The Family Of Man

The whole business about then-Judge and now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s peccadilloes in his younger days got me to reminiscing; and in the light of what we are all facing now… 

I knew, somehow, from fairly on in my life that I was not just going to ‘grow up and have a family,’ that I was cut out of different cloth, to have a different role, in life.  What that would be, I didn’t know precisely.

I’m getting closer to knowing it now.  Having a sense of the larger ‘take’ on and of the matter.

I knew, or at least could sense, that it had something to do with, in an expression, ‘setting things to rights’.   That we humans should be living with, and by, qualities like Truth, and Honor.

Truth, in all things. Including our ‘religions’…

Not that I always lived up to my inner sense of either of those qualities.  After all, I was born in the family of Man…...

I remember perhaps my first experience of living on the wild side.  I was in my junior high school years by then, as I recall, and I was passing a schoolmate on a neighborhood street one day when he told me, smiling a bit mischievously, that he had just stolen a candy bar from the nearby supermarket, and then simply went on his merry way.

What?! I thought, stunned.  He stole a candy bar…

I would never have thought to do something like that...

I wonder what that felt like, to him…

That must have felt very - daring.

Challenging…

I wonder if…

I wonder what…

The upshot of all my wondering about the matter was that I went down to the local supermarket, to see if I could do - get away with - the same thing.  Had the gumption to try the same daring escapade.  Go on; give it a try, a little voice in me was saying to me, nudging me in that direction.  Nothing ventured…

First, I cased the joint.  Saw where the loot was located.  (Right outside the entrances to the check-out lanes.)  Stood in front of one of the vaults for a bit, all casual-like.  Looked around.  Nobody watching.  Selected one of the string of pearls.  Studied it, as though for flaws.  Put it back.  Looked innocently around again.  Selected another item of obviously singular interest to me.  Studied it for a bit.  Slipped it in my front pocket; took one of the first selections, and stepped in line to purchase it.  Whereupon a young guy working in the place, having noticed where bells were going off loudly, came up to me and asked me quietly, ‘Are you going to pay for that one in your pocket, too?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, all innocent like.  And proceeded to.  And that was the end of my attempts to fit in more audaciously in the world around me.

For awhile.

By the time that I hit high school I should have known that I just wasn’t cut out for that sort of life when another Opportunity for Life Awareness came my way.  It was during my Junior year, when I was in one of the admin offices on some sort of business, and noticed a stack of stapled papers that had been run through the duplicator. (This was before the days of photocopiers.  Yes, there was such a time, and even very recently, as these things go.)  Idly, I glanced at a copy, and was somewhat stunned (there’s that neatly descriptive word again…) to see that it looked very much like - yes, it was: the sorts of questions that were going to be asked in an upcoming class of mine.  (I’m not sure what the class was called.   It may have simply been called ‘History,’ but our educators, in their special wisdom, had a habit of naming classes with funny names.  Like ‘Social Studies’.  What’s that???)  I was thus faced with a choice.  Did I dare to filch a copy (there were so many there, ‘they’ would hardly notice a missing one), and have a more leisurely look at it; or should I just let the Opportunity go.

Another such question in my short life…the outcome:

Like Red Skelton’’s The Mean Wittle Kid: I dood it.  And took it home, and ran through it - sure enough, it was my teacher’s classes’ upcoming exam  And though I knew almost all of the answers anyway, I ‘missed’ some of them at the exam time itself on purpose; not to be too obvious about my expertise.  And as that little caper turned out, I got a lesser score on the test than other kids got who were usually on my same level of ability in other tests in that class.  

So, did I learn my lesson??

I thought so, at the time.  And I should have read the tea leaves and stopped there.  But to drive the ‘matter’ home; and in for a penny…  I had one more fling at walking on the wild side before my high school days were over.  Late in my last semester, approaching graduation, I was taking a test in my Physics class, and was struggling with one question in particular; so close to the answer that I could taste it, as it were, when our teacher called Time, with everybody going up to put their test papers on the front table.  Still struggling with coming up with an answer to that question in my mind, I gave up, and found one on the paper that had just been turned in ahead of mine.  And lo and behold - wouldn’t you just know - it turned out that ours were the only two papers in all our teacher’s classes that got that particular question right.  When our teacher commented on the test’s outcome in the next day or so, he remarked on that particular curiosity, and then said - in front of the whole class - that he hadn’t been able to find out on my paper how I had calculated the answer.  My response - as if from a practiced liar - was to say that “I took a wild guess”.  (Nobody - I don’t think - noticed how my nose had just grown a bit.)  And that was that.  The end of my last year in high school.  And the end of my attempts to be ‘just like those around me’.*  

Or at least, most of them.  To my observation by then.  About how ‘people’ were living, in the world around me.  With business issues, and political issues, and specifically medical issues, beginning even then (this was the early- to mid-‘50s) to demonstrate an attitude that was very foreign to my take on things.  As to how we should be living, on this poorly put-upon but well-gifted planet.  Trashing it, and each other, all in the name of

money.  Having become an end in itself; rather than simply the means to an end - the sharing of goods and services with our fellow Man - that it basically is. 

Which observation I was able to make many years later.  And saw as the answer to our human condition.

To, that is to say, the obstacle to a better human condition.

If - when - we had worked larceny out of our hearts sufficiently enough to be able to achieve it.   

Which we are on the verge of, as we speak.

Ready.  Or not. 

P.S. Now, I wonder what would have happened if I had been successful in my various efforts to take a walk on the wild side.  And got tainted irredeemably with that brush…

     But - as it has turned out - I have been able to see beyond the veil and grasp the larger picture.

     And I encourage those of you who haven’t accomplished that little task, to do so.  Just as soon as you possibly can.  For That Time is upon us.

And P.P.S. It seems to me, on further reflection, that I have touched on this general subject before in these pages, of my journal.  But it seemed fitting to wrap this whole subject up here and now.  Before we head into

     the New World

     of our better natures.

     ..

     I talked recently in these pages about something seeming to “have come” from somewhere else.

     As have we.

     And are now returning there (at least, in that direction).

     The better for the experience.

     Or not.

     Your choice.

     As I made.  After a somewhat rickety start.  In joining - this Time around - 

     the Family of Man.

—

* I wasn’t man enough at the time to go up to that teacher afterwards in his office and confess.  I hope, and trust, that I am a better man now for the experience.

   If only because I don’t want to have to go through something like that - as ignominious as that - ever again.

   N.B.  He gave me a B for the course. (It was the only B that I got, for Academic Achievement, throughout my junior high and high school career.  I was a straight-A student, except for that grade.)  He should, by full rights, have given me less.

   But it was fit for purpose.