What the Nineties meant
I was stuck in traffic over the Key Bridge by Georgetown. Sirius XM's 80s on 8 was playing, as it always is in those kinds of dreadful situations. It was warning to not switch the blade on the guy in shades. Oh no. Don't masquerade with the guy in shades. Oh no.
On no, indeed. While I've made the case that the 1980s provided the best ten years of music the Earth has ever known (although I promptly took that back), it occurred to me how miserable the existence of the 80s on 8 DJs must be. As it turns out, they are all original MTV VJs. After they were booted off cable during the Reagan Administration, they eventually found another gig playing the same songs over and over on satellite radio.
What would that be like? Trapped in the same decade forever, listening to nothing but Footloose and the Go Gos and having to love it. Trying to find any new scrap of 80s trivia you could find, announcing the possibility of the Mike and the Mechanics reunion tour. The world has long since moved on, but their angel's still a centerfold.
The 80s produced enough music to fill up ten years, so you could conceivably tolerate ten more years of the same music afterwards. But it's been more than 23 years since the 80s were over. How much Duran Duran can you handle? Those original MTV VJs are stranded in the same spot, just as I was stranded on that bridge with the guy in shades.
Enough. It was time for a new decade. With the flick of a knob, I was in the Nineties. The 90s on 9.
For a moment, everything looked and sounded a little different. Stone washed. There was a saxophone playing. All the women were wearing Mom jeans, even those who weren't Moms. All the men were wearing Mom jeans too. There was a short, funky bass riff, the sound of the scene changes in Seinfeld.
But that was about all it evoked for me. As I sat suffocating in the traffic and listening to the 90s on 9, it struck me that it was a pretty boring decade — at least its legacy seems boring.
When you think of any other decade in the 20th century, even if you weren't alive during that decade, you can recall some symbols and music fairly easily. The 20s flappers and speakeasies. The 30s suits. The 60s hippies.
The 90s, by contrast, really don't have much to work with. If all the decades of the 20th century did a police lineup, the 90s wouldn't get fingered even with a knife clenched between its teeth.
Do college kids have 90s parties? Maybe they do. But it seems to me that's one dull party.
It's not like nothing happened then. Al Gore invented the Internet. Some young people skateboarded around their offices and made millions out of thin air. Bill Clinton was impeached, acquitted, and had his Arkansas law license suspended for five years. There must be some other stuff.
Yet compared to the decades around it, the 90s seemed more remarkable for all the things that didn't happen. There were no major recessions. There were no memorable, enduring clothing styles, regrettable or otherwise. There were no lasting music trends, unless you count a few depressed Seattle bands. There was a war, but it only lasted a couple weeks.
Even what was supposed to be an epic disaster at the close of the decade, Y2K — when the lights would go out, the frogs and locusts would descend on the streets, the dogs and cats would sleep together — ended up being the sound of one hand clapping.
Maybe I felt that way because I relate the 90s to my own life at that time, most of which I spent in my 20s and roaming the Earth, too harried to pay much attention to anything. I was on the go and in a hurry. I moved at least 14 times over those ten years, to different countries and parts of the U.S. I remember a lot of borrowing of friends' pickups. Sleeping for long stretches on couches and camping cots and crooked futons, and eating raw Ramen noodle chunks. Chasing it all down with the dust in the flavor packet and a Schlitz.
The first five or six years especially were a messy time, lots of fun but not without their struggles. As the 90s might put it, I felt like I was always stuck in second gear. It hadn't been my day, my week, my month, or even my year.
I did a lot of job hunting, much of it failed. Worked my resume over within an inch of its life trying hard to describe things like my level of Spanish. Was I proficient? That was a stretch. Literate? Conversant? Yeah, conversant. That was the ticket. But it really wasn't the ticket. Maybe you've been there.
There were some great things and some tough things, huge personal losses, but also some unforgettable experiences and some of the best things that ever happened to me. Probably everyone has their personal 90s, and maybe they should have their personal 90s. My personal 90s just happened to occur during the actual 90s, and that's probably why I haven't figured that decade out yet.
If I stopped long enough to think about it at some point, I might declare the 90s to be the most formative decade of my life, if there can be such a thing. But by then the traffic was moving and so was the radio dial, and thankfully because I'd had enough of livin' la vida loca. A little bit of 90s on 9 is okay, but you shouldn't become its DJ.
Lite-Brite: There's no app for that
We were talking about classic toys. The conversation inevitably turned to the Lite-Brite, the legendary Hasbro game in which colored pegs are stuck into little holes on a screen backlit by a lightbulb to make bright designs: comic book characters, boats, whatever the artist fancied in her wildest imagination.
Then somebody said there's now a Lite-Brite iPhone app.
No way! But of course there was.
I found that a little troubling. I've no problem with killing time in an airport with a Lite-Brite app. I plan to do it myself as soon as I possibly can. Sounds pretty fun.
But let's think of the children. The Lite-Brite isn't something to be scrunched into the solitary confinement of a cell phone. It requires a bigger canvas. The whole thing is a tactile experience.
Could they make an app for your grandmother's cookies?
The box. The opening. The release of the plastic smell into the air that was the smell of possibility. The futuristic white casing that made you feel as if you were directing the NASA control center. All those pegs. Those pegs. Those multicolored pegs. The pegs that were the minions of your creativity and that you'd find until next Christmas and the next Christmas and then stuck in the crevices of the sofa for many Christmases to come. The scores of different designs on black paper with precise numbering so nothing would go wrong: Bugs Bunny; a convertible; a snow man. Or you could go rogue and make your own design. Any design that your wicked mind might come up with. You could fill in every hole on that screen. You could do an X. You could do a Z. You could do a &^%(^. There was no limit to what you could do. You could order more pegs from the address that was in the little instruction booklet. Somewhere in Rockville, Maryland.
The smell of burning dust off the light bulb when you hadn't used it in a while. The satisfying little poof when you punctured the black paper with a peg as you created. The turning off of lights and then the plugging in of your finished product before everyone. The reflection of your creation off all those amazed faces. The applause.
100,000 miles
Mile 550 came when we went to pick up our new golden retriever puppy from some breeders in southern Pennsylvania. They lived in a double wide trailer along with three litters, about 30 pups. Ours looked like all the others but had my name written on a tag around his neck. I could hold him in my palm. It was raining when we walked out, and I shielded him under my coat.
Mile 562, driving home, was the first time I questioned the wisdom of getting a dog, since our new one had just gotten carsick in the back seat.
On mile 1,474, I loaded the back with about two tons of sod to plant in the yard. It looked fantastic when I put it down, and I admired it every day for the first week or two. Then it faded away and died in the sun like my grass always does.
