My Son, the Drunken Cowboy Bandit

We walked into a darkish gymnasium last night to see the displays created by my fourth-grade son's "Lego Club." Small groups had created really cute images from various countries, out of Legos. The displays were surrounded by foods that reflected each culture. (Though, I'm not sure why chicken nuggets were chosen to represent Egypt. Still, they were tasty.)

I'm also not sure why there was a DJ playing tunes. But, okay...

We did our rounds and saw some really cute creations. My son's group made an Irish castle, complete with a little Lego couple smooching in the back. (Don't they call it "snogging" in Ireland...or is that worse than smooching? I seem to remember Joyce referring to "snogging" in Portrait...)

Anyhoo, my little guys thought it was pretty cool: free treats; lots of kids running around; music playing. My younger son (second grade) started, at one point, to "dance." It was more of a jolly spasm: his arms would start to flop and then he would bounce. Once he really got into it, he started pointing his fingers at the ceiling like a cowboy bandit alternately shooting six guns at the moon during a campfire drunk.

The Price of Difference

Ever since my boys were born, I have been trying to piece together an accurate picture of what I was like when I was a child. I'm not sure how well I am doing, but I know that some of my success as a dad depends on figuring it out.

In my memory, there doesn't remain a lot of negative stuff. I got teased a little, but that doesn't feel like a big section of the tapestry of my life. I spent a lot of time by myself, but I enjoyed it -- still do. I went through spells of jealousy that I wasn't one of the most popular kids, but, still, I had friends. When I look back, I can see occasions when the door to superficial popularity was opened for me; timidity, not superior logic, saved me from stepping through.

I was a good athlete, but never one of the best -- I was always a "starter" but never really a standout on the field; I got to be either the hero or the goat on several occasions. 

On Valentine's day, in grade school, I got quite a few less Valentines than a lot of the kids (this is before teachers started "protecting" our kids by requiring each student to provide Valentines for everyone), but by high school, I found I got along well with most "groups" of kids. People seemed to like me because I never drew lines around them, especially not boundary lines. I found high school generally insulting and constantly boring (except for English class, where I was allowed to generate my own ideas) and I never wanted to be there after the afternoon bell or after practice was over. I wasn't one of those kids who went to games I wasn't playing in or to any nighttime functions that I could avoid. 

On the whole, I have no real attachment to my high school years, though I am happy to have learned that a few of my classmates, with whom I have recently reconnected, have become extraordinary adults.

Past moments of happiness remain vivid to me. They usually involve solitude and a pair of stereo headphones; or a book; or a blank sheet of paper; or an impossibly silent pine forest at dawn. But they also include summer nights of deep conversation with good friends and the friendships that can only come from making music with others.

Playing Jesus

When I was a boy, I would watch Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth around Easter -- back when they would show it on one of the networks as a "miniseries." Back when we still knew the fun of waiting for something to come on TV -- the joy of anticipating something we couldn't instantly access online. (And while we're at it, get off my lawn, you kids!)

Over the Easter break from school, my wife and I sat down to start Jesus of Nazareth on video (alas) with our sons. We are watching it in about hour-long sections. They're enthralled. The philosophical questions are flying. Woe to my sons' theology teachers, that's all I can say.

For me, watching this film is another of those time-warps. In the first place, I had a really cool experience with the music, this time. As a kid and as a "wannabe" composer, I was always enthralled by Maurice Jarre's score -- especially Christ's theme. If you are interested, this is it:

Maybe Not

Would you stand before a lawn-mower and ask it to calculate the diameter of its own wheels? No. You would not. You would not do this simply because the poor, non-sentient landscaping machine would not understand. It cannot understand such a request; therefore, you would stop speaking to it without further cogitative expenditures if you had, for some reason, ever begun.

Would you ask a loaf of bread to pass the salt? No. Why? Same reason. (That, and its rather blatant lack of arms.)

Do we all see the fruitlessnes in explaining to our shoes that we are experiencing a spiritual crisis? Do we comprehend what a waste of breath it is to assure our car that we will fill it up with gasonline, soon?

Yes. We do. This is because we know the nature of these objects and, if not, after one embarrassingly useless conversation with a knitted scarf, most of us learn our lesson.

The Great Teacher (A Parable)

The school was a great, open field. The Great Teacher watched from the sunlit hill.

Three teachers stood before his class, next to a great stack of bricks -- special bricks, that were called "facts."

The first teacher picked up a fact-brick and held it out. One at time, the students approached and took the offering from his hands. When each student was supplied, the teacher commanded: "Now, keep returning to me and put your bricks in a stack. You will make the biggest pile possible, for I will hand you many, many bricks before the sun falls."

