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The house on Old Bath Road was quite ordinary by the standards of Maine in the 1960’s, at least in terms of layout. It was, though, in far less than ideal condition, seeing as how no significant maintenance was undertaken during the fifteen or so years I lived there. As was typical at that time in rural New England, the house had no numerical address (or if it did, it was known only to the post office). One simply addressed mail to the recipient and their road name, and counted on the mailman to know who lived where. Also, in one additional nod to a simpler, quainter time, the house, so far as I recall, had no locks of any kind on the doors.

The house was, to put a name to it, a center hall colonial with four bedrooms, the master downstairs, and three more upstairs. In addition to the bedrooms, there was a single bath, living room, large kitchen, and two general-purpose rooms we referred to as the den and the sewing room. In today’s parlance, the den would have been a dining room, and the sewing room would have had no modern-day analog, though with a bit of renovation it could have served as an office or perhaps an anteroom to the master, which was the bedroom my mother occupied. There was a single full bathroom upstairs, off which was set a small low attic we used for storage. This attic was accessed through a door in the wall that was quite low, requiring a good deal of stooping to get through without hitting one’s head. Finally, there was a large cellar, which was perpetually damp and low-ceilinged and which had so much character it will be discussed in much greater detail shortly.

Some exterior details will help complete the picture. The exterior of the house, like most New England homes of the time, was clad with white wooden clapboards and trimmed in red. It was situated on a piece of land that comprised about one acre. It sat back from the road perhaps a hundred feet and was accessed by a curving gravel driveway that abutted the left side of the property boundary. A single mailbox stood affixed to a post at the end of the driveway, and we waited each morning by this mailbox during school months for the bus, a grim affair during winter months when the temperatures were routinely near or below zero. To the driveway’s left (west) was the main parking lot of Simpson’s Animal Park (another enterprise worthy of its own description in some future essay). To the right of our property, separated by first our outdoor clothesline (at one end of which grew a small patch of rhubarb) and then a narrow wooded area, lived the Alexanders, a family, who, despite living next door to us for my entire adolescence, we scarcely knew at all. I do not recall ever once entering their home, nor they ours, this despite the fact that there were plenty of other families up and down Old Bath Road who we knew well and visited often. Across Old Bath Road from us was a large rectangular field that Frank Simpson (owner of the aforementioned animal park) only occasionally used for overflow parking (Memorial Day, Fourth of July, etc.), but which the boys in the neighborhood used quite regularly for pick-up football games.

Behind the house was a yard perhaps ninety feet deep, at the back of which was a steep downhill grade that led into the back areas of the animal park and, eventually, if you walked another hundred yards or so down a gravel road, the south bank of the Androscoggin River, one of the largest in the state of Maine. At the point where it met our property, the river was about a mile wide, with the neighboring town of Topsham visible (silent h) on the far bank. In winter we would ride sleds down the back hill, a pastime not without its hazards, given the many trees along and at the bottom of the trail we used. To the right at the bottom of the hill ran a small creek which I spent endless hours damming up and then releasing great torrents of flood water, to the detriment of the small model villages I would construct downstream.

If you walked toward the back of our property but at an angle to your right, the downhill grade in that direction ended at what we referred to simply as the dump, which was exactly what it sounds like. At some point later in my childhood, we began having regular trash pick-up at the road, but this was not the case for many early years, and so we deposited our refuse at the bottom of this hill. Along the rear and side boundaries of the backyard, copious wild raspberries and blackberries grew on tall bushes and we picked and ate them at every opportunity, receiving our fair share of thorn scratches for our trouble. The yard behind the house was punctuated with numerous oak and maple trees. Three large oaks grew in the center of the backyard, sufficiently close together so that in my teenage years I built a multi-story tree house between them. Adjacent these oaks were two horseshoe posts placed a suitable distance apart, the tops of each steel post splayed and cracked from multiple instances of being pounded into and removed from the ground. Also near these oaks, quite early in my childhood, I have hazy memories of a chicken coop. Against the back exterior wall of the house stood two tall propane tanks that provided fuel for the stove, adjacent to which was the space where we kept our large trash bins. There was also a brick chimney, badly cracked about halfway up, in the center of the back wall that extended to a couple feet above the peak of the roof. Thinking back on it, the purpose of this chimney is a bit of a mystery to me, as it was in no way connected to our furnace and there were no fireplaces in the house. The final item I recall in our backyard was a well, one so shallow and ineffectual that it regularly failed to produce what we required for daily life, so much so that on at least a couple of occasions the fire department had to come and fill it from their tanker.

The front yard was of similar size to the back, and a row of large pines stood out near the road, the ground around them so gnarled with roots that mowing the lawn with our old hand-push mower was a considerable workout. A large maple closely abutted the right side of the driveway and I recall one time in my late teenage years failing to close the passenger side door of my cousin’s Vista Cruiser station wagon as he was backing out, causing him to rip off the entire door on the side of the tree. Other features of the front yard included a large rose bush beneath the forward-facing sewing room window and a small garden beneath the front living room and den windows. I don’t recall this garden ever being especially productive, though it did yield a recurring bunch of orange tiger lily plants each spring.

Early in my childhood there stood a barely sound single-car garage at the end of the driveway, adjacent the house. It was of such dubious structural integrity that at some point, around my tenth birthday, if I recall correctly, it was finally judged an unacceptable hazard for small children, and so a neighbor came by with a pickup truck, threw a chain around one of the roof beams, secured the other end to his trailer hitch, and pulled the entire thing down with a single effortless motion. Truth be told, a couple of neighborhood kids could probably have pushed it over without the need for the truck.

These are the basic facts about the property and exterior of the house. But there are myriad details about the interior that are worth describing as well, particularly those that in some way or other directly affected my upbringing. So, starting from the top and working downward:

The Bathroom

Our single bathroom was spartan and unremarkable—one tub/shower, one toilet, one sink. It was accessed by simply continuing straight after ascending to the top of the staircase. And it was oddly laid out, at least by modern standards, long and thin. In addition to its curious layout, the bathroom was also unusual in that because it abutted the sloping back roof of the house, the ceiling was steeply angled rather than flat as you walked past the tub toward the toilet and sink. There was a single small window to your right as you faced the sink, and a medicine cabinet was embedded in the wall. The window overlooked the back yard and it, like every window in the house, was of the old double-hung style with single-pane glass throughout, meaning of course that the house was not at all energy efficient. (Slight digression: Back in that time, before the introduction of double- and triple-paned windows, New England homeowners routinely employed what were known as storm windows—large removable wooden frames of glass that were hung from clips over the existing windows to replicate at least somewhat the insulating effect of modern double-pane glass. These storm windows were removed in summer and put into storage.) As it was only practical to place storm windows over downstairs window (we did not own a ladder), the upstairs windows leaked terribly during frigid Maine winters and I recall many a morning waking to see ornate frost patterns on the outside (and if it was a cold enough night, the inside) of the glass. During my early childhood, it was also possible to hang out clothes to dry through this window using a pulley-mounted clothesline, one end of which was mounted just outside the bathroom window, the other to a distant tree. If you were careless with the laundry, you could easily drop a bedsheet or dress shirt two stories to the ground below.

My Bedroom

Our family was in the fortunate position of having precisely the number of bedrooms in our home as we had people requiring them (one parent and three siblings—four bedrooms). Mine was to the left at the top of the stairs. It was of more than adequate size and included two windows, one that looked out over the backyard, affording pretty much the same view as the smaller bathroom window, and another that looked to the west toward Simpson’s parking lot. Aside from the usual bedroom furnishings—bed, dresser (or bureau in New England parlance), tall wardrobe for hanging clothes, and a desk—the primary thing one would have noticed upon entering my room was an abundance of plastic airplane models. This was my primary hobby growing up, one I shared with a couple of friends who lived a mile or so down the road. Like nearly every male child of the sixties, I also had NASA posters celebrating the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs on my faux wood-panel walls, posters which morphed into black light art once the seventies arrived and I entered high school. The airplane models that featured so prominently in my room were, depending on which year you visited, either set out neatly on shelves (of which I had many) or hung with thin strings from the ceiling, a practice I employed until I was twelve or so.

The only somewhat unusual aspect of my bedroom was that in order to promote the circulation of heat throughout the house, there was a square hole cut into my floor approximately one foot square, into which a metal grating had been placed. This allowed heat to rise into my room from the stove located in the kitchen directly below, and it was known simply as the register, though I have not the slightest idea why we called it that. In addition to facilitating the circulation of heat in winter, the register provided a handy communication portal between upstairs and downstairs, and it also afforded the not insignificant benefit of allowing me a direct view of whatever was being prepared for supper, as it looked directly down onto the stovetop.

My Sisters’ Bedrooms

I’m not in a position to say too terribly much about my sisters’ bedrooms, as they were, of course, off-limits to the one male in the house. Both of the girls’ bedrooms were to the right as you ascended the stairs. There was a tiny vestibule that separated the two rooms, and on the back wall of this vestibule was mounted a wall phone inside a shallow nook. Also, overhead in the vestibule, was a small square hole in the ceiling through which it was possible to access a second attic area. We very rarely used this space for anything, though, as it was quite cumbersome and inconvenient to access. Once you made the first right and were facing the phone, my older sister’s room was to the right and my younger sister’s to the left. Each of these bedrooms, like mine, had two windows and my oldest younger sister’s room was somewhat the larger of the two. And while my bedroom required a free-standing wardrobe for my hanging clothes, each of the girl’s rooms had built-in closets. That is, frankly, about all I recall of these two rooms.

The Stairs

There was nothing much unusual about our single central staircase aside from it being perhaps a bit narrower than what you would encounter in homes nowadays. It comprised thirteen steps of painted oak, most of which creaked in various spots as is typical of older homes. Descending the stairs, you turned right at the bottom to enter the kitchen, or left to go into the den. If you continued straight at the foot of the stairs, you would find yourself in a foyer (which we called the entryway) that led to outside. This was the room where we kept all the outdoor clothing, boots, etc., and it served as our main point of access into and out of the house, as well as a buffer against all the snow, mud, and other detritus that accompanies winter in Maine.

The Den

Our family had no need of a formal dining room, as nearly all meals took place at the kitchen table and we were not the sort of family that ever entertained. The den was a small square room whose main purpose was to house the old upright piano that I took lessons and practiced on for five or so years in my youth. The top of the piano was lined with family photos, and the only other furnishings of note in the room were a large chair in the corner, a wooden desk, and an old Singer foot-pumped cabinet sewing machine, which, oddly enough, did not reside in the sewing room for most of my childhood. The only other notable feature of the den was a second entrance to the house, one that faced the road and was almost never used, so rarely, in fact, that on occasions when we did have reason to open the front door, it was usually quite challenging getting the thing unstuck. Of the two windows in this room, one looked west toward Simpson’s and the other faced Old Bath Road. The den is also where we set up the Christmas tree each December.

The Living Room

One of the more notable features of our house was that in order to walk from the den into the living room you had to step either on or over a large metal grating that vented heat from the furnace into the upstairs. There were no plenums or other circulatory ducting in the house and any heat we received emanated from this single large grating. It was four or so feet square and it got warm enough when the furnace was running so that walking on it barefoot was a daunting prospect. Because the furnace was an old oil-fueled unit (more on this when we get to the cellar), not only did it emit heat, but also a wide array of noises, depending on whether it was running, turning on, or shutting down. I think back on these sounds being somewhat akin to the heartbeat of the house.

Like most homes, the living room was our biggest room. We had pretty much the same furnishings everybody had in their living rooms in the sixties, i.e., sofa, chairs, a bookshelf, and a television. Ours was black and white for many years until at some point in my teens, through an odd series of events whose details I never learned, my mother won a new color television on some radio contest. That certainly livened up our watching of Batman, Gilligan’s Island, and Saturday morning cartoons. We also had one of those immense fake-wood vintage console stereo systems that were popular at the time, complete with lift-open top, built-in speakers, and multi-record changer.

There were four doorways in the living room—the one from the den (over the furnace grate), another that led to the sewing room, a double-width opening into the kitchen, and a latchable door that led down into the cellar. I don’t recall a whole lot of activity taking place in the living room, save for TV watching (with supper in your lap if you were lucky) and the opening of gifts on Christmas morning (an annual rite of high drama that merits its own essay someday).

Sewing Room

Not much to say about this small room except to note its misleading name. It would have been more properly called the ironing room, as that was the principal activity that took place there. Through most of my childhood, my mother took in ironing from neighborhood women and the primary item of furnishing—if you can call it that—was an ironing board that got far more than its fair share of work during those years. There was also a pullout futon bed that resided in the room, though I don’t recall anyone ever using it, save for a Navy guy who boarded with us for about a year in my early teens. This little room had two windows, one that looked forward to the road and another that overlooked our outside clothesline. In addition to the doorway back into the living room, there was a second doorway in the sewing room that provided an alternative entrance into my mother’s bedroom.

Master Bedroom

As with my sisters’ rooms upstairs, I had relatively few occasions to spend time in the master bedroom. My main memory of this room was sneaking about in the days leading up to Christmas to peek at what my mother had bought us, all of which items she cleverly (so she believed) hid under her bed. Aside from the usual furnishings one would expect to find in a master bedroom, one notable item was a pine end table that I built for her in junior high industrial arts class. As for doorways, besides the one from the sewing room, there was a passageway into the kitchen and an exterior entrance that led onto a porch along the east side of the house. Descending the stairway from this porch provided access to our clothesline, which we used for many years prior to getting our first clothes dryer (and even sometimes afterward if the weather was good).

The Kitchen

Our kitchen was quite large and was the primary room around which life revolved during much of my upbringing. The central item was the gas stove, but most of the other basics one would expect to find in a kitchen were there as well. In addition to the usual refrigerator, cabinetry, sink, table and chairs, the kitchen also served as our laundry room. The layout, though, was less than ideal, as the washing machine was on one side of the stove and the dryer was on the other side, which made the transfer of wet clothes from one unit to the other somewhat less than convenient. In later years, the ironing board was moved from the sewing room into the kitchen as well, and it occupied a spot at the far end opposite the sink. Adjacent this section of wall in the kitchen, three vertical copper pipes fed from the upstairs bathroom, a large one for drainage (coming down) and two narrow ones for the hot and cold water feeds (going up), pipes which, in any modern home, would of course be situated inside the wall.

The kitchen floor was linoleum, as was common at that time, and it had been there long enough to show black wear marks through the pattern in the usual high-traffic areas (front of the sink, etc.). Most meals were taken together at the kitchen table, which was of the Formica and stainless style common in the 60’s (at some later point this changed to a wooden table). Two windows—one over the sink, the other adjacent the dryer—looked out into the backyard, and a third was behind the kitchen table looking westward toward Simpsons. This last window was directly above the exterior bulkhead entrance to the cellar, which we will get to in a bit. Standing directly in front the stove and looking upward, one could see the bottom of the register that we discussed when describing my bedroom. I can only imagine that on more than one occasion bits of dust and detritus from upstairs fell down into the pot of whatever was cooking on the stovetop. I’m sure none of us are any the worse for it.

The Cellar

At long last we come to the area of the house that was truly my domain, even more so than my bedroom in many respects. Like nearly every New England home, the house had a cellar (basement in other areas of the country) whose area encompassed that of nearly the entire house above, save for my mother’s bedroom and the sewing room, which I believe were later add-ons to the original house structure. To descend the cellar stairs, one first gave a tug on the string that turned on the overhead light, an unshaded bare bulb that threw harsh shadows everywhere. Once so illuminated, two things were immediately apparent about the cellar stairs (aside from the fact that it was an open construction, i.e., no risers). First, there were many narrow shelves built into the walls on both sides of the descending stairway, shelves we used to store canned goods and occasionally preserved foods, though I don’t recall us doing a lot of the latter, i.e. canning. The other notable aspect of the stairway was the ceiling as you descended. It was quite close to your head and covered with what I can only describe as old newspaper printing masters, thick pressed-board copies of newsprint that had been stapled to the overhead rafters.

Once downstairs and standing on the concrete floor, the first sense one invariably felt was dampness. The foundation walls were concrete block, which leaked profoundly during heavy rains. There was a narrow channel cut into the floor around the entire perimeter of the cellar and a sump drain in the northeast corner, though there was no sump pump. Whatever water made its way into the cellar simply drained down through this opening. It was common to find at least puddles on the floor (which was not pitched properly for optimum drainage) after a rain. And if it was a significant rain, there could easily be a foot or more of standing water that might take a day or more to finally drain away. This fact caused us to place items on shelving as high up as we could manage.

The second sense one got in the cellar was a general feeling of claustrophobia created by the quite low ceiling joists. Anyone more than five foot ten could not stand comfortably upright without striking their head against the bottom of a joist, an inconvenient fact that didn’t affect me much in my youth, though I saw more than one adult succumb while trying to work down there. The closest I ever came was once turning and walking forehead-first into an unprotected light bulb, several of which hung from the joists. Also hanging from the joists were numerous jars of hardware. This now-long-defunct practice was a stroke of genius in its day. To store nails, screws, nuts, and bolts, one simply found a jar with screw lid, nailed the lid to the bottom of the joist, and then screwed on the jar. In many New England cellars at that time it was common to find numerous rows of these suspended jars.

In addition to the interior stairs from the living room, there was nominally one additional way into the cellar, and that was by using the exterior bulkhead stairs. Alas, this was not a viable option at our home, for, despite the existence of an outside bulkhead door, the stairs that should have been inside were so rotted with age and moisture as to be unusable. Thus, we never had any practical reason to open the large wooden door that was set into the wall beneath the bulkhead. The only real purpose this doorway served was as yet another way for rain to get in during storms.

There was copious shelving in the cellar, and one of the main things to be found on this shelving was a plethora of old television parts, e.g., glass tubes, disassembled chasses, etc. In addition to the significant time I spent in my bedroom with airplane models, I was also a bit of a tinkerer when it came to electronics, the high point of which was the successful completion of several Heathkits, which any gadget-oriented male over the age of fifty will recall as being ready-to-assemble mail-order electronic equipment that one received in kit form, requiring soldering and assembly to create all manner of stereo equipment, radios, test gear, etc. As for the television sets, I’m not sure that I ever successfully repaired one, but I vividly recall being blown off the workbench one time when I exerted a bit too much force trying to remove a strap that held a picture tube to a chassis, causing the tube to implode violently and leave me on the damp floor wondering what I had done wrong.

In the center of the front (street-facing) wall, at about eye level, was our fuse box, of the old sort that required screw-in glass fuses. I recall numerous wires going off in all sorts of directions in a far more haphazard manner than any competent electrician would every have tolerated. It must have been at least a reasonably robust system, though, for I do not recall too many instances of needing to go downstairs to change fuses. The other primary occupant of the cellar—alluded to in earlier sections—was our antiquated oil-burning furnace (which I believe was formerly a coal unit, though that would have preceded my birth, and would also account for its immensity), along with its faithful companion, a five-hundred-gallon oil tank that was periodically filled via a pipe that rose upward and through the cellar wall, about two feet of which extended above ground level along the front of the house. The tank was black and immense and looked more than a little frightening, particularly in the usually poor lighting of that corner of the cellar. The furnace itself was a hulking cylindrical thing, approximately five feet in diameter, extending from floor to ceiling. Mounted to the front at floor level was the oil pump and motor assembly, which suffered periodically from water damage during particularly severe flooding incidents, until someone finally took the initiative and figured out a way to raise it a couple feet off the floor while modifying the connections so that it still functioned properly. Above the motor assembly was a heavy iron door you could open if you cared to watch the massive thing in action. Because of its age, it was never the most efficient method of heating a house (particularly a two-story one), but to its credit it managed to keep us warm through all those harsh Maine winters, which is no mean feat.

There are doubtless many additional nuances of the Old Bath Road house that I have omitted in this initial overview description. I will update this essay appropriately as these elements occur to me or I am reminded of them by family members and friends.

In point of fact, there are two main issues I have with you. One could be argued to not be altogether your fault. The second is, though, entirely on you. My first problem is all the bizarre and frequently destructive things believers have done in your name down through the years. Because of you people routinely act in sanctimonious and overbearing ways. They strive to frighten others into belief by repeating fairy tales about hell fire and damnation. They solicit money from people who can ill afford to give it. They argue incessantly about whose god is the correct one. In ages past they slaughtered animals in grotesque ceremonies. Today they use notions like human dominion and a presumably imminent second coming to justify abusing the planet we live on. And, most troublingly of all, people have spent the better part of their history persecuting, torturing, and murdering one another in your name. Even if I knew with certainty that you were real, I would still enthusiastically denounce you for this latter reason alone. Still, as unpleasant as all of these things are, it’s at least plausible that all this overzealous behavior on the part of adherents is not entirely your fault.

Which brings me to the second issue—human suffering. It is widely accepted by believers (of all faiths) that you are both omniscient and omnipotent. If the former is true, then you are aware of the millions of people who suffer and die needlessly every day here on earth. And if the latter is true, then it is within your power to bring an end to that suffering and death. The combination of which leads to only a handful of possible outcomes. Either you are not aware of all the suffering, meaning that you are, in fact, not omniscient, or you are aware and you either choose to let it continue (which would make you just plain mean spirited) or you are unable to stop it (which would mean you’re not omnipotent after all). I find all three of these potential outcomes grossly unacceptable and most certainly unworthy of any deity who aspires to command the reverence of the human race. Nothing personal—just putting all my cards out on the table here.

While the foregoing is easily sufficient justification for refusing to believe in you, there’s yet another aspect to this whole thing that bears some discussion. Despite everything I’ve said so far, it would, nevertheless, seem a reasonable hedge to espouse belief in you, especially given that a) no one can be truly certain of your existence (all assertions to the contrary notwithstanding) and b) the presumed consequences to me are not inconsiderable if, as I readily concede is possible, it turns out that I’m wrong about this whole thing. As I think through this, it occurs to me that my initial two reasons are less grounds for disbelief and really more grounds for not much liking you if, in fact, you are real. As for why I choose not to believe in the first place, it boils down to a simple lack of proof on your part and concomitant lack of faith on mine. And let me state here, for the record, that I readily accept the long-established logical maxim that a negative cannot be proven (i.e., that you incontrovertibly do not exist), which means I can be no more certain of your nonexistence than believers can be of your existence. Nevertheless, your manifest failure to make known your existence and to oblige me to instead rely solely on faith, demonstrates a degree of hubris and narcissism that is yet another reason to not like you much even if it does turn out that you’re real. Put simply, I believe in those things that can be directly observed and objectively scrutinized, both of which tests you fail profoundly and continuously. I should add, at the risk of sounding callous, that I am utterly unmoved by the fact that billions around the world do believe in your existence, or at least say that they do. Don’t take this the wrong way, but millions of people also used to believe that the sun revolved around the earth and that earth itself was flat. Humans have historically learned to apply science and observation to evolve in their knowledge and to outgrow manifestly nonsensical beliefs. Well, some of them have, at any rate.

