A Normal, Human Story

To the many millions of on-line readers who have fretted about the recent dearth of creative output from Mercurious, the Professor, and the other Geezers...

...many apologies.

In the case of myself (Mercurious), I have to admit being badly blocked in recent weeks, probably because I've been preoccupied with the terminal illness of my father. (How's that for a downer? I know you were probably wishing for smart-ass social commentary of a light-hearted nature. Instead, this is what you get.) When something is constantly on your mind, it's hard to write about other things, and up to now I haven't felt at all like writing about something so difficult and immediate as a pending death in the family. Those of you who are "of an age" like the Geezers undoubtedly know exactly what I'm talking about. Most of you have dealt with aging parents, I'm sure.

A couple of months ago, my Dad had a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer added to some other debilitating conditions, and we're now in a waiting game as this especially ferocious form of cancer follows its natural course. At 82 years of age and in already in great frailty, he's already outlived the medical expectation for this diagnosis. No treatment is even being attempted.

For a little while, there was something almost sweet about the whole process, as Dad was entirely lucid for a good length of time after the diagnosis, and knowing the end was coming gave us a chance to say everything that needed to be said, to reminisce about the best of our family history, to say goodbyes in as many ways as was necessary. Dad never wanted to spend many years declining in a nursing home (we'd been through that with my grandfather, his own father, and Dad surely did not want that for himself). So he was actually pretty relieved to know that pancreatic cancer generally takes people rather quickly, especially when they are already compromised the way he is, and there was a period of painless relaxation for a few weeks after the diagnosis.

That period is now ending, and the hard end-game is beginning, I think. Dad's lucid periods are now shorter, with late afternoons and evenings now giving way to confusion about where he is and what's happening. We're told this is the result of toxins beginning to build up in his system, as liver and kidneys begin to function more and more erratically.  During his clear periods, more and more often what he expresses now is "I wish this was over."

And we wish it was over, too, though that's hard to admit. Who wants to openly say they wish a family member would pass? Partly this is about wishing for an end to the suffering of a beloved family member. But in perfect honesty and with less nobility, what family members also wish for is an end to the angst we experience ourselves during this vigil period. It's very hard to watch, and selfishly we wish we didn't have to watch it any longer. And nobody really knows right now if we'll watch it for another four hours or another four months.

It's sometimes said that the human spirit is tenacious. At the moment, I'm not sure that's really accurate. Dad's spirit is quite ready to move on, but what's tenacious is his hard-wired biology holding on. This is a guy who never took a sick day in 30 years of teaching school, and that pattern is showing now. I'm generally a decided romantic when it comes to a belief in the ethereal, transcendent nature of the human spirit and will. But what I see right now is biology taking precedent over spirit, in a way that you wouldn't expect. It's biology, not spirit, that's clinging to life.

This is just a normal human story. It's not particularly tragic when an aging parent passes after leading a good, long life. And Dad's life has been one that was lived very well, with steadfast honesty and good intent. But it's also part of the normal human story for there to be pain and difficulty around the process of dying. That's where we are at the moment.

Repent, all Ye Geezers!

—after a long, soul-searching period of reflection, The Professor returns to us today with thoughts on a subject of spiritual interest. It's about time, dead-beat. 

There are a number of privileges that accrue when one enters the ranks of “geezerhood.”  One of the primary privileges is that you can get away with being grumpy…in fact, people almost come to expect it of you.  I would argue, though, that it’s not necessarily grumpiness per se that defines a geezer—after all, a geezer has been known to wax rhapsodic about the excitement of spring training (for many of you, I must clarify, I suppose, I am referring to baseball here, not pruning grapevines). So reputation aside,  it’s clear that there are plenty of things that geezers are fond of—it's just that those things tend to be outmoded, out of date, or just plain deservedly unpopular.  Geezers feel the need to champion many of these things, often grumpily;  in a word, many geezers are contrarians.  So today, let me unpack the merits of something that most people tend to look at as a pronounced “downer.”  I’m referring, of course, to my favorite season: Lent.

