This Teacher's Nightmares!!!

There ought to be a word for nightmares that aren't nightmares like Tina gets (she's being chased and her screams come across the pillow as moans born of horror and agony which awaken me, quickly, and so I heroically awaken her and am then assured by her still-asleep and breathless "thank you" which makes me wonder if I entered her dream and thoroughly kicked some assailant's ass (which I can't even do in my dreams so I'm grateful for the possibility of doing it in hers) or . . . did I just obliterate the nightmare altogether by awakening her?. No. No drama in mine like that. Mine are just annoying visitations based upon my own insecurity about what I fear is a presumptuousness going on 20 years, i.e., what business do I have in a classroom full of bright, disciplined kids? I get these two dreams, each is annoying and each attempts to put me in my place about once every six months or so:

I'm scheduled to play a piano concerto with the San Francisco Symphony. I know, but it becomes clear to me that no one else seems to know -- or maybe they do! and they certainly should! -- that I don't play anywhere near well enough to play classical music much less classical music with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra! I don't play classical! I don't sight read very well at all. I have very limited technical fluency or facility on the keyboard so that anything beyond a ballad's tempo or any run up or down the keyboard or any contrapuntal activity requiring a left hand that does anything more than pound chords on the 1 and 3 is wholly beyond me. How did I qualify for this gig? And why do people seem to look forward to my playing? And at what point did I think I could perform with aplomb, fooling everyone? Or did I just go along with whatever ill-founded confidence the music world extended to me? These questions come to me after I awaken, but in the dream they are the inchoate miasma which makes for whatever nightmarish quality the dream imposes upon me.

So . . . here I am, getting ready to go on stage (I guess we have, in fact, rehearsed even!!! and I somehow pulled it off!) in my tux to be greeted by hearty applause, the welcoming smile of MTT, and everyone's happy anticipation of a night of artistry! MTT lifts his baton, the symphony comes in and . . . I play. And sure, I'm a little anxious all the while that I'll be found out, but actually pretty confident, too, and . . . I pull it off! There's applause!

I get the hell off stage . . . .

And there the dream ends.

You might well ask, "Dude, what's wrong with that? That's no nightmare!"

But, of course, it is! Because I know I'm a fake who just succeeded with my fakery . . . and, worse, it will just encourage me to continue with my con and not ever really learn the craft of playing the piano (see "teaching") well. And one day, I will get caught. MTT will step off the podium, look at the music in front of me, look at me, and with both of us scandalized in that moment, he'll point to the f*******ing door.

Who am I to be teaching Shakespeare, Sophocles, Hurston, et al?!!?


And now, for a couple years or so, a new annoyance visits my sleep and in this dream . . . I do get caught:

I'm about to take a final exam in a class for which I have not only not done the work since about the first week of school, I even forgot this class was on my schedule . . . or conveniently forgot . . . up until this moment, the moment when all will become clear as I stare blankly at and leave blank my final exam. And I know that this will mean that I will fail the class; it will mean humiliation.

In this dream, there's no faking it . . . yet anyway. I always wake up, humiliated, before I have to take the final exam. Although I'm not confronted in the dream by any authority, it must be clear to all that I haven't been in class, just about ever, and that I cannot possibly be prepared for this test. I know I don't know and I know that everyone else must know that I don't know . . . anything.

But how is this different from playing with the Symphony? Perhaps one night I will take that final exam and bullshit my way through. I'll hand it in and hang around just long enough to gather my things while noticing the professor leaf through my pages. Yes, in this dream, I can't tell if I'm in high school or in law school (where I was negligent, but not that negligent), and I seem to be a younger man, but with the life experience of the 55 year old that I am. Seems that way anyway.

I wake up mildly disgusted with myself, but then I chuckle because I've escaped the reality, the Truth, represented in the dream and am back in the material world where my smoke and mirrors continue to work wonders.




There must be a name for these dreams. It's not stage fright. As the pianist, and despite my incredulity about being accepted as a classical pianist, in my dream I actually have some confidence that I can do this. Otherwise, I would have run to the nearest exit.

In the final exam dream, I have no intention of "performing" on stage.

