I send Stupid Stu to the Store to purchase kidney beans for my chile. He can’t find the kidney beans so instead he comes back with three kidneys from the butcher. “Kidney” and “Kidney beans” according to him, must be closely related because they have the same label.
Kidney BeansActual kidney organ
Handy Handsome Hal and I are hanging a picture. I am holding the picture in place and it’s centered, but when I ask Hal to hand me the hammer, it turns out, the hammer is not in the toolbox. I ask Hal to go into the laundry room and get the hammer hanging there — the one with the wooden handle. Instead, Handy Handsome Hal goes into the kitchen and brings me a wooden spoon. “Here you go!” He says. “It also has a wooden handle.”
Marvelous Marvin has decided that the science and math required are too difficult for him so instead of architecture, he decides to become an artist instead. Here are his first three paintings:
(All three paintings look exactly the same and are entitled: “Proper Shades”)
Marvelous Marvin’s silly sister Silvia has decided to become a composer. Here’s is a short selection from her Second, Sixth, and Seventh symphonies. (Each symphony is exactly the same). White-noise-sound-20sec-mono-44100Hz.ogg
In our Tennis Tournament, Timmy the Tennis Player and I draw each other as partners. Our opponents, new to both of us, are two lefties. We know nothing else about them — not their records, not their rankings. Timmy comes over to me and says, “It’ll be easy to beat them! I played a lefty once in high school. He hit everything cross court! All we have to do is cover the cross-court angles! When I serve, you’ll never have to worry about him going right up the line. Just poach right away!”
Me: “Well, Timmy, I’ve played against plenty of left-handers and I can assure you that they don’t always hit cross-court! Have you ever watched Nadal?”
Timmy: “Oh, Nadal’s an exception! He’s brilliant! But your typical lefty hits cross-court. They just can’t or won’t hit down the line. I think the fact that the net is higher there throws them off.”
Me: “Why on earth would it be harder for a lefty to hit down the line than a righty?”
Timmy: “I don’t know. I think it probably has something to do with the earth’s rotation. It’s clockwise like being a right hander. It’s the right way. So, the lefty is just unnatural. So they can’t hit down the line. Believe me! I know! I played a left-hander, like I said.”
Me: “Yes, I know Timmy, but I’ve had lots of experience with left-handed players. My brother is left-handed. My son is left-handed and though he doesn’t play tennis, he’s extremely coordinated. He plays musical instruments, draws, juggles — and I’ve watched plenty of left-handed pros on TV. They’re perfectly capable of hitting any shot a righty does.”
Timmy: “You’ll see!”
————————————
Which one of these is different?
Flower of the Trumpet TreeWhite RoseWhite RoseWhite Rose
Flora the Flubbing Florists says the one in the last one is different. Why? Because it’s a shade darker.
Come on people. Grow up. We’re adult humans, not viruses. We have brains. Let’s use them.
I should know what God and man is. — Alfred Lord Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall
I love flowers. I love taking pictures of flowers. They amaze me because of their beauty, but that’s only where love starts; not where it ends.
Imagine: a flower depending on bees (as well as other insects) for pollination! Bees depend collectively on the flower for their continued existence. What we see now are two groups of living beings, from very different parts of the Great Tree of Life, who have “learned” (mainly in an evolutionary sense) that they are better off working as partners.
I can see why it’s tempting for some people to look at this as a “proof” of an active God who created all of creation in a relative eye blink. To me, though, it’s even more wonderful to contemplate that this collaboration took work and accommodation on both sides; that it evolved over time; that is still evolving. And with each step, is there something analogous to trust that accumulates in both flower and bee?
Can you imagine what the bee sees, feels, smells?
There are, after all, plants who eat insects; e.g., the Honeydew, Venus Fly-trap, and Pitcher Plant. So, if we look at it from the plant’s perspective, it might be a huge windfall to be the most beautiful and attractive flower imaginable and to eat every last honeybee in one summer. The plant would “win” a windfall of nitrogen. Similarly, we can imagine a bee-like insect who comes to the plant and rather than simply “gathering pollen,” it devours the entire plant. Lots of calories.
That one year.
Of course, next year, there would be no such plants to eat or even gather pollen from. Of course, it isn’t only flowers and bees who have such an arrangement. It’s all over the place!
