"London Times - Part Two"

It started with the pay phone.

What’s “it”? The foreignness of the place I had just left the familiarity of Canada to move to.

London was different.

In Canada, people spoke with English accents. But not all of them. Now here they were – “Jabberin’ away, they was” – as if it was natural. It was very alienating. And for the first time in my life, the alien was me.

The plan was this: When I got to London, I would call my friend, Alan, with whom I’d be sharing a flat. Alan would then come down on the subway – which they call the Underground – pick me up, and escort me back to where I was going to live. I just had to call and tell him where I was.

The saga I am about to relate took place before cell phones. Back then, pay phones were the only way you could call people when you were out. They were simple to use. You picked up the receiver, you inserted a coin in the slot, you dialed the number, the person on the other end said, “Hello?” and off you went.

I’d been using pay phones all my life. No need to read the directions. How different can an English pay phone be?

You’d be surprised.

I pick up the receiver. I insert a coin in the slot. I dial the number Alan had given to me. The phone rings. I hear a guy who sounded like Alan saying, “Hello?” I say, “Alan?” Alan repeats, “Hello?”, as if he hadn’t heard me say, “Alan?” I say, “Alan?” again. Alan says, “Hello?” again. We go back and forth.

Then I hear a loud series of “beeps.” We’re disconnected, and the line goes dead.

Strike One.

Generally, when I’m involved in a “mess-up”, I reflexively blame myself. Something had gone wrong. It couldn’t have been the pay phone. I must have been me. That’s the way I am. (Therapists, back off.)

For people of my temperament, the next step is inevitable. You do exactly the same thing again.

I pick up the receiver. I insert a coin in the slot. I dial the number. It rings. Someone sounding like Alan says, “Hello?” I say, “Alan?” Alan, obviously not hearing me, says, “Hello?” again. I say “Alan?” again. And off we go. “Hello?” “Alan?” “Hello?” “Alan?”

And here come the beeps, and then we’re disconnected, and then the line’s dead.

Strike Two.

I immediately start to laugh. That’s what I do. When absurdity and failure’s involved, I laugh. What can I do? It’s ridiculous. The guy is my lifeline, and I can’t connect with him. Our entire communication was, “Hello?” “Alan?” “Hello?” “Alan?”

The next step? Involuntary shaking. There’s no hope for me. I don’t know where Alan is; Alan doesn’t know where I am. I’m done for. Totally doomed. I’m going to die exactly where I am – a Canadian skeleton standing at an English pay phone.


My fate is sealed. They’ll be flying me home in a box. A dead embarrassment.

“When did he die?”

“His first day in England.”

“How did it happen?”

“He couldn’t use the pay phone.”

Drawing on a microscopic sliver of genetic self-preservation, I pull myself together. I will not allow this to happen. Not without a fight.

I get some more change. From a “Sweets Kiosk.” It’s a candy stand. Why can’t they just call it that?

I return to the pay phone (which they call a “Phone Box.” These people! Although, truth be told, they are the older country. We were the ones who changed what you call everything.) I read the directions for the phone booth. I’m hopeless at following directions, but what can I do? I’m desperate.

Oh…I see. It’s different.

I pick up the receiver. I dial the number. It rings. Alan says, “Hello?” Only then – as the directions direct – do I insert the coin in the slot. (Why do they do it that way? I don’t frickin’ know!!!)

The problem is, I’m nervous. I know I have a limited time to insert the coin. I jab urgently at the slot. But the coin won’t insert. Hard as I try, I cannot seem to align the coin and the slot at same angle. I desperately keep jabbing.

And here come the beeps. And there’s the “disconnect” sound. The phone goes dead again.

Aaand…it’s over.

Hmph. That’s what I say when I don’t know what else to say. Even when I’m talking to myself.

I’m successful on the fifth try. Not my best work, but Alan and I are finally connected. I tell him I’m outside Victoria Station. Alan tells me to go inside Victoria Station, and wait on the northbound platform. He’ll be there in twenty minutes.

