It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It

by Robert Fulghum

  This experience with the Driving Master emphasizes the profound truth of an old story. If you don’t know it, it’s time you heard it. If you know it, you ought to hear it again once in a while.

  The story says that a traveler from Italy came to the French town of Chartres to see the great church that was being built there. Arriving at the end of the day, he went to the site just as the workmen were leaving for home. He asked one man, covered with dust, what he did there. The man replied that he was a stonemason. He spent his days carving rocks. Another man, when asked, said he was a glassblower who spent his days making slabs of colored glass. Still another workman replied that he was a blacksmith who pounded iron for a living.

  Wandering into the deepening gloom of the unfinished edifice, the traveler came upon an older woman, armed with a broom, sweeping up the stone chips and wood shavings and glass shards from the day’s work. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  The woman paused, leaning on her broom, and looking up toward the high arches, replied, “Me? I’m building a cathedral for the Glory of Almighty God.”

  I’ve often thought about the people of Chartres. They began something they knew they would never see completed. They built for something larger than themselves. They had a magnificent vision.

  For Jack Perry, it is the same. He will never see his students grow up. Few teachers do. But from where he is and with what he has, he serves a vision of how the world ought to be.

  That old woman of Chartres was a spiritual ancestor of the man who teaches driver training, who is building a cathedral to the human enterprise in his own quiet way. From him the kids learn both to drive a car and drive a life—with care.

  AFTER THE DISHES ARE WASHED and the sink rinsed out, there remains in the strainer at the bottom of the sink what I will call, momentarily, some “stuff.” A rational, intelligent, objective person would say that this is simply a mixture of food particles too big to go down the drain, composed of bits of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and fiber. Dinner dandruff.

  Furthermore, the person might add that not only was the material first sterilized by the high heat of cooking, but further sanitized by going through the detergent and hot water of the dishpan, and rinsed. No problem.

  But any teenager who has been dragooned into washing dishes knows this explanation is a lie. That stuff in the bottom of the strainer is toxic waste—deadly poison—a danger to health. In other words, about as icky as icky gets.

  One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands—BARE HANDS—and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon BAREHANDED—a kind of mad courage. She found the spoon in a clump of coffee grounds mixed with scrambled egg remains and the end of the vegetable soup. I almost passed out when she handed it to me to rinse off. No teenager who wanted to live would have touched that without being armed with gloves, a face mask, and stainless-steel tongs.

  Once, in school, I came across the French word ordure, and when the teacher told me it meant “unspeakable filth” I knew exactly to what it referred. We had it every night. In the bottom of the sink.

  When I reported my new word to my mother at dishwashing time, she gave me her my-son-the-idiot look and explained that the dinner I had just eaten was in just about the same condition in my stomach at the moment, rotting, and it hadn’t even been washed and rinsed before it went down my drain. If she had given me a choice between that news and being hit across the head with a two-by-four, I would have gone for the board.

  I lobbied long and hard for a disposal and an automatic dishwasher, knowing full well that they had been invented so that nobody would ever have to touch the gunk again.

  Never mind what any parent or objective adult might tell me, I knew that the stuff in the sink drainer was lethal and septic. It would give you leprosy, or something worse. If you should ever accidentally touch it, you must never touch any other part of your body with your fingers until you had scalded and soaped and rinsed your hands. Even worse, I knew that the stuff could congeal and mush up and mutate into some living thing that would crawl out of the sink during the night and get loose in the house.

  Why not just use rubber gloves, you ask? Oh, come on. Rubber gloves are for sissies. Besides, my mother used her bare hands, remember. My father never came closer than three feet to the sink in his life. My mother said he was lazy. But I knew that he knew what I knew about the gunk.

  Once, after dinner, I said to him that I bet Jesus never had to wash dishes and clean the gunk out of the sink. He agreed. It was the only theological discussion we ever had.

  My father, however, would take a plunger to the toilet when it was stopped up with even worse stuff. I wouldn’t even go in the room when he did it. I didn’t want to know.

  But now. Now, I am a grown-up. And have been for some time. And I imagine making a speech to a high school graduating class. First, I would ask them, How many of you would like to be an adult, an independent, on-your-own citizen? All would raise their hands with some enthusiasm. And then I would give them this list of things that grown-ups do:

  —clean the sink strainer

  —plunge out the toilet

  —clean up babies when they poop and pee

  —wipe runny noses

  —clean up the floor when the baby throws strained spinach

  —clean ovens and grease traps and roasting pans

  —empty the kitty box and scrape up the dog doo

  —carry out the garbage

  —pump out the bilges

  —bury dead pets when they get run over in the street

  I’d tell the graduates that when they can do these things, they will be adults. Some of the students might not want to go on at this point. But they may as well face the truth.

  It can get even worse than the list suggests. My wife is a doctor, and I won’t tell you what she tells me she has to do sometimes. I wish I didn’t know. I feel ill at ease sometimes being around someone who does those things. And also proud.

  A willingness to do your share of cleaning up the mess is a test. And taking out the garbage of this life is a condition of membership in community.

