The Pitfalls of Obsessive Competition...

This is a sample chapter from my second book, COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age.  In the chapter, I remember my brother's intense need to be highly competitive and what result it brought one summer evening in the early 1960's.

Chapter 7 Boardwalk and Park Place

My younger brother David had an extremely competitive nature bordering on psychotic. I’m not talking just about games like baseball, football, chess, checkers, and races either. Competition to David meant that everything was a contest. No matter how insignificant the matter was to anyone else, Davy had to “win.” It was common while we were growing up to hear him say things like, “Hey, I can finish my oatmeal first!” My sister and I would look calmly at each other and then at our brother, not attempting in any way to compete with him but just to watch him snarf down his hot oatmeal and then grin at us as though he had just received a gold medal in some Olympic event and was waiting for phtographers to begin press coverage. Other common challenges came in the form of, “I’ll race you up the stairs!” or ”I can button my shirt first.” or “Let’s see who can hold his breath the longest.” During those sessions our sister Connie and I would only pretend to hold our breath until David’s blue face smiled in a kind of outrageous delight over us after his drawing in a huge amount of air, like a deep-sea diver rising to the surface after many minutes under water. Connie and I would always exchange knowing glances and smile faintly in quiet acknowledgement of our

brother’s idiocy.

None of us ever knew what had caused David’s obsession with winning. Even money didn’t mean as much to him as coming out on top in any competition, no matter how inane. Nothing else on earth seemed as important to him as being able to say what he believed were the most important words anyone could utter, “I won.” His attitude about beating us at games like canasta and Monopoly made our playing against him far more interesting, as it was so much fun to witness when he occasionally found himself losing. His transformation was from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. His eyes would begin to blink faster, lips tighten, and his fists clench until the knuckles whitened. Connie and I would delight in goading him on to levels of anxiety and rage usually reserved for Tasmanian Devils, people standing for hours in line only to discover there are no more tickets, or middle school teachers finding out they’ve been assigned lunchtime cafeteria duty.

Unfortunately, Davy’s obsession with competition never carried over into his school work. He didn’t consider things like algebra and English tests worthy of his usually intense effort at being the best. Apparently getting the highest grade in the class on a quiz or exam was not nearly as glorious as finishing first a big bowl of ice cream, despite the inevitable headache and eyes the size of pizzas that were parts of winning that competition. Dad said more than once that had David’s spirit for winning ever been applied to his school work, he would have ended up being a senior professor at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, or Stanford, where he might also have made his mark in some walnut-paneled faculty lounge during any whiskey chugging contests that might have been held there to ease some of the teaching tension of higher education.

Connie and I share a favorite recollection of David’s indomitable appetite for winning. It all began when I arrived home from school one Friday afternoon in June, sitting on a living room sofa, ready to kick off my shoes and watch The Three Stooges on TV, while listening to mom talk on the phone. I heard only half the converstion, but what was being said on the other end became clearer as my mother repeated some of the caller’s comments and questions. It quickly became obvious about whom the conversation was.

“He threw WHAT in the cafeteria?” By then I was all ears, as Mom continued.

“And it hit Mr. Patterson’s sport coat lapel? I’m so very sorry. You know that kind of cream filling from cupcakes can come right out with some soda water and a fine brush.”

That was all I needed in order to piece together what had happened that day during lunch in the school cafeteria, but there was one more exchange over the phone that crowned the whole situation with something extra special.

“Yes, I understand. Three detentions seem quite fair, but I must tell you that he will also be punished at home. That’s right. He will be grounded for

the entire weekend.”

All right, I was pleased. I admit it, but that doesn’t mean I was vindictive about David’s weekend incarceration. It just seemed fair that after his getting away with pretending to do homework, neglecting his part in cleaning the room we shared, and his general arrogance over previous weeks, he would now be facing the balance sheet in some way. Of course being grounded for a whole weekend meant only one thing to him. Marathon Monopoly! When Connie found out about David’s being grounded, she tried not to seem too happy, but her doing a little jig around the living room gave her away.

