How Precious Was That While, page 35
So was it poetic justice? I doubt it. The parallel exists only in my own perception. But I wish that Humphreys had been kinder to that girl, and that the school system had been kinder to him. Neither victim deserved that magnitude of punishment for relatively small errors in judgment. Nature does indeed teach such harsh lessons, and lives are lost simply because a creature forgot to check the whereabouts of a predator, or happened to be too young or slow to avoid it, or was simply unlucky. But we as human beings have the capacity to rise above brutality. But of course I’m an idealist. I also watch my back, so as not to be caught as either of them were. When that fails, as it does when there is bad faith, I fight. Thus I have fought a lot, in my life and career. It’s not a perfect world.
I have always appreciated humor, and see it as one of the defining characteristics of our species. It is universal, and permeates every aspect of our society, so that perhaps much of it passes unnoticed. I made my fortune with humorous fantasy replete with puns. As my roommate at Westtown asked me once: “If the pun is the lowest form of humor, is the bun the lowest form of bread?” As has been said elsewhere, the only thing worse than a pun is two puns. Another monstrous category is dirty humor. Theoretically children aren’t supposed to know it, but they are just as much into it as the adult realm is. So one of the things I remember from Westtown is the illicit and pun-ish humor. At the time we were learning the formulae of physics relating to measurements such as the square-cube law for calculating volume or the vectors and angles and thrust of motion, a mock formula circulated. I never heard the whole of it, so have had to reconstruct it. It was, approximately, the formula for the Measure of the Pleasure: The Square of the Hair over the Mass of the Ass, times the Thrust of the Bust over the Angle of the Dangle. Over forty years later I still find it intriguing. There was another episode I found hilarious: someone rigged a joke car bomb to the vehicle of one of the teachers. When he turned the ignition, there was a high whistle, as of something sailing through the air, then a loud bang, and black smoke poured out from under the hood.
But I have elected not to support Westtown financially, though the school continues to solicit me, and all graduates. My reasons are both simple and subtle. I feel that a person should contribute to those causes he values, and I do, approximately tithing my income. By the same token, he should not be obliged to contribute to those he doesn’t value, merely because they keep asking. Since I decided to let Westtown be part of my past, I didn’t contribute—and the more persistently it solicited me, the more negative I found myself becoming. With each solicitation I explored my decision, and discovered to my surprise that it was not apathy that kept me apart, it was hostility. Yet Westtown was one of the best schools I attended—#3 of ten in my private ranking, and I do contribute to #1 Goddard College and #2 The School in Rose Valley, and to others that aren’t on my list, for different reasons.
So what was the matter? I covered some of this in BiOgre, so will add examples not given there: in bygone days, wealthy Quakers had donated formidable sums to the school to be used to pay part of the tuition of Quaker students. I counted as Quaker, because my family was Quaker, so got the benefit of that. Then the headmaster decided that the school could use that money better elsewhere, and took it, so that no student got its benefit anymore. Now the justice of contributing money for some students’ tuition and not for others may be debatable, but this was a private Quaker school, so it seemed in order. In any event, the money had been accepted with that proviso, so when it was then taken for other purposes, that might be questioned. The same applied to students’ personal money: we were required to keep most of it in personal envelopes in the office, for safekeeping. But when I came the weekend after a year of school ended, to recover my money, I could not; they had taken it to apply to expenses they charged to me. So I lost my personal money. That smelled like stealing, but there was nothing I could do about it, then. When my cousin Teddy Jacob died, his family invited me to join them in Florida during the Christmas holiday. I got along well with their daughter Dotsy, and served somewhat in lieu of a brother for her. This invitation was a great prospect for me, and I loved the idea of visiting wonderful warm Florida for two weeks. But there was a problem: their schedule meant that if I were to ride down with them, I would have to miss one day of school at Westtown. So we went to ask the principal for permission to miss that day. He was polite, but said that he could not grant such an exception for one student without doing it for others. So he turned us down. The result was that I had to take the train, and the inefficiency of scheduling and other factors resulted in a Florida stay of just one day. It destroyed the vacation; most of my time was spent traveling. But the school policy had been upheld. It wasn’t a waste, actually, but neither was it what it could have been. The message I got was that a school rule was more important than human experience, and that the school did not care how much its consistency cost others. I can’t fault that on technical grounds, but it left me with a keen awareness of the possible costs of foolish consistency. So when in later years the school wanted something from me, I concluded that I should be true to my policy of contributing only to those causes I wished to, and not make an exception merely because I could readily spare the money. If the school doesn’t perceive the logic, well, it is being served as it served me. I learn some lessons well.
