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Scenes from St. George’s, Part II: Scorekeeping, the Sandhills, and a Would Be Yearbook Heart

Note: This is the second installment of scenes from St. George’s. The first installment contains a little more context about this series. Joan Dideon says that a writer is always selling somebody out. I’m not sure I agree with this exactly, but I have taken the liberty of using some real names and some realish initials. These scenes are written with love more or less, however if I do seem to be selling anyone out I guess I feel like the statute of limitations has pretty much expired.

Gary Leinhart and My Father Forget How to Count

Gary Leinhart was another one of our middle school teachers and he also coached boys basketball for a time. He was no Mr. Dreyer, however he was a decent teacher and pretty well liked. He was not a great basketball coach, but he did like to play a little himself. I guess Gary was in his early to mid-thirties around this time but I’m not really sure.

A few miscellaneous things about Gary:

i) he was minus a finger, I think a pinky, from an accident with a saw one time, but you never really noticed it. I guess you don’t really need your pinkies all that much.

ii) he once made a citizens arrest with his friend who was also a teacher at Saint George’s.

iii) After Saint George’s I believe he moved to Alaska.

Now when Gary first came to the school he and my father (who I think was still teaching in the middle school at that time) seemed to get along fine. In fact, my father and I played in Gary’s fantasy baseball league where I was assigned to be the commissioner. Fantasy baseball is impossible at the best of times, and pre-internet it was super impossible, so the league was short-lived. Nonetheless, things were fine there for a while.

As I mentioned above, Gary was the high school boys basketball coach, and my father coached the girls. At some point there must have been some issues, because Gary and my father started to seriously dislike each other. I don’t know what was going on actually, but I’m guessing it was basketball related. Like I said, Gary was a good, if easy-going, teacher, maybe just a bit lazy. My classmate L.W. recently reminded me of some story involving Gary, an air raid siren, and J.T., but I don’t really remember this. The point is, Gary seemed to me be a pretty good guy, except on the basketball floor where he became hyper-competitive.

Around this time I was the lead scorekeeper for the high school basketball games. This involved running the game clock and the shot clocks and keeping the game score correct on the score board. It was a pretty involved job, and I loved it. I threw myself into being every day and in every way the best scorekeeper I could be, and it was a pretty big responsibility for a young fellow. J.T. was my assistant; I think he did the shot clocks. Our school played in a league with schools from all over Eastern Washington, and there were a few schools up near the Canadian border that were a bit rough. Their fans, parents of players mostly and some others, would drive down. There was a visitor section and a home section, as with most gyms. One day some dude from up north must have come to the game a little lit, or a lot lit, and after the game (which SGS won at the last second) he came charging over to the scorers’ table from the visitor’s section. He started accusing me of cheating by giving the home team extra seconds at the end of the game (e.g. not starting the clock when the ball was inbounded). I had done no such thing; and he was drunk, which I helpfully pointed out to him. I think he wanted to punch my lights out, and probably some adults had to intervene.

In any case, I was a good scorekeeper and one day my father and Gary Leinhart were playing basketball against each other with mixed teams of other teachers and students. They had chosen teams I guess and the teams were pretty balanced. My father has never been a great basketball player, but once upon a time he could play a little, and Gary was also decent. The students were all on the basketball team so the game should have been close. And it was. I should know because I was keeping score. However for what was essentially an intramural game we were not using the scoreboard, and I think I was just using a piece of paper or keeping score in my head. The game began, and both teams started scoring. As I recall, the score was 14-12 in favor of my father’s team when the trouble started. Gary’s team scored a basket and he took it on himself to try and usurp my position.

“12-0 us,” he called.

Now this was completely ridiculous because it was a two point lead for my father’s team, not a 12 point lead for Gary Leinhart’s. Before I could correct the score, my father yelled back:

“It’s not 12-0. It’s 15-2 us!”

This was equally ridiculous. As I have made clear, the score was 14-12. As any pick-up basketball player will know, it’s totally possible to lose track of the score of a game as you are playing and miss a basket here and there. This is why, as a matter of fact, there are scorekeepers to begin with. So I did my best:

“Hey guys,” I called, “the score is 14-12 red team.”

“There’s no way they have 14,” said Gary.

“There’s no way we are only up by two,” said my father.

“Yeah, the score is 14-12.”

But unfortunately my efforts to settle the matter were for naught. Gary and my father started screaming at each other and fighting about the score like little children. This was awkward and after a bit people just sort of checked out of the game space and the game ground to a halt, never to be re-started. I guess there was no way to bridge the collective 25 point gap in score perception.

Looking back at this incident, it still boggles my mind. I’ve played quite a bit of pick-up, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I wonder what the core issue was.

The Sandhill and Points West

Back in the day Saint George’s had something called “the Sandhill.” There were actually two Sandhills, which were predictably called “the Little Sandhill” and “the Big Sandhill.” These were conjoint, and located behind the baseball field at the back end of the school property.

The Sandhills, especially the big one, were super tough to climb, but they were both great for jumping off. With a running start, one could fly twenty or thirty feet in the air off the Little Sandhill and land safely near the bottom. When I was first at the school the Big Sandhill actually had a rope swing attached to a tree at the top, and you could run, grab the rope swing, and fly way out in the air. This was a much larger fall than jumping off the Little Sandhill, but it was basically safe. It was also a blast.

In addition to the Sandhill swing, the school had another swing which swung over the Little Spokane river. This is the river that the fabulist John Innes claims I used to throw people in. In any case, the river swing survived longer than the Sandhill swing, because a few years after I first got there the school took the Sandhill swing down. Too dangerous. This was basically a terrible decision and was probably made by someone who had never been on a swing in their life. School bureaucracy sucks sometimes.

So although many of my future classmates at the school never got to experience the glories of the Sandhill swing, there was plenty more to explore back in the woods up behind the Sandhill to the west. Several hundred meters back there was a set of rocks which had little climbing routes naturally built into them. These were not hardcore rock climbs by any means, but they were sufficiently testing for us students and generally pretty good action. Our school had a cross-country team, and the cross-country course turned around just before these rocks. One day a female student who was a few years my senior was running the course by herself and came across a guy on a bicycle completely nude just chilling by the rocks. She came back and reported the situation. What did you do, she was asked? I just turned around and kept running, she replied. Smart move.

There was all kinds of action, both good and bad, up in those hills. My friend J.T. and others whom I will not name would go up into the hills and start fires. Now I understand that young boys like to start fires—it’s an age old pastime—but I was not that into fires. First, they seemed dangerous, and second, and more importantly, they just seemed unnecessary. I was in the minority on this point though; fires were set.

