These are common phrases, often spouted when wounded people suggest that we have attacked them and we are certain that no physical contact was ever made.
We could be right. It is possible to never lay a hand on another human being in a negative way—and still communicate violence.
The hands are so expressive that they even emote gestures of touch.
Pointing a finger at someone in an accusatory manner often makes the person being accosted feel as if that digit is jabbing into his or her soul
Shaking a fist in traffic to communicate displeasure also carries the message that you might wish to put that same fist right in their nose.
And there’s no doubt that sprouting the middle finger is a huge proclamation that the person you are insulting isn’t worth any of your time or consideration.
The hands are so powerful that they don’t need to touch to be felt. Therefore, if someone points at me, makes a fist or gives me the middle finger, I often feel attacked.
But likewise, if someone reaches out with their hands, palms up, letting me know that they yearn for a connection, or if I’m at a concert or church and see an audience lift their hands in appreciation and adoration, I also feel that connection deep within my soul.
And if someone chooses not to give me the finger, but instead blows a kiss my way, I am moved, I feel attractive and I am touched.
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Two or three days of snow, then a brief warming period, followed by a frigid arctic blast, leaving the countryside glistening with ice, rendering everything precarious.
This was the winter of 1967.
It left all of us in grouchy moods, even though we insisted we were hearty “Ohioans,” accustomed to such frosty conditions. We basically just muddled through it, quietly complaining about “the winter of our discontent.”
Arriving back in my classroom after the Christmas holidays, I discovered that our female math teacher was gone. The initial explanation was that she was battling a severe bout of the flu.
But it took little time for the sour grapevine of the gossip mill to unearth the details. She had actually left town due to a pregnancy out-of-wedlock, making her the subject of great local scandal. My coach joked that considering she was a math teacher, she certainly didn’t do a very good job “counting her days.”
The whole locker room laughed, and I joined in–even though I didn’t get it.
Replacing her was a tall, lanky, clumsy olive-skinned fellow with thin brown greasy hair and a beak for a nose which would have been more suitable for the Family Ostrich. He was a tentative sort. Honestly, it appeared this was his first excursion as an educator.
Yes, he was an oddity. An Ichabod who resembled a crane. And in our community of conformity, he became a necessary target and needful diversion for our present boredom.
Especially when we found out that he was inept at discipline. We tormented him with our ridicule and teasing.
He wore the same brown suit every day with a white shirt and a brown tie with a gold design which could just as easily have been a speck of dried-on scrambled egg.
He had a hilarious tendency to point at the blackboard using his middle finger (which by the way, appeared to have three knuckles) and we always burst into laughter. He would whirl around and screech in a scratchy voice, “Silence!” We laughed harder.
One day a cheerleader inched her way to his desk, supposedly to ask him a question. He was so delighted for the kind attention that he failed to notice that she was taking blackboard erasers from their perch behind his back and softly laying them against his coat with her hand, creating an amazing chalk-dust design. After she returned to her seat and he turned around, we all once again erupted in great guffaws. He had no idea. Matter of fact, the same marks of chalk were on his suit four days later.
He persisted. So did we.
Matter of fact, it became more nasty when one student thought it would be funny to place an anonymous note in the suggestion box in the principal’s office, complaining about Mr. Bayonne’s teaching style.
Long story short, when we returned after our Easter vacation of resurrecting our Lord and chomping on Easter bunny candy, he was gone. We had successfully driven a stranger away–simply because we deemed him strange.
I often think about Mr. Bayonne. He may not have been suited to instruct the rabble of high school hoodlums, but he certainly deserved better treatment. But in our tiny world of thinking, this math teacher just didn’t add up.
Because he was different, he was wrong.
Because he was clumsy, he was mocked.
Because he wasn’t Nordic, Germanic or Scandinavian, he stirred our prejudice.
I have spent much of my life trying to make sure that I never “Bayonned” anyone again, and in so doing I have discovered a magnificent reality:
It takes different people to make me different. And if I don’t become different, I’m stuck … going no further than where I am.
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The Sermon on the Mount in music and story. Click the mountain!
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Within the common folklore and tales of the life and times of Jonathan Richard Cring is the notion that I hate banks.
It probably sprang from my early years, when I was so poor that when I walked into one of these institutions, I always felt like everyone in the room knew that I was “weighed by my balance” and found wanting. Over the years I have moderated my feelings and generally speaking, I am fine to go to the drive-through window and put money in without too much fear possessing my soul.
Such was my mission yesterday. Arriving there, I discovered that two lanes were open at the drive-through, one labeled “commercial accounts only,” and the other for us plebeians. In the lesser lane was a white mini van, which pulled in just in front of me. The driver reached for the magical tube, to begin the transaction. It was a woman. I pulled behind her (since I was not a “commercial account” customer).
And then it happened. As it turns out, she took the tube–not to place her deposit neatly inside, for a quick transaction–but instead to acquire a deposit ticket from the teller, which she would retrieve and sit in her minivan and make out her deposit while I waited behind her.
This is one of my pet peeves.
I thought about changing over to the commercial transaction lane. But you see, that’s where we get in trouble. We get frustrated with our present circumstances, caused by someone breaking the rules, we decide to break the rules ourselves. Then we either get caught doing it or we frustrate somebody else, who comes in, observing us breaking the rules.
I realized I had two choices. I could sit there, staring at her rear end intensely, with its “Baby On Board” bumper sticker (I assume a personal confession to her emotional status). If I did this, I would discover that fifteen seconds would seem like ten minutes. In no time at all I would be convinced I had sat there for half an hour and would reach for my horn, to blare at the surrounding world, only to receive the edification of the lady’s middle finger.
My second choice was to turn off my engine, totally ignore the situation and do something I was planning to do after I left the bank–out-of-order from my Things to Do Today list. But after all, those little notes I jotted down for myself, to give guidance for my day, aren’t exactly the Ten Commandments.
So I turned off my engine, grabbed a book nearby that I was supposed to peruse, and became deeply engrossed in reviewing the material. So involved was I that upon finishing about eight pages, I looked up and the van had disappeared. The lane was open for my entrance.
As I started my van, from my rear came the honking of a horn. Somebody behind me had selected Choice 1.
I just laughed. “I know how you feel, fella,” I said as I rolled forward to make my deposit.
Here’s the truth–I can’t change the world. Let me go further. I can’t improve the world. What I can do is find a way to make my journey as pleasant, free of tension and forgiving as possible. In doing so, it will appear that the world directly around me has changed. If I can get several friends to join me in that quest, we can generate buffer “safe zones,” where other humans can come and not feel that they need to make excuses, lie, cheat and become angry.
This may be the best we can do. Each one of needs to deposit ourselves in an environment of our own creation, where we select to be who we want to be–no matter how frustrating the circumstances become.
Turn off your engine. Grab a book. And ignore all “babies on board.” This, too, will pass.
Then all you have to deal with … is the terror of going to the bank.
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The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation for this inspirational opportunity
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