-That was a strike. -No it wasn’t -Was too. -Mikey, was that a strike? -I don’t know. You won’t let me pitch. I’m not tellin’ anyway. -Richie, that was a strike, wasn’t it? -Look, it’s my ball and bat and I’m just standing here. I’m not sayin’ either. -Look, you idiots, if I don’t pitch it’ll never be a strike and we’ll just be fishin’ the balls out of the grass over and over. -Dad says if we fight, he’ll make me mow the lawn instead of playin’. I’m gonna lie and tell him you’re pick’n a fight with me. -He couldn’t beat up your sister, never mind you. -Could so. -You tried once. No you can’t. -Well, then, he’ll have to mow the lawn. He won’t say so. -Beats standin’here listenin’ to you call a ball a strike. -See!
I’ve tried to explain here before that Kraftwerk and James Brown are essentially different versions of the same thing. No one ever buys it. But I’m going to keep on trying until my medications are adjusted just so, and I forget all about it.
If you’re of a certain vintage, this thing is awesome. I am:
I couldn’t care less how cornball that was. All sublime things are sorta lame, aren’t they?
Hollywood’s sorta lost this knack. Occasionally we watch a DVD, and the mildly out-of-date coming attractions show a drunk and a hooker self destructing in a seedy motel room in Vegas while the voice over intones sonorously:
It’s the love story of our times…
My wife and I burst out laughing every time. Good luck kids. No matter what, though, don’t end up like my wife and I; what a hopeless square everyone will think you are. Behind your back, they’ll even tell your friends you probably like the Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose.
[I’ve fallen behind everything outside since I got Lyme disease. Crabgrass. Dandelions. And hornets. My poor little son went out to play in the jumble of stuff gathered around the sandbox, and his big brother had to save him from the nest that had magically appeared there in the last few weeks. He’s tougher than me, and doesn’t hold a grudge. Which is good, because I should have been able to save him from the huge welt on his hand. Here’s the evidence your honor. I plead guilty.]
If a bee or wasp stings me, I’ll die almost immediately. I don’t care about that.
My neighbor, who likes cutting things down on a good day, counseled, unwonted, that I should razor all the shrubs down to the ground outside my door, so as not to attract such insects, just as he had done. They’ll come right in the house when you open the door, he said.
I told him I was unaware that he was also allergic to the venom of stinging insects; it seems like such rarified air I breathe. He said he was not.
The flowers stayed.
Some fears are worse than the perils they stem from. I decided not to pay much attention to it, and get on with my life. I am not reckless about it; I no longer cut down trees until the frosts have come, and other gentle nods to reality. But it does not define me. That would be worse than death.
Many persons find it odd and disquieting to see me ambivalent about this danger. They spot any flying insect and want to evacuate me like some gradeschooler during the blitz. There is an odd possibility that I’m about as cautious about being stung as I was before it became a lethal happenstance. It still hurt back then, after all; I’m not impervious to the logic of avoiding pain.
Six Flags Over Marion, we call the jumble of plastic and wood and sand and accoutrement we’ve assembled in a corner of the yard for the tot to play in. He contents himself merrily on the little slide and the ladder, and buries his troubles and his army men in the sandbox it leads into. My wife can see him from the house there, and he can play there alone or with his big brother. But it is on the edge of the wood, and the woods are not an urban abstraction here. We see things come out of those woods from time to time, and some are not suitable for children to encounter. And so we do watch. Who does not watch over their children? I don’t know them.
My wife was stung by a wasp or bee while sitting with the small child in the yard. She wept and was confused a bit; unsure where it came from. It left a formidable welt on her arm which is still clearly visible some two weeks later. I am an old hand at these sorts of things and put a paste of baking soda on the welt, and then some ice. We forgot all about it, except the itching.
A few days later, the small one was discomfited in some way. He seemed confused and hurt, though he did not cry. He is stoic that one, and rarely speaks anyway. We looked him all over and found a welt on his leg. We couldn’t tell what it was. Horsefly? Bee? Hornet? He sat quietly while we applied a poultice and he seemed hurt in multiple ways. I think it was the first time that the yard had ever betrayed him. We forgot about it.
