The People We Know

Today i discovered my wife did not even know who my favorite poet is.  This was at about the same time I asked for a hug as i felt we hadn't touched much in recent days.  I proceeded to bombard her with Billy Collins' work, but it got in the way of the email she was writing, so i had to wait and then read it a little too quickly and she seemed unimpressed.  Just a touch will be ok this time, but I've promised myself I will be relentless, pursuing it all the time.  Not the poetry, you fool, the touch.

This same day, I'd awakened in a dream of another life I might have led had I taken the other path.  Stayed at home for college, remaining the geeky intellectual in personality, but not much different career-wise, for some reason.  Maybe the dream will return and I will makes sense of the moment in a parking lot I didn't recognize and talking with people whose faces I did not know.

It wasn't the old church/gymnasium parking lot my friends and I, for no good reason at all, chose as our gathering place when we hung out in high school.   I said it was a parking lot i did not recognize.  As I try to recapture the dream, I am no longer seeing a true parking lot.  Instead it's one of those strips where diagonal parking is laid out for half the block or so.  I think there was a car running, out in the street on the other side of the cars parked there, waiting for the person I was talking with who was asking for a commitment I could not make.  No it wasn't a woman, it was an adult I did not recognize, and the fact that I viewed this person as an adult tells me I was college-age or nearly so at the time, when decisions were made that steered our lives for many years to come.

What would I have learned if I'd remained in Oak Park, I dunno, maybe I would have become the most efficient deliverer the Oak Leaves ever knew.  Yes, I said Oak Leaves.  It was a weekly--Thursdays, I think.  I wasn't up to dailies like the Trib or the American.  I'm pretty sure brothers Joe and John ( he wasn't Jack back then) had shared a Tribune route.  It was one of those much more challenging jobs--a daily newspaper route.  I think I may have folded some of the papers for their early morning trips, but I don't believe I went along very often.  They only kept that morning route long enough to save for some goal or whatever.

I never did pick that daily one up, but I did that weekly Oak Leaves  More my speed perhaps?  Does that suggest staying at home for college would have been selling myself short, taking the shorter step?  Maybe.  I do remember convincing myself to go the farthest I could (to Kansas City) so I could start a new life in no one's shadow, footsteps, etc.   I think it worked out OK, even if that step was taken for a strange reason.

Now I had a really close group of buddies I hung out with in high school (the ones that hung out in the parking lot with me back then).  I have lots more memories of that bunch than the students at my high school (there was a bit of overlap, but you know what I mean).  I wouldn't cross the street for most of the fellow students at my high school, but I was willing to and have, in fact, travelled more than a thousand miles three times in the past ten years to see one or more of that bunch I hung around with.

That sets aside the high school friends.  What about college?  Not long ago, lying in bed waiting for sleep, I decided to try to recall as many names from college as I could.  I also did the same thing for my high school days.  There was no comparison.  I recalled seventy or more college friends and just two dozen high school friends.  No, it can't be that college was after high school and therefore more likely to be remembered,  High school was fifty years ago, and college forty-six.  I don't believe my recall from forty-six years ago is any sharper than that of fifty years ago because of time.

 More likely, the college experience was more engaging and involved than high school.  The people I remember were part of a number of recollected events in college that made an impression on me.  From high school, it was principally the friends from my neighborhood and a few classmates in Honors Class.  Oh, you think us honors students were dull?  I can think of four who were on the chess team, and two that were espousing contrasting philosophical points of view and defending them in class discussions (Michael and Clifton were "the boss!").  One other random recollection of high school--there were more young men of Italian descent in the Honors Class than any other.  Twenty-five percent were Italian!  When I left for college in Kansas City, I entered a new world.

Later

Livin' In The U.S..A.

I may be making this up out of my own imagination, but I’m almost sure I remember--right here in the U.S.A--legislators making laws to address or remedy some problem facing our nation or world.  I remember leaders of cities, states and/or our country taking action to implement laws or at least constructively discuss ways to do so.  Was there ever really a time when people praised this or that court decision that protected our freedoms or rights in the way they should be?  None of these things seem to happen today.  Maybe if we could hear about or even find just a couple of such instances, even if the stories weren’t all positive, find a healthy mix of positive outcomes, then maybe....  Probably not, I guess.

Then, I might also wake up some morning when no one in our leadership has insulted or responded in kind to some insult or slight.  I guess that is just too much to expect.  We have put the tools of self-expression out there to all and they just cannot help themselves.  They have to share their inner demons.  Now that the tools are in their hands, they can’t help but write whatever comes to mind.  Would they say it to that person if they were in the room or sitting across the table from them?

I have more than once said to people that direct contact or conversation in person with others with whom we might have a disagreement is the best way to at least understand what our differences are in a respectful way.  Texting and even emails are a poor substitute for direct conversation, even if that conversation cannot be face-to-face and must take place over the phone.  We would have a chance of being clear with one another instead of just throwing judgments or insults at everyone.   It is much more likely that we will speak our minds in a more moderate form if we are speaking in person (most of us, anyway).   

Does anyone use Twitter to say something positive, or is it simply that such communication (the positive kind) is not newsworthy or deserving of our attention?   I know those tweets are out there, but I guess I should also look at who is doing the tweeting before I begin to expect something so radical as a positive statement of support for a person or position that doesn’t attack everyone who does not share their point of view.  Most of these people are politicians or celebrities who can only get the attention they crave by vitriol.  I don’t consider myself a Pollyanna, I feel like I’m pretty pragmatic and realistic, I don’t expect everyone to get along, but come on people….