What I Have Learned About Women

I was briefly tempted to write the title and then for the text to simply print “Nothing. The End.” But that would be far too glib, even for me, and not much entertainment for anyone reading it. But, in a very real sense, that would be a factual statement. I cannot actually say I have learned anything about women in the sense that I learned that two times two equals four (I did check that out on a calculator), that World War I ended on November 11, 1918 or that Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956. Thus, in terms of objective, provable facts, I cannot say that I have “learned” anything about women. And other than clinical or genetic testing, I’m not sure that ANY man can truthfully say that he has. I have, however, from the vantage point of 57+ years of life made a number of observations that, I believe, are worth something and from which some conclusions may be drawn.

One of the things my mother taught me was to treat women with respect. (She also taught me some other things which I will mention later on that were far less valuable.) Now by treating them with respect, I do not mean placing women on a pedestal or like some fragile or idealized figure that has to be protected from the vicissitudes of the world. I also do not mean to treat a woman like the sexist definition of a “lady.” I try to be respectful and polite to everyone. If that means that I open a door or help someone on with their coat, so be it. There is nothing wrong nor sexist in being polite and genteel. In fact, I find it the height of boorishness to not be. Have I encountered women who buy into the theory that any courtesy is, by definition, sexism? Yes I have. Does it deter me from maintaining politeness? No it doesn’t. In those situations, I simply acknowledge the person’s choice and allow them the courtesy of behaving in a way that makes them feel comfortable. And this is as true in the bedroom as it is in public. It is a matter of learning what the person with whom you are with prefers and living up to that standard of behavior.

I have learned that it is entirely possible for a man and a woman to be friends. Some people swear this is a complete impossibility. They believe that by definition, men are looking for only one thing. That may be true in many cases but it is not a universal truth. And I am not referring to straight women with gay male friends. I’m talking about men with a healthy interest in women in every sense of the word. Is there some sexual tension? There may very well be. Is it possible to be attracted to another person and still maintain a friendship without sexual overtones interfering with the friendship? I say it is. I have had and still have many female friends. (This DID cause certain problems for me as a youth. I never quite saw what the problem was if I played…no I mean the innocent type of play…with a girl. Girls were human, too, but it was sometimes tough to be considered a sissy just because you liked their company.) My wife has always been aware of the fact that some of the people I consider my closest friends are women. With one (and that was a big one) exception, it has never bothered her. Part of that is trust in the fidelity of our marriage. But part of it is an acknowledgement that friendship is friendship. Am I attracted to a number of my female friends? Hey, look, I’m a guy and I’m not dead. But I have learned to keep such considerations from “contaminating” the friendship. Am I flattered when a woman is attracted to me? Well, yeah. I have an ego, too. But my friendships have been just that and my female friends know that I am very happily married and that I love my wife.

I have learned that there is no such thing as too many shoes and that the corollary is there may not be too many purses either. I have come to understand that when a man says a pair of black shoes, he means just that. One black pair for the gray and blue suits, one brown pair for the browns, tans and greens, and maybe one pair of each for dress and one pair of each for casual. When a woman says a pair of black shoes it has a myriad of meanings. Are they flats? Are they stilettos? Are they pumps? Do they have an ankle strap? Are they a two inch heel or a four inch? Are they for work or for sporty casual or for the new black spaghetti strap dress? The questions can go on ad infinitum but the important thing is to realize that shoes are important. (If you really need a lesson in this, watch any season, hell, any episode, of Sex in the City. You will understand.) Was Imelda Marcos excessive? Probably. Three thousand pairs of shoes and a thousand purses is, arguably, excessive, even if she suffered from OC/PR. But I have learned never to ask the question, “Why are you buying another pair of black shoes? You already have half a dozen.” Inevitably, the answer will be something along the lines of, “But I don’t have anything to go with…”(the dots being whatever is the newest outfit). Trust me. Just go with it.

And following along those lines, I have learned that if I want to compliment a woman, I often compliment her shoes. I do this routinely. I’m not being insincere nor am I being “gay.” If I happen to think a pair of shoes looks smart and complements her outfit and her, I will tell her that I like her shoes. This is something that matters to many women. It is also a nice way of complimenting them without having to worry very much about being accused of sexual harassment. But let me add this caveat. Doing it insincerely or following it up with some crude comment is not a good thing.

I have learned that flowers are never wrong. If you cannot think of anything else to buy a woman as a gift, flowers are ALWAYS a good idea. (And I don’t mean grab a handful of dandelions or roses out of your neighbor’s yard, I mean flowers purchased in a store. It does not have to be a fancy floral shop, either. I often buy flowers at my local supermarket. They all have floral department and can even do up a very nice gift bouquet.) Does it have to be roses? No, although roses are very nice. In the entire 37+ years I have been in a relationship with my wife, I have given her flowers many, many times. In all that time, I have only given her flowers ONCE as an apology. (And that was a big, bad, relationship-shaking thing I did.) But when it occurs to me, I will grab a bouquet and bring it home. The only occasion on which I regularly give her flowers is the anniversary of our first date. And before she retired they were always delivered at work. (And the couple years where I missed, one of which was in the badly depressed year, she was extremely upset.) Let me tell you. If you want to make your woman feel good about herself, have flowers delivered at work. I guarantee all her co-workers WILL sit up and take notice. (Kind of like the commercial for Vermont Teddy Bears where the guy has one delivered to his girlfriend’s office.) But since repetition is a good way of remembering, here it is again: Flowers are never wrong.

I have learned that remembering certain dates is another good thing. I happen to have an extraordinary good long-term memory and I’m very good with facts and dates. I learned early on that remembering birthdays and anniversaries, at a minimum, is important. It matter how I remember them, whether I write them on a wall calendar, in MS Outlook at work or simply commit them to memory (always dangerous as the sole method). I keep track! I have learned that she remembers these dates. It doesn’t matter so much to her HOW I managed to remember; but that I took the effort TO remember.

I have learned that if you are in a committed relationship (which hopefully implies that you love her), as the Billy Joel song says, “Tell her about it!” Even if I think that I convey that love and affection with every breath I take, she still likes the reassurance of hearing me say that I love her. (And if there is an issue with saying it out loud, the question “why” needs to be asked.) And this does not mean just necessarily saying the words. Words said insincerely are as bad as not said at all. I have discovered that women are sensitive to much of what is unsaid or implied. They know when you are bull-sh*tting them.

Something that my mother taught me that has been counterproductive and that I unlearned is what was behind her warning that, “Some girls will lead you on.” What I finally figured out was that she meant some girls will want to have sex with you. While I have not had a huge breadth of experience with many different partners, I have learned that women like sex, too. I came damn close to fumbling my soon to be relationship with my wife in university by being a “gentleman” and ignoring a very clear invitation. From the moment I left her dorm and walked back to my fraternity in the snow and cold, I kicked myself for being too much the “gentleman” to make the move we both knew we wanted. When I did so the next night, it took a lot more convincing. Lesson learned.

Something else I learned from my mother was that women do not like household items for gifts. One year, I gave her a neat gadget that took a potato and made it into instant sticks for French fries for Mother’s Day. The trauma that she inflicted for that choice of gifts left a scar that took my wife a long time to overcome. Even when she wanted something like a new vacuum cleaner, I could not bring myself to buy it because it was not a “personal” item. I finally learned to listen carefully to things that she says she wants regardless of what they are. I came to understand it was the listening and “hearing” part that was important to her.

I have learned that unless a woman is asking for the solution to a problem, she does not want one. Men are great problem solvers. Often when a woman is complaining about something, all she wants is to have a sympathetic ear. I know that empathy and sympathy go a long way. It has been my experience that providing an arm around the shoulders and a shoulder for her to lean on and a willingness to listen without problem-solving means a lot. The times when I forget that and allow my male hard-wiring to go into problem-solving mode have resulted in annoyance at best and anger at worst.

I have learned that when I get into an argument with my wife (and the same applied to several other women), and I take the glib advice of “apologize immediately even if you’re right,” she gets even angrier. I’m not very good with conflict and used to apologize immediately hoping the issue would evaporate. I learned that such behavior only causes another problem on top of the original one. Where a man would immediately accept the apology as an acknowledgement of having “won,” I have observed that women consider it insincere.

In conclusion, let me say that none of what I have said here has been researched in any empirical sense. These are anecdotal observations that I have made over the years. I report them not as an attempt at behavior modification. I have also observed that while there are some women who prefer “bad boy” types who treat them like crap, by and large, the women with whom I come in contact like someone who evidences a certain degree of sensitivity. In my younger days, that sensitivity and empathy sometime made it very difficult for me to convert a friendship into something more. Ultimately, however, when it did help, it has lasted for 37 years with no end in sight.

The Place for Politics

Okay, so I’m borrowing MSNBC’s tagline for today’s title. I watch MSNBC. A lot. Well, a lot, at least in the evening. So you may have guessed from the title that this is going to be about politics. Now, understand, that one of the promises I made to myself as well as any potential reader was that I was going to avoid politics in this blog. Granted, the name is “Mark’s Blog About Nothing” and so much of politics is just that…nothing. But by avoiding politics I meant that I was committed to not using this vehicle to advocate for a particular viewpoint or for and against the insanity happening in the world in general and the United States in particular. (Oops, sorry. Off the soapbox.) No, what I want to talk about is my own development as a member of the body politic. There are some surprising twists and turns.

