Maybe (Maybe Not) (8 page)
Authors: Robert Fulghum
See, the truth is, at home, in private and in secret, we mostly make do. That’s how we run our lives most of the time. We might as well accept that. And feel good about it. And get good at it. It’s a matter of attitude, as summarized in these nine rules from the Fulghum Guide to Being Handy Around the House:
1. Try to work alone. An audience is rarely any help.
2. Despite what you may have been told by your mother, praying and cursing are both helpful in home repair—but only if you are working alone.
3. Work in the kitchen whenever you can—many
fine tools are there, it’s warm and dry, and you are close to the refrigerator.
4. If it’s electronic, get a new one, or consult a twelve-year-old.
5. Stay simpleminded. Plug it in, get a new battery, replace the bulb or the fuse, see if the tank is empty, try turning the “on” switch, or just paint over it.
6. Always take credit for miracles. If you dropped the alarm clock while taking it apart and it suddenly starts working, you have healed it.
7. If something looks level, it is level.
8. If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.
9. Above all, if what you’ve done is stupid, but it works, it ain’t stupid.
I
t’s August—a Wednesday morning—and I’m rolling down the road toward town and Moon’s Barbershop. As I drive, I wonder if I’ll ever be one of those old geezers who have nothing better to do than hang around the shop swapping tales. I hope so.
And when I glance up into the rearview mirror, I see I may be getting closer to geezerhood than I thought. I do have a few stories of my own. Maybe today I’ll just take a chair after I get my haircut and lay out an adventure I had the summer I was seventeen. Maybe I should rehearse this—work on my geezer style and tone of voice.
“Let me tell you about moths. People around here say you better watch out for black-widow spiders, but I say moths is worse—they’ll eat your clothes and cause
fires. Them moths they’re a lot more dangerous than you think. That’s right, moths. You can get killed messing with moths. One damn near burned the bunkhouse down over at the Prade ranch one summer. I’ll tell you. Me and two or three other boys were mending fence for Old Man Mickel that year.
“At night Rusty he liked to crank up the lamp and read to himself to get sleepy. But all the bugs in Carson County would come for the light and Rusty he spent most of his time swatting and whipping at bugs instead of reading. Just made him crazy. So one night, hot as it was, Rusty he closed every door and window in the bunkhouse and he stuffed newspapers and socks in every single hole and crack he could find where bugs could get in. Spent an hour doing it and worked up quite a sweat but said he didn’t give a damn he’d sooner fry to death than go bug crazy.
“Anyhow, Rusty he put the lamp over by his bed and he got a
Life
magazine and rolled that sucker up for a club and he stood there by the bed and he beat hell out of the few stray bugs left in the room that was stupid enough to go for the lamp. It was a massacre. He beat the fur off them bugs, let me tell you. There was bug bodies in little pieces every which way. He killed every last one of them. He thought.
“It got quiet and old Rusty he rolled himself a smoke and got himself an old
Reader’s Digest
and settled down to bed to read in peace. He was just about asleep when this big gray fuzzy moth come from who-knows-where
and went to circling the light and swooping down between Rusty and his
Reader’s Digest
and Rusty he went to grabbing at it and slapping at it but he couldn’t catch it or kill it. Well, I guess something just busted loose in his mind because the next thing I knew old Rusty he roared up out of the bed screaming and cussing and he run over into the next room and grabbed a piece of stovewood and come back hollering, I’LL TEACH YOU TO MESS WITH ME, YOU CORK SCREWIN’ SONOFABITCH!’ And he run right across his bed and took a swat or two and missed, and the moth he flew up high and lit near to the ceiling higher than Rusty could reach so Rusty he went to beating on the wall and screaming, ‘YOU’RE GONNA DIE, YOU’RE GONNA DIE,’ at the moth.
“Rusty beat the wall until the moth flew off and went for the light again. Old Rusty he swung and missed the moth and hit the coal-oil lamp dead center like he was stroking for center field. Broke the lamp all to hell and splattered burning coal oil and splintered glass all over the east end of the bunkhouse. Rusty couldn’t have done better with a stick of dynamite. Well, there was fire all over the wall and glass all over the floor and the rest of us come roaring up out of our beds, I’ll tell you, and started running for buckets and a hose and shovels and hollering like dogs in a fight. We got the fire out, but not before it scorched up the bunkhouse pretty good. We was washing smoke out of our sheets and picking glass out of our feet for a week.
“Couple a days later Rusty was trying to read again and there’s this big old gray moth come flittering onto
his pillow. Rusty hollers, ‘IT’S HIM, IT’S HIM, HE’S COME BACK FROM THE GRAVE!’ But I don’t know—even a moth ain’t that stupid. Rusty hollers he’s going to get his shotgun and blow this sucker clean to Jesus. I blew the lamp out about then. I didn’t want to die before payday.”