One day I went climbing on the rocks with my friend Kelly and his half-brother who was a few years older. Kelly’s father is Art Rudd, and he had had two children with his first wife over in Seattle or something before moving out and coming to Spokane. Kelly’s older brother was interesting and I got the feeling like he had already seen a lot in his life. Art Rudd was a dentist, and was in fact my dentist. Art Rudd was a garrulous individual and also tried to talk to you when you were in the dentist chair as if you could just chat right back. Overall, Art Rudd was an OK dentist I guess, but I also think he was running a scam. And this scam is not, I think, unique to Art Rudd. I think this scam is widespread, insidious, and bad.

I didn’t have serious dental issues, but I did seem to go to the dentist a lot, which may have been its own scam, however when I was twelve or thirteen Art Rudd suddenly started talking my mother into the concept of me getting braces. Now braces may be important for some certain people with teeth that are like seriously out of alignment, I don’t know, but that was not the case with me. My teeth were totally fine. Nonetheless, the braces conversation was initiated, and kept up, until my mother caved and I was referred to an “orthodontist” friend of Art Rudd’s. “Orthodontists,” I believe, are all basically scammers, and I am totally sure that Art Rudd was getting kick backs there from this “orthodontist.”

I went to see the “orthodontist,” who was a portly and cheerful fellow (he ought to be with all his braces money), and he said sure enough looks like you need some braces. Now I was attuned enough to BS even then to know that this dude was full of it. But I was stuck on a train I couldn’t get off of. I ended up getting braces, which did nothing, and then they came off. Scam, all the way.

Anyway, that’s beside the point. The point is, the Sandhills were awesome and whoever took down that swing is an asshole.

I Fail to Draw a Heart in R.s Yearbook

I wrote in the second scene of this series about drawing a solid sun for N.C. when I was in the lower school. What I didn’t mention is that there were actually two lower schools—the one up on the hill for Grades 1-3 and another one down by the river for Grades 4-6. When I was attending the second lower school a new girl joined our class. She was called R. Now I didn’t have a crush on R. of anything like the intensity of my crush on N.C., however I did kind of like her, and at the end of 6th grade when students were writing in each other’s yearbooks, I resolved to make my big move. I would sign her yearbook, I thought, and draw a nice little heart as well. My successful sun drawing was in the books and everything, and I thought the heart would be easy.

Sure enough, R. asked me to write something in her yearbook, so I wrote something anodyne, and then went in for the heart move. I had practiced this in my head several times, because when you get nervous sometimes you mess stuff up and I didn’t want to choke and draw a bad heart. So I took a deep breath, and went for it. And I couldn’t get close. What came out looked nothing like a heart, nothing like a sun, it looked in fact like some kind of undefinable blob. This was bad, and I had precious little time to salvage the situation. In fact, I had no time, because R. must have seen the heart coming, and she asked “what’s that?” in a fake innocent voice that made it clear to me that she knew exactly what was going on.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just drawing something.”

I tried to improve the heart to no avail, and then scratched it out and tried again. No luck. If anything the second heart was worse than the first. I had no idea how to draw a heart, had no idea at all what one was even supposed to look like. Suddenly, I was the Steve Sax of heart rendering.

“Never mind,” I said finally. “Just read my message.” My message was not the point though—it was the heart that tied the whole presentation together. And I had blown it, badly.

Thinking back on it, it was probably inevitable that I would choke on the heart for R. I mean, this was the last day of lower school and here I was attempting a heart for a girl other than N.C. I was a faithless individual, a turncoat, and the heart was never going to materialize as my own heart was still back up on the hill with N.C. in Science class. And, come to think of it, it still is.

to be continued…

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Scenes from St. George’s, Part I: Erosions, First Love, Headmasters

Sometimes you wanna put the past in the past/ but every generation gets bit in the ass

Portastatic

Note: This is a series of “scenes” from Saint George’s, the school in Spokane, Washington I attended back in the 1980s and early 1990s. Although this was all a while ago and I forget all kinds of stuff, I remember a few things. Saint George’s was a good school in many ways, but it was also a pretty loose environment. I’m sure it’s changed now, but back in the day a lot of pretty wild stuff happened. These pieces will collect a few incidents as I recall them; the scenes at best loosely connected; most are funny—a few are maybe a little serious. I plan do a few installments in this series, so if you like this one stay tuned.

Also I make no claim to my memories being authoritative in any sense. As with all memories, these have been colored, and eroded, by time. However, I will try to write only about things I witnessed first hand, or things that I have on what I believe to be pretty good authority.

My Brother Mike Looks for Erosions

When I was in the lower school (elementary school) at Saint George’s I had a teacher we will call L.K. In the lower school each grade had a main teacher, what you might call a homeroom teacher, and students also had classes with other specialist-type teacher such as Science or Music. L.K. was an OK homeroom teacher for me, not very memorable, but not terrible either. However a few years later when she was serving as the homeroom teacher for my brother Mike, things changed.

By the time Mike was in her class, L.K. was apparently in a little entanglement with the headmaster at the time called George Edwards, whom I believe was separated, or separating, from his wife. The headmaster of Saint George’s always lived on campus in a fancy house called The Davenport House, and I guess the action between himself and L.K.’s was pretty widely known. It must have been if even I, as like a fifth grader, was aware of it. I think this relationship, whatever it consisted of, must have been on the rocks though by this time, and there may have been some bad action. In any case, L.K. was totally checked out from her job. Now teachers sometimes totally check out, and this can go unnoticed for weeks or even months. Teaching is an important job, but it’s not like flying a plane or something; a checked out teacher generally doesn’t put students’ lives on the line.

Note: Since I published this piece, none other than the one and only George Oglethorpe Edwards, my former Principal, has responded at some length in a comment for this piece. He states that the rumored affair described above did not take place, and that L. was dismissed and subsequently sued the school. I have left the original text intact as a reflection of how events were understood at the time, but readers should be aware of his account.

Anyway, L.K. was way checked out. Saint George’s was, and presumably still is, situated on a very large piece of property down there by the Little Spokane river and was surrounded by wilds that were not Saint George’s property, but that students could explore. The lower school in particular was set up against a hill that went for a mile or so up above the school building. So there was a lot of space. However, there was also a basically bounded playground and lower school students would also play on the large lawn of the Davenport House, so there was no need for them to be foraging way up on the hill. Except in L.K.’s class though, because she developed a kind of genius strategy to do no teaching at all for my brother’s class. What she would do was, at the start her assigned homeroom teacher block, let’s say it was three periods in the morning, just tell her students to “go look for erosions.” The students must have learned about erosions in Science class or something, because Mike knew the word as like a second grader. The students would go up on the hill on their own and scout around for erosions, of which there were many, all morning and come back for lunch.

