Have you or anyone you know ever been congratulated by a mobile dog groomer on your 44th wedding anniversary?

It was kind of a complicated day for a “celebration.” The day before, two of our friends, a married couple, had been sentenced to jail. A little before dinner on the day itself, daughter Cait called to tell us about the excellent memorial she’d arranged for a friend of hers who had just died; it was moving and beautiful as she told it, but, following our friends’ debacle and during a marital milestone, there it was… death.

But to get on to planning our dinner celebration.

Should we choose a high-concept, expensive whirl with glitz and champaign? Is there such up here? And is that in any way us? We’d have to drive 50 miles to Williamsport; a hundred-mile round trip wasn’t quite what we felt in the mood for. 

We have 3-4 places we go for our weekly dinner, in no particular order, for no particular reason. On this special day we both leaned toward The Barn, outside Eagles Mere: a straight-forward bar setting with attached dining room that serves about 20. It can get rackety at times because of the ancient tin ceiling that reflects gayety, but it’s low-key, friendly, with good food and excellent service. The final selling point, for me: They cram every last drop of Yukon Jack into a way-oversize shot glass.

Since this was a Thursday, we figured it wouldn’t be crowded, but we were forgetting it was the first Thursday of the Fall Fair, which is a big deal up here. The dining room was filled solid, so we had to settle for a fairly isolated 2-seater near the bar.

That was just fine, still friendly and cheery, but how to get served? Would the waitress find us in this not-so-obvious corner, or were we supposed to order from the bar? Well, I solved that problem, as I almost always do, by sitting there waiting for something to happen. Eventually the very busy waitress did find us, and we ordered our simple but substantial meal of cheese steak and Barn Burger. And drinks.

We don’t usually tend to party or make a show of ourselves, but we did dress up a bit that night, with Linda wearing an amazing, high-sparkle green jacket that she’d put together for her character in a play last year.

We were really enjoying ourselves, reading the ad placemat – we love ad placemats – while waiting for our goodies to appear, when a strange but wonderful encounter took place.

A woman of 50 or so walked over from the bar, stopped, and asked us, “Are you on your first date?”

A couple thoughts came immediately: First, that’s an odd thing for any stranger to do or say at a bar. Second, she was saying this to an obvious codger and codgerette.

“Actually,” I said, “this is our 44^th anniversary.” [I’ve always been obsessed with exactitude in numbers.]

Neither Linda or I can recall her exact reply – probably “congratulations,” plus some general reason for the “date” comment. Then she went on to tell us that, yes, she was a mobile dog groomer [that is, one who drives a panel track around to service the hair and toenails of canines; as a matter of fact, we’d noticed her truck in town]. We then had a nice chat, telling her where we lived and her telling us that she knew our road and the two ponds, etc.

She smiled heartily and walked back to the bar. About 20 minutes later, Linda went over to get refills on our drinks. Half a minute later the bar burst out in loud cheering and clapping. It was obvious: “Congratulations on your anniversary.”

Somehow that tied the whole evening together into something unique and wonderful, in a setting that could have been anywhere from fine to indifferent. It was probably the best anniversary we’ve ever had.

Maybe it’s somehow natural, during our talk at the table, that we did not ask the dog-groomer’s name, and she did not ask ours. But the encounter did leave us with a few ponderables:

What would have led her to think we were on any kind of date, much less our first?

Was it something in Linda’s shiny, exuberant jacket? [I’m pretty much Every-Geezer in settings like this.]

Had she just thought us approachable but didn’t know quite what do say, so came up with something chipper but unlikely on the spur of the moment?

Does she collect or enumerate encounters with people in bars as an avocation [she didn’t seem the type]?

Are Linda and I so closely bonded that we broadcast an ineffable giddiness when together?

Was it because it was Thursday or that she’d groomed an especially lovable dog?

Whatever: Our thanks to her for making the evening one that we can genuinely cherish. And I’m pretty damned sure no on will ever again mistake our dining table as the stage setting for a first date.

