The Story of Stories

Thank you, Dall-e.

Hello.

Last Friday, Rachel and I were having dinner at an upscale Eastern Market taqueria named El Paraiso. (Excellent sangria, tragically desiccated meat.) Rachel leaned across the table and whispered: “There’s a story over your left shoulder.”

Furtively, I stole a glance.

At this point, I need to interrupt this tale with some background about the narrative arts. There is genre of narrative called “flash” storytelling, which involves relating a compelling tale in an absolute minimum of words. It is an unusual literary device that, if done well, actually rises to the level of art because in its economy and concision it will imply but not fully disclose a larger tale that remains open to interpretation entirely in the reader’s mind. It’s a form of abstract expressionism. Usually it is fiction — “flash fiction” — but not always.

The archetype of this is in a famous anecdote involving Ernest Hemingway, who is said to have been dining with friends one day when one of them challenged him, on an extravagant $10 per-person bet, to write a complete novel in six words. Hem is said to have thought a few minutes, then grabbed a cocktail napkin and scribbled this down:

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

The anecdote alone is compelling! If it were only true.

Hemingway didn’t write that, and if he ever claimed to, he was lying. A similar version of the “baby shoes” trope goes back to 1906, when Hemingway was seven years old. The first time anyone publicly attributed it to Hemingway was 1991, when the writer was 30 years dead.

However the power of the tale remains, largely for its intriguing opacity. What happened to lead to this sale? We can only guess. It can’t be good.

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In Washington’s Congressional Cemetery, there is a headstone that I used to visit a lot. It is a perfect example of flash art, though it is inadvertent. It is the largest stone in the small, sad section devoted to children. The headstone reads, in its entirety:

“In Memory, Margaret Helen McCrae.
Dec. 31, 1912-Feb. 8, 1915.
Erected by brother, James D. McCrae, Oct. 1979."

Imagine the scenarios that could result in that headstone, with those dates. There are plenty. Some are are about the permanence of love and grief. Some might involve guilt. The potential meanings are multiple. But none is without pathos.

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Okay, we’re back in the restaurant, and I am looking furtively to my left at Rachel’s suggestion, then turning back.

“A guy eating alone. So?”

“Look again,” Rachel said. She is not blind, like I am.

I looked again. Ah.

At the table was a trim, dignified looking man with a close-cropped whitish beard. Maybe 60, or a little older. He had dressed for Friday dinner in a decidedly non-modern way: sports jacket, a dress shirt, khakis. On the seat next to him was a tan safari hat, the kind with a semi-floppy brim, a modified Indiana Jones look. It was perfectly color coordinated with his outfit. This is mostly a beer and wine joint, but on his table was a pot of tea.

A refined man with style. He was of serious mien, looking neither left nor right, attending to his tacos, almost businesslike, as though this were a duty or an assignment. He seemed disconsolate.

And on the table of this elegant man dining alone with a cheerless demeanor was a cheerful place card, festooned with painted confetti, held erect by a brace for everyone to see. It said, “Feliz Cumpleanos!” Happy birthday!

Clearly, he had informed the restaurant of this milestone, but why? The dissonance between his expression and bearing and the enforced gaiety of the table delivered a jolt of loneliness, even despair. I looked at the tableau and thought of Edward Hopper.

When we were ready to leave, I didn’t want to intrude on his privacy, but had to confirm that the card was not, say, left over from a previous diner (um, perhaps a child), so as I passed his table, I said “Feliz cumpleanos.”

He looked up. His expression was either sour or forlorn, hard to tell which, but it was not a smile of friendship or gratitude or one that summoned further interaction. He looked annoyed.

“Thank you,” he mumbled grudgingly, and returned to his taco.

On the ride home, Rachel and I began to speculate. His wife had just died, and he had this birthday reservation, and to honor her …

His companion was far away on this day, and they were celebrating his birthday at the same time — like the cliche of two lovers, a half a world apart, sad in each others’ absence but looking at the same moon at the same time, feeling together…

He was just cheap and trying to get a free dessert …

And so forth.

Now, a reasonable question might be why, as a lifelong reporter perfectly comfortable with being a buttinsky, I didn’t ask him to elaborate just a bit. You probably know the answer already: This way, it’s a better story.

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Urgent message: After writing the above section, I switched to the New York Times front page, to see what was happening in the Trump trial, and this how the top of my screen looked:

(I’m doomed. I’d googled photos of hats so I could accurately describe the hat my man in the restaurant was wearing, and now I’ll be inundated endlessly with preposterous ugly hats for sale. I can confirm that in the hours since this happened, I’ve been receiving others, including a blast of ads for “pork pie hats.”)

We need real-time questions and observations. Please send them, as always, to the real-time Questions & Observations button.

Today’s first Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Today’s second Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Good, then.