I should note that Tina had a somewhat similar recurring dream years ago when she waited tables. She dreamt she had too many tables to wait on. But, you see, in this dream, she didn't create the problem. She's blameless and the injustice of it causes her to scream, a scream of agony that comes across the pillows as moans. So I wake her up. I'm good at that.

Cruella de Ville Doesn't Read Fairy Tales

I'm always amazed at how well people know fairy tales because I have no memory of anyone ever reading them to me. Maybe my folks did, at least my mom, but I don't remember it and I don’t see that being part of my mom’s maternal repetoire. Too much ghastliness for her tastes and I’m damn sure her mother never read them to the little girl who became my mom.

I know my grandmother, Cruella de Ville, didn't read anything to me either or to my brother except maybe the Riot Act, preferring as she did to smoke in front of the TV while my brother and I cowered in our bedrooms afraid to come out. God forbid one of us should be in the bathroom when she needed to go. "There's only one bathroom in the house AND I'M AN OLD WOMAN!" she'd yell and I know that at least for me it had the effect of constricting whatever progress I might be making. My God, I thought to myself, is she gonna punish me for peeing or is she going to . . . . oh my God! . . . COME IN HERE?

Like I said, I don't think my parents read to me either; not that I recall anyway. Well, there was the one time when I'd stolen some milk money in the first grade and my mother suspected as much -- after all, what's a 6 year old doing with ten dollars of bills and change? -- so she read me the story of the boy who stole and got his hands -- that's hands as in the plural -- cut off. I confessed and feared books thereafter.

Okay, my mom didn’t read me a story of hands being cut off of some boy who stole something. She just sat me down and read a pleasant story that both calmed me down, I suppose, but also prodded some guilt in a boy whose mom was so nice and warm that she didn’t deserve a thief for a son and so I confessed, knowing, instinctively, that life would be better for it.

So, fairy tales? No, but I do recall going to the drive-in with my parents and probably with my little brother to see "101 Dalmatians" and being entranced by the whole spectacle of something so joyous, so engaging as an adventure with 101 spotted, happy pups appearing as they did on the largest screen I'd ever seen there in the middle of a warm summer night fragrant with popcorn, motor heat, and my parents' Winstons.

Curmudgeon? Me?

Tina does say I’m becoming a bit, just a bit, curmudgeonly, though she acknowledges as much only when I seek her appraisal of something I’ve done or said that seems to me like it may suggest a bit of curmudgeonliness to others. For example, recently, I unsubscribed to the neighborhood email newsletter after weeks of not reading anything in which I seemed remotely interested. Many posts were by the same person who seems to “rescue” small wild animals in our neighborhood. Never mind that we live in the woods . . . where Darwinism is the law of the land.

Also recently, the neighbors all got together of a Sunday night with chairs and wine on a driveway nearby and I didn’t even know about it until Tina said, “That get-together is happening right now up at Nancy’s,” and I replied, “What get-together?” and then Tina recalled that I had unsubscribed to the neighborhood newsletter. “Does this make me a curmudgeon?” I asked and she acknowledged that, indeed, it did. She didn’t pause to think nor did she gaze at me reprovingly and certainly not consolingly. Just kept eating her dinner as if I’d asked something as mundane as, “Did you remember to put milk on the grocery list?”

“Yes,” she said, looking at her grilled chicken, glass of wine in hand.

“I just don’t want to read about every animal that so and so rescues on a seemingly daily basis,” I whined.

“Curmudgeon,” she said still without looking up from the dinner that I, in my loving spirit, had prepared for her, a dinner that included a Tarte Tatin made with tomatoes.

So . . . my curmudgeonliness, such as it is, may in fact be rational opposition to mindlessness. But, I must admit, that’s what all curmudgeons say.

By the way, the dictionary definition of a “curmudgeon” points to a “churlish,” “miserly,” even “avaricious person.” But that doesn’t seem to be the working definition, the common understanding, except for the “churlish” part. There is no accepted etymology of “curmudgeon,” which is good because I had wondered if it shared any provenance with “cudgel” or “truncheon,” or “bludgeon” and hoped not insofar as those three weapons seem far too brutal to be evoked by the relative harmlessness of a “curmudgeon” whose curmudgeonliness is routinely, and perhaps rightly, ignored instead of feared.

