The boys have discovered Bill Cosby- early Bill Cosby stand-up stuff, sandwiched somewhere between “I, Spy” and “The Cosby Show”…you know, the period a bit before and during Saturday morning cartoon “The Fat Albert Show” and early Jello-brand gelatin.
We bought Evan an iPod Shuffle for Christmas this year and later, during Winter break, we revived one of the original gum-packet size Shuffles and gave it to Colin, the 8-year-old, to listen to music. But both Colin and Evan ignored the music and went with two Bill Cosby albums as being the primary listening items. Both boys now can be seen chuckling to a few of their favorites: “Adam” and “Buck Buck” and a family favorite: “To my brother Russell Whom I slept with.”
And the comedy of Bill Cosby is working its way into daily conversation.
“Now LuketheCat is the man,” Colin might say. Then, perhaps, a “Buck Buck Number 1” will be called out by Evan and the both of them will start to laugh. There are some times, when in slight frustration with either one of them, that I might say “Something’s not right with that boy.”
I had heard some of the same Cosby riffs on a borrowed Sony Walkman in the early 1980s. The Walkman was the equivalent of the Apple iPod of today: It was the cutting edge technology and, though you could get another cassette player with cheap earphones, the real quality (and goal) was to have a Sony Walkman. I didn’t own a Walkman, but I did have a Panasonic tape player and recorder that stood upright and you could grab it by its handle and take it wherever you wanted (it was, mind you, the precursor to the boom box or “ghetto blaster” a term, as some of my students have noted, is pretty funny to laugh at). But the Panasonic was not really something that you wanted to bring a long trip, say to Tijuana on a junior class college trip. And somebody had a Walkman and shared the Sony name brand with the rest of us less blessed.
I think the junior trip to visit colleges in Southern California was the first time I got to hear an entire album/tape in real, clear sound. This was also the same trip where we went into Tijuana for some bartering for various clothing items and souvenirs and later, we watched a jili match. I remember walking across the border and listening to the borrowed Sony Walkman and feeling a bit lucky. And at the end of the day, I crossed back through the border into the US with my desired item: a pull-over off-white, pocketed poncho/sweater thing with a hood. (It was a popular item from the previous year’s trip). I was also happy that the back of the thing had the Coca-Cola logo on it. And I was pretty proud to make it back to the bus with the others wearing my find (I might have even bartered the guy down a couple dollars).
A bit later, I was beginning to sweat in the thing and took it off. Someone smirked/chuckled behind me (I think it was Russ or Todd) and I asked “What?”
“How much did you pay for that?” he said.
“Why? What’s wrong?” I asked.
So I examined the back of the my newly purchased garment. A whisper and a few more muffled laughs.
“Oh, I see,” I realized.
The Coca-Cola logo I thought was really, in the same font and with the same wave red line, read: “Como Caca.” Yes, the equivalent of “Eat Shit.”
And at that point, I imagined some merchant in Tijuana laughing a bit at the many kid who bought a shirt that was more of an imperative statement than an advertisement.
The next year, our school choir took the trip toward Southern California again, but I didn’t wear my Como Caca sweater thing: I was a bit embarrassed at the message. This trip, though, wasn’t as exotic as a trip into Mexico. Instead, we were staying a night at an apartment complex for people who were deaf and blind (we might have even used the term “deaf and dumb”). About the only thing that we might be looking forward to is that the next day we’d be going to Knot’s Berry Farm (an amusement park that was eclipsed by the popularity of Disneyland).
No one was there to meet us when our big yellow school bus arrived late at night at the apartment complex (or, perhaps, no one heard us honk…we thought we were a bit funny for coming up with statements such as these). In fact, this was about the time when the Helen Keller jokes were being introduced to the kid joke canon.
Person #1 “What did Helen Keller say when she fell off a cliff?”
Person #2: “I don’t know.”
Person #1 (screams something inarticulate imitating a deaf person)
Or, a variation
Person #1: “What did Helen Keller do when she fell off the cliff?”
Person #2: “I don’t know, what did she do?”
Person #1: “She screamed her fingers off.”
We thought we were pretty funny.
We were told that some of the residents were looking forward to meeting us and that the next morning, after breakfast, we’d be meeting some of them. (More joking around with how those conversations would play out. One guess: see first joke above and add some hand movements).
So after a restless sleep in sleeping bags on hard carpeted floors and some cold cereal and orange juice, the director of the complex took us to another room with some, well, older people who had heads slightly nodding and bodies a bit slouched. Again, the director informed us that some of the residents were looking forward to talking with us and enjoy the company. (I think some of us smiled at some of our jokes again). The people in this room reminded me of the folks in a rest home that I visited as some sort of a service project and I, along with the rest of us, tried to cross that bridge into human contact with those from a different universe than us.
I think the director read our faces that asked the question.
“You notice that there is a small type writer in front of our residents,” he said. “This is a braille typewriter: you type and on the other side, the braille letter is typed into holes which the resident ‘reads.’”
Then, he looked around at us and said to me, “Here, why don’t you talk with Frank—one of our older residents.” The director sat me down in a chair in front of the small typewriter and Frank sort of grunted in a sort of happy grunt way and put his finger on the other side of the typewriter waiting for me to type.
“What do I say?” I looked around.
And then it came to me.
H I , F R A N K . M Y N A M E I S C H R I S .
And this older man with an old man cardigan smiled and then started pressing some levers on his side of the typewriter that typed his response from braille to regular type on paper on my side (this was much like a two-sided typewriter).
Hi Chris. Nice to meet you.
And I remember that it felt like a novelty: communicating to someone I wouldn’t expect to “talk with.” It’s that same novelty you get when you send and receive your first email or chat entry or Twitter. And like those ways of communicating, once the novelty wears off, you end up with same human problem: what to say now after “Hello.”
I told Frank that it was nice to meet him. He told me “likewise” and that the person sitting to his right was his wife. And I couldn’t think of what else to say, so I told him other people were here to talk with him and told him good-bye.
Goodbye Chris.
I want to say this was one of my first occasions of human empathy. I think I remember making a mental bookmark of this moment as something I should remember because I was feeling something for another human being. I don’t think it was so much as pity as much as … yes, I’m lucky and I have many things and Frank may not have hearing or sight, but he is still very much human, and…this was a first thought for me…he is just as human as me. I took a picture with my Pentax K1000 to image the bookmarked moment.
I’m half-expecting, any day now, to get a phone call from Colin’s school.
“Mr. Judson, we’re suspending your son Colin for making verbal threats to others in his class,” the voice informs me.
“Oh, is that so?” I say. “What exactly did he say?”
A clearing of the throat and an almost panting inhale.
“It’s disturbing, Mr. Judson, and the adults here are upset that the kids might feel threatened now my your son.”
“And, what exactly did he say that was so upsetting,” I press.
“He said, ‘Kill the boy.’ This is disturbing threat and before he comes back to school…counseling…”
And I’m laughing because I get the Cosby reference and the context of Colin’s line. It’s very human and very true and very funny.
