The Story of Bill

Somehow, too many of these stories start when I was 18 years old and was almost completely stupid. Maybe that's the way it goes. At any rate, that's the way this one goes. 

When I dropped out of college and moved to The City, I had Bob Dylan aspirations. I had written maybe 6 or 8 songs, all filled with what I thought was appropriate anger and cynicism about racism and sexism and war. I could hammer out simple rhythm riffs with a flat pick and stay in key, and if I tried hard to do Dylan doing his best Woody, it was almost like singing but not really. In any case, I was either oblivious or shameless. I sang on street corners with my guitar case open-- hoping for some coins. I sang in the bathroom of the San Francisco Greyhound Bus station. Excellent acoustics there. I made about $2.25 and got propositioned by a sad gay man in his late 40s. The important part of this story is that I played in public for actual living persons. Never played for a large crowd.... parties with as many as 20 people, yes. Never actually got on a stage. When a friend and I got booked to open for Livingston Taylor at the SF Troubadour, he freaked and vanished. That was as close at it ever got. 

My other musical problem was more intricate and interesting. When I was 13, I heard Mississippi John Hurt play guitar. Pete Seeger had a show on public television; he had Mississippi John as a guest and asked him to play Spikedriver Blues. I was captured. I had never seen anything like it. With his thumb, he kept a syncopated bass/percussion line running as a constant heartbeat through the song. With his forefinger and middle, he played the tune-- and added a couple of little rhythm embellishments. So here was this one guy, playing the percussion, rhythm, and  melody--three guitars in one. At that time, I was only hammering on guitar strings with a pick, and I had learned a couple of folksy, picking patterns. Nothing close to what Mississippi John was doing. Keeping in mind that there were no VCRs or DVRs or any Rs at all in those days, I set about to figure out how to play it. I worked up a couple of attempts and pretend tunes, but something was wrong. It was too much like pattern picking. It was not even close to the independent thumb (for bass and percussion) and liberated fingers for melody that I wanted, but I kept hacking at it for the next 5 or 6 years.

Like many but not all other street musicians, I needed a real job to stay alive. I worked in the mail room of a government employees' insurance agency, and it was pretty much entertaining. Once every morning, I got to push a grocery cart around the building and deliver mail to the employees who wore suits and sat desks and did the real insurance business. I got to know a few people, and I developed some simple-minded, stereotypical expectations. 

Employees ate lunch in shifts. About a third of the company went to the lunch area at 11:30. At noon, the second third ate. At 12:30, I joined the last shift. There were tables, cheap coffee, soft drinks, hard-boiled eggs, and yogurt... not really much more. Most people brought their own lunches. A few of the suits went out for some lunch and liquor. I usually sat by myself at lunch and actually tried to write music-- music with an alternating bass line like Mississippi John played. Most of the lunch gang on my shift ate with a young woman who had seen "Hair" at least 15 times and who claimed to hang out with the folks from Jefferson Airplane. Everyone flocked around her and she entertained all of them with tales of what Grace said or what Marty did or how somebody in the audience at "Hair" got naked. There was always "Hair" when Jefferson Airplane stories were exhausted. The goddess approached me once and asked what my sign was. When I told her "Aardus the Aardvark," my fate was sealed. We would never talk again or become friends. 

One of the usual crowd broke away one day and came over to say hello. She asked if I was writing music, given that I was actually trying to write music, and I confirmed. When she learned that I was trying to write for guitar, she said "You have to meet Bill." And then she explained that he was a claims adjustor who worked for the company and that he played. Why not meet him? 

A claims adjustor! I had learned a little about the company as I wheeled around my cart full of mail. The claims adjustor territory was deadly. Short hair cuts, suits, grim number crunching. I never saw a smile in the adjustor wing. Nobody there welcomed me to the company. I sure as hell did not want to meet Bill-- much less play guitar with a suit and tie guy. My new acquaintance told me she would bring Bill to meet me soon. I just nodded and thanked her. Maybe it wouldn't happen. 

Bill and I met a few days later, and all sorts of dissonance was firing off in my head. Short hair, black suit with black tie.... polished shoes... the whole picture was "Insurance Adjustor." Yet, when he talked, I realized that he was delightfully crazy and that he was just hiding in this insurance adjustor costume. We chatted about guitar music a little, and agreed to meet at his house that Saturday to play some music together. Sounded great-- as long as I could forget about the suit and polished shoes.

When I got to his house, there was a large moving van parked in front of the place. His door was open, but he didn't seem to be there. I knocked and hollered and looked around. I even considered getting back in my car and fleeing the scene. Bill appeared a few minutes later and was glad that I came-- glad that I brought my guitar. I didn't even ask about the moving van, but the news was to come. He suggested that, after we moved some of the stuff out of his house and into the van, we could take a break and play music. I was genuinely pissed, but his mood, his nature, his Billness,  kind of soothed me. I had been conned into helping a guy move... a guy that I had just met. What the hell?

An hour later, we had most of his stuff jammed into the van, and it was time for a guitar break. When I opened my guitar case, Bill asked if he could examine my guitar. This was my second guitar. The first was smashed by TWA on a flight out of Albuquerque. With the pieces of that guitar and $200, I bought the second. It was a Kalamazoo-built Epiphone, not great but decent. I thought it was pretty sharp, and Bill approved. When he dug out his guitar, I felt a flash of phony superiority. His guitar was a beat up, small-bodied, nylon-string guitar. He showed me where Judy had kicked a hole in it. I hadn't met Judy, but now was keenly interested. Forty-five years later, I've talked with Judy maybe three times on the phone. Never actually met her, although Bill insists that I did. And so we tuned up and I stalled.... What would we play together? Bill asked me to play my favorite piece. I used my best "almost" Mississippi John style and sang some awful song about hypocrisy. He nodded when I was done, and said that it would have been better if I had been born 10 years earlier. Too late now. Bill suggested that we play together, starting with a really simple, slow progression in D, and we could explore a bit after we got comfortable. OK, says I, and please show me the progression. 

I wish I could have seen my own face when he began to play. I'm sure my jaw hit the floor. Simple, slow progression in D, indeed. With his thumb, he kept an alternating, syncopated bass line. With his forefinger and middle, he played melody with embellishments. Four partial chords in the progression. And I had no idea in the world where all that music was coming from. Certainly it couldn't be coming from that shitty little classical guitar played by one person. My first instinct was to take my own guitar from its case, smash it into small pieces, and burn them. For sure I would throw away all that nonsensical "music" I had been writing at lunch--and I did. I had no right to even look at a guitar, much less make noise with one. He encouraged me to join in, but I was lost, lost, lost. At some point, when he stopped, I asked if he would teach me-- really teach me. He said sure, but we had to move the rest of the stuff into the truck and drive out to the avenues to unload it. If I would help, I had a teacher. So, of course we moved furniture. During the unpacking process, I came across a large, clear plastic bag full of what looked like hair. I asked Bill what it was, and of course it was his hair- a former 2--3 feet of it. He had to cut it but saved it when he was invited to go on a Federal vacation a few years earlier. No more problems with suits, ties, or short-haired claims adjustors for me.