I Stole the Class Milk Money: My History of Avarice -- Finding My Conscience

I discovered my conscience only after I became the milk money thief. My conscience, a flickering thing at the time, might have sparked some hesitation prior to my thievery, but a bicycle, just the glimmer of a bicycle, blotted out what little light my conscience may have cast upon the matter. It was pure arithmetic at the time: money = bike. Easy money = bike sooner. No algebraic variables to muddy to equation.

I was in the first grade, living on a cul de sac littered with boxy apartments buildings and inhabited by lots of kids, almost all of whom had bikes. I knew how to ride a bike and I was big enough to get a real bike, the kind with air in the tires, but my dad said I’d have to save up some of my allowance if I wanted a bike.

It was 1960 or thereabouts and I was allowed 25 cents each week. Gratis. I never remember having any chores. So it’s my parents’ fault that I never learned to earn and become righteous. For the bike, I had to save 10 bucks. I don’t know if I knew that meant 40 weeks of not spending so much as a penny at the penny candy store up the hill, but I did know two things: 10 bucks was more money than I could imagine and I’d never save up that much. And even if I could save it, winter was coming soon and there’d by no bike riding in winter. Cold. Wet.

It gnawed at little me. I had no imagination for solutions. Gnawing frustration visited, often in the form of tantrums and tears, when I saw other kids riding their bikes away, it seemed, from me, and off into a land of play for bigger boys. Sometimes they’d race around the cul de sac, around and around, passing my dejected countenance as I begged for a turn on this boy’s bike or that boy’s bike. But I knew that if I had a bike, no one but me would ride it because I wouldn’t be able to bear getting off it.

Usually, they just rode off, emptying the cul de sac of all the fun, leaving me there wondering what to do.

Bike!
Want bike!



Then one day, a wondrous thing happened. We were in our classroom, doing whatever first graders did in those days, and it started to snow. A rarity in Mississippi. Snow, quiet snow, in flakes yards apart, falling so quietly, like ash from the summer swamp burns, but each flake white as, well . . . snow. Snow! Falling, but slowly. Everywhere. So slowly. Had you ever seen anything fall so slowly and quietly? Sure, it didn’t stick, but . . . it’s snowing in Mississippi in November. Snow!

I wrestled with myself because it was surely beautiful, but it was also a bad sign. Winter in Mississippi didn’t burden us with snow, but our winters were cold, wet and windy – not bike riding weather – and snow, as transfixed as I was by its loveliness, meant winter. Now my gnawing bike anger was ruining even my ability to appreciate this wintry miracle outside.

All the kids ran to the window to draw and yell. “Can we go get a bunch?!!?” “What’s it taste like?” “Can we get some and draw ‘em?” “Will we be able to get home?” The teacher, Miss Mary, seemed as delighted as we were and I remember her laughing in a way that seemed so adult as if to say, “Well, I’ll be . . . .” She walked out of the classroom laughing. That I remember well.

Because that’s exactly when I saw the milk money. Money collected once a week from all the kids to buy the week’s supply of milk and graham crackers. Just sitting there in a big envelope. All the kids were at the window. The teacher gone. Gotta be 10 bucks in that fat envelope.

I took it. Snuck it into my little shirt and then into my satchel.

Later that day, walking home, I opened the envelope. There, the first bill I took, was a 10 dollar bill. I put that bill in my pocket and the envelope back into the satchel and I went home, presented it to my mother and said, “Let’s talk bike.” Or something like that.

“Where did you get this, Gregory?” my mother asked.

“Found it on the street.”

“You found it on the street?”

“That’s right.”

Well, I seem to recall she had a look on her face like she’d just thought of a new way to serve a chicken. A look of discovery and planning all at the same time.

“C’mon, lemme read you a story,” she said.

Sounded good to me. Life was all good now. Except it wasn’t all good because I felt as if a connection to my mother was strained to breaking. I didn’t feel badly about taking the money – didn’t give it a second thought yet! – but lying to my mom made my feel lonely somehow.

I sat next to her on that ratty brown sectional sofa and sunk as deeply into it as a little boy could while leaning, almost pushing, just as heavily into my mother’s right arm, just to reestablish or confirm a connection.

