Gipp, Jacko, and Ted

For many young Americans of my age and background, getting our wisdom teeth pulled out is a common experience that we have shared.  I recall stories with many friends about similar things that happened to us during the course of the minor surgery.  Everybody talks about getting out of the chair in the surgeon’s office when it was time to leave and nearly falling down from being so drugged up.  Many share similar comical anecdotes about trying to eat food and having it fall down their face, and everybody remembers relaxing for a couple days and watching movies and television to pass the time.

I got my wisdom teeth pulled during the second week of June 2004.  I had just finished the 11^th Grade and had the procedure done before I really got going at my summer lifeguarding job.  After the procedure I went home and settled into a chair in the family room of our house.  I would spend the next couple days watching television, and while daytime television isn’t ordinarily all that interesting, this was no ordinary week; this was the week following the death of Ronald Reagan. 

Just a couple weeks earlier I had concluded my American History AP exam so I thought I knew a thing or two about American history and politics.  I knew that Reagan had been President for most of the 1980s, that he had been reelected by a huge margin in 1984 and that Reaganomics was named after him (although I really didn’t know what this meant).  The reason for this is not because I had a poor teacher or anything; rather, it is because Ronald Reagan occupied a place in the netherworld of history as it was taught to me and my peers.

Because I was born midway thru Reagan’s second term, I couldn’t have possibly remembered any of his presidency, and because his last major public appearance was in 1994 (when I was in the 1^st Grade), I understandably had no real memories of Reagan at all.  However, since his presidency happened so near to the time that I was born and went through my schooling it was not really covered in my history classes (I believe that the Vietnam War was the last thing covered on the AP Exam that year). 

There is some point where history catches up to the present; but if you are studying the present then you are definitively not studying history.  In the lives of my parents and teachers, Ronald Reagan was an aspect of the present.  They remembered his presidency well because it happened during their adult lives.  For them, Morning Again in America wasn’t some historical relic (like the commercial is for me now) but a slogan as important and relevant as Change We Can Believe In.

So there I was, with my cheeks swollen up to the point where I couldn’t chew scrambled eggs, watching the likes of Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush give eulogies to the former President.  Without much else that I could do, I was transfixed by the endless processions and events.  It seemed to me that Reagan had the longest funeral services of all time, and I just didn’t really have any basis for understanding it.

***

Earlier this summer, as everybody knows by now, Michael Jackson died.  When I first saw the news reports come up on my computer I was not too surprised at all.  Sure it was before his time, but from what I had seen of this guy in the past, nothing could surprise me.  Although I knew that he had been a hugely successful musician years ago, all I really knew when I thought of Michael Jackson were three things: 1) His face looked incredibly bizarre, 2) He probably sexually abused children, or at least had weird things going on at ‘Neverland Ranch’, 3) He once held one of his children over the balcony railing at a hotel with a blanket covering the child. 

That is just about it.

While I had been surprised years ago at the outpouring of grief during the Reagan funerals, that seemed acceptable because he the President of the United States.  Whether you agreed or disagreed with his principles and policies, he was probably the face of the 1980s. . . or was he?  As I quickly began to realize, Michael Jackson was one of the most transcendent musicians of all time, and was incredibly important to American culture.  Before he became the crazy guy that my generation will remember him as, he was the musician of the 1980s. 

In the weeks after his death, people talked about his music in similar ways to how they had talked about the death of Ronald Reagan.  The weekend after his death I visited a friend at the University of Iowa and every bar we went to played Michael Jackson left and right.  By the end of the weekend I had heard so much Jackson that I felt compelled to be one of the millions of Americans who purchased The Essential Michael Jackson on iTunes.  For the most part, I just didn’t understand it.

Unlike many of the musical artists of the 1960s and 1970s (and even before that) Michael Jackson’s music had not become classics by the time I was born.  It was too new to be considered classic but because it was not the newest material of the day I was never really exposed to it in the way that older Americans had been.  Maybe this is just the way it works with pop music (we’ll have to wait and see if anybody remembers Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers 20 years from now) or maybe it is because the height of Michael Jackson’s popularity was just something that I missed culturally and was never able to see in a historical context because I was too close to it.  Michael Jackson’s importance was caught in the same netherworld of history for me that Ronald Reagan’s was, and I therefore couldn’t understand it.

