A neighborhood walk turns into a lesson in friendship, concern, and resilience.

I’m usually a solo walker. Along with our labradoodle, Cooper, I cover two to four miles a day, looping around our neighborhood and greeting neighbors and their dogs. Sometimes Barb joins us, and if the day feels glorious, I’ll treat Cooper to a drive to a nearby park, where we can climb the sledding hill as part of our route.

Last week, two friends, Jack and Greg, invited me to join their Wednesday walk. I did a quick loop with Cooper, then drove with them to an access point on the Des Plaines River Trail. Caps on, sunscreen applied, water bottles in hand, we set out into the warm midweek sun.

The wide gravel trail wound through shady woods, alive with walkers, joggers, bikers—and the occasional pile of horse manure. We talked about family, sports, and old jobs as the miles slipped by. When my watch told us we’d hit three miles, we turned and headed back.

Walking three abreast through the forest reminded me of Stand By Me, the 1985 film where four boys trek along the railroad tracks in search of a body. We could have been their senior counterparts, though our only quest was exercise and camaraderie.

Near the parking lot, almost six miles in, Greg suddenly asked Jack if he was okay. Jack said yes—then crumpled to the gravel, flat on his back. His face was pale, but he was breathing and had a pulse.

In that moment, the doctor you want at your side is not a retired pathologist like me. Fortunately, Greg’s long career was in anesthesiology. He quickly sized up Jack’s condition: dehydration. Together, we eased Jack upright, and before long, he was sipping water, color returning to his cheeks.

We walked slowly to the car. Jack bounced back quickly and insisted we keep to our lunch plans. I checked in the next day, and he was fine.

Yesterday I heard Bob Stroud play Ben E. King’s Stand by Me on his Rock’n’Roll Roots radio program. It brought me back to the movie, to our walk, and to standing with Jack as he recovered.

We didn’t need a body at the end of our walk—friendship, concern, and relief were more than enough.

The play’s the thing.

Are you a regular reader of mine? Do you remember my unsuccessful foray into playwrighting? Two years ago, I wrote a two-act play, a dialogue-heavy drama. A part-time dramaturge I know polished it and sent the shining version to a theater producer he has worked with. The producer was dismissive, the golf season was starting, and after writing a blog post about the experience, the play went into the purgatory of an archived Word file.

Until this week, when two unrelated circumstances have joined to give me the push I need to revisit that dusty file.

First came a notification from a Facebook playwriting group. A Chicago theater company was advertising a new play competition for previously unpublished works. The submission process was easy and online, and unlike many other competitions, no entry fee was required. This seemed like an opportunity for a neophyte like me.

A few days later, I was listening to an audiobook of a thoroughly awful novel. It was a murder mystery-psychological thriller dripping with misplaced metaphors and even sillier similes. Despite the poor prose and not knowing or caring “who did it,” I listened day after day.

My patience was rewarded when I heard one of the characters, an elderly, dying mystery writer, say to his daughter, “We should talk.” SPOILER ALERT: Those words are a key line of dialogue in my play.

I have decided I cannot ignore two signals, both pointing me in the same direction. I want to get in.

I’ve located an early draft of the play, a draft from before the dramaturge held sway. While I appreciate his help, I want to be where the characters still feel like my own. This is where I am beginning.

I’m carefully reviewing the producer’s comments and reflecting on the few bits he thought worked well and the roughly 95% he thought didn’t work at all. I’m creating new scenes and new relationships. I am eliminating clunky dialogue. I’m keeping that “we should talk” line, but I’m giving it greater impact.

It’s a blast waking up my old characters, working and molding them in their own images, as they whisper to me what they need to do and say. I love them all, even the more despicable ones.

The deadline for submission is August 31. A countdown clock on the theater company’s website tells me that as of now, I have nineteen days and fifteen hours of prep time left.

Do I anticipate winning the contest? It’s a long shot. But I’m giving it a try. Because, as one of my more optimistic characters says, “You can never run out of hope.”

Stories from the parking lot and beyond.

