Clean Plates

Clear back in March of 1990, the ship I was teaching on, the USS Cape Cod, pulled into San Diego after I had ridden it across the Pacific from Atsugi, Japan.  Once I got to San Diego, I got to see my friends, Mark and Barbara, their two beyond adorable daughters (Erin Nicole, then six and Seana Christine, about to turn three) and their infant brother Bryant Edward, then four months. 

If you have never had the experience of seeing a six-year-old and a three-year-old jumping around with excitement, “It’s Uncle Kent!  It’s Uncle Kent!”…trust me, I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.  That night at dinner (which was a really delicious dish of pasta, ground beef and fried tomatoes—yes, I remember what Barbara cooked twenty-three years later),  Erin and Seana were doing their eating-like-little-kids bit.  That’s where you divide your food into nine neat piles, you stir them around and put your fork down before you give an expression that seems to say, “Sorry, I’m not hungry.”  Mark said very quietly, “Barbara, when you finish eating, if those girls haven’t cleaned up their plates, they’re going to bed.  And don’t eat slowly to give them more time.”

At that gesture, I made a point of eating a large forkful of pasta and ground beef and pronouncing it yummy.  (What I am I going to do, say, “Girls, you don’t have to eat that?”  I don’t think so.)  I am proud to report that, by the time Barbara had cleaned her plate, Erin had cleaned hers and Seana had done the same.  By the way, I had cleaned up my plate, too.  And if anyone is snickering, you can just knock it off, because if *you* were there, you would have done the same thing!

(This may look like a brand new plate, but it's actually what the dishes look like after people eat Barbara's food.)

A Story About Parenting

Clear back in mid-December of 1970, my brother Boyd drove back to Columbus from Cedar City, Utah, where he was attending the University of Southern Utah.  With the entire family gathered around the dinner table (my parents and my three brothers and me), my mother asked Boyd how long he was going to be in Columbus.  “Just long enough to get some snatch,” was his reply. 

There was silence at the table.  Even forty years later, what he said seems like a spectacularly disrespectful thing for a young man to say to his mother.  My younger brother is of the opinion that our mother didn’t understand what that word meant.  My father just said, “We’ll discuss this later.” 

I’ve thought about that exchange many times over the years.  I don’t think my father handled that at all well.  Back on New Year’s Day of 2003, I had the good fortune to be visiting some dear friends of mine in San Diego, Mark and Barbara, who have three wonderful children who sometimes call me “Uncle Kent.”  A couple days later, Barbara asked, “Who won the Air Force game?”

At that point, clear out of the blue, Mark and Barbara’s then-fourteen-year-old son Bryant Edward said, in a sarcastic voice, “Oh, look it up yourself.”  I was genuinely shocked.  First, because Bryant Edward was ordinarily a well-behaved gentleman and second, because I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to say an unkind word to Barbara.  And thirdly, because that fourteen-year-old boy was mouthing off while sitting beside his Marine Sergeant father.  I briefly considered diving under the living room coffee table to avoid being decapitated by a young man in flight.  I also considered saying, “Kid, have you lost your mind?  In the first place, you don’t diss your Mama, and in the second place, you don’t do it while sitting next to your Dad.  You’re in danger of going to the Moon without a rocketship.”  I let discussion be the better part of valor and kept my mouth shut.

After what I estimated was two seconds, Bryant’s father said, “Son…you *know*…you can *not* talk *back*…to your *mother*.  Now…what…are we going to do about this?”

I was no more than twelve feet away from Bryant and I could see the wheels turning in his head.  A few seconds later, Bryant picked the sports page off of the floor, walked across the room and handed it to his mother.  He then made himself scarce.  I waited until Bryant and his two older sisters were out of earshot and I told Mark and Barbara that, in my opinion, they could make training films on how to raise well-behaved children.

P.S.  Are you curious about the score Barbara was asking for?  The Air Force Falcons played the Virginia Tech Hokies in the 2002 Diamond Walnut San Francisco Bowl.  The Falcons lost 20-13.

 

A Pizza Delivery Guy’s Story

I recently heard this story from a friend of mine who is a lawyer who does criminal defense work.  One recent night in Columbus, Ohio, a driver was about to deliver a pizza.  When he arrived at his destination, a young black man stepped out from an alley and said, “Deliver the pizza here.”  The delivery guy did not like the looks of things, so he refused to step into the alley.  At that point, the young man pulled out a gun and said, “Give me your money and the pizza.”  The delivery guy dropped his pizza and emptied his pockets, but said as he stepped away, “You know, the police are going to be down here.” 