Now, a day of looking for erosions would have been one thing— a little erosion location could easily be justified as a Science class extension, ideally supervised—however L.K. didn’t just pull out this move once. In fact she pulled it out day after day for, I believe, a matter of weeks. Everyday Mike would come home and my mother would ask “what did you do today?” Mike would reply “went looking for erosions.” Like most parents, mine probably didn’t pay super careful attention to the ins and out of what was going on with our schooling, however after some weeks of this my mother started to find all this erosion action a bit strange.

“You went looking for erosions again?”

“Yup,” said my brother. “More erosions.” I think Mike was totally fine looking for erosions all day, as I would have been, however my mother had heard enough.

“That’s too much looking for erosions. It’s been weeks and you’re still looking for erosions. I’m going to talk to somebody.”

I believe my mother did talk to somebody, because L.K. changed up her all-erosion-all-the-time strategy. I think she was still checked out, but maybe made an effort to disguise it a little better. She left the school at the end of that year as I recall and I don’t know what happened to her after that.

That’s the funny thing about teachers—they are often remembered by students for the strangest thing they did. I don’t remember a single thing from L.K.’s class or anything else about her really, but I do remember that she loved her some erosions.

Drawing a Sun for N.C.

As I mentioned, Saint George’s had the Davenport House, which was right across from the lower school, and one of the rooms of the Davenport House was used as a classroom when I was there. We had Science class in this room for a while. One day, the teacher asked us to draw the solar system or something like that, and I started by drawing the sun. Now I had always seen the sun depicted with like pointy rays of light coming out of it—you know, the sun looks kind of angular most of the time. So that’s how I drew it.

There was a girl in my class we’ll call N.C. I don’t know if anyone else from Saint George’s back then remembers her because she wasn’t there for too long, but I do and I had a huge crush on her. In fact, I thought about her all the time. We would play tag games on the lawn on the Davenport House, “freeze tag,” and “television tag,” (I don’t remember the rules) and I would always try to tag N.C. just to be close to her. Anyway, N.C. was in Science class with me, and I showed her my sun, which I thought was pretty solid. Then, another classmate, a boy whose name I forget but who was a bad seed, interrupted my little chat with N.C.

“That’s not what the sun looks like. The sun doesn’t really have rays like that. It’s actually just round. Look at my paper, I have it the right way.”

Sure enough, this little brat had drawn the sun like a big red circle. Now I suspected at the time that on some level this guy was probably right, and that the sun as an actual mass or whatever didn’t have physical rays. But his sun looked super ugly, and also he was putting my drawing down in front of N.C. and just basically being terrible. So I turned to N.C.

“What do you think N.C. Which sun do you like better?”

And N.C. just smiled at me and said “I like your sun better.”

That was all I needed to hear. N.C. was on my team, and the little brat could stick his sun where…well you know. I was elated by N.C.’s appreciation; my sun had carried the day. I was totally in love with her, more than ever, after this sun incident.

A while back I tried looking N.C. up online, and although her name is not super common, I found four or five people who could have been her. I was hoping to send her the sun story and say thanks, but I didn’t want to just fire this anecdote over to a bunch of random N.C.’s, so I held back. If you do know who I’m talking about and you know where she’s at, let me know. Maybe she remembers my pretty solid sun.

More George Edwards Action (with a cameo from the Manimal, Kenneth Faried)

I mentioned above that when he was headmaster of Saint George’s George Edwards was entangled up with L.K. And this is true. He was headmaster for a while though, so he also did some other stuff.

All in all I would say George Edwards was a mediocre headmaster. He looked more or less the part, wore a mustache that was less Frenchy than my middle school French teacher Mr. Dreyer’s, and generally didn’t intervene too much in school matters, which was a positive. He was a decent public speaker, and put on a good showing at the annual auction and things of that nature. On the other hand, he was not especially inspiring, and as we’ve seen, had some stuff going on in his personal life which distracted him. He was from Texas originally and when he first came to the school his wife came with him, but I think this was just for show because she was out of there pretty soon after. Like I said, he was at the school for a while and I actually took a class from him in high school. More on that in a second.

I was at the school a lot because my father taught there and also coached basketball and stuff into the evenings, and myself and my friend J.T., whose father also taught at the school, kind of had the run of the place. J.T. somehow got copies of the master keys to the middle school and upper school made and gave me a set, and we would just open up the buildings whenever we wanted and go wherever. J.T. and I would sneak into the faculty lounge in the high school and pinch sugar cubes from the teacher’s coffee area, and later on we snuck into the science room to appropriate some ammonia packs from the first aid kits. I think someone eventually noticed that the first aid kits were always running out of ammonia. Yeah, that was us. George Edwards was gone a lot, and we would also go on into the Davenport House, which somehow was just open, and poke around. We probably even did this a few times when George Edwards was staying there, which is admittedly a little bizarre. The Davenport House had a kind of servants’ area as I recall, and a back set of stairs which was really cool.

Anyway, because I was always around, George Edwards asked me one time to babysit his daughter when he was off doing something. I was probably in middle school at this time, and his daughter was about 8 or 9. His daughter is probably a lovely person today, but at the time she was known to be a bit of a handful. In addition to the L.K. factor, George Edwards was, in my recollection perpetually, going through a divorce and things may have been a little tense on the Edwards family front. I didn’t know his daughter too well, but I said sure, I’ll babysit. Good he said, you can do whatever you want but just don’t let her dance on the roof.

This seemed like a very specific instruction, and I wondered what he meant. Was he just giving me a general example of a bad idea, or was she an inveterate roof dancer and I’d somehow have to try to control this tendency? It turned out to be the latter. The babysitting was going fine for a while, until she said:

“I’m going to go dance on the roof.”

“Uh, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Your dad told me not to let you do that.”

“Yeah, I’m going to go dance on the roof. Are you coming?”

Now I was bigger than her, and a guy, but still it’s not exactly easy to corral an 8 year old girl hellbent on roof dancing, and I clearly wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of it. So, I thought, the best thing to do was to go with her and keep an eye on things. The “roof” was actually not the roof of the house exactly, more like an open patio area that a window on the second floor opened on to. It didn’t really have any railings or anything around it, and all in all it was not the safest spot for dancing. However, it was medium big and looked kind of OK. Also she was clearly a veteran roof dancer, so I figured she had it under control.

She danced for a while and I watched, and then we went back inside. I had a pretty nice day with her as she was actually pretty cool, and then George Edwards came home.

“How’d it go,” he asked. “She didn’t dance on the roof did she?”

“No sir, nothing like that at all. We just stayed inside mostly and read books and talked.”

“Good job. She does like to dance on that roof. I’m glad you handled her today.”

I told George Edwards a fib, it’s true, but I felt like I earned my money you know. Roof dancing had occurred, but it has also been contained. You’re welcome there George Edwards.

