"A Belated Petition"

Dear Your Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second of England,

I do not know if you read my blog.  Nor am I privy to Her Majesty’s e-mail address.  

I am hoping that one of your Royal Secretaries will see this and pass it along for your “Royal Consideration”, if you are not too busy knighting people and overseeing “The Trooping – or is it “Trouping” – of the Colours.”  (I threw that “u” in for you.  I am an expatriate Canadian so I know about the “u.”  By the way, thanks – at least to your forbearers – for granting us qualified independence in 1867.  Your face is still on the money, though – with apologies – not all of the money.)

Anyway, let me tell you why I’m writing to you.  

Straight out?

I would like to request a favor.

I am sure you get a lot of requests, and I am truly sorry to burden you further.  I mean it’s not wildly unreasonable, like “I need a kidney”, or anything.  In fact, when you hear what it is, you might say, “Spit-spot! – It’s done!”  I have heard you are really decisive.

Nor is this some “lifelong obsession.” I just feel… not wanting to put too fine a point on it… that a serious injustice has been done, and it would be great if it were finally alleviated.  

Here’s what returned this issue front and centre to my consciousness.  (The “r-e” in “centre”?  Just for you.)

While enjoying my traditional “Thursday Morning Walk”, I heard a bird go, “Chee-chir-ree.”  It was the first detected “Chee-chir-ree” of the season, indicating – if you allow birds to make this particular designation – the official arrival of spring.

That happily heard “Chee-chir-ree” reminded me of the “Signs of Spring” scrapbooks we were assigned in elementary school.  (More about which school that was later, as it plays a central role in this petition.)   

Truth be told – and who would lie to a monarch? – I was not a big scrapbook enthusiast.  I essentially did the minimum.  Pluck a newly-arrived blade of grass out of the ground, tape it into the scrapbook – Boom!” – “Sign of Spring.”

The point is, recalling that assignment reminded me of the only other scrapbook I was scholastically required to assemble:

“The Queen Elizabeth the Second Coronation Scrapbook.”

1953.  

(I just looked it up so I wouldn’t embarrass myself and immediately put the kibosh on this petition due to “historical inaccuracy.”  I know for sure it was the early 50’s because of that – forgive me – stupid school scrapbook assignment.)

There I was, trudging from travel agency to travel agency, asking for illustrated brochures of England and having the proverbial door repeatedly slammed in my face.  Do you recall the crushed look on your sister Margaret’s face when you said ”No” to her marrying Group Captain Peter Townsend?  Same look on myface when they told me, “No brochures!”  Minus the abject heartbreak.

Anyway…  here’s the thing.  (Answering your likely impatient, “What’s the thing?”)

I learned this many years after the fact.  (Along with hearing about “Canadian Thanksgiving”, although at not exactly the same time.  I link them together because my response to bothilluminations was “What!?!”)

I don’t know if they told you this – I’m sure your plate was really full at that moment – but when Your Majesty was coronated, they struck a commemorative coin in your honour (sic) and sent copies to every school in the commonwealth, to distribute to all of the schoolchildren.

Well – getting straight to the point here – 

I never received a coin.

Not just me.  Nobody in my school got one.  That school being,

The Toronto Hebrew Day School.

Let me be clear here. I am not accusing Her Majesty or Her Majesty’s Government of anti-Semitism.  (Although there was that one misstep when you – well, I mean, not you, but one of your predecessors – expelled all the Jews out of England in 1280.)  (Applauding anotherpredecessor for later allowing them back in.)

Maybe it’s because we were designated, what they called, a “Parochial School.”  But for whateverreason, our school did not receive any coins.  (Unless we did, and our principal Mrs. Snider kept them all for herself, distributing them piecemeal to her grandchildren as Chanukah gifts, or for finding the matza.  (It’s a Passover tradition.  Ask someone to Google:  “Afikoman.”) 

Which finally brings me to my request.

I am aware it was a long time ago.  

But do you think you could find me one of those coins?