Growing up in the 1950s, I was subliminally aware that Dwight Eisenhower was President and that Richard (I am not a criminal, damn, there I go again) Nixon was the Vice President. My first real consciousness of the political process was accompanying my mother into the voting booth and watching while she flicked a bunch of levers down. The first Presidential campaign that made any difference to me was the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election. By the ripe old age of eight I had learned that we were Democrats because, according my maternal grandparents, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the greatest man in history. (This, however, did not stop them from voting for Republican Jacob Javits for Senator. I mean, come on, Javits was Jewish. I have often wondered what my grandparents would make of Representative Eric Cantor, R-VA, but I digress.) I wasn’t quite sure why Democrats were better than Republicans or if they ever were. But we were Democrats. We were pro-civil rights. We were pro-the downtrodden. We were pro-labor (except for the godless Commies and their Workers of the World Unite stuff.). And I never could figure out what the problem was that Kennedy was Roman Catholic. Hell, most of my friends were Roman Catholic. What’s the problem? (Remember, this is before the KKK allowed Roman Catholics to be members.)

The next step in my political education was November 22, 1963. That’s one of those days that you never forget where you were. I was in school in my homeroom when someone came in and said that the President had been shot. My first confused thought was that she meant the president of our school class. Then it sunk in who she meant. Was he going to be okay? Could he recover? And then the news came that President Kennedy had died. Shot dead? Like Lincoln? This wasn’t 1865. How could this happen? (Had I been a wee bit older that question would have been “How the f*ck could this happen.”) And like so many Americans, I heard about the apprehension of Lee Harvey Oswald and then HIS murder on Sunday. And, as a family, we watched the funeral. I recall two specific things that made an impression on me. The first was the rider-less horse with the empty boots pointed to the rear in the stirrups. The other was John Kennedy, Jr. (John-John) saluting.

So Lyndon Johnson assumed the Presidency and that was fine because he was also a Democrat. The 1964 campaign was a slam-dunk who to root for. Barry Goldwater? Barry Goldwater? Are you serious? He wanted to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age. Little did I know that by 1965 Lyndon Johnson would be doing the same thing, but, again, I digress. I found it mildly interesting that Goldwater’s running-mate, Bill Miller, was a New York Congressman (and his daughter Stephanie Miller has one of the best left-wing radio shows on the air). But somehow, despite the overwhelming majority for Johnson the entire south voted for a Republican. Huh? Wasn’t the Republican Party founded as an anti-slavery party and Lincoln’s election was what triggered Secession and the American Civil War? They voted for a Republican?

By 1968, I had become something of an amateur political enthusiast. I was stunned when Johnson announced his intention to not run for re-election and dedicate himself to resolving the war in Vietnam. But I was happy when the junior senator from New York, Robert Kennedy, announced his candidacy. In April, there began a series of shocks that seemed to build and multiply in my life. On April 4 we were saddened at the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Whether you agreed with his politics (I did) or not, he was still a great man. The on April 7, Jim Clark, my favorite race driver was killed in a crash. (He was my greatest hero next to Mickey Mantle.) It was the first time I had personally experienced the death of someone who I loved. Then on April 20, my father died and life as I knew it changed. But Bobby was on a trajectory to win the Democratic nomination and the Presidency, especially when he won the California Primary. And then Bobby was dead, like his brother from the bullets of an assassin. I half-heartedly looked to Eugene McCarthy who was the anti-war candidate. (Now, understand, by this time I had figured out that the stupid way in which the war in Vietnam was being fought would never lead to a victory. Therefore, if that was the intention, get the hell out now.) That July, my best friend died and I don’t remember much more of that summer. I recall being aware that the Chicago Police, essentially, rioted against the demonstrators outside the Democratic National Convention and of course McCarthy had no chance.

So Richard Nixon was elected President in the 1968 election. And my feelings about the anti-war movement were becoming more ambivalent. I agreed the war needed to end but for different reasons. By 1968, I was sure that I was going to join the Air Force and I intended to fly. My awareness of matters military grew by leaps and bounds and I found myself turning farther and farther away from my liberal roots. The process was accelerated by a senior year high school course in American Deiplomacy taught by a teacher I adored. She is probably the teacher most influential in my life but she was extremely conservative and took no prisoners. Ultimately, this led to my voting for Richard Nixon in 1972, my first Presidential election. (Yes, you read that right. I voted for Nixon.) Why? Well, George McGovern, the Democratic candidate wanted to end the war (which was fine) but he also wanted drastic cuts in the Defense budget. HE WANTED TO TAKE AWAY MY AIRPLANE! Slam dunk. Nixon it was. I even defended him when Watergate broke. I defended him right up to the point where John Dean blew the whistle. I felt betrayed and let down. The sonuvabitch really WAS a crook. (It’s interesting to note that although I was all for Nixon in 1972, in the 1970 election for Senate in New York, I was appalled that James Buckley was elected on the Conservative Party ticket. This was because the more liberal Republican and the Democrat split the liberal vote.)

There was a briefNew York mayoral interlude in 1969. John Lindsay was running as an independent against a Republican and Democratic candidate. I had to convince my grandparents, who lived in the Bronx to vote for Lindsay, not the Democrat. The answer I got was, "We always vote for Democrats." I countered thisby pointing out that they voted for a Republican named Jacob Javits. Of course the answer I got was, "Oh well, but he's Jewish." I have no idea who they voted for (I think they voted for Lindsay because of me.) but Lindsay did win re-election.

Let me take a few moments to explain this conservative turn of mind. Although I had what I believed to be valid political and military reasons for being conservative, I never lost my liberal social conscience. Inequality of any sort got under my skin. Intolerance was something I never understood and could not tolerate, whether it be racial, national, sexual or any other form. I was always a fan of the underdog (Okay, not so much in baseball. I was a Yankees fan and was content to see them win almost every year.) I never understood gaining wealth for the sake of keeping score. How rich is rich enough? (This is an even more pertinent question now….) But I could never find a comfortable fit in the conservative social agenda.

The 1976 election saw me as an Air Force officer. It used to be traditional for military officers to shun politics. Many officers never even voted. I didn’t have a lot of faith in Gerald Ford but I had less in Jimmy Carter and besides, he said he would cancel the B-1 bomber program. So I held my nose and voted for what I believed to be the lesser of two evils. (Amazing how so much of electoral politics comes down to that choice….) By 1980, I still could not support Carter and my wife and I, for the first time, worked on a political campaign. We worked for the third party candidate John Anderson. But later at night, in the dark places of the day, I knew in my heart of hearts there was no chance of his election. As much as I did not like Carter, I just hoped that Anderson could peel enough votes away from Ronald Reagan for Reagan to not win.

It was probably the Reagan Revolution that ended any possibility of my ever supporting anyone but someone with a liberal agenda…or at least voting for the person opposing the conservative agenda. My social conscience screamed in pain as I watched the Reaganites slash taxes for the least needy and cut Federal programming for the most needy. I knew that David Stockman’s confidently trumpeted that there was a safety net to catch those in need. But like so much in politics it was rhetoric at best and a flat out lie at worst. It did not matter that Reagan had reactivated the B-1 program. I was a civilian by then and my military training led me to believe it was a waste of money. And we had Star Wars, then the secret war in Honduras and Nicaragua…and thank you Ronnie for Iran-Contra. Guess we learned nothing from Watergate and it’s fine for POTUS (President of the United States) to ignore Congress and the law. That destroyed whatever vestige of believe in a conservative political agenda I may once have had. How is it that the same people who yammer on about law and order get to callously ignore the law, U.S. policy and Congress and then get to lie about it?

Michael Dukakis was a very nice guy and might have made an adequate President. But watching the Republicans dissect him in an almost clinical campaign of lies and innuendo was as breathtaking as it was disturbing. Here was another case of the lesser (far lesser) of two evils, especially one not in any way beholden to the growing influence of the religious Right. And had I know then what I later learned, how the Bush (Poppy H.W.) Administration told Saddam Hussein that the United States had nothing at stake if Iraq invade Kuwait, I might not have been so interested in the CNN coverage. My interest in aircraft and military operations got the best of me and I sat glued to the TV watching Desert Storm destroy a helpless enemy. And then Poppy gave us Clarence Thomas for the U.S. Supreme Court. Clarence F*cking Thomas! Rehnquist may have been Nixon’s last laugh at America but at least he possessed a first-class legal mind. Having been a member of the bar for several years by this time, I was aware of how dangerous was the growing shift to the hard right on the Court.

And then in 1992, the clouds parted and the sun began shining on a southerner named William Jefferson Clinton a/k/a Bubba! A liberal! A Democrat! Someone who would stop the rightward drift of the body politic and might even arrest my own growing leftward drift. Okay, the guy had trouble keeping it in his pants, but he just might win! It’s the economy, stupid! We all knew that. And Poppy did fib about “Read my lips. No new taxes.” So Bubba storms the White House and economically, things improve. The middle class was doing better. But I began seeing some disturbing trends. Government was cut (Why is it that the “Liberal tax and spend Democrats” streamline and cut government while the “fiscally Conservative” Republicans bloat it out of all proportions?) along with shifting social spending to the states. And what was the deal with these Free Trade agreements. Why is this a good deal for the United States beyond what is good for the Bonzen? (This is a term for which I have a dear, dear friend in Germany to thank for introducing it to me. It is a slang term for the bosses under the Weimar Republic’s system and those who enriched themselves at the expense of the workers. Sound familiar?) And a little noticed, at the time, sellout to these same Bonzen was the deregulation of media. (Ever wonder why there are seven stations in one market with Rush, Sean and Glenn but not one with liberal talk radio? Thank Bubba for that gift to the Rupert Murdochs of the world.) And the rabid dogs who set at Clinton’s heels in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky fiasco and their unbridled un-Christian hypocrisy pushed me even farther left.

