Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

On Friday morning, our neighbor across the street got out of bed and told his wife, "I think I'm going to die today."

His wife said, "Oh, you're just saying that."

Ten minutes later he collapsed on the floor and died.

Three fire department vehicles and three police cars remained outside for over half an hour and did not hurry off when they were done.

I learned that when there's a dead body, it's automatically considered a crime scene until proven reasonably to be otherwise. Thus the police cars.

Since I was watching from across the street, I was the first non-family member over there to offer comfort when it appeared appropriate to go. The grieving son was already there.

The man who died was a big football fan (a former player). He and his son watched the OSU football game on Thursday night.

There must be a moral. There certainly ought to be. Who wants to come to the end of his life and find that all that can be said is, "So that was it, eh?"

On Cussing

Some people can make anything sound like cussing because it's really as much about the attitude and sound as it is the actual words.

Once when I was at work at my job in Times Square, the guy who sat next to me, a very worldly low-life type who had nonetheless had a Fundamentalist background, suddenly slammed the table with his fist and exclaimed with venomous anger: "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!"

I just about fell out of my chair laughing. I'm sure I was the only person in the office who had a clue where that came from.

Mark Twain was well known for his cussing in speech (not in writing). His wife, on the other hand, was one of those prim and proper ladies who doubtless never said a naughty word in her life of her own origination. One time Twain was in a mood and spewed off a string of invective in her hearing.  Ostensibly to shame him, she carefully and precisely repeated every word he'd just said. Twain said, "Well, my dear, it seems you know the words, but you've got the melody all wrong."

My Rebellion

As a student I was pretty much a straight arrow. I may have tried to bend the rules a bit, but not severely. I was no troublemaker.

In musical ensembles, when I played bass trombone, I used to do things like play pedal B-flats to fatten a brass chord when the octave higher was indicated. I don't suppose that's exactly the model of rebellion, but it wasn't in the score, and I did believe in playing things according to the score.

About the only time I really rebelled was once when I was utterly ticked at the university band department for something (I usually was),  and went to the performance and moved my slide around, but did not play a single note.

The summer after my freshman year I worked as a lifeguard at Lee Street beach in Evanston and had an opportunity to return to that job after my sophomore year. It was a perfect summer job for a college student. However, the starting day of the job, which was absolutely required to get the job, was the day of graduation, and the director (who shall here remain nameless) wanted all hands on deck for the performance.

Band members got stipends in those days. I tried to beg off, but the total non-musician and charlatan director pulled a political move, insisting he needed exactly so many trombone players (the same for other instruments as well), and that if I failed to show up, I'd lose my stipend. Worse than that, I'd have a black mark against my name, and even though I planned to have no more dealings with the band department from that time forward, I was righteously indignant and concerned about my personal integrity.

So I showed up for the performance. But I did not play a note, thereby belying the director's insistence that eight trombones were needed to fill out the "sound" he imagined.  And as a result of that, I did not have a summer job.

I've remained resentful of that utterly stupid situation to this day.

Higher Pursuits

Hey Ma! Me 'n Harlan's takin' the F-150 into town to hear that Schubert Lieder recital. Afterwards we'll tip a brewskis with the Wallace Stevens discussion group as we try to duke out what "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is s'posed to be all about. Don't wait up.