: lower black pain.

Happy New Year!

Used to be, long ago, that I was “in advertising”, deftly mixiting key wordses and imagery like an Ibiza DJ, building the hype of the crowds ’til they were uncontrollably driven to purchase soup, or perhaps very high-end non-basic cable television add-on channels. Heady stuff.

I remember once, in my youth, speaking to an old-timer (probably younger than myself now) who told me that the two most used words in the history of the industry were “new” and “improved”.

Improved always seemed more impressive - something you loved made better, based on the fact that whatever it consisted of originally had been either added to or enhanced in some way - the taste was tastier, the comfort more comfortable. But underlying this proposition was a lie - sweet could not be much sweeter without being cloying, soft lost structure once it was too soft. Improvement that wasn’t fixing something wrong was just based on MORE, not better, and MORE is indeed better until it surpasses ENOUGH.

But NEW. New is always perfect.

New has no past and is all future.

New shines like the gleam of a shiny thing on the sunniest day backed against the clearest of clear blue skies.

New not only looks good, it smells terrific - New Car Smell, most likely a just-below lethal symphony of gasses and toxins, is extremely highly regarded as both phrase and scent. In contrast, “car smell” is not.

When something is NEW it is by default DIFFERENT. New is the opposite of OLD. New is the opposite of USED. New is the byproduct of Unique, the incredibly attractive secret cousin of Contemporary, the only truly non-terrifying part of The Unknown.

New is not a compliment, it’s an undeniable state of being that must be marked. “Are those shoes NEW?” we ask. “Is that a new hairstyle?” We, of course, know the answer - the shoes are spotless and the coiffure seems to be moving in slow motion, waves of perfect cut and color cascading with every head turn. But we must ask, as we haven’t put anything in context yet because they get extra points right off the bat if they’re NEW. New is perishable, and must be enjoyed promptly.

Today is the day Gregorian calendar fans seek a fresh start, a chance to turn their ships around, start the race, plant the seed, begin the quest. Today is Page One of the unwritten novel of another year, the studio credits at the beginning of the film of the next twelve months.

It’s not perfect. It’s both too cold and too warm (depending on where one is on the planet), and the challenges of the day before have neither dissipated nor resolved.

It’s not ideal; it’s the middle of the workweek, and doesn’t necessarily improve on any aspect of the weeks or months leading up to it.

But today is NEW, because our calendar has exhausted its pages and is itself new, and everyone on the planet agrees that it’s new, and they’ll say that to you when you’re out at the grocery store.

“Is that a New Year?” they’ll ask.

“This?” you reply, with a cocktail of surprise and humility. “Well, yes, yes it is.”

“Looks good on you!” they say in a tone that is warm but ever-so-slightly jealous in its undertone.

And they’re right. That New Year does look good on you. You simply MUST tell the rest of us where you got it.

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I’ve been to a few baby showers, and no one brought the baby little stones, though that is the story of Christmas, that there was a magnificent child whose first gifts were all rocks of some kind. Well precious stones and aromatic resin that kind of looks like rocks.

Then there is the tale of the little drummer boy, who brought music. That was always my favorite, what a great gift, so much more meaningful, no disrespect to Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar.

But yesterday I was on a work video call and one of my colleagues had her 9 month baby and as soon as I saw her face I started ooo-ing and “wubby wubby wubby” ing and that kid just smiled and clapped her hands and I completely forgot about the annual report. We were all working on Christmas Eve, the bailiwick of Ebenezer Scrooge, but the situation looked brighter when that kid started grinning.

I know that would have been me, two thousand twenty five years ago. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I think my gift would have been to (try to) make the baby laugh. The drummer boy’s performance got a smile, which was more than the fancier gifts got, according to reports. Admittedly I am ignorant regarding the value of precious stones and incense in the ancient world, but music and a smile, while hard to wrap, can soothe and lift where riches and scents cannot.

So the last gift on my list to Santa this year is just that - music and levity. Again, I’ve asked for things I already have, so it’s really just a list of gratitude and appreciation and besides, I kind of bought myself that 20th anniversary super limited-edition pressing of my favorite White Stripes album from eBay a few weeks ago.

But I didn’t open it yet, because it was too close to Christmas.

Christmas at our house is all about music. Not all of my friends celebrate this specific holiday, but we can still share a few of the songs - mostly the ones about weather - snow and cold and winter… those are universal-ish.

For about ten years I held an annual winter holidays lunchtime celebration for the creative production team I was in charge of, which we called Christmahanasolistwanzaa”. I also created an original carol for the event every year, which was mostly impressive because it’s such a difficult word to rhyme. These songs were very tongue-in-cheek but very heartfelt, and some of the folks I worked with still text me that they hear them every year on their holiday playlists.

I thought that it was high time to make a little new one, focused on the weather, applicable to anyone in the Northern Hemisphere. I refrained from using our old holiday moniker to make it a little easier on myself as I only had three hours to do it because I worked all day Christmas Eve.

But I did get that smile from that kid. Totally worth it.

Happy Christmas.