I don’t even want to talk about the Supreme Court’s violation of Florida law which de-facto handed the election to W. I could not even bring myself watch the HBO film “Recount” regardless of how good it was and the presence of Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary on the cast. Yes. I remember where I was on 9/11. I even understood the initial foray into Afghanistan (but not letting Osama bin Laden get away when he was cornered). But Iraq and everything that has flowed from that running sore, tax cuts in time of war for the richest, unfunded mandates, signing statements, rendition, torture, gutting the Justice Department, the Patriot Act, contractors and no-bid contracts, torture, I could go on but won’t. And then the triumph of the Bonzen on Wall Street. Destroy the American and, by extension, the world economy and get bailed out by taxpayer billions. Privatize profits but socialize losses. Is that what Capitalism is REALLY all about? I’m going to have to go with a big yes because that seems to be the way of the world.

I watched in horror as young men and women were repeatedly abused by sending them over and over into a war zone then treating them like discarded rubbish when they are used up or maimed. And torture. I always believed that the United States had a moral obligation to lead the world and to shame nations that tortured people. At first I didn’t want to believe but that change took a lot less time than it did for me to realize that Nixon really was a crook. And the wars just dragged on. Something you need to understand about me is that I am fascinated by military history (history in general, but military in particular). There was also a time when I was trained, ready, willing and able to jump into a B-52 at the blare of a horn and navigate it to points where we would release nuclear bombs on real people. And I am proud of my service and honor the men and women who continue to serve. But I am dead set anti-war. To borrow Nancy “Mommy” Reagan’s drug advice, when it comes to war, “Just say no.” How much blood and treasure to we need to spend? And as the poor became poorer and the Bonzen richer and richer and government spending for anything resembling social welfare was neutered by W, Shooter Cheney and their cabal, I drifted even farther left.

And then Obama provided a ray of hope. Change. Call me naïve. I was willing to buy into it. His soaring rhetoric touched all the right places. Maybe government would once again be brought back into it’s rightful role and again “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” That lasted until about August when the Tea-Baggers got rolling and so many in Congress showed themselves to be cowards at best and corporate subsidiaries at worst.

So here I am, pushed so far to the left that I am now a committed socialist. I have a firm belief in the role of government being for the governed and if that means government takes over all things like health care and has to regulate the sh*t out of corporations to protect the people, and that taxation should fall most heavily on the richest to help the neediest, I say, "Bring it on!" But today, the U.S. Supreme Court hands the government to corporations. Where does it end? I am afraid that I see no good end. "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains."

I Will Fear No Evil

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

I apologize about mixing science fiction classics here. The title of this piece is the name of one of Robert A. Heinlein’s best novels. (And I recommend this to you if for no other reason than to read the interludes which are excerpts from the notebooks of Lazarus Long…BRILLIANT stuff!) The Litany Against Fear is from the Dune series originally created by Frank Herbert. Although one of the great classic series of science fiction, it is long, involved and you really have to want to read it. But it is a GREAT series that has been continued and extended by his son. So, having gotten the literary issues out of the way, it’s time to confront, well, FEAR.

Some of you already know that in my last physical, my blood work indicated a potential prostate problem. The fact that I am a 57 year old male, in and of itself, also indicates the potential for problems. I know you ladies have certain “unique” medical issues that crop up as you age. Well, prostate issues are the male counterpart. Surely, you’ve seen the commercials for Flomax. You know, the four past-middle age white guys (ever notice it’s always white guys?) hanging out, going to the ball game, fishing, riding 4-wheelers, doing all sort of male-bonding bullsh*t. (Why is it that they never show four guys sitting around a strip bar getting drunk? One would think that showing potential male problems when lap dances do nothing for them would be more to the point. But I digress.) Other than the blood marker, I have shown no other signs of prostate issues But between that marker and my age, the urologist decided that better safe than sorry and decided to do a prostate biopsy. Yeah, that scary word. And it’s a needle biopsy. Two scary words, especially for me the “n” word. That, of course, set me off on a trajectory of crash and burn anticipating the worst. No, not cancer. I hadn’t even gotten that far in my mental processes. It was fear of the procedure, fear of pain, fear of having to endure the procedure. I wallowed in this fear for about a week or so. I sought reassurance from friends and family. I fretted incessantly. I worried about the worry. Then one day last week, something clicked inside my head (I have a lot of clicks up there) and I decided that I cannot allow fear to paralyze me, including not having the wherewithal to write these blogs. And I have felt much better about everything since that moment. That got me thinking about fear and what it has done in and to my life.

If you’ve followed along here, you already know about my trypanophobia, the irrational fear of hypodermic needles. Where this came from, I really do not know. I do remember that my pediatrician nicknamed me “No Shots” because those were the first two words out of my mouth when I saw him. This would continue throughout the examination right up to the point of getting my lollipop at the end. I never met the man, but I would have given a certain part of my body to Dr. Albert Sabin for inventing oral polio vaccine. There have been times that I almost passed out from having to go through a blood test (and the Air Force is not particularly amused at flying officers passing out for any reason). So there we have the crux of why certain medical procedures scare me.

Webster defines fear as follows: 1 archaic : frighten; 2 archaic : to feel fear in (oneself); 3 : to have a reverential awe of ; 4 : to be afraid of : expect with alarm ; intransitive verb : to be afraid or apprehensive . If you’re keeping score, number 4 comes closest to what I experience, the “fear the worst” part. This has been my MO throughout life. If I fear the worst and it happens, well, then I was “prepared” for it. If it does NOT happen (and it almost never has) I’ll be relieved that I dodged the bullet.

But let’s look at this a bit closer. In much the same way that we exercise a muscle to make it stronger, we also mentally experience things to reinforce them. I’m trying to learn German right now and I realize that (despite what Berlitz and Rosetta Stone will say) some memorization is necessary. Constant repetition has taught me that “lachen” means to laugh and “das Zimmer” means the room. The fear response in my life has reinforced itself many times over. It matters not if it was fear of needles, fear of failing exams, fear of striking out, fear of disappointing people or any number of other fears. Every time I indulged in it, I was reinforcing the response.

Fear originates in the Amygdala and is one of the basic emotions that have allowed humans to survive and evolve into people who can sit at a computer and write about fear, among other things. The fight or flight reaction is connected with this. My response has always been flight. I have a long history of avoiding conflict of any sort except when pressed to the absolute extreme and cornered. Give me an avenue of escape and I’m a member of the “Discretion is the better part of valor” club. While it has given me a highly refined sense of fear, it has not done much to help me cope with it.

As a former professional aviator and someone who loves the feel of being in an airplane, I have never suffered from any concerns about being in a metal tube with wings and a propulsion system (alternatively known as aerophobia, aviatophobia, aviophobia or pteromerhanophobia). But my daughter suffers from it as do several of my best friends. I have talked with them and understand their fear is as real as is mine of needles. One of the most basic underlying premises of this fear is loss of control. You are 100% dependent on a couple of strangers in uniform up front to get this aerodynamic vehicle safely from one place to another. Some people experience a similar thing as passengers in a car, but in a car we seem to understand the risks better. We can see what is going on, we generally can see the driver and cars generally crash in only two dimensions where aircraft have that whole third (vertical) dimension. It is the loss of control that induces fear. And having to put your welfare into the hands of a medical practitioner is yet another form of loss of control.

I count myself blessed to have served in the military but to never have had to go to war. I have several friends who were not as fortunate as me and have suffered grievous injuries. I wonder how I would have reacted in their place. I am extremely pain-averse and fear the experience. One of them tells me that there is nothing wrong with being afraid of pain. In the mini-series Band of Brothers, one of the members of Easy Company talks about being afraid constantly but not wanting to let down your buddies. (Oddly enough, fear of death has never been an issue for me. It’s inevitable at some point. I fear losing friends more than my own demise.) I have no buddies to let down by being afraid and giving in to those fears. But I do have family and I do have friends. Heaven knows, my dear wife has been through it with me enough times. The worst that I can remember was when I had to have a venogram. I turned into a quivering mass of sobbing, terrified, Jello…literally. And when it was over, I had to admit it was not so bad.

This last point has been a recurrent theme that I have never been able to put into perspective. I will freely admit that my list of medical issues have been, mercifully, short. I have been quite healthy throughout my life and have not had to endure many procedures of any sort (with the possible exception of dental issues which has been a chronic problem since my first visit to a dentist). But every time I have wallowed in one of these fear cycles, the reality has NEVER approached the expectation of it.

Anticipation, while it may be a great song by Carly Simon, is a torment I allow myself to experience. Let me give a few examples. When I had my vasectomy, I fretted for weeks before. Before heading to the doctor’s office, I took 15mg of valium. I have a clear memory of lying on the table while the doctor was operating and singing along with the radio to which I was listening. When it was over, my reaction was, “Is that it?” When I had a parathyroid gland removed, I worried the whole summer about what it would be like. A little bit of Ativan and a nurse who obligingly put the heparin lock inside my elbow made the pre-operative period…well, a nothing. After that, I was out and it was over. Before my colonoscopy, I had a flat-out panic attack. Fortunately my daughter and the friends I was with got me calmed down. A little Ativan and the knock-out stuff later, it was over. Every dental procedure requiring Novocain has always been a carnival of anticipatory fear of the twenty seconds or so of the feel of a needle in my mouth, always ameliorated by nitrous oxide and often by pre-visit Valium. I know that once past those painful seconds, it is nothing.

Knowledge is power. In my case, the knowledge of how I have reacted in these situations has allowed me to sit back and coldly examine what I have allowed myself to do. And that’s the bottom line. I have allowed myself the luxury of wallowing in fear like a pig wallows in mud. No amount of anticipatory fear is going to change the reality of what is to be endured. Yes. I intend being tranquilized before the biopsy and I will have my iPod to listen to and sing along with. But I can no longer give in to letting fear paralyze me. I have two dear friends one of whom recently endured a painful medical procedure. I am told that she was extremely brave throughout it. The person who told me about that has been through, in the last year, untold numbers of serious, life-threatening surgeries, injections, medical tests and life-threatening illnesses. She tells me that she, too, is afraid of needles. But you need to just get on with it. Her father is one of those soldiers I mentioned who was wounded. They are wonderful role models. And I am bound and determined to not let them down or make them ashamed of me, not to mention not wanting to put my wife through that sort of thing again. So I return to the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear and understand that science fiction may be its origin but it is wisdom with which I can identify.