The instructions are simple; you can’t get them wrong. I lug my suitcase into Victoria Station, I buy a ticket, find the northbound platform, and stand there. The crisis is over. In twenty minutes, I’ll be united with the only person I know in England.

I wait on the platform for over an hour. No Alan. Ah, I think to myself. Like many of my predictions, I had once again been mistaken. I would not die at the pay phone, as I’d previously believed.

“I will die on this platform.”

Epitaph: "He Couldn't Follow The Simplest Instructions."

Finally, Alan shows up. With an explanation. Apparently, there are two stations at Victoria Station – a train station and an Underground station. Alan had been searching for me on the platforms of the train station, while I waited for him on the platform of the Underground station, totally unaware that a train station existed.

Lesson One of “Earl in Another Place”:

This new country thing?

It was not going to be easy.

"Uncle Grumpy - On 'Different'"

My erroneous statement that my daughter, Anna, was my first guest blogger sent a shock of consternation raging through my readership. I’m sorry for the confusion. I made a mistake. A mistake, leading some to question my dear old Uncle Grumpy’s existence. As Uncle Grumpy himself reminded me – in a tone suggesting his holiday gift to me may now be considerably less generous – the man is as real and I am.

Sometimes irritating but always provocative, here, once again, is the real – make no mistake about that – Uncle Grumpy. Sorry again, Unkie.


Yeah, yeah, yeah. The kid’s a mush brain, what can I tell you?

Okay. Now.

There are group of people out there called cultural relativists. No need to name names, you know who you are. Cultural relativists believe it is inappropriate to judge the behavior engaged in by members of other cultures. That’s us, being smug and superior. You can’t do that. The right way to think about the behavior of other cultures is this:

It’s not better.

It’s not worse.

It’s just different.

These people are not entirely around the bend. Some people are not at all tolerant of the behavior of people from other places. That’s where words like, “primitive” come from.

You’re in another country:

“The toilet paper here is so scratchy. How primitive.”

You’ve heard stuff like that, probably worse. It’s not very nice. Sure, sometimes it’s tough not to judge the behavior of people from other cultures – they eat monkeys or something – but cut them some slack. Some of us eat snails.

I’d say we’re getting better at being tolerant of the behavior of people from other cultures. But you know what we’re in no way tolerant of?

The behavior of people from other times.

There are people out there – often the same people who demand that we be tolerant of the behavior of the people from other cultures – who despise the behavior of people from other times. Totally dismissive. Explanations? Forget it.

“But here’s why they did that.”

“We don’t want to know.”

Six word summary: “The behavior in other times? Terrible.”

I say, not so fast.

Sure, some old time stuff was unforgivably disgusting. Slavery? Say no more.

But what about, say, women stuff? The inequality. Equally unforgivable? Well…

My view. You don’t have to agree. Just think about it. It won’t kill you.

Before 1900, a vast percentage of families, I read it was like ninety per cent, lived in rural communities, primarily on farms. Back then, the farm family was more than a family, it was an economic unit. Family members worked together, each member shouldering the tasks they were best suited for.

Now, we can’t be sure here. The people are all dead, so we can’t ask them what it was like. But just imagine.

Do you really think there were farm women, baking bread or doing the laundry, looking wistfully out the window toward the fields and thinking,

“Gee, I wish I could plow.”

Maybe a few women did. The really strong women. And it was unfair that they weren’t allowed to. But for most women, it wasn’t an issue. It isn’t like some farm jobs were better than others; they were all terrible. You just did what you did. And whatever that was contributed meaningfully to the economic betterment of the family.

Only men voted. From an equality standpoint, not so good. Quoting the great movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan:

“Pipples is pipples.”

Women are “pipples.” Women get to vote.

But give the “equality standpoint” a rest for a moment, and consider things from an economic standpoint. How many women, whose very existence depended on the success of the enterprise of which they were an integral component, would have voted against the interests of the family farm?

Do you think, maybe, none?

It was one vote per family unit. Was it fair that only men got to vote? No. But it’s extremely unlikely that any the woman’s vote have been any different from her mate’s. What else could they do?

