Mrs. Fitz's Story Emporium

Coolness became important during fifth grade at Immaculate Conception school in Elmhurst. If my fledgling fellows were cool earlier, I missed it or maybe they just didn’t tell me, since I showed little potential for it.

It was cool having a lay teacher named Miss Reavis, while other classes were taught by the Sisters of Saint Agnes. Anyone with a “Miss” in her name must date boys, we reasoned. The nuns just walked across the parking lot to their convent after school.

It was cool that Miss Reavis told jokes. Maybe The Sisters of St. Agnes told jokes too since some were pretty jolly in general, but not in class.

It was cool that Miss Reavis also wore interesting clothes. Specifically, she was the only human in the building NOT in a uniform so anything she wore was interesting.

Being in the cool class gave me a confidence heretofore lacking. So confident was I that I let my Mom talk me into a corkscrew hair permanent and let my Dad talk me into my first pair of google-eyed glasses.

Cool was short-lived.

I don’t know where my brain has run off to lately, but today it surprised me with something I should have known for decades, but didn’t. The noun “job” is also the name of a book in the bible. The Book of Job is about a gent who really has a long streak of that bad luck.

In what seems a logical turn of mind, I thus considered my lifespan of jobs and noted that each and every one of them has been a streak of GOOD luck.

In total, I’ve had 13 and here’s the quick rundown of my luck streak:

1. Cashier at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital cafeteria = Medical people use outrageous humor in their free time to make up for the pain they confront. You can heal many things if you find the funny…somewhere, anywhere.

2. Waitress at Howard Johnson restaurant = People who come to eat secretly enjoy being served as much as eating food. It’s so easy to create joy if you just serve nicely.

3. Secretary at Sears, Roebuck & Co. = Conformity rules in an office and I didn’t meet one coworker who liked it. It’s okay not to let conformity call the shots, even though it can be pretty alluring.

4. Lifeguard at Elmhurst’s East End Swimming Pool = What you wish for isn’t always what you expect. I wished to have fun in the sun but discovered you have to SAVE LIVES and that is dead serious.

5. Teaching Christian Living at Queen of Peace high school in Burbank = Students are such precious commodities, you have to wonder how parents can entrust them to your care for the better part of many days. When you are trusted you better not let down.

6. Assistantship in University of Iowa graduate school = I was lucky to have this pretend job as a managing editor. I could pretend I knew what to do, knew how to do what I was doing, and get paid for it. That’s how some jobs are.

7. Reporter at Chicago Tribune = Reporters, it turns out, are my kind of crazy and I was lucky to find out I was not the only one on the planet who can guffaw about the placement of a comma.

8. Freelance writer = I was lucky to find out there is very little “FREE” in freelancing. It’s heavy lifting to meet somebody else’s expectations.

9. Teaching Composition at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn = College freshmen have no business whatsoever sitting at desks. Naturally they fidget and fuss and make all kinds of trouble. I’m lucky to know this is true of most people.

10. Business Technology columnist at Tribune Company = Luck comes from unlikely places. Listening to executives tell tales of taking risk, running the whole shebang, answering to board(s) of directors. Success is less fun than one might otherwise expect.

11. Executive Editor at a government think tank = Smart people are not always happy people. I was lucky to find that out, since I am not that smart.

12. Managing Editor at an educational product company = The bigger your position, the smaller you feel. I think it has to do with size of the load.

13. Self employed writer and editor = You will never have a tougher boss.

The only one who called my Dad Henry “Good Man,” as in “How are you, my good man?” was Bill Pickens, who was born in the southern United States and worked at Sears Roebuck with Dad in Chicago.

They fished together sometimes. This made them kin in some way that had nothing to do with where they came from, who they worked for or even what each of them thought about.

I thought it was a nice way to address a fellow and have waited to use it.

Today I did. At the corner of Belmont and Sheffield on a ouchy-hot-hot-hot day, a fellow barely old enough to claim the title “man,” needed a greeting. At least I thought he needed a greeting. He wore a black suit with tie and white shirt. He carried a satchel the size of a small child, but heavier. I saw him looking around for a place to discard his emptied water bottle. Let me repeat that. On the kind of day when sidewalks buckle, he wanted to be kind to an environment that did not return the favor.

Knowing where trash cans lurk in these parts, I said, “I can toss that for you, my good man.”

Because he was one.

One of my favorite things to do in Elmhurst’s Immaculate Conception church when I was a preteener, was lighting a vigil light, which were stacked up like tiny stadium seats to the right of the altar, under the Joseph-holding-baby-Jesus statue.

It wasn’t as powerful as incense, but the smell of burning wax was soft and mysterious and comforting. Since most of what we did in church was groupie, this was one of the solo activities allowed. I could choose to light a candle.