It Keeps You Running, Part 2

So having gotten the miracle cure known as orthotics, I embarked on what I call the golden age of my running experience. Each week I would try to push a little farther and go a little faster. Days when, for whatever reason, I did not get to run, even when they were planned days off, were simply endured. I sought out hills. I learned to lean into the hills and get up on my feet and to push up them. I returned to my sprinting roots and eagerly sought out quarter-mile interval training (something I loathed in high school). I was ably aided and abetted by my, then, neighbor and best friend, who became my running partner. Even after he moved a few towns away, we always got together at least once a week for a long run with some big hills. I’m also blessed in that I sweat particularly effectively. As a result, running in hot humid weather was actually fun. I just had to be sure of replenishing fluids. Cold weather? No problem. I bought a Gore-Tex running suit when they were fairly new and if it wasn’t cold enough I wore running tights. I read every issue of The Runner and Runner’s World and New England Runner. My calendar diary was the one from Jim Fixx’s Complete Book of Running. I read everything by George Sheehan and Amby Burfoot and many other running books. The Runner’s Repair Manual was my injury avoidance bible. I pestered my wife into making dishes from the Runner’s Cook Book. (By the way. There was a recipe for a no-fat cheesecake that was to die for! No, I mean literally. One taste and death would be preferable, it was that bad.)

And races? Sign me up! The first one I ever ran was in Goodwin Park in Hartford on a cold, snowy, windy day. All the other runners were disappointed because the weather conditions made getting a new PR (personal record) very difficult. Not me. It was my first race so I had a new PR and the post-race high of having done it for the first time. I was so proud of the number that I had pinned to me. It meant I was part of the “in-group.” 5 mile and 10-K were my favorites because competing at 5 miles was just a little bit on the easier side and 10-K was pushing my envelope. Thanksgiving morning meant the Manchester Road Race before heading to dinner with the relatives. I eagerly sought out all the races I could, especially the ones with the best T-shirts. I built up to running the New Haven 20-K race on Labor Day specifically because the T-shirt depicted Zonker Harris from Doonesbury crossing the finish line. (Interesting point about Zonker. His real-life analog was distance runner Benjie Durden.) My running shoes and clothing went everywhere with us, whether for a weekend or a long holiday.

Anyone figure out the downside of all this? How about a hint. Obsessive-compulsive behavior. Running became the focus of my world. My day was built around the time I would run. Most work days it was not a problem because I would use my lunch hour and the job I had gave me some flexibility. When I worked in Hartford I joined the Y just so that I would have a place to change and shower. They also had a small banked wooden track on the roof that no one but me used. Weekends I tried to get my run out of the way early, or late in the day after we got home. But until I got that run in, there was a drumbeat in my head that would not go away until I was able to write that day’s run in my log. That log was like a taskmaster. Days when I filled in a distance and time it would say things like, “Maybe you could have gone a little farther or a little faster or both.” Days when I would skip running it stared at me with silent contempt or would simply shake its head sadly conveying what a loser I was for missing a day. As with so many of my other OC behaviors there was no balance. If we had to go somewhere or were on holiday, I would constantly be looking at my watch (a Casio runner’s watch, of course with stop-watch and split capability and a calculator to calculate pace) fidgeting about getting back in time for me to run. If that meant dinner was delayed or that my wife and daughter ate without me, that was one of those trade-offs that had to be made. Need to cut short our trip to the children’s museum so I can lace on the shoes? Sorry, priorities.

(This lack of balance has been a recurrent theme throughout my life. I have long joked that anything worth doing is worth doing to wretched excess. I can assure you after far too many years of this sort of behavior, it is not. Wretched excess leads to overindulgence. When it’s a “healthy addiction” like running, you can rationalize it in your own mind that you are benefitting yourself, even if it is at the expense of others. But wretched excess, when it is destructive behavior of any type, whether it be drinking, drugs, anorexia, aggressive driving leads to tragedy. I am lucky to have avoided any tragic consequences but I live with some of the long-term consequences.)

The “bad year” (1989) when depression wrapped its icy fingers around my neck and began squeezing, marked the turning point for my running experience. Being unemployed, I had plenty of time to get in a daily run. These runs were at least five miles and were generally at 11:00 AM. (I think the timing had to do with there being no daytime TV show that I wanted to watch at 11:00.) It was also a perfect lead-in to my lunch which was almost always salad made with my V Slicer. (Sad to say, that V Slicer may have saved my life that year. Using it was one of the few things that lifted my spirits a wee bit.) But at this point, running had become a means to an end. That end was losing weight. I knew subliminally, at the time, that I was starving myself to death (I can remember TMI ALERT, read the remainder of this sentence at your peril standing at the toilet urinating singing to myself “Pissing my life away” to the tune of the song “Dreaming My Life Away”, but it made no impression on me.) But even running fell under the executioner’s axe as my daily activities degenerated into watching the clock move and going through the motions at my lousy retail job.

By the time I had pulled out of my nosedive, I had lost the sharp edge of my conditioning and I discovered that I had also aged a bit. My knees were becoming cranky when I ran, my Achilles tendons never seemed to stretch adequately, my lower back was sore but most important, the desire (maybe obsession is a more appropriate word) was gone. It was becoming a job. I found myself dreading getting into my running gear. It preyed on me throughout the day. The thought of changing clothes and leaving the shelter of the house had become the driving force and it got harder and harder and less and less often.

In desperation, I answered a local fitness center’s ad for people to participate in a controlled fitness experiment. I volunteered and found that going to the gym five to seven days a week was infinitely preferable. I could work out on the exercise cycles and not have to worry about my knees bearing the burden and I could plop a book in front of me and read while I worked out. After the six month experiment was over I joined as a regular member and continued to work out.

I continued with this gym until I began taking Irish dance classes. Simultaneously, I tried running again and would go for seven to nine mile runs two or three days a week. As the dancing took front and center, the running, once again fell away. Let me preface what I am about to say by saying that I LOVE doing Irish dance. It has given me a wonderful group of friends, it has provided an outlet for my desire to perform for others and it has provided a venue for competition. Having said that, it also became an OC behavior. The person who for a brief period of time was my son-in-law, made a small dance floor in our basement and five or six days a week I was down there practicing everything I knew for an hour. Life began revolving around when I could find an hour to get my practice in. (Any of this sound familiar?)

As a conditioning replacement for running it worked splendidly. How do I know this? I was having some reflux and hiatal hernia issues that were causing my esophagus to go into spasm. This leads to a feeling very much like a heart attack. Although my EKG checked out perfectly, my doctor decided I needed a stress test. This one, unlike the one I had fifteen years earlier, took a LONG time. My heart rate was not getting up high enough. Finally, after a LONG run on the treadmill, it got up high enough for it to be an effective test. At the maximum point, there was some sort of indication that something was amiss. The cardiologist immediately said that I needed to have a second one with the dye injected. This of course sent me into outer space. Run with a needle in my arm? I think not! But he and my doctor were insistent but compromised on a chemical stress test where I could be doped to the gills and injected with something that would artificially stimulate the heart. That having been done, I checked out 100% healthy. The reading had been a false positive. Now I told you that to tell you this. The reason the cardiologist insisted on the second test was because with the profile I demonstrated, he assumed I was a marathon runner and he did not want to take a chance. My doctor, of course, said he would have insisted on it anyway. Thanks, doc. Love you, too.

And so, I find myself coming full circle. I have reached a point in my life where I no longer have the desire to be the “old guy” in dance class among all the kids. Dance classes are just no longer something I want to do, nor do I NEED to do them. So, my wife, now fully recovered from surgery over the summer, and I returned to the gym. I got through a half hour of running on the treadmill and managed 2.2 miles. Fifteen + minutes per mile is a bit depressing when I consider I used to go ten miles at a seven minute pace. But my target heart rate was perfect. And I’m sore today in places I didn’t remember I had. It’s a good lesson in how the major leg muscles are used differently for running and for dancing. But I know the soreness will go away. And I have a group of friends who are rooting for me to make a comeback, including one beautiful and charming young woman who insists that she will have me running. Much as I love her, I have a beautiful and charming woman my age to whom I am married who says that is NOT going to happen. As I happen to live with the latter person, guess who has the greatest influence. But honest. A treadmill is not really running, so it’s okay.

It Keeps You Running

I thought about writing about running after a lovely and charming young woman I know suggested that now that I am eating healthier, mostly due to her influence, the next thing is that she will get me running. Actually, in truth, it would be to get me BACK to running (but my lovely bride is on record as saying, “No freakin’ way!” or words to that effect and has reconfirmed the judgment just last night.) Running and I have been off and on companions more many years. As a result, doctors of the orthopedic and emergency nature and I have also been companions for many years. It’s not so much that I’m injury prone but…OK, I’m injury prone when it comes to certain bodily exertions.

As a kid, it seems like you can run forever. When the weather is nice, especially on weekends or summer break from school, it seems like you are out all day running from one place to another whether you’re playing baseball, army, Elliott Ness and the Untouchables, tag or any number of other games. You just don’t think about it in the same way that a fish doesn’t actually think about the water in which it swims. It just is and you just do. Even after eating lunch, there was seemingly no break. (This was always a source of mystery to me. If you were at the beach or a swimming pool and you even put your foot in the water for at least an hour after you ate (which magically morphed into a half hour somewhere in my childhood), you would get the cramps from hell and drown. But anything else? Nah. Go run a marathon, you’ll be fine.) During recess periods or gym class the teachers were happy to have you run off that excess energy. Anything to keep us quiet and well-behaved during class….

