What On Earth Have I Done?

by Robert Fulghum

  Of course, I don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s why I go. And I’m not entirely in over my head. I thought the last topic addressed my kitchen oven problem completely. And several times I’ve had thoughts in line with some of the other topics after too much Metaxa brandy. These physics guys are just talking theory. I’ve seen things. I know what these guys are talking about. “Alternate Realities?”—been there. “Loop Quantum Gravity?”—absolutely. And I wake up in the fourth dimension almost every morning. Sometimes I’m there all day.

  One question that remains hanging for me is that if subatomic particles can be two places at once, and my body is made up of subatomic particles, then why can’t I be in two places at once? I asked one of the physics guys. He smiled. “We’re working on that,” he said.

  It’s inspiring to have these people around—mostly young, mostly brilliant—from places like India, Israel, Iran, France, Germany, England, France, Poland, and the USA—just to name where the presenters come from. All with their minds way out there and way in here on the edge of a conceptual reality unfettered by ethnicity or political boundaries. Only in the metaphorical sense are there national black holes, but not in physics.

  And theoretical physics is not all that’s on the agenda.

  I watched two young men and two young women from the conference sneaking off together from the official dinner, flirting their way down to the village to eat by the sea in the moonlight. Applied Biology. Now I understand what this afternoon’s talk was about: “Higher-Spins, Holography, and Duality.” Sounds like Cretan klidona to me.

  Nothing new. Same as it ever was. Physical.

  61

  The Story of the Exhibition of

  the Village Underwear, or How

  Dimitri Went to War

  Cretans are great storytellers. Heirs of Homer, they often interweave a central truth about human nature with the strands of their own experience and redecorate a good tale in each telling. Mythmaking is an ongoing tradition. A good Cretan village story is not the same as a published report of investigative journalism. Even Saint Paul wrote that “All Cretans are liars.” Their biblical reputation makes Cretans laugh. With all due respect, they think Saint Paul would not understand poetry or jokes. I heard three different versions of the following story told about events in a nearby village. Who knows the exact facts? But it contains solid truth about Cretans’ understanding of themselves—both the light and dark side. That part is certain. Adding touches of my own imagination to the story, I tell you what I’ve been told. You may judge how much truth is in it. You may decide to pass it on, with your own twist of imagination.

  _________

  It seemed to Dimitri that his father had always been mayor of their village. And that was as it should be, because he was a decent, dedicated man who thought public service was an honorable responsibility—like his father and grandfather, who had also been mayor before him—in the Cretan tradition of inherited leadership. Dimitri, however, will never be mayor. Because of the exhibition of the village underwear.

  When the national government reorganized local political boundaries, many small villages were combined into larger regional administrative units. In a contest with all the other village mayors, Dimitri’s father was elected to the new post, and the reason people voted for him was because he was so clever that his corruption was well hidden. So they said. It was understood that any elected official did business on a favor-for-favor basis. So they said. And the under-the-table-way was the Cretan way. Since there was no evidence whatsoever that he accepted bribes or cut deals, he must be very clever. And a very clever mayor was the very best kind to have.

  Dimitri heard the gossip—heard the men talking in the kafenion. “He must have a Swiss bank account.” “His brother is a dentist in Zurich. Of course.” “That’s where the money for the new Toyota came from.” “And his wife has quit working—they don’t need her income.” “He kisses up to the bishop a lot.” “And there’s all that money from the European Union for all those projects in the other villages. He must get a piece of that. After the army his son will go to some fancy university—you’ll see.”

  But Dimitri had joined the professional army—as a career—because there was no money for university. The new car was his uncle’s gift. And the only money the family had was in a Cretan bank, in a chronically over-drawn account. He overheard his parent’s long, latenight anguished conversations about how to make ends meet on the mayor’s modest salary now that his wife had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, now that the old house was falling apart for lack of repair, now that his sisters were of marrying age and there was no dowry or money for a proper wedding.

  Dimitri seethed. His father corrupt? No. Never.

  And not about to be, either.

  Dimitri hated the village for its mean-spirited gossip, even though he knew that all elected officials were the targets of its small-minded slander. If you worked for the government, you were therefore corrupt. And the only reasonable response for a citizen was to be corrupt in return—shave taxes, barter for goods and services, do business under the table when possible, and lie when necessary. In other words, above all, to be clever.

  Worse, the Cretans were proud of this. The Cretan Way. The Greek government had even cooked the books to get into the European Union, and when it was discovered, it was too late. “Why were they surprised?” said the old men in the kafenion, laughing. “They were dealing with Greeks.”

  But Dimitri was honest. As the son of his father, and his father, and his father before him, integrity was a matter of family honor. There was nothing he could do about Greek ways, but before he went off to war—to be a professional soldier for the rest of his life—he planned a small act of revenge on the hypocrisy of his village.

