The Pen is Mightier

The Pen is Mightier

When I’m not writing books about kitchen tables, I am an eighth grade Language Arts teacher. (Please, hold the applause until the end.) Every teacher knows,the humble kitchen table is a great surface for grading papers. (Many teachers use the dining room table, but I don’t have a dining room, just a big kitchen.Poor me.) The kitchen table affords lots of room for organizing papers and supplies. For me, a typical grading session requires shoving aside all the bags and sunglasses that have been strewn about like unwanted children over the table’s surface. I then spread out and organize all the papers by homeroom, the essays and the projects that need grading.  Also, lined up like soldiers are the calculator, the erasable pen to record in the grade book, and the GREEN pen. Sometimes if I can’t find a green pen, I’ll use blue or purple or whatever I find lying about, but one thing's for sure, I never use a RED pen. Educational experts tell us not to use a red pen because if a student sees lots of red marks all over their paper they could be “scarred for life.” A student could very well become intimidated and withdrawn by all that red ink, thus never really realizing their full potential. Hence, they will not succeed in life; they will live in poverty; become a burden on society and die hungry and alone and be buried in a Potter’s Field. Red ink is to education what crack is to, well,  everything else in life.

    I teach without a red pen in a depressed, urban environment. The kids are living at the poverty level, some a little above and some well below. (Let’s just say I’ve bought my fair share of winter coats and graduation dresses over the years.) I didn’t realize this economic situation at first, and I made some stupid mistakes. I came back to teaching after being away for 16 years raising my three boys. So, trying to get my point across one day about how, if you praise someone, they try to live up to that praise, I said, “Like, you know when your cleaning girl does an okay job, but you want her to do a better job, you may say, wow! Cleaning girl! Really good job!” Twenty six blank faces stared back at me. Oops.

I never thought I’d go back to teaching, but I was lured back in with the thought of summers off and only working until three every day. “It’s practically a part time job,” I told my husband.  How short is my memory.  It’s a 24-7 job, what with the grading of papers, the worrying about certain students, accountability, report cards, quarterly progress reports for 97 students, paperwork, the extra help I provide to struggling students, the paperwork, the politics, the lack of respect, lying awake night fretting over my evaluations, the paperwork, performance anxiety because of the evaluations and oh yes, shopping for winter coats and fancy dresses. And did I mention the paperwork? As they say in the Army, “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”   

But I do love being a teacher because I feel there is something I can contribute to kids who need someone and if they learn to read a write a little along the way, all the better. But this is reading and writing thing is not a must. The reading and writing are the least of what is accomplished in middle school. I always tell my students that school is not so much about learning how to read and write, but how to LIVE. How we interface with others, what acceptable behavior is, how to make and keep a friend. How to be a friend.

    Of course, I still never give up on the teaching in the hopes that everyday, at least one morsel of knowledge will be ingrained in their resisting brains.  I keep swimming upstream, teaching students who do not want to be taught, most whom are just there to get out of the house and socialize with their friends.

One of the currents I am swimming against is behavior. Behavior comes in two flavors, the boys’ mischievous antics and the girls’ penchant for the  dramatic. The girls love to talk and write on the bathroom walls.  They cry over friendships and boys, or girls if they are experimenting with being gay, and are generally in a constant state of drama the likes of which would rival any Shakespearean play. They cut themselves, post suicide notes on Facebook and let high school boys sexually experiment on them. Lots of times girls cry over their fathers. Either the fathers live at home and are abusive, or they don’t live at home and they never see them, or they are in jail, or touching them “down there.” Some days, I spend more time out in the hallway coaching and counseling and calming the girls than I do teaching.     A typical hallway conversation goes something like this:

Me: Why are you crying, honey? What’s the matter?

She:Shakes her head.

Me: I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.

She:More crying. No answer. She looks down at her shoes.

In the meantime, the rest of the class is in a total uproar, laughing, yelling, moving about the room.  I can hear them and I want to go back in there and make a big, LOUD speech, (a layman might call it yelling) but I don’t dare for fear the girl may think she does not have my undivided attention, thus proving to her that I am just another adult who could care less about her and her problems and confirming once and for all that suicide is the only real answer.  But mostly I do not go in to YELL because there is the chance She may  finally come out with some useful information and then I can help her.

