The Time I Was Almost Possibly Horribly Assaulted by Frat Guys

His dying regret was being unable to personally
run over Hitler with his wheelchair.

Franklin Roosevelt once said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Considering FDR lived most of his adult life in a wheelchair while putting himself through four presidential elections and carrying on at least one affair while married to a cousin who also happened to be Eleanor Roosevelt, the guy clearly was one of the more fearless people who ever lived.

But I've had fear. Several kinds:

• The fear that the angry black cricket in my basement will locate me before I locate it. 
• The fear at Disney World during the Tower of Terror ride, which required special tools to pry my carpal-tunnel-locked grip on the so-called safety bar.
• The fear in bed, haunted with the visions of Nazi face-melting the night after I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The kind of fear I'm writing about today is a different kind of fear, a fear you experience right before something really really horrible is going to happen. That something hasn't happened yet, but it's the anticipation that ratchets up the horror.

Like Pulling Teeth, or, uh, Fixing Them

Right now, living alone, it's as if I'm not the father.

Last I blogged, a tooth that was bothering me for some time finally chipped on Sunday, my first full day living alone while the wife and kids relax (read: drive each other crazy) in Florida. On Monday I was able to secure an appointment with my dentist for the following day.

Unfortunately, the only time that I could snag was at 12:30pm, and smack-in-the-middle-of-the-day appointments usually mean I have to burn a personal day. But I was permitted the rare option of working at home, which meant I was kept company in the morning by Maury Povitch and his time-honored techniques of dispelling the ambiguity of disputed paternity. One of the episodes on this particular day was called, and I'm not kidding but I wish I was, "Your Baby Doesn't Have 12 Fingers...He Can't Be My Son!"

Spoiler alert: Mr. Dozenfingers was right.

This Is Why I Shouldn't Be Left Home Alone

Yes, they made a fourth one. With French
Stewart as a robber. French Stewart!

So. My kids are with the in-laws in Florida for a month, and the wife joined them in the Sunshine State for the next two weeks, meaning I've 10 days by myself.

Ten days. By myself.

For some guys, a week and a half without the wife and kids would be a blur of cigars, strip clubs, and shotguns. (All right, maybe not for you, specifically, but you get the idea.)

But for me, however, things haven't gone off to such a great start.

I should mention that the last time I was left alone, Mrs. The Anthony Show and her friend went backpacking through Europe — this was less than a year into our marriage, and we didn't have kids yet — and one night I lost track of how much angel-hair pasta I was inhaling while watching a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond and discovered I had overeaten so much that it felt as if the pasta was backing up from my stomach through my throat.

In other words, I can't go very long without adult supervision.

Light Fuse; Get Away

NOT what my neighborhood fireworks
shows were like.

The Fourth of July — or, as we sometimes call it, July Fourth — doesn't excite me the way it did when I was much younger. This year it means I'm off from work and I might go to the beach in the morning and a party in the afternoon and I will likely get drunk, so it's not that bad, but still, the fireworks shows don't exactly light my fuse.

During the typical summer vacation that I enjoyed between the ages of six and fifteen — the years after I was first allowed to roam the neighborhood sans grownup and before I started working — July 4 marked one of the few milestones in a season when every day seemed to blend into another.

The Time I Almost Got Fired From My Job in High School

This can get you in a lot of trouble.

Hi! It's been a while, yes? Well, let's get right to it.

When you're an adult and you work in a field where you're an "at-will" employee — meaning you can get canned for pretty much any reason, and you don't have the backing of a powerful tax-enhanced union that guarantees job security and mandated break times — you can never be very confident when it comes to job stability.

I've had three situations involving job loss or potential job loss:

Shoulda Coulda Woulda, Part 1

So, like, what was that smoke monster again?

Loose ends. Unsolved mysteries. These are the things that can keep you up at night, or cause traffic accidents while dwelling on them as you navigate rush-hour traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

I don't mean broad enigmas like "Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried?" or "What the hell was Lost really about?"; I'm blogging about dilemmas of a personal nature, like:

• How different would my life had been if I'd accepted that job in Chicago?
• Why did Grace really break up with me?
• Why does my physical appearance resemble that of "Uncle" Fred more than of my father?

Eventually, some of these mysteries will be solved (hopefully before either Fred or your father is on his deathbed) and some won't (Grace's restraining order against you won't expire until 2075). Here's an example of one of the unsolved mysteries from my own life.

Cross-Promotion: Meanwhile, on My Other Blog...

I discuss the Creedence Clearwater Revival album Willy and the Poor Boys on my music blog, The A-Plus. Check it out!