All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (18 page)

S
ECRET
A
NNIVERSARIES
—J
ANUARY

A
MAN
I
KNOW
keeps a bottle of vodka in his bathroom. Every morning as he begins his shaving routine, he takes the bottle out of the medicine cabinet and puts it on the glass shelf just below the mirror. As he lathers his face he considers himself in the mirror. And he contemplates the bottle of vodka.

He uses an old-fashioned straight-edged razor. As he shaves under his chin he considers how deadly dangerous the blade is, but he never cuts himself. When he has finished shaving, he replaces his razor and soap and the bottle in the medicine cabinet, and goes about his life.

The man’s morning shaving routine has become a sacred ritual which exorcises demons and binds him to life as surely as if he had gone to his knees in prayer.

That bottle of vodka is half empty. There is a line drawn in indelible ink confirming the level—and the date the line was drawn. The top was screwed down tight on the bottle on the morning of that date. January 17. The bottle has never been opened since. There are little marks alongside the date—the kind used to indicate the passage of time: four straight lines with a slash across them to count five, plus four more equal nine. A slash will be made across those last four lines a few days from now marking ten.

Ten years ago, as he tilted the vodka bottle to his lips for the first of his frequent secret nips during the day, he saw in the mirror that the bathroom door behind him had opened a crack. The eyes of his only child met his. Those eyes were brimming with tears.

Time stood still. Nothing was said. The door softly closed. And the only eyes he had to look into were his own, reflected in the mirror. Bloodshot and puffy. In a jaundiced face veined and aged beyond his years. For the first time in a long time he really considered his image before him.

A stranger stared back. He was appalled. He wished he were dead.

Later that day he called a friend who was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. That night he went to his first of many AA meetings and stood up to say, “My name is Ed, and I’m an alcoholic.” When he got home he threw away all his hidden bottles of booze. Except one. As he screwed down the top on the bottle of vodka in the bathroom, he made a promise to himself: “Never again, so help me, God. Never.”

This is a tough road to walk. It’s never been easy. Many’s the time he’s locked the bathroom door behind him and considered taking just one more small drink and then replacing the missing alcohol with water to restore the level. He’s even looked at the razor as a solution to more than the problem of needing a shave.

The memory of the face of his child at the door haunts him.

So. He has prevailed—keeping faith with his God, his friends, his wife, himself, and that child.

How I wish I could be there in the bathroom with him on January 17. Along with a brass band, gifts, family, and friends. Hurray! Thank God!

But anniversary occasions like these are usually solitary events, celebrated alone in the chapel of one’s soul. It may be enough for my friend to draw that line marking ten years. And look up to face the man in the mirror with respect.

The good news is that there will be many such secret celebrations this month.

Many vows and resolutions are made in January. For all of us who don’t live up to our best intentions, there are those who succeed. Their names will not be in the newspaper. No certificates, formal receptions, or parties will mark their success. But their numbers are greater than you may think. And they might be surprised at how many of the rest of us know about what they have done. The power of hope is confirmed by their triumph.

To all those who have kept their promises to themselves—who have managed to defeat destructive demons of many kinds, large and small—let it be known that the rest of us celebrate you. We think of you as heroes. Because of you we take heart for our own struggles.

Happy New Year!

Happy anniversary from us all. Press on.

H
IGH
S
CHOOL
R
EUNION

D
ESPITE SWEARING
I would never do it, I went to the thirty-year reunion of my high school class, deep in the heart of Texas. I had not seen those “kids” since the night I graduated. And one quick glance confirmed my worst expectations. Bald heads, gray hair, double chins, wrinkles, fat, liver marks. Funny looking. Not funny.

Old. We’re
old
now, thought I. So
soon
. And it’s all downhill from here. Decay, rot, disease, an early grave. I felt tired. I began to walk slower, with a noticeable limp. I began to think about my will and make mental notes for my funeral.

This malaise lasted all of thirty seconds. Wiped out by the bright memory of two men I had met earlier in the summer at a truck stop in Burns, Oregon.

Mr. Fred Easter, sixty-eight, and his good friend, Mr. Leroy Hill, sixty-two. They were bicycling from Pismo Beach, California, to see the rodeo in Calgary, Alberta. They had been sitting on a bench by the beach, reading in the newspaper about the rodeo, and one of them said, “Let’s go!” and they got up and went. And here they were in Burns in flashy riding suits, with high-tech bikes and all. When I asked Mr. Easter how come, he laughed. “Why, just for the hell of it, son. Just for the bloody hell of it!”