***

In January of 2008 Senator Ted Kennedy gave his endorsement for President to Barack Obama.  At this point my roommate Hogan and I had become something of MSNBC junkies.  We started to watch the channel so much during the primaries and caucuses that I would sometimes wake up in a cold sweat from dreams nightmares of Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews yelling at each other even though they seemingly were saying the same thing.  This was an historic year for politics and we were following from the outset.

When Senator Kennedy gave this endorsement, my initial thought was: Who is this man, and why does anybody care?  All I really knew about Kennedy was that he was the brother of President John and would-be President Robert.  Even as an astute student of Political Science, I couldn’t really understand why his endorsement meant so much more than that of any other senator.  There was really no way I could possibly understand why this endorsement mattered as much as it did because I didn’t live through the tragedies of the 60s and I hadn’t been alive nor aware of Kennedy’s role as a leader for liberalism in the years since.

That’s why, for the first time in months, I turned on MSNBC today.  I read more articles, columns, and obituaries than I had on any previous day this summer trying to grasp what was so important about Ted Kennedy.  My mind was transfixed on what was so important about this man that news literally came to a standstill because of his death.  Like Michael Jackson and Ronald Reagan before him, Ted Kennedy was an important part of American history and culture that was too close to me to be taught or dissected but too far away for me to remember.  Ted Kennedy’s importance existed in the netherworld of history for me.

Despite the fact that I can’t attest to what it is, Ted Kennedy undoubtedly left an imprint on American politics.  His longevity in the United States Senate is longer than the combined years that our last three Presidents have served in major elected office (as Senator, Governors, and Presidents).  Even if all of the glorifications over the past day have been grossly exaggerated (which I doubt), he was still one of the most influential Senators in history, but will history remember him?

Kennedy’s was probably more important not because of his political influence, but rather because of his place in American culture.  He was the last son of the great American political dynasty.  Americans loved the Kennedys and he served as the embodiment of that throughout his life.  His endorsement of Barack Obama was not important because he was a long serving Senator; it was important because he was the brother of Jack and Bobby and he was able to pass the torch on from them to Obama. 

Ted Kennedy was an incredibly important American both culturally and politically, but for my generation he rather unfortunately might not be remembered much at all.  Michael Jackson left an undeniable impression on American culture with his music and craziness and will be remembered by my generation for it.  Ronald Reagan will someday take up a chapter or two in American history textbooks.  Ted Kennedy, while possibly just as important to our history and culture as either man, might never escape the netherworld of history in my mind like the other two have; and that’s just the way it is. 

Fear and Loathing at the Landmark Inn

The first time I read The Catcher in the Rye, I didn’t really understand what the word phony meant.  Sure, I understood the dictionary-type definition of it.  I knew that Holden was talking about a person who was fake in some way, but the 16 year-old version of Bob Kessler could not comprehend what the word actually meant.  I read the entire book in the 10^th Grade and almost became annoyed with the way Holden calls everybody a phony.  I was aware that the book was considered a classic, but I didn’t really know why it was considered a classic.

Does a book become a classic just by being one of the more readable books in the high school curriculum?  After a year and a half of reading books like The House on Mango Street, Beloved, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I think it was just natural for me to enjoy a book that I could actually relate to.  I never really understood the significance of The Catcher in the Rye until I was able to fully comprehend the meaning of the word phony, and the irony in the way that Holden uses it to describe everybody except himself.  Earlier this summer, on second reading, I was able to grasp a lot more from the book.

I couldn’t have understood the book without The Landmark Inn; the only real bar in Northbrook, and the place that I have found myself on far too many nights this summer.  I don’t mind the Landmark.  It is a fine enough bar to have a beer in.  Not too expensive . . . fairly clean . . . outdoor seating.  It is a very suburban bar.  On most nights we end up going to the Landmark Inn mainly because it is close enough to most of our homes that we can walk.  On one particular night, we were a smaller group, just four of us, but the table quickly became larger as the night wore on.