I am, as I suggested above, enough of a realist to concede that I may be utterly mistaken about all of this. It’s conceivable—not terribly plausible, but at least conceivable—that you are actually real, and that there will come a time in the distant future when I come face to face with that inconvenient fact. If that tragic day should arrive, and if I am, prior to being sent on my way to eternal damnation, granted a moment or two to converse with you one-on-one, I will not hesitate to again bring up the numerous points raised in this prayer (on the chance that you never actually hear this attempt at communication). I’m sure, by the way, that you’ve been presented with all of these arguments plenty of times in the past, and I’m sure as well that you have your own reasons for carrying on the way you do. Don’t get me wrong—I totally get that it’s kind of cool to be mysterious and to want to test people’s faith and all that. It’s just that the idea of suspending all rationality and believing in the reality of supernatural beings and events simply because there happens to be a book that says they exist—well, there are plenty of books out there (not to be snitty in the middle of a serious conversation, but much better written books at that) that assert all sorts of strange things, but I don’t believe these things simply because I saw them in a book. I actually happen to be of the view that it’s a pretty senseless thing to believe in something simply because someone wrote it down or because some authority figure told you that you should believe in it, particularly when what you’re being exhorted to believe is in the supernatural realm and fails even the most basic test of plausibility.

So I guess what we’re left with is simply agreeing to disagree. If it turns out I’m right and you are nothing but a fantasy, then that means no one will have heard my prayer and my life will go on pretty much as it always has until I eventually shuffle off this mortal coil and end up in a box in the ground. If, on the other hand, I am horribly wrong and you’re really out there someplace (and you find the time in your no-doubt busy schedule to listen to my humble exhortation), then I hope you’ll have the decency to at least drop me some sort of sign to show that you heard my prayer. Though it may not have come across in this discussion, I’m actually a pretty open-minded guy and if I’m faced with the incontrovertible truth about a thing as important as this—well, let’s just say that I reserve the right to change my mind.

Thanks for listening and, really, give some thought to that whole believe-in-me-with-all-your-heart-even-though-I-offer-no-proof-whatsoever thing. We’re only human after all.

Cheers,

Brian

The ostensible purpose of shop class was to instruct adolescent boys in that most manly of life skills, the proper use of tools, both manual and powered. The degree to which the student already possessed any of these skills prior to reaching seventh grade was a function of what sort of father you had. If he was the handy sort, had a well-equipped basement or garage, and was a skilled enough negotiator to cajole your mother into allowing her twelve-year-old son to operate power tools, then you had an initial advantage over kids like me, whose closest encounter with tools prior to shop class was using a hammer to explode caps on a rock in the back yard. As things turned out, that admittedly limited experience did not serve me particularly well when the time finally arrived to cobble together my first birdhouse.

But while the purpose of shop class was, on paper at least, the safe and proper use of tools, it was, at its essence, far more than that. It was a young man’s introduction to that most fundamental of human endeavors, the creation of something from nothing, or if not nothing, then the rawest of raw materials. Thinking back on it now, it would have been a helpful and potentially inspiring introduction if the instructor had placed what we were about to undertake into its proper historical context. From the first troglodyte polishing a fragment of flint into an arrowhead to the nineteenth century industrial titans who forged steel into bridges and locomotives, the conversion of raw materials into useful objects is the very essence of what it means to be civilized. It would have been nice to hear something like that from Mister Whitaker before he started lecturing us about the differences between red oak and knotty pine.

One wonders, with the benefit of many years’ hindsight and reflection, what the job description for a shop teacher must read like. This was, after all, not like being a sports coach, in which case you were, at least at our school, obliged to teach one or more actual academic classes in addition to fulfilling your coaching duties[1]. Shop teachers were full-time shop teachers. It went, one presumed, without saying that the candidate required copious experience with the complete panoply of tools available in your standard wood and metal shops, the very best indication of said experience being the absence of one, or at most two, minor appendages. This was, though, I suspect, a bit of a balancing act. Given that an important element of any shop teacher’s repertoire was the ability to wax trenchantly and more or less constantly about safety, the ability to dramatically wave about one’s four-fingered hand served the dual purpose of impressing the safety message into the psyche of your charges while also engaging their attention in a manner uniquely consistent with the gruesome proclivities of that age and gender. On the other hand, as it were, too many missing digits might seem to suggest to the educational powers-that-be a level of practical incompetence inappropriate to the position being sought.

It was also critical to the success of any shop teacher that he have at his command a robust arsenal of grisly accident stories with which to reinforce the safety message. It didn’t particularly matter whether these stories were true or apocryphal, so long as they conveyed one or more important lessons about why, for example, it was a bad idea to interrupt someone who was working at a table saw, or the sorts of grim things that could happen to the boy who carelessly left his shirt tail or gold chain hanging out while working around a piece of rapidly-spinning, sharply-bladed machinery. In this sense at least, shop class was a close rival to Driver’s Ed for its potential gross-out factor, the latter being notable primarily for the day you got to watch that old fifties film with all the bloody car wrecks.

And finally, not to belabor the whole safety thing too much, the shop teacher needed to convey an excellent command of discipline and respect. After all, dealing effectively with two kids passing notes in the back of English Comp class is a rather different ballgame from managing a roomful of pubescent boys with power tools. All of which goes some way to explaining why the stereotypical shop teacher had the look of a retired Marine Corp drill sergeant and the demeanor to match.

As a quasi-academic pursuit, shop was altogether different from everything else you did in school. There were no exams, no studying, no homework. You were there to master hands-on skills and, in the end, to produce a physical object of practical utility, artistic merit, or, rarely but ideally, both. The ephemeral test scores and rote fact regurgitation that comprised the raison detre of trigonometry, social studies, and history bore no resemblance—physical or psychological—to the visceral satisfaction that attended the unveiling of your first birdhouse or cutting board. And while the parents who were dreaming of Harvard Law School for their progeny might have taken small satisfaction in this necessary adolescent ritual, there was no denying the gut-level feeling of raw accomplishment.[2]

For me it was a tumultuous experience. I grew up one of those geeky bespectacled kids who built plastic model airplanes, so the general concept of working with my hands and producing something physical and concrete was not a new thing. But the transition from tweezers and glue to circular saws and drill presses was nothing less than life altering. To this day, I can calm whatever stress the world throws my way through the simple expedient of sanding by hand a fine piece of maple or drilling holes with a well sharpened Forstner bit. My affinity for tools—particularly antique hand tools—is so ingrained in my psyche that if the day ever comes when pecuniary hardship obliges me to sell my tools to buy food, I will be a hungry fellow indeed.

It’s easy to imagine that the strong connection between men and their tools can be traced directly back to that first semester of junior high shop class. Or it may be that the class served only as a vehicle to draw forth from certain boys a latent attraction there since birth, something that’s hard-wired into the male DNA. If so, I hope that somewhere there are biologists striving to identify the gene that draws men to the tool section at Home Depot, for I have this gene in spades and would take pleasure in knowing its name.

Setting aside for a moment the purely physical gratification of building things, there was, as well, a strong metaphysical aspect to shop class that is often overlooked. Virtually every lesson, trick, or technique bestowed upon students by the instructor had a profound philosophical real-world analog that applied to everyone, whether or not you happened to be handy with router and joiner. Perhaps the greatest of these life lessons is “measure twice, cut once,” an aphorism bestowed with such power and breadth that, while it now borders on being hackneyed, it is, nevertheless, as applicable to the campaigns of Napoleon or the speeches of Lincoln as it is to the humblest birdhouse fabricator. Similarly, an action as seemingly banal as sanding a piece of wood along its grain (i.e., “going with the grain”) rather than orthogonal to it contains an ineluctable truth that requires little if any elucidation. The neophyte learns, as well, that hardwood, while more challenging to work with and less forgiving of error, produces, in the end, a vastly more long-lasting and satisfying product. Choosing pine is the easy way out. Selecting maple demonstrates fortitude and perspicacity, possibly even wisdom.

That said, I nevertheless chose white pine (in the spirit of walking before one runs) for my very first project, a humble nightstand. Nothing fancy—two sides, a top and bottom, and one shelf. I spent an entire semester lovingly cutting, shaving, sanding, assembling, and finishing a piece that today I could easily knock out in a couple of hours. But at that time it wasn’t about speed or efficiency or even the achievement of perfection in the finished product. It was about transformation—in my case, a small stack of plain knotty pine boards into a usable nightstand—a nightstand that endures to this day, by the way, while much of the historical minutia and mathematical formulae of those years has vanished from my life like the proverbial straw in a cyclone. It was the journey that mattered, a journey of discovery and learning. But what, really, can a twelve-year-old learn from building his first nightstand?

For starters, of course, you learn not to saw your fingers off or let your jewelry get caught in a fast-spinning lathe or drill press.[3] But, at a more enduring, if slightly less existential, level, you learn the real-world importance of angles—not in the abstract, formulaic, Euclidian sense, but in the tactile, this-object-cannot-perform-its-intended-function-unless-the-angles-are-correct sense. You learn that the faster you sand a piece of wood, the deeper the splinter slides under your fingernail[4], another life lesson having something vaguely to do with trade-offs. You learn why three-legged pieces of furniture cannot rock[5] whereas four-legged ones invariably do, regardless of how many times you shave off a tiny bit from one leg. And, perhaps most importantly, and notwithstanding a semester’s worth of fervent exhortations from your teacher, you learn that any project worth doing is worth bleeding on[6].

In some cases, you also learn a thing or two about achievement, and, potentially, disappointment. At our junior high, shop class was broken into two semesters, the first of which was wood shop, the second the somewhat incompletely named metal shop—incomplete in the sense that the available construction media comprised essentially anything you could come up with that wasn’t wood. Both classes—wood and metal—took place in the same large room, and, as it happened, there were a few large and somewhat daunting tools toward the rear of the room whose purpose was unclear to first semester students, but which, anyone brave enough to ask was informed, were for the metal shop students’ use. These included assorted bending presses and specialized jigs and saws. Also included in this collection of arcane devices, many of which looked as though they’d been lifted straight out of a Spanish Inquisition torture chamber, was a small crucible and high-temperature furnace with which the truly brave could endeavor to actually cast something. In objectively assessing my finished nightstand from the first-semester wood class, I had concluded, perhaps a bit too harshly, that I had not stretched myself as far as I might have, a decision I meant to compensate for in the second half of the class. Which is how I came to cast my own chess set out of aluminum.

It was a wonderfully complex and audacious undertaking, so much so that the instructor took rather a personal stake in helping me see it through to completion. It was, in effect, two separate projects, the first phase of which required that I design and fabricate a master of each piece from wood. The challenge was to come up with a design that not only conveyed the essence of  the piece being created (queen, rook, etc.) but which was also axially symmetrical, i.e., formed in such a way that I could slice it cleanly in two for the purpose of placing each identical half on either side of our primitive sand-casting mold system. Having created the six original master pieces, I then used each repeatedly to render all thirty-two of the final aluminum castings, an exercise that consumed not only the entire semester’s worth of class time, but more than a few late evenings as well. It was pure tedium aligning the master halves for each individual pouring, but great fun and more than a little daunting melting scrap aluminum fragments in the small crucible, tenuously manipulating the ponderous vessel with long tongs, and pouring the molten metal into small holes at the top of the mold, hoping all the while that the inside shape held up, i.e., the sand did not collapse, a frequent occurrence which, in the end, resulted in something like twice as many individual castings as the eventual number of usable pieces.

I mentioned disappointment earlier, but it wasn’t the work itself or the outcome of the endeavor, imperfect as it was, that engendered any such feelings. Each year, the Stanley Tool Company sponsored an award at our school for the best Industrial Arts project, one each for metal and wood shop. Somewhere along the line, as I inevitably compared my efforts to those of my companions in metal shop, I managed to convince myself that I was a viable contender for that year’s edition of the Stanley Golden Hammer award. When it was finally announced during an all-hands assembly at the close of the school year, I was awarded the runner-up certificate, losing to a dark horse candidate who had cobbled together a table lamp out of colored pieces of Plexiglas, an effort I felt to be of dubious artistic merit and one that certainly had required but a fraction of the effort that had gone into my chess set. Like any poor loser, I convinced myself that it was all politics and moved on with my life. I still have the chess set, though, and will occasionally take it out and admire the sheen of the metal and the heft of each piece whenever I feel like waxing nostalgic.

Shop class was easily the most memorable experience of my junior high school years[7]. I learned to understand and love tools that year. I learned that bad things—painful things—can happen if you’re not extremely careful with those tools, and that those bad things can happen very fast if you’re not particularly careful with power tools. I learned the rudiments of planning a project, determining what it will cost and how long it will take to complete. I learned how (and how not) to treat a piece of wood and I learned how to safely handle a crucible of molten metal without burning down my school or maiming myself. I learned to recognize when I had not aimed sufficiently high and how to accept defeat graciously[8] when I overreached. I learned that what you get out of something is more or less in proportion to what you put in. I learned that creating useful things from wood and metal can reveal excellent lessons for the challenges I would encounter later in life. And I learned that building something with your own two hands, while it almost certainly won’t make you wealthy, can go quite a long way to making you happy, especially if, once you’ve poured all of yourself into it and finally gotten it just right, you then give what you’ve made to someone you care for.

[2] Similar to that hard-to-describe feeling certain men get from mowing a lawn, a task which, for all its banality, leaves one with a genuine if ephemeral feeling of accomplishment.

[3] Kids occasionally learned these valuable life lessons the hard way, though I never witnessed it myself, much to my adolescent disappointment.

[4] On a related note, you learn, as well, that extracting that splinter is vastly more painful than getting it in there in the first place.

[5] Though they most certainly can lean.

[6] Related to this, you also learn quickly that blood is a powerful staining agent and is damned tough to sand off unprotected wood.

[7] With the possible exception of sitting three seats back from Denise Adelman in Earth Science class, but that’s an entirely different story.

[8] Or at least to convey graciousness even if I didn’t feel it.

I once saw a stand-up comedian elicit a good laugh by mocking the subtle but critical distinction between being in a band in high school versus being in band, the former, of course, connoting coolness, peer envy, and a general avante garde sense almost completely lacking in but nonetheless tirelessly striven for by most high school kids, what with their generally herd-like tendencies deriving from the endless but ultimately futile pursuit of uniqueness. The latter position, on the other hand, i.e., being in band, signifies a positive dearth of coolness and, more often than not, the mockery and derision of one’s fellow students. Being in band represents, indeed, the very apogee of uncoolness, whose exact magnitude is a function of not only band membership per se but, as well, the specific instrument one has chosen[2] to play. The fact that in band and in a band differ by no more than the single monosyllabic indefinite article ‘a’ only serves to reinforce the cruel distinction between the two situations, particularly as regards the adolescent psyche, with its already plentiful assortment of hormone-induced traumas unavoidable during this fraught stage of life, a life that would be at least moderately more bearable were it not for the inclusion of the various band-related insults it is my purpose to herein describe.

Preliminaries aside, let me begin by summarizing briefly my own grim history in the domain of formal adolescent music instruction. I began taking piano lessons at around the age of seven, said instruction proceeding, more or less uninterrupted, for perhaps six years. I learned several valuable life lessons during this experience, most important of which is that I was utterly uncoachable, a character flaw that would help greatly to define the remainder of my life.[3] This is worth a slight digression, as it will go some way to explaining a few of the anecdotes that follow. I do here assert, without exaggeration or apology, that the only endeavors[4] of any consequence I have accomplished in my life are those I have taught myself. I have benefited not a whit from mentors, instructors, or coaches in any field of physical endeavor whatsoever, which is not for a moment to indict their sincerity, efforts, or coaching skill, but only to say that their efforts in my regard were as so much water hurled at the proverbial duck’s back. If an activity interests me, I simply begin to do it, first obtaining whatever equipment or apparatus may be required, and then diving right in. As a general matter, any instruction I do happen to receive (either accidentally or on purpose) in the endeavor I either ignore or, in extreme cases, do the precise opposite. I offer no explanation to account for this behavior, but only report it as fact, having endured the effects of this trait on my life for more than half a century.[5] That I can play anything at all now on a piano owes not a jot to the endless and repetitive harangues of my instructor, nor to the equally endless and repetitive drills that universally characterize adolescent music instruction, regardless of the chosen instrument. I learn things by attempting to do them, screwing them up a few times, cleaning up whatever mess I’ve caused, and then doing them again until I’ve either given up or gotten it right, or at least sufficiently right to satisfy my own internally established objectives. If these goals have historically tended toward the mediocre, so be it. I have always gravitated toward the life of the generalist[6] rather than exerting the focus and effort required to become truly expert in any single endeavor.[7]

I mention the adolescent piano lesson experience only because it goes some way toward explaining how it is that I came to be volunteered[8] for band even before beginning my freshman year of high school. There was, as is not difficult to imagine, a severe dearth of musical talent from which our high school band director, Ernest George, could recruit in those days. A proper band requires something like a minimum of forty people to field any sort of credible ensemble,[9] and finding this many children, of even marginal ability and motivation, is no mean feat in a school comprising an entire student body of only a few hundred. Which is how it came to pass that I received a note requesting I meet with Mister George at my earliest convenience in his office on what I vaguely recall was only my second or third day as a freshman, a time during which the reader will doubtless recall, from his/her own adolescent experience, a perfectly sufficient amount of trauma already occurring simply by virtue of navigating the transition from top of the heap in junior high to bottom of an entirely new and daunting heap in high school. The last thing any fourteen-year-old needs at this fraught moment in life is one more source of angst and humiliation. Sadly for me, I had not been a band member in junior high, and so I was ill-equipped to fully appreciate the magnitude of the calamity that was taking shape. And so there I sat in Mister George’s office on that fateful morning, wondering what I’d gotten myself into but, alas, insufficiently informed to wonder, as well, how I might extricate myself from it.

Truth be told, I do not really recall being offered a choice in the matter. It was simply conveyed to me that I was fortunate indeed to have been chosen as a member of the Brunswick High School band, that I ought to take pride in having been so recognized, and that band rehearsal took place during first period on Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week, the first such rehearsal of the new school year occurring, as luck would have it, the very next morning. All of which left unresolved only the matter of which instrument it would be my duty, nay my honor, to play. By this point in my life I had all but abandoned formal piano instruction, but had begun dabbling in acoustic guitar. Sadly, though, neither guitar nor piano has much place in a high school band, which, despite playing the occasional obligatory auditorium concert on the high holidays, was fundamentally a marching band. Mister George took the initiative at this juncture and proceeded to glance about the capacious instrument storage room in which we were sitting, as if to convey the sense that he was making this weighty decision extemporaneously, when, in fact, he had known the answer long before I entered the room. You know, he offered, after a suitable period of rumination, two of our Sousaphone players graduated last year and we are now rather lacking in that department.

At which inauspicious point I feel compelled to pause and clarify a few things. First, most everyone reading this will know that “Sousaphone” is a long way of saying “tuba.”[10] Second, the Sousaphone is, almost certainly without exaggeration, the most ponderous of all band instruments[11], indeed plausibly larger than all the rest combined. And third, I was singularly undersized for my age all throughout my junior high and high school years. All of which must surely have made for a great joke on Mister George’s part. Nevertheless, it came to pass, then and there, with me having neither the opportunity nor the verve to object, that I became the third-seat Sousaphone player in the Brunswick High School marching band.

I mentioned earlier, if somewhat obliquely, that I am not a morning person. Indeed, it is all I can manage to perform morning ablutions without injuring myself. I invite you to imagine, then, the chaotic and hideous cacophony that issues forth from the typical high school band inflicted upon one’s person from 7:30 to 8:15 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday. Imagine, as well, that you are not merely subjected to this wretched din from the position of spectator, but, rather, are actually immersed in the midst of it. And finally, imagine being obliged to not only put up with this nonsense two mornings each week, but to also spend an hour or more after school two or three days a week struggling to gain competence on this fiberglass behemoth,[12] a skill I got the hang of in a reasonable time, owing largely to my having been blessed with a generally good musical sense and to the fundamentally unchallenging nature of the instrument to begin with.[13] Unlike clarinets and violins,[14] the tuba is at least somewhat forgiving of error, it’s only pedagogical downside being the prodigious volume with which sound is emitted, said volume tending naturally to magnify any and all errors.

The reader will note that I employed several potentially pejorative descriptors, e.g., “hideous cacophony,” “wretched din,” etc., in that preceding paragraph to describe the sounds that emanate from the typical high school band, and I feel the need to take a moment here to defend these linguistic choices, if only to deflect any offense that may accrue to readers who have themselves spent a portion of their youths in similar ensembles. I might rightly deserve to be pilloried for such abusive comments were my experience limited to only the band in which I played as a youth, for it is perfectly plausible to suppose that our band was simply worse than all the rest. But, in fact, through a combination of exchange concerts and assorted friends and family members who have remained involved with high school music into their adult lives, I have had occasion to hear a wide assortment of high school bands—both concert and marching—representing large and small schools. And I state here, without fear of contradiction, they are all odious and excruciating. An analogy would perhaps help to convey the solidity with which I ascribe to this view. A high school band is—or is, at any rate, intended to be—a holistic musical ensemble whose goal is to be at least as proficient as the sum of its parts (in this case the musicians), in much the same way that an aircraft functions only as well as each of its parts. Imagine, then, an aircraft comprising thousands of parts, each manufactured by teenagers devoid of engineering expertise and who, by and large, don’t even particularly want to spend their time designing and building aircraft parts. One quickly gets a sense for how well, how long, and to what ultimate effect such an aircraft might perform. And so it is with a high school band. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are children who have only limited experience with their instruments, who are, in many cases, genuinely annoyed to be participating in the endeavor at all, and who, for the most part, have no long-term musical aspirations.[15] The result is pretty predictable, all things considered.

