SIDE BY SIDE

USING TRAILER PARLANCE AS METAPHOR, we’ve been hitched for a few years now. Both of us, my Amazing-Missus and I, are from the Tulsa area—she, just from the south of Jenks; me, just north of Jenks. We met in Bixby.

The insightful C.S. Lewis, as far as I know, never visited Jenks or Bixby, but he did have some keen wisdom on relationships:

“Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” —C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves.

Let’s talk about some of the side-by-side stuff. Early in our marriage we discovered one of our favorite places to eat together was Coney-Islander, a little hot dog joint native to Tulsa. (By “little hot dog” I’m talking about the size of the establishment and also the size of their coneys. They are adorable.) It is still our favorite. It started in 1926, and in all these years, hasn’t changed much. I hope Coney-Islander doesn’t hire one of those new fangled UX specialists to “take the company to the next level”. Their level is just fine. At Coney-Islander, you sit on the same side of the booth, side-by-side. This is so you can work out the Weekly Scramble on the old blackboard on the wall. It’s a C-I tradition.

We often spend weekends in Tulsa. We’ve found a great place in mid-town where we can park our Airstream. It’s close to some of our favorite side-by-side type places: the Circle Cinema, a throwback art-movie theatre; Tulsa University, a Coney-Islander, and a short drive to downtown where you’ll find the arts district, Glacier Chocolates, Guthrie Green, Antionette Baking Company, Spinster Records and Driller Stadium, all good places for side-by-side moments.

There is a mix of blessings to traveling in an Airstream: people want to talk about it and “take a quick peek inside.” Recently we were hitched up and leaving Tulsa for Shawnee, where we were to attend a very special event—a birthday party for a five year old. Often, as we leave Tulsa, our route is via Peoria Avenue, through the narrow streets of Brookside to a Coney-Islander, before getting on the highway out of town. As I pulled into the parking lot on this particular Saturday, I noticed a fancy Mercedes following closely. Before I could hardly get out of the truck, there was a woman who looked like she had just come from the Lululemon store up the street, or the hair extension store somewhere nearby. “Can I please droll over your Airstream!?” (Her actual words.)

Sure, I say. I’ll be inside drooling over “a couple of coneys with everything.” (That’s how you order them.) She’s holding her phone in the air and explains to us that she has her boyfriend on FaceTime so he can take the tour as well. My Amazing-Missus graciously hosted the tour while I went into the air-conditioned Coney-Islander to wait. As I watched her walk toward the diner from the Airstream after the tour, I saw it all as a tableau of sorts or an Edward Hopper painting (but far less forlorn)—that silver trailer, this little hotdog joint, and her; walking from one to the other. Not to over-romanticize it, but it was glimpse of a magical side-by-side life together. Our travels: together, our favorite things to do: together, our memories: together, and our future: together.

And then I thought, I hope that if Miss Yogapants and her FaceTime friend find themselves in an Airstream someday they will have great side-by-side adventures too. Like the old song says:

Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money
Maybe we're ragged and funny
But we'll travel along, singin' a song
Side by side
Don't know what's comin' tomorrow
Maybe it's trouble and sorrow
But we'll travel the road, sharin' our load
Side by side
Through all kinds of weather
What if the sky should fall
Just as long as we're together
It doesn't matter at all
When they've all had their quarrels and parted
We'll be the same as we started
Just travelin' along, singin' our song
Side by side

---

Here’s a Coney-Islander Weekly Scramble for you. Sorry I don’t have a coney for you to enjoy while you try to figure it out. If you just can’t quite work it out, email me and I’ll send you the answer. hey.pops.hey@gmail.com.

P.S.: No Googling for the answer. You’ll hate yourself in the morning if you do.

Keeping Company

You’ve heard the fun, hypothetical question, “What six people, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?”

I’ve performed a lot of weddings in my day. In most of them I have used a thought from C.S. Lewis in his book, The Four Loves.

Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other;
Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.

I then explain the obvious—that a marriage is two people who should strive not only to be lovers, but friends to each other as well.

C.S. Lewis and his good friend, J.R.R. Tolkien and a few others hung out together; regularly. They even had a name for their little group: “The Inklings”. Lewis spoke of the importance of having a group like The Inklings in that same book, The Four Loves, calling them a “little knots of Friends who turn their backs on the ‘World’”. By that, (I think) he meant, when they are together, they honor the relationship and the time by being fully present. If he were writing that today he might say, “When you gather with your little knot of friends, KEEP YOU DANG PHONE IN YOUR POCKET.” Just guessing.

I’ve been reading a book called, The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer. It is a book about The Inklings, and it has me thinking. What if I was in a little knot of friends? Who else would be in it? What would we talk about? Would it be worthwhile?

I realize this kind of friendship is a step beyond just asking six or so people to dinner, but to me the spirit is the same. For most people the hard part of the exercise would be limiting the number of people they would invite. For me, I know that if I invited too many, if the knot was too big, I would be lost. In fact, I would probably go to another room and just eavesdrop on the conversation.

It’s just introversion and I’m fine with it.

