Andy Rooney Angry

My wife is over there at the sewing table leafing through a catalog of kid toys. There's a two page spread of fire truck/construction vehicle toys and there's boys playing with said toys. On the next page, there's a two page spread of fairy wings and kitchen sets, and there's girls playing with said toys.

Surprised? I'm not. Indignant? Not me.

I don't know what has come over me lately, but I don't care-- about a startlingly high number of things that, maybe, one day, would have got me outraged enough to... um.... I don't know. Write a blog post?

I used to be what might be called an A.Y.M. (Angry Young Man). I got really hot and pissy at the drop of a hat, and I'd write A.A.L.'s (Angry Ass Letters). I'd sit at the computer and pound out a fire-breathing letter to a company, an organization, an editor. My letters were often answered, or published-- I guess my words aren't so easy to toss in a bin or insert in a shredder, and maybe I take some amount of comfort or pride in that. I like my words. My words with friends.

These days, it takes a lot to get me A.R.A. (Andy Rooney Angry). Maybe I'm more mature, maybe I'm more depressed, maybe I'm more consumed and more draggin' the wagon. More... tired. Maybe I've realized that getting angry only raises my pulse and my blood pressure. Generally speaking, my anger does very little for and to other people, it hasn't created much social change or more world order.

My anger got a plaque replaced on the Ben Franklin Boulevard-- but that was years ago. In 1970, a police sergeant named Frank Von Colln was talking on the phone at a small guard house when someone burst through the door and shot and killed him. Von Colln's holster was empty-- his revolver cold and useless inside his desk drawer.

Years later, a small park on the Ben Franklin was dedicated to him, and a wooden plaque was erected proclaiming that this small patch of ground with a ball field was to be known as Von Colln Memorial Park. But the years hadn't been kind and it had fallen into disrepair, it was falling apart. Maybe it had been vandalized, or just weathered-- I don't know. Still, the end result was the same: the sign looked like shit, and wasn't exactly a fitting tribute to the man whose name was etched into the wood.

So, I wrote a letter-- I think it was to the director of the Philly parks & rec department. I tore him a new asshole, ripped into him for allowing such a sacrosanct thing to go to hell, though I'm sure even this guy had never even heard of Von Colln Memorial Park. For good measure, I searched through newspaper archives and found a photograph of Von Colln, lying on the floor by his desk, riddled with bullet holes, the telephone receiver beside his body, and I paper-clipped the picture to my letter. A little gratuitous-- maybe. Three weeks later, I received a letter of apology (Apology? To me? Who the hell was I?) and a couple months later, there was a new, beautiful sign up. Money well spent.

Years earlier, while I was still in college and had just published a book honoring fallen police officers, I was on the phone with the daughter of slain NYC Patrolman Waverly Jones. Jones and his partner, Joseph Piagentini were killed on May 21, 1971 as they walked back to their patrol car together after answering an unfounded call at a housing complex in Harlem. Jones, black, was shot from behind four times and killed instantly. His white partner was mercilessly tortured as he lived through being shot thirteen times. He died on the way to the hospital. Jones's daughter, now a grown woman, told me that there were two trees planted outside the 32nd Precinct to honor her father and his partner, and that her father's tree and plaque had fallen into disrepair, while Piagentini's was clean and beautiful.

So, I picked up the phone and called the Precinct commander. Miraculously, the desk sergeant transferred the call and the commander picked up. I told him who I'd just spoken to and what she'd said, and I shared how disappointed she and I were in the department-- adding that the inequality with which the memorials to these two men were being treated smacked of the very racism that a black-and-white patrol partnership in Harlem in the 1970s was trying to betray. I said that the "New York Daily News" would probably be very interested in covering that angle of the story, should they happen to hear about it from someone.

A few months later, I was invited to a re-dedication of the trees and plaques. Both patrolmen's families were invited, there would be pipers, and a Catholic police chaplain would be there to bless the trees and the plaques, I was told. I declined the invitation, probably because I was still Andy Rooney Angry.

Looking back on who I was, I miss being angry, because it got things done. It strikes me that this post might strike you as self-congratulatory but, it's not-- it's just a bit of story-telling of a bygone era in my life, when I was different-- wound up and pissed off. Nowadays, it seems like everyone's getting angry-- it's suddenly fashionable when, ten years ago, I felt like I was doing that dance by myself. With Facebook, though, people get angry and they make a status update, they post a link to a polarizing article, they sign an online petition by clicking a box, they say something snarky about a Republican candidate in a sweater vest. If they're REALLY angry, they'll change their Profile Picture.

And I get it-- we don't have time to get all panty-twisted about every injustice in the world. Brad Pitt can't build affordable housing everywhere. If we spent all our time activisting, who'd wash the dishes and feed the marmoset? But maybe we can do more, if we really care. And, if we don't really care, why pretend? Because we want to look good for our "friends"? Maybe we should wait until we're Andy Rooney Angry, or risk looking disingenuous, or H.C.P. (Holden Caulfield Phony).

Sometimes I wish I was still an Angry Young Man. But usually I don't. It's just too damn hard.

My Salt Mine's Breath Tastes Like Salt

I go back to work tomorrow.

My wife had two babies, so I stayed home for a bit.

It's been nine weeks.

NEIN!

I was supposed to be gone for eight weeks, but I freaked out (NEIN!) and extended my leave by a week. Work didn't care. Hey, what's another week of not paying me to them?

