Excuse Me, That's My Seat

 I grew up eating at a round kitchen table.  Very egalitarian.  Except for our various heights and ability to be heard over the dinner din, we all started on an equal footing as far as meal time real estate goes.  I don't think my parents had any specific social engineering concept in mind when they bought the table.  It was just that a round table fit best in our small eat in kitchen.  My Dad always sat in the same seat as did all three kids.  My Mom's chair, of course, was the one nearest the stove.  A utilitarian decision born of ergonomic necessity.  I never once witnessed her sitting in her chair for more than three minutes at a time.  To this day, even at the age of  83, my mother flits around the Thanksgiving table like some servile hummingbird ready to fill your plate with more string bean casserole or grab a bit of over crisped turkey skin from your plate to see if it was seasoned correctly- Everyone else's needs always more urgent than her own desire to sit down and eat a proper meal herself.

King Arthur, on the other hand, did have social engineering  in mind when he gathered the knights at his round table.  The equalizing force of a round table was so powerful, in fact, that they named the entire enterprise after it; King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  That was perhaps the last time a round table was ever seen in a boardroom.  There has not been a chief executive since Arthur who did not want to sit at a position of prominence during power lunches.  The head of the table is psychologically powerful as well as geographically desirable .  So in spite of my parents best efforts at raising us in the most democratic fashion, where both kings and peasants alike have the same seat at the table, I grab the head chair whenever I can. Where do you think the term "chairman of the board" came from? 

Have you ever been one of the first to arrive at a restaurant where there is a table waiting for you and ten of your friends?  Do you grab the seat at the head of the table?  I do.  Or if it is a birthday celebration I make sure to sit as close to the honoree as possible.  Most people stand around waiting for someone else to make the first move.  I don't think anyone has ever won a game of musical chairs by being nice.
"You take this seat".
"Oh no, you take it.  I insist".    Puh-lease.  If something as simple as where I sit during dinner is going to give me automatic authority, I am not going to waste the opportunity.  I will take all the help I can get in the supremacy department.  Guys with my physical stature don't have a ton of natural charisma.  I figure you have to be at least 5' 11 ", be able to palm a basketball, and have a deep, calm, sonorous voice, not a whiny shrill Long Island accent to command any attention at a round table.

As a kid growing up I did not win too many contests in the macho feats category.  I am going to let you ladies in on a little secret.  Put eight boys together in a woodland setting and they are going to determine whose urine stream makes the biggest parabola (and you thought ninth grade geometry wasn't apropos to real world life)   Needless to say my arc, while elegant in it's design, did not go the distance.  So back at the dining hall you bet your ass I made sure I grabbed the best seat possible, next to the cool nineteen year old counselor, who we were all convinced, could drown a carpenter ant sixty inches distant.  

 

Even today I put a neurotic emphasis on seating arrangements at holiday dinners and family gatherings.  When the dinner is at my house I am the chairman of the (holiday) board.  One time, during an especially well attended Thanksgiving feast, my wife found it necessary to put an extra chair, next to mine, at the head of the table to accommodate one of my brothers-in-law.  If he is reading this I apologize for all the "accidental" elbows to the gut.  I actually did have plenty of room to use my knife and fork.  My seating arrangement hierarchy pathos extends to weddings and bar mitzvahs as well.  If I am the Uncle, do not sit me with the second cousins.  That insult is compounded even more by the fact that banquet tables are invariably round.  As if all the guests are on an equal footing with the bride.  Puh-lease.

I Doubt It, But I Certainly Hope So.

Why do we do things when we know it won't work out?  Hope, that is why.  As a healer of physical wounds (that is basically what dentists do), I stare down the gaping maw of doubt everyday.  And hope rarely rescues me.  As in "Doctor, do you think this will work?"
"I hope so"..... ( If I have to say that, I seriously doubt it will work).

That is why, though it sounds cynical, I always tell patients hope has nothing to do with it.  You can hope all day long that you don't need a root canal but for some reason prayer seems to periodically cure cancer but never a toothache.  There is a saying that most dentists have hammered into their brains early on in their careers: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result".  This lesson applies to many aspects of life but my point is you can hope all you want for a positive outcome but only action will make it so.