At that point, the kid swore at him and started firing his pistol at a distance which was described to me as a little more than five feet.  The pizza man began to run until he heard a repeated CLICK-CLICK-CLICK.  Either the gun was empty or it had jammed.  The driver reversed course, tackled his assailant and beat the hell out of him.  When my friend got the case, he met with the kid, who was seventeen years old, the kid’s mother and the kid’s father showed up (now there’s a surprise).  My friend informed the family that the prosecution had made an offer of six years in prison for aggravated robbery.  (The seventeen-year-old has been bound over as an adult.) 

I like to think that it takes a lot to shock me, but when I learned of the boy’s mother’s response, I was flabbergasted.  Apparently, Mom said, “That’s bull****; I killed somebody and I only got two years.” 

Jonathan Winters

Jonathan Winters died a few months ago at the age of 87.  I always loved his off-the-wall sense of humor (who else could make a commercial for garbage bags hilarious?  Check out his HEFTY commercials.) 

I also admired his courage in the battles he fought with clinical depression throughout his entire adult life. 

He was institutionalized twice in the late 1950s/early 1960s and seriously considered getting electroshock treatments.  (He also had an extremely stormy relationship with his father—talk about a guy with whom I can identify.)  He even managed to make jokes about his days in the psychiatric ward a part of his act.  According to Winters, at one point, he managed to climb a tree on the hospital grounds and when an intern asked him who he thought he was, Winters reputedly replied, “I’m Robin Redbreast!” 

To which the intern replied, “That bad?”

And Winters replied, “Okay, I’m a blue jay!”

An old friend of Winters’ called him a few months before his death and asked him how he was doing.  Winters replied, “Well, I promised the kids I wouldn’t commit suicide inside the house because that would make it difficult to sell.”

Millions of people loved Jonathan Winters’s comedy and he became a spectacularly rich and famous man, but he still had demons to wrestle.  I can’t say that he beat them, but he fought them to a standstill in a battle that lasted well over half a century. 

John Wayne's Last Films

If you want to argue about who is the best actor or actress, that is entirely subjective.  In the 1930s, Sir John Gielgud and Sir Laurence Olivier had a rivalry as to who was the best Hamlet.  However, who is the all-time most popular movie star?  That is an entirely different manner.  It is objective and entirely quantifiable.  Who sold the most tickets or who spent the most years ranked among the ten most popular actors in Hollywood.  Any guess as to who that might be?

 

Who rated in Hollywood’s top ten most popular actors for the greatest number of years?  The winner is John Wayne.  No one else is even close.  Clint Eastwood is a very distant second. 

 

Nowadays, people tend to underestimate Wayne as an actor.  (Granted, he found a winning formula and largely stuck to it.)  He is also regarded by many liberals as a boogeyman.  (His attitudes were consistent with someone born in 1907.)  I went through a John Wayne stage in my early-to-middle teens.  Upon reviewing some of those films, I found a number of surprises.  The country changed a great deal during John Wayne’s career and so did John Wayne himself.  For example, in 1970, John Wayne made a film called Chisum, which was approximately the101st retelling of the Lincoln County War in New Mexico.  Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett and all of that.  The Duke played cattle baron John Chisum.  Part of the backstory of Wayne’s character was that he fought with a Comache chief named White Buffalo over the same piece of land.  Of course, Chisum had come out on top.  However, as he mentions at one point to his young niece, he and White Buffalo had grown closer than Chisum and his brother.  Any two men who can fight over the same piece of land and develop a respect for each other knows nothing about Field Marshals Rommel and Montgomery.  Or, for that matter, Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler.

 

There’s a scene almost midway through Chisum in which the title character is meeting with the cavalry officer responsible for the territory.  White Buffalo and a number of other Comanche are present.  John Wayne was sixty-three at that point.  The actor who played White Buffalo was quite a bit older.  In that scene, Chisum has to tell the colonel that because of an attempted cattle rustling, he can’t deliver the beef contract on time.  White Buffalo starts to speak: “Chisum’s word is good.”  The colonel cuts him off, saying, “Your opinion of Chisum and his word are of no concern to me.”  Moments later, as the meeting breaks up, White Buffalo finds Chisum and says, “This changes nothing between us.”  When an overly efficient cavalry sergeant grabs White Buffalo and tells him to get in the wagon.  Chisum steps up and says to the younger man: “Sergeant, don’t you know who that man is?”  The Sergeant says, “Looks like an Injun to me.”  Chisum says, “That is the chief of the Comanche nation.”  The Sergeant replies, “I don’t care if he’s the crown prince of Montenegro, he’s getting on that wagon.” 