Lent, in the Christian calendar, is a time of penitence and spiritual cleansing that occupies the forty days (plus six Sundays to make 46 days total) before Easter.  It starts out with a bang on Ash Wednesday, when we are told one of the few public utterances  you know instinctively to be true. As ashes are smudged on your forehead, you are encouraged in somber tones to “know that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” 

Were truer words ever spoken?  And yet, if you survey your typical member of the population and ask what they think about a season characterized by repentance and recognition of mortality, they’d probably reply (after asking if there WAS such a season and what its name was) “thanks, but no thanks.”  And we’re tempted to agree with them; it sounds pretty depressing. 

But the contrarian geezer says: “what a wonderful idea!”  If I recognize my own mortality, that gives me extra incentive to be thankful for the limited time I do have here.”  Good enough so far.  But what about all that repentance?  The very word would make my esteemed fellow geezer The Mathematician grind his teeth, thinking about the gloomy Lutheranism of his youth.  But at its very core repentance is one of the most affirming actions we can take.  At the core of repentance is an acknowledgement that we could have (or perhaps SHOULD have) done better. 

Oh sure, every once in a while we have to repent for things we really did: the two full cans of cashews that were polished off watching one NCAA tournament game; or for habitually driving 95 miles an hour through rush our in the HOV lane WITH NO ONE ELSE IN THE CAR!  Or for the 320,000 dollars you embezzled from your kids’ little league treasury (they shouldn’t have left that much money lying around…)  But for the most part, for most of us, most of the time, we repent not for those things that we did wrong, but rather those things that we could have done better, those people whom we might have treated with more respect or caring, or those actions we didn’t take that could have helped the world a bit.  We say to ourselves “I could have done better” and in return, we receive the message “that’s right, you could have…keep trying.”

So why do so many of us find this attitude gloomy?  My theory is that as a culture we have gotten so used to unconditional approval that an approval that is conditional on our repentence—on our vow to try to do better—is viewed as suspect, disappointing or even hostile.  It’s depressing to many of us.  But why should we view an encouraging ”you can do better” as depressing?  On the surface, those words would appear to be a very affirming vote of confidence.

As a kid, I did well in school, but whether the grade was a C or an A, the feedback I always received was always: “was it your best?”  Best is a pretty big word, and I suppose I technically lied (to myself and my parents) a number of times  when I responded “yes” to this question.  Nonethess, it was clear: part of the “deal” involved with being part of our family was that you strived to do your best.  You were praised, but usually with the proviso that you would strive to be even better next time—and our parents had confidence that we could do better.)

So are belief, confidence and encouragement “downers?”  They don’t seem to me to be depressing, unless you think you’re already as good as you can get (read: perfect) already.  In that case, don’t bother to repent—you’ve got much larger problems to deal with than getting ready for Easter.  But for most of us—the visibly, undeniably and sometimes flamboyantly imperfect—the encouragement of repentance might be just the thing we need to get through this gloomy, over-extended winter in which we find ourselves mired. 

Happy Lent.

A Minnesota Cultural Scene

I drove to work this morning rather than taking the bus, and on the way, near the bus stop at 28th St. and Lyndale Avenue, the pickup truck in front of me sharply rear-ended the mid-vintage Pontiac in front of it. Having seen the whole thing,  I stopped the car and got out, thinking that I might offer clarity if there was any dispute as to what happened.

The Pontiac was very likely a total wreck, with the rear end crumpled up so far that the rear doors were inoperable and the rear wheels deformed so that this accident would need to be cleared by a tow truck. With some interest, I watched as the two drivers emerged from their vehicles and approached one another.

The first action was them shaking hands and introducing themselves. Then they turned to me as I approached and shook my hand, introducing themselves individually to me, too.

"Well, what do think happened there, do ya think?" said the guy who'd just been smashed from the rear.

"Well, ya know, I think maybe it was the ice. I thought I was brakin', but it was like nothing happened, ya know. Or I suppose my brakes might be bad."

"Ya, I suppose it could be either of dose things."

