Hand Me Down Hell

What the hell is going on around this planet? And why is this hell such a depressing and bad place to be?

Every time the US team gets clobbered in the World Cup, that is to say every time the US team is in the World Cup, news commentaries describing what the hell is wrong with soccer and the American attitude all suddenly crop up like dandelions in my front yard. (Man, I gotta do something about those weeds!)

My friends who, like me, are prone to dissecting and over-analyzing every small hint that we are all doomed to hell, have recently joined this odd debate.

On one hand, there’s a sense that it’s good we are even talking about the World Cup. Although some of us don’t yet understand futbol, our debate shows we take some mild, fleeting interest in the sporting world outside our borders (during the down time between Super Bowls and the World Series, of course). On the other hand, there’s an apathy about anything that seems based too much on stuffy Old World values.

This game is honestly worth a look. I think it is exciting, especially when followed on Univision. I don’t know much about it but, if nothing else, I know there is a strong degree of hooliganism and friendly international binge drinking that goes along with a world-wide fiesta.

In terms of what alternatives lie hidden in the bushes out there, we should all salute that whenever possible.

I found this 6/25/06 article by Stephen M. Warshawsky on The American Thinker web site, “Why Americans Don’t Like Soccer”, to be typical of the modern complaint.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5613&search=World

Washawsky’s claim makes sense to me. He says that futbol is often a “zero sum” game, as indicated by low scores or regular nothing to nothing ties, and therefore just doesn’t sit well with the US high-scoring mentality. If you read through that piece, you’ll see at the end he also describes soccer as a “sisyphean” sport.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I first read that word I had stop and ask myself, “Did this guy just call the rest of the world a bunch of sissies?”

Aw, then I realized I still had my turkey hunting hat on. Had to take that off and scramble around for my Greek fisherman’s cap. Once that was straightened out, I understood what I had read.

Sisyphus (Sisyphos in the Greek) was that tragic figure of Greek mythology who was doomed to pushing a rock up a mountain in hell for eternity. See the allusion? The punishments of Sisyphos and World Cup Futbol may both seem endless, pointless exercises in the American mind. In other simpler words, dread of all dreads, the game is considered boring to many Americans.

So the insinuation not so finely hidden within this debate is the one that suggests Americans have no patience. Unlike the rest of the world, which is comparatively comfortable with zero sum results, Americans are not willing to wait any length of time for something good to happen. They want what they want now and if they don’t get it fast, then they go home depressed and sulking like little crybabies.

I think there is some truth to that point. Standing in line for anything is the ultimate hell for many Americans.

Having traveled around the world, I’ve seen how other citizens of this earth seem to have a different sense of time. At first, before I realized my own faults in this matter, I thought everyone languished about too much and I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t fathom why a Greek family would spend 10 years building a new home. Why didn’t they just go get a loan from the bank and get it over with like my people do? Why, when I tried to get my car out of the shop in Japan, did the Japanese mechanic give me that sucking sound? You know, when you ask a Japanese businessman for something that is obviously “over due” in American terms, the reply often begins with a hesitant “Ssphsss” as he sucks in air, battling with his inner self in attempt to relay the bad news and save face, before he cautiously stutters, “Ahh, maybe you, ahh, maybe you come back next week”.

Well, you can imagine how any trigger-happy American stopwatch could get fouled up by such apparently lackadaisical attitudes.

But I’m here to tell you that the American sense of time is out of sorts with the rest of the world. And, honestly, it is sometimes out of sorts with our own desires, as well. Our lack of patience is the Achilles Heel of all red-blooded Yankees.

How many of us are in therapy over this affliction? How many of us really listen to what our own doctors are telling us to do? We spend a lot time and money telling ourselves we need to slow down, smell the roses, and take it one step at a time. Of all the wonderful things we can do, this is one purposeful thing we often can’t do. And, probably the worst part of it all, we teach our kids to be like us all the time. We unknowingly tell our kids score, get it now, before it’s too late!

I wonder know how this condition came to us? I’m wondering if it doesn’t have something to do with our pace of industrialization and computerization, the ever increasing speed of Henry Ford’s assembly line, and so on. I wonder if those things are what drove us or if, like fast-food joints, they were just things driven by our own impatient appetites.

I’ll bet some college kid could make some points with a thorough paper on that subject.

With a tip of the old fisherman’s cap towards college life, here’s a mildly interesting clip from the KC Star on 6/26/06, written by Mará Rose Williams, encouragingly titled “Mental Health Woes Rise”:

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/living/education/higher_learning/14902250.htm

The gist of that story is that today there are more American college kids checking themselves in for “depression” than ever before. And, I thought it sort of surprising, it’s not the freshman but the junior and the senior students making up most of these sad numbers. These kids are almost graduates, they should be excited about their future not depressed. But they are down. They are worried. They are feeling a bit impatient with their surroundings and they are stressed out.

