We want the Holly Dolly!

In most diners around Long Island and the rest of the New York suburbs, the waiting areas are filled with various arcade games, including astrological predictions and the love-o-meter.  Typically there is a game with a claw and a bunch of sub-par stuffed animals, all tucked in just enough to suck quarters out of the pockets of parents and late night drunken clientele.  They’ve recently added a vacuum attachment that sucks in paper currency.  The claw reaches down and only half-heartedly takes a swipe at the prizes is weak in its grip as it is in its resolve.  I sometimes simply reach into my pocket and deposit the contents into the garbage bin nearby to get the same results that machine gives me in order to spare a few minutes more to my miserable existence.

 

Who needs innuendo when two bits can bring

you a deeper truth?

There is a children’s show on the Noggin channel named "Wa Wa Wubbzy", and the title character’s was unable to win a prize in this arcade machine, a Hammering Holly Dolly that he/she (not sure if the gender is even relevant) was trying to win for his mechanically inclined friend Widget. 

Wa Wa Chubbzy

 

My son Kieran was reminded of this when he saw a machine in a local diner, and my wife was able to win a prize for him on the first or second try.  I knew this would not bode well for me, and it’s turned out to be the case.  This kind of beginner’s success would distort Kieran’s perception of odd’s to bring about bitter disappointment for the rest of his life, I fear.

Can't touch this.

I have never won a thing from those “Holly Dolly Machines,” and I did not expect to get better at it in the future.  I have a friend who has frequent success with them, to the point where his wife is bored with his prize-winning ability, as well as his prize-winning smile.  My son was fixated by these games, and it was not setting up well for me in my role as the hero I was aspiring to be (at least in Kieran’s eyes.) 

I have managed avoiding breaking my son’s heart to some extent so far, finding a game that offers the contestant to “play till you win”  (this is typically jawbreakers, hard candy, small bottles of bleach, kid safety items that belong in these child friendly environments we frequent of late).  I am also able to distract him somewhat, to my relief.  But sometimes we are confronted with the Holly Dolly that offers no easy out. I have not even come close with any of these evil machines, watching lesser men, women, and even children walking off with small basketballs, stuffed animals, and laptops, while I dig futilely in my pockets for more quarters or similarly shaped and textured pocket lint.  I’ve heard whispers among the toothpicks and breath mints that when this machine talks to the Lov-O-meter, it refers to me as “my bitch.” 

Years from now, when Kieran is in therapy, if that still exists when he’s ready to heal his inner trouble maker, perhaps he might explore the disappointment that I never won him anything, and this machine would sit in the middle of his discourse, filled to the brim with toys I could not win him. 

I had always assumed it was nude

In the early nineties I spent a good bit of time exploring the concepts of “toxic shame” and “inner healing.”  I bought into this so thoroughly that I sought out only shampoos and conditioners that were willing to heal my “damaged and overworked hair.”   I assumed that since I was wounded that would apply to my scalp and follicles as well, even though I wasn’t sure what work my hair was performing.  It’s not like I ever saw any W2 forms.

The Good Ol’ Days: Hair before the invention of an interior life. Sometimes a split end is just a split end.

 

Between all the extensive spiritual and mental healing, I had to pay the bills (my freeloading hair was not kicking in a red cent).   I worked on a construction survey crew for my family’s business. To pass the time on our travel between job site, I would talk quite openly with a skeptical co-worker named Paul.  Paul had a way of being understatedly funny and subversive in a single stroke of his sarcastic brush. I loved the economy of it and enjoyed laughing and being shocked in the same moment.

We drove to work one morning during this time and it was typically quiet between us on the early morning commute.  About a half hour into the heavy traffic, Paul broke the silence with what sounded like an observation and a confession. 

‘I undressed my inner child last night,” he quietly offered.

 I spent the rest of the commute laughing to myself, and thinking of how many people in my healing “community would be shocked and newly rewounded by such a comment.

There is an assumption in all of this, I realize, and this realization comes to me often enough for my wife to disagree with my understanding of it.  Watching my son shift through his various burgeoning interests, this Holly Dolly fervor will probably pass the way of the seasons or his moods, and perhaps people will not care about that inner child joke, although I doubt that.  Inner child work is fragile and serious, like an unexpected bowel movement.  There is an urgency to it that is best addressed in a protected environment. 

Paul and his inner Carmen Electra.  It makes the undressing so much more palatable, don’t you think? Philosophy example- Tautology:  Paul is bearded, this fellow is bearded, therefore Carmen Electra could arouse this fellow out of his lobotomized stupor.  He is, after all, covering up the truth telling genitalia.

 

My Inner Kirk may have Shatnered, but I doubt he was circling Uranus.

I did some soul-searching as a child and had an unpleasant discovery.   What surprised me almost as much as this dramatization was that my inner old man wore sunglasses.  

I think I busted my inner hip on this contraption.

What?  I wasn’t paying attention.

People, I believe, are not thinking that much about one another.  I was involved with a weekly discussion group years ago that explored specific topics each week, and the following week we were to offer our thoughts on who or what had impressed us the most specifically.  Initially, I was hoping my ideas and thoughts would always impress people to the point that we would forgo a new topic and explore my compelling insights.  But after we went several weeks without my input being mentioned by a single person, I found myself strangely relieved.  So people were not only not thinking about me all the time, they didn’t even notice me.  I felt as if I was off the hook.  I’m not even sure for what.  I am more invisible than I think, and consequently, more free.

