Much to my surprise and yeah, even annoyance, I’ve come across many people who, no matter what, cannot be coerced into optimism.

I’ve met scores of them, possibly because that trait used to be mine as well. These are the people determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, who become obsessed with seeing the down side of things and who refuse to enjoy the present because, sadly, it’ll end some time.

Take for example friends of ours in graduate school in Virginia who decided not to have any kids. Why? “Well, my sister’s only child grew up too quickly, graduated from college and moved away. And now she hardly ever even writes to her, and I never want to go through that.”

As devastating as Missie’s estrangement may have been, that doesn’t mean the sister’s sister ought never have children. The human race would soon die out if we all believed and practiced that. Continue reading →

Before the days of heightened airport security, I was at the terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and noticed a man struggling with two huge suitcases. This was before luggage grew wheels. I  offered to help.

Because of matters of balance — two trunks are easier to carry than one — the elderly man declined. As he rested, he pulled out a pocket watch unlike anything I’d seen before. It featured a thread-thin antenna for a radio; it announced the time; it had a 24-hour alarm, an adding machine, a ruler, level, altimeter and thermometer.

This was in the ‘60s, in the pre-Bill Gates days, when any such watch would have been a marvel. I had to have it, so I made him an offer, knowing it would probably cost more than a month’s salary.

We agreed on a price, and I removed the watch from his fob and began to leave the concourse. But he immediately called me back. Hefting the huge trunks, the old man shouted, “Hey, you forgot to take the batteries!” Continue reading →

Words are meaningless. Well, some words. Let me explain: There actually were good old days when a handshake sealed a deal, when people who promised to pay actually came through, when people didn’t need to get into the “did not/did too” entanglement.

Nowadays, too many words tend to be laden with sarcasm. The last time you heard someone say, “excuuuze me,” “sorrry” or “You’re so-oo much help” you probably weren’t seduced by notions of sincerity.

Lately, even “hel-lo,” sometimes followed by a question mark, communicates an I-think-you’re-stupid meaning. It’s a close relative of “duh,” or if you’re a Homer Simpsonite, “doh.”

A vivid throwback to the olden days came when my wife and I were looking for an economical used car, with the idea of passing it on to one of our sons, down the road. Continue reading →

Several of us were chatting about what we learned in elementary school, and most agreed the subject that caused the most difficulty was grammar.

My wife and I visited with a new acquaintance, Meggie, at a staff party Saturday. I made the point — with as much veracity as I could muster — that I had slept through most grammar classes during my years at Immaculate Conception School.

But years later, what I dozed through came back when I needed it. It gives credence to those learn-in-your-sleep foreign language lessons, which don’t work for me.

So the grammar rules somehow returned when I decided the noblest professions are teaching and writing. They’re far more rewarding than medicine, law, social work, the ministry, engineering, psychiatry, the theater, business or athletics. No contest. (Not that I’ve done all or any of these things, mind you.) Continue reading →

The columns I most enjoy writing are those that include reader comments. A few recent columns have generated some reaction and response, some of which appear here.

People reacted to last week’s column on menudo and squash. I’m happy to say that most of the comments agree with my stance that I’d request neither item as my last meal. What would be preferable? That’s easy. Cocoa Puffs smothered in Velveeta Cheese.

But on a slightly more serious note, a large combination plate like my neighbor, Carmen Vigil, used to make, would be fine.

Now to the mailbag: Continue reading →

Every fourth week we used to go through Expulsion Saturday. It was the time when at Mom’s insistence and our extremely willing compliance she’d usher Dad and all us kids out of the house to fend for ourselves.

We had the whole day free. My siblings Bingy, Severino and I generally spent that day at the Serf Theater, where the films were continuous, and by the time we left there, we had all the lines and songs memorized.

Let me explain:

Once a month, on a Saturday it was our mother’s chance to prepare and eat — totally undisturbed — a bowl of menudo. Mom may have felt guilt by not offering the rest of us a chance to gourmandize with her, but on the contrary, we were all thankful. The catch is, she may not have known our patent, latent and blatant revulsion to eating a plate of the chewy, mushy stuff. Continue reading →

As a lesson in semantics, I once quizzed my advanced students at Cuba High School, decades ago, on all the synonyms one can find for whatever right-minded people think of as objectionable.

What about the word “drunk”? How many words did my honors students conjure up for the condition indicating one is “three sheets to the wind”? But by using even that expression, well, that shows how my heritage antedated Columbus.

Going through some medieval notes I’d somehow kept from my teaching days at Cuba in the late-60s, I came across no fewer than 25 terms the students provided. Here are some of them: blitzed, blotto, bombed, buzzed, crocked, gay (yes, gay!), hammered, inebriated, intoxicated, loaded, looped, pickled, pie-eyed, plastered, plowed, polluted, potted, sauced, sloshed, smashed, soused, stewed, stoned, tanked, tight, tipsy, trashed and wasted.

