Younger Brothers

This is probably an Easter, 1958, picture of my two younger, male siblings. Looks like they're into the jelly beans, although John's favorite was Peeps. He's the guy holding the bag. Mark is on the table. John was the driven one. He would get up during the night, the night before Easter, after the Easter bunny had left his candy on little plastic grass nests scattered throughout the downstairs and determine which nests had peeps in them. Then, in the morning when we'd scramble downstairs with our baskets in hand, greed and avarice in our hearts, he'd somehow manage to create a monopoly on the peeps. They only came in yellow and pink back in my days. Obviously we led lives of want. Not.

My brothers were only a year apart in school. This gave them someone to play with on the weekends and after school--all the time. As the 4 or 5-year older sister, I didn't have a ready made playmate, so I recall I was a bit envious. They had a knack for getting into trouble, however, that I seemed to lack, which was all to the good. One time, dad caught them smoking cigarettes (we all tried cigarettes at various times during childhood, sometimes together as a group), so he thought he'd try some reverse psychology on the boys. He told John that he could smoke as long as John smoked in his presence. John immediately got on the phone to his friend, Johnny Black, who lived 5 houses down the way. "Johnny," John blurted out excitedly, "It's ok. Dad says we can smoke here! With him!"

Their most lasting contribution to my childhood, though was when they came up with a classification system for farts. As boys are wont to do, they spoke of the process of elimination often and with much hilarity. Dingleberries were a topic of many conversations. Many of the neighborhood dogs, including our own, were plagued with dingleberries. Probably due to their rich diets. The boys would dissolve into peals of laughter when they saw a dog scooting around on its butt, trying to clean up. It was thus only logical that farts were a source of much carrying on. So much so, that they invented code words, so they could discuss them without raising the wrath of Mom, who, was not only a language purist but a language Puritan. We could not use the word 'poop,' which was reserved for swearing, and we were forbidden to use the word "pee" whatsoever when describing No. 1.

My brothers' fart classification system, like Caesar's Gaul, was divided into three parts. First, there were Tobeys. These were the loud, embarrassing ones, that no amount of other noise could cover up. Then there were Roses, the sticky and sweet kind. Finally, and these were the most important class, the ones they worked hard to perfect, were the SBDs. Silent but Deadly. They would glide up next to me, rest a moment and then scream, "SBD!" cackle shrilly and run away as fast as they could leaving me in the dust. I was either on the phone with a girlfriend, or nose first, absorbed in a book, oblivious to the rest of the world, and thus, easy game and unable to catch them and pay them back.

Until now!

Why some things really don't change--a bit of a muse

Richard Nixon on Clinton Street in Defiance, OH 1957

I was looking on FaceBook the other day, checking up on high school friends from Defiance and a name jumped out at me that I had not seen for more than 30 years: Ernie Humbert.  It got me to thinking about my childhood and the kinds of major events that broke apart my world at least for a short period of time. And there were some. What I am talking about are deaths and/or murders.

These days, when a murder is committed that bears some relationship to school children, grief counselors are brought in to help the kids deal with and process the emotions that are generated by the actions. Luckily my kids did not experience any murders or deaths that were sufficient to require professional help. And this despite going to public schools in a large city. And two of them went to the science/math magnet high school in the 'bad' part of Seattle.

Even though I went to high school in small town Ohio, during those halcyon days that preceded the worst of the anti war and civil rights riots, we had two rather lurid murders.

The first involved Ernie. He was a senior in high school in 1965, so he was five years ahead of me. I was a 7th grader at the time. But DefianceJjunior High was next door and physically connected to the high school. The junior high and the high school shared the gym and the stage, and the choir and band rooms and we watched the high schoolers from a distance with the sort of admiration reserved now for heads of state. They were the almost grownups--the kids that knew what was going on. The cool ones. Ernie worked as a soda jerk for Kuntz's drug store, which was a major stop after school for students from both the high school and junior. Ernie waited on me a time or two, but as I was a junior high student, I was beneath notice. Small cokes were a nickel and you could add a flavor for 5 cents more. I started with cherry and moved to chocolate. Ernie had a ready smile and from what I could see, worked very hard.

One day, he took a large fruit knife from Kuntz's drug store and walked over to the Toons' house by St. John's Catholic Chuch.  Seems that he had developed a relationship with the mother of the family--a deep relationship. And for reasons that I still do not know, he took the knife and stabbed the father as he was sitting on the couch watching a game on tv, killing him. You can imagine that in small town Ohio, this was an electrifying event, given the young age of the murderer and his affair with Mrs. Toons . Yet, I remember very little of what happened after that. I know that Ernie went to prison but I have heard that he got a college degree while incarcerated, and was released after a number of years, having paid his debt to society.  No one even thought of prosecuting Mrs. Toons for having sex with an underage male, as would be the case today.

