not too important (they include baseball and breakdancing) , but anyway, here we go . . .

•  The single most disturbing element of social media is how eagerly we rush to judgment about someone, based on a short video clip.

We've all seen clips of people behaving badly – calling others names, making absurd statements, getting in ridiculous confrontations. Often someone will share a 10-second video and the entire social media world will rush to post the most outraged comment, hoping to condemn the person forever.

Many times the criticism is deserved. The famous video of former NFL Ray Rice punching his wife is one example that fleshed out the narrative and showed he was deserving of punishment.

But other times, we just don't know. We don't know what happened before or after. We don't really know for sure what actually happened in the video.

I don't ask people to ignore what they see. We're in the video age and what we see is often what's true. Even if a video clip is only 10 seconds long, it's still (generally) an actual 10 seconds. It happened.

But wouldn't it be better if we could pull back first? What if we acknowledged that we might not know the whole story? The real story could be better, it could be worse.

But it's not the whole story.

Consider that the next time you see something.

Off my soapbox.

Today's topics du jour . . .

• Baseball season started, so it's nearly impossible for a former sports writer to avoid predictions. At least for the two Bay Area teams.

Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of reason for optimism for either. The Oakland A's are the better team of the two, but there's a lot of pressure on their young players who emerged last year to continue to improve. Add a spate of injuries and it seems unlikely that they will make the playoffs.

The San Francisco Giants, meanwhile, are at their lowest point in a decade, with an aging core and help still a year or two away. This could be a dismal season at the newly named Oracle Park.

My guess? Giants win about 70 of 162 games, A's win about 85.

A rough next six months.

• We call lions, tigers, jaguars and many other large predators "big cats." Aren't you glad that there aren't similarly sized "big dogs"?

Think about it: A canine version of a tiger.

Fortunately, the last "Big Dog" I knew was Glen Robinson, the first pick of the 1994 NBA draft who played 11 seasons in the league.

Still, "big dogs" is a terrifying prospect.

• Did you see that the organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympics want to add breakdancing as an official sport?

Really.

Of course it seems ridiculous, because . . . well, it's breakdancing.

But then you realize rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming are both Olympic sports and suddenly breakdancing doesn't seem that crazy.

I'm going to go get cardboard and start preparing.

• I'd write more, but I need to go find that secret awful video of me and keep it off the internet.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.