Curses, Foiled Again!

I like to think that I curse far less than many other people I know or hear. There is the occasional “damn” and some other curse words muttered under my breath. But, for the most part, I avoid the really bad words. You know the ones I mean. . . . I grumble a lot, and I have been accused by my daughter of having “a tone” sometimes when I speak. But not of cursing too much.

I think my reluctance to curse was implanted in me by my parents, who were pretty puritanical when it came to bad words. I can remember a time when I came home from a hard day of first grade with a tough vocabulary question for my parents to answer. That day in the boys’ room, I had spied a four-letter word that began with “F” written in magic marker above a urinal. I said the four letters over and over in my mind to make sure I remembered them. Then I came home hoping to get help in solving the mystery.

At the dinner table, I spelled out the new word, and my parents, almost in unison, said, “Never use that word!” I received a similar response on another occasion when I asked my grandmother for the meaning of a curse word in Yiddish that I had heard. What I got, in both cases, was admonition instead of definition. Luckily, I was able to learn the meaning of both words, and many more, “on the street.”

One way to clean up the dirty words

Still, over the years, I have stayed a little squeamish about using the really bad words. You know the ones I mean. . . . For example, many people have told me that the show Veep on HBO (is it still playing?) was really good. I watched one episode and was so disturbed by watching a female Vice President and later President using “the F word” over and over, that I never tuned in again. (Lest you think that I am alone in being prudish, I can remember the time when my parents visited many years ago, and we thought we would entertain them by watching an episode of The Sopranos. They both shut down completely after the first “F word” barrage. Oh well.) Let me note that I am not proud to make these revelations.

I’ve had two funny recent experiences that involved curse words. A few weeks ago, Audrey and I went with friends to see a powerful off-Broadway show called Jesus Hopped the A Train about two prisoners who converse with each other at Riker’s Island as they await a trial or a sentencing for murders they committed. The play opens with one of the prisoners on his knees trying to say the Lord’s Prayer. He begins, “Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be they name.” He knows that there shouldn’t be any mention of someone named Harold, but can’t remember just what word to use instead. As he curses at himself out loud, we hear voices off stage, yelling “Shut the F--- up!” The curse exchange goes on for at least a minute. The audience reaction is a mixture of surprise and laughter and maybe a little discomfort. And I’m just imaging what my parents would be thinking if we had brought them to the play.

"Harold be thy name"

I am also thinking about how that play would go over if we took it on in the play reading class that I attend every Wednesday. We non-actor actors sight read plays aloud, taking parts assigned to us by the teacher. If we’re reading contemporary plays, the “F word” has a way of slipping in occasionally. We actors brave our way through the language, and, secretly, I think we enjoy being free to let out a curse. However, one class member dropped out a few years ago when she couldn’t take it anymore.

Then, last Monday night, Brett, Amanda, and I attended a game between the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Clippers. Going to the game was part of my birthday present from my kids. It was a fun night. I paid only for my transportation. I didn’t even have to leave my seat once I settled into it; Brett made a trip to the concession stand and delivered a bucket of popcorn and a Diet Coke right to me.

Behind us was a particularly vocal Knicks fan, who was Israeli. Not that unusual in Manhattan. Both her cheers and negative comments were filled with a mixture of English and Hebrew. However, when her Knicks favorite Kristaps Porzingis missed a shot or got called for a foul, she had only one thing to say —“Shit!”

I guess some words work in any language. And I guess there are right times to curse, no matter what my parents and grandmother taught me. Like when you just can’t remember what name fits in the Lord’s Prayer or when Kristaps Porzingis misses an easy shot.

Getting Younger

A few years ago, Audrey insisted that I read the book Younger Next Year. It’s a popular self-help book written by a cardiologist and one of his patients, both of whom are up in years, as we who are aging like to say euphemistically. The major thesis of the book is that you can ward off the evil effects of aging if you start a regimen of daily exercise, as well as a sensible eating plan.