Here’s the thing, which will, perhaps, make things a bit easier.  I’ll be in England – specifically at Oxford University, the second week of July.  So if you want to deliver the coin personally, that would be really terrific.  (I am not clear on the school’s “Visitors Policy” but I am sure they would make an exception for you.)

Otherwise, you could just mail it to me.

That is, if you happen to find one somewhere, like maybe while cleaning out your drawers, or something. I’m not asking you to cancel any Royal Visits to look for it.  Just, you know, you’re rummaging around some rainy day when you are unable to inspect your gardens and it’s like, 

“Oh, look – a leftover commemorative coin from my royal coronation!  I think I’ll bestow it on that former Canadian who wrote me that nice letter.”

Well, I guess that’s it; I just thought I should try.  Anyway, congratulations on your being the all-time longest reigning ruler of England.  Or perhaps anywhere, for all I know – I am no student of “monarchical longevity.“

I am not going to grovel, or anything; I imagine you hate grovelers.  It’s just, if you can see clear to respond to this ‘umble petition, I would really appreciate it.

Respectfully,

Your loyal Commonwealth (ex)-subject,

Earl Pomerantz.

(Address provided, on request.)

P.S. (Not to be fawning):  I always believed you were the prettier sister. 

"Filling The Void"

I am writing this because a man I recently mentioned to it said it was “a great insight.”  So if you think it sucks, blame him.  You don’t need to know who “him” is.  Just as long as it’s not me. 

Okay, so here it is.  

“A Jury of Your Peers.”  

A longstanding tradition. 

With a strong adjudicatorial rationale.   

Or so it appears.  (ACCOMPANYING “SARDONIC CHUCKLE”, ENCOURAGED BUT OPTIONAL)

Let’s set the contextual stage here.

THE YEAR: 1792.

“What month?”

Leave me alone.

One of your peers is on trial for committing a civil or criminal crime.  Let’s call him Clem.  As a member of the jury, you are listening to what happened so you can make a fair and equitable decision.  

While the facts are presented, you inevitably wonder, 

“Would Ido that?  (“That” being the illegal act Clem is charged with having committed.)

“If Clem didit, was he understandably justified in his actions?”

“If, as Clem proclaims, he didn’tdo it, do I believe him?”

If, based on the situation and your personal knowledge of Clem, the answer to those questions is “No”, “No” and “No” – “Guilty as charged.  Take the prisoner away.”

If the answer to them is “Yes”, “Yes” and “Yes” – “Case dismissed.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  Although you really looked guilty.  Though come think of it, Clem, and I have known you a long time, you alwayslook guilty.”

That’s the advantage of “A Jury of Your Peers” in 1792.   You know the people involved.  You know their experiences.  (Because they are also yourexperiences.)  And you know if their sworn word can be trusted.

All of which colors your ability to decide.

“Y’know, I once went into Clem’s hardware store to buy some nails.  I say, ‘Clem, I need thirty-seven nails.’  He says, ‘Comin’ right up, Henry.’  Clem counts out the thirty-seven nails, he slips them into a paper bag, I pay for my nails, and I walk out of the store.  That night, I’m home eatin’ my dinner when there’s this ‘knock-knock-knock’ at my front door.  It’s Clem. He tells me that while he was slippin’ those nails into the bag, one of them accidentally dropped on the floor.  The man walked eleven miles to bring me my full compliment of nails.  That’s Clem.”

CUT TO:  TODAY

No Clem.

By which I do not mean no more scrupulously honest people. I mean no one beyond family and a few close friends that we indisputably know and trust – or do nottrust – that we can therefore unequivocally vouch for. Or its opposite.  Vouch against?

By diametrical contrast, in today’s highly populated metropolises lacking all aspects of communitarial “glue”, we are intuitively connected to nobody.   We don’t know their characters.  We are unaware of their proclivities.  We are alien to any shared experiences.

Everybody’s a stranger.

And yet we persist in the charade of

“A Jury of Our Peers.”

Why do we do that?

Try thison your harmonica.