One day during the George Edwards era, when I was poking around the Davenport House for reasons passing understanding, I came across a soft-core videotape in the TV room on the second floor. There was a picture on the box of some frolicking beach babes and it had some kind of suggestive title. Interesting, I thought, George Edwards likes himself some beach babes. More interesting than that though was the fact that he just left this lying around. Maybe George Edwards needed a couple of lessons in headmaster trade craft. Or perhaps he didn’t expect that J.T. and I would just be cruising around his house uninvited. In any case, I would get a different kind of glimpse into the person behind the role via a story my classmates related to me which happened one day when I was staying home with my trick knee.

What is a trick knee? Well, the trick knee was the patented move of a Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman called Joe Nash back in the day. Basically Nash, and sometimes his teammates, would fake an injury (thus the “trick knee”) to stop the clock late in the game. In American Football it is super important to stop the clock in late game situations; this is why you always see players trying to get out of bounds in these spots. Joe Nash and the Seahawks found a loophole in the rules, which at the time didn’t prohibit the fake injury move. I believe the rules have now been adjusted.

I found an article from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel by one Sharon Robb from 1989 that talks about this. (The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has some super organized archives by the way.) Robb is talking about the 1988 AFC title game between the Seahawks and the Cincinnati Bengals. “Clarke” here is Ken Clarke, Nash’s fellow defensive lineman.

Seven times Nash (five) and Clarke (two) took turns faking injuries on third-down situations to enable the Seahawks’ nickel defense to get onto the field. After the third time Nash went down, the crowd of 58,560 caught on and started booing. Cincinnati coach Sam Wyche and his players were livid, complaining to whatever official was within earshot. The fourth time, Nash went down and feigned injury without ever getting hit, and walked off the field under his own power.

I remember watching this game and marveling at Nash’s trick knee move. To me this was an example of exactly the kind of player I liked. Nash was probably not the best lineman in the league, but he did what he had to to try and help the Seahawks win. I played basketball for a while at Saint George’s and later on as well. As a basketball player I had strengths and weaknesses, but was never going to be the go to scorer. So I developed other skills, especially offensive rebounding. This was my specialty, and my favorite NBA player of all time is the Manimal Kenneth Faried. Like me, Faried wasn’t a great scorer, but he made up for it with his dominating offensive rebounding. He stuck around the league for a while because of just this one skill.

When I was in graduate school in Arizona in my 20s I played a lot of pick-up at the gym there. Pick-up is interesting because players mostly don’t know each other and just have to kind of fit together on the fly. This process is pretty hit or miss; however I was a good pick-up teammate because I could score if need be, but was just as happy to try and dominate the glass on both ends, especially the offensive glass. Most pick-up players don’t rebound all that hard, so by just going all out in that aspect of the game I could pretty much control things a lot of the time. One day I was matched up against a slightly older guy and I was kicking his ass on the glass. I was pulling out all my moves, and he basically had no chance. He started getting mad and began pushing me in the small of the back when I was going for a rebound. In basketball a little pushing and elbowing is acceptable but pushing your opponent in the small of the back is bad form. I let him know his play was out of line and told him:

“Hey dude, you can push me all you want and I’m still going to eat your lunch on the boards.” This was the last straw and my guy said something I’ll never forget:

“You aren’t a real basketball player. You’re just a fucking garbage man.”

What he meant was I was just picking up all the rebounds and loose balls like a garbage man picks up trash. He intended it as an insult, but I took it as a huge compliment. I am absolutely a garbage man, me and the Manimal both.

Anyway, I loved Joe Nash so I copied his trick knee move. Not on the football field though, my trick knee would flare up on days when I didn’t feel like going to school. “My knee hurts,” I’d tell my mother, and she’d let me stay home. I didn’t pull this move out much because I basically liked going to school, but once and a while my chronic knee condition got the best of me. One day in what must have been 1990 (just a bit after Joe Nash’s epic playoff performance) I was trick-kneeing it and missed George Edward’s class, which I recall was some kind of government class or something. The fabulist and video game loser John Innes will remember.

The reason that I know this happened in 1990 is because this was when the First Gulf War was kicking off. It turned out that George Edwards had once upon a time been in the military, or more precisely I think he was at the time in the military reserves. The gulf action must have made him feel nostalgic or something, because the next day after my knee had healed I went back to school and my classmates told me something extraordinary had happened in government class. What was that? I asked. George Edwards had us go outside and march, they told me. March? What kind of marching? Military marching, they told me. He had us do military marches and gave this big talk about the military and he was actually crying.

Now this all sounded pretty odd, and I felt like my trick knee had worsened on just the right day because I sure wasn’t up for any marching.

“What was going on with him?” I asked.

“We don’t know. He was just getting super emotional and he made us march on the road all class.”

Although I was glad to have missed it, I found this story interesting. To be fair, this was not an L.K.-like move where George Edwards just didn’t feel like teaching that day. He was out leading the marching, apparently. He wasn’t a great government teacher, however after I heard about the marching I liked him better. This incident, I felt, provided a little window into the real guy, the Texas native who liked beach babes, didn’t want his daughter falling off the roof, and felt a deep connection to the military reserves.

One thing I wonder about is if any other teacher at the school was aware that all this marching was going on. I think they must have been because it apparently took place right on the road in front of the school. I wrote in my Mr. Dreyer piece about how back in the day teachers would just do questionable stuff and nothing happened. George Edwards was the principal, so he probably had carte blanche on the marching front in any case, but did no one ask him, “hey there George Edwards, everything OK out there today? Maybe we should chill a bit on all the marching” or anything? It can be really tough to tell principals what to do, although I’ve gotten pretty good it in my own career. Anyway, I wonder.

George Edwards moved to Seattle later on and got another head of school job. My brother Mike ran into him over there and says he’s a really good guy. As for his daughter, I hope she’s still out there, dancing her little heart out.

Dedication: For N.C., wherever you are.

to be continued…

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On John Innes, the Fabulist (with cameos from Bruce Innes and Hunter S. Thompson)

John Innes is a high school English teacher in Oregon. He works at a Catholic School there where he also coaches basketball, and probably does some other stuff. His players call him “Coach Innes,” and I think they respect him. And this is reasonable enough. Innes is a good coach, and good teacher, and most of the time a pretty good guy. He used to be a good golfer, but I think he lost it. Too much water on the elbow, can’t control the slice. But teachers show one side of themselves in the classroom and another outside of it. What John Innes has kept hidden from his students and players is that he is big old fabulist.

I know this because Innes, probably to fill the time when his lesson plans peter out or something, is known to tell stories to his students about the days when he and I were in high school and university together. And these stories are all completely bonkers. Innes will tell his students a story about me throwing people into the Little Spokane river back in high school. But I would never do that. I mean the Little Spokane is cold, and what kind of person would toss a fellow student into a cold river just because? Also, to get to the Little Spokane, which ran by our school, you had to cross a super long bridge. I’m not dragging some chick or dude across a super long bridge just to get them wet. Doesn’t make sense. I don’t know where Innes gets this stuff. It’s totally ridiculous. Innes is big old fabulist.

