for Griffin, vicarious-living extraordinaire

Vicarious: experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person 

Each afternoon when Griffin gets home from preschool, he grabs his chaps, rodeo vest, spurs and cowboy hat and transforms from Iowa boy to Lane Frost. Lately, he’s even taken to wearing one glove on the hand he uses to hold the bull rope. This is a cool addition, I must admit, and has further authenticated his look. He already wears boots with any and every outfit. Jeans with boots, sweat pants with boots, shorts with boots–hey, even underwear with boots. Boots make the man, you know.

Griff has been living vicariously through Lane Frost (via the movie 8 Seconds) for the better part of a year. If they gave a lifetime achievement award for the one who has watched the most minutes of 8 Seconds, he would win hands down. But he doesn’t just watch the movie; he lives the movie. As Lane Frost is bounced, jerked, and ultimately thrown from the backs of various bulls, Griffin flails himself dramatically from his imaginary bull to the floor or ground. And then–and this is an extremely pregnant pause–he waits for one of us to say, “Lane, are you alright?”

He dusts the imaginary arena dust from his chaps, gives the traditional Lane Frost two-handed wave to the crowd, and says, “Yeah, I’m alright.” And then he repeats the entire scene again. And again and again. . .

If I were to bet today, I’d bet that Griffin will never see the back of a real bull. He talks a mean game and certainly has the rodeo garb to look the part, but in his words, “I’m afraid of getting stung” (his word for gored). Still, the tenacity of his vicarious bull-riding experiences moves me.

Author and humorist David Rakoff claims that there is nothing more cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness. As a child, when the first notes of the television program Lassie filled our living room, I teared up. I loved Lassie, the beloved collie, Timmy, Ruth and Paul Martin, Doc Weaver, and Ranger Bob. And through the poignancy and sadness of each episode (which was resolved in the final moments, of course), I cried those cleansing tears of one who felt herself a genuine member of the Martin family. For those precious minutes of each weekly episode, I was emotionally transported into the Martins’ lives. And I loved it.

Canadian American businessman and engineer Elon Musk writes:

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems. . . It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

I’m all for inspiration through vicarious living. When I returned home from breaks during college, I was once again enveloped in an inspiring story that starred larger-than-life characters. The author and director? My brother, Chad. There was the Gilligan’s Island saga, starring Chad as Gilligan (naturally), my father as the Skipper, my mom as Lovey, and two of my sisters as Mary Ann and Ginger. Because there were no more “girl parts” for me, I was relegated as the Professor (I also was assigned the part of Sulu in the Star Trek days; I never scored a female role.) I watched my brother live vicariously through a host of characters, often dressing the part. One of my personal favorite roles was when he was Dr. David Banner/the Incredible Hulk. He wore a button-down shirt which he would quickly remove to reveal a T-shirt my mother had artfully ripped for him to simulate the effects of bursting chest muscles. This was vicarious living at its finest, and even with bit parts, I was blessed to be a part of it.

There may be a darker side to vicarious experience. Steven Pinker, a popular science author, writes:

We can make fun of hockey fans, but someone who enjoys Homer is indulging the same kind of vicarious bloodlust. 

Hockey fights, spectacular car crashes, ski runs gone wrong, Greek battles, Texas Chainsaw-type massacre scenes–there is vicarious bloodlust in these and so many other events. We love to live vicariously through disaster and horror. From the safety of the bleachers or our arm chairs, we gasp, we cover our faces (and peer out from our parted fingers), we shudder and utter the obligatory, “That’s so terrible!” And then, when the moment has passed or a commercial has interrupted the programming, we return to our popcorn and check our text messages. Such is the nature of vicarious bloodlust: these things are truly awful for others but, thankfully, not for us.

In his poem, “Out, out–“, Robert Frost tells the story of a young boy who is cutting wood with a group of men. Just as his sister arrives to call him home for supper, he cuts his hand so badly that the doctor is called to the scene. Frost concludes the poem here:

And consider the ultimate vicarious act. German theologian and Holocaust victim Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.

Christ acts with vicarious responsibility for us, taking on our guilt, our sin and sorrow. I might have lived vicariously through Mary in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, but when the film ended and the lights came up, I could begin the transition from Golgotha to my comfortable home in rural Iowa. Not so for Christ whose vicarious responsibility for his children and their sin is, indeed, the consummate vicarious act.

