If you are familiar with Max’s hot dogs on the Long Branch, New Jersey boardwalk, or the Windmill in Long Branch’s West End, or my sister’s Fourth of July parties for the last gazillion years, you know Jersey hot dogs.

Man those are hot dogs…

This year I had a carrot hot dog on the Fourth of July.  It was awesome.

 

The first part of the summer is always a bittersweet time of the year for us.

It starts on Mother’s Day; then Memorial Day; Hayley’s birthday; includes Father’s Day; then my birthday; Kim’s birthday; our wedding anniversary;  the Fourth of July; then July 19^th, the day of Donny’s accident; and ends with Savannah’s birthday on July 20^th; then we breathe again.

And I always find myself reliving that summer.

We had some good times in the early part of the summer of 2002.

On June 20, 2002, Donny and I headed off to Wolf Trap to see Jo Dee Messina and Brad Paisley after Kim couldn’t go.  It was his first and only concert.  I had seats in the first row, but the three girls he knew sitting in the lawn turned out to be tough competition for the old man, but Donny didn’t leave me hanging too long and finished out the show sitting next to me in the front row.

That Fourth of July 2002 we spent in Jersey at my sister’s and got down to the beach.  He used to mess with me and quote the line from the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore, “You want a piece of me old man?” whenever we were doing anything sports-related like throwing the football at the beach or mixing it up with the soccer ball on my sister’s lawn.

I didn’t want a piece of him but I surely wanted badly to have something I could show him.

Donny was a natural-born athlete.

I am a natural-born non-athlete.

He beat me in everything.

One vacation at the outer banks, I knew he had never played golf, so I took him and his friend Chris golfing. Finally, I thought, there was something I could teach him, some sport I could role model.

Something I could maybe even beat him at.

By the end of the day though, I guess I had passed on as many good golf tips as I possibly could and it must have paid off because he beat me again.

 

The funny thing was, I never made the Adam Sandler connection until after Donny’s accident.

I never used to like Adam Sandler movies.

Now I can watch them all day long.

 

When we ride bikes now on the bike trail Kim always says “c’mon old man.”

I like that.

 

I don’t know what I will do on this Thursday the 19th but maybe I will ride my bike.  And maybe my wife will say “c’mon old man.”

And it will be okay.

Because winning doesn’t matter anymore, it never really did, it was having some meaning in that young man’s life that was really important to me.

And maybe, I realize now, in this old man’s life…

So I guess maybe in some way I have won.

At least I can tell you, Donny, that I still have your Mom’s back and she has mine.

Heck, I am even eating carrot hot dogs on the Fourth of July.

That has got to be love.

 

Happy Gilmore: “You like THAT old man? You want a piece of ME?”

Bob Barker character: “I don’t want a PIECE of you, I want the whole THING!”

 

I want the whole thing too…

But I would settle for just a piece of you right now.