“There is no life I know to compare with Pure Imagination…”

Friends:

With her mother and I being the readers we are, it is no surprise that our second grader is already reading at a 6^th grade level.  Gone are the days of the Disney cartoon books and Dora the Explorers; now she is full-on with the chapter books, over a hundred pages, few pictures and even some morals.  In fact, she is even taking some suggestions from dear old Dad and it gives me an opportunity to relive some of my own childhood.

Case in point:  “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl.  After some kicking and screaming and a bit of whining (forgive me for being upset, but I wanted to read it too), she finished the book in a matter of hours and was on to the sequel with excitement.  But when we started discussing the book, it occurred to me how many of its lessons I failed to grasp when I read it for the first time as a kid. 

You see, not to pat myself on the back, but I was a pretty darn good kid.  I didn’t act spoiled, I was well behaved and I was incredibly appreciative of everything that I had and was given, wasn’t I?  So the life lessons in “Charlie” were somewhat lost on me at the time.  However, they are glaringly obvious now that I have kids of my own.  Because when I asked Brooklyn what character she believes she is most like, she pulled out traits of all of them—except Charlie.  She talked about how she loves candy (like Augustus Gloop); how she loves to chew gum (like Violet Beauregard); how she is always asking if she can have this, this, and this at the store (like Veruca Salt); and how she loves to watch TV (like Mike Teevee).  Yet nowhere in her answer does she indicate that she is anything like Charlie.

When I was first exposed to the characters, it was inconceivable to me that kids like that actually existed.  Wasn’t everybody like Charlie?  Didn’t everyone appreciate all that they had?  Didn’t everyone respect their parents??  Yet as I have matured and become a parent of my own, I am much more attuned to the fact that not all kids are created equal.  In fact, there are a whole lot less Charlies out there then there should be.

I used to think that Veruca and Violet and Augustus and Mike were just caricatures of excess, exaggerated simply to highlight their cartoonish qualities to make the book (and movie) that much more of a fantasy.  Look how bad each of these kids are; and look at how angelic Charlie is—and who gets it all in the end?  The cherubic Charlie; while each of the bad eggs gets their comeuppance.  (I never get to use that word!)  It seems so obvious… now.

So as I was discussing with Brooklyn the lessons of the book, it was clear that there was much that was lost to her.  She saw the book the same way I did when I was child; it was just another cartoon, another fable, another fairy tale.  Except for the fact that all of the main characters were kids—and isn’t it safe to assume that all kids are good?  Brooklyn has no reason to think that kids can be naughty!

Ahh, but the perspective that comes with age.  “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is more than just a kids’ book.  It’s a criticism of parents; it’s a morality tale for children; it’s as much an educator as our math and science books, because its lessons are as applicable to life as any of the primary subjects: Anything to excess can be damaging to you.  Too much candy, too much gum, too much television, too much getting what you want; in the end each of the kids was felled by that which they consumed to excess. 

And in the end, with all of the deaths and tragedies that we have witnessed from drugs and alcohol, driving too fast and living too hard, it is all too apparent to us how excess can lead to demise.  Maybe that’s something that Brooklyn and other kids her age don’t need to learn about just yet.  Maybe it’s ok that she sees it just as a story and not as a warning.  Perhaps all that she needs to learn from the book is that Charlie respected his parents and grandparents and, of course, Mr. Willy Wonka (and I mean the Gene Wilder not Johnny Depp one).

Have a great week.

“In touch with the ground, I’m on the hunt I’m after you…”

I don’t like thinking about my childhood.  When I do, it gives me this sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach.  The butterflies start fluttering down there, a little bit of queasiness sets in and I quickly have to force my mind to shift to another course of thought.

