“I was just wondering if anybody knew his name.”

Friends:

Even though you may have seen a movie multiple times or listened to a song until the CD wore out, you can still pick up something new with each viewing or listening. I happened upon “The Shawshank Redemption” just this past week and even though it is one of my favorite movies and I have seen it probably 20 times or more, something struck me about it that I had never considered before. Something that reflects all of our deepest desires, something more important to us than money or fame…

If you don’t know the story of “TSR,” it’s a prison movie, plain and simple. And while Andy Dufresne and Red are the main characters, played by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, it’s the story of Brooks Hatlen, played by James Whittemore, that struck me with this past viewing. Brooks was the old prisoner who ran the library and kept a pet bird in his coat, feeding him little scraps at the lunchroom table, who, after 42 years inside, was finally paroled. After trying to make it on the outside as a common man, he simply couldn’t handle it and took his own life. The prison had become his world and, without the structure and comfort of his home for 42 years, he was lost and afraid.

In the movie, prior to taking his own life, Brooks climbs up onto a table and uses his penknife to scratch the words “Brooks Was Here” into the cross-beam of the room in which he is living. In the book on which the film is based, “Different Seasons” by Stephen King, the only information about Brooks’ death is that he died in a home for indigent old folks – clearly not the more dramatic suicide portrayed in the film.

Nevertheless, it’s the words that Brooks scratched into the cross-beam before he died that connected with me on a level that I had never before realized. When you think about Brooks, you think of someone who had been in prison for 42 years and consequently, to the outside world, was invisible. Or, to put it another way—he had simply never existed. Inside the walls of the prison he may have some limited legacy, but on the outside, where the mass of society lives and breathes, he was like a wisp of air that’s gone before you know it has even blown your hair.

And I think that this is every person’s deepest fear, to be forgotten, and our greatest desire: to make a mark and be remembered. Without the scratchings on the cross-beam, Brooks would never be thought of again, his name never again uttered, his existence never again considered. But with 13 little letters, he has left a tiny fragment of himself. Nothing earth-shattering, mind you, but at least something that, when people go into that room, they would see his words and have the briefest of moments of thought about Brooks Hatlen. What they would think about is anyone’s guess—hopefully nothing as depressed as a convict who had been in jail for 42 years only to be paroled and kill himself because he missed prison life. But nonetheless, they would think about him.

A few weeks ago my Rabbi gave a sermon and he indicated that memories of our ancestry only goes back three generations, to our great-grandparents’ generation. Earlier than that and our ancestors are people we never met and of whom we know very little if anything. Which means that our accomplishments and experiences will be long forgotten by the time our great-grandchildren have children of their own. And aside from the money and fame, I think that deep down all we as human beings want is to make a mark so that we are remembered. We may no longer be tangible to our later generations, but our contributions can live forever.

Brooks Hatlen had no later generations—his genes died when he committed the crime for which he was imprisoned for 42 years. His legacy at the prison would be fleeting at best. So what else did he have? How else could he make his mark so that someone, anyone, would remember him?

He carved his name into a cross-beam; it was all he could do to prove he ever existed. If only 3 people ever see that carving, that is 3 more people who will ask the question of who was Brooks and what were the events in his life that led to his climbing up on a table and etching those 13 letters.

Brooks had no other choice. We are far luckier. We have the power and the capability of doing wondrous things with our lives and leaving an indelible mark on our world. We aren’t limited to scratching our names into a cross-beam. The thought that what I do today could be remembered forever? Yeah, that’s pretty exciting.

So I better get to it, don’t you think?

What about you?

“Hey, wait! I know why you aren’t acting like yourself. You don’t have your special helmet!”

Friends:

I would like to think that at heart I generally like people. I know that this sounds funny to say, but when you interact with people, especially strangers; it is fairly simple to determine who likes people and who doesn’t. It can be from the way that they make eye contact or the method of their greeting or even just how much of an interest they take in you. For the most part I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, that they are just like me and have no real grumble with society as a whole and people individually. And this is a tough thing to do, especially in a world such as ours when we don’t know where the next terrorist act will take place, or the next racial epithet sounded, or the next honked horn and road rage assault. Wouldn’t we all like to go back to the 1950s, when people didn’t need to worry about locking their doors and trusting people was an easy thing to do, not a risky thing?

This thought occurred to me this past weekend as I experienced car trouble and had to rely on strangers to provide assistance. Look, no one likes to have car trouble—in fact, it always comes at the wrong time, and in the wrong place and for the wrong reason. For me, it was some kind of a computer malfunction in the car that only has 1300 miles on it. But when the warning lights on the dashboard start flashing and the brake system signals a malfunction, you get off the road immediately and figure out the rest from there.

So there we were, the four of us on the way to Pomona for our annual trip to the fair for deep fried whatevers (this year it was deep fried Klondike bars) and the lights flashed and a quick exit from the freeway was in order. After alerting the dealership to the issue, we were instructed to wait for a tow truck to take the car, and all of us, back to the dealership in Valencia. We were at a gas station in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people around, waiting for an unfamiliar person to take my car and my entire family, back to the dealership. And might I add that it was already 100 degrees at 10:30am.

