First Day on the Job

I have a new project: watching episodes of “Scrubs” on Netflix, starting with Season 1. It’s hard to miss “Scrubs” if you have cable, and I have seen random episodes over the years. But I didn’t follow the show from its beginning, so I missed something important. Watching the first episodes from the first season, I have been experiencing not only humor and zaniness but also fear and anxiety—the characters’ and my own. Just why is watching a sit-com about young doctors in a crazy but somehow functional hospital making me anxious? There must be an explanation.

Season 1 of Scrub blends
humor and anxiety for me

One part of the explanation may involve just how I am viewing the show. I started watching the first episodes on my iPad while lying in bed late at night. Picture me shading the light of the iPad from Audrey under the covers, like I used to read books with a flashlight when I was a kid. This is not as easy to do as you might think. I have a double problem to deal with: I am trying not to shake the bed with giggles, and I am trying not to fall asleep before the closing credits. I got through the first two episodes the other night before conking out. So I got to see J.D., Elliot, and Turk first enter that hospital and be thrown headlong into a state of “new job anxiety,” a world that most professionals and maybe most jobholders of any kind face on the first day on the job. In the state of new job anxiety, you sense that almost everyone around you knows what to do better than you do.

That’s what I was feeling oh so many years ago on my first day of teaching at Central High School, an inner city school in Providence, RI. I was 22-years-old and decided to wear a tie, so I wouldn’t be asked by a veteran teacher to show my hall pass when I walked down a corridor. On Day 1 of my new career, I stood in front of 30 assorted students, taking roll and handling administrative details for an extended home-room period. The kids were checking me out. In the tried-and-true method of teachers everywhere, I had written my name in large chalk letters on the board: “Mr. Goodman.” Up until that day, “Mr. Goodman” had always referred to my father.

"Buehler! Buehler! Buehler!" This could have been me.

Everything went fine for the first 10 minutes. Then, a large and fairly intimidating student burst into the room with no explanation for his lateness or embarrassment at disrupting the class. Before taking his seat, he asked, “Who are you?” I pointed a somewhat shaky finger at the board where my father’s name was printed. “Mr. Good Guy,” the student proclaimed. “Do you take drugs?” I shook my head no. “Do you drink booze?” “Not much,” I replied. “Fool around with the women?” “Nope,” I answered. Then, giving me a slight shove, he announced, “What kind of good guy are you; you don’t do nothing!”

I somehow overcame my fear, and the student, whose name I discovered was Larry Davis, finally took his seat, though not before offering to sell me some jewelry he had in his pocket to give to my girlfriend or mother.

I had an open period following home room and headed to the English Department office. “Boy, Larry Davis put me through the ringer,” I announced. “Larry Davis,” a colleague replied. “Is he out of jail already?” It seems that Larry had gotten into a violent fight with another student the previous year in which some knife-play occurred. Larry usually reserved his anger for fellow students and not teachers, I was told. I was only somewhat relieved. I got more relief when Larry never made another appearance in my classroom. Within a few weeks I was told to remove him from my roster; he had decided to drop out. Was I being a bad teacher when I made no effort to convince him to change his mind?

So that’s my Day 1 story. I have another to share, which involves a lawyer friend named Joe. When he was a rookie defense counsel involved in his first trial, Joe began his first jury summation this way: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please remember that in our legal system, a person is presumed guilty until proven innocent.” Mrs. Rabinowitz, a middle-aged Jewish woman on the panel to whom Joe felt a kinship, gave him a slight shake of her head. He quickly reversed his statement. “Excuse me, I meant that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.” Mrs. Rabinowitz responded with a slight nod this time. No matter, the damage was done. Mrs. R. and the other jurors soon agreed, without presumption, that Joe’s client was indeed guilty.

Joe too survived his Day 1 disaster and has had a long and successful legal career.

And, of course, the young doctors in “Scrubs” also overcome their Day 1 anxieties. They get beaten down. They get back up. They find entertaining methods to help them conquer the fear and the craziness, sort of. And we laugh. Or in my case, I try to laugh inside without shaking too much.

I got through the first two episodes, and then shut off the iPad and closed my eyes. But I didn’t exactly escape into sleep. I fell into a strange dream. In it, I was a new doctor trying to keep up. At some point, I was instructed to carry a young patient in my arms into another part of the hospital where I picked up some supplies and then returned to my floor. The task tired out both me and the patient. We sat down together in a large chair and fell asleep. When I woke up a few minutes (or more) later, I was still in the chair, but in my lap was not the young patient but a middle-aged midget (or little person, if you prefer). Hospital veterans had made a switch on me during my nap. And they were now laughing hysterically. The midget was laughing too. Luckily, he looked nothing like Larry Davis.

I plan to continue watching Season 1 episodes, nightmares or no nightmares. And maybe I’ll head to Season 2 after that. I’m taking a risk, I know, but that’s what you have to do to survive in the world of situation comedy reruns.

Must Reading for Sixty-Somethings

I have often marked decade birthdays by gifting copies of one of Judith Viorst’s clever poetry collections. These started with When Did I Get to Be Twenty and Other Injustices and went on to It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty, How Did I Get to Be 40 and Other Atrocities, Forever Fifty, Suddenly Sixty, I’m Too Young to Be Seventy, and the latest, Unexpectedly Eighty.

The Sixties book features a poem called “The New Alphabet,” which begins this way:

A's for arthritis.
B's for bad back.
C is for chest pains. Corned beef? Cardiac?
D is for dental decay and decline.
E is for eyesight -- can't read that top line.
F is for fissures and fluid retention.
G is for gas (which I'd rather not mention). . .

