"Wrestling With Unmentionables at the Laundromat"

By Jerry Zezima

Hearst Connecticut Media Group

It may be true that everything comes out in the wash, but it’s also true that if you’re in a laundromat, you shouldn’t take off your bra in front of other customers before doing the wash.

That’s the valuable lesson I learned recently after the dryer conked out and my wife, who has never, to my knowledge, removed her brassiere in public, dispatched me to the laundromat to finish a load of wet clothes.

“You see everything in this place,” said manager Angel Lopez. “One night, a lady started getting undressed so she could put her clothes in the washer. She was topless and was just wearing her underwear. I went over to her and said, ‘Really? You couldn’t do this before you got here?’ ”

“Maybe,” I suggested helpfully, “it was her only bra.”

“Listen,” Angel said, “men are just as bad. Like the guy last night who told me that if he didn’t do the laundry right, his wife said he was a dead man. He said, ‘Are you going to help me?’ I said, ‘No. I want to see if she’s going to kill you.’ ”

“My wife is too nice to resort to murder over socks and bath towels,” I said. “How about your wife?”

Angel smiled and replied, “I’m not married.”

Not that he wouldn’t be a good catch, even though he is widely considered a bad guy.

“In addition to working at the laundromat,” Angel said, “I’m a professional wrestler.”

He wrestles under the name of Cano Lopez, the Exorcist.

“Cano is my mother’s maiden name,” said Angel, who has “Cano” tattooed on his right forearm and “Lopez” on his left.

“In the ring, I’m a villain,” he said. “People boo me, but between matches, kids come up to me and say, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ ”

“Do you wrestle in the WWE?” I asked. “It’s headquartered in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut.”

“I wish!” said Angel, who’s affiliated with East Coast Pro Wrestling.

At 53, he’s one of the oldest wrestlers on the circuit. But at 5-foot-8 and 227 pounds, he’s one tough geezer.

“You have to be,” said Angel. “We get hit with steel chairs, jump off buckles and land on wooden boards. We’re like actors who do our own stunts.” He winced and added, “I’m 53, but my body says 83.”

Angel’s brother, Marc Static, is a wrestler, too. They’re two of 24 siblings, 12 brothers and 12 sisters. “I’m No. 17,” Angel said.

“There must have been a lot of laundry in your family,” I noted.

“Mountains of it,” Angel said. “It prepared me for my job here.”

And he does it extremely well. In addition to being an amateur psychologist (“I listen to everybody’s problems,” he said), Angel is an appliance engineer, a lint expert and a folding consultant.

“Did you know that a buildup of lint could cause a fire in the dryer?” he said.

“No,” I answered. “Just to be safe, I’d better clean it out of my belly button, too.”

After using one of the dryers without starting a three-alarm blaze, I asked Angel for help in folding the towels, socks and underwear in my laundry basket.

“The towels go corner to corner, then fold them again, the long way, in a trifold,” he instructed. “The edges go in the closet.”

The opening of one sock in each pair is folded over the mate “so they won’t become separated,” Angel said. “And underwear is pretty easy. Now you try it.”

I passed the folding test with all the flying colors of my towels, socks and boxer shorts.

“Your wife will be impressed,” said Angel.

“Next time I come here, I’ll bring her,” I replied. “And I promise she won’t take off her bra.”

Copyright 2019 by Jerry Zezima

"The Rise and Fall of My New Desk"

By Jerry Zezima

Hearst Connecticut Media Group

If you were to call me at work, which means you’d be operating under the delusion that I was actually working, you would hear this recording:

“Hi, this is Jerry Zezima. I’m either away from my desk or at my desk but fast asleep. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you. BEEP!”

Now I may have to change the recording because my office is getting new workstations (a fancy term for desks) that allow employees to work standing up.

The problem is that unless you’re a horse (or, in my case, the back end of one), it’s impossible to sleep standing up.

So I spoke with the director of engineering services, Steve Zimmerman, who is overseeing the transition.

“I won’t stand for this!” I told him.

“You’ll still have a chair, so maybe you could go on a sit-down strike,” suggested Steve, whose office features a wraparound desk so cluttered that it could well contain the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.

There’s also a sign that reads: “Occupancy by more than 229 persons is dangerous and unlawful.”

“I don’t think that many people could fit in here, so I won’t get arrested,” said Steve, adding that he’s the same way at home.

“I have a lot of clutter,” he said. “My wife is a neat freak. If you’re not moving, she’ll vacuum you.”

“It’s like that in my house, too,” I noted. “But my desk here is very neat. That’s because I don’t do anything.”

