One Fine Day and the Man Who Can't Be Moved

There I was, in the bathroom taking a shower, when the song came on, and I had to laugh. It was the old song One Fine Day, and I had to laugh because it took me back to the summer of 1979, when I played it almost every day after having my heart broken by a girl I was in choir with…we’ll call her Paula...focusing on the line “some fine day, you’re gonna want me for your [guy].”

I laughed about the fact that almost 40 years later, it’s safe to say that some fine day she probably never did come around to wanting me for her guy; but that’s OK, because I got over her.

Which caused me to laugh again, because the other song that was my mantra that summer was Crystal Gayle’s I’ll Get Over You; and by November of that year, I had gotten over her, and was in a relationship that lasted for roughly the next six years.

Funny, isn’t it, how when we’re in the midst of a breakup, or in its immediate aftermath, it can seem like the most important thing in the world…the most devastating thing in the world, and the thing we’re sure we’ll never recover from. Funny how when we’re in the midst of it, it’s very hard to see how a breakup that you didn’t ask for can be opening the door to something else…to something that’s perhaps better than what you’re leaving behind. And so you work your hardest to try to hold on to what you’re losing. And once you’ve lost it, you think about ways of getting it back.

Here, the song Until You Come Back to Me comes to mind. When it first came out, it was a simple song about someone who is so singled-minded about getting their old lover back that they’re gonna “camp on [their] steps” and “rap on [their] door, tap on [their] windowpane.” Now it seems more like the anthem of a stalker who needs to be given a restraining order.

Which brings me back to the summer of ’79. You see, it was more than I’ll Get Over You that got me over Paula, there was an internal conversation I had with myself that made me see everything in a whole new light:

Wise Keith: So she was the perfect one for you right?

Sad Keith: Yeah.

Wise Keith: And you’re miserable because she left you without saying a word, right?

Sad Keith: Yeah.

Wise Keith: But if she was the perfect one for you, would she have treated you like that?

Sad Keith: Wha…? Huh? Whoa! Thanks, I needed that!

My heart was still broken because I had been treated badly by someone I had trusted with it, but…I was no longer pining over her. She treated me badly, and that was a sign that she wasn’t right for me, and I should just move on. Which I did…and was happy about a few months later.

Which brings me to The Man Who Can’t Be Moved. A beautiful song about a guy who just can’t move on from the fact that his girlfriend broke up with him; and hopes that one fine day, if he just stays in the spot where they first met, she’ll come back. I want to smack this boy around and say, “Get over it! Move on! There’s someone better for you out there, and you’re gonna miss her if you keep obsessing over this one!”

“If she was the perfect one for you, she wouldn’t have left you like that!”

I want to tell him that one fine day he’ll just think of her as a nice memory, and a lovely footnote to his romantic life.

Just as one fine day I felt the same about Paula.

The Wrong Lens of Love

For years, the story I told, and the story I believed, was that as an adolescent and young adult, my social life pretty much sucked, and that except for a few rare strokes of luck, I couldn’t get the girl to save my life. But in looking back, I realize that it really wasn’t that bad, and that my social life was relatively average.

I mean seven “real girlfriends” and dates with at least seven others over the course of 13 years is nothing to sneeze at...even if some of the relationships lasted as little as five weeks.

So where was the problem?

Two of my dear friends from grade school will tell you that I’ve been an incurable romantic since at least first grade. It’s true. I’ve liked girls ever since I knew what they were, and obsessed about having a girlfriend probably since age four.

And I mean obsessed about it. It wasn’t just that life was so much better if you had someone special to share it with, but I also believed that, as Dean Martin so famously sang, “You’re nobody till somebody loves you.”

But I know now that it’s not true, and that all those years that I was desperately trying to get a girlfriend...and annoying the crap out of every girl I came into contact with...I was missing the point. I was missing the point of enjoying life in general. I was missing just being friends with girls (not that there was a whole lot of modeling of that going on back then). I didn’t realize that I was practically the only one stuck on this romantic ideal, and that most people in high school or college (and definitely not in grade school) weren’t paired up with someone. I didn’t get the fact that the “sexual revolution” that I heard and read so much about wasn’t happening for everyone but me.

Well...OK...when you wake up on several different occasions in the middle of the night to your freshman roommate and his girlfriend going at it, it definitely seems like the sexual revolution is rudely thumbing its nose at you. But still, I didn’t get that he was one of the exceptions, and not the rule; and while maybe five people on my floor were sleeping with someone, the other 50 weren’t even seeing anyone.