Collaboration and cooperation are not just features of the ecosystem, of course. The flower may be the most beautiful and showy part of a “flowering plant,” but it not the only part. The roots are just as vital as is the stem as are the leaves as are the flowers. They are in balance. All are important. And, in a way, each has its own beauty.
Three leaves in the San Diego sunset. Exposed root of a tree. But which one? Should I cover it?
Back to the bees though — what could be a more intimate form of cooperation? The flower actually depends on the bee to fulfill its sexual roles! The flower is associated with sexual love in many ways and in many different societies. And sexual reproduction, whether by flower, bee, or human is implicitly saying to the universe, indeed, shouting, whispering, and singing to the universe: “There is still more; there is still something better to strive for; an individual such as never has existed before and a species that will continue to explore what is possible. Life will not end with my life. I am a part of all life that ever has existed or ever will exist. Yes!”
Not bees, nor humans, nor even roses are a timeless inviolate and changeless perfection of form and function that never again needs to change. The essence of life is change balanced with stability. Change by itself is chaos. And stability without change is delusional. More accurately, it’s delusional to start with, but ultimately it is death. Any system, person, species, government, town, institution that declares itself perfect and unchangeable regardless of circumstances is a system, person, species, government, town, institution that has just signed its own death warrant.
Every part of the plant is important. And every part receives benefit. Everyone in human society benefits from the work of the whole but not everyone receives benefit. If a flower neglects its roots, or its stems, or its leaves, the whole plant will die. For our society to survive, it must change. And one of the changes near the top of that list is to make our society more fair. If we don’t, the whole flower of our civilization will die. As will the bees.
Check this out. What is this? It’s obviously the stump of a dead tree. Or, perhaps more accurately, it’s the dead and broken trunk of a tree.
Or, is it?
It took me about five minutes to convince myself that all of those yellow flowers and associated green leaves are part of that same tree!
Here’s another example. Where did these mushrooms come from? As you likely know, they grow from spores. But where did these spores come from? I didn’t plant them. There are no mushrooms nearby. But somehow, a puff of spores wafted on the wind and found an appreciative stretch of well-shaded damp ground.
Life is amazing. Well, after all, it’s been doing its thing for 4.5 billion years. And, when I say “it”, of course, I really mean “we” because all of life — you, me, and everyone else and every other life form on this planet, like it or not, are on this same spaceship earth.
Career Advice from Polonius: To Thine Own Self be True
“To thine own self be true.” This advice comes from Polonius who is giving advice to his son in Act I, scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Polonius says: “This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Let’s focus on the first part.
One of the dreams of education is to customize teaching to the specific learning style(s) of individual students. This was a hot topic when I was in graduate school.
Some day, your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren may be the beneficiaries of learning experiences that are individualized to their specific styles. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it could happen. It isn’t only a question of research on what various styles are and how to present material that resonates with these various styles. There is also the question of priorities and dollars and personnel.
But meanwhile, here’s the good news. You don’t have to wait for another 50 years of research and a reshuffling of priorities so folx spend more money on education and less on, let’s say, cosmetics and professional sports. As I say, don’t hold your breath.
But let’s get back to the good news. The good news is that you can discover for yourself how to maximize your own learning as well as what your particular talents are.
One cautionary note: Don’t be a jerk about it. If you’re in a group dealing with grief, don’t say, “Well, I learn best if a subject is reduced to a few hundred polynomial formulae. So, let’s start right there. Let’s reduce grief to three dimensions. Later, of course, we can do a proper multidimensional scaling exercise to determine the optimal number of dimensions.”
No. Don’t say that. Of course, you’re free to suggest that approach, but chances are, in this situation, and in most realistic group situations, you will be treated to information in the same manner as many others who have different styles from yours.
However, in many situations, you are, far and away the main important stakeholder. You can use your knowledge of how things work for you in order to strategize and plan how you will learn about things. You can organize and arrange your work so you’ll be more productive.
Here’s a trivial example. I have learned that my eyes have a wisdom of their own. If, for instance, I’m going out for a walk around the garden to take some pictures of the sunset on the flowers, I grab my stuff and find myself turning and staring at the hat-rack on the way out the door. When I was younger, I would ignore this. But what I have learned is that my eyes are really good at knowing what to look at. So, even if I’m in a hurry, I take a moment to reflect on why my eyes are looking there. And, then, it comes to me. I’ll do better if I wear a brimmed hat to keep the sun out of my eyes while I look at my iPhone.
