“VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE”

First frame: "I have a hammer!"    Second frame: "I can put things together!  I can knock things apart! I can alter my environment at will and make an incredible din all the while!"    Third frame: "Ah, it's great to be male!"
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            We’ve all heard the French phrase, “VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE,” which implies long live the difference between the sexes.  There are obviously innate differences, despite attempts by some to blur the distinction.  These differences should be celebrated.  After all, if it didn’t work that way, you wouldn’t be reading this.

            When I was six or seven years old, I got beat up almost daily by a red-headed kid down the street.  I was a wimp and that little sucker was tough.  In fact, years later he was a champion wrestler at San Jose State College.  My mother didn’t want me to fight, so I didn’t know how to protect myself at that early age. 

            Finally, my dad got tired of watching me stagger home with black eyes and a bloody lip, so he got down on his knees and showed me how to throw a punch.  He was a tough Irish guy with a fantastic muscular build and was probably taught how to fight by his own father, who was a boxer.

            The next time the kid went after me, I put my dad’s training to use and got the kid’s mind right.  I never had a problem with him after that and we became good friends.  But that was then.

            Many boys today channel their natural aggression vicariously by fighting characters on computer games.  But who can blame them?  Boys aren’t allowed the physical freedom to let off steam.  Unfortunately, too many are raised by single mothers, most are taught by women in their formative school years, and our culture discourages masculinity, which sometimes contributes to confusion over sexual identity.  A scientific study recently stated that testosterone levels in boys are lower today than in the past.  There must be estrogen in French fries.

            I’m not including violence by youths in the “hood,” gang violence, or behavior outside of our cultural norms.  There are other dynamics involved with these problems.  I’m only talking about “middle America” and the unisex trend foisted on kids.

            When I was in school, it was natural for boys to have harmless fights during recess or after school. No knives or guns.  Just fists. Today, boys in the classroom are taught to behave like girls with no outlet for their natural male inclinations.  They are expected to sit quietly, do their work, and refrain from turning snakes loose in class.  If a boy draws a picture of a gun, he’s immediately incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.  His Gitmo education will teach him to wail in a weird, high-pitched voice, eat a goat, and blow things up. 

            A.D.H.D. and other labels are attached to kids who can’t focus.  So when boys act like boys in the classroom, we drug them into compliance with Ritalin or Adderall.  Running laps around the track or banging heads on the football field would help.  Boys in my generation played outside, constantly seeking adventure and physical challenges.  Sadly, that’s not realistic anymore.

            Today, television cop shows depict “macho women” beating up huge bad guys.  Women are the heroes, judges, bosses, karate masters - besting men in all categories of brain and brawn.  Women in the military are shown crawling through an infiltration course.  TV shows depict the woman as the head of the family and the man as a wimp who can’t do anything right.  (Gayle will tell you that I melted a screwdriver changing a light switch with the power on.  Don’t believe her.)

            I guess I’m from the “old school” where women were women and men were men.  I still instinctively walk on the outside near the street when walking with my wife.  That’s something else my dad taught me.  It stems from an archaic practice back when people tossed garbage out of their windows onto the street, resulting in men being covered in coffee grounds and watermelon rinds.  "There is nothing new under the sun . . . "

            I’m waiting for boys to come to school in leotards, tutus, and paper angel wings.  If it’s an androgynous Peter Pan world, where is Tinker Bell?  As I recall, she was pretty good looking. . . and very feminine.

Dusty Memories

     “Welcome” to a new group of readers from the Los Gatos area in northern California.  These are mostly former classmates and old friends, so I thought I would focus on some of my memories from the “good ol’ days in Los Gatos.  Just a few quick bits and pieces.