Some incidents are of a lighter nature. Once my sister Teresa was talking about an interaction with someone, and said she wasn’t trying to curry favor. “Favor is the name of a horse,” I quipped, and we all laughed. Back in those days I wasn’t known for humor, but perhaps there were signals.
When I was in the Army, it was said “There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.” This applied to clothing too. The U.S. Army regulation issue undershorts were not well designed. The civilian variant advertised that there was no chafing center seam. Sure enough there wasn’t; instead there were two chafing side seams. Their fly was designed so that if a man wanted to use a urinal, it would be most comfortable if that urinal were set in the ceiling. Also in the Army: we normally wore fatigues at work, but weren’t allowed to wear the regulation fatigue cap; instead use of a civilian cap with a raised, flat top was universal. Once another soldier asked me “What’s that thing in your hat?” “My head,” I responded, and he was silent. Later I looked at my hat and saw that someone had put a bit of wire through two of its holes. I had been set up for a joke, but had inadvertently diffused it by jumping to the punch line. Jokes were not necessarily kind. I had several flat tires, then one day saw a nail propped against my rear tire in such as way that when I backed out of the parking lot, it would be driven in, giving me a flat in due course. That explained much. Thereafter I circled my car each time before using it, making sure there was no trap. The actual humor of such vandalism escapes me. I had a notion of who was responsible, and why: he had been friendly until it turned out that I was the superior Ping-Pong player. I made no issue, because I lacked proof, but I chalked it up as another little lesson of life.
When I was in the second half of basic training in the Army, learning the survey that I was later to teach in that same unit, I worked hard to maintain my average, for only the top two in my class would be kept as instructors. The problem was that the Army itself didn’t seem to care much; it routinely took students from classes for KP, guard duty, and whatever else. When I missed a day of classes because of some such assignment, I found a way to learn the material anyway. One soldier was slow to grasp the material, but he wanted to do well, so I would go over it with him. He would tell me what they had covered, and show me his homework, and I would figure it out and explain it to him. Thus he was able to keep up, and I was able to learn the material despite not being in class. There was one time that I had studying to do, and I was terrified that my time for it would be taken away. This was when they told us that there was post baseball, of semipro quality, and any of us who wished to could attend the game free. No one was interested. Jokes started flying. Someone farted. Another trainee whirled, imitating an officer: “Who fired that shot?” That annoyed the cadre, so they started assigning “volunteers” in the usual Army manner, sending the jokers and others taken at random to the waiting truck to be taken to the game. I was afraid I too would be hauled off, and stood with perfectly still face, hoping to escape. I was in luck; I wasn’t taken. Thus I got my study time and maintained my average. It would have been ironic if I had lost my average, and thus my chance to remain as an instructor, and to bring my wife to join me so that the Army could become bearable, for the sake of a baseball game. I had very little interest in baseball anyway.
