Compensation: The Real Meaning

I have been thinking about compensation lately and how the meaning of the word has changed for me as I approach age 70.

When I was a teenager—bagging groceries at the Foodtown on Henry Street—compensation meant the $1.15 an hour I was being paid at first. That’s what you earned in a minimum wage job in those days. When the minimum wage was increased to $1.25 soon afterward, my salary went up nearly 10 percent. Today, there is talk of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That seems like a huge increase to my 16-year-old self, but not nearly enough when viewed through my almost 70-year-old eyes.

Maybe I should have written a research paper on minimum wage in high school.

Luckily, during those teen years, I was often able to supplement my salary with tips I earned from carrying bags of groceries out to customers’ cars. Unluckily, I was expected to report the total of any tips I received. Then the reported total could be deducted from my pay for the day. (Full confession: sometimes I fibbed a little and reported only about 75% of the tips, which, unluckily, never amounted to more than $8, even on a great day.)

So what’s different for me about compensation today beyond the changes in minimum wage? It’s what I have to compensate for. A couple of years ago, I injured a tendon in my right forearm. My doctor diagnosed the injury as tennis elbow, which would be cool if I played tennis on even a semi-regular basis. No, I got the injury from carrying heavy suitcases up several flights of stairs while on a vacation in Denmark after a hotel elevator broke down. So, what I really have is suitcase elbow. Would it sound cooler if I called it Danish suitcase elbow?

Would this be more impressive in Danish?

Then, in recent weeks, I have felt a weakness behind one of my knees. I would try to describe it, but anyone nearing 70 like me probably knows what I am feeling. It’s a…a…a…weakness. Once again compensation has been required, so I have added an Ace knee brace to the Ace elbow brace I have kept around for use at the gym ever since my Danish adventure.

This leg has weathered nearly 70 years.

I fear as I actually reach 70—or beyond—that I am going to need additional compensation both for my physical shortcomings and in order to pay for new medical devices to compensate for them. My wife’s grandmother used to say, “It’s no fun getting old.” It’s also painful for your body, your psyche, and your wallet.

Everybody Needs an Editor

These days, I have more free time on my hands than I used to, so I have been listening to a series of lectures on CD by a professor of Hebrew and Bible studies at NYU on the history of the Bible. One of the early lectures focuses on the question of who wrote the Bible. There are no definitive answers to the question. Really, I didn’t expect a specific author credit other than perhaps Moses. But the scholarship is very interesting. What did surprise me was that the professor spends some time noting that the Bible had not only writers but also editors. 

As someone who sends out business cards proclaiming to be a “Writer/Editor,” I was glad that the editing role in the creation of the Bible was being acknowledged. Even if the writers were divinely inspired, they were bound to make some mistakes and overlook some inconsistencies. Hence, the need for editors. Of course, we editors also like to think we are divinely inspired. As I often tell my children (and anyone else I encounter), “Everybody needs an editor.”

Here is an example of Biblical editing that the lecturer noted. In Exodus, Chapter 12, verses 8–10, the Israelites are commanded to eat the flesh of the lamb that they slaughtered and whose blood they used to paint their doorposts so the Angel of Death would “pass over” their houses and spare their first born children. How should the lamb be cooked? The answer is stated directly: it should be roasted with fire and NOT boiled in water. Any parts that remain after the evening meal should be burned with fire in the morning. The details are pretty specific, so they must have seemed important to the writers of Exodus and to the people of Israel who were fleeing from Egypt and heading slowly toward Canaan.

The story of the Passover celebration meal is repeated later in the Bible, this time in Deuteronomy 16:7, where a different verb is used to describe the cooking process—one which involves boiling, though my Bible translates the term as “roast.” Not a big deal, most of us would probably think. But the discrepancy worried scholars over the years—and must have disturbed one or two Biblical editors too, because they now got involved. In a later book, II Chronicles (35:13), one or more editors took over when the lamb cooking process is again described, and this time included terms for BOTH roasting and boiling. The editors thus protected the egos of both previous sets of writers—an editing skill that is often underappreciated.

Over the years, my children have each asked me to review some of their compositions and to provide a little editing magic. We all decided that was not cheating, just improving. I found the best technique to use involved leaving the beginnings and endings of paragraphs pretty much intact while making needed adjustments in the middle sentences and adding an occasional transition or two. [It’s a little like those reading tests you see online where some of the letters inside words are transposed, but your mind makes the connections anyway.] It must have worked ok, because both children often got an ego boost in noting, “You really didn’t change anything much.” I would just nod.

