I’ll never rake again without thinking of my old man

A couple weeks ago I wrote a column about parenting. In it, I mentioned my old man. The comment was peripheral, at best, to the point of the essay. I barely gave it a thought.

I’ve thought about it a lot in the past few days, though. It turns out that column was the last thing — of mine, at least — my dad would ever read. He died a few days later. Something like a stroke, sudden, unexpected.

In that column, I wrote the following: I love my old man, but as a child, I feared him, too. He put up with exactly zero BS from myself, my brothers and my sisters. I often thought he was unfair and sometimes he was. 

But with him, I knew where I stood. I had my part to play in the family and he had his. If I was bored, he didn’t rush to the psychologist’s office to see what he, as a parent, was doing wrong. He handed me a rake and put me to work in the back yard until I wasn’t bored anymore.

He mentioned that column after it was published, when I went to see him in the hospital. By then he was moving in and out of consciousness and was thwacked out on morphine; I hung around the hospital room for hours, hoping he would wake long enough to speak with me.

Nobody looks good on a hospital bed, but my old man looked bad; gray, tired, used up. Shrunken, somehow. Tubes and wires snaked into him and out of him, to help him breathe, to monitor his vital signs, to deliver drugs.

His breath hitched in small, shallow gasps. His hand felt cold, frail, insubstantial, like the fluff of an August dandelion waiting to be carried away on any errant breeze.

A moan escaped his parched throat as he swam up toward consciousness.

“Sharon,” he said, calling for my mother in his semi-delirium, forgetting she died two years ago. His fragile hand constricted slightly around mine. His eyes remained closed.

“No dad,” I said. “It’s Mike.”

“Big Mike or little Mike?” he said. A joke. “Little Mike” is my 10-year-old nephew, my brother William’s son.

“Big Mike,” I said. “Glad to hear you’re feeling well enough to be a smartass.”

I knew his windows of awareness were by this time opening but briefly, so I quickly told him about the crowds of friends and relatives that had come round to see him as he slept, how the whole family had stopped by during the course of the afternoon. He either didn’t hear me or wasn’t interested.

“I read that column you wrote about me handing you a rake when you were bored as a kid,” he said. “Pretty funny. I wanted to share it with your mother, but … she’s gone, you know.”

“I know, Dad,” I said. His grip, already tenuous, weakened further. He was fighting to remain awake, losing the battle. Then for just a moment, his eyes cleared and he focused on my face.

“Get a rake,” he mumbled, smiling, drifting off. A few hours later he was gone.

“Get a rake” were the last words my old man spoke to me. Somehow, I like that better than “I love you” or “Goodbye, cruel world.” “Get a rake” is … I don’t know … more honest. It’s closer to summing up the often complicated relationship I had with my father.

I’m really going to miss him, especially when I’m bored. Or holding a rake.

Buy my book, "Looking at the Pint Half Full," at Robbins Book List in Greenville, or in eBook format at Amazon.com.

Coming soon: Mike’s Big Book of Parenting

My old man used to tell me that a writer is his own worst critic. That’s never been the case with me; other people are generally far more critical of my stuff than I am. 

Maybe it’s because I’m just not that fussy. I don’t aspire to be the next Thurber or Twain. All I want is to crank out my 600 words, collect my paycheck and grab a beer and cheeseburger in a pub where they keep the volume turned down on the TVs.

I live a simple life, I don’t aspire to wealth or greatness. Happiness, for me, is a small boat that doesn’t leak, a fishing pole and a warm afternoon. The boat and pole I have in the garage; I’m confident the warm afternoons are just a few months away.

But I digress. Frequently. The point is, THIS writer is not his own worst critic.

Every so often, though, I’ll write a column that — for one reason or another — I’m just not crazy about. Maybe it doesn’t strike me as funny, or as funny as I’d like it to be. Maybe it rambles too much and takes forever to get to the point (like this one!). Maybe I’m just thinking about how I’d rather be out in my boat drowning worms.

Whatever the reason, some columns I just don’t like. Last week’s was such a column. I wrote it, I filed it, I plan to charge for it, but for my part, I just didn’t like it much.

But you guys did. (It was the one about “modern” parenting techniques.) I received a ton of reader mail. Not a ton, a half ton. Quarter ton. OK, a dozen letters or so. For me, that’s a ton.

All those letters were extremely complimentary, which I love, because nobody likes hearing how much they stink, even me. Especially me.

