Maybe (Maybe Not) (10 page)

“I know him now. I can smell him, sense him before he moves. I welcome him. Yah, Toro, come on. I plant my feet and watch him come. He charges. I pass him safely by with a swing of the cape of my confidence. The crowd in my head roars. OLÉ! The crowd is made up of all those ancestors who passed their bulls—they are pulling for me. OLÉ! OLÉ! OLÉ!

“There is always a silence when the bull is defeated.”

“And in that silence, the bird in the window sings again?”

“Yes.”

I
n 1984 my wife and I shouldered our backpacks and set off on a five-month journey around the world. A dream come true. A wonder wander walkabout. The romantic anticipation came easy—the reality was often hard.

Traveling is anxious work. So much time is absorbed in just coping with the unfamiliar—with language, currency, local customs and officials, accommodations, and food. The trouble with “Getting Away from It All” is that you indeed get away from it all—all those background comforts of home—as well as from the unconscious ease with familiar smells, sounds, and cultural patterns. Having all your mental systems on full alert for a long time is exhausting. One gets cranky. And two get even crankier.

Our adventure fatigue was relieved by an elephant ride in Thailand.

This came at the midpoint of our journey, when we were thinking, If we’re having such a wonderful time, why aren’t we having a wonderful time?

An acquaintance arranged for us to visit a forest reserve north of Chiang Mai where elephants are still used for all the heavy work of logging. We were to view the operation from elephant back. A shaky ladder was tilted against the side of an elephant. We cautiously climbed up and onto an equally shaky wooden platform strapped to the elephant’s back. The anxiety of getting on was matched by the anxiety of riding. We were a long way off the ground, and it felt as if we would be catapulted in that direction at any moment by the great lurching march of the beast.

When the ladder was raised again for us to get off, I noticed a small sign attached to the top step.

In the ensuing years, much of that trip around the world has faded from conscious memory. But indelibly written in the operating instructions for my life is that admonition from the top rung of that ladder in Thailand. The instructions continued, concerning
holding on with both hands and not poking the elephant. But it was that first line that spoke to me.

Even now, when I am about to make a move of consequence, small or large, a warning light flashes from the control panel in my head: “This is an elephant dismount.” And sometimes, sometimes, I actually manage to compose my mind.

S
occer Mania comes to our Seattle neighborhood every September.

When children appear at the door selling luxury candy bars to make money to buy their own uniforms, we know the soccer season is under way. These ill—at-ease visitors on the front porch are the rookies, both at the game of soccer and the game of door-to-door sales.

Here’s the tableau:

A timid knock at the door. A small child. Head down, muttering, hand holding out the bar of chocolate as if apologetically returning something stolen.

The child does not want to be there.

The parent, standing off in the bushes, does not want to be there.

And you do not need the chocolate.

But since you were once the child and several times the parent in this semi-scam, you are obliged to take your place in this initiation of the young into entrepreneurial capitalism, sports, and the American Way.

(Besides, while it is true that you don’t really
need
the chocolate, you
want
the chocolate, and it feels so right to simultaneously help the young and get candy.)

The nine-year-old daughter of a friend recently went through this coming-of-age ritual in a way that was both disastrous and triumphant.

Since this was the first season for her team, each child was obliged to help raise money for uniforms by taking at least one case of chocolate bars to sell. A model of soccer-team spirit—everybody plays a part in achieving a goal.

With no enthusiasm whatever, the girl accepted her case of chocolate in the same spirit she would accept pimples in a few years—something to be avoided if possible, but endured if necessary. She wanted to play ball. She didn’t know retail sales was a prerequisite, but so be it.

Her mother and father did not buy the whole case outright from her as she had hoped. So much for Plan A.

Her brother and his friends were no help, though they tried to help her diminish her inventory by stealing a couple of bars. And every member of her Sunday School class also had chocolate to sell.

She hid the chocolate under her bed for a week, hoping a fairy would take it and leave the money. No luck.

When the soccer-league candy chairmother called the father to find out what was going on and why the child had neither come to soccer practice nor produced the chocolate receipts, the father’s pride was hooked. He promised results.

He gave his daughter an emergency-level intensive course in salesmanship and personal responsibility. He and the daughter rehearsed. She came to the door and practiced knocking and he shouted, “KNOCK LOUDER, I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” until she could hit the door like the first wave of a police raid.

He made her look up, speak plainly, and offer a two-for-one deal if necessary. When he finally got her to shout, “
BUY THIS CANDY OR I WILL SET YOUR HOUSE ON FIRE!”
he figured assertiveness training had gone far enough. He marched her off with fire in her belly. She was pumped!

