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Other Voices
Other Voices
“Please Call on Me…”
The early morning sun bathed the room and desks and floor, of Mrs.Malutek's first grade class, in a hue of soft golden yellow. Roughly 25 other students and myself were sitting as attentively as any child could on their first day apart from mommy and daddy. The clock on the wall read 8:15, but I didn't know that then, and Mrs. Malutek was standing in the hallway just outside the door speaking to one of the Sisters; while in class new alliances were being formed amid a myriad of inquisitions from anxious and excited youths. This is the first time I met “blubber”, whose Christian name was Jack, and Gary and Johnny-boy and Vinnie. These were the boys who sat on all sides of me on that, my very first day of school. I recall the smell of old wood and pencil lead and soap, but even more so than that, the stench of fear, embarrassment and urine.
Poor Patty Bichanosky, the little girl who sat caddy corner to my flip-top desk, was to suffer terribly for that incident the rest of her days at Byzantine Catholic Central school. It wasn't her fault that the teacher was preoccupied and wasn't there to see her raised hand and allow her to make the much needed trip to the unfamiliar bathroom down the hall. As I think back on the subsequent eight years I was to know Patty, I can't help but wonder if her extreme shyness was somehow linked to that day, or merely an inborn trait.
If I have one memory which lies paramount in my mind as my first school remembrance it is the vision of a classroom full of students taunting and chanting at that most unfortunate child. The sadness and despair etched upon her face and the tears, which flowed from her eyes as uncontrollably as the urine that ran down her leg from a bladder which betrayed her. The memory will forever remain with me.
The slow - motion surreal event lasted only moments, as does the unreality of a car crash, but the impact was long lasting and utterly cruel. Mrs. Malutek was quick to enter the room upon hearing the sudden and rapturous upheaval and quickly doled out surprisingly harsh words to poor little Patty. As if what transpired didn't torture the girl enough, here was her first experience with an authority figure other than her Mom and Dad, and this woman had outright disdain, indifference and a lack of empathy to Patty's situation.
I'll never forget the vision of the nun at the doorway and her stone-etched face, cold and emotionless, nor will I forget the taunting of the children or the scolding of Mrs. Malutek. But for all these thoughts, evoked by my recollection of the events of my first and earliest memory of school, I am haunted most by what Patty's tortured mind must hold. The sadness and loneliness she endured and how it all could have been avoided if only the teacher had seen her raised and begging hand.
Where Has the Pride Gone?
Advertising in the new millennia has all but overtaken the society at large. Everywhere you turn is laden with traps designed to massage your ego and relieve you of your cash. Everything from over the counter cold remedies to ice-cold beverages is neatly packaged and presented to you as the answer to all your problems. Don't feel so hot today? Try the new and improved prescription strength nasal decongestant doctors recommend most. Having a rough time making friends? Crack open a frothy brew and just watch as the Swedish bikini team dances about your living room with trays of Vienna sausages and deviled eggs. Lonely? Don't worry, open up the freshness packed tube of potato chips and marvel as an instant party forms in your kitchen, complete with music and a bevy of lights to rival even the most polished stage show.
It's hard to escape the blitzkrieg of dung shoved down your throat on a regular basis. The daily invasion of persuasion can at times be so overwhelming that it permeates the very fabric of your sensibilities. Their thoughts become your thoughts and if you are not careful, your thoughts cease to be. Madison avenues' grasp sadly reaches far beyond plastered billboards, saturated airwaves, newsstand magazines and thirty-six inch television screens.
Politicians are marketed and sold like any other product -- only they don't seek to increase the profit margin; their bottom line is how much power they can obtain. In order to accomplish this they hire slick public relations firms and demographically savvy pollsters in order to know everything about you. From issues that concern you and buzz words that entice -- to what color tie you most approve of. It is all a game and you, the American public, are the ones who get played.
Absent from the geopolitical landscape today seems to be the courage of one's convictions, which was once so prevalent in America. Self-serving moguls and power hungry politicians replace self-made men. The idea that you can do anything if you dare to dream it and are confident in your beliefs, steadfast in your values and particular about what you ingest -- organically and electronically, has long ago fallen by the wayside. This is not the age of restraint but the era of ego and politicians know just how to stroke it.