If you use Reddit, you may be familiar with a Subreddit called “Am I The Asshole?” Contributors describe real-life situations they’ve faced and ask the internet to judge: Were they in the wrong? The respondents can concur that the original writer is the greatest jackass of all time, or let them off the hook with a gentle “You did no wrong.”

I consider myself a pretty decent guy. I don’t cheat at games, I appreciate everyone’s cooking, and since I don’t expect perfection from the people around me, I usually don’t badger them if they fail to meet even my limited expectations. But three incidents in the last week have got me wondering, am I the asshole?

Incident #1: I was picking up Cooper from his Monday Doggie Daycare experience in Wheeling. The facility has limited parking, with only two legal parking spots, as well as one space for disabled drivers. When I began my turn into the lot, I saw that the regulation spots were both taken. Knowing that the drivers and their dogs would be out shortly, I braked and waited in the single driving lane. A car driven by an able-bodied teenager zoomed by me on the left, almost sideswiping my car, and pulled into the disabled driver spot.

Once we were both inside the daycare building, waiting for our dogs, I told him, not too politely, that I didn’t appreciate his driving maneuver and that the spot was reserved for people who needed it, not impatient teenagers. Am I the Asshole?

Incident #2: I pulled into a parking spot in the sprawling parking lot at Woodman’s Market. As I left my car, I was approached by a woman pushing a packed shopping cart. She wanted me to pull my car back out so that she could wheel her shopping cart through the parking space to her car, a few spaces to my right. Rather than backing out, a risky maneuver in the always crowded lot, I showed her that less than 10 feet to my right was the wide, very well-marked, pedestrian lane, perfectly suited for her purpose.

She gave me an angry look, but I didn’t back down, and I didn’t back out. Am I the Asshole?

Incident #3: Barb and I were doing our weekly shopping at the Sunset Foods Store in Northbrook. The deli case was on our right as we waited to place my usual order of lunch meat. A woman in a motorized shopping cart came speeding toward us, a mere foot from the counter. The look on her face made clear her impatience with us as we scrambled to get out of her way.

Twenty minutes later, we saw the same woman maneuvering back and forth in her attempt to get the mobile cart into the checkout lane. She was muttering loudly, clearly frustrated. I knew I should help her, but our previous encounter had left a bitter taste in my mouth. I stayed in my checkout lane until store personnel assisted her a moment later. Am I the Asshole?

So, readers, what do you think? Three decisions on my part to either not help out or not turn the other cheek. Am I the asshole?

Spoiler alert—I don’t think I am!

It’s less than I think!

If you are a Facebook user, have you noticed and interacted with Meta AI, the virtual assistant that occasionally pops up in your Facebook feed, summarizing or explaining posts? Most days, I ignore it—I would rather read actual comments than have my device explain them to me. But on Wednesday, Meta’s little rainbow circle symbol on my post caught my attention.

“More about the author’s work,” read the flag.

“OK,” I thought. “I’m game for that. Let’s see what Facebook and Meta AI have to say about me.”

I imagined the link would whisk me away to a glowing summary of my hundreds of blog posts. I envisioned a detailed review of my family, my career, civic service, and my travels, and how it all came together in my prose. I was even hoping there might be mention of my two favorite quotes, Alec Trebeck’s “wrong again, Les,” and my golfing buddy’s “nice shot, Les.”

Simply put, I anticipated that Meta AI would create the equivalent of a Wikipedia page, all about me, something that has long been missing from the digital world. I understood that, as with all AI products, there might be some hallucinations—it might brag about my major league baseball career or my lunar landing—but those were minor errors I was willing to accept.

I clicked the link, eager for a big payoff. I didn’t get it. Rather than a Wikipedia page, I got the equivalent of a book jacket review:

From this post, we can infer that Les Raff’s writing style is personal, reflective, and humorous. He shares his personal experiences, such as his encounters with COVID-19 and vaccinations, in a lighthearted and relatable way.

It’s not what I expected, and yes, I felt let down by the skimpy AI analysis. But I shouldn’t complain too much. The remarks do capture what I try to do most of the time when I sit down at my desktop and chat with you (only my Trump rants are not quite so light-hearted).

