Some write brilliant novels, all the while worshiped in life and then death, their remains a whisper in the minds of their friends, family, fans and followers, a David Foster Wallace signature tattooed onto the heart. Wild bunches of marauders in faraway places run for their lives with their borgnine-faced buds, facing death at every turn of the horse.
I've had moments of joy, rather than expressions of major achievement, and I don't know how much of that joy manifested into other's hearts. Usually in going through life you want to achieve something great, or bring joy to others, if not both, receiving your own joy as byproduct.
Below are a few moments that brought me joy, among many that I will recount later if I am not too bogged down by laziness (ah, perhaps that explains the achievement thing).
Charlene lived on the 6th floor or so of our twenty story building, one of four buildings that surrounded the playground, red rink, and "country club" in the rapidly changing Lefrak City. She was also in one of my classes. We boys went through a S.W.AT. phase, recreating the police show by making our own little training obstacle run as we scrambled to be first and thus chief badass. (We didn't use words like "badass" back then, despite already having learned a shady little rhyme that involved the name of Batman as chorus and the body progressing from "taking to the movies" to various sexual activities and eventual pregnancy).
On another floor the girlfriend of my best friend's older brother would blast the theme song and off we went, running up a short wall topped by a fence, dashing through a parking lot and around, returning to the fence and leaping down, then through the playground (up the monkey bars), and then down and across to another short fence where we bent over and grabbed the other side, lifting our legs into the air to fly over; the weaker ones among us climbed over traditional style, losing much time.
I was never last, and occasionally near first. Charlene stood on her balcony with little boxes of cereal, flinging them down. It didn't fully occur to us that her dad probably thought better than to allow his very young white daughter to hang downstairs with a largely black and largely male group of kids. We were in the same class, likely second grade because we moved right after that year. Looking back, and looking at kids today, it's hard to fathom half the stuff we were allowed to do, and half the stuff we did.
Eventually my father joined in the Jewish flight, we left Egypt and moved further east to Fresh Meadows, the mere name of which signified upwards and onwards. But seeing my favorite Charlene toss down boxes of my favorite cereals made S.W.A.T. worth it. I be remiss if I neglected to mention the bologna and American cheese sandwiches my mother made for lunch each day. Some simple things are quite memorable. These will be warm memories on a future deathbed.
From the time I first realized super heroes were real (yea they are!), Batman was my ideal. He was a real man, without ridiculous powers, able to be defeated if not careful. He was mere man with money and training, so quite replicable by us all, versus someone like Aquaman where moving to the sea and learning to communicate with moron animals seemed more implausible than attaining money, training and awesome crime fighting technology.
Back then I watched Adam West and Burt Ward in the comic Batman television show every day after school, same time and channel, perking in excitement when I realized that it was the day for the second half of the cliffhanger. Better yet was when Batman arrived at my house in doll form, and not even for a birthday or Christmas!!!! (Exclamation points provided by 6 year old me).
The euphoria was almost impossible to contain and the son of my mother's best friend got a Robin doll, though it was hard to make him do my bidding, Kevin being spoiled and a bit too competitive to play the proper subordinate role.
At that time I had two sidekicks myself; there was Jason, a timid (meaning more respectful of all our parents) Korean kid and Robert, christened "Robert the Snobbert" by his own older brother due to his constantly running nose, the contents of which often decorated the sleeves of his shirts and jackets in gauzy wet/dry fashion. They followed instructions and I sometimes led them from the shadows into evil (teasing others, stealing, kid mayhem), never getting caught myself. This would be President Obama's "lead from behind," accept for nefarious purposes. Sidekicks are awesome, as are superheroes. They are glorified good friends, and I remember warmly all those who were loyal till life forced us in different directions.
Much later I worked at a Christian family summer camp, after staying as a guest for several summers with my mom and sister. On occasion my dad would come, but generally he considered most of their weekly visiting ministers mere babes in the Christian woods and not worthy of him taking off from his financial firm employment.
The reason I took the job at all was that my best friend at the time worked/hung out there each summer, but also, I wanted to reconnect with a tall attractive wide faced girl named Debbie. We spent the year before the work year writing innocent letters back and forth, though she was not particularly focused on me in any romantic sense. When I met her I was eighteen, too shy to have meaningfully extended conversations with her or any female, yet well aware I was not her type beyond being an okay, respectful kind of guy that enough people seemed to know and like.
The beginning of our work year began with delight at the sight of her and the beginning of some timid, casual conversations. I tried to bump into her during every free moment and my heart would shake the cage with both hands at the sight of her approach. Of course that lasted about a week into the summer schedule.
I found out that she was in fact really interested, like really, really, interested, in my roommate Brett. He was from Ohio, a great athlete, rosy cheeked and tall. He had a swagger, as did his father, both sharing commanding mustaches, blond and black respectively. It occurred to me that I would never sway her heart away from his Rhett Butler Brett head. That was the sensible pessimistic half of my brain. The optimistic half that woke up each morning believing I could have any woman on earth told me she was still winnable.
