9/11 Generation

I wrote this post last year on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I think it's still appropriate.

A few months after September 11th when the horrors of that day had receded into ache and outrage, my son came up to me and said, “You know, Grandma and Grandpa had December 7th, and you and Mom had November 22nd, but until September 11th I hadn’t experienced a defining moment in time.”

It’s been ten years since 9/11 and I’m still thinking about his comment. He seemed to be saying that 9/11 was a generational event. “It’s an anchor in time,” my son said when questioned further. “I’ll always know where I was and what I was doing when the towers came down and those planes flew into the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.”

In that regard I understood what he meant. I wasn’t around at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, but I was eleven when Kennedy was assassinated. Like most folks, I still remember where I was when I heard the news—fifth grade at Jefferson School, late afternoon just before the bell ended classes that day. The announcement came over the intercom, and I was scribbling in my notebook and not paying attention until I heard our teacher sobbing and looked up to see her covering her face with her hands. I remember walking home from school thinking, What does it mean? I still wonder.

So when my son said September 11th left him with something I thought, What does he mean? The events of that day resulted in a bone-chilling tragedy of great complexity but for my son it represented something more. But was it generational? I felt traumatized by 9/11 as well, and I’m a generation removed from my son. Do we need tragedies to anchor us in time? Are we drifting on the wind like Forrest Gump’s feather until something bad grabs us and shakes us to our core, something so dreadful that it transcends time? Why can’t moments of happiness traumatize us for the better?

As I think about it, I realize that my son was right, but not in the way I thought. September 11th was a generational moment, not because it belonged to a single generation—young people like my son—but because it was a trans-generational moment shared by everyone with the capacity to feel pain and loss, revere heroism and respond to the suffering of the innocent. That dreadful day made us think about our loved ones in a different way. It blurred the differences between young and old, forced us to examine our lives and our actions and bound all of us into a powerful force for good—the 9/11 generation.

Tomorrow: Conclusion of Giant Killer

Giant Killer

Several of you asked if I ever found the albino tadpole mentioned in "Burgie the Carpet King." As Paul Harvey would have said,"Here's the rest of the story."

In the early 60s, I whiled away summer days under the sycamore tree in the front yard of our modest Kilarney Park home. Never far away was my best friend Ricky Delgado. One morning Ricky said, “Let’s go check out Cabrillo Creek.”

“Naw.” I was enjoying a library book about a pet turtle that solved crimes.

Ricky stretched like a bored cat. “Maybe we’ll find something interesting. My cousin lives in Sacramento and once saw an alligator sunning itself on a floating refrigerator in the Sacramento River. Maybe today we’ll find something even better.”

“Better than an alligator?”

“Did you hear that Bruce Moxley spotted an albino tadpole in the creek last week?”

I slammed my book shut. “No way!” Moxley was the most popular kid in the fifth grade.

“I swear.” He held a hand over his heart.

An alligator would be super cool, even though my parents would never let me keep one. But tadpoles fell under the category of “Flushable Pets,” the only type my parents allowed.

Cabrillo Creek began as an irrigation canal back when peach, apricot and pear orchards blanketed the county. The canal now channeled rainwater away from new housing developments, such as Kilarney Park. Over the years, compost heaps and discarded landscape materials had been dumped into it. Surrounded by houses and strip malls, Cabrillo Creek contained only a trickle of water during steamy summer months, but we kids thought of it as an untamed Amazon.

In anticipation of capturing an albino tadpole, I dumped screws and bolts from a mayonnaise jar Dad kept on his garage workbench, wedging it between the jaws of the bookrack on the back fender of my Schwinn. Ricky told me not to ask for permission to go because my mother was the neighborhood’s reigning queen of NO. She didn’t approve of Ricky, who had a juvenile record for stealing.

The day was warming up as Ricky and I pedaled to the creek, my face turning red as I struggled to keep up with him. When we reached the creek we stashed our bikes under shrubs and descended to the trickle of slow moving water at the bottom. With the sun beating down on us, we hunted for the illusive albino tadpole. As usual my mouth was working at full throttle; I chattered nonstop until Ricky finally broke down and said, “We don’t have a chance in hell of finding that tadpole unless it’s deaf, so shut the f*ck up!”

Several times I stumbled and nearly broke the mayonnaise jar. This was starting to feel like a bad idea, far less desirable than sitting under my sycamore tree reading Waterberry the Crime-Solving Turtle. The space between puddles grew longer as we squinted into every puddle we encountered. I finally glanced at my prized Zorro watch and saw that several hours had passed. Time had come to abandon the search and head home, but Ricky wasn’t one to accept defeat easily and pressed on.

Near a bend in the creek we encountered a deep puddle with a rusty washing machine peppered with pellet gun holes. It lay on its side in a puddle, its interior filled with brackish water. The detached lid was submerged a few feet away. Ricky and I were about to move on when something caught our eye; we both sucked in gulps of air and silently pointed—sunning itself on the white washing machine lid, invisible to all but the most observant eyes, was the illusive albino tadpole.