And if you’d like to hear the song, please click on this week’s narration.

Sniffles and sneezesfrom Nor-Easter breezesare nothing to look forward toSkies are not complementaryWhen mixes are wintryBut they seem much warmer with youTrees are bare but I’m wearing six layersAnd something’s in the airEverywhere

Well, I can get by the weatherIf iI can just spend my December Together with you

Yes, I can get by the weatherIf I can just spend my

December togetherwith you.

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Santa comes but once a year, like your birthday, but somehow it seems longer between Christmases than birthdays. December feels like it has 72 days rather than 31, with the 25th kind of always just out of reach, like that dolly zoom Hitchcock used to do where the thing in the middle just lurches through space. Sakes.

I haven’t sent my letter yet, but as previously stated, it is short, with mostly a thank you and an ask after the family and Jack Frost. (I have been a good boy this year, and even an OK man, from time to time.)

Gift No. 3. Patience

if in this world

(which is somewhat adrift)

i could give my child one ideal Christmas giftthis year i would choose an activity long pastholding a life lesson which I hope would last.

it isn’t expensive or fancyin factat its heart is a simple, plain household object from which I learned a strategy of how to cope.

What is it?

A self-addressed stamped envelope.

it’s NOT the perfect gift, you say?

well understand, back in MY DAYyou wanted something really greatit’s possible you’d have to wait

say, if you had exciting plansto join a cool club meant for FANSyou’d have to deal with writing cramps(they didn’t waste their cash on stamps)

you get 2 envelopes (no less)on one, you put on your own addressthen take the next (a bit more wide)and put the first one, stamped, inside

send all of that to where they askand then you face the hardest taskwords in the fine print - hard to see

“allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery”

today, that’s a truly significant gap from the time you want something ’til it’s in your graspbut this was a late seventies paradigm: we paid for some things both in money, and time

at this point, we had no choice but to simply waitand after few weeks achieve a keen stateof true patience.

a zen-ish faiththat all was good, knowing that it would show upwhenever it would

and then (in the most meta IRL thing)one afternoon your friendly postman would bring youA LETTER FROM YOUstuffed with little surprises(impressively small due to restrictive sizes)

but whatever the prize they had started the buzzit was rarely as good as the wait for it wasample space to imagine, guess, and lightly fretas to what you eventually were gonna get

now Chronos and all the Norns suffer neglecti think that they all deserve much more respectin our age of “right now”s, where not much is tactilei believe the best present is

“after a while”.

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A Christmas list is a bold statement - the idea that you deserve something, much less the entire contents of a manicured list, is a brave stance to take, particularly when you’re young. And then bringing that list to a man you only see once a year and not spending your time catching up or asking about his family but instead reciting the list to him in full expectation of his timely delivery of said items is… extremely presumptive.

Yet Santa listens, and smiles, and nods appreciatively, and takes a picture with you, and instructs one of his elves to give you a lollipop. Amazon™ does not give us lollipops, or photographs, or empathetic smiles - only boxes.

Having never been allowed to sit on Santa’s lap -

(see: https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/gifts-of-thwipmas-past )

my relationship with him was more mature. I stood next to him, man to (little tiny) man in thoughtful, respectful discussion. I always thanked him for what he had delivered the year before, and only brought him one request, and then only if it wasn’t too much.

This year I am respectfully asking Santa for gifts that don’t cost anything. There are more than one, but he doesn’t have to wrap or deliver them, so I’m hoping the resulting carbon offset equals everything out.

Gift No. 2. Dignity. “The state or quality of being worthy of respect” In Two Acts.

(first act: tragedy)

The next to the last straw in leaving my long standing corporate job was a comment by company leadership regarding the saying of “hello”.

Our business had experienced a series of financial downturns, resulting in a total overhaul of work space: the majority of private spaces were demolished in favor of an open floor plan. Shared upscale picnic tables with a long corridor in the middle led to the only remaining offices on the perimeter. In these offices were important C-Suite talent.

So obviously to get to these offices, company leadership had to walk past a sea of employees, busy at work in the 36” by 24” space they had settled into that day. Complaints were lodged that as they passed, they would only greet a handful of those who said “good morning” to them, most often acknowledging the same few employees every day.

That complaint came to me, as the executive responsible for inclusion and benevolent cultural interaction. When I spoke to leadership about this, I was told (in a chummy, “you understand” kind of way) that since we could no longer offer raises and bonuses as incentives for diligent dedication, attention was being used as a substitute.

“Dignity is a human currency.” I was told, in what felt like confidence due to the lowered volume, slight narrowing of eye and leaning inward of head. “We can’t just give it to everybody. People should feel it’s something they need to earn. We have to give people something to aspire to, and worry about.”

And that was it for me, because parceling out the simple dignity of acknowledgement, flagrantly disregarding every person’s intrinsic value in order to manipulate those under your management is… well… bad, I think.

At that moment I knew it was time to find somewhere more generally aligned with my “you should just kind of try to be nice to everybody” policy.

Again, I think this might have been told to me in confidence. Hmn.