There is much to be said for vicarious experience. As for Griffin’s rodeo alter-ego, I’ll all for it for as long as it lasts. And when he grows weary of Lane Frost, I’m hoping there is another adventure waiting in the wings.

For Gracyn, soon to be 9 years old

The day before St. Patrick’s Day, Gracyn and Griffin came over to make leprechaun traps. We sat on the floor with two cardboard boxes, colored paper, tape, glue, leftover Easter basket grass, jewels (because jewels are always a positive addition to any project!), pom poms, and whatever else we could find in our craft cupboard. Thirty minutes later, they had created two authentic traps destined to lure any self-respecting leprechaun.

The next morning, however, Gracyn pulled me aside and said, “Grandma, my mom told me the real truth about leprechauns.”

“The real truth?” I probed.

“You know, about how leprechauns are just make-believe. That truth,” she explained.

In that second, I was transported back to my third grade year, the year I learned the “real truth” about Santa. I may have cringed visibly, but I hope it was just internal cringing, the cringing of a grandmother who loves a little-girl-soon-to-be-a-young-lady.

But she smiled and winked. Then I breathed again and ventured, “It’s fun to be the one in on the secret, the one who can make it special for Griffin, isn’t it?”

She nodded, and I could see that she was already thinking, imagining, planning what she would do with her brother’s leprechaun trap. The girl has a memory and mind like a steel trap, and she remembered that I had a small leprechaun gift tag that had been in the bottom of the craft drawer for several years. She told me to distract Griffin, and she headed to the basement–the dark basement, the basement she never enters on her own–to retrieve the leprechaun and hide it in her coat pocket.

When I visited their house the next day, Griffin ran out carrying the leprechaun that Gracyn had lovingly placed in his trap. “Look, Grandma! I got one!” he cried.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Gracyn beaming. In an instant, she had transitioned from leprechaun-getter to leprechaun-giver. In an instant, she looked less like a little girl and much more like a young lady. And in this instant, I felt the promise of a new season, which would undoubtedly prove to be just as lovely as the last.

In truth, I witnessed the first sprouts of this season several weeks earlier. Classroom queen for the week, Gracyn invited me to sit with her and two chosen friends for lunch. As we unpacked our lunches on the special table reserved for just such occasions, one of her friends began to tell me of all the pets she had. She had pets at her mom’s house, and–she said expectantly–reptilian pets of all sorts at her dad’s house. For ten minutes, she and the other friend regaled me with pet stories, each one more curious and spectacular than the last. All the while, Gracyn nibbled away at her sandwich and listened.

As the lunch period was coming to a close, Gracyn looked at her friend with the reptilian multitudes and said, “Tell my grandma about. . .”

And there it was: the tangible sprouts of transition. My sweet granddaughter deferred the entire lunch period to her friends, allowing them to take the throne that she, as classroom queen, was gifted for the day. As the other lunch tables began to empty and students lined up at the door, Gracyn smiled, gave me a quick hug, and said, “Thanks for coming, Grandma. See you tonight.”

Be still my heart! Such graciousness, such magnanimity, such guileless generosity. This was the sprout that would soon blossom in a single act on St. Patrick’s Day.

Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris, biologist, speaker, and consultant, writes:

Caterpillars chew their way through ecosystems leaving a path of destruction as they get fatter and fatter. When they finally fall asleep and a chrysalis forms around them, tiny new imaginal cells, as biologists call them, begin to take form within their bodies. The caterpillar’s immune system fights these new cells as though they were foreign intruders, and only when they crop up in greater numbers and link themselves together are they strong enough to survive. Then the caterpillar’s immune system fails and its body dissolves into a nutritive soup which the new cells recycle into their developing butterfly. 

The caterpillar is a necessary stage but becomes unsustainable once its job is done. There is no point in being angry with it and there is no need to worry about defeating it. The task is to focus on building the butterfly, the success of which depends on powerful positive and creative efforts in all aspects of society and alliances built among those engaged in them.

Just as the caterpillar is a necessary stage but becomes unsustainable once its job is done, so is the necessary but unsustainable innocence of childhood. In a world of increasing darkness in which schools and shopping malls are no longer safe places, we might wish to sustain this innocence–if only for a few more years, a few more months.

But the task is to focus on building the butterfly, and the cells of the failing caterpillar give way to the nutritive soup from which the butterfly will emerge. I like to think of childhood as the nutritive soup from which adolescence and then adulthood will develop. And believing this, I can consider Gracyn’s fading childhood as a rich broth that is giving way–moment by moment–to something magnificently more hardy.