So I’ll get over my disappointment and keep writing. Maybe someday a real human will write my Wikipedia page in the future, and I will be overjoyed—even if it skips centerfield and doesn’t fly me to the moon!

Remember life in 2020, when COVID turned everything upside down? A lot has changed—vaccines and testing have made a difference.

But oh, those vaccines! In the last five years, I have been jabbed, poked, and stabbed. I’ve been ping-ponged from Moderna to Pfizer and back again. Sometimes I’ve been injected with the “Pinch” and sometimes without it. But despite all the pokes, prods, and best intentions, just like in 2020, I am sitting here with a case of COVID.

I’m not sure which strain I have acquired. There are too many to keep track of these days. And it is anyone’s guess where I picked it up— it could have been at the food bank, the golf course, or the grocery store. The little viral freeloaders are everywhere.

My symptoms began overnight Saturday, with an intense sore throat that had almost disappeared by morning. Barb, always prescient, predicted I had COVID, but I dismissed the possibility. I spent two listless days before finally breaking down and using the last COVID test we had.

I didn’t need to be a retired pathologist to interpret the bright red line that appeared on the test strip almost immediately. A kindergartner could have solved that puzzle.

I haven’t kept up with recommendations for handling COVID, so I had my first Telemed visit, a discussion with a Nurse Practitioner on my internist’s team. We talked about Paxlovid (not for me), isolation (barely an issue anymore), and whether to take acetaminophen or ibuprofen (I prefer the latter).

I’ll stay home for another day or two, with my books, newspapers, and crossword puzzles. Barb bought a new box of test kits and tested negative, so she can go to her volunteer shift at the hospital while Cooper keeps me company. The Advil jar and Kleenex box are close at hand, my tea cup is perpetually full, and I am grateful I have nothing more serious than a bad case of the sniffles.

And that we have left 2020 far behind.

A reflection on what I wrote eight years ago and why it matters even more now.

If you’re a Facebook user, you’ve likely seen notifications like “You have memories,” linking back to posts from one, five, or ten years ago. The memories are generally happy ones. I suspect the Facebook algorithm chooses them with that in mind.

Today, I got a notification from Team Zuckerberg about a post I had written exactly eight years ago. It was a link to the Getting More From Les blog entitled “It’s Time to Repeal and Replace Donald Trump.” That blog remains the most widely read in my collection—the only one to surpass 10,000 views. Reading it today, I can only shake my head at how naive we were eight years ago.

My emphasis in that post, seven months into Trump’s first term, was on Trump’s attempt to abolish the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and replace it with…nothing. I also wrote that Trump’s

“foreign policy is a sham apparently designed to protect his personal interests; his Cabinet is mostly packed with lightweights; and his communications team is a joke.”

I ended by calling for impeachment or the use of the 25th Amendment to terminate his presidency.

Could we have imagined in 2017 that two impeachments would mean nothing? That foreign policy would flip-flop daily? That cabinet members—already lightweights—would willingly sacrifice public health, national morality, and global standing to serve Trump’s grievances and ego? Or that a violent attack on the Capitol Building would be seen as a heroic event, its perpetrators excused from responsibility and prison.

Eight years ago, ICE was kept in our freezer, and the National Guard was kept at home. CBS still had some dignity, and Stephen Colbert’s best days were ahead of him. We could have a reasonable discussion with those on the other side of the political aisle. Does anyone still have discussions like that?

Trump will not last forever. But, likely, the damage he has done will long outlive him. He didn’t start the fire, but he has fanned the flames, and because of his presidency, we may lack the resources to put it out.

And eight years from now, I doubt Facebook will be reminding me of this happy memory.

Designated Drivers, Fearless Leaders, and One Alleged Accountant

I recently returned from my 21st annual baseball trip with my high school buddies. This year, accompanied by our wives, we spent three toasty days in Tampa—sunning, swimming, dining, and watching the White Sox play the Rays in their temporary, makeshift ballpark. The White Sox won, the threatened rainstorms never materialized, and we all had a blast.