Ok, well, don’t tell anybody.

(second act: comedy)

I directed a play in high school written by a cast member of the Monty Python’s Flying Circus comedy troupe, a sendup of the kind of murder mysteries written in 1940’s UK boys adventure magazines. None of this coordinated with my existence as a 1980’s black kid in Kansas City, but I thought I could adapt the material a bit.

That didn’t really work, so I went the other way, adding a surrealist slide show with odd musical choices between scenes… like a live-action Python episode.

I was actually cast in the play as the irascible old grandfather, who predictably is the first to get murdered. Due to some silly plot point, the characters are not allowed to move the body, so it is covered with a tablecloth until the police can arrive. I would be able to run the projections from the balcony if I could just find someone to switch with me during the blackout. Since my hands were visible from under the tablecloth, it had to be an African-American someone.

There was a guy… in my class, just about my size, probably the smartest guy in the school, and the only other person besides me to use duct tape to hold his glasses together from time to time. He was not interested in the theatre, but found my proposal intriguing - slip under the tablecloth while I leave the stage, stay there for about 17 minutes, then come out and take a bow with us. The simplicity of the whole operation amused him, and he thought it would be a fun fact to add to his transcripts for college admissions.

Everyone knew him, but only peripherally, as, well, that smart guy with broken glasses (from time to time); not a football player or a cheerleader - his identity was stable and entirely free of controversy (or dare I say, drama).

So, Iike most of us in high school, he was underestimated. And that is what led to the most significant moment of public adoration I have ever been a part of.

We were required to perform each play for an assembly of the entire school. Mine was the second of two one-acts performed that day. For a midwestern high school’s reception of a student-directed surrealist rendering of a post-war British farce, things went pretty well.

At the end, all of the main characters are murdered and covered with tablecloths (it’s a comedy): so for our curtain call the last cast member standing (the chambermaid) takes a bow alone, then one by one takes off each person’s tablecloth for their bow. When she finally reached where my character was sitting, I walked out from the side of the stage.

The audience was visibly and audibly confused. I responded with a furrowed brow, looked behind me, turned back to them as if to say “Oh! That!” and walked over to pull the tablecloth off my double, bespeckled, in full makeup, who strode to the dead center of the stage with his arms raised triumphantly above his head.

It was absolutely deafening. Every student, every teacher, instantly on their feet, cheering madly. It lasted for almost a full minute… the rest of the cast did the thing where we all stepped back and held our hands out facing him, like he was the conductor of the orchestra we didn’t have in the pit.

And amazing as that moment was, it was afterwards that made the difference, when people were giving this kid high fives in the hallway, all the freshmen knew his name, and teachers randomly patted him on the back. He walked a little differently down the halls, yes, with dignity, but not because someone has given him a little respect, but because they acknowledged that he had been worthy of it all along, and they just never knew. Everyone had been impressed with how smart he was, and thought they had him pegged, but he defied their definition and did something brave and unexpected. Cool.

The play didn’t inspire even one person to ask me about groundbreaking British comedy, but watching that kid, I absolutely didn’t mind.

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Sure, you can give presents at the holidays, in boxes, like everybody else, but the real challenge is always to find something UNIQUE, isn’t it? Something no one else would ever think of? Something fun to give that inspires happy surprise in the give-ee.

Well, the best things in life, I’ve heard told, are free. And while most of those are impossible to wrap, it is generally agreed that their impact greatly outshines that of any, say, tiny mechanical “life-like” dog from the internet.

So my list for Santa this year is unique in the fact that he cannot actually bring the requested gifts to my house. They are not objects, but concepts, thus they all just have to happen, Deus Ex Machina style, like I was a character in a Netflix™ holiday movie who keeps running into a kind old stranger with twinkling eyes and a full white beard that I somehow, even though it’s December, entirely fail to recognize.

No. 1. Learning.

I love learning new things - and here I am leaving off the most obvious and descriptive three words of that sentence… at my age.

I mean, we’re supposed to learn when we’re young, that’s our job. And there is so much that we are experiencing for the very first time - every interaction we have with the world is some kind of lesson -

- and then we begin recognizing PATTERNS

- and then we end up amassing INFORMATION

- and our experiences compile into bits of WISDOM

- and then, later on, one day we go to the bookstore and look at the shelves featuring our favorite authors and realize there are more books that we’ve already read than ones left to read. Yep. That’s where I am.

So to gain NEW stories, experiences, and facts is especially exciting to me now. Sure, there are online courses and lectures and how-to manuals and cookbooks, but Wikipedia is bananas. In just a few hyperlinks, your entire world can change. That’s what happened yesterday.

For almost 30 years I worked in Advertising, making my living by being creative. During that time I was told by many people how rare that was. Didn’t seem rare, there were tons of us doing it.

Yet, some suggested that I in particular was at a social disadvantage. Some saw the exact opposite. Yet all seemed keen to remind me that I was, culturally, a communication pioneer. Black Shackleton; unique, alone, and perhaps curiously… doomed. Can’t blame these folks: they lacked the same history that I did.

