Odds and ends and sage advice ~ January 28, 1993

David Heiller

Odds and ends this week

I WAS SITTING AT the Partridge Café on Monday with two friends, “Bruce” and “Sandy.” (When you see names in quotation marks, that means the names aren’t real, unless some wise-guy editor wants to fool you.) We were talking about kids, how strange they can be.

Their son, “Andrew,” had announced on Sunday that he had to do a class project by Monday. One of the suggestions from the teacher was to make a replica of the Mayflower. “The Mayflower!” Bruce said in disbelief. How can a kid make a replica of the Mayflower? What fun is that?

Andrew (and Bruce) had other ideas. They wanted to make a stock. You know the kind of things they used to have in public squares to punish thieves back when the Mayflower sailed here. Your hands go in these two slots and your head goes in a bigger slot in the bottom piece. A top piece is put on, it is fastened together, and everybody laughs at you and throws rotten tomatoes.

Now that’s a project a kid can get into. Dads can too. So Bruce, who is a carpenter of some renown, took out every tool he owns and worked for five hours and came up with the nicest stock this side of the middle ages. It worked great, he said with the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old. You put these pins in place and you will definitely not get out of this stock.

Andrew wanted a padlock for it, but Bruce drew the line at that.

I would like to have seen the teacher’s face when Andrew brought his stock to class. I bet some devious thoughts crossed her mind, like “What a great way to punish little Joey!” We could use one around our house at times.

I bet Andrew gets an A. But what do you do with a custom-built stock in this age of enlightenment?

“We were thinking of putting it in our bedroom as a conversation piece,” Sandy said with a twinkle in her eye.

I WAS TALKING TO A LADY, who I will call “Lynn,” the other day. She is resolved, along with her husband, to lose some weight and get in better shape. She and her husband went to bed at 9 o’clock on Sunday night, and set the alarm clock for 5 a.m. They were going to get up and exercise together.

Well, 5 a.m. rolled around and instead of jumping out of bed like Richard Simmons, guess what happened? Lynn shut off the darned alarm clock and rolled over for another hour of precious sleep.

I was talking to Cindy about it that evening. Here are two parents who work pretty much full time, with countless other things to take up their time, not the least of which are three children, and they are going to get up at 5 a.m. and exercise?

Yeah right, Dad.

That’s life in the 90s, I thought cynically. We’re so pressed for time we have to set our alarms for 5 a.m. to lose a few pounds. Fat chance.

But it’s more than a sign of the times. It’s one of those ideas that sound better at 9 p.m. than it does at 5 a.m. I used to have notions like that with my next door neighbor in high school. Every night I would vow that I would say “Hi” to her as we waited for the bus, strike up a conversation, and charm her socks off. But every morning she would give me a hard stare and I would stand next to her in burning silence. Some things never change.

MY SON NOAH WEARS two pouches around his neck. He made them from a leather kit that he received for Christmas.

In one pouch he has put some sage. He says: “If I kill something or I find something dead or used to be dead, I sprinkle a tiny bit of sage, saying I worship it.”

Noah’s other pouch is bigger. In it he keeps shark teeth, a leopard rock, and a spear head. “It’s like a medicine bag,” he said. ‘You have it for luck. And if you’re down in the dumps, you can take something out and hold it. It’s like a spirit.”

I’ve never seen anything that “used to be dead,” and I don’t know what a leopard rock is. But I didn’t argue with him. These are Indian customs that he has read about. They may seem silly to our “civilized” minds. But think about it. What if every hunter carried a little sage with him? Wouldn’t this reverence for life be better for everyone? And what if the next time you were down in the dumps, you could open your leather pouch and hold onto your leopard rock and feel better?

I guess that’s not so odd after all. In fact, it’s pretty sage advice.