How I wish I could remember what she was reading. How I wish I could ask her. But she’s gone now and it was some 43 years ago. Doesn’t matter because I do remember not paying much attention to the story. Everything in me was a like a darkening sky troubled with swirling swamp ashes blown by a wind gusting this way and that, a wind that seems to sweep the air away making it hard to breathe. I felt born away from my own mother. I was aloft, torn away from a solid foundation and I began to sob. I pushed my head into something surely solid, my mother and everything motherly about her, and I sobbed.

At first, she just kept reading like she didn’t notice. Or like it was expected. “Well, now, what is upsetting you so?” she finally asked.

It relieved me, it settled me just to have the opportunity to tell her and to clear the skies in my heart. “Mom,” I sobbed. “I took that money at school.”

And that’s the day, without having a word for it . . . that’s the day I became acquainted with my conscience.

My mom presented it to me without a word and waited for me to discover and make use of it.

I Ordered "Lettuces"

Last night, at Universal Cafe in SF, I ordered "lettuces." The menu offered "lettuces." From a farm in Marin somewhere.

When the waiter quietly inquired, I ordered the lettuces with a measure of gravitas usually reserved for matters requiring careful deliberation; the tone used when indicating delicate procedures in crucial matters, much like a surgeon might say, "We will now tie off the aorta." Or, insofar as there was no eye contact between the waiter and me, the transaction around the lettuces was something akin to an assistant bringing me something to sign.

However, none of this occurred to me at the time I ordered the "lettuces." And so I ordered lettuces, not "lettuces."

I ate the lettuces, and to the extent that I thought about the lettuces further it was only to confirm that I enjoyed them, lightly tossed as they were with a bit of green apple and a vinaigrette of olive oil and an aged sherry vinegar. But then, upon leaving, I encountered a young colleague, SC, and her husband dining al fresco. And because we were at Universal, a little known but much honored cafe featuring local this and sustainable that, we naturally inquired of one another what well-considered choices we'd made from the menu.

We spoke reverentially, knowingly, in the celebrated specificities of the menu: ". . . Milo's farm chicken marinated in yogurt . . . grass-fed lamb sugo . . . belwether sheep's ricotta . . . catalan farm strawberries," et al.

Only then, when I stated I'd had the "lettuces," did I realize, "Wait, did I just say that I ate 'lettuces'?!!? Good Lord! Here . . . I’ll tell you what I really ate. I ate a salad! . . . accompanied by a ricotta tortellini with morels."

"PRETENTIOUS!" my young friend EC, fist up to her mouth, would cough scoffingly (though I heard no common-man protest when she scarfed the serving of olive oil cake with strawberries, a balsamic reduction, and creme fraiche).

Yes, yes, a salad is made up of lettuce and sometimes even lettuces, but the word "salad" has faithfully served to describe the dish since the late 14th century according to the OED. And while "lettuces" is soft and euphonious, it's also a bit comical in the plural with its staccato "-tuces" at the end.

"Salad," like "lettuces," shares the same or similar soft consonant sounds with an "s" sound, but by comparison with the comical "lettuces," "salad" seems elegant, even chic. George Clooney eats salads. Clowns eat "lettuces" . . . or rabbits do.

Does this mean I will risk opprobrium in culinary sacred spaces if I insist on ordering a "salad" when the menu celebrates local "lettuces"? Will the wait-staff bring ketchup, unsolicited, with my pommes frites instead of the preferred aioli? Or will they chuckle at me, knowing as they do that their feted restaurant wouldn't deign to carry ketchup though, my God, would it kill that great little bistro in Oakland, A Coté, to carry a bottle of ketchup? It's OAKLAND!!!

I do prefer ketchup.

The Red and the White - a One-Act

Scene: Ken and Joan, retired couple at breakfast in their home with Will, Ken’s son, and Lynn, Will’s wife, both visiting. All are at the table.

Joan: I see you've found the worst possible napkins that we have Ken.

Ken: They were the only napkins I could see where we keep our napkins. And, of course, you think they're not good even though they are perfectly good napkins.

