The Weekly Essay

A deer wandered into our backyard. I’ve seen them in the front yard. One was even standing in the middle of the driveway one day when I came home. Before I could decide what to do–my options were waiting, honking the horn, or getting out and yelling at it, which I didn’t want to do because it had large antlers and those are scary when they’re on a deer and not mounted on a hunting lodge wall–it moved into the neighbor’s yard to feast on their tulips.

The deer in the backyard was an entirely different thing because our backyard is fenced and, with a few exceptions, like squirrels and chipmunks which can go through or over the fence, or the time I opened the backdoor and found a couple of raccoons on our patio which then slipped away over the fence into the night, or, more likely, into the neighbor’s garbage, the fence keeps out wildlife. I’ve seen deer in the wooded area behind the fence, and that seems the best place for them.

The weirdest thing about the deer in the backyard was how nonchalant it was. It didn’t have antlers–my wife reminded me it’s the wrong time of year for that, and it was probably young too. It must have jumped over the fence but by the time it came into my purview it was just casually strolling along. It stopped to munch on some dandelions then went over to the big tree that stood in the middle of the yard. To me there was still something really strange about it, about wildlife coming that close to the house. I know there are also possums, coyotes, and foxes in the neighborhood. There’s one house a few blocks away that has a really big yard, and in a corner by the road where there’s a culvert that’s overgrown with weeds we saw a family of foxes one day. The people who lived there put up a sign near the culvert that said “Slow–children at play” with a picture of a fox. A few blocks away in another direction there also used to be several acres of farmland that had been left to grow wild and it was a home for a lot of animals. Then it was all turned into a shopping center and the animals now move among our homes–the ones that survived, anyway.

There are still wild places, but suburban sprawl keeps on sprawling, pushing those places away, but the deer wandering across the backyard was a sign of nature pushing back.

Sometimes an idea or memory gets stuck in my head and, because there’s so much empty space, pings off every corner nonstop, and the only way I can get it out is to talk about it. Recently it’s been an expression I heard adults use when I was a kid: “like it’s goin’ out of style”. This was a simile used to say someone was doing something really energetically, which, if you’d asked me as a kid what it meant, that’s exactly how I would have defined it because I was a weird kid with much too formal diction. Anyway I’d hear an adult say something like, “Roger was eatin’ those crackers like it was goin’ out of style.” If that sounds bizarre, well, welcome to my world–I understood what they meant but there was still something really weird about the saying. Why would crackers, or eating them, go out of style? And if it was going out of style why would Roger want to eat a bunch of them? Was he eating up all the crackers before they got pulled from the shelves to make room for newer, more stylish crackers? It wasn’t just eating either. Raking leaves, washing the car, playing basketball–if someone was doing something really vigorously they were doing it “like it was goin’ out of style”.

At least “like it was goin’ out of style” was an expression I understood. An expression that completely baffled me was “going out of town”. As school wound down each year my friends would tell me their family was “going out of town”. What did that mean? We lived in the suburbs which, as far as I was concerned, was already out of town, since I thought of “town” as pavement and skyscrapers–what was, technically, downtown. My family went “on vacation”, which I understood because, even if we left town, we went to another town.

To get back to “like it was goin’ out of style” it occurred to me that I don’t hear that expression anymore, and haven’t heard it in a really long time. Like leisure suits and the nightmare-inducing live action shows of Sid and Marty Krofft it seems like it ended with the ’70’s. It should have gotten a final burst of use before disappearing but instead it seems to have faded away.

Unlike some of the relics of that era I think it’s an expression that needs a comeback so I’m going to start using it again. Every chance I get I’ll be using it really energetically, really vigorously. You know how I’ll be using it.

The student have graduated and left for the summer, marking the end of another year. Most college and university graduations happen sooner than high school so the ceremonies always take me by surprise. Growing up I thought of the end of school coinciding with the beginning of summer, which always meant mid to late May, although I had cousins in New England who weren’t released until June. I thought it was because the snow would shut down their schools so regularly, but that wasn’t the case. New Englanders, after all, are used to dealing with snow. In my cousins’ case it was just that their fall classes didn’t start until after Labor Day, whereas here they started in August, maybe because most schools had more reliable air conditioning than some homes.