In another of his little “stories,” Innes claims that during university at Hamilton College I snuck into the chapel there on campus and climbed up into the bell tower. Now, there might have been a chapel at Hamilton, sure. There might have been a lot of things. Hamilton has some pretty old buildings, and it’s not impossible that a chapel would have some kind of bells in it. But I’m not gonna go climbing up there. Innes fancies himself a “literature” teacher, and maybe he’s mixing in some part of a Dorothy Sayers plot or something. Also, Innes may be extrapolating from the notion that I generally may attempt to access certain spaces that might seem “off limits.” That’s possible. I mean, if I see a “Members Only” sign on the door of a club, I’m gonna think “hey there pal, I’m a member. In fact, I’m a permanent member baby” and I’m gonna go right on in. I have also noticed that in buildings where there may be some public spaces and some private or closed spaces, if you are dressed nicely, as I can, and are pretty tall, as I am, you can sometimes just wander wherever and people will, by and large, just let you, especially if you wear some kind of lanyard around your neck. But this doesn’t mean I’m going to go poking around a bunch of bells. It’s totally ridiculous. Innes is a big fabulist, and he needs to get over it.

Innes tells another story about me graduating from university in linen. What’s he even talking about? I mean, I did graduate and have a piece of paper somewhere I think, but linen? What a bizarre thing to say. And for that matter, what if I did? Linen is a cloth, clothes are made from cloth, I was presumably clothed at graduation. So what? I think what may be going on here is that the water from his elbow is migrating up to his brain. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, and what I do recall is that I wore a little purple flower in my hair at graduation and some dude from the newspaper took a picture of me and this ran somewhere. Innes may have remembered the flower thing and then imagined a whole bunch of other nonsense around it. Linen. It’s totally ridiculous. His fables are just getting out of control.

So Innes apparently thinks it’s funny to spin a bunch of nonsense about me. I don’t know exactly why he does this, but he may come by his mendacity honestly, so to speak. Innes has a father called Bruce Innes. Bruce Innes is a Canadian, and a pretty interesting guy. He used to be in a band called The Original Caste, and they had a hit called “One Tin Soldier.” The song is still pretty well known to a certain generation, which is cool. That band split and Bruce Innes must have drifted around blowing his money for a while, cause he ended up in Spokane in the late 80s, which is when I met the fabulist John Innes. I went to Bruce Innes’ house sometimes in order to crush John Innes at a video game called “R.B.I. Baseball.” I don’t play a lot of video games, but it doesn’t matter. I crushed John Innes at Sega Hockey a few years later as well and he whined about it for weeks. Guy has water on the elbow from way back.

Anyway, Bruce Innes’ Spokane house was pretty large and had a fully soundproofed music studio in the basement. I’d never seen anything like this and assumed that he must have some serious cash. But I don’t think this was actually the case. Like I said, I think Bruce Innes had spent most of his money from his music heyday by this time. My brother Mike, who remembers some stuff and forgets other stuff, told me recently that Bruce Innes made his living around this time by writing jingles for an audio and video store in town called Huppins. I don’t remember anything about this, but it’s too specific not to be at least a little bit true. It can’t all have been Huppins though, right? He must have done other stuff. Bruce Innes ended up leaving Spokane and moving to Sun Valley where he became the go to guy to play music sets at rich people’s parties. Then he moved to Oregon. I don’t know where he lives now. So yeah, he’s had an interesting life.

Back in the days when Bruce Innes was high on the hog with his music royalties he ran around with some famous folks. He met Leonard Cohen, and told me one time that Cohen was a total dick. Leonard Cohen is a legend of course, and is now remembered best as a genial older statesman, but this doesn’t preclude the possibility that back in the 70’s he may have been a dick. Doesn’t preclude it at all. Mr. Google says that Bruce Innes also knew Joni Mitchell. More well known though is Bruce Innes’ association with the writer Hunter S. Thompson. Most people of a certain age will remember Thompson, the “gonzo” inheritor of Hemingway and a pretty major figure in American literary history. Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, in which he relates a funny anecdote of bonding over college football with President Richard Nixon in the back of a car sometime, despite the fact that Thompson hated Nixon. Thompson also wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I also have read. This is the book that the Terry Gilliam movie is based on, the one where Benicio DelToro plays Thompson’s sidekick and always advises him “as your lawyer…,” a phrase that has entered popular culture and is still widely used.

This is also the book that features Bruce Innes and some story about a monkey. I’m not sure if this next part is in Las Vegas or not, and in fact I think it isn’t, but another story is that Thompson and Bruce Innes were hanging out in Colorado somewhere and decided they would run for political office on the same ticket. Thompson would run for sheriff and Bruce Innes would run for something else. Now, Thompson’s run for sheriff is a well known piece of his mythos, and he did actually have a platform under the umbrella of “Freak Power,” but I imagine that whatever this run really entailed, Thompson exaggerated it pretty dramatically in later telling. I’ve heard Bruce Innes talk about this as well, and he makes it sound like the two of them were actually aspiring politicians for a time. But I don’t believe it. I’ll bet you what happened was these two guys were hanging out and getting stoned, and thought it would be funny if they “ran” for office. They probably got a poster or two made and hung them up around town, told all their friends about it as a lark, and talked a bunch of BS for a while. Bruce Innes is a great guy, but I think he and Thompson are kind of full of it. So like I say, John Innes probably comes by it honestly.

Whatever the source of John Innes’ struggles with the truth, one time after he had told some of his usual whoppers about me, one of his students found these stories interesting and wrote me a request for more information. He actually wrote it in verse, which was pretty creative, so I wrote him back in the same style on a flight out of Adelaide. The poem basically attempts to correct the record that the fabulist John Innes so regularly distorts. It also touches on some of the lowlights of my college career, including my fondness for writing excuses for students who needed extensions, the fact that I sported a tan trench coat for much of my first year, and my inability to get a steady girlfriend. John Innes, the fabulist, is referred to as “J.I.” in the poem. In the interest of having some of my “b-sides” back in print, I am re-posting this guy in its original form. It’s called “An Open Book,” and I gotta say, it’s still pretty good.