Meanwhile, the last week of school was looming before us as we looked forward to the freedom of summer vacation afterward. Even though David was grounded for the weekend, Dad expected him to help me with our yard duties, which included mowing and trimming the front and back lawns. Because it had rained the day before, the still-moist grass clippings were much heavier than usual. We were out of lawn bags, so David and I stuffed all the clippings into a large empty trash can, David jumping down on each load and maximizing the density of all that grass. When we finished, the yard looked great, but the trash can was so packed, that it would have made a terrific science project. The promo at the science fair might have been, “How much grass can be put into a twenty-gallon container?” Science project or not, I think we found the answer that day. The can was so dense with grass clippings we had stuffed into it, that its weight made the can immovable. I remembered Mr. Gilbert, our science teacher, talking about “star matter” so dense that even a teaspoon of it would sink to the center of our planet. Yes, now I understood how such a thing might be possible. It appeared that the can of grass clippings, even if it didn’t sink to the earth’s core, would be a permanent part of our yard’s landscape.

That Saturday evening after dinner, the marathon of Monopoly games began with David insisting upon being banker and using the race car as his token. I was the top hat, and Connie was the Scottish Terrier. All the years we played the game, that tradition had prevailed. We played into the wee hours of Sunday morning, breaking finally only for church and lunch, which the family ate in the kitchen so as not to disturb the Monopoly board still on the dining room table from the unfinished game of the night before. Having played until three in the moring and been awakened for church at seven, we knew at this point the only thing keeping us awake was each one’s determination to win the championship before bed on Sunday night. After dinner, as Mom and Dad watched an episode of a TV show called, “One Step Beyond,” David, Connie and I resumed our game, the third one in our marathon, which Connie won, making the series a perfect tie, each of us having taken one game. David hated that. The final game didn’t begin until eight that Sunday evening, and David was on the verge of hysteria in his desire to win the game and take the championship.

At ten o’clock Mom and Dad were going to bed, and Dad told us not to stay up too late, because there was school the next morning. He also reminded David and me that the trash can filled with grass clippings had to be taken to the front curb for garbage pick-up the next morning. We decided to do that unpleasant chore at the end of the last Monoply game. Two more hours passed as we approached the end of that final game, one which I seemed to be winning, as David grew more and more anxious. He stared at my deeds to Boardwalk and Park Place with covetous and bloodshot eyes, while the old Linden clock in our dining room ticked toward one A.M..

Suddenly, due probably to fatigue and the knowledge that there would be school the next morning, my brain experienced its last hurrah for the day in a brilliant coup of negotiation with David. His eyes widened, as on Christmas mornings, when I told him he could have my deeds to Boardwalk and Park Place if he would make sure the big can of grass clippings got to the front of the house before bed. After David took an oath, witnessed by Connie, to take the clippings around front, I handed over to him the two valuable deeds and their little red hotels. Then the game came to a quick conclusion as David ran away with enough rent money from his swanky properties to bankrupt Connie and me. By then we were all three yawning, but to make sure that David upheld his part of our bargain, Connie and I accompanied him to the trash can, which he managed after several minutes of sheer determination to move in tiny rolling motions, inch by inch down the long driveway to the little brick paved area on the street parkway in front of our house. As the can wouldn’t roll easily over grass toward the bricked area, David put his arms around it, his knees bent in a lifting position. His whole body moved upward in a strained but useless effort to budge the huge container. Then he fell backward, rolling on the grass and onto the sidewalk in deep and agonized grunts of physical pain. Through clenched teeth in what might well have been taken as the voice of a dieing man, David’s final half-grunted message was, “But....I won the championship!” Connie and I looked at each other under the street lamp post just smiling and shaking our heads.

David was finally able to get up very slowly, limping triumphantly into the house behind us, like a wounded soldier in line for his Purple Heart. The last thing I saw before turning out the lights in the dining room was the Monopoly board with all its pieces exactly as we had left them along with David’s final “Chance” card which read, “Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”

HOARDERS AND DOOMSDAY PREPPERS

                

I don't know why I have become so utterly fascinated by the television shows, HOARDERS and DOOMSDAY PREPPERS. I can say only that as someone who is mildly OCD in terms of caring for my own home, I see the hoarders and “preppers” almost as creatures from another world altogether. There is something so obsessive and unworldly about their fears, that I look at them the way folks used to look at exhibits of freaks in old traveling carnival shows of the 19^th Century.