Then there was the year I was in seventh grade and we had so much snow it shut down the whole city for weeks—Nashville, of course, not being used to dealing with snow. The school I went to for seventh and eighth grade was close enough that I could walk to it, and frequently walked home, but the snow meant the kids who relied on busing couldn’t make it in, so they just shut down everything.

The freeze lasted so long that the school board, which normally just tacked extra days onto the school year to make up for whatever we’d missed, decided that instead we should make up the loss by spending an extra half hour at school each day for about three weeks at the end of the spring semester. So we sat around doing nothing, but at least it meant our summer break wouldn’t be postponed.

College graduations, of course, are different, which may be why they come sooner. For most students they don’t just mean the end of school; they’re the beginning of adulthood. It’s a very different transition from all the ones that came before.

Congratulations, classes of 2023, wherever you may be graduating from, and good luck.

There’s now a soccer league, or, as the rest of the world calls it, football, in Japan for players who are over eighty. This is such a brilliant idea, although I think it’s diminished slightly by the fact that most of the octogenarian players are former professionals who’ve been out of the game for a few decades. It’s great that they’re still around and still able to get out on the pitch but I feel like players who’ve had glory days should, especially by the time they’ve passed threescore and twenty, step aside and let non-pros have a chance at making a goal or two. Maybe there are some players who’ve reached that age who were never that great at soccer in their youth but feel they have a better chance at competing against peers who haven’t had a couple of hip replacements. Maybe there are players who didn’t really have an interest in soccer when they were young but got pushed out onto the field by their parents and played miserably, without even really knowing what they were doing, would like another chance at the game late in life, having developed an appreciation for it in the intervening decades.

Yes, I am talking about myself, even though I’ve still got a few intervening decades before I reach my eighties. I didn’t really want to play soccer, but my parents told me to at least try it. So in the fall of third grade, after I went home from school each day, I’d go to another school for an hour or so of soccer practice. Then on Saturday mornings, instead of sleeping late and watching cartoons, I’d get up early and go run around a field for a couple of hours, which wasn’t that much fun in shorts, and in my case it was mostly just standing around because I didn’t have much idea what was going on. I have a vague idea that our team wasn’t very good and that we lost most of our games, but because I didn’t really know what was going on I was just waiting for the final whistle when we’d shake hands with the opposing team and then we’d all get hot chocolate.

By the third year I actually got a little better, but it was also my last year, and I was still easily distracted. The games started later so I was more alert on the field but we’d also moved to a different field that was next to a wooded area that looked swampy. Whenever there was any downtime—when we weren’t practicing kicking goals or doing laps around the field—I’d look longingly at the swamp and think I’d much rather be exploring it. But at least some of the time I was actually engaged in the game, even if I still hadn’t entirely figured out what was going on.

One Saturday morning, before a game was about to start, I was standing off to the side. A few guys on my team were kicking a ball around. I tried to get involved but they were top players and, while I don’t think they told me to go away, they weren’t interested in me joining them either. So I shrugged and walked away.

At that point a really old man—I think he was someone’s grandfather, or maybe great grandfather, who was an occasional presence at games—walked over to me and just started yelling at me. He told me I needed to pay attention, be aggressive, get out there and work or I’d never be any good as a player. He told me I was useless, that what I was doing was terrible, that it was important to focus, give it my all, and work for the team.

Even in sixth grade this kind of dressing down, especially by an adult, should have sent me off sobbing to hide in the backseat of my parents’ car, but it was so weird that this complete stranger focused on me I was certain he had me confused with somebody else. I knew I wasn’t much of a player but I also knew I really didn’t care enough for this warped version of a pep talk from a guy who, judging by the thickness of his glasses and the cloudiness of his eyes, could have easily been talking to one of the goalposts, to affect me.

It also helped that someone from my team, a tall, redhaired kid named Chuck who, like me, was a low-ranking player but still better than I was, came over and said, “Hey, Chris, come kick the ball around with us!” He was with a group that wasn’t that good but was just killing time before the game started, but that didn’t matter. Just like that I was released from the baleful rantings of a complete stranger and welcomed into a group that I’d never really felt I was part of.