Most of existence bugs me at one time or another, but this is something that really bugs me: how the existence of  the individual is systematically ignored when discussing the group.

In nearly all our attempts to define who we are as humans, we choose to look at what’s general, not at what’s specific to the individual. That is, the assumptions we make – in research, in politics, in social action, in most fiction writing, in what we look for when we wake in the morning – are based on searching for the median or average that will help tell us what is “true.” 

This comes from a species-wide acceptance that there is always a ’normal” an “accepted,” a “widely-agreed-upon.” Most of the time, by doing this, we lose track of the fact that each of us is a unique being with a unique construction.

A few examples:

#1: Both Biden and Trump were over the last year set upon for being “too old” to be president. If you look at them as individuals, at any age, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask, “Are you fit to be president?” But to start off, before any data have been collected, with the assumption that anyone over 75 is a doddering loon is not just obnoxious but ridiculous.

[OK, the particular loon writing this is 85; I’ve mixed up people’s names all my life, as has just about anyone I know. It has to do with brain storage mechanisms more than age.]

As it turns out, there is serious doubt about either Biden or Trump’s fitness to run a country. In Biden’s case, it looks like his response to aging has left him struggling. As for Trump, at no age would I have trusted him to take random samples of possum saliva. The man’s a cretin with the cognitive acumen of a crankshaft. 

#2: At the other end of the age spectrum, the socio-political crap-collectors are now lumping all younger folks in the country into random “generations,” arbitrarily bounded by dates that make little or no sense, then assuming that these non-groups all think and behave like bonded clones. Worse, these “generations” are slapped with randomly-assigned letters like Z and X or derogatory labels like “millennial” [which can makes them seem like adherents of the 1000-Year Reich].

I have far greater trust in the country’s young [especially the women] than in my own cohort of codgers, but even in this case, for me to label them a solid forefront of hope would do them immense injustice. Every individual of every generation is a unique entity with a specific genetic heritage, personal background and conglomeration of experiences. They are not massed emblems.

#3: My own childhood. [Yeah, I know you don’t want to hear any more about that, but you’re going to. There’s a point to it in this case.]

When I spend time [with regret] reading about childhood experiences, related by adults relying on their memory, teachers relying on their charges’ behavior, or experts relying on their narrowness of outlook, I’ve have not yet, ever read or heard a description that matches my experience of childhood.

That doesn’t make my wee years in any way extraordinary or whoop-de-doo horrific, it just makes them mine in a wholly individual sense. Despite a range of experiences that I surely shared with any young human, my childhood did not match the general indicators for “being a child.” 

Maybe it’s because of this later-in-life realization that I now consciously try to emphasize the individual ahead of the group in almost any situation – not because I like the individual more, but that I find thit a more spot-on entry to understanding the whyness of the universe. [“Thit” is not a typo, it’s my newly minted pronoun singular intended to conflate “he/him,” “she/her,” “it” and “they/them”; I could have chosen “shit,” so as to include the “s” from “she,” but that would suffer from conflict with established connotations.]

My choice of focus also comes from having always felt myself to be totally an individual – not a in a good or bad sense, but in the sense of feeling related to almost nothing. I don’t reject others, but that I am not of them. 

So, yes – connections exist, groups exist, trends exist, and there’s good reason to keep them in mind and to study their construction. But we also need to remember that every social “unit” is a conglomerate of individuals in constant change, even when the group appears settled.

All is temporary, whether using a short time scale or a long. 

Of course, in attempting to establish the underlying laws of the physical sciences, we definitely need to concentrate on the general. If the law of gravitation only worked on alternate Saturdays when he sun was shining from the northwest, it wouldn’t be useful in definition or prediction. The scientist wants to know how the mechanisms of the physical world can be described in every instance – or as close to that as possible, as determined through experiment.

As for the social sciences, they aren’t really science; in fact, I wish the term “social science” didn’t exist. It’s a congeries of rambling approximations and pretty-good guesses about how to quantify a collection of individual responses.

