Good Things To Do

1. Wake up early when the house is quiet. Make a great cup of coffee. Write three pages while drinking it.

2. Walk the dog. Do it alone (well, bring the dog) or with others. I went with my daughter. If you don't have a daughter, just bring someone you love. If you don't have a dog, go out anyway. Just don't poop on someone's lawn.

3. While outside, notice the people walking and running. Wave. Say hello. Maintain eight feet of distance.

4. Pick up your dog's poop. I mean, come on. Do a little laundry. Wash the dishes. Take care of things.

5. Indulge in a hot shower. Feel clean and warm. Let water run over your head while you close your eyes and think nothing at all.

6. Put on a record. If you don't have a turntable (God help you), play music some other way. Don't wear headphones. Fill the room with music and feel yourself eddy through it.

7. Read a book. A paper book. One that doesn't ever have to be charged. Read until you're sleepy.

8. Take a nap. Preferably on the couch. Preferably under a cat.

9. Eat something good that you made yourself. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich maybe. Make some to share and enjoy it with someone.

10. Call a friend. Check in with your mother. If you can, call your father. I can't, but I'm talking to him anyway. Being alone is good, being lonely is terrible. Leaving someone alone can be good, leaving them lonely is a sin.

11. Make your own list of good things and tell me about it.

Twenty Second Curiosity

I just washed my hands. Pretty much everyone can say that all the time now. We've all just washed our hands and been singing or otherwise trying to time twenty seconds. I'm a counter, but I count too fast so I go up to thirty-eight and then rinse for twelve more counts. I give my hands three shakes into the sink then dry them on the towel, wondering, "when was that last washed?" Got to keep clean and try to stay healthy.

It got me thinking about the things people study and the ways other people mock such things until needing them. I imagine a few months ago when a study asking exactly how long to wash hands would have been ridiculed. Our local paper recently (mercifully) suspended comments, but an article on such a study would have driven the old-white-male commenting mob to complain about liberals wasting hard-earned money on nonsense. There would have been back-in-my-day comments. A hand-washing study would have been a joke, a waste, a typical bit of foolishness from those who seek to know more.

Until the old white guys caught fevers.

There are things worth learning that seem to have no use in the moment. My daughter is in college and unsure what to study. She wants something interesting and has been pressured to do something useful, but what does that mean? All her school life she has been urged toward "college and career readiness," but we are born college and career ready so long as we are born curious.

"College and career readiness" decides what we are supposed to study based on short-term thinking. I was an English teacher and "college and career readiness" meant no more novels. Just have 'em read informational texts. That turned out to be part of the war on intelligence, the battle against wisdom, and the hatred of expertise. Everything had to be clearly useful right away, damn it.

Useful to whom?

Once upon a time, a researcher wondered, "how long should we wash our hands?" She was a medical student or a surgeon, a lab technician or a professor. She was curious. The question tugged at the brain. She wanted to know what would be best for all of us. A minute seemed too long, ten seconds, too short. She was thinking of ordinary people. Ask too much and they'll skip washing all together. Ask too little and they might as well skip.

A hand-washing study began, continued, and came to the conclusion that twenty seconds is optimal for public health. I'm sure those results are still being questioned and tested. Curiosity shouldn't ever end.

Some studies turn out to be frivolous, sure, but others seem frivolous only until we need them. Remember the stories about Post-It notes? And Corning's Gorilla Glass was designed for 1960's race cars but later turned out to be great for phones.

I don't know what I'll need to know in the future, but I want curious people studying weird and wondrous things, checking their stopwatches to see how long I should wash and, through small miracles of wondering, keeping me alive. I want my daughter to simply be curious and follow where that leads. I want my country to be less afraid of and much more appreciative of those who serve through curiosity, research, and expertise.

I also want to go wash that hand towel and give my hands another wash while I'm at it. I'm not curious enough to want to catch this virus.

A Bench In The Park

I couldn't sleep last night. I was worrying about the virus, trying to find answers for things I don't know yet. I was planning days that don't exist and spinning up into anxiety that only kept me awake. This morning's pages told me this story. You've probably heard it before.

An old guy sits on a bench in a park across from a pond and near a playground. The late afternoon sun shines softly. It's an ordinary kind of day, warm enough to enjoy, not so hot as to notice. He sits alone. He is calm, patient, accepting of whatever the day brings.

On the playground a boy runs and screams. He moves from slide to swing to teeter-totter. He spins and jumps, hangs and rolls. He's me. I'm going as fast as I can. I don't know if there are other kids there. I'm too busy.

I know the old guy on the bench. I know he's waiting. I try to ignore him. I don't want to slow down, don't want to stop, don't want to go home. I don't want to grow up.

But children tire and get hungry. I walk away from the playground, heart still pounding, blood racing, breath uneven. I sit on the bench and look toward the pond. Two ducks glide out of the sky, splash into the water, then settle in calmly. My breathing slows. The afternoon shifts one minute into evening. The light changes, the trees sigh, a squirrel pauses to see its world.

I turn to tell the old man that I'm ready to go, but there's no one there. I'm sitting in his place. Calm, patient, accepting of what has happened.

I turn from the pond toward the playground where a boy runs and screams. He tries not to look my way.

And I understand just exactly how he feels.

Good Things

I have what my daughters would call dumb good luck. Really dumb. Off the charts stupid. This means I fall in shit and tend to come up smelling not just like roses but more like Coco Chanel. Things work out for me.