I hasten to point out that the generally poor quality of high school band music is not entirely the fault of the musicians. The only thing a band director could possibly do to compound the already dubious nature of the situation would be to arm the musicians with versions of popular music that have been specifically adapted for use by such ensembles. If you’ve ever been subjected to a marching band’s rendition of Feelings or the theme to Hawaii Five-Oh, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Bad music combined with bad musicians can really only land you in one place.

And while we’re on the subject of musical inferiority, this is as good a spot as any to expound upon the marching aspect of things. For it is apparently not enough to combine unskilled, unmotivated musicians with badly selected musical numbers. Turns out that if you also force these musicians to march around in the middle of a football field[16] while attempting to execute said musical selections, you can elicit an even lower quality result, musically speaking. High school football halftimes generally last something like fifteen minutes, during which interval the band members, clad in their quasi-military attire[17], replete with white shoes and headgear inspired by either the dress caps of field-grade military officers or Buckingham Palace guards, depending on the particular school[18] one attended, gathered on the sidelines in preparation to rush onto the field at the sound of the horn that signified the end of the second quarter. We would generally begin by assembling in some innocuous shape such as a simple grid, and then, once the music began, commence marching around and through each other in an attempt to create letters, school mascot shapes, etc. Such marching often involved maneuvers in which we would split into two or more discreet groups that would then pass between each other in extremely close quarters, an exercise fraught with peril for an undersized kid lugging a forty-pound instrument on his shoulder while attempting to read and play sheet music.

I mentioned inclement weather earlier, and it’s worth expounding on its impact a bit more here, particularly as our school was located in southern Maine and the football season ran from the start of the school year in early September through Thanksgiving or thereabouts, which is to say, during a period when the weather could be anything from a heat wave to a blizzard. During the all-too-frequent rain storms,[19] our home field, being part of a relatively low-budget school system, would become a quagmire of mud that rendered any and all attempts at formation marching futile in the extreme. I should note, as well, that while the bell of my Sousaphone afforded a modicum of shelter from the rain, it functioned also as a remarkably effective sail, thus making my attempts at staying in formation all the more challenging.

I stated at the outset that, despite our being primarily a marching band, there did occur a few obligatory indoor concerts each year, typically associated with holidays or special school events. These were the occasions when you truly got to appreciate the utter criminality of our musical renditions. Several factors combined to make the concert experience so much more horrific than that experienced at a football game, not least of which is the fact that the main attraction at a game is, of course, the game itself, the band’s contribution being, as it were, incidental to the principal reason people are there. And, of course, at a game, there were ample avenues of escape when it came time for the halftime entertainment. Indoor concerts were attended pretty much only by parents of the kids in the band, and then only because of the terrific pressure[20] adults seem to feel to attend any activity being participated in by their offspring. Therefore, the band’s performance was not only decidedly not incidental, it was, if you will, the raison d’etre for the entire assemblage. If then, as a final insult, you enclose the entire affair indoors, i.e., in a confined space from which none of the hellish noises can escape, thus serving to amplify the entire thing, well, suffice it to say that by the end of the evening’s festivities, more than one parent spent the drive home reconsidering the wisdom of having enrolled their progeny in such an organization.[21]

Long story short, I don’t so much regret my time in high school band as I regard it as but one painful component of my entire uncool secondary school experience.[22] I can’t say either that I’ve gotten a terribly great amount of benefit out of four years of Sousaphone playing in the years since graduation, though I do confess to experiencing momentary twinges of nostalgia on those rare occasions when I see a marching band pass by. I still play some piano and guitar from time to time, though I can attribute none of that interest or ability to anything I ever did in band practice. I do, though, wonder from time to time what it would feel like to heft one of those colossal things onto my shoulder again and give it a try for old times’ sake.[23]

[2] Or had chosen for him. More on this directly.

[3] Other valuable life lessons I learned included a) any delusions I might have entertained about making a living as a concert pianist were horribly misplaced, b) performing at recitals in front of crowds (even relatively friendly captive audiences like parents) was fraught with anxiety so intense I frequently felt like passing out in mid-performance, c) anything you do because someone else wants you to do it sucks, and d) I don’t much care for dressing up in suit and tie.

[4] I am referring here to physical activities, e.g., sports, music, carpentry, etc., i.e., things that one does (as opposed to academic knowledge, much of which I am happy to concede to having learned from others, either through books, lectures, films, etc.)

[5] And resulting, in particular, in athletic performance whereby endeavors such as skiing, tennis, etc. exhibit a performance trajectory almost identical in every case, i.e., rising steeply at first and then leveling out at some mediocre level once certain bad habits have been learned and then reinforced through repetition and lack of correction.

[6] Or dilettante in the pejorative.

[7] Now that I think about it, I wonder if my lack of coachability and my short attention span might not have something to do with each other. I’ve also been told on countless occasions (both personally and professionally) that I am a horrible listener. One senses a theme.

[8] I judiciously choose the word “volunteered” here in recognition of the fact that my mother (i.e., the one responsible for the volunteering) may one day read this essay, in which case the use of a more truthful if pejorative term like “drafted” could be seen to reflect badly upon her judgment at that time.

[9] The notion of credibility to be explored in more detail in short order.

[10] Not to dwell overly on the particulars here, but a Sousaphone is essentially a concert tuba that has been reshaped so as to facilitate being carried on one’s shoulder while walking versus the seated position required of the traditional tuba. Also, the Sousaphone has only three valves, whereas many (though not all) concert tubas, in fact, have four. Finally, tubas are made of brass, whereas Sousaphones are more commonly fabricated from fiberglass that has been painted white, presumably to reduce their considerable weight so as to reduce the burden of carrying the instrument while playing it. There do exist brass Sousaphones, though I never had the opportunity of playing one, which is just as well since they weigh about as much as I did in those halcyon years.

[11] The only possible exception being the bass drum. This hardly qualifies as competition though, since a) many bands provide some sort of trolley or other wheeled apparatus for carrying the drum, and b) even if the bass drummer is obliged to actually carry the drum, it weighs far less than a Sousaphone.

[12] I positively drew the line (to the extent that a fourteen-year-old can draw a line beneath anything) at carrying the Sousaphone home with me on the school bus. Forget the colossal inconvenience (envision a fourteen-year-old trying to carry a Sousaphone in its case onto a school bus); the peer derision that such an act would have engendered can only be imagined.

[13] At least at the high school level. Make no mistake; as with every other instrument, there exist extraordinarily talented and skillful tuba players, many of whom make a rather good living at it in places like, for example, New Orleans.

[14] I believe there is a special (soundproofed) area of heaven awaiting every parent who endures a child learning to play any woodwind or bowed instrument.

[15] Sadly enough, unlike guitar and piano, there isn’t even an ancillary social benefit to playing a band instrument that might come in handy outside of school. You don’t see too many kids sitting around the campfire listening to some guy play his trombone or clarinet.

[16] Not just march around aimlessly, mind you, but, rather, march around in various and sundry synchronized formations designed, presumably, to elicit team spirit from the audience through the creation of school logos, geometric shapes, and other potentially recognizable patterns whose nature is, in truth, discernible, if at all, only by someone positioned directly overhead in a light aircraft, i.e., utterly undecipherable to the average spectator seated in an obliquely angled (viz a viz the field) grandstand. Not that it matters in the slightest anyway, since what few spectators attend high school football games invariably make a mad dash for the snack bar or restroom during halftime and are, as such, seldom witness to the spectacle taking place on the field between halves. Oh, and more often than I care to recall, this marching in synchronized formation while attempting to play bad music took place in the midst of driving rain or snow.

[17] Ours were black with orange piping and looked, at a distance, remarkably like German SS uniforms, but I’m not even going to go there.

[18] Mercifully, ours were of the former variety, as about the only thing that can make playing a Sousaphone even more annoying is trying to fit a foot-tall, fluffy Q-tip-like hat beneath that enormous bell.

[19] During which football, unlike baseball, continues unabated.

[20] Both internal and societal.

[21] The kindest thing that can be said of an indoor high school band concert is that at least the kids get to sit down and not get rained on while they’re playing.

[22] Another of which experiences (topic of a future essay) included making the embarrassing and inevitably futile decision to go out for freshman football. It was during the first practice session that I discovered myself to be approximately half the average weight of all the others players on the team. As if this wasn’t problematic enough, anyone who’s ever grown up in small town where all the kids go through school together can tell you that it is abundantly clear who the jocks are long before you get to high school. Turned out I wasn’t one of them.

[23] In a bizarre random occurrence, the skill of blowing into a tuba mouthpiece did actually come in handy for about five seconds while on vacation in Mexico a couple of years ago. There was a bar near the pool at our hotel that announced the onset of happy hour through the expedient of the bartender blowing vigorously into a large conch shell. Upon being invited to give this a go, I performed with greater skill and aplomb than any other guests in recent memory, at least according to the bar manager.

~ Transgenic Technology and the Foods We Eat ~

Humans eat food to survive. Most, if they’re fortunate, do it multiple times each day. And if we go very long without doing it, our bodies have limitless creative ways of making their displeasure known. But we also eat for pleasure—pleasure derived from taste and texture, from culture and tradition, and, for some, from the very process of creating food in the first place. That creation involves three distinctly different types of individuals. Best known are those who combine raw ingredients in creative ways—sometimes exciting, sometimes banal. These are the chefs who craft memorable dishes, the artisans who bake fine bread and pastry, the vintners who magically turn the humble grape into wine, and the factories that turn out the infinitude of products that occupy our grocery store shelves. Then there are the less celebrated among us, the farmers and ranchers who grow crops and raise animals, creating the raw materials with which the chefs and artisans perform their magic, and with which corporations create products that are…well, less magical but arguably far more important to the daily lives of most ordinary people. It is their day-to-day work, and the raw materials they create, that have changed so dramatically in recent years, thanks to a host of technologies that have, until very recently, operated only at the farthest fringes of the human food chain.

Which brings us to the third group of individuals whose efforts, while essential to the everyday food we consume, go even less noticed than those of the farmers and ranchers. These are the food scientists who create—seemingly out of nothing—the flavors, smells, preservatives, texture modifiers, and nutrients that characterize nearly everything we consume. Their work is every bit as magical as that of the finest pastry chef. Without food scientists we would not enjoy everyday products such as pre-sliced bread, fat-free milk, frozen entrees, or the redoubtable Twinkie with its alleged shelf life measured in months. We may debate at length whether these innovations make us better or worse off as a species, but, for the vast majority, these products are an indispensable element of everyday life. As amazing as these technologies are and as impactful as they have been on all our culinary lives, food science has spent the past couple centuries only just warming up for the main event, that which is the principal topic of this essay, the genetic-level modification of the food we eat, the products we now routinely refer to as Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs.

It is not my purpose here to proselytize or otherwise wax tendentious about GMOs. There exists no shortage of extant literature both celebrating and vilifying this technology. It is also not my objective to expound upon the rudiments of the science. I do not profess to be a geneticist or a scientist of any sort. Rather, what I aim to achieve in the pages that follow is to propose a framework for thinking about the issue, one that addresses, or at least introduces, many of the elements that contribute to the GMO debate, any one of which can then be explored in whatever depth the reader feels compelled to tackle. I truly hope that you will come away sufficiently convinced of the importance of this topic in your daily life to want to know more about it, and I hope, as well, that you will enjoy a new appreciation for the role that science plays in what we put into our bodies, because, trust me, science is there in everything we eat, from the humblest leaf of organic lettuce to the most highly processed box of cookies on your grocer’s shelf.

Societal debates such as this one can be grouped into two major categories. There are issues of a highly emotional nature, which, as a consequence, usually admit little objective scientific analysis (examples would include abortion and gun control). These are issues about which almost no one ever changes their mind, regardless of the facts or analyses that may be laid before them. All data and opinion contrary to their deeply held beliefs are simply dismissed as biased and propaganda. The other major set of societal issues are those that, while important and strongly felt as well, do, in fact, lend themselves to at least a somewhat more objective assessment of fact (foreign policy, taxation, deficits). People are occasionally willing to examine all sides of such issues and formulate their opinions based on the balance of data available at the moment. Unfortunately, although there exists ample information on the subject of GM agriculture, it is rapidly becoming a societal issue of the former sort. Emotion appears to have the upper hand on objective analysis. And that is a pity, particularly since so many lives potentially hang in the balance.[1]

So where does one start in examining such a fraught subject? Best, I suppose, to start at the beginning. Since we are talking about the genetic modification of otherwise natural agricultural products,[2] it is important first to acknowledge that mankind has been performing genetic modification of crops for as long as we have been growing our food, which is to say millennia. Long before humans invented the term ‘genetics,’ or had even identified the biological building block known as the gene, farmers the world over were cross-breeding plants[3] to make more robust, faster growing, more drought-tolerant strains of every conceivable crop, whether edible or not. Over the centuries, as much effort has gone into creating better performing strains of roses and pine trees as has been the case with rice, corn, and wheat. The success with which mankind has met these challenges is profoundly demonstrated by the dramatic decrease in the percentage of our population[4] now required to grow the world’s food supply.[5] But it is only in the most recent couple of decades that it has become possible to manipulate the molecular-level make-up of crops and, in so doing, control specific attributes of the plants and animals that are the most basic elements of our food chain.

Before diving into the pros and cons of GM technology, it is worth setting out a few basic facts and figures so that the reader understands the impact GMOs have had (and increasingly will have) on our lives:

- The first commercial GM product was Calgene’s (later a Monsanto subsidiary) Favr-Savr tomato, introduced in     1994 and modified so that it ripened later to reduce spoilage while being transported to market.

- More than 85% of the corn crop in the United States is GM. For soybeans and cotton, the figure is 93%.

- Nearly 17% of the entire agricultural area of the United States grows GM crops. Globally the figure is 10%.

- In 2003 70%-75% of processed food in U.S. supermarkets contained at least one GM ingredient.

So GM technology is, quite literally, everywhere. It’s in our appetizer, our entrée, our dessert, our coffee, even, quite possibly, in the roses decorating the center of the table. Oh, and it’s almost certainly in the cotton your clothes are made of. If one wanted to live a truly GM-free life, it would take some serious research and effort.

But what exactly is it that drives industry to want to genetically manipulate agricultural species in the first place? We have been reaping the benefits of cultivated crops for ages, so what exactly is it that needs improving? Well, everything really. Anything that plants do, it is believed, they can, with enough work and patience, be coaxed into doing better, faster, cheaper, more consistently. To select but a few examples of the crop characteristics GMO practitioners strive to improve:

• Increased resistance to common agricultural pests
• Increased resistance to herbicides
• Improved growth in arid conditions
• Quicker growth and more efficient photosynthesis
• Increased control over the ripening process
• Greater tolerance of temperature extremes
• Ability to withstand harsh soil acidity and alkalinity
• Greater quantities of desirable nutrients

The list of attributes being explored for improvement is literally endless,[6] but the approach is, at the most macroscopic level, simplicity itself. You locate a species that demonstrates naturally one or more of these performance-improving characteristics, identify the specific gene or genes that enable that capability, and then transfer the gene(s) from the original into the target species. To put it in somewhat more concrete terms, if your goal is, for example, to create a strain of rice that can grow in a very dry climate, find yourself an organism that has demonstrated a penchant for flourishing in arid conditions, identify the gene that enables this capability, and transfer that gene into your rice strain.[7] It goes without saying that this approach, while simple in principal, is fiendishly difficult to perform in practice and it is only in recent years that genetic understanding and technology have been sufficient to the task.

Developing such GM—or transgenic—species is a difficult, time-consuming, and extraordinarily expensive undertaking. The companies that participate in this market,[8] thus, are understandably keen to get them into the agricultural market as quickly as possible in order to recoup their research and development costs and begin realizing profits from the investment. Because these corporations are, at their most fundamental, tasked with maximizing earnings for the benefit of shareholders, it is here, at the juncture where profitability meets public policy, that most of the friction arises. Marketing and sales are all about speed and aggressiveness, whereas testing and safety assurance are characterized by caution and conservativeness. Which brings us directly to the first of the many complex issues attending the GMO debate—safety.

Ask any anti-GM activist what their primary concern is with transgenic technology and they will tell you that the products have not been demonstrated to be safe for human consumption. Ask an industry professional the same question and they will respond that no studies have ever systematically linked GMOs to safety or health concerns, either for humans or other species.[9] Enter the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), World Health Organization (WHO), and various and sundry other governmental and quasi-governmental organizations, each of which has (or believes it should have) a voice in determining the safety of agricultural products, both natural and GM.

Except that there’s a fundamental conundrum associated with this aspect of GM. As anyone who’s studied logic can tell you, it is impossible to prove a negative assertion conclusively. (In this case, the proposition “GM crops do not cause harm.”). Corporations and universities can perform safety testing from now until the last funding dollar is exhausted with absolutely no adverse outcomes and the anti-GM zealot will continue to insist that they haven’t tested enough. They haven’t definitively proven that the technology is safe. A single unfavorable test result, conversely, can immediately torpedo an entire multi-billion-dollar development effort, as has happened on more than one occasion in the pharmaceutical industry. Sometimes these adverse test results are identified in pre-release testing, in which case the product never sees the light of day. In other situations, as with Merck and their extremely profitable Vioxx product, it is only after many years of use that adverse effects become known and fully understood. And it is the potential long-term health effects of GMOs that most concern the anti-GM crowd.

One of the most challenging aspects of any corporate product development program—whether it’s a new drug, airplane, automobile, or food product—is determining how much testing is enough. Statisticians can opine as to a degree of confidence that can be gleaned from a particular testing regimen, but at the end of the day, someone (or some group) has to decide how much is enough. How many test flights are sufficient before allowing passengers onto the new airliner? How many test miles before the new model car can be released to dealerships? How many studies must be performed before that new food or drug product can be declared safe? And over how long a time period must such testing be conducted in order to adequately understand potential long-term effects? Inevitably the developer who has put money on the table, and whose only means of recouping that money is through sales, will push for faster testing and quicker approval. The anti-GM advocate, with no financial stake in the outcome, will invariably conclude that whatever has been done is insufficient.

All of which leads in a more or less linear fashion to the broader issue of corporate ethics. The life sciences industry has done itself no favors over the past couple of decades by adopting some of the business practices that it has. Given that the anti-GM crowd tends, by its nature, to be anti-business as well, companies that adopt the view that activists are obstacles to be circumvented or defeated rather than fellow stakeholders in a complex societal situation should be little surprised by the reaction they receive to announcements of new GM products. To the extent that corporate motivation is largely profit driven, altruistic statements about feeding the world’s hungry and helping the small local farmer ring hollow to many ears. Compounding such seeming disingenuousness with onerous business requirements attending the use of transgenic seeds, implementation of terminator genes, and the patenting of long-held local products only exacerbates the image of an industry desperately in need of a public relations makeover.

Indeed, it is the corporate aspect of the GM debate that puts off many who might otherwise be positively disposed to the technology itself. In particular, there arises the notion of increasing corporate control over the world’s food supply. For decades most Third World farmers have employed methods of farming similar to those used by generations of predecessors, methods which are, in many cases, freely used and widely shared. Such methods include not only reserving a portion of a crop for seeds in the coming year, but also the flexibility to rotate crops as needed to ensure continuing fecundity of the land. There exists a strong impression—frequently warranted—that GM companies entering a new market arrive with the goal of transitioning an entire regional or even national crop to their new line of seed. Farmers who choose not to purchase and plant GM seeds can find themselves swimming against a very powerful corporate stream, surrounded by neighboring farmers who have purchased and planted the new GM seeds, leaving non-participants with GM-tainted crops when they wanted only to continue in the way they always had.

Other practices routinely employed by GM companies in developing nations have contributed as well to the generally poor reputation of these organizations. The enforcement of mandatory annual seed purchases, for example, is a practice whereby farmers, once under contract to use a new GM seed, are obliged to buy new seeds from the company with each planting season and are prohibited from saving any seeds from a preceding crop for use in replanting. Failure to make contractually-agreed seed purchases each season can easily land a farmer in court. In the event that a farmer attempts to reserve a portion of seeds for future use anyway, some GM seeds are engineered so as to be fertile only in their original generation and sterile thereafter, thus forcing the new purchases. It has also become common practice, and the source of much bad publicity, for corporations to take out patents on agricultural species that have either existed in nature for millennia or been created by local farmers through traditional cross-breeding practices that have taken place for generations. Such legal machinations can put local farmers in the position of suddenly being obliged to pay significant amounts of money for seeds they have historically had access to for nothing or very little.

The rapidly increasing spread of GM crops also raises the so-called superweed debate. When GM crops are engineered to be impervious to herbicides,[10] a side effect can be weeds that inherit, by wind-borne pollen and other methods, the same capability and thus become difficult or impossible to eliminate in traditional ways. In addition, to the extent that some farmers have chosen to grow exclusively organic and/or pesticide-free crops, utilizing fields that are located near GM crops can render their products unmarketable, particularly in places like Europe which have extremely stringent non-GM policies, as they can no longer guarantee that their crops have not been affected by the nearby transgenic varieties.

Anti-GM activists worry as well about diversity of the broader ecosystem, the fear being that the more corporations market similar GM species from one country to another, gradually phasing out the planting of traditional local varieties, the more at risk is the overall agricultural system, particularly in its potential susceptibility to one or more diseases or pests that could affect a wide swath of GM species worldwide.

A final issue that has made news in recent months is that of food labeling. To the extent that it is now almost impossible to find a processed food at your grocer that does not contain one or more GM ingredients, there have been numerous attempts in recent years to force food processors to label any products that contain GM ingredients.[11] Predictably, the giant food corporations fight vigorously against such measures, feeling, probably correctly, that many consumers will opt to purchase those products that are GM-free while foregoing those that are not. Food producers argue that such labeling will only serve to confuse consumers and they point consistently to USDA regulations that mandate labeling only in instances where the product has been definitively proven to be materially different, either in health or nutritional content, from non-GM varieties. Perhaps the most troubling argument put forth by processed food companies is that labeling is impossible or prohibitively costly because they do not, in fact, actually know whether the ingredients in their products are GM or not. Companies fear that the added burden of keeping careful track of ingredients so as to enable accurate labeling would be onerous to them and an added expense that they would, naturally, pass on to consumers. Add to this debate the generally high level of confusion and ambiguity over existing food labels[12] and it’s at least understandable why corporations would resist any regulation that threatens to complicate things even further.

