Full Jake and Hungry

His clothes were a bit frayed but not yet ragged. His salt and pepper hair was neatly combed but could have used a washing. His face was decorated with two days of stubble. He was sitting on a plastic storage box with a newspaper as his cushion. The piece of cardboard he held as a sign was clean and precisely cut. The sign contained a single word so beautifully lettered it could have been painted by a professional sign maker. The word on the sign was “Hungry!”

Jake was rounding the corner to the front entrance of the office building when he saw the man holding up the sign. “Oh damn, another panhandler!” This one was sitting just far enough away from the building to keep the security guards from hassling him. “But he’s still close enough to accost me before I can escape into the building.”

Jake did not mind parting with some loose change. The problem was that there were so many beggars and many of them were so aggressive that they seemed threatening. This one glanced up at Jake and said good morning. He did not smile at Jake, and the inflection in his voice did not communicate joy or sorrow. It was as though he had simply stated a fact. Jake normally averted his eyes when he encountered a panhandler; it was the old ignore them and they will go away tactic. But there was something about the manner of the greeting and the pretty lettering on the sign that made Jake want to talk to this one.

“Hello, Hungry. I’m Jake.” Jake silently chided himself for telling the panhandler his name. That was never a good thing to do.

“I suppose being Jake is better than being hungry.”

The panhandler’s reply made Jake realize that his introduction must have sounded condescending. “We’re all hungry for something.”

“Spare me the sermon. All donations are appreciated but, believe me, there’s no way you can match the pious load the Salvation Army lays on us at Christmas or Thanksgiving.”

“I wouldn’t think of trying, but why did you think I was going to preach to you?”

“’Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness…’ That’s a verse the moneyless leisure class knows too well. It’s one of the things frequently told to us as we suffer the pangs of physical hunger and thirst while sitting through the sermons.”

Jake could picture the derelicts salivating on the hymnals like Pavlov’s dog. “If they fed you before the sermon you would probably bolt out the door the moment the sermon began.”

“Not I. Listening to the sermon is the price of the meal, and they’re far too likely to remember who skipped out on the bill.”

Jake laughed. “I guess if I gave you enough to buy a meal, you wouldn’t be hungry any more.”

“Not for five hours or so.”

There was no arguing with that. “Then you’ll be hungry again.”

“And, for better or worse, you’ll still be Jake.”

“Why did you say for better or worse?”

“Which one it is depends on what you’re hungry for.”

“If it weren’t for your previous statement I’d think you’re about to preach to me. I’ll make a small contribution to forestall that.”

“The quality of mercy is not strained, but it’s tightly sealed in the purse of the counting house.”

The beggar was obviously trying to increase the amount of the contribution. Jake gave him two dollars. Hungry was wearing a butt pack he had turned on his body so that it covered his lower abdomen and rested lightly on his lap. He unzipped one of the compartments and inserted the dollar bills.

“You spent some of your hard earned cash well today, full Jake.”

“You should put hungry philosopher on your sign.”

The panhandler smiled. “I eat therefore I am.”

“I pay therefore I am.”

“We all pay. One way or another we pay.”

Jake walked into the building and down the hall to the elevators. The conversation with Hungry was very much on his mind. We all pay, and the price we pay depends on what we are hungry for. He pushed the up button for the elevators. Although we frequently fret about our expenses, Jake did not think the cost of material things was much of a problem. At least the material things have price tags that tell us what we must pay up front. That was not true of our ambitions or other emotional things; they do not have price tags. Well, maybe they do. Maybe the price tags for our ambitions and other emotional things just have such small print that we find it too difficult to read them.

Jake stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the twenty-first floor. Karen squeezed through the doors as they were closing.

“Good morning, Jake.”

“Good morning, Karen.”

She was a very attractive young lady. He smiled at her, but her greeting was somewhat of an intrusion on his thoughts. He asked himself what he was hungry for. Wealth and recognition, he concluded. Money buys power and recognition brings prestige. Fame would be flattering, but the autograph hounds and such would be a pain in the ass. With power and prestige you can get everything else you want.