As I clicked through Wikipedia yesterday researching protest music and peace anthems, I came across an old classic advertising jingle:

“I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…”

made super famous when Coca-Cola collected young people from around the world on a hilltop in Italy to create what was, in 1971, the most expensive commercial ever made. An international chorus, united in a song that culminated with the musical slogan “It’s the Real Thing”, referring to love and peace and (of course) the product in the bottles they were holding.

It was a hit. I mean, it was an actual hit - the jingle was extended into a song, re-recorded twice and went gold around the world - quite a feat since a commercial had never before experienced such commercial success.

Two clicks later I discovered that the original tune was from a record called “True Love and Apple Pie” by British hitmakers Cook and Greenaway, which had been extensively rewritten for the ad by the songwriters, legendary ad exec Bill Backer, and US songwriter Billy Davis.

I had never heard of Billy Davis. One more click I learned he worked at McCann Erickson in New York as their SVP Music Director, writing music for ads like “If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer” for Miller and “Coca-Cola Adds Life…Have a Coke and a Smile”.

I KNEW these songs, I sang them in the grocery store and around the house, never suspecting that a black person had anything to do with them.

In a general sense, does that matter? Probably not, but it would have back then - giving me a clearly possible goal to focus on. I made up little songs all the time and wanted to do that for a job, but try telling that to your mother. And it’s important to me now, as evidence that the work I accomplished in that category was part of a specific legacy of professional experience, and not an independent or isolated spark. Blackleton No More.

And it might sound a bit crazy, but I feel that learning about Billy Davis yesterday has somehow, across time and space, influenced that little kid I used to be, sending a bit of encouragement back 50 years and across 3000 miles…

Hey! Kid! Keep being a wierdo! Keep memorizing Monty Python sketches and reciting them in loud voices in the backyard! Keep learning how to make up songs and write stories and build things. I know it sounds impossible now, but grownups like you actually make things you like, and someday you can get a Real Job with all that in New York City! Seriously!

But while you’re at it, you might just want to keep a sharp look-out for an old man with a long white beard and a red shirt and a twinkle in his eye? He should definitely be around there somewhere.

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You know there’s more pie, right?

I’m so glad you’re here, but … pie. I don’t want to distract you. Priorities and all.

If you do have a minute, I’d love to tell you a little story. It’s not very long, but right after you really should go back to that pie idea.

The “Give-a-Show Projector” : basically a D-cell battery flashlight with a plastic lens on it so that you could project filmstrips on the wall in the dark…the very dark (‘cause it wasn’t that great a flashlight).

The Kenner company sold tons of these from 1958 on - and like the 3D marvel toy “ViewMaster”, “Give-a-Show” brought images from tv shows and movies right into your house… no sound of course, but in a pre-video time you could experience the same still-frame cinematic thrill as audiences of the 1880’s.

Anyway, I got one for maybe my seventh birthday (I love it and I still have it) ; it was given to me at my only birthday party where grade-school classmates actually came over to our apartment. And our neighborhood.

Let me set this up: my mom wanted me to go to the best school possible so I wouldn’t become one of those urchins with a pageboy cap and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth calling everybody a “wise guy”.

So three weeks before my very first school year started, my pediatrician suggested Mom check out the school his daughter was in. Mom loved it, took me for an interview (I was three and a half - I’m sure I was scintillating), then she super-quickly secured a new teaching position that allowed her to drop me off in the mornings, and I was given some third hand light blue shirts and navy pants. Boom: we became proud members of a new community.

It was only the second year this school had allowed boys to attend, as it had traditionally been a Catholic girls school (which perfectly tracks with my alignment with all things “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”). Also, in a spirit of the peace and love 1960s, economically challenged students who normally wouldn’t be able to consider this school an option were welcomed at a discount. As well as we browner children.

Thus this birthday party was a fascinating array of the socio-economic dynamics of 1973 Kansas City, ranging from, well…us to my friend who lived in a mansion. Maybe it wasn’t a mansion… how big are mansions? It was like the house Steve Martin has in “Father of the Bride”. Like that. We had been there once for a PTA function - his bedroom was as big as half our apartment and he had the GI Joe with the tower that has a zip line so Joe could slide from the top of it down to his Jeep™. I mean, dude.

That same kid came to my party, in a town car with a driver. This was absolutely not congruous with my neighborhood’s esthetic, which was in no way destitute, but I don’t think anybody would leave a limo on the street overnight.

Anyway, this young man was OVERJOYED by my Give-a-Show Projector. When his mom (and their driver) came to pick him up, he took her all around MY little room, showing her my yo-yos and posters and harmonica and comic books. Before they left, his mom asked my mom where she found all these unique things.

“Oh! Uh… well, they were down at K-Mart.”

“Kay - Mart.” she wrote it down on a little pad with a tiny pen. “Really! Now where is that?”

“Well, they have several of them. One’s out on Metcalf Avenue.”

She put the tiny pen back in it’s leather loop. “Well, thank you. Such interesting toys. Wonderful.”