“I voted against the farm.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I never voted before.”

Okay. Here’s the turnaround.

Everything changed with the move to the city.

Immigration to the city restructured the entire arrangement. Maybe the kids put in a couple of hours in the store after school, or they contributed to a family “pool” of money, but the family as a distinct economic unit completely disappeared. No more family members working together, each member shouldering the tasks they were best suited for.

With the old arrangement out the window, all bets were off.

Working outside the family unit, individuals in the city began to demand – and had every right to expect – individual rights. And justice required that the same rights be given to everyone. Equal rights under the law. Equal pay. Equal treatment in the workplace. And so it went.

There’s this movie, based on a book of the same name, which I can’t remember, where a character in it said,

“The past is another country. They do things different there.”

The farm system was another country.

They did things different there.

Not better.

Not worse.

Just different.

"Major Dad 'Mop-Up' - Part B"

It wasn’t always a nightmare.

Major Dad had a solid writing staff (featuring Janet, Lisa, and a consulting Miriam), and they consistently kept me afloat. The team had talent, energy, and most importantly – something I rarely displayed myself – a positive attitude.

If there’s one thing I’m sensitive (arguably too sensitive) to, it’s my limitations. I know when I’m done. During one rewrite session, laboring well past midnight, I suddenly announced, “Guys, I have three left”, meaning three jokes, or whatever. I was right on the money. In the ensuing ten minutes, I pitched three really funny lines. Then – as previously announced – I ran out of gas. The writing staff powered me through to the end.

We continually devised techniques for keeping things lively. Early in production, McRaney, who had asked us to call him “Mac” in the show, instructed us not to call him “Mac” in the show. I think it was because his wife called him “Mac” in real life, and she didn’t want him called “Mac” on TV. “Mac” was for home.

Well, we’d always forget. So, to reinforce the rule of not calling “Mac” “Mac” anymore, whenever a writer made a mistake, and referred to “Mac” as “Mac”, we would immediately shpritz the miscreant with water guns.

There were three reasons for that. The Writers Room was generously stocked with water guns. We were trying to teach the miscreant a lesson. And we were in a mood, especially late at night, where it seemed hilarious to us to make other people wet. Burdened with the murderous schedule of a TV series, vacations from sanity can be deliriously welcome.

You’d think I’d be good at working with writers, but, quite often, I wasn’t. The process could be very frustrating. The problem, simply put, was that I wanted my writers to write like me, and they stubbornly insisted on writing like themselves.

Many times, during rewrites, I would get three or four very funny and totally viable pitches, reflecting three or four different storytelling perspectives and, often, a equal number of comedic styles, none of which were like mine, and many unhelpfully incompatible with mine. This stopped me in my tracks. I was not articulate about what I wanted, and wasn’t sure it would change things if I were. I had no idea what to do.

Somehow, we plodded along. Major Dad had a first-year order of twenty-two episodes. That was the “Finish Line.” That’s what I was lurching towards. And it looked like I’d make it. I had already planned my reward – a week’s stay at this spa I go to in Mexico, beginning right after we filmed Episode Twenty-Two.

The network calls: “We’re ordering four additional episodes.”

Waaaaaaahhhh!!!

You’re supposed to be happy when that happens. Ordering additional episodes is a vote of confidence, signifying an almost certain second-year pick-up of the show. And since hardly any series gets cancelled after two years, a pick-up for Season Two points to the show’s running for quite a while, possibly reaching “syndication level”, where the real money is. That call was a really good thing.

And yet I was crying. Why? Because they’d moved the “Finish Line!”

There were a couple of characters on the show that weren’t working. They didn’t fit naturally into stories and their comedic value was only so-so. Our plan was to finish Season One with those characters, then drop them, and create new characters for Season Two. Extending Season One with characters we were getting rid of, didn’t make any sense. The reasonable move was to finish the order of twenty-two episodes, then re-tool the series for the following year.

I made my case to Universal’s head of Current Programming, a smart and caring man named Garry. Garry listened patiently to my argument, after which he said he agreed with me. It was stupid to do more episodes using characters we were going to replace. Then he told me to do them anyway.