“I’ve noticed,” said Steve.

“What I’ve noticed,” I countered, “is that the workstations have two computer screens. Does that mean I would have to do twice as much work? And will the company double my salary?”

“It would be nice,” Steve said, “if you did any work at all. As for your salary, you’re lucky you get paid.”

“I guess you’re right,” I replied. “The extra money would only put me in a higher tax bracket. At the very least, it would weigh down my pants.”

“Still, I think you’ll like the sit-stand desks,” Steve said. “A lot of people work standing up these days because it’s healthier, although if you stand too long, your feet will get tired.”

“What if you sit too long?” I wondered.

“Don’t even go there,” Steve said.

“I do like the choice of chairs,” I acknowledged. “My favorite is like a rocking chair. I would use it to practice for my old age, which is rapidly approaching.”

“What about the desks?” Steve asked.

“My main complaint is that there isn’t room for a fully stocked bar,” I replied.

“I need one myself because you’re driving me to drink,” said Steve, adding that there would be room for a liquor cabinet under the desk. “You could even put a crock pot under there.”

“Most of what I say is a crock,” I told Steve, who did not disagree. Instead, he took me to see the desk of administrative assistant Sarah Gukelberger, who has already been working at a prototype workstation.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “I have a herniated disc, so it feels good when I stand up. And you can’t fall asleep, which would get you in trouble.”

Steve nodded and said to me, “These desks force you to be productive.”

“Why should I start now?” I said.

“Better late than never,” Steve responded.

Sarah pressed a button to show me how the desk can rise and go back down depending on whether you want to stand or sit.

“I suppose,” Steve said, “you could lower the desk and use that comfortable rocking chair if you wanted to take a nap.”

“I think I’m going to like these new workstations,” I said. “And I won’t even have to change my phone message.”

Copyright 2019 by Jerry Zezima

"Moving Company Declares Chapter 60"

By Jerry Zezima

Hearst Connecticut Media Group

The best thing about being a baby boomer, aside from believing that 60 is the new 40, which explains why I can’t balance my checkbook, is that you can still do everything you have always done, but if there is something you don’t want to do anymore, you can pull the age card.

Lugging furniture falls into this category. If you are the lugger, you will fall, too, wrenching your back in the process.

That is why the Zezima Moving, Storage and Hernia Co. is going out of business. I will say for legal purposes that the corporation is liquidating. The liquid, I hasten to add, is beer, which is what I have needed after each of the many moves I have made for family and friends over a painful period dating back to the Carter administration.

The last one occurred recently when I was assigned to remove a couch from my mother-in-law’s house in Stamford, Connecticut, load it into a rented truck and drive it to Long Island, New York, where it had to be unloaded and replaced by another couch that then had to be driven to the landfill, where I also would have ended up if I could afford the dumping fee.

There were three main problems:

(a) My mother-in-law’s couch weighed approximately as much as the truck.

(b) The house was evidently built around it.

(c) It was raining so hard that I should have rented an ark.

This required brains and brawn. Since I am sorely lacking in both, and have the soreness to prove it, I enlisted the help of my nephew Blair, who has a prodigious quantity of each, plus something I haven’t had in the 40 years since I was his age:

(d) Youth.

As the rain rained down, I had a brainstorm: I covered the couch with a drop cloth to protect it from the downpour. Unfortunately, the cloth was not waterproof. It was like putting a napkin on your head before walking under Niagara Falls.

To compound matters, the couch was leather. I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t leather kinky? Answer: Yes, which is why I got a massive kink in my back.

Leather is also slippery, which makes it hard to grasp, so I had to bend down and lift one end. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning coursed down my spine and stopped directly above my end.

Then Blair and I had to tilt the couch this way and that to get it through the narrow doorway and were instantly drenched by the monsoon outside.

With the aid of my wife, Sue, and our younger daughter, Lauren, we got the couch down a walkway, over a wall and into the truck. I drove back in the pathetic vehicle, whose original owners must have been the Flintstones, and headed to Lauren’s house.

There, my son-in-law Guillaume and I risked further back trouble (he already had sciatica) by carrying the couch up a flight of stairs. We looked like Laurel and Hardy doing the same thing with a piano in “The Music Box,” for which they won an Oscar.

Guillaume and I deserved a Harry because we were harried by our wives to get the couch into the house, from which we had to remove another couch, which thank God was lighter, and drive it to the dump.

“I’m too old for this,” I told Sue after we had returned the truck and got into my car for the ride home. “The next time furniture needs to be lugged, someone else can do it.”