Doug took a photo or a scan or something from the print edition and posted it online, then e-mailed the link to people in his address book. If I can get 600,000 more folks to do this, I can shoot a video of me writing my column “Gangnam Style” and be an overnight sensation. Maybe enough money will roll in that I can fish for a living.

Doug also suggested I run for president, in no small part because I seem like the kind of guy who would accept bribes most anyone could afford, thus putting the “little guy” on a political par with Big Oil at last.

My favorite letter was from Deborah, who suggested I write a book on parenting. I think she was serious. She even offered to help with the research and interviews.

As much as I appreciate the confidence Deborah has in me, the idea of ME writing a “how to” parenting book is, frankly, terrifying. I am MUCH better at pointing out flaws in the parenting techniques of others than I am at telling folks how to do it RIGHT. In other words, I’m great at griping, but not much for actually doing anything to make a situation better.

Besides, when I think of all the mistakes I made raising my own kids … oy! Me writing a book on parenting would be like Rush Limbaugh writing a book on how to be a good liberal.

If you need someone to put together a book on small boats, fishing and beer, I’m your man. But the idea of a generation of children raised on MY theories? Oooh … some ideas are just too horrifying to contemplate.

Dwayne also asked if he could repost the column, which for the record, is always just fine by me. I don’t know much about the legal ramifications of this, but I think my columns still belong to me after they’re published, and once they leave my email out-box, I don’t worry much about what happens to them. Just don’t Photoshop Lindsay Lohan’s body on them and post ‘em on porn sites.

Finally, Molly said she and her husband got a kick out of the column and are passing it along to their five kids, ages 7 to 18. All I can say is, “Don’t do it, Molly!” Those kids will grow up hating me for suggesting an occasional swat on the fanny isn’t going to do them any harm and might actually do them some good.

I already have more enemies than I need.

At any rate, thank you all for your letters and emails. They made me feel a little better about what I considered to be a moderately stinky column.

Mike’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville. The Kindle version is available on Amazon.com.

mtaylor@staffordmediasolutions.com

(616) 548-8273

Sometimes life’s best lessons come with a rake

Why, yes, of course the world has gone crazy. The monkeys are in charge of the zoo. The center cannot hold. Will the last sane person out please turn off the lights?

Pick your metaphor.

The point is, much of modern life makes no sense at all. Common sense is no longer all that common. And nowhere is this truer than in the way in which we now bring up our kids.

For thousands of years, each generation of children was raised in much the same way as the generation which preceded it. Good behavior was rewarded, bad behavior was punished.

A parent’s job was to feed and clothe the child until such time as that child got a) a job, b) married, or c) drafted. An educator’s job was to make sure the child could a) read, b) write, and c) figger numbers.

Beyond that, the kid’s fate was in his or her own hands.

Then came Dr. Spock, self-esteem, organized pee-wee football, baseball, softball, professional piano lessons, soccer, karate, ballet, gymnastics, swimming, upscale preschools, upscale pre-preschools … the list goes on.

Good behavior was still rewarded. So was bad behavior. And mediocre behavior. And no behavior at all. Why? See Dr. Spock and self-esteem, above.

Parents were too busy driving junior to all these “fun” organized activities to actually do any parenting themselves. So teachers were asked to do that job in their stead, and to fit in the teaching thing whenever they had a few spare minutes.

It’s a great system, assuming you’re trying to churn out a generation of pathological narcissists devoid of any sense of personal responsibility. In his later years, Dr. Spock himself backtracked on many of his child-rearing theories, but, oops! By then, the damage was already done.

Too many people had been brought up worrying WAY too much about parenting issues that previous generations had never even considered. There are those, even now, who still contend modern child rearing techniques are vastly superior to those of their parents’ or grandparents’ day.

To which I say, really? Do your kids treat you with the same respect you showed your own parents?  If the answer is “yes,” I’m betting you raised them pretty much as your parents raised you and you’re wondering who this Dr. Spock person is that I keep mentioning.

I love my old man, but as a child, I feared him, too. He put up with exactly zero BS from myself, my brothers and my sisters. I often thought he was unfair and sometimes he was. 

But with him, I knew where I stood. I had my part to play in the family and he had his. If I was bored, he didn’t rush to the psychologist’s office to see what he, as a parent, was doing wrong. He handed me a rake and put me to work in the back yard until I wasn’t bored anymore.

If I was angry or upset, I was encouraged to say exactly what was on my mind, just as soon as I was out of earshot.

My old man didn’t feel an urgent need to make sure my every waking moment was filled with educational activities designed to bolster my self-esteem. Hence, I learned how to make friends, join pickup softball games, climb trees and figure out for myself how to enjoy life.