The Episode Twenty-Three script was ready to go. I finalized the details, then went off, as planned, to the spa. I should never have done that. I should have cancelled the trip. But I didn’t. I was angry about the extended season. And I was exhausted. I really needed to go.

During my spa week, I checked in on the show. I learned from my second in command, another guy named Rick, that McRaney had written a different last scene from the one in the script and was insisting on performing his version of the scene on show night. (Time and trauma have erased any memory of further specifics.)

When I got back, the damage had been done. Actors, unilaterally writing their own material, that’s just not acceptable. McRaney, as the studio possibly racistly put it, had gone “off the reservation.” I announced to Garry that, if that’s the behavior I could expect in the future, I would not be returning for Season Two.

By Episode Twenty-Four, my body couldn’t take anymore. It removed me from the fray by detaching my left eye’s retina. I was out for the season.

A sigh of relief.

Except for the retina.

Getting wind of the fact that I was finished on Major Dad, not just for that season but for good, Rick and McRaney high-tailed it over to CBS and announced to the network’s president, a “Yaley” named Jeff, that the two of them would run the show (as they had wanted to all along). As soon as they left, Jeff called Kerry, the smart and decent president of Universal and said,

“Who’s Rick (last name)?”

When he heard Jeff’s story, Kerry called Rick into his office and fired him on the spot. That’s not the way you do things. You go through channels. The next season, and the two after that, Major Dad was run by my former second-in-command from Season One, the other Rick.

After co-writing Season Two’s first episode, where the two new characters were introduced, I was informed by Rick that my participation in the show would no longer be welcome. (During that period, I had very little luck around Ricks.)

Major Dad flourished during its second and third seasons, airing Monday nights, before Murphy Brown. Starting of its fourth season, the show was rescheduled to Fridays. The ratings immediately plummeted.

There were two reasons for that. Friday was a terrible comedy night for CBS. (Shortly thereafter, CBS’s Everybody Loves Raymond languished in its Friday time period, taking off only after it was transferred to Mondays.)

The second reason for Major Dad’s diminishing ratings was that on Friday nights, Major Dad’s core audience was out, attending High School football games. CBS’s president, “Yaley” Jeff, who had engineered the show's move, was clearly unfamiliar with the folkways of the Heartland.

By this time, Kerry had left Universal to become President of Television at Paramount. It fell to two Universal executives named Tom to negotiate Major Dad’s fifth-year pick-up. Facing dwindling ratings, and “hardball” negotiating tactics from the Toms, who were apparently tone deaf to the realities they were dealing with, CBS abruptly cancelled the show.

And that was that.

In all, three series have aired on major networks, created or extensively developed by me. Best of the West was my funniest series. Family Man was my truest. Major Dad was my most commercially successful. I figured, one day, I’d put all the elements together.

This now seems unlikely.
-------------------------------
Postscript: Every year, I get a statement from Universal, informing me that Major Dad is still “in the red”, meaning there are no profits for me to participate in. I have no doubt this is the case. I can’t imagine a studio lying about its profits.

"Major Dad 'Mop-Up'"

There was this guy named Bernie Slade. Bernard Slade. Also a Canadian. Bernard Slade’s primary claim to fame – or at least his most prestigious claim to fame – is that he wrote a successful play, which later became a movie, called, Same Time, Next Year. My interest was in Slade’s television work, where he created two popular series, The Flying Nun and The Partridge Family.

I always admired – make that envied – Bernie Slade. To me, Bernie Slade had the greatest job in television.

Bernie Slade created TV series. That was his whole job. He created the series, but – and herein lies the envy part – he was not required to work on them. He would do the pilot, and if it got picked up as a series, someone else was brought in to run the show. Bernie would then go back to work creating other series. (At least, this how it appeared from the credits: I’d see, Created By: Bernard Slade, but no writing or producing credits on the series.)

I ravenously coveted that job.

I never got it. (The job may actually have disappeared.) When a series I created got picked up, the network required me to run the show myself. This was unfortunate, all around. I had some aptitude for making up series ideas. I was considerably less effective at running shows.