But since social scientists like to think they’re doing real science, they compile simple-minded questionnaires that try to focus on general trends, then pretend there’s a universal lurking behind the answers.

What happens with these questionnaires is that the questions actually do elicit individual responses, but not often ones available to the subject, who instead has to choose, from the three possibilities offered, the one they feel comes closest to their actual response [the available choices are often “yes,” “no” or “not certain”].

*   *   *

Now, thank your lucky your stars: Nothing that follows relates to anything above.

*   *   *

A lawn is no damned good to anybody. You mow it and the result lies as a big green flop, doing nothing. No flowers, no differentiation, as you assiduously lop off every last tassel that might look interesting.

Some people just love to cut grass. When astride a riding mower, they may even claim it as a form of meditation. So, for awhile I wondered if I was missing something; maybe mowing really is a relaxing form of Zen.

But then the truth struck me: I had the whole thing backwards: In practice, Zen is probably as big a pain in the ass as mowing.

*   *   *

Headline: “Babe Ruth’s ‘called shot’ jersey from 1932 World Series sells for record $24.1m”

Not only proof of the stupidity of the rich who buy useless shit by the walletload, but consider how many housing units that 24 mil could have provided. Instead, it provided absolutely nothing of real value.

*   *   *

Should the plural be “jack in the pulpits” or “jacks in the pulpit”? And why is there no jack off the pulpit?

*   *   *

Now and then I want to pound my head into the wall, hoping that both my head and the wall will disintegrate.

*   *   *

My father could wiggle his ears. No idea how he developed that kind of muscular control. 

Today is the first time I’ve thought of that in decades, though it certainly should have popped up in my mind over all those years. After all, it says something delightful about my father. Yet there are other things I do remember that say nothing about him, one way or the other.

Memory is as fickle as a fly’s flight.

This first batch is quickie suggestions on how to improve life at home, online, and on the road. I know you’re looking for more stuff like that, right?

%   %   %   %

Refer to J D Vance as “Trump’s running mutt.”

*   *   *   *

I suggest that all organic food and drink cartons carry only one motto:

“No Stupid Claims”

*   *   *   *

I get most of my online news from the Guardian and the Daily Beast, which both do amazing in-depth coverage. But even with them there’s still an endless upchucking of articles about things happening with or to celebrities and politicians about whom I have no possible interest.

My suggestion: Collapse all this pseudo-news into one corner of a page and dedicate it to “Minor celebrities and politicians who are: accused, charged, convicted, diseased, maimed, or dead,” with a two-sentence summary of each incident.

OK, “dead” could get by with one sentence. Or just a date.

*   *   *   *

Assume that the coming spate of absurd and violent AI movies will not terrify the young and stupid, but become accepted like violent animated cartoons. I mean, who the hell mistakes Wile E. Coyote for part of daily reality [except metaphorically]?

*   *   *   *

A sign that I suggest for any very narrow road bridge: “Too Narrow and Too Narrow and Too Narrow…”

 *   *   *   *

For online info on skin problems, I suggest: “It’s a Site for Psoriasis”

 *   *   *   *

Concerning the angst some feel over the plea deal offered to 9/11 plotters to plead guilty to keep them from the death penalty: I suggest, instead giving them life in prison with the mandate to keep them alive for as long as possible by whatever means. That would be a far worse sentence than quick death.

<   <   <   < 

And now some personal screedings:

%   %   %   %

Recent headline:

“Birthrates are plummeting worldwide. Can governments turn the tide?”

I sure as hell hope not. The current eight billion people aren’t enough?

*   *   *   *

The sad decline of Marc Andreessen:

In the mid ’90s, Andreessen began a private expansion of the first real web browser, Mosaic, which was developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

He initially called his version Mosaic, also, but the finished product became Netscape, a giant leap in navigating the web.

During the build-up, Andreessen posted regularly on one of the newsgroups that were the major sources of info in those days; I downloaded each beta version of Netscape as he released it.

