Coming Out ...

            Several days ago, I took a baby step toward outing myself as – no, that's not accurate – toward making it more widely known that I am ... an atheist. 

            Every few weeks a group of friends, mostly fellow playwrights, meets for breakfast in the coffee shop of a Best Western Hotel in Nyack.  We chit-chat, gossip, and we each, in turn, relate what's going on professionally and, sometimes, socially and familially. 

            The group, which I dubbed the "Breakfast Bunch," includes five or six playwrights, a couple of prose writers, and a painter.  Longtime friends are we. 

            A part of our informal get-togethers involves book swapping.  We bring with us books that we've read (or have no intention of reading), and give them away to each other.  It's a practice I initiated (not to mention founding the Breakfast Bunch to begin with some 15 years ago). 

            That morning, as I was bagging some books to take with me for giveaway, my eyes fell upon a copy of Christopher Hitchens's God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.  It's a book I'd read a couple of times for its intelligence and its razor-sharp satiric humor.  It gives elegant and persuasive voice to the conviction I've had most of my life – that there is no god or gods.  Since I possessed two copies of the Hitchens book (I must have picked up a duplicate at a library book sale or something), I decided to include one in my batch of books to go. 

            What did that augur?  Clearly, my friends could infer from my ownership of the book that I'd read it.  Further, it might be surmised that I am a non-believer.  Two of our group members are staunch Catholics.  How would they react? 

            I've never made any secret of my atheism.  Naturally, my wife knows.  Though raised as a Lutheran, she today professes some vague mystical pantheism which she has described but I've never understood.  Other than that, religion, or the lack of it, just never seems to come up. 

            I don't know what my parents or my brothers and their families know or do not know about my atheism.  Essentially, my family is Catholic in name.  I don't believe there are any regular churchgoers among us.  Religion seems to have little place in the Parra clan, except for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. 

            When I must attend a baptism, wedding, or funeral, or any other religiously encumbered life event, I usually situate myself off to the side or in the back of the church so that my unwillingness to mouth meaningless prayers – or to stand, kneel, sit, stand, kneel, sit, stand, kneel, sit – is not conspicuous.  I refuse to go through the motions; to do so is to tacitly endorse the absurd and insidious superstitions. 

            When I'm logistically unable to blend into the surroundings, I employ another tactic.  I unholster my smart phone and use it as a camera.  Moving around and taking pictures from all angles gives me something to occupy my mind, and camouflages my non-participation in the rites and rituals. 

            That morning at breakfast, pulling books out of my bag, each accompanied by a brief oral description, I eventually came to God is Not Great.  I held up the book for scrutiny.  It was clear that some of my friends knew of the book and its author.  Only one of the unfaltering Catholics was present that day (the spouse was traveling on business).  I said: "whether you're a believer or not, this is a book you ought to read."  No one took the book ... or the bait.  As I moved to return the book to the bag, one of the prose writers did ask to have a look at it.  I handed it to him, and he ended up taking it with him.  Out of my staunchly Catholic friend came nary a peep. 

            So my first – and rather meager and tentative – foray into public self-disclosure as a flaming atheist ended "not with a bang but a whimper."  Still – pardon my mixing allusions – "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  

"San Andreas" - Best for Disaster Movie Freaks

San Andreas is eye-popping for those who love special effects (I happen to be one of them). You leave feeling you've actually seen California devastated. Cool. Story-wise the film is nothing special. Same generic plot that you find in most disaster movies: family/friends separated by the tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, hurricane (you name it) need find each other and get to safety. Dwayne Johnson, playing a fire department rescue specialist, is the main character. Johnson handles the action scenes well, but, when it comes to the scene or two where we're supposed to feel his pain over his family problems, it ain't happenin'. He's too macho to shed a tear, and so he resorts to screwing up his face to indicate emotion. That being said, like the movie Titanic, you don't buy the ticket to get warm and fuzzy with the characters; it's about seeing the computer-generated ship sink or, in this case, computer-generated cities crumble. On that score, I give it four our of five stars.

Gypped ... almost.

I just visited a nearby CVS pharmacy, and I left glumly reminded how rampant ignorance is in the world around us. 