Over the next months, I spent as much time as I could listening to him play and getting instruction. I spent hours practicing simple little licks and trying to free my thumb so that it could independently conduct rhythm and syncopation business. It took a year until it started to happen--only started. And then I went back to college in Davis.  So ended the three and four sessions each week. I drove from school down to The City almost every weekend. I'd arrive at Bill's apartment out in the avenues by Friday's sundown, and we'd play most of the night. I'd crash on his couch, and as soon as Saturday began to happen, we'd get back to playing. By noon on Sunday, I'd be in my car heading back to college--hoping to get some sleep in my classes. On a few occasions, Bill came up from The City and we'd play the 2 day marathon at my place. Didn't do it often because folks tended to get annoyed.

 What I took from Bill were 3 or 4 tunes, and he approved of my ability with all of them before I left. I also took a lick... actually a couple of licks that maybe made up a phrase. I worked on the tunes endlessly, jamming here and there to expand them. And I worked on the lick-phrase and gradually built a song around it.  When I went away to grad school at Michigan, I would play to him over the telephone. He would listen, give me a couple of critique suggestions, and encourage me to keep playing. And I did. I knew that I was getting just a tiny bit better. I saw improvement here and there in my technique, although my musicianship was and is surely amateurish. On occasions, when I played to him over the phone, he would holler and stop me and ask what I was playing. When I told him that it was this or that song he taught me back in The City, he would claim that he never heard it before. Sometimes he asked me to play it again. I guess that meant I had stopped stealing from him and was taking my own path. Maybe. 

We continued our phone concerts for a few years, and then of course we sort of lost touch. I next saw Bill almost 20 years later. An old friend, a wonderful old friend from my childhood, was in late stage AIDs. He and I agreed that I should fly out to see him before he died. It was January 1992. We had a happy but sad reunion, shared a few stories, and filled each other in on everything that had happened since we last saw each other in high school. My dear old friend was indeed ill, and he was participating in three separate and independent experimental drug programs for people suffering AIDs. The cocktail of medications, probably in combination with AIDs-related dementia, resulted in some delusional kinds of thinking on his part. By the middle of my second day visiting, he was convinced that I had left my wife and daughter to come and be his lover until he died. When I reminded him that I was just there for a visit and would be returning to my family and home and job, he refused to understand. My solution to this anxiety provoking situation was this: I'll call someone I still know in The City, and we'll all get together. The social company would be good for my dear old friend and maybe make a crack in this hard delusion. The problem in my solution, and every solution has at least one, was that I didn't know who I still knew in The City. First name that came to mind was Bill.

I called his number (the white-pages/land-line system in those days), and got an answering machine. After the "beep," I started talking... "I don't know if you still remember me, but it's..." And he picked up... "My Brother!" 

It took him about 30 minutes to drive over and find parking. Of course he brought that same old beat-up guitar-- and a bottle of wine or something. Bill and my childhood friend got along nicely. We toasted his life and wished him ease and peace in his death. And then we played. I think that my dear friend enjoyed most of it.  Bill was clearly still Bill. Genuinely nuts and wonderful. 

One late guitar evening many years earlier, Bill promised that I would play better than he by the time we were done. But he was always messing with my head anyway. When we swapped guitar pieces in 1992 -- had to swap because we only had his guitar there-- he was still masterful and the master. I didn't feel like I had let him down, but there was no way in hell that I was better. My dear old friend didn't quite understand the dance, and he was a little annoyed until he got used to it. Bill would be improvising, chatting, and otherwise tearing it up when I would hear a lick that I didn't know. I'd say "Stop! Do it again."  And Bill would stop and do it again so that I could see the fingers and hear the notes and maybe even do it myself once or twice to lock it down. This doesn't make for a pleasant concert experience for someone who is really ill and fighting for it. The second time I interrupted Bill, my old friend complained about how rude it was and wasn't Bill angry? We both looked at him like he was babbling in an unknown language. Bill said "No, this how we do it. It's what we do." 

And it was. Had been from the beginning. We played late into the next morning, and I tried to soak in as much as possible. I left for the airport that afternoon. My old friend was upset and perhaps mad at me for leaving. We never spoke again. He hung on until March. When he died, his parents had to bury him in a secret place in the high, Arizona desert. The Mormons forbade them from burying him in a Mormon cemetery. Wonderfully tolerant people to this day.

Bill and I talked a few times after that, but the calls were just catch-ups and didn't happen all that often. About five years later, two of my students were heading for the Bay Area... one for grad school at Berkeley and the other to study acupuncture in The City. Neither knew a soul there, so I called Bill to see if he knew of any apartments that might be cheap but decent. When he answered the phone he was shouting. I wasn't quite sure what was going on. The conversation was pleasant enough and we were both glad to talk, but the shouting continued.  I asked him if he knew he was yelling. He stopped and was quiet for a minute. He told me that he had suffered a stroke and that, as a result,  sometimes he talked too loud. In some hopeful attempt to think about the positives, I said something like "At least you can still play music."  But no, he couldn't. He couldn't hit the right strings, and he had stopped playing altogether because it was so frustrating. I reminded him that he once told me "It all starts with one string...one note. If that's all you can do, play that note until it is perfect."  He thanked me for reminding him, but he wasn't hopeful that he would ever play again. 

In one of the last adventures of Wild Bill, he went to hear David Bromberg play some small venue. He edged his way closer and closer to the stage until he was right up front, and it didn't take Bromberg long to recognize an old, old, friend. He stopped playing mid-song, walked to the front of the small stage, and asked "What?"  Bill said to him "You still can't play for shit," to which Bromberg retorted "And you are still short." Neither disagreed.

Although she still will not let me talk to him, Judy showed Bill this story. He approves. I'm good.

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

The prompts for my rambling nonsense come from my daughter, Mira, and in this case from the best son-in-law that one could imagine, Eduardo Rubiano. Perhaps because he has heard me mumble this phrase on numerous occasions, or maybe because he has found himself in his own predicaments, this is the prompt: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

The problem is that there are so many possibilities, so many close calls, so many near disasters. Somehow, the ones that rush to mind first involve hitchhikers. So why not?

In 1970, I was young and single and completely full of shit. So even if my wife reads this, it happened before we met and I can't be held guilty in a here-and-now sense of things. I was driving from San Francisco on 101 up through Marin County, and there she was: a blonde, barefooted, curvaceous hitchhiker. Didn't seem to be packing weapons--just jeans and a t-shirt, and she was out in the open so I didn't suspect a boyfriend hiding in the bushes who would jump in the car along with her. Imagine the possibilities that I was imagining the possibilities of imagining.  