Because the Landmark Inn is the solitary bar in our town, it attracts a wide array of people (well, that is very relative).  There are the older divorcees that are trying to pick up men (and women, I suppose); there are the twentysomethings that haven’t found their way out of their parents homes yet; there are the older college students home for break; and there are the lifetime residents who have been going to this bar (or an earlier incarnation) with their softball team every week for the past twenty years.    

On the night in question, my group fit under a couple of these definitions.  Of the four of us, two were twentysomethings who weren’t looking towards moving out of home anytime soon.  My friend Peter was about to move out to LA for a big engineering job, and I was just biding my time until I could leave for China.  It would have been a fine night of drinking and conversation if it had just been the four of us, but this seldom happens at the Landmark Inn.

On this night, no sooner had my friends and I sat down on the outdoor porch than we ran into a girl that went to high school with us.  She enthusiastically hugged us all, and we courteously invited her and her friend to join us.  We had never been very close with this girl, but she spoke to us as if we were long lost friends.  She asked what we were all doing for the next year of our lives, and we discussed future plans thoroughly.  At one point in the conversation, I was talking about my upcoming trip to China when she exclaimed that I would have to tell her all about it. 

In that very instant I understood EXACTLY what Holden Caulfield was talking about.  I hadn’t really seen this girl in four years (with a good chance that we hadn’t shared words since grade school) but she wanted me to be sure to tell her all about my trip when I got back.  I told her that I would be blogging about it extensively and assured her that I would put the link to the blog on my Facebook page.  The funny thing is that I don’t even think we’re Facebook friends, and unlike most people, it isn’t because I de-friended her.  We were never friends to begin with. 

This girl was a phony if I had ever met one.

Why should she care about my goings on in China?  Sure I was planning to write an interesting blog with interesting stories, anecdotes, and essays from my year in the Orient; but why should she care about it?  Not only had she not heard from me in a long time, but she had never read anything that I had written.  In fact, even if I had known this URL during that conversation, she probably would have never come to it.  She did not care at all.  Everything she said was to make me (as well as my friends) think that she cared about what we did or what we were doing when in reality she didn’t really know who we were.

About this point in the conversation a large group of people who we graduated from high school with walked into the bar.  Some of the guys stopped to talk to one of my friends, others stopped to talk to the girl in question, but most of the guys just continued walking over to the table they would be sitting.  Nobody said much of anything to me, which was to be expected, and I think I respected the guys more who didn’t say anything.  How many of them really knew or cared about the people sitting at our table?  Is there some unwritten rule that says you have to stop and chat with anybody who went to your high school?  I think that Larry David was correct in his infamous episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where he refuses to ‘stop and chat’ with a man he knows just because he walks past him.  There are some people who I run into that I need to stop and talk with, but there are others that I don’t.  That is just the way it is.

But while I was sitting there watching these guys sit down at another table a ways away from ours, I came to one important realization.  If these guys were from Notre Dame and just sat down at a table near mine, I would absolutely walk over and chat for a little bit.  It’s not because I like people from Notre Dame more, or because I disliked the guys who were sitting at the table; but really it is because the people from Notre Dame actually know me, the guy that I am now.  People who I knew in high school knew me in high school.  They knew the 16 year-old version of Bob Kessler, the version that couldn’t figure out what Holden meant when he talked about phonies.  I am a completely different person than I was back then for so many reasons, but no matter what I do I can never convince these people that I am anything different than the person I was in the 12^th Grade. 

This is why I hate Northbrook.  It isn’t that I actually have a problem with the town itself, it is that I have a problem with the way everybody who lives here will ultimately perceive me.  No matter what I did in my four years at college, people here will always see me as the guy I was four years ago, a person who only now exists within the framework of our collective memories. I am a completely different person now than I was then, and there is no way that most of these people can comprehend that because for better or worse, most of the people I come across in Northbrook are the same that they were four years ago.

Or at least that is how I see them.

