by Ralph Maltese | Oct 30, 2016 | Uncategorized
Twick or Tweat
It is that time of year….of course every time is a specific time of year, but, in this case, I am referring to that season of orange—-of orange leaves drifting down and draping the lawns, orange ovals cut into jack-o-lanterns, and orange-and-black caped mini-goblins going door-to-door on the last day of this month. Of course, stores started preparing for this time of year back in August, showcasing monster masks and costumes of the latest super heroes or tv personalities or political caricatures. The child in all of us comes out at various times and in various seasons.
Growing up in the Bronx, Halloween for me consisted of trick or treating all six floors of our small apartment building on Burnside Avenue, perhaps seventeen apartments in all. Half the apartments did not answer my knock. I trudged up and down the darkened stairs, a small hobgoblin trick-or-treating in cold shadows that haunted the hallways. In the city, a parent does not send a trick-or-treater up and down urban blocks soliciting goodies. The whole event took me maybe twenty minutes.
When we moved to suburban New Jersey, my parents sent me out the door on Halloween and were surprised if I came back within three hours. The town of Ridgefield was open to hundreds of costumed devils and witches and ghosts and zombies of all mishapes and sizes. Houses were festooned with orange lights and cobwebs and lawn witches and pumpkins. And the haul! Clark bars and Musketeers and Fifth Avenues and Good and Plenty and Mars bars and Almond Joys. The tonnage of sweet stuff took at least a week to devour. Sure, there was the occasional health food giver who tossed in an apple, and there were those home owners who chimed in with some pennies which we disdained—until, like Homer Simpson, we realized that currency could be exchanged for candy. My younger brother Jimmy and I divvied up the loot, his favorites Chuckles and Hershey’s Kisses and mine, Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy. As the older and wiser brother, I calculated that one Chuckles was worth two Turkish Taffies were. The negotiation process took several hours.
My fond memories of Halloween were added to when I became a parent of a trick-or-treater. For her first Halloween, Christie, my oldest, dressed up as a witch. We practiced her approach. “Knock on the door.” She rapped the kitchen table twice. “Say ‘Trick or Treat.’” “Twick or tweat.” “And if they ask you what you are, say, ‘Cackle, Cackle, I’m a witch.’” “Cackle, cackle, I’m a witch.”
So we tried it out on our next door neighbor. Christie knocked on the door, our neighbor opened the door, Christie sang out, “Twick or Tweat,” our neighbor asked what she was (it was obvious, but adults always have difficulty initiating conversations with toddlers), and Christie responded, “Cackle! Cackle! I’m a witch!” Our neighbor plopped a handful of Jolly Ranchers into Christie’s plastic pumpkin basket. Christie looked at the candy in the bottom of her orange bucket, looked back at our neighbor and back at the candy. I took her by the hand to the next house where the routine was repeated and she studied the growing mound of candy in her pumpkin basket. Connections were being made. Somehow this witch behavior was wielding rewards.
At the third house Christie walked up to the door, knocked loudly, the door opened, and she said, “Twick or Tweat, I’m a witch, Cackle Cackle, where’s the candy?” I had to remind her of the proper trick-or-treating protocol. Kids learn fast when they have an investment in the learning…..so do we all.
One of my favorite Halloweens as a parental escort occurred on an unusually bitter cold night, the wind blowing hard and an occasional spit of rain slashing at the faces of me and my two oldest, Christie and Becky. They were so bundled up by their mother that the costumes hardly showed, but they seemed warm and eager. The alternative to having our kids stay warm was to have them go as ghosts, spreading a sheet over the fifty pounds of sweaters and overcoats they were wearing. I had on a light jacket, and after the first block of houses I was hoping that the trick-or-treating would be a short affair. By the second block, my nose was running, and I was imagining that I might become the first parental hypothermia victim. As we turned the second corner and I took in with dread the number of houses we were going to visit, I met the father of two trick-or-treaters who were friends of my daughters. The trick-or-treaters joined forces, and we became a team. At the end of one side of the block, with the wind picking up, my parental compatriot voiced the same emotion I had.
“Boy, tonight is brutal. Worse Halloween for weather ever!” The spitting rain was becoming freezing rain and it stung our faces.
I nodded. I think my lips were frozen together.
A few freezing seconds went by. He reached in his pocket.
“Glad I brought this.”
It was a gun-metal flask.
“Brandy. Want a hit?”
I nodded and forced my lips apart.
The liquid went down smoothly.