I pulled over, opened the passenger door, and asked if she needed a ride, which is really a good question to ask someone who is standing at the roadside, thumb up. She said yes, held the door open,  and then turned and yelled "King!" A big-as-hell white dog... German Shepard and some other mixed stuff ...who had been laying flat in a shallow ditch just behind her-- bolted into the car and grinned at me. She ordered him into the back seat and slid in.

As King continued to grin at me, she explained that she always brought him along when she had to hitchhike, and, making sure not to make any sudden moves, I told her that this was a good idea. My imaginings were draining away fast. She wanted a ride to a bicycle shop in Novato, and could I take her there, and then drop her off at her place? Drop her off. Well yes I could, I reassured King. 

The bike shop was only five miles up the road, and by the time we got there, King was done menacing me, although I did not chuckle him under the chin and tell him what a good baby he was. She got out-- without King-- ran into the shop and was back only minutes later. Time to take her back home... very near the spot where I picked her up. I drove her back and she directed me to a little motel where she said she was staying for the time. And would I like to come in and smoke a joint? I reckoned that , yes, I would. And those old imaginings, tempered a little by King of course, started to raise their ugly heads.  

I actually thought things were going to go well, if you know what I mean, until we walked into her motel room. There, to my great joy, were two guys. One was a Skinny White Dude with a partially grown mustache and black, oily hair.  The other was an African American Gentleman, big and about 6'4'' with very little hair at all. The special part was that they were wearing their "colors."  "Colors," for anyone who cares, usually consist of a jean-jacket, with sleeves torn off, and an array of patches on the back. The patches identify the motorcycle club that has accepted the wearer as a member, after god-knows-what acts the member has satisfactorily accomplished. These particular patches announced that the club was "Gypsy Jokers," who were known to not get along well with Hells Angels or many other people, for that matter. I thought about who might miss me. Who would be saddened when the papers reported my mangled body discovered in a shitty little roadside motel? I wondered if this was how they fed King.

She (The Girl), and for the life of me I cannot remember her name, introduced me to the guys, explaining that I had helped her out. This seemed to lessen the tension in the room ever so slightly. Further, she explained that she offered smoke and that I was "cool." One more notch down on the tension. As with The Girl, I do not remember the the Skinny White Dude's name. Doesn't matter. The African American Gentleman was introduced as "Black Jim." I said "Cool, nice ta meetcha,"  but I did not go so far as to say "Nice ta meetcha, Black Jim," nor did I conjour up some hip handshake.  Didn't want to press my luck. The Girl happily explained "Black Jim beat a Hell's Angel to death with a tire iron."  I nodded. Some months earlier, I had learned that it is best for a Citizen (me) to say as little as possible and most certainly to ask no questions of Members (them).

"What do you ride Motherfucker?" Ah, conversation. 

"Can't afford a bike. Got a shitty little car." Say as little as possible.  

"I don't know what I'd do if I didn't ride." 

Another nod from the Citizen.

The Girl happily chimed in "Let's Smoke!"  and yet another notch of tension slipped away, and IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME. 

"You got a joint?"  And lo, it so happened that I did. I produced two from my shirt pocket, and this seemed to gain approval. Ahhhh peer pressure.

Black Jim produced two more, and Skinny came up with another. Black Jim took my joints without actually asking, and I didn't complain. And he soon had all 5 in his possession.  The Girl produced an additional joint and a roll of masking tape. I wondered about the tape. Remembering the citizen rule, I did not ask but I was soon to learn.

Skinny Guy herded us into the motel room closet, which contained nothing. I wondered how long, actually, The Girl was staying there. He took the tape from her, and sealed us in. Taped around all the edges of the door. I was actually a little relieved that he didn' t tape me up for sacrifice to King. Black Jim lit the joints--all of them-- and started passing them around. No time whatsoever to make a stupid hippie comment on the flavor, the quality, the source of the weed. "Smoke and pass, Motherfucker." And so with the little closet sealed, we smoked and smoked until all joints had passed and died, and the sealed closet was full of smoke.

When we tumbled out of the closet, way too long later, I was a mess. I did not confess this to the assembled. The Girl reminded them "He's got a car. Let's go get hamburgers." I was hoping that Black Jim and Skinny would be too cool for munchies or, even better, for my little car. But no. Burgers it was.   

They directed me to a Jack-in-the-Box. If you have never been to a Jack-in-the-Box, don't worry about it. By now, McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's have probably driven them out of the market. They served nondescript burgers and fries. Nothing special. Back in the late 80s they were hot in the news for a few weeks because they poisoned hundreds of people by serving burger that was contaminated with fecal matter. One of my colleagues suggested that they could get back in the business by advertising "We cook the shit out of our burgers." I guess they never picked up on the idea.

At any rate, we were off to the Jack. Their unique sell in those days was the drive through. You pulled your car up to this huge head--ostensibly a Jack-in-the-Box head on a spring. Then, once you finished reading the menu and decided on your Jack Cheese Burger or Double-Jack or Jack Fries, you shouted your order into the mouth of the Jack head. Skinny and Black Jim and The Girl were babbling their orders to me and I, being in the mess, was suddenly struck with the absurdity of shouting these orders for a Jack Shake and a Jack Fish and all this shit into the mouth of a huge Jack head. The disembodied voice in the head asked "May I take your Jack order?" and I began laughing. "Excuse me?' and my laughter turned into helpless cackling. Skinny and Black Jim and The Girl were now losing their buzz and getting agitated. They were leaning over me, yelling their orders in the general direction of the Jack head's mouth, and I was laughing so hard that I was retarded.

We somehow pulled forward to the window, mainly because Black Jim was yelling at me, and the attendant handed over some bags. Black Jim threw a handful of dollar bills toward the window and told me "Go Motherfucker!"  I wiped tears from my face and drove. Back at the motel, they took their bags, got out of my little car, and went into the room. It was clear that my role in this party was done. No sweet good-byes. No "thanks for driving." Nothing. I suddenly realized my good fortune. The door to the room was closed, and they were, no doubt, deep into their Jack food. They did not know my name. They did not know where I lived. Nothing. I got the hell out of there.  

I never saw Skinny or Black Jim again. Several months later, outside of Sausalito, I saw a familiar blonde, barefooted, curvaceous Girl hitching North on 101. There was a big white dog lying flat behind her. I hunched down behind the steering wheel and accelerated South into the fog and safety of The City.  

The Bad Gene Hypothesis

My daughter is fond of saying "We came this close," and then she holds up her thumb and forefinger about one-half inch apart, "to being White Trash." And she is absolutely right.  

The funny part is that the bad gene is on the unexpected side of the family. My late father was a self-confessed asshole. He liked conflict-- he sought it out. At age 70, he picked a fight with some guy in the grocery store parking lot because the guy left his dog in the car with windows rolled up. As he aged and his driving became more random, he cut-off someone in traffic who then gave him the obligatory finger. My father chased him down, forced him off the road, and demanded that he get out of his car and fight. The other driver, realizing that he was dealing with a crazy person, gunned his car out of the ditch and fled. The stories could go on and on, but not here.