Mile 36,742 we drove in the rain to the hospital. Our daughter was born that day. We drove her home at about mile 36,755 and took her inside, and I realized that I was terrified because now there was a baby in the house.
Miles 36,755 through about 47,000 were mostly trips to get diapers and formula.
Mile 54,322 I backed into a metal post and put a nice clean dent in the fender. The first blemish. I officially owned it.
During mile 68,058, I was stopped at a red light. I looked in my rear view mirror and there was a white Honda Civic speeding behind me with a teenager on the phone, not paying attention. There was nothing I could do as I watched everything in slow motion and braced for the blow. I jerked forward at impact but it wasn't that bad and the air bag didn't blow up. He was already out of the car with his hands on top of his head. But he was okay. We looked at the damage. He had crunched my already-dented fender, damaged the hitch a little, but that was it. Meanwhile, he had completely accordioned his hood and crushed the entire front panel. He panicked. My dad's going to kill me, he said. He was maybe 16. We walked over and sat on the curb and I tried to calm him down. He won't be mad, I told him, everybody has something like this happen at one time or another. I told him about all my wrecks, although I doubt it helped much. The tow truck came. I felt bad for him.
One other hand, I got a new fender out of it. Presto! No more blemishes.
On mile 78,450 we got a new car. We kept the 4Runner but didn't use it as much. I felt a little guilty when I'd drive off in the new one, watching the loyal 4Runner sitting lonely at the curb. Neglected.
The miles didn't pass as quickly. Maybe 3-4,000 each year. But it always ran perfectly.
On mile 98,450, we drove out to pick up a memorial stone for our dog.
The odometer got to 99,800. 99,965. The big moment was almost at hand.
Then I left town for a while. When I got back, I looked at the odometer: 100,012 miles. I had missed the milestone.
I'm not much of a car guy (most of the time anyway). But even though the mile markers I've used here are just guesses, I couldn't help but get a little nostalgic about all the things we went through together for almost 100,000 miles. When you have a car that long, it can become a little like a person.
I thought of doing a Ferris Bueller and reversing 19 miles so we could go through the rite of passage together. But I know it wouldn't really count. I'll just wait until 200,000, when both of us will probably be showing our age and who knows what else will have happened in our lives?
Gay pride parades: Why all the drag queens?
It's almost inevitable: Every year during the D.C. Gay Pride Parade, the newspapers and TV stations highlight the drag queens. This photo of Porcelain St. Clair, for example, was on the Washington Post's front page.
Of course, there's no monopoly on that kind of coverage here. You see the same thing in stories about the pride parades in New York, central Pennsylvania, Omaha, and pretty much everywhere else: "Drag queens, politicians, grandmothers and shirtless men descended on Tel Aviv in their thousands Friday to party in the annual gay pride parade ...."
Why are the drag queens so prominent? I've never been to a pride parade, so I can't say what the participant demographics are like, but I would bet the majority are not in drag. And yet the cameras love the drag queens. Maybe they're featured because they make for a more interesting illustration than, say, The Capital Area Gay Chess Association (not a real organization as far as I know). Maybe everyone just thinks they're funny. Maybe they're just the gay parade equivalent of the Shriners who wear the tassled hats and ride around in little cars throwing toffee.
There's nothing scandalous about them. Who cares what people wear in a parade or anywhere else? Maybe you would like to dress like Carmen Miranda with a bowl of fruit strapped to your head while visiting the dentist or the DMV. I've got no beef with that. It would spice things up for everyone else.
I only raise this because the focus seems to dilute any more substantive message to these parades, assuming there is even supposed to be a more substantive message to these parades. It makes it hard to take the whole thing seriously. And if I were gay, I think that would bug me.
Let's say you're a well-intentioned heterosexual person who abhors discrimination against gays and lesbians. You've seen some of your friends and family having to deal with it. It makes perfect sense to you that there would be a parade to support gay and lesbian rights.
Then you watch some of the coverage. You see the top finishers in the drag beauty contests. You see the Dolly Parton Brigade. You just can't get that fired up about the whole thing. You're probably not going to say to everyone else watching: "Sweet! I think it's about time a guy walked down Main Street dressed as Cher."
To many hetero guys (and maybe women too), I would bet it just seems weird and goofy, completely foreign. But my best guess is that many of the people marching in the parades don't care what we think and are just having a good time, and maybe that's the whole point of the parades. Not everything has to mean something.
(Photo by Sarah L. Voison for The Washington Post)
The woman with the Dalmatian
For all these years she's walked her dog by our house, rounded the corner, and kept on. She's about my age, always regal and dressed impeccably, even before 7 in the morning when I was still in my baseball cap and uncaffeinated.
Her Dalmatian walked on her left side. It was like watching two fish swim together. That's how well they seemed to know each other's movements.
Sometimes I'd see her out when I was walking my own dog, back when he was alive and that was the way I'd start my day. The dogs brushed up against each other and we'd say good morning. We never shook hands or introduced ourselves. She had a faint German accent. The Dalmatian's coat was brilliant in the sun, well brushed and tended to. After I moved on, the spots would stay in my mind's vision.
They walked in the summer and their sunrise shadows spread over the blades of grass in the yard, jagged like the teeth in a saw.
This winter there was a warm day, and I saw her walk by with the Dalmatian. She was wearing a head scarf. I didn't think much of it, until I saw her a few days later wearing a different head scarf. She gave me the same polite smile she always does.
It was raining hard one day this spring and there they were, walking under one of those clear umbrellas like kids have sometimes. I could see her scarf through it. The Dalmatian was touching her side as they walked.
I haven't seen her or the Dalmatian in weeks.
I have always thought that those fighting cancer were the bravest people. Then I remembered one breast cancer victim saying she didn't like it when people said that. There's nothing courageous about trying to rid your body of this, she said. That suggests there's some kind of choice.
I appreciated her point, but with all respect, I think you can still admire people even when they don't want to be admired. You take your heroes when they appear.
I'm proud to be Prussian
I've always described my heritage as, among other things, one-quarter German. For most of my life, I've known next to nothing about that German quarter. I had a German last name. My German forebearers immigrated to the Midwest during the 1800s. That was about it.
This week, my daughter had to do a school presentation on her family tree. We did some research, hoping to see some a few names and dates. Instead, we made an earth-shattering discovery: Our lineage was not identified as German, but Prussian. Prussian! With the click of a mouse, we had become exotic.
Prussia. The kingdom that dominated the German Empire for centuries. Land of nobility. The Tuetonic Knights. Frederick the Great. Otto von Bismarck. It wasn't a state with an army; it was an army with a state.
