In My Youth and Long Ago

Old shoes that flap

I must have been about 11 or 12 when my father bought me my last pair of shoes. These were not the fashionable type; in fact they were the so-called high-top style footwear sometimes referred to as hillbilly or farmer shoes. They were durable enough, and were made for boys with the single purpose of lasting longer then the regular kind - which usually wore out or were outgrown within a few months. I wore them everywhere, including long hikes, through wild patches of brush, cactus and thickets, over rugged rocks and cobbles, and while wading knee-deep in muddy swamps and streams. As for leather footwear, they certainly lasted a long time, although I was outgrowing them at a rapid clip. 

The soles on my right shoe were so worn out that the stitching came apart and the shoe would go flap, flap as I walked. My father was too frugal and poor and so couldn't afford to get me another pair of boots. By a stroke of genius, he finally figured out how to fix them. Following one of my constant nags, he took all of thirty seconds to wrap some duct tape around the toe to keep it from flapping and making noise. It worked somewhat, but it didn't keep out any water, and it looked as ugly as a nose wart.

I had a paper route then, delivering the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel in the evenings. In the fall, while nearly finishing my route, I remember driving down a long, gravelly lane that was full of pot holes. It was already dark, and it was all I could do to avoid the bumps in the road. Suddenly some critter ran out in front of me and I plowed into the side of the beast with my front wheel. I couldn't tell what it was at first and together we just tumbled and rolled into a ball as newspapers scattered all over the road. It was some kind of dark animal about the size of a house cat, and it ran off before I got a good look at it. 

For a brief moment I caught the whiff of skunk odor, so I immediately figured that’s what it was, not realizing I had a taken a full blast of spray at point-blank-range. This is not good, and apparently was delivered with such force and volume as to render my sense of smell instantly useless. Anyway, I gathered up my papers and stuffed them into the canvas bag that was draped over the bike’s handlebars.

I continued on and finished the route in about thirty minutes or so. When I pulled into the yard, my mother was waiting for me at the door. Well, she said she had received a number of phone calls in the past half hour from my customers who were complaining about the awful skunk odor all over their evening news. After three of these calls, she put two-and-two together and she figured out what happened. In fact she had a pile of clean clothes lying on the porch and a pan of hot soapy water with a long-handled brush sticking out of it.

With her arms folded in front of her, she looked me over from top to bottom. “Youcan’t come in the house like that.” she said.. “So let’s get those clothes off first.” We stuffed my old cloths in a large paper bag and my mom said that we would have to bury them later. Geeze, I couldn't smell a thing. Then she scrubbed me from head to toe with soapy water. To my surprise she also had the garden hose hooked up and ready and she sprayed me down with cold water, which resulted in a sudden flight of panic across the yard.

She finally rubbed me down with apple cider vinegar, which she said she heard about as a remedy from one of the neighbor ladies. Even though my nose still wasn't working, she said I still smelled like skunk despite all the scrubbing, the applications of soap and the pickling in cider. I put on clean clothes, but my old pair of clod-hoppers had to stay outside on the porch.

Well, well. By morning everyone was complaining about the skunk odor except me. I had to walk to school by myself with a fresh set of clothes on and some of my dad’s aftershave rubbed into my hair and scalp. My old boots were waiting for me on the porch, so I had put them on without a thought before I took off for school.

Just for the record, I should be able to claim innocence for any classroom disruptions which followed since I still couldn't muster up a bit of odor about me. But the teacher soon began to waive her arms in protest and despair right after the doors closed as our lessons started for the day.

“Alright, whoever you are, I’ll find you, you know that, right? So you might as well stand up and come forward at once you skunky-smellin' scoundrel,” she said, “and let’s put you outside immediately before I get a stick.”  It is an embarrassing thing for a young boy to do – it’s like coming forward 

to face a firing squad, not to mention the ultimate humiliation from the verbal jabs from your friends and classmates.

So it was that day when I had to walk home alone with instructions not to return unless all remnants of that ol’ smelly critter had left my person. All in all for me it turned out to be a stroke of luck. In the end, you see, we determined that it was those worn-out pair of farmer shoes that were the most offensive, and therefore had to join my clothes in the paper bag and then buried deep in the ground as well.