My mother, on the other hand, was the model peacemaker. Everybody loved her. They brought her pies and quilts and she made them casseroles and little painted trolls. It seemed like everyone in their little town knew her, and whenever she went out, there were happy greetings and hugs all round.  

Here's the punchline: As far as I know, nobody in my father's family has ever been in jail.  On the other gene, one of my mother's brothers was locked up so many times that we lost count. I remember my mom and dad driving from Gallup to Albuquerque to bail him out on at least three occasions. I was seven years old at the time. My mother's only sister was the town pump in high school and did a little night in  jail for doing horrible things to her first -- maybe second-- husband. One of her brothers was a Catholic priest for 20 or so years. While in his Compton, California parish, the Bishop told him to buy a vehicle so that he could get around and visit parishioners. He tapped into the Well that is The Church and bought a Harley. It was an ElectraGlide if I remember correctly. When the Bishop found out, he suggested that a motorcycle was inappropriate and that he should get a small car instead. How does a Porsche 914 sound?  The eldest son of the aforementioned pump had the potential to express the bad gene, but he narrowly avoided it. He was jailed a couple of times in high school, but he was so damn tough that the cops didn't want to deal with him. Remember, this was the 1940s in a small town in central Minnesota. There were no stun-guns or tasers, and it would just be bad form to shoot a white guy for sport. Their solution, as soon as he graduated high school, was to hire him on Friday and Saturday nights to help break up bar fights. He was good at it. This tale of the bad gene could continue into the 21st century, but let's focus.

May he rest in peace, but my cousin Mikey was put on earth to raise hell. This is, perhaps, because he was the youngest son of my aunt, or maybe it is because he never had a father who stayed around for long (given the torture), so he never gained that "moral compass" they all talk about among those who talk about it. My first memory of him has to do with the Candy Cigarettes. Back in the 1950s, a favorite treat for little kids was Candy Cigarettes. Why not?  They were made out of some kind of white, mint-flavored hard candy. Of course they were shaped just like cigarettes, thus the name. And one tip was dipped in some kind of red dye-- to look "lit," you see. You could get them in plain or filtered. Nice. 

We (my mother and I) visited my aunt and Mikey--- and I have no idea what city we were in--maybe Salt Lake, maybe Los Angeles. I brought the Candy Cigarettes. Somehow at age 3 or 4, I had already acquired a fear of The Mikey, and I knew I had to bring some kind of peacemaking offering. Candy Cigarettes only made sense. His mom would consume at least one pack of real cigarettes (Tareytons with the recessed filter, "I'd rather fight than switch.") during our half-day visit, so it was right that we smoke too. After all the preliminaries, Mikey and I were off to "play," and I offered the Candy Cigarettes as an ice-breaker. Rather than taking one and pantomiming smoking, savoring, and pretending to blow smoke rings, the little bastard began crunching and gobbling them by twos and threes. Everyone knows that there are only twenty in a pack. What the hell! I grabbed the little pack out of his hands. Big Mistake.  

To this day, if you look at my aging face, it is clear that the tip of my nose takes a sharp hook to my right (to your left if you are following along). Thank god he hit me with the back side of the rake rather than with the teeth. I don't know for sure, but I think I know what happened to the last of the Candy Cigarettes. The rest of the morning was a little hectic for me.

My next Mikey moment came when I was about 10 or 11. By that time, Mikey and his mother were back in Brainerd, Minnesota, Gateway to Lake Country. I was living in Holbrook, Arizona, and this was an exotic trip for me. It snowed in Holbrook, but it did not stay on the ground for more than a day or two. In Holbrook, there were no frozen lakes where people drove to their ice-shantys. There were no public ice-skating rinks, nor was there hockey.  My parents insisted that we had visited Brainerd when I was 2 or 3, but I apparently forgot. After visiting with my grandparents and my civilized cousins, it was time for a Mikey visit. My parents assured me that Mikey was a changed civilian. He went to Catholic School now, and he was a "good boy." No need to bring Candy Cigarettes or any other peace offering. 

After the usual familial BS, Mikey and I were, once again, off to play. This time, however, the cover story was that we were going to a little neighborhood store to get cokes or hot chocolate or some damn thing.  The reality was that we were going out to stalk a little neighborhood girl named Jackie, whose parents owned the little neighborhood store, and who always stopped there on her way home-- to be sure that Mikey was not following her. We hid behind some parked cars, all a big adventure for me, and waited. Sure enough, Jackie made her way to the store, hung safely for 10 or 15 minutes, and then, cautiously, looked out to be sure he wasn't around. When she broke for her house, only a block away, Mikey came out of hiding. He was fast but she had a head start. She made it to her door just as he grabbed a baseball-sized chunk of snow-encrusted ice from the gutter. She grappled with the door and got it open and got inside. And then she made the mistake of turning to sneer at him. The snow-ice missile was already on its way before she even turned, and if nothing else, Mikey had a great arm. Hit her squarely in the face. She shrieked, fell back, and scrambled to close the door completely. 

Rather than showing any sign of remorse because he had just shattered this girl's nose, or, even better, turning to run, Mikey doubled over in laughter. His laugh was a harsh, raucous laugh. Think of Robert DeNiro in Goodfellas. Then think of that laugh coming out of a 10 or 11 year old kid. There were neighbors who had witnessed this assault, and a couple of them came outside and yelled some incomprehensible threats. Mikey grabbed another chunk of ice, hurled it at one of them, and then took off. It seemed in my best interest to follow, but lord he could run fast. At least the witnesses could corroborate my claim that I was just there. Watching. I wasn't one of the usual neighborhood kids. We would leave in only a few days. Perhaps I would never be identified. 

Several years later, Mikey et al., moved to Phoenix. Oh good. Now he was only a four-hour drive away. And we had to go to Phoenix often, because Holbrook didn't have much in the way of stores. The Phoenix incidents swim together in a mural of strange and awful behavior. On one occasion, one parent or other thought it was a good idea to let us roam freely at the Mall (Christown, for you Phoenix fans of the early 1960s) while the grownups shopped in peace. And so we roamed, and so Mikey spotted a very pretty girl who was basically innocent and minding her own damn business. I remember clearly when he approached her, reached out gently, ran his hand down her straightened blonde pseudo-surfer hair, and said something apparently sweet. The temporarily charmed look on her face changed dramatically when he reached around and grabbed her ass and hung on for several seconds as she bucked and lurched away. Ah that DeNiro laugh again. Amazing how it echoed in the Mall.