By paying attention to this little quirk, I’ve saved myself a lot of grief over the years; e.g., not left the house without my wallet, etc.
Here’s another example. I’m very good at seeing “patterns” emerge from a small number of examples or when there is considerable noise involved. This serves me well as my hearing diminishes because I can use top-down processing. Generally, but not always, I understand what people are saying. If I try to listen to a foreign language tape that is only isolated audio words, I have no hope of knowing what they are saying. “Key” “Tee”, “Pea”, sound exactly the same.
Seeing patterns easily is generally a nice capacity. However, I’m horrible at finding my own typos immediately after I write something. I actually “see” what I meant to type. A week later, I’m pretty good at catching the errors. If I had more patience, I would wait a week to proofread for every blog post, but being patient isn’t a strength either. I do go back over old posts occasionally and fix the typos (which I never saw at the time).
When I go to the movies — remember when we used to go to movies? — anyway, if I went to a comedy, I was very likely to laugh too soon. I “hear” the punchline two lines earlier than it actually occurs. There’s no benefit to my laughing early! But that’s when the punchline hits me. I do keep it soft so as not to disturb the others in the audience. On the other hand, I’m pretty good at “discovering” the playing patterns of my tennis opponents and anticipating what they are going to do. Naturally, I don’t always guess right, but I do way better than chance.
I bring up these examples to illustrate a generality; that most of these individual differences have an upside and a downside. Mainly, learning about my own styles and capacities is something I learned well after leaving high school. That makes sense. In school — or at least, the schools I went to — everybody got the same instruction in the same way almost all the time. But as an adult, you often have a lot of control over your own timing, flow of information, etc. I think it’s worth your while to look back at your experience and discover what you have difficulty with, what you’re OK at and what you are exceptionally good at. When you have a choice, use the approach you’re really good at.
I fear for our children. And our children’s children.
But not for Great White Sharks, or wolves, or forest fires or Grizzly Bears.
High in the thin invisible air, higher than the condor soars — deep, deep in the dark underground rivers of the world and in the crushing ocean depths, there lurks a monster more terrible than these by far.
Its tiny stinging tendrils reach out from the ocean, the sky, the forests.
They are ugly and they reek though often they snake out unseen to claim their victims.
Each year the monster grows and claims more victims, condemning them to death — not the swift but terrible death of the Grizzly’s jaws — or the snap of a Great White Shark.
Instead, the victim succumbs to the slow, grey, agonizing and painful cancer of rotting disease. In the tumor’s desire for unlimited growth, it sucks the life from its victim over months or years. The tumor, of course, like all creatures of pure greed, has no life of its own. It cannot sustain its own life but must prey on others. That is the nature of Greed, of Cancer, and of Pollution – three names for three heads of one deadly dog: Cerberus.
Ugly, fetid, foul, poisonous tentacles of pollution encircle our children and they are closing in. They are closing in.
And yet, we have all the weapons we need: our will.
We can withdraw the hand of Greed that feeds Today to the deadly beast.
And all through the massive hall of mirrors, the countless years called:
“The Infinite Tomorrow”,
our progeny will thank us.
Unlike us, their empathy will be strong, valued, and nearly ubiquitous. So, they will know that, as absurd as it sounds, this was not an easy decision for us. It was a near thing. We nearly doomed our entire species to lives of disease, disaster, and despair.
“Where the hell is Vladdy? He was…where’s my f###ing watch? Isn’t anybody around here competent? Where’s my watch? Hello? What the … ? Where’s my Adderall? Vladdy? Vladdy? Where’s my Vladdy?!”
He stuck out his hand and stoved two of his teeny fingers against the cold stone wall. He screamed in protest at the pain, though most folx would have laughed it off. He blinked and tried to look around; re-orient himself. He was coming down from the Adderall. Nothing made sense. He was Undisputed King of the Universe. Yet, he seemed to be trapped in … well … it looked to him more like a prison cell than anything else.
“F###! It is a prison cell! “ he yelled aloud to no-one in particular. “That’s right! God damn! I wish I believed in God because then … but without any of that Golden Rule crap or all the other Bull$hit. I just want a God I can call on to bail me out of trouble. Where the hell is my Vladdy?”