Me: Do you want to go to guidance?

She:Still looking down at her shoes. Shakes her head no.

Now I’m looking down at her shoes, because somehow I feel that maybe therein lies the answer.  Like, did someone make fun of her shoes? Are her shoes too tight? I give it a minute. The shoes tell me nothing so I press on.

Me: Is anyone home?

She: Shakes her head no.

Me: Do you want to call your mother (father,grandmother, aunt, guardian, goldfish, whomever takes care of you) at work?

She: (between sobs) N-no.

Me: Do you want to just come back in the classroom and put your head down until you are feeling better?

She: Shoulder shrug. Still looking at her shoes.

    I’m running out of options. Perhaps I should suggest we send the rest of the class home and She and I could have a nice, therapeutic chat over a cup of coffee. I think she would say yes to that.

Me: How about a friend? Do you want to go with one of your friends to the ladies room and wash your face and talk it over?

(I figure I can pry the information out of the friend once things settle down.)

She brightens at this suggestion. She looks up at me and nods her head. Yes! Yes She would like to go with a friend to the ladies room.

This means not just one, but two kids will be out of the room during most of the lesson, but it is better than ME being out of the room during most of  the lesson. So we call the best friend out into the hallway and I watch as they both trot happily down the hall to the ladies room together, arm in arm, ready, no doubt,  to text four other girls, sitting in four other classes to commiserate.

The boys misbehaviors tend to be more creative, like peeing in water bottles, stuffing the toilets with paper, peeing on the walls in the bathroom and generally any abhorrent bathroom behavior where they can wield their penises and wreak havoc. They never cry or look at their shoes, so somehow I find them easier to deal with. I often yell at them good and loud from frustration; they don’t seem to mind at all and it makes me feel gobs better. (One boy said as I was screaming in his face, “You know you’re beautiful when you're angry?” So fear not,  I don’t think I’m inflicting any permanent harm.)

I have to repeat a great deal when disciplining the boys. Apparently at home, and in some particular cultures, the boys are thought to walk on water and they are truly shocked to find that when they come to school, they jump in the pool, so to speak, and sink. Their parents can tell them a hundred times not to do something, and they will ignore it because they know there are no consequences. Mama’s boy can do no wrong. In my classroom, I can’t allow it. I have a big test to get these kids ready for and I don’t let much stand in my way. A typical reprimand for a boy goes something like this:

Me: William, turn your body and face forward.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Me: You are sitting sideways and smirking with Ellis from across the room. You are distracting Ellis and everyone around him. Now turn around and stop it.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Me: Turn around, face front and refocus on the lesson.

He: I didn’t do anything.

I stare at him, waiting

He finally turns and puts his legs under the desk, facing forward. I continue.

Two minutes later:

Me:William, turn your body and face forward.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Me: You are sitting sideways and you continue to smirk with Ellis from across the room.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Me: Turn around, face front and refocus on the lesson.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

    Both boys and girls break the cell phone rules. Their phones are to be shut off and stored in their backpacks during school hours, though ’ve never seen it done. The girls wear very tight pants, leggings with pockets actually, and their phones are always sticking halfway out of the back pocket.  I always make the joke, “You’re going to butt-dial Timbuktu those pants are so tight.” (Another stupid joke I make is: Those hoop earrings are so big, you could pick up radio stations. An eighth grader think these jokes are funny.) Kids just can't understand why they can’t have phones in school. They think, as I once did, that this is because if a student is texting or god forbid, talking on a cell phone, it will distract them from learning. Not so. Not to turn this into a Sixty Minutes investigative report, but the real reason is: schools don’t want kids taking pictures of teachers sleeping at their desks or eating a banana from the school breakfast. (Strictly forbidden. The student’s breakfasts and lunches come from state mandated money, and they would rather us throw food out than have a starving, undernourished, underpaid,teacher eat it.) Or, having a phone,  they could share test answers or post bathroom pictures on Facebook. More than just looking up answers, kids could record a teacher saying something like, Sit your ass down and shut up or I’ll break your legs, or smash your face or whatever threat is applicable at the time. (And even though most teachers, like myself, would never say such a thing, believe you me, after a long day of repeating sit down, be quiet to 97 pairs of deaf ears, we’re thinking it. You can damn well be sure, we’re thinking it.)