On yet another occasion,  a parent-- and I think it was my mother-- was conned into taking us to a James Bond movie at a drive-in theater. This particular drive-in theater actually had an area of out-door seating, presumably for young teens who did not want to sit in cars with their mothers. At least that's who populated the seating. Not an adult in sight, and why should there be? Nobody could actually hear the movie in teen seating; nobody was even paying attention.  We left the car and headed for the teen zone, where Mikey produced a cigarette and lit up. I had not yet acquired the practice, but I admired his style. Again a pretty girl. She was seated, kind of sideways to us, and it was apparent that she was progressing nicely through puberty. Mikey said something to her. I couldn't quite make it out, but she clearly did.  I didn't hear her retort either, but he clearly did, and it was obviously not an acceptance of his offer. His response was to drop his cigarette down the back of her blouse and smash it there with the palm of his hand. Imagine her delight and surprise!! And there was DeNiro again.The amazing part was that Robert DeNiro wouldn't break big in movies until 10 years later. Yet, we all recognized and cringed at the DeNiro laugh. 

In the weeks and months that followed, the Mikey reports piled up. There were fights at at school and other assorted stuff including an occasion when he threw so much dirt and debris into some poor man's pool that the filter mechanism failed and required expensive replacement. There was the school bus incident when he stole a sanitary napkin from a girl who sat down beside him. No Big Deal, you say?  She was wearing it at the time. The solution, recommended by the school counselor and a county social worker, was psychotherapy. And so he started going to therapy. Whoever the therapist was, he was a fool. Mikey's problem, according to the Shrink, was that Mikey needed to care about something and be responsible for it. Mikey needed a pet!

The proclamation of Pet-for-Mikey therapy came at a perfect time, if you like perfect catastrophes. Mikey's mother was a "professional" waitress. This career must have come about after she was done with her high school escapades and was cleared to handle food. Nonetheless, she worked at high-end restaurants serving food and adult beverages, and in those days this was enough to pay a mortgage and the other costs of middle class living. Think of how much we have progressed! What it really meant was that she wore a professional waitress uniform and high heels. Year after year and night after night in the high heels had ruined her feet, and some well-intentioned physician decided that the solution was to surgically remove all of her toenails. The toenail surgery coincided with the declaration of Pet-Therapy week. Perfect.

Anyone who knew better would suggest that Mikey acquire a fish or a gerbil--something that required little maintenance and that was painlessly expendable. This entire enterprise was doomed from the start, but there was no way that a fish or gerbil or bird would enter the picture. Maybe a python, but no small animal. When the day finally came, Mikey picked...ready for it? ... a 3 year old German Shepard named Princetor. I'm sure that, in his violent fantasies, he and Princetor would clear the sidewalks as the big Shepard menaced the common folk; and in a pinch, Princetor would pin some offender against the wall with teeth barred and all hackles up. Sadly, it was not to be. The beauty part was that Princetor was a sissy coward. He spent most of his time cowering and quivering under a table and didn't react well when his protective environment was challenged or changed. It took no time at all for Mikey to develop a deep hatred for the traitorous dog.  

We visited soon after Pet Therapy began. One of us rang the doorbell, and we heard a phenomenal commotion erupt inside the house. This was not the commotion of a big dog hurling itself at the door and gnashing its teeth to defend its kennel and  dismember some intruder. This was the commotion of my aunt screeching and cursing well beyond her normal screeching and cursing. Turns out that when the doorbell rang, Princetor would try to crawl into her lap, whether she was sitting or standing. She would fend him off with one hand while protecting her chronic companion cigarette with the other, but she could only half-fend with one hand. The outcome was that 70 or more pounds of Princetor would wind up dancing on her feet--the same feet that had only recently been liberated from their toenails and that were painful enough as is. Her shins were clawed and scratched. Her feet were hideously swollen, both from the surgery and from the repeated assaults by Princetor. Mikey was locked away in his bedroom seething with contempt for the dog. It wasn't only the doorbell that set this pas-de-deux in motion. If Mikey yelled from the other room, if the volume on the television changed when a commercial interrupted her stories, if a car backfired, there was Princetor seeking the maternal protection that never came. My aunt's screams and curses only fed the cycle with more fuel. It was clear, at least to me, that Princetor's days were counting down.

Someone, probably with good intention but maybe not, suggested that, because Pet Therapy wasn't going so well, Mikey should take up a musical instrument. Of course, the only instrument that would work with so much rage and aggression was drums. And so Mikey's mom bought him a drum set... Bass, High-Hat, Snare, and Tom. He set up in his bedroom, and he actually developed quickly into a first class noisemaker. He could play the drum part from "Wipe Out" and a couple of other pieces from Sandy Nelson's "Teen Beat." ( Go ahead and Google it.) Of course, in those small tract houses that exploded in John F. Long's West Phoenix in the 60s, there was no real insulation, no distant bedroom to convert to a music room, no basement. When he played drums, the house was filled with drums, and even the TV was drowned out. Imagine the effect on Princetor.

One day, while Mikey was away, Princetor lifted his leg and  pissed on the bass drum. Lots. When he got home and discovered the crime, Mikey took Princetor to the front door holding him firmly by the collar. He doused his back with lighter fluid, struck a match, and let him go. So ends Pet Therapy. 

Mikey dropped out of high school soon after but long before it  became a 60s fashion. First he moved back to Minnesota to work with his older half brother, the one who cleared out bars on Fridays and Saturdays, but who had, in the interim,  launched a  successful construction company. Mikey couldn't deal with the structure, with the schedule, with the actual work on a day-to-day basis. So, in late 1965 or early 1966, he disappeared into the bowels of San Francisco and the last of the true hippie days. When he re-emerged four years later, he was bruised and beaten but not defeated. Somehow, despite all the skepticism, Peace and Love had defeated Rage and Violence.  He had a wife with a baby on the way. He worked a straight job every day, commuting from Pasadena to downtown LA, 30 minutes each way in LA traffic. He was proud that he had never done heroin as the Haight-Ashbury fantasy crumbled. He inspired me in that sense. Me too, Mikey! 

I saw him only once after he started his straight life. We had a really nice weekend together. I got to meet his wife and got to babysit so that they could have a night out. 

Mikey died a few years ago. Stomach Cancer. Rather than take the 18 month sentence of horrific chemotherapy, he went surfing with his two sons and managed to live for 9. I kept his last voice mail on my machine for two years.

Maybe the bad gene isn't absolute. Maybe it only rises to express itself when we're young and generally stupid. Maybe it speaks loudly to some of us, but to me it only whispers "Go ahead, Do it."

Anger Management

I think it is a general rule that fathers are suckers for their daughters, willing to do almost anything to make her happy. This assumes that the daughter doesn't come home at age 13 with multiple piercings and a butt tattoo, but maybe that's just me talking. No doubt there is a father out there whose daughter has a butt tattoo with angels and flotsam that says "Like What You See?" and the dad is just proud, proud, proud.