The doors opened at the twentieth floor, and Karen stepped out of the elevator. “Have a good day,” she said.

“You too.”

The twentieth floor contained the arbitrage department, which tried to predict which currencies would raise or fall in relation to the other currencies. The people in that department tried to hedge on the currencies or profit from their fluctuations. It was also the floor that housed the back office. The back office kept track of the transactions among other things, and the people there tried to keep the firm in compliance with all the regulations.

The twenty-first floor was where all the action took place. It was where the brokers were. Jake had obtained his broker’s license less than a year ago. He was still working under the guidance of a hot shot named Thadeus Galleon. Thad gave Jake some of his less wealthy clients so that Jake could gain the experience he needed to attract his own clientele. He also told Jake which securities to advise his clients to buy. Thad even sponsored Jake’s membership at the country club.

“I have the golf bunch; farm the tennis crowd,” he told Jake.

Hungry was not there the next day or the day after that. The man was a panhandler. Jake could not think of a single reason why he should care about a panhandler, but he did care. He wondered if someone had driven Hungry off or if he was sick or something. This concern, however, was minor. Jake was too busy to waste much time worrying about an interesting beggar. He was given a generous expense account to use wining and dining prospective clients. His life was sales. He lived to bring in wealthy clients with lots of money to invest, and he was experiencing some rather remarkable success in doing that. He had already added four wealthy clients who were good investors.

Thad was pleased. “Try to get them to put as much as possible into the Cleary fund,” he said. “It’s like a mutual fund. It does not allow the investor to choose what percentage to invest in stocks, bonds, and money markets. It makes those decisions for them. It tries to balance the risks against the potential rewards. It’s aggressive but safe.”

The atmosphere at the firm was almost giddy. This was a boom time, and everyone was raking in the cash. They compensated for the long hours by drinking and laughing a lot. Men and women also paired up to steal some precious time for sex. It was an exciting atmosphere for a young man, and Jake was having fun.

When Jake rounded the corner that morning he saw Hungry sitting just far enough away from the building to keep from being hassled. He still had the beautifully lettered sign and the two days of stubble.

“Hello, Hungry.”

“Good morning, full Jake.”

“Are you getting enough to eat?”

“I always need help, but I don’t think I’ve lost any weight. What about you? Are you getting enough of what you’re hungry for?”

“My cup runneth over and my larder increases daily.”

“Lucky you. How tight are your purse strings?”

“Not quite as tight as last time.” He gave Hungry three dollars.

“Thank you. Enjoy the good times, but be prepared for the bad times.”

“Oh, I think I can handle the downturns.”

“What about a precipitous drop?”

“Is that what happened to you? Did your business fail?”

“I was really raking it in, making as much money as fast as I could. I was also spending it as fast as I was making it. I was drinking too much, smoking pot, and snorting coke. I was not getting much sleep, and my behavior was becoming erratic. Then the bottom fell out our market. You could say I dropped out, but I was also given a strong push in that direction.”

“That won’t happen to me.”

“Don’t be too sure of that.”

Jake ended the conversation by walking away to the safety of the building. He was doing what he knew he should not do. He was becoming friendly with a beggar. A beggar’s job is to talk people out of their money. A beggar will expect more from you if he thinks you consider him a friend. And what was with the doom and gloom warning? Jake dismissed it. Unlike the beggar, he was not doing drugs. He realized that he was probably drinking too much, but that was the way the game was played. He got into the elevator car and rode it to the clean, exciting world of the twenty-first floor. No matter what happened there would always be some people who have lots of money. There would always be investors.

Over the next several months he kept his conversations with Hungry very short. Hungry picked up on the hint and kept the verbal exchanges light. Although he used his smile sparingly, some of Hungry’s statements were very amusing. He had plenty of time to watch people, and he was very observant.

Events at the firm were a mixed bag. Jake was hearing and seeing things that should have raised red flags. There was a lot of talk about the need to clear certain securities, and there was a lot of pressure on him to sell shares of those stocks to his clients. He was sure the firm made a market in those stocks and probably had too many shares in inventory. He told himself they were still good investments. At least there was nothing to indicate they were bad investments.