Its tiny brain managed to sense danger; it dashed from its resting place and disappeared inside the washing machine. With the mayonnaise jar in hand, I scurried over, bent down and swished the jar back and forth inside the washer. When I examined the jar, swimming frantically inside was the tadpole. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. This tadpole would grow into a white frog, a guaranteed crowd pleaser for Show and Tell when we returned to school at summer’s end.

In our quest for tadpole treasure, we’d traveled farther than I’d ever been without parental supervision. I’d be in hot water if my folks knew I’d come this far.

“What’s that?” Ricky said, pointing at shiny objects on the shadowed slope leading to the top of a nearby overpass. They looked like bikes. Ricky climbed up to explore, and retreated with breakneck speed. “We’re outta here!”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“C’mon, move your ass!”

He’d obviously recognized the bikes, but he was beating a retreat without further comment.

I’d been too distracted by the albino tadpole to notice the billboard towering above us. Dad and I often drove down the El Camino Real on our way to visit Grandma so the colossal woman should have been familiar, but she wasn’t.

Piercing the blue unblemished sky, the billboard’s wood scaffold rose thirty feet above the cars whooshing past on the highway below. Written in big letters was:

New

Kilarney Park Homes

in Five Miles

Had we come five miles?

My emotions, triggered by the giant lady painted on the billboard—a behemoth beauty with golden hair, pearly skin, perfect teeth and cherry red lips—were ricocheting in my head like a pinball. I knew little of Scottish clothing and would have had difficulty finding Scotland on a map, but I was enthralled by the giantess’ loose-fitting vest laced up the front, and her jaunty tartan tam and matching sash. I’d never seen bagpipes and could only wonder what it was being squeezed in her hands. I had no idea that this enormous lady, whose Ipana smile beamed down on me like sunshine, was an advertising tool marketing Kilarney Park. At that moment she seemed like a guardian angel, and I was about to need one.

Big Chris Ferris, the terror of my fifth grade class, who’d been tormenting me for as long as I could remember, descended with his henchmen like a cluster of spiders from behind the billboard.

Conclusion on Wednesday

Flying Without A Net

Last night I did something in bed I haven’t done in years. I was contentedly lying there, dreaming I was King of Bloggers and had finally figured out the difference between further and farther, and a while and awhile, when it happened. Mrs. Chatterbox was on the far side of our king-size bed and in no position to monitor what was going on. That’s when it happened. I felt ashamed when it was over. I mean, I’m not a kid anymore and this sort of thing doesn’t happen to grown men, even men with bladders shrunken to the size of peanuts and requiring frequent trips to the bathroom.

Okay, I’ve let you entertain prurient thoughts long enough. I didn’t abuse myself or have a nocturnal accident last night. I rolled out of bed and landed with an unceremonious thump on the floor. Mrs. Chatterbox bolted from dead sleep and asked, “What was that? Are you alright?”

I scratched my head and tried to focus on the strange viewpoint of our darkened bedroom. The perspective was that of a mouse and I felt tiny and insignificant. The heap of decorative pillows tossed aside when we turned down the bed appeared massive, my discarded shoes menacing with their snake-like laces. I briefly felt like Alice in Wonderland and half expected to see the insolent grin of the Cheshire cat glowing in the darkened window.

“Are you alright?” Mrs. C. repeated.

“Yes. I…I guess I rolled out of bed,” I answered, returning to my tangle of sheets and repositioning my pillow.

She gave me a kiss on the cheek.

I lay there for several minutes, until a thought caught like a bramble on the sweater of

my memory. I was a little boy in baggy pajamas spending a Saturday night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I remember it well: the room off the kitchen was small, the bed so big it brushed against one of the walls. Grandma would hear my prayers and tuck me in. After she left, Grandpa would arrive, his shape a stocky silhouette in the light-filled doorway.

“Have you been a good boy today?” he’d ask, the rumpled fedora he always wore pushed back on his bald head.

I would nod and he’d place two bits in my hand. “Go to sleep now,” he’d say, pushing the bedroom door closed, careful to leave it open just a crack so I wouldn’t be thrown into total darkness.

I’d hear the TV click on and Grandpa’s joints would crackle and pop like my favorite cereal as he sank into his living room armchair. Before long the theme from Perry Mason would hum on the TV. As Perry began his defense, the door to my bedroom would open wider. Grandma would be standing there, silently listening to me breathe, a chair from the kitchen table in her hands. Worried I’d roll out of the big iron bed, she’d sneak into the bedroom and place two chairs against the side of the bed so I’d roll into them instead of falling to the floor. I always pretended to be asleep when Grandma came with her chairs; her gesture to keep me safe always made me feel warm and loved.

Once when the circus came to town, Grandma and Grandpa took me to see flying acrobats soaring through the air, spinning between trapezes a hundred feet above the ground. My enjoyment was marred by thoughts of what might happen if they fell. Grandpa told me not to worry. “That’s what the net is for—to catch them so they won’t get hurt.” I hadn’t noticed the net and enjoyed the acrobats much more knowing it was there.

But last night there were no chairs to keep me from rolling out of bed and falling to the floor. I guess being an adult meant working life’s trapeze without a net. But I was wrong. Mrs. C. couldn’t have picked a better time to reach over and squeeze my hand. She snuggled her head on my chest.

The truth; I’m a lucky man—I’ve never been without a net.