by Tom Papa
It’s kind of comforting knowing that he’s here. He’s become my most reliable friend. Now, when things turn on and off without any of us having flipped a switch, we know who did it. When I hear someone whisper or see something move out of the corner of my eye and there is no one there, I know there really is.
You should totally get one.
I don’t see why a ghost is such a hard thing to believe in. We have a spirit. We are spirits. We have palpable energy. It doesn’t seem to me that impossible that energy can’t hang around in one of those planes we know nothing about.
Not all of it makes sense. I get it. It does seem a little strange that they keep their pants on and have only one outfit. If I were a ghost, I’m pretty sure I’d be naked all the time. And it is weird how confused they seem to be. You would think that if you transcend this world, you’d have a better understanding of what’s going on. They never seem to be that bright, which may be why they end up stuck in an attic for all of eternity.
I stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in Massachusetts once. These are perfect settings for ghosts because the whole thing is creepy from the start. “Here’s our house, we’re not using all the rooms, let’s have total strangers come and sleep in our extra beds, take a shower, use our soap and towels, and before they leave in the morning we’ll feed them some breakfast.” That’s spooky.
I had checked in kind of late. The owner had one eye, and he didn’t wear an eye patch. I figured that he probably did most of the time, but it was late and in the same way that most people feel great about taking off their pants at the end of the day, he had taken off his patch. It was a curious sight and I couldn’t stop staring, so I did my best to stay a little to his right, out of view.
He was a little cranky, maybe from my staring, and told me I could have my pick of the two rooms as I was the only person staying with him tonight. I suddenly felt like we were on a date.
Everything creaks in a bed-and-breakfast. The stairs, the doors, even the bed creaks. If you’re an engineer, you know it’s because of the aging materials in the house. If you believe in ghosts, you know it’s the sound of lost souls. Either way it makes it difficult to be as quiet as possible, which is what you are trying to do when you are staying in a stranger’s house.
I lay down on a bed that had a doily for a bedspread and looked like a good place for an old lady to die. I turned out the lamp that looked like a porcelain ship and closed my eyes. I couldn’t fall asleep. I was listening to all the weird noises and trying to figure out if anything was a threat. I heard the wind rustling through the leaves outside my window. I thought I heard footsteps, but it was just the old pipes groaning and shuddering. And then I heard something that I could not explain.
Actually, at first I felt it. A coldness came over me. Not like a window left open or the breeze from a ceiling fan. This was a dank, soulless cold more like a presence than a climatic event. And then I heard it. A woman, whispering in my ear.
“I like it here,” she said.
I bolted up and turned on the ship lamp, and there was nothing there. I told myself it was the wind, but man oh man, that was a pretty articulate wind. I turned the light off and lay back down.
“I like it here.”
Oh, come on! Was it Johnny One-Eye? Was I going crazy from exhaustion?
What was happening?
When the owner came into the kitchen in the morning, wearing an eye patch, he found me sitting at the table. I had been sitting there all night long, scared out of my mind. I asked him if anyone had ever said anything about a ghost in the house. I expected him to turn, lift his eye patch, and say, “So, you’ve met Delores. She’s always doing that.”
But he just poured me some warm orange juice and gave me a little chuckle as if I were making a joke. I pressed him a little further, but he obviously had no idea what I was talking about. But I knew it was real. I heard it. And how could I expect him to see it, on account of his eyes and all.
It was real. It freaked me out. And I left immediately.
But unlike that creepy wraith, my ghost doesn’t give off an “I’m going to murder you” vibe. First of all he doesn’t talk much, which I know is strange for an actor. He also doesn’t pick up steak knives and chase the children, which is good.
I named my ghost Karl. He’s kind of cranky, as all out-of-work actors are, but he has hope. I feel like he has that eternal optimism you need to survive in show business, even though he’s dead. As with all actors, it takes a long time before you realize when your career is over. I hope he isn’t reading this over my shoulder.
I like having him around. You really should be open to your own haunting. He’s like another friend. But like all friends, he can be annoying. He thinks it’s funny to hide stuff on me, but it’s really not. I know, people misplace stuff all the time, but this stuff goes away and appears in the same spot a little while later. Ghosts apparently have a pretty lame sense of humor.
And again, if you don’t believe that my ghost can move stuff around, I get it. I’m sure you can come up with a bunch of reasons why this isn’t possible. Well, if you need proof, I also have a video.
I really do.
STAYING POSITIVE
I’m often asked how I’m able to remain optimistic despite the overwhelming barrage of bad news and pessimism. An incomplete answer is that I was born this way. I was born with the right chemical balance in my brain that gives me the ability to live on the happy side of the street. I don’t have a lot of depression in my gene pool and am lucky enough to not be overcome with unexplainable waves of incomprehensible sadness.
That’s doesn’t mean that I’m permanently on “happy mode,” but it does allow me to gather up my thoughts and forge through to a more positive outlook without the aid of therapy, pharmaceuticals, or large amounts of whiskey. That’s just luck.