My visit was prompted by a 30% off coupon I had received by email.  Seemed like a good opportunity to stock up on stuff.  List in hand, I cruised the CVS aisles, grabbing dental floss, Alka Seltzer, and so on.  As I dropped items into my cart, I kept a rough running total in my head.  When I was done, my estimate came to $70.  I headed for the checkout counter, contemplating with gratification the amount of money I would be saving. 

At the computer/register, I waited a while as the young man behind the counter apparently had some problem in the transaction with the somewhat perturbed woman ahead of me.  When he was through with her, I handed the unsmiling fellow (hard to tell his age, but he certainly was no more than a teenager) my CVS Extra Care card, and proceeded to pile my selections on the counter.  I watched the mini-screen on the credit card apparatus as the kid scanned the items.  Grand total before taxes:  $70 and change.  Score one for my mental acumen. 

Now here’s where things went wrong.  The young man pointed his handheld scanner at the coupon I had printed out.  The scanner failed to read the barcode.  Next, he keyed in the numbers printed below the barcode.  Apparently that didn’t work either, because he picked up a small calculator, and began hitting buttons.  All this in absolute silence. 

On the mini-screen, I saw that my cost reduced to $65.  I’m no mental Stephen Hawking, but $70 times 10% is $7 times three is $21.  I told the young man that the discount had to be near that amount, and not $5.  He looked at me with barely concealed exasperation.  He began re-scanning all my items to un-purchase them back down to zero, at which point he repeated the scanning until we were back at $70.  No explanation, of course.  Again, the young man picked up the calculator, and got to work. 

I glanced around at the customer waiting behind me.  He nodded solemnly.  He was in my corner.  Finally, on the mini-screen, the discount showed up as $19 and change.  Knowing that sometimes certain items are exempt from discounts (and to avoid dragging out the process), I quietly decided “close enough.”  I swiped my credit card, and completed the transaction. 

It boggles the mind – my mind at least – that people are hired to handle cash and credit card business when they seem to be, to be kind, clueless.  And, what irritated me, as I toted the overstuffed white plastic CVS shopping bag back to my car, was my belief that most people don’t pay attention when they shop.  I’m willing to bet the farm that, had that young man been the customer, he’d have headed home carefree and unaware that he’d been gypped of something around $15. 

Dr. Zhivago and Scaring the Poop out of Charlie

Charlie the Dog has been scratching and chewing around his rear end for a week or two, so today was trip-to-the-vet day.  As Sandy and I were getting on our heavy coats for the short drive in frigid weather to the Vet at the Barn, Charlie freaked out.  Charlie suffers from separation anxiety, and won’t eat or drink or play with his toys while we’re not home.  How do we know what he does or does not do when we’re out?  Because not a thing is eaten or moved until we return home.  (The lone exception is an unfortunate, now torn sofa pillow that takes one for the team.) 

 

But today Charlie outdid himself.  Sensing something was up, he went into a whining, squealing, crying, yelping fit, and refused to calm down.  It got so bad that he crapped.  In the house.  Fortunately, it was on the old rug in the basement, and the poop was firm enough to easily pick up with a plastic baggy (yeah, I know, poor rug).  In Sandy’s car, the dog continued his meltdown, even in Sandy’s arms; his high-pitch yelping hurt my ears, making it hard for me to focus on my driving.  I could see myself being pulled over by a cop for swerving and driving while under the influence ... of a panicked dog. 

 

We were the first of the morning at the vet.  Even so, we had to wait 20 minutes while the doc had her morning coffee, I assume.  The wait was an ordeal with devil dog barking and whining, squirming, trembling, and pulling, worse than ever before.  Finally, Charlie was examined by the vet, and led away to some unseen back torture chamber where he got his rabies shot, a blood sample drawn, his rear end attended to, and a sedative administered.  The doctor gave (or should I say sold) us a bottle of the doggy downers.  To be fed to him two at a time with meals. 

 

As we left the building, even with a somewhat high Charlie pulling, Sandy and I breathed sighs of relief that it was over.  So we thought.  When we got to Sandy’s car, it too whined and squealed, but, unlike Charlie, it wouldn’t go anywhere.  The battery was dead.  Apparently, in the frenzy of our arrival, I had neglected to turn off the headlights when I parked at the vet. 

