House of Eratosthenes

It’s Father’s Day, and I’m thinking of my son. He’s nine years old, and thinks I know everything. “That’s my Dad,” he tells people, “He knows everything!” We’re finishing up another year or two, three tops, of that. By the time he’s fifteen, of course, I’ll know absolutely nothing and he’ll be the one who knows everything.

This is something I see as a very critical juncture, because up until now when I talk him I sound just like a Democrat: Do this. Don’t do that. This is right, that is wrong. Because I said so. That’s the way fathers talk to their little kids, who in turn are expected to have not yet mastered matters of common sense. Shown a proclivity for using it now and then, maybe even demonstrated what will become a good habit or two down the road. But not quite yet to be trusted, completely, with giving candy-bearing strangers the brush-off, or crossing the street unsupervised.

Father Son And yet, chances must be taken from time to time, so a not-completely-benevolent environment will nurture the growth of a not-altogether-incompetent moppet. Time’s a-wasting. Double the age he is now, and he’ll be an adult. So I’m in the middle of an important job, and I can’t share it with his mother: I’m to teach him to think like a real man. And so since he’s been six, occasionally at first, then with increasing regularity, I talk to him like a Republican: Now undo what I did, and YOU do it over again. Of course I know the answer, but go look it up anyway ’cause I’m not telling. I’m going to be dead someday and we don’t know when; you need to know how to do this.

You want me to do WHAT? What in the WORLD, are you going to call me up when you’re a grown-up? You gonna tell your wife and kids “hang on, let me get my Dad because he knows how to do this?” I don’t THINK so. C’mon, big man, show me whatcha got. You’d better do a better job catching that ball, or those other kids are gonna shove you in a locker for sure.

This is a profound transformation. Learning to work the computer, to catch the ball, to ride the bike, these are important as exercises, but conceptually, they are all beside the point. The point is learning how to think. By the time the adolescent juices start flowing, he will figure out that just because someone says a thing is so, doesn’t necessarily make it so. Should his brain lack the horsepower to come to that realization, and in his case it most certainly does not, the hormones will be released to give him the adrenal rush, so he can figure it out the way an amoeba figures things out. One way or another, the epiphany will come, as it comes to all young men: He was not put on the planet simply to do what someone else tells him to do. Now, what’s he gonna do about it? And don’t look to Dad for the answer.

Too many of us nowadays, when we come of age, seem to settle on the answer of “I’m going to stop doing what Daddy tells me to do and start doing what someone else tells me to do.” These people have to live sheltered lives. They can’t go boating. They can’t go camping. They can’t travel. For the most part, they drive to work, get told what to do, go to the store, buy the things their wives tell them to buy, go home, get told by their wives what to do, and go to bed. To do things outside of that cloistered little routine, you have to make observations and divine facts for yourself — there is a quantity of water in the bottom of my boat, and it appears to be increasing in volume. You have to draw inferences based on these observed facts — there is a leak in my boat. You have to figure out what to do based on these inferences — paddle your ass off. And, you have to divine the consequences of failing in your new task — ready or not, we’re going swimming!

Or…we are using bait X. We used bait X last time. We bought chicken from the store on the way home. Let’s use something else.

Or…there is evidence of bears here. We have food. Bears smell food. We have nothing capable of physically separating a bear from food. So let’s find another campsite.

And therein lies the intrinsic hostility toward summertime camping adventures, and pretty much any activity out of the cloistered existence described above, borne by liberal politics and politicians. People must stick to the mainstream, because to go outside the lines is to require independent thinking, and liberals can’t tolerate that in people. It has become a strictly urban ideology. This is new. When I was a kid, liberals were good-hearted, friendly outdoor-type people. They could have hidden television remotes in their beards, but they didn’t have much to do with television remotes because they tended to eschew modern conveniences. That was supposed to be why they were concerned about environmental issues. To be a liberal, meant to have a pair of hiking boots, maybe two, hanging on your front porch so that everyone could see you had them. The conservatives were people who went to the office all the time and made money, living sheltered urban lifestyles, and didn’t care about environmental issues because they were supposed to be oblivious to the deterioration going on around us. Liberals rode bikes. Conservatives drove smart little convertibles.