I ask myself how it is possible for anyone to allow his or her home to become a nest of contagion through sheer piles of trash, often covered in vermin, not wanting to discard any of it. That seeming lack of awareness of one's environment builds over time, not just in a week or two and reminds me of an eight-hundred-pound man looking into a mirror suddenly one morning to say, “Gee, I've really let myself go!” The cause, as far as I can determine from the experts, who so sensitively and judiciously deal with the hoarders, is a tragic loss, so often the trigger for the hoarding behavior, a behavior that the hoarders themselves often refer to with unintended humor as “collecting” or “accumulating.” They become so terrified of losing anyone or anything again, that they hold on to every bottle cap, rubber band, and empty toilet paper roll with the false hope that the item will serve some purpose later on for a “craft project.” In the end, it's all about control. In losing a loved one, there is a sense that the world is falling apart, and there can be a terrible need to hold on to something that is left in some wildly irrational grip on whatever is in one's environment, even if it's an old band-aid or a dead cat.

I love the episodes in which the hoarders begin to see why they have been accumulating irrationally and actually change in ways that get them back their dignity and joy in living. The before-and-after shots of those homes are gratifying to watch and leave the viewer with a sense of hope for hoarders, whose lives seemed so hopeless earlier in each program.

The other sense of gratification I get from each episode I watch is that after turning off the television set, I can look around my own house to feel content that, even if there is a coffee cup on an end table, or a cereal bowl in the sink, I have no feeling of being overpowered in any way by something and can easily remedy any feeling of being untidy. My house always looks especially good after watching one of those TV episodes.

There are three million hoarders in the United States, according to the statistics given on the show, and there are also three million “doomsday preppers.” Unlike the show HOARDERS, the DOOMSDAY PREPPERS program doesn't attempt to change the behavior of the preppers, perhaps because their fears and obsessive behaviors don't affect other people in the same ways, and there is no sense that the result of their cause will be the spread of dangerous disease through nests of rats or unsanitary conditions. No, the obsessions of the preppers have some other level of dignity and safety. In fact, safety is the main idea, a need to feel safe in a world in which these people feel horribly threatened by a coming, even if only imagined, holocaust, doomsday, or Armageddon of some kind.

The irony of their behavior for me is that they spend every waking moment in preparation for something unspeakably horrendous in order to achieve a sense of safety and inner peace. In fact, it seems that they live in constant fear, just like the hoarders, of losing what they have, often passing this sense of terror on to their children. It strikes me as a dilemma based upon sacrificing the joy of this life in preparation for the next one. It seems almost like preparing to live in a hell they feel is inevitable. I wonder too, what kind of life a destroyed world would offer, that would make one spend all his time preparing to live in it. Finally, both programs show us people, who have an almost pathological need to be in control in a world which they feel is taking from them or is going to take from them something precious. Perhaps what is precious for them has already been lost, that sense of joy, peace, and gratitude for who and what are here right now, but whatever the reason, I suppose people have to find their own level of inner tranquility, as long as it doesn't infringe upon that of others. I am at once sympathetic with the hoarders and preppers, while being awed by their somewhat twisted devotion.

JB

Colorado House Bill 1238

Colorado House Bill 1238 proposes that students no longer be retained to take classes over again.  Early intervention with parents is part of the bill's goal, but students in early grades would be "passed" anyway, even if students were unable to meet standards for what were formerly required classes.  Instead, there would be "social promotion." It is politically correct in the most admirable ways, but there is still disagreement over the issue of retention. The greatest hope, according to the wording of this bill seems to be that parents be encouraged early to read to their children and be part of the learning process from the beginning.  Early intervention by the school would take place primarily from kindergarten through third grade, but the idea of social promotion would continue indefinitely.

     As a retired high school teacher who was in the profession for thirty-five years, I approve of the increased role of parents in the process of educating children.  I also like the idea of early intervention regarding literacy as soon as there are signals that help is needed. Further, I applaud any high quality, remedial help given where needed, and given in a timely manner that, will help every student achieve the sense of dignity that comes from being literate..  The motives of House Bill 1238 in those respects are right on target.