A few weeks later Karen took Jake aside to warn him. “Do you know the stocks Thad is making a market in?”

“He hasn’t told me what he is making a market in, but it’s not too hard to figure out.”

“Well, the shares we’re holding in inventory are beginning to reach a level that will draw the attention of the regulators.”

“That’s not good.”

“No it isn’t. Be careful Jake!”

Jake tried to put her warning out of his mind. There was nothing he could do about it, and he was sure Thad was smart enough to scale back on those stocks. Then he heard something he considered even more disturbing. He overheard a broker who handled corporation accounts and institutional accounts describe a particular deal as a real stinkeroo. “You’ll be proud of how much of that I’ve already sold short,” he said. “We’re going to make a bundle on it.”

Had it always been this way? Had Jake merely missed it, or had the attitude of the brokers actually changed? It seemed to him that the more money they made the more they wanted. They were now thinking of their clients as investors to be exploited rather than people who were depending on the best advice their brokers could offer. Jake was no angel. He was as guilty of being greedy as the next guy, but there was a line he did not want to cross. If you violate your fiduciary duties the consequences can be severe for you and your clients.

The next time Jake saw him, he gave Hungry five dollars.

“Are you trying to buy your way out of purgatory or are you just feeling particularly generous today?”

Jake was sure this was meant to be a joke, but it came too close to what he was actually feeling. “I don’t feel guilty about anything. I guess I’m just beginning to think of you as my lucky charm.”

“I hope you’re right because I think you’re going to need some luck.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about all those complex investments, such as derivatives, and who is in them. It seems to me there is a growing mountain of financial shit. The larger that mountain becomes the more unstable it becomes, and I’m really afraid there’ll be an avalanche.”

“So now you’re an expert on investments.”

“Just because I’m a bum doesn’t mean I’m uninformed. I probably have more time to read about it than you do.”

“And you’re scared?”

“When the bubble bursts it’s not going to be good for anyone, including me. People don’t give as much when they’re feeling strapped.”

“I suppose you’re right about that. I hope you’re wrong about the market.”

“So do I.”

Unfortunately Hungry was right about the bubble. In September the sub-prime loan market became a sinkhole that swallowed many financial institutions and was threatening the entire economy. By October the stock market went into something resembling a free fall. By November the firm where Jake worked was close to bankruptcy. This prompted an audit that revealed some serious irregularities. Investigators then moved in and they were going from office to office. Jake heard one of the regulators say something about the possible stock price manipulations. Jake instantly thought about the stocks Thad was making market in. “Galleon, my ass. The man’s a bloody pirate.” He had talked Jake into selling quite a few shares of those stocks, and Jake was worried about that. He left the firm that day with an empty grief case. Hungry was in his usual place.

“Bad day, full Jake?”

“The worst!”

“I’ve heard about what’s happening. What’s your personal liability?”

“Not too great I hope.”

“No offense, but I think you’re a pretty small fish. If they file a criminal case, I think they’ll drop charges against you for your testimony. If they file a civil suit, they’ll probably name you in order to make it easier to get your testimony.”

“Not a pretty picture.”

“No sir, but I don’t think the legal part will be that much of a problem. The financial cost of this debacle is another matter.”

“I have to find another job quickly because I don’t want to take up your profession.”

“It’s not so bad once you learn how to do it. I lived on the streets for a year until I kicked the drugs and the booze. Believe me the streets are a jungle with predators and some very mean drunks. Beginners think the more destitute they look the more sympathy they will receive, but they are wrong. People are repulsed by the filth and desperation. The trick is to look like you have recently fallen. That makes people think that all you need is a little help to get back on your feet.”

“I take it that you don’t live on the streets anymore.”

“I live in a run down apartment. It’s a single room with a bathroom, but I do have a stove and a small refrigerator. I even get laid occasionally.”

“Good for you.”

“Most men try to buy poor women with drugs or booze. I’ve discovered that it’s better to buy them food and make friends with them. It takes a lot longer to get laid doing that, but you attract better women. It’s worth it even when they don’t lay you. You can never have too many friends”

“Hungry, you’re a lecherous old rake, but I wish you luck.”

