Month: March 2015

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The K Word

When I used to watch “Happy Days” as a kid (and boy, does that date me), it was always hilarious to watch the Fonz try to apologize. He’d take a running start at the key word, like a verbal Olympic track star, but never quite clear the barrier.

“I’m s-s-s-s ….” (Stop, grimace for laugh track.) “I mean, I’m real s-s-s-s- ….”

But that was a sitcom. I’m a grown adult in the real world. Which is why I will have no problem saying that my four-year-old niece has been declared ready for k ….

You know. For k-k-k-k …

This is ridiculous.

Kindergarten.

Wow. It’s even hard to look at that word on the page.

I’m proud of her, of course. And objectively, it should be no surprise at all. She’s the right age. She’s been doing very well at her pre-school. When she visits, the living room now has a more focused mess that receives at least a token effort of cleanup. And she’s very good at telling our behemoth of a dog “No, Blakie!” when he accidentally whaps his gigantic tail in her face.

So she’s ready. Beyond a doubt. And it’s a good thing.

So why does it feel like the world just caved in?

I know I’m not alone here. (If I were, “Sunrise, Sunset” would be a forgotten song.) And I know a lot of it is sheer human cussedness. We like to think that our world will go on the way it is forever, never changing in any significant way. And when reality intrudes – a shrinking hairline, a growing child, a friend or relative that moves away – it’s unsettling. Sometimes it even seems to give you eyes to the future, where you can suddenly envision the new kindergartner’s first date, her college graduation, her efforts to start a career … all this from the individual who once bound the first floor of your house in yarn because it was fun.

With me, the shock is a triple whammy. Some of you may remember that 2010 was the year I became Uncle Scott in spades, acquiring two nieces and one nephew in a six-month period. (That makes it sound like “The Price is Right,” doesn’t it?) Sometimes at close range and sometimes from over a thousand miles away, I’ve watched them discover finger paints, the Blue Angels, drums, the solar system, ballet and the non-negotiability of naptimes.

So when one of them is ready to cross the bright blue line of The Big K it means all of them are. That they’re growing up. Maybe even that they’re growing away a little, with a part of their lives happening at a distance.

Mind you, I know we want children to grow. I’d be even more disturbed, and for different reasons, if the Terrific Trio of 2010 was 35 years old and living in our basement with no immediate prospects for departure. No one wants to be the helicopter relative or to be dealing with a family full of Peter Pans.

But when so much of a life has been so close, it’s hard to let go. Even a little.

Their life has changed. Your life has changed. And it’s time for you to do a little more growing up, too.

I know this isn’t the end. There will be plenty of exciting adventures ahead. Probably more than a little exasperation, too. But Heather and I watched them transform from confused babies into enthusiastic toddlers and we’re ready – if a little sobered at times – to see what’s coming next.

So go ahead, word. Bring on the k-k-k-k …

The k-k-k-k…

Sigh.

Arthur Fonzarelli, where are you when I really need you?

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The Moment of Pain

Sometimes news is hell.

I don’t use the word lightly. Yes, at the best of times, the daily news can seem to hold enough misery, anger and grief for anyone. Major wars. Minor cruelties. Kardashian news. We know it, we brace for it, we sigh as it goes by.

But some weeks are worse. This one, for instance.

If you’re among my Longmont readers, you know what I mean. The murder-suicide, with a man suspected of killing one parent with a knife, nearly killing the other and then taking his own life. The stabbing attack on a seven-months pregnant woman, where the child-to-be was physically removed. Each hard on the heels of the other, gruesome and horrific.

If there’s anyone who simply turned their computer off on Wednesday and refused to read any more Internet news, I can’t say I blame them.

Some scenes hit you in the heart and rip your soul open to scream. They’re the calls that every cop and paramedic hates to get, that every reporter hates to write, that every reader hates to bear witness to. They’re the ones that your brain refuses to let go of, asking the heavens “How is something like this allowed to exist?”