We trick or treated the other side of the street when my daughters stopped and examined their father who had frost on his eyebrows. “Want to go home, daddy?” I shook my head and we continued. And my adult mon ami and I continued our ritual….which repeated itself at more frequent intervals. By the end of the fifth block, our trick-or-treaters’ little legs were giving out. “Maybe we should go home now,” Christie said.
“No, no. Look at all those houses on the next block,” I advised. The flask was almost—almost– empty, and the cold was not so cold and the rain may or may not have stopped. It was a very small flask, not enough to fog the brain of one grown man, let alone two. The sips just provided a glow, making the weather seem more like a stroll through a Virginian garden in May rather than a staggering through ice floes in January.
When we did finally return home, Polley studied my face for some reason. “I didn’t think you guys would stay out so long.”
I just smiled. “They were having such a good time.” I will forever remember and be in perpetual debt to that fellow father of trick-or-treaters who got me through that Halloween. Christie and Becky certainly seemed ecstatic with their cache.
Halloween has changed. Apparently, kids can’t dress as “evil beings.” No more witches, devils, skeletons, zombies, or Putins. We have now kids sporting tv personalities and celebrities. In my day that would have meant masks of Wally Cox and Dorothy Kilgallen or anyone else occupying the center square in Hollywood Squares or on What’s My Line? And candy has been replaced with gift cards and donations to charitable enterprises, and boo-bubbles and monster bracelets. Is one boo-bubble equal to two monster bracelets? We also have the Teal Pumpkin Project which raises food allergies awareness for children (like my grandchildren) who have to be careful about what they digest.
Old Fogey Alert: It just seems to me that like most things Halloween has become more complicated. More fear about what might happen and less joy in what is happening. Perhaps that has always been the reality. Rose colored glasses and all that. When the dust clears from my brain I realize my foolishness. In reality the children of today will know (and hopefully enjoy) Halloween as it is…..boo-bubbles, teal pumpkins and all.
I do believe that for many children, Halloween is their favorite holiday…even more than Hanukah or Christmas or Kwanza. And that is because kids can wear masks, meaning they do not have to behave like the goodie-two shoes adults are expecting them to be all the time. For a few hours they can stagger like zombies or display their muscles for truth and justice as superheroes or they can cackle like witches, or become a walking mailbox. We all wear masks at times (another future blog entry), but on Halloween young ones can pretend to be someone else…and this pretense is licensed. At this one time of year we are allowed to be scary and scared at the same time. Boo!!
by Ralph Maltese | Oct 23, 2016 | Uncategorized
“What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate”
Captain, Cool Hand Luke
On this blog I never recommend activities or medications to ease Parkinson’s. There is a reason for this. I am NOT a doctor—-nor do I play one on tv. ASIDE ALERT! Growing up the only doctor I fantasized becoming was Dr. Kildare, played by Richard Chamberlain, 1961 to 1965. Somewhere in the bowels of my vinyl record collection is a forty-five, “Three Stars Will Shine Tonight,” the theme song of Dr. Kildare sung by Richard Chamberlain….not particularly sung well, but eat your hearts out you seventy somethings….
However, I have discovered one tactic that makes doing everyday things like dressing and getting in and out of a chair/car/bed a little easier. Parkinson’s affects the nerves and thus the muscles are not receiving the messages they should. It is as if the evil sign of the brain orders the muscles, “You move one inch and I’ll deprive you of dopamine.” “You pick up that shoelace with two fingers and you are in big trouble!” In the movie Cool Hand Luke, the Prison Warden, the Captain, frustrated by Luke’s frequent escape attempts, beats him and shouts out, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” That is the Parkinson’s scenario exactly. So, to improve communication, I talk to my limbs. The good side of my brain ignores the evil side’s threats and tells the muscle, “Do this!” I discovered this when, my left foot shaking seemingly uncontrollably, would stop when I commanded it to. “Stop left foot!” And, as if realizing that my brain was not fooling around, my left foot would stop shaking. Like a young child who shirks off the first warning in short time, my left foot is back at it again in a little while, but I need those respites at times. So I summon my best teaching voice and order my foot to cease and desist.
But, after years of learning from teaching, I offer the carrot as well as wield the stick. I go out on a limb to order my limbs, and I am in a constant conversation with my extensions when I dress. “Come on leg, you can do it, just lift up and slide down into that Fruit of the Loom brief.” “Okay fingers, let’s go! Wrap those shoelaces around each other and tie those sneakers down.” “Okay right hand, you can do it boy, slip that sock over your toes and pull it down over the foot. Foot, you stay still!” “Finger, good fellow, you pressed the right button on the tv remote on the third try!” We all have gradually grown as a team, even bringing in the non limbs. “Back, you listening? Straighten up and pull yourself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Soon I will be telling Feet to stand you up.”
