I was generally oblivious to things, a condition I have
gradually grown out of to some extent.
These days I think I am selectively oblivious to things I cannot change,
to things I find repulsive and wish weren’t true, and probably to certain
social protocols. Over the years, Sandy
has clued me in on a lot of subtleties that I was not picking up on. Once I catch on to something, I can hopefully
apply the same principle to similar new situations. My general oblivion may have been a defense
mechanism on my part to protect myself from the negatives around me. When Mom arranged to meet me with the car and
make our escape, she actually had to ask me, “Have you noticed that your father
has not worked in years?” She couldn’t
assume that I did!
As further evidence, I recall sitting and reading in our
front room in our little apartment in Inwood when Mom came rushing into the
room asking, “What’s that smell? What’s
burning?” She rushed to the kitchen,
found the problem and took care of it, then came back with “How could you not
have smelled that? Where is your
head? Would this place have burned to
the ground around you while you sat there reading?” Years later I have come to the realization
that in general women have better senses of smell than men do, and that
specifically, my sense of smell is worse than average. But I certainly should
have been aware that something was burning in the kitchen.
Sandy complained for many years about how I would leave
the coffee pot plugged in for several hours, getting refills as needed. She would ask, “How can you drink that
stuff? It smells old and awful.” I really thought she was exclaiming about my
sense of taste, not the awful smell.
Also, when she would boil water for spaghetti or teas or something, she
would turn the heat up to medium or a little higher, and it would take
“forever” to boil. I would come along
and crank it up as high as it would go.
It wasn’t until we got a more modern stove top a few years ago that I
caught on that the old style burners often had bits of spilled food on them,
and when I cranked them up, they smoked and stunk. Who knew?
Comedian Bob Newhart released two comedy albums in 1960
and 1961: The button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (reached #1 on the charts), and
The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back (hit #2 on the charts). One way to describe my life would be that of
a continual effort to overcome a button-down mind, though I’m not really sure
what Mr. Newhart meant by it or what I mean by it. Here is an example: I have 5 dinner plates to
unload from the dishwasher and put away.
There is a stack of 7 plates already in the cupboard. If I don’t rotate the dishes, we will be
using the same 5 or so over and over, and the other 7 will remain essentially
new and unused. Can’t have that, my mind
says, so I take down the 7, put up the 5, and then stack the unused 7 on
top. I guess my mind is thinking that if
we wear out the 5 from repeated use, we will need to buy a complete new set of
12. The set will last a lot longer if we
use each of the 12 more or less evenly. Actually, I don’t know what my mind was thinking.
The same holds for a drawer full of socks or
underwear. Before putting the clean ones
away I pull out the unused ones, put the newly cleaned ones on the bottom, and
then put the unused ones on top. The rationale is a lot sketchier here, because
we only buy underwear and sox in sets of 3 or so; we only need to replace the
ones that wear out, not the whole collection.
It just seems wrong to use the same ones over and over while the others
remain in the draw in nearly brand new condition. I have actually liberated myself from silly
habits like this, but don’t think I don’t think about it every time I put
things away! In fact, Sandy puts my
clean clothes in the drawer probably 80% of the time, and I assume she puts
them on top, so I often take fresh ones from the bottom. That’s my version of a button-down mind.
During high school I played on the junior varsity
baseball and football teams, plus dabbled with wrestling and basketball. When I quit football it was the varsity team
at the beginning of my junior year. I
had discovered beer and cigarettes during the summer, had lost my physical
conditioning, and was very discouraged when I found that I could not perform at
the beginning of the new school year the way I had at the end of the previous
school year. I did not have the sense to
realize that it takes a few weeks to get back in shape, if you haven’t been
staying in shape for a few months. If
the coaches tried to tell me that, I guess I wasn’t listening. I was probably oblivious.
I just realized that I have no memory of how I got home
to North Massapequa from my after-school sports activities in 9th
and 10th grade. The buses
left after school was over. I must have
gotten a ride from someone and was so oblivious as to be unaware. I wonder if I ever thanked anybody’s parents
for helping me get home. Amazing. Now I pick up Brianna and one or two friends
after middle school. I wonder whether
they are so self-absorbed as to not remember how they got home. Probably not.
Brianna, for one, is much more aware of the world around her than I was.
The year I dabbled with basketball, I was on the team
just for something to do and probably to avoid going home. I was not much of a basketball player and
would be put in near the end of a game if we were hopelessly behind or
comfortably ahead. But then one night
our team engaged in some vandalism at a rival school after the game. Somehow the starting team members were the
ones primarily identified as the culprits, and I was not. They were kicked off the team, and I got a
lot of playing time. I don’t recall, but
we probably lost all our games after that.
I also wasn’t much of a wrestler, either. With hindsight, I just didn’t have the
personal motivation and intensity to summon all my strength and abilities and
attack and be relentless. I was very
strong and thought I could get out of any hold my opponent tried to get me in,
but it didn’t always work out that way.
That may have been the first indication of my passive nature. I just wasn’t aggressive enough. I discovered that it is lonely out there on
the mat one-on-one, with all the others watching. I’d rather be part of a team that is on the
field together.
In baseball, I enjoyed being out in the field more than
being at bat. That is unusual and
probably indicative of a passive nature.
Most players would rather bat than play the field. I played center field and prided myself on
always getting a good jump on the ball, being quick, covering a lot of ground
out there, and hustling to back up the infielders and my fellow outfielders on
almost every play. I played Little
League through age 12 and what they called Babe Ruth League (age 13 – 15) on
Long Island. In San Jose they call it
Pony League. I also played for the high
school varsity team. I made the Pony
League All-Star team most years. I
actually pitched a playoff game when we ran out of pitchers, and threw a two or
three-hitter. It must have been good
control, because I did not have any real speed.