But my genetics is only part of it. Staying positive was a philosophy that was taught to me. It’s a skill that can be learned. You can do it, too. I was taught, in no uncertain terms, that we should be grateful for what we have, that we’re blessed to be alive, and that we shouldn’t take life all that seriously.
This was drummed into my head by my entire family, but especially from my grandmothers. Both women lived through difficult times, under difficult circumstances with the added obstacle of being women, and emerged with an outlook on life that wasn’t just honorable but helpful.
They were both first-generation Americans raised by Italian immigrants who lived in rough, poor conditions made worse by the Great Depression and World War II. These two events are so enormous that it’s easy to pass them off as something we’ve all heard about as of course being difficult, but the consequences were beyond real and life changing. These events cultivated loss and fear and beyond all a change in how one looked at and lived in the world. They truly knew what it was like to lose loved ones to war and sickness, to worry about the future, and to go without, to go to bed hungry. This was not our version of “I’m starving” because we haven’t eaten in the last twenty minutes, this was very real and mapped out their childhood.
My nana grew up in an apartment in Jersey City, full of people with their share of explosive tempers and drinking problems and men with questionable morality. My other grandmother, with very little money, raised her seven children, the youngest confined to a wheelchair, and lost her husband at the young age of thirty-eight.
There was a long list of things they could complain about, but they never did. They weren’t broken or defeated. They had faith. They told us, through words and deeds, that we not only have to overcome but were supposed to laugh with our family and enjoy our lives. Anything short of that and we weren’t fulfilling our duty.
We were taught to truly see the suffering of others. How there was always someone else that had it worse, was dealing with more, and if they could get by, then who were we to complain?
Never complain. Don’t whine. Don’t be a baby. No one wants to hear it, and how does that help? We are not a fam
ily of delirious, joy-filled dingbats. But we don’t quit. We just keep on keeping on.
On the morning of 9/11, I watched from Newark International Airport, where I was about to board a flight, as the second plane hit the towers. Once the confusion settled and I realized I should return to the city, it was too late. All the bridges and tunnels were shut down, so I got a cab and headed to my grandmother’s house about twenty minutes outside of the city.
When my nana, the woman who had probably seen me upset more times than even I was aware of, opened the door, I had to fight back tears. She didn’t understand why I was so upset. Her first response was, “My Tommy is here!” When I asked if she saw the news, she said, “Oh, these things happen,” and invited me inside.
I sat in her small TV room watching the news, trying to make sense of the world, when she came in with her coat on. “I have to go meet my lady friends for cards.”
“You’re going to play cards? Now?”
She looked at me with pity. “Oh, you’re upset. Here, have half of my tuna sandwich. I’ll be back around three.”
She handed me tuna on white bread and shuffled out the door as if it were any other day. She had been through so much that this cataclysmic event was just another bad day, in a list of bad days, that we’d have to face and overcome. These things happen.
Other bits of advice I was given: “I’ll give you something to cry about.” “What do you have to be unhappy about? Do you know how other children live?” “It’s all perspective.” “Buck up.”
The world is filled with pain and hardship. We all have reasons to quit. We all have reasons to look at the world and think it’s hopeless. But what does that get you?
When you are traveling and there’s a delay, is it going to help your situation if you get angry about it and start sulking and fighting with your fellow travelers? If you don’t get the job you were hoping for or the girl or guy you wanted, what’s the course of action? Climb into bed and stay there forever? Or go after another job and another lover?
Life isn’t easy. It’s actually extremely difficult, with only one guaranteed ending. But you should refuse to waste it, if not for yourself, then for everyone around you. That was my grandmothers’ greatest trick—they weren’t living this way for themselves, it was for the sole purpose of helping others. Just knowing that we have the power to make it a little easier for everyone else who is muddling through should be enough to make us try.
Try and be strong. Try and be better. Try to enjoy.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
When I’m watching a school choir performance these days, I spend most of the time trying not to cry. In the beginning I was trying not to cry because they were so bad, but now they’re simply the most moving, stirring, and emotionally packed shows I have ever seen and I’ve seen Cats at the Valley Village Community Theater, so I know what I’m talking about.
When the kids started out in nursery school and kindergarten, it was hard not to get choked up, but that was more out of pure cuteness. Those shows were tantamount to tossing a box of puppies out on the stage. You ooh and ahh and can’t believe anything so cute actually exists.
Then they grow a little and awkwardness sets in and for years the shows are just horrible. There’s some joy seeing your own child up there, but the rest of those kids are a mess. They can’t sing, they can’t dance, and anything with an instrument is a certain form of torture. I get that every kid should play an instrument, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to hear it. That’s for their own family to deal with.
That’s one of the great tests for a parent. You know that making your child practice an instrument that they can’t play is doing the right thing. You know that practicing is the only way they will get better. And you also know that they’re going to produce the worst sound in the world and bring it into your home.
