We talked this week about the difficulty of writers speaking. But writers are pretty good at reading and reciting. When was the last time you heard the last lines of The Great Gatsby, read by a smart writer? Here's Chicago writer Bill Nack.
The world is a happy place, too
In my continuing effort to counter my own pat negativity, allow me to pass on the observation of a new acquantance, who excused his own workaholism by pointing out that a workplace offers "a relatively stable environment to go to every day."
We individualists and self-made islands may have a hard time admitting, even to ourselves, that we rely on work—and the various goofballs we deal with every day—as a social comfort and as a reassuring physical and mental routine.
But just because we don't like to admit it doesn't mean it's not true.
Leo and Shelly, Wolf and Friedman
My mom always told my dad he needed to gain weight. "No, Leo says 180 is enough," my dad would say, about his doctor, Leo Wolf. My mother didn't like Dr. Wolf—thought he was old-fashioned and complacent—and referred to him as just, "Wolf." Wolf also thought it was okay that my dad smoked three cigarettes per day. And it probably was. But find a doctor to tell you that today.
Mom didn't go to Leo, she went to Shelly—whose full name was Sheldon, but who my dad called by his last name, "Friedman"—and she took my sister and me to him, too. Shelly was more liberal than Leo. He was more liberal than my mother, actually. Once, he suggested that, in order to cure her manic depression, she try cocaine. "I'm telling you, Carol, it's fantastic."
But Leo and Shelly were family advisors; they were the human embodiment of a vast and mysterious medical realm. They were people whose genius and foibles we knew. And they were doctors, too.
My parents sometimes followed their advice, sometimes ignored it, but always seeked it, because these men were friends, and why wouldn't you tell a friend your troubles? (As opposed to a stranger; once, a heavy-drinking pal of mine was asked by a doctor he'd just met, how much alcohol he consumed; he cracked under the persistent inquisition, bellowing: "More than everybody else!")
Sometimes doctors settled family arguments that didn't really have everything to do with medicine. For two years I begged my mom to let me try out for the junior high football team. I was too small, she said, and would get hurt. Finally, she made an appointment for the two of us to see Shelly Friedman, who she hoped would somehow break our loggerheads. "Oh Carol, let him play," Friedman said. "The worst that can happen is he'll break a leg."
Relieved, she looked at me, shook her head, and shrugged, OK. I looked back at her, pretending an I-told-you-so face, but meanwhile thinking, "Break a leg?"
I never tried out. Thanks to Shelly.
We'll live without family doctors, of course. But not as long, I'll bet. And not as well.