When my daughter was 13 and about to begin 8th grade, she was a mess. Her mood was a roller coaster, and almost every day I would ask my clinical colleague (who was not only a clinical psychologist but also a woman) if this was normal. The good professor assured me that she would not get married on this carnival ride. And I trusted her. Thank goodness she turned out to be right. 

My daughter's selection of friends at that time included one of the lost boys who handed out his Ritalin at school so that the other kids could enjoy a little buzz and like him a little better too.  Also included were two relatively harmless guys who were chronically stuck in the characters of Beavis and Butthead. They had most of the cartoon dialogues memorized, and they wandered about muttering that nonsense relentlessly. It was pretty much impossible to talk to them about anything at all. And then there was Jewel. Parents should know that if you give your daughter a stripper name, she is going to turn out badly. Her parents could have gone with Cinnamon or Champaign or some other exotic dancer speciality, but this one was Jewel. henever she was over for the classic sleepover, I would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and hear a murmuring from another room. I would slowly and carefully pick up the telephone in our bedroom-- just to be sneaky-- and, sure as hell, Jewel would be on the line. Sometimes it was a local call. Often it was not. Great kid. For those of you who are young, long distance calls used to cost extra, lots extra. 

And so, as 8th grade was beginning, my daughter asked if she could have a "Welcome Back to School" party. What the hell? What could go wrong? I told her that it would be great to invite 20 or so kids over to the house. I would cook Santa Fe food for them. We would buy a couple of cases of soft drinks... Wonderful idea.

I remember clearly how she burst into tears. "Twenty doesn't even include all of my best friends!" and she sobbed. Kids have an interesting definition of "best," so I asked her to make up a list so that we could plan. How bad could it get?

A couple of days later, on a Thursday evening, the vice principal from her middle school called. I hoped it might just be a social call. His son and our daughter went to pre-school together when they were a harmless 3 and 4 years old. Just a coincidence that he landed the job out in our neighborhood. Maybe it was just another report that her pal had given her a tab of Ritalin. But no. He advised us that Jewel had made up 10 or more posters advertising the "Welcome Back to School " party. They were all over the junior high, and future stripper Jewel had even posted them at the nearby high school. he party was advertised for Saturday. 

My first idea was just to shut it down. If I had been sane and less of a father/sucker, I would have. Of course it would have broken her heart, and I feared that she already hated us enough. I didn't want to drive the wedge deeper and wind up with a kid who disliked her parents as much as I disliked mine. So, Party On!  

First order of business was the Rent All store. I picked up some extra little tables and a VolleyBall net, along with a volleyball just to complete the theme. Next morning, I talked with a friend who was a Minneapolis cop. He suggested that I just inform the police in our little suburb that this beast had been born and ask that they drop in once an hour--- just to be a presence and keep things settled. Better than hiring a rent-a-cop, and, in his view of things, cops in our little town don't have anything to do anyway. Next was to ask parents of the friends we knew if they would like to come over and share the duty. Not one of those bastards even blinked. Let that be a lesson. If you are the parent of an early teen-ager, the people who you think might be your friends are not. Get rid of them as soon as you can. They will only break your heart and then blame you later. They are the trash in you life that you need to throw out.

Seven o'clock rolled around on that special Saturday night, and the usual crowd of friends rolled in with it. Beavis and Butthead were there, along with Jewel and perhaps ten other kids. I was harboring a delusion that this would be the show. Seven-thirty and the first cop rolled up. He introduced himself as "Bobby." He looked to be about 16 years old with a fresh cut Crew haircut. I'm only 5' 8'' --tops-- and this guy was smaller than me. At least he had a gun.  I offered him coffee and a bowl of chile-con-carne and he declined. He strolled to the back of the house, where the kids were, and made his presence known. They found him amusing but tolerable. Time progressed.

Seven forty-five. We were now up to, perhaps, 40 or 50 kids. Some of the moms and dads would linger in the driveway as they dropped their spawn off. I would extend the offer, over and over--- Please stay and help out. Free Chile-con-carne. I could almost hear them laughing as they drove away. I hope their daughters come home with butt tattoos, especially one moron who was always decked out in a black leather motorcycle jacket and called himself "Snakes." He even encouraged other people to call him "Snakes." Born to be an asshole and he was already successfully on his way. 

The next round of cop rolled in. She was very nice, and did not ask me if I had lost my mind. No coffee, no chile.

It was now past nine. No cop. The crowd in the backyard and basement had bloomed into more than 300 hormone-addled, shitty kids. I wandered into the basement to find it littered with popcorn and other debris. Most of the hard party animals were outside where they could smoke and consume substances without detection, but there were a dozen or so in the basement. I loudly asked what the hell was going on. Why were they making such a mess of my home? One of the little fuckers threw a handful of popcorn at me. Without a thought at all, I opened the sliding glass door beside him, grabbed him by his neck and, with the other hand, got a good grab on the back of his baggy pants, and threw him headfirst out onto the patio. Got a good three or four feet of distance toss, despite my short stature. The other kids instantly got quiet.

"Do I come to your house and fuck it up? Do I come and make a mess all over your place?" One kid in the mix, apparently someone who these urchins respected, said "I see where you are comin' from. We'll help clean up." I wheeled out a vacuum cleaner, and thanked him as he got to work. The little, momentary, oasis of sanity in the basement was not contagious, however, and the chaos outside was intensifying. There were fights breaking out. There were girls crying because someone called them fat. There were more kids there than I have ever seen. Jewel was not on the house phone, so I called the cops and asked where my routine patrol was. They apologized and said that they forgot. 

When Bobby pulled up in front, I told him that he needed some help...that there were too many kids out back. He puffed up his little chest, and told me "Settle Down. I'll take it from here!" A minute later he was back at my front door. He was hyperventilating and all the color was drained from his little face. "Do you know how many kids are back there?"  Yup. "Can I use your phone?  I've locked myself out of my car."  Good control, Bobby.

Three or four patrol cars arrived, and they began to clear the place out. "Did you know that Richard Smith was here? How could you invite Richard Smith?" I explained that I did not know most of the kids that were there, and that I most certainly did not invite their friend Richard. This did not calm them down. The clearing process took the better part of an hour. "Snakes,"  who I had earlier asked to stay and help yelled at me because his daughter told him there was alcohol at the party. Before all of the cops assembled,  I reminded him that I asked him to stay and help and offered to kick his candy ass, and he huffed away. The rest was a mess. And here comes the prelude to the Anger Management story: Beavis stayed to help. There was debris all over the backyard and well into other neighbors' yards. We and he gathered it all up and bagged it. We and he got all the paper plates and other food stuff together and disposed of it. We searched for the volleyball and found it on a neighbor's deck. Beavis actually helped do dishes. I was stunned. I thanked him profusely, and although he kept drifting into the Beavis character off and on, he managed to come out to acknowledge my thanks. I told him that he was always welcomed to ask me for a ride or to visit. The night ended on that good note.