“Good luck to you, Jake.”

Jake was going to walk away, but he decided to satisfy his curiosity first. “What do you do for money when your not here?”

“I paint a few signs or decorate some windows when I can find someone who will hire me to do that, but most of my income comes from panhandling.”

“So panhandling is your primary occupation.”

“Yes sir.”

“With any luck I won’t have to use the tips you’ve just given me.”

“I sure hope not. The damn recession is going to increase my competition too much as it is.”

Jake laughed. He took a dollar out of his wallet and held the money out to Hungry. Hungry shook his head.

“You might need it. This conversation’s on me.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Jake was one of the lucky ones who lost his job. He had friends who helped him find a new one. It was in a different profession than stockbroker, and it not pay him nearly as much as he had been making. So much for power and prestige, but at least he was not destitute. One of the oddities in our laws is that the broker who was selling worthless stocks to corporations and institution would walk away unscathed. His clients were considered sophisticated investors and that relieved him of the fiduciary duty he would have owed to unsophisticated investors. Thad, on the other hand, was a smaller player, and he would pay the legal price for trying to manipulate the price of stocks. Both brokers deserved to be punished. The people they swindled would be lucky to get ten cents for every dollar they invested.

So what was Jake hungry for? He could not say at this point. He still wanted to be wealthy but not at the expense of his integrity. He still wanted people to consider him a success, but how do you define success? What had happened made him grateful for what little he had and for the good people he knew. Hungry was right about never having too many friends. Jake decided to call Karen and ask her if there was anything he could do to help her.

 First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms.com Aug. 11, 2010

Our Autopilot

Old cavalrymen often told the story of how horses in the corral would form up and go through the maneuvers indicated by the calls of a bugler who was practicing those calls.

“The horses must have been pretty smart to remember all those calls and how they were supposed to respond to them,” I said.

The person who was telling me this story smiled. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Doing all that unnecessary work doesn’t seem too smart to me.”

What we do frequently resembles what those horses were doing. We practice or perform tasks until our actions become automatic. In some ways this conditioning resembles an autopilot. It is what allows us to do more than one thing at the same time; it is what allows us to simultaneously walk, chew gum, and think about that project we are struggling to complete. Even in this example of combining simple things, however, there is a fourth factor that can be problematic. If you are concentrating too much on that project, you might forget why you are walking, which is to say that you might forget where you are going. This is particularly true if where you are going has nothing to do with the project you are thinking about.

One Saturday morning I got up at the same time I normally got up to go to work. My family was having a get together at my sister’s house. The first freeway I had to take was the same one I took to get to my place of employment. My mind was on something I had been writing the night before. I was half way to work before I realized that I had missed the transition to another freeway I had to take to get to my sister’s place.

Another time I found myself walking down a hallway of the firm I worked for. My mind was very much on a project I was trying to complete, and I forgot where I was going. I had to stop and think about it. On that occasion a full bladder reminded me that I had left my office to go to the men’s room. When I was leaving the men’s room a female attorney emerging from the lady’s room almost bumped into me. She was still reading a pleading she had taken into the rest room.

“Damn, you can’t go anywhere without working,” I said.

“True, too true.” She glanced down at her wristwatch. “I must have lost track of time. I can’t believe I was in there for over a half an hour.”

“You know what they say about the passage of time when you’re having fun” sprang to my mind but went unspoken. I was afraid she might not take kindly to the implications of that comment. It raises some questions about what she was doing in the restroom. In all likelihood she was just peeing. Peeing is something we frequently do. It does not require a lot of thought. Reading the pleading and forming a response to it, on the other hand, are tasks that require a conscious effort. It is easy for me to understand why she might have forgotten that she was sitting on the pot. It was because her attention was focused on what she was reading.

