Bitter-Sweet Changes

by G. E. Shuman

     “It's a funny ol' world, isn't it?” (That happens to be my favorite Jack Sparrow quote, from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series.) Yes, Jack, I would agree that it's a funny ol' world. Unfortunately, at least to me, some of the 'funniness' isn't all that funny, this year.

     You see, Friday, the week that this paper comes out, is the day that our youngest child, Emily, graduates from high school. (Tears welling up already.) The day will be both heartening and a bit heart-breaking for Emily's mom and me, for certain. Em is a very accomplished student, the valedictorian of her graduating class, a member of the American Christian Honor Society, the president of her student council, a wonderful nearly-professional photographer, and just a natural leader. Whew! Just writing all of that was a bit tiring, but I did need to brag a bit. Emily will also soon be heading out on her second summer missions trip to assist the students at a Christian school in Africa, and then, for her, it's off to college. She, who has accomplished all of this while excelling at a full-time fast food restaurant job, will make a speech and sing a solo during what will be the last high school commencement I will ever attend where one of my own children is graduating. Her mom and I could not be more proud of her.

     Yes, the end of this school year will be remembered as a bitter-sweet experience for me, as it may be for you, if one of your children happens to be graduating. I have the honor of being one of Emily's teachers, so will be on the stage with her, physically, that graduation evening. Mentally, emotionally, I will be elsewhere; a basket-case, in a corner, watching, thinking, taking in the near-future events for what they are; for what they will be. What else can a proud parent do? I will do my best to stay out of the way; to silently observe the graduates, especially my daughter, having the times of their lives, both on graduation night, and as their summer progresses.

     As time goes on, and as I get steadily older, (I have realized that this getting-older bit will probably continue until I die.) I think that part of living, and indeed, of surviving, in this 'funny ol' world', is found in an attempt to heed the following advice that I once read, and frequently recall: “Take kindly the council of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”-Desiderata. (Google it. You won't regret it.) When I was younger I wondered why older people seemed to move more slowly than younger ones. I almost pitied them, as I watched them prattle around in stores, or on the street. Now that I am closing in on being one of them, I understand all of that a bit better. I have come to the conclusion that some older people move slowly because they have no choice. Others, because they do have a choice, and choose to take their time. That is a lesson seemingly impossible to learn when young, but one most older folks have learned very well. A good friend of mine once said: “I don't mind leaving early, but don't rush me.” I heartily concur.

     As you read this, my family will be right in the middle of a very busy week. We will have a lot of company visiting in the area, and all will be celebrating Em's great accomplishments, with us. Soon after that, plans will begin to form around the Africa trip, and then of packing her off to college. To me, all of that has the potential of being very stressful, and very sad. My goal is to not allow the idea of 'sad' to be how I 'experience' the experience. Life will be changing for our family, as it perhaps has, or soon will be changing, for yours. Such changes, even though they are positive and good, are forever, and I am doing my best to see those things in a positive light.

     Parents pass the torch to the next generation, even as we pass the tissues to each other. Graduations, truly, are the commencement of wonderful future adventures for those graduating, and the ends of eras for those left behind. Both of those things are as they should be.

     Congratulations to the Websterville Baptist Christian School class of 2014! To my daughter Emily... (This is my newspaper column, so I can say it if I want to.) I love you more than I can tell you, I will always pray for you daily, and I will never be more proud of anyone than I am of you. Dad.

     I am trying my best to graciously accept the fact that Jack Sparrow was right. This really is “a funny ol' world.”

Thank You Gary

by G. E. Shuman

     If memory serves, and in this rare case, for me, it does, this particular edition of my column in The World is a very special one. The fact is, this writing marks a great demarcation, a stone-chiseled date, and a very important anniversary for me, if for no one else in the 'world,' so to speak. You see, this column is number five hundred and twenty, in what some may see as an effort to fill 'The World' with my vast store of useless trivia and seemingly-limitless weird perspectives on the issues of life. In being column number five hundred twenty, this one marks the twentieth anniversary of this twice-monthly intrusion into the otherwise sane lives of the people who read what I write here.

     What happened, those twenty years ago, is this. How it happened is in this way. Why it happened is simply due to the kind generosity and unmerited trust of my good friend, and this paper's co-publisher, Gary Hass. You see, a few weeks before that infamous date those twenty years ago, Gary was in the department store I managed at the time, conversing, and negotiating with me on some advertising promotion or other, for the paper. I have no idea what the ad was about, but I am profoundly thankful that Gary was in the store that day. I had already been writing for years, having been published a few times since my high school days. But those times were infrequent, and there was something about opinion-piece writing that I just had to try. The allure of having a regular space to fill on the pages of a newspaper was simply irresistible to me. On any normal day, if normal is even a word I should use, I would never have dared ask a newspaper owner to even read my work, much less to give me the chance to write for him. But, that day was different, because Gary was different. He was no cold-hearted news man; he was a friend, and a compassionate person who truly cares about his family, his employees, and his community. My small part in what took place that day was simply to ask the question. That question was just to inquire of this friend, whether it would be, or not be, possible for me to try writing for his paper. I felt totally unworthy of any positive response, and the answer I expected from Gary was not the answer I got. He simply said: “Yes.” He then told me to send something to the paper, and that he would give it a try. Wow!

     You know, twenty years can be both a long time, and a short time. For me it seems like I have lived in this area forever... and I'm getting close to that being the truth. But it also seems like only yesterday that my older kids were young, and my younger kids were just arriving. (By the way, without a call from Gary one day, the adoptions of those two youngest children wouldn't have happened at all. That is a story for another time.) It also seems like only yesterday that I mailed, to The World, that very first, typewriter-produced copy of my column.