Joan: They are NOT perfectly good napkins Ken. It takes three of them to clean up what one good napkin can easily take care of. You didn't see the bigger paper napkins?

Ken: I've only used one napkin and it seems to work fine.

Joan: You have not, Ken, you've used two.

Ken: One, two. . . what difference does it make.? They're cheap and effective.

Lynn: It's a waste of paper when we have nice cloth napkins.

[pause]

Joan: [to Ken] And you need to wipe your mouth . . . [to herself] which will probably require another napkin.

Ken: I can use this one. [picks up a use napkin] See? [wipes his mouth, but misses the food]

Joan: Fine, Ken. [rolls her eyes. gets up]

Will: I have to say that I've used two which, given their size, is probably equal to --

Ken: And if we’re going to talk about getting the wrong thing then where did this white wine come from?

Joan: I think Will picked it out Ken. It was in the refrigerator.

Ken: I know Will picked it out, but who bought it? You’re supposed to buy the red wines and I’m supposed to buy the white wines. I didn’t buy this white wine.

Joan: Sometimes I like a white wine that isn’t so sweet so I bought this one and Will chose it for dinner. Would you like one of your white wines?

Ken: Well, I don’t want any of this wine . . . or the red wine, so, yes, I would like one of the white wines that I bought. Two wines on the table and you know that I don’t like either one of them.

Joan: Well, your wine is in the refrigerator, Ken. Do you want me to get it for you?

Ken: Yes, Joan, that would be very nice . . . and while you’re up you can get the napkins you prefer if that’s what you want. I couldn’t find them. It was just these paper ones.

My History of Violence

I took no consolation in my handiwork as I approached the paddle -- the paddle I’d made in woodshop – that would momentarily be used for my whippin’. Coach Tigner slapped it against his calf as I drew nearer to him at the front of my 7th grade PE class. I did not ruefully reminisce at that moment that I’d been the one who carefully sawed, sanded and stained that paddle to Coach's specifications: He liked a longish paddling area, maybe 16 inches by 5, about 3/4ths of an inch thick, and rounded at the end. A tapered handle, maybe 2 inches wide, descending about 8 inches from the paddling area to a rounded knob through which a hole had been drilled to allow for a leather strap to wrap around the wrist. Three 1/2 inch holes bored at the end of the paddling area for ornamentation or, more likely, to allow for greater paddle speed. It would have been unseemly to ask “Why the holes, Coach?” upon receiving the specs. (Legend had it that Coach liked to leave three little spots on your butt, but in reality no one using these paddles ever hit anyone that high up on the paddle. No, we always got good wood right in the thick of the middle.) The best feature, the piece de resistance of which I was most proud, was the rich, beefy gravy-meets-bourbon stain lovingly applied with long brush strokes for the same seamlessness that graced the little bookshelf I'd made and which I still have on my piano. Yes, fine artisanal paddle crafting.

My bookshelf:


My 7th grade PE class featured a bunch of boys doing exercises in maybe 5 columns 6 boys deep, when I decided that my jumping jacks (Coach preferred "side straddle hops" in the jargon of his profession) would jump arms and legs out on the count instead of the missile-like up and down. I did it twice maybe, oh, and I’d also moved off the line some, happy with my little stunt, when Coach suddenly took up his whistle quick and blew a short staccato burst like he meant to puncture the sound of thumping, shuffling tennis shoes in that gym.

We all stopped. I don’t remember my initial reaction, but knowing myself at the time, I suspect I might have been looking around discreetly and smiling a bit. I do remember, and I remember this distinctly, that I expected a “Get in line, son, and stop your foolin’!”

But no. Coach pointed that paddle right at me, its leather strap straining at the wrist.

“’M’ere boy!” he commanded.

Well, that meant only one thing: He was going to test the aerodynamics of my design on my ass.

“That’s right, boy, YOU!” I must’ve displayed the international gesture of disingenuous uncertainty – eyes wide open, head thrust forward, my finger turned and pointed to my own torso – as if to get some clarity which no other being needed in that gym. All eyes were on me.

“There's nobody else clownin’ around so get on up here like I tol’ you, boy!”