After everybody left, I asked my mother about it because I was confused as to why a kid with everything would be at all interested in what we had. I knew that they didn’t sell fancy toys at our stores, but it never occurred to me that they didn’t sell our little toys at the more expensive places.

“When it comes down to it, it’s just how much you appreciate what you’ve got.” Mom said. “You could have more than us, or fancier things, but if you really don’t love them they don’t feel special. But we have this –”

and here her arm stretched out in sweeping display, like Vanna White,

“and we are very grateful for it. So it feels to us like we have all we need.”

We ate more birthday cake, giggling at the idea of a limousine pulling up to a discount store.

And that kid with the mansion grew up to use his wealth and influence to help others and to make the city better. Good job, kid. Anyway, that story is kind of why I never have just one thing I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving, I’m always kind of thankful for everything. The sun and the rain and, I guess the appleseed… and you, reading this. I really appreciate that.

Thank you for your time. Have a wonderful day.

[now… pie!]

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It’s been pointed out that the Eskimo culture has many words for “snow”. In my family we have two.

One is “snow”, which we use when there is snow.

The other is “frost”.

It’s “family thing”. You’ve got them, with your family - chosen or domestic, that collection of words or phrases that mean something to you because you share the story behind them.

Here’s the story behind “frost”:

I’d been working 12 hour days for seven months, then nearly 18 hour ones for about three weeks – finishing a gigantic project. I was a wreck. Also, I hadn’t actually taken a vacation in seven years. Given the state of me, Zoe decided that we should get away, and booked a trip for us.

The year was changing from 1999 to 2000, eve of the new millennium: Zoe and two friends of ours planned a holiday voyage to Italy. My mother questioned traveling abroad on New Year’s Eve that particular year, but Zoe wanted to be in a place that had functioned fine for centuries before electricity, just in case we found out at midnight on Dec. 31st that we really weren’t going to have any for a while.

We didn’t have any money to speak of, so Zoe and our friend had meticulously worked out arrangements to share a little place to stay. This was an incredible challenge in such an ancient age (pre smartphones or the modern internet) as we all lived in different cities, yet she expertly engineered timetables with spy novel accuracy, allowing each of us to purchase the absolute cheapest flights available.

However, due to their incredible value, none of these flights landed right at our actual destination, so to complete the plan it was necessary that someone kind of drive around and just pick up everybody.

That someone, I soon discovered, would be Me.

The plan was that we’d

* fly to our affordable airport

* rent a car,

* run around and pick up our friends at their affordable airports

* and then drive to the place we were staying.

Besides, the car was a great investment. No train fare for four people. We could go to the grocery store and then cook for ourselves. That is Pure Savings on four wheels.

These were The Facts. I knew The Facts. I’m super good with facts.

What I didn’t ask about were the details. Those were… fuzzy, like Chewbacca-after-the-sonic-torture-device-in-Cloud-City fuzzy.

I probably agreed to it. Who knows. At that time, I hadn’t really slept in about a season and a half. I was pliable and amenable. I agreed to many things.

I dimly remember standing in the kitchen being assured that Italians drive on the right side just like in the US, so I could drive there if I wanted to. This bit of trivia soothed me, but only to the shallow depth produced during conversations one believes to be entirely theoretical.

I got home from work about 11PM the night we were flying out, showered, grabbed my suitcase, and we in hopped a cab to the airport. Our affordable tickets had us taking off in the middle of the night and then landing in the middle of what I assumed was different night, where we immediately traveled to a budget hotel straight out of a Wes Anderson fever dream – there was a shower but no tub or curtain, just a mysterious drain placed in the dead center of the bathroom floor.

It was awesome. Vacation had begun.

I am a good driver, but my grasp on reality and motor functions hadn’t yet returned, as any sleep I’d picked up on the plane or in our mysterious hotel had been countered by an understandable amount of jet lag.

We went to pick up the rental car and purchased a detailed road map.

“Where are we now?” I asked in poor Italian. The gentleman made a circle on the map.

“And where is…” I showed him the address of our destination.

He looked a bit shocked, furrowed his brow slightly… took the map, flipped it over, and drew another circle that was a good twelve inches below the first.

MY brow furrowed slightly. My wife took my arm and sped me off to the car.

We set off through the empty morning streets, trying to find the entrance to the highway.

“Hey, uh, why are those circles so far apart?” I asked her.

“We’re in Milan.” she answered.

“Oh.” I remember replying, trying to connect her answer to my question.

“And where are we going?” I asked.

“Florence.” she said, pointing at the second circle on the map, “It’s just right over here.”

I drowsily thought about Florence Henderson, the actress who played the mom on “The Brady Bunch”. That episode with the tiki doll was kinda scary. We found the highway and began driving.

After about an hour I realized we had been driving for about an hour. I’d been busy learning how to downshift instead of braking and trying to determine what speed everyone was going in kilometers, which seemed a great deal faster than 55mph.

My wife had been navigating and telling me stories, looking more and more tense.

“Are we there yet?” I asked.