Housekeeping

When I was in the 11^th Grade, my American History teacher used to put the agenda for the day on the board at the beginning of each class.  If she was going to lecture about a topic, it would be written on the agenda.  If she wanted to do an exercise in groups, it would be on that agenda.  Sometimes she would write the word “housekeeping” on the agenda, which would essentially mean that she had things to go over with us that were only tangentially related to the course topics.

Housekeeping in school was always a way to make sure that everything was taken care of.  In college, matters of housekeeping were always covered on the class syllabus.  Things like when the papers would be due, when readings were supposed to be completed (in theory), how the grading scale operated, and what the attendance policy was would always be covered on the syllabus.

As I enter the 17^th Grade, I have some housekeeping to take care of.  So here is the syllabus, things that might not be interesting, but I want to cover up front:

-There will be a wide array of posts on this site.  Don’t expect everything to be related to China or my time there.  There will be some stories, some essays, and probably some bullet point lists.  I don’t expect anybody to read everything on this site, and I hope that different people enjoy different types of posts. 

-From time to time I might revert back to the Bob Kessler circa 2007-2008 and write a film review or two.  For those looking to read some of my film and television reviews from that time, most of them are still collected (for now, at least) over at saltystix.com. 

-This is clearly going to be a more personal endeavor than Things Notre Dame Students Like, and while I will continue to update TNDSL, there will be more updates to this site than the other.  Furthermore, as it is a more personal site, I would appreciate it if the readership would refrain from posting anonymous comments.  While anonymous comments can usually be hilarious, such as “bob’s never had a girl!,” I would appreciate it if I could know who is saying what on this blog.  This isn’t really because I need to know, but rather functional thing.  I’d love to hear from everybody, and what everybody thinks about what I write, but I would also like to hear from actual people and not anonymous people while I am gone. 

-To repeat: NO ANONYMOUS COMMENTS PLEASE.

-Finally, but the most important reason behind this post; I want to firmly put in writing that the writing on this blog might be based in some factual truths, but it might not be.  While I don’t intend on writing blatant lies, I also don’t plan to bring a recording device around with me like Tucker Max (and some friends have told me it is really weird when I start taking notes on napkins at bars and restaurants). 

The people and characters I write about could be real people, they could be based on real people, they could be amalgamations of real people, or they could be completely fictitious people that I write about in order to make a point.  Since most of the readers here probably personally know me, you will probably be able to figure this out fairly easily.  I just don’t want to create outrage like this woman did.

That is about all I have to say now.  Hopefully, I am able to write everything that I want to write.

Enjoy,

-bob

The 17th Grade

There we were; a close friend and I, walking back from an arduous day of class discussing the most important political issue of the day. He was a Democrat and a staunch Clinton supporter who I had barely known for two months while I was a life-long Republican eager to lend all of my arguments behind the current president: George Bush. Typical of most political debates of the time, neither of us had any idea what we were talking about as we each spit out rhetoric that probably made little to no sense. Like Olbermann and O’Reilly today we each had our deep seated political convictions and were dead-certain that the other was wrong. We were like anybody else in the country that day . . . except that we were in Kindergarten.

It was November 3^rd, 1992 and I was only five years old, but it remains as the most vivid memory of my early years. That day we had participated in the school-wide mock election for President of the United States that took place every four years. Over the course of the day each class was taken down to the lower level of the building and made their choice for President in the voting booths (music practice rooms) that were only a floor below the actual voting booths where our parents were actually voting in the actual election.

In our mock election that day I voted to re-elect President George Bush (this was, of course, before his middle initials mattered) while my friend voted for a young saxophone player named Bill Clinton. We had no idea why we voted this way or why we felt the way we did about our chosen candidates. We just did. It wasn’t until years later that I figured it all out.

***

When I first decided to spend the next year of my life teaching English in China I immediately knew that I would have to start a blog. Not only did I need to keep my diverse network of friends, family, and contacts updated on my goings-on, but I also would be able to use the blog as a way to continue my ridiculously improbable development as a writer.

