Long story to a short line:         

My Mom told the story that I wanted to go to school so bad that she found a kindergarten class at a public school a few blocks from our apartment in Hoboken. The Catholic School, Our Lady of Garce did not offer anything but grades 1-8. The kindergarten class was in Demarest School, which years later would host dances that required a “couple” to enter, but that’s another story. I have three distinct memories of that kindergarten class.

1. There was a coveted “peg table” that was very popular. We lined up at the classroom door and when it opened everyone rushed to their favorite toy or thing. I ran for the peg table, you could sit down at it and (yes, you guessed it) put pegs in holes. Hey, its’s fucking kindergarten! Well, this one day I must have accidentally pushed a girl and it must have been winter and the steam radiators were at full heat, and she fell into one and burned her arm. The good news is it was Hoboken it was 1954 and there were no lawyers around. Her very angry father did show up at my apartment and yelled up the 22 stairs at my Mom pointing at the burn on his daughter’s arm. “See what your son did to my daughter?” My mother handled it well.
2.  There was a girl with red hair who always wore a yellow dress with those stupid black and white shoes. I loved her. I would try to sit next to her when we had sitting events. Once, during our milk break she got up to get her little container of Whole Milk first and I bent down and smelled the bench where her ass had just sat. It smelled like slightly wet wood.
3.  The last day of kindergarten we were given a folder of all our drawings and “stuff” to take home. On the way home, I remember running into some “big kids” and my folder got smaller and not so neat. I remember my Mom consoling me. It might be the beginning of  “Zorro”. Timing is right – 1954.

First Grade and Mrs. Caldron and I’m finally in Our Lady of Grace being regularly beat up by Sisters of Charity. I am the boy who is assigned to deliver the little milk containers to each classroom. Why am I assigned to do this? Because it keeps me busy and otherwise out of the nuns’ non-existent hair. At the end of the day, I gather all the erasers and take them outside to shake the chalk out of them (this entails slapping them along the side of the school building). I didn’t know why I was given all these jobs until years later when I read about ADHD and realized if I was born 20 years later I’d have been lined up outside the nurses office to get my “calm him down” shot. I was so lucky.

Here’s the thing: all during my 8 years of OLG, just about EVERY report card had on the back a check in the “Unsatisfactory” or “Improvement Needed” boxes next to Emotional Stability. “What does emotional stability mean?” I’d ask my mom never missing the opportunity to ask a question. She didn’t know and so she’d say something like “you get angry sometimes”. I didn’t think I got angry EVER.

To bring this story to an end, the other day I was posed with the question:

In three words what you will have on your tombstone, and I proudly replied:

Remains Emotionally Unstable   

Welcome back.            

The new look is a bit more organized and reflects the basement coming together into alphabetized areas. Not my ideal plan, but a good start and at conclusion, at least I’ll know where everything is.

The Blog area is more linear and will allow scrolling into past entries which I like. Will there be more changes?

You bet. In the meantime…..

I’ve been playing on Twitter the last year. Yes, Elon has re-named Twitter “X”, which I like but saying “I’m on X” just doesn’t convey the same information.

I’ve also changed my diet and joined a “Keto/Carnivore” Twitter Community of like-minded people who try to support each other’s journey to good health. But that’s another blog entry.

My Twitter handle is DonDiegoVega69 – an ID I used to play Online Poker during the Pandemic. Come visit

For today I thought I’d post what I think are my 20 best Twitts over the past year. Here they are:

I have always tried to live my life based of the results of MY thinking not other people’s thinking. I have rarely succeeded. But those times …when I did – they were the best of times.

Black Privilege: Chirlane McCray, the wife of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, was awarded $900 million to launch a mental health project aimed at assisting the city’s homeless. The Daily Mail reported that she “lost” $850 million of the $900.

My Dad never met the “People on the internet”. But he was always prepared with one of his standard remarks: “Hey, Buddy, if shit were electricity, you’d be a walking powerhouse.” We are what we eat. Ignore the donuts you meet in life.

Let’s not forget the best George Costanza line: “It’s not a lie if you believe it”.

Grew up with Hellmann’s Mayo. Worked for the Hellmann’s Company for 32 years. LOVED Hellmann’s Mayo. Unilever now owns Hellmann’s and swapped out capers for sugar in the recipe. I now buy and enjoy Duke’s Mayo. Sad to lose an old friend.

I know this sounds biased but, Valerie, I’ve found Canadians are best avoided. They put gravy on French Fries!! These are confused and troubled people.

From a very young age, my son always referred to God as “she”. My lovely wife and I took the position that he might know something we didn’t and never corrected him. He’s 33 and a fine young man.

It doesn’t happen often anymore. But every now and then, I’ll walk into someone’s house and the smell of cigarettes will bowl me over. I’ll stop and smile and close my eyes and say: “I’m home”.

What you think, happens. Simple Easy to explain Hard to accept.

Proud to have been fired by Unilever in 2003 for excessive unprocessed sarcasm.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

So, I “retired” from a huge corporation, always lots of political in-fighting going on, 32 years of it. I decided to volunteer at a local senior center. There were THREE paid people in charge. It took me two days to realize two of the three hated each other. People mostly suck.

My son asked, “Why are you so sure the bank will give me the loan?” I replied, “because you don’t NEED the money.” Lesson learned.

Let’s remember before the United Nations was built, the land it sits on was mostly slaughterhouses and the original Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory. I can understand a bunch of pencil-necked bureaucrats sloshing thru offal on their way to save the planet for the poor and wretched.

The last time Greta Thunberg visited Ukraine their Secret Service is rumored to have swapped her birth control for Pez. I’ve been patiently waiting for the Immaculate Conception story ever since.

So, if Trump is elected, he’ll basically, do everything the Brain was going to do but without Pinky, right?

It is part of the ugly reality of living in a free society: Every day we must deal with people we would rather throttle to within an inch of their worthless lives, but instead we tip our hats and say: “have a nice day”.

Before he was Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne was Cowboy Curtis on PeeWee’s Playhouse.

When the future love of his life (for 8 hours at least) walked by Jack Dawson on the deck of the Titanic, what was he doing? Smoking, of course.

I used to have a “holier than thou” attitude but I lost it in a terrible (but beautiful) thunderstorm outside Flagstaff, AZ in the late 60’s. Shortly after, I picked up a poor attitude at a tourist shop in Bakersfield. I’ve been using that quite happily ever since. jus sayin