    I am actually jealous of cell phones. I consider them my number one rival in the classroom. It’s me against the phones and I always lose. It often goes like this:

Me: Jeanelle, are you texting?

Jeanelle: No.

Me: Then why is your cell phone out. You know the rules!

Jeanelle: I was just checking the time.

    I point to the clock.

She looks at the clock like she’s never seen it before. Like, when did someone put that there?

Jeanelle:I’ll put it away.

    My chest swells with triumph. l I have won the battle. The lesson continues. I look over at Jeanelle’s seat in the back. She is staring at her lap. I got her now!

    “Janelle, what is so interesting in that lap of yours?”  The class giggles at the possibilities.

    Don't you know, the kid pulls her textbook up from her lap, smug as can be? The class laughs at Jeanell's victory. I hate them all.

    “Okay, sorry,” I say a little too boldly to hide my humiliation, “I thought you might be  texting.”

    I move on with the lesson. I wander around the room, checking in with students along the way, planting ideas and giving some much needed praise where none is actually warranted.  

    And then I see it, from across the room. Jeanelle is leaning over, ever-so slightly, texting in her backpack! Aha! Let her try and weasel her way out of this one. Ha!

    I sneak up on her.

    Me: Jeanelle! Hand me that phone this instant!

She: What phone?

Me: Don’t you “what phone” me! You were texting in your bag and you know it! Now let’s have it!

    I extend my hand like the superior being I feel I am at this very moment.

    She shakes her head, and slaps a graphic calculator in my hand. I stare at it. The class roars. I hate them more.

Me: What is this? Why are you playing with a calculator during writing class?

She: I’m sorry, I was doing my math homework.

    In an effort to distract the class’ attention away from my cell phone delusions, I yell,

“Are you supposed to be doing math homework during writing? What about the paragraph I gave you to do?”

    She shows me her notebook. A perfectly written paragraph describing the classroom stares back at me. She has done all I had asked her to do, she has described with all her five senses, and she used similes and metaphors and imagery, the whole nine yards. She then thought to use her time wisely (where did she ever hear that?) and catch up on some homework. I didn’t just have egg on my face, I had the whole omelet.

    Jeanelle seemed forgiving enough. She just smiled and went back to her math. After class I caught her in the hall. “Jeanelle, I’m sorry I accused you of texting during class. I was wrong and I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”

“Oh, don’t feel bad, Mrs. Sherman, I was texting. Just not at those times when you thought I was!”

The little shit.

You may now applaud.

   

The Kitchen Table/Turkey

The Kitchen Table Turkey

Few things in the home get more mileage than the kitchen table.  We use it for everything from paying the bills to assembling science projects.   In olden days, babies were born on them. Kitchen tables are the heart of the home.

        Since we put an island in my kitchen two years ago, our kitchen table has been relegated exclusively to big family dinners and as a surface for my purse and junk mail.  I almost feel sorry for it. And it’s not just the table, it’s the chairs that have also been made to feel like outcast relatives of a once very happy family.  Hanging off their French country backs, the armchairs at either end of the massive rectangular table only serve to hold deflated, unchosen purses and tote bags In fact, one end of the table has become my official purse changing station, complete with an old Tupperware container littered with all my current favorite lipstick shades, tissue packets, old receipts and dead pens. My kitchen table is an unkempt graveyard of sundries.

                

        My earliest memories of the kitchen table as in institution are the times my mother, brother and I lived with my grandmother and two bachelor uncles,Tony and Mikey. (Every Italian family has at least one middle-aged live at home uncle; we were duly blessed to have the pair.) My parents were divorced and my mother was going to night school to get a teaching degree. So my brother David and I had three babysitters. Three very neurotic, visceral babysitters. To stick a map pin in it, we were living in Bayonne, New Jersey.  A good blue collar town, complete with an important looking library and a scholarly looking red brick high school.

    A word about my aunts and uncles. My grandmother had eight children, all names ending in the EEE sound. There was Franky, Sadie, Joey, Tony, Josy, Mikey, Rosie and Annie. Their real names were Frank, Marie Rose, Joseph, Anthony, Josephine, Michael, Rose and Ann. But I guess when you're hollering a name, Rosie sounds better than Rose. I always wondered as I grew older why they bothered to give a kid a name like Anthony, when they knew darn well they were going to yell Tony! out the window.

