Fun in the Tub

When you make a mistake, Richard Nixon said to his close friend Millie, admit it: just don’t tell anyone about it.
That’s essentially what I want to do now – not admit that I made a mistake when, about a year ago, I impulsively suggested that Karl Rove had something to do with the Valerie Plame ‘leak’.
Actually I want to do a bit more than simply not admit to something.
In the spirit of modern, existential political honesty, I am not only not going to admit to making a mistake, I am going to suggest that what I did not do was not illegal.
Not that anyone has accused me of doing something illegal: just that if they do, what I did not do, was not illegal.
(Politics and good grammar do not mix.)

We’re dealing in hypotheticals here: I wasn’t around when the White House sprang a leak, so I can’t personally attest to the facts surrounding this famous drip.
We do have the written reports from those that were there – and Grand Jury testimony and, coincidentally, those reports have now been retroactively declassified, allowing me to share what others knew to be leaks, at the time, without being accused of leaking myself.
According to those reports, Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leaks at the White House.
In fact, Karl turns out to have been a victim of those leaks. Or perhaps I should put it a different way.
When the leaks first appeared (and leaks are like trees that fall in the forest, if you’re not there to see them, they don’t exist) Karl was the one called in to the fix them.
Karl was essentially - the declassified, insignificant, politics as usual, facts now seem to suggest, a plumber.
Now I don’t want you to think (wink wink, nudge nudge) that by using the word ‘plumber’ I am in any way suggesting any similarities to the way that Karl Rove functioned in the White House, and the way the infamous Watergate ‘plumbers’ functioned.
No: they are very different.
Karl has his plumber’s license, and Nixon’s plumbers were undocumented aliens that the White House hired to save a few bucks.
Poor Karl, he was just a hired hand, called in to fix a few leaks.
You know how it goes: you see a little water damage on the ceiling, a few drips, and so to be safe you call for the plumber.
The plumber would be just as happy tightening up a few screws, adding a nut and bolt here and there, and getting his $250. But when Karl arrived, it was immediately apparent that there was a hidden leak, the source of which had to be found, or else.
So Karl got out his tools and started looking.
He dug through the ceiling of his office, and into the office of Scooter Libby: though he found a big pool of water there, the source was still hidden.
So he dug through the wall of Libby’s office and into the Vice President’s office: though the water was a lot deeper, the leak did not originate there.
So he dug through the floor of the Vice President’s office and, finally, he found the source.
There was the President himself, taking a bath: laughing and splashing about, playing with his GI Joes, and unknowingly causing a little water to cascade over the tub and onto the floor and.. well, you know the rest.
Nothing illegal there.
Just a lot of good clean fun, and a little innocent, inadvertent leaking.
Or course Karl and Scooter and Dick couldn’t talk about the President taking a bath. The press would have had a field day with the image of the President and his GI Joes.
So they protected him.
The President did not even know that he was the one responsible for the leak. He couldn’t imagine anyone would care about his bathing habits.
So when days later, he told the plumbing press that he would not tolerate any leaks in the White House, he meant it.
Informed sources at the White House have now told me, on condition of anonymity, that he is very sorry for all the trouble that he has caused, however inadvertently.
The President has now had all the tubs in the White House removed, replacing them with enclosed shower stalls.
And just to be safe, the President has issued a secret order that all classified information that is inadvertently leaked, for any reason, is to be considered declassified as soon as it is revealed.

So okay, I will admit that when I leaked the story of Karl Rove leaking the story I was not exactly leaking the truth.
I didn’t know the truth, at the time.
But now that the truth has changed, I stand by my story.

Hovercraft

My timing was good this past week.
On Wednesday I drove to Leominster to help my older son, Robert, celebrate his 21st birthday.
We had dinner, drinks, and now his name is going on the wall of the restaurant because he was able to down a double-shot of tequila, worm and all.
My sister-in-law, I have heard, was appalled by my participation in those festivities.
I understand her concern, but I don’t think I was encouraging bad behavior: I actually thought I was making quite the opposite statement.
The best we can do, I have always said, is to not make things worse.
Whatever you do, I love to quote Camus in “The Plague”, just don’t spread the microbe.
Besides, I wanted him to know that I was impressed that he had made it this far, relatively unscathed.
On Friday we bought a new bike for my 7 year old son.
By the weekend the weather had warmed considerably, and the seven year old was able to stay out for hour after hour, riding his new bike.
By the mid-afternoon he already had a few tricks to show me: first balancing his feet on the back of the bike and rolling down the hill, and then putting his feet up against the front and, again, balancing as the bike rolled along.
Be prepared, I told my wife, with bandages and first aid cream.
But what are we supposed to do – forbid him from attempting any tricks, taking any risks? You all know what comes of that.
So instead, seeing he was big enough for the 20” bike, we took him to the street, give him the bike, and let him ride.
Maybe it’s all about balance.
You have to let your children learn to walk on their own, otherwise when they needed to get something from the refrigerator they would fall right over.
It’s hard to strike the right balance yourself, as a parent: if you hold on too tightly, you’re both going to crash. If you let go too quickly, well, they’re still going to fall.
So what you do is hover.
You practice the fine art of hovering, of subtle support: you mix praise with fear and sneak laughter into the lecture.
This past week was a triumph of hovering.
God knows it ain’t easy.
To hover in Leominster I had to drive two hours, eat some mediocre Mexican food, and down a few shots of tequila myself.
Then it was on to Worcester –where Robert was sure to get carded, for more drinks (his, not mine) and bad karaoke.
Then a two hour drive home, interrupted just before I turned into the driveway by a call from my son –closing down the bar with his goodhearted (and sober) girlfriend.
“Yes’ I told him, “I had a great time too. Sorry I had to leave so early, but I have some more hovering to do with your little brother.”
Hovering around a seven year-old is just as tough as hovering around a 21 year-old –maybe tougher.
First of all, at my age, drinking a shot of tequila is far easier than keeping up with a seven year old.
And if the 21 year-old screws up, at least you can say that he should know better. The seven year-old still has the youth excuse.
There is very little difference though, in how much help they will ask for.
The younger son will actually ask for help, at first, for about 30 seconds: then he wants you out of the way.
The seven year old is, at least, not as good as hiding their desire for your approval, and will beam at praise.
The 21 year old will only ask for help after they have screwed up: but be careful not to think that your help gives you the right to lecture.
The 21 year old bristles at the offer of any advice from his father. He occasionally needs help, not advice, which usually translates in to cash.