  

All of which reminds me of perhaps my most memorable editing moment, which occurred the summer after I graduated from high school. I was working as an intern on the Savannah Evening Press, the local afternoon daily. The press run of the day’s paper was almost ready to begin. I was asked to give a quick (but thorough) read to the front page to make sure everything looked right. I spotted a pretty embarrassing error. The typesetter had left out the letter l in the word public. In Savannah, Georgia, in 1967, no one discussed anything pubic, especially on the front page of a newspaper. I was told to rush down to the press room, find a pressman, and say these memorable words—“Stop the Presses!!!” That is exactly what happened. Then a typesetter rushed in with a chisel and chipped off the letters “ic” from the word on the plate. The presses started up again, and 30,000 copies were run off with a blank space between the words pub and library on page 1.

In the old days, type was set by placing individual
metal letters into metal frames

I have spent much of the next 50 years editing as well as writing a wide range of materials, but I have never felt quite as heroic as at that moment in 1967. I can just imagine how the editors working on II Chronicles must have felt as they improved the Bible!

A pressman checks the presses. As I learned,
he can even stop the presses!

First Time Fathers

Among the memorabilia turned over to me after my mother died five years ago was a letter that my father had written to my mother soon after my older brother was born. At the time, my father was stationed in England, serving in the Army Air Force during World War II. He was writing to respond to a letter he had just received from home letting him know he was a father for the first time. I’m not sure just why my brother entrusted the letter to me—after all, it’s really about him—but I’m glad to have it. Collecting and retelling our family history is part of my role.

I wasn’t sure how to write about that letter. Then I began reading a book of short essays on fatherhood by comedian Jim Gaffigan entitled Dad Is Fat. The title’s appeal to me is obvious. As one of my friends used to say, “I resemble that remark.” I also can relate to a lot of the feelings and mixed emotions that Gaffigan describes. Having been a father for nearly 38 years now, I think I should understand the role pretty well, but I still question my value sometimes and often rightfully doubt my expertise.

But this blogpost is really about beginnings—how three different fathers responded to their first days of fatherhood.

I can tell you from experience that it is hard to figure out your father role at first. Here is Gaffigan’s take:

The newborn stage is a special time. It’s really a sacred time when nobody expects you to do anything except enjoy your bundle of joy. This sacred time lasts roughly 20 minutes, and then you become the publicity agent for the mother and baby. The masses of family and friends want to be assured the mother is okay and get information on the baby. For some reason, it’s really important for people to know how much the baby weighs. This has always baffled me. It’s rude. She’s not even a day old, and people seem to be obsessed with my daughter’s weight.  She was nine pounds, but I remember telling friends, “She’s eight pounds, sixteen ounces” because it sounded thinner.

My father’s letter of response was not as humorous as Gaffigan’s, But it did have a funny connection to Gaffigan’s story, as you can see below. It was filled with wonder and romance and seemed so UNLIKE the quiet reserved man I would come to know a few years later. In fact, I felt that I was trespassing a little bit as I read the letter, though I am glad I did. It was addressed to “Dearest One and Skippy” and started this way:

Gosh “Sweet,” today was my lucky day. I finally received a letter from you dated April 21 [three days after my brother was born and almost exactly 75 years ago], and was I glad to hear from you. I believe this was the most welcome letter I have ever received from you. Today was also payday, and naturally as I only draw 8 pounds, I decided to invest a couple and send Skippy his first birthday present. . . .

Glad to hear that you and Skippy are getting along so good, but, Sweet, do you think I am a mind reader? Do you know you didn’t tell me how much Skippy weighed or even his birthday? . . . .

 .

Good night, sweet dreams, and God bless you both.

My parents took this picture several months before my
brother was born. My father enclosed it in his letter.

The third new-father response was mine. After our son Brett was born, healthy but a little bit yellow from jaundice, Audrey stayed in the hospital with the baby for a few extra days. I decided to surprise her with some better-than-hospital food from a deli near the hospital. I ordered the food, waited for a few minutes as it was prepared, and then got impatient to start my visit with my new son. 

As I moved toward the deli’s front door, the counterman shouted, “Hey, don’t you want your food?”

I blushed a little as I turned around and reached for the bag. Then I started toward the door again. 

“Hey, aren’t you going to pay for the food?” he shouted with a laugh. I made a quick apology and got out my wallet.

“By any chance, did your wife just have a baby?” the counterman inquired.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Just a wild guess,” he replied.

I would like to think by the time my second child, Amanda, was born and I became a second-time father, that I had gotten a little smoother. But she would probably be the first one to tell you that smoothness is not my style then or now. Alas, our children know us too well.

Audrey, Brett, and me soon after our family got bigger and better.