309: I have an appointment with my room. But my room doesn’t show. I wait and wait but there’s nowhere to sit, nothing to read. My legs grow weary, so I go home. And there’s my room, looking very cross.
310: Edward didn’t sound like anyone else in the high school. He called boys Mr., sing-songing the first syllables of mister and the last name: Mister Ziegler. He was large but timid, especially afraid of electrical wires. A teacher told us his “brain was different.” The rude kids called him names referring to his mental development, but most of us were extra nice.
He could tell on what day of the week any date in the past or future would fall, which he was constantly asked to do, though I don’t recall anyone verifying—or knowing how to verify—his answer. He played trombone in the school band without looking at the music, and during rehearsals he would occasionally step up to the podium and conduct, to the cheers of his bandmates. He did it once during a concert, and got a standing ovation.
Someone had chalked a home plate on the back wall of the Water Company—across the empty lot behind my house—creating a makeshift stickball field. Off to the side was a small conglomeration of machinery surrounded by a chain-link fence with a sign warning of electrical danger. One Saturday, as I was mowing the backyard, I saw a couple of the rude boys hanging out with Edward, throwing a ball around, always over Edward’s head. I couldn’t hear what they were shouting, but I could guess. Edward was laughing, so I turned away. Then, a horrified, horrifying howl. The boys had tied one of Edward’s hands to the chain-link fence. He repeatedly screamed, “No, No!” followed by each boy’s name preceded by “Mister.” I knew Edward wasn’t in danger but he didn’t.
I went into the house. When I next saw Edward in school he said, “Mister Ziegler,” and I asked him on what day my birthday would fall in fifty years.
Half a century later, what haunts me is not that I didn’t do anything to stop Edward’s pain, but that it didn’t even occur to me there was anything I could do.
I choose to remember that Edward immediately answered, “Wednesday.”
311: Early in my relationship with Erin, during our first full evening with her parents, Paul and Esther, I had a trick up my sleeve: a card trick I learned from a pre-famous Penn & Teller VHS tape. The purpose of part one of the trick is to fail. A modest amount of skill is required to force the Three of Clubs on the subject, then, following improvised card trick maneuvers, you triumphantly pick, say, the Ten of Diamonds from the deck and declare with brimming pride: “Is…that…your card?!” To which your subject either consoles you or gloats at your failure. You explain that you’ll work on it for next time and go on with your evening. Later, you turn on the T.V. and there’s Penn Jillette from the VHS tape playing a local news anchor. After a few minutes, lo and behold as if by wizardry, the newscaster flashes the Three of Clubs and says , “Is…that…your card?!”
I imagined this would result in befuddlement followed by applause, but we never got that far. When I sprang the Ten of Diamonds on Esther and said, “Is…that…your card?!” she stood up, applauded, and replied with a resounding “YES!”
312: Artists should not be compelled to “stay in your lane.” Artists should, as the speaker of Robert Creely’s “I Know a Man” suggests, “buy a goddamn big car, / drive…” But always heed Creely’s speaker’s friend’s advice: “he sd, for / christ’s sake, look / out where yr going.”