  When you are a kid, you feel that if they really loved you, they wouldn’t ever ask you to take out the garbage. When you join the ranks of the grown-ups, you take out the garbage because you love them. And by “them” I mean not only your own family, but the family of humankind.

  The old cliché holds firm and true.

  Being an adult is dirty work.

  But someone has to do it.

  LADY I KNOW RUNS AN UPSCALE DOWNTOWN TOY store. Says her live-wire customers are mostly well-dressed middle-aged men who come in during the middle of the morning when their employees are back at the office working. In toy-store jargon these men are called “loose wallets.” Only the best toys will do, and they never leave the store empty-handed. She says she can spot them coming down the street. They wear an eager, simpleminded look and walk with pleasant purpose, clearly coming to do something they enjoy. And they don’t wait around for Christmas, either; they come any time of year.

  Who are these big spenders?

  Grandfathers. First-time grandfathers as often as not.

  The answer to a toy salesperson’s prayer.

  And I am one. Which means I have been spending a great deal of time in toy stores recently, shopping for dolls for my granddaughter.

  (Fear not. I won’t tell you all about my granddaughter. Because if you are not yet a grandparent, you really don’t want to hear about this, and if you are already one, then all you want to do is tell me about your grandchild, who is, naturally, a more amazing kid than mine, and I don’t want to hear about that.

  This is the basic downside of grandparenthood. You want to talk about it a great deal. Nobody really wants to listen much to this illustrated lecture of yours—�
�Want to see some pictures?”)

  To continue. Dolls have changed since last I shopped for one twenty-five years ago. For one thing, most are “anatomically correct,” and the salesperson is always eager to demonstrate this by holding up a dress or pulling down pants and exclaiming, “LOOK, THE REAL THING!”

  This is the hardest part of doll shopping.

  In theory, I am all in favor of this development, but I don’t know which is more embarrassing—enduring the demonstration or asking not to be shown. I’ll take their word for it. Perhaps the threat of the mandatory demo explains why grandfathers tend to shop for dolls in the middle of the morning when nobody else is in the toy store.

  Toy manufacturers have progressed well beyond realistic body parts. There’s not much limit to what a doll can do.

  “Baby Tickle” laughs when rubbed under her arms.

  “Whoopsie” makes a shrieking sound and her hair flies up when her tummy is pressed.

  “Baby Wet and Care” breaks out in a diaper rash. What’s more, she comes not only with the lotion that clears up the rash, but with a lotion that gives her the rash in the first place.

  Then there is “Newborn Baby,” who comes “just as it is released from the hospital,” which means it is life-size, wrinkly and soft and kind of ugly. Equipped with a hospital ID tag on its wrist, a pacifier, and—get this—a navel bandage where the umbilical cord was cut. It eats, drinks, whimpers, and messes its diapers (it’s anatomically correct, of course) and spits up if you squeeze it. Comes in male, female, black, and white. (No yellow or red. Why not?)

  This trend toward realism in dolls deserves applause.

  It suggests a remedy for the population problem.

  Why not get very real about dolls?

  How about “Baby Sick,” who eats and throws up unexpectedly at the same time it develops diarrhea, and cries all night.

  Or “Baby Disease,” who periodically gets covered with scabrous red spots, and coughs for three days and nights.

  Or “Baby Difficult,” who shouts “NO, NO, NO, NO!” instead of saying “Mama.”

  Or even “Baby Embarrassing”—you wind it up and it plays with its anatomically correct self while you are trying to change its diapers.

  The ultimate baby doll would have ALL of these characteristics and actions. And whole generations of little girls and boys might grow up thinking very carefully about having real babies. They would know what they were getting into. Thus the doll manufacturers of America might become a powerful force in the service of population control.

  Don’t hold your breath while waiting for this development. The toy-store lady admits that the closer to being lifelike it is, the less likely a doll is to sell.

  The “Newborn Baby Doll” I mentioned doesn’t get any buyers even on sale at half price.

  Even first-time grandfathers won’t take it.

  Especially not first-time grandfathers.

  No, these guys buy exactly what you would expect: unblemished, unreal little beauties with fluffy dresses and ballerina features—the ones that are cute and sweet and soft. Without anatomical details, either, thank you.

  Perfect is what they want.

  Just like their granddaughters.

  TALLY-HA, THE FOX! No, not tally-ho. Tally-ha. Ha, as in “to laugh.” This perversion of the traditional incitement of the hounds is the rallying cry of the Hunt Saboteurs Association of England. The HSA is a troop of commoners who have taken an uncommon interest in the ancient aristocratic sport of fox hunting.

  Let us review. Hunting the fox involves gathering some upper-crust sorts who wear funny clothes and sit in skinny saddles mounted on rangy horses. At the urging of a master of the hunt who is dressed in a red sportcoat and who blows a brass horn, they all race about the countryside over fences and hedges and moor and hill and dale and field, all following after a whole lot of dogs who are in turn chasing what they hope is a fox. If it is a fox and the dogs catch it, they tear it to pieces. All the horsy riders think of this as great fun, as do the dogs, I suppose. What the horses and fox think, I can only imagine. To belong to a hunt club is to BELONG in a big way. The Royals are often right in the middle of all this, with a princess or a duke or two considered essential to the status of the hunt.

