Do you know what I’ve been hearing a lot of lately?
“Go home and hug your kids.”
After 9/11, a co-worker said, “Go home and hug your kids.” When we watch the horrors of war on TV. When we see news stories about children who come into harm’s way. Even after a tornado’s rips the roofs off of people’s homes, we are urged to go home and hug our kids.
It’s a sign of the times that my children are black and blue. In fact, their eyes are bugging out because I get so bummed out, I come home and immediately go for the kids with outstretched arms. They bolt from me, dive under the bed, and wait for my happy hour cocktail to kick in, (which effectively feeds my need for the hug.) It’s getting so bad that every time I heard George W. Bush say nucular, I’ve got both my daughters in a bear hug.
At least once a week, I hear someone say, “This feels like a sitcom.” I have never seen anybody in a sitcom ever say, “This feels like a sitcom.” Does that make the sitcom more real than the world that compares itself to one?
If everyone gave up TV, I believe there would be tons of car accidents caused by our staring too long into rear view mirrors.
There is one song that historians could unearth in 300 years that will perfectly describe our culture. James Taylor’s “Traffic Jam.” He sings, “Damn, this traffic jam, how I hate to be late, it hurts my motor to go so slow, by the time I get home my supper be cold, damn, this traffic jam.” There’s more:
Now I almost had a heart attack
Lookin’ in the rear view mirror,
I saw myself in the next car back
Lookin’ in the rear view mirror
‘Bout to have a heart attack.
This closing verse in particular puts the entire 20th-century in a nutshell:
Now I used to think that I was cool
Ridin’ around on fossil fuel.
Till I found out all I was doin’
Was drivin’ down the road to ruin.
Imagine how your legacy would be different if, in your obituary, someone absently-mindedly typed the word “mouth” instead of “smile.” It would read: “Alison will be remembered far and wide for her infectious mouth.”
(If that ever happened to a friend of mine, I’d go home and hug my kids.)
It just proves that words are important. I don’t know if I am mumbling more these days, or speaking too softly, or if it’s her hearing, but my wife has been asking me to repeat myself. In any case, more and more these days she says “huh?” and I sigh with mild exasperation and repeat myself. We’re like the Sunshine Boys. I imagined this hard-of-hearing plot device in a drama that takes place on a lifeboat. Someone slips off the craft and can’t get back to the boat.
“Tell my wife I love her!” he cries as the undertow takes him away.
“Tell her...what?” someone responds from the lifeboat. “You’ve had enough of her?”
“No,” he says, treading water. “Tell her, I said good-bye and I love you.”
“I‘ll tell her you said good-bye. I love you, too.”
“No,” he gasps. “I don’t love you. I love her. Tell her that.”
“What do you mean you don’t love me?”
“I mean,” he calls, floating into the distance, “be sure she gets the message ‘I love you.’”
“Oh! I get it. I should tell her, that you love...her?”
“Agh!”
“Is that a yes?”
That sounds like the backbone to an entire Adam Sandler flick. Here’s another movie pitch: An entire genre of Amish remakes.
Dost I amuse thee?
Is thou talkin’ to me?
There’d be no cussing in these movies, but there would be plenty of smoking. Amish are the last pipe smokers around. Smoking once held a prominent spot in films and popular culture. That is now replaced by the constant pulling from a water bottle. Bottled water is the new cigarettes. Watch how, during interviews, people will stop, punctuate their point with a long swig of water, and just as they used to tap the ashes, put the bottle back down. Or they will chain chug. Who needs to sip every seven seconds? Put someone behind a podium and they’re bogarting that mineral water.
I’ve even seen water used for dramatic effect in my Catholic church. A woman, whom I know considers it a bad day when at least one person doesn’t tell her she resembles Ann-Margaret, not long ago entered the church, dipped her manicured nails into the holy water, tossed back her hair, and first let the water dab at her brow to cool herself. Mother of God, it was as if Blanche DuBois was using the entire Vatican as a paper fan. She double-dipped, brought the water to her tanned chest, let it dribble down into her dress, then...well, I sort of drifted off at this point. I’ll take it as a matter of faith that she finished her sign of the cross.
Take that to your pew and try to focus on the liturgy. Quick, hug the kids.
