Tag: honesty

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A Hairy Moment

There are masters of illusion and concealment in this world. Artists who can make anything from a handkerchief to the Statue of Liberty seem to vanish without a trace.

Toupee Man is not one of those masters.

Who is Toupee Man? The Spanish police haven’t released his name, but his genius is surely one-of-a-kind. After all, there can’t be that many individuals who have hit upon the mind-bending idea of smuggling 17 ounces of cocaine into a country by … well … hiding it under a toupee.

Needless to say, said hairpiece and its cargo were more than a little obvious. Which is something like saying that Elton John was just a bit unrestrained in the 1970s.

“There is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls,” the police wrote in a statement reprinted by Reuters, one of the many news agencies to report this.

Inventiveness. Yeah. We’ll go with that.

It’s easy to laugh. Heaven knows I did. But like a lot of life’s humor, part of the laugh comes from familiarity.

We’ve seen this before.

Oh, I don’t mean we’ve all witnessed awkward items being smuggled under unlikely formations of hair, unless anyone has had the opportunity to live next door to Marge Simpson. (D’oh!) But we know the routine of trying to conceal the undeniable.

We’ve seen the prominent figure who “walks back” an outrageous statement, trying to explain why what he or she said wasn’t really what you heard.

Or the celebrity at the center of a scandal who tries to deny, to evade, and then to excuse.

Or anyone, great or small, who finds themselves in the midst of something unpleasant and tries, for just a moment, to “make it not have happened.”

There are a million terms for it. But it’s an urge as old as humanity. Hide the bad stuff. Make it appear normal. Even when it’s as obvious as trying to slip an Uzi under a baseball cap.

From the tale of Cain to modern playgrounds and politics, it’s always born of fear. And the answer is the same one that every kindergarten teacher knows, and that ever PR firm today teaches for crisis control.

Don’t hide.

Acknowledge the mistake. Admit the harm that was done.

Apologize. Sincerely.

And then make it clear how things will change going forward.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences. There almost certainly will be. After all, if it was harmless, there wouldn’t have been an urge to hide in the first place. Trust gets weakened. Customers leave. Policies can founder and elections be lost.

But invariably, owning your actions causes less damage than trying to bury them. Ask Mr. Nixon sometime.

The last step, of course, is the most important of all – how will things change? That’s where transformation can occur, if we let it. C.S. Lewis once noted that if you’re on the wrong road, the fastest way forward is to first turn back.

No wigs. No disguises. Just coming clean and taking the first step to do something different.

We know this. It’s why we get so angry when someone we know – famous or otherwise – refuses to learn, refuses to change, refuses to acknowledge that they have anything to change. And why we get so embarrassed when we catch ourselves, from time to time.

And it’s what makes it so wonderful when the change truly comes.

It starts with self-recognition. With empathy. With the recognition that other people matter, and that when we wrong them, we need to make it right.

Because if we don’t, there can be hell toupee.

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The Silent Partner

The first time that Peter Mayhew met George Lucas for an audition, Peter rose from his chair in courtesy. And rose. And rose.

Peter Mayhew was 7 feet, 3 inches tall. Lucas stared upward at the towering Englishman, turned to producer Gary Kurtz and said “I think we’ve found him.”

“Him” turned out to be Chewbacca, the mighty Wookiee partner of Han Solo in the Star Wars films. An ape-like wall of muscle and hair, the beloved alien co-pilot was a huge part – literally – of establishing that this was indeed a galaxy far, far away.

Chewie continues to roar, on the screen and in our memories. But his original actor has made the jump to hyperspace. Earlier this week, Mayhew – whose height had been a side effect of Marfan syndrome – died from a heart attack.

And for a moment, many of us felt a disturbance in the Force.

It’s funny, really. This wasn’t an actor who died too soon like Carrie Fisher (though 74 still seems too young these days). He hadn’t accumulated a huge body of work like Alec Guinness.  In an odd sense, the other Star Wars loss that Mayhew had the most in common with was Kenny Baker, the original player of the droid R2-D2, who passed away in 2016.