        At the center of my formative life was Grandma’s kitchen table.  It was the latest, most modern table of its day—unfortunately, its day was about 10 years before I came along.  By the time I was five years old or so, the Formica surface shone a vague, well-worn hospital green.  There were white cloud-like spots where each of us sat, the color so scrubbed away. Hanging from the table’s edge was 4 inches of corrugated chrome, same for the matching chairs. They were a shiny plastic, padded at the back and seat for comfort. These days, whenever they want to make a restaurant retro, they use tables like my Grandma had. Many good times were had around that table, as well as serious discussions about mortgages, illness and death, and of course, family feuds, large and loud.

         Grandma’s kitchen lacked any of the modern conveniences we have today.  There were no cabinets or countertops. All food prep was done on the kitchen table. The center of the square room was barren, with all the kitchen necessities fitted against the four walls.  The 4-burner stove was fairly new and stood alone against a short wall, the hole from the previously piped stove covered up with black iron plate. The sink, plumbed into another wall, had legs and two enormous wells for dishwashing and I suppose at one time, clothes washing.  Next to the sink was a washing machine, a top loader, and next to that was the old washer with the clothes wringer perched on top. Growing up, I never wondered what that big roller was up there, I only knew we never used it. Then one day, it was gone, and I didn’t wonder about that either.  When you’re little, it’s all about your immediate world.  Where are my toys? What’s in the refrigerator?

    Thinking back on those times, I have warm and fuzzy feelings about grandma's kitchen table--not the actual table itself, but the feeling it evokes even to this day. All of us sitting around it, in the warmth of the kitchen, me looking up from a bowl of stew,  or a plate of chicken and vegetables,  into the faces of the people that made me feel safe and cherished. And my Uncle Tony, for all his gruff and uneducated ways, understood at a deep, instinctual level, that children need to be acknowledged and paid attention to. Any time anyone else spoke to us at the table, it was to direct us to “pass the ketchup” or “sit still”  But not Uncle Tony. He would make an effort. “Chris Annie! How was school today? Are you the smartest one in the class?” To my five year old brother it would be, “Davey! You like football? (No answer/blank stare from David)  Yeah? Well, you watch the game with me tonight.” Every night the same few sentences, but we never tired of Uncle Tony taking time out from his busy schedule of yelling to speak to us, to show us he cared.

     The table was right outside my bedroom door--well, it wasn’t exactly my bedroom, it was my grandmothers, but she gave it up so my mom and brother and I could sleep in there while she slept on the sagging sofa. Every morning from my bed, I could hear my grandmother making breakfast: assembling the coffee percolator, putting the small, dented pot up to boil for our soft boiled eggs, pushing down the toast in the toaster that only had two settings, white and burnt.

       

When I was about seven, my Uncle Tony brought home a live turkey for Thanksgiving.  He worked for the New Jersey Turnpike and apparently won the unfortunate bird in the holiday raffle.  Now, up until this moment, I was under the assumption that all food came from the grocery store.  Oranges, eggs, lettuce, hamburger, pork chops—I never gave any thought to where they came from before they got to the Shop-Rite.  If food had names like cow instead of beef and pig instead of pork, I would have caught on right away. I did know chicken was from chickens, but I never saw a veal at the petting zoo. So when Uncle Tony came in with a rather large, loosely closed cardboard box with its contents screeching and thrashing about, I assumed this was some sort of  very upset animal he intended to keep for a pet.

    “Ma,” he shouted,  “I got a turkey here!”

        I was sitting at one end of the kitchen table coloring; my grandmother standing, preparing dinner at the other end.  Uncle Tony could scarcely control the box and quickly unburdened himself by wrestling it to the middle of the kitchen floor.  I quickly scrunched myself up on the kitchen chair, safely tucking my feet under myself.

        “Santa Maria!” she wailed, with all other manner of Italian expletives that roughly translate into, Oh my God! You brought a live turkey into the house! Are you crazy?

        Then the conversation went on in a mixture of Italian and English, something to the effect of,

        Non aprire quella scatola! (Don’t open that box!)

        We gotta get it outta there!

        Non in cucina! (Not in the kitchen!)