He alternated among muttering, screaming, talking aloud, and pounding his teeny fists against each other. His long litany of people to blame was quite long by now. You couldn’t really say that he had the list memorized. It varied a lot from day to day, but it generally included at least the following minimal set:
{CIA, FBI, NSC, NSA, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Time, FORTUNE, FORBES, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, the US Military generally, and the USAF, USN, Army, Coast Guard, Marines, and Space Force in particular; The Wall Street Journal, the Obamas, the Clintons, FDR, JFK, Jimmy Carter, RINOS, rhinos, the UN, the EU, Brexit, Bad Luck, George Soros, Bill Gates, Bad Germs, Doctors, WHO, Doctor WHO, the FDA, OSHA, EPA, NASA, People of Color, Mexico, People of Color from Mexico, Asians, Asia, Africa, South America, Canada, immigrants, emigrants, migrants, grants, rants, ants, NTSB, China, UK, Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, hemispheres, trans people, cis people, people with big hands, people with other big stuff, any other people}.
“Look at this place! I need a palace! Not this place! Wait. All I need is the letter ‘A’ and I can change the “place” into “palace” — hah! I may be down, but I’m definitely not out. Now, where the hell to get an “A”? Hey, God!! YO!! Give me an ‘A’ — no? Nothing. That’s how it’s gonna be huh? Wait till I get out of here! Hey! You want to prove you exist? Give me an ‘A’ right now! No? Then, do me a favor and just kill me right this second.”
Did you ever have one of those dreams where you fall off your bike and you jerk awake suddenly? Or, perhaps you’ve dreamt of flying but then it turns into a dream of falling and depending on your personality, it’s either kind of fun or absolutely terrifying. For him, it was terrifying. And, even though it only lasted for ten minutes, it seemed to him as thought it lasted forever. He never admitted fear during his entirely cowardly life before prison and he wasn’t about to start now. He kept a stack of chips close at hand so he could always put one or two on his shoulder. After a ten minute free fall of sheer dark pinwheeling terror, he judged that putting a whole damned stack of chips on his shoulder was not out of line. So, it’s perhaps understandable that his first words to Saint Peter were:
“Who the F### are you? And where the F### am I?”
I don’t know how you imagine St. Peter’s voice, but I think of it as full and deep like an opera singer’s voice. No. Not like an opera singer but more like a duet with a chorus in the background, yet with every word completely intelligible no matter how many hair cells you’ve lost along the way because you were a drummer in a Rock Band, say, or served in live combat unlike the protagonist of our current story, who would do anything and tell any lie to stay as far away as possible from live combat.
So, the operatic fullness of St. Peter’s voice echoed as though in a nested set of cathedrals, each connected to others across the globe and back through millennia. This is what he said:
“We are here for the sorting. It won’t take long.”
Perhaps it should appear more like this:
“We are here for the sorting. It won’t take long.”
But that just makes it sound big, not resonant or magical. Best to stick with ancillary descriptions, wouldn’t you say? Let’s get back to the response of our protagonist.
“Sorting? What sorting? Wait! Is this that heaven or hell thingy? That’s all BS to grab money — or, so I thought. What?”
Again the voice — a voice that had overtones of oceans roaring, rain falling, thunder booming, bells chiming, children laughing, wolves howling, and the nightingale singing. This time it said:
“Oh, no. Not at all. It’s much more specific and subtle.”
Now you or I might wait till we heard more about the situation we were in before saying anything else. Here’s the odd thing. Some people would view as brave just thoughtlessly blurting out something that could alter the course of your whole life — or afterlife. But I view rashness as a sign of weakness and cowardliness. In essence, the blurter cannot stand not knowing the outcome. They turn to jelly in the face of the unknown. It takes more courage to gather data, gather data, always upgrading and updating your plan and doing the best that you know how. That’s wisdom and courage. Blurting out the first thing that flashes in your brain is neither. But that is what our protagonist is all about.
“Well, I am rich and famous! So give me a great place — the greatest place — in all of heaven. Obviously!”
I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t think of Christian Saints as smiling exactly. Perhaps they have that beatific “All is Life and Life is All and God is All and All is Good” loving everything smile. Come to think of it, it’s very much like Buddha’s smile.