It seems my ancestors left at the absolute peak of Prussian infuence in the latter half of the 19th century. Around the time we dominated Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and swallowed Bavaria, among other territories.
After my family left, things went south. The victors of World War I, thirsty for revenge, drafted the Treaty of Versailles and carved up pieces of Prussia and distributed them to Belgium, Lithuania, Poland, Denmark. The remains were stolen by the Soviets after World War II. Much of it became what was called East Germany.
On a freezing day in February 1947, a day nobody remembers, Prussia was quietly but officially dissolved with the stroke of a pen. My people have now been absorbed into the rest of Germany. You have to blow the dust off the pages of a history book in order to see what's left of Prussia.
Well, I'm not going to sit by and watch my heritage evaporate. My ancestors wouldn't have called themselves German and I'm not going to either. We're Prussians and damn proud of it. A quarter of my body is Prussian. You are who you say you are.
We took the German flag off the presentation and replaced it with the Prussian. My daughter is 12.5 percent Prussian. Assuming she doesn't marry another Prussian-American, her children will be 6.25 percent Prussian. They might keep splitting it generation after generation, but a little Prussian will always live on. That's the beauty of being American.
Should my middle-aged male friend just admit he likes the new Taylor Swift album? (continued)
My friend, who was wary of admitting he liked Taylor Swift's album Red, now has a separate but related and yet maybe even more significant problem: Step by step, chord by chord, he is learning to play every Red song on his guitar. And to sing them too.
He started out with noble intentions. His young daughter's guitar skills were advancing, so he thought that in order to keep the momentum he'd get the complete Red guitar tablature songbook. It was brilliant. The vegetables had been hidden within the pizza. He didn't have to force her to practice. She did it on her own almost every day.
Then, one evening, as she practiced in the living room, the same snake-charming power that had seduced him into listening to Red in the first place began to toot its little intoxicating tooter. He became entranced, lost. When he awoke, he found he had picked up his own guitar and was playing in a Taylor Swift jam session. It was fruitless to resist: Every single one of those songs was tasty, juicy. He sounded damn good even though he was forced to go at least an octave higher than his comfort level advised.
At the end of the chorus to "We Are Never Getting Back Together" they stopped playing, and, imitating Taylor's Valley Girl tone, spoke the magic words together: "Like ever." They almost always got a giggle out of it.
Thinking about that made me wince a little. But it's in the natural order of things. There is a time in a dog's life to be ferocious, to bare teeth and to rule the pack. He will howl all night and intimidate all the other hounds in the alley. At some point, the dog gets a little softer, a little meeker. He flops his belly down on the porch and lets the puppies crawl all over him.
To the Class of 2013
You've accomplished something, whatever school you're graduating from. Almost 25 percent of Americans don't finish high school. Almost 70 percent don't complete a bachelor's degree. More than 93 percent of people in the world won't finish college. Hundreds of millions across the globe, mostly girls, never attend school for a single day.
So you should feel proud. But don't feel superior. Not everybody had the means or the support that you've had to get here. And anyway, lots of people have done very well without graduating. Peter Jennings and Hans Christian Andersen didn't finish high school. Mark Wahlberg, Louis Armstrong, and Julie Andrews didn't finish high school. Edward Albee, Adele, Paul Allen, Dan Akroyd, and Jane Austen never finished college. That's just a few of the A's.
You're going to have a good time celebrating this event, as you should. Maybe you'll party in a hotel. Tomorrow, there will be a maid who will clean up the room you partied in. Chances are she's cleaning that room because she's trying to get somebody she loves to the chair you're in. She's accomplishing a lot too.
Try to find at least one person that you can confide in. Somebody you trust absolutely and can call at 3 in the morning with a crisis. It doesn't matter if you see them every day or once a year. You'd be surprised how much you might rely on them down the road. To me, a person like that is right up there with food, water, and shelter. Once you have those, you can do anything.
Also, try to be that kind of person for someone else. Think as hard as you can for good suggestions, and listen to every word. If they tell you something in confidence, take it to the grave. No matter what. Helping somebody like that is one of the most satisfying feelings you can have in life.
Don't take too much advice. When you do take advice, take it from good advice givers. One of life's challenges is identifying who they are. For example, I may not be one of them. So maybe you should reject my advice and then go and take too much advice. You'll have to figure it out on your own.
You've probably heard that you'll never use most of the math you've learned, but I think that's wrong. That usually comes from people who didn't like math or weren't any good at it. Math is more useful than you think in life. You never know.
Actually, I think that goes for anything you learn. Y ou can't remember everything you've studied, but try to treat every bit of knowledge that comes your way how a really talented seamstress might use fabric that others would discard. Every scrap could get used at some point to make something cool.
Keep learning. Know it all.
If you haven't had your heart broken yet — really broken to the point you can barely get out of bed — then the diploma you're receiving is just a rain check until the actual commencement ceremony you'll have some day. It might be a person you love that rejects you, or not getting a scholarship or a job you want. You will pour your heart into something and fail. That's the real graduation. Your grandparents probably won't be there for that day, and you won't get cards and checks and a mimosa. But it's every bit as important an event as this day is. It's a transendence. That's the day you start becoming one of the greats.
It's never too late to thank your teachers. Or to thank anyone for something you appreciate only later. Or to express condolences. In fact, it might mean even more years later.
The right response when you get a compliment is to simply say thank you. Don't deny it or reject it. If the person didn't mean the compliment, then who cares how your respond? But more often than not, they meant what they said. Take the money and run.
Avoid the people who discourage you from what you want to do. They are poison for you and me. Usually, they are people who were discouraged from doing what they wanted to do and listened. That turned them into discouragers.
Don't be a discourager. No matter how silly somebody's ideas or plans may seem to you, nobody can see the future. They may surprise you. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper job and told he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas." Maybe the person's idea really does turn out to be lousy. Let the person fail on their own. Buy them a drink — that might be their commencement day. Then encourage them to do the next thing. They'll remember you when they open their version of Euro Disney.
When you meet somebody new, ask them questions. You can always learn something from someone, and if you don't then it's a missed opportunity.
Learn a good card trick. Everyone loves them.
The last day of school, again
This is a recycled post, but I can't help thinking about it this time of year.
Most seventh graders can't wait until summer vacation. But I dreaded it. She was leaving, and I'd never see her again.
Through that winter and spring, she was my reason for getting up in the morning. She'd been in my class for years, just another one of the girls. Until one day in seventh grade when she wasn't. There were some whispers, some notes exchanged behind backs. What I gathered was that she liked me a little bit, and then of course I suddenly liked her a lot. That was the beginning of the romance and the end of all conversation between us. Communication after that was through intermediaries or tightly folded correspondence.