Years ago, the Israeli army hired psychologist Daniel Kayneman to develop a test that would predict the future success of the assembled recruits in combat.  Years later, in an evaluative follow-up, it was discovered that, as a predictive indicator, Kayneman’s test was entirely useless.  

The Unbelievable But True Punch Line:  

The Israeli army kept using the test.

Why did they continue to do that, although it demonstrably didn’t work?

Because that’s all they had.

Does that sound crazy to you?  It’s like, “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.”

The idea of “A Jury of Your Peers” was a viable concept in the homogenized communities of 1792. (And in feudal England, where it originated.)

In the anonymous, urbanized culture of today?

We don’t know any of our peers.

Yet we behave like “A Jury of Your Peers” like it’s a still viable approach.  

Why do we do that?

Because that’s all we have.

“And that, Your Honor, is why I feel unqualified to participate in Jury Duty.”

So what do you think?

About my “great insight”, notmy just-came-to-me excuse to escape Jury Duty.

Although, come to think of it,

It’s a pretty good excuse.

"Sometimes You Can Learn Something From Learning Nothing"

Being seriously engaged in this undertaking, I am forever on the lookout for new blog post ideas.

A couple of weekends ago, I believed I had foundone.

In the course of a “go-to-sleep” stroll down Santa Monica’s Main Street with daughter Anna and her drowsy, “Snugglied” daughter Golda, we occasionally stopped along the way for some casual neighborhood store shopping.    

Without mentioning the particular store in question, I will simply say this:

I bought a shirt there for forty dollars.

I do not know where you live – L.A. is hideously expensive – or what your personal clothing allowance may be.  If “talking price” is personally insulting to you, let me I preemptively apologize.  It’s just that… where I live, and in my current situation…

Forty dollars is a really cheap shirt.

It was a nice shirt. Long-sleeved.  Linen.  No collar, like I like them, being an inordinately short-necked individual.  Note:  Let me be clear before you get an erroneous suspicion.  I have not sunk to becoming “I bought a new shirt” blog writer. Unless the exigent circumstances merited mention.  Which in this case, well…

There was just something about the price.

For the first time since – I don’t know, the fifties? – I had purchased an adult-sized sport shirt for forty dollars.

And being a lazy liberal – that’s a liberal who smells the whiff of injustice but that’s as far as it goes – I thought I’d write about the nagging guilt around purchasing a forty-dollar shirt.  No ameliorative action.  Just the guilt.

I had found an idea.  

Upon further consideration, however, I could not get excited about that idea, partly – no, largely– because, though I had this discomfiting feeling – “Why is it so cheap?” – I planned to buy the shirt anyway.

I then imagine a way out, a plan to salvage the post, delineate my discomfort “for the record”, be hopefully entertaining in the process, and perhaps plant a seed of empathy and corrective suggestion for the visiting readership. 

My ingenious proposed strategy:  I would write it as an analogy.

I even imagined an italicized foreword:

“Analogies are paralleling examples that don’t hurt as much.”   

(Which are generally more fun than dry, pedestrian reportage.  “I saw a forty-dollar shirt. – What makes it so cheap?... where’d they go?”)

I would reset the analogical scene in 19^th Century America.  You can see where I’m going with this, right?

NORTHERN CUSTOMER:  “Why is this cotton shirt so inordinately inexpensive”?

Yeah.  

There.

The only difference being that they knewwhy, and I didn’t.  (And was not overly inclined to find out.)  (And I just lied about “overly.”)

Almost immediately, the scenario took shape in my head.

FADE IN:  A Men’s haberdashery in 1850’s America.

A customer comes in, looking to buy an “everyday” new shirt.  The store’s energetic proprietor shows him a shirt the customer appears to be taken with.  

CUSTOMER:  “How much does it cost?”

PROPRIETOR:  “Seventy-nine cents.”

The same situation, right? With the salving element of “distance”, and scaled backwards, for inflation.  

(Note:  I tried to research how much a cheap shirt would cost in nineteenth century America, but what I ran into were companies selling replicas today.  Quickly tiring or “serious research”, I contrived a “funny number” instead.)