And if her transition wobbles on awkward legs for a time, I can take heart in the promise of coming attractions. During spring break of my sophomore year of college, I was at home one morning when a friend of my mother’s and her teenage daughter came for coffee. The woman asked my mom if she could take her daughter upstairs to see our wall of portraits. Actually, most of these were school pictures that ranged from kindergarten pictures to more professional senior photos. As the pair was coming down the stairs to rejoin us, I heard the mother say, “See Kim, I told you these girls were pretty homely in middle school. But they turned out just fine, didn’t they?”

And there you have it: the homeliness present in my sisters’ and my adolescent photos was living proof of the inevitable wobbling towards something more comely and less awkward, the caterpillar yet to become a butterfly. That our homeliness might also serve as the nutritive soup for another struggling adolescence makes our middle school “row of shame” quite bearable.

Author and journalist Teresa Tsalaky writes that Light precedes every transition. Whether at the end of a tunnel, through a crack in the door or the flash of an idea, it is always there, heralding a new beginning. As my granddaughter is about to turn 9 years old (how can it be?), I can celebrate the light of her childhood and anticipate the light that has already begun to herald a new beginning. 

There may be those who wish to expedite transitions, uneasy with their awkwardness and all too eager for what is to come. Not me. I’m all for a season of transitions, for I have smelled Gracyn’s first blossoms, and the fragrance is more alluring than I could have imagined.

Years ago, chalk in hand, I recall facing a class of high school students moments after I had written “grace under pressure” on the blackboard. I had assigned Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “The Undefeated,” and we were just beginning our discussion of Manuel Garcia, the protagonist. An aging, washed-up bullfighter, Garcia continues to beg his promoter, Retana, to find him work. Finally, Retana consents and finds him a fight for much less money than the younger, more promising bullfighters are earning. Garcia then pleads with a friend, Zurito, to “pic” for him (serve as a picador or horseman who uses a lance to help the bullfighter).

Looking on, a bullfighting critic writes that the bull Garcia draws is “all bone.” It takes Garcia five tries to stab the bull. Although he finally kills it, he is gored and rushed to the doctor for surgery. As Zurito looks down at his friend on the operating table, Retana hands him a pair of scissors. Hemingway writes:

That was it. They were going to cut off his coleta. They were going to cut off his pigtail.

Manuel sat up on the operating table. The doctor stepped back, angry. Someone grabbed him
and held him.

“You couldn’t do a thing like that, Manos,” he said. He heard suddenly, clearly, Zurito’s
voice.

“That’s all right,” Zurito said. “I won’t do it. I was joking.”

“I was going good,” Manuel said. “I didn’t have any luck. That was all.”

Common sense, age, and injury should all lead Garcia to the inevitable decision to quit bullfighting. Cutting off his coleta would symbolize an end to the bullfighting career that had defined–and continued to define–his life. Even as he approaches surgery, he insists that he “was going good” and that he can continue, that he must continue fighting.

In a profile titled “The Artist’s Reward” which appeared in the the New Yorker on November 30, 1929, author Dorothy Parker asked Hemingway: “Exactly what do you mean by ‘guts’?” And Hemingway replied: “I mean, grace under pressure.”

To some, Manuel Garcia is a foolish old man who clings to a romantic notion that he can continue to fight bulls; to others, like Hemingway, he is “grace under pressure.” That is, he refuses to meet defeat with fear or resignation. He will not let them cut off his coleta, which would signal utter defeat, and instead, insists that “he was going good” but didn’t “have any luck That was all.” Like Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea, Francis Macomber from “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” Lieutenant Frederic Henry from A Farewell to Arms, and many other Hemingway heroes, Garcia has a special kind of “guts” which literary critics attribute to many Hemingway “code heroes”.

Until recently, I had never heard of John Woodruff, the 800 yard runner who took gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Like most, I had read about Jesse Owens and had marveled at his accomplishments as both athlete and individual. But Woodruff? I can’t recall ever even hearing his name.

Unusually tall for a middle distance runner, at 6 ft. 3 inches, John Woodruff had earned the nickname “Long John.” Although he had college running experience, he had little international experience prior to the Olympics. The grandson of former Virginia slaves and a star high school football player, he quit football because his mother insisted that the practices were interfering with his chores at home. Later, he dropped out of school at 16 to seek employment. During the Depression, however, work was scarce, particularly for African Americans, so he returned to school.