“An Open Book”

Not really in the mood
but you’ll think me quite rude
if I don’t make a reply
around me on the plane
folks eat, are entertained
no one’s writing save I

So I’ll take a look back
to days at the dog track
where I ended up by mistake
thought we could beat the odds
just silly teenage sods
there was no money to make

I know not if J.I.
has spun a pack of lies
concerning my personhood
Yes, I wrote poems for girls
who told me they were pearls
ah–but they weren’t any good

About a cold river,
and the rest of his quiver
of myths and exaggerations
well if someone was shoved
it was done out of love
or congratulations

So to upstate New York
in a trench coat–what a dork
but the world took pity
the life there was fine
but naught was on the line
should have gone to the city

I did two things quite well,
needing something to sell
I wrote brilliant excuses
‘bout ridiculous capers,
couldn’t finish my papers
I claimed aces, held deuces

My second great skill
is one I hold still
I fell for crazy ladies
locals, Russians, and Turks
they all drove me berserk
with a boatload of maybes

Four years in the dorms
and countless reforms
led to little of note
I left sans a sob
a plan or a job
and without my trench coat

Dedication: For John Innes, the fabulist. You know I won that Sega game, but I confess I may have tried to get up in that bell tower. So let’s call it a tie there baby.

Postscript: Since this piece was first published, Bruce Innes has sadly passed away, I believe in Vermont. As I said in the piece, Bruce had a fascinating life, and he was also a genuinely sweet guy. I really liked him. RIP Bruce, maybe you can win an election or two up there in heaven.

Note: If you enjoyed this piece, you may also enjoy “An Open Book,” also about the character known as John Innes. You can find that here.

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My Brother Mike’s Bad Book

Subtitle: A Mariners game, a rowdy night, and the moment my brother defined himself with four perfect words

Several years ago I attended a Seattle Mariners baseball game with my bother Mike. The Mariners were playing the Toronto Blue Jays, and we went out for a few drinks before the game right next to the stadium. I was amazed by just how many Blue Jays fans there were in town for the game. They were all over the place.

Now, although I grew up in a baseball family, as I got older I kind of lost interest. The games are just too long and there are too many of them. However, going to a game in person is pretty cool. Mike is still a hardcore Mariner fan, which I respect. On this night the Mariner’s star pitcher Felix Hernandez was pitching, and the Mariners won the game. However, the result is far from the most memorable aspect of that night.

Our seats were pretty good, right next to, but not actually in, the “K Zone” where the Hernandez heads were. Over the course of the first few innings, Mike downed several more beers and he got a little rowdy, as he sometimes does. Mike, in Freudian terms, has more than a little “id” in him. As I mentioned, there were a lot of Blue Jays fans in town and Mike, as a good Seattleite, took this as a challenge. As the game went on he began calling out, loudly, various Canadian cities.

“Calgary suuuucks…Winnipeg suuuucks…Lethbridge suuuucks.” Like that.

I found this all pretty amusing, if a little unorthodox. It wasn’t how I would chose to enjoy the game, but this was Mike’s style. As the Mariners built a lead Mike’s chants started to escalate, and some Blue Jays fans began to take offense. Probably this was the point. These dudes were looking at Mike, pointing, saying things. There was no real risk of a fight; however Mike was mixing it up no doubt.

Around the 5th inning or so another dude in a Shawn Kemp jersey started making noise of his own. (Shawn Kemp was a star player for the Seattle SuperSonics back in the day before some asshole stole the franchise and moved them to Oklahoma City. Fuck that guy.) At first this was all fine, because anyone in a Sonics jersey was OK with Mike. However the Sonics fan started getting a little out of line and dropping the f***** slur.

“Look at this fucking f*****. Fuck this f*****,” stuff like that.

As far as I could tell there was no reason that this guy had to target an individual in this fashion. The difference, as I saw it, between his action and Mike’s was that Mike was basically operating in good humor and calling out all the Blue Jays fans present in the spirit of friendly competition, while the Sonics fan was picking on an individual, and using a slur. Although the exact nuances of the difference are perhaps debatable, the dude was definitely out of line.

Mike noticed this guy and didn’t like what he saw. He began saying so, and someone not in our group took notice. This other guy, in regards to the Sonics fan, said something to the effect of “he’s ok in my book.” Mike didn’t miss a beat at he uttered the classic line, one I will never forget.

“That’s a bad book,” he said.

That’s all he said; he didn’t challenge the guy to a fight or anything, didn’t even directly address him. The Sonics fan was getting so abusive that someone called security, and he was escorted out.

“That’s a bad book,” reminds me of my friend from high school Cameron Turner who liked to say of something he didn’t approve “that’s sick, and wrong.” Both of these are super memorable phrases, and highly redolent of the person behind them. Mike was a little lit. Mike was razzing Blue Jays fans as a collective. Mike was attracting attention. At the same time he felt that there was no need for gratuitous gay slurs. And he was right.

One of my favorite phrases in the world is “that’s some bad action.” Mike was speaking in the same vein with “that’s a bad book.” I’ve never been prouder of anyone in my life than when Mike called this guy out.

I fuckin’ love my brother Mike.

Postscript: Just a little while ago Mike and his fiancee had a baby, Felix. Named, of course, after the pitcher. So that’s pretty cool. I just hope he doesn’t grow up to be a Blue Jays fan.

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On “Dude” Usage

Note: This piece is a re-worked version of one of our early attempts at what might be called “linguistic ethnography.” Linguistic ethnography, as I see it, is basically the study of how language is used and evolves with special attention to the social role of language. A comprehensive look at dude usage is a bit beyond the scope of this blog; therefore, what follows is a breakdown of some of the more interesting dude variants as used, primarily (although not exclusively) by and between North American males. Longtime readers may recall the original version of this piece, which has been updated with a brand new dude variant.

Introduction:

“Dude” I think, goes back to cowboy culture and something called “dude ranches.” I don’t really know what a dude ranch is, however I suspect it is horse-related. I do though know a bit about the modern use of “dude.” Below are some examples of “dude variants in the wild.” I am neither endorsing or critiquing and of the phrases or behaviors described. Dude variants simply abide.

I: “Dude, what the fuck?”

One of the classic dude phrases, this is used to register sincere umbrage, usually with a friend or “mate.” Examples include: a friend says something unkind about a woman you both know, a friend steps in front of your putt on a golf course, a friend takes the last juice from your refrigerator without asking, etc. “Dude, what the fuck?” is a little tart, however it contains an opportunity for the offender to “climb down.”

Example:

Guy 1: Dude, I don’t know about that chick Tracy. She’s blowing me off and she’s really becoming kind of a bitch.

Guy 2: Dude, what the fuck? You know Tracy’s a friend of mine and she’s cool people. Come on man.

Guy 1: Sorry man, you’re right. It’s just been a rough week.

Guy 2: Dude that’s totally understandable. We love you man—we got you.

Comment: Illustrated here is a principal of male friendship where guys can speak sharply to each other, offend, and just totally get over it the next moment. Guys marvel at women, who seem sometimes to drag reconciliation after a conflict across a greater expanse of time, and count themselves lucky, in this instance, to be guys.

II: “Duuuuuude”

This is used when a guy sees a guy he knows and hasn’t seen for a while. It is often coupled with a hand shake and “bro-hug” and/ or a slap on the back.

Example:

Guy 1 (seeing his friend approaching): “Duuuuude”

Guy 2: Hey buddy, what’s up man?