The chandeliers turned on above her head. She had gray eyes and a haircut in the style of the Olympic ice skater Dorothy Hamill, as did almost all of the girls and quite a few of the boys.
I went back through all our class photos. How could I not have seen what a beauty she was?
It was late winter. The radiators knocked in the background and I snuck peaks at her. Sent her notes about how bored I was and was she bored too?
Our teacher, knowing seventh graders, moved all our desks around frequently those last months of school. Sometimes the girl with the gray eyes was on the other side of the room. For three electrifying weeks she was only two desks away.
But it didn't really matter. I knew where she sat at all times and there were always ways to notice her. She held her pencil to the side of her face during math and pressed the eraser into her cheek while she thought. A little dimple around it. I thought: It's an amazing person who does something like that. Beautiful and brainy.
The weather got warmer in May and our recesses got lazier. The boys didn't play kickball or basketball but stood in circles and talked about the summer. We all looked to where the girls were. By that time of year, their uniforms, like ours, were exhausted and counting the days along with the rest of us. But I thought she was Audrey Hepburn.
Then there was a note from her. Call me tonight, and her number. We were still at the age when it was unusual to call, so I knew something was up and it could only be bad news. I waited until everyone was out of the room and dialed. I hadn't spoken to her in weeks, so it was like talking to a stranger. We complained about school and how we couldn't wait until the last day, then she took a deep breath and told me her dad was being transferred and they were moving. Very far away and very soon.
The last Friday in May, which I had been thinking about since fall, suddenly became the end of all days. The classroom was stuffy and we yanked open the windows. The teacher didn't bother teaching that last week but instructed us on cleaning out our desks. I lifted the top. All the leavings of the year were in there. I had been so sick of this desk, and now I wanted to sit behind it for the rest of my life.
The day came. I woke up early. Same old uniform. Same old walk by myself. But the school was buzzing. There were trash cans stuffed with paper and workbooks everywhere in the halls. Summer vacation was hours away! And when you're in seventh grade and the eighth graders have already finished and their class is abandoned, that is the day of your coronation as the absolute monarchs of the school.
We shuffled through last routines in class, our teacher said have a happy summer. It was so fast, there was no time alone with her. My desk was barren.
Then it was over and we were all around the playground. The girl with the gray eyes came over to me with a piece of paper. Here's our new address, she said. I got it last night. Write me. She pressed it into my hand and got into the familiar blue station wagon with her mom and left.
Later, when I looked at her address, it was in a state that was on the other end of the earth. I wrote her a a few times over the summer, and she wrote me back. Then we stopped. It was hard to think of things to say. I told her I was having a fun summer and going to the pool a little but was getting bored and was kind of excited for school to start again.
The DC scandal industrial complex
On some days, you can already see the sheen of humidity in the horizon. The birds are awake earlier, and there will be caterpillars on the sidewalks before long. Most of us feel the frozen concentrate in our body thawing out and coursing around.
But here in Washington, D.C., not everyone is feeling 22.
Summer presents a problem for the thousands of people who make their living off seeing to it that we are outraged about something rotten in the capital city. The problem for this anger industrial complex is that around this time of year, most healthy people are getting ready for the beach. They aren't going to read the paper or watch cable. They are too happy to get mad.
Even worse, these few months are like the Dust Bowl of politics. It's an off-year summer, when there are no big elections or narratives. You can only publish so many stories about whether Hillary or Christie will run.
But then a little rain fell. The Obama administration's apparently poor handling of the Benghazi attacks resurfaced. That's something to chew on for a while.
And then a real miracle: It looked like the IRS had screwed over the Tea Party.
And like manna from the sky, there was suddenly a story about the Justice Department bugging AP reporters.
One problem makes a few articles and a few nights of cable hollering. Two problems can get you through a month. Three problems all at once? That's Christmas. Maybe two Christmases. That's two Christmases and some visits from the Tooth Fairy.
Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal says it's the worst Washington scandal since Watergate." George Will of the Washington Post sees "echoes of Watergate." Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post says: "CNN shows voters disapprove of Obama’s handling of the Benghazi scandal by a 53-to-42 percent margin." There's a poll of each of the scandals. There's a poll of two of the three scandals. There's a poll of all the polls of the scandals. In a rare show of unity, MSNBC and Fox News are both outraged about all the scandals.
It doesn't matter if anyone knows what actually happened. What matters is that people are outraged, that people can vent about their outrage, and that there are polls measuring how people feel about their outrage. We can get outraged first and ask questions later.
There are many legitimate stories in all this muck. But the ratio of speculation, polling, declarations of the worst scandals since Watergate, and calls for impeachment to facts and reporting is running approximately 175 to 1.
Summer is the time of vacations and beaches. Right now, if you look at any media source, it also seems to be the time for packs of flies feasting at the dumpster.
The good news is that there are adults who will figure everything out. In the mean time, I wish the media would just shut up and report.
Television: The new family time
When people first got televisions, watching a program was a family event. It was a miracle. It was like traveling without having to travel.
We take it for granted now, but imagine buying your first TV set in 1951. You didn't need to go to the movie theater. The theater was in your house. You could watch somebody in New York reading the news. You could watch the St. Louis Cardinals while you played chess with Grampa.
Everyone sat in the room and couldn't believe the bounty that was before them. They talked for a while and then they stopped talking and just watched.
Televisions became cheaper, more available. It wasn't that big of a deal to have one and, eventually, more than one. TV became an escape. You didn't need to sit in the living room with everyone else. You could turn it on, tune it in, and drop out.
There were a few channels that went from dawn to 11 p.m., then they went all night, then there were five channels, then cable, then 57 channels, and then countless channels. MTV. HBO. You could watch whatever you wanted on your own, whenever you wanted. You could watch surgery at 3 a.m.
Time passed. There were computers, and then there were really big computers and then smaller computers that could connect you to anyone and anything. You could play a game with somebody in Indiana. Botswana. You didn't need Grampa.
At one point there were enormous things you could put by your ear that looked like walkie-talkies but were called cellular phones. They got smaller. And smaller. Then they were smart. Really smart. Everyone got one. You could talk into them. Then you could look into them. You could play a game with somebody in Botswana while you ate a chalupa at Taco Bell.
You didn't need to be in the house or the office to surf the web. You could stare into the device all day long. You could look into it deeply like you were doing something important even though you were just checking on your fantasy team. There were a lot of interesting things on there. There were a lot of interesting things on your iPad. There were a lot of interesting things on your Kindle. There were limitless interesting things and many ways to look at them.