Fifty-eight hundred miles later, via Colorado and the Grand Canyon, they expected to arrive home in October, unless, of course, other interesting things turn up along the way. They were not in a race.

I walked away from that encounter tall and straight and handsome and young—making new lists of all the things I would do and all the places I would go and all the things I would
be
in all the years ahead of me. Retire? Never! Die? Never!

As I write now, it’s almost twenty years later. I’ve not forgotten Mr. Fred Easter and Mr. Leroy Hill. They would approve of what I’ve done in these twenty years. Next year—2004—my fiftieth high school reunion looms as a faint fuzzy marker in the onrushing future. Will I go? Probably not. Where will I be? Well, I’ve never been to that rodeo in Calgary. . . . Why the hell not?

S
AN
D
IEGO
Z
OO

S
AN
D
IEGOHAS A ZOO
and a wild-animal park—the finest in the world, some say. Being a serious zoo fan, I once spent a day there. Zoos are great for adults—they take your mind off reality for a while.

For example, did you ever look real close at a giraffe? A giraffe is unreal. If there is a heaven and I go there
(don’t bet heavy on either of those,
but
if)
, then I’m going to ask about giraffes. Just what was on God’s mind?

Little girl standing beside me at the zoo asked her mommy the question I had: “What’s it for?” Mommy didn’t know. Does the giraffe know what he’s for? Or care? Or even think about his place in things? A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.

Besides the giraffe, I saw a wombat, a duck-billed platypus, and an orangutan. Unreal. The orangutan looked just like my uncle Woody. Uncle Woody was pretty unreal, too. He belonged in a zoo. That’s what his wife said. And that makes me wonder what it would be like if samples of
people
were also in zoos.

I was thinking about that last notion while watching the lions. A gentleman lion and six lady lions. Looks like a real nice life being in a zoo. The lions are so prolific that the zoo has had to place IUDs in each of the lionesses. So all the lions do is eat and sleep and scratch fleas and have sex without consequences. The zoo provides food, lodging, medical care, old-age security, and funeral expenses. Such a deal.

We humans make a big thing about our being the only thinking, reflective critter, and make proclamations like “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But I look at the deal the giraffes and lions and wombats and duck-billed-what’s-its have, and I think I could go for the unexamined life. If the zoo ever needs me, I’d give it a try. I certainly qualify as a one-of-a-kind endangered species. And examining my life sure gets to be a drag sometimes.

Imagine you and your kids passing by a large, comfy cage, all littered with cigar butts, cognac bottles, and T-bone steak bones—and there, snoozing in the sun, is old Fulghum with six beautiful ladies piled up around him. And your kid points and says, “What’s it for?” And I’d yawn and open one eye and say, “Who cares?” Like I say, zoos tend to take your mind off reality.

The lion and the giraffe and the wombat and the rest do what they do and are what they are. And somehow manage to make it there in the cage, living the unexamined life. But to be human is to know and care and ask. To keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence hollering, “What’s it for?” at the stones and stars, and making prisons and palaces out of the echoing answers. That’s what we do and that’s what we are. A zoo is a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

N
EXT
S
IX
S
TORIES

The next six stories belong in a section by themselves. They are about a neighbor. The guy next door. When I think of all the places I have lived, what I remember most about why I liked living there was not the house itself. It was the neighbors—the great ones.

Most of us have had a good neighbor in our lives.

Or else we are that person to someone else.

We watch each other. And, for good or ill, learn from one another. The people next door play a substantial role in our lives. Yet we seldom choose them. I once went house-hunting with a friend who is a Native American. She was interested in the usual aspects of real estate—the location, the condition of the house, the price, and so on. But her two priorities were the neighbors and the trees. She looked carefully for a house with big, beautiful trees in the yard. And before she got serious about buying she went to meet and get acquainted with the neighbors. She said a house could be remodeled, even torn down and rebuilt. But fine trees take a long time. And good neighbors make a huge difference in the quality of life. I agree.

As you will see in the stories that follow I had the good fortune of having a great neighbor. For the purpose of a good story, I have exaggerated a little—but not much. The facts are true. The guy next door was for real.