  He was trained in the Special Forces for clandestine operations. With three fellow soldiers, he returned home on his first furlough just before “Ochi Day”—the annual commemoration of General Metaxas’s one word response to Mussolini’s announcement of invasion and demand for Greek surrender. “Ochi!” No! And the Greeks beat the Italians half to death before they retreated from Greek soil. The village thought it symbolic to have the young Special Forces soldiers around for a few days at such a time.

  There would be the usual parade. Everybody would gather to watch all the schoolchildren from the demos march through the village. Lines of miniature Greek flags had been strung across the main street and hung from the town hall. The night before there was a great glendi in the picnic grounds outside the village, with music and food and wine and dancing.

  _________

  Sometime during the night, the lines of flags across the streets and on the town hall were replaced by strings of underwear. On display now were:

  The gossipy priest’s shabby gray boxer shorts, ravaged by age as if gnawed by dogs in the crotch from his constant attack on his itching behind.

  The teeny-tiny pink-and-yellow thongs belonging to the self-righteous spinster schoolteacher.

  The police sergeant’s leopard-skin and zebra-striped briefs.

  The magnificent flesh-colored bloomers worn by the widow Bakakis, she of the big mouth and even bigger ass.

  And an assortment of the assertive padded bras worn by many of the village matrons and their daughters.

  And so it went—strings of the shoddy and the flamboyant, the worn and the ambitious, the flowery and the stained—the underwear of the town displayed in all its truth for all to see. And speculate on. And gossip about. And claim, if they dared.

  Now the village knew why there had been a sudden plague of thefts from clotheslines and the Laundromat. There was no pervert among them. Only an angry young man taking a parting shot at his village, waging war in his own way. He would never be mayor. But he was clearly successful at Special Operations. He knew how to fight with stealth—to hit where it hurt—and disappear in the night, back to the base in Maleme.

  Well, they think it was Dimitri.

  Nobody actua
lly saw him do it.

  Clever.

  62

  Grasshopper Mind

  Crete. An August afternoon. Hot and humid. I’m hunkered down on my porch in a small patch of shade in a mindless stupor. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a big yellow grasshopper lands on the sunlit stone wall in front of me, like a tiny circus acrobat suddenly leaping into the spotlight at center ring. TA-DAH!

  Then she jumps again—about twenty times her length and about ten times her height, landing farther along the wall in front of me. TA-DAH!

  Amazing. I feel like applauding. She’s very good at grasshoppering.

  I wonder what it would be like to be able to do that. The equivalent distance for someone my size would be about 120 feet, ascending to sixty feet at the top of the arc. A leap over a five-story building. TA-DAH!

  If I could do that I would want to think about it carefully before doing it even once. Maybe once is all I would ever do it. Actually, I could do it. Take a running leap off a five-story building on the edge of a cliff. Nothing to it. The jumping part, I mean.

  It’s the coming down that would concern me.

  Landing.

  I wonder how it was the first time for the grasshopper on my porch. Some grasshoppers can also fly, you know. I don’t know about her, but personally I would want to be one of the flying type.

  I can imagine the novice grasshopper suddenly feeling the uncontrollable urge to push off. “Launch! WOW, I’m really up here! WOW, I can fly!” The grasshopper must have been immensely pleased—for a moment. I suppose there are klutz grasshoppers that don’t get it right away and fly themselves into the ground and land on their heads, or who get so excited they forget to flap their wings.

  I would probably be one of those.

  I admire this grasshopper in front of me. Not only is she good at going up, she’s good at coming down. She lands well. That’s the whole secret of getting high and going far. Descending lightly. Landing well.

  The day I graduated from high school, my daddy told me that I was too young to know what I wanted and not to be in a hurry to decide. He said success in life lies in wanting what you finally get—no matter what you think you want now or how far away or how high up you go. The goal is being satisfied with how you end up. Coming down successfully is the final test of a life. A grasshopper would agree.

  Fifty years from now I intend that my grandchildren shall say of their long-gone grandfather:

  “He went high, he went far, and he landed well.”

  63

  “Bee-Yooo-Tee-Fool.”

  Tomorrow I am leaving Crete for Seattle.

  Though I am still here as I write, I already miss Crete.

  It’s a curious thing for a child of the Texas plains like me to become attached to the people and culture of a Greek island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. No rational explanation.

  But I suppose that in the midst of my own twenty-first-century life that often seems so temporary and shallow and confusing, I yearn for a connection to a deep-rooted place and deep-rooted people with ancient traditions that include unrelenting hospitality to strangers.

  How surprising that I would wander so far and wide to find that in Crete, or that I would recognize it when I found it. Lucky me.

  ________

  From my house I can see across the bay to a far hillside where the world’s oldest olive tree has been producing for more than two thousand years. The villagers there have always taken care of it, with the same perseverance that they apply to taking care of themselves. They are a people who act with a generous care-full-ness that can encompass a foreigner like me. Whenever I visit their tree, I am given something to eat or drink, and some oil or soap to take away home. And always the blessing to “Go with God.”