Everyone in the house had at least one device. Everyone in the house looked at the device of their choosing. You could turn them on, tune them in, drop out. You didn't have much time to think about what you were going to say to the people in your house because you were busy thinking of what to say to your friend in India. It was okay because everyone else was also thinking of what to say to their friend in India.
At some point you all reached maximum overload. It was too much. There was an intervention. What to do? You all agreed that at a certain time, on a certain day of the week, you would put away your devices. You would do something together.
All this time, the TV was still there. It had gotten bigger, and it had gotten clearer. But it was still there. You could order any movie. You could watch any show. You could record any show. You could order a show on demand or through Netflix. Eventually, there was something everyone could agree on. You didn't have to watch Jersylicious. You could watch something good.
The Super Bowl was on. The season finale of something everyone loved was on. The devices were in another room. You were talking to each other. Talking about Tom Brady or the decline of Mad Men. Grampa had the chess set ready for you.
David Beckham's many hairdos
The Guaridan's captions are just as entertaining as the photos. The 2005 faux-hawk was "a bit of mousy 'meh' mess." His 2010 boy band comeback look was "mullety at the back, quiffy at the front, and messy in between."
We kicked the British's ass in the Revolutionary War and have saved them numeous times since. Yet their journalists still rule.
It's easy to poke fun at Beckham and his many 'dos, but as I looked through these photos I found myself admiring his willingness to shake things up, to take some chances, to fail miserably, and then to rise again. Above all he kept soldiering on, always changing and never resting with any one look. His hair was like Madonna. All five of the Spice Girls with some special guest stars added in.
The 2003 cornrows were the prime example. He couldn't quite pull them off but he came pretty close, and how many of us can say that? Cornrows on me would look more like alfalfa during the drought of '87.
Here's to the dentists
My college professor said the problem with communism is that not enough people want to be street sweepers. If you have a state-guaranteed income, why take a lousy job?
I was thinking about that during a recent dentist appointment. Not many people like dentist appointments. So imagine being a dentist. Your day is nothing but dentist appointments, one after the other. You wake up in the morning, put on gloves, and scrape goo off people's teeth. Stick the little hose down there to absorb all the gunk and grime and your ears are filled with the sound of suction.
Have you ever looked deeply into a mouth? Take a flashlight, open your mouth, and look into a mirror. You see a dank cavern with bumps and orifices and a long, dangling thing way at the back in the place where everything falls off the cliff and into the gizzard. That's what a dentist looks at all day.
Yet there are thousands of people in this country who voluntarily do that job. Tens of thousands. They devote years of study to make it possible.
And thank God for them. Whether it's for the money, for the love of the job, or for something else, they look into our mouths, and as I see it, they keep the world rotating. If we didn't have dentists, there would be nothing but Austin Powers roaming the earth. You yourself would be Austin Powers. People would be disgusted by those around them and their smiles and their disgusting, twisted, rotting teeth. Procreation would stop. We'd go where the dinosaurs went.
I think you can say that about every job. One of life's miracles is that there are usually enough people to fill every kind of position. They may hate the job and complain about it from dawn to dusk. Not everybody gets their dream situation, and there are a lot more people collecting garbage than are playing drums before a packed stadium. But every job gets done. That is because there is satisfaction in every job.
I have come to respect and admire every type of work that everyone does. If you dig a bit, jobs are almost always interesting, and we should be grateful for the role that people fill. I've made similar observations about hotel maids, lawyers (which is my own job), garbage collectors, and, indirectly, exterminators.
Take accountants: I'm really glad that I'm not an accountant, because if I were then I'd have to do accounting all the time. And I don't like to do accounting. But every 14th of April at 20 minutes to midnight, as I'm hauling ass to the post office in a sweat and panic, I am very glad indeed that there are accountants.
The Great Gatsby: the movie's greater than the book
A friend once wrote a review of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises for our high school newspaper. At the time, I thought that was a little weird. Who reviews a book decades after it's been declared a classic? Even weirder was that he gave it a bad review. Awkward dialogue, he wrote. Boring story.
I gave him grief about panning the book. You can't give Ernest Hemingway a bad review.
Why not? he asked
That stumped me. I hadn't thought of a reason because I didn't need a reason. It was the Sun Also Rises. It was a classic. It was Ernest Hemingway. That spoke for itself.
But it didn't speak for itself and I did need a reason. And I didn't have one because I didn't know why it was a good book.
I remembered that conversation this past weekend when I saw the new Gatsby movie. I realized my friend had already grasped at age 17 what took me many more years to understand: You don't have to like something just because it's a classic.
I read Gatsby my senior year of high school, just like everyone else. It was a story about a guy in 1920s New York who sells his soul to make a bunch of money and impress a married woman he loved, and it ultimately costs him everything. I didn't like it. Awkward dialogue. Boring story. Contrived ending. Wooden characters. Why would anyone, especially a high school senior, like a book in which the protagonist calls people "old sport" all the time?
Years later, I thought Gatsby deserved another try. I read it slowly. I read it again. I listened to a BBC Radio production of it while I had a long stay in the hospital. Then I read it again.
Having read and listened to it several times as a mature adult who was sensitive to all its subtleties, I reached a conclusion: Awkward dialogue. Boring story. Contrived ending. Wooden characters.
My problem is I just don't get it. When I read a novel, I like a good story, and it doesn't seem like there is much of a story there. A bunch of people drinking and and cheating and moping. Staring at lights in the distance. It's an elegant All My Children.
And what about the character of Gatsby? He was a high-priced stalker with a big house and shady background, a guy who thought he could impress a woman by throwing a lot of nice shirts at her. He threw parties he didn't attend for people he didn't care about. All this to win over a woman who seemed shallow, without a mind of her own. How bad could I feel when he gets shot in his own pool?
But it seems I'm on the wrong side of good taste. Even though Gatsby was hammered in initial reviews, many consider it to be the American novel of the 20th century. It still sells half a million copies a year and, partly because of the movie, will probably sell many more for years to come. Maybe it's our Don Quixote.
So I probably stand alone when I admit that I thought the new Gatsby movie is better than the novel — and, by the way, much better than the 1974 movie starring Robert Redford, which adhered more closely to the original story.
I know it's not a fair to compare words on paper against a movie with a multimillion dollar budget. But even beneath all the fireworks, the movie tells a story that was invisible in the novel. It's also a feast for the eyes, especially in 3-D at the theater. Every frame of it seems to be interesting, like its own painting. It has a fast pace and sound track that inject some adrenaline into a novel that seems to be napping after a three-martini lunch.