            There are three subject areas on my blog and articles from each can be found in the archives, but I haven’t written many in the category labeled, “When I was a kid.” Back then, the wheel had just been invented and we were trying to see if we could make the first go-cart out of a wooden prune crate using those new round wheel things.  It’s hard to remember events from that long ago.  But many stories about growing up in the ‘50s can be found in my book, “The Huckleberry Days of the ‘50s - Growing up in Los Gatos.”  You can find the book on my website.

            There’s been a lot online about the remodel of the old theater in Los Gatos.  Many of us have dusty memories of that theater where you could watch a newsreel, a couple of cartoons, a serial, and two feature films for 25 cents.  In contrast with the positive memories, I remember a very embarrassing situation from those days at that old theater. 

            I was with a bunch of my rowdy teenage friends when we parked ourselves in the very center of the theater.  All went well until one of the guys was overcome by an acute attack of highly explosive flatulence.  The victim chose to proudly advertise his condition, taking advantage of the acoustic in the theater. Whether by design or chance, he hit critical mass during a quiet, romantic scene in the film.  The more he laughed, the more he contributed to a temporary hole in the ozone layer over Los Gatos.  He actually cleared out most of the main seating section. I wasn’t alone running for the exit. That’s a true story, but not a particularly good memory.  Maybe I should have told you about the popcorn instead.

            Some may remember the old railroad that went all the way from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz.  It was called the “Suntan Special.”  I remember running after freight trains with my buddies, jumping on the outside ladder, and hanging on all the way to the beach.  To avoid detection, just before we got to the terminal we’d jump off, hit the ground hard, and roll in the gravel. 

            And then there was the train trestle.  If you remember the old movie, “Stand by me,” where the kids were trying to cross a trestle as a train approached, you can relate to the anxiety we always felt when crossing that ominous structure located somewhere up by Felton.  If you missed a crossbeam and caught your leg in the gap, you’d have a major problem if a train was coming.  That was not a totally irrational fear, but in our early teens it was fun to imagine frightening scenarios.

            Snow in Los Gatos was unheard of until it hit Los Gatos and the summit area in the Santa Cruz range back in the ‘50s.  It was a great time to cut school and head for the white stuff.  I remember a carload of us loading up on snowballs and nailing car after car until we broke a windshield.  Jun Sasaki reminded me of this, but neither he nor I could remember who put the rock in the snowball.  The school administration was called and we all had to chip in to pay for a windshield replacement.

            I still remember the “fort-building” days and the competition between the ground-dwellers, who dug holes and camouflaged them, and the tree-dwellers, who had the advantage of prehensile tails for climbing.  The gopher guys usually did better, because the monkey guys didn’t have opposable thumbs and kept dropping their tools.  One of my friends built the mother of all foxholes - a huge and deep foxhole hideout in an orchard that was so well camouflaged an unsuspecting farmer drove his tractor into the foxhole head first.  That tractor is now buried under a shopping mall.

            I’ve barely scratched the surface, but I would bet that many of you have great stories from that glorious decade of the ‘50s and growing up in rural America.  For the younger readers - you missed all the fun, but if you know someone with gray hair, ask them to tell what the world was like before cell phones and video games.  You’ll be amazed. 

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Donald Duck was an Exhibitionist

     “Anthropomorphism”, is not a new word for anyone, but it is interesting how it is applied in various cultures. Books have been written on Greek and Roman gods and other polytheistic cultures and the images they worshipped. Even today most people have a concept of God that includes human characteristics. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, might say it’s an archetype from our ancestral past or Freud might consider God a “father figure”.   We tend to “create” God in our image.

            We do the same with animals.  I might be a little anthropomorphic when it comes to animals, but I blame Walt Disney. I grew up with Bambi, Donald Duck, Goofy, who was most likely my role model, and Pluto, who actually walked like a dog. Frankly, I think Mickey Mouse makes more sense than some square sponge that lives in the sea. But all those characters are tangible manifestations of anthropomorphism.  

