The Big Turn

 Out the front window, where the rest of the world was resting peacefully, sat the U-Haul van. It was the magic carpet that brought our son back to us. Again. For the past five and a half years he has been making that trip from San Luis Obispo to Oakland, and back again. Mostly for the purposes of furthering his education and the eventual reception of a degree of higher learning. There were times when all of those trips seemed final. Or futile. There were times when the direction he was headed brought relief, other times dread. The same could be true of his parents, who certainly rode a roller coaster of emotions during the four hour drive that allowed us all to reflect on our feelings.

We were worried, at first, that the change of locale would put a whammy on his homebody sensibilities. Would he be able to ride out all that difference in that first year? Yes. He could. What about the second year, when academic challenges caused him to reflect on his capacity to achieve that ultimate goal. Turns out that he had many of the same issues extricating himself from high school, but his determination and drive were such that he didn't stay stuck for long. He kept on moving. 

Somewhere in there, he got a job. In retail. Which meant that his trips up the coast were curtailed while he pursued the sales goals that he and Best Buy set. And surpassed. His parents were always grateful when he had two full days to spend at his home in Oakland over the holidays, Black Friday excepted. Little by little, we realized that if the Donald wouldn't go to Oakland, Oakland would go to Donald. His parents made that trek down 101 to make the connection they needed. 

Because, as it turned out, so did their son. 

This past August, with a degree in hand and a rebuilt car beneath him, our son drove home. He arrived with great big question marks hanging over him, not the least of which was "For how long?" There was talk of a job in Santa Barbara, so the bulk of his belongings stayed in a storage locker in San Luis Obispo. We spent a couple of months wondering how things might shake out in the big picture while he lived out of a limited version of his stuff. Until it became clear that there was no overnight solution to this new hurdle. As it turns out, getting a job straight out of college is a tough nut to crack even when there isn't a global pandemic going on. 

This week, he and his mom drove down, as they have so many times before together and separately to empty that storage locker and bring it all home. That U-Haul van was full, but not overflowing, and when we finished unloading it into the basement where he had begun to set up shop, our son came home. 

For how long? No one can be sure. He's applying for jobs, he's looking for the next solid step. But for now he and all his stuff have landed back home. Mission accomplished. 

Repressed

 "I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective." Ah, the ignorance of bliss. This little bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail reminds me of my time working for an employee-owned company, "We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week," says the constitutional peasant. When I arrived in Oakland, I was looking for a job, and it never occurred to me that I would be part of a social experiment, let alone an anarcho-syndicalist commune.

After three months of working at Bookpeople, the employee-owned corporation founded in Berkeley in 1969, I was asked to become a shareholder. For five hundred dollars. Which was a chunk of change for a guy who just landed in the Golden State to fork over, so arrangements were made for deductions to be made from my paycheck. I did ask, at the time, if there was another version in which I just never became a shareholder, kept my job and didn't have those deductions. It became clear that this was discouraged, but in a very polite and meaningful way. All I had to do to become a shareholder was endure the deductions and show up to work each day until the five hundred dollars were paid off. It was explained to me that everyone who was currently employed at this book distributor had navigated this same path. No one else held any more shares than anyone else, and that a someone working on the packing line had an equal say in what went on in the company as the folks in the offices. The offices just behind that big wall. The offices with carpet and heat. And natural light. Except for that whole environment thing, and the monthly salaries paid to the folks clever enough to hang on to those carpeted, heated, naturally lighted offices. 

And I was assured that even though I was just a warehouse worker, who rose abruptly to the ranks of order puller, I could run for a one year term on the Board of Directors. This group of five individuals took the place of that "executive officer of the week." They would meet and once a month we would all stay after work and listen to their report. "But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting," reminds the constitutional peasant. There was a lot of voting. And plenty of opportunity to orate at these monthly meetings. 

Yours truly landed himself a spot on the Board of Directors just about the same time I climbed the ladder into the warehouse office. Management at last. Well, after a year and a half. As a newlywed, this allowed me the chance to bring home a few dollars more, since I had an office, even though it was still on the other side of the wall. The whole time I worked at Arby's back in college, managers sat a desk in the back room when they weren't doing the things that everyone else did: pushing roast beef sandwiches at customers. I knew it was a management gig because I had a clipboard. And a spot of the Board of Directors. Which got me more hours after work, wrestling with budgets and policies and the inner workings of a corporation. While the folks I was managing were leaving to go home, my day went on. And on. 

Somewhere in there, the economic realities of the book business began to make themselves apparent. The margin that we relied on to make our social experiment work began to shrink. The ideals we held so dearly and our independent spirit began to shrivel in the harsh light of Barnes and Noble and Borders. Chains wanted better deals than our traditional mom and pop bookstores. It was the Board of Directors upon which I sat that first sailed the idea of a general manager. Somebody with a big office and a big salary to shepherd us through these stormy seas. And in my second term on the board, we hired a guy for that office. From outside. 

When it was all over, and the people's voices had all been heard, from both sides of the wall, we went ahead and made a king. For a while, we tried to shine everyone on that this guy was just another shareholder, and made a show of doing his shareholder review as part of a board meeting. But the die was cast. "You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship. ..... A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--" Which is about the point where Arthur grabs Dennis by the scruff of the neck and tells him to shut up. 