But now the hard part begins.

During our trips, we have a Fearless Leader to set things in motion, an Admiral to keep us on course, and the rest of the gang are our designated drivers, humorists, and philosophers. But once we get home, I take center stage as the Alleged Accountant.

How I was entrusted with this position is unclear. Perhaps it’s because, in addition to my medical degree, I have an MBA. It’s from a graduate school maybe one or two notches above Trump University in reputation, but hey, it’s an MBA just the same. Once we’re home, I dust it off and swing into action.

While on the trip, one person pays for each meal—no restaurant wants to handle six credit cards at breakfast. Same with the vans we rent. One person picks up the tab. Game tickets? One order, twelve seats. All these go into a theoretical “book.” By the end of the weekend, one person may have spent hundreds, while another has forked over just twenty-five bucks. My job is to make that “book” less theoretical. I collect receipts and do the balancing act. Who owes what—and to whom?

An Excel spreadsheet helps me through the first round of calculations. My rule is simple: charges for all meals and transportation are split evenly. That keeps things straightforward—until someone misses Monday’s dinner or skips Tuesday’s lunch. I don’t want to charge them for meals they didn’t eat!

It takes a few passes through the spreadsheet, but eventually I reach a reckoning and send out my preliminary analysis to the crew. Inevitably, someone points out a detail I got wrong—maybe I split a bill six ways instead of five. Eventually, the whole megillah gets reconciled to everyone’s satisfaction.

Then it’s time for those who underpaid to Zelle or Venmo (or even send a check) to those who overpaid.

And then, finally, I get to retire my accountant’s green eyeshade—at least until next year.

Would you ask the Piano Man?

Two days ago, my golf buddy Harvey and I were pulling our carts along the long fifth fairway at our favorite nine-hole course when I asked him a question.

He replied, “If I answer, is it going to end up in a blog?”

“No,” I said. “And you know I always change the names of the people I write about.”

But his comment got me thinking—about how I use personal material in my writing, and how I decide what to share.

I used to write more about politics, but there’s not much left to satirize when reality outpaces parody. Besides, I’ve never seen the point of preaching to the already converted. Since retiring, I’m not as immersed in medical advances as I once was, so I’ve written less about that. And my commentary on professional sports never quite clicked with readers—understandably so, especially these days.

That leaves my own life as the main source of material.

I’ve written extensively about Rogers Park, the neighborhood where I grew up: the Jewel grocery store where I worked, Ashkenaz where we had Sunday dinners, the Field and Sullivan schools I attended, even the laundromat where I wheeled our cart every week. These posts always elicit nostalgic comments from readers.

Those memories—filtered through a rose-colored retroscope—rarely name anyone outside my immediate family. I try to respect privacy.

But many of my more recent posts draw from the here and now—the situations I find myself in, and the people I meet. Harvey’s remark made me wonder if I’ve ever crossed a line in writing about those interactions.

Then I thought of “Piano Man.” Everybody knows Billy Joel’s iconic breakthrough. It’s about his time playing piano in a lounge, but more than that, it’s about the lives he observed while there—John, and Bill, and Paul, and the nameless old man at the bar. It’s life turned into song. It’s art.

I’m not Billy Joel, and my blog is no “Piano Man.” But like him, I sometimes draw on the stories of the people around me. I try never to reveal secrets or cause anyone embarrassment or distress. I hope I succeed.

I asked Harvey (not his real name) for permission to use his quote in this post. He agreed—on one condition: that I mention he’s muscular and charming.

So, to my pumped-up, amazing friend—thank you for inspiring this post. You’ve got honors on the next tee.

Some Things Matter More Than a Pickleball Score

I play pickleball with George once a week. We first met two years ago when a mutual friend assembled our pickleball squad. George is a big guy, but a gentle giant. His only flashes of frustration are directed at himself, usually after one of his dinks goes into the net instead of over it. When I am teamed up with him, we usually lose, but we both play hard and do our best.