In a way, it makes sense. You’re the chef who created the delectable menu for the opening of your restaurant, and the next day, you’re gone, and another guy is preparing the food. They’re following the recipes, but it’s not the original chef. When the networks buy a show, they require the original chef to stick around. Whether they’re good at sticking around or not.

You created the series, you ran the show. That’s how it worked. It wasn’t all bad. They paid you really well.

So I ran Major Dad, along with the aforementioned “Executive Producer”-coveting Rick, and a crusty but good-hearted codger named John Stephens. John had been the Executive Producer (along with Rick) on Gerald McRaney’s previous series, Simon and Simon, transitioning to Major Dad after Simon and Simon completed its run. John handled the show from a production standpoint, hiring the crew, scheduling, etc. He did pretty well, for someone who had no sitcom experience whatsoever.

(Point of Personal Privilege: John would tease McRaney by calling him "Sergeant Markoff", after an unlikable character from the Gary Cooper version of the movie, Beau Geste. I got a kick out of that.)

Take note. This is significant. In all my years working in television, Major Dad was the only series I ever worked on full-time for an entire season. You read that right. In my entire career in half-hour comedy, I worked on a full season of episodes only once. I don’t know how people do it. (And do it year after year.) It darn near broke me in half.

You read a script on Wednesday. You film it the following Tuesday. The next morning, you read another script, and do the whole process over again. You produce three, sometimes, four episodes in succession. Then you have a week’s break from production, called a hiatus, but it’s not a vacation.

You’re preparing new scripts. You’re editing episodes that were already shot. You’re casting roles for episodes down the line. You’re approving set designs. You’re mixing sound for the episode about to be aired. You’re polishing the script ready for the upcoming reading. You’re giving the staff writers notes on the drafts of scripts to be produced later. And you’re writing a script yourself.

And while you’re doing this, you’re putting out fires – dealing with the actors, plus the studio and network executives, who are totally indifferent to what you’re trying to accomplish (and the murderous time schedule you’re working under) and pressuring you to do things differently (invariably in a way the audience has seen before several million times.)

At first, Major Dad ran relatively smoothly. The actors were cooperative, the audiences were enjoying the show. (Just as a side note, my capable stepdaughter, Rachel, was given the assignment of naming the Major Dad children. I wasn’t being generous. She was way better at picking appropriate children’s names than I’d have been.)

The work was exhausting but it somehow got done. We were moving ahead.

Then, without warning, while we’re filming our seventh script, McRaney announces that he hates the eighth script, and he refuses to do it. Unsettling but fine. We send him the ninth script, which will now become the eighth script, and we’ll write new ninth script.

McRaney hates that one too.

Now, we’re in trouble. Why? Because we don’t have any more scripts.

Major Dad shuts down production for two weeks. Replacement scripts (based on replacement ideas we haven’t come up with yet) need to be written. Stomach churning and sleep disturbances ensue.

I meet with McRaney and his manager to discuss the problems McRaney’s having with the scripts. At some point in the discussion, McRaney’s manager, coincidentally a former Marine, says, “Now, putting on my ‘comedy hat’….”

I, internally, hit the roof, and bang my head against it a few hundred times. I’m not a Marine. I don’t claim, and never have claimed, to have a “Marine hat.” McRaney’s manager had never been involved in a comedy. Where the heck did he get a “comedy hat”!?

It appeared that McRaney simply wanted to be consulted on the scripts. Which was my fault. I had deliberately kept him out of the loop. The reason I had kept McRaney out of the loop was because he was generally irrational in his objections to the scripts. So my keeping him out of the loop was, arguably, his fault.

Nah. It was still my fault, for being incapable of handling the irrationality. Which when you think about it, made it the studio and network’s fault. I never wanted to run a show in the first place.

I wanted to be Bernie Slade!!!

Okay, I need to calm down. I’ll finish this tomorrow.

"London Times"

A long time ago today, when I was twenty-one, I went to London, and lived there for more than fifteen months. (But not sixteen.) It was a major turning point in my life.