     If you are one who has followed this column for years, and have tolerated my feeble attempts to entertain and shed a little less-than-dazzling light on some subjects, I thank you for your support. I have confided in you, sharing everything from my slight insanity to my most heart-felt concerns. Please know that a person bares his soul in such a way, only to family. The great gift of spending these last twenty years with you has been a true blessing in my life. Thank you for the privilege, and...

Thank you Gary!

Where's The Magic?

By G. E. Shuman

     There's no magic in something that always works. I know that sounds a bit ridiculous, and maybe even unappreciative, but it's true, at least to some people of my generation. Or, maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way. I don't know. So, for some of you, who have grown up in a society where 'stuff' just usually does what it's supposed to do, let me explain.

     When I was a child, growing up in rural Maine in the 1960s, (In the '60s almost all of Maine was rural. I'm not sure if that is true now. ) Anyway, when I was a child, our family had one of the most modern, state of the art TVs on our street. (The advantage of living on a dead-end street in Central Maine in the '60s was that that street was as far as you ever had to impress anyone.) The screen of the TV was actually round, and held in place with a vaguely-square metal frame, to make the round picture tube look somewhat less than round. The frame cut off some of the picture, but no one cared. My point is that every once in a while, our TV, even when only a few years old, would 'give out'... as they used to say. It would just stop working, and when that happened we would call a very nice man at a local television repair company named Drappo's, to come over for a house call. Television repair was common in those days, as were television repair house calls. There was really little choice if you wanted your TV fixed. The things weighed, probably, over a hundred pounds, and were housed in big, chunky, cheap pieces of furniture called consoles. Yup, a console TV was something every household had to have. Ours even had a phonograph and am/fm radio built in. Kids, here's a pop quiz. What is a phonograph, and what do am and fm stand for? I remember what the tall, skinny man from Drappo's looked like, and the fact that he would wave a magic degauser thingy in front of the TV screen to make the picture more or less a color one again, if that was the problem. He would often also replace several of the vacuum tubes in the set, and we would be off and running for another year or so. How strange all of that seems now.

     My point is that things are better now, but in being better now, they have, perhaps, lost some of their magic. Everyone just expects their TV to work, every single time they turn it on... these days. If it didn't work, no one would think of taking the thing in for repair, much less asking someone to come to their home to fix it, and no one could have answered that call, if they had. Today we would just haul that big, flat-screen device to the trash and go to a big box store to get another one, on sale.

    In those days we also had things called 'transistor' radios. Even today, every modern radio actually runs on transistors, but we don't think about that anymore. A transistor is no longer a new wonder of the world, any more than an incandescent light bulb is. When I was a kid I had what they called a ten-transistor radio. Is there anyone out there who still remembers those? I recall that if you had TEN transistors you were better off than people whos radios had fewer, and you, with yours, would therefore get better reception. I even remember, before that, having a two-transistor radio. My dad told me that if I held the radio up to a particular wall in our living-room, (It was the wall where the TV antenna wire was snaked up through to the roof antenna.) I would get better reception. Boy, was he ever right! That little radio blared music from many miles away when I held it against a particular spot on that wall. It was really MAGIC! In a future column I might even tell you about the crystal radios I used to build as a child. Those things were really cool. They, almost magically, worked without batteries or being plugged in. (Talk about saving energy.) And you could build one with a small block of wood, some thumbtacks, a roll of copper wire, an empty toilet paper roll, a razor blade, a safety pin, and a fifty cent 'earphone' from Radio Shack. You could only hear a few stations on a crystal radio... but late at night, when all was quiet, the fact that YOU built that radio, and that it worked, was as magical as if the sounds were coming from another galaxy. And who knows... some of them may have been.

     My first camera, which I 'sent away for' when I was probably seven or eight years old, cost me a whole dollar, and some number of Bazooka Joe bubble gum wrappers. It was the cheapest piece of black plastic, with an even cheaper plastic lens, that you have ever seen, but it took pictures. Today, no one would be amazed that a camera worked. They would be amazed at one which didn't. The 'roll' of film for my camera cost more than the camera itself did, and I first tried it at a family picnic, one Memorial Day. I could barely wait for those first developed pictures to come back to me in the mail. I remember how awe-struck I was to see them. Yes, my one dollar camera actually worked! To me, there really was magic in that. Today, seven year olds are taking studio-quality pictures with their phones, and instantly sending them around the world. But who wants to take pictures with a phone? How boring and displaced we are from how things 'should' be. How wonderful technology is... but also, how UN-magical. Walt Disney would be sad.

     The same story goes for vehicles. Most cars start every single time you turn the key. Many cars don't even have keys, and start every time you push the button. How unimaginative that is. I remember, as a child, actually thanking God when the car started on a freezing, winter day, especially if my dad had been out in the cold, spraying stuff into the carburetor, (a car part from the past) and drying the spark plugs on the kitchen stove for an hour or so. No one wants to go through that these days, including me. It's a good thing that people generally don't have to pray that their car will start in the morning, but are they at all thankful when it does?

     A few weeks ago my wife was in Arizona, visiting her dad and his wife. She called me, and we were immediately connected, with perfect sound quality. (No one thinks about a telephone's sound quality anymore. And no one uses the word telephone.) I remember, back in my childhood days, when my dad would call one his brothers in California, late at night, on the weekend, because it was cheaper to call then, and wait as operator after operator, (Telephone operator- a long-gone occupation.) connected his call, all the way across our country. When Dad's call finally reached one of his brothers' homes it was almost a miracle. The sound of one of my uncles' voices was magical to my dad.

     Don't get me wrong. I would not trade the technology of today for that of the '60s, any more than I would trade modern medical knowledge for what was known back then. I am glad that my car, my phone, my TV and my camera are as advanced as they are. I just wonder what there is left to be amazed by. I know this is a strange thing to say, but, where's the magic, when everything works?