Another time there was to be a big battalion inspection. Inspections were the bane of military life; the barracks had to be scrubbed throughout, everything polished, and our clothing laid out perfectly. After several inspections, unused uniforms had to be dry-cleaned again, because of the wear entailed in the inspections. We even had to have packs of cigarettes laid out, including the nonsmokers, and they all had to be the same brand, Lucky Strike. It seemed like a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But there was hell to pay if anyone messed up. One day we were preparing for inspection, but the cadre came by and said that our barracks had been postponed for several hours, so we were to do a GI party (scrubbing the floor) instead. It didn’t matter whether the floor had just been scrubbed; I suspect that cleanliness wasn’t the point anyway. We started in—and then suddenly the inspection party arrived, catching us in disarray. We had to run to our bunks and stand at attention as we were—in fatigues, with shirts out, hands soiled, buckets sitting there, mops leaning against bunks. One soldier had one boot on and one boot off, and had to remain that way. But the inspection team must have realized that there was a problem, and the officers went through the normal routine as if everything were completely in order, not commenting on the disarray. Maybe they had changed the route deliberately, in order to catch a barracks off guard, so as to verify actual preparedness. Since we were obviously working, and not goofing off, we were okay.
When I hitchhiked home from college, the day got late and rides were scarce. As dusk fell, a car passed me, then stopped. I ran up, and it was a single woman. She said she wasn’t going to pick me up, but then she thought of how far I would have to walk otherwise, knowing that no one else would stop, so she had stopped. She was so relieved to find that I was a harmless college student that she drove three miles out of her way to help me on mine. I really appreciated that. I still had a long walk in the dark, and at one point cows were chasing me, and I feared I would walk into a porcupine, but it was about six miles shorter than it would otherwise have been. Today I wish I could thank that woman personally for that favor, but I don’t even know her name. So I’ll just say that if any woman reads this who gave a ride at dusk to a college kid in Vermont the summer of 1953 or’54, THANK YOU, Fair Lady!
For a time I collected stamps. Once a man sent me a huge batch of stamps on paper torn from envelopes. The deal was that if I soaked them and got them safely off the paper, I could have any I wanted, plus some special ones. I expressed interest in triangular stamps, and I believe he did find me some. The job itself was interesting, and I sent him a batch of cleanly separated stamps. About half of them were common British ones. Later I encountered big fancy stamps from Tannu Tuva, and so I looked up that little Asiatic country. I discovered that the Encyclopedia Americana had an entry: TANNU TUVA—SEE TUVA. And under TUVA it said SEE TANNU TUVA. So much for that edition!
When we lived on the farm in Vermont, back when I was about seven years old, at one point we visited elsewhere. The folk were very friendly, and brought out a big box with many interesting items. My sister and I were encouraged to take something from it as a gift. There was a harmonica in it, and I wanted that, but the woman guided my hand and had me pick something else. This bothered me; she hadn’t understood what I really wanted. So later, when the others left the room, I took the harmonica and put it in my pocket. But I knew it wasn’t right. On the way home my mother, checking in my pocket for a handkerchief, found the harmonica. “You can’t keep this!” she said. “I know,” I said. That was all. She sent it back to the owners, and I was ashamed. It was one of the defining lessons of my early life, and by the time I had wrestled it through I concluded that stealing was wrong. There’s always a rationale, that a person needs something, or that somebody else cheated him so deserves to be cheated back, but it’s still wrong. When I was in the Army, there was a box of blue/red colored pencils for general use; I took one, and I think it was never missed, but later I pondered and concluded that that too was stealing. The Army cheated me in an enormously greater manner, but that didn’t make it right to cheat it back. Thus I continued to refine my philosophy, closing gradually on my ideal: total honesty. It’s not an easy course, and I know of no one who is more concerned with it than I am, and I can’t claim to be perfect in this. It’s an ideal whose difficulty seems to vary inversely with proximity. What of social “white lies”? Do you tell a hurtful truth in the name of honesty? I think not. What is the distinction between privacy and truth? I conclude that there are things that are properly no one else’s business. So if there is an embarrassment in someone’s life, he or she does not have to advertise it to others. There is also the problem of keeping confidences. When a depressive teen writes to me of contemplating suicide, I feel bound not to report that to authorities; it is privileged information. But it means that something I know, that might save a life if I told, I will not tell. That’s a difficult kind of integrity. So in the end there are no clear answers, and I must settle for fudgy guideline answers that may later turn out to be in error. I must have tolerance for standards I may deplore.