I recall watching the Summer Olympics on our old black and white TV (yes, the kind that got a total of thirteen stations, had actual dials and knobs that you had to get up to change, a rabbit ear antenna on top and vacuum tubes inside to make it work) and thinking that the running events were the only real Olympic Sport. (OK, maybe swimming, too, but to me swimming is simply not much more than staying alive in the water.) And, of course, the United States always did so well in the sprints and the relays. Guys with odd names like Abebe Bikila or Paavo Nurmi or Emil Zatopek would usually win the distance events but we “real” Americans knew the truth, that the REAL running events were the sprints. (That would all change thanks to Jim Fixx, Frank Shorter and Forrest Gump, but more on that later.)

In high school, I had given little thought to running on the track team. That changed the day our gym coach (who was the assistant track coach) pulled a hurdle out and told us all that we were going to run over it repeatedly. What we did not know was that while we thought we were just doing that day’s gym class, he was auditioning us. He pulled me and one of my best friends aside and told us that he wanted us at track practice that afternoon. Thus began my short and totally non-illustrious career as a high school hurdler. I am short and have always been short for my age. If you look at most hurdlers (most sprinters for that matter) you will see that they are generally tall and long-legged. I was short and proportional. I rapidly learned the technique of hurdling and had little problem clearing the low hurdles. But when it came to high school high hurdles (which were actually three inches shorter than college and Olympic height), I would either slam the hurdle down with my lead leg or, worse, slam my trailing knee into it. One of my more experienced teammates would just stand there watching, shaking his head, picking me up when I tripped and feel and not knowing what to say. If it were being graded it would be technique 9.8, performance 3.2).

I did have a few claims to fame on that track team. One is that I had the best start out of the blocks. I have no idea why but for some reason I was quicker than almost anyone in the county for that first split second right after the gun went off. The coach would use me to test the really good sprinters out of the blocks. I also managed 10.1 in the 100 yard (yard, not meter) dash. Unfortunately, our team had a guy who ran 9.6, one who ran 9.7 and two who ran 9.9 in the 100 yards. My biggest claim to fame, however, was at the beginning of our senior year, the coach decided that one of our best quarter-milers was going to learn the hurdles. Now, let me apologize to the many teachers and coaches for what I am about to say: I was a classic example of the cliché, “Those who can do, those who can’t teach.” The coach and I worked with this guy because, well he was the coach, but I am a pretty good teacher and my grasp of the technical aspect of hurdling was strong. Suffice it to say, he went on to become national high school high and low hurdle champion in 1970. Despite my placing in a few events, that is the accomplishment of which I am proudest.

My first running-induced medical experience came on this team. We were at an indoor meet and instead of blocks, we started on rubber pads that were braced from behind. Uncharacteristically, I got a horrible start and the guy bracing mine took his foot away a split second too soon and the pad slid backwards. My right leg suddenly extended all the way and I could feel the big muscle on the back of my upper leg pop. One of the shot-putters had to carry me to the bus….

College hurdling was out of the question. If I could not manage a 39 inch tall hurdle there was no way I was managing a 42 inch high hurdle. So, I talked to the coach, a very, very nice guy, and we agreed that I would give sprinting a chance. Unfortunately for me, his workout technique demanded a great deal more medium speed running at a distance than I had ever been used to. To his credit, he ran right along with the runners. We would run constant laps of Manley Field House and each lap, the last man would have to accelerate to the front to lead that lap. I was getting close to my limit this particular day when it was my turn to lead. In an attempt to “motivate” me, he got right up behind me urging me forward. Unfortunately his lead foot and my trailing food got tangled up and I went flying, crashing down on my hip. Thus endeth my college track career.

Running did, however, provide me with one opportunity to help my fraternity big brother…or so I thought. All the Air Force ROTC cadets who were either in their last two years or who had an ROTC scholarship had to run a mile and half run each year under a certain time. (This still goes on in the Air Force.) Big brother appealed to me because I was such an experienced runner and he needed someone who could pace him because he wasn’t sure he could run a good enough pace. I was fighting a cold and tried to beg off but he sounded so pathetic that I agreed. So there I was, running with him to make sure that he did well enough to pass the run. When we were done I dragged myself back to my room, took a cold pill, flopped on my bed sweaty clothes and all and proceeded to fall into a deep, drug-induced coma. A bit later, my roommate opens our door to an insistent knocking and there is my big brother with another one of the guys from the fraternity telling me I have to get up, there’s an important meeting. I wanted to change out of my cold sweaty clothes but they hustle me out because there is no time. Shortly thereafter, I learned that the real reason he wanted me to run with him was to tire me out as part of the beginning of Initiation (a/k/a Hell) Week. Thanks. Love you, too.

One of the first times that Americans, as a whole, took notice of distance runing was in the 1972 Olympics. Frank Shorter won the marathon, the first American to do so since Johnny Hayes in 1908. While I had the greatest respect for the accomplishment, I could never, in my wildest imagination, see myself running distances greater than a quarter mile at a clip (with the exception of my once a year mile and half for Uncle Sam’s Air Force. Sad to say, as college went by and I entered the Air Force, I had let my conditioning go. The year I had to do the test in navigator training, I was too slow. (Back then it was no big deal. I understand now it really is a big deal.) That was a bit of a wake up call but, still, not so much.

In 1977, the late Jim Fixx wrote “The Complete Book of Running” which became a runaway national best-seller. I took subliminal notice of the growing “running craze” but the tide merely washed over me, leaving me unaffected. That began changing in 1979. I was a member of the Charleston (WV) Jaycees and one of our fund-raisers was a five mile race. I worked on the race but did not run but now a little bug was beginning to buzz around my ear.

After moving back to Connecticut the following year, I decided that if this many people thought running was a good idea, I would try it. About six weeks into this initial foray, I was at the extreme end of my run when my knees became so painful that I had to limp home. I stopped running until the pain went away and then returned to it. Six more weeks, same result. So, to an orthopedic doctor I went. He prescribes Butazolidin Alka, an NSAID that I understand is also used on HORSES. I take the pills, the pain goes away and I go back to running. Six weeks later, back to the doctor for another round of the same medication. I think I went through at least four visits before I realized that he was treating the symptom, not the problem. Let’s also recognize that little old OC me had become a complete running devotee (no, that doesn’t begin to state it, I was completely running-obsessed and based my day around my run) and could not do without it the obsession. (The running community likes to refer to it as a positive addiction. That may be but for someone with OC issues it goes way beyond that.) Realizing that the doctor I was seeing was not addressing what might be an underlying issue (I have the world’s flattest feet a/k/a pronation. Can we guess where this is going?), I saw a new doctor. He examines me and proceeds to schedule me for a nerve conduction study and a venogram…on the same day. Know what a nerve conduction study is? They touch nerve points with an electrode to stimulate it. That’s another way of saying they give you a series of controlled shocks that increase in intensity as they go on. Now, add to this, that my mother-in-law, an experienced RN and nursing instructor had informed me that the venogram is one of the most painful medical procedures she had ever endured. By the time my wife gets me to the radiologist, I am a quivering mass of terror and tears. As it turns out, it’s not that bad a procedure. Thanks for the terror warning, Ma. (After the Department of Homeland Security was created I thought she should have had a great career raising the terror threat levels to scare the whole country but she had retired by then.) So after subjecting me to all of this, the doctor announces that his diagnosis is that I have flat feet and all I will need is a good pair of orthotics and I will be able to run pain free, his diagnosis from the first exam. Of course, I ask why the other tests. His answer is that he was 99% sure it was the flat feet but he just wanted to be 100% sure it wasn’t an underlying problem. (Thanks, Doc, love you, too.) He writes me a prescription and sends me to the Children’s Hospital. Happy as I was about what promised to be a miracle cure, I felt really conspicuous being there. Here I am taking up their time to make orthotics for me to be able to run comfortably and there are all the kids who are being fitted for prosthetics so maybe they can just walk. I voiced this to the technician with whom I was working and his response was that it was a pleasure for him to be able to work on a healthy person. That made me feel a wee bit less guilty but not much.

To be continued….

The Cars, Part 2

The station wagon was sold before we left West Virginia and we came back to Connecticut with the Datsun. It was shortly thereafter that I took an adult education course on auto maintenance. From that time on, that poor car was never the same. The points burned out every time it snowed. No mechanic I ever spoke to could explain the connection between the two but it seemed one of those cosmic jokes the universe likes to play on you for no obvious reason. I made another startling winter discovery. The car had a vinyl liner above the passenger compartment. When a sufficient number of very cold days go by and you accidentally hit the liner, it shatters into shreds. This was also the first car in which I ever had a car accident. It was just a torn fender and it was not my fault.

My parents gave us an old Buick which was my wife’s car for a while. It was dark blue and old but it ran. We then traded in the Datsun on a Honda Civic, a significant step up. This was the car that got me through law school. Unfortunately, even as late as the 1980s, Honda’s were subject to rapid salt-induced body rot. We also bought a used VW Beetle to replace the Buick. Interesting thing about those old beetles is that the heater does not actually heat very much. The air-cooled engine did not get all that hot in the winter. As a result, the heater was tepid at best. While we owned that car, Connecticut was hit by a hurricane. Our next-door neighbor’s tree fell over into our driveway. Would you think a branch could have gone through the VW so we could replace it? No. The branches framed it perfectly. We couldn’t go anywhere for a while, but the car survived, literally without a scratch.