One hot, summer day I kicked off my shoes and let them fall beneath my desk. An hour later my phone rang. It was my secretary. She called to remind me of a meeting I was supposed to attend a few minutes later. Since I did not normally take my shoes off at work I forgot that I had done it. My response to the reminder was automatic. I grabbed a note pad and marched off to the conference room where the meeting being held. No one seemed to notice my lack of shoes until the meeting was over. As I stood up to leave the person sitting next to me asked where my shoes were, much to the amusement of the other attendees. Such lapses of memory usually inspire a bit of ribbing from my fellow workers. I was prepared to hear about this for quite some time. Fortunately, a female attorney did something even funnier a few weeks later. She had two pairs of shoes under her desk. When it was time for her to leave her office for a meeting she slipped on two shoes without looking. She arrived at the meeting wearing one red shoe and one black shoe. It was quite a fashion statement, even if it was inadvertent.

Most people would not consider the examples I have given as multi-tasking. They would say that remembering where you are going, where you are at, and that you have taken off your shoes does not require any thought, but they are wrong. Those mundane things we all take for granted still demand some of our attention. The autopilot simply relieves us of the burden of thinking about each motion that is necessary in order to walk or put on our shoes.

Attorneys work long hours. What they do also requires them to concentrate on every detail of the task at hand. They say that the less sleep you get the more automatic and mechanical your motions become and the more you have to concentrate on each individual task. That sounds like the excuse I have been looking for. I am going to take a nap now.

First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms.com on Aug 3, 2010

A Woman Scorned

Anne was twenty-five years old. She was a slim, shapely girl with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a pretty face. She sat in the glow of the overhead lights with her face too close to the monitor. She was straining to see the small fonts. Max walked into the room.

“Ah, slaving over a hot computer I see.”

She giggled. “We women are always slaving over a hot something.” She paused before adding “regardless of race.”

She got him, and she had cleverly used race rather than gender to do it.

“Oops! I guess that’s the problems with cliches. They’re mental shortcuts that roll off the tongue before we think about the connotations stemming from their origins.”

She laughed. “Now that we’ve stomped all over your joke, what can I do for you?”

“Do you want me to wait a few minutes for you to complete the entry you’re making?”

“That depends on what you want.”

Did he imagine it or did she flutter her eyes at him. He did not want to jump to any conclusions.

“I’m looking for the documents Ship produced in response to our first set of requests for documents in the Ship-Worthy case.”

“Give me just a moment,” she said.

She quickly finished making the entry she had been working on. She hunched over to put her face closer to the screen. She then brought up the database created for the Ship-Worthy case. She straightened up as she typed. She leaned forward again and squinted as she checked her query for errors before pressing the enter key. A list of the documents popped up on the screen. She leaned back in her chair and lightly messaged her forehead.

“I’m getting a head ache,” she said.

“The story of my life.”

She sighed. “Yeah, it’s tough. Women always have head aches and men are always deprived, poor things!”

She clicked on the print button and smiled to let him know her rejoinder did not mean she was offended by his humor. She was sending him mixed signals. He seemed to be engaged in a battle of wits and a flirtation. Was she saying maybe, but on her terms?

“Eye glasses designed for the distance and glare of the screen would probably prevent the head aches.”

“Gee, I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

Max laughed. “Benevolent self interest!”

“I guess you don’t believe in the old saw about men never making passes at girls who wear glasses.”

“No. The only drawback to computer glasses is that they might make you stand close to someone to see who is talking to you.”

“I could always take the glasses off to talk, unless you want me to stand close to you.”

“I sure wouldn’t object.”

She stood up and lightly bumped into him on her way to the printer. The expression on her face when she glanced over her shoulder at him told him the bump was not an accident. She picked up the print out and handed it to him.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He phone rang, and she answered it. He waved goodbye as walked out of the room.

It is amazing what a little banter or flirting can do. Max had seen Anne before. He knew she was the attractive lady who helped maintain the document repository, but that was all he thought about her. Now that he had interacted with her, he was really looking forward to seeing her again.

The next time he went to the repository Jim went with him. Max was disappointed to see that Anne was not at her desk. There was a photograph laying face up next to her keyboard. It was of her and two of her friends at the beach. Her friends were wearing bikinis. Anne was wearing the type of one-piece bathing suit competitive swimmers wear.

“Wow!” Max said.

“What?”

