Playing with Guns

I remember a first-grade classmate saying, "You mean your dad and my dad could have been shooting at each other?"

It was possible.

I hadn't really thought about it before then, and it felt funny to admit it, but it was possible.

It was no secret that my dad and mom were born in the old country. For one thing you could hear it. Even when they spoke English, which was most of the time, my parents didn't sound quite like other people.

If you looked close you could see that my dad had been in the war. It was evident in the half-thumb of a war-torn hand. (The left, I think, though I'm no longer certain.) You could see it even more when he was working in the sun and took off his shirt. There on his back was a long, deep crater about the size of a razor clam. The first time I saw it I asked him what it was and he said, very simply, that a bomb exploded near him during the war and a piece of it landed in his back.

I could see that it had been bad, but as a young boy I never even thought about how much worse it could have been.

The day my classmate told me, toy gun a-blazing, about his dad fighting the Germans, I asked my dad about fighting in Hitler's army. I don't recall exactly what I asked, or all that he said, but I do remember the look on his face and the way he shook his head.

He made it clear that he hated Hitler and the Nazis, but then he surprised me with this:

"Hitler did a lot for the German people," he said.

"He did?"

"Ja, sure, in the beginning we were much better off than before ..."

Then, I think, it was impossible for him to tell a young boy everything that was going through his mind.

Forty-some years later, I would sooner forget that my father said what he did about Hitler doing a lot for the German people. But there it is. I remember interrupting — "He did?" — because it shocked me, even then, that the name Hitler could be connected with anything but evil. I was too young to realize (as I'm sure my father did) that the connection was there in what he had just told me -- the division, deprivation, and depravity already implied.

Nine-One-One

It was a Sunday night in December of 1996, our first year in the house, and we were about to find out how long it would take paramedics to reach our doorstep.

Joanne had gotten out of bed at some point. I knew she wasn't feeling well, and I heard her moan as if ready to throw up. Then there was the clatter of our plastic waste basket tipping over. Then a heavy thump.

I called to her.

No answer.

I found her stretched out on the bathroom floor, her head twisted in a tiny corner where the wall extends just beyond the edge of the tub. Her eyes were open and she was white.

She still wouldn't answer.

I cradled her neck and eased her down flat. Then came the horrifying second when I looked down into her vacant eyes and thought: she's dead.

I didn't want to believe that. I said her name again and again. I couldn't find a pulse. She was so white. I tried to remember CPR and mouth-to-mouth. Make sure her breathing passages are clear, I thought. When I pinched her mouth, I heard her suck air. Good. But her eyes. They didn't move. Didn't even blink.

Back in the bedroom, I dialed 9-1-1, then dragged the phone as far into the hallway as the cord would allow. The part you hold to your ear stretched almost to the bathroom. As I was babbling incoherently, Joanne said, "What are you doing? I'm fine."

I told the operator, but she said the paramedics would be here soon.

A fire truck arrived a few minutes later, followed by an ambulance. Though Joanne seemed to check out okay, they took her to the hospital just to be safe. (Here's the thing: In the morning she was going to quit a job she once loved but now hated, and she had been stressing about it so much she passed out. Breaking an 11-year bond is not something Joanne takes lightly.)

The next day she was resting on the sofa and asked me to fix her some toast.

Grudgingly, I got up and walked to the kitchen.

"You know," I said, "I’m only doing this because you’re alive."

Wants and Needs

In my day job, I work for a high-tech company, writing about breakthroughs that I try to describe in terms that even I can understand. Hey, I studied journalism in school, not science, so I try to keep it simple. I have to.

The truth is, I admire engineers, scientists, technologist. They impress me not only with their brains but with their hearts.

What motivates them more than anything is a desire to change the world. They spend their time finding ways to do things like, oh, help cancer researchers run simulations 50 times faster. What's more, they refuse to accept the notion that something can't be done simply because other smart people tried and failed.

In short, they're inspiring. There doesn't seem to be any limit to what they can do if they set their minds to it. Yet the best technologists I know think very seriously about the implications of what they're doing.

Most of us don't even do that much.

Which is why I was glad to see Fast Company's "E-Tool Bill of Rights," designed to reset expectations and redraw boundaries that technology tends to erase.

We should never forget that technology is made for us and not the other way around. But it goes beyond that.

Too often, I think, we let the things we want pull us away from the things we need. What we want may be a raise, a promotion, a new car, or a cure for cancer. Good things. But in their pursuit, we've become too busy to eat right, too wound up to sleep at night, too tired to exercise.

In short, we need to take better care of ourselves.

Life is precious.

Random Images

Barefoot girl in a backless dress.

Traffic lights reflected on wet pavement.

The shadow of a small plane flickering across the contours of a grassy shoreline.

Long-haired boys and short-haired girls.