Should I have forgotten about it? Does inuring yourself to some little creeping dread to the point of ambivalence taint your judgement? Is it worse or better than you treat it? I don’t know.
We were in the yard yesterday, and the little one came running and wailing from Six Flags Over Marion.
I’ve heard genius is a kind of intuition. Lots of people know lots of things, but they never assemble them into the whole required to see around the corner. It is said that people like Mozart look at a piano, and it makes perfect sense to them right away.
We all have moments of clarity I suppose, we regular people. You know many things, some barely impressions, and they coalesce occasionally into hard, fast, ideas. And I saw that child and saw what I should have seen before it happened this last time. There was a frame for the picture, and everything in it.
His little ear was the size of a saucer. Stoicism only gets you so far when you’re barely three, and he wept the tears of the disappointed and hurt. And I tended to him as I had been taught, imperfectly, by my ancestors. Draw it out with baking soda and bleach, and then the ice. Sit still and be calm. He sat and watched Clifford with his mother.
And then I went outside and I tore that plaything apart and found those wretched things I knew were there and poisoned them and crushed them and crushed their lairs like an archangel and a devil combined, and afraid only that I would not get a chance to kill every one.
Throw me a bone, willya? I don’t want to worry about this any more if it’s as dead as a Pharoah. Is the education of children in any meaningful way in a public facility gone forever? Because if it is, and here I am in my foolishness, still trying to cooperate in the wreckage of the process by encouraging my children to give it their all, I’m feeling pretty stupid here. If it’s over, please tell me. I’m beginning to feel like a guy attending a stranger’s wedding, wondering why everyone is laughing at me for asking the girl in the white dress for a date.
If you are of a traditional mind, the school presents a problem now. My bones direct me to tell my son:
My boy, you are going to school. You must do your best, cooperate fully, and respect the authority of the the teacher.
That worked great, until it dawned on me that the majority of his teachers were raving maniacs. And I can’t build the edifice of a properly educated child by telling him to listen closely to the teacher, except when they’re talking ragtime; oh, and by the way, they might always be full of it, or just most of the time — you decide.
I won’t bore you with the details of why his teachers appear to have been eating the paste since they were wee. Suffice it to say, they appear to have identified the public school system as a convenient host, buried themselves in its flesh like a unionized tick, and used the tiny but important high ground they have seized to rain a sort of off-topic propaganda on people too young to protest much about it. They are like abrasive monomaniac blog commenters, only they can give your kids an F.
There is a growing minority of persons that have decided to remove their kids from the public schools altogether, and teach them at home. I can’t fault them, but I can’t support them either. Unilateral disarmament is not peace. And you may very well be teaching your children the correct cranky worldview to have, but it will remain a cranky worldview nonetheless, because you are the only people in it. Take it from an auto-didact: people are fascinated with what you know, and horrified at what you don’t. It’s a long row to hoe. And I must admit that I am reminded of people who brew their own sparkling cider from wormy apples they grow in their yard, who always want to give you some when you visit, and other such “improvements” on readily available goods. They press the recycled Grolsch bottle with the suspicious looking cracks in the rubber stopper in your hands when you leave. You know, grass still won’t grow where I dumped that stuff out when I got home three years ago.
Anyway, the picture is 25 years older than I am. I’m not nostalgic for anything. I simply recognize something there that is not present any more. These children’s parents are no doubt far from rich, but their children are respectable. The surroundings are anything but elaborate, but there is order and seriousness. There are numbers and letters on the board, not inane opinions founded on the rock of hiding inside a school building your whole life long. There is an unashamed token of the United States as a profoundly important reality and ideal being displayed front and center. There is a teacher trying her best to bang something useful into those lovely little knotheads.
If it’s over, please tell me. I’ll feel foolish if I keep on like this.
Month: August 2007
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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