You see, I never was much of a writer. If you take a look at my middle school transcripts the recurring theme is that I always did poorly in the class they called “Language Arts”. While I was a great reader, the papers I had to write each year always weighed me down. I don’t know what it was about research papers, but the 13-year old edition of me just couldn’t get the job done on these topics:

The 6^th Grade: Cleopatra . . . C

The 7^th Grade: The Forward Observers in World War II: D-

The 8^th Grade: Something Controversial about Watergate: D+

These grades don’t show signs of improvement. They don’t show signs of a future graduate of the University of Notre Dame. They barely signal the presence of a future manager of Kentucky Fried Chicken (although that was the direction I was headed before this opportunity in China presented itself). With grades like this it’s a wonder that they kept me in “Extended Language Arts” each of those years.

Somewhere along the line I started to figure things out and after the 11^th Grade I wrote the essay that probably changed my life: the one that got me into Notre Dame.

***

By the time I entered the 9^th Grade I had a strong group of friends that has remained close to me ever since. Despite the dispersion of the group from Northbrook, Illinois to places like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and New York, we still care about each other and will go to any depths of creepy Facebook stalking to find out inside information about girls the others are seeing.

Having this group made leaving for college much more difficult. I liked how things worked throughout high school and was not eager to go to a place where I didn’t have such a close knit group. When I entered the 13^th Grade I was terrified of the prospect of having to meet new people and make new friends. Meeting people had never come easy for me, and I quickly found myself trying to memorize the names of six guys from my dorm when I took their Student IDs to register for the student ticket lottery.

Jon. Michael. Doug. Jack. John. Eric.

I flipped back and forth between the IDs trying to memorize their names as I walked around Notre Dame Stadium to the rapidly forming line.

Jon. Michael. Doug. Jack. John. Eric.

Unfortunately I suck at memorization. The whole effort seemed for naught when I got back to the dorm, passed back their IDs, and couldn’t remember any of their names at dinner that night. I figured out later that I would rarely call these six guys by these six names in the months and years ahead.

***

By the end of the 5^th Grade I didn’t have many close friends at all. Sure there were people who I hung out with, or played with, but these guys weren’t really friends. Towards the end of the year we were on a school bus returning from a trip to the middle school. I can’t remember what we were coming from, but I do remember one of these guys exclaiming, “Man, Junior High is gonna be awesome. They have a cafeteria, we get to buy our lunch. It’s gonna be great.”

Several months later I was sitting at the lunch table near him in that very cafeteria during the first couple weeks of middle school. It wasn’t that I was friends with this guy (I wasn’t); I really just had nobody else to sit with. I aimlessly drifted towards the people I knew from middle school, but after a couple weeks this didn’t really suffice. When some people became ‘popular’ I had to fend for myself like every other middle school student.

Years later, in the 12^th Grade, I happened to have an elective class with that same guy. I hadn’t talked to him in years (and hadn’t had a class with him either) and we didn’t really say much to each other in class. It was a Psychology elective that was taught by one of the swim coaches. Not the AP class he taught, but the one for people just needing to fill a space in their schedule.

One day, the teacher went around the room and asked us all what we each would title our autobiographies when we got the chance to write them. I had never given much thought to what I would title the story of my life, and I asked him to come back to me after I gave it some thought. The teacher went around the room and the other students gave cliché answer after cliché answer.

Determined not to come up with a cliché answer of my own, I came up with the most cliché title of them all: Running Backwards. When he heard this response, the guy from grade school chuckled out loud prompting me to tilt my head to the side and look at him inquisitively. “What’s wrong with that title?” I asked.

“It’s a stupid title,” he said, “It makes no sense.”

At this point I think the teacher was more shocked than anything that a person could make such a rude and senseless remark. He tried to support me like I was a bruised and battered 2^nd Grade student, but at this point I could manage myself. “Who are you to tell me what a good title for the story of my life should be? You know nothing about me,” I said.

The teacher then interjected by asking me why I thought that would be an interesting title for my autobiography to which I responded with some nonsense about how I thought I was moving as fast as I could towards something, but because I didn’t really know what that something was I might as well have been running backward. He liked it, I think, and it was true when I said it (and probably still true today).