Later, I settled my sore back onto our couch, which isn’t going anywhere, and had a beer. It was the best move of the day.

Copyright 2019 by Jerry Zezima

"A Long Bout of Social Insecurity"

By Jerry Zezima

Hearst Connecticut Media Group

Now that I have turned 65, which makes me old enough to know better but still less mature than my grandchildren, I am contemplating retirement because, according to the Social Security Administration, it doesn’t pay to be working posthumously.

So I went to my local Social Security office to sign up for Medicare and encountered so many people that I figured I’d still be there when I turn 66, at which time I can get full benefits.

“You can die of old age in this place,” I said to a nice couple named Janice and Andrew, who sat next to me in the back row.

“Medicare won’t cover it,” said Janice, who’s 69 and still works as a school secretary.

“And if you’re dead,” added Andrew, 66, who lost his job as a machinist at a company with offices in Connecticut and on Long Island, New York, “you can’t get Social Security anymore.”

“It pays to stay alive,” Janice said.

“If you can call this living,” added Andrew, noting that it was the third time he and and Janice had been in the Social Security office.

“This is my first time,” I told them.

“You always remember your first time,” Janice said with a wink.

I figured my visit would be unforgettable when I arrived at 10 a.m. and walked into what looked like a Cecil B. DeMille epic.

“I’ve been here since 8:41,” said Harry, 50, who sat on my other side. He used crutches because he had leg surgery and was on temporary disability.

“What’s your number?” I asked.

“D606,” he said.

“Mine is A228,” I told him.

“You’ll probably get called before I do,” said Harry. “They won’t take pity on me.”

“You’re just using that as a crutch,” I said.

Harry got up and limped away. He returned about five minutes later.

“Was it something I said?” I wondered.

Harry shook his head and replied, “I had to go to the bathroom.”

In less time than it would take a kindergartner to read “War and Peace,” my number was called.

“Bye, everybody!” I said and walked up to, appropriately, Window 0, behind which was a nice young woman who asked why I was there.

I told her I wanted to apply for Medicare, adding: “I would get COBRA, but I’d be covered only if I was bitten by a poisonous snake.”

“May I have your Social Security number?” the woman asked.

I didn’t want to yell it out in a place containing the approximate population of Luxembourg, so I wrote it on a piece of paper and slipped it under the window.

“You can sit down until you’re called again,” she said pleasantly.

When I returned to my seat, Janice, Andrew and Harry said in unison, “Welcome back, Jerry!”

I scanned the room. Some people were on their phones, others were chatting, one woman was reading a book (not one of mine, unfortunately) and a fellow geezer was snoozing.

Another guy was wearing a sweatshirt with the skull-and-horns logo of the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch, which prompted Janice to say, “I’d like to give this place a one finger death punch.”

Actually, it wasn’t that bad. The Social Security folks were courteous and helpful. And the people I sat with, despite their grumbling, were friendly and funny.

“If you don’t laugh,” Janice remarked, “you’ll cry.”

I cried for joy when my name was called. I went to Window 1 and was told by another nice young woman that the earliest appointment was in two months.

“See you then,” Janice said as I left. “We’ll still be here.”

Copyright 2019 by Jerry Zezima

"The Grandkid Olympics in Poppie's Gym"

By Jerry Zezima

Hearst Connecticut Media Group

As a lean, mean geezer machine, I have managed to keep my boyish figure all these years by strictly adhering to Zezima’s First Rule of Physical Fitness: Exercise and health food will kill you.

That’s why my regimen is limited to 12-ounce curls, which are performed with bottles containing corn, hops, barley, water and other healthful ingredients; the avoidance of all vegetables except, of course, myself; and a daily glass of red wine, which is, according to my doctor, over-the-counter heart medicine.

But I have reached the age (old enough to know better) where I really should be more active than getting up twice a night to go to the bathroom.

That’s where my grandchildren come in.

Chloe, who will be 6 in March; her sister, Lilly, who turned 2 in October; and their cousin, Xavier, who will be 2 in March, are the proprietors of Poppie’s Gym, a floating health club and potential emergency care facility that is situated wherever the kids and I happen to be.

The various sites include my house, their houses, the backyards of the aforementioned places, the kiddie pool, the playground, the vineyard, the orchard, the amusement park and whatever store, outlet or mall where my wife and/or daughters are shopping while I am watching or, more likely, chasing the children.

Activities include walking, running, hopping, skipping, jumping, crawling, scampering, splashing, dancing, throwing, batting, kicking and weightlifting. If there were a grandfather competition in the Olympics, I would have won gold in all these events and appeared on boxes of Wheaties, my smiling visage covered with an oxygen mask.