When you have some sort of car trouble like that, you are likely more than frustrated; your plans have been thwarted and now you have to deal with many unknowns—the problem with your car, your current location and the people who you will depend upon to help you.

I have had car trouble on a few prior occasions and this is what I have always experienced— whether there to tow the truck to the dealership, to change the flat tire, to bring gas (never happened to me, knock on wood) or jump start the car, the tow truck drivers have always been exceptional. Maybe I am lucky, but for some reason my experiences with them have always been positive. Maybe it’s that they appreciate that I am upset because of the car trouble or maybe it’s because they see that their job is to help people, the tow truck drivers have always been incredibly kind and helpful. Not necessarily the most talkative of people, but gracious and accommodating nonetheless.

For example, there are a lot of things that I dislike doing—one of them is putting my younger daughter’s car seat in the car; once it’s in, I would prefer that it stay in because getting it locked in is a complete pain in the you-know-what. But because the car had to be towed back to the dealership, it meant that the whole family had to be towed back. Before I could even offer to help or ask how we were going to make it happen, the tow truck driver had already picked up the car seat, heaved it up into the truck’s cab and strapped it down in the back seat for Kensi. That alone was enough to make my day. Mind you that this was after he had arrived and immediately had introduced himself to me and shook my hand. I am a huge believer in the handshake because I find it to be a personal and civilized way of greeting people. And it immediately put me better at ease- here is a guy who wants to shake my hand, introduced himself to me and in that brief instant showed me that he understood the importance of his task, not only to get my car to the dealership safely, but to get my family there safely as well.

I know that we as people tend to categorize others based on their profession or social status, but what do we really accomplish by doing that? Nothing. There are good people out there; wait, I will rephrase. There are more good people out there than bad. And it is always comforting when you run into them, even through chance encounters, and realize that you were right in having faith in people as a whole.

Have a great week.

“The whole world now knows… my son, Sean Mullen, was kidnapped, for ransom, three days ago.”

Friends:

Our world has certainly changed, even in the brief 30 years since I was a kid (30 years!!). Ok, that just made me feel old… But seriously, the things that I used to do as a kid, I just don’t feel comfortable letting my kids do. Why does it have to be like this?

This weekend the family was at Disneyland to participate in some racing events, a 5K for Brooklyn and I and a half marathon for Amy. Kensi even participated in a 100-yard “diaper dash.” To make the weekend even more fun, friends of ours from Australia were in town to participate as well and we got to spend a few days at the parks with them. Their 10-year old daughter and Brooklyn hit it off immediately. Of course, they wanted to go on rides that were less exciting for everyone else and for the briefest of moments I contemplated letting them go off and ride a ride alone… for the briefest of moments only.

I recall when I was 10 years old or maybe even younger going to Disneyland with cousins from Phoenix. Late in the evening my brother and I and our boy cousin who was a year older than us wanted to go on the boat ride. Our parents said fine so long as we met them at the monorail at a specific time. We agreed and off we went the three of us alone in Disneyland at night. However, when the thought of letting Brooklyn and her new friend go on a ride by themselves entered my mind, it was instantly eliminated. Not a chance in the world would I let my daughter go off on a ride by themselves, even in the happiest place on earth.

This morning we were running through the McDonalds by our house for breakfast and because the drive-through line was so long, Amy decided to run in so I parked and waited. As I sat there, I saw three girls, two approximately 12 years old and one appearing to be a few years younger, walk out of McDonalds. Where I grew up, there was a McDonalds down the block, about as close to our house as the McDonalds is to our house now. I remember countless times as a kid walking down to the McDonalds for lunch or breakfast or a snack and never having any problems. Yet when I saw those girls this morning walking out of McDonalds, my first thought was that I don’t know whether I would let my kids go to McDonalds by themselves. And this is the McDonalds right down the street from our house in a good area.

Has the world changed that much in 30 years that the things we used to do as kids we wouldn’t necessarily allow our kids to do?

So I began to think—am I being paranoid as a parent or is there some validity to my concerns? Have I simply read too many books and seen to many movies and television shows that deal with abductions and murders and other nefarious crimes?

In preparation for the 5K I started to run but since my days are so packed with work and the kids I typically run at night, usually around 8:30 or 9. I run around our neighborhood and there is one section where the path goes inland from the street through some nature. Each time I run through there, my pace quickens just a bit, a spike of fear tickling my spine as the thought occurs to me of how many books I have read where the murderer kills the jogger in the early morning hours and leaves his body amongst the marshland. Consciously I know that there is nothing to worry about, but there is still that little voice that says to run faster and to make sure that the GPS on the phone is turned on and visualize my escape route if I need to make a quick dash.

Is there a difference between being careful and being overprotective? I guess I can give thanks to “Without a Trace” and “NCIS” and the countless number of books I have read because it has just made me paranoid. But it also reinforces for me the belief that there are bad people out there and I just need to be vigilant in my protection of myself and my family.

And that is a sad thing—because life was a whole lot different 30 years ago, when I played in the street outside my house every day after school and I walked to school by myself and I rode my bike without a helmet and I went to R rated movies without a parent or guardian accompanying me…