 

At this point, the screenwriters came up with a neat twist.  Chisum reaches into his pocket and pulls out a massive cigar and offers it to the Sergeant, who accepts.  He then offers another to White Buffalo and takes one for himself.  All three light up.  After puffing away for a few seconds, Chisum says to the Sergeant, “If you ever lay hands on White Buffalo again, I will kill you.”  The sergeant is goggle-eyed.  I thought that if a man John Wayne's size said said that to me, I would take notice. And if a man who *any* size who was wearing a pistol on his hip said that....   White Buffalo takes another long drag on his cigar and says cheerfully, “Sergeant,.... we go now.”  It’s just a little bit, but I found myself liking Chisum’s character quite a bit for standing up for his old rival.

 

In 1969, Wayne made a film called The Undefeated, which takes place in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War.  His character is named John Henry Thomas (one of my oldest friends is a gentleman named Jonathan Thomas, so I got to tease him about that movie).  Colonel John Henry Thomas was a Union Cavalry officer (dear God, that poor horse) who is getting back to the business of capturing wild horses and selling them to the federal government…until he gets a better offer from the French government of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico.

 

Rock Hudson plays a Confederate colonel who is such a bitter ender that he would rather burn his home and relocate to Mexico than live in a defeated South.  Adventures ensue.  The biggest casting surprise in The Undefeated was the role of "Blue Boy", Colonel Thomas’s adopted son.  Who did they get to play Blue Boy?  Roman Gabriel in his only film role.  Roman Gabriel was six foot four and weighted 220 and built like he could play quarterback for the Rams. (Which is what he did). He was of Irish-Filipino ancestory- so he was swarthy enough to play a Native American.  I was simply astounded that after making a career out of playing Indian fighters, John Wayne played a character who had adopted an Indian son.  I would have liked to have been in on the script development meeting before filming started.  Roman Gabriel was plenty big enough to play one of The Duke’s kids. 

DI Therapy

 

The folks at GEICO have put out a very funny commercial which begins with the question, “Does GEICO provide great insurance?  Does a drill instructor make a terrible therapist.”  Former Drill Instructor R. Lee Ermey then plays a therapist calling his patient a “jackwagon” and smacks the him over the head with a box of tissues.  The commercial is funny and makes my own experience that much more ironic. 

 

Anyone who appreciates irony will appreciate this story; as will anyone who appreciates the adage, “When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.”  Since many of my readers are parents, I hope that you’re all smart enough to know that if your child messes up, it is vital to separate the behavior from the individual.  If you say, “Johnny, you spilled noodles on the floor; that’s bad.”  The kid will say, “What’s the big deal?  I spilled noodles on the floor and if I pick them up, everything will be fine.”  On the other hand, if you say, “What’s wrong with you?  You spilled noodles on the floor, you rotten kid.”  The kid will reply, “What’s the problem?  I’m a rotten kid.”

 

I really wish someone had explained that principle to my father about half a century ago.  My father was in the habit of saying, “This is ANOTHER example of your goddam half-assed attitude.”  Let’s parse this statement.  First, I’m “goddamned,” which means I’m divinely cursed.  (A pretty ironic statement for someone who has been an atheist for half a century.)  And I’m “half-assed,” which sounds like a terrible congenital birth defect. 

 

I once told my father that I didn’t know who taught him to say that, but I told him that I hoped whoever it was was burning in hell.

 

Back in 1989-1990, I spent almost ten straight months teaching on board US Navy ships as part of a program providing sailors with a college education.  While on board the USS Lawrence in the sub-Equatorial reaches in the Indian Ocean, I happened upon some literature from Alcoholics Anonymous.  I’ve never had any problem with alcohol or any other substance abuse, but as I read that literature, I had a complete revelation.  I knew that some of my behaviors were so compulsive that they could be classed as addictive and I knew I needed to make some major changes in my life.  In March of 1990, the USS Cape Cod (which I cross-decked to) pulled into San Diego and I had the delightful experience of catching up with some old friends I hadn’t seen in years: Mark and Barbara and their three children.  I’ll never forget walking in their front door and being treated to the sight of their six-year-old and three-year-old daughters Erin and Seana jumping up and down and yelling, “It’s Uncle Kent!  It’s Uncle Kent!”  If that wasn’t the happiest moment of my life, it easily cracks the top five. 

 

During my visit, I had occasion to sit down and had a long talk with Mark, who is one of the more colorful characters it has been my pleasure to meet.  After a stellar twenty-five year career with the Marine Corps,  he retired as a First Sergeant, a rank which about 1% of all Marines attain.  In five of those years, he served as a Drill Instructor, one cycle as a Junior DI, another as a Senior DI, a long stretch as a Chief Drill Instructor.  Then he was selected for duty at the Drill Instructor Academy.  At the end of his career, he was offered the opportunity to train aviation cadets at the Military Academy in Pensacola.  (Does everybody who saw "An Officer and a Gentleman" remember Louis Gossett, Jr. as Gunnery Sergeant Foley?  Yeah, one of those guys.)

