All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten Read online

  Spider web! She has walked full force into a spider web. And the pressing question, of course: Just where is the spider now?

  She flings her baggage in all directions. And at the same time does a high-kick, jitterbug sort of dance—like a mating stork in crazed heat. Clutches at her face and hair and goes “AAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” at a new level of intensity. Tries opening the front door without unlocking it. Tries again. Breaks key in the lock. Runs around the house headed for the back door. Doppler effect of

  “A A A A A G G G H H H H a a g g h . . .”

  Now a different view of this scene. Here is the spider. Rather ordinary, medium gray, middle-aged lady spider. She’s been up since before dawn working on her web, and all is well. Nice day, no wind, dew point just right to keep things sticky. She’s out checking the moorings and thinking about the little gnats she’d like to have for breakfast. Feeling good. Ready for action. All of a sudden all hell breaks loose—earthquake, tornado, volcano. The web is torn loose and is wrapped around a frenzied moving haystack, and a huge piece of raw-but-painted meat is making a sound the spider has never heard: “AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!”

  It’s too big to wrap up and eat later, and it’s moving too much to hold down.

  Jump for it? Hang on and hope? Dig in?

  Human being. The spider has caught a human being. And the pressing question is, of course: Where is it going and what will it do when it gets there?

  The neighbor lady thinks the spider is about the size of a lobster and has big rubber lips and poisonous fangs. The neighbor lady will probably strip to the skin and take a full shower and shampoo just to make sure it’s gone—and then put on a whole new outfit to make certain she is not inhabited.

  The spider? Well, if she survives all this, she will really have something to talk about—the one that got away that was THIS BIG. “And you should have seen the JAWS on the thing!”

  Spiders. Amazing creatures. Been around maybe 350 million years, so they can cope with about anything. Lots of them, too—sixty or seventy thousand per suburban acre. Yes. It’s the web thing that I envy. Imagine what it would be like if people were equipped like spiders. If we had this little six-nozzled aperture right at the base of our spine and we could make yards of something like glass fiber with it. Wrapping packages would be a cinch! Mountain climbing would never be the same. Think of the Olympic events. And mating and child rearing would take on new dimensions. Well, you take it from there. It boggles the mind. Cleaning up human-sized webs would be a mess, on the other hand.

  All this reminds me of a song I know. And you know, too. And your parents and your children, they know. About the itsy-bitsy spider. Went up the waterspout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. And the itsy-bitsy spider went up the spout again. You probably know the motions, too.

  What’s the deal here? Why do we all know that song? Why do we keep passing it on to our kids? Especially when it puts spiders in such a favorable light? Nobody goes “AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” when they sing it. Maybe because it puts the life adventure in such clear and simple terms. The small creature is alive and looks for adventure. Here’s the drainpipe—a long tunnel going up toward some light. The spider doesn’t even think about it—just goes. Disaster befalls it—rain, flood, powerful forces. And the spider is knocked down and out beyond where it started. Does the spider say, “To hell with that”? No. Sun comes out—clears things up—dries off the spider. And the small creature goes over to the drainpipe and looks up and thinks it really wants to know what is up there. It’s a little wiser now—checks the sky first, looks for better toeholds, says a spider prayer, and heads up through mystery toward the light and wherever.

  Living things have been doing just that for a long, long time. Through every kind of disaster and setback and catastrophe. We are survivors. And we teach our kids about that. And maybe spiders tell their kids about it, too, in their spider way.

  So the neighbor lady will survive and be a little wiser coming out the door on her way to work. And the spider, if it lives, will do likewise. And if not, well, there are lots more spiders, and the word gets around. Especially when the word is “AAAAAAA GGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

  Often, when speaking in public, I begin by saying I will silently sing. As a clue to what’s going on in my mind, I explain, I will make some motions with my hands. I ask the audience to help me out by doing the same thing when they understand what’s going on. It’s the spider song, of course. I have great memories of rooms full of people silently singing the itsy-bitsy spider, while doing the motions, and grinning. They always grin. They always applaud themselves at the end.

  Did you know that you can sing the words to the itsy bitsy spider to the tune of the “Ode to Joy” portion of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony? With some minor adjustments it works. You might call the combination the fight song of the human race. I once got a thousand people to do it, motions and all.

  Both pieces of music are about the same thing: the capacity of life to triumph over adversity—about perseverance in adventure, for spiders and people.

  PUDDLES

  IT’S MAY IN CENTRAL PARK in New York City. An afternoon shower followed by seductive spring sunshine lures busy people off sidewalks and onto park benches. At 80th Street and Fifth Avenue there’s a path into the park, on which the rain has left an obstacle course of puddles.