In my mid teens I started finding that the ball seemed to
be “bouncing around” in the air on me, especially when I had to run hard to
catch it. I missed a few fly balls, and
my confidence began to weaken. Believe
it or not, it was just a few years ago, near the end of my 30+ years as a
runner, that a casual comment by a fellow runner helped me realize what had
happened. He had played a lot of
baseball in his day, at a higher level than me, and was currently travelling to
watch his granddaughter, who was on a competitive softball team. Somehow I mentioned the “bouncing around”
issue, and he said it is caused by running on your heels. I was stunned. He pointed out, as I already knew, that track
runners are taught to run on the balls of their feet and even on their toes
when sprinting all out, and to keep their heads still. I had never made the connection before.
Evidently, as a young baseball player I had slipped into
the bad habit of running on my heels instead of my toes and mid-foot. Now I wonder how far I might have gone in
baseball if a coach had spotted that and I was able to correct it. That, in turn, led me to realize how
important good coaching is to a young athlete.
I have grandchildren who have qualified to play/dance at the competitive
levels, and the most exciting thing about that is that they get exposed to
great coaching. It can make all the
difference. In my general oblivion, I
can imagine a coach asking me, after I dropped a ball, “What happened out
there?” and me responding, “I don’t know.”
I’ll bet if I had been able to describe what was happening, a coach
would have been able to get me passed that problem. I can’t blame them for not knowing. I wasn’t playing at a high enough level to
have a coach who was so good that he would anticipate or guess my problem with
me not saying anything about it.
Prior to this recent revelation I had already realized
that the most accomplished athletes were the ones who responded to training,
responded to the competition, and elevated their games. There are many physically gifted young
athletes who never make it to the top of their sports, because at some level
they stop responding and elevating their game.
I don’t think it is physical. I
am talking about the thousands of young athletes who are all blessed
physically, but do not continue to progress all the way to the top levels. I have a special respect for those who are
able to continue to respond to great coaching and thus maximize their great
physical potential.
I’ve noticed that professional athletes and Olympic gold
medalists do very well on the Dancing with the Stars television program. I don’t think it is a coincidence. In almost every case they struggle initially,
then get better and better each week, as they respond to the coaching, the
critiquing and the competition. They’ve
learned to “pull” the required performances out of their bodies. Before I move away from the subject of
professional sports, let me comment on something I found very interesting and
thought others would, too. There was an
era in major league baseball where statisticians began to keep track of how
many players, and which players, had 30 or more home runs and 30 or more stolen
basis in a single season (the 30-30 club).
When Willie Mays did it in 1956 he renewed interest in the feat, as he
was only the second player ever to have done it, and the first since 1922. He did it again the following year, but that
was it.
After Bobby Bonds achieved the 30-30 club five times
during the 1970s, and his son Barry Bonds matched that record during his
career, Willie said that if he had known the statisticians were going to keep
track of such a thing, maybe he would have paid more attention to stealing
bases. (He hit 30+ home runs most
seasons). The reason for the special
attention, of course, is that it is so rare to find both the great power and
the great speed in the same person.
Now, the interesting part is that I was speaking with a
man who had coached in the minor leagues – hitting and infield. When I mentioned Willie Mays’ comment, he
pointed out that once Willie McCovey started hitting clean up behind Mays
(1959), Mays did not want to leave 1st base open by stealing 2nd;
because the opposing team would then walk McCovey intentionally, or “pitch
around” him (not give him anything good to hit, at the risk of walking him),
which effectively would take the bat out of McCovey’s hands. Alternatively, if Mays was called out on an
attempted steal of 2nd, McCovey would then be batting with no one on
base. Therefore, Mays did not attempt
many steals from 1959 on. I didn’t ask,
but I would think the same logic holds for not attempting to steal 3rd:
He was already in scoring position at 2nd. Why take the chance?
For the record, some 38 players have now joined the 30-30
club, and four have gone 40-40. However,
most of these records were achieved during what has been called the “steroid
era,” which taints the feats enough to discourage admiration or further
discussion here. I discuss steroid use
among young men elsewhere, in connection with the “body image” issues that have
plagued young men and women during my time.
Getting back to high school sports, I was on the football
field with my team, playing against a rival team, when a large explosion took
place somewhere along our bench. Someone
had lit a cherry bomb and tossed it under the team bench. I never heard whether they figured out who
did it, but the only kids above suspicion were the 22 who were on the
field. We couldn’t have done it. I also don’t recall the extent of any
injuries. In my immature mind, I just
knew that I didn’t do it, and could not be on any list of suspects, since I was
out on the field at the time.
When I read or hear about these tragic incidences these
days where male high school athletes commit sexual assaults on female students,
I can almost relate to their very dim understanding of the seriousness of what
they were doing and their virtual inability to value the girl as a person. I remember coming home on the bus from an
away game with this cute cheer leader sitting between my buddy and me. She had developed early and had probably the
biggest boobs on the bus. I think she
was sitting next to me because she liked me, but my buddy and I kept grabbing
feels until she was crying so much we had to stop. I recall that we thought it was great fun and
were disappointed that she “didn’t handle it very well”. Of course, we later bragged to the other guys
about it, and had no concern at all for how she might have been affected by the
incident.
With all the social media in action today, hopefully boys
will get a clue and come to the realization of how devastating such an
experience can be for a girl, in some cases even leading to suicide because, as
one Los Gatos girl said in her note, “My life is over.” I would hope that they would not only behave
better because of the greater chances of being caught, but because the social
media is helping get the message and understanding through to them about how
serious and wrong this is. My buddy and
I thought it was harmless fun, or maybe we didn’t think at all.
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