Eventually, the VW was retired and we bought a year old Toyota Corolla for my wife. That was a car that just kept on going without giving a bit of trouble. When we traded in the Honda, I made a huge mistake. It was just when I was changing law jobs and in the euphoria of getting out of a bad situation into what I thought was a good one, we decided that my reward would be a Toyota MR2. Yes. I finally had my two-seat sports car! I’ll be the first to admit it was a tremendously fun car to drive. Unfortunately, it’s the car I most closely identify with the “bad year” of depression. As a result of the depression, and the inattention it causes, I backed into a car parked opposite our driveway. That provoked a reaction of me being unworthy to drive it so I insisted that my wife take it and I would drive her car. That lasted for a while until she decided that she was not going to tolerate a clutch and manual transmission and made me take back the MR2. The next year I got hit head on and a huge cup of coffee flew all over the interior. (No, that accident was not my fault, either.) From then on the car smelled faintly of coffee.

The MR2 was passed on to my daughter and I got my first pick-up truck, a Mazda B2200. That was actually fun and the joke was that since I was a NASCAR fan and had a pick-up truck, now I had to get a gun rack for it. I never did and when that truck finally gave up the ghost, we donated it to the Kidney Foundation which towed it away for us. I moved on to a well-used but extremely durable Jeep Cherokee. That was my first 4-wheel drive car and it worked well in the winter.

My wife took over her mother’s Oldsmobile Cutlass which had a couple of neat features. One of the issues she and I have is the heater. I am always too warm and she is always too cold. The Olds had separate controls for individual “comfort zones.” The only issue with that was when I would drive and she was the passenger and we would wind up messing up the settings for the other one. Hey, you make do. That car ran until one day it would not start. We had it towed to a local service station where they were supposed to do a “diagnostic.” After a week of no word, I went over to discover that the engine had been entirely disassembled and they told us we would need a new engine because after pulling it apart they “discovered” that the engine block was cracked. This they could not have figured out simply by LOOKING at the damn engine. They informed us that at that point we owed them over seven hundred dollars and the new engine would run about two thousand dollars more including labor. When my wife got home, we went over to the service station with the title. I signed it, handed it to the owner and said the car was his and he could sell it for parts to cover his costs. He started to threaten me with legal action and I suggested that if he did I would file a complaint with the Motor Vehicle Department (for which I work) about his business practices. End of discussion.

We sold the Jeep to our next door neighbor and it kept running for several more years. We then bought a blue Ford Taurus for me and a Buick Century for my wife from a used car dealer. She had intended the Taurus for herself but Dale Jarrett, my favorite NASCAR driver, at the time drove the #88 Ford Taurus which was blue. End of discussion there. I was actually quite happy with the Taurus. It was a great car and Ford was justifiably proud of it. (Which is why, of course, a few years later they discontinued producing it. Ah, Detroit. Magnificent management decisions….)

We, actually, my wife, decided that we needed another pick-up truck. We bought a 1990 Ford Ranger with over 200,000 miles for eight hundred dollars. Despite having to put another thousand or so into it, this has been one of the best investments we ever made. At least five people have borrowed it for moving or transporting stuff. We have used it repeatedly to haul stuff to the town dump and storage. It’s still with us although it has some “issues” about passing its emissions test.

The Buick died a rather ignominious death. My wife was on her way to work when someone turned quickly into her path while he was making a left turn. I got a call from her from the Hartford Hospital emergency room. My daughter and I both had dental appointments that morning and I immediately called the dentist to tell them I would not be in. My daughter was, literally, in the chair and they told her. Fortunately, the dentist’s office is next to the hospital so she walked over. There we were, one happy family sitting in the ER waiting for someone to look at her. From 9:30 AM until 3:00 PM, we sat there. Oh, yes, they did x-ray her foot and she had several broken bones. Finally, the chief of the ER got tired of us having to wait and he casted her foot just to get us on our way. We then went to where the car had been towed and it was totaled. The front end was bent in at close to a 90 degree angle. Most remarkably, the air bags did not deploy because the car that hit her hit square between the front bumper sensors. Learned something new there.

Once she was able to drive again, we went to the same folks we bought the Taurus and the Century from and finally bought her a Taurus. For a while we were a two-Taurus family and she still drives hers. Eventually, mine was becoming rather tired, so, we traded it in on a Hyundai Elantra on a day when we swore we were not going to buy a car. My wife is one of the hardest bargainers you will ever meet and she got them to give us exactly the deal SHE wanted. And the best thing about my new car? XM Radio. We got four months free and after that there was NO WAY I was giving it up.

So what have I learned through all this? I’ve learned that I make repairs or perform maintenance on any motor vehicle at my own and the vehicle’s peril. I have learned that a light, two-seat sports car with wide tires and a rear-engine performs very poorly in snow. I have learned that every pick-up truck owned in the United States does NOT have to have a gun-rack, especially if one does not even own a gun. But most of all, I have learned that we are far too reliant on automobiles. This is not a startling conclusion but it is a sobering one. Unless you live in a major urban area in this country, mass transit is non-existent. It’s a sad commentary on the car culture we have allowed to take over our lives and that is slowly strangling us. But, I need to finish up here. I have to hop in the car and get gas. And stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee, but not the drive-thru window. I WALK into the store to order.

The Cars

I realize that from the title, some of you might have, for a small portion of a second, had the vagrant thought, "Gee, he's going to talk about Rick Ocasek's group." I will admit to liking some of their music and especially the cover art on Candy-O. But no, this is not about the rock group, it's about my relationship with automobiles and driving.

The first family car I can recall was a Studebaker. I would not be surprised if some of you have never heard of this make. Production of them ended in 1966 which is probably a bit before some of you were born. Anyway, this was the first family car we had. It was replaced by a 1955 Chevrolet four-door sedan that was blue. This is the car I most clearly identify with my early childhood. I have clear memories of driving to the Bronx in it to my grandmother's on Friday nights for supper. I was young enough that my mother would put me into my Dr. Denton's before we left for home and I would sleep on her lap on the way home. (No. There were no seat belts then. If we had hit something I probably would have become an integral part of the dashboard and would not be sitting here writing this.) It was a manual transmission with the gear shift on the steering column. It was in this car that my mother struggled to learn to drive (which she never did). After my father died in 1968, a friend of ours who was a car mechanic looked it over and declared it unfit to keep. We sold it for $25.00 and, from what I understand, it died on one of the bridges on the way to Brooklyn.

In 1963 my parents purchased a Dodge Dart. That was a remarkable car. The engine was a slant six that came in two sizes, 170 and 270 cubic inches (we got the smaller one). It had an automatic transmission that was controlled by a series of push-buttons on the left side of the dashboard. Because it had no clutch, my mother finally learned to drive an automobile. Most important, it had a radio. A radio! Now I could listen to the Yankees games when we were in the car without having to jam my little transistor radio (yes, I said transistor radio) in my ear. This is the car in which I learned to drive. It was also the first car in which I experienced, as Meatloaf so eloquently put it, passion by the dashboard lights.

Freshmen at Syracuse University were not allowed to have cars and parking was at an extreme premium. But by my sophomore year, my mother had remarried and the Dodge Dart was given to me. Living in a fraternity, we had our own parking lot. And everyone's car had a name. There was Ward, the VW Beetle. There were the Oil Burner, my big brother's 1964 Chevy Impala and the Gas Range, his roommate's 1965 Impala. There was the Beast, a 1960 full size Mercury convertible that, when the windshield washer was activated with the top down, the front seat passenger got sprayed. And there was my Dodge Dart which my big brother named Arnold Ziffel for some reason. (In case you don't know, Arnold Ziffel was the pet pig on Green Acres that Mr. and Mrs. Ziffel treated as if it was their child (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ziffel)). Syracuse winters are long and hard but between 1971 and 1974, the two most reliable cars were the oldest, the Oil Burner and good old Arnold. Arnold was the car in which I courted the woman to whom I am married. He was the car that drove me to a fraternity wedding in Rochester despite persistent overheating. He went with me to Air Force field training in Plattsburgh, NY. And in May 1974, days after I had been commissioned and received my bachelor's degree, and fully laden with all the stuff from my room, we were driving from Syracuse to Connecticut, less than a month before our wedding. I stopped for gas on the New York Thruway about ten miles west of Albany. When I started Arnold up, the engine made a dreadful noise and some ugly smoke emerged from the tail pipe. Knowing as little as I know about cars, we limped away from the service area and made it to Albany where I pulled into a service station. The mechanic took one listen and pronounced it terminal. The main engine bearing was shot. Short of repair, no way was this car making it to Connecticut. We called my fiancée's parents and her uncle and a family friend drove up to Albany and met us at a motel where we had taken refuge from the now pouring rain. In the worst rain that Albany had seen in decades, I had to transfer all my things from Arnold into her uncle's car. That was when I discovered that if it rains hard enough, those raincoats were not entirely waterproof. We drove to a junk yard, pulled the plates off Arnold and left him to his fate. If I had a bugle I would have blown taps. (And then her uncle and her friend were annoyed at me because they expected me to do the driving home and I was soaked and exhausted.)

We used the cars in the family over the summer because I was due to go on active duty in August but in California. We flew out on a Wednesday and were met by friends. The next day we took a lease on an apartment and went and bought a car, an AMC Hornet Hatchback. (I'm sure some of you have never heard of AMC. It was absorbed by Chrysler in 1988.) We needed one off the lot and the only one we could find that had the features we wanted was a manual transmission. I had never driven a manual but my wife had. So she spent the rest of the day giving me a quick and dirty lesson in driving a manual transmission. That was Thursday. That night our friends and we decided to go to San Francisco for the weekend and take the new car. Suffice it to say, I did not dare the hills of San Francisco as a stick shift driver. (We used public transportation in the city. But the following May, after I graduated, my wife's uncle came to visit and we went back to SF and did the scenic drive. I'm proud to say that I DID manage the hills with a stick shift then.) When we left California, my wife was pregnant so she flew home. I caravanned across country with one of my Air Force classmates. We drove from Sacramento, California to Homestead, Florida for water survival training. I had a lot of stuff loaded in the car and it was rather heavy. I had the wonderful experience of driving across the Mojave Desert (Death Valley. Ever heard of it?) in early September with the heater on to keep the car from overheating. From Homestead, I had to drive up the coast to New York where my wife would meet me and then on to Rome, New York to report to my base.