I recently ramped up the exertion level when all three grandchildren visited. It was invigorating, especially when I hoisted Chloe, who weighs almost 50 pounds; Xavier, who tips the scales at 30 pounds; and Lilly, the peanut of the bunch at 23 pounds but whose squirminess in my arms amounts to a clean and jerk, the former involving a diaper change and the latter describing me.

Then there was the 100-inch dash, in which I chased Chloe and Lilly across the family room and back again so many times that a calculator would have exploded like the Hindenburg.

Xavier preferred the biathlon, which entailed playing peekaboo and then running around the room with Poppie on his heels. It’s a miracle I didn’t wear out my heels.

On numerous occasions, all the kids wanted to take my hand and play with me individually. This would require me either to be three people (as my wife would say, isn’t one enough?) or to have three hands, which would make it extremely difficult to buy gloves.

After several days, the Olympics were over and Xavier went back home. My wife and I will soon get on a plane to visit him and the athletics will continue. We often see Chloe and Lilly, who live only about 45 minutes away, so Poppie will be sure to keep in tip-top shape.

In fact, shortly after the sporting events had ceased, I went to the doctor for a checkup. My heart rate and blood pressure were perfect, my weight was normal and overall I was declared a remarkable physical specimen.

“What do you do to stay so fit?” the doctor asked.

“I play with my grandchildren,” I replied.

“Keep it up,” she advised. “It beats getting up twice a night to go to the bathroom.”

Copyright 2019 by Jerry Zezima

"Shanks for the Memories of Rikers Island"

By Jerry Zezima

Hearst Connecticut Media Group

As a fugitive from justice who has committed countless crimes against journalism (I plead insanity to all of them), I am not ashamed to admit that I was on Rikers Island.

Now my past has caught up with me because I recently found out that one of the security guards at work was a correction officer at Rikers when I was there.

“I recognize you!” Kenneth McDougall said when I flashed my pass at the company entrance. “They let you out?”

“They had to,” I replied. “I was a bad influence on the other inmates.”

Here’s my confession: Several years ago, I was asked to speak about writing to detainees at the New York City correctional institution. After a few hours of corrupting the minds of dozens of young men, all of whom promised to reform after being subjected to my cruel and unusual punishment, I was released on my own recognizance because no one else would loan me theirs.

“Rikers is a rough place,” said Kenny, as he is popularly known. “You survived. The question is, how did Rikers survive you?”

“Probably because you were there to keep the peace,” I told Kenny, who was a New York City correction investigator with the Intelligence Unit. He worked at Rikers for 23 years before retiring in 2013. Now Kenny, who’s 52, works in corporate security.

“It’s not as interesting as being in prison,” he acknowledged as he showed me photos of confiscated weapons, including shanks, ice picks and a toothbrush with a razor in it. “And those were the little ones,” Kenny said. “The big ones were like arrows. I saw guys with shanks sticking out of their backs. They don’t die. If you or I got stuck with a pin, we’d bleed to death.”

“In this place,” I noted, “the most dangerous weapons are No. 2 pencils.”

“Then you’d have to get the lead out,” said Kenny, who was known as “the Shank Hunter” because he confiscated about 4,000 weapons. He added that a sense of humor is the best weapon in a place like Rikers. “That’s how you survive,” he said. “Correction officers are some of the kindest, funniest people you’ll ever meet. They’re unsung heroes.”

Kenny found a lot to laugh about in “the Hooch Caper,” when he confiscated two bottles of moonshine that some inmates were making.

“I brought the bottles to the security office,” Kenny recalled. “These guys used apples and moldy bread as yeast and closed the tops. If you don’t go back daily and release the caps, the bottles will explode. That’s what happened. They blew up all over the place. There was hooch on the ceiling and the walls. My buddy Bill was in there. He said, ‘Who did this?’ I confessed.”

“Did you taste the stuff?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?” Kenny said. “It smelled terrible.”

For Kenny, humor runs in the family. His father-in-law, Tony Ricco, was a stand-up comic.

“He played the Catskills, the Poconos and Vegas,” Kenny said. “He’s 87 now. My wife and three daughters have good senses of humor, too. With me around, they have to.”

“I’m glad you were around when I was at Rikers,” I said. “But what if I went back?”

“You’d be on your own,” Kenny said. “I wouldn’t be there to protect you. But I think you’d be OK because you have a good sense of humor, too. Just don’t make any hooch. If it explodes, my buddy Bill wouldn’t find it too funny.”

Copyright 2019 by Jerry Zezima