     What disturbs me is that public education has been trying recently to erase consequences of the efforts and behavior of students themselves.  Over the past several years, the entire burden of imparting those essential skills of being able to read, understand, calculate, and to think critically and creatively fell first and almost entirely upon teachers through No Child Left Behind, students becoming mere passive vessels for knowledge that teachers would somehow make happen (hypodermic injections?).  Now the burden is to be placed upon parents, while consequences are slowly removed for students.  When students are relieved of any consequences for behavior and academic achievement, I wonder about the possible results down the road being better or worse than what they are now.  I am very much against social promotion, which appears to remove any value to the idea of effort and earning something by actual work.  The workplace in the outside world is still performance-based  That world outside the other side of the halls of academia is not an easy place to survive, and I wonder if that world will be so concerned about individual “feelings” in the work place.  The strongest argument for social promotion is the occasional and  permanent emotional scarring left on students who are held back as their peers continue. It makes me wonder about the scarring that could occur in sending kids out into the work force with fake credentials, diplomas that have become one-size-fits-all.

     Are we truly reaching the point at which promotion means nothing, and that our message is, “Well, that’s OK.  If school is too hard for you, we’ll promote you anyway.” Doesn’t that diminish the value of what others are working for?  See if that works for pay checks in the world I mentioned earlier.  Imagine a student’s attitude about learning anything that is not really required.  My attitude as a kid would have been, “So what?  Why should I work for quality when they’re going to give me a diploma anyway?  What’s the point?”  And I don't believe that attitude would be so uncommon among students today either. Will parents take the yoke upon themselves that teachers could no longer carry?  Are we placing more responsibility on students than we used to, or much less?  We are so interested in avoiding bruised egos through education and everything else, that I see coming our way, eventually, a society and economy in which no one really has to do anything he doesn’t want to do, and it scares me. 

     One of the greatest problems caused by educational "theory" over the past thirty years has been the enthronement of "self esteem," even if it is delivered in a completely synthetic way.  I still believe that no one can give anyone else self esteem.  It is something that has to be earned in order for it to mean anything.  Whatever currently fashionable labels we assign to promotions or classes, students are, as they have always been, sharp enough to know exactly what those labels signify.  We need to discern carefully the differences between earning what one is given, and what is simply handed over on a silver platter.  When the two become the same thing, we're in big trouble.

JB

Excerpt from my first book, ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood (published, January, 2010 in Baltimore)

I love memories of Grandma Bolinger from the 1950's.  She was a bit eccentric, and we always had a good time.  In this chapter there is some information on Grandma's background, her mynah bird, our cat, Poody, and my younger brother, Davy.  I've always hoped that other families were possibly just as weird as ours, but I suppose they wouldn't admit if they actually were.  JB

The book is available as a Kindle edition on Amazon.com or hard copy from the Indiana State Museum Book Store for $7.95.  They ship the same day.

 http://www.indianamuseum.org/shop/cats.asp?categoryid=27


    

Tippsy

Chapter 17... HERE COMES GERTIE...THERE GOES POODY

     My father's mother was something of a nomad. After she divorced my grandfather, she spent much of her time visiting her four children and her grandchildren. The four worked it out in shifts of up to three months at a stretch, allowing each family the joy of hosting Grandma. I use the word, "joy" advisedly, as the frame of reference was apt to change so that it became most significant as we waved goodbye to Grandma at the end of her visit. I want to be fair about this and look carefully at recollections we share as a family of those visits to our house during the 1950's and 1960's.

     First, it might be well to explain the circumstances under which Grandma Bolinger divorced her husband 

Frank, our grandfather. Grandpa Bolinger had a farm with sheep, cows, horses, chickens and pigs. He also raised prize Chow Chow dogs that had blue tongues, making them worth at least twelve hundred dollars apiece, even in the late 1950's. A no-nonsense man who had survived a difficult childhood with his immigrant German parents, he had also endured The Great Depression, and thirty years of marriage to Gertie (Gertrude Alice), our grandmother.