By the time I got to Moon’s, I was fired up. I did it—got my haircut and then went out front where the geezers were sitting in old cane-bottom chairs on the sidewalk in the shade. I told my story. They laughed politely enough, in an indulgent sort of way. But it was the last story I got to tell. I had reminded them of even better tales, and they were off and running.
The truth was clear—I was an amateur among professionals. There’s more to a performance than just the contents of the story. I’ll have to learn how to hold my mouth just right, learn not to laugh at my own yarn, and develop a slumped, nonchalant lean while sitting in a chair. Guess I’ll have to learn to spit, too. Real geezerhood may still be a way off for me.
O
ver the last couple of months, I have received information from the following organizations:
The National Tattoo Association
The International Save the Pun Foundation
Clowns of America International
Burlington Liars’ Club
Thimble Collectors International
National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance
Fairy Investigation Society
The Anti-Circumcision League
The International Federation of Tiddlywinks Associations
American Poultry Historical Society
Spark Plug Collectors of America
Count Dracula Fan Club
Bobs International
Snowdome Collectors’ Association
Liberace Fan Club
National Pygmy Goat Association
The Howdy Doody Memorabilia Collectors Club
The American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association
The Flying Funeral Directors of America
Bat Conservation International
American Council of Spotted Asses, Inc.
American Roller Coaster Enthusiasts
Procrastinators’ Club of America
The Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained
Membership in the last organization appealed to me, because I had not solicited this remarkable pile of mail and had a hard time explaining to my secretary and wife how this barrage came about. I could qualify for the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained.
At first, I found the brochures amusing, then amazing, then fascinating.
Most are serious organizations, and their existence could be taken seriously.
The right to freely associate and assemble is what our country is about.
Here’s proof at least that some of us are taking advantage of the privilege.
There must be thousands and thousands of organized
groups—finding kinship around almost every human interest or point of view. These organizations illustrate our need for company—to know we are not entirely one of a kind, despite a paradoxical need to be unique.
I received material from one man who was the only member of his group. But he found there were others who also belonged to one-person groups, so he now heads up the International Association of Single-Minded Rogue Males and One Person Clubs.
As the unsolicited mail continued to pour in, I realized this had to be the work of a practical joker. One of my friends had set me up. I had three in mind. The three friends with the most complex senses of mischief, who always operate on the other side of the conventional. Not wanting to tip my hand, I carefully stalked the suspects for weeks.
When I was sure I knew which of my friends submitted my name to all these groups, I sent in
his
name and the membership fees and joined him up to all of them.
The tables are turned on him.
But no. The
joke
is on
me.
I guessed the wrong friend.
And the guy I did join to all these groups is as blown away by his membership mail as I was. Congratulations to him! There are now
two
members of the Where-the-Hell-Did-This-Come-From? Mystery Mail Association. Welcome to our club!
F
or most of my life, I have known very few people with my last name, Fulghum (full-jum). My immediate family was small and died off early, leaving me the last apple on this branch of the family tree. As a result of recent genealogical research on the part of several distant relatives, it became clear that anybody with our last name was kinfolks. For the last several years we have held a national reunion. There are enough Robert Fulghums to form a baseball team.
As you might expect, as we have assembled our family tree, much attention is paid to the more famous figures of the past to whom we are supposedly related. Viking sea-rovers, kings, crusaders, knights, dukes, and those who accompanied conquerors and invaders hither and yon.
But I’m not really so sure we should be so proud
of all of these guys. Weren’t they greedy pillagers and plunderers who made war on innocent people? Weren’t they feudal landlords who oppressed the peasants? Weren’t they migrant exploiters looking for something for nothing?
And how about the women—it bothers me that the great women are left out of the family hall of heroes.
In addition to the exemplars, I’d also bet our family has had its share of chowderheads, liars, chicken thieves, pickpockets, cowards, bad cooks, and fools.
The truth is, the great majority of those whose genes we bear were pretty ordinary folks. They stayed at home and minded their own business, thus we don’t know their names or much about their lives. They were more like us present-day Fulghums than the headliners across the centuries.
I wonder what it was like, back there in the good old days.
I imagine me in April 992, a thousand years ago.
The tenth century. A century in the middle of what modern historians call the Dark Ages. A century whose only illumination was sun, moon, lightning, fire, and starlight. Whose only source of power was human or animal muscle and falling water. My name would be something like Robert the Crazy-Legged (Norman French:
fol-jambe).