The poem is clever and full of the truth. And, like most of the other poems in the collection, it’s mostly light-hearted. I would have little reluctance sharing it with anyone reaching 60. Because—let’s face it—all of us need to inject some humor into in our “aging” joints, along with the occasional cortisone shot.

That said, I have a new gift idea in mind for friends entering their seventh decade—an electronic download of The Deadline, the new e-book novel by my friend and former colleague Steven Jay Griffel. Steven’s book presents an even truer vision of what it’s like to face your sixties in the 2010s. A carnival barker might shout, “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll shudder, you’ll sigh.” In other words, the book will make you chuckle and worry at the same time. What else would you expect to happen when you are reading about a Jewish male character whose main goal is to be happy? As my brother used to taunt when he would give me noogies as a child, “Are you laughing or crying?”

Luckily there are no pictures of my brother
giving me noogies during our childhood together.

 

Steven’s happiness seeker, David Grossman, is facing lots of the angst of a 60-something American male in 2013—he has lost his job and feels a strange reluctance to look for a replacement; he has an aging parent, who may not be around much longer; his wife is a mixture of angel and taskmaster, supporting his dreams but giving him a hard dose of reality at the same time; his closest friend is building a new love relationship and starting a new business, and David, as befits his personality, offers advice and even helps secure a loan from some unsavory characters, who may, alas, have evil in their hearts. And, believe it or not, this is a comic novel! (“Are you laughing or crying?”)

The central idea in the novel, and I believe the driving force of all of us 60-somethings, is that David wants to follow his passion. Of course, some of us don’t know what our passion is or how to find it. And, if we do find it, how to exploit it. David does. He wants to write a book, a good book, a successful book. A book good enough and successful enough that he can devote his time to being a writer full-time. Imagine, being passionate all of the time! David has struck a bargain with his wife: he has one year to be guiltlessly passionate, to write his novel. After that, if he is not a financial success as a novelist, he will be required to become a “responsible adult” once again.

David writes and frets and advises and shares both wisdom and worries with his mother, wife, sister, and friends as the clock ticks toward his deadline. The writing goes well in the novel itself and in the novel inside the novel. But will it be done on time and be good enough? Readers get caught up in the drive toward the deadline. But it can be a bumpy ride.

 

So, I suggest giving The Deadline to someone reaching sixty-something. People, who, like David Grossman, are young enough to start over but starting to feel their age. People who are filled with passion and hope and a touch of guilt. Happily, or sadly, the book speaks to me. Then, of course, so does Judith Viorst’s poem with its painful reminders of arthritis, fading eyesight, and (you’ll pardon me) gas. 

Positive Signs of Age

A few days ago, I sent a belated birthday wish to my long-time friend Charles via Facebook. In my comment, I noted that he had reached a “magic” age for Baby Boomers—64. Why is that significant?  Ask the Beatles.

The song “When I’m 64” was on every Boomers’ lips after the “Sgt. Pepper” album came out in 1967. And one of Charles’s and my mutual friends from Charleston came down the aisle at his wedding in the early 1970s to someone’s singing, “Will you still need me. . .will you still feed me. . .when I’m 64?” The song was just a lark when we were in our twenties. Now it’s relevant! To paraphrase Pogo, “We have heard about 64, and [soon or now] it is us.”

I’ve been struck by how many recent happenings in our lives have seemed Baby Boomer relevant. For example, in a two-week period a few months ago, Audrey and I joined in three events that really define “Boomer-dom.”

First, there was the first bris we’ve attended for the grandchild of close friends and contemporaries. Baby Max was welcomed into the world by a cheering crowd of dozens of his new admirers, armed with iPhones or other video devices. There were lots of photo ops at the bris, though Max may not have felt he was at his photogenic best during the occasion. No male in the room could blame him for being a little testy at the events that took place. Notably, it was mostly women who took pictures of Max’s brief trauma. Here are a few that Audrey captured:

Max with his mom Lauren

We’re going to be closely watching Max and any of his future siblings grow as we grow older. But reaching grandparent age is a definite Boomer milestone.

Just a few days later, another contemporary couple walked their daughter down the aisle. Now that’s not necessarily a Boomer moment, but our friends, like us, didn’t become parents until they were in their 30s. So a wedding in their 60s was logical. Neither of our children is ready for marriage any time soon, so we may be aging Boomers before we dance at their weddings.

The third event was a little more unusual. It was a restaurant/lounge performance that featured a friend and her associates defying time by rocking hard through two raucous music sets. Here are a few seconds of evidence:

We knew we were in for something out of the usual when the band opened its first set with a cover of Camper van Beethoven’s “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” I can’t say that I could join in with the song, which begins this way—

Every day, I get up and pray to Jah
And he decreases the number of clocks by exactly one
Everybody's comin' home for lunch these days
Last night there were skinheads on my lawn
Take the skinheads bowling
Take them bowling
Take the skinheads bowling
Take them bowling

But I quickly got into the beat and the spirit as Elissa and several Boomer cohorts, performing as HipAnonymous, churned out tunes that alternated between melodic, hard-driving, and outrageous. Didn’t we all dream of being rockers at one time? These were Boomers living out the dream when many of us are just happy to take naps. Unlike many in the audience, the band members’ knees didn’t seem to creak and they had no trouble remembering all of the lyrics of their songs. We loved rocking with them, and some of us even grabbed blocks or other percussion devices and joined in. Audrey tried out the video function of her iPhone with mixed results, as you could see above. In 60’s-speak, it was “a happening.” But I’m dating myself.

 So, Audrey and I spent two weeks embracing a diverse and exciting range of events that made us feel both older and younger at the same time. We snapped pictures, danced the hora, and sang about skinheads. If this is what it’s all about, bring on 64!