My Regrettable Negligence

Of all the things I have done wrong, it seems there is one odd infraction, unintentionally committed, that haunts my memory the most.

It was during our eighteen days of spectacular fun in Japan. We were in Okinawa, Japan, to be more specific. On New Year's Day we attended a festival, which is a big thing there. As far as we could see, we were the only foreigners among the considerable crowd. Everything was colorful and our senses were saturated. As is their custom, the people were extremely courteous.

We wandered around and took in the many sights, sounds, and smells. The event was a lot of fun even for me. I don't normally enjoy big crowds or festivals. By our stature, clothes, and hair color, we stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Oddly, many people wanted to get a selfie with the family of Americans. We stopped and posed with anyone we noticed doing the selfie alignment. I started to feel like a rock star. It was kind of fun, although I wouldn't want the pressure of being conspicuous all the time.

A few young people tried out their limited English on us. It was clearly textbook English. We reciprocated with equally amusing attempts at Japanese. At least we all got a good laugh out of the deal.

Eventually, we found the food alley and, naturally, there were too many choices to pick from. Nothing was in English, so we had to go by the pictures or the food offerings themselves. Somehow, when I pointed at the spicy chicken on a kabob-looking stick, the oblique angle of my indication was also construed as a selection of a drumstick meal. There were nine of us ordering in a foreign language and the confusion was abundant.

When the orders were meted out, I found myself in the awkward position of being handed two meals. I was perplexed. The Japanese man with the drumstick meal and the Japanese lady with the kabob chicken did not understand this American with a communication problem. After several minutes of muddled gestures and head nodding, I was able to establish which of the meals I had actually intended to purchase. The lady passed it to me and the man returned the drumstick to the grill.

Way later it occurred to me, that in that honor driven society, I had probably insulted the man. I am such a dolt at times, maybe most times. I should have purchased both meals. It would have only been an extra ten bucks or so. It certainly would not have been the first time I have overeaten. Besides that, my college-aged son and two sons-in-law were there, so I could have passed the extra meal off to one of them.

Unfortunately, without considering the cultural context, I simply tried to resolve the communication breakdown. As a result, I have this weird sense of unresolved guilt. I wish I could return and make an apology. But I have no way of even knowing who the young man was. That really bothers me. I have done so much worse to others, but have at least been able to return and apologize.

In the big scheme of things, it is fairly minor, but the unresolvable nature of it leaves me, well, unresolved. So I offer here my apology, from the far side of the earth, to the very polite young man at the food booth among the dozens of food booths. And I hope he did not take that personally.

To my readers, I have a piece of advice for you: If you have a reason to apologize to someone, do it quickly before the window of opportunity closes.

That oh so Painful First Kiss!

They say you should never kiss and tell. But then who cares what “they” say? She was dusky and sultry and I had all intentions of making a big impression on that girl. I don't remember her name. For that matter, I don't actually remember what she looked like, either. After all, we were about five years old. That was a long time ago.

For the record, I never intended to kiss the girl. Back then, girls were afflicted with an incurable malady known as cooties. I didn't know what cooties were, so I just stayed clear. I did, however, have an irrepressible urge to show off for her. Little did I know where that would lead.

My family owned a fantastic playground known as a picnic table. I'm sure I was instructed to stay off of it, but I must have been temporarily lovestruck. The picnic table sat near our elevated back porch which was made of cement. On that fateful day, I discovered a board had been left between the porch and the picnic table. My dad must have been in the middle of some project. I never gave that part a thought. I just saw it as a stage for me to show off my death-defying manliness to a fair maiden.

I ran across that board back and forth from the porch to the table several times. With each lap, I invited whatever-her-name-was to join me in the audacious fun. I was like a pirate on the high seas, laughing in the face of danger. Cannon fire and saber-to-saber combat could not frighten me! Did you see that? I ran across the plank! The world was at my whim and the lady was about to swoon.

Except she was not the swooning type. In fact, she was sort of practical. At one point, as I was about to make my return to the porch, she called out in alarm, “Watch out, the board is close to the edge!”

She, of course, did not know with whom she was dealing! I was like Superman: invincible, invulnerable, and bulletproof! (Yes, I could shift fantasies that fast.)

With my next step, I discovered that the world was made of kryptonite. I don't actually remember the fall. I only barely remember the kiss. (If you are squeamish about blood, you may want to stop reading here.)

Where was I? Ah, yes, that kiss. It was stunning. It was profound. It was monumental. It left a lifelong impression on me. It was with the edge of the cement porch, and it busted my face wide open. I bled all over the place and my mom sort of freaked out.

Besides that first kiss, I got my first stitches out of the deal. It was also the beginning of my love/hate relationship with gravity.

I've often wondered if that girl even remembers the event. I wonder if she was impressed with my cavalier indifference to danger. One thing for sure … I bet she was impressed with the way I cried.

Inspired by Humility

Walter was among a group of poor young men from North Carolina who would take their Job Corps breaks and ride the bus to San Antonio, Texas. Our church was near the bus depot which made it a natural first stop for those guys. Seemingly at random, they would show up at our church, and our tiny congregation would take them in.

My family “adopted” Walter. I don't think anyone decided, it just happened. Consequently, on those weekends he would come to our house and blend right into our family activities. We never knew in advance when Walter was going to show up, but we always looked forward to it.

They say luck favors the prepared, but Walter's early life did not set him up for any of those favors. With a second-rate education, a severe speech impediment, and black skin, Walter's future did not exactly look like the American Dream. Walter, however, was humble and very lovable and, though he was our senior by a decade, my brother and I thought the world of him.