GM technology and all the many associated issues are far too rich and nuanced a topic to make much more than a dent in this short essay. The best I can hope for is to have introduced several of the important sub-topics that comprise the core of the debate. As the Prop 37 labeling campaign heats up in California, we can be sure this will be at the forefront of the news again, particularly if the measure succeeds in the fall. And if the measure should pass, rest assured the food companies will push back with every resource at their disposal. California has a well-established history of being on the leading edge of legislation that eventually ends up affecting the entire nation, a fact not lost on food manufacturers. There’s a great deal at stake, no matter where you live and no matter which side of the issue you happen to come down on. But whether you eat to live or live to eat, there’s a lot to be said for knowing what’s in your food.

[2] GMO technology can be (and has been) applied to both plant and animal agricultural products, but the science is vastly more advanced on the crop side of things thus far, and it is in this domain that I will focus most of the examples in the forthcoming discussion.

[3] Sometimes in well-structured scientific ways. Sometimes completely by accident.

[4] In 1870 something like 75% of the American population was involved in some facet of agriculture, whereas today that percentage is 2%–3%, with a significant portion of what we grow either exported or, in many cases, wasted.

[5] It’s important to acknowledge, as well, the role of improved efficiency in farming techniques, equipment, etc. These innovations include everything from GPS and satellite surveillance to automated planting, watering, and harvesting.

[6] There are some pretty bizarre examples being worked on as well, including pigs and fish that glow in the dark, goats modified to produce spider silk in their milk (for use in making bullet-proof vests, etc.), and cows engineered with human genes so that they produce human breast milk (seriously).

[7] It is worth noting here, though I will not expound on it at length, that there is no fundamental reason why the desired trait needs to come from the same kingdom (plant, animal, bacteria, etc.) as the species whose performance you are endeavoring to improve. For example, there has, for many years, been active research into certain species of fish that thrive in frigid water, the goal being to identify the gene that enables this capability and transfer it into plants so that they might perform better in very cold climates. Similarly, the gene that got the whole GM movement off and running in the early nineties was one that allowed Bt corn to generate its own internal pesticide, thus significantly reducing the need for externally applied pesticides. The gene that made this possible came from a bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis.

[8] Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta, to name a few of the largest

[9] In 1999 a study released by Cornell University suggested a link between Bt corn pollen and monarch butterfly deaths. The report caused outrage in the activist community and was only later refuted by additional studies (2001: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) indicating that the conditions created during the original testing bore no resemblance to those encountered by monarchs in the wild.

[10] For instance, Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready crops, first introduced in 1995 for soybeans, specifically designed to allow farmers to widely spray herbicides that kill weeds while leaving crops unaffected.

[11] This issue will rear its head again this November when Californians vote on mandatory GM labeling for all products sold in the state. Proposition 37, The California Right to Know Genetically Modified Food Act, will appear as a ballot item and, if passed, would make the state the first to enforce such measures on the broader food industry. The only U.S. state with any GM labeling requirement at all is Alaska, which mandates GM labeling on all fish and shellfish.

[12] There currently exist either no standards or very unclear ones governing when labels such as “natural,” “organic,” and “pesticide-free” can be placed on food products. Does the “organic” label mean no pesticides were used? Or that the product is GM-free? Not necessarily. Consumers, nonetheless, routinely pay a hefty premium for “organic” vegetables. During one recent supermarket trip, I was struck by the difference between cosmetically identical cucumbers, the regular one at 68 cents each versus the organic one for $3.25.

Morte nihil melius[1]
Anonymous

Introduction

I know what you’re thinking, sitting there, furtively skimming this introduction, hoping no one sees you holding the manuscript. Why on earth would I read this? Who, for that matter, would even publish such a thing? Pessimism? Dear God, things are so bleak and heinous these days; what the world needs is optimism, damn it. Well that, my friend, is where you’re mistaken, and I mean to spend the next few pages explaining precisely why.

Now please don’t get me wrong. This is, after all, a self-help piece. And self-help books and essays are about achieving happiness, success, self-actualization, and other hard-to-define but generally positive states of being. My working hypothesis (which turns out to be true, otherwise there wouldn’t be much point to the essay) is that happiness and success can and do spring directly from a well-grounded understanding and exploitation of negative energy. Pessimism—like gravity, friction, and attraction to fast food—is nothing less than a force of nature. But unlike gravity, pessimism is a force over which one can exert a great deal of control. It is that control, and its attendant outcomes, that we will explore in this treatise.

Now if you’ve made it to the third paragraph of this introduction, it suggests that you already feel some alignment with what I am saying. It probably also means that you expect you might actually gain something by reading what follows. That, of course, would make you an optimist, for only an optimist sees potential in unexplored things (more on definitions later). The good news is that, as an optimist, you are precisely my target audience; you have the most to gain from reading this essay. The thing is, though, that in order to benefit from this discussion, you need to come at it hoping for the very least. That is the subtle beauty that is pessimism.

Interestingly enough, the initial concept for this essay began as a discussion I had with a colleague about six years ago. At the time, he argued strongly and convincingly the case for optimism. Just look around you, he extolled—prosperity is everywhere. The Dow is almost at fifteen thousand. Why, soon everyone in the country will have their home and will be fulfilling the American dream. I rejoined with a rueful shake of my head and the assertion that surely doom and despair were right around the corner and that he (and indeed everyone) ought to act as though this were the case.[2] I think we all recall how things turned out about twelve months later. As dark and grim as events have been in the ensuing five years, it’s only natural to assume that surely there exists no possible course but for things to get better from here, right? It’s precisely that point of view that so vividly explains why pessimism is a world view whose time has come.[3] Learning and embracing the concepts discussed here will help you face up to the reality of how wretched and hopeless life really is, and indeed allow you to profit and benefit from it.

The world is, of course, comprised of both pessimists and optimists. And we all know plenty of optimists. They are the hopelessly misguided fools who waltz their way through life, wondering why they’re disappointed every time their silly optimistic hopes are dashed. Pessimists, on the other hand, by always assuming (and, indeed, looking forward to) the worst are, by definition, never disappointed. But it isn’t only this lack of disappointment in life that makes pessimism so powerful. That’s just the most obvious benefit. Consider the following additional outcomes:

• The sheer delight of those too-rare occasions when something good actually happens that you weren’t expecting.
• Enjoying what the Germans trenchantly refer to as schadenfreude, that special pleasure that comes from watching others in misery.[4]
• The pleasure of getting to say “I told you so” a lot.
• The peace, quiet, and solitude that derives from much of humanity not wanting to spend time around you

Yes, by simply accepting and harnessing the power of pessimism you can actually make your life better, and frequently at the expense of others no less, which is, after all, what living is truly about. Life is, after all, a zero-sum game. As a consequence, any happiness you aspire to attain must come at someone else’s expense. Ah, I hear you saying, surely happiness and pessimism are mutually exclusive concepts, for how can someone with a perpetually negative outlook be happy? Does it even make sense to invoke the notion of happiness in a discourse on pessimism? It sounds paradoxical, I will concede, but stick with me for a few more pages and discover how such a magical thing can be not only possible but, in fact, inevitable.

So, Just What the Heck is Pessimism?

One of the writing techniques we all learn in grade school when faced with the terrifying prospect of having to deliver a three-page essay (aside from using wide margins and large fonts), is to include a comprehensive dictionary definition of whatever it is that we’re writing about. For the student, this is a time-tested way of banging out a quarter page or so, right out of the gate, without needing to do much actual work. So just to prove to Miss Olexa that I actually learned something in that third-grade comp class:

pes·si·mism n.[5]

1. A tendency to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view: “We have seen too much defeatism, too much pessimism, too much of a negative approach” (Margo Jones).
2. The doctrine or belief that this is the worst of all possible worlds and that all things ultimately tend toward evil.
3. The doctrine or belief that the evil in the world outweighs the good.

[French pessimisme(on the model of French optimisme, optimism), from Latin pessimus, worst. See ped- in Indo-European Roots.]

*          *          *

Let’s start by making sure we’re all talking about the same thing. It is critically important to this analysis that we not confuse pessimism with other purportedly negative feelings or states of being. I take a bit of issue with the foregoing definition, insofar as it seems to place an emphasis on evil. That feels a bit over the top to me. I’m not sure just what it is that’s evil about assuming the worst possible outcome to any given situation. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, but it appears more evil to me to always assume the best and fail to prepare for anything else[6]. It would, as well, be easy to confuse pessimism with defeatism, fatalism, or even cynicism. The difference is, though, one of attitude versus action. Take the reverse state for a moment—optimism. Excessive optimism leads invariably to hubris, which is to say the adoption of strategies and actions based on a belief that you cannot possibly be mistaken in your outlook. There are many candidates for poster child in the hubris category, but two strong contenders would have to include General George Custer and the Captain of the Titanic, Edward John Smith.[7] In the same way, excessive or inappropriate actions based on one’s sense of pessimism, no matter how finely honed, can lead directly to fatalism and defeatism. And even these two seemingly similar concepts are different, though in very subtle ways. Defeatism suggests a belief that one is always going to emerge the loser from every situation, regardless of any action taken. Fatalism, on the other hand, is the belief that, in the end, nothing matters, so there is no sense in taking any action at all. Pessimism, by contrast, is neither of these. Rather, it is the simple belief that in most instances, the worst possible outcome is the one that is going to come about. But, secure in this knowledge (or belief at any rate), there are any number of suitable actions that can be taken to improve one’s outcome and, hence, overall happiness.

It’s worth clarifying, as well, that pessimists are not sociopaths or misanthropes. They have no inherent hatred of mankind, or hatred of anything for that matter. If they assume the worst, it is only because that is the view of life they have chosen (wisely) to adopt, and not because they actually wish for bad things to happen to anyone (least of all themselves). They are simply realists who have chosen to make the most of (usually) bad situations.

And while we’re clarifying just what we mean (and don’t mean) by pessimism, let’s take a moment to revisit the hackneyed notion of whether a glass is half empty, half full, or something else entirely. There are many ways of describing a glass that contains precisely half of what it is capable of containing, including not only half empty and half full, but also half utilized, half occupied, or half depleted. If you want to get all zen about it, you can even argue that the glass is completely full—half with water, half with air. My point is that it’s all really just a matter of perspective. If your frame of reference is the glass, then you talk about the water level. If, on the other hand, your frame of reference is the water, you conclude that the glass is twice as large as it needs to be[8]. Given our previous assertion that pessimism is really about believing that the worst possible outcome is what’s coming, the true pessimist in this example would, instead, conclude that, current water level notwithstanding, the glass will soon be empty and, quite possibly, broken as well. Such a belief would cause you to have a spare glass handy, or at least a paper towel.

Historical Context – Pessimism through the Ages

There is a great deal to be learned from an examination of how pessimism has been (or failed to be) applied down through the ages. History is replete with figures who achieved great successes or miserable failures (sometimes both), and in many cases it is their sense of pessimism or optimism that ultimately determined how they have been remembered. Let’s look at a few.

General George Armstrong Custer – Let’s begin here with the observation that Custer graduated last in his class at West Point. Thus, it can be argued that the optimism problem began, in this case, the moment after the graduation ceremony ended and the Army offered him a full-time job. Of course, by this time the Civil War was well along and there was not much cause for (or at least tolerance of) pessimism on either side of the Mason Dixon line. Against all odds, Custer actually acquitted himself quite well during the war, and it was only when he was sent out west to tame the Indians that things got dodgy. When the time came, in 1876, to do a bit of mopping up at Little Big Horn, Custer figured his couple hundred stalwart soldiers ought to be more than up to the task of dealing with a band of heathen savages. Crazy Horse, ever the pessimist, figured Custer was a decent enough fighter so as to merit extreme conservatism, which helps explain why he showed up with about ten times as many men as the general had. The rest, as they say, is history. In fairness to Custer, he did suffer a bit from his circumstances, i.e., being in the Army. It’s not as though one can walk up to one’s commanding officer and say “You know, General, if we attack those savages, there’s a good chance they’re going to kick our ass.” That sort of thing is frowned on in the military.

Neville Chamberlain – History’s treatment of Prime Minister Chamberlain has waxed and waned over the years, but he invariably gets a lot of flak for the whole Munich Agreement thing, at the conclusion of which signing in 1938 he came home triumphant and ever the optimist, declaring “I believe it is peace for our time” and opining that “I got the impression that here was a man [Adolf Hitler] who could be relied upon when he had given his word.” It is rumored that in the privacy of a few trusted advisors he also remarked “Gosh, that Hitler’s a swell chap, isn’t he now.”  His successor, Winston Churchill, was a good bit more pessimistic about life in general and the Furor in particular, noting at one point “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

Herbert Hoover — In early 1929, Herbert Hoover made the following ebullient assertion. “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” Say what you like; the man was no pessimist. It is, though, awfully hard to imagine that he (and the nation) wouldn’t have been a good deal better off had he been one. Ever one for doubling down, Hoover, once the stock market crash had well and truly occurred, went on to observe in mid-1930 “While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall recover.” One supposes this is the sort of spirit we expect from our politicians, however deluded it may be.

Edward John Smith (Captain of the RMS Titanic) – Seems to me that anyone tasked with commanding a large moving object, particularly one carrying many thousands of passengers, ought, as a prerequisite to the job, be determined to be as pessimistic as humanly possible. Assume and be prepared for the worst conceivable calamity, etc, etc. Captain White, quoted just prior to the launch of RMS Titanic, notably observed “I cannot imagination any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.”

Largely ignored by history, amidst all the brouhaha about the iceberg, the sinking, and all the dead wet people, is the fact that as Titanic was pulling out of Southampton, England at noon on the 10^th of April, 1912, the whole inaugural affair damn near came to a screeching halt when the great ship came within four feet of crashing into the SS City of New York, which vessel had the temerity to break a hawser and drift out into Titanic’s path. One might have thought that Captain White would find this a sobering, indeed prescient indicator for how his maiden voyage was going to go and that he would have acted with a measure of reserve thereafter. One would, though, have been mistaken, as history and Hollywood have so trenchantly documented.

Napoleon Bonaparte – The many facets of Napoleon’s career and military exploits are far too copious to enumerate here, except to say that hubris played a prominent role in his personality and his approach to military endeavors in general. On the morning of June 18, 1815, as he and his generals were sitting around camp waiting for the mud to dry so they could launch their assault, he calmly stated “I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad soldiers; we will settle the matter by lunchtime.” It actually ran rather longer, not really wrapping up until sometime after dinner, by which time Napoleon’s troops, as well as the remainder of his military and governmental career, were a shambles. As a consequence, he was encouraged to spend the remainder of his life in Saint Helena, a place that is completely devoid of optimism, or at least it was last time I was there.

On the plus side, though, Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo ushered in something like fifty years of peace, which is rather a lot for the Europeans. And, by the way, this is as good a spot as any to note that war in general has a long history of offering up some of the very finest examples of misplaced optimism. Consider, for example, the following brief selection of quotes (provided in chronological order, simply to demonstrate that, history notwithstanding, we do not appear to be getting any better at this sort of thing):

• “A small action will set everything to rights.” Major John Pitcairn of the British Army opining on the burgeoning American revolutionary effort, 1775.
• “The South has too much common sense and good temper to break up the Union.” Abraham Lincoln, 1860
• “You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.” Kaiser Wilhelm encouraging his departing troops, August, 1914
• “People are becoming too intelligent ever to have another big war.” Henry Ford, 1928
• “Hitler is a queer fellow who will never become Chancellor; the best he can hope for is to head the Postal Department.” Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg[9], 1931
• “Well, don’t worry about it…It’s nothing.” Lt. Kermit Tyler, Duty Officer of Shafter Information Center, Hawaii upon receiving word that a radar signal had been received indicating a flight of at least fifty planes heading toward Oahu, December 7, 1941.
• “It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and be home by Christmas.” Ronald Reagan (California gubernatorial candidate), 1965

The list is endless, but the message is always the same—optimists end up looking foolish and frequently, if they’re in positions of power, end up costing many other people their lives.

Painful as it is to admit, it’s important here to concede that it is possible, as with all things, to misapply pessimism and, as a consequence, to get things terribly wrong. For that reason, we will talk later about how to employ its power appropriately and not overdo it. But just as a cautionary measure, let’s review a few[10] instances in which pessimism worked out less well than originally hoped.

• “You ain’t going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.” Jim Denny, Manager of “The Grand Ole’ Opry, firing Elvis Presley after his first performance.
• “Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching. Working once a week, he might have lasted a long time and become a great star.” Tris Speaker, Manager of the Cleveland Indians, 1921
• “I think there is a world market for about five computers.” Thomas Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM, 1943
• “Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.” Marechal Ferdinand Foch Professor of Strategy and Commandant of Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1911.

Pessimism in Everyday Life

But fear not, for it isn’t only the luminaries of this world who have so much to gain by embracing the power of pessimism. You too can turn your life around using this simple but powerful technique. As we will make clear in the next section, the approach is simplicity itself. And it is the very first step that is easiest of all to actually implement, though it’s also the one that many people (particularly the hard-core optimists) have the hardest time getting their heads around. This is the steps in which you train yourself to automatically, instinctively assume that the outcome of every situation will be the worst that it can possibly be.

And yet, as difficult as it is for many to accept this simple premise, the evidence is all around us, in many cases so obvious that we scarcely even notice it. Therefore, to increase your confidence and give you a broader perspective on the opportunities that await your newfound sense of pessimism, the following list presents some of the everyday occurrences in which pessimism plays a pivotal role. Once you learn to recognize these scenarios, you will come to realize that nearly every moment of your day is jam-packed with opportunities to gain advantage from embracing the pessimistic lifestyle.

Before launching into this list, however, it’s worth pointing out a subtle distinction that may have occurred to some of you. “How,” you ask, “does the so-called Murphy’s Law” factor into all of this? Isn’t it really just a variation on what you’re saying throughout this discussion? Well, Murphy’s Law[11] is really nothing more than fundamental pessimism wrapped up in an unnecessary tautology. Have a look at the opening conditional statement and you’ll see what I mean. The condition “If anything can go wrong” is as unnecessary a pre-condition as can possibly be imagined, for surely there has never once existed in all of human experience a situation in which there was not some conceivable problem, difficulty, or malfunction that could occur. If we, thus, delete this premise from the original aphorism, we are left simply with “it will,” which is nothing but an especially terse way of stating what we’ve been trying to say all along, i.e., that we should always assume that the worst will happen in every situation. So let’s have a look at a random selection of situations that confront us each day.

Everyday Events

• When you drop your toast, it will hit the floor, buttered side down[12].
• When you try to catch any dropped object in mid-fall, you will always make the situation worse.
• When you tear out the advertising postcard from your magazine, you will pull out at least two magazine pages as well.
• That dirty spot you’re trying to clean on the window is always on the other side. Also, once you think you’ve finally gotten all of it, it will continue to show later, but only when the sun hits it a certain way.
• When catching a flight, your gate will always be the farthest one down the concourse.
• The weather will always be the worst it can possibly be for whatever activity you wish to undertake (too hot, too cold, raining, snowing, whatever)
• The gas tank on your grill will run out halfway through cooking your steaks for dinner.

Consumer Products/Packaging

• When you try to pull one plastic garbage bag from the box, four more will come out with it.
• If you lose an item, the only way to find it is to go out and purchase an identical new one.
• The amount of force required to pull open a new bag of potato chips far exceeds the amount necessary to pull the entire bag in half.
• You cannot insert the straw into those little juice boxes without immediately shooting half the contents of the box across the room.[13]

Technology

• When you absolutely need your cell phone to work, e.g., in a road emergency, the battery will be dead.
• At the precise moment you get all seventeen digital clocks in your home set to the same time, there will be a power outage.

Waiting in Line

• The line you choose at the (bank, grocery store, DMV – take your pick) is the slowest moving. You cannot change this, no matter how many times you change lines, or how much you analyze the pace of each line before committing. On a related note:
• The woman ahead of you will pay for her purchases with a check drawn against a foreign bank.
• The man ahead of you has found the only item on the shelf that has no pricing or scanning information on it. This means the cashier must talk with someone in that department. The customer will know the price, but the cashier will not believe him.
• The woman ahead of you at the grocery store will ask the cashier if she (the woman) can run back into the store to pick up “one more thing I forgot.” The cashier will say “Sure, no problem.” Alternatively, the customer may make everyone wait while her husband goes to fetch the forgotten item.
• The man ahead of you will swear that the sign back on the counter indicated a lower price than the one that keeps coming up on the cashier’s scanner. This will require a conversation with the department head (who is at lunch or on break).
• Just as you reach the head of the queue, the cashier will end her shift and be replaced by a new person, who must go through ten minutes of “getting set up” activities before waiting on you.
• If you’re really in luck, the cashier will inform you that you represent the back of the line and ask you to begin informing people who arrive behind you that the line is now closed. This allows you to incur their wrath and dirty looks rather than the cashier.
• Corollary: You can, of course, immediately speed up any line you are in through the simple expedient of moving to another one.

Driving and Automobiles

• Parts covered by warranty do not fail.
• Strange noises emanating from an automobile vanish when the car gets within one mile of any repair facility.
• Your spare tire will not be inflated when you need it.
• Whenever you allow extra time to get to your destination there will be no traffic and you’ll be an hour early. Whenever you’re running late, there’ll be a huge traffic jam.
• Turn signals always convey erroneous information. Either they are on, but the driver doesn’t know it and has no intention of actually turning (as on the highway overpass), or they aren’t on, but the driver is in fact turning.

Dining Out/Restaurants

• No waiter/waitress can memorize your order and then deliver it accurately.
• The odds of receiving your fast food order (at the counter) accurately are about 50/50. These odds fall exponentially when you use the drive-through, since they know you can’t come back, except at colossal inconvenience.
• The hostess will always lie (i.e. underestimate) about the actual length of the wait to get a table at the restaurant, just to get you to stay.

So What’s a Person to Do?

Acceptance of the inevitability of each of the foregoing events begs the obvious question of what, if anything, we can do about it. In fact, there exist palliative steps that can be taken in every one of these cases—steps that may reduce the pain and annoyance that would otherwise result, or which may actually result in a genuine benefit. A few selected examples of what I’m talking about:

• The pessimist waits at every intersection until the approaching car has actually gone by or turned in, rather than risk believing the turn signal and pulling out in front of a non-turning vehicle.
• The pessimist carries reading material at all times so as to have something to do in long lines.
• The pessimist keeps a spare filled gas tank for his grill in the garage at all times.
• The pessimist does not attempt to catch dropped objects, but rather learns to wait until they have ceased all motion, all the while carefully watching where they land.