So you hover: half way between the ground and the air, between praise and advice, between fear and laughter.
You need to have great balance.
You need to have great timing.
It was just one of those weeks, when everything that could go wrong, didn’t.
The sun was out, the wind was just right, and I managed to just hover in mid-air, like a dad is supposed to do.

All the Marbles

I’ve lost my marbles.
At least it feels that way.
I loved marbles, as a kid: it was such a simple ‘sport’, so easily understood, so effortless to play.
Nowadays things are a bit more complex, a bit more demanding..
Nowadays you need a graduate degree just to read the Sports section of the newspaper.
But even with the proper education, you still need to regularly devote at least two hours a day to studying rosters, compiling statistics, and memorizing the names of mascots, just to stay competitive.
Not competitive in the actual sport, of course: no, you need all that education and ongoing research just to compete in the Fantasy Leagues.
The Fantasy Leagues!
You know what they are, don’t you?
The one thing the Fantasy Leagues are not, is a fantasy. They are all about real athletes, actual performance, player drafts, and piles and piles of statistics.
It takes weeks of intense preparation to be competitive in a Fantasy sport.
Don’t get involved in a Fantasy sports league if you are inclined to fantasize. Don’t get involved in a Fantasy sports league if you have a real life –unless of course you are willing to make the Fantasy Leagues your real life.
And please, don’t get involved in Fantasy Sports Leagues if you are only looking to have some fun.
You want fun, try marbles.

But as I said at the start, I have lost my marbles.
I succumbed to the alleged fun of March Madness and now, perhaps mercifully, I am already out of it.
Again, I am not talking about the real games, the actual basketball: no, of course not.
What I am talking about is Bracketmania.
All across the country millions of Americans put their chores aside, rescheduled medical appointments, postponed bachelor parties, and otherwise put their lives on hold so they could predict the outcome of 59 basketball games in three weeks.
You probably have a better chance of winning the Powerball game, but that hasn’t stopped hordes of people from filling out their brackets, putting down their cash, and staying up past their bedtime to find out if the Rootabaga Giants from the MidSouthern Conference upset Altoona’s Laughing Cows, or the Humpbacked Whales of Miller State managed to eek out a win against perennial powerhouse Anthracite State.
Are you following this?
Who’s fooling whom?
I’d never even heard of Arkansas Central Christian, and yet I was fairly confident that they’d advance to the second round.
I couldn’t tell you which side of the Alabash River the campus was located on, but I confidently predicted Whoozits U. would surprise St. Juleps of Naomi.
I never stood a chance.
Of course, hope springs eternal: before the first game of the first round I stood atop the leader board (tied with everyone else at zero points), full of potential, sure of victory.
I had even filled out the tie-breaker sheet, predicting the total amount of points that would be scored in the championship game.
Then they played that first game and I plummeted down through the standings, like the Knights without Roy Hobbs.
After two rounds I was still in the top 30% of all participants, which placed me ahead of over 100,000, but behind 37,105.
I took some solace in the fact that there were so many pathetic losers behind me in the standings, at that point –and even scoffed at those who purported to know what they were talking about.
I, on the other hand, never had a clue.
Marbles, as I said, are more my speed.
In marbles, you have your Clearies, your Snotties, your Purees and your Agates.
You draw a big ring in the dirt, and then you take turns with one opponent, dropping marbles into the circle.
Then you take turns shooting at the marbles.
If you knock them out of the ring, you keep them.
I still have a bag of Purees, mementoes of my days as 2nd grade champion of St. Johns Elementary in Bangor.
The last time I looked at my March Madness bracket, I was in 89,473rd place, with that number growing faster than the national debt.