I don’t know what happened to that other guy, but if I had to guess; he’s probably managing a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

***

A few weeks ago I went on a road trip stopping in places between Chicago and the east coast. I could give a lot of different reasons why I went on this trip, but the main reason was because I wanted needed to say goodbye to the friends that I wouldn’t be seeing for a year. I reassured them all that I would keep in contact while I was gone and that they would be able to follow me on a blog that I was starting. The only problem was that I had yet to settle on a title for the blog (since the title Running Backwards was already reserved for my autobiography).

On one of the stops towards the end of my trip I went on a babysitting excursion with my friend in Dayton, Ohio. Arriving at the home of her client, I was shocked to find that there were no babies present, only an 11 year old girl who I proceeded to make small talk with (because I am awesome with kids). While I was making her a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch she told me she was 11 and I feverishly tried to work out in my head what grade she was entering. I haven’t been very good with numbers since that day years ago when I finished my AP Calculus exam and felt sore in the brain; so I guessed, “You’re gonna be in 5^th Grade this year?”

She told me I was wrong and that she was actually entering the 6^th Grade, and I responded by saying, “You know Maribeth and I are entering the 17^th Grade.”

At this point I was getting very excited, but both the girl and my friend seemed puzzled. After explaining to them that if senior year of high school was the 12^th Grade, then senior year of college is the 16^th Grade, and whatever happens after that becomes the 17^th Grade, I marveled at the notion that I had stumbled upon the name of my blog in the most unexpected way.

***

The 17^th Grade is what happens after college graduation. It’s what happens after the last test has been taken and the last paper has been turned in. It’s what happens after all the cigars have been smoked, all the liquor finished, and all the memories packed up into boxes and carried off to places that we can barely call home anymore. It’s the place that all those years of schooling were meant to prepare us for even though we could never possibly be prepared for it.

For those of you who have been paying attention, however, I am entering the 17^th Grade somewhat more prepared then I ever could have anticipated.

Despite my claims that I was phoning it in throughout most of college, I did learn a thing or two about how politics works from my Political Science Major (shocking, I know). Among other things, I learned the truth behind that story from 1992. I was only a Republican because my parents were, and my friend was only a Democrat because his parents were. Furthermore, I figured out that most Americans don’t bother to rethink this political identity from cradle to grave. Shockingly, I had learned something that would help prepare me for what was to come.

In one of these first classes I was sitting in a large lecture hall during the second week of school waiting for Freshmen Philosophy to start. I was fairly early to the class and there were a lot of empty seats, but some guy sits down right next to me. While I was a little confused about the situation, I became even more confused when he started to talk like he knew me. I went along with it and quickly figured out that he lived two doors down from me in the dorm and I should have known who he was; but I hadn’t been holding his ID earlier in the week so I couldn’t possibly have memorized his name.

Knowing that it takes me several meetings to remember a person’s name (unless they happen to be a mildly attractive girl that I had been creeping on from afar), I learned how to mask this deficiency by using all the old tricks to get through conversations with people I could not remember at all. I started to make friends with people before I could even remember their names.

Once I did remember their names we would end up becoming great friends, even if I wasn’t searching for great friends.

Finally, all these years of schooling did end up teaching me a thing or two about writing. First I learned how to write a thesis, and how everything must be in support of that thesis. Then I learned, with some carefully placed asterisks, that even if things don’t make any sense, people will still probably find stories interesting. Finally I learned that as long as my writing is choke full of pop culture references, people will either love it or hate it. [suddenly, I am worried. There are no pop culture references in this initial entry].

Most importantly, I learned the story of this blog, and how I discovered the title during the most unlikely of conversations, and how the most important things I will probably find even if I am not looking for them.

***

So what now? At the end of Robert Redford’s 1972 film The Candidate, Redford sits in an empty hotel room after winning election to the United States Senate. He had changed a lot in his campaign and had done everything it took to win, but for what? He turns to his campaign manager and says, “What do we do now?” I very well could have asked that same question as I packed my car to return to Northbrook after 4 years of college, because none of us really know.

Whatever happens next, I hope to share my stories here for everybody to read and enjoy because for me the 17^th Grade should prove to be more interesting than any that came before it. After 17 years of a formal education I am going to China where all the things I have learned these years could prove incredibly crucial . . . or completely worthless.