I have tried the same strategy on my vocal chords, but that is more challenging. Part of it is the Parkinson’s, but most of it is my conversational style. In discussions, especially with friends, I think about statements already made, and when I finally decide to make a pithy contribution, the group has moved on to other topics. My slowness to interject means I am ten minutes and twenty topics behind other people. The “relevant” factor is usually long gone. I have tried communicating with my vocal chords, “Come on, guys, say it now!,” but the lines of communication are not always operative, those particular neural pathways clogged or disrupted or something.
Gone are the days of jumping into a pair of shorts and pulling over a sweatshirt to go out on the basketball court to shoot hoops, without ever thinking the process or talking to my body. Then again, gone are the days of jumping.
One truism I have learned from the Parkinson’s. This day, this very moment, might be the best I feel for the rest of my life. And if I need to develop better communication skills between my brain and my body, then I am “all in.” “Come on, finger, hit that “.” keyboard key.”
by Ralph Maltese | Oct 16, 2016 | Uncategorized
The Low Talker
I was leading an eleventh grade class discussion (which usually involved a conversation among five people in the room—yours truly and six students.) This was before I read the research that confirmed that most “class” discussions involved only five or six people with the teacher doing most of the talking. I think it was B.F. Skinner, the behaviorist, who queried, “Who needs the most practice in talking, in expressing oneself?” Skinner’s next question was, “In the conventional classroom who does the most talking?” But this was before I learned how to engage more than six students.
So I was working hard to inspire my students to think, in this case to think about Stephen Crane and naturalism in literature and whether or not our lives were dictated by forces beyond our control. There was a pause, and I studied their faces for what we now call “formative assessments,” to ascertain whether they were getting it or not. Most faces I read were in Happy Valley, belying their thinking which drifted to where to take Mary Lou on Saturday night or what jumper Trixie would wear tomorrow or whether the Eagles would beat the hated Cowboys on Sunday. A few, a very few, were knocking off brain cells considering the question I posed: “Were their lives predetermined or did they have freedom of choice?”
Like comedy, teaching often depends heavily on a sense of timing. I wanted my query to work its way along their neural pathways, and, for some students, this journey is arduous. So I waited. Suddenly, abruptly shattering the thoughtful silence, Jerry, a rather heavyset lad with a perpetual red face practically jumps out of his desk.
“Hey, Mr. Maltese!! Hey, Mr. Maltese!! I just had a great idea!! A great idea!!” Jerry was half out of his desk, hand raised to the ceiling.
“Go, Jerry.”
“Mr. Maltese!! I was thinking!!! (a huge breakthrough). Suppose, just suppose, we are not real? Suppose all of us, everything, is just somebody’s imagination? Suppose some great being is dreaming and we are just part of his dream? How about that?!”
“Jerry, that is fantastic thinking.” Okay, I did not have the heart to tell Jerry that Descartes and other philosophers had developed that same supposition centuries before. One of the lessons I learned early on about teaching was that what may be old to us is new to someone else. The idea was new to Jerry, and to squash his “discovery” is to commit the cardinal sin of eradicating wonder. Besides his revelation proved he was thinking.
Iago shouted to Jerry, “You a…….e, I ain’t no part of someone else’s dream. I’m real and, if you come over here, I’ll break your nose and show you how real I am.”
I raised my voice so that it boomed across the room and blasted Iago in his face. “How dare you call anyone names and insult their thinking! How dare you!” And I went on dressing down Iago for a few minutes.
In the beginning of the school year my foremost goal is to develop a classroom climate conducive to learning. It is hard to develop but necessary. Part of that effort involves sending the message that I, the teacher, would not allow bullies to intimidate the class. At the commencement of the school term, students are more fearful of their classmates than they are of the teacher. In sizing up the instructor, students want to know if I would protect them from the predators, if I was in charge. I have seen too many novice teachers begin the year with something like, “Hi, I am your teacher, Bob. Bob is easy to remember because it is the same spelled backwards. More than your teacher, I am your friend, and we are going to have lots of fun this year.” The good students are thinking “This guy couldn’t save me from a falling leaf.” And the sharks start swimming around the tank. So, the first time a student makes even the slightest insult I would be all over that pupil as the adage says, “like a cheap suit,” usually out of all proportion to the actual offense. Message sent.
So when Iago slunk down in his seat, appropriately chastised, I noticed this “Whooooaaa!” rising as a chorus from the rest of the class.
“Mr. Maltese, we never heard you raise your voice before.”
