Vergil’s Coffee

I shook the hand of the President of the United States yesterday. And I’m still trying to sort out the details of the day…still wondering if I should wash my hand (well, not really).

But I’m not smug that others didn’t get sit where I sat or shake the hand of the leader of our country; no, I’m smug because all of the opinions of the event that followed on the local and national news didn’t have the wonderful thought and feeling that I had and for some reason, I feel a bit bad for those who haven’t articulated my thoughts and feelings.

Smugness is that “pleased with one self” contentment that borders on the point of obnoxiousness and once you cross into the comfort of self-satisfaction,” it’s really difficult to recover.

I haven’t been smug about many things. I think when I answered “2+2” flashcarded by Mr. Matula in 2nd grade and my “4!” shout out surprised all of us. For Mr. Matula, because he just turned the card over and I answered as we saw it and for me, because, well, I decided that I’d guess “4” before he turned the card over. I think that was the point that I thought I was good at math and as I would see my standardized test scores, I would smile quite smugly that my results indicated that I was 3-4 grades ahead of my “average” classmates. College changed that though, when I took a Pre-Calculus class through correspondence and found that I had to strain through the word problems (“swear through” would probably more accurate).

For some reason, I was also feeling a bit smug the next year in 3rd grade in Mr. Eynon’s class when we would listen to Alan Sherman’s album “My Son, the Nut” with the classic track summer camp song. We would ask for him to play the cut again and Eynon would play it and we would be laughing all over again. I wasn’t really laughing after being hospitalized for most of Spring Break that year after my brother almost shot my eye out with a b-b gun. I do remember waking up quite groggy after 3 or days of sedation and watching lots of television. I felt really smug, though, when I got to be wheeled around the third floor and getting to eat an Popsicle.

I was quite satisfied with myself that as I got out of the car on my return home that I hadn’t told mom what had really happened and that I had kept the story that we fabricated for her. (That, for some reason in my thinking, that keeping one’s word would be more important than one’s keeping his left eye).

Perhaps I was also a bit smug that my step brother Dusty and I won the scavenger hunt in Gaithersburg, Maryland one July in 1977 at a summer day camp. I would visit my father (perhaps with my sister) for about a month each summer until my 8th grade year when…well, I’m really not sure why the summer visits stopped. I remember that Dusty and I were on the same team and that I was really into winning this hunt. Most of our luck was that “right place, right time” serendipity happenings and we won this really, really cool thing that “flew” along a line from one tree to whatever thing the other end was attached to. The ship hung on the string and gravity and slope made it “fly” across the way. I think it even made some neat flying sound. Anyway, I won one for our hunting and I was quite pleased. Later on that week, though, I would leave the dinner table crushed because my mother-in-law just reminded me, again, sternly, not to stab my fork so many times into the macaroni and cheese. I burst into tears as I left the table, forgetting to ask if I could be excused, but I had to make a quick exit anyway up the stairs and to my room for the month. I jumped onto the bed and I would cry real hard into the pillow. I don’t think my outburst had much to do with the fork thing or the rebuke. Maybe, perhaps, it was more the build up of kid-stress from a stressed vibe in the house as the stepson from California would wear out his welcome as guest while not really being a part of this current family.

The boys get a sort of silly smugness of self-satisfaction when they listen to “Put on Your Sunday Clothes.” Perhaps I should explain, but I’ll spare you too much background. Let’s just say that as a direct result of the movie Wall-e, both Evan and Colin know the musical Hello, Dolly. And if you’ve seen the Pixar film, you remember that Wall-e is enthralled with the music and humanness of the film version of the musical. The theme is the first thing you hear during the opening credits:

“Out there\There’s a world outside of Yonkers, Way out there beyond this hick town, Barnaby\There’s a slick town, Barnaby“

And that theme has been played 257 times (according to the stats on iTunes) and even the theme music for this past summer’s stop-action movie “Hello, Wall-e.” And you can see that goofy grin of smugness sometimes around the house as either one might be doing that high-stepping stroll down the main street to the train station.

So when I watched the media storm of Obama’s town hall meeting Monday, I was struck by how far off the mark the interviewer and reporters were in their retelling of the events of the day. Then came the pundits who wove their versions of the day including Rush Limbaugh’s claim that it was a disaster. Anyone who was actually there knew and saw that the President disarmed the crowd’s boos at the woman’s question and had the audience smiling by the end of his answer to her question about ethics. Rush didn’t show his viewers this. The talk show guy from Eureka wasn’t there either, but that didn’t keep him from calling Elkhart the dumbest town in the nation in regard to its RV industry. (Oh, and he has comments turned off so you can listen to him, but he doesn’t have to listen to you).

Some might say that these responses along with the people holding posters or passing out pamphlets before the town hall meeting are the outworking of the first amendment and that idea of free speech in action. And I couldn’t agree more: Free speech means speech that is free from most restrictions. One could say also, that with some free speech: you get what you pay for.

I’m feeling a bit smug because for some reason I got to sit behind the President of the United States and I got to shake his hand. Neither the reporters or pundits or even the talk show host from Eureka, CA got to be where I was. All they can do is rely on the excitement of their own self-talk, satisfied with listening to their own echo.

Me, I’m feeling a bit smug.