Our first second car was a big old station wagon. My in-laws gave it to us so that my wife would also have a car. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't fuel efficient but it ran well in the winter. Our first Christmas tree was cut down and transported in that car. It was also the first car on which we ever put snow chains.

After I got out of the Air Force, we purchased a Datsun B-210 and gave the Hornet to my in-laws. It became my mother-in-law's car. After finishing graduate school, I took a job in Charleston, West Virginia. We caravaned down. Me in the Datsun, loaded to the gills with stuff including a two-drawer file in the passenger seat, my wife and daughter in the station wagon and my father-in-law and a friend in a Hertz truck driving our hosehold goods. That station wagon came close to being totalled near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Where Interstate 81 merges with another main highway, a tractor-trailer was in the lane ahead and to the right of the wagon. It had a corrugated steel body with metal signs mounted on the side. One of them came loose and came flying directly at the station wagon. My wife did a stellar job of evading it and it missed hitting by a few feet. I happened to have a CB radio in the Datsun and listened to the truck drivers praising how that "beaver" avoided hitting the sign. My wife was thoroughly amused when I told her what they had said.

To be concluded....

What a Tool

Tim Allen used to star in a TV sitcom called “Home Improvement”. In case you’ve never heard of it, you can take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Improvement. Those of you who are already familiar with the show as well as my happy infelicity with tools will have figured out where this is headed. In the show, Tim Taylor, the main character, hosts a home improvement show. Although an expert in the use of tools and construction, etc., he also constantly injures himself in ridiculous manners. I can only conclude that long before this show ever appeared on TV, my father was channeling it.

Let me talk about my father for a minute. He was one of the most intelligent people I have ever known. He was skilled with his hands both in large and small projects. As a boy, he built wooden airplane and ship models. To economize due to the cost of materials, he would build a model the exact size shown on the plan rather than expanding it. He and my mother, for many years, made custom party favors. But he was also skilled in constructing large furniture. He built a desk in my bedroom that ran the width of the room. He built a huge set of closets to store…well, this is where part of my OC/PR comes in. The bottom line is that he was very, very skilled with his hands and with tools of all sorts. He was also convinced that if I picked up a tool I would hurt myself. Now, I’m not talking about power tools like a circular saw or a drill. I’m talking about hand tools like screwdrivers, hammers, pliers or handsaws. How it was that he allowed me to use a craft knife to build plastic models I will never understand. So there you have the genesis of why I have come to describe myself as (and if you are offended by politically incorrect terms, skip to the next paragraph NOW) a tool-tard. (One of the women with whom I dance who is a great artist in many media is terribly amused by that term.)

While I lived at home, this inability was not a terribly debilitating defect. After all, we lived in an apartment building. The superintendent took care of the work around the building, my father took care of things inside. It was occasionally embarrassing, though. My mother was acting in a local amateur production of The Pajama Game that was being produced as a fund-raiser. My father volunteered to work on the sets and backstage crew. So did I. Answer? No, you may get hurt. That was bad enough, but a friend’s father was also working on the crew…along with his daughter who was three years younger than me. When I tried that argument the answer I got was, “Well she knows how to use tools without getting hurt.” Had I known the term at the time, I probably would have smart-mouthed, “Well, duh!” But I didn’t so I slunk off to a corner and read.

Once at Syracuse University and ensconced in my fraternity, things followed a similar pattern. The frat house was owned by the fraternity not the university so we were responsible for maintenance and up-keep. At the beginning of my sophomore year, we all came back early to re-paint the interior. (I recall the term that we used for the color: sh*t-brindle brown.) So, there I am, asking our house steward what I can do. He hands me a roller, a tray and some paint and he says for me to do the walls. Hey, no problem. Even I can figure that one out. Paint goes in pan, roller rolls in paint, paint goes on wall in even strokes. No problem. Right? Wrong. After a few minutes of this, for no obvious reason, it was suggested that I might be better at doing the trim with a brush. I say, no problem. Even I can figure this one out. Paint can is opened, brush goes in paint, paint is carefully applied to trim. After a few minutes of this, for no obvious reason, it was suggested that I might be better at painting the window frames on the windows that had already been taped. I say, no problem. Even I can figure this one out. Trim paint can is opened, brush goes in paint, paint is applied to window frames. No worries about getting paint anywhere else, the windows have been taped. After a few minutes of this it was suggested that I might be better at…going to Liquor Square and buying several cases of beer to bring back. All righty then. So much for painting.

The first house we owned was in Rome, New York. We moved in less than two weeks before our daughter was born. My in-laws came up from Connecticut to stay with us until after the birth. My father-in-law, who was also very handy around the house, took it on himself to do all the painting and wall-papering. I accepted this as being logical since my days were taken up by the Air Force and then going to the hospital. When I asked if he needed any assistance he very nicely said that he didn’t mind doing it himself. I thought he was just being nice and thanked him.

I learned differently several years later. After I separated from the Air Force, we lived with my in-laws while I was going to grad school. They had a nice big house with a nice big back yard and an above-ground swimming pool. In the summer of 1977, my mother-in-law announced that my father-in-law and I were going to build a raised deck for one end of the pool. I kind of liked the idea because, for the first time, it looked like someone was going to trust me with tools. So there we are, all the wood and all the assorted other stuff needed and I ask what I can do. He wanted to start me off with something simple, so he gave me a circular saw, gave me a quick explanation of how to use it safely and then sent me off to cut wood to size. I’m working for a few minutes, naively believing that I’m doing what I should be doing. The next thing I know, the saw stops working because someone pulled the plug. He takes the saw out of my hand and says, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” He then takes me to another pile of wood where holes needed to be drilled. He gave me a power drill, explained how to use it safely and leaves me to drill holes. I’m working for a few minutes, naively believing that I’m doing what I should be doing. The next thing I know, the drill stops working because someone pulled the plug. He takes the drill out of my hand and says, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” Now I’m starting to get a wee bit peeved. The next tool I am handed is a hammer. I tried to beg off on this because the limited experience I have had with nails is that there has never been a nail that I could not bend with a hammer. I don’t care if it is the most hardened steel on the face of the earth. Two blows and I’ll bend it. But he tells me to give it a try. So I start. Sure enough my technique was perfect. Bent nail after bent nail but I’m still barely getting the job done. The next thing I know, the hammer is pulled from my hand with the admonishment, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” There were several more tools we went through, all of which ended within a few minutes with the same, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” Finally, I said, “Is there anything you want to let me do?” He hands me a post hole digger and tells me to dig the holes for the corner supports and he marks exactly where I am to dig. So, I take the post-hole digger and begin digging the holes as I have been shown. The next thing I know, the post-hole digger is yanked from my hand and before I can say anything, I hear, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” At that point I walked away, walked in the house and was headed to our bedroom. My mother-in-law looks at me and starts to give me grief for walking away from the project…until I tell her what happened and that I’m done trying to help. She then went outside and gave him hell for doing what he had done. But the deck got built without my assistance and all I learned was the lesson that Mark + tools = bad combination.

I wasn’t just dangerous with tools like those. I had never lived in a house that had a microwave oven until we lived with my in-laws. At the time, the only hot dogs I liked were the Hebrew National Kosher hot dogs. (By the way, aside from being better parts of animals, Kosher meat products tend to have fewer by-products and factory-farm hormone crap.) Anyway, I knew that all you had to do was put food in the microwave, turn it on for a certain length of time and it would come out hot and ready to eat. So, I put two hot dogs on a plate, put them in the microwave, turn it on…and within a minute, there were sounds that sounded like gunshots from inside. I quickly turn it off and open the door and look. There are the hot dogs, with their ends exploded off and hot dog ick all over the inside of the oven. Yes, I performed a double circumcision of two hot dogs because no one had explained that Hebrew National hot dogs have sealed casings that need to be slit before being microwaved.

Later that same week, my mother-in-law asked me to vacuum the house. No problem. I used a vacuum cleaner as a kid and in my fraternity. This was an Electrolux canister vacuum on wheels. I start vacuuming and everything is going well until suddenly I hear a soft explosion from the vacuum and it shuts off. I look at the back and see that the end has blown off. Oh sh*t! I killed the vacuum! I’m frantic because I don’t know what to do when my wife walks in. Practically in tears, I tell her that I’ve killed the vacuum. Much to my surprise, she starts laughing. I ask what’s so funny and she explains that this particular model is designed to pop the back end and shut off when the bag inside is full. Yeah. That turned into a charming family story.

Cars are another of those things the maintenance and repair of which eludes me. I grew up a fan of auto racing but somehow the workings of the internal combustion engine and how to maintain said engine eluded me. Oh, wait. Maybe it was because if I offered to help my father the answer was, “No, you’ll hurt yourself.” So when the town adult education department offered a course in basic automobile repair, my wife and I decided this might be just the thing for me. It was nice. It was taught in the high school’s auto shop. I learned how to do tune-ups, how to gap plugs, how to set the timing and a host of other necessary basic maintenance jobs. So once the weather got better, I went to the local auto parts store and got the parts I would need to do a basic tune-up on my Datsun B-210. I did it exactly the way the instructor had taught us. I knew that you never take more than one plug wire off at a time. That way, there’s no question that you have them in the correct order. I was so proud of myself, I changed the plugs, set the points, changed the rotor and everything fit back together! I then got in the car and turned the ignition on…and it turned over. But it would not start. No matter what I did, no matter what I double-checked, it would not start. Finally, we called the local service station. They towed the car and promised to check it out. Later that day, we get a call from them. I’m expecting the worst, like it’s the starter or something bad. When I ask what the problem was, the voice on the other end of the phone says, “Whoever tried to tune up your car crossed all the spark plug wires. Don’t they know you only do one at a time?” OK. So much for basic auto maintenance. (That car, literally, was never the same. Every time it snowed, the points would burn out. I have no idea what I did to it but I’m sure I caused it.)

