The Clooch Maker

The year was 1955. The United States was in between wars, and it was a good time. It was the year of the Thunderbird, Ginsberg’s Howl, desegregation, and the beginning of teenage angst. Progressive thinking and rebellion were growing trends.

Jack Robinette had no interest in trends. If he had to choose which would destroy the greatest minds of his generation, capitalism and politics or sex and drugs, he would have chosen the latter. So at age sixteen, in response to what he considered perilous times, he decided to join the Navy.

As he strolled down to his local enlisting office, he imagined himself being called onto some grand stage with a bigger than life American flag draped behind him and Glen Miller playing wildly in the background. He pictured his mother clapping on the front row with hysterical pride.

“What is your name son?” The man in uniform screamed at Jack just as he walked in the door.

He was stunned as he walked off stage in such an abrupt manner and couldn’t coordinate a satisfactory response.

“It doesn’t matter. Can you write?”

This time Jack managed to nod his head so that it suggested yes. The man in uniform tossed a large unstapled stack of papers at him which landed more in the floor than in his hands.

“Fill those out carefully. If there is something you don’t understand leave it blank.”

“Yes sir.” Jack mustered his first words.

 It was very simple. He provided his name, social security number, and lied abut his age as there was no proof of anything required. But then he came to one particular blank next to one certain word that for some reason combined made Jack stupid. To this day, no one can explain why he couldn’t just leave it blank. It’s as if any faculty of reason that existed in him flew away like a bird for the first time and ran into a tree leaving it momentarily paralyzed. Best guess is, in the interest of being thorough he wanted to leave nothing blank. If he were going to lie he thought it would have to be something made up. This way he believed it would never come up. He wrote down clooch maker. The rest was easy, as they wanted to know his height, weight, favorite foods, hat size, and other useful information of this nature.

 

?!?!?!

 

A few years passed and Jack did exceptionally well. In fact it wasn’t until several years later on the Gulf of Thailand during a routine patrolling mission in the beginning stages of the Vietnam War that he encountered his first serious problem.

It was exactly 2:00 p.m. eastern civilian time on a Monday when Jack was for the first time in his illustrious career summoned to the Admiral’s quarters. As he stood outside the door of the Admiral’s office it felt like there was an alligator wrestling the world’s strongest man in his stomach. He did the thing he could not do and knocked on the door.

“Come in Lieutenant.” The admiral said in a raspy but rigid voice, like the Godfather if he had been born in the Midwest.

There was an enormous picture of the Three Stooges framed on the wall. It appeared to be signed, but Jack couldn’t tell for sure. The desk was small and neat, mainly because there was nothing on it except for a phone and lamp. There was a neatly made bed in the corner. Wagner played from an unknown source softly in the background. Jack was instructed to have a seat in the wooden fold out chair that had sand all over it across from the Admiral..

“Lieutenant you have served your country and the Navy well, and we have been reviewing your records for a promotion.”

Suddenly everything going on in his stomach seemed to have taken sleeping pills with a bottle of red wine, and he relaxed.

“There’s just one thing son. For a promotion of this nature you have to complete a special task.”

“Anything sir!”

The admiral looked down at his crossed legs and folded hands and then directly at Jack.

“Well Lieutenant, your file says you used to be a clooch maker. We need you to produce for us in 24 hours a clooch.”

The admiral stood up and so did jack. They saluted.

“Tell the Captain what you need. I’ll see you in 24 hours. You’re excused.”

The joy and enthusiasm that Jack experienced were again replaced by fear and anxiety. He was up the creek and thrown off the boat. If he told the truth he risked losing his promotion but, “What is a clooch?” He muttered to himself, and some how the same overwhelming stupidity that overcame him the day he wrote it down encompassed him again. So he went to the Captain.

“Captain I will need the following to complete the clooch task: several sheets of steel, at least 10, an electric saw, a welding machine, a mask, a drill, about 1,000 screws, and an appropriate screwdriver.”

