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Reality draft.

2007-10-04

Good morning Boys and Girls.

When my kids were young, they participated in an after-school bowling league for a few years. Whenever I could, I'd sneak away from work those Thursday afternoons to watch them.

It gave me a kick to watch the two of them as team-mates pulling for each other, especially since their two-and-a-half year age difference and their divergent personalities often meant they saw things a differently at home, where squabbles between them were, if not a regular occurrence, also, not all that rare.

So watching them high-fiving and hugging each other and their team-mates was a ball. I don't ever remember them doing anything other than encouraging each other when they were bowling. Usually my ex would be there too, having served as taxi driver for ours and, sometimes, one or more of the other kids too.

After the bowling, which finished up right around dinner time anyway, we'd often pile into one of the local family diners, the favorite of which was only a few hundred yards down from the bowling alley.

At the time, my ex worked part time for a lady from the old Yugoslavia, who, though a very nice woman, never smiled much and had a rather sour disposition. This despite her having, to all appearances, found a pretty nice life here in the good ol' USA with a successful small business and a husband who seemed to tow the line pretty well.

Her name was - and hopefully still is - Donna, and she was a great Mom and a good soul even though her outlook was anything but sunny. One day, I remember asking her if everything was okay. I forget what specifically prompted my concern, but she said everything was fine. "Oh, good," I remember responding, "You don't look at all happy and I was worried something might have happened."

"I no trust happy," she said, and continued with whatever she was doing.

"Pardon?" I asked, sure I'd misheard.

She shrugged, and frowned, and honestly, I thought she was going to cry, when she repeated herself. "I no trust happy." She looked at me. "All my life, every time I get happy, something terrible, it happens."

And she gave me a few examples from her life that, by the time she was done with them, made me understand her attitude. If I was her, I decided, I wouldn't "trust" "happy" either.

One year, her son - I'll call him "Ben," - who was a couple of years younger than my daughter, asked to bowl on my kids' team. This created a little dissension within the ranks because, frankly, Ben could be a little difficult. Though he'd been born in the States, his grandparents had recently come over and lived with their family and so the language of their household was the one they'd spoken before arriving, meaning that even at ten years old, Ben's English was spotty at best and he tended to speak in fractured bursts of syntax challenged speech.

The phrase that stuck with us all for years afterward, even after Ben was completely "Americanized" and became a star lineman for his high school football team - by which time he'd dropped even the slightest trace of the accent that was so pronounced in his speech as a child - was the one he'd used constantly during bowling whenever he wanted to run to the vending machines for a candy-bar. "I could have a quarter?" he ask, -his standard, and often repeated request for funds for the string of machines that, even then, required far more than a single quarter to give up any single treat. Sometimes he'd even petition for some of the money his mother entrusted to our safekeeping before throwing the second ball that constituted the completion of his turn, something that struck all of us as hilarious - at least the first fifty or so times it happened. He did have trouble grasping the concept of the game, though throwing the ball hard was somethng he really seemed to enjoy. For the first few weeks - oh who's kidding who - for the entire year, the challenge for Ben was in "keeping it between the gutters," and understanding that he got two rolls of the ball each turn. He'd roll that first ball directly into the gutter, and then cheerily turn to either my ex or me, and smiling, ask in that innocent and oblivious voice of his, "I could have a quarter?"


After a while, my sweet children - those two kind and generous souls, the ones we'd raised so very well - wanted to kill him.

 

After a while, it became funny, and it stuck. Though it was probably mean, within our family for years afterward, anytime someone needed cash for something from another family member; any amount of cash; the plea, no matter whether it was for a buck for a soda - or hundreds of dollars for a college course or a car repair - would often be, "Hey Dad, I could have a quarter?"

........

But all this came to mind today primarily because of Donna's self-protective philosophy, the one that bangs into my head from time to time like a struck gong, the percussive attack reminding me that, while it's probably not the most pleasant way to go through life, at least it's one that helps you get THROUGH life with minimal wear and tear, because, really, it's not whether the glass is half full or half empty. No. What it is, is this: sometime there's something in the glass, and sometimes there isn't. That's it. Best to treat it the same either way. Don't get too excited by what you find, cuz tomorrow? Well...

I know what she meant.

These days, "I no trust happy," either.


Be good to everyone.

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