     After World War II, Grandpa had a mynah bird named Tippsy who could not only repeat words and phrases 

Poody

but also imitate the actual tone quality of human voices. My grandfather was a man of rich and colorful speech with a repertoire of profanities that defined his character for over half a century. Grandma would lecture him and warn him about using such language, especially when there were guests, but nothing stopped his raspy banter. Tippsy would imitate my grandmother's voice saying, "Don't talk like that, Frank!" This would only infuriate her further, and the bird would be delighted to repeat other often used phrases that flew from Grandma's mouth until one day, the family minister stopped by to pay a call. When Tippsy called Reverend Donaldson a "dirty cretin," (impersonating Grandpa's voice with frightening accuracy), grandma dropped her favorite Royal Doulton tea pot, shattering it beyond repair. Screaming, "That's the end! That's the end!" she ran from the room and upstairs, and the minister politely excused himself, trying to smooth things over with some platitudes like, "Things like that happen." I can imagine that my grandfather only smiled, knowing perfectly well that no such thing had ever happened before in the clergyman's lifetime or ever  would again. The two men shook hands, and Reverend Donaldson left the house to Tippsy's screams of "That's the end! That's the end!" Divorce papers were filed the next day.

     My brother and sister and I enjoyed Grandma's visits, because on weekends when my parents would go out, she would be our baby-sitter and allow us to stay up later on Saturday nights to watch CREATURE FEATURES, a show that allowed us to see such classic films as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, THE GIANT GILA MONSTER, REVENGE OF THE CREATURE and INVADERS FROM MARS. We would make a barrel of popcorn and curl up on the livingroom sofa in our pajamas to be scared out of our wits. One of our props during these sessions was a fox stole that Grandma took everywhere with her, even in the summer. It had glass eyes, disturbing because, of course, they never blinked. Its mouth, frozen into a perpetually menacing grin, revealed the original canine teeth. Old and matted, the stole made a terrific hand puppet that we used to spook each other during scary portions of the movies we were watching. We named him Phil and fed him kernels of popcorn. One of my most vivid childhood memories is that of sitting in church, singing hymns and gazing at the malevolent face of that fox draped over Grandma Bolinger's shoulders, bits of popcorn still between its teeth.

     Our big cat Poody was rust-colored and had the temperament of a pit-bull on crack. If he were outside with us in the yard, no one else could enter the property without danger of being attacked by this psychotic feline. Every kid in the neighborhood knew about Poody, the evil and possessed cat that thought he was a dog and that he would fling himself, hissing and spitting at anyone who dared enter his property. I guess we never needed a watch dog. No one else we knew had a guard cat, something that later on might have proved to be one of those GUINNESS BOOK things. The Bruce Lee of neighborhood cats, Poody remained a regional anomaly until his death the summer of 1954 from a passing car that was not intimidated by our cat's karate moves. We knew that with Poody's death an era had passed and that a solemn ceremony was required for burying him in our garden. An old Philco radio cardboard box lined with pink satin from one of Mother's old evening dresses served as the casket, and our entire neighborhood of kids came to the funeral, perhaps more from a combination of morbid curiosity and celebration than from sentiment.
                                                         
     The following summer, as soon as school was out and Grandma came for a visit, my brother David was seized by a morbid inspiration to take her fox stole out of its box and chase other kids in the neighborhood with it, telling them that he had dug up Poody, who was still alive. He accompanied these threats with hissing and spitting noises that sent children fleeing for their lives. It must be understood that the stole retained its teeth and that its flat face suggested strongly that it had probably been run over by a car, and from a distance, its rusty color and bushy tail were the image of our deceased Poody. That night my brother hid in the guest closet near the front door as neighbor after neighbor rang the bell to ask our parents why David had dug up a dead cat to terrify innocent and impressionable children. The most popular suggestion was to seek psychiatric care for David, but Mrs. Mihalic's advice was my favorite, that David should be forced to write apologies to every child on the block for his heinous behavior. That, in fact, was what our parents made David do. The letters were all printed in crayon and delivered personally by him to the homes of all the plaintiffs on Parrish Avenue and beyond. This time Poody was declared officially dead. Again.