— Observation: According to the Trump trial, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, Keith Davidson, conspired with editor Dylan Howard of the National Inquirer to catch and kill her story of the one-night stand in return for hush money — all to save Trump embarrassment before the election. On election night, as it became apparent that Trump was winning, Davidson emailed Howard with this message: “WHAT HAVE WE DONE?”

All I could think of was: Oppenheimer.

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Because we are in Passover season, and matzoh is universally obtainable, I am going to resurrect a “Fud” recipe from a year ago. Fuds require a complete recipe in four steps or fewer.

This is for matzoh brei (or as my young kids mispronounced it, “monster pie”). It is a Jew thing, usually served as a hearty breakfast but could also be dinner. I made it last night. It was as good as the first day I made it, 50 years ago. The matzoh was from a box that had been stored atop the refrigerator from the early days of the pandemic. Matzoh stays fresh forever. Forever. Like the food of the Hebrews stumbling around in the desert.

1. Boil water and preheat a deep dish or wide frying pan, with at least a half stick of butter, more if you dare.

2. Crack several shingles of matzoh into bite-sized pieces, put in a colander, then pour the water over and right through the matzoh, so it gets damp but not soaking wet.

3. Scramble almost as many eggs as the number of matzoh shingles you used, then put the matzoh into the preheated pan, and pour the egg over it, starting to mix immediately.

4. Continue mixing, cooking on medium high, salting liberally, until the matzoh begins to brown and is no longer really floppy, which is maybe ten minutes — then serve with cottage cheese and the jelly or jam of your choice.

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We are now entering the real-time Question and Observation and Response portion of The Gene Pool, where, um, you ask questions and make observations, and I Respond. Many of the Q&O’s today are answering a challenge I made on the weekend, to 1) Tell us about times that your child, or you as a child, embarrassed the parents, or 2) Times that your child, or you as a child, had a Foolproof Plan that Did Not Work out. There was a voluminous response. You and your families are composed of brats and scoundrels. If you are doing this in real time, please remember to keep refreshing the screen to get new responses.

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Q: What do you think of the arrest of students at Columbia and NYU for protesting the war on Gaza?

A: Glad you asked. I think that the faculty should demand the ouster of the presidents of those two universities.

These were peaceful protests; heated, but peaceful. Trespassing is not ordinarily an arrestable crime, and has historically been used as a tool for legitimate dissent. Universities are places to learn and hone critical thought, which is based upon intellectual conflict.

The underlying fact here is a dreadful, merciless war upon an innocent citizenry; mostly women and children are dead. Wherever you stand, it is clearly an issue for debate and moral parsing and protest. I’m sure there is vile antisemitic verbiage among some of the protesters, but that should be part of the critical dialogue, a teaching moment. Colleges shouldn’t punish thought, even noxious thought, absent noxious action. Jewish students must be protected and their voices heard, but these debates should be encouraged, not subject to police batons and zip-tie handcuffs at behest of the schools.

I am a child of the 1960s. The statements and actions of the these universities are no different from the self-righteous, implacable, threatening voices of authority I heard in the 1960s, when the issue was Vietnam, except there is a crucial and more ennobling motive here. The 60s protests were in large part selfish: We didn’t want to die in a deeply unpopular, strategically unsound, ultimately pointless, racist war. These protests are on behalf of people ten thousand miles away. They come in reaction to their administrators kowtowing to insidious pressure from far-right politicians. This should be a crucible for critical debate.

I have long bewailed the social inactivism of modern college students. For years I’ve wanted to see a spark of the same passion and furor that drove us in the 1960s, rather than effete navel-gazing whining about microaggressions and such. Well, it has come. Here it is, at last, and I applaud it.

Now, it does occur to me as I write this that getting arrested could be part of the experiential lessons learned, and a badge to wear later in life. It’s beside the point, but an interesting corollary. I am considering this.

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Okay, now we get into silly tales of preschool hijinks.

TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE IN THE EMAIL AND IT WILL DELIVER YOU TO THE FULL COLUMN ONLINE. If you are reading the Gene Pool in real time, keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

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You can’t get stuff like this elsewhere. Now, you might think that is a good thing, and if so, keep reading for free! Otherwise, you might consider paying $4.15 a month for it, just to be nice.

Q: Here's something I thought was a great idea that backfired and embarrassed my parents.

When I was a wee lad I would watch Match Game with my father and its humor rubbed off on me.  When I was about 6 a female friend of my mother got married in Iowa, near where we lived - a conservative place full of straight-laced people.

At the reception I found myself at a table with my mother, the bride, and some of their female friends.  A perfect opportunity to be funny!

"Do you know what I like about women?"

Everyone leaned in, expecting something cute.

"Boobs!"

I got whisked out of there by my parents. My mom was mad at me on the way home, but angrier at my father. The Match Game!  At six! 

A:  Terrific story. 

