This week was full of ups and downs, highs and lows, fun and “work.” We finished re-decorating a bathroom, entertained multiple sets of guests, visited a hospital, dined out several times with family and friends, split up for two gigs (Athens and Cumming), updated a parent’s DSL and computer set-up, assembled a fire pit, watched an emotional heist movie, and discovered a floor full of water. Relax – most of these will not be discussed today, although I would not be surprised to hear more about some of them later.
Oxygen
The hospital trip involved an 8-month old great niece who was in town for a medical procedure. I believe I can convey the thought for this section without going into personal details. At one point in the evening, I was given the opportunity to help out for a few seconds by holding a tiny oxygen mask in place. I can’t remember ever feeling so useful across such a small number of seconds. I am well aware that medical people do so much more on a regular basis, but that is not my field nor my experience, and I was glad to have even this small opportunity.
Vicarious Pride
Spock, Scully, Yang, and Sheldon represent a pop-culture trope of logical, emotionless characters, who are also generally possessed of extremely high intelligence. I am often tempted to place myself in this category except for the intelligence requirement. I regularly analyze myself in a fruitless attempt to understand why my emotional makeup seems to differ so much from most of my family and friends.
For example, when I tell people that one of my children is a doctor in residency, the response is often, “Oh, you must be so proud!” And I never know what to say, although I generally stumble on some socially acceptable response. I’m not that dense.
The fact is, I really am proud of all of my children, but not necessarily because of their accomplishments. It’s more because of who they are. I see their accomplishments as rational outcomes of their genetic and environmental influences, one of which is me. I hope that I have not screwed them up irrecoverably.
But I did have one of those “proud” experiences at the hospital. Although I have heard many fascinating stories from her residency, I have never had the opportunity to watch my daughter work. But I did have the opportunity to watch a pediatric resident at work Wednesday night, and the care he took, and the skill he exercised, and his overall thoughtfulness all made me think of my daughter, and I was, indeed, profoundly “proud” of her at that moment.
I have a much better response to that question now. And I’m still proud of all of my children. Not to mention my spouse, who made them the delightful people they are today, in part by providing them with a human habitat to grow up in, as a counterbalance to my rather cyborgian context.
A Fink
Wife and I were talking about people Sunday afternoon as we motored about, and I was reminded of one of my first employers, Mr. E. D. Fink, first name Elmer, but usually called Ed. While in my mid-teens, I cut and raked Mr. Fink’s yard and performed miscellaneous yard work.
Mr. Fink was a shop teacher at Jordan Vocational High School, the cross-town rivals of my alma mater, Columbus High. (That may well have been the beginning of my ambivalent attitude toward athletic rivalries. Who knows?) Mr. Fink was smart, literate, and inventive. He “invented,” designed and manufactured several steel yard devices, including a device to hold a hose spray nozzle in a fixed position so he didn’t have to stand there holding it himself, and a dibble. A dibble is a pointed device for planting seedlings.
One of my most memorable experiences with Mr. Fink was the removal of a huge eleagnus hedge in his back yard. This particular eleagnus consisted of a dozen or so plants at least 15 feet tall, with vegetation about 6 feet thick. To remove it, I had to crawl under the hedge and, carefully avoiding the two-inch long thorns, saw them off at ground level using a bow saw. Once each one was sawn, I wrapped a chain around the base and pulled it out with my Dad’s Bronco. We piled them into a huge pile and burned them. It took two Saturdays, probably about ten hours of work total.
Most of the time at Mr. Fink’s house I was busy working, but occasionally he would take a few minutes to impart some of his philosophical thoughts. They were mostly about a positive work ethic, doing a good job, that kind of thing. One random comment I remember was that he hated to pick up tissues that blew into his yard, because you “never know which end they used them on.”
But the comment that sticks with me the most is the one I recounted to Jayne on Sunday, as we discussed various events and personalities. Part of its charm is the incorrect grammar, which is frequently cute coming from a literate person, and part of it is the “What?” that goes through your mind if you think about it too much. But it works for me in plenty of situations.
Mr. Fink would pause, look me in the eye, grin, and say, “You know, there isn’t nothin’ funnier than folks.”
I need look no further than my own Spock-like reflection in the bathroom mirror to be convinced that he was right.