It doesn’t matter if the audience is the world or the folks inside city limits. The audience is you. And it’s too much to hold.

I don’t have a magic word to make it go away. I’m not sure I could be trusted with one if I did. To feel another’s pain is to be human; if I banish that pain, am I sending my humanity away with it?

But oh, the temptation.

So what do we do?

If there’s any answer at all, I think it has to be “What we can.”

Grief like this doesn’t just shock, it isolates. It makes you feel alone and helpless in an overwhelming world. Other hurts seem minor compared to that big boulder that refuses to move.

That is when we most need each other.

This community has a powerful heart. It showed in full force during and after the 2013 flood, when no sort of help was off limits. People cleaned their neighbors’ homes, housed their neighbors’ families, sometimes saved their neighbors’ lives.

It’s harder with something like this. I know. There’s a less visible enemy to fight, a less obvious way to help. But the gist remains the same.

Be there.

Be there when someone in pain needs a kind heart and a listening ear.

Be there when they don’t dare talk but just need someone nearby.

Be there when you see a friend or a neighbor or a stranger who seems to need a hand.

Not as a snoop. Not as a looky-lou or an intrusive pest. But as the brother or sister we all need to be to each other.

Most of us may never know any of the people who were at the heart of this. (Those who do, bless and keep you all.) But we all know someone. It can start with something as simple as a word of kindness to a police officer or EMT, a reminder that they’re remembered and appreciated. It can grow as big as you want it to.

If we all care for one of us, we all care for all of us.

Good news happens, too. But it’s rarely as easy as looking. We have to find it, to make it, to create it ourselves. We have to be it. And that can be a frightening prospect.

But not half as frightening as having to stand alone.

News can be hell. Undeniable. True.

But together, maybe we can be heaven.

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A Word Out of Place

Who can forget the climax of “Gone With the Wind” when Rhett turned to Scarlett and shockingly, unforgettably told her “My dear, I don’t give a darn?”

Or the pages of Shelby Foote’s “The Civil War” where William T. Sherman warns that “War is heck?”

And of course, there’s that shocking background refrain in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” where one of the “Chronics” in the asylum can’t say anything but “Fff ….” Come to think of it, I guess he never gets to say much of anything.

At least, that may be the case with a new app called Clean Reader that’s advertised to remove all the profanity from an e-book. The app can be set to Clean, Cleaner, Squeaky Clean or Off, depending on how many swear words a reader feels like tolerating; censored words receive a blue dot and a suggested substitute for those that tap the deletion.

It’s not the first time that something like this has been tried, of course. Go back to the 19th century and you find Thomas Bowdler’s cleaned-up edition of Shakespeare, where Opehlia drowns accidentally and Lady Macbeth screams “Out, crimson spot!” (And yes, this is where the word bowdlerization comes from.) Film buffs can point instead at CleanFlicks, a company which re-edited movies to remove offensive content until a judge told them to stop.

The difference here, of course, is that there’s a certain amount of reader control. Instead of buying an adulterated copy, the customer buys the same book as everyone else and then chooses whether to filter it. That’s led some to defend the app: “It’s my book and my business, right?”

There’s some truth to that. But there’s also a catch. Two catches, really.

Yes, you can do with your book whatever you want. If you choose to right now, you can take any book you own and go through it with a black marker to remove anything. That’s not new, either. Thomas Jefferson once took that approach to his copy of the Gospels, literally trimming out any reference to miracles or the supernatural.

But that’s where you run into Catch No. 1: markers don’t work so well on the mind. Even when you let something line out the profanity for you, the word isn’t gone. Every time a reader hits the deleted or substituted word, the act simply calls attention to what used to be there, unless the reader is either innocent or quite young.

And then there’s Catch No. 2, brought up by a friend: if you don’t trust an author to use the right words, why are you reading him or her in the first place?

One of the glories – and yes, sometimes, one of the dangers – of the written word is that it’s a telepathic act. By staring at words on a page, you can know what a writer was thinking, no matter how much time has passed since the thought. At any time, a reader can dive into the ideas of Mark Twain, J.D. Salinger or Maya Angelou, touching them mind-to-mind until the book is closed.