My family moved to northern Minnesota in 1975 and some years passed. In 1979 Walter made the trip to visit us up north. At that point my brother and I were in our late teens and we did everything we could to impress Walter.

One very fateful morning while “enjoying” my mom's infamous pancakes, my brother and I regaled Walter with all of our elaborate schemes to become excessively wealthy. Walter, who was by that time locked into a life of low-paying menial labor, patiently took it all in until we were finished. When we finally shut up, Walter simply said, “I'm laying up my treasures in heaven.”

Wow! Talk about cutting me off at the knees. You could say he took me down a few pegs, but really he took me up. Walter was, of course, referring to the teaching of Jesus that concluded with, “You cannot serve God and money.”

I was deeply inspired by Walter's humility and his steadfast refusal to covet what he could not have. He was free from the bondage of pursuing happiness in a place it could not be found. That event took place over thirty-five years ago, and I am still inspired. I know and have known many wealthy people in my life. I have even met a few billionaires. My observation is that Walter had more satisfaction in his life than any of those wealthy people could imagine.

I once saw a sign that read: Before you try to get where someone else is, check to see if they are happy there.

Socrates, the Lovable Buffoon

He was not much of a dog. I called him Socrates because he had such a pensive look. I assumed that look meant he was deeply philosophical at heart. I was wrong; that was simply a blank stare. The dog was kind of a buffoon.

He was half St. Bernard, half Collie, and who knows what the other half was. He had the noble character of a mouse, and at the first sign of danger Socrates would hide behind me. If there was any further indication of trouble, he would head for the house like he was being teleported.

He was lovable, however. At just over one hundred pounds, Socrates understood his job was to keep people's laps warm. The secret signal, that would get him into someone's lap, was a glance in his direction. That dog knew an invitation when he saw one, and he would RSVP instantly, and in person. At least he would reward his host with lots of long hair on their clothing.

Socrates was not overly active. In fact, he would eat lying down. When a car came down the driveway, he would bark lying down. When wild critters got too close to the house, he would make his threats lying down. Most of his aerobic exercises were accomplished lying down, unless he thought there was danger to someone, then he would hide.

One cold winter day, in northern Minnesota, I decided Socrates and I were going to do some dog sledding. I harnessed Socrates as he writhed about on the floor, calling me Benedict Arnold. I hitched up the dog sled, which heretofore had only been pushed or pulled by myself or my brother. And I rounded up my youngest sister who, fully bundled for the outdoors, weighed in at probably thirty-five pounds. It was all a simple process that took no more than two hours.

Our road was extremely rural. The road and the township were so rural, neither had a name. When we heard a car, everyone stared to see who was driving down the road. It was also a nicely snowpacked surface with a gentle hill. It was the perfect starter path for training Socrates how to pull the sled.

It would be an overstatement to call that singular attempt at dog-sledding a fiasco. It was more like a fizzle. No one got hurt. There was no runaway sled. My sister was not scarred for life. She may not even remember the event. It was simple, Socrates plopped down and looked at me like, “What? What do you want? Can't you see I'm, doing my only job? Lying down.”

Socrates as a puppy, leaning against me. sitting up was such effort.

I tried to inspire, cajole, even pull the dog, to no avail. The best I could do was push the sled down the hill and Socrates would leap aboard when the sled passed him. My sister would squeal with delight and the dog would smile in that deeply philosophical way of his.

Maybe, maybe he wasn't such a fool after all. Maybe he had that all planned out, to spend the afternoon getting sled rides down the hill. Come to think of it, when I finally put everything away and dragged my exhausted self into the house, Socrates was lying by the wood stove.

Well, at least I got a good midwinter workout out of the deal.

We fell for it!

Raising Rabbits for Fun and Profit, the booklet title read. My brother and I fell hard for that one. We read the book. We did the math. We got excited. We managed to negotiate a trade of I-don't-remember-what to get a rabbit hutch with eight or so compartments and a white rabbit in each. We must have talked our parents into footing the bill for the feed. And just like that, we were in business!

Multiplying rabbits turned out to be really easy. All the math and care instructed in the book was really unnecessary. We just dropped the buck into a female's cage for a five minute visit and in a few weeks, we were rich in baby rabbits.

I know you get the biology part, it's the profit part that you want to know about. Well, it so happens, we want to know about that part too.

Our expectations of prosperity did not exactly go as planned. It turned out finding a market for a gazillion rabbits in rural northern Minnesota in the 1970's was, let's just say, challenging. It was farm and hunting country, for crying out loud. There were wild rabbits in abundance everywhere. And everyone we knew lived on a farm … where they raised their own livestock, including rabbits if they so desired. Okay, it was not challenging, it was ludicrous.

In a few short months we had more rabbits than we could imagine how to get rid of. Our dream of affluence had become our bane. So, we made the only wise move left to us. We released the rabbits.

I wish I could say that was the end of the fiasco, but it was actually just the beginning. Rabbits have two annoying hobbies. You already know about the multiplying one. The other is, they burrow into anything soft. Not that anything soft in Minnesota was important, like insulation.

At this point I just heave a deep sigh as I recall the relentless rabbit “witch hunts” we conducted. If only we had eaten those first eight rabbits, I might still enjoy a meal of rabbit now.

The last vestige of the rabbit plague was routed on Christmas day. The well house was their final stronghold. And yes, it froze up and we lost water.

I'm not sure it's fair to blame the well house fire on the rabbits, since technically they were gone. We were just thawing the pipes out with what we called a torpedo heater. It was a long day by the time we got the well house rebuilt.

Every once in a while someone will offer me free rabbits. I just smile and walk away.