It took a few more years, but once Bookpeople had a king, they once and future place where everyone had an equal share and equal say disappeared. And I went where the big bucks could be found: teaching in a public school. 

Dentifrice

 I have spent some time in this space complaining about dental guilt. You know, even if you haven't read me expound on it, what this means. "You need to brush more/differently." "You've got a lot of tartar built up here, are you flossing?" "Did you know you have a nest of tree squirrels living in your back teeth?" Which is always infuriating, since I brush and floss religiously twice a day. Okay, maybe Crest isn't exactly a sacrament, but I do take active care of my mouth like it mattered. Conscientiously at least, if not religiously.

And I may be romanticizing the past, but I don't remember being admonished quite so regularly by our old dentist. The guy who sold his practice and roared off into the sunset to pursue a second career in extreme sports. Or something like that. And his erstwhile hygienist who was always chatty but never overbearing. Gone. Yet my family's mouth kept reporting to the old address twice a year so we could be ridiculed and embarrassed for our sub-par dental abilities. 

First and foremost: This is what I am paying you for. Or rather what my insurance is paying for. To keep our mouths clean, within reason. Which is another angle at which these new dentoids have chosen to insinuate themselves. First, while prodding and poking around in my mouth, they tsk and suggest that the best way to limit such nasty plaque buildup would be to schedule additional cleanings each year. Which sort of makes sense, but in addition to this polite suggestion there is the hike in the price of those cleanings for which my dental plan has no interest in covering. 

Somewhere in the back of my mind is this image of me as a slobbering and toothless victim of dental apathy keeps me tethered to whatever the doctor says. Except my less fearful mind knows that there is a place where I can get much of the same service for less. The idea of having a family dentist had an extreme sports sized hole punched in it after twenty-five years, and while I lay there in that chair with people in hazmat suits hovering over me in these days of COVID, I felt suddenly free to make a choice outside my rut. Patients change doctors all the time for all kinds of reasons, or so I am told. That tug on my loyalty shouldn't be the only thing keeping me there. Under that bright light, mouth full of tubes and sharp implements, it's not easy to be assertive. 

So I went home. Sat down at my computer and started the search. 

With only a trace of guilt. 

No Mister Bond - I Expect You To Die

 A reckoning is at hand. At some point in the very near future, someone is going to remind me that I once suggested that Timothy Dalton was the best James Bond. 

No.

Strike that. 

I once insisted that Timothy Dalton was the best James Bond. I had some way too clever way of describing how Dalton's performance brought back subtleties of the character from Ian Fleming's books that were missing from so many other actors' portrayals of the super spy. It was a conversational gambit that worked really well for a clerk in a video store trying to check out The Living Daylights. "Classically trained actor," blah blah blah, "darker," blah blah blah. Made me sound like a real film buff.

Or a dolt.

Sean Connery is and always will be James Bond. If all he ever did was Goldfinger, that would have been sufficient to have his face emblazoned on the coin to commemorate the character. And yes, I am willing to forgive the blue terrycloth onesie he wore poolside and his offhand remark, "My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!"

I am also willing to overlook the hairpiece he wore in his last turn as 007. Never Say Never Again, unless it's to that toupee. Besides, it wasn't until after he let himself be unapologetically bald that his career really took off. He won his only Academy Award for The Untouchables, still a rough and tumble guy, but one who was not in need of a combover. 

He also played an aging Robin Hood to Audrey Hepburn's Maid Marian who was a sister. He helped bring Indiana Jones back to respectability by playing the archaeologist's father. People Magazine named him Sexiest Man Alive when he was fifty-nine years old. It's almost enough to make you forget about Darby O'Gill and the Little People. But no need, really, since Sean Connery was a giant no matter where he was and what he did. As part of 2020's insatiable need to suck more than any year ever, it took Sir Sean this week as part of the campaign to make this unrelenting vortex continue. But it turns out they took the wrong guy. He'll straighten things out wherever he lands, because that was how he rolled down here. He stomped on the Terra, even in a baby blue romper. And he will be missed. Aloha, Mister Bond. 

He

Thick And Thin

 The first foreign film I remember? Skinny and Fatty, a 1958 Japanese movie that I saw many years after its release. I didn't watch it because it was a foreign film, I watched it because of the title. It was speaking to me. In that model, I was Fatty. The film tells the story of the new kid in school, Oyama who is the round one, and Komatsu the thin one who tries to build his self esteem. This is especially the case when it comes to the rope climb in gym. 

I was miserable at the rope climb in gym. I was miserable in gym. Even more to the point, I performed poorly, and I felt poorly while I was there. I really could have used a Komatsu. As I sat in front of the television, transfixed by this offering from The CBS Children's Film Festival. Normally, I was tuned in to watch the comic interplay between Kukla, Fran and Ollie, the hosts of the show. Two puppets and a comedian rehashing bits from their glory days and introducing children such as myself to cinema from around the globe. If I told you that I had a memory of any other film in the series, I would be lying. This was the one that fed my inner stirrings. 

