In 2001 I retired from teaching school and my son was fresh out of University with a BS in Chemistry. Taking no time off he plunged into a PhD program at the University of Michigan. He found lodging with a couple whose huge house had more bedrooms than most houses have rooms. Woody, the man and, I forget his wife’s name, they ran a boarding house for graduate students. Woody had other business as well but every time I was there he was the concierge in a two legged ant hill while ‘What’s Her Name’ hovered around the kitchen. There was a standing joke about how many days the pan of soup had been sitting uncovered on the stove top. She fixed plenty of food but the boarders preferred their own P-B & J sandwiches over petri dish soup.
Come spring, bullets were flying, people dying, bombs and IEDs booming in Afghanistan and the news networks covered every encounter, every casualty. Grad students were consumed with school but 9/11 was too much to ignore. George W. was ranting, “You’re either with us or against us.” and that hubris still remains a self inflicted insult with a life of its own. His advisors who oozed with confidence were the same experts who ridiculed the Russians for waging war there; “You simply cannot win a ground war in Afghanistan.” At Woody’s place everybody followed their own compass but were also collard by the same war.
My son was full of piss & vinegar (aggressive energy). American casualties are factored into the cost of waging war and he dismissed that easily; they had all volunteered and knew the risks. Dead insurgents were just numbers, squandered by a corrupt Taliban regime and he (my son) certainly had no qualms over their demise. Analytic chemistry was his full time concern, 24/7.
For five years I loved going to Ann Arbor. I had recently retired and got to see my kid, got to hang out in a bonafide research laboratory, be around enthusiastic, young people whose stories were just beginning to unfold; not to mention Ann Arbor’s concerts and food scene. Around the house I blended in and nobody noticed me. Woody was still ‘the man’ and ‘What’s Her Name’ grew increasingly troubled by the war. She would sit on the sofa watching real time coverage of air strikes and roadside bombings. Her reaction to every report was the same. She winced and groaned with each explosion and whimpered, “Why can’t we just get along?” it was 2002.
A year later my son moved across town to a different house, shared by different grad students but no surrogate parents. They lived in a bubble, away from politics, away from George W.’s war. Their work was consuming and challenging but that is why they were there. I could sleep on the sofa whenever I was in town. It was a good time but seemed he would grow old and die before he finished his program. In hindsight it confirmed the adage; a watched pot never boils.
Twenty years have slipped under the bridge and down stream and we’ve both moved on. He did good, got his gold braid, Maize & Blue Hood and a real job. But also I remember ‘What’s Her Name’s’ whimpering; “Why can’t we ...” Her concern was well taken but whimpering was all she could do. The difference from her then to me now is that I don’t beg the question, I know why.
Human evolution bogged down about 12,000 years ago when the 1st Agriculture revolution started crowding people together in towns and city states. They suffered a highly contagious outbreak of arrested development, stuck at the 3 year-old stage. It didn’t affect our creative talents, only manifest in the selfish, ‘Me-me’ & ‘I want’ nature of spoiled 3 year-olds. We are still stuck. If a 3 year old can’t have what they want they can throw a temper tantrum but then they grow up. Regular people get mad but they get over it. Tyrants have no qualms about killing their enemies if that’s how they get what they want. Whoever gets in the way, they die too. The ‘Bullies’ believe their own dead warriors make their mothers proud and dead enemies have only themselves to blame. Tyrants know if you don’t win you die so they have no reason to compromise or follow rules and wholesale murder is a universal remedy for bad neighbors.
Mrs. ‘What’s Her Name’s’ moaning just vents some anxiety; a question with an (!) instead of a (?). Humans get along very well with inanimate things but not each other and it will be a while before the Bullies hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
Come spring, bullets were flying, people dying, bombs and IEDs booming in Afghanistan and the news networks covered every encounter, every casualty. Grad students were consumed with school but 9/11 was too much to ignore. George W. was ranting, “You’re either with us or against us.” and that hubris still remains a self inflicted insult with a life of its own. His advisors who oozed with confidence were the same experts who ridiculed the Russians for waging war there; “You simply cannot win a ground war in Afghanistan.” At Woody’s place everybody followed their own compass but were also collard by the same war.
My son was full of piss & vinegar (aggressive energy). American casualties are factored into the cost of waging war and he dismissed that easily; they had all volunteered and knew the risks. Dead insurgents were just numbers, squandered by a corrupt Taliban regime and he (my son) certainly had no qualms over their demise. Analytic chemistry was his full time concern, 24/7.
For five years I loved going to Ann Arbor. I had recently retired and got to see my kid, got to hang out in a bonafide research laboratory, be around enthusiastic, young people whose stories were just beginning to unfold; not to mention Ann Arbor’s concerts and food scene. Around the house I blended in and nobody noticed me. Woody was still ‘the man’ and ‘What’s Her Name’ grew increasingly troubled by the war. She would sit on the sofa watching real time coverage of air strikes and roadside bombings. Her reaction to every report was the same. She winced and groaned with each explosion and whimpered, “Why can’t we just get along?” it was 2002.
A year later my son moved across town to a different house, shared by different grad students but no surrogate parents. They lived in a bubble, away from politics, away from George W.’s war. Their work was consuming and challenging but that is why they were there. I could sleep on the sofa whenever I was in town. It was a good time but seemed he would grow old and die before he finished his program. In hindsight it confirmed the adage; a watched pot never boils.
Twenty years have slipped under the bridge and down stream and we’ve both moved on. He did good, got his gold braid, Maize & Blue Hood and a real job. But also I remember ‘What’s Her Name’s’ whimpering; “Why can’t we ...” Her concern was well taken but whimpering was all she could do. The difference from her then to me now is that I don’t beg the question, I know why.
Human evolution bogged down about 12,000 years ago when the 1st Agriculture revolution started crowding people together in towns and city states. They suffered a highly contagious outbreak of arrested development, stuck at the 3 year-old stage. It didn’t affect our creative talents, only manifest in the selfish, ‘Me-me’ & ‘I want’ nature of spoiled 3 year-olds. We are still stuck. If a 3 year old can’t have what they want they can throw a temper tantrum but then they grow up. Regular people get mad but they get over it. Tyrants have no qualms about killing their enemies if that’s how they get what they want. Whoever gets in the way, they die too. The ‘Bullies’ believe their own dead warriors make their mothers proud and dead enemies have only themselves to blame. Tyrants know if you don’t win you die so they have no reason to compromise or follow rules and wholesale murder is a universal remedy for bad neighbors.
Mrs. ‘What’s Her Name’s’ moaning just vents some anxiety; a question with an (!) instead of a (?). Humans get along very well with inanimate things but not each other and it will be a while before the Bullies hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
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