  The newcomers to this jolly scene are the adherents of the Hunt Saboteur Association. More than two thousand enthusiasts dedicated to spoiling the fun. They are on the side of the fox. And against human cruelty to wild animals. They describe fox hunting as “the unbearable in pursuit of the uneatable.”

  Their goal is to bring chaos and embarrassment to fox hunting and to help a lot of foxes live happily ever after in one piece. To accomplish this, the Saboteurs are just slightly less organized than the Israeli Secret Service. No matter how discreet the hunt organizers try to be, the Saboteurs always seem to know their plans. Whenever a hunt is scheduled, the Saboteurs go into action. Here are just some of their tactics and activities:

  Often they send out false or conflicting notices of hunt meetings for gatherings of riders at the wrong place on the wrong day.

  Partisans hide in the woods and blow false horn signals to confuse riders, and sometimes they even mount up disguised as riders and rush about in the wrong direction.

  On days before a hunt some of the Saboteurs range the fields and woods for miles around spraying artificial fox scent on trees and fences, and at the same time scattering juicy chunks of raw meat to distract the hounds.

  The guerrillas have been known to set off village air-raid sirens and small smoke bombs to disconcert the riders, and even to set free all the horses while the riders are having a bite to eat and drink.

  Recordings of fox barks and packs of dogs baying have been played to scatter the interest of dogs and riders alike.

  Once, all the dogs in a pack were lured into a truck and driven miles and miles away.

  The Saboteurs have crept into tack rooms and smeared honey on all the saddle seats, and even put red dye into all the watering troughs for miles around so the hunters would have to try to get their horses to drink what looks like blood.

  Small tableaux have been staged on the commons in nearby villages—where men dressed up in fox costumes chase people dressed like aristocrats.

  One plan is to fly overhead in a helicopter during a hunt, playing silly children’s songs and tapes of silly laughter.

  And I’m told that groups of Saboteurs have even run naked through the garden parties after the hunt—naked except for fake foxtails attached to their buns. And barking like dogs, of course.

  Needless to say, the press is always notified of the coming actions of the Saboteurs, and they love to come and record the whole affair. More than once the fox hunters have been made to appear both barbaric and foolish. All their names get published. Not good.

  The hunt clubs don’t like the Hunt Saboteur Association very much. But the hunters’ deployment of police and lawyers only makes them seem more ludicrous, and spoils the hunt anyhow.

  The result of all this is great fun for the SABs, as they call themselves, some great parties in the village pubs after their business is completed, and a diminishing interest in fox hunting for some of the hunters, as well as peace of mind on the part of not a few foxes.

  I like the Hunt Saboteur Association. Not because saving foxes has a particularly high priority for me. And not just because I oppose any kind of cruelty. I applaud the spirit of the SABs.

  So often doing good involves a kind of grimness. To assault evil, even small evil, with mischief, cleverness, merriment, and laughter—that takes genius few of us have but which, when it is found, graces the human scene and makes progress both possible and palatable.

  If we could just figure out how to have more fun at it, maybe more of us would join the ranks of those who seek after justice and mercy.

  WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY fits in someplace between the Ten Commandments and Murphy’s Law.

  God, you will recall, invited old Moses up on a tall mountain out in
the desert and handed him a couple of solid-stone memos with some powerful words on them. Commandments. God didn’t say, “Here are ten pretty good ideas, see what you think.” Commandments. Do it or take the consequences.

  Murphy, at the other extreme, was the ultimate good-humored human cynic who said that no matter what you do, it’s probably not going to work out very well anyhow. Some people think that Murphy was an optimist.

  As a middle ground, I offer Fulghum’s Recommendations. Items not touched on by God or Murphy, really. And neither as ironclad as the first Ten or as despairing as the endless variations on Murphy. Note that there are only nine in my list. I’m still working on the tenth. Or the eleventh, for that matter.

  Buy lemonade from any kid who is selling.

  Anytime you can vote on anything, vote.

  Attend the twenty-fifth reunion of your high school class.

  Choose having time over having money.

  Always take the scenic route.

  Give at least something to any beggar who asks.

  And give money to all street musicians.

  Always be someone’s valentine.

  When the circus comes to town, be there.

  THIS IS 1963.

  From deep in the canyoned aisles of a supermarket comes what sounds like a small-scale bus wreck followed by an air raid. If you followed the running box-boy armed with mop and broom, you would come upon a young father, his three-year-old son, an upturned shopping cart, and a good part of the pickles shelf—all in a heap on the floor.

  The child, who sits on a plastic bag of ripe tomatoes, is experiencing what might nicely be described as “significant fluid loss.” Tears, mixed with mucus from a runny nose, mixed with blood from a small forehead abrasion, mixed with saliva drooling from a mouth that is wide open and making a noise that would drive a dog under a bed. The kid has also wet his pants and will likely throw up before this little tragedy reaches bottom. He has that “stand back, here it comes” look of a child in a pre-urp condition. The small lake of pickle juice surrounding the child doesn’t make rescue any easier for the supermarket 911 squad arriving on the scene.