R2-D2 was a tiny barrel of a robot; Chewbacca a lumbering ape-like figure.  But in both cases, their actors had to bring them to life without a word of dialogue. No English. No subtitles. Just beeps and whirrs from the one, roars from the other, and whatever intention and personality their actions could convey.

That’s hard.

I’ve played a lot of roles in community theatre, and watched still more. One of the most fundamental, and difficult, skills is to carry a scene where you don’t speak or speak very little. An actor’s voice is a powerful thing – no, a human’s voice is a powerful thing – and when you take it away, you find out how well-conceived the character truly is. Does the actor know what they want to do? Does it show on their face and in their body? What do they do to make that clear?

Do it badly, and you’re a cipher, a blank spot on the stage. Do it well and you become part of the audience’s heart. It’s one of the oldest adages: show, don’t tell.

And it applies to a lot more than the stage or the screen.

We spend a lot of time surrounded by words. (And as a writer, I say bless you for it.) But we also live in a world where many of those words are disconnected from action, used to hide motivation rather than show it. And whether you call it spin or hypocrisy, the effect is the same one that any cut-rate actor might expect – an unconvinced audience, skeptical, jaded, and rapidly growing tired of the story.

If you took the words away, or dubbed them over with Chewie-like roars, what story would you see?

It’s one thing to profess love for a country, for a neighbor, for a faith. Do the actions  bear that out? Do they defend, lift up, heal, build? Or is one story playing in the script and another in their life, like someone reciting Winnie The Pooh while playing out a Tarantino movie?

The audience can tell. And we cherish the true ones.

Mayhew, by all accounts, was one of them, a gentle giant on and off the screen with a heart as big as his frame. His intentions were always clear. It’s how we came to love his character, and how some came to love him as well.

Now his running time is done. But what he’s left behind still stands tall.

That deserves a roar of approval.

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Facing Out in Joy

With every night and each new adventure, Missy giggled and smiled. Getting stuck in a rabbit hole. Marching to the North Pole by lunch time. And of course, laying a devious trap for the horrible Heffalumps.

There was no doubt about it. “Winnie the Pooh” was a hit.

When I added the stories to our bedtime reading, it had been a long time since I’d journeyed through the Hundred-Acre Wood. But it soon felt like yesterday. As we encountered the irascible Rabbit and pompous Owl, Piglet the Very Small Animal, and of course, Pooh Bear himself (of Very Little Brain), it was a reunion with old friends and long-missed neighbors with delightful stories to share.

It also seemed familiar. And it took me a moment to realize why.

Regular readers will remember that in my spare time, I’m an amateur actor. And this Friday, my latest show opens at the Rialto Theatre in Loveland – “You Can’t Take It With You,” an unforgettable comedy from the 1930s. If you haven’t seen it before,  or the movie with Jimmy Stewart, it spends its time with the pleasantly off-balance Sycamore family, a clan that can charitably be called unique. Dad tests fireworks in the cellar, Grandpa raises snakes in the living room, and Mom alternates between unfinished plays and incomplete art works, while welcoming anyone into the home – sometimes for a years-long stay.

The comedy, of course, comes from the collision between the Sycamores’ carefree lifestyle and the expectations of a more rigorous world. And that is where I began hearing the humming of That Sort of Bear … and a whisper or two of a joy that our own world sometimes forgets.

Namely, the simple act of being happy without apology.

Pooh is who he is. He seems foolish and silly at times. Heck, he is foolish and silly at times. (“Silly old Bear!”) But he hurts no one, he enjoys his songs and his honey and his friends, and in his relaxed happiness, he often sees things that others miss.

The Sycamores are who they are. The outside world thinks they’re mad, and it’s not always wrong. But they hurt no one, they enjoy their thousand and one odd pastimes and friends, and in their relaxed happiness, they remember some simple things that a more hurried humanity has forgotten.

And then there’s us.

We spend a lot of time  trimming ourselves to fit the world’s expectations. Some of that’s a necessary consequence of living with other human beings – neither the Sycamores nor Pooh Bear disdain common courtesy, after all. But all too often, it’s a little more toxic.

All too often, it turns into hiding.