But now, looking back, I get it. And I wish I had known that then. I would’ve been a lot happier. And a lot less depressed about being lonely.

My social life was pretty good. I just had unrealistic expectations from popular music, TV, and movies.

I know that now. But I wonder how many other adolescent and young adult males there are out there now who are just like I was then. How many guys are there out there right now, willing to do themselves, and others, harm, because they’ve gotten the wrong message about romance and being loved. I wonder how many lives might be saved if we could reach them and tell them to chill, and that their social lives are decidedly average.

And…and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough…if you haven’t been there yourself, if you have never been in that dark pit of loneliness and depression yourself, do not minimize this as someone being sad “just because they couldn’t get a date.” When you’re in that pit, it is so much more than that. It is so much worse than that.

This unrealistic expectation, and this obsession with having someone, anyone, also explains why many people stay too long in relationships that are not good for them...and why I did so myself.

And the moment I finally realized once and for all that I didn’t need someone else to make me happy; the moment I saw in someone else what I must’ve looked like to all the girls I’d thrown myself at, and said “eew”; the moment I decided to just give up on this romantic obsession...was when I met my wife.

Well...two weeks later, to be precise.

But it took me 30 years after that to realize that I'd been looking at my social life through the wrong lens.

How many of the rest of us still are?

On Being Awesome Parents

Four years ago, we had the following exchange with our then 12-year-old daughter:

Sofie: Have I ever thanked you and Mama for being such amazing parents?

Me: No.

Sofie: Oh.

Ah…the classic “non-compliment” compliment.

A few years later, at 14, she was concerned about being as awesome parents for her kids as we’ve been for her. OK now…a straight out compliment. And again, this past weekend, the 16-year-old version expressed concern that we teach her how to be the kind of parent for her kids that we’ve been for her and her sister. So with that in mind, here are my instructions...for everyone.

Number one: You know that old line about how parents can’t be their kids’ best friends. That’s bullshit, and it depends entirely on your definition of “best friend.” In my world, your best friend is looking out for what’s best for you, and won’t let you do stupid or dangerous stuff. Your true best friend won’t cover for you when you’ve done something heinous, but will encourage you to own up to it. Your “buddies” might, but not your true friends. Your true best friends will not only have fun with you, but will encourage you to be your best self. And by that definition, parents can be their kids’ best friends.

Number two: It’s not about power, it’s about setting a good example. Don’t be the parent who’s always saying “Because I said so.” Instead, make sure there’s a good reason for your saying so, and if there’s not, then admit it. Back down when your kid is right, so that they know that the times when you do dig in your heels, it’s really important. Of course, there are some times when you can’t explain why, and it has to be “because I said so”, but those times should be few enough and far between enough that your kid is willing and able to trust your judgment.

Number three: Don’t try to be the perfect parent. The best book about parenting was one I never read; the title alone made its point. It’s called The Good-Enough Parent. Don’t fret about whether or not you’re doing this exactly right and by whose rules. Just be good enough. If you try to be perfect (whatever that is), you’ll only make everyone crazy.

Number four: Back them up when they challenge authority and that authority is wrong. But also teach them that sometimes they just have to suck it up…for the moment…as we all do.

Number five: Don’t come up with rules just for the sake of having rules; and ask yourself why the rules you have exist in the first place. Why can’t the kid have a whole bowl of Reddi Whip for breakfast? If that's the only way you can get a dairy product into them, then let them have it!

Number six: Let them make their own mistakes, and deal with them on their own, without rescuing them.

Number seven: Understand that the world is a random place, shit happens, and you can’t prevent it. You can’t protect your kid from everything; and if you’ve successfully protected them from X, they may well get struck down by Y. 

Number eight: Don’t be afraid of your kids hanging out with the “wrong” kids. Or rather, don’t be afraid of the “wrong” kids hanging out with yours. If they’re hanging out with yours, and hanging out at your house, maybe it’s because your family is an example of a stable one, and your kid is a good influence on them, rather than them being a bad influence on yours.

Number nine: Be goofy and don’t give a crap what other people think. Don’t get all freaked out when your kid and their friend wave and shout “Hi!” to people out the car window as you’re driving along through town. It could be worse.

