Small Catastrophes

"When things seem to be going against you, remember that an airplane takes off against the wind, not with it." Henry Ford

The 1918 “Inverted Jenny” stamp became legendary because the blue Curtiss JN-4 biplane was accidentally printed upside down. Only 100 of the misprinted stamps ever reached the public, making them among the rarest and most valuable U.S. stamps ever produced. Single stamps can sell for as much as $1 million.

One

It took a lot of courage

to leave the line of

hands-in-their pockets,

feet-shuffling,

heads-down

boys

to walk across the gym floor

to the line of giggling

girls

to ask her to dance.

She did, reluctantly, now that I

think about it—glancing at her girl friends

with a shrug of her shoulders.

When the dance finished,

we stood there sweaty,

lit by shards

of multi-colored light from

the spinning disco ball.

As she made to leave, back

to the safety of the girls’ line,

I mumbled

“Would you like to go steady?”

And I held out my brand new

Kennedy half dollar because

I didn’t have a pin or a ring, and

since many of my classmates were

going steady, I thought,

Why not?

She looked at it and me, and with a

pained, quizzical look said

“What? Um, gross.

Who are you?”

Two

On the darkened booster bus

to the state baseball championships,

Sophomore year, I sat next to Kathy S.

kissing—

—that awkward first time, at least for me,

electro-shock think-your-heart-will-explode kiss.

Not her first, I thought as I brought

the plane in for a landing. Her, um,

credentials were widely known.

But I didn’t care.

We lost the tournament, but Kathy and I dated

for months after that, if I can call “dating”

being driven to and from the movies by my father.

One time, he must have caught us

in his rearview mirror

kissing in the back seat—

UGH, I know, right?—

because when we got back to our house, he

stopped me on the driveway and said,

“Be careful you don’t father something.”

Huh, from kissing?

My friend, Chuck Jackson, had given me

“the talk”

on the curb in front of his house,

so I knew better. But

then I worried

what my dad thought about me

that made him jump

from first base to home plate before

we were even in the house.

Three

My year-long high school graduation present

was dating Carol H.

She was smart, but never held it over me,

funny in her own quiet way,

and possessed of a unique and honest beauty

that I leave to a more polished poet to describe.

With my then-clinically low self-confidence,

I couldn’t believe she said “Yes.” But

I eventually felt

she more than just liked me because she would lean into me

as we walked—a dead giveaway—and

she gave me a nickname:

“Pokey-Stover,”

which is how she signed my yearbook.

I was in love with her, and I knew it was love

because I ached when I wasn’t with her,

and my grades suddenly improved.

I knew awe for the first time. Before I saw

the Grand Canyon,

the Northern Lights, or

the first moon landing

that summer I left for college.

When we went off to separate universities,

I affixed the stamps upside down on my love letters

because one of my dorm mates said

“That’s a way to say, ‘I love you.’”

Carol either accepted that

or thought I had latent dyslexia.

Through those letters, we arranged for me

to visit her campus over a weekend.

It was a long bus ride there, fueled by

anticipation,

and an even longer one heading home

because I was still reeling from the

“Dear Jeff”

talk, a soliloquy, actually,

I received sitting in front of her dorm.

“But we could still be friends.”

You have to get that first break-up

out of the way, I eventually realized.

It’s a rite of passage, like

a first rejection or

a first kiss.

I no longer have my yearbook,

so thankfully, I don’t have to

periodically reminisce over

“Dear Pokey…love Carol.”

(My thanks to Cindy House for the out-of-my-comfort-zone writing prompt.)

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This week’s podcast episode #414 focuses on memorials and how best to experience them. The most effective memorials, my guest, Dr. James E. Young, explains, create a “performance” that brings you physically and mentally into the memorial’s space to experience its underlying historical story and energy.

The root word of memorials, memoir, and memory is the Latin memor, meaning "mindful" or "remembering,” as I did above.