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Quote of the Day: A Life of Play and Why I Joined Ricochet
I was a boy of vast enthusiasms and a fierce love of play. One entire summer we kids on the block played Monopoly almost every day. I also collected and shot marbles, bowled, shot pool, drew cartoons, collected baseball cards and E.C. comics, and read science fiction. (On the right, that’s me as a kid with my family when we lived near the Coliseum in LA)
Best of all were those afterschool sandlot ball games that went on until it grew too dark to play. I never wanted the play to end.
It never did. I grew up but the play continued; only the games changed. I used to think that Wordsworth’s oft-discussed idea, that “the child is father of the man,” was just more of the Romantic Era’s little-children-are-miniature-philosophers nonsense. But I see now that Wordsworth was exactly right, at least about this one idea. My adult diversions, at least, seem to have grown out of childhood play.
Running marathons as an adult grew out of the sandlot sports I loved as a child. Playing banjo and guitar as an adult grew out of playing trumpet in my junior high band. Inventing a board game to sell grew out of a summer of playing Monopoly. And my 50-year adult obsession, making things out of wood, grew out of the measuring, sawing, and nail pounding I did as a kid in order to make various roller-skate scooters and stick-built forts.
Of course, becoming an adult meant that I had to make a living. But I sure as hell didn’t want a job in which I would actually have to, you know, work. So I became a professor. (I never believed that being a professor was real work. My dad, a roughneck in the Signal Hill oil fields, worked. Teaching a poem by Robert Frost was like the engraving on a fancy rifle. It wouldn’t help you shoot straight, but it was pretty to look at and fun to show to your friends.)
Since reading had always been a pleasure and writing had always been a kind of diversion, the university was an ideal venue for adult play. It’s clear now, as I look back, why I specialized in England’s Neo-Classical Era. All of its major writers —Dryden, Swift, Pope, and Johnson — were satirists.
Even lecturing was always more fun than onerous. (I think of myself as an outgoing introvert.) It was always a fascinating challenge to see if I could figure out how to engage my students in learning and discussion. So I would sit up in my office for hours and try to figure out how to, let’s say, get my students involved with Pope’s Rape of the Lock. Most of my solutions involved, in some way or another, an oblique, droll, or humorous slant to the work in question.
I had a student come up after class one day and say, “Don’t you take anything seriously?“ I think he was implying that I didn’t. And you know, the kid was right.
I spent a lot of time drinking coffee in my corner office on the seventh floor of Faculty Hall. I was the Director of Humanities, so I only had to teach nine hours a week. The other 31 hours was largely up to me. No time card. No schedule outside of a few obligatory hours of office time for students. I had soft-landed in a place where I could play.
In my office, I had a pleasant view of my thickly wooded college town. On the desk in front of me, I had a cage with two hamsters, Swift and Pope, with one of those little wheels they like to run on. I had a fancy coffee maker on my desk and one of those little swinging metal ball things that is supposed to illustrate some kind of scientific principle. I had a giant crossword taped to the wall that took me two years to fill in.
If God is as serious as he usually comes across, I’m in big trouble.
Pretty young things, who returned my eager smiles with haughty disdain when I was a callow youth, now had every reason to be nice to me. I was finally sitting in the catbird seat.
All of this might suggest that I was easy on my students. In fact, I had a reputation as a hard grader, the kind you don’t want to take if you’re in love with your GPA. I once had a student, an older man about my age, come up after my writing class and ask, “How come you’re such a bastard?” I think the question was rhetorical, but he still caught me by surprise so I didn’t have a witty rejoinder. But I did come up with a killer of a comeback a mere hour later. Unhappily, no one has called me a bastard since, so my inspired rejoinder lies dormant — though always ready to spring forth and eviscerate anyone who dares call me a bastard again.
One time I did something that sounded adult and serious. Around 1980, I founded an organization called The Kentucky Philological Association. (I just Googled it and found that it’s still going strong, so it’s now about 40 years old.) But I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been a lark and an interesting challenge to sit down and see if I could create an organization ex nihilo. Most everything is a game.
I was, however, never able to figure out how to make a game out of grading student papers. Analyzing student prose and writing comments in the margins is a slog, no matter how you slice it.
When I retired, I spent even more time playing. I started making arty jigsaw puzzles, wooden jewelry for women (not a big success), game boards, little humorous statues, and little coffins for one’s cremains. I sold all of these at Saturday Markets in Eugene and Portland. (Actually, I never sold a single one of the little coffins, which were a drag on the little coffin market.) With a steady retirement income, I had the luxury of making only things that pleased me. I’m now out of the business, but if you want to see some of puzzles, go here.