The Captain was a bit confused by these requests. In an earlier meeting with the Admiral, they thought it may be some kind of raincoat. Curiosity was killing this captain.

“You will work in storage closet 49b. These provisions will be ready for you within the hour. You will have 24 hours from the moment they arrive to complete your task. Understood?”

“Yes sir!” They saluted.

After acquiring his equipment Jack sat everything on one side of the room. He had just under 24 hours to create a clooch. He decided first to write down a list of questions that if answered might lead to a better knowledge and even construction of a clooch. The list looked something like this.

 

1.      What are the properties of a clooch?

2.      What does a clooch look like?

3.      What does a clooch do?

4.      Who invented the clooch?

5.      Does the clooch make a sound?

 

The heavy cerebral activity jogged a memory of Jack catching his first fish. He recalled perfectly the way he and his father sat in the boat mouths open like the sky was raining skittles and vanilla ice cream as he pulled that giant bull mastiff size catfish out of the water. Humility was pointless, but before he could pull it in over the boat, that mean old catfish wrestled himself free from Jack’s line. It was something else though that Jack remembered, something that had something to do with the formation of the world’s very first clooch! Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney, Bill Gates, Jack Robinette!

            He forgot abut the Admiral and the promotion. He forgot he was in the Navy. He was Zen and the Art of Clooch Making! He worked arduously. Bang! Bang! Bang! Then he would drill some and weld some. Bang! Bang! This went on for 23 hours straight, and with just five minutes to spare he sent the word to the Admiral to be on the deck of the ship in four minutes.

            Before running his invention up to the top of the ship to be released upon the eyes of the world he took a moment to reflect on the process of his creation. As it was four times his weight and twice his size, getting the object to the deck proved to be quite a chore. Worse than flossing! He spotted the Captain and Admiral at the front edge of the ship. Just in time, he set the object down in front of his superiors and saluted them. Then he momentarily looked up at the sky and then deep into the water as if he could see to the bottom. He then motioned for the other men to walk with him and the object closest to the edge of the ship, and he did it. He threw it into the water. It fell into the water the same way that fish did, and it made the same heart wrenching sound. CLOOCH!

 

Psycosis in rats and my 1st demerit

I recently read something about inducing psychosis in rats. Scientists do so by changing their routine. They condition them to believe this lever when pushed provides food, and another when pushed  provides water and so on. To drive them crazy everything is constantly switched around. Consistency ceases to be a factor and the rats need Prozac!  

            So I started thinking about this in terms of being human, and my first demerit immediately came into my mind. I was six years old and in first grade. Mrs. Lawing was my teacher. She was a beautiful lady from Hawaii but unsympathetic to the cause of a color blind six year old in need of help. I was introduced to, that day unknowingly, to the idea of moral relativism. You see (no pun intended) Sean Flarity wore very thick glasses to begin with, and it was no secret that he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. I sat next to him on this particular day during coloring time. He was doing everything as far as I was concerned at the time (aesthetic relativism is another blog. I was six!) all wrong. His grass was brown and his water was green. The dead grass and slimy water was more than I could stomach.  So I did what any kid would do. “Sean you’re doing it all wrong.” I said to him. ‘What do you mean?” I explained and we worked something out. He told me the concept he was going for, and I handed him the corresponding crayon. It was working nicely until Mrs. Lawing spotted us. “That’s one demerit Michael! Coloring time is quiet time.” That’s what she said!

            So you might be asking yourself. “What is the connection?” Well here it goes. As a six year old my knowledge of the world was limited but still somewhat advanced. I was very respectful to adults. I could tell you how many apples were on the tree and was a great reader. And most importantly I was very friendly because this is what I had been taught by age six. But that day I remember thinking about things differently. In a very simple way it occurred to me that kindness has its limitations. To put in adult terms I learned that our desire to do what we know is right is dependent upon a particular situation’s variables.