 

The First Sergeant does not have much college education, but over the years, he frequently surprised me with what a thoughtful and intuitive fellow he can be.  Indeed, if you gauge a man’s intelligence by the woman he marries and the children he raises, he is a *flat-out* *genius*.  I have at times kidded him that listening to his comments resembles watching Dom Perignon pour out of an oil can.  While wearing the biggest grin I could manage, I’ve told him that I’ve never known anyone who is so much dramatically smarter than he looks.  I am delighted to report that he shot me back an even *broader* grin and replied, “You bet!  Camouflage is one of the most important military weapons.” 

 

I told him about the reading I’ve done and the insights I’ve gained and that I have a lot of work to do.  He nodded and said, “Kent, it sounds like you have a great attitude.”  A couple months later, I was working at Mead Data Central near Dayton, Ohio.  I once took a break to go to the cafeteria, which was, at that hour, completely deserted.  When I tried to put a nickel into the Coke machine, I dropped it and the coin landed on its edge, rolled under the Coke machine and I couldn’t retrieve it.  I was terribly frustrated and somehow, while I was not hallucinating, I could vividly imagine my father whispering to me, “This is ANOTHER example of your goddam half-assed attitude.”  I was so angry that I started hammering my fist on the Coke machine.  After a few minutes, I caught myself with the thought, “Dear God, I’m turning into Norman Bates.”  It also occurred to me that if anyone saw me acting that way, there was the distinct possibility that they would be coming after me with a bunch of butterfly nets.  I took control of myself and my mind played a trick on me.  For some reason, I remembered the words of my friend, the First Sergeant: “Kent, it sounds like you have a great attitude.”   It then occurred to me that I would VERY much like to see my father try to get in a shouting contest with the First Sergeant, a man seven inches taller, sixty pounds heavier and thirty-five years younger than he.  The image of that mismatched confrontation made me guffaw.  Yeah, Dad.  Try yelling at someone who did that for a living.  Go for it, Dad. 

 

In the years since, I sometimes share that story with people I met at twelve-step meetings.  (There are twelve-step meetings for a number of addictive behaviors.)  Maybe I’ve done someone else some good; I know it did good for me.  It’s fascinating how the mind can heal itself.

A Hemingway Story

 

Okay, everybody.  If you know your Hemingway, then you should know “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Care to guess the answer?

 

“To *die*....... in the *rain*.”

  

Whenever I interact with someone who passes up a chance to do something spectacularly stupid, I will often sing a little ditty which I have entitled the “You Are Not a Total Idiot Song.”

 

It goes:

 

“You are NOT a total idiot

You are NOT a total idiot

You may or may not be a rocket scientist, but

You are NOT a total idiot.”

 

This past year, I’ve spent a great deal of time serving as guardian ad litem for a family named Hemingway.  In that capacity, I had to write a report to the judge after visiting the biological parents and foster parents and making my recommendation as to the best interest of the Hemingway children: young girls about three and six.

 

Option #1: Biological Mom and Dad.  Biomom looked like she was getting her act together but violated her probation and got sent back to Marysville’s Ohio State Reformatory for Women.  It was not her first time there.  Biodad will shortly finish a stint in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and will soon be relocating to Kentucky, where he will be serving a double-digit stint. 

 

Option 2: I went out and visited the foster parents who were Mr. and Mr. Responsible Gay Couple.  They have a very fine-looking house on a multi-acre plot in Union County and are taking care of a couple of other small children.  The household includes four dogs (who do not bite; I checked).  There’s enough of a backyard for a very gentle horsey to graze.  When one of the foster parents expressed concern about the outcome of the case, I explained that the Ohio laws don’t care if you’re an angel walking the Earth with the resources of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, the biological parent gets a chance to clean themselves up.  That said, I did have a couple concerns as to how they conduct their household.  I asked, “Do you conduct religious rituals involving human sacrifice?”
   "No." 
   “Do you raise any fighting pit bulls?”
    "No."
     I commented on the horse in the back pasture and asked if he ever held rodeos involving bull riding for the kids. 
     "No."
     I said, “I really don’t think we have a problem here, fella.”

 

Do you get the point I’m making?  Biomom’s in Marysville, the nice gay couple has dogs and a horse and a beautiful home.  I’m proud to say that I recommended the foster parents continue to have foster custody of the children.  Sometime in the near future, they’re probably going to get *permanent* custody.  I don’t pretend to be some Great Brother of Man for making such a decision, but I am fully confident that I made the right choice.  You may disagree, but then I would NOT sing my “You Are Not a Total Idiot” song to you.