For example, last January, finally coming to terms with how horrible my teaching job was, I decided to quit in June. My wife — a sensible, logical woman — asked, "what will you do instead?" I shrugged. "Something will come to me." She expected (hoped?) I would start scouring the classifieds. That I still believe such things as classified ads still exist indicates how good I am at looking for jobs. It should then come as no surprise that I took January off from thinking about what would come next, what job would replace teaching. Everyone deserves a month to come to grips with things.

Then I took February off from making any decisions. March too. As April approached, she lost patience with me. (It's impressive she lasted that long, but she's pretty cool and seems to love me.) Still, she kind of broke and may have said something like, "what are you planning for us to live on?" When I shrugged this time she wasn't even a little amused, but here's the thing: I was sure something would come along. Like usual, something did.

Good things find me especially when I'm expecting them. Last year I was open to good things. I trusted the world and myself. So it's not shocking that I was presented with two opportunities and that the one I chose turned out to be fantastic. But even when I'm not expecting things to work out, they just do.

As a kid, I failed out of college. Talk about disaster. Three semesters of Clarkson tuition down the toilet. I came home at Christmas feeling like a complete failure, certain I would never recover. After New Year's, I drove to the community college. Handing my application to a woman there, I asked, "when will I hear if I get accepted?" She patted my hand, smiled, and said, "oh, honey, everyone gets accepted." In that moment good things began coming to me.

I took classes and worked full-time and did homework and loved most every moment of it. Classwork came easily, not because the classes were all easy but because I was ready to work, learn, and see what would happen. I didn't worry about grades. I just wanted to figure everything out and felt like I could. Good thing after good thing came my way.

A kid in psychology class complained he was failing math. I told him, "I know math." He asked me to tutor him and I did. During our fourth session I decided to become a teacher. It was just so clear. I finished community college, went on to earn a four-year degree in teaching, got into graduate school tuition-free with an assistant-ship that along with my what my girlfriend (now wife) earned paid rent and bills. After that I endured the life of a substitute teacher but only for five months. I was offered a part-time teaching job I hadn't even been looking for and which led to more good things.

But enough of my history. I want to think about what makes for my dumb good luck. I'm not pure as the driven snow. I've made too many mistakes, squandered opportunities, overestimated and underestimated my talents, and done people wrong. I'm as much of a mess as the next person.

It's not because I was born on third base thinking I hit a triple. I was born on first base with huge lead against a catcher with a weak arm, but I've always known that. (Of course, that proves I really was born on second base and am underestimating the privilege afforded white, middle class men.) I got a great head start, but plenty of people get better starts and haven't gotten where I have, so what's the deal?

Is it stupid good luck? I don't want to think so. Luck is arbitrary and unreliable. What I've experienced has been regular and predictable. I end up in good situations. I don't believe in luck, but if we have to call it luck, I can live with that.

You might think I'm going to say I've made my own luck, that I create all this good stuff. There's some truth to that, but I don't think I've done anything impressive for which I should take credit. I've just gotten used to good things, come to expect them. My expectations are skewed.

I don't care to be rich. Well, I wouldn't mind buying a Tesla, but really, I don't care much about wealth. I've never been poor that I know of. There were times Mom talked like we were poor, but Dad never went down that road. He exuded quiet confidence that all was and would be well. He found money. Not like that. He found it by going to work. He bought a business and worked a second job until the business got going. Mom took a job too. Together they made things work, made good things happen. They weren't rich but were satisfied. They had dreams that weren't crazy-town and reached them one after another.

Mostly I'm like that.

Back when we first married, all my wife wanted was a good job, a warm house, and two children. In that order. We did it backward. Two children we expected to be wonderful. And so they are. Not perfect, but perfect for us. While she was pregnant with our first child, we found a house and made it the warm, comfortable, messy, cozy home we always wanted. Now we have jobs that make us happy in most every way. It only took twenty-nine years.

All of this is supposed to be leading somewhere, but I don't have much of a conclusion to draw other than that I'm sure the next good thing is around the corner. Maybe it will be the thing I'm imagining. Maybe something else entirely. I'm shrugging as I type because it doesn't matter what it is, I know it will be good.

Okay, that sounds pretty damn Pollyanna. I know. Sorry. It's not like birds don't occasionally crap on my head. Just last weekend someone dented holy hell out of my mighty Prius. Even so, nothing was really damaged, the car is ten years old, and the dent kind of makes the car look tough. (Somewhere my tall, bearded friend is laughing at the ridiculous notion that a Prius could every look tough.) I've had troubles and worries. Lord knows I have anxieties. Yet, it works out. I come out ahead.

There's a whole other piece to write about my anxiety and the dark holes into which I sometimes fall. That piece, if I get around to writing it, will balance this one. I mention it just to be honest. I don't always remember and believe it, but for now I know that good things keep coming to me.

Why is that? How have I made that happen? If I share the answers, this can go viral, and the Tesla will at last be mine.

But I don't know the answers. All I have left is this story:

Yesterday I struggled choosing to do or not do something. A friend and I got together for lunch and I told her about it. She gave me a nugget of wisdom that unclogged my brain and brought me to the place where I could decide. I then called my wife (who is enjoying this decision process much more than the last one). She told me whatever I decided I would come out ahead and happy. I talked with two friends, then made my decision to go for it, to take a leap. It worked when I quit teaching and this time there are fewer risks though maybe an even bigger reward.

I was looking for a push and happened to have lunch with the friend who could provide it. Good things again.

I don't know what will happen now that I've made the decision and taken the leap, but it will be good and lead to the next good thing. Dumb good luck? I think it's something else but don't know its true name. What I do know is that the name will come to me, like most good things do.