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Some thoughts.

An essay: Number 1 – As I wrote this, I was in a state of complete dismay over the rising incidences of Covid 19 paralyzing our country. I tried to identify the place in me where those feelings of helplessness resided. I found two very potent ones.

When I was fourteen years old I was bullied. The scene of the crimes: South Mercer Junior High School, located in a bastion of understated white privilege at, as the name indicates, the south end of Mercer Island, Washington.

My mom and I had loved our life in California. I had found my tribe in a children’s theatre group, and we basked in sunshine and inhaled gentle orange-scented breezes. I had even done some work as a professional child actor. But, for airline families, transfers were a fact of life. I had attended thirteen schools in the previous four years due to earlier transfers and it was hard for me to accept my new life, so far from California. I felt completely alone. I was enduring one of those “awkward” phases most kids experience. Believe it or not, I was rail thin at that time, all legs and gangly arms, completely uncoordinated. My thick glasses with black frames screamed “NERD.” Indeed, that I was.

Every Friday, at the end of gym class, we took our workout clothes home to be washed. I used a paper bag to carry mine. One day, I walked into my wood shop class and the teacher had not arrived. A group of boys I had known from gym class was huddled in a corner, clearly cooking up trouble, and not good trouble. One of them saw me and motioned to the others, who, quickly, surrounded me. One grabbed my books and flung them in different directions across the room. Another grabbed my bag of gym clothes and drop-kicked it to another boy at the other side of the room. After several volleys, the bag broke open and the clothes spilled out in a scattered pile. Several of the boys began hurling the clothes to each other around the room. Finally, they threw them in a pile on one of the shop tables and began spitting on them, while laughing, goading each other on, and yelling words of hate at me.

We heard the sound of the teacher approaching. Quickly, I grabbed the clothes and tossed them into my tattered bag, retrieved my books, and hid everything in a corner. After class, I retrieved everything and walked home slowly, through a darkening, sleety sky. I felt as though I had been sucker-punched, which, in a way, I had been. I have never told anyone about this, until now, not my parents, not my teachers, no one. My shame was so deep and it haunted me for years. How could I have been so hated, just for being who I was? I couldn’t make sense of it. But it didn’t stop there.

My only safe haven was Spanish class, taught by Mrs. C. I worked hard and did well. I loved talking in Spanish about warm climes and tropical forests. One afternoon, I went to return a dictionary to her. When I entered the classroom, I saw Mrs. C. sitting at her desk. She was crying. I froze, not knowing what to do. I was at that life stage where I had witnessed very few adults weeping, except in movies or TV shows. In real life, it was a private thing, too private for kids to witness. I tried to back out of the room, but she looked up and saw me. She beckoned for me to approach, which I did. I had learned that Mrs. C. was the wife of an Air Force officer. She and her husband had traveled the world and she carried herself with a humble, yet elegant dignity that I admired and wanted to emulate. She was, to my recollection, the only black teacher in the school.

“What is it, Mrs. C? Can I help you in some way?” I asked.

She proceeded to tell me that she had just been attacked verbally by a group of boys who had hurled hateful, racial slurs in her direction at the end of her previous class. To me, it sounded like they were, likely, some of the same boys who had bullied me just a few days before.

“Can we do something?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t do any good. It’ll happen again,” she said.

We sat in silence for a while. Then, Mrs. C. said, “Thank you, John. Thank you.”

I rose and left the room, my own tears mixing with the sleety rain of another winter’s day. Mrs. C. and I never spoke of this again. Now, in hindsight, I realize that those moments were my entry into adult life. I was confronted with the shocking reality that, for many, life is never fair. At fourteen, I was presented with the sobering truth that humans are capable of visiting such senseless cruelty upon each other. And for what? So they can feel better about their place in the world by putting their knee on the neck of someone else?

Why are these memories so potent for me, now? Because, as I watch the wholesale decimation of our quality of life, not only at the hands of dull-witted politicians, but also, at the hands of my fellow citizens who still refuse to do even the simplest of tasks, such as wearing a mask during a pandemic, and refusing to respect the dignity and rights of others, I am horrified. I cry for the fact that people of color still have to fight for their right to exist. My wonderful Mrs. C. was ten times the person those bullies were, and yet she suffered at their hand.