I went online around 1:30 am one morning, about 20 minutes after he posted Netscape 1.0, the first “full” release. I downloaded it immediately, so may have been one of the first dozen or so in the world to grab it. It worked like nothing that had existed to that point for finding websites.

Nowadays, Andreessen is a venture capitalist, one of the most frightening labels in this age of monetary strangulation. He and several other other ultra-rich dingleberries are buying up huge acreage in California to try to establish a high-tech city for 400,000 inhabitants that would take a massive swath of farmland out of production and overrun what little would remain of the enfolding county. The majority of the locals are in no way pleased and are fighting it tooth and nail.

Oh, Andreessen has also become cozy with Elon Musk. I know I once defended EM for his ornery humor and goofiness, but ya know, he ain’t funny no more.

*   *   *   *

Linda and I support a bunch of causes, a couple political, most charitable i in one way or another. We give each of them about $50 annually, according to a time schedule I’ve set up.

In return, we now receive unending streams of junk mail from not only every one of them [except for the two where I found how to opt out on their website], but from every other known or semi-known organization that covers a similar money-hungry territory. 

If you support any animal rights outfit, the ASPCA will hit you up, even though you’ve never had any contact with them. If you support an environmental group, expect an appeal within weeks from the Disadvantaged House Flies of Uzbekistan.

The other day, we received 8 pieces of mail in our Dushore PO box. 7 went directly into the conveniently placed PO paper-trash receptacle. 

This generation of trash is annoying enough, but it’s a small point. What really gets me is that a sizable percentage of what I contribute to an outfit I otherwise believe in goes to mailing me crap I don’t want that asks for yet more money. And why he hell are they sharing their mailing list, with my name and address on it, without my consent? 

The worst effect is, rather than getting more out of me by hounding me with guilt and garbage, they’re beginning to convince me that I should spent less on my support of anyone or anything.

Maybe, instead, I should just bundle up my used paper from home and drop it in the PO trash box.

They recycle!

[a story]

Paul McGarrish felt no nostalgia as he looked across the campus, only the general bemusement that filled most of his life. It bemused him, for instance, that he was worth seven billion dollars (by Forbesian count), even though he had never felt any desire for large sums of money. He bought things, of course – lots of things – but most times ended up giving them away.

The bluestone of the main campus walkway had been replaced by octagonal tiles, some kind of asphalt amalgam. Much better. The bluestone, heralded as virtually indestructible when installed, had spalled and shattered. The new material could easily be replaced, tile by tile, if necessary.

Jaunty little flower beds languored under the trees where walkways met. The grass, that in his day could be made to grow only in leprous patches, was lush and assertive. Fewer aged trees, alas, yet the whole was one of the most attractive urban settings for higher education in the country.

Maybe he should not commit this action (less action really, than solidified intent). It might be considered mean. But it was something quite different, something like his incomprehensible accumulation of lucre. He needed to see it through so that it might tell him something.

He strode comfortably, hands in pockets, as he always did, up the path to the administrative offices and through the newly installed ornate wooden doors (removing one hand from his pocket to navigate the latch).

Inside, he turned to the president’s office and introduced himself to the secretary. The president herself would not be available to see him, he knew; one reason that he had chosen today to “drop by.” Short, thin and image-conscious, the secretary made him feel himself closeted with something infectious.

The assistant who ushered him into her office was young, blonde, with stunning grey eyes at once intense and non-committal. No woman on campus, undergraduate, graduate, faculty or staff, had looked like this when he had attended. Or perhaps he was simply more aware today. Seven billion dollars provides ample time for becoming aware, if one is so inclined.

“Well,” she said, after showing him to the obvious seat, “we’re so glad you could make it. Did you come by private jet?”

“There’s no landing strip on campus,” McGarrish replied. “It would be impractical and possibly dangerous.”

“Ha ha,” she mock laughed. “Sorry, that was just… I find it difficult to start conversations with Really Important People. I tend to say stupid things. Forgive me.”

McGarrish rose. “You are formally forgiven.” He extended his hand to her and they shook. Her hand was narrow, finely boned, with exquisite skin. Ah!