The environmental issues have not changed, but the cultures have done a complete one-eighty flip-flop. Conservatives are proud of the ability they have to do things that aren’t strictly necessary anymore, like hunt for meat. Or sail a boat. Or fly a plane. Liberals, now, are the ones who congregate in offices, and their office is a coffee shop. The Boy Scouts, endeavoring to teach boys on that critical path to manhood how to do such arcane things, which aren’t strictly necessary but still good to know, earn from the liberals a variety of assaults: Lawsuits, boycotts and, when the preceding two fail, a derisive sneer.

Doing things for yourself, has become anathema to liberal-ness. A generation ago, liberals grew vegetables in their own gardens so they wouldn’t have to support the evil corporate monolith by purchasing them. Today’s liberals don’t do jack squat. They buy food in restaurants and grocery stores. Getting food any other way is something for rednecks and Ted Nugent.

And when they talk, they sound just like me, as a Dad. A Dad to a pre-nine-year-old. A Dad entrenched in the pre-manhood phase of his boy, a phase my son and I are just wrapping up. The phase where nobody is actually entrusted with anything, not even their own affairs. Outside of liberal-land, those who live in this cocoon, eventually must break out of it or else shrivel up and die.

It’s an important lesson, because once you’re a man it is simply inappropriate for people to be telling you what to do, if they aren’t signing your timesheet and your paycheck. There’s no call for it; not in this country, anyway. America has, throughout its entire existence, been struggling with the meaning of the word “free,” as in “free man.” A man unbound by indentured servitude, slavery, immaturity, legal incompetence or conviction. You own you; nobody else does. Your affairs are your own, and you are Lord and Master of them. Within the domain of his own affairs, a real man has what it takes to see what needs to be done, and then do it.

Furthermore, this thoroughly anti-American ordering-around of fully-grown-up people, introduces an ambiguity to human affairs that does not serve the interests of the person speaking. The Parable of Bob’s Dollar illustrates this.

Just like a Democrat disseminator of talking-points talking down to his constituents, saying “President Bush needs to be impeached,” I tell you to give a dollar to Bob. Never mind why. Just do it. What could it be that I have in mind? The sheer number of possibilities runs high enough to make the whole exercise unworkable.

The most likely possibility is that Bob needs a dollar, or an additional dollar, to buy something. Wouldn’t you like to know what that thing is?

Perhaps, though, it’s something else. Perhaps I caught you saying a dirty word and Bob is the treasurer. Again, the exercise is unworkable. If there’s a dollar-per-dirty-word rule, shouldn’t you know what that rule is, in order for it to work? And what if someone else said the dirty word, and I’m wrong in thinking you said it?

Maybe I have gathered the impression that you have two dollars more in your pocket than Bob has in his pocket, and I want both of you to have the same amount. Again, unworkable. How do I know how much money you have? What business is it of mine? And come to think of it, what about the money in my pocket?

Maybe Bob told me he hasn’t eaten in a long time. Who is to say Bob is any hungrier than you are?

Maybe Bob likes the smell of money. Maybe Bob likes to eat it. Why can’t I be the one who gives him the dollar?

Or perhaps it doesn’t have anything to do with actually giving Bob money. Maybe Bob has twenty nickels or ten dimes, and wants to use a vending machine that only takes quarters and dollars. If that’s the case, shouldn’t I be saying that?

There are two points to be made here. The first is that it is wholly unworkable to communicate anything meaningful to you in this circumstance, and the second is that it is wholly unworkable for any one of these strategies to realize some measure of potential for real success. I have only pointed out the most obvious possibilities of what I may mind in exhorting you to fork a dollar over to Bob; if we were to give it some real thought, we could come up with a list virtually endless. In all cases, our joint venture has foundered on the rocks before we have even set sail. There is no meeting of the minds on priorities, on contingencies, on prerequisites, or any of a number of other vital things. There cannot be. By telling you what to do, and not why, and not what the expected result is to be, I have failed to treat you with the minimum respect you deserve as a thinking adult.