“Look at the photo.”

“I see what you mean. They’re hot! Is that Anne in the one-piece suit?”

“It sure is.”

“I wonder what she’s hiding.”

“As revealing as that suit is it can’t be much.”

“It’s probably a tattoo or a scar.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, that suit wouldn’t hide any figure flaws, but since her friends are wearing bikinis you know she’s hiding something.”

The conversation ended there because Anne entered the room. Max set the photo back on the desk.

“Hi, fellas. Were you looking at the picture?”

Max grinned. “It’s irresistible.”

“I’ll take that as a complement.”

“Please do.”

“A friend of mine sent it to me yesterday. It was taken last summer when I still had time for a social life.”

“I take it you’ve been putting in a lot of overtime.”

“They really need to hire one more person. What can I do for you?”

“We need the documents Casper produced in response to Worthy’s first set of requests for documents.”

Anne’s search turned up a large number of documents. Max and Jim spent four hours reviewing and marking the ones they wanted copied.

“It’s going to take us an hour to copy all of those,” Anne said. “I can take the copies to your office if you want.”

Max smiled. “Thank you. I would appreciate that.”

The repository was only a few miles from the law firm. Max and Jim picked up some burgers to take back to the firm with them. They ate them in the attorney’s lounge. They were leaving the lounge when Anne and a young man from the repository wheeled the boxes of documents in on hand dollies.

Jim approached Anne. “Let me take those,” he said.

He led the young man to a conference room while Max signed the form for receipt of the documents.

“It’s really kind of you to personally deliver these.”

“Think nothing of it. It gets me out of the office for a while.”

“I know what you mean. I look forward to going to the repository for the same reason. Knowing you’re there makes it even better.”

She smiled. “How do you feel about tattoos?”

So it was a tattoo her bathing suit had been hiding.

“I wouldn’t reject a woman just because she has one.”

Jim and the young man were now approaching and the flirtation was put on hold.

“It looks like it’s time to go,” she said.

“Pity.”

“Yes, but I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

“I’m counting on it.”

She laughed as she took the hand truck from Jim. Max watched her enter the elevator.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t ask her out.”

“I will just as soon as I can get a night off.”

Max worked late every night that week, and he could not find a plausible reason to go back to the repository. On Monday he was talking to his secretary when he felt someone behind him. He turned to see who it was.

“Anne! What are you doing here?”

“I delivered some documents to Jim.”

“Are you still putting in the long hours?”

“You have no idea. It’s been so long since I’ve had sex that I’m afraid I won’t remember how it’s done.”

“That makes two of us. Why don’t we discuss it over dinner tonight?”

“Let’s make it my place.”

Max asked his secretary for a piece of paper. She rolled her eyes as she handed the paper to Anne. Anne started writing her home address and directions to there from the firm.

“What time are you leaving here?” she asked.

“Five o’clock, no matter what happens.”

“I’ll be there.”

She handed Max the directions, kissed him on the cheek, and walked away. He turned to his secretary.

“Good secretaries tell not tales.”

“Good bosses don’t seduce women in front of their secretaries.”

“Well, she started it.”

“Too bad I can’t send you to your room without your supper.”

Max laughed.

He was walking up to Anne’s front door when she pulled into her driveway. She got out of her car and removed the containers of Chinese food she had bought on her way home.

“May I take those for you?”

She handed him the containers and opened the door.

“Follow me.”

She led him to her kitchen table. She did not have a dining room. He put the containers on the table as she set out two plates.

“Would you like some white wine to go with it?”

“That would be wonderful.”

He opened the containers of food while she poured the wine. She waited until they were both eating before she broached the subject.

“About the tattoo: It’s the name of the boy I was going with when I was a sophomore in college. He was a senior who swept me off my feet. He took me to Mexico for the spring break, and I was drunk on my ass when I got the tattoo. After we broke up, some friends of mine decided to cheer me up by getting me drunk again. That’s when I added a little something to the tattoo.”

“I guess it’s too painful and expensive to get them removed.”

“And it can leave a nasty scar.”