I even heard an unusual expression, thanks to my son Stan: “stew in one’s own crapulence.” Naturally, I surmised a scatological tone, until Stan explained that, having heard it on the Simpsons, he too was curious and looked it up. One’s “crapulence” has to do with drinking, not the other thing. But back to my classroom. Continue reading →

First, my best friend got struck by lightning. The next day, my high-school buddy suffered a heart attack while boarding a bus. But the upside is that a man who works near me is now $7 million richer.

Such would all be true if certain threats and promises really came true.

But first some background:

One of my teachers at Immaculate Conception School, Sister Ständige Angst, did a good job of convincing us of consequences. “If you fail to put others first, you will suffer,” she reminded us.

Many of us in the fifth grade class in 1949, must have carried around this fear of retribution most of our lives. Specifically, there’s still something in my early parochial schooling training that puts fear into me over broken promises and failing to do what’s asked.

I struggled with this for years, around the time chain letters made the rounds. Out of nowhere, I’d receive a letter from a prior acquaintance who never knew I existed.

In this letter were instructions: pass it on to 10 friends, with the stipulation that each of them do the same. Have any idea how quickly things multiply? Are there enough stamps in circulation to accommodate all the recipients? What is 10 to the 30th power, for example? That number would soon be many times the world’s population. And think of the revenue the Postal Service would accrue, and the work mail carriers would need to perform.

And for what? To exchange a recipe. To insert a whole dollar. To send a prayer or poem.

The most recent e-mail I received came from a woman in Springer. The header says, “Read this alone.” Accordingly, I adjourned to the smallest room in the house, away from prying distaff eyes, to what? A poem that encourages some good old-fashioned virtues like being kind, helping others, not procrastinating. But great poetry it was not.

Before the poem appears, the reader wades through various scenarios. In one case, a woman fails to forward the poem and loses her love, who gets killed in traffic.

In Case No. 2, the recipient doesn’t forward the mail to enough people and meets a horrible fate.

And what’s behind Door No. 3? The recipient sends the e-mail to the required 10 people within the specified 45-minute span, and now is blissful, humming, “Just Molly and me, and babies make five . . .”

Invoking the nun’s lesson on promises, I thought back to when I placed duty on the par with promise. That is, if asked to do something, such as forwarding a chain letter, I often complied.

The nitty-gritty of the e-mail, the poem, refers to two old friends, one always on the verge of dropping by to visit the other. But, as Macbeth would say, “Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,/ to the last syllable of recorded time.”

The upshot is that good intentions are not enough. He waited too long, and one day he received a telegram announcing that his friend had died. The scenario is believable — sort of — until we learn he got a telegram. Who receives telegrams anymore?

Often, chain letters remain alive because of fears of what happens when people break the chain. In my youth, I kept the chain going because I heeded some of the consequences indelibly impressed on us by Sister Ständige Angst.

Chain letters often thrive because participants heed the horror stories about those who refuse to play the game. And what if, given the laws of chance, a person were to become injured after discarding the chain letter? Well, we need to be sure the deletion caused the catastrophe and didn’t merely precede it.

The uncertainty could be the reason chain letters thrive, even if the postage and duplicating costs for mailing 10 letters is a fortune.

I believe any time I get a chain letter, it will have been sent under duress: the sender feels obligated to pass it on, fearful of consequences.

A common chain letter contains names of people in the mix. If the chain breaks at any point, that eliminates thousands of prospective zillionaires. Remember, if the “donation” is 10 dollars, your 10 friends will have chipped in 100 dollars; they in turn spawn 100 people worth $1,000, then $10,000, up to $100,000, and more. But by the time the 12th generation appears, we’re talking trillions of dollars. Continue reading →

Just a few weeks before my 70th birthday in April, a friend from High Rolls, N.M., sent me a booklet that tells all about my birth year, 1939. It’s an easy-to-read booklet whose facts I can hardly believe.

Let me explain:

All my life I’ve refused to believe that things could ever inflate as many as 10 times. For example, if I could buy a Coke for a nickel during my youth, I would never expect to pay 10 times that amount or 50 cents, even if I lived to be a hundred.

Not convinced? Look at eggs. I often got sent to Peña’s grocery store, right across the street from my childhood home on Railroad Avenue, to buy an egg. Not a dozen eggs, just one. The woman who tended the store most of the time, Lucy Peña, would charge a nickel. Continue reading →

During the Punic Wars, my high school girlfriend and I went steady by telephone. A house full of teenagers placed demands on our phone, so my slot had to be early in the evening, lest I interfere with my three sisters’ more important calls.

One time, after having been on the line for an ungodly amount of time — six minutes — I mentioned something in Mad Magazine.

The word “mad” triggered something in Evelyn’s mind, prompting her to say, “That reminds me: I’m mad at you.” Sure enough, we’d had a silly quarrel the night before, and though the next night’s conversation started smoothly, my using the “m-word” triggered memories of many a quaint and curious series of long-forgotten chats and spats.

So why had she been friendly —even oblivious — until I reminded her of something? And soon, without there being a cause, she’d remind me and herself that she was mad. Continue reading →