Napkin Or No Napkin

Mbandjok Mom and sis went to lunch recently at the Denny’s in Van Nuys, chic dining for this family.

As mom and Caroline took their table, mom noticed a bald man in his mid-40’s enter with a group of other men. The man apparently stared intently at Caroline as they walked to their table. Mom was a little miffed at the rudeness.

As the women ate, mom noticed the man was still staring at Caroline “to the point of rudeness,” mom recalls. It doesn’t take much for mom to express herself, and she shot stares back with a “don’t you ogle my daughter” sternness.

Finally, the man stands up, walks to the Bowles table.

“How is the food?” the man said. “Do you need anything?”

Mom was less pissed; perhaps he was a manager, waiting to go on duty.

“No, we’re fine,” Caroline responded automatically, though pausing slightly because she thought she recognized the guy. “Thank you.”

The man smiled, turned and began to walk away.

Never one to bite her tongue, mom said to Caroline, “I could have used an extra napkin.”

Caroline immediately looked over her shoulder, raised an arm and told the man, “Mom needs an extra napkin.”

The man walks to one of the waiters, says “I got this, Sam,” takes a napkin from his tray and returns to the table.

“Here you go, mom,” Howie Mandell said before walking back to his table.

As Mandell is an avowed germophobe, mom assumed the napkin was clean.

 

The Theory Of One Thing (Or How God Died In The Big Bang)

 

The brutal irony of science is that, in discovering how to measure matter, it discovered that nothing does.

Where once science argued the Big Bang theory, now we have the Multiple Universe debate, which posits that we are more granular than we ever thought. That our macrocosm, the cosmos we once saw as infinite, is actually just a contact lens in a sea of countless infinities. It’s enough to leave you scrambling for a blankie, pacifier and bottle of Jack to forget our insignificance.

But we can’t help but add humanity to our search for worlds without it. For what is atheism, if not faith? We side with science because it has a better track record; you know what? Turns out the world isn’t flat. The sun doesn’t revolve around our planet. Human sacrifice won’t bring rain. Our bad.

Religion, on the other hand, prefers to retrofit theories to explain an ever-empirical world. Hell yes dinosaurs roamed our neighborhood only a few millennia ago; God just has his own daylight savings plan and time zone; He’ll explain when you get there.

But when we hear Stephen Hawking explain so convincingly  the workings of the cosmos — that time had an official beginning like an Olympic starter pistol, that everything sprang from nothing, that there really are bottomless pits (we just call them black holes)  — we must take it with the same faith as a Pentecostal must accept god. How is the Big Bang on a scale any less miraculous than the loaves and fishes? Science is great at explaining the laws of nature. But whence the lawmaker? Give this to faith: It can be a lot less depressing  than quantum physics.

Perhaps the answer lies not in Hawking’s mind, but his body, which continues to fade like a collapsing star. The macro from the micro, as when a split atom alters so many molecules. Hawking embodies our own conflict with existence. He should have been dead 50 years ago, but still fights the darkness that consumes his life.  He has elevated us without movement, illuminated galaxies from a wheelchair and serenaded our choir with a gospel chanted through a Speak n’ Spell.

Maybe he has inadvertently stumbled on the singularity that unites both sides of the pew.

That life, no matter how you define it, finds a way.

The Yes Board

I woke up today thinking of 6-year-old Precious Wellington Flood III. I swear that was his name; his sister’s name was Pumpkin, though I don’t know her middle name. Hopefully not Carving.
Precious went to Detroit public schools, where mom taught for 20 years as a first grade teacher. They say you always remember your first grade teacher. Mine was Miss Parker. Who was yours? Were you a smart pain in the ass then, too?
Mom has all kinds of stories of nascent brilliance. During a book reading about mammals, mom asked the class how a dolphin breathes underwater.
“Through he nostrils!” a confident kid shouted.
Precious wasn’t a shouter, but a handful. Precocious, smart, defiant, arrogant. My kinda kid.
He’d challenge mom. Her primary psychological weapon was the Yes Board and the No Board. If kids were good, they got to go to the front of the board and print their name under a big smiley face and one word: YES. Fuck, you should have have seen those kids beam to make it on the Yes Board.
Conversely, bad kids had to autograph the frowny-faced No Board. Kids bawled to scrub their names off. Genius.
Unless you got a kid like Precious, who must be an FBI profiler now, cuz kid was as sharp as a scalpel.
One day, he woke in a mood and came after mom. During a reading exercise, he stood up and headed to the door.
Mom: “Precious, what do you think you’re doing?”
Precious: “I’m going home.”
“Sit down.”
“I’m going home.”
“I said sit down.”
Precious strolls out the door.
Mom, slack-jawed, gets up, leaves the circle of kids, walks out to the hall to confirm this is actually happening.
It is. Precious is just grabbing his backpack on the way out.
Still not sure this is real, mom grabs Precious by the collar, marches him back into class, tells him to go in front of students and put his name atop the No Board, the most scurrilous of all the day’s offenders.
Precious does it. Slowly. Proudly. On the way back, he informs mom:
“I want to be on the No Board.”
Mom never told him, but admitted to us that night: “He called my bluff. He figured out the system.”
Still, there was a grudging respect between 6- and 60-year-old.Mom knew Precious was just that, if a touch(ton) difficult.

And Precious dug mom. I think all kids did. Here’s why.mom
Mom taught at tough-ass schools. Homes with two parents were as rare as parents with money. But there was devotion aplenty. At the end of one school year, the parents got together to make mom a patchwork quilt as a thank you. Each kid wrote a sentiment, drew a picture, which was sewn into the blanket.
“We love you Mrs. Bowles!” one read. “Thank you for teeching me how to read!” another  said, hopefully as a joke. From another boy, the precocious Noah, unabashed adoration:

“When I think,” it said beneath two rows of hearts, “I think of you.”

My god! to be that eloquent, so young. I cannot think of him without a catch in this tired throat.

To Precious, Noah, the Yes Board and love despite itself.