Those two moments—one bizarre and, in retrospect, really awful, and one really great and uplifting—are my most vivid memories of childhood soccer.

I wouldn’t mind reliving that second moment. As for the first, I think that old guy needed a team of his own. Whatever the source of his bitterness was he didn’t need to be directing it at a random twelve-year old on a chilly spring morning. Soccer is, to most of the world, the beautiful game, because it’s open to everyone.

The power went out.

We knew storms would be rolling through so we were prepared. We had the closet cleaned out and ready to hold us and the dogs if the tornado watch turned into a warning. There are flashlights in a couple of different rooms and the house is small enough that even in the dark I could find them. I’d tested them earlier and, in spite of not having been used in a long time, they worked. We also have good old fashioned matches and I’m pretty sure we’ve got candles somewhere, if it came to that. Phones were charged.

The striking about the power going out, the part that always surprises me, is the sudden silence. Even with the TV off, even when the air conditioning or heat aren’t running, the house has a steady hum as long as electricity is running through it. It’s only noticeable when it’s gone.

The refrigerator, of course, has its own pulse as coolant streams through its veins, a sound pitched just above that of the rest of the house but also, because of its constancy, we only become aware of it when it’s gone. And with the power out the countdown begins. We keep the refrigerator closed to keep the cold in for as long as possible but there’s still the looming threat of spoilage, the possibility that we’ll lose the highly perishables: dairy products, poultry, eggs. Well, the sour cream will probably be fine. The freezer, on the other hand, is in greater danger. How long will the ice cubes hold out? The ice cream? As soon as the frozen shrimp thaws it’s done for. It wouldn’t be right for sushi even if we could plug in the rice cooker.

At least right now the weather is on our side. It’s the middle of spring so the weather is just temperate enough that the house wouldn’t get too cold, which can happen in winter, or too hot, which would happen in summer.

Still I made plans for the long term. There are some large rocks in the backyard I could arrange into a fire pit for cooking. Or I could just use the neighbor’s fire pit. They wouldn’t have to know. I’m pretty sure they weren’t home since their lights were out.

The dogs had all been out and taken care of business, so they were fine. I thought I could always go outside too, before I remembered the plumbing doesn’t need electricity.

We still had the cars, and once the worst of the storms passed there were plenty of places we could go. The power has gone out before and we’ve always managed. I just always want to be prepared for whatever could happen. I want to stay calm and know that we will get through.

I was in the middle of reassuring myself when the power came back on, and everything was fine again. Still that was a pretty grim thirty seconds.

When I moved all my stuff out of my cubicle the one thing I was most worried about, most protective of, the one thing that made me beg my boss–who’d offered to clear out everything and box it up and leave it in the hall to save me the trouble–to let me do all the packing myself was a simple small glass bowl. It doesn’t look like much but I painted it myself during my second round of chemotherapy, at the Nashville Gilda’s Club, which offered, among other things, a weekly art therapy class. I was really lucky to meet people there who’d had cancer, in some cases decades earlier, and who were doing fine. It was nice to get together and make stuff.

So the bowl has a lot of personal significance for me, and it also became significant at work a couple of years later. A new person had just been hired and she came to my cubicle for some training. She saw the bowl on the shelf next to my monitor and asked what it was.

“It’s a goldfish bowl,” I said.

“You’re really into dad jokes, aren’t you?”

I’m not sure if that was a compliment but it helped break some of the tension that’s always present when work brings strangers together.

So this week I was involved in training another new person. We all went around introducing ourselves and talking about what we do. I’ve held a lot of different jobs in the library but I explained that what we’d be focusing on was something that I’d been doing almost from the beginning and that I kept coming back to in spite of my efforts to move on to something else. And then it hit me that I had a perfect opportunity, so I did my best to deliver a classic line.

Source: giphy

It was a great way to break some of the tension, although I worry that I might have sounded more like George Costanza than Al Pacino, which could be a little too much insight into my personality.  

Source: Yarn