Maybe it’s the child who got bullied in school. A lot. Even if the victim makes it out the other side, the lesson has been learned: Don’t be too different, or you will regret it.

Maybe it’s the person with a chronic illness who’s run into “compassion fatigue,” the friends and family who don’t know how to handle a condition that isn’t fatal but won’t go away. Over time, the lesson is learned: Better to exhaust yourself acting “normal” on the surface than to encounter a world that constantly says “This again?”

Often, it’s something less dramatic, but no less discouraging. We choose one of a thousand masks to make the world more comfortable with us, even if it means we aren’t that comfortable with ourselves.

Or – we can let go.

We can acknowledge who we are. Face the world without hunched shoulders and a wary look. And even love the silly things that hurt no one, and make us happy.

No, it’s not easy. It’s risky, in a lot of ways. The world can be harsh to the different and the honest.

But it’s also the only way to truly live, not just exist. And in that living, to see the world and yourself with fresh eyes.

That’s something even a Bear of Very Little Brain can appreciate.

***

(Psst! If you want to catch the show, “You Can’t Take It With You” runs the weekends of April 12-14 and 19-20 at the Rialto. See you there!)

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Making an Im-Press-ion

(Appeared first in print 4/10/2017)

When you’re a teenager, it’s easy to wonder if you’ll ever make a difference.

That’s not a problem for the kids of Pittsburg High School. Not after turning their southeast Kansas school newspaper into a star of investigative journalism, and turning their school’s administration upside down in the process.

Yes, really.

For those who missed it, the teens probed into the background of their newly hired principal and found that some of her credentials didn’t seem to add up – in particular, that the university where she earned two of her degrees didn’t appear to be an accredited institution or even to have a physical address or working website. In fact, they discovered, it had a reputation as a “diploma mill.”

By the time they were done, what could have been a routine story about a new principal ended up by asking some very awkward questions. Awkward enough that the principal announced her resignation, just a month after her hiring.  By then, the kids had the attention of the national media and the thanks of the school district’s superintendent.

“We’d broken out of our comfort zones so much,” 17-year-old Connor Balthazor told the Washington Post. “To know that the administration saw that and respected that, it was a really great mo ment for us.”

I’ll add my own applause to that. These are the kind of lessons that need to be learned, not just by high school journalists, but by any citizen in a democracy.

And it happened because the kids had the opportunity to learn, the freedom to act, and the initiative to do something about it.

Kansas school papers, like Colorado ones, have a guaranteed freedom of the press for high school journalists. (In fact, Colorado passed that guarantee while I was still in high school myself.)  The schools have only a limited ability to restrict what appears in the paper – mainly, things like libel or obscenity – allowing students, like their grown-up counterparts, to work uncensored.

But that only matters if you have writers who are willing to go past the obvious. And much journalism, whether high school or professional, is comfortable to stick with the routine. The state championship winners. A new class or a retiring teacher. Much of it is necessary stuff, but it doesn’t often demand much of the writer or the reader.

To go further, a good reporter needs to remember two principles. Always ask the next question. And always verify the answers you get, even if they seem to make sense. Especially then. “If your mother says she loves you,” the old newsman’s saying goes, “check it out.”

In a day when many newspapers are folding (no pun intended) and when social media allows the half-true and the false to circulate more rapidly than ever before, that’s an important skill for everyone.

These kids have learned it. And then some.

And in the process, they’ve taught a few lessons of their own.

They’ve shown a reminder that learning isn’t limited to the classroom, the test, and the textbook. The extracurriculars – newspaper, theatre, music, and more – offer a host of valuable lessons for the student who’s willing and able to take advantage of them.

They’ve reminded us that an alert media can make a difference. That an alert citizenry can make a difference. All it takes is a willingness to look, and a determination to keep looking.

They’ve even given us some hope for the future, that the next generation is ready and eager to join the conversation.

That sounds like a lot to build on one article in one school paper, I know. But they’ve worked to build it. And I suspect they’ve learned that it’s a work that never stops. The name of “journalist” is always being re-earned. Much like the name of “freedom” or “democracy.”