Now, if you read that YOU might get depressed. I know I did. I instantly wondered, forget the World Cup, what kinda hell have we pushed onto these college kids? What have we done? Why are they so disturbed?

You know, when it comes to kids, we always blame ourselves first in these dire situations. It must have something to do with the way we were raised and the way we raised them.

Well, in my family, our gift for impatience started with the fellow sitting at the end of the dinner table. My dad was a member of the American generation that refused to be depressed or bored, our nation’s greatest generation.

Whoa! I almost wrote the nation’s “so-called” greatest generation. In truth, there ain’t nothing so-called about it. It’s a fact.

The way I figure it, you have to get your ticket punched twice to get your name on that roster. First, you have to survive the real Depression then you have to survive WWII.

Now, as wars go, to be honest WWII wasn’t like our Civil War in terms of a horrifying tragedy. But there’s no doubt it was not a good event. (… ah, shit … for the first time all day, these human words fail me … war is the most inhuman of all things, yet it is so naturally human, so ingrained within our consciousness that we can calmly compare one’s tragic result to another … it’s ironic and insane … I’ll say nothing more on this subject.)

Suffice it to say WWII and the Depression were two hellish times in our history. If you survived both of those things then bingo, you are in my party, everybody else back up, give the brother some room, front row seats for you, pal, hope you enjoy the show, thank you very much.

And to those who did survive, I must say to you, don’t feel guilty about that. I’ve talked to a lot of folks from this era who are prone to wondering, “Why me? Why did I make it?”

I’ll tell you why. So soft-bellied little babies like me can look at your beautiful face, listen to your thrilling stories, and remember that it wasn’t always so comfortable here in the Land of the Free.

Anyway, Daddy Bamboo did grow up during the official Depression on a hard scrabble farm in eastern Kansas. He ran away from home with barely an eighth-grade education and worked like a dog on a dairy farm in North Dakota. He was drafted and fought in a world war at a young age, later trained grown men to do the same, bitched and complained about a lot of stuff and put up with a lot of crap throughout his life, but in his mind he knew precisely what was depressing and what was not.

He had those stories for those who think they might have it a bit rough. Anyone who has a dad from that era knows these stories by heart.

These are the stories about never having proper shirts on your back or shoes on your feet. They remind us plumbing wasn’t always indoors and school houses once had only one room. In Dad’s story, there’s the part about if he was lucky he could bring a potato to school to be boiled in unsalted water on the wood stove in the center of the room so he could have something to eat for lunch. Yes, there’s even the part, made famous by Bill Cosby, about walking to school in the snow, up hill, “both ways”. All these depression-era guys told the same story of grief.

Do you know what my dad would have told some “stressed” modern day college kid? For those who don’t have an idea, he’d say something encouraging like this:

“You ain’t got it so bad. Now, I want you to wipe your snotty little noses, get your butts back to class, and shut the hell up!”

And that’s putting it mildly.

But, to be honest, Dad wasn’t heartless. He once confided in me a story about when he was drilling some raw Army recruits out in the hot sun one afternoon at Fort Leavenworth. Everyone was uncomfortable in the oppressive heat, he said, but one guy in the formation was constantly fidgeting and this sent Dad through the roof.

The rule says, when you’re at attention, you don’t move. This guy broke the rule. He had hell to pay for that and the bill was delivered on that day with a comprehensive ass chewing, another one of Dad’s specialties.

Later, Dad said, he learned that the poor guy was frantic because he had a pesky bee buzzing around his face. Dad told me this in the most solemn, sincere way. It bothered him a lot. He was truly sorry for giving that guy so much hell. Had he known the source of the fidgeting, he would have squashed the bee himself instead of chewing that guy out and felt a lot better about it.

So, what I’m saying here, kiddies, if the bee buzzing in your ear is real, not imaginary, then old Dad would understand completely. Then he would go out of his way to help you. But if it ain’t real, then you better hump on back to class real pronto-like if you know what’s good for you.

Here it is, now, the future. The future that Dad and his greatest generation gave to us all. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. Yet, because Dad and his generation were far from perfect, we suffer from some odd afflictions. One of those greatest afflictions is our impatience. This is why we have such a hard time sitting still. This is why we hate zero-sum games. This is why we can’t wait to get out of school.

The nation’s greatest generation taught us this affliction by the way they lived and my Dad was, if nothing else, a feverish representative of his class.

It comes to my mind that I have never met a man more dedicated or happily committed to a life of Sisyphean pursuit than my dad. Bad weather, national holidays, nothing would stop this guy from doing things especially if they didn’t need to be done. If things were all working well, he would anxiously tear them apart and rebuild them. He would clean things before they got dirty, knowing full well that if he did or didn’t, they would still get dirty. This endless, pointless labor was his way of life.