But no. Saint Peter’s smile this time wasn’t that smile. It was a genuine smile about 50% camaraderie. It also held 40% of the usual saintly “God is in me and you and it’s all good” smile. But, I swear, there — right there — at the corner of his lips — was 10% the smile of irony, of karmic justice, of snark, of satire, — all my favorite genres rolled into one. It cannot be said that it was a purely saintly smile. But, after all, anyone would have to be heartless not to see the beauty and the wisdom in our protagonist’s new “assignment” among the world of the living, or, more likely a world that seems like the world of the living.
Our protagonist found himself propelled backward in time to the womb of a very dark woman in Brazil. Her tribe had lived in this part of the rain forest for millennia. Now, they were being forced out for — well, I could give you a long causal chain — or really network — but let’s just cut to the chase — she was being forced out, along with her whole tribe for greed. That’s the bottom line. Some extremely wealthy people wanted to become more extremely wealthy and they didn’t really care if it meant uprooting a 5000 year old civilization and making life miserable for every one of the inhabitants. Oh, and I should mention, hastening global climate change catastrophes as well.
Anyway, she had to sell her own body and later her young daughter’s body as well (our protagonist in a former life) for food and transportation. It was a perilous journey; a difficult journey; a hellish journey. More than once, the child had been ready to end it all, but the mother comforted the child, now lame from too many beatings at the hands of her many molesters and urged her on. The mother told the child of a land where there would be no more beatings. In this land, they didn’t care about where you came from. They didn’t care about the color of your skin. They would give you a chance. No-one was above the law. When we get to this promised land, all will be well. All will be well is what she told her child.
When they finally got to that fabled land of milk and honey, that shining city upon the hill, something slightly different from the mother’s dream for her daughter came to pass.
They were separated and never saw each other again. They yelled and screamed for each other but there were just the two of them and those who pulled them steadily farther apart were many and armed and strong. Each heard the voice of the other becoming fainter and fainter. At last though, nothing but memory.
But that didn’t stop the molestations; not for mother; nor for her daughter.
Can it be that earth is actually an elaborate method to extract punishment? If so, how many lifetimes will it take for our protagonist to atone?
Does each person really write, direct, and star in their own play? Or, are some of us, merely bit players in dramas constructed for another purpose entirely?
If we view Karma this way, isn’t there also a danger of blaming people born into bad circumstances because they must have done something bad in their “previous life”?
I believe we can co-construct the future on this earth. We can collectively write the play, direct it, and play parts. Of course, we’ll have to improvise as well. We can make this world less filled with pain, less filled with racism, less filled with misogyny, and more filled with truth and beauty and grace.
Will we be rewarded in an afterlife?
I don’t know.
But I do know we will be rewarded through the lives that come after. Let’s make the world better for those lives. Countless millions made the world we live in better for us.
[The poem below is one I wrote about 60 years ago. I still feel the same way today. So, here’s an example of something that hasn’t changed about me psychologically despite all that’s happened in my world and in the world..]
I’ve been thinking a lot about the psychology of change lately. For one thing, it’s quite relevant to the pivot projects (https://pivotprojects.org)
I thought it would be fun to write a series of blog posts on experiences of personal change, either as a student, as a teacher, or more commonly, neither. It would be even more fun if readers shared a bit about their experiences of psychological change. Wouldn’t it be to everyone’s benefit if we understood the general principles of psychological change so that we can do a better job adapting to this ever-changing world? So, think of the example below as just “my turn.” And, then, it will be your turn.
When I was in “Junior High School,” I was interested in some parts of school and not so much in others. I didn’t care about my grades but they were okay because at that point, I had a very good memory. And, then, one day near the end of eighth grade, I happened upon a book in our library that said good grades were important because — guess what?
You’ll get into college? Nope.
That you’ll get a better paying job? Nope.
This book claimed a reward much more meaningful than either of those were at that point in my life. It claimed that if a guy got good grades, he’d be liked by the girls! Here was a secret formula to success with girls. All I had to do was get good grades!
It did not even occur to me at the time that this claim probably had zero data behind it. It was likely written to induce guys to get good grades. I honestly don’t even think it said anything about what it meant for girls to get good grades. However, that may have been because the book was titled and aimed solely at boys. Of course, it could simply be the rampant sexism that is with us still — (sigh) — like that one guest who you know is about to barf on your rug because they’ve had too much to drink, and they live next door and they’re being obnoxious and you really just wish your neighbor would head home but they don’t. Instead, they stay until they disgust and insult everyone, barf on the carpet, then start screaming at you for serving cheap wine. That guest is what continued sexism & misogyny is like for most us. It’s also what all the other superiority BS is like for most of us.