My wife suggests that I am wrong on this point, and it is particularly for acts or comments we may have forgotten that may be living lives independent to ourselves.  At her mother’s funeral a few years back, a woman came up to my wife and mentioned that she remembers vividly a time that my wife’s mother had scolded her sharply to do her own laundry (My mother-in-law had been washing this woman’s laundry for years and had enjoyed it and the woman’s company for many years, until she could no longer do it because of aging and her health.).  Although the scolding was years in the past, and despite the fact that her mother spoke fondly of this woman, it was this scolding and not the companionship the women mentioned to offer her memories to my wife in comfort. 

My wife’s mother had found it increasingly difficult to do as she got older, and really was struggling with how to tell her friend this.  It simply was held in too long, and when she made her sharp comments, it left a permanent mark on the other woman.   I can’t help but think that even after these many years that the proper telling of the inner workings of my mother-in-law could have melted away this version of history.  If this woman knew the fondness my mother-in-law had for this woman, that she liked her enough to wash her clothes in order to enjoy her company more fully, that surely might have washed away like the water under the bridge.  Both the bitterness and a healed memory contradict my original belief about how we don’t even notice one another sometimes, but perhaps there is a better point to make.

The second guessing and self-recrimination are not very useful or enjoyable.  To obsess on the effect we are having causes an echolalia in our experience, that confuses us and takes us out of the moment more than we admit. To double think everything in order to protect our image is wasted energy that more often or not is not even necessary.  Even if we tried to control our effect on the world around us, we can’t guarantee the outcome.  To be stuttering through our existence is no way to use the grace that comes with trusting and acting with clearer purpose. The trick is to put this theory into practice.  You’re on your own with that key component.

Two Monks Walk into a Bar…

There is a traditional fable I have heard about two Buddhist monks walking along a road until they come to a river they must cross.  There is a man there also wanting to cross, but who claims he is unable to because he doesn’t not know how to swim.  One of the monks carries him across and deposits him on the opposite bank. The two continue on without the man, walking in silence (much like my coworker and I in our commute, except we were in a Kharmic minivan). Some time passes, and the second monk voices his displeasure about the man who his companion carried across, when swimming turned out unnecessary.  The river could be waded across with little trouble.  He suspected the man simply did not want to get wet, and this was infuriating to the second monk.  The first monk looked at his friend and said, “I have put that man down a mile back, why do you still need to carry him?”

Monks: No Passengers

Great story I think, ignoring the fact that I will never be the monk to let this kind of thing go.  I not only carry that man well past the river, he had to climb on top of the other hundred resentments I forgot to put down.  Where’s the chiropractor in this old yarn, anyway? 

My own version of this Fable is one involving my younger brother Terry.  We were working together in Nassau County, Long Island.  They were raising the roads and sidewalks in this low-land working class community near the shore.  The lots were so small that one could walk on the sidewalk and hear the television, arguments, and surprisingly, the chirping of a pet squirrel.  The front door of that tiny house had an embroidered potholder hung on it, with the words, “I love squirrels” hand sewn on it and the silhouette of boxy looking squirrel to boot.  It was mid summer, and every day a heavy, untidy old woman would lumber up to any of the work crews and begin a conversation warning us about the dangers of sunburn.  Despite telling her repeatedly that we wore plenty of sunscreen, the woman would protest with “I’m just saying…” and add some detail or other about putting on lotion.  She didn’t seem to heed this advice herself, wearing a soiled lookings torn sweatshirt styled in manner of Jennifer Beals in the 80’s film “Flashdance”   This not only completely exposed her shoulders, but the garment too readily offered up a courtside view of pendulous breasts that needed as much washing as her hair and skewed remaining teeth.   I was too busy trying not to screw up my calculations about the roadwork to listen to her for very long, and usually I walked away from the woman almost before she was done talking.  The odor was challenging, to say the least.    The other crews took to actively ridiculing her, calling her a “Swamp Thing” which seemed a bit harsh to me, even if it was not entirely inaccurate.

My brother Terry came to work with me for a couple weeks, in between projects, and while I was preparing for our field work, I looked up a couple times to see him talking to this woman, interestedly.  When one day she sauntered off back to her squirrel house, I realized that Terry was the first person I had seen that had actually outlasted this woman in a conversation.  I imagined that she might be plotting to find a way to beat my brother at this game, and that she was scheming even as she lumbered away from us.  

My brother felt this was too complicated a scheme. “Her, she’s probably just thinking about her soup right now.”  I didn’t know it at the time, but I often catch myself concocting conspiracy theories, only to remember this woman and Terry’s opinion about her thoughts.  I would have to agree with him that more often than not, people seemed to have lost interest in the dramas I observe, and are now just thinking about their soup.

 To be fair, this squirrel was quite talented.  

Waterskis are so passé.

Post Script-The Foul-mouthed Space Invaders

I’m reminded of one more story about the machines in diners, and this involves a diner just outside of Kennedy Airport.  Our family business would provide survey work for the Port Authority, and we were always working on one part of Kennedy Airport or another.  When they paved the runways, we were required to stay nearby when they worked to be ready the moment they finished a pass with the paving machine.  This work was often done at night, and there were long stretches when we would go to the diner to juice up on caffeine and wait for our next bit of work. Before he found his calling as a teacher,  my youngest brother worked with us, and he was particularly wild in his late teens and early twenties. Tim joined us during his summers to make a little more money than he might earn flipping burgers.  He spent a lot of this down time playing the video game they had in the diner, and did not hold back from exclaiming his frustration every time he did poorly issuing forth loud bouquets of colorful obscenities.  After he ran out of quarters, Tim joined us at the booth, and the waitress came over to refill our coffee. 

“I never realized how foul the language in these games had become.  I’m going to mention it to the manager.  These machines really gotten out of hand these days.”

The waitress said this earnestly and without a trace of irony.  Tim did not miss a beat.

“I know,” he agreed solemnly and turning his gaze,  “I was getting embarrassed.”