        Ma, we gotta get it outta there!

        Non avete il coraggio aprire quella scatola in cucina! (Don’t you dare open that box in the kitchen!)

        He opened the box.

        I flew off that kitchen chair and into the bedroom right behind me with all the agility and speed of, well, of a bird. (Good to have a bedroom directly off the kitchen. Another bedroom was off the dining room. This adds credence to the notion that Italians are a food-focused bunch.)

        Through a crack in the bedroom door I witnessed the slaughter.  The turkey flew out of the box and started running all over the kitchen, body slamming into  the stove, refrigerator and washing machine. I was screaming through the crack in the door, which I’m sure did not help the matter any.  My grandmother and uncle were also running around after it, colliding with each other with miscellaneous shouts of Get him! and Get out of the way!

        By now my nubby knees were knocking and I kept alternating between screaming through a crack in the door and screaming through a closed door; I couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted to see this or not.

       Finally, my grandmother, a tough old bird herself, cornered the hysterical thing and grabbed it fast around the neck.  The turkey’s wings were flapping a mile a minute and feathers filled the air.

        “Tony! Un coltello! (A knife!)” Grandma shouted.

        A knife!

        I just knew this was not going to end well for the turkey.  I wasn’t sure what the end game was here. Why would Uncle Tony bring this bird home, only to kill it?  I remember panicking at that very moment, because I felt I did not know my family anymore. That somehow I had been deceived and was living with a bunch deranged lunatics, under the guise of a loving Italian family. (Years later, a therapist told me all Italians feel this way at one time or another.)

        Grandma slammed the turkey down on the table and began sawing away at its neck with the dull knife, while Uncle Tony held down its torso. I was horrified and started screaming all the louder.  I could feel the lining of my tiny throat ripping as my terror escalated. The turkey was still flapping its wings and I could see my crayons flying onto the floor and all around the turkey.  Sad and comedic all at once, this poor bird spent its last moments alive, covered in the bold colors of a Crayola 64 box, blue-green and magenta an odd contrast to the brown and grey feathers. Blood was everywhere, my coloring book a goner.

        Once the head was completely severed, Uncle Tony jumped back to avoid the blood.  The bird body propelled itself off the table and started running around, just like they say it will, only now, blood was spurting out of the top of the neck and the chase ensued once more. Once again it was Grandma who got hold of the poor thing and held it down in the sink until it stopped its spastic twitching.

        “E finito.” It is finished.

        I slowly came out of the bedroom and into the shower scene from Psycho.  Blood spattered the white appliances and the linoleum floor. My grandmother was still holding the crimson knife and my uncle was trying to pick up the bird with a dish towel over his hand.

        I started to cry. Long and loud. “I WANT MOMMY! I WANT MOMMY RIGHT NOW!” I was frightened and angry all at the same time. How could they put me through such a horror. Weren’t they responsible for me and my well-being? The two of them looked at me, astonished. They had forgotten I was even in the house, even with all my screaming and carrying on.  My grandmother came rushing over, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and sat me on the kitchen chair. She stood over me, quickly removed her blood-splattered apron and pushed my head into her soft belly, as she often did when I was upset.

        “Nonchu cry.  Is okay.  Is okay. We have turkey! Turkey for Thanks-a-givina!”

        What! This wasn’t a Thanksgiving turkey.  A Thanksgiving turkey is like a beach ball covered in bumpy skin, bald and sometimes frozen.  This dead thing on the floor had claws and feathers and BLOOD!

        I burst out crying again and I don’t think I stopped until my mother came home about a half hour later.

        So thus began my life’s journey as an anxious, neurotic, phobic woman, all because I’ve seen too much in my life, the least of which was the day my Uncle Tony brought home a live turkey for Thanksgiving.

        My Uncle Tony winning that turkey was probably the very best thing that happened to him in his whole life. Imagine? His is a sad story, but inspiring as well. Not because Uncle Tony did, in the end, do anything miraculous with his life, but that no one ran out of patience with him and bashed him over the head with a cast iron pan. His life is a testament to the strength of our family. My Uncle Tony had a stutter.  So bad was his speech impediment, classmates mercilessly ridiculed him.  This was before the days of the Bully Awareness Movement, the Anti-Bullying campaigns, and bumper stickers that guilt us into doing random acts of kindness.  Kids would make fun of him, throw sticks at his back as he would walk home and laugh and snicker when he was called on in class.  He grew up extremely insecure, frightened and most of all frustrated.