McGarrish sat down.

“I understand you had a gift in mind?” said Grey-Eyed Athena.

“I did, and I still do. A large gift.”

“Well, that will certainly… That’s very… I’m delighted. The president will be delighted too.” Her eyes almost spoke in time to her halting speech.

McGarrish smiled. “Good lord, you have no idea how delightful it is to have someone become admittedly, bumblingly confused. Half my day is spent with toadies whose prime object is to convince me they know exactly what they’re doing when they haven’t the faintest idea. Bully for you!”

The grey eyes turned momentarily candid. “I’ve never actually heard anyone say ‘bully’ that way before.”

“Don’t think I have either. You are the most relaxing person.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“I can see that, which is why you are so relaxing. All right, should we talk about details? It’s an unrestricted gift, except for one relatively small condition. Big, big dollars. Goodness, now you’re going to see that I don’t now what I’m doing either.”

“But you must.”

McGarrish chewed his lip and thought that over. “No, I don’t think so. Details.”

“All right.” Grey-Eyed Athena drew a yellow lined tablet closer to her and picked up a battered pencil, probably chewed on.

“I propose to donate a flat sum of one billion dollars.”

“Oooh, that’s… unparalleled. My goodness!”

“Isn’t it? I’ve never heard of anything like it myself, except for Ted Turner, and that was to the United Nations. This is to a single collegiate institution. It could be used to fatten up the endowment, or institute new programs or, ummm, well, God knows what else? Money, money, money.” His misplaced grin returned, broader.

“Well… unrestricted? Or… or almost unrestricted?”

“Yeah, just a weensy part of the total set off for a particular project, no more than, I’d think, about twenty-five million. Well, inflation, all right, say fifty million. That leaves…”

“Nine hundred and fifty million.”

“Not confused about math?”

“Women aren’t supposed to be. These days. And never were. Now, this fifty million, how is it restricted?” A sudden confidence solidified in her face, bringing out another level of beauty. Ah! Ah!

“It’s for a building, it doesn’t much matter what the building’s used for, I’d think research might be best, but I’d leave that to… the trustees, the board of trustees. The location is important though. Crucial.”

“You don’t want to tear this building down, do you?”

“For you? In a minute. But in general terms. No. My – I say my, but it won’t be named for me – the building must be a minimum of seven stories tall and face Wigand Street.”

“That’s quite crowded.”

“Oh, tear down a few things and it won’t make a difference. Pretty ugly bunch. Tear down that new mall, what a monstrosity. Hmmm, this could go beyond fifty million. There’d still be plenty left.”

“Can I get you some coffee?”

“You certainly can, you’re highly competent, whether you always realize it. But I hate coffee. Do you have any tea?”

“Oh dear, I’m not sure. I’ll look.”

“Take your time. Most places have forgotten it exists. I’ll even take Tetley. No silly herbal swill, though.”

She moved from the room with aching grace, and McGarrish moved with a shamble to the window. From there the campus exuded even more of a rightness about it, a sense of now, of time held in abeyance for four years so matriculants could experience a level of comfortable ease – interspersed occasionally with all-night madness – that they might never know again. Except for the business students, who would notice none of it.

Seven billion dollars “earned” through business and investment that mystified him still. Why come here to fight, if that’s what it was? What was he fighting against?

Athena returned with a teabag, which she held by the tag. “Ta da! Tetley.”

“Yum yum. We should be able to wrap this up pretty quickly. I’d invite you out to lunch afterwards, but that would by a form of noblesse oblige. It’s rotten for rich, balding men to inflict themselves on the young and beautiful simply because they can.” He held up his hand. “Don’t reply, I’m musing out loud. That’s one of the few blessings of being exceedingly rich that I do take advantage of. You know, if I weren’t rich… I’d be poor, but probably in a straitjacket.”

She frowned. “Why do you think that? There’s nothing crazy in being honest. Is there?”

“Damned if I know.”