 

We stepped out again into the freezing air, and back to the vet’s barn we three plodded.  I asked if anyone had jumper cables.  The pleasant young receptionist nodded, got on her coat, and pulled her car around near Sandy's Honda Accord where I met her.  With hands trembling from the cold, I attached the cables from her battery to ours, and ... nothing.  Well, not nothing; sparks were flying.  I detached the cables, thanked the good Samaritan, and again went back into the building. 

 

Sandy got on her cell phone to her auto club.  A recording told her that the wait for service was 90-minutes.  Ninety minutes!?  Who goes out in weather like this?  I told Sandy that I would walk the mile or so home to get my car and my heavy-duty jumper cables.  She smiled a mixture of appreciation and pity, reminiscent of Katherine Hepburn’s sad smile at Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen as he climbed back into the shallow, swampy, leech-infested water to continue towing the boat. 

 

Bundled in my winter parka, with scarf and bunnet (a taxi-driver type cap with ear flaps down), I half walked and half jogged south along Route 45, careful to step as far as possible off the road as cars bulleted past me, apparently having no doubt that the bundled up pedestrian would manage to get out of their way in time. 

 

The temperature had to be in the low teens, and I chillingly realized I had underestimated the cold.  The wind was in my face.  My cheeks were stinging.  I began to worry about frostbite.  With my nose running, my moustache froze.  I tugged my scarf up to cover my face to my eyes.  My eyeglasses fogged, and the fog froze, limiting my visibility.  I thought of Omar Sharif as Dr. Zhivago trudging his way to Lara, similarly bundled up, falling over in the deep snow of Siberia, almost freezing to death.  But he made it home, and so did I. 

 

I started up my new Nissan Rogue parked outside, turned the heat up high, and entered the garage to get my jumper cables.  They were not to be found.  I searched for 10 minutes until I literally stumbled over a plastic milk crate containing items from my old car, including the cables.  I zipped back to the vet, the Rogue holding the icy road fairly well.  I attached the cables, started up my car, and then Sandy’s.  I gave Sandy, standing warm inside at a window, the thumbs up. 

 

When we got home, I let Sandy’s car run for a short while so that the battery could recharge.  Eventually, I shut off the Honda, opened the door to get out, and the car alarm went off.  I sat back inside, closed the door against the cold, and hit the alarm button on the Honda key.  The alarm silenced.  I opened the door, and the alarm went off again.  This time I shut the door from the outside, hit the button, and the alarm ceased.  Another thing to have a mechanic look at. 

 

As I took off my coat in the house festooned with Christmas wreaths and lights, my eyes fell on the jar of Charlie’s sedatives.  I wondered what his two-pill dose would translate to for a creature seven and a half times his weight. 

What’s with Hospitals Today? Where's the caring?

Hospitals today are not only pushing patients out the door as soon as they can; they’re also cramming in the patients they do keep. 

 

My octogenarian father checked himself into Albert Einstein Hospital in the Bronx on Sunday.  He was coughing up blood.  It wasn’t panic time because he gets lung infections every now and then.  However, this time the coughed-up blood was more copious than usual, so my father and mother trekked to Einstein’s emergency room. 

The examining doctor pronounced there was nothing to worry about.  The treatment would amount to four or so days of antibiotics.  The doctor ordered a precautionary X-ray, and decided that my dad should at least stay overnight for bed rest and observation.  My father agreed.  Everybody agreed. 

In short order, my father found himself in the typical open-in-the-back hospital gown, fastened to an IV drip bag, and tucked into a bed in the emergency room holding area.  The doctor explained that dad would be rolled up to a room as soon as one became available.  The emergency room is not a good place to hang out, the doctor pointed out; too many sick people. 

By early evening, there still was no room for dad.  My mother, also an octogenarian, was tired, and took a taxi home.  I wouldn’t be on the scene until the following day.  After it became apparent no room would be available, my father, his IV bag, and the bed he was in were rolled onto an elevator and up to the ninth floor where he would spend the night. 