He was handsome with black Brill-Creamed curls cascading to a point down the center of his forehead.  My mother says he liked the ladies, and apparently, as he got into his twenties, they liked him too, stutter and all.  But in the end, as one friend after another got married, he remained single—no girl wanting to permanently align herself with Tony Lo Bello, the stutterer.   As he got older, friends, male and female fell off, each, in turn; getting married and starting new lives that had no room for him. By the time I came along, he was in his forties and he was leading a solitary bachelor’s life, going to work each morning and returning home each night to my grandmother, dinner and the television.

I don’t know if it was because he was always fighting to communicate—to push the words out, or just because he was frustrated with the way his life was unfolding in general, but he always seemed to scream every word, phrase and sentence that came out of his mouth.  Uncle Tony was LOUD,  He would start yelling from the moment he walked through the door after work until, thankfully, his favorite programs would come on.

“MA! WHEN ARE WE EATING?”

“WHERE’S THE GODDAMN KETCHUP?”

“THERE AIN’T NO SODA LEFT. WHERES THE SODA?”

To all these shouts and bellows, my grandmother would hardly say a word, but run hither and yon, all over the kitchen like that horrific turkey, satisfying his every request. (The general consensus of the family is that she allowed this nightly abuse because she felt so very sorry for how his life turned out she would martyr herself so that his life, at least at home, would run as smoothly as possible.)  The rest of the family, myself included, learned to just tune him out.  We perceived his yelling as simply a part of who he was, like someone blind or lame. It was our “normal”.

He would sit down to eat after work with such gusto, one would thing he could inhale the entire contents of the table.  The chomping and the slurping were almost violent, as he would rapidly devour every last morsel of say, chicken, veins and cartilage scraps included.  “IT’S GOOD MA,” he would always say, “IT’S GOOD.”  And Grandma would beam, soaking up her moment in the sun before she had to go fetch him yet another napkin to wipe his greasy mouth and fingers.

For as loud as Tony was, he had a heart just as big.  He loved his family, his seven brothers and sisters, fiercely.  He would do anything for any one of them and because he was single and unencumbered, was often called upon to give a “lift”, pick up packages, help with a move.  He never said no. In fact, I think these favors made him feel important and needed.  My brother, David and I lived with him for many years and somehow, though all the craziness, we formed a strong bond. We were like his children, and he liked to have us sit next to him to watch a program or share a candy bar. He would say every night when we would sit on the sofa to watch T. V. , “Do you kids remember when you were babies, I used to lay right here on this couch with you on my chest?  You would sleep like a baby on my chest.”  (It seemed so obvious that the answer would be “no. No I do not remember any of that. If I were small enough, say a few months old, to fit on your chest, AND I was asleep, how would I remember any of that? But neither David nor I would want to hurt what little pride he had left, so we always said, “Yes. Yes, we remember.”) His family were all he had, really, and for all his brash ways, he cherished us.

As I got older, in my teens and early twenties, the lion started to mellow.  His rantings became less and less; he just didn’t have the energy to push out those loud bellows. He probably was becoming to resign himself to his solitary life, and once you are resigned, frustrations seem to melt away or get buried under the “what ifs” and the “should have dones.”

One of the few things besides my grandmothers cooking that gave him any pleasure was Frank Sinatra.  Frank was everything to Tony, truly everything, for what else did he have?  On Saturdays, he would play Frank Sinatra records all day on the console stereo player. This furniture-like apparatus sat directly outside his bedroom door in the dining room. He would lie on his be for hours, his hands behind his head, just listening and marvelling at Frank. Sometimes, so great was his awe, he would have to share it with someone--anyone, even me.

    “CHRIS ANN! CHRIS ANN! COME AND LISTEN TO THIS. HEAR THE WAY HE DIPS? (He would make a dipping motion with his arm.) BASSIE TAUGHT HIM THAT. THE DIP. HE LEARNED IT FROM THE HORNS. THE HORNS. THERE! THERE! DID YOU HEAR THAT? THE DIP!”