President Obama wrote a book called "The Audacity of Hope" which I have not read.  I imagine it is about the importance of hope during times of stress and adversity.  Maybe I should read it before I critique it but since I trend more toward the physical than the spiritual, never mind.  Mindful breathing seems more practical than hoping anyway. That is a physiological function directly connected to a psychological function (the brain needs oxygen).  So when I am done breathing mindfully I still have doubt but I don't care since my brain is high on oxygen.  Maybe Deepak Chopra should name his next book "The Audacity of Mindful Breathing".

I would read a book called "The Audacity of Doubt".  It actually takes more guts, in my opinion, to not act because of your doubts than to act because of your hopes.  Heroism is only bestowed upon those who act.  The saying "no guts, no glory" is proof of this.  It takes more internal valor, however, to know when not to act but you will never be lauded for your discretion.   But it is doubt, not hope, that will more consistently assure a positive result.  A healthy dose of doubt makes us think before we act.  If someone says to you "it will probably be okay", it most definitely will not be okay.  If more people had doubted the advice of their subprime mortgage lenders rather than hoping they could cover the monthly bill we wouldn't be staring China in the ass right now.

The Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Danger

I was watching a morning show this Sunday while exercising on my stationary bicycle.  There was a segment on a daredevil show in Omaha Nebraska.  They were interviewing the brave (foolhardy?) men who crash burning cars into other burning cars and engage in all sorts of pyrotechnic derring do.  I was watching it with a minor feeling of sanctimonious revulsion (you know, "I can't, but I want to, look away from these morons") when I remembered my Dad taking me to the crack up derbies at Freeport Raceway near my hometown in New York.  The bigger the crash, and the louder the explosions, the more we cheered.  If someone was taken away on a stretcher we would clap for his bravery and pray for a speedy recovery so he could come back next month and do it all over again.  Well, if unrelenting agitated nattering is a synonym for praying then perhaps our solicitations were indeed heard.

It was not the sudden nostalgia for my own youth that got me to write about my feelings toward the repugnant voyeurism of reveling in pageants of masochistic showmanship.  It was what the world's greatest stuntman, Spanky Spangler (a Green Beret and Vietnam vet), said to the crowd after his death defying stunt that got me to thinking and writing this blog.  He said, and this may not be an exact quote but the sentiment is accurate; "Being a daredevil is a sign of freedom.  We should remember how lucky we are to live in a country that has freedoms that allow us to do things like this".  Really?  That's what Thomas Jefferson was talking about when he said we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  The freedom to light yourself on fire and jump from a window five stories up and get paid to do it?  Well you know what?  That is exactly what he was talking about.  The right to be left alone and to live our lives as we choose so long as we don't prevent another citizen from living their life as they believe.  So now my question is how many of Spanky's fans  in the Nebraskan Heartland don't mind if two men get married?  Or if a woman chooses to have control over her own body just like Spanky?

God's Waiting Room

Getting old does not have to suck.  Just ask the residents at Broadmead Retirement Community in Hunt Valley, Maryland.  Having enough money to buy in and stay in won't, of course, make you automatically happy but it certainly will keep you unbothered.  And that is a state of well being I can see myself actually achieving.  Self actualization may never be in the cards for me so I can be content with living on the bottom floors of the pyramid.  And Broadmead does safety and social so good that one might actually have a shot at esteem and self actualization in the eventide of their existence.

I witnessed it for myself in the smiles and cheerful dispositions of even the most marginally ambulatory of the matures I encountered while visiting my in-laws.  The entire place could easily be mistaken for Stepford Connecticut 40 years later.  Even down to the front gate which, we were ominously warned, closes at 9:30 PM after which who knows what would have become of us.  Perhaps, like the unwitting wives of that fabled community, I would have been drugged and had a chip implanted in me.  Then programmed to blithely fabricate dentures there for the rest of my useful dental life.   Another obsequious robot programmed to meet the needs of this coterie of hyper content senior citizens.

The cast of characters I met in just one afternoon and evening was enough to fill me with such a sense of joyful anticipation that I can barely wait till I am 85 years old.  I am ready to retire there now. And if Medicare pays for my very own POV then I say who needs more than one pair of shoes?  It's just a 5 minute trip from your independent living apartment to the dining hall and if you forgot to plug in your POV then the courtesy golf cart is just one free phone call away.  And between the rocket scientists and brain surgeons who have retired here, fascinating dinner conversation will never be wanting.  Yesiree, if this is God's waiting room, then take my copay and pass me the "People" because I won't mind waiting.