As the narrative progressed, I had the proprietor purring, “Feel the fabric.  Soft as butter.”, the uncomfortable customer explaining, “My shirts usually cost more.” and the proprietor playfully responding, “You can pay more.”

The morally upright customer reveals he traditionally buys English-made shirts, which, although more expensive, he knows are produced by “free labor”, as England had banned slavery numerous years before.  (In 1833, being historically specific.)

“I am against slavery”, the customer proclaims.

“I don’t have any,” answers the proprietor.

The proprietor concedes that he cannot stop the customer from paying more for the same garment elsewhere, possibly one that’s not quite as “soft as butter.”  He also reminds the customer that, from a practical perspective, one man rejecting a shirt because of who originally picked the cotton would make no tangible difference to the lamentable “pickers.”  It may, in fact, make things worse– lower profits for the plantations would likely pass along as worsening living conditions for the “Unfortunates” he ardently wished to support.  When you think about it, buying that seventy-nine cent shirt could actually help them.

The planned post would go on in such a fashion, ending, perhaps, with a flurry of “offers you can’t possibly refuse”, rising to the giddy level of “Six shirts for three dollars! – What you’d normally pay for one shirt, and I’m offering you six!”

Well… you know what?  

It was the same story – a congenitally guilty consumer challenged by an enticing bargain – which turned out assuaging none of my original concerns as an analogy.

There was a hole in this imaginatorial balloon.  I decided to let it go.

Although – “Full Disclosure” – there is a terminating codato the story.

What elsedid I do, besides abandoning that blog post and then explaining to you why?

I just sighed.

Okay, here goes.

Two weeks later, I went back to the store where I had purchased the forty-dollar shirt and bought a wonderful pair of shorts.

When they were “ringing me up”, however, I breathed a sigh of satisfying relief.

The shorts were more expensive than the shirt.

I know that’s lame.

But beyond talking about it, 

I have no idea what to do.

"Bamboozled... But Only For 38 Years"

Scripted programming, if successfully executed, creates the illusion that it is unscripted.

I thought I was personally above that befuddling hocus-pocus, largely because, for three or so decades, I was one of the people creating that illusion.  

You would think I’d have known better.

But I didn’t.  Until I recently, belatedly, came to my senses.

It was only with this overdue “awakening” that I came to the realization that it is not just what H.L. Mencken called the “Booboisie” who believe what they are watching is actually real, but that I too, on occasion, have succumbed to a similar subterfuge myself.

Let me be clear about this. It is not that I believe, like viewers I have met believe about comedy, that “the actors make the jokes up themselves.” If that were true, I‘d have gone home a lot earlier than the following morning on rewrite nights.  It seems to me we were making up something.

I understand the writers write all the dialogue.  I also realize, having spent arduous sessions hammering them out that the writers originate – or adapt in the case of the “ripped from the headlines” series – the episodes’ stories as well.

Still, with Law & Order, the specific terrain of my recent illumination…

Watching with baited breath – whatever that means – I  have found myself regularly behaving as if I believed the juries’ “deliberated verdicts” were actual, deliberated verdicts, cheering enthusiastically when I agreed, and slapping my hand to my forehead when the jury egregiously messed up.

Law & Order had a misleading “Crack the case!” promotional billboard.  A more appropriate descriptive is, “Guess the verdict!”  

In typical Law & Orderfashion, the defendant has already confessed to the charge, leaving no case left to “crack.”  The determining issue in question, championed by their defending attorney is,

“Which of you ladies and gentlemen of the jury would not under similar circumstances have done exactly the same thing?”

Translation:  “They killed them but send them home anyway.”

The show’s prosecuting Attorney’s delicate counter-argument is,

“You may empathize with the defendant but what they did is still murder.”

The thing I enjoy most about Law & Order, which made me a reliable follower since its 1990 inception is that such moral conundra – don’t underline it in red, computer – “conundra”:  the neuter plural of “conundrum”; am I the only one around here who took Latin? – anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah.

The thing I enjoy most about Law & Order is that the arguments are carefully balanced.  For Example:  Can companies that make legal guns easily converted into dangerous assault weapons be legitimately charged with murder?  