There is hardly a worse feeling than the sensation of complete helplessness, as lunacy reigns supreme. In the midst of this pandemic, intelligence, reason, empathy, and compassion are under attack. Enough!

Now, perhaps, more than ever, I refuse to let anyone destroy my empathy and compassion. Releasing one’s grip on those qualities would be, in my view, a stone-cold living death.

Doug and Bob

Essay Number 2 – Doug and Bob

Today, I have decided to stop tilting at windmills, at least for the moment, and to focus on something that has brought me delight in a boyish way.

Doug and Bob came home yesterday. “Who are Doug and Bob?” you may ask. Doug and Bob are your everyday, ordinary astronauts who just spent two months at the International Space Station while we earthlings tried to make sense of Covid 19 and a world in seemingly endless turmoil.

Doug. Bob. Doug and Bob. Don’t you love it? A coupla regular guys you might meet at a weenie roast. Amazingly down to earth, especially considering that they’ve been away from earth for eight or nine weeks. Wouldn’t you just love to share a brewski with them and shoot the breeze about Cumulonimbus buildup over the south coast of Tasmania, or to ask them about the green glow of earth’s atmosphere when the station travels to the dark side? Wouldn’t you love to lean in a bit and ask how the space potty really works?

Yesterday, Doug and Bob brought joy to me, and a welcome respite from government ineptitude and press conferences worthy of Pinocchio at his pineyist. Watching the launch a few months ago and the splash-down yesterday stirred long-dormant feelings of early mornings glued to the television, watching the Mercury astronauts as they launched from Cape Canaveral. How I thrilled to the landing of Apollo 11, watching the coverage with my grandparents from the air conditioned comfort of their summer-sleepy home in West Texas. And, the culmination of it all came when I sat right behind Neil Armstrong, just a few months later, on a flight to Europe as he prepared to entertain U.S. troops for Christmas. There I was, talking with the first-ever man on the moon. Later, when Armstrong was asleep, I stared at his foot through the crack between the seats in the same way I had devoured the image of the Apollo lander on TV, even when the astronauts were inside, taking a nap.

Something and someone to root for, that’s what I have been craving. American-ism. As a boy, I understood neither the content, nor the context of President Kennedy’s speeches about our ambitions for the moon. At my tender age, I had no idea that, even President Kennedy, like many, teetered on feet of clay. He was a hero. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Wow. I felt great. I was part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to succeed. I felt safe, proud, enthusiastic.

This year, amidst Covid madness, for the first time in many years, our astronauts ascended into space and returned in an American-made capsule that looked as sleek as a Tesla. The interior basked in a glow of indirect light and all the clunky knobs and switches had been replaced by touch-screen panels. Doug and Bob wore futuristic space suits that could easily be imagined on Brad Pitt or Bruce Willis. These elements had not been designed by a mid-level civil engineer. Clearly these Space-Ex designers could, just as easily, have turned out designs for prototype Teslas.

The splashdown and capsule retrieval were delightful in the very fact that they were mundane, as if these folks had been doing this for years, which of course, they had, if only in training. The training had paid off. The capsule was hoisted from the sea by a device that might have its analogue in any mid sized marina, and an hour later, out popped Doug and Bob, a bit weak after months in zero G. Soon they were whisked away to see their families.

As I had once done as a boy, watching the Apollo lander perched on the surface of moon, I glued myself again, yesterday, to the TV screen. After being reeled in, Doug and Bob waited, patiently, to be extricated from their climate-controlled space-age man cave. A member of the ground crew came on the radio and asked how they were doing. Doug said, “The weather inside is beautiful.”

The noble, sleek Spacex capsule that once rode to the stars on a gleaming chariot of fire, now sat in the dock, bruised and battered. Inside, according to Doug, the weather was beautiful. Maybe, just maybe, one day, that image will apply to America, as well.