There’s so much more, but if I were to try to put all this into three words they would be these: Lighten up already!

Death Only Has to Win Once...But Usually it's Not Even Playing

Tonight my 16-year-old daughter is going with some friends to a concert. Somehow, in giving her both permission to go and the money for the ticket (in exchange for jobs around the house that she hasn’t quite completed yet), I neglected to ask exactly where the concert was, figuring that it was somewhere within 45 minutes of here. I just found out that it was in Albany…Albany…three days ago. Albany’s two and a half hours from here! Had I known that before…

But it was too late. I know, a lot of parents would disagree with me, saying that it’s never too late to change your mind on something like that, once you have more information; and that you’d have to be crazy to let your 16-year-old go to a concert with friends that was two and a half hours away. But you know something, she didn’t intentionally withhold the information from me, she says that she told me that the concert “wasn’t here.” And knowing the friend that she’s going with and how good she is with sharing information, she may not have known herself.

I thought about this carefully, and after ascertaining that they were being driven to and from Albany by a responsible adult, who is the 29-year-old sister of one of the friends, I relaxed, and told her to have fun. And then when I got a phone call from that 29-year-old sister, giving me her phone number and copious details about how she planned to deal with them, I relaxed even more.

But I know that many parents would be saying, “No bleeping way. Too many things could happen!”

I agree lots of things could happen. Lots of things could happen right here in town at a concert at the Dome up at SU, or even downtown at the Landmark Theater. Yes, they could get into a car accident on the way to or from Albany…just as they could get in an accident to or from a venue right here in Onondaga County. The likelihood of something happening doesn’t change with the distance it is from home.

But the people who worry about things like this are all dealing with the same unspoken mindset…“that death only has to win once” for all your worries to seem justified.

Yes…death only has to win once, but usually it doesn’t. Usually it doesn’t even get in the game. We can talk about “all” the horrible accidents we’ve heard of on the Thruway between Syracuse and Albany (and how many have there really been over the past 10 years?) while totally ignoring the many more people who safely make that trip every day.

But I’m not really here to talk about the concert. That’s just a lead-in to something else.

I’m no statistician, I don’t even play one on TV, but I do know a few; and they say that people in general are horrible at assessing risk…often basing it on their emotions and the skewed samples that they see. I knew an emergency room nurse who refused to let her teenaged kids ride their bikes in the street because bike riders came into her emergency room after having been hit by cars. I talked to a police officer many years ago who said that you should never let your kids on the internet because that’s where stalkers are. These people saw all the worst cases as part of their jobs, and extrapolated that out into everyone else’s experience.

And they were wrong.

They were saying that death…or severe injury…or an abduction…only has to win once in order to make the activity too dangerous for anyone to be involved in.

And this is the mindset that many people have about immigrants…both legal and illegal, and especially about refugees from “dangerous countries.” That “one Skittle in 10,000” might be poisonous, so we shouldn’t have any Skittles at all. That one immigrant in 10,000 could be a rapist, murderer or terrorist. To them, death only has to win once for all those people to be dangerous.

But in their fear of what they can’t control, they forget one very important thing: Yes, death only has to win once…but usually it doesn’t even play at all. And to live in the constant state of fear that they have isn’t living, as far as I’m concerned.

And so, now that I’ve said this, I hope my daughter has a good time at the concert, and she’s been instructed to text me when she gets there and when she leaves.

Crazy, Not Mentally Ill

I just finished listening to a great audiobook. It’s Words on the Move, by John McWhorter, a professor of Linguistics. Between that and Ann Curzan’s The Secret Life of Words from The Great Courses, I learned a lot about the English language over the past year.

And the important thing is that language changes. Words gain new meanings, shed old meanings, and gain additional meaning while retaining the old ones.

Which brings me to the word “crazy.”

Sometimes, when I use it on Facebook, someone will implore me to not throw that word around so casually, as it makes light of mental illness. Or perhaps after a suicide, someone will ask us to think about how we use the word “crazy” and what it says about the stigma we attach to mental illness. But I’m going to argue that “crazy” doesn’t always mean, and perhaps didn’t always mean mentally ill. In fact, I’m also going to argue that when most of us really want to talk about someone who’s mentally ill, we actually use the words “mentally ill.” Crazy is something else altogether.

So what is “crazy”? Let’s ask Patsy Cline.