Why am I on this particular soapbox today? Well, I just read an article about a school in England that has banned the game of hide and seek.

Hide and seek promotes “secretive play,” administrators say. It sends “mixed messages,” they say. It exposes children to “dangerous situations.”

I only wish I was making this up.

My own son, many years ago, was sent home from third grade for breaking the playground rules. He and a friend were playing cowboys and Indians, using their pointed index fingers as six-shooters.

Such brutality, such mindless violence, I was informed, would not be tolerated on the playground.

It seemed crazy to me then and it seems crazy to me now. But then again, I was raised by a man who handed me a rake when I got bored. So what do I know.

Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com. 

My next book is going to fix everything. Or else.

Last summer, as some of you may remember, I checked myself into the emergency room. Four days later, I exited the hospital one gall bladder shy of what I went in with.

The hospital gave me some lovely parting gifts; hand lotion, a plastic bedpan to be used for regurgitative purposes, a bottle of Vicodin, and a bill for $25,000.

It was that last item that nearly put me right back in the hospital again. 

At the time, I had no health insurance. I do NOW, oh, you betcha. Now that I’m perfectly healthy and likely to remain that way for the next 20 years or so. But I didn’t then, and that’s what counts.

The folks from the hospital’s billing department were as nice as could be; they did everything imaginable to work out payment arrangements. But it soon became apparent, to both the billing department and me, that I just don’t have enough income left at the end of each month to make the minimum payments their bean counters require in a situation like this, for a bill of this magnitude.

The bill was referred to a collection agency. As many of you already know, these places are not typically staffed with the sort of folks one would invite to a summer barbecue. Not unless one were a mob boss who needed someone greased for squealing to the feds.

Collection agents take their job seriously and are willing to skirt right up to the very edge of what the law allows in order to rake in those bucks owed. If the law permitted the breaking of kneecaps, I’m pretty sure there are agents out there who wouldn’t hesitate to wield a Louisville Slugger in the requisite manner.

Fortunately (for me and my kneecaps) they’re not supposed to do this.

Now, before you get the idea I’m complaining about the hospital, collection agency, or any of their representatives, let me assure you: I am not. I received excellent care during my time of need and I owe that $25,000, fair and square. I wish with all my heart I had the money to pay it. I just don’t. 

I’m not proud of that fact (and my mother would turn over in her grave if she knew I was talking money in a public forum; it is, after all, terribly gauche), but this is simply the way things are for me right now, the reality within which I am obliged to live.

At any rate, one of these collection agents called the other day. My caller ID read “unknown”, which is cell-phone-speak for “bill collector.” I answered anyway, hopeful that, this time, we might arrive at some amicable arrangement, even if that meant the bill wouldn’t be paid in full until my 95th birthday.

The collector was a nice enough woman. She told me to give her money. I told her I would love to, but I didn’t have any. She asked why not. I told her. This was a familiar conversation for us both and we were mostly going through the motions.

“Well, I’m looking at your website,” she said.

“Yeah?” I said.

“It says here you wrote a book,” she said.

“Yeah, a while back,” I said.

“Couldn’t you sell more books to make some money?” she said. She was serious. Bill collectors are serious people.

“Um … well, I could, if anyone would buy them,” I said. “But I wrote that book a couple years ago, and I think pretty much everybody who wants one already has one. Some people — those with wobbly tables with one short leg — may even have two.”

“Oh,” she said, still thinking. “Well, couldn’t you write another one?”

I admitted that, yes, I probably could. I then pointed out that Random House had not recently attempted to kick down my front door in order to present me with a quarter-million dollar advance on my Next Big Novel.

Like a lot of folks — more than you would believe — the nice collection lady assumed every author is a SUCCESSFUL author. I tried to explain that the difference between me and Stephen King is roughly $26 million a year.

It took her a minute to accept my abject poverty (it has taken me considerably longer), but in the end she agreed I was a likable enough deadbeat and could anticipate many long and fruitful conversations with her and her colleagues in the near future.

My fault, not hers, so no hard feelings. And who knows? She may be right. Maybe my next book is the one that’s going to propel me to the New York Times bestseller list. 

So I’ve started working on it. It’s a fictional work about a group of rogue bill collectors who finally flip out from dealing with deadbeats like me and go on a killing spree. 

If it makes enough money to pay that hospital bill, I’m going to mention the collection agent on the dedication page.

Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.  Mike’s Kindle ebook, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available online at Amazon.com and in paperback format at Robbins Book List in Greenville.