Admittedly random examples, but with a bit of careful examination, it should be apparent that every one of the foregoing scenarios admits some sort of proactive response that will result in a benefit to the committed pessimist.

Religion and Pessimism

Can there possibly be any facet of human existence more inherently optimistic than religion? Regardless of which deity you revere, which holy book you adhere to, or which stories you believe, every religious acolyte is convinced, with unflagging confidence, that not only is their way the one true way, but that through relatively simple expedients like espousing faith and attending church regularly they will live for all eternity. I am most definitely not a religious person, but you have to give these people credit. In the face of absolutely no corroborating evidence to support their beliefs, they are not only absolutely convinced of the way things are going to turn out in the very distant future (indeed, eternity), they also accept without question the occurrence of a whole host of miraculous past events that have no evidentiary basis at all, aside from having been cursorily described in their particular holy book. That requires a hell of a lot more optimism than believing that it won’t rain during your picnic or that you will get that big promotion at work.

Of course, a fundamental question underpins every religion and that is whether or not there even exists an afterlife, without which there isn’t all that much point to religion at all, is there? The optimist, it should by now go without saying, not only believes that there will be one but that it will an altogether blissful affair replete with reunions with long-dead loved ones, etc. Conversely, the pessimist believes that there cannot possibly exist an afterlife, unless, of course, he believes, as well, that it will be entirely miserable affair for all of eternity, in which case its existence would be a virtual certainty.

And yet if you scratch just beneath the surface, what do you find?  An edifice of belief so profoundly pessimistic it’s a wonder anyone at all finds the whole affair attractive. Consider, for example, the most basic tenet of them all. Every religion, regardless of the details, believes that failure to proactively and unquestioningly accept their belief system damns you to an eternity in perdition. As outlooks go, that one’s about as negative as they come. But religion is, first and foremost, about faith. And faith is about as pure an expression of optimism as you can find, which is why the religious willingly choose to ignore the pessimism inherent in their belief system and instead layer on top of it a veneer of optimism that is about as inappropriate an application of the concepts I am attempting to describe in this essay as can be imagined.

A more objective assessment of religious reality would reveal a few indisputable facts, starting with the fact that there exist in this world dozens and dozens of major and minor religions,[14] only one of which can, by their very definition, turn out to be right in the end. That means that only a small percentage of the people in the world will truly realize the promise of eternal life,[15] while the majority of us are, regardless of our beliefs or actions, doomed to an eternity in hell’s fire. To the extent that religious practice is a hedge against an unknown future, simple mathematics would suggest that your safest bet is to gravitate to the largest group. That said, 33% is still only a one in three chance of not finding yourself on the freight elevator to hell when the big day comes. But even that assessment paints a too-optimistic view of eternity, for, as any religious zealot can tell you, it’s not enough to be a member of the right major group. You must, in fact, adhere to the beliefs of a very specific sub-group if you are to maximize your odds of eternal success. Even, for example, within the largest group of all, the Christians, you have Catholics, Baptists, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the list goes on and on. But every one of these groups believes that the members of the other sub-sects are just as doomed to hell as are members of completely different religions. There are, of course, as many variations on the Muslim and Hindu themes as what we’ve enumerated here for Christians. All of which means that your odds of having chosen the exact perfect group, worshipping just the right deity are pretty much nil. And that means you’re left with a pretty pessimistic outlook no matter which group you belong to.

Therefore, if you subscribe to the advice laid out in the preceding pages, there can be only one logical course of action. Simply assume from the outset that you’re doomed to hell[16] and live out your life as though religion were no more than an endlessly entertaining mass delusion. Sounds like a risky course, you say. What are the benefits of going down this path? In fact, they are many:

• Getting to sleep in on Sunday mornings
• Not having to get all dressed up one or more times every week
• Not wasting your hard-earned income donating it to a tax-exempt organization
• Not being obliged to participate in whatever time wasting extra-curricular activities your religion would have you do, e.g., proselytizing, working around the church, etc.
• Not being shunned by your coworkers on Monday morning while everyone else is discussing what they did on Sunday.

The time and money saved from these benefits alone more than makes the case for embracing the pessimist (which, in this case, happens to equal atheist) viewpoint in all matters theological.

So How Can I Put Pessimism to Work for Me?

Okay, so we’ve discussed numerous examples from everyday life as well as the lives of the famous and infamous. But how, you say, can I take this from the abstract to the concrete? How can I make it actionable? How can I use the power of pessimism to change my life? The answer is so banal and simple that it’s almost embarrassing to write it down. But since we’ve come this far already, let’s go ahead and spell out explicitly what astute readers will have already gleaned on their own. There are but three simple steps required to make pessimism work for you:

1. Think Pessimistically—Begin from an assumption that in every circumstance in which the outcome is uncertain, the actual outcome will be the worst possible one viz a viz yourself.[17]
2. Evaluate Your Ability to Affect the Outcome—Determine whether or not you can take steps that will have any material impact on how the scenario plays out.
3. Act Opportunistically—Identify and implement steps that will either bend the outcome to your advantage, or, if that outcome is set in stone, modify your position so as to obtain maximum advantage from the bad outcome.

As straightforward as these three steps may at first seem, they bear some elucidation if you are to gain maximum advantage from pessimism in your daily life.

Think Pessimistically

It takes some genuine imagination to conceive of the worst possible outcome in any given situation. And, indeed, it is, I confess, a bit of an overstatement to talk in terms of “worst possible” when discussing potential outcomes from everyday events. The set of possible outcomes must first reside within the realm of the actually possible and, ideally, within the realm of the statistically reasonable. If, for example, your family is planning a picnic for this weekend, theoretically, at least, one could imagine the worst possible outcome being a colossal earthquake that destroys civilization as we know it, in which case, it is challenging to conceive of opportunistic actions that one might then take to gain advantage from such an occurrence. But it is certainly feasible to assume that it will rain, hail, snow, or other seasonally appropriate meteorological occurrence. Depending on venue chosen for the picnic, you could also benefit from assuming it will be closed or so crowded that you cannot get in, or that if you do get in you will spend hours finding a parking spot. The possibilities are boundless. My main point here is to limit your universe of expected negative outcomes to those that actually bear some likelihood of coming to pass.[18] While thinking ahead is an important prerequisite for benefitting from pessimism, spending a great deal of time on low-probability outcomes is a waste of everyone’s time and will make you no friends anyway.

Evaluate your Ability to Affect the Outcome

When thinking through our picnic scenario, surely there is nothing you can do to actually affect whether or not the weather will be inclement. But if it’s a big promotion at the office we’re talking about, then the story becomes rather different for, in this case, while it is most certainly productive to begin from an assumption of negativity, i.e., that it will go to someone less deserving than yourself, it is also folly to sit back and assume that this is a preordained outcome. What I’m getting at here is to say that two out of the three steps in this action plan require (at least potentially) proactivity on your part. Actions based on the expectation of a particular uncontrollable outcome we will discuss momentarily. But every bit as critical is the real possibility of taking actions that can actually affect the outcome. And while it might be tempting to assume that any actions we choose to take in this regard ought to be those designed to improve the outcome, that is by no means always going to be the case. There may indeed be genuine value in taking steps to make the outcome even worse than it otherwise would be. An example might help on this subtle twist.

Consider our promotion example again. You’ve worked hard, proven yourself an effective manager, and an opening has become available one level higher than yours. The problem, of course, is that there are numerous other managers as eager as you for the position. The skilled pessimist assumes without hesitation that the promotion will go to that manager least qualified to do the job.[19] The passive pessimist can still receive modest benefits from this assumption, e.g., not getting his wife’s hopes up, not purchasing (or even bothering to make plans to purchase) that expensive new car, and not going to the trouble of packing the things in his cubical in expectation of moving into a big new office. While these are all genuine benefits and not to be taken lightly, they pale in comparison to what can be achieved by the proactive pessimist. Imagine, for example, the possible effects of the talk you could have with your boss, a talk in which you make clear your complete satisfaction with your current position, in which assertion is implicit your lack of interest in the promotion. You then follow this up by extolling the virtues of the most incompetent nincompoop you can think of in the department, one whose promotion into the new role cannot help but implode within weeks or even days, thus causing not only the sacking of that unfortunate individual but also the summary dismissal of your own boss (for making the recommendation), thus resulting in the creation of now two promotion opportunities and the removal of two obstacles to your winning one of them. It’s a simple example, but one that demonstrates the power of not just pessimism, but proactive pessimism. Which brings us to…

Act Opportunistically

But what about those situations in which the outcome is totally beyond your control. These could include the weather, fluctuations in the economy or the stock market, or the likelihood that your car will break down.[20] Even in these circumstances, making that all-important assumption about the outcome being the worst it can (plausibly) be can have enormously beneficial consequences for you if anticipated and handled correctly.

You’ve no doubt noticed by now that there are many nuances to this discussion. An important one arises the moment we begin discussing financial matters, like, for example, trying to make money in the stock market. Surely, you say, the pessimist will assume that market prices will fall. Not at all, I respond. For anyone with even the most basic understanding of such matters knows that making money in the market requires only that prices change and that you correctly anticipate the changes and act accordingly. Every bit as much money has been made by clever investors in the presence of falling prices as in times of increases. This is because of the existence of various financial instruments that accrue to your benefit when you correctly judge that a share price will fall. Therefore, to take this example to its logical conclusion, the correct pessimistic assumption is not that a given company’s stock price will either rise or fall, but rather that whatever happens, you will guess incorrectly and, as a consequence, lose (or, at best, fail to make) money on the transaction.

That said, how on earth, you ask, is it possible to benefit if every investment I make is doomed to lose money? I do not mean to spend a great deal of time on this topic, else we will quickly find ourselves stuck down at the bottom of a financial rat hole. Suffice it to say that the trick with this (and other related) situations is the delicate business of second guessing oneself. This is a dodgy undertaking, as even the most cursory examination will reveal. If, after careful analysis and consideration, you elect to make decision X regarding an investment, the trick then becomes that of realizing that your actual course of action should be precisely the opposite of what your thoughtful analysis has led you to believe. Unfortunately, many people will only end up outsmarting themselves with this admittedly circular approach. A related approach that leverages the same basic tenet but which removes your own indecisiveness from the equation is that of enlisting the help of a friend. The friend is, then, simply instructed to carefully observe what you do with your investments and to do precisely the opposite. This, as should be clear, removes your vacillation from the matter entirely, for no matter how many times you rethink your own decision, it is only your final action that will trigger that of your friend. So long as he makes a larger financial decision than yours, the two of you can then arrive at a suitably beneficial sharing arrangement with the proceeds. By taking this approach, you’ve not only guaranteed benefit for yourself, but you’ve improved a friend’s life as well.

Schopenhauer and Pessimism

Many philosophers throughout history have opined on the concept of pessimism, but none more trenchantly than Arthur Schopenhauer, a man who, to all reports, was an insufferable wretch, and whose view of life is best summed up by his pithy quote “The worst is yet to come.” We have argued earlier in this treatise that the practice of pessimism is, at its core, an exercise in expectation management. Similarly, Schopenhauer argued that the only way in which life was even bearable was if one came at it with extremely low expectations. Stated differently, his goal was not so much to enjoy life but to get to the end of it having endured a minimum of suffering.

He offered a great deal of sage advice[21] on subjects such as living with oneself, living with others, and getting through life in general. On the former matter, he notably suggested setting constant limits on one’s ambitions and desires, so as to avoid the inevitable disappointment that attends the setting of lofty goals. He was also a big fan of solitude, probably because he didn’t get invited to a lot of parties—go figure. As for advice on getting on with others, he not only espoused the hard-to-dispute view that smart people prefer to be on their own because they find ordinary people annoying[22] but also what is arguably the single salient point of this entire discussion—assume that the world is filled with fools and act accordingly.

This sentiment is so valuable as to merit a bit of detailed exploration, if only to increase the odds of the reader remembering it. According to Schopenhauer, we should assume that every new person we meet is an idiot and place the burden squarely on them to prove otherwise. Nine times out of ten they will fail to do so, and when that tenth one does turn out to be genuinely clever we will be shocked beyond description. Some concrete examples may help:

• Assume the car in front of you on the freeway is going to lock up their brakes at some point for no reason.
• Assume the store employee will give you bogus information when you ask him where the swimwear is located.
• Assume the waiter will get your order wrong.
• Assume the drive-through at Burger King will get your order wrong.

The list of possibilities here is quite literally endless, but in every case the steps you can take, based on the fundamental assumption of stupidity, that will either result in a benefit or, at a minimum, reduce what would otherwise be profound annoyance, should be pretty obvious. We’ll let Arthur close out this brief section in his own effervescent words:

“There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.”

The Future of Pessimism

It has not been the goal of this discussion to make the case for a life of misery. No sane person would strive for such a thing nor exhort others to do so. Rather, I have endeavored to demonstrate how, by assuming the worst in everything, one can, in fact, enjoy a richer, more fulfilling life. As was established at the outset, employing pessimism as a force for good in your life is, first and foremost, an exercise in expectation management. But just because we lower our initial expectations about a given event or scenario does not, by any means, imply that we passively, bovinely accept this outcome and its concomitant negative consequences. Rather, by assuming the worst and proactively taking steps to either change the outcome or, failing that, benefit to the extent possible, we realize genuine improvement in our lives and, quite possibly, the lives of those around us.

What is the long-term outlook for pessimism? Is it a sustainable lifestyle, or merely a means to an end? Are we, like Schopenhauer, doomed to a life by ourselves because no one can stand to be around us? It’s probably apparent by now that throughout this treatise I have been using the term pessimism as a surrogate for what I really regard as nothing more than judicious risk management. And risk management, in turn, means nothing more complex than evaluate all possible outcomes and plan for the worst one. Those who go through life believing in the old aphorism “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst” understand precisely what I’ve been talking about.

[2] I should point out that I did not base this warning on some advanced knowledge of macroeconomics or any special expertise in derivatives or other financial machinations. Rather, I based it simply on the general view that things almost always get worse, particularly when they seem to be at their rosiest.

[3] Come again is more like it. World events, of course, run in cycles, and there have been plenty of periods throughout history (both recent and ancient) when a healthy embrace of pessimism would have done the world good. We will explore some historical examples as we proceed.

[4] It’s only fitting that the Germans are the ones who made up such a word. They are, after all, the masters of pessimism, as will become apparent in some of the examples that follow.

[5] Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

[6] Like, for example, in the case of Captain Smith, who we will read about shortly.

[7] More on these wretches to follow directly.

[8] Or, if you’re an engineer, you simply conclude that the glass was designed with a 100% safety margin.

[9] Yes, that Hindenburg. It’s only fitting, after all.

[10] Keeping the list short, seeing as how these examples tend to undermine my working hypothesis a bit.

[11] If anything can go wrong, it will.

[12] This first item introduces the mathematically perplexing family of situations in which the outcome would seem to afford a 50/50 outcome potential, but which, instead, always turns out negatively, statistics notwithstanding. Other events in this unique family include trying to decide which of the double doors you are approaching is the unlocked one, and whether to turn left or right at an intersection when you don’t know where you’re going.

[13] This is of course due to the extreme amount of pressure one must exert to hold the box steady while trying to jam the straw through the foil. Five-year-olds seem able to manage this challenge; adults cannot.

[14] The worldwide breakdown goes something like this: Christian 33%, Muslim 22%, Hindu 14%, Buddhist 7%, Nonreligious 11%. The remaining 13% or so are comprised of Jews, Sikhs, Shintos, Zoroastrians, Baha’i, and a vast assortment of others.

[15] Unless, that is, the atheists turn out to have got it right, in which case the percentage falls to zero.

[16] A variation on this theme if you insist on the pure atheist interpretation (which is, in the end, as much of a religion as any other) assumes that when you die you lay in a box and rot and that heaven and hell don’t enter into the equation at all. In either event, your course of action while living is clear.

[17] It is critical to keep in mind that each outcome must be referenced to yourself, for reason we will explore shortly.

[18] Other possible but extraordinarily scenarios that are entertaining to consider but ought to be stricken from your repertoire include sunspots, biological plagues, and spontaneous outbreaks of civil war (with or without the release of nuclear weapons).

[19] Reasons for which could run the gamut from incompetence on the part of the promotion decision maker to plain old nepotism.

[20] This particular example raises yet another subtle twist on the notion of proactive pessimism. Unlike the promotion example, in which you have the power to take specific steps to at least potentially affect the outcome, the likelihood of your car breaking down is largely a statistical phenomenon controlled by things like manufacturer quality control and the sorts of driving you are obliged to do every day. However, it is affected as well by the sorts of maintenance you choose to perform or to ignore. So while your actions viz a viz your car are unlikely to lead directly to a breakdown, they can certainly have an effect on a statistical probability.

[21] Presumably assuming in the process (as would any practicing pessimist) that his exhortations would be ignored and that he would be forgotten by history.

[22] A view that goes some way to understanding why he didn’t get invited to many parties. Instead, he lived for nearly thirty years alone, accompanied only by a pair of poodles.

Growing up in Maine, it is reasonably assumed that my halcyon youth was filled with an unending orgy of skiing, camping, fishing, hunting, and all the other rustic backwood sorts of recreation that out-of-staters generally associate with the place. The bitter truth of the matter is that I never—not even once—participated in any of these activities until I was fully grown and had moved away to other places.[1] Non-Mainers harbor, as well, one additional myth about native downeasters, viz that we daily gorge ourselves on great heaping platters of lobster. Indeed, it was the popularity of this myth that prompted an associate to suggest that I might be uniquely qualified to expound in an entertaining (perhaps even informative) manner on the topic. As it happens, lobster was not, by any means, a staple food during my childhood. I was, however, sufficiently well versed in its many nuances to allow me to offer at least an opinion or two on the matter.

I begin by confessing that, having stewed on the idea for a day or two, I found myself at a bit of a loss as to which particular aspect of lobster lore I might explore. Indeed, my initial reaction was that this ground had been more than adequately ploughed by a favorite author of mine and arguably the finest essayist of his generation, David Foster Wallace, who, in his essay entitled Consider the Lobster,[2] crafted what seemed at the time an exhaustive and provocative treatise on the topic. Oddly, though, despite the essay having been commissioned by Gourmet magazine,[3] in which publication one might have expected to encounter, say, innovative new recipes or eye-pleasing presentation techniques, Wallace instead chose to expound at inordinate length on the issue of whether or not lobsters feel pain when they are boiled alive.[4] He did, however, also see fit to discuss, at least in passing, some of the basics that underlie any fundamental understanding of the lobster, e.g., its biological relation to other creatures—aquatic and otherwise—as well as the economic impact of lobstering on the state of Maine.[5] Surprising as well, particularly given that the occasion for Wallace’s essay was the annual Maine Lobster Festival, he spent rather less time than one might have expected talking about how one actually goes about eating a lobster. All of which prompted me to conclude that it was in this particular domain that I might offer a bit of guidance, with the modest goal of sparing the neophyte or tourist the sort of public humiliation that might otherwise result from inadequately informed dining.

I will, therefore, as a public service, offer some basic thoughts on the preparation and consumption of lobster, in what might be parochially regarded as the true and correct Maine manner[6]. However, before launching into the tutorial proper, I need to clarify an important point. Throughout all that follows, we will be discussing Maine lobsters,[7] i.e., the olive-green-colored ones with big claws that you see in those depressingly small and crowded tanks at your grocery store, usually accompanied by a sign saying something like $32/pound, give or take, depending on the time of year and how far you live from Maine. There exist, of course, other types of lobster, from places like California, South Africa, etc., but these are all abominations of one sort or another, gustatorily speaking, and unworthy of the name.

The first step in the lobster-eating process is selection. If you’re in a grocery store staring bewildered into the tank, you will typically be asked to select one or more specific individuals.[8] If, on the other hand, you are sitting in a restaurant, they will do the actual selecting but will, at a minimum, ask you to choose from a variety of sizes, generally ranging from one to five pounds. Stick with one to one-and-a-half pounders. As with most other animals, the older and bigger they get, the tougher they get as well.[9]

Before one can enjoy a lobster, it must, of course, be prepared. Despite all that you may have heard during your lifetime about lobster thermador, lobster rolls, lobster ravioli, lobster this, and lobster that, there is, in fact, one and only one proper and socially acceptable way to prepare lobster, and that is by the simple expedient of boiling it…in a pot of water. At which point I will pause and acknowledge that the primary audience for this treatise is comprised of those raised and/or currently living in the southern tradition of crawfish boils and the like. That being the case, I feel compelled to digress for a moment to clarify exactly what is meant by “boiling” in the context of Maine lobster. It means putting the animal, still alive and squirming[10], into a large pot of boiling water, to which nothing at all has been added but salt. I should acknowledge as well that I have enjoyed more than my share of Cajun cooking over the years, so indulge me as I reiterate this important point. At no point in the lobster boiling process are substances such as “Slap Ya Mama,” “Tony Chachere’s,” or crawfish/crab boil introduced[11].

There is, however, at least one way in which eating lobster is not unlike eating crawfish, and that is in the magnitude of the mess you will make of yourself in the process. I will go so far as to suggest that eating lobster is, in fact, the messier proposition of the two, if only due to the more extensive excavation required. Whereas eating crawfish is about going directly and immediately for the tail meat, the lobster aficionado will spend inordinate amounts of time digging the tiniest scraps of meat out of places no human has any business going. But I’m getting ahead of myself again. We’ll get back to the eating in a bit.

If you have chosen to partake of your lobster in a restaurant[12], then you will, of course, not be involved in its preparation. If your foray into lobster eating includes the cultural element of dining in an authentic venue, the advice is simple enough—keep it as rustic and close to the water as possible. Yes, there are restaurants in Portland where they will serve you a lobster—places with linen tablecloths and crystal wine glasses. Do yourself a favor: drive the half-hour up the coast to Bailey Island and find yourself a place out near Land’s End where rows of picnic tables are covered with red and white checkered tablecloths—the sort of place where the waitress[13] asks you where you’re from while she’s tying a plastic bib around your neck. If you can actually see the lobster boats out the back window and the people next to you are attacking their food with what look like wrenches and ice picks, you’ve found the right spot.