I had no such consciousness at the time. I just remember reading it and feeling as though I had discovered something akin to “The Fountain of Youth” or “El Dorado.” What’s amazing is that reading something in a book altered my behavior immediately and in a way that lasted for years. Getting girls to like me. That was a motivation that I could tie into. I think because getting girls was also tied into competition, it also changed me so that I viewed getting the best grades as winning. I already liked to win! Oh, yes. I was competitive. Overly competitive. But I had never thought of grades in school as any kind of competition. I got my grades based on how well I did and you got your grades based on how well you did. The two had been, in my mind, completely unrelated events.
Until I read that passage.
How many people did that passage impact? For me, even if it wasn’t based on any real data, it had a positive impact. I got good grades and I did have wonderful girlfriends. I got praise from my classmates too. I didn’t ever really feel the envy & hate portrayed in so many modern movies about high school. Maybe I was just too busy studying to notice.
I wonder if the same passage could have impacted some people’s lives negatively? Maybe someone read that and they just found out that they had gotten their girlfriend pregnant. They might have read such a passage and thought it was a cruel irony. Or, perhaps they were gay. Or, maybe they had a learning disability and were already working their tail off to keep a C average.
And, I suppose that the majority of kids my age who read it might have known it was BS from the git-go. On them, it had little or no effect.
Even if I am the only one to have ever taken it seriously, it is pretty remarkable nonetheless that my behavior could be pushed into a new state simply by reading a sentence or two in a book.
This essay describes some of the blockages to change; in particular, what is sometimes called “cognitive dissonance” In general, our decisions, unlike those of classical economic theory, are path-dependent. https://petersironwood.com/2019/07/18/essays-on-america-wednesday/
Dr. J. Clarence Thompson shuffled thorough his unfolded shirts. He glanced at the clock. “Crap!” he muttered, “I’m going to be late. Next time, I’m going to put my shirts away so I know where to find the one I want.”
He muttered to himself a lot since he had been “retired” from his job teaching topology at nearby Kansas State University. “Damn. I’m going to be late for my tee time. Maybe I should call…hold on. Here we go.” At last Dr. J. Found the green and gold Hawaiian shirt he had been looking for. Some of his other golf shirts restricted his movements. He had enough trouble staying in the fairway. “What the hell? What’s with this shirt.”
Let me explain. Dr. J. Had a habit of removing his shirts so that at least one, and sometimes both sleeves were inside out. This time though, the shirt was twisted in some very odd way. Like the whole shirt was inside out inside one of the sleeves which was itself inside out.
“This kind of crap always happens when you’re in too much of a damned hurry. I should have just gotten up earlier. Or, skipped breakfast. But that never works. What the hell is wrong with this shirt?”
Without really meaning to, he scrunched his eyebrows together and clenched his teeth. He hated being late for a tee time. He snorted ruefully. “Shouldn’t really be that hard for a topology professor. Ex-professor,” he reminded himself. “This is ridiculous. The shirt…Okay…the sleeve is inside the shirt but he shirt is inside the sleeve that the…Hey, Jenni…Oh, crap.”
He had promised himself to stop talking to his deceased wife. Or, to use her name any more than necessary. Every time he thought of her, it pained him. Stupid skiing accident. He pursed his lips together tightly. She liked golf. At least that’s a safe sport. You don’t break your neck running into a tree.
Dr. J. thought back to a time he had landed in the woods a few yards off the fairway. He had decided to try hitting the ball toward the hole rather than taking the easy way out and chipping it out onto the fairway. A wasted shot, he had thought. Instead of streaming through the small gap, the golf ball had hit a tree and whizzed back inches from his head. He now lay 40 yards farther from the hole. But he tried it one more time with exactly the same result. Finally, he had “taken his medicine” and chipped out into the fairway. Triple bogey despite some nice putting on the green.
“All right then. Let’s take this one step at a time. I pull the sleeve out this way…and … WHAT?!”
Dr. J. stared at where his left hand should be. It. Was. Not. There. But…there was no blood. “How could there be? I haven’t cut himself. But where the hell is my hand!? Call 911? And say what? They’ll put me in the looney bin for sure. It doesn’t feel like my hand is gone. But maybe it is a phantom limb phenomenon. No. It can’t be gone.”