I tried to think up troubles sometimes to warrant the act. In fact, sometimes I made up troubles, which were not mine but I figured belonged to somebody who would appreciate a candle lit. I thought of warriors facing battle because I knew a few soldiers, although all of them were stateside. I thought of pestilence. I didn’t know what that was but it sounded bad. I thought of orphans but am ashamed to say living without parents didn’t sound all that terrible.

Lighting a candle had two best parts. First, the flame. In our house, flame was confined to birthday cakes and the rare leaf burning managed by Dad and Dad alone. The second best part was hope. Something about lighting a candle lit hope. Inside me.

I never timed the walk from our home on Sheffield to the Diversey driving range on the edge of the lake in Chicago because I prefer not to know. It is one of the reasons I like the walk. This cuts down on what I expect; increases the odds of seeing something I don’t expect.

Another reason is, regardless of outcome, practicing golf is thus sandwiched between what I consider a guaranteed competency. Walking. I can do that.

A third reason is walking moves me from the space in which I am certain to get things done to the space where nothing is a must-do, a to-do or a done-do, if you don’t count hitting the ball well, which I don’t.

I went from being a bad golfer before lessons to an atrocious golfer after lessons. This is NOT what I expected to happen so I did what self-serving individuals do. I rationalized. Conversing with myself, self concluded too many dos and don’ts overwhelmed any natural ability ever in my possession.

It has taken a year for self to conclude natural ability as nothing to do with golf, or, in my case, managing to hit the ball at all.

I think golf is cool because it is willy nilly. Its potency to take you back to zero skill at any time goes against most of what I normally do, which is try to improve.

However, I note improvement in ONE area I didn’t expect. Each time golf shows me who is boss, I realize I am not.

I think that is a cool thing.

Auntie Marge taught me that 2:30 p.m. is the time of day the angels pass over. The day rustles a little, like a skirt resettling itself in breezes. It’s pause-able.

Today 2:30 p.m. met me on a running path bench that’s what my Dad called “spittin’ distance” from Lake Michigan. Since the day was August amiable, I responded by smiling at every body that passed me by.

I realize this might have been off-putting. Some evaded my bench as if it, or I, was a mud muddle. In particular, one gent appeared offended. He had a nice cane, a nostalgic straw hat, a straight back and the gait of a promenader. He was impressive to me and I supposed to himself. He most decidedly promenaded past me faster that the situation warranted.

Then, well past spittin distance, he wheeled around like a drill bit and shouted to me and to me alone, “Did you SEE that!? A raccoon! I didn’t know they lived here! It must live under that tree! See it!? See there!? It’s a raccoon! It’s a raccoon!”

Well, in fact I did not. I had not. However, his animation so pleased me and I supposed himself, I nodded and waved and smiled-smiled-smiled. I believe the angels were delicately amused.

Yesterday the United States Women’s Soccer team lost to the Japanese Women’s Soccer team; and before the athletes reached the sidelines to absorb this information, USA’s “squandered chances” was uttered, broadcast, generally touted about by observers, pundits and commentators.

Watching the athletes compete for 2+ hours, I saw not one chance squandered. I saw prowess and skill. I saw compassion and frustration. I saw a clean game.

Squandered is a sore loser’s word. The United States Women’s Soccer players may be sore, but they are not losers.

They are good, good sports.

On Bastille Day, I’m stuck on wondering what “liberation” is.

Is it fighting tyranny?

Is it letting go of perceptions we cherish even if they defeat us?

Is it revenging those who told us what to do without our permission?

Is it risking unknowns to discover who we are?

Is it a selfish impulse?

Is it a primal drive that may, or may not, make sense?

Is it being free?

Is it connecting?

Is it possible?

Yes.

One brush with fame the Larson family had during the impressionable 1960s happened when our Mom sang in a parish musical. It was called “The Gay ’90s.” Her sister sang, too; and I think this upped the special factor.

In the weeks before the event, energy in our ranch house made it jiggle like jello.

Mom sewed her costume evenings in her airless bedroom at the end of the bedroom wing, which was the only wing the house had. Her sewing machine whirred in a festive way, happy I guess to be privy to girly pink and silver brocade fabric.

I didn’t see her in this bustled finery until the night of the musical. Then she rustled down the hall, through the kitchen and into the car with a whoosh like a wisp, a breeze. The feathery hat on her dark curly head bobbed. Mom never bobbed. And, she laughed a bell-tinkle laugh when my bothers and I said important stuff like, “Wow.” and “Wow.”

I don’t recall what songs she and her sister sang but still hear how beautiful she sounded as she left our house to wow the crowd.