The other tragic deaths in Defiance that I remember occurred when a mother from our parish went crazy and shot her children, killing one or two, before turning the gun on herself, and committing suicide.  One of her kids, Mike,  a guy who was two years older than I was, survived, albeit with bullets in his head. My dad, the pediatrician, treated him, but never mentioned to my recollection, word one about it. I remember hearing from Mike, who hung out with a fast crowd at the time,  that because of the bullet wounds, he could not drink alcohol for a while, the only mention he made of the tragedy to me. Again, I do not remember that anything was done to psychologically help the remaining children of the family, or for those kids who were close to the family, or for their schoolmates. Things were different 45 years ago.

But it makes me realize that living in a small town does not protect you from the depredations of the world. In fact, it can give you a false sense of security. I would not trade my upbringing there for any other, but I enjoy and appreciate all the benefits I derive from living in a large city today. And I wonder if sometimes the dangers of living in a large city are exaggerated when compared to those of a small town. The plural of anecdote is not data, but still I wonder.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Dentistry notes from all over

I had my teeth cleaned by an expert today. He really knew his business. It was over in less than an hour but by the end, I could really feel the difference. He was not too timid to scrape off the plaque, although it was not entirely painless. And he showed me that I have been brushing my teeth wrong for, oh, more than 50 years. Here's the deal. You don't want to approach your teeth with the toothbrush at a 90 degree angle. Rather it should be at a 45 degree angle. And scrubbing hard does not mean getting the job done. As he asked me, do you use a scrubber on your fine china? Ooh. That hit home. He also said not to use a mouthwash that had alcohol in it--too harsh on the gums, even when they are at their healthiest. Finally, he suggested doing my evening dental hygiene routine an hour before bedtime, so I am not crashing while I am brushing my teeth--I will pay better attention to the tasks at hand. And there are three that should be done in the following order: 1) floss, 2) brush teeth for 2 minutes or more at the 45 degree angle, and 3) rinse with the non alcohol mouthwash. If I manage to eat or drink something afterwards, he said I should just floss or brush again depending.

So nothing like upending a 50+ year habit. We'll see if I can do it.

He also told me about some of the travails of Dr. W, the specialty dentist. As I mentioned before her practice is focused on cancer patients but also patients who are waiting for transplants. In order to do a transplant, one of the requirements is that you cannot have a mouth infection and she works to make sure that her patients are 'clean' there and ready to go otherwise. But not so fast. She has had situations, where a $250,000 transplant, after years of waiting, has been approved by Medicare or the state or a private insurance provider. But they won't approve the $1,000 in dental work that is a pre-requisite for the transplant to take place. This is absurd. In some situations, she has (forgive the expression) eaten the costs and done the work without compensation, so that someone who had been waiting 15 years for the transplant could finally get it. Again, this does not make sense. It's being pennywise and pound foolish.

Being at the dentist twice in less than a week, sent me on a reminiscence of dental visits past. I grew up in a small town in northwestern Ohio and our family dentist was a very nice guy, but he didn't believe in anesthetics for fillings. I remember a number of fillings installed where he hit the nerve and I jumped rather high. It's amazing I didn't lose part of the inside of my mouth or worse as a result. I wonder if he changed his practice at some point.

I also remembered my torts class my first year of law school. Our professor, who was just starting teaching law, was a nervous fellow who had a tough time standing in front of the class and talking for 50 minutes. But he was discussing one day the doctrine of res ipsa loquitor which translates to "the thing speaks for itself." And the example he used to illustrate this doctrine was a story about a woman who went to a dentist's office for a major treatment of some kind, one where the dentist had to put her under general anesthetic while she was in the dental chair. He administered the anesthetic and she went under, only to wake up and discover that one of the fingers of her right hand was broken. She inquired of the dentist and was met with stony silence. So, she eventually sued the doctor for negligence, alleging that the broken finger was res ipsa loquitor of the negligence because obviously she was not being treated for anything other than something wrong with her mouth. At trial, on the witness stand, the dentist finally broke down and confessed that the anesthetic he had given his patient was one, that at times, would cause the patient's muscles to seize up as she went under. And when the patient went under in the dental chair, her hands had clenched and the right hand had caught his testicles in a vise-like grip that he could not release until he broke one of her fingers!!

The story was amazing, but the fact that it was told to us by this fellow who was probably the shyest professor I ever had, was all the more amazing.

Off to brush my teeth--the right, no, the 45 degree way!