At the first house, her father gave her a go-get-’em pat on the butt and hid behind a tree to watch the kid pitch candy. The child stood at the door without moving for five agonizing minutes until her
father realized the fire in her belly had burned out. He rescued her, and they walked back home in silence.

The father gave her a new pep talk about doing hard things and having courage and how it was when he was a little boy. He appealed to her place in the future of feminism. Real women can do this, OK? OK. All right, let’s get ’em!

This time she wanted to go alone—her father lurking around on the sidelines made her nervous.

At the first house, she did her door-pounding and then ran for it.

Several other neighbors wondered who pounded at their door and disappeared. Unable to go beating on doors, the child spent the rest of the afternoon in the garage, hunkered down in the backseat of the family sedan. She reappeared at dinnertime, defeated.

The father couldn’t give up. Too much was on the line. Crucial time in the life of his child. He considered the power of advertising. Take advantage of location. The family lived in a university town, in a neighborhood where football fans parked their cars on the way to the stadium for the Saturday afternoon games. Hundreds of people walking by. They would want and need candy!

The father explained the concept of advertising to
his daughter and convinced her that all they had to do was make a sign, and she could stand down there on the street corner for an hour before the football game and the fans would buy all the candy she had.

They made a sign, HELP THE HILLSIDE SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM BUY UNIFORMS—$1.00—GREAT CHOCOLATE!

The little girl was gone for an hour. Her father could see her from the front porch and checked on her from time to time. She was selling candy hand over fist. Yes! YES!!

She came home smiling. A triumphant smile. She had sold
ALL
the chocolate—the whole case. She was relieved. Her father was proud of her and pleased with himself. What a team they made! They celebrated with a banana split, with extra chocolate sauce.

A couple of days later, their next-door neighbor, who had been a party to this adventure in retail sales, came over in the evening at that hour when children are already in bed. He and the father sat out on the front porch and had a beer while they enjoyed the autumn sky. The neighbor said, “I have something to show you. It’s too good to keep, but you have to promise not to show it to your daughter.”

From out of a brown paper grocery bag, the neighbor took a folded piece of cardboard. “I found this in my garbage can.”

It was the sign the father had made for the daughter. It still said HELP THE HILLSIDE SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM BUY UNIFORMS—$1.00—GREAT CHOCOLATE. But underneath those words, in his daughter’s crayoned printing, was this footnote:

“MY FATHER MADE ME DO THIS.”

W
hen I taught philosophy, I began the course by walking into the room after the students were seated and announcing, “We are now going to play musical chairs.” The only further instruction was, “Please arrange your chairs and get ready to play.”

No student ever asked why. Ever. And no student ever asked how to play.

They knew the rules as surely as they knew hide-and-seek.

Always the same response—the students enthusiastically arranged the chairs in a line with the seats alternating directions, then stood encircling the row of chairs. Ready, ready, ready!

All I had to do was punch up “Stars and Stripes Forever” on the tape machine, and the students
marched around the chairs. Mind you, these were seniors in high school. They hadn’t played musical chairs since second grade. But they still knew how, and jumped into the game without hesitation. Musical chairs! All right!

After removing a few chairs, I stopped the music. There was a mad scramble for the remaining chairs. Those without chairs were stunned. They knew how this game worked—music stops, get a chair—how could they not have a chair so soon? They had “How dumb can I be?” written on their faces.

Too bad. But they were losers. Out. Over against the wall. Only a game.

Music continues, students march around, chain removed, STOP!

Students go crazy trying to get a chair this time.

As the game goes on, the quest for chairs turns serious. Then rough.

Girls are not going to fight jocks for chairs. Losers to the wall.

Down to two members of the wrestling team, who are willing to push, knee, kick, or bite to be the last person in a chair. This is war! STOP! And by jerking the chair out from under his opponent, one guy slams down into the last chair—a look of triumph on his face—hands raised high with forefingers signaling NUMBER ONE, NUMBER ONE.

The last student in the last chair always acted as if the class admired him and his accomplishment. He got the CHAIR! “I’m a WINNER!” Wrong.

Those losers lined up against the wall thought he was a jerk.

Admiration? Hardly. Contempt is what they felt.

This was not a game. Games were supposed to be fun.

This got too serious too fast—like high school life—and real life.

Did they want to play again? A few of the jocks did. But not the rest of the class. It all came back to them now. Big deal.

I insisted. Play one more time. With one rule change. Musical chairs as before, but this time, if you don’t have a chair, sit down in someone’s lap. Everybody stays in the game—it’s only a matter of where you sit.