My London experience played a transformative role in my ultimately coming to California. It was a three-stage process, "it" meaning the prying me out of my Canadian cocoon. First, I went to L.A. to attend the Bertolt Brecht Summer Theater Workshop. Then, I went to London. And finally, I moved to L.A., where I have remained ever since. Before these events, I had never gone anywhere on my own. Anywhere far, I mean.

As a rule, I wasn’t a person who went places. I stayed home and watched TV. Big picture: I went to school during the school year, and in the summer, I went to camp. Small picture: I was not big on leaving the house. Especially in the winter.

I had quit Law School after five weeks. On Orientation Day, the Dean of Law had welcomed us with the obligatory warning: “Look to the left of you, and look to the right of you. By…[I don’t remember the designated date]…one of you will not be here.” I had dozed through that speech at every level of my higher education. I was never the guy deleted from the proceedings.

This time I was.

After I quit, I walked across the street from the Law School to the college, and I found my friend, Alan, in the Hart House Theater, designing sets from some upcoming production.

“I just quit Law School,” I told him, a little trembly in the voice and the knees.

“Good,” he replied.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Alan told me about another Alan I knew, who was living in London. (At the time, I knew a considerable number of Alans, or Allans, or Allens. I could list half a dozen more of them for you, but they’re not really pertinent to this story.)

“Hart House Theater” Alan suggested I write “London” Alan and ask him if he was interested in sharing a flat, or a bedsittingroom, or something else that was English. I had never thought about London before. I had little interest in going there. I was a homebody. I didn’t want to go anywhere.

I didn’t tell Alan that London was a bad idea. Instead, I said it sounded like a good idea. Hearing myself say that scared me. It told me I was really desperate.

This was me, maybe it was you too. From the age of three onward, September rolled around, and I went to school. That’s what you did. You came home from camp and you went to school. I always went to school in September. What else were you supposed to go?

That’s why after I graduated from college, on the day before I flew to L.A. to attend the Bertolt Brecht Summer Theater Workshop, I signed up for Law School. I had no great interest in becoming a lawyer. I hadn’t even thought about it. I just wanted somewhere to go in September.

My brother had just become a lawyer. I had always gotten better grades than him. I figured, if he could be a lawyer, so could I.

I started Law School in September. I quit in November. And that was that.

This was a turning point. Up till then, my experience told me you always had a future. After Kindergarten, there was First Grade to look forward to. After, Elementary School, there’d be Junior High, after Junior High, High School, and after High School, college, and after college, there’d some professional school, like Law School, only I just quit Law School, so they way I saw it…

I had come to the end of my future.

I was done.

It’s hard to be done in your hometown. People look at you, in a strange and probing way. They drill you about your plans. They interrogate you about your future. I had no desire to be looked at. I had no plans. And my future, as I understood it, was behind me. It seemed wise to be somewhere else.

But London? London held no particular interest for me. It was an English place with fog. It had strange food and strange people. It didn’t have my room. On the other hand, London had an undeniable thing going for it.

It was somewhere else.

I had some money. There was this arrangement that, when I turned twenty-one, I’d receive a certain amount of cash from my father’s estate. It was a sad way to get money, but it got me out of town.

During my extended stay in London…

I would live in three different places, one of which offered no tub or shower, and I’d be required to partake of the Public Baths…

I’d be a substitute teacher (having no teaching training whatsoever) and, through the kindness of a headmaster, be presented with a classroom of my own…

I’d be hired during the Christmas season to wrap toys at Harrods Department Store, where I’d encounter a princess, and later, lead my fellow toy wrappers out on strike, and be fired as a troublemaker…

I would spend a year getting “method” acting training (in London, where their specialty was the opposite), and, during a “showcase” performance, receive “mention” in a major newspaper for delivering a single line...