It has become almost a ritual. Every year at Christmas, I always buy some kind of cool tool for my wife. She knows how to use tools. Apparently, in Connecticut where she grew up, tools did not pose the same threat to children that they did in New York. Consequently, she learned to use them. (She has even built small walls. I’ve seen her do it. Of course I was, watching from afar so that I would be sure not to injure myself.)

I’m actually pretty good at assembling furniture like you typically get from Ikea. This has far more to do with the fact that I can follow a set of assembly plans because I have built hundreds of plastic models. Even I can figure out how Part C fits snugly into Part A. And those neat little Allen wrenches they give you (see I actually know the name of the tool) make inserting the screws correctly idiot-proof. But my wife usually cuts up the box it came in because there’s that whole sharp edge thing plus Mark that are a literally a bloody dangerous combination. (I once slashed my thumb on a dinner roll but that story will have to wait for another day.)

A number of years ago, we bought mini-tool kits in plastic cases, a red one for me and a pink one for my daughter. I have actually used that tool kit any number of times. I have discovered that I CAN drive a nail without bending...assuming that the nail is going into plaster wall. If I accidentally hit a stud, bend city. And I have a pretty good handle (no pun intended) on screws and screwdrivers. (Righty-tighty, lefty loosey.) I have tightened and loosened nuts with my pliers and even used the hex wrench. I have jealously guarded that tool kit because it is mine. And it’s the first one anyone ever trusted me with.

Wrestling with Demons

Whenever I have taught a class, when I introduce myself, I explain that I am actually a frustrated stand-up comedian. Because I have a captive audience, I plan to stand up and do schtick for them. If they happen to learn something along the way, that’s even better. When I started writing this blog, I said it was partly a therapeutic exercise and if, when reading it, you laughed or learned something, well, that’s even better. What I’m getting at is part of my motivation is to entertain and amuse. Sometimes, however, what I write is not all that humorous but is more a part of that therapeutic process I mentioned.

If you read yesterday’s blog about my eating habits (and if you did not, I heartily recommend you do so right now. I know the author and he is a charming and entertaining writer) you may have stumbled on the fact that I used to be very skinny, but not so much now. I briefly considered getting deeper into that point yesterday but decided against it. How that came to change is part and parcel of today’s topic.

Looking back on one’s life, there are things that are much easier to see at a distance. Much as we often miss the forest for the trees when we are walking within it, sometimes distance lends perspective. So to paraphrase the traditional introduction at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous:

“Hi. My name is Mark and I suffer from depression.”

As I said, with the perspective of age and memory, I can safely say that I have struggled with this demon since I was old enough to have memories. I am an only child so I had no siblings with whom to compare myself. I knew, from a very early age, that I was a bit different from the other kids in the neighborhood. I chalked this up to being the lone Jewish kid in the neighborhood or the fact that I was always the smallest and the weakest kid. Those things were, in fact, absolutely true. But I was also the kid who cried most easily and it didn’t take all that much to provoke that reaction. I was one of the smartest kids in the neighborhood but that meant nothing compared to the fact that it was easy to make me cry. Between many of those experiences and being an over-protected only child, I developed a facility for solitary pursuits. I built models, I played games like Monopoly or Risk by myself, I listened to records…and I read. It was probably in reading that I found my greatest escape. More on that later.

I had a long history of what would probably be characterized as inappropriate expression of anger. It took a good bit to provoke an angry reaction because I learned early in life to swallow it. After all, my parents NEVER argued. I’d see parents on TV arguing all the time and concluded that it was just a convenient ploy by the writers. Real people NEVER argued or got angry. (Right?) But when my anger finally emerged it was explosive. It often took the form of abandoning a friendship with someone who had long been my friend. Thus, my mother concluded, I was in need of psychological counseling. I was the only kid I knew who received that “privilege”. That provoked a reaction that said that if my parents think there is something wrong with me, I must really be a messed up person. It became a self-reinforcing loop of knowing that I was a screwed up dude and hating the fact that I was being forced into “seeing a counselor.” (By the way, I finally put an end to that after my father’s death. At the age of fifteen I finally said, “No. I’m not playing this game any more. You can waste your money if you choose. But I won’t go and if you force me to, I will sit and read.” Because HER counselor said that she shouldn’t force me to go, she stopped. I still HATE talk therapy.)

By the time I got to university, I was very set in my solitary ways. Somehow, one of my friends got me to rush fraternities with him. When, lo and behold, one offered to pledge me, I leapt at the chance. The low point of that experience, however, was when one of the seniors, a major in psychology, decided to use our pledge class as a practice “T Group”. That ended with me in hysterical tears swearing I was quitting. Eventually by frat Big Brother talked me down, got me drunk and that idea was abandoned. I also have some very clear memories of sitting in a corner chair in the living room of the frat house with a textbook, desperate for someone to say something to me but unable to reach out and interact. This would go on for days at a time with no recognition on my part what was wrong. It also led to some binge drinking and drunken, teary screaming matches with several brothers. Much of that ended when I began dating the woman to whom I have been married for over 35 years. Even so, there was a deep, hot, bubbling caldera of anger that sat inside and came out as terribly caustic sarcastic humor or would result in a Mt. St. Helen’s type of explosion. There were also times when something bad would happen and I would dissolve into tears and withdrawal.

There were some warning signs early in 1989 (what we call the bad year) that things within my head were deteriorating. The law firm I worked for had a long reputation of chewing up associates and spitting them out. As time went on I found myself more and more depressed to the point of having to shut my door at times just to cry so that I could continue getting through the day. (I thought I was hiding this from everyone, my wife included, but my demeanor said otherwise.) After this firm broke a firm promise to me and told me what a poor job I had done for a year (I learned later I had done a good job but this was their ploy to get me to accept a pittance wage increase), I let a legal head-hunter talk me into signing on with another firm. That lasted exactly four weeks. The SOB who hired me didn’t even have the guts to terminate me himself, he had the office manager do it. (Again, I later learned there was nothing wrong with me other than that the head of the firm changed his mind and didn’t feel like giving me the time and training I needed to learn that type of law. Hence my lack of regard for personal injury law firms.) So as of the beginning of June I was out of work.

For the first time in my life, I was faced with having to go to an unemployment compensation office. All I could think of was that I had a bachelor’s degree, two masters degrees and a Juris Doctor with honors and now I was on unemployment. Resume after resume went out. I had maybe three interviews over the summer and that was it. In November, my mother’s only sibling, her brother, died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. After I returned from the funeral in Florida, the downhill pace accelerated. As the unemployment insurance was running out, I took a retail sales job with a department store just to earn some wages.

That Christmas season was a dismal point in my life. This is where the eating thing I mentioned fits in. Essentially, I stopped eating. I would eat just enough for the hunger pains to abate. Breakfast was coffee and some cereal. Lunch was most often a black and white iced cookie. Supper at work became a large Coca-Cola. My daughter tells me that a one point I admitted to her that my weight was down to 112 pounds and I was running 40-50 miles a week. I don’t remember that but I don’t doubt her word. I was literally committing suicide by starvation. That period permanently altered my metabolism and since then, I have struggled a bit with my weight. At some point, finally, my wife told me that either I get help or she was leaving.

My doctor referred me to a psychiatrist who did not do talk therapy but treated depression with medication. The first ah-ha moment I had with him was when he explained that clinical depression, as I was evidencing, is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It wasn’t my fault any more than catching a cold is my fault. That helped but it was really the medication that began pulling me out of the nosedive. Some time in March, we were driving somewhere and I asked my wife if we could stop at Burger King. She asked me why and I said that I wanted a Whopper. It was the first time I had evidenced any interest in food in months and she made a bee-line for the nearest Burger King.

I’d like to say that the recovery process has been one of those miracle things where I got into treatment and SHAZAM! I was cured. But I can’t. It has been fraught with slight ups and many deep valleys. There have been four medications tried and Prozac seems to work the best. (I know. There are some of you out there who hate the idea of Prozac but I’m okay as a result of it.) It has not been easy. I believed that if I could get through the day without feeling bad, it was a worthwhile trade to not being able to feel good. (It’s kind of the opposite of many people with bipolar disorder who accept the downs because the ups are SO good.) It has been a twenty year process fraught with periodic bouts of very low moods for weeks at a time. But I knew that when these periodic lows got bad enough, I needed to see my doctor.

Reading has long been an escape for me and I noticed, in retrospect, that when I got down, I would resort to reading as an escape. There was something about history that was always able to take me away and make me feel part of the past, away from the depression of the moment. These reading binges, combined with the OC/PR part of me resulted in reading a topic for weeks on end until I had become “expert” on it. Hence, my book “topic collections” including, but not limited to, submarines, General George Patton, American Indians, Age of Sail, the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor era, nuclear weapons and strategy and the American Civil War.

At the end of this past summer, I slid into an extended down-turn serious enough that, for the first time since before I was on medication, it affected me at work. The doctor decided to up the dosage. Eventually, this had an effect. But one morning, I woke up feeling euphoric. I was convinced that I had finally beaten the demon. I felt good! I had never felt this way before. I was positively bubbling with positive energy. I could not shut up. By the end of the week, however, I slid down into paranoia and fear every bit as strong as the euphoria. The doctor concluded that it was the result of too high a dosage of