It's not perfect. I'm not sure why they have the narrator, Nick Carraway, write the story as he sits in a sanitarium, with the words coming out of his typewriter like it's an Electric Company for post-graduates. And while I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was fantastic as Gatsby, he never quite figures out what kind of accent he wants to have ("old sport," still used way too often, comes out about seven different ways).
But overall, it was a lot of fun and kept my attention throughout. Actually, maybe the movie helped me figure out what I was supposed to get about the book all along.
What would Christ have done about the Boston bomber?
Since the Boston Marathon bombings, there's been a lot of focus on Islam. But two pieces in the Washington Post got me thinking instead about Christianity.
The first was a front-page story about the misery bombing victims are going through. One of those victims is Paul Norden, pictured above, who lost his right leg in the April 15 explosion.
The immediate physical and psychological impacts of the blasts have slowly begun to subside. Ahead is the difficult period of learning to function outside the cocoon of support that has been spun around them. For Norden, that will mean negotiating the 14 steps up to the second-floor home where he will live with his mother. It will mean learning to reach for something high in a kitchen cabinet while balancing on one leg and a crutch. It will mean adjusting the way he bathes, grappling with medical expenses and finding new ways to simply get around. His family also must care for his older brother, J.P., who lost his right leg in the bombing as well. ...
Norden admits he did not work out much before the attack. He weighed 246 pounds. He is 206 now, but an apples-to-apples calculation is difficult. “I don’t know how much my leg weighed,” he says.
The other story — shorter, unillustrated, hidden deep within the inner pages of the paper — was about the struggles Massachusetts officials had finding a burial site for the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston bombing suspect who was killed in a firefight with police April 19. For some reason, that story got me thinking even more than the first.
For weeks, cemeteries in Massachusetts and nearby states refused to accept Tsarnaev's remains. Then Martha Mullen, a mental health counselor in Virginia, heard the story and helped arrange for his burial in a small Islamic cemetery about 75 miles south of Washington, D.C. "My first thought was, Jesus says love your enemies and not hate them after they’re dead,” Mullen said. "Nobody is without sin. Certainly this was a horrific act, but he's dead and what happened is between him and God."
Those two articles made quite a contrast. Reading about people like Mullen, who will never get his leg back, made it easy to identify with the local woman who said they should have treated Tsarnaev like bin Laden and "dropped him in the ocean." Tsarnaev apparently didn't care about others' lives. Why should anybody care about his? It makes you want to feed him to the sharks until there's nothing left.
But Mullen's quote echoed in my head: "Jesus says love your enemies and not hate them after they're dead."
She's received some criticism from many people, including local politicians and Islamic leaders. She said, “I can’t pretend it’s not difficult to be reviled and maligned. But any time you can reach across the divide and work with people that are not like you, that’s what God calls us to do.”
It's a nice message. But I wonder how I'd feel if they buried Tsarnaev by the gravesites of my late family and friends? (He's buried in Virginia, but it could have been anywhere.) Suppose that when I went to visit their graves, I saw his marker — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who murdered four people, including an 8-year-old, and whose bomb ripped limbs from Paul Norden and dozens of others, buried right there by people that were very important to me. Would I be willing to accept that?
It doesn't make for easy answer. I definitely don't have one. But I suppose the good thing about Christianity is it compels you to ask the question in the first place.
Mother's Day
I managed to stick it out, and when it was time to go back to the U.S., that letter traveled back with me. Then it went from the West to the East Coast, back to the West Coast and then back to the East Coast again, pretty much everywhere I've lived since the day I received it. It's been stored in suffocating attics and lonely storage units, under beds crammed in with God alone knows what else. But here it is.
When I put it close to my face there's a sweet, dry smell that seems to have a little of every year and every place I've been since she wrote it. The paper is still crisp, and it's the same paper she sat down and held as she wrote with her legendary cursive. You can see the indentations where she pressed or crossed something out.
Dear Mark,
... Hope the weeks are going by smoother. Things probably haven't changed that much but hopefully your ability to cope has reached a better point. Really wish you had called sooner. Not that we had solutions and I know you hated making that call but you may have been spared a little anguish. I'm so glad you did call — not that we wanted you to be miserable. You just have to know we are here for you through thick and thin. Really.
Of course we want to share in the good news whenever it comes but things can't always be rosy. You have to share the tough moments too, if only to get some off your mind or shoulders. We like to think we are always in command but I don't care who you are, there comes a time when we all need someone, even if it's just listening. ...
I can't help but think you are going to look back at some point in your life and see all you have experienced in Thailand as a very positive time — when you are far away from it and see it in another light.
Love and prayers,
Mom
She was right, including the last part: I'm far away from that moment and that person and see it all in another light.
I've said this before, but as convenient as emailing, texting, Facebook and all the rest are, letters still seem like the best form of communication ever invented. A letter is an event. Even when the writer is gone, you still have their words right in front of you.
Happy Mother's Day to Mom, and to all our moms.
A conversation with the Basque president
In last October’s Basque elections, almost two-thirds of voters favored parties that, to varying degrees, could be described as Basque nationalists. Those parties took 48 of the 75 seats in the Basque parliament, the body that has governed the Basque Autonomous Community since 1980, when Basques held their first elections and formed their first government after four decades of rule under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
The party that received the most votes was the Basque National Party (EAJ-PNV), allowing EAJ-PNV members of parliament to elect Iñigo Urkullu as Lehendakari, or president of the Basque Government. Urkullu is now leader of the approximately 2.2 million people that live in the Basque Autonomous Community, or Euskadi in the Basque language. The position carries with it a significant amount of influence because, among other reasons, Basques control more than 90 percent of their own tax revenue under a unique economic arrangement with Spain.
Besides his direct political powers, Urkullu is also a symbolic leader for hundreds of thousands of Basques who live in the neighboring province of Navarre and French-Basque region, and for the millions of Basques and Basque descendants who have strong communities scattered across the globe — in the United States, Latin America, and as far away as Australia.
He takes over during a unique time of opportunities and challenges. Supported by its traditionally strong manufacturing and industrial base, the Basque economy is one of the strongest in Europe, and yet it hasn't been immune from the effects of the severe financial crisis in Spain. But Urkullu is also the first Basque president to govern without the burden of civil war or military activity by the terrorist group ETA, which abandoned its armed campaign in October 2011 after more than 50 years in operation. Still, since his party enjoys only a simple majority, Urkullu will have to find ways of working with the other three main parties in the parliament, EH Bildu, Socialist Party, and Popular Party.
How will your government differ from the Socialist-led government of the past four years? What are your priorities?
Rather than trying to be different, this government's objective is to have a clear direction. That means in every area, and also in foreign affairs, naturally. We want to be better known and project ourselves better world-wide. We want to make a place for ourselves on the international stage. We want to get Euskadi recognized in the forums in which strategic debates are held and have our voice heard there.