But finally, in my late 70s, even woodworking began to pall. I had finally burned out on making things out of wood — and most everything else. I was growing old.
What was I going to do? I’m an insomniac and I was accustomed to spending a good part of the night hours in my workshop designing and making things.
It was looking as though I would retire not just from my various enthusiasms, but also from life itself. I could see my future, an old man shuffling around the house in worn slippers until Time, that great destroyer, would finally turn me to dust.
Then about two years ago, I discovered Ricochet. Hello! The site was designed, I read, for those in the “middle to right” part of the political spectrum. That was me! Five bucks a month and there would actually be readers to read what I had written. And the readers and I could go back and forth. And I could make witty comments on other writers’ posts, and they would witty me right back.
By now you probably guess that I would turn Ricochet into a game. You were right. And I keep score. I keep track of how many people give me Likes. (My last post was a new PR, 53 Likes. What do you think of that?) I also have categories called Most Responses to a Post, Most Posts Elevated to Main Feed, and How Many Times I Topped Mrs. She in Likes When We Posted Around the Same Time. (Thus far, we’ve only posted around the same time only once. To my dismay, Mrs. She left me languishing on the Member Feed with a miserable six Likes, while she was promoted to the Main Feed with, I don’t know, a whole bunch of Likes. I stopped counting her Likes after she was promoted. So the score is right now is She 1, Forrester 0.)
At my advanced age, my old friends in the meat world were gradually disappearing, as is the nature of things, but I‘ve made new friends — or at least their artfully constructed projections of their real selves. I’ve gotten to know Quinn the quester, RushBabe the relentless, ‘hant the helpful, Mongo the manly, She the sheep lover, and GrannyDude the philosophic Unitarian preacher from Maine. There are more but I‘ve used up all the alliteration that I can think right now. (Actually, I ran out just before I got to GrannyDude.)
So Ricochet is a godsend. I thought that my life would end on a long boring slog. But no, there’s still time to play and Ricochet is my playground, probably my last one.
When I carved a happy face 
into the little box that will someday hold my ashes, I thought I did it on a whim and perhaps an amusement for my grandkids someday. Now I see that that happy face actually sums up my attitude toward life.
If my mom were still alive, I know what she would say: “Wiseacre to the end.“
Published in General
This is one of your best posts, Kent! I love it! To show the role of play in your life is outstanding! Life should be fun, and you’re way ahead of me in making it a playful experience. Thank you. Oh, and by the way, G-d has a great sense of humor! Look at how he indulges me!
Thanks, Susan. I’ve always thought that you and I, despite surface differences, have a lot in common. I can’t, however, think of a single humorous episode in the Jewish Bible. Wait, I seem to vaguely remember a book in the Protestant Apocrypha — I can’t remember the name of it — in which a bird poops on a man’s head. It seems to be played for comic effect. Does anything come to your mind about that episode? I may have to look it up.
I don’t even know if that book appears in the Jewish Bible.
This is really good. Advance directly to Go and collect $200.
I think we have lots in common! Our different perspectives are, I think, complementary. When I say G-d has a sense of humor, I’m talking about how he touches each of our lives in these times, rather than his actions in the Bible. He has to spend too much time there chastising the Jews for screwing up again and again. But funny, unexpected things happen to me all the time. I sense that many of them are G-d tweaking me, playing with me. Others might not credit those outcomes to G-d, and I don’t credit everything unexpected to Him. But there are certain things that just seem to have a “G-d sense” to them. When I meditate, I often get new ideas for posts. Some people would say that’s just what happens when my mind quiets down. Maybe. But I find myself saying to Him, “Really? Right now?” because of course I want to flesh out the idea rather than continue to meditate. But I’ve learned to either jot down a word or trust that it will come back to me when my meditation time is up. I hope that makes sense!
And that’s why I called you Quinn the Quester.
The mother in that family portrait is not wearing a mask. Is she a virus-denier?
Ha.
Dear Kent,
You need to get out more.
Love, She.
I have heard exactly the same thing from Mr. She, countless times:
Have you ever read, Goodbye Mr. Chips (don’t see the movie; or at least, if you do, see the old one with Robert Donat, not the newer one with Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark.) I’d be willing to bet that over the course of decades, you’ve had more of an impact on the world than you imagine.
I think that’s absolutely true. Certainly is of me, anyway.
A simply wonderful post.
An odd musical interlude:
Okay, that is a hilarious post.