The whole exchange had no more passion to it than a customer ordering coffee from a clerk at Starbucks. A little disappointed but utterly unsurprised at the lack of drama, I soon continued on to the office.

This is an entirely normal scene in Minnesota. I witnessed at least a dozen road accidents this winter and only once did I witness anything like an angry reaction from violated and occasionally injured drivers.

The driver of that car had license plates from Illinois.

Teenager on the Internet, Part II

This story link provides an update to story recently posted about a teenage boy who posted an off-color joke/lie about being in a sexual relationship with a young female teacher:

In my previous post, I suggested that a public apology on the lad's part might do a lot to undo the damage, and indeed that's what's now happened. It occurred at a carefully staged  official press conference attended by not one, not two, but three lawyers representing the family, giving credence to my suspicion that this thing was now being orchestrated by lawyers sensing PR possibilities.

The end of the story has one of the family lawyers calling the school superintendent and chief of police "imbeciles" for levying the school suspension and suggesting that the kid's action might be a serious crime.  And there's now the hint that the family's lawyers might seek some sort of law suit against the school for mental damage caused to the boy by the "overreaction" on the part of school officials.

Back in the day, such an event would have been handled quite simply and maturely by a responsible parent marching the kid into the principal'[s office, calling the young teacher in, and having the boy apologize for being such a dumb-ass. But now in the day of on-line public dispersal of information, news media dying to create stories, and lawyers seeking talk-show publicity, this is what we've come to.

As the old joke goes, "What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the sea?"

Answer:  "A good start."

The Internet is Not a Video Game

An open message to kids and young adults who haven't yet got the message:

Facebook, Twitter and all other forms of internet-based social media exist in the real, adult world of cause-and-effect consequences. They are not video games from which you can punch the "reset" button if you don't like what's happening.

In the most recent local example of this, a popular young student-athlete in a nearby suburb of Minneapolis has been charged with a felony after he posted a comment on some kind of "confessional" web site where he stated he was having a sexual relationship with an attractive young female phys. ed. teacher in his high school.  He now claims this statement was meant facetiously, sarcastically, as a comment of the absurdity of what was transpiring on this web site. (That's possible, I suppose, but it frankly smacks of the kid's attempt to bluster his way out of big trouble.) But the consequences of his action involved the quote being distributed via Twitter to hundreds of people, which in turn lead to school administrators and police interrogating the bewildered gym teacher to her great humiliation and embarrassment. Once it became clear that the stories were entirely bogus, our young high schooler was first expelled from school, and now potentially faces felony charges for the harmful effects of his actions.

As my wife and I discussed this last night, we agreed that the problem here is that internet technology is really built by and for people who view it all as some kind of game and not part of the real world. When you hear hackers talk about their actions from prison cells, for example, they generally talk about not viewing what they did as real crimes, but just as interesting intellectual games they played against financial databases and national security web sites. Nobody seems to realize that the internet exists in a real adult world where actions have consequences.

I recall from our high school days both a very attractive female gym teacher and a couple of female academic teachers who were 6 or 7 years older than we were at the time and who were the subject of jokes and innuendo, too. But the difference between 1972 and today is that back then we whispered our distasteful jokes to a cafeteria table of five or six close friends. We wouldn't have dreamed of broadcasting  boastful lies to the entire school through the loudspeaker system. But in a world of Twitter and Facebook feeds, today's kids and young adults are broadcasting their every thought to the world at large. All internet-based communication applications should come with the following warning: "Say nothing that you don't want the entire world to hear."

The fact is that this single event, even if it was entirely innocent, will now follow the young man (and the teacher) for the rest of their lives. When interviewing potential employees these days, as a manger I of course do a cursory level of internet research. Can you imagine wanting to hire somebody who has this kind of thing in their background when you do a Google search of his name?