(In that one, the “Compassion Factor” favored the prosecution.  But they lost anyway.  Actually, they won, but the judge overrode the jury’s decision.  Man, what a surprising switcheroo!)  

Which leads to my belated “Wake-Up Call.”  Thirty-eight years watching the show, and the proverbial penny finally dropped last Tuesday.

As the climactic decision is about to be announced, which – the arguments, being carefully balanced, could reasonably go in either direction – I watch with heightening anxiety, as if the “Final Decision” is up to the jury, forgetting during that tense moment in the proceedings that the “Final Decision” is not up to the jury.

The “Final Decision” is up to the writers.

The “jury” is just actors.  (They’relucky if they get to speak at all.   ATTORNEY:  “Your Honor, I’d like to poll the jury.”  “JUROR NUMBER SEVEN:  “Great!  I’m getting a line.”)

It’s allfictional.  The actors play fictional characters.  The cases are fictional cases. The arguments are fictional arguments. And the “Final Decisions” are fictional decisions.

… it recently occurred to me.

What thencomes to my mind is – because it’s not Perry Mason, who won every case from 1957 to 1966 – with the trial’s week-to-week verdict entirely up in the air, how do they decide whoexactly wins when?

As with all fictional decisions, the determining outcome is in the hands of “The Creatives.”  Which the “Prop Man” then writes on a slip of paper, which the jury Foreperson reads aloud.

The question is,

With the arguments ably supporting either decision, how do they decide what will be written on that slip of paper?

(Peripheral Wondering:  Did an indignant “Prop Man” ever “throw” the writers by altering the verdict before delivering that slip of paper to the Foreperson?  INDIGNANT PROP MAN:  “I know it wasn’t my place, but it just seemed so wrong.”)  

If the determining decision is, in fact, entirely up to the writers, on what basis, I wondered, was that determining decision ultimately arrived at?

And when, it subsequently occurred to me, did they make it? You want the scriptwriter to write as even-handedly as they can.  Could the show runner, who specifically makes the determining call, keep them in the dark about the outcome?  

(I can imagine the finally apprised episode writer fuming, “‘Not Guilty!”  Come on!”  And the show runner reminding them, “Relax, Larry.  It’s a television show.”)

The “jury’s” decision couldbe entirely separate from the particular case. Maybe there’d been two “Not Guiltys” in a row, and the show runner didn’t want his prosecutorial protagonists to suffer an ignominious “Hat Trick.”  Maybe it’s as simple as, “I’m the boss.  ‘Not Guilty.” Who knows?  Maybe they just flip a coin.

And to think I took this ersatz ersatz manipulation so seriously.

“Madame Foreperson, has the jury reached a unanimous decision.”

“We have, Your Honor.”

“On the charge of ‘Being a Clueless Sucker Who Should Really Have Known Better’, how say you all?”

“Guilty.”  

(Postscript:  The case, scheduled for appeal, offers little chance of a reversal.)

-------------------------------------------------------

A Blogger's Addendum:  I accidentally got a look at the number of people reading this blog, leading to this humble request.

If each of you can tell a thousand people this blog may be worth checking out, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.

"The (Seemingly) (Though This Could Simply Be Self-Pity) Vestigial Family Member"

I would not even write about this if I had not seen an example of this prototypical behavior on a television comedy.  And when you’re mining for “Life’s Ultimate Truths”, after the Bible, the next font of nurturing wisdom is unquestionably sitcoms. Especially sitcoms on premium cable. 

I have talked in the past about watching and enjoying the HBOseries Crashing.  In this semi-autobiographical series, protagonist – and series creator – Pete Holmes is a thirty year-old man with a strict religious upbringing who, after catching his wife cheating on him, commits to a newlife as an aspiring standup comedian.  

This post is only tangentially about that.  But I needed to properly “set the scene.” Anyway, in one Crashing episode, there’s this arranged dinner for Pete’s creepily clingy Mom’s birthday at which Pete has promised his now estranged spouse he will announce that they have permanently split up, a revelation Pete has been anxiously reluctant to divulge.  (And therefore insisted she come withhim.)  