One of the three quotations in there must be the Quote of the Day. We still have five openings this month, if you would like to supply your own quotation:
http://ricochet.com/752667/quote-of-the-day-may-signup-sheet/
Susan, I found the passage that I mentioned. The book is Tobit in the Protestant Apocrypha. I don’t know if Tobit appears in the Jewish Bible. At any rate, a bird poops in Tobit’s eyes while he is sleeping by a wall. (He’s sleeping outside because he has just buried someone and he has been “defiled.” It’s not played for laughs.
https://artpuzzles.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/hello-world/
Is that what you wanted linked, Kent?
Indeed. If reading the news were not proof, I do not know what else could be.
Arahant, I don’t have a good system. I have an idea for a post, and then I go looking for a quote that might, even tangentially, support the post. I think I should look for a quote first.
It’s not. He doesn’t.
Yes. Thanks. I need to learn how to make a hot link out of an URL.
If this is what you come up with, who cares? You’re doing fine. And naming hamsters Swift and Pope? Marvelous.
How to tell if you are on a conservative website: someone warns you off the 50-year-old version of a movie in favor of the 80-year-old version. (No complaints here!)
‘hant, it still doesn’t show up in my post as a hot link.
These days, teachers are advised to spend less time grading. The claim is that instructors can give immediate and targeted feedback that ends up being more meaningful to students than receiving back a paper that took ages to grade. I just shared such an article with teachers last week.
If you could make Pope humorous and interesting, that was a life accomplishment.
You would have to do that, Kent. There is an edit button up at the top which will allow you to change your post. If you click on it, then go down to the link (URL) and highlight it. Copy it. Then click the insert/edit link button, which looks like three links of a chain, and paste the URL into the little link window. Then update the post. Or you could wait and expect the editor to do it when they promote this. But don’t wait until after it’s promoted and try to do it then. That would be bad.
You’d fit right in in the company of saints. God loves a good party. Jesus’ first public miracle was saving the wedding by making sure they didn’t run out of wine.
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least, I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus domino!~Hilaire Beloc
I wasn’t able to get into organized sports growing up because we lived pretty far from town. Best we could do was 3-man baseball and two-man basketball. I got into running as an adult and ran several marathons in my 30s, nearly 40 years ago. The practice runs were the best, especially when I had gone about 12-15 miles and found that yes, there is a “runner’s high.” My best marathon time was 3:29:47, always remember it because it was under 3-1/2 hours. Then my back, knees, and hips conspired against me.
See, Kent. The conversation is promoted and the link is fixed.
This is good stuff as in – you might be wiser (more serious) than you think. Finding joy in life is an art, a talent that should be taught? You seem to have made peace with anything they may have bothered you, but the bottom line that you are saying is have fun – life is short!
Are you still making/selling these awesome boxes for cremains? Mr. CowGirl has expressed a wish for that type of disposal of whatever is left behind when his soul leaves this realm. So, I was thinking that your boxes look pretty cool and I’d like something like that. Let me know, okay?
Grading papers is a lot of work. It takes hours, and I always appreciated the work that my professors did, and their comments. I tried to be helpful all during the writing process with my little nine year students. But, I also graded them with a rubric they’d used to first grade themselves, and then I added my opinion.
Phil, I ran for about ten years and absolutely loved it because of the challenge. But I also loved the daily training runs. I ran in mile races, 5 Ks, 10 Ks, half marathons and full marathons. I wasn’t a great runner, but it was fun trying to better my previous times. My best time in the marathon was 3:15 in the Chicago Marathon. I made the cut-off times for the Boston Marathon a couple of times, but I never ran it.
Cow Girl, I used two of the little “coffins” for my parents’ ashes, which now sit on our fireplace mantle, along with their photos. And I saved two for my wife and me. I used a few others to keep personal keepsakes. And that was all I made. Thanks for asking.
New Yorker references are beyond the pale.
I love this post. It is interesting to think how our interests as a kid manifest themselves in our career path.
I was interested in computers from a very early age. When I was in probably the 6th grade, I wrote a letter to IBM asking them to send me “what they knew about computers”! Some nice person shipped back a manual for some sort of IBM keyboard.
I wound up as a programmer/engineer, first working on ‘mainframes’ and then each generation as they got smaller and smaller.
I still have a draft post trying to describe the various twists in turns in my career, but it got too long and I couldn’t figure out what to cut
I’m pretty sure I have a warped sense of humor, but the story in Acts 20:9 ( I had to look it up to get the details right) always struck me as funny. Paul was preaching in the upper room of a house and a young man – Eutychus – was seated by the window. When Paul kept preaching, Eutychus fell asleep and eventually fell out of the window. Paul went down and either revived him or just found him to be o.k.
Now, I think that’s funny! Probably because when I was a kid, I had a hard time saying awake during sermons. At least I was on the ground floor.