“Let me check.” she replied. She looked out the window at the road signs, did a few quick calculations with the map. “We’re looking good.” she finally said. The plan was solid, but timing was very tight. And again, her answer didn’t really answer what I was asking.

I didn’t ask the right questions. I see that now. But Zoe has a singular talent for these kinds of arrangements, where everything always works out perfectly in the end. Still, at some point, probably before I started driving, I should have casually asked how far it was from Milan to Florence. That casual answer would have been “almost 200 miles”.

Running around to pick up people? I had imagined that the airports were like in New York, where LaGuardia and Kennedy and Newark are all ten miles away from each other. Ten miles is a “run around” distance. I would have experienced extreme apprehension (leaning into absolute dread) at the idea of a 200 mile road trip my first time driving in a foreign country.

All of this came to light, bit by bit, during the next hour. Many more cars were on the road, but unlike holiday traffic I was used to, they all seemed to be going faster.

“Well, you’re more than halfway done now. There’s no big deal. You’re doing fine!” Zoe said in a really encouraging tone. “From here on it’s a straight shot down this road.”

“I finally did the math and I think everybody’s going about 90 miles an hour.”

“Then it’ll go even faster.” she said, smiling.

I took it in stride until the road turned white.

“Is this…snow?” I asked her.

“I don’t think so.” she said, completely convincingly.

I looked ahead of the car. “Are those mountains?”

“No. Those are the hills.” she emphasized.

“They have white peaks.”

“Probably clouds.” She dialed the radio to find more music to listen to.

It was at this point my adrenaline finally conquered my jet lag.

“So I’m not, like, in Italy, driving a stick shift rental car going 90 miles per hour on a snowy road in the mountains?”

“That’s not snow.” she said, with an air of pure transparency. “It’s frost!”

“There’s an inch and half of it.”

“It’s heavy frost. Just keep driving.”

And I did, and her plan worked out perfectly, and we all got where we were going had a lovely and value-centered holiday.

But “frost” is now a family thing meaning “don’t look over there…you don’t need to look over there” ; a signal to just trust one another and keep going, a hybrid of “I’ve got your back!” and “don’t worry your pretty little head.”

“Hey! Is that smoke coming from the kitchen??”

“Nope… heavy frost. Dinner in ten.”

So, now you know. Welcome to the family.

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I remember getting less than five spankings.After the first one, I really did attempt to avoid them.

As my only present parent, my mother usually held the exclusive monopoly on even the threat of spankings, but I did get one when I was three years old from a babysitter when I totally bit a bully (total fluke – I’d probably never do that now), and a very memorable one was administered to me by my grandfather - a man so inherently and elementally fair as to be an actual district court judge in real life: never raised his voice, neither hemmed nor hawwed, and was a great role model whose example I normally followed to the letter.

He didn’t even really want to do it, it ends up.

It was a complication of science, experimentation, and curiosity: a misunderstood boy, betrayed by both his grandmother, genetics, and (albeit inadvertently) the very nice people of the Proctor and Gamble™ company.

My grandparents lived down the block from us - when my school was out but my mother was still teaching, I would stay at their house.

My grandfather was in court most of the day, so my grandmother would watch me. Somewhat.

I was eight, and normally I had lots of books to read, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to just read books all day, so we would watch television. I know that sounds weird but no, you’re right, that does sound weird.

Anyway, this fateful day was very hot, and as the early summer heatwave wore on, my grandmother thought it a good idea that I cool off with a bath. She also knew that this was a good way to get a little time to herself, as the bath was a watery theatre to me, where I would make up stories and have adventures: all she had to do is yell out my name occasionally when I stopped talking to myself.

My grandfather had built a little bathroom right off the kitchen, complete with a bathtub. It used to be a breakfast nook, so it was a bit cramped, but I liked it because it was supposed to be for “guests” and I always felt fancy when I was in there.

It had fancy soaps in the shapes of little fruits (which we couldn’t touch) and fancy hand towels (which were not for drying your hands on) and Dixie Cups™ (totally just for show - which is why the dispenser always full) and lightly scented powder blue Charmin™ bathroom tissue.

I remember exactly what happened because I had to explain it all to my grandfather. I remember standing in front of him as he stared at me intently, eyes narrowed, lips tightly pursed.

This is pretty much exactly what I told him:

I was in the tub and everything was ok and I hadn’t touched any of the things I wasn’t supposed to touch, but then I had something in my eye and my hands were wet and I wanted to wipe my face but the towel was over by the door so I got a little bit of the blue bath tissue and wiped my eye with it,

but the water make it melt and it dissolved in the water.

So I got another piece of paper, this one was bigger so it would stay together, and I wiped my eye with it, but it started to dissolve too, but then I noticed that the dissolved paper just stayed floating on the top of the water, and when I put my hand under the water and pulled it up it would cover my hand with blue.

But I still hadn’t wiped my eye yet

so I got another piece, this one was actually pretty big, because I was blinking a lot because my eye was kind of stinging, and I wiped my eye. But I couldn’t reach the trash to put the paper in and I didn’t want to clog the toilet so I kept it in the tub and I knew that Grandma wanted me to answer her when she called so I listened very carefully even when my head was underwater and I jumped up and answered her every time.