Wouldn't it be great to have a little friend who would show up and be my support even when everyone else is shunning me? And even if the other kids started to hun him, he would stick by my side and keep encouraging me until one day I could climb all the way to the top of that rope?

The puppets didn't diminish the pathos for me. They were the hosts of the show that was bringing me this peek into my own private struggles. They had seen into my soul, and instead of piling on and making jokes at the expense of the protagonists. It really would not have made me feel any better to have a clown and a dragon getting yuks out of the predicaments presented in Skinny and Fatty. My memory is that they were every bit as compassionate as the Muppets who would eventually inhabit Sesame Street. Perfectly capable of unhinged lunacy, but the clown, the dragon and all those urban fuzzy monsters knew when to tone it down for the sake of the material. 

So I still remember watching that movie, alone. I was clever enough at the time not to broadcast my insecurities to those around me. Not that this kept anyone from picking up on them. I didn't share them in the traditional sense. I embodied them. And even though my mother is mother enough to gently remind me that I wasn't a fat kid, I knew that I was the round one. The one that couldn't climb that stupid rope. 

So I started watching movies. Lots of them. Some of them were from Japan. Some of them were introduced by a clown and a dragon. I don't remember all of them, but I do remember Skinny and Fatty. And for the record, I did finally get to the top of the rope. Even if I didn't have a skinny friend to cheer me on. 

Head Check

 Maybe I should have my head examined. On Saturday evening, I lent my strong back to the efforts of my brother-in-law's move into a new apartment. I have done this exercise before. A number of times. I lifted. I toted. I hoisted. And I made this suggestion: The next apartment really ought to be on the first floor. Somehow stairs seem to be inherent in the world where my brother-in-law lives and moves. 

But that's not the reason I should have my head examined. Over the past couple months, we have been methodically going through all the windows in our house, removing them, sending them out to be refurbished by someone with lots more window refurbishing acumen than I have. Then they returned, all fresh and almost new, and I put them back in the house. Where they belong. 

Which isn't why I need my head examined. It was a process that became easier each time I took a window out or put one back in. Learn by doing, my son's college used to say. So I grew a new skill. That's a good deal. No need for head examining here. 

Until I tell you that we had been putting off painting the outsides of the windows, because we were waiting for the glazing that had been renewed to cure. And we had to come to a decision on color. What hue were we going to cover the primer with? My wife thought orange, because we all live in a Yellow Submarine, porthole included. Why not yellow? Well. the accent colors are pink and orange. We know this because we looked at the Lego model I got for my birthday a few years back. Taking a Lego piece to Home Depot to match the color isn't quite head-examining material. Not quite. 

Waking up on Sunday morning with the notion that I could remove every one of those windows once again, paint the outside, then put them back in. In a day. By myself. My wife suggests that maybe I am too intense. Intensity may be the reason I should have my head examined. Not that my intensity isn't appreciated, at least once the smoke clears. That's when I feel the day slip away from me. The conversations I missed and the muscles that are sore as a result of my obsession. 

Because I won't just relax once I finish some monstrous task. I go looking for more. 

I should have my head examined.

Ticking

 We have an election coming up. The vast numbers of people with whom I speak on a regular basis have already voted, This means we are all stuck in a place not unlike kids on Christmas Eve, anxiously awaiting the moment that we have been anticipating for months. Years. It's going to happen, but no one is exactly sure how it will all turn out. 

The surprises that await are not necessarily the pleasant kind. A little like the interaction that I had with a friend I haven't spoken to in quite a while. Not about politics anyway. We're both dads and we work hard and we commiserate on that level freely. But when the topic of "next Tuesday" came up, I learned more about how he felt.

"What do you think Joe Biden's going to do for you?" he asked.

At first, I was slow to react, attempting to gauge his sincerity. Was he putting me on?

"What about the economy, my friend?" And that last twist let me know that we were off and running on an actual debate. Not just launching platitudes and sound bites, but discussing the issues that affect us both on a daily basis. Dads. Husbands. Working men. I chose what I figured was some low hanging fruit, like the wall on our southern border and its relative effectiveness. Or lack thereof. He was calm and satisfied with the way that had been handled. He was glad that "at least he's making an effort." This came as a bit of a shock to me, coming from a man who was born and raised in Guatemala, but the more I listened, the more I understood. This was a guy who has not been given a free pass to anything, and he doesn't believe that anyone else should either. He wants the best for his family. That's his bottom line.

And he firmly believes that Donald Trump will deliver that.

Or at least he believes that Donald Trump will come as close as anyone else. 

My initial reaction was to recoil, but then I realized we had this safe space for me to speak my own mind. I told him that my bleeding heart is what brought me to public education and that I wanted a chance to help everyone that I could, including my family. I could not relate directly to the hard way he had climbed up the ladder, but I told him that I believed we should make it easier for everyone to have the chances that he took. No one should have to be afraid. Not afraid to try. Not afraid to fail. We can build a bigger net to catch the people who are falling, and build them up to a level where they can start doing the same for those around them. That is the ideal of America, and I was proud to know him and the way he achieved his dreams. 

Because I believe it is time for this nightmare to end.