  A small child, kitted out in full raingear, runs splashing through a puddle, “YAAAAAAAAHHH.” His mother, likewise rain-proofed, runs after him, shouting, “NO. NO. NO.” Catching his hand, she pulls him back onto dry land and barks sternly: “NO PUDDLES, Jacob. I told you: NO PUDDLES.”

  The child strains outward and away from her like a guy wire from a tent in a windstorm. He whines. The mother pulls him further away down the path. The child upshifts into a wail. The mother tries to pick him up. The child goes limp and screams. It’s a stand-off. A child-in-the-checkout-line-at-the-supermarket deal. And this kid is a black-belt screamer: “WHOOOAAAOOOYAAAA.” The mother is embarrassed. People are staring. (“What did she do to him?”)

  A well-dressed middle-aged man observes from a nearby bench. He’s wearing polished black leather wing-tipped shoes. Between him and the mother-and-child hoo-ha is a large puddle. The man stands. Walks deliberately into the puddle, wing-tips and all. Grins. Shouts, “HEY-HEY-HEY.” Mother and child look up. The kid goes silent, stands still.

  This scene is too good to be true. How can I stay out of this? I get up off my bench and walk into the puddle to stand beside the grinning man. I’m wearing serious leather sandals and socks. I grin at the man and the mom and the kid. A fashionably dressed young woman takes off her shoes and joins us, as does her dog.

  The kid laughs, lets go of his mom’s hand, and marches into the puddle.

  All eyes are on the mom.

  Now at center stage, the mom wears an expression of pained pleasure. She’s caught again in a parenthood paradox. On the one hand, the child must learn to mind. But, then, what harm can a puddle do if the kid is wearing rain boots? She doesn’t want him to get sick. But of course everybody knows you catch colds from germs on other peoples’ hands, not from puddles. It’s hard to back down when you’ve said “NO!” But it’s not wrong to change your mind. She doesn’t want her child to follow the example of strangers. But all these three people have done is to stand in the puddle and grin at her. How can so much be at stake over such a small event? What’s a good mother to do?

  Being a parent always involves some hypocrisy. If she were a kid, she’d be in the puddle now. She walked in puddles when she was a child and came to no harm. Her mom probably shouted “NO PUDDLES” at her, too. Does parenthood always mean being driven by the autopilot of the past?

  All this races through the mom’s mind in nanoseconds.

  The waders and watchers are waiting. She can’t stand there forever.

  The mom smiles. Laughs. Walks into the puddle. Her audience applauds.
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  The waders shake her hand, shake each other’s hands and go their ways.

  The child has a pleased-but-stupefied look on his face.

  Adults are weird. He will not understand how weird until he is one.

  So, you may ask, did this really happen?

  Well, yes and no. The day and the park and the puddle were real. The small cast assembled in this little arena was there. And the inclinations we all had were right and true. But, in fact, the mother pulled the kid off down the path, still barking “NO PUDDLES” at him, and leaving the rest of us grumpily minding our own business. Still, it might have happened. It should have happened. Puddles are there as a test about staying young as long as you can. All the adults there that day failed the test.

  How I hated walking away thinking, as I have so many times in my life, that next time or when I have time or when circumstances are just right I will do what my heart says to do. Sometimes acting foolish and being wise are the same.

  Later that afternoon I went back to do what I knew I should have done.

  Too late. Too late.

  Mother and child and nice people and puddle and opportunity had gone.

  HAIHO LAMA

  ELIAS SCHWARTZ REPAIRS SHOES. He is short and round and bald and single and middle-aged and Jewish. “An old-fashioned cobbler,” says he, nothing more, nothing less. I happen to be convinced that he is really the 145th reincarnation of the Haiho Lama.

  See, the Haiho Lama died in 1937, and the monks of the Sa-skya monastery have been searching for forty years for his reincarnation without success. The New York Times carried the story last summer. The article noted that the Lama would be recognized by the fact that he went around saying and doing wise things in small, mysterious ways, and that he would be doing the will of God without understanding why. A guy like that would be worth looking for, all right.

  I found him. Through some unimaginable error in the cosmic switching yards, the Haiho Lama has been reincarnated as Elias Schwartz. I have no doubts about it.

  My first clue came when I took my old loafers in for total renewal. The works. Elias Schwartz examined them with intense care. With regret in his voice he pronounced them not worthy of repair. I accepted the unwelcome judgment. Then he took my shoes, disappeared into the back of the shop, and I waited and wondered. He returned with my shoes in a stapled brown bag. For carrying, I thought.