If, on the other hand, you’re the brave sort and are prepared to look your dinner in the eye as you prepare it at home, a few words to the wise should suffice. Add some salt to the water, get it boiling, and toss in the lobster, taking care to get the lid back on pronto. Like any animal suddenly thrust into boiling water, the lobster will make some effort to get out, at least for a brief period.[14] There exist actual guidelines for size versus cooking time, but I won’t bore you with those here except to say fifteen minutes or so ought to do the trick. You’ll know it’s done when the lobster has turned red and an antenna can be easily pulled from its head. The only other preparation required is the melting of copious quantities of butter. As with my earlier comments concerning spices, this should comprise butter…and only butter. If, in the end, you’ve followed these instructions to the letter, the only two ingredients on your plate will be lobster and butter.

Now you’ve come, at last, to the moment when you get to actually eat the lobster. And it is at this point that you have to make an important decision. You can either take the easy route, which means breaking open the carapace and claws and eating only the easily accessible meat contained in these two locations. Or you can embrace the challenge of locating and digging out every conceivable morsel, regardless of where it may be hiding. This is as good a moment as any to comment on tools. It should be entirely obvious by now that the standard arsenal of knife, fork, and spoon are ill equipped for lobster eating. Rather, you will require nut crackers, an exceedingly narrow two-pronged fork, and a pointed device that looks frighteningly like that thing the dentist inserts into your mouth during your biannual checkup and cleaning. The goal of all this purpose-built hardware is, of course, to enable you to get into those tight little nooks and crevasses where the tiniest shreds of lobster meat reside. If you are at a restaurant, they will happily supply you with these implements. If you’re at home, prepare yourself by obtaining a few sets in advance and spare yourself the disappointment of being improperly equipped when the moment of truth arrives. If you’ve already completed your lobster preparation and only then realize that you’ve neglected to obtain the right implements, don’t panic—simply dash out to the garage. A pair of Vice Grips and a Number Two Philips screwdriver[15] will do in a pinch.

Once the eating has commenced, the process is simplicity itself. Spear a piece of lobster meat with the thin fork, dip it into the melted butter[16], and insert it into your mouth in a manner pretty much similar to any other eating you’ve done in your life. What happens with most people is that they quickly make their way to the tail meat, which is, without question, the sweetest, most rewarding part of the lobster. This is then followed by having a go at the two claws[17] and dispatching the tender morsels easily obtained there. From this point on, most people will make a reasonable effort[18] at getting at the tiny bits of meat in each of the thin legs, a pursuit that requires a level of skill and fortitude typically not forthcoming in the neophyte, i.e., a combination of squeezing, sucking, and skillful wielding of the aforementioned arsenal of implements. There are, in fact, meager but tasty morsels to be had behind the head, in the tail flippers, and in other assorted and obscure locations. Most people I know, though, focus their energy on the tail and claws, make a token effort at a leg or two, and call it quits.

That’s really pretty much the whole story in a nutshell. Indeed, the popularity of lobster in Maine stems not only from its easy availability and mind-numbingly cheap cost,[19] but also from the nearly complete lack of culinary skill required to prepare it. Bottom line—if you can boil water, you can cook lobster. Oh, and one final tidbit of advice—make sure the ones you’re buying have those little rubber bands around their claws.[20] They have those claws for a reason and they’re not shy about using them.

[2] Wallace, David Foster. Consider the Lobster and other Essays. New York, New York: Little Brown and Company, 2006

[3] Whose editors, I suspect, did not, prior to the commission, familiarize themselves with his previous work quite as diligently as they might have.

[4] This being the preferred manner of cooking and about which I shall have more to say directly.

[5] Which, to no one’s surprise, is considerable. For example, of the 80,000,000 odd pounds of lobster harvested each year in the U.S., more than half comes from Maine.

[6] I will expressly not, for reasons of editorial restraint, discuss numerous other no-less-interesting-though-arguably-less-practical aspects of the lobster, e.g., why they turn red when you cook them, why they prefer the cold waters of Maine, and how it is that you occasionally see those photos on CNN of some guy who’s caught a forty-pound specimen. Perhaps another time.

[7] Homarus americanus

[8] Gazing into the crowded tank, one gets the distinctly spooky impression that they are all trying desperately to avoid eye contact.

[9] Humans being a notable and possibly ironic exception

[10] If this prospect offends your sensibilities or you find yourself wondering whether you are crossing over some potentially important ethical boundary, I again refer you to Wallace’s excellent essay, previously described.

[11] There’s a reason why people perpetuate the hackneyed joke about the New England spice rack comprising only salt, pepper, and cinnamon.

[12] You will pay more, of course. But it’s a small price to pay for a guilt-free night’s sleep. You may still, though, not completely avoid an element of psychological angst, as your server may opt to bring the live animal to your table prior to preparation, just so that you can look into its eyes one final time. Not a terribly common practice in Maine, but it happens.

[13] If it’s a waiter, you’re probably in the wrong sort of establishment. If he offers you a wine list before dinner, run, don’t walk, to another restaurant.

[14] Though not nearly as vigorously as crabs, which I’ve seen leap out of the pot and run across an entire front lawn.

[15] Suitably sanitized of course.

[16] There are numerous potential faux pas that will immediately identify the individual as a lobster-eating rookie, but one example being the pouring of the melted butter onto the lobster.

[17] After you gain some experience you will come to realize that there are two sorts of claw meat, the original and the regrown claw, the former being the more tender in this author’s opinion, though opinions vary. Apparently lobsters spend a good deal of their lives fighting, which frequently results in lost claws, but which they have the not inconsiderable benefit of being able to grow back. If you examine the claws closely, you will notice that the originals are quite pointed whereas regrown ones are rather blunted and generally larger, proportionately speaking.

[18] Particularly if accompanied by a local, who will inevitably challenge and berate you into digging for every conceivable morsel, no matter how miniscule and  intransigent.

[19] At least during the summer months, when fresh lobster straight off the boat can be had for three or four bucks a pound, making it cheaper than hamburger.

[20] Or, alternatively, a small wooden peg jammed into each claw.

I never doubted for a moment that this day would come. At some point in nearly every introductory conversation I have, the topic of children comes up. Do I have any? None, huh? Why is that, exactly? Then, sensing discomfort, awkwardness, we tacitly agree to move on to some different, safer topic of conversation. It’s at these moments that I frequently feel compelled to retort with something like, so, why did you decide to have kids? How would you rate the pros and cons? Would you do it again if you had it to do over?[1] We live, though, in a society that regards child bearing as so self-evidently worthwhile, indeed necessary to the advancement of civilization, that daring to scrutinize the process with anything approaching objectivity is on a social par with offering to show a friend your collection of pipe bombs.

Much of the time, I write with the goal of either informing or entertaining readers. In rare moments of clarity, I might even pull off both simultaneously. But every once in a while—like now, for example—I find myself writing solely for the purpose of explaining something about myself to myself—explaining, in this instance, encompassing, as well, related concepts like rationalizing, reflecting upon, airing out, possibly apologizing for. And I have to confess that this children thing does, indeed, enter my mind from time to time, usually in response to one of two primary stimuli. The first is when I witness the all-too-common meltdown in a public place of some two-year-old who has been raised to believe that the world revolves around him[2], and that failure to get his own way about what sort of cookies his mother should buy merits a tantrum that will communicate to the entire world the sort of despot he has been cursed with as a parent. In these instances, I invariably react (to myself) with a feeling best described as a satisfying blend of self-congratulations and personal vindication. Only then, just to confuse things, there come those occasional (typically non-public for some reason) times when one witnesses moments of immense sweetness, pride, and apparent joy on the parent’s part, which causes me to rethink the whole thing, at least for a minute or two.

I should state here, for the record, that the opinions expressed herein are based on actual experience, and not mere word of mouth, either for better or worse. I have had a great deal of exposure to kids during my life[3]. I have no shortage of friends and relatives who have them, covering the full age range from newborn to adolescent to those who have grown up and gone off to college. I’ve encountered, at least as a spectator, pretty much all of the good and bad moments that a parent can experience, at least as far as I know. I have seen children tell their parents they love them. I have seen those same kids scream at their parents how much they hate them and wish they would die. I’ve seen the aforementioned meltdowns more times than I can count. I have seen sons who had to be bailed out of jail by their fathers at one in the morning. I have seen two three-year-olds stand toe-to-toe and repeatedly punch each other in the face like Ali versus Frazier. I could go on.

There are, in my estimation, many reasons for having children. Focusing for the moment on the intentional ones[4], all of these reasons, save one, are bad. People have kids because of peer pressure, because of pressure from their aging parents who want grandchildren and won’t shut the hell up about it, and from a society that expects them to produce progeny lest they die bereft with a houseful of cats. They have children because their skill set does not support them doing anything else aside from raising children[5]. They have them for legacy reasons, i.e., they feel the need to perpetuate a family name, a gene line, whatever. The list goes on ad nauseum. But, I submit to you that the only valid and sustainable reason for having children is because, down deep inside, you really, really want to have them. And there, returning to the opening paragraph for a moment, is the rub. Deep down inside, I have never once felt anything beyond a passing curiosity as regards children. At no moment in my life has the thought ‘gee, raising kids looks so awesome I just have to give it a try’ ever passed through my head. It’s often occurred to me that one of the foundational pieces of information I’d like to have in order to fully process my reaction to children is the knowledge of what percentage of the adult population feels like I do on this matter. You can’t simply look at demographic studies of who does and who does not have children. As I’ve already suggested, there are all sorts of reasons for having them and for not having them. And it’s also not the sort of thing, I suspect, that a lot of people would be terribly honest about if you just came out and asked them.

I should add here that I have, in fact, encountered a few people in my life who were willing to state that they too had made active choices not to have children. Of course, you will get as many reasons for not wanting to have children as there are for having them, again, many of those reasons bad ones. I know disillusioned people who think the world is going, or has already gone, to hell, and who don’t want to bring children into such a wretched place. I know people who wanted children, but who felt they weren’t equipped to raise them effectively, either psychologically or economically. I know people who had one form or another of bad upbringings themselves and who felt that this would somehow taint their own ability to raise children without repeating the mistakes they endured during their own childhood[6].

All of which is to say that not only have I given this issue rather a lot of thought over the years, I’ve also conducted (in large part involuntarily) a good bit of field research into the subject, which, while largely anecdotal, is, nonetheless, informative and generalizable. Having spent a great deal of time aggregating and distilling that research, I feel I am prepared, at last, to put forth for general consumption (and no doubt a hefty dose of vituperation) some of my conclusions concerning children[7].

1)      Being a parent requires that you willingly shut off a significant portion of your brain for lengthy periods of time. These will be different portions of your brain at different times, depending, of course, on the particular situation. Failure to master this ability can, I believe, result in permanent brain damage. I am reminded, for example, of the repetition phase that every child seems to go through sometime between ages two and four, wherein they demand to watch the same movie in a more or less endless loop for about a year. I have encountered more than one parent so hypnotized by this behavior that they eventually find themselves walking around the office mindlessly humming the Lion King theme all day.

2)      Being a parent requires that you subordinate (and, ideally, forget completely about) everything that you actually want to do for the better part of twenty years, give or take, depending on how many kids you have. I have friends who haven’t seen an adult movie in a theater since ‘ET’ was released[8]. Having children means that you cannot have the car you want, cannot furnish your home the way you want to, cannot attend the social events you want to, and, most certainly, cannot eat a complete meal in peace in a restaurant[9]. The list is endless.

3)      Being a parent means that you will frequently find yourself doing insane, inexplicable things. You will, without thinking twice, spend a Saturday driving to every McDonald’s in your city because your daughter has to have that final novelty plastic figurine that will complete her set, and without which she will be a pariah at school, seeing as how everyone else has the complete set. You will pay phenomenal amounts of money so that your child can have enormous inflatable bouncing castles, cotton candy machines, face painting clowns, live ponies, and anything else necessary to prove to your neighbors that you can put on a better birthday party than they can.

4)      Being a parent means that your time is never, not for one single instant, your own[10]. You will spend every weekday evening and weekend day driving your kids to soccer games, violin practice, school play rehearsal, and play dates. And when you aren’t driving them from one of these activities to the next, you will be sitting at the kitchen table with your spouse carefully poring over a spreadsheet that details your child’s activity program, and within which there had damned well better not be so much as one fifteen-minute interval during which there isn’t some culturally enriching activity to occupy their time[11]. And not only will you drive them to all of these activities, you will pay (again) enormous amounts for the privilege of their participation. At risk of oversimplification, being a parent means that your life is reduced to the functions of chauffeur and ATM machine.

It’s important to concede that there are many people in the world who are okay with all of the foregoing. Thank goodness for these people, for without them civilization would doubtless crumble in a matter of decades. My personal constitution does not, however, allow me to accept any of these states of being. Which likely means that I’m selfish or intolerant, perhaps even inhuman at some level. I decided, at an early stage, that if I could not embrace the parenting lifestyle with enthusiasm, then I was best off leaving it to others. The last thing any child needs is a parent who deeply resents the myriad of sacrifices that the job demands.

Totally separate from my general psychological unsuitableness for parenting, another aspect of the experience, one characterized by the times in which we live, contributes significantly to the wisdom of my decision. The societal rules of child rearing have changed dramatically since my adolescence, and many of these changes I find either ineffective, or downright debilitating to the development of a child. I am referring, in particular, to the culture of hypersensitivity to self-esteem. In my youth, the only way in which congratulations and reward came about was in response to doing something worthy of them, i.e., earning them. You got the best grades, excelled at sports, or created something unique for the science fair. In the child-rearing world of today, children have come to expect congratulations merely for showing up. We are raising a generation of kids who believe there are no winners and losers in life, that everybody is a winner, simply by virtue of participating. We hand out certificates of accomplishment like so much toilet paper. We award diplomas and conduct elaborate graduation ceremonies at the conclusion of every grade. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a bullshit way of raising children, and it sets them up for profound failure and disappointment when they enter the real world and find out that their boss isn’t going to heap praise upon them or hand them a certificate of accomplishment every day they manage to show up for work on time.

There is no conceivable way that my upbringing and worldview would allow me to function in this way with children—my own or anyone else’s—and I have little doubt that the first time I espoused these views at a parent/teacher meeting, I would immediately be branded a “bad parent” and regarded as such forever after. Stating my indignance at the prospect of springing for a cap, gown, and diploma frame so that my eight-year-old can graduate with suitable pomp from third grade would doubtless be sufficient to get a file started on me with CPS.

There is a final aspect of child rearing which, more than anything else, has contributed markedly to my decision to forego what might otherwise have been, all of my objections to the contrary notwithstanding, a rich and rewarding child raising experience. It is the fraught area of corporal punishment. I grew up in a time and place when sparing the rod was tantamount to raising a family of delinquents, or so it was widely believed. The fact that I grew up in a single-parent household didn’t help any, since the usual good-cop/bad-cop approach employed by many experienced mother/father teams was not available, leaving my over-stressed, under-supported single parent to handle all disciplinary matters. Add to this home life the public-school administrations of the time, who were not only enthusiastic believers in the salutary effects of corporal punishment, but who took things a step further by providing frequent doses of public humiliation as well, and you end up with a child whose primary psychological motivator in most matters is fear. In today’s world, parents are expected to reason with their two-year-old, to explain why perhaps striking one’s younger sister repeatedly with that baseball bat might be a bad idea and requesting that the child spend a bit of quality time reflecting on the pros and cons of his actions. In my day, you were shouted at to stop whatever unfavorable activity you were engaged in, and if you did not both acknowledge the admonition and respond appropriately to the threat (whether real or implied), you could expect to be beaten, and enthusiastically so.

I can never know what effect this background would have on attempts to raise children of my own. What I do know is that I have a bit of a temper when thrust into extremely unfavorable circumstances. And I know, as well, that no one is as capable of creating unfavorable circumstances as a young child. Whether it’s destroying some object that you hold in great value, or acting out in a public place, I have serious doubts about my ability to respond acceptably, doubts so severe that I am not prepared to place anyone at their mercy.

Aside from a boundless capacity for mischief and an insatiable ability to zero-in on the exact object that you don’t want them to go near, children also, from time to time, demonstrate a unique capacity to create emotional schisms that are better described by example than exposition. I have a good friend who saved money for years to buy his first-ever brand new car, only to have his three-year-old go out into the driveway one sunny summer day and use a small sharp stone to scratch the words “I love mommy” deeply and indelibly into the driver’s-side door. In today’s world, we would be expected to congratulate the child on his ability to express his feelings so candidly and creatively. We might even be impressed by the fact that had learned to write complete sentences at such a tender age. But we most certainly would not be encouraged to beat him within an inch of his life, which is how any such creativity on my part would have been received back in the halcyon days of my youth. And, just to be clear, I’m not arguing for a moment with the generally superior state of affairs, morally speaking, of today’s world, just saying that I am not at all confident with my own ability to behave in these ways. So, better safe than sorry.

I’ve never met a parent who, in private or public, would admit that, had they the opportunity to do it all over again, they wouldn’t have their children again. This even includes two good friends who each endured sons of such epic disciplinary failure that they had to be sent involuntarily to military academies during their teenage years. The fact that I find this so utterly inconceivable causes me to wonder if I am not predisposed to see only (or mostly) the bad in the kids I encounter around me. Or perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve never had the opportunity to attend a school play where my daughter is dressed as a tree on stage, or sat in the bleachers during the little league game when my son hits the clutch base hit in the bottom of the ninth, or struggled to sew together the perfect Halloween costume. I’m just not certain whether I should feel regret over this state of affairs or not, and that’s probably as it should be.

[2] At risk of appearing sexist, I will stick with ‘him’ throughout this discourse rather than resort to clunky devices like ‘s/he,’ ‘him/her,’etc. Let’s all just agree, in the interest of brevity, that the observations and opinions presented herein refer to, and are more or less equally applicable to, children of either gender. Any exceptions will be noted as such.

[3] The fact that this exposure has encompassed dozens of different children, rather than the same two or three every day, may color, in some way, my views. Strictly speaking, my opinions should, however, have greater statistical veracity than the views of a parent, the majority of whose views—for better or worse—will be based largely on their own family experiences.

[4] Accidents, after all, do still happen.

[5] This, like several statements in this essay, sounds a bit crass. However, I know more than one parent who will willingly admit that they believe themselves societally fit to do nothing other than create and raise children.

[6] Which, in extreme cases, possibly includes ending up in prison, since many of the practices that were perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, during the upbringing of most baby boomers, are now not only frowned upon, but are, in fact, illegal in many states.

[7] As with all generalizations, it’s important to concede from the outset that there will be exceptions to each of the following statements, anecdotes, and observations.

[8] If you can, without any thought at all, name more characters on Sponge Bob Square Pants than you can on any currently running sitcom, then you are familiar with what I am saying.

[9] An interesting phenomenon that seems to occur with every first-time parent is that in which they decide, with great optimism and enthusiasm, that they are not going to have their lifestyles modified by the mere arrival of an infant. These are the couples who bravely head out to restaurants and movies, toting their progeny (and associated mountains of apparatus) along, and pretending that everything is the same as it ever was, notwithstanding the half hour that it now requires to get into and out of the car or the fact that they have to leave a quarter of the way through the movie or the dinner. Invariably, these couples give up on this fantasy after the second or third attempt and simply stay home for the next twenty years.

[10] Unless you are pathetic enough to count your time at work as your own, in which case…well, never mind.

[11] And, of course, help them get into Harvard.

Or

Why Skiing is an Especially Apt Metaphor for

Life Itself

What do you get when you combine the annoyance factor of golf, the vast expense of scuba, and the bodily risk of skydiving? That’s right—skiing, a pastime whose origins are lost to antiquity, but which, in all likelihood, involved some Swiss or Austrian misanthrope—let’s agree to call him Gunther—living high on a mountain, who awakens one day to discover he is snowed in by a couple of feet of fresh powder from the previous night’s storm, and on the very day he had meant to go into the village at the base of the mountain for his semi-annual consignment of groceries. Well, shucks, our antiquarian hero[1] says to himself, looks like the only way I’m going to make it into town today is if I strap a couple of boards to my feet, rub a little goose grease on the bottoms to slick them up a bit, and slide down on top of all that snow. And so, for the moment neglecting to consider how he is going to make his way back up the hill with all those groceries, Gunther deftly navigates his way down the mountain and into the village, to the astonishment of his fellow citizens, who stop and stare in awe at the grace and speed with which he speeds down the village’s main street. And thus (at least plausibly) skiing is born[2].

Fast forward a few hundred years and you will find at your typical modern ski resort not socially-challenged mountaineers[3], but half-hour queues, hundred-dollar lift passes, and eight-dollar cardboard hamburgers. But, like a first-day skier staring over the precipice of a double black diamond, I am getting rather far ahead of myself here. I mean to explain all of the nuances of the sport in good time, but first a bit of back story is required, in order that you understand the context of what might otherwise come across as an unnecessarily negative exposition into what is, admittedly, a wildly popular pastime.

It will not be news to those who have participated in a sport of any kind that the earlier in life one begins said participation, the better at it one tends to be throughout the remainder of one’s life, most especially if that early start is augmented with some quality instruction, and if, of course, the individual is amenable to said instruction. All of which is a long and obtusely structured way of suggesting that I achieved none of these objectives, at least as far as skiing goes. The fact that I grew up in Maine probably counts for something in all of this. Goodness knows, I came of age no stranger to snow, though all of the terrain on which its copious quantities lay during my upbringing was unremarkably flat[4].

I not only grew up in Maine, but lived in the same house for my entire memorable childhood, save for a bit of moving about in the first couple of years, of which I have no recollection. Our family was on the decidedly lower end of the economic scale, and we didn’t engage in any of the sorts of recreation that required one to actually pay money. In fact, upon reflection, it still astounds me that I managed to grow up in Maine without once doing any of the things that people travel great distances and spend great sums to come from other parts of the world to do[5]. Oddly enough, I do not even recall having any friends in school growing up who were skiers. I include this apparent biographical digression only to help explain why it is that I first tried skiing at such a relatively late age.

It was only when I got to college, at the lofty age of twenty-four[6], that I first had the opportunity to give skiing a try. Once I mustered the verve to strap on a pair of boards and hit the slopes, I quickly[7] discovered a few things, the lessons of which I mean to impart in the paragraphs that follow. If you have never skied and are keen to give it a try, these insights will, I think, serve you well.

