Surprises come in all ways — best to prepare
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- March 22, 2025
- 384
Usually, when bad news is headed your way, you have an inkling, some kind of internal alarm bell that gives you a little warning.
When your girlfriend, for example, says something like, “We have to talk,” you’d have to be six shades of stupid not to brace yourself.
The same survival instinct applies to unscheduled meetings with a boss or a landlord or a doctor. About the best you can do is repeat to yourself, “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
Then you walk into a chain saw and get stuffed into a wood chipper.
There’s a lot of that kind of grim fatalism in the air these days, owing to myriad causes, none of which appears to be temporary.
Basic human decency is on the wane even as grotesque avarice and flagrant disregard for the rule of law take center stage, elbowing aside such discarded norms like kindness, caring and generosity.
That’s why I hardly leave the house anymore and rarely turn on the television, spending most of my time hunkered in my basement office, relying on a transistor radio for the music of my long-ago youth and eschewing any kind of news updates, preferring silence.
This, of course, leaves a lot of empty hours for self-reflection, and trust me on this, you’re probably better off working on a jigsaw puzzle, one of those 1,000-piece jobs of a polar bear in snow.
My wife, to turn to a brighter picture, informed me the other day that she’d seen the first robin of the spring, her smile radiant as she shared the news, positive energy surrounding her like a force field.
About all I could offer was, at best, a tad bit on the hard-edged side.
“Sure hope that feral stray cat doesn’t rip its throat out,” I said.
My mother used to keep a stack of rocks on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, her version of a nuclear stockpile, and she was as vigilant as a Shawshank sharpshooter when it came to protecting the birds she faithfully fed in the backyard, winter through fall.
If she saw a cat sneaking up, all stealthy and sly, she’d call for me.
I’d drop whatever I was doing, run downstairs, crank open the window and let fly a fusillade of projectiles, not hitting often but putting a bit of a scare into the feline predator, who slunk away.
Speaking of Shawshank prison, portions of the 1994 movie were filmed in the Mansfield Reformatory, located just across the county line from my hometown. I’ve never actually been there, but from what I hear from those who have, it’s an impressive edifice.
The film itself is often included near the top of many Top 10 lists and is widely considered among the most inspirational movies ever made, its depiction of human ugliness offset by a message of hope.
You won’t find a lot of people who aren’t reduced to tears of joy when Morgan Freeman walks up that beach to greet Tim Robbins.
“Get busy living,” its most quoted line says, “or get busy dying.”
The only time I ever got close to the Reformatory was in summer 1975 when the slow-pitch softball team I was playing for competed in a tournament in a complex of ball fields built, quite literally, in the shadow of the prison itself.
Gave a whole new meaning to “costly error” and “caught stealing.”
Tim Robbins also starred in “Bull Durham,” a true sports movie gem, a fine film that is true to life, love and the game of baseball.
But before that, back in the bicentennial summer, there was “The Bad News Bears,” in which Walter Matthau played Morris Buttermaker, a washed-up former big league pitcher who earned a living cleaning the swimming pools of the California upper class.
He drinks too much, smokes too much, swears too much and hasn’t the inclination or the desire to coach a youth baseball team, but promised a tidy sum of money, he agrees to take the gig anyway.
What follows is a chronological account of his team’s season, from the depths of despair to the heights of making it all the way to the championship game, which doesn’t go the way Buttermaker hoped.
Along the way we get to know the players, and it’s a fun ride, full of humor and pathos, an insightful little movie with a lot of heart.
I loved it immediately and saw it several times in the downtown theater, which was one of the reasons that when I was offered the chance to coach a Pony League team, I jumped at the opportunity.
I was 24 and confident I could help a team that had gone just 2-18 the year before, maybe instill a sense of pride and purpose.
The result was a marked improvement, resulting in an 11-9 finish, not great but a solid foundation for a better season next summer.
Which was why, when the letter — typed in red, saying my services would no longer be required — arrived, I was taken by surprise.
I never saw the bad news coming.
Since then it’s happened again and again, a lightning bolt thrown from on high, utterly unexpected but nonetheless real, leaving only one possible choice: To get back up, dig in and take another swing.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where as long as there’s a chance, life is very good.