  When I opened the bag at home that evening, I found two gifts and a note. In each shoe, a chocolate-chip cookie wrapped in waxed paper. And these words in the note: “Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it. Elias Schwartz.”

  The Haiho Lama strikes again.

  And the monks will have to go on looking.

  Because I’ll never tell—we need all the Lamas here we can get.

  ANGELS

  “ARE YOUR STORIES TRUE? Are the people real?”

  The simple answer is Yes. The more complicated answer is that I am a storyteller, not an investigative journalist. A good story can be improved by adding necessary facts—spice to the stew. A dash of hyperbole may be used to encourage laughter. And sometimes I combine two very similar good stories into one better story—sacrificing what is true for the sake of Truth. Often it’s necessary to change names and certain identifying details to protect the privacy of the individuals about whom I write. Not everybody wants to be well known.

  A case in point is the Haiho Lama.

  The story is true. But, from the beginning, the shoemaker was adamant about not being identified. He felt it was not right to get credit for simply doing what everybody ought to do in the first place. “Please don’t use my name or tell people where my shop is,” he asked. So I made up a name: Elias Schwartz. It was just as well. The shoemaker’s real name was too improbable to be credible: Eli Angel.

  Mr. Angel is dead now, and I feel free to correct the facts and tell you the rest of the story.

  Eli Angel was an Orthodox Sephardic Jew born on the island of Rhodes. Though his formal education was limited, those who knew him considered him a very learned man. He could hold his own in Greek, Spanish, French, Hebrew, and English. He knew history and philosophy and theology. A generous man, he was active in helping other immigrants settle into their adopted country. In his neighborhood in Seattle he was revered for his many small acts of perceptive kindness, for believing that whatever good a man does comes back to him. When he died, the synagogue was filled to overflowing. They called him a tzaddik—a righteous man, worthy of respect.

  By coincidence, my wife knew Eli’s wife. My wife, the epitome of medical discretion, had never told me that she was Mrs. Angels’s physician. After Eli’s death, Mrs. Angel was feeling pretty bad and came to see my wife. She missed her beloved husband. She wished more people had known him. My wife told her the story of the Haiho Lama from the Kindergarten book, and explained that millions of people knew about her husband—they just didn’t know his real name. His acts of kindness had come back around to comfort his wife.

  Doing good things without expectation of reward was Eli’s specialty—way beyond putting cookies in shoes he wouldn’t repair.

  The Jews have a word for such deeds—mitzvoh.

  Mrs. Angel died recently. And now I can tell you even more.

  When Eli met Rachael, it was love at first sight. He proposed after knowing her two days. She turned him down. Why? Because she had cancer; she had been told she could not have children and would not live long. He insisted. He would love her until the end, whenever it came. With love as a shield against impending doom, they married. Love produced four children. And love kept them together into old age. Mrs. Angel was as good at mitzvoh as her husband—a conspirator in doing good deeds without getting caught at it.

  I know all this because I recently spent time talking with Angels. Eli’s son is a third-generation cobbler, running his father’s shop up on Capitol Hill in Seattle. People in the neighborhood speak of Raymond as they once spoke of his father—a real mensch—a worthy man. I watched him engage customers with patience and attention. Another mitzvoh specialist, I thought to myself.

  I spoke with Raymond’s sisters and his daughter, and saw the family scrapbooks. Eli Angel and his dear wife, Rachael, were talked about as if they were still around—still taking care of their corner of the world. I went away reminded that not all people are no damned good and the world is not going completely to hell. I went away admonished and blessed.

  The evangelist, Billy Graham, says angels are real, we just can’t see them.

  Wrong.

  I know where the real Angels are. I have seen them with my own eyes.

  Some Angels I know can fix your soles. And mend your soul at the same time.

  HIDE AND SEEK

  IN THE EARLY DRY DARK of an October Saturday evening, the neighborhood children are playing hide-and-seek. How long since I played hide-and-seek? Fifty years; maybe more. I remember how. I could become part of the game in a moment, if invited. Adults don’t play hide-and-seek. Not for fun, anyway. Too bad.

  Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There’s hiding and there’s finding, we’d say. And he’d say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-GIVE-UP, and we’d all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn’t play with him anymore if he didn’t get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He’s probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.

  As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him ov
er at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, “GET FOUND, KID!” out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It’s real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.

  A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn’t want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn’t need them, didn’t trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn’t say good-bye.

  He hid too well.

  Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. “I don’t want anyone to know.” “What will people think?” “I don’t want to bother anyone.”

  Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.

  Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines—by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.

  “Olly-olly-oxen-free.” The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says, “Come on in, wherever you are. It’s a new game.” And so say I. To all those who have hid too good:

  Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.