Last year, he informed our group that his 30-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with breast cancer. He detailed for us the surgery and chemotherapy that lay ahead for her. George was clearly devastated, and the rest of us stood by in stunned silence. For the rest of the morning, the mood was somber, and talk of the year ahead replaced our usual water-break banter.

As I commonly do for friends, I volunteered to review the pathology reports — just the written findings, not the slides — and explain anything the family had questions about. George accepted my offer, although it turned out his wife’s Googling had already explained everything at least as well as I did.

Since the day George told us of his daughter’s diagnosis, I find a moment every week between games to ask George how she is doing. I can usually read the answer on his face before he speaks. She has some good weeks, but many other weeks are plagued by headaches, nausea, and hair loss.

I hear a lot of other people at the fitness center ask George about his daughter, and he always replies with the same calm patience.

Lately, I have been wondering whether my questions to George are an intrusion. I don’t know him that well, and perhaps he needs to save his empathetic energy and responses for his closer friends and family. I can understand how wearisome constant questioning must be. So today, after a tough weekly update, I said to George.

“George, please tell me if you mind my always asking how your daughter is doing.”

To my relief, he looked at me and said, ‘No man, it is fine that you do. Thank you.”

So I’ll keep on asking, always hoping that one day George will respond with a big grin and say, “She’s doing great, buddy. The future looks bright.”

And when that day comes, I won’t mind at all if we lose another game—because some things matter far more than the score.

My platelet donation had a history.

I donated platelets for the first time yesterday—it’s like giving blood, but slower, longer, and for me, it was even more meaningful.

I have been donating whole blood since I was in college. I have bared my arm at blood drives in hospitals, synagogues, fire stations, and even the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. I lay on a recliner, let the tech stick a needle in my left arm, and in 20 minutes, the whole thing is over. Filling out the paperwork takes longer than the donation.

But platelet extraction is different. In a non-stop sequence, blood is removed, platelets are isolated, and the other blood components, the red blood cells, the white blood cells, and plasma are returned to the body through the same needle. This is repeated multiple times until the necessary volume of platelets is obtained. The procedure requires two hours or more.

Why did I decide to shift my donation pattern from whole blood to platelets? Vitalant, the regional blood collection agency, has been pursuing me relentlessly with weekly phone calls and daily e-mails. These inform me of the urgent need for platelets, particularly among patients undergoing chemotherapy. They tell me that my blood type makes me an ideal candidate for a platelet donor. And just like TV promoters around the world, they promise me special promotional t-shirts and gift certificates if I act quickly.

But what truly pushed me to switch from whole blood donation to the longer, more demanding platelet procedure was something else. It was memories of my father-in-law, Barb’s father, Lee.

Lee was a friendly, upbeat guy, as at home selling Fruit Of The Loom and BVD underwear as he was on the front nine with his best buddy Oscar. I’m sure he would have gotten me out on the golf course, too, but we never got the chance.

Shortly before our 1978 wedding, I learned that two years earlier, Lee had been diagnosed with Leukemic Reticuloendotheliosis, a rare malignant blood disorder now known as Hairy Cell Leukemia. As is typical in its early phase, Lee’s disease had been indolent, not impairing his activities or his outlook.

In the spring of 1979, we passed from the calm into the storm. Lee fell and broke his arm, unleashing the full fury of his disease. He was hospitalized as his blood counts plummeted. Spiky malignant cells replaced his normal white blood cells. A fungal invasion ravaged his body and brain, and his internist told us of his need for white cell transfusions to try to fight the infection.

I was young, in good shape, and the right blood type to donate. On three occasions that April, I underwent leukophoresis, a procedure very similar to platelet donation, except that both my arms were involved, blood leaving my body on the left, and returning, stripped of white blood cells, on the right. Each two-hour session gave me hope that I was accomplishing something for Lee.

Lee did not survive.

Forty-six years passed between losing Lee and my decision to donate platelets. So it wasn’t the promise of a t-shirt; it was the memory of doing what I did for Lee that helped me do something similar for someone else—someone whose family loves and needs them.

All my platelets will help a living person fighting cancer, but I am dedicating yesterday’s donation to you, Lee, and to all those rounds of golf we never got to play.