It all makes a lot of sense, and I have taken two key steps toward meeting the book halfway: (1) I read a copy of the book that I checked out of the library, though I admit that I returned the book to the library as soon as it was due and didn’t even entertain the thought of purchasing my own copy for continuing reinforcement; and (2) I joined a gym and signed up for regular sessions with a personal trainer named William. 

I have written about William before. He is what I like to call a “gentle sadist.” He has a vision of me as someone lighter, stronger, and, yes, even younger than I really am. I am trying not to depress him too much by continuing to demonstrate the “real” me at our sessions.

I try to exercise pretty regularly, but often take a day or two off. A person has to have time to rest and add calories, after all. Which might tell you how well I’m doing on the sensible eating part of the plan.

For example, today I’m taking a rest day because my calves ache. The pain is the result of a strange machine at the gym that William imposed on me yesterday during our “work on your legs” day. Here is what it looks like.

(Needless to say, this is not a picture of me on the machine.)

William’s idea is to set the machine for a weight a bit higher than what I consider comfortable. Then I am to place my shoulders under the two horizontal pads, stand with my toes on the bar at the bottom, raise up on my toes, and lift the pads with the “power” of my calves. Normally, I do three sets of 15 lifts. Though some days, like yesterday, William pushes me to 4 or 5 sets.  You would think I would emerge from the machine with a sense of greater strength. Not so. I emerged with wobbly legs and moved “drunkenly” toward the next exercise.  And today, I’m having a little trouble climbing stairs gracefully. Not to worry. This exercise stuff is not a sprint, as they say, but a marathon. Sure. . .

During my “day off,” I’ve been reading an amusing memoir by an Israeli writer named Etgar Keret. I recommend it highly. Here is his take on taking up yoga to get in shape.

I did try yoga a few years ago, At the end of my first beginners’ class, the pale, skinny teacher came over to me and in a soft but firm voice explained that I wasn’t ready yet to work with the beginners and should first join a “special” group—a bunch of women in advanced stages of pregnancy. It was actually quite nice—the first time in a long while that I was the one with the smallest belly in the room. The women working out were very slow, and they would pant and sweat even when they were asked to perform simple, basis actions, just like me. I was sure that I had finally found my place in the cruel world of physical activity. But the group steadily grew smaller: as on a reality show, each week another woman was eliminated.  About three months after I joined the class, all of the members had given birth except me, and the teacher with the same soft but firm voice told me before turning out the lights on the studio for the last time that she’d bought a one-way ticket to India and didn’t know whether she would be back.

                        --Etgar Keret, The Seven Good Years

I figure soon, once I can walk into the gym without listing right or left, I’ll get back to the machines and to William’s pushing. Is this going to work the way the doctor suggested in his book? Sadly, I think it is more likely that I will succumb to a comment my mother might have made. “Get cracking. You know you’re not getting any younger.” 

A for Activism

A few weeks ago, Audrey and I went to see Michael Moore’s show on Broadway, The Terms of My Surrender. The tone was set in the opening moment, when Moore—dressed as frumpily as usual—walked onto a stage with an American flag motif as a backdrop and shouted, “How the fuck could this happen?”

Who is that man hiding behind Michael Moore's playbill?

The question seemed to glow in the air. It made us laugh and feel uncomfortable at the same time. We wondered if Moore was planning to tell us something during the show or was going to blame us for doing or for not doing something. The answer turned out to be both.

What followed was a 90-minute extended monologue (with a few entertaining detours) that focused not so much on the fame or infamy that Moore’s words and films have generated for him over the years but on the ways he has gone about earning that fame or infamy. Starting from his childhood days in Flint, Michigan (an archetypical blue collar city), Moore has done much more than shout or make documentary films to demonstrate his activism. He has—well—acted! And he was making a plea or a demand for us audience members to get our act together and begin acting ourselves.

One of his stories hit close to home for me. Moore told about his adventures while attending Boys’ State in Michigan the summer before his senior year in high school. Guess what? I did the same thing in Georgia about five years earlier than Moore had. 