In her song Crazy, she sings, “I’m crazy for crying, and crazy for trying, and crazy for loving you.” Does she really mean that she’s mentally ill? No…she was saying something more along the lines of being unrealistic, of having thoughts that were too far-fetched to be reasonable. Or working totally against logic.

So why not use those words instead? That’s what some people in the mental health community suggest. The answer is one that John McWhorter could easily tell you…because a word is more than the snapshot in time that its dictionary meaning gives you. Besides, many words have multiple dictionary definitions. A quick check of dictionary.com gives us:

• mentally deranged, demented, insane
• senseless, impractical, totally unsound
• intensely enthusiastic, passionately excited

Only the first definition implies mental illness as we now understand it, and is probably not even the main way that most of us use it (more on that later). The second describes what Patsy Cline was singing about and talks about people with crazy ideas. And there are more that aren’t even covered there.

When I talk fondly about my crazy ex-roommate, I’m not saying that she’s mentally ill, and you know that. I’m also not saying that she was senseless or impractical…far from it. But she was bizarre and outrageous…in a fun way.

And what about the person who “drives you crazy”? Are we really saying that they cause you to be mentally ill? No…they’re affecting you to the point where you can’t think straight, another common definition of the word. I suppose you could say that mentally ill people can’t think straight, and yet, no one says that we should be careful about using that phrase because it stigmatizes and minimalizes mental illness.

But sometimes the person we describe as crazy really is mentally ill…and we didn’t know it. I have a friend who talks about her crazy ex-boyfriend (one of the reasons why he’s an ex-boyfriend), and later found out that he wasn’t just odd, annoying, unreasonable, and obsessive, but that he really did have some psychological problems worth noting and treating.

The simple fact of the matter is that not only is “crazy” so much more than a word that could mean mental illness, but it’s usually *not* used that way. In fact...and here's the kicker...we never politely use that word to describe a truly mentally ill person. Even my friend with the crazy ex-boyfriend uses that term to describe him as she knew him during the relationship, when he drove her crazy with his bizarre attitudes and behavior, and not his current diagnosis of psychological problems.

Which brings us to another issue: maybe sometimes a person acts "crazy" because they actually are mentally ill...sometimes. And sometimes they're odd, unusual, unorthodox, outrageous, senseless, obsessive, bizarre, and have very strange ideas well within the range of of what we consider sanity.

And, linguistically, to say that it always means and has to refer to mental illness is…well…crazy.

The Most Argumentative Time of the Year

And now it’s time for everyone’s favorite December pastime...arguing over Christmas songs.

And this started long before the current flap over Baby It’s Cold Outside, which probably seemed creepy to younger people for quite some time before the #metoo movement brought it to everyone’s attention in a way that many of us older folks hadn’t thought of it before. No...people have been arguing about Christmas music for as long as there’s been Christmas music.

We’ve been arguing over whether or not something counts as a Christmas song, we’ve been arguing over whether or not something is a good Christmas song. We’ve been arguing over whether or not something is a tasteful Christmas song. And we we’ve been arguing that certain songs don’t belong on Christmas albums or shouldn’t be played on the radio based on our own personal preferences...as if we were the sole arbiter of what’s a good Christmas song…and forgetting that there are millions of people out there with just as many opinions.

Let’s face it, if you think about it a bit, many so-called Christmas songs aren’t even Christmas songs at all...they’re winter songs, and should be played all the way from December 21^st to March 21^st. But for some reason, we start celebrating winter the day after Thanksgiving and get tired of it on January 2^nd...after only 13 official days of the season.

Songs like Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell Rock, Sleigh Ride, Home for the Holidays, Winter Wonderland, and Let it Snow are all about winter, not Christmas. But we consider them part of the canon anyway.

Which brings us back to Baby It’s Cold Outside. Creepiness aside, there are those who maintain that this shouldn’t be in the canon because it’s not even a Christmas song. When you bring up the “winter” argument, they counter that it only talks about it being cold, and doesn’t mention the time of year at all.

Unless you look at the lyric that says:

Baby, you’ll freeze out there

It’s up to your knees out there

Up to your knees in what? Ragweed? Pork bellies? Pennies from heaven? I’m betting Frank Loesser was talking about snow…which would mean it was winter…unless you’re in Syracuse, where it could snow into May.