Guy 1: Duuuude, how the fuck are you?

Guy 2: Dude, it’s crazy to see you man.

Guy 1: Dude, I know right. So what are we doing? Are we drinking yet or what?

Comment: Illustrated here is the multi-purpose functionality of both “dude” and “man,” which may seem interchangeable to the untrained ear, but in fact have different nuances and ideal placements in male patter. And, a good long “duuuuuude” can be very satisfying to unleash.

III: “Dude, that’s not the way we need to go here”

“Dude, that’s not the way we need to go here” exists in a family of phrases which includes for example, “dude, that’s really not gonna get it done,” “dude, I’m going to ask you to take a step back and check yourself for a second,” etc. These are all part of the very wide set of phrases that a manager can use with a direct. Modern managerial theory is divided on whether or not “dude,” is acceptable in supervisory conversations of this sort, and strong opinions exist on both sides. I side with the “yes” camp, but only in a basically dude-centric culture. As a middle-manger for many years I have often used phrases such as these while perhaps using the person’s name or just “hold on” in place of “dude.” But in my head, I’m saying “dude” every time.

IV: “Dude I’ve been thinking…”

This can go a lot of ways. It’s a crisper “dude,” and an entry into a SERIOUS TOPIC. Often found towards the end of drink two or into drink three, when guys are staring to get comfortable with their feelings, this phrase is usually either a precursor to a promise to spend more time together, or to a project or idea the guy has that he wants to share with his buddy.

Example:

Guy 1: Dude I’ve been thinking…

Guy 2: Uh oh. That’s never good…

Guy 1: Shut up dude and just listen for a second, man. I’m seriously thinking about building a greenhouse. Like seriously dude.

Guy 2 (thinking): Man, that actually sounds pretty sweet. A greenhouse. Cool man. That’s really cool.

Guy 1: I’ve got a line on this guy who can get me the parts for like $400. I just have to assemble it. Man, this could really be big.

Guy 2: Fuck, man. That’s awesome dude. I’m proud of you.

Comment: An exchange such as the above will often be accompanied by some light physical contact, actual or attempted, if not a full-on “bro-hug.”

V: “Dude, I’ve got this”

“Dude, I’ve got this” is used to tell a friend to back off from attempting to assist with a task a guy thinks he has under control.

Example I:

Guy 1 (seeing his friend trying to carry two beers up a narrow set of stairs at the bar): Dude, let me give you a hand.

Guy 2: Thanks dude, I’ve got this.

Guy 1: Of course you do dude. But we’ve all had a few and I just don’t want you to spill anything.

Guy 2: Dude, I said I’ve got this.

Example II:

Guy 1 (watching his friend trying to fix a flat tire on another friend’s bicycle): Dude I think you may need to take the tire all the way off first.

Guy 2: Thanks dude, I’ve got this.

Guy 1: Sure dude. I’m just not sure you’re gonna be able to fix it like that.

Guy 2: Dude. I’ve got this.

Comment: “Dude, I’ve got this” is clearly a softer way of saying “back off,” and if you push a guy who is in “I’ve got this” mode, you may in fact elicit a “back off.” Because in most cases neither guy wants to get to the “dude back off” stage, most of the time Guy 1 will concede after the second “I’ve got this” is played. In Example I, Guy 2’s repetition of the phrase is more or less in the same tone as its initial use. In Example II however, we see the tone of Guy 2 shift with the repetition. While “thanks dude, I’ve got this,” is said in a light, casual tone, “Dude. I’ve got this” sees him breaking out the pause-as-warning. So in fact it would sound something like this: “Dude (pause) I’ve got this.” As implied above, this guy usually ends the conversation.

VI: “Alright dude”

“Alright dude,” is usually said towards the end of a conversation or phone call and serves as an indicator of a positive conclusion to the encounter.

Example:

Guy 1: Alright dude, it’s been good catching up.

Guy 2: Dude, for real. Always fun man.

Guy 1: Let’s do it again.

Guy 2: Cool man—I’d like that.

Guy 1: Alright dude. You be good.

Guy 2: Dude, bro, it’s all good. Check you later.

VII: “Dude, check this out”

“Dude, check this out” is a highly versatile phrase used to draw a friend’s attention to a matter of interest.

Example I:

Guy 1: Dude, check this shit out. It’s a shuffleboard, man. Whaddya say?

Guy 2: Duuuuude, shuffleboard…

Example II:

Guy 1: Dude check this chick out right over there, behind the begonias. She’s just looked your way, like three times.

Guy 2: Shut the fuck up man. She’s not looking at me. Get out of here, dude.

Guy 3: Dude, she totally is. You should totally go over and say hi.

Guy 2: Come on guys. Knock it off.

Guy 1: Dude, she just did it again…

If you have come across a dude variant that you think merits inclusion pop it in the comments with an example or two and we’ll see what we can do.

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On the Prefix “Soft”: Part I

The prefix “soft” is incredibly useful. Generally speaking, it indicates either actual relative softness (e.g. “soft cream,” a softer form of ice cream), or a certain gentleness and/ or flexibility obtaining to a non-tangible concept (e.g. soft schedule). This piece (which will be broken up into a couple of posts) will explore a number of instances of the prefix “soft” at greater or lesser length.

“Soft-schedule”

Francis Wade in the classic blog post “Hard vs Soft Scheduled Items” comments thusly on soft scheduling:

Professionals who undertake the discipline of Scheduling at higher skill levels (Orange and Green belts) have their calendar as the central point of focus (…) Their lives would be made much easier if Outlook were to distinguish between different kinds of segments, recognizing them as either “hard” or “soft.

(Let’s just pause for a moment to appreciate Wade’s capitalization of “Scheduling,” as well as his reference to “Orange and Green belts” as scheduling skill levels. This dude is serious about scheduling.) Wade here hits on an essential point, Outlook (the Microsoft program) does not (or did not, Wade was writing in 2011) allow users to classify schedule items as “hard” or “soft,” viewing instead all items as identically fixed. In Outlook, something is either on or off one’s schedule. This is a problem according to Wade because:

A soft item is one that only involves the user, and can easily be moved around one’s calendar, with few immediate consequences. They might have great importance, but a late start would not endanger the end result.

Obviously, Wade is differentiating a soft item from a “hard item.” Thus, in the realm of scheduling, “soft” indicates that the item is flexible because it is individually owned. For example, a teacher may have “grade papers” on her schedule at an appointed time, however in practice everyone knows that this schedule item is fungible.