There was an isolated odd incident in the Army. When I was in basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, it quickly became known that I was a vegetarian. They nicknamed me “No meat.” It was good-humored, and I suffered no discrimination or unkindness because of my diet. Once another trainee questioned me about it, and I answered him, but got the impression that there was a sarcastic edge, and was privately annoyed. Later I was told that when he went home on leave, his girlfriend dumped him, and he committed suicide. No connection between that and our dialogue, except in my mind: maybe his girlfriend didn’t like muted sarcasm either.
Sometimes I’m stupid. This is annoying when I’m taking an IQ test. I remember being unable to figure out what was wrong with a particular picture of a man standing outdoors, so when the test was done, I inquired, and was told: his shadow was pointing into the sun instead of away from it. Ouch! So obvious, yet I had missed it. Years later, taking another such test, I saw another picture of a man in the sun, and remarked on the idiotic way I had missed. But this one was not in error that way; the man’s shadow was not falling toward the sun. So I missed it. Afterward, I inquired, and learned that there was no shadow at all. Double ouch!
My politics are generally liberal, and I am not shy about them, though I value integrity more than philosophy. For example, those “liberal” students who shout down conservative speakers are not making a political statement, as I see it, but rather are demonstrating their lack of appreciation for freedom of expression. They need an education in courtesy and the First Amendment before they can claim to be true liberals. If they object to what conservatives say, they should skip the program, or, better, listen carefully, then make reasoned statements of refutation. But I must say that most of the illiberalism I see is on the conservative side, and their agendas often disgust me. I tried subscribing to the Wall Street Journal in the late 1960s or early 1970s, to be fair-minded, but dropped it when I saw how narrow its intellectual base was. For example, this was the time when Richard Nixon was president, and it was evident from the start that he was a man of no scruples—his congressional campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas showed that—but the Journal could see no evil in him. Then one day they had an editorial criticizing him. Well, now; what was this? So I read it with interest. So what was its criticism? It said that he wasn’t being hard enough on his critics. What a sham! In the 1980s I tried American Spectator, and quickly saw that its idea of savvy commentary on Democrat candidates for president was that they were “weird.” That was it? In the 1990s I tried the National Review, opened it at random, and read that all the charges against Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich were either trumped up or irrelevant. Apparently they hadn’t heard of the way he had cheated on his wife, dumped her when she had cancer, stiffed her on child support, then campaigned for “family values.” Or the way he drove another congressman out because of a smelly book deal, only to make his own smelly book deals. Trumped up? Irrelevant? Maybe there exists a conservative publication that is fair-minded and opposes hypocrisy in conservatives as well as in liberals; I just haven’t encountered it yet. I, as a liberal, do oppose bad behavior regardless of ideology, as mentioned above, and don’t support a given politician merely because he spoon-feeds me compatible views. Without integrity, those views are valueless.
Sometimes qualities emerge that show unsuspected facets of people. At Westtown School there was a Vespers program every Sunday evening that students were required to attend. In one of them a woman told little stories and sang songs of her own composition to accompany them. It really was nice, but as the program progressed she seemed to become increasingly nervous, and finally she looked at the audience as if about to break down entirely. Then someone caught on, and began to applaud. Normally there was no applause at Vespers; evidently the headmaster had forgotten to tell her, and she thought that she was failing entirely in her presentation, without being able to fathom why. It must have seemed like the audience from hell, offering no clue about its nonresponse. The one who caught on, and who started the applause, which was then given for her following songs, was a student in my class named Marvin Flicker. He was a large, aggressive, militant Jew who took no crap from anyone about his religion, and sometimes got into fights because of it. But he normally defused it by another device: he would lead any anti-Jew songs. He knew them all. At times he seemed somewhat insensitive about the feelings of others. But this was the time when he was the first to catch on to a problem, and to deal with it appropriately.