She excused herself when they finished eating. She appeared in the doorway of the kitchen a few minutes later. She was naked and absolutely gorgeous. Her stance and the look on her face indicated a reticence that contradicted the nudity.

“You’re going to see the tattoo eventually, so let’s get it out of the way now.”

She turned her back on him. “Ray” was tattooed on the small of her back. Beneath that was “is an” and beneath that was an arrow pointing down to her butt crack.

Max laughed. “I’m guessing it wasn’t an amicable separation.”

“I caught the son of a bitch cheating on me.”

“Ouch! And now you’re stuck with his name on your back. Well, no matter how drunk we might get, I promise I’ll talk you out of tattooing my name on your abdomen.”

The thought about what an arrow descending from her abdomen would point to made her laugh.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ve learned my lesson about drinking and tattoos.”

“That’s my girl!”

“Not yet. You’re going to have to take me now or lose me.”

She did not have to say it twice.

First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms.com on Jul. 27, 2010

Birds And Bees Aren’t People

All cities are small towns in the sense that your neighborhood, your school, and your church are your community regardless of how many neighborhoods, schools, and churches the city may contain. This is particularly true for a youngster who is still depending on his feet or a bicycle for transportation. If you live in a blue-collar neighborhood your neighbors will know you and your parents. People of that social-economic class are the ones who attend PTA meetings and participate in little league, the scouts, and other organizations set up for their children. Being known by your neighbors can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how much mischief you get into. Do not throw rocks unless you are doing it with a kid whose dad replaces windows for a living. Most of your neighbors are pretty practical about who they are going to blame. If they see you and him throwing rocks, they will want to blame him rather than you for the broken window.

Kenny was twelve. He was too young to be worldly, but he was too inquisitive to be as innocent as his youth would suggest. The city where he lived seemed large to him, but it was getting smaller all the time. This apparent shrinkage was merely his perception caused by a change of perspective. It was a comforting indication that the world becomes smaller and less mysterious as one grows up. He preferred to walk to school rather than riding his bicycle because walking gave him more time to interact with the other kids walking to school, particularly the girls. He was attracted to the girls even though they did not share many of his interests. He knew why this was so, but since he had not entered puberty the attraction had not translated into an urge at this point. This is not to say that he did not get erections. In fact they were becoming fairly frequent. It was really embarrassing when he had one and the teacher called on him to do a math problem or something else at the blackboard. His teacher ignored the protrusion, but the giggles from his classmates told him they noticed it. The erections were a mystery. He knew what they were for, but it is not like he was having sexy thoughts when he got them. So why did the damn thing act like it was trying to poke its head through his pants to see what was happening outside? He thought there should be a mental switch to raise it and lower it when appropriate. Apparently, it did not work that way.

The other facets of the male world were a lot less confusing. Males love sports. Whether you are watching or competing, you can usually share sports with your father and other males. Men spend a lot of time talking about sports. The barber shop is the best place to go if you want to know what else they talk about. Men will talk about almost anything at the barber shop. The two subjects the barber tries to discourage are religion and politics. People get too emotional about both. Kenny could understand why people get emotional about religion. You believe what you believe, and you do not want someone saying you are full of it when you cannot prove they are full of it. Why people get emotional about politics was not so clear. It seemed to him that there were two things you should ask about any political candidate: “Will he do what he says he will do? Should he do what he says he will do?” His father told him there was very little in human experience that was new. That is why we study history. Kenny thought you should be able to look back in history to see if and when a proposed action or something similar was tried and how it worked out. Perhaps people get upset about politics because some politicians mix religion with their politics. The other, and, Kenny thought, the more likely reason for people getting upset about politics is that politicians say such terrible things about each other. He wondered why people were so inclined to believe the bad things they hear about people they do not even know.

School was out for summer vacation. Kenny had just finished eating his breakfast. His mother was looking at him critically.

“You need a hair cut,” she said.

“But I’m meeting some of the guys to play baseball at the park.”

“Then you should get your hair cut now so you’ll be back in time to do that.”

She had a point. He still had several hours before the other kids would be at the park.

“Okay.”