This post is only tangentially about that as well.  But we’re getting closer.

At one point, the estranged wife leaves the table and there is an uncomfortable silence amongst the remaining family members, which is finally broken when Pete’s father suddenly reports,

“I bought a new ladder.”

And here we are.  The train of thought – “Toot-toot” – arriving, after two hundred and twenty-four words of contextual buildup at its destinational station.  Maybe I’ll shorten it in rewrite.  Though experience suggests it will get longer.  (Final Tally:  Wow. Two hundred and twenty-onewords.)

Anyway…

At the end of the episode, under or just after the “End Credits”, I can no longer remember which, Pete Holmes – as himself – explains that, like the father in Crashing, hisfather also blurts out bizarre non sequitors, confusingly out sync with the current ongoing conversation.

This vignette is funny because it is hilariously unexpected.

But it is additionally achingly accurate. 

I know that.  Because I’ve donethat.  In fact, I may have once actually said, “I bought a new ladder” myself.

After purchasing a new ladder.  

And thinking, somehow, it was worth mentioning.

Pete Holmes is uninterested in unraveling this strange but recognizable behavior, being content with the verisimilitudinous “That’s what they do.”  Since, however, I have considerably more time on my hands – and am (selectively) curious by nature – I started to ponder the origin of this inexplicable, like “Birds that fly backwards” phenomenon.

Why do fathers lob tedious grenades of unasked-for information into the midst of otherwise normal conversations?  (I imagine the word “tedious” and “grenades” have never before stood side-by-side in a sentence.)

Here’s the answer I came up with:

Nobody is talking to us. 

And to fulfill the philosophical dictum: “I just heard my voice, therefore I am”, fathers say things that fly incongruously in from left field. It’s hardlythe “A” material, but it’s something.   

What else can we reasonably contribute?  We cannot provide valuable infant childcare suggestions.  We have – I am speaking stereotypically here – little interest in unbelievable shopping discoveries.  We have zeroto offer concerning “The Real Housewives of Anywhere.”

So we offer the best thing we can come up with.

“I just bought a new ladder.”

“I am thinking of getting a haircut.”

“I feel so relieved after filing my on-line tax payment.”

Which is immediately greeted by “That Look”, that says,

“Why are you talking nonsense?”

I know children love their fathers.  But it’s like, I don’t know, a guy helps change your tire by the side of the highway and then stays around for the rest of your life.  That’s exactly how it feels.  They’re grateful.  But it’s like, 

“Are you still here?”

No question, fathers make indispensible contributions to their children’s lives.  And I’m sure their offspring are appreciative of their efforts. So there’s

“Thanks for sperm donation. I especially like the chin.”

“And the money – that always comes in handy.”

And “You cried when I had my teeth out when I was nine.  That was sweetly memorable.”

“But what purpose are you serving today?”

I mean, it’s not like we’ve literally been ostracized.

“Dad, nobody says, ‘Don’t jump in.’  Just say something we careabout.”

Like what?

Having serious difficulty coming up with anything you might both conceivably be interested in, the remaining options are, you sit silently as if you passed away but you still pick up the check.  Or you wrack your brain, searching for anything to say!

I do not have the solution to this problem.  And I suspect the older I get, the worse it will be, “I bought a new ladder” eventually replaced by “I’m enjoying my new hip.”

Who knows, maybe I’m not interesting anymore.  But if that’s true –  that I am genuinely not interesting – 

Why do I think I still am?

"Visiting Rites"

When I was a kid I remember telling me mother,

“I hate ‘havtas’?

What’s a “hafta”?

“You havta finish your vegetables.”

“You havta go to synagogue on the High Holidays.”

“You havta eat your grandmother’s Friday Night chicken, even though it’s

a sickly boiled lump sprinkled with paprika, and, minus the paprika, looks nauseously similar to an actual dead plucked chicken.”

You just havta eat that chicken.

That is simply the way it is.