I would learn to appreciate beer at room temperature, and almost learn how to roll a cigarette…

I would enjoy a weekend at an insane asylum in Yorkshire (as the guest of a staff member, not as an inmate)…

I’d be singled out by my local pub owner to “stick around after closing”, and be kidnapped by some friends to the Epsom Derby…

I’d see Paris and Amsterdam on five dollars a day…

I would accompany a guy on his honeymoon, after his wife of two weeks had dumped him and returned home…

On my birthday, I would just miss seeing Laurence Olivier in his final performance of Othello, and later, be involved in a pretty scary car accident…

I would steal plays from a world-famous English bookstore (and pay them back decades later by deliberately buying a book I didn’t want)...

I would come home on the Queen Elizabeth, where I’d order kosher food and have a shipboard romance.

Leaving for England, a long time ago today, I had no idea any of that would be happening.

I remember traveling to the airport with my mother, my brother and his wife, Nancy. I remember the goodbyes and, when my flight was called, I remember heading away by myself.

As I walked down the corridor from the Departure Lounge to a plane that would take me thousands of miles from my home, I heard myself say, out loud, to the strangers passing around me:

“Could somebody please tell me why I’m doing this?”

I had absolutely no idea.

"Maybe It's True"

Mr. Rosen had two fingers missing on his right hand.

He covered it – “it” meaning the place you don’t want to look but your eyes are drawn to it anyway – with a black leather glove, which he always wore when he was driving us to school. Mr. Rosen was called a taxi driver, but what he was was a man who picked up little Jewish children from their suburban Toronto homes and shuttled them to and from the Toronto Hebrew Day School, which was downtown. (The school itself? That’s for another time.)

You knew Mr. Rosen was missing fingers because two fingers on his black glove just flopped around. And because my older brother said so.

Okay, so I’m six years old, and Mr. Rosen’s escorting me personally to my front door, which is not generally his habit. I’m holding Mr. Rosen’s hand. The other hand. Mr. Rosen delivers me to my mother, but not without comment, which is the reason for the personal delivery. Mr. Rosen’s comment is this:

“Your son is a chronic complainer.”

Six years old, and I’m a “chronic complainer.” Come on! I’ve been around for six years. Am I really old enough to be a chronic anything?

Where’s the line? I say, ten. Ten years, you can be a chronic something. But six years, especially your first six years of existence? That’s outrageous.

And what of the charge itself? Was I, indeed, a “chronic complainer” as Mr. Rosen had proclaimed? Let’s leave out “chronic”; I’ve expressed my position on the ten-year cut-off. “Chronic” aside, was the six year-old Early Raymond Pomerantz indisputably a complainer?

Absolutely.

Although I wouldn’t call it a “complainer.” I’d call it a “noticer.” I’d notice things that other people apparently ignored, and then I’d say something about them. I wasn’t aware at the time that people’s ignoring certain realities – some might call it “taking things in stride” – was an encouraging sign of mental stability. I just thought they were lousy noticers.

I noticed things, and gave voice to those noticings. To Mr. Rosen, that made me a “chronic complainer.”

Here’s the thing, and I think you’ll agree. People who are labeled “complainers”, or even “chronic” complainers, never complain about nothing. They’re not idiots. A situation is awry, and they’re compelled to complain about it. People who never complain about anything, at least from my perspective, there’s something wrong with them. Those people are asleep!

The question is: Is the situation which I’m about to relate to you worth complaining about? If it isn’t, then yes, I’m a complainer. If, however, it is worth complaining about, then I’m not a complainer but am, instead, a person who noticed the unacceptable and spoke out boldly for its remedy, an action, which could seriously be described as heroic.

You see how I turned that around? Well, hold your judgment. There could be something to it.

The decision I will leave in your hands.

Here are the facts:

Mr. Rosen regularly chauffeured nine children in his “taxi.” Seven sat in the back seat, and two sat in the front, beside Mr. Rosen and his missing fingers. That was the trade-off. You could sit in the front seat with the fingers, or you could be penned up in the back. Most of us opted to be penned up.

No seat belts. Seven children, crammed in the back seat – two stacks of two kids, one stack of three. Not safe, but that’s how it was. The kid on the bottom was the safest, because the kids on top of them were holding them in place. If the car stopped abruptly, they’d be the least likely to go flying through the window. The kids on top would be flying out before them, and by then, the car would probably be stopped. On the “down-side”, with a child of indeterminate weight wedged in on top of you, if was very difficult to breathe.