Shift forward two weeks. Another party for 8th graders off in another neighborhood. Could she go? Why not? It was not my party. In addition, she was now a legend. No need for her to do anything at all teen-deranged. She had thrown the party to end all parties. Police had to come and break it up. Cops in our little town would talk about it for the next three or four years. They would wave at me and laugh whenever they spotted me out walking the dog. Why not go to someone else's party? I reminded her that I would buzz her pager (yes, this was before kids had cell phones) at 10:30 or 11... just to let her know that I was on my way to pick her up. When I buzzed, I got a recorded message. It was Beavis, talking about drinking urine and other assorted nasty. How could my new trusted little ally get into her recorded message and leave this disgusting mess? I was in the car instantly and on my way.

After banging on the door of party-central for a minute or two, an actual parent appeared, and I asked--politely, mind you-- for my daughter. She came to the door, deeply humiliated that I was there and asked why I didn't page her. I asked her to go back inside and call her own pager. When she re-appeared, she was almost in tears. She said only "Beavis"--actual name withheld to avoid a lawsuit. I asked her to go inside and retrieve him, and of course she hesitated. I promised that I only wanted to talk with him and that I wouldn't do anything. I lied. 

Beavis came out, and I asked how he could do such a thing. He refused to look at me and muttered-- in his real voice rather than the cartoon one-- that he didn't know what I was talking about. And here it comes: I reached out and slapped him. Not a bitch slap, not a dope slap, not a slap that would actually cause anyone pain. It was a little tap with open hand to make him raise his head and look me in the eye. I told him that I heard the message, that I knew it was him. And he nodded. I asked how he could do such a thing after helping out at our party disaster, after I had opened our home to him. He just said "I didn't mean to." Then came my moment in the sun. I told him that if he ever did anything like that again, I would come to his house, set his dog on fire, and beat the hell out of his grandmother. I forget where I got that line... Maybe Zap Comix, maybe National Lampoon, maybe Hunter Thompson. For a professional academic, my reading is deep. I had always wanted the occasion to use that line. And now I was complete. 

My daughter got into the car seething in shame and anger, and I drove us home. We did not talk, and all the way home only one thought kept rolling through my mind: I had put my hands on a kid who was not my own. Granted, I didn't really smack him or kick him in the knee, but I had touched another person's child. I felt horrible by the time we got home, and the first thing I did was call the Beavis family. His father answered, and before I could get my apology out, he informed me that he already knew the terrible thing I had done, and, even better, he had called the police. I asked if he knew what his kid had done, and he told me "Kids make mistakes. We don't hit them and threaten to burn down their grandmother.  We forgive them...." and his little monologue went on a bit. I begged to interrupt. "Your son didn't make a 'mistake.' What he did took planning. He somehow managed to break into my daughter's pager service, delete her message, and replace it with his obscenity. It had to take a half hour or more. That was not a 'mistake.' It was a plan."

He asked me if I was drunk. I told him that, of course, I was not. When my daughter was growing up, we had no alcohol in our home, nor did we drink out side the home. He slammed the phone down, and it was time to wait for the cops.

Twenty minutes or so later, the knock came to the door. I would like to say that the "doorbell rang," but my wife and I are, well, asocial. Our doorbell hasn't worked in over 20 years, and we like it that way. Nonetheless, the cop knocked, my wife went to the door, and I grabbed my toothbrush and put it in my shirt pocket. I met the officer at the door, and told him that I was ready to go. He asked that I calm down and asked further if he could come in so that we could review the incident. First question: "Are you drunk?" Same answer as to Beavis's dad. He looked me over and seemed satisfied. He asked me to explain what had happened, and I did. Beavis, in all his brilliance, hadn't yet erased his message on the pager, so the cop got to listen to it. When I told him about setting fire to the dog and beating up the grandma, he stifled a laugh. And then he asked if I actually hit the kid...even asked me to hit him the same way. He assured me it was OK. When I showed him what I did, he actually said "It is a good thing it wasn't me. I would have smashed his head." I could see that I might not be spending the night in jail..

Then he said "What you did... the part about threatening to set fire to the dog and beat up the grandmother is 'terroristic threat.'  It could be construed as a misdemeanor or a fifth degree felony, depending. We have to offer something to Beavis's dad."  We.

And here it is: "What if I offer to go to Anger Management?" He jumped all over it. Yes! That was perfect. I, of course, would have to complete a course and produce the certificate, but that would do it. He was confident. And he was off to take the offer to the Beavis family. He assured me that this was the ideal solution--he would be sure of it, and we exchanged the appropriate information so that he could keep track of me.

I made all the arrangements through my HMO, and on the first night of class I arrived early. Didn't have to, but I was unfamiliar with the location and didn't want to wind up driving around looking for parking and all that. Imagine my delight when I arrived! One of our former students, a guy named Tom, was there. My first thought was that I would be in Anger Management class with a former student, but that wasn't it at all. Tom was the instructor. He asked what I was doing there, and I told him to look at his roster. His mouth dropped open for a moment, he blushed, and said "Oh." Here we go. 

The other members of the six-week class started to arrive. It was a class just for men, apparently. None of them looked particularly psychotic or dangerous, so it felt OK-- not great mind you, but OK. Once assembled, Tom explained that we were all here because we needed to get better control of our anger. He explained that anger was not bad, but that it could turn bad unless we knew how to deal with it in better ways. He gave some examples from his own life, his own dealings with his partner--who turned out to be his wife-- even though though he called her his partner. And then came our turn. We were asked to introduce ourselves and tell the group why we had been sent to the class. Fun? You bet!

The first guy, Mr. Volunteer, explained that he worked for the power monopoly that has its death grip on the Twin Cities (those weren't exactly the words he used--again-- lawsuit). He recounted how, on three different occasions, he reacted badly when a supervisor told him to do a particular job. His response to being ordered by a supervisor was to beat hell out of the guy. In the most recent incident, the supervisor was hospitalized. Free, court-ordered ticket to Anger Management! Next two guys were spouse abusers. Not the kind where you might call your wife "dumpy." They were the really bad kind where you burn her or beat her. Great guys. The next guy, Mr. Scary, igured that he didn't really want to share right now. Tom seemed to understand.

Next guy was another wife beater. The next guy, Mr. Snake, explained that his son made him insanely mad and made him abuse. The son, you see, pretended to be deaf after contracting Scarlet Fever; but he was only pretending to  be deaf so as to embarrass Mr. Snake. He knew that the kid wasn't really deaf. He was determined to prove it-- and to prove that the doctors and his wife were wrong. Here was a prince of a man.

Next guy to speak was me. I told my story about Beavis. When I finished, the room erupted. Mr. Volunteer said "I would have killed the little fucker!" Mr. Scary looked up from what he was doing. Mr. Snake asked "Why are you really here? What's going on?" I didn't want that level of rational discourse from the Snake, but I welcomed it at the moment.

