Month: November 2017

Retribution

The slogan on these martial arts studio t-shirts declares, “Touch Me and Your First Lesson Is Free.”

We’re cautioned against inappropriate behavior. We’re reminded that the consequences of misbehavior could be costly.

Society is noticing. Unwelcome, patronizing physical contact is not acceptable.

They ought to make a movie about it, or pass another law against it. Unfortunately, some of the movie makers and law makers are themselves flawed.

There are truly outrageous transgressors out there.

Just when I get ready to cast the first stone against these offenders, I am apprehended.

Because if we widen the lens, we can all think of things of which we ourselves are guilty. Foolish things. Inappropriate things. Things having bad unanticipated consequences.

Maybe we were young and insecure and wanted attention. Maybe we were cocky, arrogant, and purposefully crossed lines, and knew better.

For whatever reason, we let ourselves go there, we are ashamed, and we ought to be.

There is a sort of underlying, guiding truth.

No matter what the offense, those of us who recognize the depth of our transgression and repent, get to start over.

Those who don’t, endlessly circle and snarl.

This Piece of Wall

The last time I painted the outside of my house, it took me a year-and-a-half to complete the project. Every two weeks I would scrape, prime and paint a twelve-foot section of the walls and trim. I started at the front of the house, the most visible part that the neighbors would see. Failure to complete the project would be hidden from their view.

Not so long ago, there was a another kind of wall, the notorious Berlin Wall, dividing Germany into two pieces.

The first time I crossed into East Germany, I entered through Checkpoint Charlie, the American military passage leading through that great, foreboding wall that split friends and family apart. Many from the East died while attempting to cross that monstrous concrete bulwark.

The second time I encountered the Wall, Communist East Germany was breathing its last. The Wall was being properly and deservedly defaced; it was ablaze with colorful paintings and slogans of soon-coming freedom. Incredulously, the demise of The Wall had become a celebration of life, an invitation of hope and of promise.

Walls have a purpose, whether good, or whether bad. I don’t always get to choose the walls in my life. But perhaps choosing how I paint them is the next best thing.

Friend for Life

During my recent trip to Morro Bay on the Central California coast, I fulfilled a quest many years in the making. I was pulling on a thread that had been with me since 1969, my freshman year of college.

Soon, Rob showed up in our two-man dorm room in Fischer Hall, teeth blazing behind a mischievous grin, which he never could seem to tame. We were each eager to size each other up. We would be roomies. And we would hit it off.

Somehow, Rob talked me into joining the college men’s glee club that year. Otherwise, my then-introverted nature would not have veered onto such a track. Rob was a second tenor; I was a baritone, and we had a ball.

Rob had several other untamed passions, including a love for acting and the theater. He toyed with the idea of an acting major. The challenge to try out something else new stuck with me. A rivalry began, which I won; I actually picked up more college stage roles than he did.

For our sophomore year, we decided to do the roomie thing all over again. We moved together to an off-campus house. Month after month tumbled along, and Christmas 1970 was around the corner. Rob decided he needed an adventure. He decided to hitchhike the 2,100 miles home to San Luis Obispo.

He nearly made it. In the California desert, the convertible left the road, headed into the sand, and flipped. The owner died instantly. Rob suffered head trauma, arriving at the hospital unconscious. He remained unconscious right through to the men’s glee club spring California concert tour. The entire glee club packed into his tiny hospital room, but Rob never woke up.

For the next thirteen years, Rob did not wake up. I visited Rob one more time during those years. Blind, permanently hunched over in the wheelchair, Rob’s body was pushed out into the grass and sunshine, but he wasn’t there. There was no crazy smile, no tenor voice, no stage presence.

I cannot think of a single day since Rob’s long-delayed death in 1983 that I have not thought of him. This sunny day, in the center of a cemetery, five graves down from his father, I finally visited Rob again.

How fleeting life can be, but how permanent the sway upon each other’s lives.

So, we must live well.