He knew my name – sonofabitch lived down the street from me – but at the time it wasn’t his “boy” which disturbed me. What pained me was that he must’ve had no idea I’d made his paddle. Lovingly.

I considered, for a moment, telling him I’d made that very paddle. But the only thing worse than one’s fate in these moments would be a public effort to forestall it with some weak offering. What could’ve been weaker than, “You know, uh, I made that paddle myself in shop”? Any boy within earshot of that would have laughed derisively and with cause. “Supposed to just take your whippin’” . . . and be a minor hero for the balance of the day. Lame efforts to humanize the situation for purposes of a commutation of sentence or even just for a shorter backswing would result in obloquy and worse in the schoolyard.

I seem to remember looking balefully at my handiwork as I approached Coach who bid me bend over in preparation for what I knew would be 1 or 3 swats. You never knew in advance, there not being some sort of spreadsheet of offenses with the requisite swats drawn up somewhere. Still, you try to assess the situation because if there’s one thing for sure it’s this: if you get 3, your heart will jump and lodge in your throat and you will cry and that crying will be humiliating and that humiliation will be far worse than the pain which, let there be no doubt, would be considerable.

I spread my legs shoulder width apart and reluctantly grabbed my ankles. Or maybe I just put my hands on my knees. Whatever it took to give him a target. By this time I'm past quietly praying for only one swat and instead I'm trying to, as I said, assess the situation amidst panic.

So, here, made more coherent, is what was initially the furiously rushed and tumbled assessment I made as I grabbed my ankles: On the one hand, this just had to be a one-swat whippin’ because I hadn’t done anything all that godawful! What’s more, my whippin’ was going to be a public affair – in front of the gym class! Three-swat whippins always occur outside of class! On the other hand, the fact that I was up there at all for an offense that was surely de minimis portended darkly: Obviously, Coach must be maniac! Can’t know what to expect.

Thwack! Then . . . Coach stepped away.



One swat. And it stung. Heart bounced up into my throat, but settled back down without my humiliating myself.

“You’re gonna do this right from now on, isn't that right, boy?”

“Yessir.”

“Back in line, then, and be sure you do.”


No boy was ever paddled again that year in PE. My example scared maybe 40 boys into Marine-like unison in our calisthenics for the better part of a year. The event took on legendary proportions, but not because of anything I did – that wasn’t memorable or even worth a mention as we boys recalled the swing and thwack of that paddle. It wasn’t even Coach’s psychosis that haunted us.

No, it was the paddle. The paddle served its purpose. No one ever wanted to get hit by that paddle. My paddle. Did its job.

Over time, I became prouder and prouder of my handiwork and thrilled to the reports of its subsequent use.

memoir

I was quite young, playing outside in my small home town in Mississippi. I don't recall what was at stake, or the friends I was with, but I suppose a choice had to be made so I sang, "Eeenie, meenie, miinie, mo, catch a . . . . "

But in Mississippi, little kids using this rhyme did not catch a "tiger." We caught a "n______." And so that's what I commanded. And just about the time I said it, my mother came running out of the kitchen.

"Gregory! Get in here. Right now!"

Now, I'd never seen my mother that angry and I had no idea what she was angry about.

"What’d I do?" I asked. And then her legs brought her 4'11'' frame to me quite quickly, whereupon she grabbed my arm and brought me inside with all the vigor she could muster.

Once in the kitchen, she turned and faced me, still holding my arm and with an authority I’d never heard in her voice she commanded, "Don't you ever let me hear you use that word again! We do NOT use that word in this family and I don't care who else uses it or how much. WE . . . DO . . . NOT! Do you understand me?"

Well, you know, I didn't really understand, but I sensed that admitting to that would just get me into more trouble. At the same time, I also figured out that the only word that she could be talking about was the one that I really didn't know the full meaning of. At that young age, I wasn't really clear as to what "n_________" meant. I surely didn't picture a human being when I said ". . . catch a n________ by the toe” though I knew that there were human beings to whom that word referred, but that reference was always confusing to me, perhaps because my parents called those people “negroes.”

Anyway, I wanted to placate my mother, so when she announced that "WE . . . DO . . . NOT" say a particular word, I made as if I understood.

