Allow me to introduce myself

I multi-tasked before anyone knew the term. I multi-tasked before Facebook, before texting, before smartphones, before Google, before DVDs, before VCRs, before PCs, even before Ronald Reagan. Picture it, Sophia Petrillo – Pittsburgh, 1980. A seventeen-year old Opie with the horny weenie of the Marlboro Man after a photo shoot, the supple lines of a butterfly swimmer who just broke the high school record, and the witty confidence of Bea Arthur after Season 2 of “Maude.”

Uncle Ed Gallagher died in the middle of a heat wave, June of that year. He was seventy-three years old, ancient by my teenaged standard, little more than middle aged, now that I’m pushing fifty. No one knows I was suffering from a terrible case of athlete’s foot, I’d been peeling dead skin between my toes for six months, but most of all – that I enjoyed it. Every time I pulled dead skin from my toes it felt like I was creating a Rembrandt masterpiece.

My toes itched like crazy that Monday afternoon I went to swim practice at the University of Pittsburgh, but I ignored it because I wanted to see my coach, hot and sexy Fred the neurotic Chevrolet Caprice driver. Why’d he drive a Caprice, I wonder. Even then, single men in their thirties wouldn’t be caught dead in a housewife’s car, let alone a muscular Italian with a hairy crotch – no one knows I remember things like that. I remember neurotic Fred’s hairy crotch, too bad I never got to bury my face in it.

I drove home that Monday – believe it was June 23, 1980. Double practice day, we swam three miles that morning followed by ten times around the stadium, up and down those god-damned stairs. But I got to see Fred’s bush in the showers, made it worth it. Then I drove the Datsun B-210 to afternoon practice, swam another two miles, and drove home. Too bad I got the urge to put my watch on while I was driving up Rodi Road, because I did and forgot to look where I was going. Swerved right into a telephone pole and went sideways down the hill. Car was totaled beyond recognition, but I crawled out the passenger window unharmed. Poor Jeff, it was supposed to have been his car. Don’t tell anyone … I’ve always told people I passed out due to the heat wave.

Multi-tasking didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.