And it isn’t because my childhood was terrible or horrific or fraught with tragedy and despair.  Quite the contrary.  I had probably the best childhood any kid could ever have; tremendously loving and supportive parents, an easy school experience with good grades and little difficulty and wonderful vacations all over the country and into Europe.  My childhood was perfect.  Which is why thinking about it is so difficult—I miss it so damn much… when life was simpler, stress was non-existent, other than taking tests and wondering if the guy is going to throw a curveball 0-2 or try to sneak a fastball by me, and when everything I could possibly need was right in front of me.  As I consider my life now, it makes me miss my childhood that much more.

I began thinking about this last week as I finished reading the autobiography of John Taylor, the bass player for the iconic ‘80s band Duran Duran.  We moved to Northridge in 1979 and right around 1982 or 1983 we got cable and the most amazing thing was on our TV set—music videos and, especially, Duran Duran.

When you are 7 years old, you know absolutely nothing about the world.  Were there places outside of Northridge?  I think I had been on an airplane twice before I was 7, to go to and from Phoenix for a Bat Mitzvah.  But other than that, I knew nothing that existed outside of Los Angeles.  But Duran Duran, they were something close to mythic.

They were from this exotic place called England and they sang songs that had words that were unidentifiable and shot their videos in the most remote of places, like Sri Lanka.  I remember when I saw the video for “Hungry Like the Wolf” that I felt jealous for the little Sri Lankan boy who got to be in the video with the band because he got to meet them—he must have been something pretty special. 

I didn’t know about concerts or recording studios; all I knew was that this band from the UK was larger than life.  And my parents knew how I felt about the band because for Hanukkah that year that bought my brother and I all of the band’s albums on cassette tapes.

I remember going to the supermarket and buying Teen Beat or some other such rag just to get the lyrics to their songs and learn more about these men amongst men.  Compared with all of the other New Wave bands of the time, like Depeche Mode and Flock of Seagulls or The Cure, Duran Duran was different.  They weren’t singing songs of depression; they didn’t promote angst or sadness; they didn’t dress all in black and sound like they were whining.  They were crisp and clean-cut (although Nick Rhodes, the keyboardist, was weird because he wore lots of makeup) and seemed to be having fun and enjoying themselves in their videos.

When I think about Duran Duran, I think about my own innocence.  I think about playing the cassettes over and over again and wondering what the band was doing right at that moment.  Were they in Mongolia shooting a video?  Were they in Australia on the beach?  It seemed incomprehensible that they were average people, just like my parents or my teachers, who simply decided to become rock stars instead of lawyers or doctors.  They were exotic and worldly and something out of a storybook, characters who had been conjured by an author’s pen to travel the world and bring joy to millions of little boys and girls.

After I read the book I downloaded all of their albums to my iPod (my how times have changed) and listened nonstop for the next week.  Every second in my car I had the music blasting.  And each time I had this little sense of queasiness in my stomach; it was a reminder of my childhood, of my innocence, of my lack of sophistication.  But it was also a reminder of my parents and their acceptance of my fascination with this band with the double name—this band that, for some reason or other, felt it necessary to take the name of a famous boxer of the time.  It was a reminder of a time when things were simpler, when life was simpler, when my whole life was still ahead of me. 

Reading the autobiography was a chance to relive my childhood, so to speak.  A chance to look inside the mysticism and finally get some answers to why they shot the video in Sri Lanka and what the song and video for “The Wild Boys” was about and what happened that the band broke up.  Without the internet or other concept of how to find the answers to these questions, my mind was simply allowed to wander, to further magnify their supernaturalism.  But now I finally had some answers. 

Whether or not the answers were satisfying or not, it allowed me the opportunity to re-set my mind to that of the 7 year old innocent and recall what it was like to not have a care in the world but only what exactly “The Reflex” was about.

Now that I am older and have kids of my own, one of whom is the same age now as I was when I discovered Duran Duran, I think about my own childhood and I want them to be as fulfilled by their childhood as I was with mine.  So if they want to listen to Justin Bieber or One Direction or some other crap like that, I am reticent to turn it off—because my parents didn’t turn it off when I was listening and it fostered my innocence and happiness.