He snapped his fingers. He felt his fingers snapping. But there was no sound. “There!” he shouted joyously. “I hear it. But…how can it take that long for the sound to get here.”
“I need a beer. Jennifer? Can you… oh crap, that’s right. Stupid skiing accident. Damn her! How could you be so thoughtless?! Beer? I need whiskey. I will pull my hand out with my other hand. Then, I will call Carl and tell them I can’t make it. Twisted my ankle. I’m not going to tell them about … this. I just need to calm down and think this through. What is that damned racket? No wonder I can’t think straight.”
In the background, CNN was interviewing some random “man on the street” and Mister Random was saying: “He’s the only politician who tells it like it is. He doesn’t pretend to be all politically correct. You know? He’s truthful.”
The reporter put the mike near his own mouth and asked, “How do you know he’s truthful?”
“He’s told us! He told us to watch out for — no offense — but you work for the fake news! You guys are all liars. He’s the only source of truth. It’s refreshing.”
Dr. J. glanced at the TV and saw the reporter trying hard not to let his feelings show on his face as he asked again, “And the way you know he tells the truth is that he says he tells the truth?”
“Yeah, exactly!”
Dr. J. had long ago discovered that when you were absolutely stuck in solving a problem, that it often helped to think about something completely different for a few moments. He shook his head at the hapless fool being interviewed on TV. A vivid picture formed itself in Dr. J.’s imagination. He saw a large orange “picture” of a Klein’s Bottle. Of course, it wasn’t really a picture, just a children’s illustration. Of course, the “logic” of the interviewee wasn’t really a Klein’s Bottle. It was simply a circle that fed itself forever. The hapless fan had no more idea how foolish his circular reasoning was than the eddy at the end of an oar worries about … well … anything. Water doesn’t worry. It is being pushed about by external forces. In the same way, this “fan” had been manipulated into going in a circle. Dr. J. recalled an illustration in a Scientific American article he had read about ants following pheromone trails. Normally, the ants coordinated marvelously with each other and found their way home without a hitch.
But you could turn them into a death cult. Lay a circular trail of pheromones and the ants would follow each other in a circle until they starved to death.
“Okay, enough of that. Back to the problem at hand.” Dr. J. had begun muttering to himself again. “How do I get my hand out? Maybe if I reach in … like so … from the other side.”
Carl had worked hard to convince the rest of his threesome to come with him. Carl was popular but Dr. J. was difficult for most people to deal with. But they did come, because, as Carl explained, we look out for each other at this age. It wasn’t like Dr. J. to simply forget about their regular Thursday early tee time and not even call. There was no knock at the door, but the apartments at Happy Acres afforded only a few places to hide an extra key. Carl opened the door. Something, he was sure, was amiss. But what?
They searched the apartment and found no note, no hint of where he had gone. Carl also noted that Dr. J. had left the thermostat set at 72. He would never leave it that hot when he was out and about.
After an hour’s search, they called the police who very politely explained that if they wanted to file a missing person’s report, they could, but that, in his experience, the person always turned up shortly and most of the time, they turned up alive. Not always, but almost always. In any case, police policy forbid them from searching for him or indeed, doing any real investigative work for 24 hours.
Carl excelled at being persuasive. After all, he had been in the 100 percent club his entire career at Megamax. But he could not move the police officer into action. He put down the phone and realized he had no idea what to do either. He felt sure something was wrong, but he couldn’t really put his finger on anything in particular. Dr. J’s house looked as it always did. It did seem odd, come to think of it, the way that shirt is all folded in on itself.
“Hey, guys, come take a look at this weird shirt.”
Ben put a very serious look on his face and said, “That’s it! He’s in the pocket of his own shirt!”
Then, he and Avram began laughing uproariously.
Carl joined in the fun himself. But he still persisted. “Okay, okay, very funny. But it — I mean if you were going away for a week or two, would you leave your shirt lying on the floor, all twisted up like this?”
Ben chuckled. He could see a great opportunity to ham it up. And in the process, he’d jolly Carl out of being worried over nothing.
“Yeah, here, I’ll solve the mystery. The mystery of the twisted shirt! Watch this folks! I, Ben Sherlock, will place my hand into what appears to be an ordinary shirt!”
That turned out to have been a huge mistake. As were all the successive rescue attempts.
petersironwood 