And then, on the not so creepy side, we have My Favorite Things, which everyone agrees is not a Christmas song, but keeps ending up on Christmas albums and playlists anyway. We can thank a song plugger for Rogers and Hammerstein for that. He convinced several well-known recording artists to put that song on their Christmas albums in 1964 in order to drum up interest in the upcoming film The Sound of Music. And now, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with either Christmas or winter, we seem to be stuck with it.

I have a friend who absolutely hates Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, and can’t understand why anyone likes or plays that song. But I remember when it first came out. I was in my mid-20s, and thought the song was hilarious in a way that perhaps only someone in their 20s can.

And I’m sorry, but you have to be a total Grinch not to like The Chipmunk Song.

But finally, for those who insist that only hymns and other religious music can really count as Christmas songs, I’m gonna end here with a song that is so beloved by many that you won’t believe that anyone dared question it. The quintessential Christmas song, second only to Silent Night. I’m talking about Cantique de Noel, or Oh Holy Night.

What could anyone find wrong with that? Well, after it achieved a certain level of popularity in its native France, the Catholic church considered it inappropriate for use in church for two reasons. The first was that the original poem was written by a wine merchant who had no interest in religion, and indeed, was a Socialist. The second was that the friend who set that poem to music was Jewish. Fortunately, by the time the French church tried to put the kibosh on it, the genie had been out of the bottle for quite some time, and even if it was inappropriate for singing at mass, people would sing it in their homes and everywhere else in France.

So…I’m going to close by saying, no matter how you feel about this song or that song, let’s just take this time to give our arguing a little rest. Accept the fact that different people have different tastes about holiday music, and, in the words of Ralph Blaine…

Have yourself a merry little Christmas!

Just Like Breathing

I’ve seen it happen many times before, and each time I’ve seen it, it’s annoyed me beyond any need for a laxative. But now I can better explain why it annoys me so much.

What am I talking about? Articles or documents written by church people for a church audience that get criticized by other church people for not specifically mentioning Christianity or Jesus. Their argument is something along the lines of “How will people know that we’re not just another social organization, not just another group of people trying to do good works in the world, if we don’t mention that we’re Christians?”

My first, rather snarky, response is, “This article was in a denominational magazine. Are you freaking kidding me? Are you that stupid? Do you think that people in general are so dense as to not realize that something in a magazine called Living Lutheran (or Positively Presbyterian, Ecstatically Episcopalian, or even Confidently Catholic) is based on the writer’s Christian faith?” And does the mission statement of St Andrew’s Episcopal Church really have to state that they’re a Christian community? Isn’t it pretty clear that they’re not a chapter of the Ethical Culture Society?

My second, similarly snarky, response is basically, “This document was written for use within the church. We all know why we’re here. Do we really have to telegraph it to everyone?”

The response of the critics is that as Christians, we need to be aware of, and tell people what’s most important to us, and why we do what we do.

To that I say, “Well…maybe.” But there’s something else I have to say to them. Actually, it’s a question I have to ask.

What’s the most important thing you do every day?

Really, what is the most important thing you do everyday?

Some of you might mention taking care of your kids, or the work you do for the local food pantry, or perhaps it’s your job as a teacher, or maybe even your job at the local hospital. Those are all good things. But quite frankly, none of those count as the most important thing you do every day.

At least not to me.

Nope…the most important thing you do every day is something so intrinsic to your being that you don’t even think about it. In fact, it’s so important that even if you voluntarily stopped for a few minutes, you’d involuntarily start again.

What am I talking about?

Breathing.

Breathing is the most important thing any of us do every day. It’s what allows us to go about doing the other things we think are important. But do we ever mention it? Do we put that at the top of the list of important things we do?

No. We don’t even think about it until we have a hard time doing it.

So why do some Christians insist that other Christians make a point of their Christianity when talking to church audiences?

For that matter, why do some Christians insist on putting their Christianity out on parade when they’re helping others? Isn’t it enough to let your Christianity quietly inform your good works, and then have the people you’ve helped ask you about your motivation later?

A vegetarian friend of mine once said that there are good vegetarians and bad vegetarians. You’ll never know that a “good vegetarian” is a vegetarian unless you pay close attention to what they’re eating, or unless it just happens to come up naturally in conversation. A “bad vegetarian” will take every opportunity to tell everyone about their vegetarianism.

I think that those Christians who want us to explicitly state our Christian identity and motives are bad vegetarians, who want to make us into bad vegetarians too.