It is so difficult thinking about my childhood, because I miss it so damn much… and I wish I could go back.

“If Robinson can help us win, then he is gonna play on this ball club!”

Friends:

As you not doubt know, sometimes your best clients come from the most unexpected places.  For example, the client who came to me through a sister in law she didn’t know she had who was trying to dig up dirt on her husband to use against him in a divorce.  It seems that in the process of preparing to divorce her husband she located a trust agreement which provided for an estate to be divided between her husband and her husband’s estranged sister.  So the wife takes the trust to the divorce attorney who sends her to me who tells her that her sister in law has a very real and strong case against her brother for some serious dough.  What is the woman’s response when I tell her the good news about her sister-in-law?  She wants to know what’s in it for her.

To be specific, she wanted to know if she should ask her soon-to-be wealthy sister-in-law for some sort of finder’s fee.  And after I dance around the issue without committing to an answer one way or another, the woman stands up, grabs me by the shoulders and begins shaking me violently, all the while asking me how much she should ask for.

After this grand display of sudden interest in her previously unknown sister-in-law’s case, by way of an excuse for her conduct the wife says these exact words:  “You know how we people are.”  Did I happen to mention to you that the wife is African-American?

Needless to say I was completely taken aback by the comment and, in what I would call some “fast on my feet” thinking, I said that it had nothing to do with race; it had to do with how people react to money because people certainly do change immensely when money is at stake.  But in actuality, the whole incident was uncomfortable for two reasons.

First, you learn someone’s true nature when you witness how they react to someone else’s good fortune.  In this instance, the sister-in-law is in her 70s, lives in Detroit, and has lived a life of tragedy, sadness, and struggle.  After having heard her story, I can think of no one who more deserves the good fortune that she will experience once her estranged brother pays for his wrongdoing.  But the wife in this situation takes no joy in the good fortune of someone else; she only feels jealousy and anger and begins working an angle of how to make this whole situation beneficial to her.  Whereas now the wife would gladly trade places with her sister-in-law, the day, the week, the year, the decade previous I doubt she would have been so willing to offer the trade.

The second reason for my discomfort was truly the use of race as an excuse for her behavior.  As you know I am a die-hard Dodgers fan and I am excited for and proud of all of their on-field accomplishments, Hall of Famers, and colorful characters.  But the thing that I am most proud of them for is their leadership in breaking the color barrier.  The Dodgers came first with Jackie Robinson and have since been leaders when it comes to civil rights and baseball.  So when I heard this woman use her race as an excuse for the way she was acting, I immediately thought back to Jackie Robinson.  How would Jackie Robinson have felt about this use of race as an excuse?

February is African American History month—why it is in the year’s shortest month I do not know although Wikipedia seems to claim that it was chosen for this month because both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were born in February (makes sense to me, I guess.)  But during the month we will hear so much about the great African American heroes and leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks and George Washington Carver and Barack Obama.  Do you think that any of them would have ever used their race as an excuse for anything?

I am not attempting to make any type of a political or social statement, I am merely telling a story of an incident that occurred in my office while meeting with a potential new client.  At the end of my meeting with the wife, I had two feelings: one was that I was ashamed that the wife felt that she had to rationalize her conduct by using her race as an excuse.  The second was sadness; sadness that despite the monumental changes that have come about as a result of the tireless and heroic efforts to ensure equality amongst all Americans, it is clear that there is still a lot of work to do. 

I am by no means naïve; I know that there is still racism; I know that there is inequality; I know that there is still a humongous amount of work to do.  But we live in the greatest nation in the world, the nation that prides itself on and promotes to the world its focus on freedom and equality.  It sounds good in the brochure, but it’s not there yet.

Look, all she had to say was that she could use the money—that’s something that is decidedly not a racial thing but is a human thing.  We all could use the money, right?