  Cretan culture engenders rituals, and one of mine, when leaving Crete, involves a visit to Jimi, the village barber. His shop is a tiny one-chair affair tucked in between a gas station and a tire repair business. No sign—everybody knows where he is and what he does. One chair, one bench, one mirror, a cement floor, one barber, and a limited selection of the tools of the trade. No magazines or potted plants or background music. His shop smells of old-fashioned lavender hair oil and baby powder. Not exactly salon glitz, but Jimi is fast, friendly, and cheap. His haircuts last for three months.

  A small, energetic, open-hearted man in his seventies, who often sings while he works, Jimi wears a white butcher’s coat instead of a barber’s smock. Why? Cheaper, longer lasting. Besides, he worked as a butcher for a while, and the coat was still in good shape when he turned to barbering, so why not? Men come to him for haircuts, not fashion statements.

  Jimi went out to Australia from Crete as a young man to shear sheep. He stayed on to cut hair at an Australian army boot camp for twenty-five years. He has one haircut. For sheep or men. It’s not only that my hair is shorter when he’s done, but my head seems slightly smaller.

  Even so, my spirit is larger, having been exposed to the essence of Cretan vitality. Jimi’s Aussie/English and my Yankee/Greek make for lively loopy conversation punctuated with laughter. I’ve never seen him anything but animated, optimistic, and enthusiastic.

  In truth, I ritually visit Jimi for a feeling I want as much as a haircut. When he’s finished, after liberally applying lavender cologne and baby powder, and whisking me off with a soft brush, he holds up the mirror, touches my hair and beard, and says “Bee-yooo-tee-fool!” “So Bee-yooo-tee-fool!”

  And while I may not actually look that way, it is the way I feel.

  No apology for my sentimentality about this island or its people. Of course there are ugly places in Crete. And the supply of the wicked and foolish and pig-headed is as evenly distributed here as anywhere else.

  And I am not a native, but always one who comes and goes—forever an outsider—which means I don’t pretend to understand all that goes on day by day.

  Still, after twenty-three years, “the soil of Crete is under my nails,” as they say. And I am old enough to know that in this life you see what you look for, and you get what you are open to receive. And you belong to those whose company you cherish, for they will cherish you.

  In my own limited, awkward way, I can say and feel deep down,

  “Eimai Kritikos—I am Cretan.

  “Bee-yooo-tee-fool!”

  64

  Intersection IV

  Geography does not define the next set of essays and stories. Though wherever they may have been conceived, carrying them from one landscape to another improves them over time. What was begun in Crete has traveled with me to Seattle and Moab before it was finished. And the feedback I get when telling the same story to different friends filters out the debris.

  I sometimes think of myself as a literary oenologist—a wine maker.

  First, there’s the soil and the planting and the caretaking of the vines in one place. After the harvest and crushing the juice of the grapes is left to ferment in barrels in another place. And some wines are said to improve by being shipped on long journeys and bottled at a final destination.

  Along the way, many minds and hands are involved before the juice of the grape is finally consumed as the daily table wine it’s meant to be.

  Likewise, many sensibilities affect my essays and stories—family, friends, and editors—each adding a creative step along the way. But it is the reader who finally completes the process with the additive of self.

  This is brought home to me whenever a friend tells one of my tales to someone else in my presence. A new, improved, and enriched version always emerges.

  To point this out is to risk saying the obvious.

  But I want to emphasize the lasting pleasure of the companionship I imagine I have with you. How I would like to ask you some of the questions from my list, which begins on the next page . . .

  65

  The List

  I have a list in the “active” pocket of my mind. A list I often refer to when thrown into the company of strangers while traveli
ng. The list is labeled CONVERSATION LIFEBOATS.

  It’s the same list I use in emergencies at cocktail parties, receptions, potlucks, boring dinner parties, and my dentist’s waiting room. I explain my plan to my unknown companions as an opportunity to condense the time usually needed to get acquainted—and a way to get beyond superficialities. Sometimes I offer them a choice from my whole list, and sometimes I just pick one item and go with it.

  Here’s my list. I’m showing it to you. Pick one:

  1. Did you ever have a great teacher—in school or out? Tell me.

  2. What would you be learning—if you had time?

  3. What would you have learned to do if you knew then what you know now? (Another language, for example.)

  4. What would you teach, if you were asked?

  5. Teach me something. Anything.

  6. Do you know any silly tricks? Coins, cards, face contortions?

  7. If you could be an eyewitness to some event in history, which one?

  8. If you could see anyplace in the world before human history—where would you go and why?

  9. Who would you like to see naked?

  10. Who do you admire? Who admires you?

  11. Answer an unasked question—something you know but nobody would ever ask about and you would never volunteer.

  12. Decisions of consequence—what forks in the road were on your Way—and what if you had taken the other path?

  13. Pick another place/time in modern history—since 1700—to live.

  14. Book, movie, you’ve read/seen more than once. Why?

  15. What ability/talent do you not have but would like to have?

  16. Ever thought about changing your appearance or identity? And?

  17. If you were a spy, what would be your cover?

  18. What was the worst/best summer job you ever had?