A couple of weeks of living with Brett made me realize that he was not so bright, and further, that he was in a tight relationship--parent approved and waiting for engagement--with a girl back home. Me and my buddy stepped in to remind him of Christian principles like duty, honor, loyalty and the always handy what will your parents and coreligionists think. The task was to make him conflicted over any type of summer indulgences with my Debbie. We knew his mind was not capable of handling too much disapproval from his folks and that his emotional facilities lacked the mechanics for creative and morally nuanced thinking regarding summer fun.
Despite these efforts, he and Debbie seemed to be hitting it off, sending my emotions downhill. What was worse, it was not just Brett. Down near the waterhole a hippie type older guy with a ridiculously melodious guitar style managed to lure single, wide eyed women to his tent. Debbie was one of them.
She and a friend asked a couple of us staff guys if we wanted to go down to the river to hear this man. I declined, then showed up briefly, mentally spewed at the sight of everyone fawning over his fingerstylings, and promptly left after a due effort of five minutes or so. They begged me to stay, but I determined it was a pity or sympathy beg, or, a "we better cover our butts by having male staff here" beg. The senior staff would not have been thrilled at a couple of its female youngsters down by the lake on their own with a grown male guest. Frankly I suspected he was a bucket of seething inappropriate lust, penis larger than his Christianity and smoother than his guitar playing. I was not in entirely rational mode, given the many other families camping out nearby, but it was night, and night makes anything possible (ask Batman).
Somewhere near that time I ended up in my duplex (before they moved all us guys in together), lights out, crying and talking to God, begging him to make Debbie "into me". I really laid out a framework, with a bit of pleading, and a bit of promising. That very night my buddy came around and mentioned that he thought Debbie was looking for me. Later she appeared and we chatted. She gave me a note of vague affection and smiled shyly. Then off she went to the female dorms and I tucked into the bed, tears again rolling down my face and thanking God for having my back. It was a pure moment of heaven, if not really an actual romantic achievement.
As these things turn out, just as she seemed to warm to me a little, and as Brett was cooling to her with each call from his faraway girlfriend (and the arrival of his parents), it occurred to me that Brett and Debbie were exactly matched in mental telepathy. And by that I don't mean the Star Trek style of silently communicating, but rather, their intellects and simplistic views of things seemed to work in trivial lockstep. Me and Debbie had nothing to talk about once we started actually trying to talk. I was soon giving her Brett advice, alternating between sabotage, good advice, and encouragement depending on my daily heart flickerings. For while I realized she was not interesting, she was still sweet, and I often debated whether sending her into Brett's romantic mustache was really doing her any good, or if urging her away was doing her some evil.
Eventually too, someone else started attracting my attention, and a couple of other females started stalking me. The manager's underage daughter started appearing everywhere I happened to be, and asking me questions about why I thought Debbie, or this new girl were so special. She eventually stole some jewelry from me, which her mother found when the wash was done. "You were probably looking for this," she said with a smile in front of most of the staff that was hanging out in front of the ice cream shop.
"How did she get that?" I asked incredulously and her mother said, "Oh don't worry, she has her ways and we had a little chat with her." My other stalker was a guest and between working, playing sports, avoiding the stalkers and chatting up the new girl, my interest in Debbie's romantic outcomes wavered to disinterest. Brett eventually abandoned ship as well when his own parents called in his girlfriend to the scene.
But that night when Debbie suddenly appeared out of the blue, seemingly affirmed and transported there by God himself, that was golden despite my eventual lack of enthusiasm. Sometimes God seems to give you what you think you want, so you can enlighten yourself to the reality of the opposite.
When all four of us guys moved into the same suite we made an awesome time of it. The television in the room my buddy and I shared even had cable remaining from the previous staff occupant. That was eventually and mysteriously turned off. I devoted my third week's paycheck (somewhere around $65) to visiting the local rural supermarket and buying steaks, spaghetti, cake supplies, and homemade tomato sauce ingredients so that we could have an all guy staff feast... no females allowed.
We allowed Joe from the permanent staff to take a plate to his wife, but mainly because he was such a cool guy and reliable to show up at volleyball and basketball games. Others got "to-go" plates as well, which we knew they would give to the wives back in their units. Word had gotten around about our discriminatory manfest and eventually the woman followed up with their own (Debbie brought us plates).
That event (along with the reciprocation) spread conversation and joy. I was actually too stressed at the time, knowing nothing about how to cook a good steak and wondering why the well done had turned into dry as a dead well. Growing up in my household, rare or medium steaks were like "Whah?"
With food and a mock battle of the sexes, everyone seemed to have a great time and the memory makes my brain smile.
There are other moments in my life that serve as giant adventures in terms of the affect on my daily happiness, although largely duplicated as small insignificant happenings in the lives of millions of others who go on to have great small moments AND huge achievements, like building Apple computer or becoming president or being the first person to jump the farthest from space to earth. I've had moments of pure happiness, but I don't know that I've achieved anything substantive, or at minimum dumped a worthy amount of joy and memory into others.
I like to think that I've left some joy and memories, and that if I were to die young without my adventures, I will be buried by weeping minds (mostly female) filled with a pleasant remembrance.
(Note: I often post at first draft, under night fog, and double back later to correct grammar, typos or structure. So if something reads odd, feel free to mentally adjust it and jump to what you think I was trying to say.)
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