That was true. I never was a shouter. There were teachers down the hall who were shouters, and the shouting never seemed to alter the behavior of the students since the shouting never seemed to stop. Einstein’s quote: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” When I tried to share Einstein’s witticism with my students, I realized that for some of them, especially those in Jerry’s class, it was a little too abstract. So I changed it. “You turn the key over in the ignition 99 times, and the car still doesn’t start, you don’t do it again. You try something else.” I once received the reply, “Mr. Maltese, what else am I gonna do? Especially if I got no tools in the trunk? Call my old man and piss him off because I forgot to get gas? I try kicking it over again and pray.”
But with the Parkinson’s I have become a shouter. My vocal chords have apparently shrunk to vibrating reeds that could fit in a microchip or something. In Seinfeld, nodding in response to a low talker’s request without hearing a word leads to disaster. No such disaster has yet befallen me, but the potential is there. People have to make a greater effort to hear me. Their eyes narrow, they lean in as close as social norms allow, their lips try to follow mine, and their entire face scrunches up. To me, who hears me perfectly, the listener seems deaf. But I know the problem is with me, with the Parkinson’s, so I usually summon all my strength and channel into those tiny vocal chords and repeat what I said. My “shout,” like a small breeze dissipating in the woods, fades to a whisper.
All those years of teaching and I shouted maybe twice, once when I received a really nasty paper cut from a manila envelope. My teaching mind is still here, but the teaching voice is gone, and that saddens me. Almost all speech now is a strain.
There is a difference between hearing and listening. What is really frustrating is knowing someone heard me but did not listen, so I have to repeat myself which, depending on how the Parkinson’s is that day, can be really exhausting.
Ultimately I have become quieter. More and more conversations are between me and me. After all, what is thinking but having a conversation with oneself? And I don’t have to shout.
by Ralph Maltese | Oct 9, 2016 | Uncategorized
Driving Me Crazy
Driving my automobile has changed dramatically for me. I started driving over fifty-four years ago, so some of that change is simply because of the passing years. Parkinson’s also has a great deal to do with it. Let’s just say that the fun of tooling around town with no particular purpose is gone. My shaky left foot, even though it thumps repeatedly on long trips, and my occasional twitching left hand, are not the problem. Since my limbs no longer jump immediately to my brain’s commands, working myself into the seat requires lots of positioning. The minute I get settled behind the wheel, I feel the need to concentrate more.
When I was sixteen I don’t think I concentrated on anything. There was too much going on all around me to stop and focus on any one thing…..which is why studying was so hard. While learning how to factor polynomials, I also had to learn how to fix the family car, especially if I needed it for Saturday night. My father had a theory about buying cars. He thought it was a virtual crime against the Supreme Beings of the Universe to pay any more than $1,000 for a vehicle that simply got one from one place to another. This severely limited his purchasing options. Ah, but he had tools, and he had a son that he appreciated even more when his offspring had bits of car rust in his hair, grease on his eyebrows, and scrape sores on his knuckles.
Despite the various states of disrepair, we took the Nash Ambassador or Desoto Powermaster or Packard Clipper for a ride out to the calm and countrified wilderness that was western New Jersey, and we invited my Aunt Marge and Uncle Ray along. We all expected breakdowns, and we were not disappointed. Flat tire? My father would ease the apprehensions. “Got two spares in the trunk [which were balder than the one needing replacement]. Ralph will change the tire, and we will still make Paterson by lunch.” Carburetor meltdown? “Butterfly valve is stuck. Ralph, pry the valve open with a stick and leave it there while I kick it over.” Nash dies on a hill in the Catskills? “Everybody out. We’ll push it up and over the hill and when it gets rolling I’ll jump start it.” And he did. “Simply getting from one place to another” was never simple and always an adventure with my father’s cars.
My family enjoyed crabbing at Point Pleasant or Tom’s River in New Jersey. The one and a half hour drive usually took three hours because my father eschewed paying the quarter toll every so many miles on the Garden State Parkway (another offense to the workingman’s gods). After all, he was already shelling out 20 cents a gallon for gas. So we took Route 9, a stop and go traffic route, made beastly if we got behind a slow moving tractor trailer. The heat would beat down on the Hudson Hornet, the sun bouncing off the hood and the glare alone exhausted us. Not many cars priced under $1,000 are fitted with air-conditioning, so we manually rolled down the windows, stuck our heads out and let the hot wind pound our faces. When we finally got to our destination, we took some time peeling our sweaty skins off the seats. The ride home was worse since we were all tired from crabbing in the salty air and under the summer sun.