(And as you may have noticed I am regularly uncomfortable with “the way it is.”  Not that I do anything about it – besides mentioning it.  I’m just regularly uncomfortable.)

Although as I got older, my obligatory duties became somewhat easier to accept, I remain at times shamefully remiss when confronted by “havtas.”  

Once, at a movie screening, Dr. M spotted a writer in his mid-nineties I was acquainted with sitting in a wheel chair and she suggested I go over and say hello.  Somehow, I just couldn’t do it, my feet bolted immovably to the ground. I knew paying my respects was the polite and decent thing to do.  But I also knew the first words out of my mouth would be “How’re ya doin’, Bob?” and the “scared” part of me did not want to find out.  

So I regrettably blew off the “hafta.”

All this, offered as background, makes me extra-sensitive to my behavior around the expected elements of protocol.  Protocol’s there for a reason.  And there are reverberating consequences to blowing it off.

A while back, our son-in-law Tim had abdominal surgery and was recuperating in the hospital.  In my awkward and oblique way, I tried immediately to reach out.

I have a friend whose girlfriend is a nurse at that hospital.  I emailed my friend, I told him about Tim, mentioning he could maybe pass the information on to his girlfriend so she might pull a few strings and “get Tim extra Jell-O.”

That’s the best I could do. I know.  But at least it was something.

In the meantime, my, what do I call it… generous?...  impulse demanded more personal involvement.  No, not “generous.”  It’s just the typically “right thing to do.”  There is an accepted etiquette about people recovering in the hospital.  

You are supposed to go visit them.

Preferably bearing flowers and/or balloons.

(Or intravenous candy, if they make that, because Tim was unable to eat anything.)

“Let’s go!”  the “normal” part of me loudly proclaimed.

The thing is, there was this interfering obstacle.

That interfering obstacle was Tim.

With the exception of wife Rachel, Tim made it clear he did not wantvisitors.

In the early stages of his recovery, Tim was disoriented, uncomfortable and – mentioned only to complete the picture – flatulent.

(Our recent birthday card to him read, “We are farting at home in your honor.  Happy Birthday.”)

Still, I had this urgent impulse to visit.

To show loving familial support, of course.  But also to prove I was a grown-up.  (Involving not just visiting a recovering patient, but facing a developed aversion to hospitals, which brought back personally experienced flashbacks… of hospitals.)

The problem was,

“How do you visit a man who does not want any visitors?”

From a certain (misguided) perspective, Tim’s demand felt rejectingly dismissive. 

“You don’t want me?”

And yet, turning the tables, would Inot want the determining say about visitors?

Okay, so you respect the guy’s wishes, hoping Tim’s “No” is not a coded insistence for visitors.  (Taken at “face value” due to a latent aversion to “haftas.”)  I did not go the hospital.

The trouble with thatis,

However legitimate the reason,

Not going to the hospital is not going to the hospital.

And how exactly does that look?

Despite his protestations about visitors, did Tim secretly believe I did not wantto go to the hospital?  Had he wished me to to me to sweep aside his objections and show up defiantly at his bedside?  And the fact that I didn’tmeant I felt happily “off the hook”?

That negative assumption was totally incorrect.  But how could I prove it?

How could I show “adult” behavior when my ability to demonstrate it is denied?

Which gets a part of me thinking,

“How darehe not let me visit him in the hospital!”

That’s the way your mind works when your mind works like mine works.  And you have to use it or they’ll take it away and all your hats will feel big.

This troubling conundrum dissolved when Tim announced he was finally ready for visitors.  Since little children were involved, the encounter was brief and soothingly relaxed.  My big contribution to the gathering was that we sing “Happy Birthday.”  And we did. 

The issue of the delayed visit remained scrupulously unexpressed.

And I wondered.

Was there nothing necessary to say?

Or were we both just being polite?

"Why, I Wondered - Part Two"

The “Why Question” in question being:

“Why would anyone go into show business when almost everything else is a demonstrably safer career bet?”

An answer I received while canvasing several writer friends for their opinions, one that frequently escapes mymouth as well was,

“I couldn’t do anything else.”