    “Sisnatra’s the best Uncle Tony,” I would say, or  some similar placation.  Anything to get back to my brother, playing  a notorious criminal, or public enemy number one, hiding behind the sofa sucking his thumb. (I was busy solving crimes as Honey West, TV female detective extraordinaire, and had no time for Frank and his dips.)

    His love for Sinatra was legend to all who knew him and folks would talk to Tony about Frank like they really knew each other. Did you see Frank on TV last Sunday? Do you think it’s serious with him and that skinny Mia Farrow? When is Frank coming to the Garden?

        Well, Frank did come to The Garden in 1974 for “The Main Event.”  and strangely,   I was  there--with guess who?  Uncle Tony.  There was an extra ticket and no one wanted go with him.  How humiliating to have to ask me, a sophmore in highschool.  I didn’t have the heart to say no and besides, I was curious to see what all this “dipping” was about in the flesh. Even as a teenager, I knew it was a privilege to see Frank Sinatra and at the time I was very interested in theater and singing, so it wasn’t all that much of a sacrifice. Or so I thought.

    The car ride into the City was the usual hair-raising experience riding with Uncle Tony always was. He drove like he spoke, with a stutter.   He would push on the accelerator, then back off of it, than push than stop completely, right in the middle of the road, to yell or ask a question.  The family always felt we would get whiplash or rear ended or both when driving with him.  And the older he got, the slower he drove.  So by the time I was a sophmore in highschool and he was in his 60’s, we crawled through the Holland Tunnel and up 8th Avenue to Madison Square Garden. Cars were  honking behind us, honking as they passed us or honking as he drifted over the dashed lines.  “SONOFABITCH DRIVERS. THEY DRIVE LIKE COWBOYS! GAW HEAD--KILL YOURSELVES!” A 20 minute ride took over an hour, my heart in my throat the entire journey.

    Once we were there, the concert went well, for us and Frank. Uncle Tony jabbed me in the arm every time  Frank dipped, and I would nod, knowingly, like this was our little secret and how unfortunate the rest of the world was for not realizing this. Dip-conscious or not, the crowd adored Ole Frank.  

At intermission, Uncle Tony wanted to get a drink.  He liked a scotch once and a while on special occasions, and this was definitely a special occasion. He asked me if I wanted a soda. I said no. I wasn’t then and am still not much of a drinker.  I could go an entire day without one sip of water. I rarely drink when I’m eating and I’m definitely  not one for sweet drinks or soda.

But, big hearted as he was, I think he felt badly to have a drink while I had nothing. So he quickly got himself a drink and came back to our seats with the hugest cup of Coke I have ever seen.   I could have soaked my feet in it. It had to be well over a litre. It had to have cost him five dollars, a fortune back then. Again, not wanting to offend him, I took the vessel and pretended to be thrilled and grateful.  Mercifully, he did not stay to watch me drink it.

“I’M GOING BACK TO THE BAR AND STAND FOR A WHILE. YOU GONNA BE A’RIGHT?”

I assured him I would and off he went. Well, it was all I could do to choke that soda down. I figured if  I drank it fast, like medicine, I could show I was grateful for it and in fact, really and truly enjoyed it.  I took huge gulps, the fizz effervescing up my nostrils, burning my throat, bloating my stomach.  Finally, I got through the entire cup, and was just bending down to set it near my feet for future disposal, when Uncle Tony plopped down in his seat and presented me with YET ANOTHER Coke of the same size and magnitude. I thought I would burst just looking at it!

“HERE. FOR THE REST OF THE SHOW.”

He was proud of himself, I could tell.  Proud of his generosity and his thoughtfulness.

I could have won an Academy Award for the performance I gave, spanning every emotion from joyful surprise to awe for his kindness. “Oh, you are just too much! Really, too, too much. Sweet. Very sweet. Best uncle ever!” A little squeeze of the hand and the band started the intro. Thank God.

The concert was wonderful, not only because I got to see a legend in person, but because that was a rare time I was ever alone with my Uncle and I got to see other sides of him. The generous side and the musically talented side, and unfortunately, the lonely side.  I’m so grateful that I went with him so he did not have to be alone on what was, for him,  such a magical night. And as we bucked home in the car that night, through horns blaring and brakes squealing all around us,  one thought kept running through my mind…”I gotta pee!”