The very first thing you need to know is that skiing is expensive. If there existed a sliding scale that compared the prices of the various athletic and recreational activities available to the average American[8], skiing would easily reside in the upper decile. In fact, there are two related but distinct components that comprise the overall budget for ski gear. The first has to do with the skiing itself, i.e., equipment needed to make one’s way from the top to the bottom of the mountain[9]. The second tranche of expense has less to do with skiing per se, and more to do with surviving the abysmally cold temperatures during which most skiing takes place. Into the former category fall three primary items—skis, bindings, and boots[10]. Bindings, for the uninitiated, are the items used to connect the former to the latter, and whose secondary but equally important function, is to facilitate the separation of you from your skis in the event of a spill, on which topic more and copious details will soon follow. Without getting too deeply into the recondite technological details here, suffice it to say that a respectable set of new ski equipment can easily set you back in excess of a thousand dollars, though it can be had for a good deal less through judicious shopping[11].

As counter-intuitive as it may, at first, seem, the sartorial expense associated with skiing can easily surpass that of the equipment, particularly if you’re the fashion-conscious sort. It’s actually surprising how many people will scrimp on gear, but then break the bank buying the down jackets, pants, socks, thermal underwear, hats, helmets, gloves, scarves, face masks, backpacks and endless other accoutrements[12] that are (possibly) necessary in order to survive a day on a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain. But the critical thing to keep in mind about these decisions is not so much the fashion element, though this is by far the bigger driver of cost. Rather, the principal concern should be the efficacy of one’s purchases. How warm will that five-hundred-dollar jacket keep you when you’re sitting on a stuck chair lift, in a twenty-knot wind, fifty feet up in the air, for fifteen minutes on a cold, cloudy day? Will your socks bunch up in the toe of your ski boot? Will your mask fog up just as you’re approaching a bump at high speed? Unfortunately, many of these critical questions are unknowable until you’ve committed to the purchase and are actually out there on the slopes freezing to death and cursing the salesman back at Sun & Ski who assured you that this was the finest jacket money could buy because of its synthetic Argentinian beaver-skin lining and state-of-the-art solar-cell rear panels, or whatever. Suffice it to say that judicious research and active solicitation of the opinions of knowledgeable friends can save you from some very pricey and frustrating mistakes down the road.

Having outfitted yourself appropriately, your sense of anticipation will, no doubt, have risen to a fever pitch as you try to sleep the night before your impending assault on the mountain. Once the big day arrives[13], the first thing you will notice about the skiing experience is that it takes a rather extraordinary amount of time and effort to actually assemble all of that clothing and gear you’ve spent the past few weeks gathering. Indeed, the first significant challenge for any new skier is that of getting from the car in the parking lot to the point where you’re in a position to actually join a lift line, on which more shortly.

Indeed, getting from the car to the lift is sufficiently challenging to almost qualify as a sport in its own right. It goes something like this. You pull into your parking spot, daunted perhaps for just a moment by the sound of the tires crunching and squeaking on the hard-packed snow. Understand that by this point you’ve typically been riding in the car for a good long while[14] after having stopped at McDonald’s and quaffed a couple of egg McMuffins and a quart or so of coffee. You’re comfortable, warm, and likely half asleep. When you reluctantly push open the car door, the first sensation that hits you is the biting cold and rarified air of what is already a pretty high-up place, even at the altitude of the parking lot. You grudgingly step from the car, remove your ungainly skis from either the roof rack or back of the car, taking care in the rapidly growing cold not to ding the cars around you (or your own) with those freshly sharpened edges. You then proceed to spend five minutes or so zipping up, buttoning down, tying together, and generally ensconcing yourself in all of the clothing you purchased in preparation for this adventure, but which you did not wear in the car on the ride up. At some point, as you’re wrapping yourself in layer upon layer, it will occur to you that you finally understand why that little boy in “A Christmas Story”[15] couldn’t get back up once he’d fallen over into the snow bank near his house. The first sobering lesson that the new skier discovers at this point is that it is a challenging thing indeed to walk across an icy parking lot wrapped in several layers of winter survival gear while carrying skis, boots, poles, and a backpack. The second insightful thing you learn is that skiing has, as one of its more charming attributes, the very real possibility of your becoming completely exhausted before even beginning the sport proper.

Having made your way safely into the lodge, two new and daunting obstacles await[16]. The first is that you must get your boots on. The seasoned skier will make this look easy. If, on the other hand, you are an infrequent skier or totally new, this will be the moment when you get your first inkling of how the rest of the day is going to go. Assuming you were prescient enough to have brought with you the same socks you wore when you tried on your rental boots back at the shop, you should be okay. If not, you may well end up with boots that are too tight or too loose. Without belaboring the point, suffice it to say that you can expect to spend ten minutes or so getting the boots to slide on, figuring out the byzantine clipping mechanism that holds them closed, and finding the precise sweet spot at which the ski pants and boot tops will meet without pinching your ankles, cutting off circulation to your feet, or allowing snow to get inside. If, once you’ve got everything jammed into place, it turns out you have gotten boots a size too small, or put on one too many pairs of socks, you can look forward to poor circulation in your toes all day and a resulting case of frozen lower extremities.

But let’s say, just for laughs, that you’ve managed to get your boots on with a minimum of aspersion, there isn’t too much pain, and you aren’t sweating that profusely yet, despite having put forth the effort while wearing a full ensemble of Arctic clothing that precludes nearly all joint flexure, and all in an eighty-degree ski lodge. When you first stand, you will notice an interesting and slightly awkward sensation. Your boots have been designed so as to force you to bend your knees slightly forward all the time, whether you want them to bend or not[17]. For now, this is merely fascinating. It will be a couple of hours before it starts getting irritating. At long last, the time has come to exit the lodge, step into line, and buy your first lift pass.

Which is not a good time to realize that you left your wallet back in the car. Because if that is the case, you now face the unenviable choice of walking back out across the icy parking lot in ski boots or swapping back to the shoes that you had on to begin with. It’s also not a good time to realize that you, in fact, have your wallet on you, but it’s in the back pocket of your jeans, which, of course, means that it’s under your ski pants and your jacket. If, however, you have managed not to fall prey to any such neophyte faux pas, you will, eventually, make it to the front of the line, where you will make the unpleasant discovery that purchasing a lift pass for a single day of skiing is, these days, about on a par with purchasing an airline ticket. Standard daily rates are now in the seventy-five to one hundred dollar range, depending on which mountain you are visiting[18]. And, to add insult to injury[19], it’s not even like you’re really buying a full day of skiing. The lifts typically don’t open until 8:30 or 9 a.m., and they’re generally closed by 4 p.m. Subtract time for lunch, and you’re really paying for five or six hours on the slopes. It also will not help your frame of mind at this point to dwell on the fact that you got up an hour and a half before sunrise and drove three hours for the privilege of laying out all this money.

If you’ve never skied before, take a moment to read that paragraph on the back of your lift pass, the one with the indecipherably tiny font. It’s hard to read for a reason, i.e., because if people read it closely, the popularity of skiing would doubtless suffer somewhat. In short, what it says is that skiing is fraught with peril and that if you hurt[20], maim, or kill yourself, either through your own actions/inactions[21] or the actions/inactions of others, the resort is not at fault and that neither you nor your designated heirs/survivors may sue the resort since you were presumably well-warned in advance. And you don’t get to check a little box or otherwise acknowledge that you voluntarily accept this state of affairs. The fact that you chose to get in line, pay for the lift pass, and affix it to your person, constitutes your acceptance of full responsibility for whatever happens[22]. And finally, the disclaimer says that you can’t get your money back if, by nine-thirty, you’ve decided the whole thing sucks, you’re cold, and you just want to get back in the car and go home[23].

But you, of course, are made of sterner stuff and have decided to go through with it. After all, you drove all the way out here. You paid for the lift pass. May as well see what the fuss is about. How hard can it be when three-year-old kids are flying past you[24] and effortlessly sliding into the back of the lift line like they were joining the lunch queue at their elementary school cafeteria? Well, pretty hard at first, as you discover the first time you click your boots into the bindings and promptly fall over before you’ve even had a chance to start moving forward. Every ski resort has this relatively flat area at the bottom—pejoratively known as the bunny slope—where neophytes can begin to get the hang of things without exposing experienced skiers to the hazards of their ineptitude. That’s the idea, at any rate. In actual practice, most bunny slopes are nothing but a relatively flat area at the bottom of the hill, that last section between the steeper upper sections and the lift line toward which all skiers regularly return. Which means that what you really have on most bunny slopes is a bunch of horrified, stumbling newbies interspersed with experienced skiers flying through and between them. What could possibly go wrong?

This is as good a spot as any to digress for a moment and remark on an important psychological issue associated with skiing, particularly first-time skiing. It’s not so much about putting mistakes behind you as in golf. Nor is success on the slopes based on a killer competitive instinct like, say, football or basketball. Introductory skiing is primarily about tenacity. Depending on your native level of athleticism, getting to the point where you can credibly get into the lift line and make your way up the mountain can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to several days. In fact, it’s difficult to learn much on the bunny slope, because they’re generally not more than a couple of hundred feet long, so that if you do manage to start moving at something faster than walking speed, or even carve out a half-decent turn or two, the whole thing is over almost as soon as it begins and then you’re crawling back up the hill on the rope tow or tee bar that serves most beginner slopes[25].

But, because we’re all optimists here, let’s fast-forward again and imagine that you’ve mastered the bunny hill and successfully made it through the lift line and onto the chair lift.[26] During the five-to-ten minutes that it typically takes to get to the top of most mountains[27] you discover the first pleasant aspect of the sport[28]. Assuming that it is a decent day and you aren’t skiing in the middle of a blizzard,[29] you will find that the views from the lift can be spectacular[30], particularly at the bigger western resorts in Colorado and Utah[31]. In fact, during the lift ride up, you will encounter numerous interesting, sometimes even humorous, sights. You will see skiers below you who make it all look terribly easy, moving with grace and skill like they’re auditioning for a Warren Miller documentary. And you will see some making their way feebly down the hill, appearing to know no more about this thing than you do, which is always heartening. You will see occasional pieces of abandoned ski equipment—a glove here, a pole there—that will make you curious about how they came to be there.[32] You will gaze upward in wonder at many of the hills you will later have an opportunity to ski down.[33] You will see the tops of trees going by your chair, from which you will frequently see hanging all sorts of incongruous items, the two most common of which are Mardi Gras beads and women’s underwear. Apparently there is a sub-sport associated with skiing whereby bored people on lifts play a sort-of ring toss game with the tops of the trees and their partners’ under-garments. I haven’t looked into this too closely yet, but it may make an intriguing essay in its own right. And, as you ride upward, you will eventually, inexorably, see, to the horror of every new skier, the station where you must exit the chair.

The reason why all new skiers regard this moment with terror is that they’ve been instructed to do so by the experienced skiers with whom they’ve made the trip that day. However, unlike all the other lies your friends may have told you down through the years, in this assertion they are correct. This is a very good time to be afraid, or at least thoughtful and prepared. You are about to embark upon the first serious challenge of skiing, getting off the chair.

Removing oneself from a chairlift, while not inherently dangerous, does present a couple of difficulties to the uninitiated. You are required to do several new things, all more or less simultaneously, during which effort events are going to unfold quickly and inexorably, whether or not you are actually prepared.  As the exit approaches, you must lift your ski tips, so as not to jam them into the rapidly approaching snow, whose distance from the bottom of your skis is fast diminishing. You must then, in a reasonably controlled manner, rise from your seated position and ski—actually ski—down a very small hill, where small could be a couple of feet or ten feet, depending on the particular mountain. This hill, though very short, will almost certainly be a good deal steeper than anything you encountered on the bunny hill, now a few thousand feet below you. Almost everyone falls the first time they attempt the dismount from a chair lift—which wouldn’t be so bad in its own right, seeing as how you haven’t really gone very far. The problem is twofold. First, when anyone falls, their natural human tendency is to grab at something, anything, in an attempt to arrest the fall. In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases when getting off a chair lift, that something is the skier next to you. And this skier, even if experienced, has an excellent chance of falling as well, since he isn’t really expecting to be pulled sideways during his otherwise uneventful dismount. So now he starts falling, grabs the person next to him and…well, you get the idea. Typically, the result of all this will be a pile-up at the bottom of the little hill, comprising however many people there were on your chair[34].

Which would be bad enough if there wasn’t another full chair heading up the mountain about ten seconds behind yours. On rare occasions, the tangled morass of skiers, at least one of whom[35] has no idea what is happening, can manage to untangle itself and get out of the way before another group exits their chair and skis into the pile[36]. More commonly, an alert lift attendant will notice the calamity unfolding, and will, with great exasperation, stop the lift and walk out to help untangle things, while everyone else on the lift swings impatiently in their seats, getting cold and wondering what pinhead crashed at the top of the hill and interrupted their skiing.

The good news about this embarrassing chain of events is that you’ve unwittingly accomplished one of your key goals for the day, your first fall[37]. And believe me, it’s better to have your first fall occur on the top of the hill at slow speed than when you’re flying down the hill, out of control, screaming at the top of your lungs[38]. In fact, falling is an inherent aspect of the skiing experience. Trying to ski without falling is akin to trying to swim without getting wet.

I should state, at this point in the narrative, that there are endless tips and techniques that accompany the actual act of skiing, i.e., getting from the top of the hill to the bottom in one piece. It is not my goal to describe these techniques here, as they are copious, highly subjective[39], and, besides, no one ever learned to ski based on something they read on paper. If you’re like most people and you choose to eschew instruction, the basic approach is to point your skis downhill and see what happens. So long as you stick with the easier hills and you’re with someone who’s willing to offer advice on some of the basics[40], you will typically find that within a couple of runs, you’ve rather gotten the hang of it, and might even be having an actual good time. It is typically around this point that the new skier will have his first significant fall.

Falls are a bit of an art form in skiing. Indeed, skiing is where the original notion of the face plant came from, i.e., a fall in which the first part of your body to make contact with the ground is one’s face. Sounds implausible, I know. Yet it happens countless times every day on every mountain. A few other useful fall-related terms that you can pepper your conversation with in order to sound more informed include:

• Yard sale—Fall involving such excessive velocity that you lose both skis and poles and have to climb back up the mountain to retrieve them, since inevitably your body will tumble farther down the hill than will your unattached gear (which is conveniently designed so as not to travel down the hill when it’s not connected to you).
• Spread—A measure of fall severity calculated as the maximum distance between any two pieces of your unattached equipment. Typically, higher speeds will result in higher spreads. The higher the spread, the more impressive the fall.
• Biff—As in to “biff it.” Generic term for wiping out.

There are two principal categories of falls, those you see coming and those you do not. The former are generally those in which you’ve begun to get tired and you feel that telltale burning in your quads or your knees starting to give out, or perhaps you have begun to gain velocity in what is starting to feel like an uncontrolled manner[41]. In any of these cases you at least have the luxury of choosing the manner and, to a degree at least, location of your demise. The latter type, the ones you never see coming, are a whole different animal. These are the falls that happen the moment you think to yourself “hey, this isn’t so hard after all.” Where, just as you’ve gotten up a decent, reasonably controlled head of steam, your ski catches an edge suddenly and tries to rip one of your legs off to one side. Or maybe it’s late afternoon or overcast. Visibility isn’t so hot and you happen to catch a small mogul[42] at precisely the moment your weight is a little farther back than it should be, at which point you will do what, in the skiing vernacular, is known as “catching air.” Under normal, controlled circumstances, catching air is a favorable thing and generally regarded as one of the more fun and impressive aspects of the sport. However, when it catches you unaware and your weight is backward, what happens is that for the entire duration of your “hang time” your entire body will continue rotating backward, no matter the vigor of your thrashing and cursing, so that when you land (as you ultimately will) it will be either on your ass, your back, or your head, depending on various physical arcana like initial velocity, angular momentum, etc. In any event, you will land hard and it will hurt.

Other unfortunate types of unexpected falls include those that involve your fellow skiers. It will not surprise you to learn that there are other beginners on the mountain with you. Occasionally one of them, just like you, will get out of control and ski into you, or perhaps vice versa[43]. The best you can hope for in these circumstances is that the speed of impact is minimal. Another variation on the multi-skier accident scenario is one in which you ski into another skier who isn’t even moving, which, needless to say, that person will find rather unsettling. People frequently stop to rest while skiing, sometimes in places where other skiers can’t see them until the last second, like, for example, just over small rises on the hill.

Whatever the actual cause of the spill, an assortment of interesting things can occur as part of the practice of falling while on skis. One thing you will discover is that nylon-shell jackets are really slippery. If you happen to fall with just the right amount if speed and you happen also to land on your back, you can find yourself in the dubious position of sliding all the way down to the lodge on your back, which aside from looking funny as hell to other skiers, also causes you to endure a long walk back up to get your stuff. You will also learn during falls that the snow is utterly unimpressed with how diligently you tucked all of your sleeves, pant bottoms, etc. into each other back at the lodge, i.e., you will find snow in places inside your clothing that you cannot possibly comprehend. Finally, you will discover, if you should fall hard enough to lose your skis, that getting them back onto your boots while standing on a steeply angled section of the hill can be challenging indeed. For that matter, even standing back up after a fall can be taxing, particularly if, by now, you’re tired and your legs are starting to tighten up a little[44].  But enough of all this negativity and bad energy. Let’s say, just for laughs, that you’ve begun to get the hang of it, made it down the hill a few times, fallen more than a few times, uttered some words you hadn’t previously imagined being comfortable uttering in public, and now you’re ready for your first lunch at the lodge.

And it is in the lodge, during the lunchtime respite, where the novice skier encounters two of the most challenging aspects of the entire skiing experience. You will learn, in short order, that skiing, being the energetic pursuit that it is, consumes quite a lot of calories, which, of course, makes one hungry. What you will discover at nearly every ski resort in the country is that the food is not only fiendishly expensive, but also not terribly good, considering what you’re paying. But, be that as it may, you will still buy lots of it, if only out of sheer gratitude for having made it through the morning. Still, unless you make a regular habit of eating lunch at Yankee Stadium, you will likely find it a bit shocking when the cashier looks at your hamburger, chips and coke and says, with a perfectly straight face, “That will be twenty-three dollars.”

But you will pay, because that’s what skiing is all about, i.e., paying for stuff, lots of stuff. It is at this point, after you’ve shoved your now-much-lighter wallet back into your overpriced ski jacket, that you come face-to-face with what may be the single biggest physical challenge in all of skiing—carrying a tray filled with food across a crowded lodge while wearing ski boots[45]. The degree of difficulty of this endeavor rises swiftly if you make the tactical error of volunteering to get food for others in your party while they search for a table. The horrifically unnatural gait imposed on you by the boots is transmitted upward into the food tray in a manner that makes the walk back to your table look like something out of a bad Frankenstein movie. Only it gets better. Some sadistic soul, way back at the dawn of skiing, decided to make it an industry-wide practice to not allow plastic lids for drink cups at ski resorts. When you ask about this cruel practice, they will invariably mumble something about excess trash. But the god’s honest truth is that watching someone in ski boots try to carry a flimsy plastic tray across a hardwood lodge floor balancing four large lidless Cokes is the greatest source of entertainment the underpaid staff at the lodge gets during a typical workday. The final element one can add to one’s performance, in order to garner the absolute maximum number of difficulty points, is to successfully carry the food tray back to the table while also negotiating a flight of stairs en route.

So you’ve made it back to your table, voraciously consumed your twenty-three dollar cardboard hamburger and thirty-ounce Coke[46], and begun enjoying the warmth and general joie de vivre atmosphere of the place. At which point, the second most challenging aspect of skiing smacks you straight in the face, i.e., motivating yourself to get back up, put your expensive and now sweaty clothes back on and do it all again for the afternoon. It may, in fact, be an injustice to rank this challenge as second most difficult. After all, given enough ski trips, everyone becomes reasonably facile at carrying the food tray. But, in my experience anyway, going back outside for the afternoon runs never gets any easier no matter the degree of experience[47]. Only then it occurs to you that you paid eighty bucks for a lift pass whose value expires utterly in another three hours or so and you’d damned well better get your ass out there and make use of it while you still can, etc, etc.

So the afternoon is, more or less, the same falling down and getting up as it was all morning, only now you’re a little smoother and a little faster, which, of course, means that your falls are a bit more exciting and, all too frequently, a bit more painful. Factor in your full stomach, the lunch-induced lethargy that takes an hour or so to wear off, the fact that conditions at most resorts degrade somewhat as the afternoon progresses,[48] and your now overworked and underprepared legs, and most people start actually looking forward to the lifts closing down at 3:30 or 4:00. Except you’re not quite there yet. It’s only quarter to three and it’s usually around this time—halfway up on a long chair ride if you’re really lucky—that you suddenly realize the folly of that thirty-ounce Coke you drank at lunch.

Which, alas, presents you with the last really big challenge of skiing, i.e., toiletry. Setting gender issues aside for a moment, all of the apparatus you require in order to accomplish this otherwise banal task is now buried beneath several layers of winter survival gear. Even if you’re a male and facing the straightforward matter of urination, gaining the appropriate access[49] takes several minutes of struggle and contortion, despite which there remains a decent chance that some of what you’re aiming into the urinal will end up on your ski pants. If, on the other hand, what you require involves more than standing before a urinal, then be prepared for a half hour or so of gyrations constrained by the confines of a standard, i.e., no-wider-despite-being-used-by-skiers-who-look-remarkably-like-the-michelin-man stall. But enough of this scatological discourse. On to one of the very few pleasant, indeed transcendent, aspects of skiing.

When that final run is in the books, and you’ve removed your skis, you will discover the pure human state of bliss known as removing your boots. When you do this—which, as a final gotcha—can take a good deal of effort, given how thoroughly one’s feet tend to snug down into the boots after a full day on the slopes, you will do what skiers refer to euphorically as “rediscovering your ankles.” It’s an absolutely phantasmagorical sensation that is, in itself, almost reason enough to take up skiing in the first place. Nothing feels quite like walking back across the parking lot and being able to bend your ankles while doing so. Combine with this the psychological bliss of knowing that you’re going home and you don’t have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning—it’s almost a drug-like sensation.