I thought long and hard about that answer.  In the end, I found that explanation factually inaccurate, although emotionally “on the money.”

My mind took me to my six-week enrollment period at the University of Toronto law school.  I had signed up as an afterthought after college graduation, seeking a place to go to school after Labor Day, as I had been doing since I was three.  My older brother had graduated law school and I got way better grades than he did, so I figured, “No sweat.”  

I gave no thought, however, to what they were actually teaching us to become.

So I’m sitting in law school and my fellow classmates are all wearing suits.  That should have been a “give-away” right there.  

Nobody has fun, wearing a suit.

But it was not just the wardrobe.  And it was not even the schoolwork.  I got “A’s” my whole life.  I could probably (eventually) figure that “thinking legally” thing out.  It wasn’t an actual question of “Couldn’t do it.” (Or anything of equalcerebral challenge.)  I am pretty certain I could.  

What then made me quickly determine, “This place isn’t for me”?  In a summarizing five words:

“‘Lawyering’ is a ‘Grown-up Profession.’”

And show business?

Show business is for children.

My experience over the years suggests that, by and large, people in show business are unfit for any form of adult undertaking – which, of course, includes undertaking itself– and, consciously or otherwise, we know it.

Could I ever imagine myself as a doctor, telling the family,

“I usually save them. But this time I didn’t”?

Could I ever, as an attorney, utter the words,

“I am sorry you are going to prison.  Here’s my bill”?

Could Earl Pomerantz, the “Financial Adviser” ever possibly confess to a client,

“I made some wrong calls. Your net worth is now nothing”?

I’m in the construction business.  I have to negotiate with “The Mob.”  Or else courageously say “No.”  Or – the more likely“or else” – skitter out the back door, leaving both unfaceable options unfaced.

I am a dentist… forget it. I can’t even goto the dentist.

When, as a practical matter, all adult career opportunities are functionally “off the table”, what remains enticingly “onthe table” is show business.  Where you don’t have to wear a suit.  Where you call your boss “Billy.”  And where, “Worst-Case Scenario” –the catastrophically worst thing that can possibly happen in this arena…

Is that the show doesn’t go on.

Nobody dies because of you. Nobody goes to the slammer. Nobody’s homeless, who once had a healthy portfolio.  Nobody’s body’s encased in newly constructed cement viaduct.

Inevitable Career Selection:

“Hooray for Hol-lywood…”

Sure, you want to be init.  You think, for the glamor and excitement, for the money, for your name prominently displayed in the credits.  And yeah, alsoto be creative.  But underneath it all is the soothing awareness that nothing terrible happens in show business.  Except, once or twice, 

The show doesn’t go on.

From a “serious consequences” perspective?  “Show Biz” is the easiest job in the world.  

“If you don’t finish that script on time, I’ll kill you”?

It may be threatened. 

But I have never known it to occur.  

So that’s where we gravitate to, the unserious “small potatoes” of show business.  

But get this!  

Despite its comparative, low stakes considerations, we – meaning the majority of people in show business – 

Agonize desperately over every moment.

‘The easiest job in the world.”  And we can’t even do that!

Check out the clenched faces of people making movies and television shows.  An outside “civilian” takes one look and goes,

“Are we at war?”

And that’s with pervasive, palliative “self-medication.”  (My particular M.O., mentioned elsewhere, was “I suffer.”)

That’s how “un-adultish” we are.

We can barely survive “The easiest job in the world.”

A redeeming addendum:

A comedy writer friend reports saying something spontaneously hilarious to his enchanted new girlfriend, who went, 

“How do you do that?”

I have experienced it myself.  Having written something adjudged to be “clever” on a birthday card, the card’s recipient asked,

“Did you come up with that yourself, or did it you happen to see it somewhere else?”

For us – which we generally fail to appreciate because our peers are equally skillful – the “Funny on demand” process is readily doable.  It’s not exactly a “Calling.”  But you know what?  

It feels like one.

The people in show business?

We may be babies.

But we are babies with a gift.