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Q: Am I wrong to be so frustrated with many media outlets, including the Washington Post, for referring to Trump’s New York trial as a “hush money” trial?  The charge here is for election interference, and that’s an important distinction, it’s a much more serious charge.  This seems like laziness to me. –

Sean Clinchy

A: This has been an ongoing pundit theme, but I disagree with it.  It’s a convenient shorthand, it distinguishes it from the other election interference case Trump faces in Georgia, and it isn’t wrong.   The entirety of the “election interference” charge against Trump is based on the desire to hide the “hush money.”    It’s like objecting to calling Nixon’s scandal “Watergate” because it was not really about the break-in, but about obstruction of justice, coverup, etc.   

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Q: This is from London Times

A: Thank you.

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Q: Way back in history, I had the misfortune of attending an elementary school run by nuns. They were all crazy, and mostly mean, especially to boys. There were only two non-nun teachers, and my fifth-grade class was taught by one.  A young, attractive woman, she (like many other teachers back then) had the practice of moving one student desk to be right next to her desk.  This desk was reserved for students who were serial misbehavers and allowed the teacher to keep a close watch on his behavior (it was always a boy). In this case the boy (Stephan) had a big crush on the teacher and would misbehave just so he could be close to the teacher.  One day a boy in the class put a few tacks on the teacher's chair. Every student in the class knew the tacks were there, so we were all quiet and seated when the teacher entered and approached her chair. She realized something was up due to the lack of any noise, but did not see the tacks. As she began her descent onto the chair, at the last moment Stephan's hand shot out and grabbed the tacks. The teacher was quite angry since she thought Stephan was pretending to grab her butt. She never realized what had actually happened, but really lit into Stephan for his "disgusting" behavior. Stephan never explained about the tacks. I am struggling with what I learned from this incident, perhaps it was the futility of getting involved.

A: Terrific story.   I think you have summarized the moral perfectly.   A basic principle of human nature: No good deed goes unpunished.   

Stephan was in a bind, and he took the doubly honorable way out.    He did the right thing, but in order to spare himself the punishment, he would have had to rat out the whole class.  So instead he took a beating, and absorbed humiliation from the Woman He Loved.   I’ll bet he’s been a moral person his whole life.  If he became a serial killer, please don’t tell me. 

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Q: Oh the horrible things I did as a kid. My mom found so many angry notes from my teachers when she was cleaning the house recently. Why she kept them for decades, I don't know. I put a dime in someone's milk, put pencil shavings in the class plant (which is good for the plant, I shouldn't have gotten in trouble) made the printer print a bunch of blank pages (for which I was punished for "wasting paper", years before pay-per-page plans were a thing), hacked my bully's MySpace and AIM accounts to invite everyone to a "drug party" at his house (because that's totally what people call it), and ordered Domino's Pizza to my teachers during class, for which I was easily caught since I was the only one who had all those classes at those times. I was a crazy child. But now I'm a mature adult.

Q: Speaking of finding notes, we once found an intriguing one about Dan.  This was from a story I wrote many years ago: 

As she was doing laundry one day 12 years ago, my wife found a crumpled detention slip in the pocket of our son's jeans. Dan was in middle school. A teacher had written: "Daniel Meltzer to the office. Disruptive behavior, disobeying instructions! Giving Adam Cohen's name instead of his own when asked!"

This indignant document was a forensic gold mine, damning evidence of an audacious, multitiered crime: Clearly, there had been a substitute teacher. Dan Weingarten, 13, had flagrantly misbehaved, and when reprimanded, had given a false name. Caught at this, he brazenly surrendered another name, also a lie, but delivered with sufficiently convincing aplomb. His small, smug, pseudonymous self was then dispatched to the principal's office, where he never arrived -- as evidenced by the very existence of this piece of paper. Instead, he became a hallway fugitive until his next class.

  Q:   Aptonym in graf 12… 

A:  This is exquisite!  Skim the top and then go to paragraph 12!

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Q: I have the same ad showing up. My last hat purchase was early in the pandemic. My children have banned me from wearing it in public because I am Not Illinois Jones.

A: OMG. I am in for YEARS of this?

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Speaking of Trump’s future, this incredible story just appeared.

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Q:  You asked about things that sounded like a good idea, at first.  When I was about six, a mischievous girl with a wicked sense of humor, I thought it would be funny to put some of my mother’s lipstick on Amanda’s lips.  Amanda was our toy schnauzer.  Funny idea, right?   

I didn’t really know how much lipstick to push out of the tube, so I pushed it all out.   At which point Amanda ate the whole thing in one chomp.   

Have you ever heard what happens when you do that?  It leaks out the other end in full color.  It doesn’t come out like tastefully dyed ordinary poop; it leaks out.  In dribbles.  For two days.   We had carpeting.   