Now here’s the stupid part.  There was no room for him.  So my father found himself in the rolling hospital bed along the wall of a busy hospital hallway.  When night came, as worn-out as he was, my father found it impossible to sleep.  Staff regularly moved up and down the corridor with clipboards and/or wheeling medication-laden carts; the overhead lights were in his eyes; and the personnel at the nurses’ station gabbed aloud incessantly.  This is where he was supposed to be observed and rest?  The next day, I drove my exhausted father home. 

On just about every visit I’ve made to a hospital, as a patient or visitor, I’ve seen patients in beds in corridors.  Sad, yes, but until this past weekend it wasn’t personal.  Hospitals are being closed left and right, supposedly for efficiency and economy, and we’re left with patients sleeping in passageways?  Economical, maybe, but where’s the efficiency in that?  But, maybe more importantly, where’s the caring and compassion?  What I see is indifference and, for the patient, humiliation. 

Adventures at Wendy’s

On one of my all-too-frequent visits to Wendy’s – which, unfortunately, is diabolically situated between SUNY Rockland, where I teach playwriting, and home, where I do playwriting – I ordered lunch from the value menu:  a 99¢ cheeseburger, the 99¢ fries, and a 99¢ diet coke.  As the cheery young lady behind the counter took the five-dollar bill I proffered, thinking out loud I said the change should be $1.78.  The young lady’s smile vanished when the cash register display confirmed my calculation to the penny.  The girl gawked at me in amazement; you would have thought I’d just reconciled the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics.  I had done the simplest of math in my head, and she was speechless.  It wasn’t only that I had done something beyond the young lady’s ability; it seems I had done something she didn’t know was possible.  She was dumbfounded; I was horrified. 

On another of my hyper-caloric stops at the ever-beckoning Wendy’s, I ordered my usual value menu burger, fries, and diet coke.  Once again, knowing what my change would be, this time I was the one surprised.  The young lady – a different cheery counter attendant – had given me a dollar or so more in change than I had coming.  I looked up from the money in my hand to the face of the very pleased-with-herself girl behind the counter.  I said:  “I think you’ve given me too much.”  Her smile broaden as she chirped:  “I gave you the senior citizen discount.”  She was so proud of herself that I couldn’t bring myself to smack her face.  

One-Way Ticket

There was a moment I was sure I’d be coming home from vacation in a body bag. 

I was travelling through Mexico with my girlfriend, Susan, and we stopped at Puerto Escondido, a quiet beach town on the south coast.  On our first day there, we went to the beach. 

The shore there was not the packed beaches we’re used to in the States.  It was deserted – no bathers, no lifeguard, no one in sight.  We could have been on an uninhabited island. 

The sun was high and hot, and Susan, a slender actress with long, brown hair, got busy sunning herself.  I decided to try the water.  I waded in until I was mid-chest deep, where I stood enjoying the view of the endless ocean and cloudless blue sky.

In the blink of an eye, the water level was over my head.  There had been no wave, no warning, just sudden depth.  I struggled to the surface, only to be pulled down by the undertow.  Again I fought my way up, gasping for air, and again I was sucked back down.  When I broke the surface a third time, I thought of screaming to Susan for help.  I didn’t.  Even in my panic I knew there was nothing she could do but endanger herself. 

After what seemed like an eternity of being tumbled helplessly washing machine-like beneath the waves, I was totally exhausted, spent.  In my mind’s eye, I saw Susan boarding the plane home accompanied by my body in a zippered plastic bag.  It was over; I was going to die in Mexico.  It was to be a one-way ticket. 

At that very moment of total, somewhat calm resignation to the inevitable, I found myself standing mid-chest high in the water.  The ocean had receded as suddenly as it had come. 

I staggered out of the water.  Susan smiled, lifted her camera, and snapped a shot of me as I collapsed down on the blanket next to her.  I was shaken to the core.  It wasn’t until the next day that I could speak about it to her. 

Twenty years later, that photograph of me, pale, soaked, and looking like a man returned from the grave, is hanging on the wall of my home office.  It’s a reminder to me that life can be capricious, and every day – every single day of life – is precious.