            Now to bring it all back together, that day was the first instance I can recall having the levers switched. I was doing what I believed to be right and I was penalized. It happens to us all everyday. Too much of our time is “quiet time” and we are forced because of absurd parameters to sit next to some color blind kid that wants his grass to be green like everyone else.  Some of us, maybe most of us, are trying our best to do what is right, but still nothing is as it should be, and that’s why we are a Prozac nation that has a really hard time loving or trusting anyone. In any case we must go on trying. 

A Mid Summer’s Reoccurring Dream

As far back as I can remember going to school until I graduated from college I had this reoccurring dream that I was in the classroom naked. I was always elementary school age. I must have dreamed this dream eighty billion times because I can still recall it so perfectly. I remember looking around the classroom to make sure no one noticed (they never did), and I can to this day envision their face’s features with flawless clarity. My teacher at the front of the class, seemingly oblivious as well went on about sentence diagramming. Always sentence diagramming! All I could think about was sneaking out so I could get dressed. The dream never got that far. It was mostly about the terror of being naked in front of others. I later began to interpret this dream as a sort of sub-conscious commentary on how I felt about school. To me, it meant that I could never completely be myself in an academic setting. I never really found a niche in school. It always seemed very arbitrary and forced, and I never wanted to be there. I was always going through the motions.

            I quit having that dream about six months after I graduated from college. About the same time I moved away from that crumby little college town and decided to pursue my dreams of doing whatever an English major does when he graduates from college. For me that meant having more jobs than I am years old, living in four cities in five years, and accumulating a lower credit score than my math SAT score, but in all those years I never had that dream.

            So now I have almost been home for a year. I have had the same job, lived in the same apartment, and seen the same people and places everyday for like 345 days. Apparently this kind of behavior is highly approved in our society, and it is referred to as stability. People love stability, and it’s very good for your credit score! Yeah! But I’m afraid stability might be the catalyst of a new naked dream. This one is weirder. It involves me walking out of a hotel in Chicago. I’m on my way to a Cubs game, and I’m like two blocks from the stadium when I realize I’m NAKED. So I turn around and begin to run as fast as I can back to my hotel. It seems very far away, but I feel as if I’m running very fast, and I’m not getting tired. Here is the really strange part. This really young African guy (how do I know? our dreams tell us things we cannot expain) catches up to me as if I were walking and begins to push me and laugh. Then he disappears. This happens several times while I run and it just ends. That’s it.

            My fear is that this latest dream may be a subconscious disapproval of what society deems good behavior. Do I really fear stability that much? Does the man chasing and laughing at me represent how I view society as a whole?  Is it possible that I’ve made my insides believe that the scheme of things is really in fact that corrupt? Do I really believe that if society is considered innocent then anyone who isn’t guilty isn’t leading a meaningful life? Secretly I hope so, but I probably just subconsciously fear I have a small penis or something.

For People Watchers

People seem to enjoy watching people. Everyone is a people watcher. Personally whether I’m sitting or standing I’m constantly listening in and watching everyone around me. I’m constantly saying to myself, “hmm good point.” or “really?” And I have to admit I love to make a grand sweeping generalization and I have quite the gift for labeling others by their social stereotype. But lately I’m beginning to question my behavior. I’m wondering if I need to switch it up a little. Maybe I should take up bird watching. Maybe I should just sit and watch my dog sleep. She twitches when she has nightmares and it’s interesting to think about what scares her. And isn’t it possible that I’m missing out on some action in the world of the inanimate? Maybe I could find out what happens to my t shirts, socks, and underwear. The point is. It has come to my attention that there is a lot more going on in the world than this tragic comedy we refer to as the human race. There are cities, neighborhoods, and back country roads filled with mystery and wonder. I’m ready to watch anything except people: my laundry, skyscrapers, rivers, lakes, mountains, stray animals, flies buzzing around road kill, cars, airplanes, I don’t care. People are just people. We are really turning into a dime a dozen type enterprise, but the way a specific body of water runs over a specific rock under a very particular moon is master card type entertainment. Or just pay more attention to your dog. Whatever works!