This government has five objectives in foreign affairs. Firstly, we want to work for Euskadi's sustainable development, promoting our productive sectors' interests. Secondly, we want to take part in the construction of Europe. Our future is connected with Europe's future. We want to grow as a European nation, and we have to get our voice heard in the forums in which our powers are debated.
Our third objective is to strengthen our ties with the Basque community around the world. Many of you are descended from people who had to leave Euskadi because of economic and political difficulties. And many others have moved abroad in recent years for professional reasons or as investigators or voluntary workers. Either as communities, or as individuals, you want to help to improve Euskadi's image, and we want to work with you on this objective.
And this is linked with our fourth objective: getting Euskadi-Basque Country known world-wide. When coming on the world stage, our people and particular characteristics give us a lot of vitality. Our particular characteristics are the Basque language, self-government, and the Basque Economic Agreement [with Spain]. These are our tools and advantages to make ourselves known world-wide, to show our character to the world.
And finally, our fifth objective is to help build a more balanced world. Basque society has to make its commitment to solidarity clear. And that way we can help to build a fairer world.
Those are going to be the main factors in our foreign policy and, to do all this, we are going to need every citizen, every private association, and every Basque company to work with our public organizations.
The Basque Country’s economy has performed well compared to much of Europe in recent years, but it’s still not at full speed. What ideas do you have to improve things, including the unemployment rate? Will the economy make it difficult to implement other policies?
Thanks to the economic policies followed in Euskadi over recent decades we have a stronger manufacturing and industrial structure than several other nearby economies. This has helped us to lessen the effects of the crisis: fewer jobs have been lost, there is less debt, public services are protected, and so on. Even so, Euskadi is in the middle of the crisis, and we are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now will affect Euskadi for the next 20 years. To face this situation, people are our priority and our commitment. Guaranteeing people's welfare in difficult times.
How is that principle reflected in the government's decisions? We are maintaining our health service, an education system of the highest quality, and all other basic social services. The fact that last year's tax revenue was lower has forced us to make some modifications, but the three areas I've mentioned are untouchable as far as we're concerned, and 74% of our budget goes into those services. When it comes down to it, we're going to look after people until the worst of the crisis is over, and that includes services for people who are out of work.And at the same time, although a little more slowly, we are going to lay the foundations for economic recovery. We're going to have to slow down public investment, and we won't be able to start any large-scale infrastructure projects, but we are going to start an in-depth plan for employment and a plan for financing small and medium-sized companies, amongst other things.
For Basques, how important are Scotland’s referendum on independence scheduled next year, and the effort by Catalans to hold their own vote on independence? Regardless of how either of those turn out, do you plan to push for a referendum on Basque independence?
It is important, obviously. And not just for Euskadi, also for the other dozens of nations that make up Europe. However, one shouldn't confuse or compare the evolution of each nation's history. Each nation must take its own steps. And, lastly, one should be careful about saying that independence is the way forward in all cases. There are big differences between what is happening in Scotland and what is happening in Catalonia, even though it's all happening at the same time.
As nations, they are claiming their right to be recognized and their right to make their own decisions, but the response from each state has been completely different: on the one hand, the United Kingdom has recognized the Scots' rights in that sense. Spain, on the other hand, has denied Catalonia those rights, and the difference between the two states has been made very obvious.
We don't want to get into a sterile debate with Spain about whether we should become independent or not, but we are going to work for Spain to recognize our rights and respect them legally so that we will have the possibility of exercising those rights at some time in the future.
I also think that we should think again about the meaning of independence in current-day Europe. In fact, the states that make up Europe have less and less sovereignty, even if they are independent states.
What have been the biggest consequences so far of ETA’s ending its armed campaign in October 2011? What is the long-term significance of ETA’s decision?
ETA giving up its arms has been the best news for Basque society in recent decades. Euskadi needed and deserved peace. And that, in itself, is a great achievement: the time has arrived for Euskadi to start building its future without the threat of violence. Now all the citizens of Euskadi can live in complete freedom, and that is the biggest consequence. We can now tell people all over the world about Euskadi without any problems, without any of the damage that violence used to cause us. We can demonstrate that we are an honest, loyal, mature society.
Even so, peace has to be built day by day. To start with, ETA still has to make its final decision: as well as giving up arms, it has to announce that it's disbanding. Basque society is still waiting for that to happen. Steps still have to be taken to establish peace firmly: recognizing the victims, justice, and the possibility of a joint understanding of our history, as far as that's possible. Fortunately, it's going to be easier for us to move forward now that we’re no longer threatened by violence.
You've said it's a priority of your government to "internationalize the Basque Country" and to "secure the recognition and participation of the Basque Country as a country in our right in the international community." What do you have in mind with those statements, and what are some of your ideas to accomplish those goals?
Internationalization is often linked with the economy, but it isn't just about business structures. It's a process that affects the whole of society and it's up to the government to build the bridges between all the stakeholders in order to develop that internationalization: the economy, culture, education, development cooperation, and so on. Euskadi is going to have to play a key role in this over the next few years, and all the stakeholders are needed there.
To start with, I'm having meetings with all the ambassadors in Spain and, recently, with regards to Europe, I've had meetings with the European Commission [the European Union's executive body] and the President of the European Commission Durao Barroso, and with [European Council President] Van Rompuy in Brussels.
I mentioned this government's objectives earlier, and this is where we have set our sights. We have strong, firm resources to be able to achieve these objectives: on the one hand, the Foreign Affairs High Secretariat, led by Marian Elorza. On the other hand, you, the Basque diaspora. You are indispensable in the process of internationalizing Euskadi. Third, as I mentioned before, the business world, people who work in culture, voluntary workers and so on. In fact, all Basque citizens' contributions are valid in Euskadi's internationalization process, in the project of making Euskadi-Basque Country known all over the world. One of our greatest challenges is bringing all those forces together.
Why do you think the Basque diaspora is so important to the Basque Country's future? Do you think the history of that diaspora should be part of the curriculum taught to Basque children?
The Basque diaspora is part of this nation. The Basque diaspora is one of the main players in making Euskadi so well-known all over the world. Euskadi's good reputation, character, culture, and history. That diaspora has worked to make that known all over the world for years, and we definitely have to carry on protecting that treasure by working together.
It is important that children today know about the diaspora as you are part of our nation. You are a part of the history of the Basque Country, we are one and the same, even though we live on different continents, but we are one nation. What's more, in this increasingly global world, in which our young people are no longer afraid to travel abroad, they have the chance to feel at home in many different places thanks to the diaspora.