A blue Adirondack chair by itself on the lawn.

Wind-blown palms through mosquito netting.

A white blouse with black buttons.

The smell of chlorine and Coppertone.

A big-breasted blonde in a black bikini.

Silver jet streaking over black hills in a twilight sky.

Cliche curtains ruffled by a lacy breeze.

"Eyelashes wasted on a boy."

Ice-blue lights on the bare branches of twin trees.

Red tail lights fading into a black-and-white winter night.

Now, Smile!

I lost a tooth yesterday. Not just any tooth. One of the front two. The right one, to be exact.

I broke it Friday night biting into a piece of pizza of all things. The pie was a little crispy from being reheated in the oven, but still. I was shocked.

At first the tooth was just loose, but Sunday it broke off while I was chewing something soft and doing my best to avoid the danger zone in my mouth.

Standing in front of a mirror, squinting at the jagged little stump that used to be my tooth, I was in for another shock: I looked like a derelict. It was quite horrifying actually.

This morning my dentist told me that teeth get brittle as we get older. Plus, I have what he called a deep bite, so he wasn't surprised at all. He simply fitted me with a temporary tooth — nothing that would withstand a bite of french bread, but at least I look like my old self — and scheduled a root-canal operation for later in the week.

I'm told that there's a lesson to be learned from every experience, and in this case the lesson is simple: I need to appreciate what I have before it's gone.

Knowing that — really knowing it — is worth more than any tooth.

Work in Progress

I struggle sometimes, because I don't trust my own perceptions.

Should I?

To me the world looks flat, but pictures from space show that it's quite round.

On the other hand, don't try to tell me what to think. I trust my own mind more than anyone else's.

Except when I don't.

The strange thing is it's easier to disbelieve than it is to believe. Disbelief is safer somehow. To believe is to put yourself on the line.

I like to think of myself as a spiritual person. My intuitions, when I trust them, are almost always good. I should trust them more. I think.

I think of the time I was first in line at a red light and thought, Don't be in a hurry. It was an odd thought because I had no reason to be in a hurry. Then, sure enough, a car came speeding through the intersection from my left, two seconds after my light turned green and his turned red.

But I also think of the time I told my best friend he should look for a new job in Roseburg, Oregon. I don't know why I thought of Roseburg -- I'd only been there once -- but he did indeed find a job there. Only it didn't work out and he quit soon after he started.

Good thing he doesn't really remember me suggesting Roseburg.

I've been trying to increase my awareness through yoga, and I look forward to Mondays in particular. On Monday nights, the center where I train holds a special class in which we do 103 Chun Bu Kyung bows. Think of it as an exercise in sincerity and humility. An active meditation. Whether you believe in the Chun Bu Kyung — an ancient spiritual code that begins and ends with one — doesn't really matter. Everyone ends the night feeling calm and peaceful.

Or energized.

You have to trust your own experience.

Sometimes our instructor will ask us to consider a question while we bow. "Ask yourself, 'Who am I?'" she told us recently.

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

I was getting nothing. And then ...

You are God's creation.

I don't know where that came from, but it made me smile.

Later I would wonder if it was a message from the cosmos or just a random thought, but in that moment, I was happy to be God's creation. I felt his pleasure in what he had created.

And in the next moment I realized I was also my own creation.

Think of it (me) as a collaboration.

As a storyteller, I know a little about creating characters and having them take on a life of their own. I love that.

I think God loves it, too.

What I've Learned

> If you're going to criticize me, say something nice first, even if you don't mean it. It will help, even if I know you don't mean it. (Note: Others may require actual sincerity.)

> When I'm feeling down, I play Van Morrison's "And the Healing Has Begun" over and over and over. With each repetition, I start to feel stronger.

> If you like to dance, dance — and don't let anything stop you. Not shyness. Not anything.

> The punishment for lying is always wondering if others are lying to you.

> Buy Reese's peanut butter eggs at Easter time. They're way better than the peanut butter cups. They're fresh.

> Hatred is a waste of time. You only make yourself miserable.

> If you're taking a cruise on, say, the Danube, choose the downstream tour. Less engine noise.

> Think about it: If you were God — omniscient and all-powerful — could you ever be jealous of anyone or anything?

> Would you demand that people worship you?

> If you did, what would that say about your emotional maturity?

> Note to President Bush: If positive thinking were enough, our troops would all be home by now. Try something new.

> The movie What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole will boggle your brain.

> Even when I was attending church and studying the Bible like crazy, I could never understand prayer. You can't say anything to God he doesn't already know.

> Now I think the trick is to make your whole life a prayer, even if you feel compelled to use profanity now and then.

> I really like this quote from Depak Chopra: "At any given moment the universe is working toward the best possible outcome."

Hat humbly doffed to Esquire for its inspiring January issue.