Lets start with a multiple-choice question, since those are almost always easier than ones that begin, In October of 1843, something really important happened, and unless you can recall what it was and can write 250 intelligent words about it, youre going to fail this quiz and probably wont become a success in life.
I know, I know: A total buzz kill.
I mean, I understand why my instructors and professors felt duty-bound to give tests and exams. It was a big part of their job description, their raison detre, their way of measuring your progress as you slogged your way through whatever class they were teaching.
It was mostly, but not exclusively, about imparting knowledge, that age-old handing down from one generation to the next the most important elements of wisdom, adding links to the chain of academic excellence.
I was always cool with that, and when given no choice, would almost always find a way to bluff my way through what were euphemistically called Story Questions. After all, I pictured myself a writer when I got to be an old guy.
Say when I was 24 years old.
But I soon tired of the drill of what were later known as Essay Questions, because they were so easy to master. All it took was a background in subject-verb agreement, a willingness to link one thought to the next – no matter its relevance – and, quite pointedly, the ability to defend your thesis, no matter how outlandish.
When I was a freshman in college, I remember being singled out to explain why I had spent three double-spaced pages equating Mick Jagger with William Shakespeare.
Well, I said, if you consider the words to You Cant Always Get What You Want and compare them with Hamlets heralded graveyard soliloquy, I think youll understand my point ... unless youre too old.
I realize now how low a blow that was but, at the time, I took my A back to the dorm and cranked up the entire Let It Bleed album and then, on general principles, walked all the way to the library and actually began reading Hamlet.
Which, it turns out, is actually the greatest literary achievement in the history of Western civilization. Funny how things turn out, isnt it?
And now that were all in the mood for not-so-serious questions, Ill pose this one, which will doubtless win you a beverage of your choice if you ask it in the right place at the right time, preferably in October as baseball – the only game that matters – is approaching its zenith.
Its trivia, but not trivial, if you catch my drift.
In the entire history of the game, only four players have hit 200 home runs in both the American and National Leagues.
Name them.
As you let that query marinate for awhile, let me ask the question I promised at the outset of this column, one thatll confound and amuse you to no end.
And its – Yay! – not an Essay Question.
Its multiple choice or, as we used to call them in high school, multiple guess.
And I believe that thats an important, if not defining, difference between taking tests when youre 17 and 19 years old. In high school, most teachers were content to simply give you a red checkmark if you answered B instead of C.
But they always held an ace in the hole, the None of the Above response.
Man, that was so lame.
But in college, most professors actually encouraged you to think, but the more I think about it, I suppose that most of my Essay Questions were probably graded by TAs who were just doing the least to justify their post-grad fellowships.
Am I cynical this week or what?
Anyway, forget Notre Dame. You couldnt possibly care about my alma mater unless its to gloat that the football seasons over before its begun, because in college football, a school is penalized for playing a tough schedule rather than fattening up on low-rent teams.
Again, its lame to care and until the NCAA authorizes an actual playoff, the whole BCS system is a farce.
I was thinking along those lines the other week after Id watched the Irish get shellacked at Michigan, and by those lines, I mean stuff that really doesnt matter unless you get so invested in it that you actually care.
What was that line in Network?
Oh, yes.
We are the illusion.
Meaning anything that appears on TV.
So Notre Dame lost a football game.
So what?
A good question.
And heres another.
How could I, during the course of a wonderful week on the beach, manage to sprain my left knee to such a painful degree that I can barely genuflect in order to offer a prayer that ND loses no more games this season?
Here are your multiple-choice answers:
A. While four-wheel driving a Jeep with no doors.
B. While scaling the highest sand dune on the Eastern Seaboard.
C. While battling a vicious riptide and, well, saving a life.
D. While paddle-boarding the Albermale Sound and falling into the current a dozen times.
E. While walking the beach at midnight and stopping suddenly to avoid crushing a hermit crab beneath my flip-flops.
F. All of the above.
G. None of the above.
IF YOUR GUESS WAS F, give yourself an A, because the truth of the matter is I cant be sure how I ended up with a patella swollen to the size of a softball.
All I know is that, ever since my wife and I closed up the oceanfront cottage where we entertained family and friends for a week, Ive been hobbling along like Dennis Hopper in Rivers Edge.
Or was it Blue Velvet?
I always get em confused.
At any rate, picture Walter Brennan in The Real McCoys or Festus in Gunsmoke.
I know those are allusions that date me, but thats the whole point of this essay. For the first time in my life, I felt kind of old.
Nearing 60, I understand that my window for keeping up with folks half my age is closing with a creaking, final shudder and I get it that the AARP sends me more come-ons than Rolling Stone magazine.
My lovely wife, whom I adore and tolerate, said something like, Its got to be hard finally feeling your age.
This from a woman who could pass for 20 years younger than she is as she tried to convince me to use icepacks and get lots of rest as my knee throbbed out the bass line to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and my ability to clear out the gutters as fall closes in was brought into specific relief.
But I can still climb a ladder.
I know this.
But even as my body might – and Im conceding anything – be failing, I also know the answer to the baseball trivia question I posed a while back.
The only four guys who have ever hit 200 homers in both leagues are:
1. Frank Robinson
2. Ken Griffey Jr.
3. Mark McGwire
4. Fred McGriff
And Ill bet you that at least once in their lives, they all dealt with aging in much the way I am.
Reluctantly.
Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. Find his Facebook page and youll have fun.