I suggested in the title of this essay that skiing is an apt metaphor for life itself, and, I suppose, the time has finally come to explain why on earth that is so. For starters, I would argue that, by employing suitable imagery, one can make any activity into a plausible metaphor for life, be it skiing, watching old movies, or eating a banana. That said, skiing, more so than most sports, comprises a wide array of different challenges, compressed into one single long day,[50] most of which activities exhibit a degree of difficulty greater than what one encounters simply sitting around the house on a Saturday watching TV. Presumably, at the end of the day, after having overcome all of these obstacles, you are rewarded with the knowledge that, in fact, you can do this sport and still come away with your limbs and self-esteem intact, if a bit the worse for wear. And if that’s not exactly like life, then I don’t know what is. Oh, and there’s also that ankle thing.

[2] I will, throughout the comments that follow, be referring exclusively to skiing of the downhill, i.e., Alpine, variety. The other kind—Nordic or cross-country skiing—is really nothing but glorified snow-shoeing, and it is far too much like actual work to qualify as recreation, at least in the opinion of this author. Snowboarding, on the other hand, is rather like downhill skiing, insofar as it is recreation and enjoys all of the same weather-related challenges that I will describe forthwith. On the skill side, however, you should be aware that the two sports bear strikingly little in common, aside from the general goal in both cases being to get down a steep slippery surface in one piece.

[3] Well, not too many of them.

[4] Not deathly flat, in the Kansas or Nebraska sense, just flat enough to obviate any nearby downhill skiing.

[5] Including not only skiing, but also hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, climbing, and boating, not one of which I was exposed to at any point in my childhood. The sole exception would be my having been to a “camp” for a couple of weeks one summer. As anyone who’s done both can tell you, “camping” resembles “camp” only in the sort of way that being in a band in high school resembles being in band. Yet another contextual spur which, while doubtless fascinating,  is, alas, beyond the scope of this treatise.

[6] Unlike most kids, I elected to insert six years of military service between my high school and college years.

[7] “Quickly” grossly understates the situation. These lessons were learned in ways that were painful, embarrassing, and frequently frightening.

[8] A scale on which, say, jogging defined the bottom, requiring only a pair of sneakers and some shorts, and scuba diving was at the top, requiring thousands of dollars of gear, none of which participants are typically inclined to scrimp on, what with being under a hundred feet of water, surrounded by carnivorous fauna, and all that. In this regard, skiing would compete quite favorably with scuba.

[9] Alpine skiing occurs on mountains. Apologies if I omitted this critical detail earlier.

[10] You’ll actually need a couple of poles too, though their expense is inconsequential compared to the other items being discussed here. In fact, most people would do just as well with a couple of reasonably straight tree branches.

[11] Including a willingness to own something other than the most current year’s equipment.

[12] Into this category (though outside the scope of this essay) I would also include an assortment of accessories almost vast enough at this point to merit its own category. I am referring, of course, to the enormous selection of electronic gizmos now available to the skier, including, but by no means limited to, two-way radios, GPS locators, video recording equipment, and ski performance computers (in case you feel compelled to keep track of your speed, total distance covered, trails traversed, etc.).

[13] Assuming that when the alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. the next morning you didn’t simply throw it across the room and go back to sleep.

[14] An hour if you’re in Utah. Three hours if you’re in Colorado, unless you’re one of those people with the funds to have rented a mountainside condo, in which case, bully for you…

[15] Ralphie’s brother Randy. You remember—it’s that movie they show a hundred times every Christmas season, the one where the father (Darren McGavin) wins a mail order contest and receives a lamp made out of a fake stripper’s leg as his prize. Yeah, that one.

[16] The astute reader will notice a theme beginning to develop, i.e., there is absolutely nothing easy or convenient about skiing. From the moment the alarm goes off until you thrust your tired, cramped legs beneath the covers that night, it’s all difficult. Even something as banal as eating lunch is fraught with danger and excitement, but more on this later.

[17] I have frequently opined, in past writings, that there is this annoying tendency, throughout the sporting world, for the correct body position in which to pursue the sport to be that which is the most uncomfortable and unnatural it can possibly be. Skiing is, of course, no exception.

[18] And whether or not they have recently hosted a Winter Olympics or other high-visibility event, in which case add another twenty-five percent to everything.

[19] Normally I abjure the use of cliché phrases like this one, except that the notion is, in this case, altogether apt and worth considering in its most literal sense. Before the day is over, you will, indeed, almost certainly be not only insulted but very possibly injured as well.

[20] Physically or, one imagines, psychologically.

[21] Before we’re done you’ll understand why the word “inactions” is included here.

[22] There exists an organization whose sole purpose is the tracking and tabulation of skiing-related injuries and fatalities. I am not going to bore you here with the actual statistics, except to observe that the fact that such an organization needs to exist in the first place ought to be indicative of something. Besides which, if I quoted the actual numbers, you’d likely give up on the whole thing and stop reading here and now. We certainly wouldn’t want that.

[23] It’s worth noting here that, technically speaking, you are not required to purchase a lift pass to ski on the mountain. You only need it if you plan on riding the lifts to get back up to the top, which, admittedly, makes the whole thing a good deal less annoying. That said, I have actually encountered a couple of people in my life who take off their skis at the bottom and carry them back up the hill. Not exactly my cup of tea, but they were saving a fortune, on top of which they most certainly looked to be in better shape than me.

[24] Sans poles no less. And while we’re on the subject, the reason why those annoying three-year-olds are so good at skiing is that a) little kids are both stupid and fearless, a potent combination on the ski slopes, b) they are that much closer to the ground to begin with, and so have less to risk in a fall, and c) they have more pliable bones than you, so if they do fall, nothing much happens. It’s mainly about (a) though.

[25] Not to dwell too long on these two cleverly-designed torture devices, except to say that ski resorts invariably choose to provide the most difficult means of uphill conveyance for use on hills utilized by the least experienced skiers, just one of the many ironic twists you will discover if you decide to stick with the sport. It’s difficult to explain in limited space why tee bars and rope tows are, in fact, more annoying to use than the regular chair lift. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

[26] These come in sizes ranging from two-person all the way up the most modern six-person, high-speed behemoths. The difficulty of both getting on and, in particular, off at the top, is more or less proportional to the number of people on the chair, as we’ll see shortly.

[27] Which may comprise a single chair ride, or a combination of two or more, depending on the resort.

[28] Yes, despite my generally negative tone, there are a handful of borderline positive aspects to skiing.

[29] It happens.

[30] Though, skiing being what it is, most of the best views are behind you.

[31] Readers in Wyoming and Montana, spare me the hate mail. We get it. You have nice views too.

[32] Hint—a lot of it falls off chair lifts, as you may discover the first time you decide that your hands are too warm and you try taking your gloves off during the ride up.

[33] Which, through an odd sort of optical illusion that I still can’t quite explain, will look not all that challenging as you look upward at them from the lift. It’s only when you reach them coming the other way from the top that you realize the awful mistake you’ve made.

[34] One of whom will be embarrassed. The rest of whom will be deeply annoyed.

[35] You

[36] In cases where the lift attendant wasn’t paying attention, I’ve seen as many as four chairs full of people ski into the same pile. It’s actually kind of amusing, so long as you aren’t one of the ones at the bottom of the pile.

[37] All those times you fell over while trying to stand up on the bunny hill don’t count as actual falls.

[38] Which is not to say that you won’t have that experience too. Just that you probably don’t want it to be your first.

[39] As with golf and all other sports, ten different people will tell you twenty different sets of things you should absolutely, positively do (or not do) while skiing.

[40] The “basics” include, for example, not crossing the tips of your skis, trying to keep your weight forward (which is, by the way, why they made those boots with the built-in angle at the knees), and getting to the point where you can stop when you want to and execute a serviceable turn to either the left or the right (or, ideally, both). Failure to learn both stopping and turning can cause you to do embarrassing things like ski off the side of a trail and into the trees.

[41] Take heart. The very fact that you can recognize when you are out of control is a sure sign of progress.

[42] Ski term for smooth lump of snow which you are obliged to travel either over or around. Your choice. Some are small as rabbits, others big as Volkswagens. If this is your first day of skiing and you find yourself looking at one or more of the latter, give some serious thought to your trail selection. Those green, blue, and black signs are there for a reason.

[43] I have a good friend who, in his early days of learning, got a bit out of control near the bottom of the hill and skied at full speed into the back of a lift line. Imagine bowling, only with people as the ball and the pins, and you’ll get the picture.

[44] Standard advice here is to rotate your (still prone) body so that your legs are pointed down the hill, and then try to stand up. Trying to explain how to get your ski back on while at an angle would comprise a whole separate essay.

[45] I have argued, in multiple forums, that this activity is, at once, so difficult to do and entertaining to watch that it merits being an Olympic sport in its own right.

[46] This will come back to haunt you around three o’clock.

[47] I know people who find this so difficult and disconcerting that they avoid it altogether through the simple expedient of not stopping for lunch at all.

[48] Particularly if there are a lot of boarders on the hills, who tend to scrape off all the good snow and leave a layer of crust for you to ski on.

[49] Trying really hard to be suitably delicate here.

[50] Kind of like Ulysses by James Joyce, all of which action (using the word here in its loosest possible context) occurs in a single day, and for far less money than a day on the slopes. Was wondering how I might get a literary reference in here someplace.

Americans are positively infatuated with scoring in sports. I don’t mean scoring in the sense of keeping score, though goodness knows there exist more than a few hard-core fans who, not content to simply sit and watch a game, will, instead, labor over every pitch, hit, throw, and error that occurs, writing each down in arcane hieroglyphics on score-sheets, for what possible use afterward one is hard-pressed to imagine. I’m talking here, though, about our national obsession with seeing the score of each sporting contest rise to as high a level as possible. There is something ingrained in our psyche that not only fuels the need for clearly defined winners and losers, but also demands that the actual productive output of each event be both measurable and as large as possible.

It’s the principal reason why soccer has never taken off in this country beyond being a fun activity for your third grade son to participate in after school. No serious American sports fan is going to put up with investing an hour and a half in a game whose outcome might be either a scoreless tie or decided by a one-to-zero score[1]. All those Brazilian and Italian guys running around the soccer pitch, screaming and tearing their shirts off because they scored one point after an hour of play are as foreign in demeanor to us as they are in nationality. Never mind that soccer never stops for commercials, which automatically dooms it in the American market, it’s the profound lack of output that makes it viscerally unacceptable to us[2].

It’s why we like NASCAR, where the lead changes every fifteen seconds, as opposed to Formula One, where overtaking is so rare that they break into regular television programming in Europe whenever it happens. And it’s why the American public never got too terribly agitated over the steroid controversies of a few years back in baseball. Yes, we all agree, at some conceptual level, that tolerating drug use among our professional athletes might be a bad precedent to set for our young people, but there’s no denying that watching all those home runs is sure exciting. All of which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the subject of the designated hitter rule.

The Designated Hitter (DH)[3] is to baseball rather like what the “enforcer” is to hockey, except that he doesn’t get to walk out onto the field and punch one of the opposing team’s players in the face with impunity. Instead, his only function is to hit the ball, either very hard or very reliably, preferably the former[4]. His role is so narrowly defined that when he does get a hit, very frequently (assuming it isn’t a home run) he’s not even allowed to run the bases, often being substituted out for a faster runner[5]. DHs do not play a fielding position. If they were skilled enough to both hit and field, they would be doing it. Quite frequently the DH is an older guy who used to be a position player, but who no longer possesses the required agility, though he can still swing a bat reasonably well.

Since the DH rule’s inception nearly forty years ago, there has been continuous and often acrimonious debate about the relative merits of the game with and without the position. The pro-DH crowd will typically offer some hackneyed argument to the effect that surely it’s more interesting to see a skillful hitter at work than to waste one’s time watching some pitcher (who didn’t even have the common decency to pick a batting helmet that fits) make a lame, half-hearted swing at an oh-and-two fastball. This argument is not without merit, as far as it goes. Problem is, it doesn’t go nearly far enough. However, before proceeding on to the evisceration of the DH rule, allow me to enumerate the other reasons cited by the misguided souls who support it.

Not only is it arguably more entertaining to watch a bona fide hitter at work than someone for whom the task is an annoyance, there is, as well, the genuine risk of injury at the plate, either from being hit by a pitch or perhaps swinging the bat in a bizarre and unpracticed manner[6]. As if that isn’t bad enough, on the off-chance that the pitcher actually manages to get a hit, he is then obliged to run the bases, unless, of course, the manager elects to remove him for a pinch runner, in which case his pitching duties for the duration of that game are over. Not only does running the bases consume energy that the pitcher might otherwise be conserving sitting in the dugout between innings, there is, as well, the potential hazard of sliding into base, particularly if one is inclined to do so head-first[7]. The final argument for the DH rule is that, by asking only that these players hit, it has extended the careers of some otherwise marginal players whose days of fielding are long behind them[8].

I have a theory about the designated hitter rule, one I can neither prove nor which MLB would ever own up to, and it goes back to my opening observations about the American sports enthusiast’s love of high scoring. For the same reason that we don’t particularly care if our athletes are bulked up on steroids, we also don’t care if our pitchers aren’t called upon to hit. The end result is more scoring. Many baseball fans will tell you that they enjoy a good pitcher’s duel, i.e., a game in which there is virtually no hitting or scoring. These people are lying. Their proposition is no more credible than the auto racing fan who denies going to races just to see the wrecks. From that first moment in the schoolyard when everyone gathers around to watch two bullies fighting (but no one tries to stop them), we are brought up to relish the brawling aspect of competition. When it comes to baseball, which is a relatively mild sport compared to football or hockey, the only thing more entertaining than a clutch home run is the occasional bench-clearing brawl between teams, which is, alas, all too infrequent.

So why do I regard the DH rule with such contempt and, in my title, call for its abolition as an abomination? A big part of the answer to this question derives from the fundamental characteristics that distinguish baseball from our other three great American sports. The most important of these differences is that baseball is generally regarded as the most cerebral of our pastimes. Football and hockey are relatively fast-paced and violent to the point of criminality, thriving primarily on the bloodlust of the typical American male. Basketball, on the other hand, is such a juvenile and mind-numbingly repetitive activity that laboratory rats have been trained to do it[9]. Also, in the case of football and basketball, the games are played by unnaturally enormous human beings who spend most of their non-playing time struggling to find cars they can fit into and suits they can wear without tearing the seams apart.

One of the many reasons why the common man can identify with baseball a bit more readily is that, with a few notable exceptions, most of the players are of reasonably ordinary stature. When one encounters a player up-close, instead of saying “Good Christ! What have they been feeding this guy?” (a common enough reaction upon meeting a pro football or basketball player), the reaction is more likely to be along the lines of “I could almost do that,” which, while delusional, is not completely divorced from reality, questions of speed and skill notwithstanding. Another important distinguishing aspect of baseball is that each player is called upon to perform at least three pretty much unrelated activities in order to be regarded as an excellent player. One must hit the ball reasonably well[10], play a position in the field competently, and run with some measure of speed and acumen on the base paths. Don’t get me wrong here—there are precious few players who excel at all three of these endeavors, but most manage at least two[11]. It’s the breadth of responsibility, and the unpredictability with which each skill will be called upon, that is part of what makes baseball special, all of which goes for pitchers too. And while every position player is, periodically, expected to throw the ball to another player with accuracy and speed, it is the pitcher’s unique responsibility to do so more than one hundred times in each game. Calling upon him to strike at the ball with a fat wooden stick once every two or three innings, like everybody else on the team, is simply part of the job description, or at least it ought to be. The fact that pitchers are historically lousy at the job[12] only adds to the richness of the game.

A slight digression is called for at this point. It completely eludes me why it is that pitchers are historically such poor hitters. Prior to 1973 they all had to do it. The most popular explanation is that starting pitchers only take the field every fifth day, which would seem to limit their at-bat opportunities[13]. Still, though, I find this an implausible excuse for the phenomenon. There are, after all, plenty of pinch hitters who come off the bench but once or twice a week and still manage to do a passable job of making contact with the ball. Seems to me there’s a strong chicken-and-egg element to this problem[14]. Somewhere back at the start of baseball (presumably even before the ‘bambino’ proved that it was at least possible for pitchers to hit), the word got out that, as a class, pitchers weren’t going to be any good at this particular field of endeavor. With the bar thus lowered, they stopped taking batting practice or otherwise being coached in hitting, and created an (as it were) major league self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s also worth noting here that many major league pitchers come out of college programs where they played other positions and, so, were required to bat as often as everyone else on the team. Again, it makes little sense, but there you go.

Even more compelling than the sheer human pathos of watching an utterly unqualified player attempt to hit a baseball[15] are the strategic elements of the situation. One of the inconvenient rules of non-DH baseball is that if you want to stay in the game and continue to play your position, you are obliged to bat when your turn comes around. Almost without exception, pitchers get put last in the nine-man batting order, precisely because they are so poor at it. Nevertheless, their turn still inexorably arrives, like every other player, either three or four times in a typical game.[16] Very frequently, most typically in the final three innings of a game, the pitcher’s turn at bat will come up at an inauspicious moment like, for example, when their team is losing by three runs[17] and they have two men on base with two outs. If it is, say, the sixth or seventh inning and the pitcher is having a reasonably good game[18], the manager is placed in the dubious position of either letting his pitcher hit, with attendant offensive consequences, or substituting a genuine hitter into his spot, but then being obliged to bring in a relief pitcher, who may or may not be equipped to do as good a job as the starting pitcher. If the team happens, as well, to have a marginal bullpen, this makes the substitution decision all the more fraught. And, of course, there is no guarantee that the pinch hitter who takes the pitcher’s place at the plate is going to produce a hit either. It’s simply a matter of comparative mathematical probabilities. That said, many a manager has torn his hair out after yanking a competent pitcher for a pinch hitter, only to have the pinch hitter ground into an inning-ending double play.

In addition to the substitution conundrum, there are a few other, more subtle, factors that come into play when a manager is deciding whether or not to substitute a pinch hitter for his pitcher or not. In the normal course of a game, the pitcher not only uses between-inning time in the dugout to rest his arm for the ensuing inning, but also to psychologically prepare for the upcoming slate of opposing batters. Calling upon him to bat, in addition to interfering with this regrouping time (both physical and mental), presents him with the strong likelihood of being humiliated yet again before tens of thousands of people, and raises, as well, the aforementioned risk of injury while batting or, potentially, being obliged to run around the bases. On an even more subtle note, since hitting requires the use of an entirely different set of muscles and tendons than does pitching, it is by no means certain that a pitcher will perform as well on the mound following an inning in which he’s come up to bat[19].

All of which leads to the indisputable conclusion that the non-DH game is a far richer and more entertaining experience for the fan (this one, at any rate). And while we’re on the topic of entertainment, it’s worth a word about interleague play, i.e., games in which American and National League teams play each other. By MLB rules, when teams from different leagues play each other, the home team’s rules apply. This means that during two short periods of each season, the fans are treated to games in which American League pitchers are obliged to hit National League pitching. Bearing in mind that these are, then, individuals who almost never touch a bat unless it’s to see what one feels like, the five or six at-bats that each such pitcher gets during a regular season are hysterically entertaining, even if such entertainment comes entirely at the pitcher’s expense.

I should have stated at the outset that I was driven to write all of this down when I first heard that the Houston Astros are going to be demoted to the American League starting with the 2013 season. As my hometown team of the past decade or so, I felt personally and egregiously offended by the move, negotiated as part of a transition in team ownership, and agreed upon in a transparent attempt by MLB to balance out the number of teams in each division. This is a laudable goal in its own right, but it comes at the cost of inflicting upon the citizens of Houston, already sorely beset by having to support an abysmal team, even grimmer entertainment prospects for the future. It doesn’t help matters any that the team has no one on the roster who’s good enough with a bat to serve in the DH role.

[2] Interesting aside – Inasmuch as Americans love high scoring in their sports, it’s a bit curious that cricket has never gotten even a remote foothold in this country, what with their century at-bats and multi-hundred-point scores. I can only attribute it to the insufferable length of matches (particularly test matches, which drone on for five full days (taking time out for tea, of course), at the end of which a perfectly plausible/gentlemanly outcome is a draw). Aside to the aside—It is said, perhaps apocryphally, that the Church of England invented cricket in order to graphically instill in its adherents the concept of eternity.

[3] The Designated Hitter rule, or Major League Baseball Rule 6.10, was enacted in 1973 and adopted by (only) the American League. Fun DH trivia—The very first designated hitter ever in MLB was Ron Blomberg of the NY Yankees, who, on April 6, 1973, came up to bat against Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant. Blomberg rather missed the point of the new job, however, and got a walk.

[4] Very few in baseball achieve both simultaneously, despite the fact that hitting is their only job.

[5] This statement is more likely to be true late in a game when the DH is not likely to come around again in the batting rotation.

[6] Andy Pettite, the ace left-hander traded from the Yankees to the Astros in 2004, spent a large portion of that initial season on the disabled list because he threw out his pitching elbow during his very first at-bat in the National League (which was probably the first at-bat of his entire professional career, come to think of it).

[7] Head-first, in this case, being a misnomer, since all head-first slides are, in fact, arms/hands first.

[8] Never mind that keeping these reluctant retirees on the roster blocks the way for up-and-coming young players awaiting their shot at the majors.

[9] I’m not making this up. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41ZW0OGp4HE. Try teaching a rat to hit a low-and-away slider sometime.

[10] A surprisingly low bar, actually, considering that failing to hit the ball two out of every three attempts (which would net you a .333 batting average) is still regarded as excellent performance at the professional level.

[11] Oddly enough, speed on the base paths is the rarest of the three.

[12] With the notable exception of Babe Ruth, who apparently was good at everything in baseball short of selling the hotdogs.

[13] A situation exacerbated by the infrequency with which starters pitch a complete game.

[14] Which came first—pitchers as inherently poor hitters or pitchers who no longer attempt to be decent hitters?

[15] A fact just dripping with irony, since the pitcher who is attempting to make contact with the ball routinely falls victim to precisely the sort of aerodynamic shenanigans that he spends the rest of the game inflicting on the other team’s hitters. I am at a loss to conjure up any examples of systemic irony in our other three major sports.

[16] Assuming they pitch the entire game, which is, in fact, quite rare in modern baseball. But, still, they’re likely to get at least two at-bats before getting yanked.

[17] Which is almost certainly the fault of the less-than-stellar pitching of the very guy standing at the plate with the bat in his hands. Yet more irony.

[18] See previous footnote.

[19] For which reason more than one pitcher has adopted the approach of never removing the bat from his shoulder, regardless of how high quality a pitch may come his way.