Let’s get to work, shall we?

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With Everything On It

“Go, ahead, honey,” Heather told Missy. “Show him your card.”

Eagerly, Missy reached out and handed me her latest creation. The sheet of computer paper that it had once been could barely be seen. From corner to corner and edge to edge of the page stretched a sea of foam stickers – no, a wave of them, piled high and crammed tight.

Valentine’s Day had already come and gone, so Missy had grabbed for the package of Easter “foamies” instead and applied it generously. Squadrons of rabbits squeezed for room among armies of eggs and forests of grass. Somewhere beneath, a magazine page had been glued to the page, its image all but invisible beneath the huddled masses.

It was the finest example of Everything Art that I had ever seen.

Our disabled ward Missy, who is my age physically but often much younger in spirit, likes to express herself in a number of media. She’ll paint like it’s going out of style and slice up pictures for her collages until no magazine in the house is safe. But the quintessential Missy artistic style may be “Everything Art”: cram the page with everything you can reach that will stick to it, until the picture you’re creating has nearly become a sculpture.

Everything Art is somewhat tricky to display. Because many of the pieces are stuck to other pieces rather than to the page, hanging it on the wall means some of it may begin to slide and fall. Lying it on a flat surface has a better survival rate, but even so, Everything Art has an ephemeral nature akin to ice sculpture or painting with light – the beauty you see today is not guaranteed to last, so study it well while you have it.

Fragile. Unusual. Undeniably drawing the eye. And most of all, enthusiastic with absolutely nothing held back.

Oh, yes. This couldn’t be more Missy if it tried.

As regular readers may remember, Missy tends to approach life without filters. A bite of a delicious dessert may raise a cheer that echoes across a restaurant. Music exists to be turned up to 11, or even 15. Her smile lights a room as easily as her temper can shake it, and new discoveries produce a lot of excited conversations afterward –with or without words.

Yes, she can be quiet, even stealthy when she has mischief in mind. But even then, she’s fully engaged, just in a different way. She wears herself openly and she gives what she has to everything she does, whether it’s dancing with hands high in the air or waiting at her favorite bay window for someone’s return.

It’s life as Everything Art.

Most of us have learned to hold back a bit. Sometimes to keep from exhausting ourselves too soon. Sometimes out of concern what others might say. There are many good reasons and many less-good ones, some arising from forethought, some from fear or remembered pain.

But every day, Missy reminds me how good it can be to release the restraints. Not to hurt or overwhelm someone else, but just to honestly engage with the world, in joy and wonder and curiosity.

To let down the barriers and see what’s beyond the wall.

To live.

Sure, there’s a place for care and caution. But living under guard can be tiring. As the old words go, there’s a time for every purpose under heaven – and that includes a time to let go and dive in.

Because sometimes, life is too short not to grab all the foamies.

 

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Laughter in the Shadows

The “Murder on the Nile” rehearsal had been going well. Plenty of threats, plenty of clues, the body being found just when it should. And then, as a character cracked a minor witticism, I heard a cackle from the audience.

Despite having to keep character, I almost smiled. There was no denying when Missy was in the house.

There are silent theater audiences in the world. Missy is not often one of them. When it comes to a performance, my wife’s physically and mentally disabled aunt often wears her emotions on her sleeve … and on her lips. A funny bit of business on stage may get a whoop of laughter. An injury to a character will suddenly get an “Ow!” from her sympathetic lips.

It’s not constant, like a “Mystery Science 3000” commentary track, but it’s not held back when she’s there, either. And because my wife Heather hasn’t been feeling well, Missy’s been there a lot, coming with me to practice after practice as the plot falls into place.

So, once in a while, we find ourselves with feedback from the darkness. I can’t really complain. In this, Missy truly is family.

I have never been what actors sometimes call a “smiler” – the sort of person who sits in the audience of a show, smiles and nods, and then ambles off to my car thinking how pleasant it all was. I laugh. Loudly. Strongly. Often infectiously. My actor friends have been accused of planting me in the audience just to get things moving, like a lighter held to a piece of kindling.

