It's a good time, there's none better

The Column: 05.05.23

I remember when I was six and was allowed to do dishes with my older brother and sister while Mother cleaned the kitchen with Lysol: it was a ceremony, a step into maturity, being entrusted to handle the family china, a mark of maturity for a little boy, and, busy, crowded around the sink, we talked a lot, a big pleasure in a family in which children were not encouraged to speak up. And I made my brother and sister laugh, describing my teacher’s upper arms that bounced as she wrote on the blackboard, that we named Hoppy and Bob, and also when I said that Washington looked like Lincoln’s wife. To think I could amuse my elders was a real spark of self-esteem.

I chose my parents for their persistent faith and their love of work, not for personal charm, and it was a good choice. They also gave me a fine sense of impending disaster and a few weeks ago it came true and I lost my balance and suddenly became a physics experiment, but only my left knee was bashed, no marbles were lost and the antique crystal vertebrae of my lower back were not cracked, and I haven’t been shipped off to a rehab prison to play Bingo and sing along with Gladys at the Hammond playing from the Sunshine Harmony songbook.

No, I limp around and do my work and brush away sympathy and I was astonished today when I came across the online résumé of the worst boss I ever knew, a miserable misfit who combined cluelessness and arrogance in a uniquely toxic way, and here he had the gall to write about himself as a “thought leader,” “visionary,” a “transformational” manager — Joe Blow dressing up as John the Baptist. The man had the vision of a demented mole. What he considered transformation, most people would call demolition. The yo-yo took full credit for the accomplishment of hundreds of dedicated people. There is no word for sheep manure this deep and dark.

Brazen fools like him are multiplying like feral cats in the ranks of management and when I read about gigantic layoffs at Facebook and elsewhere, I’m assuming that skilled workers take the big hit and the executive yahoos hold on to their credenzas and keys to the executive john and think about the transformation of their golf game.

That’s why I’ve adopted a new habit of complimenting people for goodness. I compliment the fruit stand guy on his bananas and buy a bunch and he smiles. I tell the waiter that the green curry is of primo quality. I thank my haircutter for making me look a distinguished author and she is pleased.

I’m at the age when you see the insides of more than your share of health clinics and some are like walking into a meat warehouse but when I walked into New York Presbyterian the other day and then the Hospital for Special Surgery, I was struck by the extraordinary kindness of everyone — even the security woman welcomed me like a friend and the receptionists and the guide who took me back to an examining room and the tech who did the exam — it really knocked me out, me a Midwesterner, this being New York — and I found Lillian the supervisor and told her what a wonderful place this is: “Most people walking in here are having a bad week and the kindness and good manners of this place mean So Much. Thank you.”

This may strike you as Goody Two-shoes but I say it’s important, in the midst of so much hubris and balloon juice, to pay tribute to genuine goodness. And now I even compliment myself a little. As a Christian I avoid pride but every morning I rise painfully on my battered left knee and, all by myself, hobble on a cane to the bathroom, shower, dry off, shave, dress, and attach a complex four-strap knee brace, and I congratulate myself.

I miss my wife who is far away, playing viola in an opera. Rehearsal was going badly under an abusive micro-managing maestro who made Mozart miserable but who then left abruptly and was replaced by an anxious sub and my wife went out of her way to compliment him.

She’s been a transformational visionary in my life and she is also a good person. Violists don’t get the big head like some violinists do; they know their role, which is to support. They sit in the pit playing their part and when the Mozart flows like the Mississippi they float along happily in it and don’t imagine they created this. That’s how I feel on good days: we’re all in this together, getting it done.