No, my father understood right away that I needed something to cover those big, smelly feet, but he couldn't afford to pay for a new pair of shoes. A ten dollar bill probably would have done it, but in truth, it was a pair of fancy cowboy boots that I really wanted in the worst way, a pair of black-leather western-style boots I had set my eyes on at the local western-wear outfitters for several months. So yep, I got ‘em alright. It was a big sacrifice; however, because I had to use the money I saved up from the paper route. It didn’t matter, though, on account of I felt a lot better. And I stood a little taller too because of the thick heels. The main thing was my improved sense of pride since I no longer smelled to high-heaven or walked around makin’ that flappin’ sound. 

The Psychoanalyst's roll as proctologist

The Psychoanalyst's roll as proctologist.
or, twenty questions beyond sanity

by Ron Kop © Copyright

How do you find that point between the end of night and the start of a new day? Is it a tangent on a map? Can you find it like finding the headwaters of a great river? Is morning light similar to the birth of a stream, where water diverges along a high point, like the top of a mountain as some of it flows one direction, and some more of it flows another? Isn’t that how all great rivers start; and couldn't you put a stickpin on a map to show where it first began to flow? If you can do that, then can you also locate the dividing line between the edge of night and the break of day?

“What do you think, Frank?”

“Think what, Harry?”

“Can you tell me when the night ends and a new day begins?”

“Isn’t it whenever the sun comes up? What’s so important about that?”

“You mean ‘why is it’ important to me?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Look Frank, wasn’t I trying to make a point here to support my argument? Didn’t you tell me a little while ago that you could determine the exact point when the mind starts to deviate from the normal to the abnormal; and from the abnormal to the normal again? Like my brain, for example? Do you really believe it’s possible – any more possible than you can tell me the exact time when a new day begins or ends?”

“Doesn’t it begin exactly at midnight? When the clock strikes twelve, isn’t that the beginning of a new day precisely?”

“So that’s your final answer? What if you don’t have a clock? What about the guy who lives on the other side of the country? Does his day start at midnight here, or there?”

“When are you going to get to the point?

“Haven’t I yet?”

“Look, let me ask you this: don’t you have to be in a specific time zone when the clock reaches midnight for it to be midnight?”

“Isn’t it relative, really, since time is an invention of man? Do you mean that it’s midnight here just because that’s where the hands of the clock fall? And who’s clock should we use: your’s or mine? How do we know it’s even accurate? Do we? We’re told it’s accurate by some outside authority, but how can we know for sure?”

“Aren’t the clocks set by some government agency? Isn’t it adjusted according to the rotation of the earth in relationship to the sun? Isn’t that as accurate as you can get?”

“So you're saying a new day begins at a given point along a trajectory? Doesn’t that mean it actually begins several times throughout the course of a 24-hour period? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Aren’t I?”

“Wouldn’t that mean it’s midnight a whole bunch of times – 24 times a day to be exact? How can that tell me when a new day begins if I have to pick one from 24?”

“What are you getting at? If the clock strikes twelve midnight, no matter where you live, than isn’t that the beginning of a new day?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. How can it be a new day at eleven o’clock for someone living in a different time zone, when it’s a new day for me at twelve at exactly the same time?”

“I think you’re confusing the issue.”

“No I’m not.”

“Well, then, smartass, you think you can explain it for me?”

“How can a new day begin for me at midnight, but not for someone who lives a few miles away in a different time zone? The time zone is an arbitrary line created by man simply to suggest when it’s midnight. No, that can’t be the real beginning of a new day – or the end of a day if you want to look at it that way.”

“Listen Harry, you’re talking in circles. You do that every time we have one of these sessions. All you’re doing is wasting my time as well as yours.”

“Hey, aren’t you getting paid for this?”

“Am I? This is gratis, remember?”

“Did I tell you how much I appreciate it, Frank? You want me to come over and paint your house or something?”

“You think my house needs a paint job?”

“OK, how about I come over and mow the grass?”

“Haven’t you heard of Xeriscaping?”

“Alright, you want me to start paying my own way from now on?”

“Why would that be necessary? Listen, I told you before that I’m doing research on a condition called PTSD. I’ve got a grant to write a professional paper on the subject, and you’re the only one I know so far who’s a legitimate candidate.”

“Wow, I’m a candidate?”

“Yeah, you’re a candidate – a very sick one at that.”

“How sick am I, doc?”

“You’re one sick bastard, Harry.”

“Can you help me, doc? Am I gonna die?”

“Come on, Harry, don’t joke around. This is serious stuff. “

“I’m sorry, Frank. I was trying to make a point about your research. You will never find the exact location of my neurosis, or at least not whenever you think it began.”

“Yes I can.”

“No you can’t, Frank, and I’ll prove it.”

“OK, go for it.”

