Take Care

Several years ago, I was caught up in a crisis that was far less dire than the Coronavirus crisis that we’re all in the midst of now. At the time, it was assuredly a Dire Crisis that consumed a great percentage of my waking thoughts, at least when I wasn’t doing my actual job … which was related in subject-area content to the Dire Crisis, so there were reminders all over the place.

I wasn’t paranoid about viral material, though. Or if I was, it was the kind comprised of ill-considered social media remarks that led to exploding comment sections and the like. Good times.

Anyway, I was corresponding with a fine friend of mine, and a platitude escaped my typing fingers. It was well-meant, well-intended, correctly-spelled, and the sentiment was never lost in translation. My friend knew what I meant.

“Take care,… -Rob”

But I had a moment, after hitting “send” on my eMail machine, of … –yeah, that seems shallow.

So I created a new message, same eMail address, and continued typing, in one fluid motion.

“Upon further reflection, ‘take care’ is a soulless phrase which I should ban from my lexicon forever. Sorry. I really meant, it’s always good to talk to you – and of all the things in the world that can change, that one never should.”

It took hardly a few minutes before I got a reply back.

My fine friend replied by insisting that when I used that phrase … and when a few other people we knew used it … it wasn’t heard as a “throw away”. Instead:

“I hear it as ‘be sure to take care in everything you do; be sure to take care with all you experience; life is not meant to race through – live it with care.’”

My fine friend went on to suggest that it was always good to hear my voice, over the phone or in print or in electronic pixels; and to realize that I was willing to just let my fine friend ramble and vent and all that. “One day,” my fine friend suggested, “I shall sit quietly and listen, and will ‘take care.’”

The response was more eloquent than I was able to be, in that moment, and I’ve held onto it for a long time. In the years between that crisis and this one, I’ve thought of it and thought perhaps it would be useful to describe the exchange to people. Maybe it could be helpful somehow, I’ve thought.

Well, no time like the present.

Take care.

Clearly, first and foremost, that means keep that ol’ six-foot social distance physically. Wash your hands. Don’t go to the freakin’ crowded freakin’ beach and mingle with all the other stupid freakin’ people who, if they think at all, clearly think to themselves, “it’s a free country and I can do what I want.” Wash your darn phone, too, by the way.

But perhaps priority #1A ought to be, take care of yourself and the people you love. And the people you like a lot. And the people who fall under those categories but whom somehow you don’t connect with on a regular basis, even though they deserve it.

As it happens, a few days ago, I spent an afternoon writing quick notes, most of them on the Facebook allegedly-private-messaging service, to a number of people who fit those descriptions. (And I’m about to launch a few more messages into the electronic ether, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, my fingers only type so fast … although at this point, I’ve got more time for it, …so.)

The responses were either immediate or close. And they seemed a bit startled, if happily startled.

Which might mean that, among the other good things that might come out of the current horrible frightening time, we might re-learn how to take care in everything we do … to take care with all we experience … to keep in mind that life is not meant to be raced through … and to live life with care.

So, dear reader (dear readers, I hope!) … here’s hoping you’re doing as well as possible … that you’re hanging in there and staying well through this current Dire Crisis, and that you’ll continue to do so after this is all over.

Yesterday, I had a different fine friend of mine use the Contact section of this blog to re-establish contact after quite some time of being apart. I suspect we each had lost track of the other’s contact information; and unhelpfully, we live on opposite sides of the planet … but she made the effort. Which, I now think, is why this whole thought re-occurred to me:

Take care.

It Could Be Verse

“Project[, I wrote on my Facebook page last Wednesday]:

“For the sake of the Republic, we must defeat Donald Trump by any means possible.
Therefore, my daily goal during these last seven weeks before Election Day will be to post [on my Facebook page] poetry decrying the awfulness that is Donald Trump.

“My little contribution.”

 

Wednesday, September 21: Today’s Trump Haiku:

“I’m the best ever.

So great it’s incredible.

“S’true, folks. believe me.”

 

Thursday, September 22: Today’s Trump Haiku:

Horrible, awful,

Loathsome, vile, deplorable,

Trump is. Believe me.

 

Friday, September 23: Today’s Trump Haiku:

“Winning, losers, wall;

Unfair, nasty, stupid, folks:

I have the best words.”

 

Saturday, September 24:Today’s Trump Limerick:

There was a man from New York City

Whose bright hair, he thought, made him pretty

His red trucker’s hat

Made him feel like *all that*

But it turned out that he was just someone who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the nuclear codes

 

Sunday, September 25: Today’s Trump Haiku:

“Raining? Weather rigged.

Rib-eye overdone? Food rigged.

Hill’ry wins? World rigged.”

 

Monday, September 26: Today’s Trump Haiku:

“They’re nasty to me

They’re very unfair to me

Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo”

 

Tuesday, September 27: Today’s Trump Haiku:

Fleece! Bilk! Swindle! Cheat!

Defraud! Deceive! Delude! Dupe!

Down the field, Trump U!

The 31-Day Blog Challenge, Day Seventeen: Inside of a Dog, It’s Too Dark to Read

Today’s writing prompt:

31 DAY BLOG CHALLENGE, DAY 17: “Favorite childhood book”.

This is where regular readers of the Blogge may get that feeling of slowly dawning horrible realization … so this is why he is why he is.

 

In response to this prompt, I tried to think back to the various books that made an impression on me, usually thanks to a teacher (darn; Teacher Appreciation Week was earlier this month).

[] My first grade teacher, Ms. Baird, sent a couple of us off to the school library to go look for a book we would like to read. (That was in the age where a teacher wouldn’t be reprimanded for deviating from the standardized-test prep curriculum.) I ended up with a book called “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet”. (See again the first paragraph of this post.)

My research about this book tells me three important things: [1] there were actually eight of those books in a series, [2] based on a television series of the 1950s, and [3] written by several authors who all used a pseudonym, and had a technical advisor. No word as to whether the technical advisor’s name was also a pseudonym.

[] Some time during the third grade I think, I found a book on the classroom shelves of my teacher, Ms. Howe, called “The Mouse and the Motorcycle”. It was written by the estimable Beverly Cleary (who, trivia alert, celebrated her 100th birthday last month!), of “Ramona” book series fame … about whom West Chester University professor of children’s literature Pat Pflieger wrote, “Cleary’s books have lasted because she understands her audience. She knows they’re sometimes confused or frightened by the world around them, and that they feel deeply about things that adults can dismiss.”

At that time I felt deeply about a mouse who finds a toy motorcycle in a house in which he lives, and rides it around, making its engine work by making a vrrrrroom!! engine noise. Talk about environmentally-friendly fuels! (Although, oi, the noise pollution…)

[] I have already blogged about my eighth-grade teacher, Mr. Tornrose, organizing a creative writing / dramatic reading after-school activity (not listed in the school yearbook, therefore I suspect he wasn’t drawing a stipend; therefore this was out of the goodness of his heart and his interest in expanding our middle-school minds a bit) … during which, most memorably, I and four of my classmates had Shakespeare and his mighty “Macbeth” revealed unto us.

We even got to say “out, damn spot!” on school grounds.

 

But unquestionably, the book which had the biggest childhood impact on me, I would judge, was one that I found at a church yard sale on Cape Cod during one family summer vacation. It was an oversized book, packed equally with illustrations and text regarding a topic that would permanently re-define my idea of what was funny and how to express it.

It was called “Why a Duck: Visual and Verbal Gems from the Marx Brothers Movies”.

I was ten years old.

And only now, at the end, do you understand…

I was doomed.