She shifted her gaze to the yellow tablet. “So the building is the single restriction?”

“Yes. There’s a secondary restriction associated with the building, but the rest of the money is unencumbered. It’s just a big pile of dough, like Scrooge McDuck’s.”

“Umm? Oh, yes, somebody showed me one of those once. The comic. What’s the secondary restriction?”

McGarrish pulled up from a slouch and sat straight in his chair. “On a sign four feet in height directly above the front door, in letters not less than eighteen inches tall, the name must read ‘The Great Big Motherfucking Building.'”

The grey eyes flew wide and took on exuberant life. They expressed alarm, shock, vacillation, then, suddenly, humor. Athena snurfed a giggle into her hand that widened into a titter that rolled into a burbling guffaw. As this huge laugh enveloped her slim frame, McGarrish leaned back, head pointed almost toward the ceiling, and joined in. Their laughter swept on like a rollercoaster down its incline, careening around the breathtaking curves and into successive humps of lessening comedy.

Oh, what a lovely hell of a racket.

“Boy,  you caught me on that one. Whoo! Oh goodness. Do you really have a, pooHA! name for the building? You don’t want to name it after yourself?’

“I do. I don’t. I have a name, but not mine.”

“What is it?”

“The Great Big Motherfucking Building.”

“It wasn’t a joke.” The flame in the grey eyes extinguished.

“Oh, it is a joke. I guess you’d call it a joke. It’s not a joke about what the name will be, but naming it that – you think that’s what the name is? A joke?”

“I wasn’t trying to–“

“No, no. I’m not accusing you of anything, I just want your opinion. You think something like that would be a joke? Well, people would laugh at it, but that doesn’t prove anything. They laugh at an injured dog. It’s funny, certainly. But why am I doing it?”

“You don’t know?”

“I woke up one morning in my damned goose-down bed which is too soft to be comfortable and the thought popped right into my head. That’s how I’ve made my billions, thoughts popping into my head from nowhere, so I felt I should act on it. But it could have been an entirely incorrect thought, the work of the devil. Blast – people don’t say that either, do they – I’ve just gotten tired of my motives, if they even are motives, always staying in hiding. Who am I anyway? Have you seen me around anywhere?” He swiveled his head to check the corners of the room.

“I’ll get the straitjacket.”

Again, in smaller measure, their combined laughter swooped through hills and valleys.

“You’re not offended by this?” McGarrish asked.

“Just puzzled. It’s an awfully… aggressive thing to do, and you don’t look aggressive.”

“Gentle as a lamb, as they say. That’s what I mean – I don’t know why. But I’m dead serious. Serious in that sense.”

“An unalterable condition.”

“Yuh, yuh. Exactly.”

“They won’t do it.”

“You think that’s it? That’s what the test is?”

“Well… it would be if I were doing it.” And the grey eyes swept over him like cats in heat.

“I… don’t think… that’s it. Something else. I almost saw it when I was looking out the window there.” He pointed. “It’s larger than that. Hairier.” 

“A grizzly thought.”

“Good lord, you know, if I’d met you when I was younger… But I have to get going, find where I parked my jet.”

Athena stood and held out her hand. “I’ll convey your wonderful offer to the president.”

“One billion dollars. Oh yes, oh yes. By the way, if you were still in college, would you take classes in The Great Big Motherfucking Building?”

“I’d consider it an honor.”

“Perhaps if we changed the name of the entire university…”

“That would be asking a bit too much. Even from you.”

“Two billions dollars?”

“I’d think about it. I’d think about that… long and hard.”

Outside, the students moved between classes with casual aplomb, their crossings and tangential meetings reinforcing the geometry of the walkways. Perhaps that was all there was to it, a human geometry that could produce billions or a crude joke with equal, unthinking ease.

The Great Big Motherfucking Building would never be built, or if it was it would last only until his death, when it would be defaced, effaced. Its memory, like his, would become a footnote slowly obliterated by time, while Grey-Eyed Athena grew old.