But the words matter. Twain once said that the difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug. They’re tools, chosen to evoke a desired effect.

Change the word, and you change the effect. You no longer have a clear window into the author’s mind, but only an approximation.

It’s true, not every author uses profanity, just like not every painter uses teal or violet. The ones that do have a reason. If the excuse seems weak, that’s a perfectly valid reason to read a different book or even a different author. Nobody reads everything, nobody has to read anything.

But what you do choose to read – don’t hold back. Read it. Without screens. Without modification. Find your way into that mind, even the uncomfortable parts, and see what you discover.

You may love it. You may hate it. But you’ll know because you’ve read the book, instead of almost the book.

And missing that opportunity would be a darned shame.

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A Long, Strange Trek

On the day he died, I heard NPR replay an interview with Leonard Nimoy about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In it, he mentioned that he wanted to try something different for a science-fiction film: that he wanted to have a story with no real villain to defeat.

“We had done two pictures in a row with black-hat heavies and I didn’t want a bad guy anywhere,” he explained in an interview elsewhere for the magazine Monsterland. “Circumstances would cause the problem. Lack of awareness, lack of concern, ignorance…these would be the problems. Not a person.”

That clicked with me. And it may be the best epitaph for the man in the pointed ears that I’ve ever heard.

I came late to Star Trek. No real surprise there. I grew up a huge Star Wars fan at a time when the fan bases didn’t overlap much and were often perversely proud of it. One was a swashbuckling space opera that found instant mainstream success; the other, an odd mix of conflict and exploration that built its following over years.

Silly, of course. To anyone on the outside, after all, a geek was a geek. But to many, the lines mattered.

But even Star Wars kids thought Mr. Spock was cool.

How could he not be? He was the intelligent outsider, the alien among humans, cool and detached without being heartless. He had an answer for everything, often accompanied by a wry remark and an arched eyebrow. To him, the universe was “fascinating” but never totally inexplicable.

He was, in short, what every young geek and nerd like me wanted to be. Apart, but still a part. Not surrendering an identity to be part of the crew, but embracing it and being valued because of it – even if it still meant we were weird.

I was grown before I found out that Nimoy spent years resenting the character. Understandable, in retrospect. Few actors like to be typecast, to become so strongly identified with a role that they can never really be seen as anyone else. For someone as versatile as Mr. Nimoy – actor, poet, photographer and more – it must have been doubly frustrating.

But over time, he came to embrace Mr. Spock. The Vulcan came to be “one of my best friends,” as he told Starlog magazine.

“When I put on those ears, it’s not like just another day,” Nimoy said. “When I become Spock, that day becomes something special.”

It did for a lot of us, too.

Today, we live in a world where the geeks won. “Game of Thrones” and “Doctor Who” are hit TV shows. “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” commanded huge film audiences; superheroes by the dozen still do. Even roleplaying became mainstream somewhere along the way – with proponents such as Stephen Colbert and the late Robin Williams – and computer gaming is so common a hobby as to barely be worth mentioning.

But saying “the geeks won” doesn’t really capture it. It’s more like the lines got erased. Maybe not entirely (there’s still some discouraging tales about how “geek girls” get treated by a small but noxious crew of self-appointed critics) but enough that the distinction no longer has the same meaning. The geeks became the cool kids, and vice versa. It’s even OK to talk about Jedi and Vulcans in the same breath.

There really isn’t a bad guy anymore.

Leonard Nimoy was a big part of that. And while it might seem like an odd part of his legacy to emphasize– “he helped make it OK to be a nerd” – there are far worse ones to have. Anything that brings people together instead of setting them apart should be celebrated; anyone who builds bridges instead of walls should be cherished … even if the bridge is that of the starship Enterprise.

Thank you, sir. You lived long. You prospered. And you helped many of us do the same.

In an often-dark world, you truly lit a Spock.