Earlier in your career you were a teacher. Did you ever imagine you would become Lehendakari?
To tell the truth, it wasn't in my plans then and nor was it for a long time afterwards. But life, and politics, often put you in surprising places. Being Lehendakari is a great honor, but it isn't an end in itself. You're Lehendakari to lead Euskadi in the right way, that's the objective, that's what you have to keep in mind. Basque society chose me as Lehendakari, the people’s confidence put me here. My concern is responding to that confidence in the right way.
How has everyday life changed for you and your family since you became Lehendakari? What’s been the hardest part to get used to?
As I’ve said, being Lehendakari is the biggest honor for a Basque, at least, that's how I see it. It is an honor and, as such, a responsibility. We have to turn around the situation Euskadi's in, and, as Lehendakari, I'm going to do all I can to achieve that. That means work, and enthusiasm too. Those are my tools. As far as my family's concerned, there is no doubt that this new situation influences them. My family has always been my biggest support. I wouldn't be able to go forward without their help.
Now that you’re president of all Basques, who will you root for when Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad play? [Athletic, from Bilbao in Bizkaia province, and Real, from Donostia in Gipuzkoa province, are the bitterest of soccer rivals, putting Urkullu (a Bizkaian) in a difficult spot.]
There are many Basque football clubs, and I'd like to express my support to all of them. Even so, it's true that the matches between Athletic and Real tend to be the most fiercely contested matches. I can't deny, Bizkaian as I am, that until now my heart has been white and red. But I also support Real in the matches between them ... May the best team win! Whoever wins, matches between Basque teams are always incredible football events, and long may that be so.
(Translation from Basque by 11itzulpen. Thanks to Concha Dorronsoro, Ander Egiluz Beramendi, and Henar Chico.)
The den mother
She said the pledge with us before every meeting. We promised to to do our duty to God and country, to help other people, to obey the law of the pack. Then we said the Cub Scout motto together. Do your best.
Once, before Halloween, she had a party and we all dressed up in costumes and bobbed for apples. When each of us came up with an apple in our mouth, she was there with a towel to dry our hair. Nice job, she said. You got one. She dried the water of our foreheads.
We made caramel apples and then ate them out in the cold October air. They always tasted good because you had done it yourself.
On Mondays, we wore our Cub Scout shirts to school. Navy blue, with our pack number on the chest and the gold epaulettes on the shoulders. It was a break from the monotony of uniforms in the Catholic school all eight of us pack members attended. The pack was all the boys in the class except one.
She helped us put on our merit badges. They were named after animals: Bobcat, Tiger, Wolf, Bear. You were awarded for different skills: "Know Your Community" and "Take Care of Your Planet."
She made a big ceremony every time somebody got one. She wore her Sunday best, had the awardee stand in front of everyone as she gave it to them. It felt like getting the Congressional Medal of Honor. Mrs. V put her hands on your shoulders and presented you to the pack. We all clapped. It wasn't just anyone who could have done what you did.
She lived on a house in the foothills above the city. You could see the whole valley, the Owyhee Mountains off in the distance. There was the world in front of you.
I was good friends with her son. We'd get in fights and then the dads made us shake hands. He'd spend the night at our house and I'd spend it at his. She drove me home afterwards with my friend and me in the back seat. You're going into fourth grade, she said to us as she drove me home one day in late August. Wow, you're getting big.
We got too old for the Cub Scouts. Maybe one or two went on to Boy Scouts but the rest of the pack broke up. We were in grade school together and then went our separate ways in high school and beyond. Most of us didn't keep in touch. You can be together for eight years with the same people and then never see or hear from them again.
I went away to college and then other places for work. Eventualy, Mrs. V and her husband moved away too. I probably didn't see her for 25 years or more. I didn't keep in touch with her or her son.
Earlier this week, I was looking through a newsletter and there was the news. Mrs. V had died. I felt a punch to my stomach. News like that should have come from the police at the front door, with hats in their hands, instead of in Times Roman on my computer screen. But is there ever a good way?
I wondered about the other members of our pack.
It's not always obvious at the time, but everything we do for kids can make a difference. You never know what sticks with them.
Meet Chad, failed motivational speaker
Breathe in. Hold it. Exhale.
Don't breathe for a while. Hold it. Hold it. Keep holding it. Feel your stomach muscles tighten. Feel the beads of sweat forming on your forehead. The panic inside you. Cough. Inhale.
Close your eyes. Relax your stomach. Think of your dreams. Think of when you were a child, all the things you wanted to do with your life. Just because you haven't done any of them doesn't make you a failure. Think to yourself: I am not a failure. I am not a failure. Keep telling yourself that.
Inhale. Hold it.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Forget that the rest of your life is a little shorter than it used to be and that you wasted much of the first part of your life on nonsense. Say it again, say it out loud: I am not a failure.
Don't exhale yet. Hold it. Let the new oxygen circulate around your brain. It's fighting the old, stale air that has been in your body all these years and allowed you to settle for second place. Now blow all that bad air out! As you blow it out, make a little trumpet noise. It's fun.
Open your eyes. Turn and look at the person to your left. Now turn and look at the person to your right. You're better than them. Or at least one of them. Maybe you're equally as good as both of them or at least one of them. And even if you're not as good as one of them or both of them, what counts is that you think you're better than them, and it doesn't matter that everyone else knows you're not as good as them, or that it's mathematically impossible for three people to be better than each other. You know what I mean.
Stand up. Breathe. Hold out your right hand. Shake it all about.
Sit down. Inhale. Close your eyes. Don't exhale. Inhale again. Say "Bah!" Say it again: "Bah!" When you're really fed up with your life and the people around you, it helps to say that loud and proud: "Bah!"
Make a mental list of what you want to do with your life. Now make a mental list of the things you want to do this year to start making some of those things possible. Now make a mental list of the things you want to do today to make those things this year possible. Got it? Now wipe all those lists from your mind. You should just relax, man. The more you relax, the longer you live. It's the key to a long, uneventful life.
Are we on inhaling or on exhaling? Thanks. Exhale.
Take the paper and pencil you've been provided and draw a picture. It can be a picture of anything you want. Just focus on the drawing. While you do that, I'm going out for a sandwich.
Okay, I'm back. Inhale. Look at your picture. It's probably a really bad picture. Tear it to shreds and throw it up in the air. Exhale.
Stand up! Stretch! Now give me a standing ovation! It feels great to have people give you a standing ovation. Any time you are feeling down, give yourself a standing ovation. Ask others to join in, even if they are perfect strangers. Don't let it bother you if they refuse and just stare at you blankly. That's their problem. You just go on giving yourself a standing ovation and being the best "you" that you can be.