The end

       *   *   *

Pie-plate volume elucidation

Following up on how Linda can determine the diameter needed to create a one-half-standard-volume ceramic pie plate.

the evenly slanted side wall of the standard pie plate has

an upper diameter of 9”

a lower diameter of 7”

so, an average diameter of 8”

[sorry how the equations below look; I don’t have a math program on my computer, so doing my best in Word]

 with volume equal to πr²h, and substituting x for r in the new volume, we get

 πx²h = 1/2  πr²h 

since  π and h are constants on both sides of the equation, they cancel out, leaving us with 

x² = 1/2  r² = 16/2 = 8 

^thus        

^{x = sq. root of  8 = 2.8 [rounded]}

^{using x as the new radius,}

^{new diameter = 2.8 x 2 = 5.6 inches}

^{Linda has a neat program, known and comprehensible only to potters, which also allows for the thickness of the clay wall and shrinkage of the clay in drying. For this problem, it comes up with a wet diameter of:} 

^{5.75 inches, or, in mathematical terms, “pretty damned close.”}

^{You may wonder why I have wasted your time and mine on this idiot side issue. I certainly do.} 

^{Well, kinda fun, in a lame-ass way.}

As I’ve mentioned all too often, my childhood was a time of terror. Nothing actually terrible happened, I just hated being a child, had no idea how the world worked, was afraid of almost every situation, and knew that, being a child, I was at the bottom of the human ladder.

Still, I thought now is as good a time as any to bring up a couple examples of those dread days. To me, they fit right in with the current world tune.

While I was living on Hastings Ave. in semi-rural Havertown, from age 4-7, I had no friends, but there were a very few kids I that I… played with? Flexible term.

That I did things with.

Donald lived down the block, same side of the street, on the way to the creek. He was a year or so older than me and, in retrospect, pretty much of a useless shit. We did things in the back yard I won’t go into, except to say that they often had to do with piss.

One day, down at the edge of the creek woods, he pissed on my leg. When I got home, my mother wondered why my shoe and sock were wet and, ummm, maybe smelled funny?

For some reason, I told her what had happened. I guess I couldn’t dredge up the proper lie, but it was stupid on my part. What I didn’t tell her was that he did it because I dared him to. Anyway, I was then forbidden ever to play with Donald again. [I did, but of course I was terrified of the possible consequences at home.]

The particular incident I’m getting to took place in Donald’s back yard but did not involve Donald. His family had bought a new refrigerator and the cardboard box was lying on its side back there with a big section cut out as a sort of hideout to loll inside.

This scene requires three additional characters: another boy, no memory who, sitting in the box with me, and two girls outside the box, holding us prisoner. The older girl was Barbara, who terrified me the most of any young human I knew. She lived on the corner of the block on the way to the creek. 

The only direct encounter I had with her, prior to the box, was on her front porch while I was talking to her younger brother, David. She told me in no uncertain terms that I was never to talk to David without her permission, with threats both implied and specific. Apparently she had assigned herself David’s ownership.

Barbara had a thinner, younger associate, maybe my age – I don’t recall her name – who acted as her lieutenant. Anyway, this day, behind Donald’s, they camped outside the box and told us we were not allowed to leave.

We stayed.

Why would we have allowed that to happen? Were we physically afraid of them? I doubt it. For my part, I think it was the local manifestation of my overarching terror. 

At some point Barbara had to go home – possibly to torture a small animal – placing her lt. in charge. I asked the lt. to let me exit the box. NO! Yet, oddly, I did flea, and there was no physical altercation.

Once I reached home I told me mother what was going on. [Again, why be such an idiot?] She handed me a corn broom to hold upright and demanded I go back to confront my captor. 

I remember walking down the block with terror in front, terror behind, but don’t recall what actually happened. Probably pointless posturing from both me and the lt. 

I look back on that day and that self with disdain for my fearful, insipid little schmuck, someone for whom I can find no empathy.

It’s easy – and psychologically more or less correct – to say I couldn’t help being what I was,. But I should not have been that! It feels unforgivable.