Then when the bath was over I ran my hand over the top of the water a lot to make sure I had gotten all of the dissolved paper and it wouldn’t clog the drain and I squeezed all the water out of it and then put it in the garbage can in the kitchen so that I wouldn’t mess up the bathroom.

And that was it.

And that WAS it. Except those times I had ducked underwater to be The Man From Atlantis™ (7PM Thursdays on NBC) meant (of course) that my head dipped below the surface of the water : and every time I emerged I embedded dissolved Charmin™ paper pulp into my totally authentic 1970’s AFRO.

My grandfather later admitted that his expression during my confession was not due to the severity of my crime, but the fact that my entire head was now bright blue and he was barely holding in his laughter.

After my bath, I had gone to the kitchen to have a cookie, waiting for my grandmother to be proud that I’d cleaned up so well, which DID happen but was interrupted by her full throated scream at my Accidental Smurfification.

She tried to comb it out. It wasn’t happening. Spray paint would have been less adhering.

She said she’d just have to cut all of my hair off, and she would have too, if I hadn’tta made a run for it (the power cord was only so long) –

– and in the end, that’s what pushed her over the edge. The running. That’s when she decided that my grandfather should give me the spanking.

My mom was going to be there in a little bit, but Grandma was absolutely apoplectic, so in a spirit of “happy wife / happy life” Grandpa told me to go out to the backyard TO CUT MY OWN SWITCH.

I took a few psych classes in college. I’ve watched various PBS specials, read a little bit of Freud, a little more of Jung. Never in all my studies have I seen this particular process properly broken down and examined for the truly hellish mind twister that it is. Having been warned to “get a good one”, I measured every merit of the twigs from the bush I was sent to. Too thin would certainly move FASTER, and too thick would feel like a baseball bat.

My grandfather said that he laughed silently on the porch, tears streaming down his eyes, his eldest grandchild awash in horticultural terror in his backyard, blue hair blazing in the late afternoon sun.

I came back with a two foot long choice with few burrs, prepared to meet my fate. I got one swat and was sent to apologize (again) to my grandmother, who was mostly fretting about what to say to my mother when she arrived.

But my mom was already used to me at this point. Together we had conducted a series of experiments about solutions where we dissolved salt and sugar in water, then suspended a string in the sugar water and made rock candy. So my fascination, and my explanation, sort of made sense to her.

She looked at my hair a bit wearily and was very glad it hadn’t been cut off completely, but we went home she cut it a bit shorter, and then I sat on the floor in front of her while she meticulously used the smallest comb in the house to tease out as much of the bright blue as possible.

It was summer, after all, and no one was going to see it.

Except maybe the folks at church.

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5/13/73

It’s Sunday, after church.

My mom and I are in the back of my uncle’s car, heading to the fancy cafeteria that the family visits on Mother’s Day so that:

* Grandma won’t have to cook and

* we can celebrate her publicly as our Center Of Attention (which is always her second favorite gift, right after “cash in a plain, white envelope”).

My mother has a car, but she’s left it at home because:

* it is too small for four people and

* there’s a national energy crisis going on: gasoline is being rationed and we’re all supposed to carpool as much as possible.

and I can’t help with all the driving, as

* I do not yet own a car and

* I’m only 6.

The weather’s lovely, there’s little traffic, and church let out a little early so that everyone could make it to their own cafeterias, then get back home at a decent hour.

As we were head over the Interstate Viaduct (a REALLY fancy name for our local bridge over the Kansas River) my uncle turns to his wife in the passenger seat.

“Honey?” he asks her, “What time is it?”

“OH!” my mother says from the back seat, hurriedly trying to free the face of her watch from the tight sleeves of her Sunday clothes, “I think it’s about - maybe two o’clock?”

“…no, no, no, no - I’m asking HER.” My uncle turns to his wife again, “Can YOU tell us?”

My aunt smiles, looks at her wrist and pauses for a moment, then announces “It’s 2:14.”

At last my mother succeeds at shoving her unbuttoned blouse cuff back far enough to make out the time. “…yeah, I’ve got about two…eleven?” That’s how she missed seeing it right away.

“Mama! Look!” I say, excitedly, as my aunt holds up her wrist to reveal a new golden watch. It is SQUARE; with a tiny golden face that has NO HANDS on it, just a tiny black rectangle in the middle, and two shiny buttons on its right side.

“What IS that?” my mother asks, as my aunt presses the top button, and tiny red lines blaze to life on the watch, in the rough shape of the numbers 2, 1, and 5.

“Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?” my uncle crows, having proudly provided our first glimpse at Wearable Technology.

The answer was no, we had never seen anything like that in our lives. The Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury books that my mother adored as a child foretold possible futures filled with space-age wonders, but the current world outside was still oppressively analog, powered by gears and smoke - no flying cars yet, or antigravity belts, or two-way video phones.

…but here is this new thing on my aunt’s wrist, this…?