It’s like inviting your child to use a jackhammer on the dining room table in the middle of a dinner party.
Our school started the kids off with the recorder. It’s a funny flutelike first step. It’s not the best instrument in the world. If it were, it would come with a case, and it does not. The kids have to carry it to school in a sock. And that’s okay, because you know it’s not going to be around very long. No one continues playing the recorder, and no one has ever formed a band and asked if anyone knows a recorder player, but it’s the gateway drug of instruments.
Anyone who shows any aptitude at all with this sock flute goes on to choose their next instrument, and this is when the trouble starts. Suddenly the grade is filled with oboes, tubas, drums, and the dreaded violin. And what are you going to do with a bunch of kids with instruments? Form a band. And what are you going to do with this band? Put on a concert and make everybody listen.
Listen to “Hot Cross Buns” and “Jingle Bells” and it doesn’t matter what else because it all sounds like a clown dropping off his garbage at the dump.
Clankity metal, screeching horns, and crying children. My wife and I couldn’t take it. Maybe we’re bad parents, but we stopped at the sock flute and convinced them to take up dance.
My wife has been a dancer her entire life, starting as a child and later dancing professionally, so it’s only natural that she makes our two daughters into smaller versions of herself. Thank God. It made for a much quieter house. And while our concerts had much better music, they were just as rough to sit through.
I always enjoyed them, but not for the right reasons. I’m a big comedy fan and these shows were hilarious. Just the idea is funny. Let’s get some creatures who are growing at an incredible pace, who have no chance of controlling or understanding their bodies, put them in costumes, and make them try and dance in unison for other people.
This is about as far away from the Rockettes as you can get. These kids aren’t even close to the same height, definitely not the same shape, and not nearly the same skill level. We’ve seen kids fall down, fall off the stage, and fall in love right in the middle of a show. It’s chaos in tights.
And dance shows are long. They are so long. They start at ten in the morning and go until half-past everyone’s bedtime. There are so many kids and so many numbers that it’s just impossible to make them any shorter.
As difficult and challenging as it is for the dancers, it is equally as hard for the audiences. I spent years watching parents nap during the show and be punched by their wives when they start to snore. I’ve seen grandparents smuggling alcohol into the bleachers, going out for a smoke at intermission and never coming back.
And yet as tough as they are to watch, everyone in the audience is recording every second of it on their phones. The idea that there will ever come a time when the entire family gathers around to watch a replay of this is absurd. It would be more fun watching Grandpa’s colonoscopy. I’m guilty of it, too. Even though my eyesight isn’t the greatest, I once spent an entire show recording my daughter on my phone, only to find out hours later that I had been following the wrong girl.
These are rough years for all involved: the budding singers, dancers, musicians, teachers, parents, friends, and relatives. Even the janitor isn’t safe as we are all forced into this exercise, season after season, show after show.
And then something happens.
The children get older and they get to decide for themselves if they want to participate. They move beyond doing it because their parents said so. They do it now because they have some real passion. They care and they try and they practice on their own, out of the sight of their parents. They do it for themselves, all year long, and suddenly we get an email to save a date on our calendar because there will be a show that we didn’t see coming and didn’t know anything about.
And it will be a really good show. Not all of them. Not all the time. But there are moments that can take you as high as, if not higher than, anything you have ever seen because there is courage and dedication and excitement. You are literally watching a human being evolve. They are beginning to harness all that love a
nd fear and energy of being a person and expressing it, daring to be judged.
There is nothing more hopeful. It’s actually heartbreaking how hopeful it all is. And when you see them reach, see them strive for something bigger than themselves, and sometimes hit it, and they know it and the audience knows it and the teachers and the other kids all know it … well, that’s just about the most amazing thing you could ever see.
HAVE YOU EVER TAKEN AN EXIT OFF THE FREEWAY THAT YOU KNEW WAS WRONG JUST BECAUSE EVERYONE IN FRONT OF YOU DID? I HAVE …
FOLLOW THE HERD
Sometimes you have to be your own person. You have to strike out on your own and act the way all those motivational sayings on social media or on posters at the car wash want you to act. “You do you.” “Take the road less traveled.” “Be the captain of your own ship.”
But that takes a lot of work, which is why they have to continually yell at us like a drill sergeant about it. And while embracing your independent streak has its own rewards, sometimes you have to give yourself permission to take the easy way out and just be a part of the big stupid herd. Go to the big stores, eat from the chain restaurants, and watch The Bachelor. We can’t all be Andy Warhol, sometimes we just have to be normal. And sometimes normal is all you need.
So do the easy thing and enjoy the nice free continental breakfast in a lobby of a Holiday Inn Express. Drink bad coffee and eat a bagel that’s only a bagel because they say it is. Stare mindlessly into that rotating toaster machine and wait for that bagel to slide down the back like a dirty, crumb-filled slot machine. Scoop it up with your plastic knife and waddle back to your chair. You did it.