“Like I was trying to tell you earlier about the beginning of a new day; you can’t use a manmade clock because it’s an arbitrary position, it’s too gray.”

“Is this line you want to argue, then?”

“Well, yeah: look, who can really know when a new day begins or when the old one ends?”

“OK, I’ll play a long. Remember, I’m a psychologist, and not a physicist. Don’t you know how to spell?”

“Yeah, I remember. I’ll go back to my original question. When does a new day begin?”

“This is getting awful old, Harry. Alright, we’ll use the laws of physics to answer your question: a new day begins with the rising sun.”

“Not a bad answer. But doesn’t it rise on a trajectory, like I mentioned before? That means one man’s daylight is another man’s darkness, right?”

“I think whenever light begins to show itself, then that’s the start of a new day – no matter where you live along the trajectory. The presence of light, where there had been no light before, is the start of a new day. That’s it, Harry.”

“But what if I can see the light on the horizon, but no sun yet, would that be daylight, so to speak?”

“OK, I see your point: so it’s officially daylight whenever the sun peeks over the horizon, period.”

“But what if I were on the other side of a really high mountain, wouldn’t the sun come up a little later?”

“There you go again, trying to confuse the issue. It doesn’t matter where you are, Harry. If the sun squeaks over the horizon, then that’s daylight – officially speaking.”

“What I mean is, do you have to see it rising over the horizon for it to be officially a new day?”

“Yeah, you have to see it. No, wait a minute; you’re trying to trick me with that old blind-man-in-the-forest routine. OK, you don’t have to see the sun rising.”

“Then how would you know?”

“Know what?”

“If it was daylight?”

“Oh shit, Harry, give me a break, man.”

“How can you know a thing if you don’t see it?”

“OK, I don’t know. So I guess you’re gonna tell me, right?”

“Well, not yet. But you were right the first time: it was a trick question. I know that my heart is beating even though I can’t see it. And so I know the sun will rise, just like it does every morning. But I just don’t know when exactly.”

“Ah, I’ve got you now. Maybe all we’re really talking about is semantics. You just used the word ‘when’ to indicate a precise point of knowing the beginning of a new day. So tell me, when is when?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“But what makes you think I know the answer to that question.”

“So how can you know a thing that begins in a man’s head? How can you know anything about me, what my thoughts are, or were? You think you can measure my life like it’s laid out on a piece of graph paper to be analyzed? You really believe you can do it?”

“I need a break, Harry, do you mind if I smoke?”

“Do you mind if I fart?”

“So you need a break, too? Or do you want to go on?”

“Is your medical bag only full of bloated questions, Frank, or did you bring along some shiny instruments? Why do I feel like a lab frog with my guts exposed? It’s like I’m being stuck with a sharp point, or is it just my imagination?”

“Speaking of which – what kind of point are you trying to prove?”

“Alright, how about we get to it right now? Have you ever been to the headwaters of the Colorado River? Did you know you can get there just by hiking up the side of hill, somewhere in the Never Summer Mountains? Do you know the place?”

“Yeah, have you been there?”

“Somewhere the water from melting snow makes its way down hill. But which side of the hill? On the ridge line is the Continental Divide. It’s the exact point where the water changes direction. On one side of the ridge the melted snow flows to the east, and on the other side it flows to the west. It’s a very precise point. But why can’t we find the beginning of a new day the same way?”

“Sunlight isn’t the same as flowing water.”

“But doesn’t sunlight flow, just like water, only a lot faster?”

“Yeah, like the speed of light. Water’s considerably slower, mister science.”

“If I were walking up that ridge on an early morning, towards the dividing line between east and west flowing water – at some point I would expect the light of the sun to hit me in the face. Could that be called a new day?”

“Sounds right to me; so, what do you think?”

“What if I were walking up the other side of the ridge, with the rising sun to my back? Would it still be a new day? I suppose that’s too rhetorical, huh?”

“Well, there you go; you’ve answered your own question. But I still don’t see the point you’re trying to make.”

“It’s all relative, man. What if I were heading in the opposite direction, with the sun to my back?

“Look, you can’t outrun the sun. It’s moving too fast. Well, I should say the Earth is moving too fast since the sun isn’t rotating around us; it’s the other way around, ya know?”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why it’s all relative.”

“How’s that?”

“Like I said before: what if I were going the other direction? But only faster.”

“What, like driving in a car?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“The sun would still catch up with you and get in your face. In fact, even if you were flying in a jet, the sun would still come around and get in front of you. It would just take a little longer than if you were traveling in a car.”