A subject for another essay is the somewhat puzzling response in the community where this event took place. Because the young man in question is a popular kid, captain of several sports teams, the community has united behind him with a petition of more than 2,000 names asking for his school expulsion to be reversed (I have an uneasy suspicion that this is so he can lead a sports team in playoff action). Yes, it's possible that felony charges might be overkill for this transgression. But a month or two of school suspension to teach the lad a lesson certainly doesn't seem inappropriate. We're not talking about a kid being suspended for having a pen knife in the glove box of his car parked in the school parking lot. This is real stuff; effectively an assault on the teacher.

The local chief of police commented on this, wondering why the support was mobilizing behind the young man and not the young teacher who has been so badly humiliated and embarrassed by the event. And why is it, I wonder, that the young man and his family are maintaining such dead-fast silence. If I'm this kid's father, I grab him by the ear and lead him to a microphone. A public apology for the unintended consequences of his action might go along way to justifying a response of understanding and leniency toward him.

No doubt the family is acting on the advice of lawyers, who as we all know exist in their own make-believe world.

A Dirty Sign of the Coming Spring...

The first sign that this brutal winter might eventually give way to Spring was seen in downtown Minneapolis today....

At the end of the day in the parking ramp where I park, the concrete floor was covered with hundreds of crusty, dirty globs of hardened of ice and snow born from automobile undercarriages and wheel-wells, loosened by the first above-freezing temperatures in almost two months.

In fact, the last month of winter in Minnesota is known by a native American word from the Dakota Sioux tribe that translates thusly:  "the time of the snow boogers."

Spring, it is out there somewhere.

Citzens of LAX, Jan. 31, 2014

In the waiting lounge for gate 41, terminal A of Los Angeles international airport, a young family from Texas sits near me in the isolated cul de sac of chairs at the back end of the room. Dad wears a ball cap that says Texas on the brim, and from the evidence of a Disneyland tote bag, I assume the family has   been vacationing in southern California and is returning home to Dallas, where I will be pausing only briefly on a layover to Minneapolis.

They are an attractive, affluent family. The father has the muscular, healthy bearing of a serious weekend athlete, the mother is thin and lithe, perhaps a yoga practitioner. Their casual clothing is expensive, from top brand names, and the kids, a girl about 10 and a boy about 8, each have their own Ipad encased in a soft leather protective sleeve. It is a picture book family; the parents bear a slight resemblance to a young Kevin Costner and Christie Brinkley, and the kids could be models for television ads.

But it's quickly apparent that there is some kind of tension here. Mom sits down with the two kids on either side, and Dad offers her a piece of fruit, which she declines with a terse shake of her head without looking at him. She focuses, somewhat defiantly, on her smart phone Twitter or email feeds; her thumb scrolls briskly. He sits down near his family but slightly removed from them, a weariness evident on his face. 

Within a few minutes of scrolling on her phone, abruptly, Mom breaks into quiet tears and quickly goes to the restroom to compose herself. I wonder, briefly, if there's been some sort of family emergency back in Texas; perhaps it's worry causing the obvious unhappiness in the little family. But when Mom returns from the rest room, eyes dry, makeup fixed, and lips tightly pressed together, the anger at the husband is clear. She refuses to look him in the eye, and instead draws her children toward her from each side, the universal move of a mother retreating from her husband—nesting tightly with the kids to the deliberate exclusion of  the father. 

Dad is decidedly miserable, and when he glances my way and see that I've noticed their family drama, he reddens and looks even more woeful. It's impossible to know, of course, but I wonder what his offense was. Am I eavesdropping on one of those entirely normal little moments of family tension brought on by holiday fatigue and too much frenzied activity?  Or is this a deeply ingrained family problem that threatens more seriously? Did he forget a camera on the cab to the airport,  or is he sleeping with a secretary? 

At that moment the announcement comes beckoning families with children to board early. Fifteen minutes later as I board and move through first class on the way to coach, I see all four members of the family sitting across a full row in the luxury section. Mom and Dad are each in window seats far apart, with the kids in the aisle seats. They are still playing games on their Ipads, but I can see now that they're uneasily aware of the tension in their parents, and have focused on their electronics to avoid the discomfort of a family that  has ceased to be nurturing.

The reality for this beautiful family is a little ugly right now.