It’s 1999. I am standing in the rain — really more an icy drizzle — in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb my newspaper doesn’t even cover.
I am trying to shoot a picture of the Niles North High School homecoming parade that doesn’t look like every other parade picture ever snapped. And do it without soaking my new 24-50mm lens.
A kid on a float overhands a piece of hard candy which hits me squarely in the forehead, stunning me for a moment. I find this hilarious, already turning it into a story, until a mom comes over and asks, “Did you know you are bleeding?”
This is one of life’s key loaded questions. No matter how you answer, the answer will not be good.
A few months back, heading northbound toward Seattle on the interstate, with afternoon traffic moving slightly above the speed limit — a rare enough occurrence to be a story in itself — I was keeping right to allow hardcore speeders easy passage when I noticed a series of cars in my lane suddenly braking, moving left, then rocketing forward.
Drawing closer, I realized a battered Camry was going about 50, despite a flat tire on the driver’s side rear. The highway shoulder was plenty wide enough to pull over and safely change it or call for help, but apparently the occupants were determined to make it to the next exit, about a mile ahead.
Fascinated by the Camry’s side-to-side shake, I slowed to match its speed, hung back a dozen car lengths, and turned my flashers on. I expected the shredding tire to fly apart, but the car made it to the exit for an area called Star Lake, which has a gas station a few yards off the interchange. But they just kept going.
When I pulled out and passed, the driver, a teenage boy in a backward ballcap, and now more than two miles from the nearest ramp, was chatting on the phone, laughing. I tried to imagine the conversation:
“Dude, whassup… Me? Not much. I’m on I-5, heading back to Canada.”
BIZ PRESS – The DNA testing firm 23andMe continues to struggle after declaring bankruptcy in late March, though courts have cleared the way for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to buy the company, which has lost millions of dollars since its heyday in 2021. Officials originally blamed the bankruptcy on weak demand and fallout from a data breach, but internal audits have revealed that more than half of all American men who visited the company’s website mistakenly believed it was a discussion forum focused on their lifelong personal devotion to Michael Jordan.
According to a notion popularized by psychology professor K. Anders Ericsson, it takes 10,000 hours of practice at a task to make you an expert. The Trump White House is, of course, more of a fake-it-till-you-make-it operation, yet even by those lax standards Linda McMahon’s CV seemed a bit thin for the Secretary of Education gig. Until her appointment, McMahon’s most notable achievement in the field was mistakenly claiming she had an education degree.
Oops. French.
Yet simply in terms of faking it she is, if anything, overqualified, having come from the exalted world of professional wrestling, steadfast in its concern for the welfare of children. In the 1990s, for instance, World Wrestling reportedly allowed a predatory announcer who had been fired over his taste for “ring boys” to return to the fold, but only after a stern warning from McMahon’s husband, Vince, to “stop chasing after kids.”
So, then: not soft on discipline, always a conservative ideal.
A decade later her World Wrestling Entertainment banned wrestlers from smashing chairs over opponents’ heads, a rule which could easily be adapted to classrooms or cabinet meetings.
Why then, given such a rare opportunity to influence the youth of America, would McMahon go along with Trump’s lust to shutter ED?
Christopher Rufo, a conservative DEI foe who is spearheading the drive to shut down the Department of Education, admitted to New York Times columnist Russ Douthat that the reason they want to close the agency instead of reforming it is because, “Conservatives cannot fully staff the Department of Education… Shutting things down is actually a very effective strategy.”
True, good help is always hard to find. Yet Rufo is overlooking a ready pool of staffers, and staunch patriots all: the WWE has 800 employees who could surely find ways to multitask for the sake of its future fan base, and double-dip in the bargain (a term, in fact, which sounds like a wrestling move). At McMahon’s level it’s common for executives to bring along their best people, and I’m sure they all have opinions on schooling. Who doesn’t?