The Great Teacher frowned.

The Boy in the Banana Suit

Allow me to introduce myself: Chris Matarazzo, writer, drummer, philosopher, father, thinker, mender of fences (really, I fixed my fence once) and archaeologist of the human spirit. I am a master of English (because it says so on a piece of paper) and a vice-principal in charge of academics (because it says so on my office door).

Winslow Homer: "Snap the Whip"

I pay bills, play classical guitar and I have conversations with educational donors and deans of stuff for various important reasons. I read books -- lots of books. I have scads of them on shelves around my living room and when people ask me why I don't just borrow them from the library to leave room on the walls, I shake my head sadly, painfully aware of the decline of humankind.

I am grown, important chap who carries a briefcase and is forced to wear ties and uncomfortable, yet shiny, shoes.

Fire Bundles

When are we grown-ups ever going to learn? We fret and fret over the things we put before our kids -- what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong -- and we toss and turn, worrying if we're crushing their creativity and initiative; whether the modern world is stealing their hearts away . . .

Of course, when I say "we" I mean "me" -- and maybe you, too?

But this morning, a misty Sunday with the absent sun returning for the first time in days to light up the droplets into diamonds on the grass, the smell of autumn earth as pleasant to me as the scent of a cake in the oven, I heard my smallest boy explaining something to his mother.

He was playing a "Toy Story" game on his fancy-schmancy portable gaming unit, and he was saying, "Mom -- I'm pretending this is "Silly Sheepies" (a show my sons put on with their stuffed animals during their weekend "sleep-overs" together in one of their beds) and they are trying to put Sheepie in the sheep-pound but Sean is trying to rescue them and  . . ."

Little Shadowboxers

My mother always was very much against guns. As a kid, I never had a toy gun, outside of the occasional water pistol. Mind you, I really wanted to have toy guns and I would greedily claim any available weapon at friends' houses before playing "war" or any other violence-based games. At home, though, I was, as they say on the mean streets, without a "piece."

At my wife's house, in her childhood, things were a little different. Toy guns were allowed, as were BB guns in the later years. Legend has it that there was a rifle incident in the back yard of their suburban home that left a tree somewhat worse for wear. Karen grew up with two brothers, both of whom own hunting guns and bows to this day. For the record, neither of them has ever killed a man. (Nor has my wife, to the best of my knowledge.) Both of them are throrougly nice guys and one of them is one hell of a dancer. (Just thought I'd mention that, in light of the wedding I attended last night.)

The Father of the Man

One night, we were watching old family videos. One section of footage, originally shot on an old 8mm camera on a hot summer day in Philadelphia, circa 1968, would bring me to tears.

There was me, just learning to walk, in dark shorts, white shoes and a striped shirt, face surrounded by a reddish-brown, curly mop of hair. The sunlight in my tiny heart -- as in the hearts of all babies -- was more than a match for the light that shone off of the car fenders and windows of the row-homes.

My mother helped me to stand, holding my hands high as I faced away from her, and when I mustered the courage, I would waddle away, about six steps, into the waiting arms of my uncle, and then turn for the return journey.

Calling All Ladies and Gentlemen . . .



John Jacob Astor IV, who is
said to have put on his tuxedo during
the sinking of the Titanic, so he could
die "like a gentleman."


Read carefully -- there will be a quiz.

Today, I was in the drugstore with my little boys. At the check-out, there was a line of magazines, right at their eye level. Each magazine was graced with a picture of a beautiful woman. Most were wearing low-cut dresses, but one of the women was seductively opening her shirt, exposing most of her bra; her head was thrown back, eyes mostly closed, mouth barely open.

Recently, on the radio, I heard a song. The singer used the "f-word" but they "edited it out," so that he only said: "fffk," in the song.

On Nickelodeon, the children's channel, there is a show called "Victorious," about a bunch of kids in a performing arts high school. Victoria, the main character, sings a song called "Freak the Freak Out." Some lyrics: "What I'm gonna do now is freak the freak out."

Whossat?

Thomas Eakins. "The Baby At Play"

The other day, my mother mentioned the first thing I ever said. It was a question: "Whossat?" This was, of course, the closest I could get to "Who's that?"

According to all the stories, I said it every single time I saw someone enter the room, pass the window or drive by in the street. This went on for quite some time. It occurred to me that my first "word" pretty summed up what I would be all about for the rest of my life. It foretold who I was going to be: someone who is preoccupied with figuring out who the people around me are, really -- what makes them do the things they do and feel the things they feel; what moves them; what scares them; what deludes them; what drives them to walk, act, think and dream in certain particular ways.