In my opinion, Wade is right on as far as he goes. His point about Outlook is a seminal one. However, I do not agree that we can only soft schedule something that applies only to ourselves. I believe we can just as easily soft schedule a call with a friend or a meeting at the pub. If my friend texts me and wants to speak on the phone tomorrow, I might reply with “sounds great, let’s soft-schedule that for 2 PM.” This means, clearly, that 2 PM is the target time, however it may be a little earlier, or, more probably, a little later. If you think about your own life you will probably recognize the role that soft scheduling plays in it. In fact, soft scheduling is everywhere, you probably just don’t use the term.

(Before we go any further I want to address the issue of hyphens. Mr. Google suggests that “soft schedule” should not be hyphenated, nor, in fact, should basically any of the terms this piece will examine. I can give this one to Mr. Google because it is just easier to skip the hyphen. However, logically, and even emotionally, I like the hyphen for a lot of “soft” prefixes. This is because the hyphen, in my view, serves to attach the prefix to the term, thereby underlining the fact that we are engaging in an act of proactive and meaningful categorization.

An additional grammatical point here is that nowhere in Wade’s piece, for example, does he use “soft schedule” as a verb phrase, or indicate that we can do so. Folks in general massively underrate the effectiveness of turning a noun phrase like “a soft scheduled item” into a verb phrase “to soft schedule.”)

In any case, you get the idea with soft scheduling. Let’s move on.

“Soft pedal”

A soft pedal originally referred to a piano pedal, which is interesting, however for our purposes it means something else. According to Collins dictionary: “If you soft-pedal something, you deliberately reduce the amount of activity or pressure that you have been using to get something seen or done.” (Look at this s***—Mr. Collins Dictionary is hyphenating soft-pedal! Mr. Google, though, disagrees. Why would we hyphenate soft-pedal and not soft schedule? What’s going on?)

We see soft-pedaling all the time in politics. A politician or party will advance an idea and then back away slightly from said idea without entirely abandoning it. They just turn down the temperature around it. It will be apparent that soft-pedal is lexically and conceptually related to a number of other idioms, for example “tap the breaks,” “put on the back-burner,” “let’s put a pin in that,” and, my favorite and perhaps quasi-original to me, “to bracket.”

(When we bracket something, we acknowledge the existence, and importance, to one or more parties in a conversation, of the item in question while indicating that the item needs to wait or be placed in the background for the time being. We may bracket an item because we don’t have time to deal with it right now, because it doesn’t fit conceptually with what else we are doing, or because it is too sensitive, political, or otherwise complex to address at the current moment. As an example, let’s imagine a newly hired HR manager at a large company. In the first week on the job she is told by multiple people of an alleged instance of sexual harassment from a senior male manager to a subordinate younger female. The HR manager is told that everyone knows about this instance and that nothing has been done or said on any level. Now, our HR manager (let’s call her Jessica) is in a tight spot—obviously the allegation is a live issue, and perhaps a growing one as it has not even been acknowledged. Also, by very virtue of the fact that this complaint has come to Jessica several times immediately after her hiring it is clear that other employees are expecting her to do something about it. And she should. On the other hand…Jessica is brand new. She probably does not have a full handle, or even much of a grasp, of the corporate culture or power dynamics at the company. She does not know who to go to, necessarily, and even if there is a specified reporting flow for these kind of complaints, and, this point is crucial, she knows already that even if there is a flow it is not functioning properly. In fact, if she was to bring the matter immediately to a direct superior she could well be stepping on a political land mine. So our Jessica, god bless her, may say to her colleague something like: “I get it. This sounds like a serious issue and I understand that the fact that it has not been addressed only exacerbates the situation. However, let’s bracket it for the time being, and in the meantime I’ll try to learn more and see what the right next step might be.” Now in theory is this the right call? Maybe not. Maybe Jessica should go guns blazing up the chain. But no, she really shouldn’t. She should listen, observe, assess. In other words, she should probably bracket.)

Back to soft-pedal. Unlike soft schedule, which is basically always a positive, soft-pedaling can cut both ways. Soft-pedaling can be a risk. Take for example the Democratic primary contest for the 2020 presidential nomination in the United States. As any political watcher knows, candidates in primaries generally tack further to the left or right and in the general tack back to the center. The reasons for this are obvious, however in the digital age where every word, every micro-shift in a candidate’s position, gets analyzed in depth in real time, it is becoming far harder to tack from side to side without coming off as inauthentic. In the 2020 primary, Bernie Sanders’ plan for Medicare for All became the default position of anyone running anywhere near the left lane of the party. Now, the fact that Medicare for All was unlikely to get passed even under a Sanders administration, much less that of a bandwagon candidate like Kamala Harris, made it basically safe for a leftish candidate to champion the cause right through the primary.

Two candidates, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, initially jumped on-board with Medicare for All as they were trying to run in the left (Warren) or center-left (Harris) lane. Other candidates including Joe Biden (the eventual winner) and Pete Buttigieg were running basically as centrists, so they weren’t obligated to support it. Others, such as Andrew Yang, were niche candidates and/ or somehow on a tangent to the left/ center axis, and were therefore not endangered by the issue one way or the other. Harris and Warren could have just stuck with their support, however as the primary advanced they felt compelled to soft-pedal their position. This was probably from some combination of media demands for them to differentiate their plan from Sanders’, advisors telling them they needed to triangulate ahead of the voting, and, in Harris’ case, a lack of a political core that left her susceptible to political wobbling. Harris was going to lose in any case; she was a bad candidate with a toxic relationship to her staff and a habit of telling ridiculously embellished life stories. Warren, on the other hand, arguably lost her shot at the nomination because of her decision to soft-pedal Medicare for All. She couldn’t get her position straight, started to dissemble and flop-about, and her candidacy stalled in the Fall of 2019 as a pretty direct result. Such was the fall-out from her soft-pedal.

Nonetheless, in politics and in organizational settings the soft-pedal can be a crucial move. In an office environment a manager or manager group may try to roll out a new initiative and run into headwinds from employees. Said managers then have a choice, they can continue to push straight through and force the initiative, in the process risking the goodwill and enthusiasm of the team, or they can soft-pedal. Here, the soft-pedal is often the right call because it is quite different from “the climb down.” When managers climb down (or “back down” in more common parlance), they may put the issues to rest however they will likely lose face. Sometimes a climb down is necessary and hygienic, as when the managers realize the initiative is simply a non-starter and it’s best to cut their losses. The soft-pedal, however, allows for two things: i) it allows the managers to save face and to maintain the flexibility to bring the initiative back, perhaps in a revised form, at a later date, and ii) by leaving the initiative on the theoretical table while taking it “off the front burner” employees are reminded that the point behind the initiative may still be important in the future. When and if the initiative is brought back, the issue set has been “seeded,” and this seeding can “prime” employees to be more receptive the next time around when the initiative (by this time re-packaged) is re-introduced. Of course, the managers can also just allow the initiative to die off of its own accord over time while avoiding the (more sudden) climb down.

Such are the pros and cons of the soft-pedal. Handle with care.

to be continued…