Woodruff joined the track team whose practices ended early enough for him to complete his chores, and his mother gave her blessing. After success at the high school level, he attended the University of Pittsburgh. During his freshman year (1936), he placed second at the National AAU Track Meet and first at the Olympic trials. In spite of his age and inexperience, his impressive times made him a favorite for an Olympic medal.

During the first 300 yards of the Olympic 800 finals, an inexperienced Woodruff found himself boxed in by more experienced runners. He understood that if he broke free from this box, he may foul other runners and risk disqualification. And so he committed what the New York Herald-Tribune called the “most daring move seen on a track.” Woodruff explained that he “stopped and moved over onto the third lane of the track. I let my opponents pass me by, and then I started the race all over again.”

In a New York Times article describing the race, we read:

“I didn’t panic,” he [Woodruff] said. “I just figured if I had only one opportunity to win, this was it. I’ve heard people say that I slowed down or almost stopped. I didn’t almost stop. I stopped, and everyone else ran around me.”

He didn’t panic. He literally stopped and restarted his entire race. With 500 yards to go, he took off again from a dead stop. Refusing to panic or to give up and setting his sites on winning? Indeed, these are the traits of one who exhibits grace under pressure. If Woodruff were a literary character, he would certainly find himself among the ranks of the finest Hemingway code heroes.

It goes without saying that running at an Olympic 800 pace is a feat by itself. But stopping, restarting, and then exceeding your previous Olympic pace? I have no words for this.

Woodruff’s incredible story has made me wonder why I had never heard of him. Having scratched twice, sprinter and long-jumper Jesse Owens nearly didn’t even place in the long jump during this same Olympics. But with advice from his German opponent, Lutz Long, Owens not only successfully completed his final jump but won the gold medal. An African American winner of four Olympic gold medals, Owens could also be considered an authentic example of grace under pressure.

But what of Woodruff’s gold and his story? Owens’ accomplishments continue to shine, but Woodruff and his accomplishments have been seemingly lost.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about Woodruff’s bold decision to simply stop, to move aside, and then to start again. When we consider courage, we most often think of one who acts and continues to act–not one who stops and steps aside. Hemingway’s code heroes persevere. If Manuel Garcia had not been gored, he would have finished his fight and urged his promoter to schedule the next. For most Hemingway heroes, there is really no stopping or moving aside.

But what if, in certain circumstances, true grace under pressure may require more than forging ahead? What if it asks us to stop whatever we are doing, to let others move ahead, and then to start again?

Twenty minutes into a high school English lesson, I realized that I was wobbling and then (gasp!) teetering on the edge of instructional disaster. The lesson I had planned, the one that had seemed so right and destined for success, was moments away from utter failure. Students were lost, and I was floundering. This was not my first brush with classroom disaster. I had found myself on this very precipice countless times before, and I had soldiered on. Some may have called this courage. This forging ahead in the face of imminent disaster. This persistence that fueled that final 25 minutes. This refusal to quit talking, as if I could talk my way out of confusion. Two paths had diverged in the instructional woods, and I had not only taken the one less traveled, I had taken one that no one would ever travel!

But on this particular day, I stopped the lesson. I looked up from my text book and said, “I’m really sorry. What I had planned seemed like such a good idea, but now I can see that you’re hopelessly confused. And to be honest, so I am. We are just going to stop and forget this whole lesson. Instead, we’re going to look at . . .” What I had chosen to study next has escaped me. But I did a John Woodruff. I stopped, let others catch their breath, and then I started again. In short, on this day under these circumstances, the most courageous thing to do was to stop and begin again. Ironically, this may have been one of my finer moments as a teacher, a moment of true grace under pressure.

Sadly, how many other times in the face of impending failure have I just kept going, desperately trying to keep my head above water and–at the very least–to save face? And how many times have I believed these acts to be courageous? Too many, I’m afraid.

I’m not too old to take a valuable lesson from John Woodruff. Honestly, once my momentum is going–in whatever I am doing–it’s hard to slow down, let alone stop. But Woodruff instinctively knew that, if he had a chance to succeed, he must stop. It’s also worth noting that he could have pushed his way out of the box, hoping that officials wouldn’t see the contact. I fear that there are far too many athletes who bullishly push forward regardless of the potential consequences.

John Woodruff was a class act. He played by the rules, he gave his fellow athletes the courtesy he believed they deserved, he restarted his race, and he won. If this is not grace under pressure, I don’t know what is.