A Posthumous Happy Birthday

Had my father lived, he would be 89 tomorrow. He didn’t, obviously. He died in 1993. Since then, I’ve learned how death really changes a person.

My father was an interesting and difficult man. He played football in the Rose Bowl. After World War II he met Errol Flynn backstage at a nightclub in Paris. He had a sneaky method of forcing his car into the next lane even if the person didn’t want to let him in. He taught me how, and I try to use this knowledge with great responsibility.

But, since his death, my father’s life has been retroactively subsumed by one short phase of it. He was a Marine. He was at Pearl Harbor, and then later, Guadalcanal. I have his medals. I was named after a high school buddy of his, a man I met only once, a genial guy named Carroll who survived the Bataan Death March. I knew my father named me but I didn’t make that connection until after he died.

That’s part of how death changes people. My father didn’t speak of his time in the service. He gave me his copy of Guadalcanal Diary signed by everyone in his platoon (which is mentioned in the book) on condition that I promise never to read it. I never have.

Despite his posture, his nobility and his temper, when he was alive I never thought of him as a Marine. Now, in retrospect, that surprises me because despite our complicated relationship and the variety of my memories, I rarely think of him as anything else. In that sense and in so many others, his death also changed me.

Irony Bored

Wednesday night, I was in the kitchen and missed a call because the phone was on my desk. Thursday night, it was the reverse. It’s only ironic because I made sure to bring the phone into the kitchen with me lest I miss a call, and then forgot to take it back.

My beloved E.F. Benson used “irony”, “sarcasm” and “wit” almost interchangeably. As a result, I came late to the Morissette-inspired harangue. Don’t we have enough to worry about without having someone like me jump down our throats because we said “ironic” when “serendipitous” or “coincidental” would have been more apt?

Ironically, there will be no rant. Even I am bored with this topic.

Up, Up And Away!

Children dream of adventure. Start with a tricycle, then a two-wheeler with training wheels then zoom! First they want to cross the street alone, then they want to walk to a destination. Eventually adventure means stories, from fairy tales to novels to epic sagas of obstacles overcome and golden goals met and won.

It doesn’t stop. Teenagers want to drive and drink and screw and not be in school. They get a little older, and they want an exciting job and not to be in college. After that, it’s any job that pays well. Then, later, a job they don’t hate.

See? We’ve crested the hill and now we’re on the downside. We still want adventure, maybe never more so. Our idea of it changes proportionately. Now adventure can be as simple as paying off a credit card or going to a new Starbucks. Pathetic? Maybe. But we’re older now. We’re out of school. Driving is a necessity, and opportunities for both drinking and screwing aren’t the variables they once were.

What we’re left with is perspective. Stories about valiant heroes battling dragons became novels about valiant individuals battling their inner demons. It’s still wish fulfillment, but the bigger we get the smaller and more meaningful our wishes become.

Think about it. You still crave adventure, we all do. But without a cyclone and a yellow brick road to guide us to it, adventure isn’t easy to come by in the real world. Oh, it happens. Metaphor aside, there are very real monsters out there as much as there are very real heroes. And, to pick up that metaphor again, it’s up to us to slay our own dragons.

3 Birds, Some Bugs & A Turtle

Or, as Robert said, “I know there are animals here somewhere. I can smell their poop.”

Stipulated: When we lived in San Diego, we had annual passes to that zoo. Hiking the hills for a couple of hours a day, through glorious and exotic foliage, passing the various non-human communities, was a familiar treat. It’s been more than a decade since then, but that’s our (apparently impossibly high) standard.

There’s a huge banner outside the L.A. Zoo, advertising an exhibit coming in 2007. They’ve also taken out half the parking lot, which doesn’t seem to matter because there was plenty of close parking. There were more “No Trespassing” and “Exhibit Closed” signs than there were open exhibits. The solitary gorilla in the enclosure sat with his back to the crowd. You know he was doing that on purpose.

Once upon a time, on hot days in San Diego, we used to sit on a bench in the aviary amidst the infinite number of colorfully loud birdies and play cards. So we headed straight for the aviary here. Other than a cramped flamingo ghetto, all we saw were three birds and a turtle. I put bugs in today’s title but there weren’t even that many of them.

If we go back, it will be because of the woman who was cleaning up tapir poop. For all the bleak shabbiness of the place in general, she scratched the tapirs behind the ears like they were puppies. They were as cute as puppies too, and she showed them such tenderness, such obvious love, that it made the whole experience a happy one. Besides, I adore warthogs, and theirs is named Wanda.

Frying-Pan Fired

This is a saga of karma, Nemesis and ultimate redemption. Doesn’t that sound good? Well, on a stupidly small scale, it’s accurate.

First the karma; it’s simple enough, really. When I went to my regular gym yesterday, it was jam-packed with people behaving even more annoyingly than usual. Standing around talking, neither training nor getting out of the way of anyone who wanted to, “belligerence” was the word of the day. My gym-partner and I gave up, and I made my solitary way to my back-up gym. There I was faced with two different but each archetypically perfect 20-something fitness females prepping for a competition, both training right next to me. Karma, from the frying pan into the fitness fire.

They were also my Nemesis. My discipline is good. I’m there almost every day, but I cater to my age and tend to do the minimum I can do and still live with my pride. Granted, that’s a middling lot, but it wasn’t enough when I saw how hard these young women were working.

Today was also a solo day, and I went straight to the hardcore gym. It’s gray, achy-bone weather, and I was making excuses to myself while on the treadmill. You know, stuff like “at my age this is fine” and “my bones ache so I don’t have to do that much.” That’s where the redemption comes in.

Angrily, and with great determination, I gave myself a mental wedgie. This is as young as I’m ever going to be, and so what if my bones ache? Somehow I managed to stop whining and kicked into gear for a workout of which I can be proud. It’s not Significant, it doesn’t matter a damn, but there are times when doing enough really is enough, on every level.

See, that’s the redemption. It doesn’t matter what you’re down on yourself about, what matters is that you fix it.

Besides, it cracks me up that in this case, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is literally true.

Diagonal Dialectic

The guy was sitting with a companion, at a table kitty-corner from ours. Is it “kitty corner” or “catty corner”? Never mind, I digress.

Now that I think about it, and having reread my adorable and witty yet ultimately pointless description of the aforementioned guy’s strange behavior, I think I’ll shelve that and we can discuss the digression instead.

So, which is it? Do you say “kitty corner” or “catty corner”? Take a stand and hold your ground. Don’t cop out and say that you say “diagonal”. No one does that, not in real life.

Tomato/Grenada

Let’s talk about perspective. An unfunny joke can be hysterical depending on who tells it. (Ask Melva for the gas station story. Trust me.) The worst of the 80s came back, only now it’s cute and quaint with the perspective of time. Never mind, bad example.

The point, such as it is, depends on how you look at it. Smile and the world smiles with you, unless they think you’re plotting against them. “All the world loves a clown” except for sensible people who find them disturbing.

Attitude is everything. Turn that frown upside down. Look at the bright side. Bludgeon yourself with peppy clichés until you’re either distracted or not bothered any more.

And if you can’t change your perspective, don’t worry about it. Just wait. This too shall pass. If it doesn’t, if it’s the new normal, then your perspective will adapt and you’ll find a way to look at it that you can live with. There’s an example for you: as much as I loathe the “new grammar”, I just ended a sentence with a preposition, with no distressing physical side effects.

Remember, as bad as the 80s resurgence was, shoulder pads never came back. There’s always a bright side.