Being one of the first “pick-ups” on the route, I was inevitably consigned to the bottom tier, where I stood a two-out-of three chance of having only one kid – invariably a larger kid, as I was small for my age – planted on top of me. There were comments, I admit, utterances of discomfort, but no actual complaints. And certainly, no “chronic” ones.

Then things got worse.

At the age of sixteen, a Canadian long-distance swimmer named Marilyn Bell became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario. After her heroic accomplishment, for reasons never explained to us children, Mr. Rosen started picking up Marilyn Bell and driving her to school, a private high school not far from the Toronto Hebrew Day School.

Marilyn Bell always sat in the front. Alone. If you don’t count Mr. Rosen.

What that meant, of course, was that, now, nine children had to somehow fit themselves in the back seat – the “somehow” being three piles of three. I was invariably be found at the bottom of one of these piles. The children weighing down my lap were heavy. And I could not breathe at all.

So I complained.

What was Marilyn Bell doing in our taxi? Why was I consistently designated to the bottom of the pile? And at the very least, could somebody please open a window so I could breathe?

You tell me. Was that unjustified?

Smothered under a pile of humanity and seriously lacking in oxygen, I speak out. And now, I’m a “chronic complainer.”

The question is, “Is that the label correct?” Frankly, there are signs that it might be. Writers, generically, are complainers. Take fiction writers. Their stories may be based on personal experience, but unhappy with the facts they lived them, they change things in their fictional depictions, altering events and outcomes, so they’re more to their liking, or at least more compelling.

What’s their complaint? Reality isn’t good enough.

Writers like me, honest chroniclers of actual experience, we change stuff all the time, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. Finding the real truth, somehow, unsatisfying, we remember the truth as we choose to remember it, a truth which, not surprisingly, makes us look better.

It’s all complaining, in one way or another. The world is not how we want it to be. And in our writing, we’re fixing it. Other people smile and whistle, accepting life as it comes to them. Their writing output isn’t much, but the complaining, to the relief of the people around them, is at a minimum.

Last night, I watched a woman on C-SPAN lecture on a book she wrote called, Evil Genes. Her view is that many behaviors we think we control, we really don't. Instead, our behavior is largely the result or our individualized genetic programming.

If she’s right, then there could be something in our DNA that compels certain people to be complainers. (And, not coincidentally, to be writers.) If this predisposition is a permanent fixture of their make-up, the complaining can’t help but be chronic.

Okay, then. Confession:

I may be a chronic complainer.

And Mr. Rosen – wherever you are – who complained about my being a chronic complainer?

You may be one too.

"Why?"

It’s a fascinating question. Sensible in every way. Why, after suffering rejection after rejection after rejection, are people in show business willing to continue coming back to the marketplace to try again?

The answer lies in this story. (You may already have heard it, but the answer lies there anyway.)

There’s this agent, who has one client, an unknown opera singer who sings magnificently. The agent brings him to the La Scala Opera House, where tenacious persistence, he procures an audition for his client.

The agent and the La Scala theater manager sit side by side in the empty opera house, as the newcomer, alone onstage, begins to sing. His voice is a revelation. Despite his many years in the opera racket, the theater manager has never heard anyone sing so purely, so powerfully, so beautifully, so evocatively.

“Did I tell you?” crows the agent, following the unbridled enthusiasm of the theater manager’s applause?

“This man is the greatest opera singer I have ever heard!” effuses the theater manager. “I want to book him immediately to perform at La Scala!”

“That’s wonderful!’ cries the agent.

The theater manager then asks,

"What is your asking price for your client to perform in my opera house?”

“A million dollars a performance,” the agent replies.

“A million dollars a performance!”

“That’s our price. Take it or leave it.”

“But it’s insane. Be reasonable, Man. How many bookings do you expect to get at a million dollars a performance?”

The agent replies, confidently,

“We only need one.”