The first car I used on a date was my father’s brand new Buick. That car, covered with Villanova Stickers inconveniently gave up the ghost in the St. Joseph’s parking lot following a Nova basketball victory. My next vehicle for getting me from here to there was a Rambler which had a tendency to cough when anyone, including a coed, was in the passenger seat. It was embarrassing, really, but the car was good on gas and I could work on it. Loaded with college classmates, we drove up the Jersey turnpike to New York City for a Madison Square Garden game. Somewhere around Newark I noticed the speedometer needle spinning wildly around until it burned itself to a nub. My father took me to one of his favorite junkyards (the owners of which he knew on a name-to-name basis) to locate a speedometer to replace the one that had self-immolated in my car. We found at least twenty 1958 Ramblers all of which had their speedometers removed. Hmmmmm. I never did replace it. “Officer, I did not know I was going that fast. Look, my speedometer burned out.”
At least back then I could work on my car. No longer. A year ago I lost my car Silver (I name my “steeds’), a Subaru Forester, when, while stopped at a light, the gentleman behind us decided not to stop at the light. We christened our new car, an Outback, the Enterprise because of all the safety features. Drifting out of my lane? BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Too close to the car in front of me? BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Car approaching when I am backing up? BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The car in front of me has moved while I am taking a snooze? BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Price of oil rising in Outer Mongolia? BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! It even notifies me when The Enterprise needs an oil change. During the Vietnam War, the military was puzzled because despite all the safety features in the fighter jets, so many of them were being shot down. There were alarm systems to warn the pilot that he was being tracked by ground radar. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! There was the alarm that an actual missile was launched from the ground. BEEP! BEEP! BOOP! There was the warning that an enemy aircraft had spotted the jet. DING! DING! DING! And the warning that the enemy aircraft had launched a missile at the American plane. DING! DING! DONG! And a few more bells and rings. So with all these warning systems, why were a disproportionate number of planes brought down? Eventually a pilot sheepishly confessed, “Sir, with all these alarms ringing in the cockpit, we couldn’t concentrate on the mission so we turned the alarms off.”
I never turn the Enterprises systems off. But there is a trade off. I cannot work on my car anymore. I do not even recognize the parts of my automobile. Sometimes I do not even recognize the icon of the warming light that suddenly lists up. When I have a problem, I just have to trust the mechanic.
“Hi. One of my warning lights came on. The icon looks like an exclamation point surrounded by stars and a symbol from the Rosetta Stone.”
“I’ll check it out.”
Several hours later. “I figured out why your warning light came on. You need a five digit semi-automatic, fire proof Monongahela widget. Cost you five hundred Jackson’s.”
That is a lot of moolah. “Can I have a four digit?”
“No. They don’t make four digit semi-automatic Monongahela widgets.”
“Can I have a cheaper one that is not semi-automatic?”
“Nope. They don’t make non semi-automatics for this model.”
I did not want to give up the fire proof feature. “Okay, do what you have to do. By the way, what does the five digit semi-automatic, fire proof Monongahela widget do?
“It makes sure the cigarette lighter’s night light in the back seat works.”
Oh.
As comfortable as the Enterprise is, my Parkinson’s still makes every road trip an effort. The effort begins with getting seated. I have to shimmy my right leg just so to squeeze it under the steering wheel and into position on the accelerator. Once we get going, my legs and arms and eyesight are fine. My shaky left foot is annoying, but if I get the right radio station and the right music it thumps to a congruent rhythm. Sometimes an NPR interview with a goat herder from the Himalaya’s even slows it down. But oh do I concentrate. Not because I cannot see or hear or hit the brake. It is that, because of the Parkinson’s, I do not trust my brain. So I focus the entire trip. Of course, like other people my age, every time we exit the car at a gas station or rest area, I have to perform triage, checking which body parts are still functioning, and it takes a few steps to shake out the kinks in the legs and back. Lots of stretching and twisting and turning. Instead of, as in days of yore, always trying to make time, we now stop so our bodies do not permanently remain in the driving position, and my brain seems to appreciate the time out.
Especially after a long trip, my exiting the car resembles a drunken sailor staggering until he gets his land legs. But there are arrivals at certain destinations that make the long ride and intense concentration worth it….specifically the grandchildren who run out to meet us and jump into our arms. “Okay, Sweetpea. It is so good to see you. Just wait a second until granddaddy’s spine straightens out.”
My father was right. A car is simply a device to get one from here to there, but what gives the vehicle value is the delight and joy of the “there’s” and the comfort and security of the return to the “here.”