But she must've known better. I must've had some quizzical look on my face because she visibly relaxed a bit, stood there looking at me like she'd just figured out something, and asked, "You don't really know what I'm talking about do you?"

Never having seen my mother so angry, not being aware of any transgression on my part, and absolutely relieved that she had calmed down with a more solicitous approach, I broke into tears. "Nooooooooooo!!!!" I cried. "Wha’did I do????!!!!!!?????"

Then she told me what, perhaps, she should have told me long before, but hadn’t. She told me, as best she could in order to make it clear to a little boy, about the problems between white and black people, about the bad treatment, and the bad words. That people who use the bad words might be mistaken for bad people who do bad things. She told me about "n_______" in particular and explained what she could. I realized I’d never heard her use that word before; nor had I heard my father use it. But I’d heard a lot of other mothers and fathers use it and so I was suddenly proud of my parents.

"So I know you didn't mean anything by it because you didn't know any better," she acknowledged.

"Uh-huh, I didn't know. I didn't mean nothin' by it!"

"Well, now you know."

And she was about to let me go back outside to play, but then she grabbed me again with as much force, but without malice as if, this time, she was pulling me away from the brink of some bad fall. Her eyes were just as big as before, but softer, as she added: “Don’t you dare tell anyone other than your father what I just told you. Not friends. Not their parents. You’re gonna hear that word and you will hear it . . . .”

“I have heard it . . . a lot,” I assured her.

“Yes, I know you have, but you will never correct them or tell them what I said. Do you understand?”

“But . . . .”

“It will get you into more trouble than you can possibly imagine . . . and me, too,” she said, firmly looking at me, riveting her face to mine, her eyes to mine, so that I understood, wordlessly, that the safety of my mother sat in my hands and so I shook my head gravely, too preemptively afraid for my mother to say a word.

Went back outside to my friends and this I remember well: I felt superior to them, more mature, and protective of my mother. They laughed as they asked what had come over my mother and whether I’d gotten the “whippin’” it looked like I was going to suffer. Even now I burn a little cold imagining, as I did then, that these so-called friends of mine might harm my mother.

I don’t recall how I responded to their teasing -- just the sort of rising-above-it-all sensation that comes with revelation amidst those to whom the profound thing has not yet been, could not be, revealed.


I haven't said or written "n__________" since. And the issue never found a voice again in the family. My mother’s sister used it once when I was about 14, causing my mother to visibly wince, embarrassing my aunt, but we didn’t discuss it. Should’ve, but felt like we didn’t have to. My mother had scandalized the word and any scenario involving it.

Indeed, it took me a long, long time, long after the family left Mississippi, and I was in my late teens or early 20s, until I confronted the word upon hearing it, forgetting, I’m sure, that I was breaking my promise to my mother, a promise that needed to be broken, a promise I’m sure she’d have me break.

Dad's Batmobile

My father recently sold his Cadillac Eldorado. Spotless, that car, but what I most remember about it is some uncharacteristically sporty wheels. I first saw it nine years ago when he pulled into the parking lot of Francesco's restaurant near the Oakland Coliseum where we were about to see a Warrior's game. Here's what I thought at the time:

My father has always wanted a Cadillac and now, in his retirement, he has bought one and it's beautiful, if you like Cadillacs anyway. It's a dark, metallic blue with a black leather interior and the dashboard looks like something from a Star Wars cruiser. . . . but it has these really fancy wheels, wheels that look like the wheels on the Batmobile, really sporty chrome jobs that look like three big curving waves coming from the hub to the edges and that really don't seem to fit my 72 year old dad. In fact, even though my dad had told me to look for a dark blue Cadillac Eldorado, I didn't think this particular Eldorado was him because of the intensely sportorific wheels. So when he got out of the car all I could say was, "Nice ride, Dad, but what's up with the Batmobile wheels?"

He gave me "the look" (!!!!!) which he uses when he wants me to understand that he is not amused. The look looks like this: He closes his eyelids just a little while looking straight at me as if his eyes were big, black guns, and he takes a short breath and expels it forcefully while moving his tongue back and forth along and behind his bottom teeth.

"Car came with 'em, " he said. "I didn't choose 'em. They were just there. C'mon, we'll go for a ride. You drive."