The story gets worse.   I never told my mom what I did, so she rushed the dog to the vet because of “bloody rectal leakage.”  My mother died about 10 years ago, never finding out what I had done.  I never told her.  Amanda of course, was fine. 

I feel guilty telling you alls now.  But I am 55, and want to die with a relatively clear conscience. – 

A: You are absolved.  It would have been funny.  It’s Amanda who was the jerk. 

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Q: My brother (age 7) was an ingenious kid.  He took my little tin chair (I was 4) and wired it to his electric train set to create an electric chair.  Even at 4 I was not dumb enough to sit in that chair.  But he burned the skin off his thumb testing it.

A:  Good God.   I’m ready to believe that your brother became a serial killer.   If he’s a heart-transplant surgeon,, please don’t tell me. 

*

Q: Auto cigarette lighter applied to car seat -- YES. Sitting in a friend's family car HE thought it would be fun to burn circles in seat. Go figure, friend's father was no more amused by this than Gene's former BiL family. That makes two of these stories -- was this a thing? Maybe that's why there are no more lighters in cars, just power outlets.

A: I find it interest that online, the hole with the power is STILL generally called a “cigarette lighter.”  There doesn’t seem to be another easily understandable term.  

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Q: The "story" attributed to Hemingway is only interesting to those who cannot recall having a baby in the house. Babies wear only socks, or are particular about which shoes they accept, or are given shoes that no one gets around to putting on their feet before they outgrow them, and so on. There are a wide variety of reasons for a particular pair of baby shoes to go unused, most of which are profoundly uninteresting.

A: Fair point. Thanks for ruining a timeless literary trope.

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Q: When I was a young’un I tended to get into mischief. One day, for reasons that I can’t reconstruct, I cut up the seat of one of our kitchen chairs with some cutlery. I don’t know what punishment I received, but I sat on that (unrepaired) chair for what seems in retrospect like years. Eventually the chairs got recovered, and even more eventually these sturdy survivors became my kitchen chairs. One day my older daughter carved up one of the seats with a kitchen utensil. I am not normally a speechless man, but the swirl of frustration leavened with karmic justice left me dumbstruck. There was a talking-to administered, but no appreciable punishment. I simply couldn’t.

A: I have a friend, of my generation, whose son was disciplined and suspended for a week for smoking pot in the school parking lot.   My friend could not bring herself to yell at him or remonstrate.  She figured the perceived leniency was better – as far as a lesson – than perceived hypocrisy.

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Q:  My brother’s wife Paulette took my small ( now huge) nephew Joey into Nordstroms to shop for clothes. She ducked into a dressing room stall to try on some things that had caught her eye, dragging Joey along. When mom stepped out to admire herself in a three-way mirror, she told her son to stay in the dressing room. 

Joey had recently mastered the basics of potty-training, but was still navigating his way around the more nuanced protocols. Generally, his experiences in stalls were excretory and he took his opportunity alone in the dressing stall to do his business.

Upon her return to the dressing room, Paulette quickly surveyed the situation, grabbed her boy and beat her ass out to the mall’s parking lot.   – Jon Ketzner 

A: Hahaha. See next post.  

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Q: Bad judgment:  On family trip in the 1960s-- camping in Yosemite. A brother and I were intrigued at the outhouses, specifically marveling at all the excrement. So we concocted The Best Sight Gag Ever:  We wrestled a six foot length of telephone pole into the outhouse  and dropped it down the hole. The "theory" was that everyone would glance down and see the BIGGEST TURD ever! 

The reality was that the pole was too long and our mom discovered it by sitting on the protruding end getting dozens of splinters. 

A: Superior. A telephone pole!

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Remember: Real time questions and observations:

Q: Not me, but my brother when he was three or so. We were in a restaurant (maybe Wildwood NJ, on a summer vacation), when he stood up on his seat and announced to the restaurant, “Mom, I have to make a whale!”  Which was his euphemism for a dump. 

A: Make a whale is not bad.  I prefer “grow a tail.”

Note: We have now completed the Turd section of today’s Gene Pool.

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Q: A request: please do not post items, such as the excellent London Times bit about the Viking ship, requiring us to go to The Site Formerly Known As Twitter. I refuse to be a part of Elon Musk’s toxic hellhole, but an account is now required to see a post on X. Take a screen shot instead, find it elsewhere, something. I hate that after cancelling my X account I had to create a new one just to view stuff.

A: Ah, thank you. Didn’t know that.

This is Gene. Thank you all for your honesty in answering the racism poll, except for the half dozen or so of you who claim to harbor not a shred of racism. You lie. I firmly subscribe to the theory propounded in Avenue Q’s song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” which is sung as “Everyone’s a Ritter Bit Lacist” at one point, by an Asian woman.

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This is still Gene. I am calling us down. PLEASE keep sending in real-time questions and observations, which I will address on Thursday.

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