Submarine Captain

I was talking to my mother the other day on the phone; we were discussing current events. Actually, we were kind of talking around them; I’ve been trying to lower my stress level by avoiding the news.

I was telling her of a conversation I had had down at the supermarket deli counter with two female employees I know well. They asked me how things were going and I shrugged.

I told them, “You know, I come in here to shop and I have to wear a mask but thank God, it’s only for fifteen minutes, You guys on the other hand…”

“—Oh, I know,” one lady said. “Any chance we get, on a break or whenever, we take these suckers off and just start gasping for air…”

The other one said, “What about these people you see driving around, wearing a mask?”

“Are they worried they’re gonna infect themselves?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

The three of us laughed and then waved our goodbyes to each other as we went our separate ways.

My mom agreed that things were crazy.

I delicately referred to a certain prominent individual who speculated aloud that the virus might magically disappear in spring when the weather got warmer.

“Deus ex machina,” my mother responded.

For those who don’t know the expression (and I only know it through a film class textbook) I offer an excerpt from Wikipedia’s definition of it: “Deus ex machina…English ‘god from the machine’) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function can be to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device… The term was coined from the conventions of ancient Greek theater, where actors who were playing gods were brought onto stage using a machine. The machine could be either a crane (mechane) used to lower actors from above or a riser which brought them up through a trapdoor.”

I said, “You know when I was a kid I used to wish the school would blow up overnight whenever I had a test or a project or homework or whatever…but I outgrew that type of thinking. And you hope that other people would, too, before they, say, became President of the United States.”

I continued, “Although there was this one time when something like that occurred for me…”

When I was in the fifth grade playing softball in the backyard I broke my thumb taking a throw at first base. The glove was defective—it wasn’t a name brand like Rawlings or Spalding but a New York Yankees baseball glove made by God knows who. I say defective because the design of the glove left the thumb on my left hand exposed and unprotected by the padding you would ordinarily find in any conventional baseball glove. I knew it was broken because I felt my thumb snap when I took the throw, not to mention the intense pain that accompanied it.

Nobody believed me, not my brothers, not my best friend, Harry, not my parents, not even the doctor. They all told me it was jammed and made fun of me when I made a little splint for my thumb out of white athletic tape and a thick twig I found in the backyard.

The next day in school, our English teacher sent us off in pairs to the school library. Once there, we were supposed to find a book that corresponded to our desired future occupation as an adult.

Well, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up—other than a pro football player—an answer I was sure that my teacher would find unsatisfying and my classmates would find ludicrous. So rather than waste my time looking for a book that connected with some phony job ambition I didn’t have, I just looked for something fun to read. I found a book on submarines which looked super-cool to my fifth grade self, so that’s what I checked out.

Upon returning to the classroom, the teacher announced that we would all take turns standing in front of the class and showing off our book and explaining our chosen future profession.

Well, I was screwed if she called on me but there were twenty-something other kids in the class, what were the odds?

Pretty good as it turned out. The teacher called on me first. I gulped in fear and began walking towards the blackboard with about all the enthusiasm I’m sure the average French aristocrat exhibited walking towards the guillotine. The “Funeral March” was playing in my head as I desperately tried to concoct some ridiculous cockamamie story about wanting to be a submarine captain.

Halfway there, God intervened in the form of a kid with a note at the door. I was to report to the office immediately.

“Ooooohhhhh!” all the kids in the class moaned in automatic reflex. “You’re in trouble!”

And of course I thought I was, too—for what I didn’t know—but since when is getting summoned to the office a good thing?

Apparently right at this one particular moment.

When the idiot doctor looked at the X-Ray that morning he found that, indeed, I had broken my thumb. (“Well, look who knows so much?” – Billy Crystal, The Princess Bride.) He panicked and called my mom and one of them contacted the principal’s office to pull me out of school immediately so I could have my thumb set and a cast made.

And no, I was never questioned later on my book choice or future job aspirations.

It was a great day for me in an otherwise ghastly middle school career.

The only problem was once you get bailed out like that, you keep waiting for it to happen again. And it’s a pretty safe bet that you won’t.