We all want leaders we consider to be upright and moral persons -- a rarity in this society today - those who will stand and be counted as men and women who instill belief in a better way, and garner support for the task. Neither a fear-monger nor a do-nothing, but a go-getter and a fighter for an uncommon commonality and not lacking unity or pride or the where-with-all to get the job done. Instead, political candidates are the products and the ideas they spout are the advertising. They gloss over the eyes and hearts of the public with carefully orchestrated 15-second soundbites without shame in their quest for power.
One evening as I worked at my computer, a political ad by a politician running for a local office, began playing on the corner television set. “The grandson of a steel mill worker,” the background music dramatically builds and implies this should be of some importance to me, but you know, strangely it is not. Just how much mileage does this man intend to gain from the fact that he is the grandson - of - a - steel - mill - worker?
My grandfather, now 14 years deceased, worked in those mills amid the fire and the molten metal, He worked hard, worked his ass off for nearly 37 years; was strong as an ox and had the handshake of a real man - powerful and stern and respected. In the fifties, this land was riding high and a man earned a decent wage with which to support his family alone.
As antiquated as the dynamic of the nuclear family seems today, it has eroded into single parent homes, where all too often the television has become the sitter for an entire generation of young and impressionable youth. Where have all the good times gone? I am nostalgic for a time when values were taught at the dinner table and not from the surreal world of advertising and tawdriness of a superficial society portrayed through commercials, television sit-coms and 5th avenue execs whose only Almighty is the dollar. There is an absence of silence and simple contemplation, of respect for the old ways in favor of this new want it, need it, got to have it, cant live without it unreality. Young girls are molested and left for dead on the side of the road, discarded as gum wrappers and cigarette butts out of windows of passing cars whom neither knew nor cared about what had happened. School shootings and crack cocaine overdoses occupy the evening news, which is also pre-packaged and sensationalized for the titillation of the viewer. In the realm of politics scandals abound and Mr. Smith goodness is hard to come by.
The common threads which the immigrant men and women brought with them an entire century ago, and wove into the fabric of society has long been gone. My grandfather's father and mother began the spreading of old world values, which permeated entire neighborhoods. Those seeds planted through human decency and kindness allowed for doors to be unlocked and an adult, not the parent of a child, being able to scold and teach because there was a certain set of values held widely, if not entirely by all. There was a spirit of pride and self worth, of accomplishment and independence.
Peace is at a premium in the world at large, and in the solitude of what once was your mind, is now a war-torn battlefield wherein you find yourself lost, and aware of everything, yet nothing at all. You go numb. Over-saturated and desensitized to the horrors and relegated to the role of reluctant observer. Whether a willing participant or not, life won't drag you along kicking and screaming - it just happens and you happen to be there. Society and its attitudes have eroded beyond the bounds of reason, the reason and good common sense passed on from the fathers of our fathers. We like to tell ourselves we are a good and faithful nation, but we are not. It is a sad day, which has dawned on this new millennium society. Seemingly, without provocation the floodgates of hell have opened and the brutality of man's own mortality ebbs swiftly away and the dogs of war alongside the hounds of hell are about to swallow us whole.
Will we awaken in time to overcome this superficial absurdity? Maybe. Or maybe the slogans and the rhetoric does us the greatest of disservice, worst of all, that we lie to ourselves about our worth as a nation, at least far away from Wallstreet and the paper economy. We used to build things. We used to heat enormous blast furnaces and make iron glowing amber, which would go into battles fought for freedom and build our cities strong. We used to serve our nation and the world, and all marveled at our ingenuity. Now we all too often serve ourselves and all others be damned. The self-serving political ad with its music and its emphasis on “the grandson of a steel mill worker....” conjures up an image of a good and decent man. The politician's intent was to align himself with all that his grandfather had accomplished as if it were his own, but the wounds which need healing today cannot be cauterized by feeding off the accomplishments of someone else's past. It is time to allow our present doings to write a new history of which we can be once again proud and stop exploiting the association of days gone by.