From painting the house to mowing the yard to washing the windows, this guy was a constant flurry of endless activity. I don’t know how he found time to actually go to work

If, God forbid, a solitary leaf spiraled its way down from a tall tree on a blustery autumn afternoon and silently made its way toward our front yard, at a time when I would much rather play football with my friends, Dad was there to make sure I was instantly organized, trained and equipped so that offending leaf would find its proper place.

And his generation invented the saying, if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself! To this day, this is why I know nothing about the inner workings of the combustion engine. Every time my car would make a little poof of an odd noise, Dad would run out with a bag of tools and holler for all the neighbors to hear, “Get out of the way, I will handle this!”

This is how he was raised, though. He believed he could do anything if he put his mind to it and if something was worth doing, it was worth doing right this very second. During his time, there was no other way of doing things. And, as a result, he thought sitting around watching the grass grow was evil procrastination.

Oh, boy, I wish I had a dollar for every time he tried to do complex things on his own, things that he had no business doing, instead of calling on a professional. Mom said, after hearing an odd sizzling noise in the house, she would regularly find him sprawled out underneath a ladder, sweat dripping from his brow, after he had zapped himself again with a heavy jolt while trying to wire up some new light fixture or electric thingy in the basement.

Daddy Bamboo once got his busy hands on a chain saw. I don’t remember where he got it. Something makes me think he found it in a garbage dumpster. He was famous for retrieving things other people threw away, tearing them apart, and bringing them back to life. I think he had secretly always wanted a new chain saw to play with but could never completely justify the expense. Another hand-me-down affliction!

All I remember was waking up way, way too early one Saturday morning to the rude sound of a loud chain saw outside my bedroom window. By the time I had dressed and got out of the house, Dad had trimmed every tree in our yard whether it needed trimming or not.

Actually, “trim” is a poor word in this case. The trees were hacked down to the nub, only their thick naked trunks remained standing proud in the cool morning wind, their heavy branches fallen like dead soldiers all around them. My little Sis, just emerging in her pajamas from the house, saw the violent damage and began to sob.

Before I could speak, he told me, “They’ll grow back better next year. You’ll see.”

Without taking a breath, he grabbed the saw and a bucket of gasoline and ran across the street to Mrs. Burke’s house.

Poor old Mrs. Burke was as kind and sweet as a kitten, the most generous Christian woman I have ever met. When Dad introduced her to his new chain saw and asked if she’d like her trees trimmed, she thanked him and said, why, yes, that would be lovely.

Little did she know.

When she returned from her house chores and hour or so later, she was muted by what she saw. There Dad stood, grinning ear to ear, a quiet but smoldering chain saw in his hand, pointing to what was left of her oak tree in the front yard.

The headless torso of the mighty trunk stood with two crudely amputated limbs on either side, pointing helplessly to the sky as if it was crying, “Why, Lord? Why me?”

Mrs. Burke held her hand to her open mouth, unable to speak.

“You’ll see,” Dad bubbled, “the shade will be much better next year!”

This is why we have no patience, people! The same tools, the same attitude, the same “get off your butt” mentality that made it possible for the greatest generation to be great made us crazy about doing stuff, and doing it now, even if it doesn’t need to be done. And it is this condition, which I’ve heard some call the “action imperative”, which naturally makes us unwilling to sit through a meandering, pointless and scoreless game.

When I was younger, I would try to tell him, hey, take it easy, the grass will grow, the leaves will fall, we don’t need to catch them all! Just watch the game, man! But he thought I was crazy. And slowly, over the years, I gave up and did become crazy. Crazy just like him.

But Dad escaped the depressing chains of hell on this earth almost 11 years ago, taking the cause of my craziness with him. Although a fervent worker, he was not a religious man. He never went to church as far as I know and I never heard him say anything about spiritual matters. His dog tags identified him as a Protestant which I expect was true since he spent his life protesting loudly about damn near everything. He was definitely a man of the earth, rigidly imperfect but set on dealing with coincidence, catastrophe and good fortune with equal and rapid preventive vengeance.

I have some friends who say that’s ok. His soul will be just fine. Some say he may have already been reincarnated, perhaps making up for what he lacked in his previous life.

I have other friends who suggest it’s not ok. These friends must believe that, well, his soul went somewhere else. I find that very hard to believe. But if that’s true, I can just imagine what’s going on down there.

One thing’s for sure, wherever he is, the workforce is well organized. I’ll bet the oil and the filters are changed regularly, the trees are trimmed neatly and the house is cleaned and shining from an everlasting new coat of paint.

In a few years, the US might field a team that is competitive in the World Cup, so it’s probably important that we get on board and up to speed on that game, even if it does seem like it’s in slow motion.

Around that time, the kids now in college will have graduated, overcoming their temporary set backs to take on the heavy responsibility of running our businesses and our nation. We probably need to help them when we can, making sure they are squared away as much as possible so they don’t ruin it all for their own kids.

And, if we just have some patience and let Dad do what he does best, hell, by then, it might not be such a bad place after all.

I think it will definitely be better next year.

You’ll see.

Cheers,
Mb