One memorable moment came when I took Heather to a long-ago performance of “The Mikado” at the Longmont Theatre Company. The show is GIlbert & Sullivan at its finest: beautiful music, a crackbrained plot and funny as heck. I laughed without hesitation or restraint several times, and I had plenty of company.

And then, at one point, a gentleman in front of me turned around. He whispered “Do you mind? Some of us are trying to enjoy the show!”

I didn’t say anything. I really didn’t. But at that moment, I was seriously tempted to respond with “I’m succeeding.”

Thinking back on that, and on Missy’s moments of shock or joy, the importance of that keeps coming back to me. How often do we show our appreciation? How often do we make it obvious?

An actor beneath the lights can’t hear smiles. That’s obvious. Most people we meet aren’t any more telepathic than that, yet we often ask them to be. Not necessarily with small compliments – as a people, Americans are pretty good at dropping those into a conversation – but with the real joys and worries that drop below the level of small talk and into true understanding.

I know, we’re reluctant to drop that mask of “I’m doing fine” with just any stranger. (Stranger? Missy’s never learned that word yet.) But many times we keep it up even around friends, reserving the true depth of what we feel. What if we didn’t?

I don’t mean striding the stage like a ham Shakespearean actor in mid-soliloquy. Heaven knows my own personality is on the quiet side many times. But loud or quiet, there’s a power to be had when we open ourselves up and lay our feelings bare. It’s why gatherings such as weddings or funerals can be so memorable and have such power; we’ve been given permission to open the gates, tear down the walls and show how we feel.

I don’t pretend it’s always comfortable. Or easy. But it can draw people together like nothing else. If you’ve ever had a friend you could say anything around, you know what I mean. Things come so much easier when the inner guard can relax at last.

It takes practice, of course. Maybe start with a safe, controlled environment. One designed to elicit broad emotions, where you can open up and react in a crowd of strangers, comfortable in your anonymity.

If only I knew somewhere like that ….

Oh. Wait a minute.

See you at the show. And maybe I’ll hear you, too.

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Putting the Pieces Together

Missy has a unique way of playing Concentration.

To start with, her cards always stay face up. That in itself might not be unusual, given her disability. Simply locating and matching a pair of cards counts as a triumph, even without the added challenge of remembering where a certain pair is hiding.

But it’s what happens next that gets my attention.

Because Missy’s matching doesn’t stop with pairs.

Cards showing markers are stacked with cards showing crayons. Cards showing airplanes get sorted with cards showing rockets. Any card that has a picture of food on it finds its way into a common pile.

In short, she’s finding patterns.

More, she’s finding patterns that everyone would recognize.

In this day and age, that’s not just a triumph. That’s darned near a miracle.

***

“Still a man hears what he wants to hear/And disregards the rest.”

— Simon and Garfunkel, “The Boxer”

 

There’s a lot of anger in the country these days.

Anger over gun laws and gay rights. Anger over drones and bugs, over hours-long filibusters and mile-long health care plans. Anger over what exactly happened on a rainy Florida night between two strangers that left one dead and the other notorious.

I’m not discounting that anger or proclaiming myself immune. I’ve felt it. You probably have, too. And frankly, it’s good for citizens of a democracy to be uncomfortable at times, to not be complacent, to look at the world and say “This is not how it should be.”

But going there isn’t enough.

You have to decide what the next step is going to be.

For some, the urge to anger becomes the urge to destroy. Hit back. Tear down. It’s the most primal urge of all, the most tempting. The blow thrown in rage. The bomb set in Boston. The war that consumes all of Europe, then all the world.

To let the heat become fire, all-consuming.

For others, anger is a chance to build and transform, the righteous anger that cleans moneychangers from the temple or slavery from a nation. To say “This is not right” and replace it with something better.

To let the fire light the way to a different path.

For most of us? It becomes hot air. Something to vent on Facebook and Twitter, to rant about in the halls of power, to air the dissatisfaction without necessarily seeing it become action.

Now, that talk has its place. It’s better to shout than to shoot, after all.  Sometimes that debate can even lay the groundwork for those who do act, if only by helping one more neighbor to see and appreciate a view that’s not their own.