Even better, WWE classifies its wrestlers as independent contractors, leaving them plenty of motivation to pitch in, and possibly qualify for health insurance in the bargain.
Meanwhile Linda, presumably putting in eight-hour days behind the big desk, is watching the minute hand on her Rolex and putting a significant dent in that 10,000-hour deficit.
Deputy Secretary of Education Natalya, left, during recent negotiations with the president of the NEA.
Bonus fact: the Department of Education is often referred to as ED, rather than DOE, to distinguish it from the Department of Energy. Could it be that the abbreviation ED, in its other context, explains the undisguised hatred Trump seems to hold for the agency?
It’s just after midnight in Chicago, 1999, on a Blue Line elevated train headed outbound, and a nattily dressed older man is drinking hard liquor straight from the bottle. He’s upset, he explains to no one in particular, because “my baby cheated on me,” even though “I gave her 20 dollars and told her to splurge.”
A younger guy teases the drunk, who then flashes something from a pocket and says, “I’ll cut off your ears!”
“With that butter knife?” asks the younger man, who also offers this pearl, although I miss whatever prompted it: “Just because you pour syrup on shit don’t make it pancakes.”
By Division Street the knife has been put away and the young man is trying to explain to the drunk – who thinks he is riding to Riverdale, which, outside the context of Archie and Jughead, I’ve never even heard of – that he is on the wrong train, the wrong transportation system, and headed in the wrong direction. He should be on Metra.
At Wicker Park the older man takes another pull from his pint bottle and steps onto the platform. As the train doors close the other passengers whoop with laughter. “Gave his baby 20 dollars and told her to splurge,” says one. “Man, you can’t cross the street with 20 dollars.”
I have no children, no firsthand experience, and never have any idea how old strangers’ children are, but feel strongly that all existing children, when in public, should have their ages displayed prominently on their clothing, thus making it easier for me to later describe that hilariously cute thing they did. Because making a labradoodle wear a watermelon rind for a hat is charming from a three-year-old, but just abusive from a high school junior.
Once I get beyond the basic data — a healthy adult can live three days without water; babies have more bones than adults — I find it increasingly difficult to make generalities about humanity.
Terrence, a Roman playwright, said: “I am human. Nothing human is alien to me.”
Even so: A German cannibal advertises for a willing victim, then kills and eats him, snubbing at least five more applicants. A German Austrian heiress allows 50 strangers to decide how she should give away her $27 million fortune, then follows through. I could spend my whole life contemplating either story, the alternate poles of the human psyche, and never reach any conclusions, beyond “It takes all kinds,” as my own German American relatives used to say when confronted with the inexplicable.
In 1917 a soldier from my hometown named James Bethel Gresham shipped out to fight the Germans and became the first American to die in the War Which Failed to End All Wars. A generation later, German American men from the same area lined up to fight the Fuhrer, and many stayed over there, beneath headstones.
Now, some grandsons of men who died fighting Nazis proudly sport swastika tatts, sig-heil, read Daily Stormer. As if there was anything the slightest bit neo about race hatred.
There was a time when humanity seemed to agree that Nazis were, you know, evil, and that people who thought otherwise were abhorrent. How, then, to draw sweeping conclusions which accommodate the most powerful man on earth idly musing that Hitler did some good things and had enviable generals? Or the richest man on earth sharing a post absolving Hitler from Holocaust blame. Or Pete Hegseth, the beefcake Aryan, banning Maya Angelou from the United States Naval Academy but not Mein Kampf. Perhaps if the caged bird had been a Proud Boy he’d be more open-minded.
Or my grandmother, an Indiana schoolgirl, receiving first communion with her praying hands holding a Bible printed in German. It sits on my desk as I type.
I don’t recall her ever voicing fond memories of the Reich.
Oh, that baby thing? Apparently, some of their bones will later fuse together, forming new, stronger bones, Metaphorically, at least, I wish adults could manage the same trick.