So now that I have explained the Parable of Bob’s Dollar, go to a liberal website or a Democrat website. Read some of the posts and look at what’s out there: Bush has to go. Rumsfeld must go. We must stop global warming. We must earn back the respect of our “allies.” Rove has to be indicted. We must pass a global test. We have to get off foreign oil. We have to get out of Iraq. We’ve got to “shore up” Social Security. We must raise the minimum wage. We’ve got to respect womens’ right to choose. We have to legalize controlled substances. We must stop the corporations from getting away with murder. We must hold them accountable. The rich must give something back to the community. We must reduce the wealth gap. We should not execute anybody no matter what. Guns should be banned. Must have more diversity. We have to we got to we must we should we ought. Got to, ought, must, should.

What happens if we do these things? Don’t even ask.

What happens if we don’t? Don’t go there.

What is known, or thought by some to be true, which convinces someone this is a good idea? Again, don’t ask. And who has been so convinced? Stop asking questions.

Is there any way we could end up sorry for having done these things if we do them? Not gonna tell.

Their ravings read like the ramblings of a bunch of Goddamned control-freak Europeans. Must, must, must.

Or…fathers just like me, talking to their small children, children too young to be trusted to look both ways before crossing the street. Children who, one would hope, have the capacity to earn more trust than that while their age is still in the single-digits. Nevermind the inferences. Nevermind the larger strategy. Just do it.

I have to call my own Dad today. He and I don’t talk to each other like we did when I was too young to cross the street…and we don’t talk to each other the way we did when I was a bitter, petulant teenager. We talk to each other like two men. From time to time, we might share some things that any-ol’ pair of grown-up men might not share; things that begin with “the older I get, the more I notice…” He says such things, at 74, about as often as I do at 39. That right there, is a little spooky.

It must have been a challenging transformation for him. I’m beginning to realize that now, myself. My son is way too bright and deserves way more respect than to simply be told to give Bob a dollar, and to not be told the reason why. He’s coming into an age where, should I want him to give Bob a dollar, it is to my benefit to let him in on the reasoning behind it — there are better-than-even odds he knows more about what’s going on than I do, and will come up with a better plan.

From time to time I see evidence of this. It is a moment that fills me with pride, although it is somewhat eerie because it is an overture to my own obsolescence. He will, it turns out, have to know how to do things after all. Because one day, I will be dead, after all. It’s not just a figure of speech. So nursemaiding him throughout his adolescence, deep into his adulthood, telling him all along when to give Bob a dollar, is out of the question. It’s not what I was designed to do.

Because someday, I’ll be pushing up daisies. My son and I may have two decades to chew the fat as two-grown men as my own father and I have had; or we may not. He may visit the headstone often, or he may be a complete stranger to it, it matters not. What matters is that wherever he is, he’ll be living a satisfying life, maybe rich, maybe poor, but definitely enriching those around him. But above all, knowing what to do, how to do it, and not being a raging helpless pain-in-the-ass.

So the terse commands about “do this,” “don’t do that,” cross my lips less often than they used to, and from here on out I will be speaking them less and less often…and one day, I’ll stop altogether. Hopefully, before he’s eighteen. After all, I’m not raising a boy, I’m raising a man. This is America, where no man is the absolute master of any other.

That is what Father’s Day is all about. Mommas give their boys what the boys need, forever and ever. Fathers plan their own obsolescence.

This is what we, today, call a “conservative” value. Some would call it “controversial.”

I don’t know why that is. And I wish it were not so.

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Bob’s DollarSunday, June 18th, 2006

Bob’s Dollar
Sunday, June 18th, 2006