The second situation, which extended over a few months, happened during my freshman year of my Catholic all-boys high school. 

Those of you who might have shared the misfortune of growing up a practicing Catholic, especially in the routinely oppressive 1950s, may recall the horror of saying a Bad Confession.

It was one of the scattershot of mortal sins – which also included deliberately missing Mass on Sunday or eating meat on Friday – that could zip you straight to the tinderbox of Hell, should you be hit by a speeding garbage truck or have a block of serpentine marble fall on you from a highrise.

It didn’t help that a couple of our parish priests and a few of the nuns thought the best way to keep kids in line was to treat them as worthless scum escaping perdition by the skin of their evil-stained teeth.

As for a Bad Confession – wooee!

To take communion at Mass – by dissolving the remarkably pleasant body of Christ on your tongue – you had to be clean of mortal sin, preferably by going to confession the previous Saturday evening. But, should you deliberately neglect to mention a mortal sin in confession – meaning that sin could not be absolved by the priest – that was a Bad Confession, the rough equivalent of dropping your drawers and mooning the Baby Jesus. And should you dare ingest the body of Christ following a Bad Confession, it would tie your soul in knots that Thomas Aquinas could not unscramble.

Here’s what happened with me: One afternoon, in the backyard of our house at the end of the courtyard off 37^th St. in Powelton, I viciously kicked a pile of bibles that my mother had for some reason stacked against the brick back wall of the house. I kicked them because they were her Episcopal  bibles, thus not true, Catholic bibles. 

Mom, naturally, lay into me about my sectarian limitations. After a bit, I felt chagrined. Then I felt awful. Finally, I felt I had done something truly evil. This horrified me so much that I couldn’t even face confessing it; then it horrified me more because by not confessing it on Saturday, I’d made a Bad Confession.

That marble slab was waiting to drop on me.

Escaping evil is never easy for a confirmed believer. Until I confessed my Bed Confession, I could not receive communion. On a Sunday, that lapse could be somewhat ignored, since I went to Mass with only my Catholic father. But at high school we also attended Mass on Wednesday at the church a block from school; where I could not receive communion because of my self-perceived Mortal Whopper.

For the first couple weeks it wasn’t that bad. While everyone else in our pew went to the altar rail to swallow God, I knelt in my place, later explaining that I had forgotten and drunk water that morning [at the time, you could take nothing by mouth before receiving Christ’s body, including Philly’s foul tap water].

But this went on week after week – pew after pew emptying while I knelt alone – though I will never understand why none of the priest-teachers, always watching, asked me, “Why?” I’m glad they didn’t, but it made little matter, because I was pilloried in my own mind… singled out by the finger of God, again and again.

Somewhere along the line I finally confessed my Bad Confession to our parish’s most understanding and decent priest [to whom I should have confessed my bible-footballing to in the first place], who told me that, technically, it never was a Bad Confession, since my sin was hardly mortal.

When I took communion once again, it tasted good.

Thank you Father Whoever, and I hope your name eventually escapes my declining mind. You were a good man, and I pray the angels to provide you with a daily bowl of cookie-dough ice cream.

No, I do not actually pray for anything, not even whipped cream.

         *   *   *   *

This test is well outside the discussion above, but Linda, my beloved potter, wants to make a clay pie-plate  that will hold one-half the volume of a standard pie-plate that we put in the oven to bake a pie.

Besides the reducing the volume, she is planning, for simplicity sake, to form her model with a straight vertical side, rather than the standard slopped side.

Assuming that the figures below correctly represent a standard pie-plate, how should she determine the diameter of a one-half volume pie-plate?

height of pie-plate  – 2 inches

diameter at top – 9 inches

diameter at bottom – 7 inches

[These measurements assume an even side slope.]

Using the formula for the volume of a cylinder – πr²h –r being the radius, h being the height of the cylinder – what diameter should she use for achieve one-half the standard volume?

Please include your answer and reasoning. You will be quizzed on this next week.