“I’m impressed, Frank, you’re getting good at this.”

“Yeah, well it’s still a stupid game that you got me suckered into.”

“Ok, ok, I still haven’t made my point. But you haven’t answered the question either. Instead of moving away from the sun at the speed of a jet plane, what if you could travel at the speed of light?”

“That’s impossible. And even if you could, then the light from the sun could neither reach you nor overtake you in any kind of race because all things would be equal. Time would virtually stand still.”

“And if I stopped suddenly, then how long would it take the light to reach me?”

“Well, that depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“It depends on how far away you are when you stop moving.”

“Well, let’s say for the sake of argument that I’m ninety three million miles away. How long would it take for sunlight to reach me?”

“Alright, I get it. How long does it take for sunlight to travel to planet earth? No, don’t tell me. I already know it takes several minutes. And that’s good enough. That tells me that once daylight strikes the earth we’ve completed part of our rotation from the point the light left the sun and the exact time it arrived.”

“And what about the ends of the earth – the polar caps? For six months out of the year it's complete daylight for 24 hours at the north pole, and it's total darkness for 24 hours at the opposite end.”

“Oh, come on, Harry. I’m not even going there, man.”

“Well, like I’ve been trying to tell you – it’s all relative. We don’t know it’s a new day precisely. But we just know that it is. It’s a predictable thing. We know that when the sun comes up that we’ll have about 12 hours of daylight. And we also know that as the sun goes down that we’ll have about 12 hours of darkness – at least on this particular part of the earth where we live. It’s just something we know, something we can always predict. We just can’t put an exact measurement to it in the form of clock time – which is a purely manmade invention. We also know that time exists because of how long it takes for light to travel from point A to point B. We can make certain calculations based on those facts. But as for you and me, we still can’t predict the exact time the day begins, or ends. There are too many variables involved – the ones I mentioned before.”

“So, what does it all have to do with you and me? What’s the point, Harry? I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“You’re the one who insists on knowing everything about me: when my father first beat me, or whether or not I suckled on my mother’s breast or drank from a bottle. You persist in your analysis by asking a question after question, trying to pinpoint an exact time when something in my life changed – for either good or bad. I’m telling you to lay off because it doesn’t matter. The answer of when something happened, or happens, is no more important than knowing when the sun comes up in the morning. You just know; that’s all. And that should be good enough.”

“How far do want to take this?”

“And you, how far do you plan to take it?”

“I’m sorry, Harry, do you really feel that way about it?”

“I think what you’re attempting is a waste of time isn’t it? Don’t you see, Frank? I’m not perfect, and neither should you. From the time we’re born, things happen to us that change us forever. We can’t help it, really. That people change is obviously a predictable thing. But we can’t always know its precise origin or beginning. Asking me over and over again how I felt about something that happened in the past is no more productive than knowing on what side I butter my bread.”

“Yes, we are who we are based on the sum of our parts. But what makes you think you can do this job better than I?

“I can’t, and don’t. You do what you gotta do. But it makes no sense to me for you to know what I felt about something that happened years ago. I can’t give you an accurate answer, so how can you make an accurate assumption based on incorrect data?”

“And that’s the point you’re trying to make?”

“Haven’t I made my point? Don’t you understand?”

“So, I suppose you’ve got a suggestion on how we proceed from here?”

“I’ve got a few.”

“You realize, of course, that you’re telling me how to do my job – that you know better?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And what makes you so damned qualified, mister psychologist?”

“Do you do this with everyone – all your clients?”

“Do what?”

“Grill them to death about shit that don’t matter.”

“It does matter. And that’s the difference between you and me. I know the difference, and you don’t. I’m the so-called professional, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, OK, I understand.”

“So you’ll cooperate from now on?”

“Yeah, I guess. Go for it.”

“Harry, are you sure? Somehow I don’t believe you.”

“Would you want to go on if I let you ask me whatever you want? Aren’t you the so-called proctologist here?”

“Is that supposed to be funny, Harry? Do you hear me laughing?”

“Do you hear me?”

“So, will I get an honest answer? Or do you plan on stalling for a while longer? Anyway, if I told you that this hurts me as much as it does you, would that be of any consolation?”

“How can you be so kind, Frank? If I give you honest answers will you ask me intelligent questions?”

“It’s for your benefit you know? Or have you forgotten that?”

“Do you really think I care?

“And I suppose you don’t?

“Hey, Frank?”

“What?”

“Can we stop now?”

“I don’t know, can we?”

“Yeah, lets.”