For example, my mother had a book that was simply titled Yoga and it had a woman in a leotard demonstrating various asanas. For a thirteen year old boy, a woman in a leotard was reason enough to closely examine the book (in those days, the lingerie pages in the Sears catalog were good reading as well), but I also appreciated the philosophical text that accompanied the photographs, detailing a whole lifestyle dedicated to the meditative benefits of yoga.
My father also had a paperback book on transcendental meditation which appealed to me for a single reason: the author promised that with enough concentration, you could literally float in the air. I did everything the book said to do, right down to focusing on a mantra (I don’t remember what my mantra was, but as a smart-ass seventh grader, it was probably something like “boobs”), but I never got close to leaving the ground. Between the failures of that book and my cynicism about Catholicism, my spiritual growth was definitely stunted at a young age.
I also remember that my dad had the sequel to Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, the first real sports tell-all about baseball in the Sixties. This book had a bunch of stories about a guy named Doug Rader who apparently liked to poop on cakes that the team bought to celebrate birthdays and other milestones, then close the lid of the cake box and wait to see the poor teammate’s reaction to the defiled dessert. As a thirteen year old, I thought this was hilarious. As a sixty-two year old, I now think it was a waste of good cake.
My dad also had a book called Steal This Book, by the Yippee activist Abbie Hoffman. The book was basically a guide to living outside the law as a countercultural hippie, with practical advice on shoplifting, phone scams, and even making pipe bombs. It was many years before it occurred to me that it had been my dad who bought this book. Why would he have bought this book? My theory is that he was only 23 when I was born in 1963, so I think he lived vicariously through the Woodstock generation, unable to be a part of it because of, among other things, my mother and me and my sister, who he loved dearly.
(He wouldn’t have been much of a hippie anyway. He didn’t do drugs, and he loved easy listening music. Not ballads and jazz, but hardcore elevator music. It was unbearable to ride with him in his car, hearing easy listening versions of songs by the Beatles and the Stones, cringing through choirs intoning Baby you may drive my car or I cannot get any satisfaction no matter how hard I try to do so. At least that’s how I remember it.)
I bring this up because my parents’ library also included a book on mythology and a copy of Aesop’s Fables, and those stories imprinted on me in a big way. One of the recurring themes of those stories was how the gods hated - hated! - the hubris of mere mortals. You think you’re all that, huh? Here’s a deeply ironic comeuppance to you, sir, the gods would say, and you would be turned into a newt or a piece of cheese to be eaten alive by a hungry rat.
I think of those stories because I too am afflicted by hubris. I think I am funny. And what happens to a person who thinks they are funny? The gods make them deeply, deeply unfunny at the worst possible moment.
And this does happen to me. My wife has come to accept that when we go out to a party or a gala, I will be charming and funny for 95 percent of the evening and then, chasing a laugh too hard, I will say something deeply inappropriate, resulting in open-mouth astonishment from all who hear what I said.
I will not cite examples of this because they are all amazingly embarrassing, and usually at her firm’s social functions or at dinner parties or just chatting at the mall with someone we happen to run into. Open mouthed astonishment and then muttered good-byes, and my wife either staring daggers at me or rolling her eyes.
I have often thought I’d have been a good character in an instructive mythological story. “And somehow, Scottius had placed both feet firmly into his mouth while his head was in his ass. And the gods rejoiced to see him put in his place because Scottius knew not his place and was trying too hard to be funny.”
Anyway, I approached last night’s gala - a fundraiser for San Jacinto College - with great care and trepidation. No foot in mouth tonight.
We found our table and my wife introduced me to the couple sitting next to us. “You remember Scott?” she said. “Last year, he told you that story about his urologist calling his penis unremarkable.”
I figured this was my wife’s attempt to preeempt whatever I was going to say this year, but geez, maybe they hadn’t remembered until she reminded them. Plus, it had been a good story, and my wife was making it sound worse than it had been. (I know, you cannot imagine how that story could have transcended its punch line, but it’s actually … no, the story had been pretty much what you’d think it was: funny but deeply inappropriate.)
They’d remembered me. “Oh sure, we remember that story. You have any new adventures in your pants?” Mrs. Z asked me, smiling. They were okay with me.
She was actually great fun, as was her husband. We talked about Louisiana cooking and golf and the law and I stepped carefully through the conversation as if I was walking on an iced-over lake in early spring. I ultimately made it through the night with no major gaffes, and I won a silent auction for some golf equipment I had been intending to get anyway.
My only real goof was when I hugged the chancellor of the college when she had extended her hand for a handshake. In my defense, she had hugged my wife, who she’s known for thirty years, so I thought that was the mode of greeting across the board. And I did see her hand, too late, my momentum committed to the hug, so I put the brakes on and did the most xhaste hug possible before quickly releasing and jumping back behind my wife. One day, I will figure this out.
We had a nice meal, prepared by the San Jac students in their culinary program and made it home by 11:00. No late nights these days. My son and daughter had gone to watch the Rockets lose to the Lakers and we got a quick recap of the game before going to sleep.
This morning was basketball, then a trip to Home Depot for twelve bags of mulch. I then made pizza dough and homemade sauce and we had pizzas tonight with the kids and my grandson and my mother. No dessert, just a quick game of Rummikub and off to bed.
Tomorrow, some legal work and then a Rockets game. Fun!
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