Moore felt uncomfortable during the week he spent with hundreds of overachievers or would-be politicos. So he used his time writing a speech for a Boys’ State contest sponsored by the Elks Club on the life and impact of Abraham Lincoln. As it turned out, Moore had a grievance against the Elks. His father had decided not to join the organization when he learned that being white was a key requirement for membership at that time. That was soon to change, and Moore was a key reason for the change. Amazingly, his speech attacking the Elks in Lincoln’s name won the contest, and he delivered it in front of several Elks leaders who were I’m sure both angry and embarrassed. The story made the national news, and within a year, the Elks and other fraternal organizations were shamed into opening their membership to all races.

My Boys’ State experience was different from Moore’s, though it did have a couple of activist moments. For the most part. I enjoyed the politicizing that went on during the week and even got caught up in the races for Boys’ State governor and legislature that were held there. I didn’t run for office, but served as one of the party whips, which meant that I was expected to whip up support for my party’s candidates. I became deeply involved in backroom intrigue, making promises and counting votes. If smoking had been allowed, we whips would have worked long into the night in smoke-filled caucus rooms. This was 1966, after all, the days of old-fashioned politicos such as Lyndon Johnson and Everett Dirksen and Sam Rayburn. Of course, it was also the time of Georgia’s notorious racist governor Lester Maddox. My memory is that I was never required to shake his hand when he visited the program that summer. I’d like to think that I would have refused to do so if asked. (In my mind, I was much more of a badass than in real life.)

The week was about more than playing at politics; it also was filled with the undercurrent of the Vietnam War. June of 1966 was a high point of the war, and we males approaching high school graduation were getting worried. Feelings ran high in Georgia on both sides of the Vietnam debate. Like most young “activists,” I opposed the war, which was easier in that I didn’t yet have a draft card to worry about heeding or burning. (“Hell no, I won’t go!” I shouted, and then mumbled in an undertone, “. . . unless somebody makes me.”) We could talk tough because we were all certain that we were going to get college deferments, or so we hoped.

One of the loudest of us objectors was a student from Moultrie, Georgia, named John F. (I’m protecting his identity here because I still don’t trust that J. Edgar Hoover isn’t coming back from his place in Hell to get us.) Georgia Senator Herman Talmadge was coming to speak to us one afternoon. (Talmadge was a strong war supporter at the time; amazingly, he would change his stance a few years later). John told us that he was going to grill the senator over the coals, just wait and see! Talmadge spoke for 30 minutes or so, driveling on about why the fight in Vietnam was so important for U. S. interests. Then he agreed to take questions from us guys. John’s hand immediately went up, and there was smoke coming out of his nostrils. “Senator Talmadge,” he shouted. “I’m John F. from Moultrie.”

Senator Herman Talmadge could bring forth fire and brimstone,
or he could sweet talk to get his way.

That was all he could get out before Talmadge gave him a smile and turned on the charm. “John F. from Moultrie. Do you have a brother named Paul?”

“Yessir.”

“Didn’t he work in my office last summer as a college intern?”

“Yessir.”

“Great guy. How’s he doing? Please give him my best. Tell him I remember him well.”

John started to gulp.

“Now, what was your question?”

“A-hum-a- nuh, a-hum-a-nuh,” John seemed to deflate as he sank back into his chair.

It was a perfect lesson on how politicians are able to grab and hold control over an audience.

If only John had had a few lessons from Michael Moore before trying to take on the senator that day.

Up until a few weeks ago, that’s where my Boys’ State memory of John F. ended. But after our evening with Michael Moore, I decided to find out whatever happened to John. Through the magic of Google, I was able to learn a new chapter. It seems that John rebounded from his Boys’ State deflation to head to college and even to Harvard Law School. He practiced law for many years and then found a new outlet for his energies. He became a psychic and teacher of meditation and psychic development. An article I read online refers to John as “one of the nation’s better known serious psychics.”

I am not sure what qualifies one as a serious psychic, but I’m sure it requires a special type of activism. And I’m sure I would have as much to learn from John as from Michael Moore about how to give voice to my thoughts and hopes.