            In the movie, “Stand by Me,” the kids were arguing over whether “Goofy” was a dog or a person.  These cartoon characters confused kids in my generation.  I spent part of my wasted youth trying to understand why Donald Duck and his nephews wore shirts and no pants.  I tried that once, but my grandmother slapped my little pink ass and put my diaper back on.

            I thought maybe Donald Duck was a pervert of some sort, but settled on the idea that ducks wearing shirts and no pants was a cultural thing. Did you know that a duck’s “quack” is the only sound that doesn’t echo?  It’s true.  As a kid I had a duck, but I let him run around naked.  I think it embarrassed my grandmother.  But I wouldn’t kill a lady bug, because I knew her “house was on fire” and she needed to “fly away home.”   

            Those rhymes and cartoon characters must have left indelible impressions on a generation of kids, so that now when people look at a bird feeding its young they think the bird “loves” the baby birds, when in fact the bird is just doing what she has been programmed to do. The bird would probably rather be dropping markers on a statue of Lenin or trying for a moving target, like a pedestrian.  I remember being the target of a strafing attack by a seagull.  This bird had to be over 200 pounds with a sever bowel disorder.  He nailed me on his first pass. One can only hope that he loaded up on rancid squid and made it all the way to Washington, D.C. 

            When my dog runs to my wife with his lips drawn back, we think he’s smiling. When he licks my hand, I think he likes me, but then I realize I hadn’t washed my hands since eating ribs. We project our humanity onto our animals and interpret their instinctive behavior as more than it probably is in reality.  But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

            I have a soft spot for animals generally, which seems to increase the older I get.  Many of my friends, who were once hunters, have given it up as they’ve aged.  I guess they’ve either lost the ability to hit anything or developed a greater appreciation for life in all its forms.

            I blame cartoons for the fact that I thought animals could talk until my senior year in college when I threw away my poster of Donald Duck and started wearing pants.  But applying human characteristic to animals is reinforced when my dog likes peanut butter sandwiches as much as I do.  I think a bit of anthropomorphism is a good thing.

Our Brave New World

     George Orwell’s book, “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s, “Brave New World,” seemed far fetched back when I read these books, but not any more.  Evidently those books have seen a resurgence of interest lately.  Let’s just scope in on one area of change.            

            With genetic engineering we can almost design our offspring to fit our preferences. Women can carry and have a baby for someone else.  I remember reading about a pregnant man.  Talk about a guy who needs a group hug…or a lobotomy.   Women can have a litter by taking a pill.  Can you imagine the feeding frenzy when eight little suckers fight for a nozzle on the “Octomom?”  Remember her?  She’s the woman who spit out an entire litter in one sneeze.  

            Japan has robotic dogs and cats for pets. Korea imported some of these robotic pets, but stopped when people choked on ball bearings and metal washers.  

            I’ll bet they’re working on a process to create a new species of computerized quasi-humans.  Some of us already have mechanical parts.  My new knee starts walking when I’m asleep.  If I had two, I’d probably find myself half-way to town before I woke up.  I’ve kicked poor old Dakota off the bed more than once.  I don’t know where Gayle went.

            We are coming up with all kinds of innovative techniques to modify who and what we are.  Mel Brooks said, “It’s good to be king.”  Some people go further and say, “It’s good to be God.”  Evidently God didn’t get it right.

            Michael Jackson changed from a black man into a white woman.   Based on his jerky body movements, he may have actually been a hyperkinetic robotic clone.  In some ways we are going beyond Huxley’s, “Brave New World” and Orwell’s predictions.  It won’t be long before we won’t know who is 100% human and who is a mechanical clone. 

            I just read a news item where robot sex is currently under development.  These creations look and feel human, according to one report. The cost of these machines may be off-set by the fact that a man won’t have to pay for dinner, wine, flowers, and all the other “preliminary” stuff and women won’t need to pretend to be in love.  Just press the right button and they’re ready to go, which is not much of a change when you think about it.