“It’s a DIGITAL WATCH!” my uncle explains. “There’s a tiny computer inside it that tells the time on this little screen…”

My mother assumes it’s radioactive: you can’t have a battery next to your skin like that, it’s dangerous. I assume that it’s expensive: it doesn’t look real.

My aunt then pushes the second button, and the numerical date appears in the little window.

She pushes the first button three times, and the rough words “I LOVE YOU”, followed by HER OWN NAME, appear on the screen.

It was the greatest Mother’s Day present I had ever seen. I had only gotten my mother a Hallmark™ card.

If I was to play this moment out,

both my mother and I would eventually get digital watches in about five years, once they made it to K-Mart and the price came down precipitously,

and we’d watch the world around us transform into a version of the future that Asimov and Bradbury predicted (along with Gene Roddenberry, and maybe Aldous Huxley),

and then I’d be HERE, now, writing these very words on a glowing miracle box from a company named after a fruit:

but I don’t think that’s how time works.

If time was one straight line, then that watch from 50 years ago, viewed in modern context, would not be all that impressive, and I shouldn’t feel any jolt of awe when thinking about it now.

But I still do. The memory of that moment carries with it the pure emotions that I felt in that car, at that time.

Some memories are self-contained, self-sustaining, still able to make us laugh or cry or fill us with wonder. Complete temporal ecosystems. Snapshots.

I have no idea what else happened that day, or what I ate at the cafeteria, but in that car, on that bridge, is where The Future began.

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Frank Sinatra isn’t lazy. He’s been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.

I’ve only been four of those things, so far. Not because I’m lazy, it’s just that I don’t have as many years on me as Frank, and my circle of compatriots and associates is far less comprehensive than his was, requiring less role-based interactions.

I have not been a king of any sort, and though I readily admit to a few corporate situations where I was a bit of a pawn, I have successfully never become anyone’s puppet. (Whew.)

Look, I’m not trying to play The Sands - I just want to make it from MARVEL movie to MARVEL movie with as little incident as possible: little do I strive to accomplish that crosses kings or conjures strings.

Frank Sinatra helped define the time that he lived in, and that time helped shape the person that he became. Can you imagine Frank Sinatra as the lead singer in an ‘90’s hard rock band? Or as a superstar DJ on a festival stage? Or playing the role of King George in Hamilton? Okay, well, that one’s pretty cool… they’d probably have to add a more swingin’ horn section.

But none of those would be Frank. Frank is a sharp suit, a half-drained martini glass, a dangling cigarette and a microphone. You could use those items to dress as Frank Sinatra for Halloween, as together, they form a fair representation of his iconography, if you combine all of that with a little bit of charm.

Oh, and a tremendous amount of talent, of course, which you can’t get at a costume store.

He made it look easy. Well, they all did; Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole and Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin. They all sang songs six nights a week, two to three shows a night, and made ‘em swing. Las Vegas royalty.

We don’t have anything like that now, really. Celine Dion, sure… Lady Gaga, Beyoncé. But those are productions - awe inspiring events, with giant screens and costumes and special effects, not just a person and a band and a microphone.

Anyway, I was thinking about what to be for Halloween this year, and I had a longer list of what I DIDN’T want to be…

* Scared

* Tired

* Furious

* Confused

* Overwhelmed

* Panicked and

* Numb

…the seven dwarves that nobody likes.

I wanted to be confident but not meglomaniacal, present while lacking pretention, and… fun. I write a humor column for my family. I cannot afford to dismiss the world as merely Grim, Dark, Dire, or Cold, though those were my “spookytime” themes this year, and I can’t make the world all better either. My chief strategy is to offset - there’s always grim news, so create something pleasant; where possible, bring a bit of light to the darkness; fortify hope when all looks dire; and bring warmth, kindness to those overwhelmed by a dearth of empathy… The Cold.

Recycle a bottle, plant a tree - actually I did plant a tree in 1972 and it grew to a giant thing I saw 20 years later. That made a fair bit of oxygen for a planted stick we got on sale from the K-Mart garden store.

Anyway, here at the end of this seasonal year, I wish everyone a Happy Halloween. Enjoy yourself. Put on a costume. Play some music. Or do both at the same time.

Grim? Dark? Dire? Cold?

Not you, Baby. You’re swingin’.

That’s life (that’s life)That’s what all the people sayYou’re riding high in April, shot down in MayBut I know I’m gonna change that tuneWhen I’m back on top, back on top in June

I said that’s life (that’s life)And as funny as it may seemSome people get their kicksStomping on a dreamBut I don’t let it, let it get me down‘Cause this fine old world, it keeps spinnin’ around

I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poetA pawn and a kingI’ve been up and down and over and outAnd I know one thingEach time I find myselfFlat on my faceI pick myself up and getBack in the race

That’s life (that’s life)I tell you, I can’t deny itI thought of quitting, babyBut my heart just ain’t gonna buy itAnd if I didn’t think it was worth one single tryI’d jump right on a big bird and then I’d fly

My, my

That’s Life: 1963 by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon, arranged by Ernie Freeman

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