That way can lie understanding. Compromise. Even cooperation.

But … and this is a big “but” … there has to be a place where minds can meet.

And that can’t happen if everyone has their own personal reality.

The Zimmerman trial was only the most recent example. We’ve seen others. Cases where so many already know what happened, know what the truth is. And will pull out everything they can, be it fact or rumor, to support that pre-determined conclusion.

Doesn’t fit the picture? Shuffle it back into the deck.

Need that matchup to work? Go ahead. Stack the pizza cards with the crayons. Who’s to say you’re wrong?

I mean, besides any kind of objective reality.

Facts are uncomfortable things. They’re not always going to be on the side we want. It is, indeed, useful to recognize patterns and draw inferences from them – but only if we’re ready to follow where they take us.

If it mars our pretty picture, so be it. Better an honest uncertainty than a conviction built on air.

And if we can’t do that … well, then we get today’s Congress. And much of today’s social media. A lot of echo chambers, each sure of their righteousness and the other guy’s error, none ready to acknowledge the horrible possibility that they might be mistaken.

It doesn’t take much to change it. Just open eyes. An honest mind. And a willingness to put sense before pride.

Missy will be glad to demonstrate.

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Living in the Eye

It is with deepest regret today that I lay to rest a fine old saying: “Character is who you are when no one is watching.”

Not because character has become obsolete. But the idea of nobody watching has.

Any doubts in that direction were themselves laid to rest by former Governor Mitt Romney, whose unintended infomercial (“The United States! Now with 47 percent fewer taxpayers!”) has become fodder for pundits, comics and chat rooms across the country. Mr. Romney, of course, thought he was in a quieter corner of the campaign trail, a closed fund-raiser where anything said in the room would stay in the room.

But it wasn’t Vegas. And it wasn’t private.

Nothing really is, in the age of the Internet.

Lest you think you I like to pick on Mitt, he’s just the latest victim. A similar event four years ago put Barack Obama on the hot seat, thanks to an infamous remark about “bitter” voters who “cling to guns and religion.” He, too, found that closed doors and an open society don’t mix very will.

If only they had learned the Restaurant Rule.

There’s two restaurant rules, actually. The first I originally read in a Dave Barry piece (and later found he had stolen it from Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson): “A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.” It’s a useful standard, and for more than just waiters; I find, for example, that I can tell a lot about a person by how they treat our developmentally disabled ward Missy.

But it’s the second restaurant rule I’m thinking of. The one taught by my mother long ago, in two parts:

  1. Always assume that what you say at a restaurant can be heard at the next table.
  2. Never assume that no one you know is at that table.

The last time I brought this up with anyone, I was thinking of Facebook, where a whispered talk at a back table can reach the maitre d’ in moments. But between YouTube, Twitter, camera phones and more, any gathering spot can become an Internet sensation in moments. Never mind Big Brother watching you – it’s Little Brother, the friend or neighbor with curiosity and a smartphone, whose eye can reach farther than any Orwellian bureaucrat ever dreamed.

This could create the most honest politicians on the planet. Or the phoniest ones ever.

Honest, because we can see and hear them in their most unguarded moments and learn what truths lie behind the campaign programming. What point is there to hiding in a searchlight?

Phony, if the candidates realize there are no unguarded moments and start wearing the mask at all times, public and private. Shine a light – and there’s no one there.

Personally, I’d urge the honesty, and not just because it gives me better news stories. Sooner or later, masks slip, even if only for a moment. That’s when the damage comes, not necessarily because of what you said or did, but because you tried to bury it. (Right, Mr. Nixon?)

But remember, candidates and candidates-to-be, there is always an audience. If that tempers your remarks, if it holds back your wilder impulses, if it means more biting of the tongue than biting remarks – that’s not a bad thing.

That’s not phoniness. That’s discretion.

So, let me remind you: You have the right to remain silent. (And when it comes to television ads, we’d really prefer it.) Anything you say can and probably will come back to haunt you in the court of public opinion.

Remember the restaurant. Consider the customers.

And always tip the waiter when you’re done.