            The definition of marriage has been broadened to the point that someone might actually marry one of those “humanoid” machines.  I’m not sure why a man would want to take the chance that a divorce could give his ex-robot his house and half his retirement.  And what would a woman gain from divorce from a robot?  Maybe a mechanical arm and a leg.  It’s safer to just buy one of these things on EBay and stay uncommitted. 

            They say that you will be able to design your own robotic “partner.” You can pick height, sex, body dimensions, facial characteristics, hair color, and even whether or not you want them to talk.  That “talk” option on the order form would rarely be checked by men unless he could program the exact dialogue, like, “You’re wonderful.”  “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved”- goofy stuff like that. 

            I’ll bet that when a woman chooses her ideal robot man, his vocabulary would be limited to, “It’s my fault” and “I’m sorry.”   Human husbands learn these two phrases early.

Sex in the Military? Duh…

        "Women in the Senate Confront the Military on Sex Assaults." That was a headline on the front page of the New York Times. I got this second hand, because I don’t read media that I don’t trust.

         I’m going to quote from an article by the great Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, one of my favorite “thinkers”, and a prolific writer.

         In a recent article Sowell responded to that Times article by saying, “In a triumphalist article showcasing the growing numbers of women on the Senate Armed Services Committee, ‘one of the Senate's most testosterone-driven panels,’ the story line presents female Senators attacking male military officials over charges of sexual assaults against women in the armed forces.

         “For thousands of years, people around the world had the common sense to realize that putting young men and young women together in military operations was asking for trouble, not only for these young people of both sexes, but for the effectiveness of military forces entrusted with the fate of nations.

         “Yet, in these politically correct times, civilian leaders who increasingly have no experience whatever in the armed forces are far more willing to try to micro-manage the military than back in the days when most members of Congress and most Presidents had served in the military.”

         Sowell adds, “There seems to be something liberating about ignorance and inexperience.” Ain’t that the truth…!

        Women served in the army back when I was in basic training at Fort Ord. They were called WACs, a remnant program of WWII, terminated in 1978, but they had no contact with us. We could see them marching while being berated by foul-mouthed female drill sergeants, but they didn’t share foxholes, barracks, and communal latrines with us. The scary part was that even the female sergeants began to look good to us after a few weeks of incarceration.

        Hormones are raging in young soldiers. Hookers may have come on base during payday weekend, but most of us were like cloistered monks with pictures of our girlfriends and highly anticipated letters that were always “sniffed” before opening. The perfume aromas would be proudly shared with our buddies. But sharing your tent with a woman introduces a dynamic that destroys the military paradigm. Military men with combat experience should make these decisions - not women and quasi-male politicians.

        When I was in basic training, protective mothers (not mine) pressured our base Commander to allow their little angels to get proper sleep, so the rule changed to disallow lights on in barracks until 5 a.m. Prior to that, lights came on at 3 a.m. or so and cleaning began. Thanks to those mother hens, the lights didn’t come on until 5 a.m., but now we had to scrub the floors at 3 a.m. in the dark and polish our boots in the latrine, where lights were always on. The military hadn’t been castrated yet.

        We have women in political leadership positions along with men who never served, and a “Commander-in-Chief,” who claims to know nothing about anything, when it comes to his endless scandals. But his distain for the military is clear. With people like this using military policy for social change, can our government be serious about the strength and morale of the military?

        We are feminizing our country with government usurping the care and protection of women that men in previous generations provided. Consequently, the notion of self-reliance, responsibility, and the male protection of women has been replaced by government, making men expendable and irrelevant appendages.

        I think most men in my generation escaped this trend, because we still have an inbred sense of responsibility, including the protective instinct. In past generations, men could be men and women could be strong, but genuinely feminine at the same time. That’s one reason most members of the Tea Party and its sympathizers seem to be well past puberty.

        That’s also why old dudes will deck you for an offense against their wives, while a young metro-sexual will just giggle.