Once the confession cycle was concluded, sans Mr. Scary, we did our first exercise, and I began to wonder how the hell Tom earned a diploma in our psychology major. He passed out paper and sent a box of crayons around the room. "Take a piece of paper and one crayon--just one-- and draw your anger." Great instruction. We all seemed to get the plan. I took my piece of paper and picked a red crayon. Everyone, including Mr. Scary got to work. I drew a human head, as best as my pathetic drawing skills would allow, with smoke coming out of the ears. Seemed like a reasonable thing to draw. The other guys were deeply involved--even Mr. Scary, although he was very protective of his crayon creation, covering his work one arm and keeping his back turned to the rest of us.

After 15 minutes or so, Tom announced that drawing time was done and that it was time for us to show and tell. Please put our crayons back in the box as it passed around and get ready to show and explain our drawings to the group. Everyone except Mr. Scary complied. He announced that he was almost done but not ready. Tom seemed to understand, once again, and said that the rest of us would start and let Scary jump in when ready.

Mr. Volunteer eagerly volunteered to go first. See? He held up his drawing and explained "This is a saw, because I like to work in my shop. And this is my dog, because  I take him hunting and he likes to ride in the car. These are my shoes. They are new Nike's and I want to break them in. This is..."  And then Tom interrupted. "How are these related to your anger?" Mr. Volunteer looked puzzled. "What?"  Tom explained that the drawings were supposed to depict our anger. Mr. Volunteer said "Oh, I guess I misunderstood the assignment." This was a theme that would repeat over and over during the weeks to come. 

In their turns, the guys showed their drawings, most of them depicting the victims of their anger-- usually not in flattering ways. I showed and explained my smoking head. And finally, Mr. Scary seemed satisfied and ready to join the fun. When he showed his drawing, it was a black circle-- a completely filled-in black circle. There was at least an eighth-inch thick, black crayon circle on the page. He had used almost one complete crayon to draw the damn thing. Just a big, thick,  black spot about 4 inches across.  Tom asked how this related to his Scary anger, and he said "This is what I saw-- just complete darkness-- before I had to kill them." Tom announced that it was time for a little break. 

During our break, I managed to find a soft-drink machine and bought a can of Coke. The Snake managed to find me and struck up a conversation about what a cheating bitch his wife was and how she was manipulating their son so that he would play deaf. He had a plan to fix the bitch.  For reasons that I'll never understand, the Snake always followed me on the breaks. Seemed to think I was his pal. I wanted to take up smoking again so that I could go outside and lock myself in my car.

When break was done, Tom explained our assignment for next time. It was "journaling." We were to keep track of our anger episodes during the next week. Try to figure out what triggered them. Try to remember how we reacted and what we did. And week one of Anger Management was done. As I drove home, I kept replaying Mr Snake's voice in my head. Not the evil parts about his hatred for his wife and kid. Certainly not the nightmare trip through the crayon drawing of his anger. The part I heard, over and over, was "Why are you really here?"  Only one week of "therapy, " and I was feeling better. I was not those guys.

Our session for week two began much like week one. I arrived early. My wife points out that I do this all the time. My explanation is that I just don't want to miss anything. At least I don't have to touch the doorknob three times, turn the lights on and off twice, and clean the chair that I sit in. So there I was, early. Tom and I had a chat about his graduate school training after he left us with his Bachelor's degree. I didn't probe deeply. The other guys began to arrive, and Tom appropriately assumed his professional distance. Once assembled, we were off and running. First task was to share our journal entries if we had some.

Mr. Volunteer began, of course. During his week he had gone down to the power-company offices to talk with the Human Resource people about his situation. Something that one of the suits said pissed him off and he responded by threatening an ass kicking. He had to be removed from the office and escorted out of the building. One of the wife-beaters had kicked--yes kicked-- his wife out of their house, but he was pretty pleased that he didn't follow her out and beat on her a little more where the neighbors could see. Now there's improvement. Nobody else had much to say. My slate was genuinely clean for the week. Mr. Scary, apparently, was already cured. He didn't show up for Week Two, nor for the rest of the class. Somehow, it seemed OK, and I suspect that all of us felt a little better now that he was already cured and gone.

Next exercise was watching a bit of video from a film called The Great Santini, starring Robert Duvall and Michael OKeefe. The scene we saw depicted Duvall tormenting and abusing his son, Okeefe. In one scene, Duvall bounced a basketball off of Okeefe's face and urged him to cry.  Duvall can really play an asshole role. When the scene ended, Tom asked us to tell us how we felt during that scene and to relate it, if we could, to our experience of anger. Mr. Volunteer wanted to be first. And he was. He recounted, in high detail, the scene we had just viewed. He described the setting and the positions of the characters. He re-enacted the encounters between Duvall and OKeefe including the exact dialogue. Have you ever heard a little kid tell you about a movie? There you go!

Six or more minutes into his story, Tom interrupted. "You really have an excellent memory for the details, but how does it relate to your anger?" Mr. Volunteer just looked blank. "I guess I misunderstood the assignment." I wondered, silently, why it was that he was beating up his supervisors rather than the other way around.

We rolled around the table, each of us in turn delivering our reactions to Duvall's abuse of his kid. Mr. Snake remarked that he wished he could lay basketball like that with his son, but the little bastard was still pretending to be deaf. One of the other abusers suggested that Okeefe should be glad to have a dad like that and just "toughen up." Absolutely outstanding! 

Our assignment for the next week was to, again, document our incidents of anger and rage and, if we could, to think of strategies for diffusing them. If we got angry, we were to figure out ways to be angry but not act out. And away we went.

The weeks rolled on and sort of blur together. We learned better ways to talk about anger when we got some. We learned that walking away was OK. We learned breathing exercises to calm down. We, at least I, learned lots of stuff. Mr. Scary never came to class again. Mr. Volunteer persistently wanted to be the first to participate in everything and, just as persistently, always seemed to misunderstand what was being asked. Mr. Snake learned nothing at all. At least that's what I think.

I think I grew a bit. I was a fairly violent kid. Although I tried to shed that skin when I embraced the Peace and Love, I guess some of it stuck with me. After the class I was better. I turned in my certificate to the cop who was waiting for it, and never actually saw Beavis or his idiot father again. More than 15 years later, I got to try out some of my Anger Management skills. Two friends and I were moving some furniture into a Senior Living apartment that I had secured for my parents. As we were unloading, a really agitated man pulled up behind us. "Hey you shit-for-brains! Get that fucking truck out of here!" I told him we'd be out of his way in a few minutes. We weren't actually blocking his path. He just wanted to be where we were. As we off-loaded the last piece, he got out of his car and approached me. Of course, he didn't approach the actual owner of the truck, who is a long, lean 6 feet and five inches tall. Nor did he approach my other friend who is a clearly strong big guy. He got in my face and grabbed my shirt with both hands. "Move that fucking truck!"  I just smiled and said "Not my truck. And by the way, you are not a very nice person."