His mother dug through her purse and sighed. She did not have the money for his hair cut. “Well, tell the barber your father will be in to get his hair cut this afternoon, and he’ll pay for both hair cuts then.”

Kenny got on his bicycle and rode to the barber shop. The place smelled like cigars and the powder the barbers used to dust their customers after cutting their hair. Normally, Kenny did not mind waiting at the barber shop until a barber was available to cut his hair. In fact, he liked it because there were magazines there that appealed to him. They were not girly magazines; they were sports magazines and adventure magazines. The adventure magazines contained some very interesting stories, and they were not magazines he could find elsewhere. There were two barbers at this shop, and only one of them had a customer in his chair. This meant that Kenny could get his hair cut and make it to the park in time to play ball. The available barber, Barry, agreed to cut Kenny’s hair. Barry did not seem to think that waiting for payment was a big deal. This might have been because his business had slowed down lately. Electric hair clippers were frequently advertised on television. They were supposed to be easy to use. You simply placed the attachments over the blades to cut your hair to the desired lengths. The pitchman assured his audience that they could get professional results in no time at all.

Kenny sat down in the barber chair.

“Who’s your favorite baseball player,” Barry asked as he started cutting.

“Mickey Mantle.”

“Isn’t he an Okie?”

“I don’t know, but he’s a great player.”

“He’s from Oklahoma, just like me.”

“Do you know him?”

“No, but I like him.”

An upset teenager now walked into the shop. It was easy to see why he was so upset. It looked as though someone had shaved off a large swath of his hair just above his forehead.

“My little brother removed the attachment from my clippers when I was answering the phone, and I did not notice it until it was too late.”

This made Kenny laugh. It also made Barry laugh. Kenny finally stopped laughing, and Barry started cutting his hair again. Then Kenny had a thought that was even funnier. The only thing the barber could do to correct the accident was to skin off all the teenager’s hair. The teenager would have been as well off if he had left the attachment off his clippers and finished the job himself. The fact that that did not occur to the teenager was understandable. Most people are going to panic when they see a large hole in their hair, and their instincts are going to tell them to have it fixed by someone who is more competent than they are. Kenny’s laughter was now making the other barber laugh, and production at the barber shop ground to a halt until everyone regained their composure. That was when another gentleman entered the shop.

“Hello, Barry.”

“Hi, Frank. Just back from Vegas?”

“Yeah, I had a great time.”

“How’s your wife?”

“Better than nothing. How’s yours?”

Even the distraught teenager laughed at the comment.

“That’s great line,” Barry said. “Did you hear it at one of the shows?”

“Yeah. This gal, Rusty Warren, is really funny. I even bought her record album. It’s called Knockers Up.”

Kenny quickly guessed that “knockers” was another name for boobies. He had not heard anyone call them knockers before, and he found it funny. He could picture women literally bumping into things with them.

The men at the barber shop did not discuss sex, but they sure joked about it. Most of the jokes were not explicit; instead they contained innuendos the men did not think the children would understand. Children, however, hear the more explicit sexual references on the playground and elsewhere. There are even references to sexual acts in the bible. It does not take long for kids to realize what adults are talking about. They might not understand it, but they certainly know about it.

Kenny was glad that his parents let him take the sex education class at school. The subject was confusing enough as it was. There were obviously some things the class did not cover. His teacher said people have sexual intercourse to have babies. Yet, the other comments and jokes Kenny had heard told him that adults do it because they enjoy it. The teacher also described sex as an act of deep love. Yet, the other comments and jokes Kenny had heard told him adults will have sex with people they hardly know. Was the teacher wrong or was he simply leaving out a lot of information? And why did Kenny get erections for no apparent reason? Was his penis simply exercising itself so it would be ready when called upon?

Kenny also wondered why some parents would not let their children take the sex education class. Like religion and politics, sex was a subject that upset people. It was not a subject you were supposed to talk about. But what if his teacher was right? Was sex evil even if it produced babies? Was it evil even if it was an expression of deep love? Kenny wanted to resolve those contradictions but that was not important at the moment. It was time to play baseball.

First published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms.com on Jul. 20, 2010