So now I figure I better say something nice about the car so I put on my cheeriest smile and I say: "Wow, this is my first time in a Cadillac and it's just as comfortable as they say it would be." I had been in Cadillacs before, but I knew he'd be proud.

"Yeah, well not too many people get the opportunity to drive a Caddy" he says. Then he motioned to my left hand side by the door. "You see those controls at the edge of seat? You have 4 different settings there to make the seat exactly the way you like it."

"Really?" I enthused. So at that moment I started fooling with the controls to make the seat "exactly the way" I like it, but he says, "Hey, what're you doing there? I got it exactly the way I . . . hey, don't touch the button in front! You didn't touch the front button, did you?"

I told him I didn't know if I had touched the front button because I wasn't looking down at the buttons while I was driving, I was "just fooling around" with the buttons to make the seat more comfortable.

"I thought you said it was comfortable!" he says.

"Well, it was, but you said I could make it more comfortable," says I.

"What, by 'fooling around' with it?" he asks. And he gives me "the look" (!!!!!!).

"I wasn't really fooling around, I was 'experimenting,' trying to find the right fit."

"What do you need with the 'right fit?'" he asks. "We're just taking a little spin. I had the seat just the way I like it. If you didn't touch the front button then when I drive again I can push it and the seat will go back to the way I like it, but if you DID push the front button, then the seat will go back to some way that you had it after fooling around with it. Now I'm gonna have to readjust it again."

"Sorry," I offered. "Maybe I didn't touch the front button."

"Do you KNOW you didn't touch the front button?" he asked.

"No, I guess not."

"You just touched all the buttons you felt down there, right?"

"I suppose so," I admit.

"Well, you probably touched the front button. Hey, where are we anyway?"

At this point I was driving in downtown Oakland right around Jack London Square so my dad asked, "Do you know how to get back to the restaurant from here?" I said I did. Then he pushed a button on the dashboard and a computerized voice suddenly boomed in the car with "DESTINATION PLEASE."

My father then yelled, "FRANCESCO'S RESTAURANT, OAKLAND,CALIFORNIA, ON HEGENBERGER AVENUE!!!!"

The computer then asked, "Street address please," but I said, "Dad, I know how to get there," and the computer repeated, "Street address please," but Dad pressed the button again and the system stopped. "It's okay, Dad," I said. "I know how to get there."

"Eh, that' s not the point," he complained. "The navigation system can tell you the BEST way to get there."

"I know the best way," I said. "It's probably the only way."

"Oh yeah?," he said. He pressed the button again and again came the computer voice: "DESTINATION PLEASE."

Very quietly, Dad said to me, "give it your home address."

I whispered back, "I know how to get home, dad."

"Just give it . . . . "

"DESTINATION PLEASE."

"Just give it" . . . ( "the look." (!!!!!!!!!!) ) . . . "your address."

"Okay," I whispered and then more loudly I said, "Sixty-nine, twelve Balsam Way, Oakland."

There was a pause and then the computer said, "PLEASE REPEAT DESTINATION."

Before I could answer, my father screamed, "SIX NINE ONE TWO BALSAM WAY, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA!" Then he whispered to me, "You gotta speak up and I don't think it understands 'sixty-nine twelve' anyway."

Then the computer said, in a more moderate tone, "take the second right from present location at Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive."

My father then asked for "FULL DIRECTIONS!" and the computer gave me directions that would surely have gotten me home, but they weren't what I would consider the best directions, so I said, "Well, that's not the way I'd go home from here."

"Why not," asked Dad.

"It's not the best way," I said.

"It's the best way according to the navigational system," he said.

"It'll get me home," I conceded, "but it's not the best way."

"Oh, so you know the BEST way," my dad says.

"I should know the best way to my own home. I've been living here ten years," I say and suddenly, suddenly!!!!! I realize that -- even though I've turned and looked away from my father -- I'm giving him "the look" (!!!!!!!!!!) I've inherited THE LOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Well, let's go eat," he says.

"Okay," I say.

Silence for minute.

"Handles nicely," I say.

"Yeah, she's smooth," he says.

"Must be the batwheels," I say.

"Yeah, right," he says. "The batwheels."