This year, 2015, I’m going to explore this idea of having a Knot. Will I work to actually make it happen? Probably not, but I hope at least to be bold enough to meet some new people, have some interesting conversations and learn something about myself.

Let’s start though with this game of naming the Dinner Party Six. I’m going to expand the options a little and say that it’s okay to include a fictional person or two. I mean if we can invite dead people why not make-believe ones too?

Here’s my list (at least for now), not for the Knot, but for the Dinner:

Wait. First, I want to say in all honesty that while I’m not including family members in the list, I love being at the table with my Amazing-Missus, our two sons, our daughter-in-law, and our Grand-Girls. Second, there are some that I would love to have at the table, but they are of that category of being even above my hypothetical dinner guests; you know, people like Jesus, Mary Magdalene, G.K. Chesterton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Einstein, George Gershwin, etc. (Relax, I’m not saying or even inferring these people are equal to Jesus.)

Okay, now for the list (in no certain order):

1. David Letterman (he would ask really good questions, keeping the discussion going)
2. Flannery O’Connor (because she writes lines like: “To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”)
3. Paul McCartney & John Lennon (I know, I know)
4. Tina Fey & Amy Poehler (They will split an entree)
5. Yo Yo Ma (hopefully he and John would play “Imagine” together)
6. Atticus Finch (played by Gregory Peck)

You know Atticus Finch, from the greatest fictional book ever, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. If not, maybe, you’ve seen the movie where the role of the Atticus, the single father of two kids, is beautifully played by Gregory Peck. 

The story is told by Scout, Atticus’ daughter. Here’s an except from the book. Scout is telling of encounters she and her brother Jem had with a mean old woman named Mrs. Dubose who lived down the street. Scout’s description of her father in this passage will make it clear why I want him to have a chair at my table.

When the three of us came to the house, Atticus would sweep off his hat, wave gallantly to her and say, “Good evening, Mrs. Dubose! You look like a picture this evening.”
I never heard Atticus say like a picture of what. He would tell her the courthouse news, and would say he hoped with all his heart she’d have a good day tomorrow. He would return his hat to his head, swing me to his shoulders in her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight. It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

So, what “six” people would you invite to dinner if you could?

Which Way Does Your Gate Swing?

Does the name Judith Sheindlin ring a bell? She's from Brooklyn, New York (if that helps).

A line you hear often is "Life's not fair." What an unsatisfying answer!

• Your kid doesn't get to start at quarterback, so: "Life's not fair."
• The jerk in the next cubicle got a raise, you didn't, so: "Life's not fair."

The antithesis of that seems to be: "I'm so blessed."

• Your daughter makes the elementary school cheer squad, so: "I'm so blessed."
• You son makes the Honor Roll, so: "I'm so blessed."
• You live in a "gated community"...

WAIT, that one depends on which way the gate swings. Our youngest son works for the Oklahoma County Sheriff. For the folks he's around, the gate swings the wrong way, because they're all innocent and "Life's not fair."

You know in some cases, maybe they're right. I heard a statistic the other day that purported that for kids who have parents who are incarcerated, more than 70% of them will at some time be in jail themselves.

Monet's Garden Gate

One of my favorite people to hear speak is Michael Sandel. He's a professor at Harvard. He teaches a class called, "Justice: What's the Right Thing To Do." You can watch it on YouTube or you can read the book by the same name. I highly recommend both. Here's one of my favorite quotes:

“The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be” 
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

It seems to me that sometimes we can have several "I'm so blessed" and "Life's not fair" moments all in the same day. In other words, both of these states are temporary, and depend on the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Here's a statement I believe is more true and accurate than either of those two: Life's complicated.

Back to Sandel's quote: If we're not careful we'll come to believe that the way things are DOES determine how they ought to be, and how they in fact ARE. Is it crazy to say that the way things are, is not necessarily the way things really ARE? In other words, do we sometimes make the wrong assumptions about reality?

I promise you--if you watch too much Fox News, or if you watch too much MSNBC, you will soon have a distorted reality of the way things are. I know this is coming across as opinionated preaching, but what I'm really doing here is putting in words and ink a new lesson I'm learning.

For me this lesson is this: if I constantly look at life as though I'm looking through a microscope, telescope, or a tunnel, I have no choice but to view and judge every event as a moment of: Life's not fair, or I'm so blessed.

Oh, and you do know Judith Sheindlin. You know her as Judge Judy. Turns out that she is the highest paid judge in the land. A justice of the U.S. Supreme Court makes just over $200,000 a year. Judge Judy makes nearly $50,000,000. Yes, that's 50 MILLION a year! Is life fair, or is Judge Judy just really, really blessed. And if she is, what has she done to merit such blessfullness? Or is it even based on merit?

Here's what I do know, by experience, for myself: If I look broadly at life, taking as big a picture as I can, I see that we are all blessed way beyond what we deserve, that there is more beauty than I can behold in a lifetime, and that when you try to see life as it was Designed and Created, it is in fact, fair.

"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." --C. S. Lewis

See what I mean?