(The answer: not much.)

I'm gold that most husbands/partners/S.O.'s don't take so much time off when their wives/partners/S.O.'s, Baby Mamma, Bitches have children. Of course, most people have single babies. Twins are kind of more complicated. More screaming. More shitting. More... there.

There there, they're there.

And they're definitely there. And, tomorrow, from roughly 5:45am when I leave the house until 3:45pm when I return, I'll be here, and they'll be there. My wife'll be there, too, until April 2nd, and she's got a couple intrepid people coming in sporadically to assist but, for the most part, she's going to be a solo act while I'm deeply entrenched in the psychiatric salt mine.

I was thinking about writing this next paragraph about how I'm preparing myself to go back. But, see, there really is no way to prepare yourself to go back to a job after nine weeks of being away. What am I supposed to do? Zen out? Read up on Clozaril? Do mental push-ups? Please-- it's bull-cock. It's like preparing to have twins in your house every waking and sleeping (HA!) second of every day.

(NEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIN!)

Can't be done.

Stupid.

No.

SO, why try?

I'm just going to wake up tomorrow and pilot the car a little less mindlessly than I've been doing for the last year-and-a-half, and hope I remember how to interact appropriately not only with patients, but with coworkers. I hope I remember which little checkboxes to tic off and which ones to leave alone. I hope I remember to sign my name, stamp my name, and write the time-- specifying a.m. or p.m. I hope the new photocopier likes me. The old one didn't. Antisemitic piece of shit.

Faced with my inevitable return to the working world-- I'm angry more than anything. I thought I would be more hysterical and panicked, but I'm not. I'm just mad. At myself. At me. Mad at my meager earning potential. Mad at my schedule that necessitates my being at work every other weekend. Mad at the fact that we don't have gobs and gobs of money and cocaine stashed away under the floorboards that might facilitate a life of leisure for my wife and my children. Mad at this country that punishes procreatin' mothafuckas by offering them unpaid leave at a time when expenses rise dramatically and unendingly.

I'm one angry little blogger-boo.

Roar.

I suppose it's going to be alright, though. People always say that, usually when they have absolutely no idea if it's true. I suppose my wife will be alright and my kids will be alright and, if I can get through the door without bursting into tears, I'll be alright, too. I know that, in some ways, I've lost my facility-- that breezy ease with which I strolled down the hallways and knocked on patients' doors and knew everybody's name and everybody's story-- who washed their pants yesterday with cigarettes in the pocket and had a meltdown, who assaulted whom, who's on fall precautions, who's being discharged soon-- who isn't.

Well. I suppose it'll all come back. People say that to people, too. After all: working in a psychiatric hospital's just like riding a bicycle.

Isn't it?

Am I An Angry Blogger?

Sebastian, one of my precious few male readers, asked me that question in an email today.

"Are you an angry blogger?"

And I looked at those words, at that interrogative statement and I thought, "Hmpf. Am I?"

In the end, I suppose, the question really isn't for me to answer-- it's for you to answer. I certainly don't sit down at the computer and say, "Okay, Apronbitch, let's let some anger fly!" The only thing I try to be is engaging-- interesting enough to compete with a sea of online media content-- iTunes, YouTube, Hulu, porn, and let's not even talk about the scads of other blogs out there that you could be reading instead of mine. I mean, Jesus-- why would you bother?

I don't know why, but you do, and I'm very happy that you do. See? I'm a happy blogger.

It's easy, I suppose, to see why some people might think of me as "an angry blogger." First of all, I swear a lot-- and that can definitely come off as angry, mean or hostile. Because I use profanity frequently, I view it as just another component of my vernacular-- no different than my tendency to overuse the word "ameliorate" or my unfortunate propensity to utilize run-on sentences that drives my wife crazy because I oftentimes write like I talk and there just isn't always a decent place to put a comma or a semi-colon and I'm not even sure I know how to use a semi-colon correctly anyway.

The Open Letters and the Dear Apron posts appear angry, sure-- but, really, I'm just trying to explore an alternate viewpoint-- especially in the Dear Apron columns. Dear Abby is so patently ridiculous, so prim, so uptight that my eyelids hurt when I read her advice to people. Some bloggers like to make the claim that they're unique for "telling it like it is." To me, that's bullshit for "I speak from my own point-of-view, which may be different from yours, or it may be the same."

Certainly there are times when this blog is angry, and it's usually when I'm angry about something. But please don't label me an "angry blogger." As the yellowed, torn poster from the 1970s that hangs up outside my office implores, "Label jars, not people."

Then again-- maybe I deserve the label. Maybe I am an angry blogger-- whatever that is. I mean, if you say so....

I really do thank Sebastian, though, for asking me that question. Sometimes you've got to ask people tough questions-- it's good for them, and it's good for you, too. All through middle and high school, I was obsessed with dating a certain girl. I talked about her all the time and obsessed over her the way I do about most things. Finally, I went out to dinner with another friend of mine, and she and I were talking about this girl I wanted to date/bang. Well, we weren't actually talking about her-- I was talking about her and she was humoring me. Finally, after I had completed Monologue #863 about this girl, my friend put down her fork and knife on her plate, wiped a crumb off her chin and she looked at me and said,

"What is it about her that you like?"

And I immediately rattled off a list of attributes about this girl that I found desirous and that deemed her worthy of suffering the entry of my penis on a regular basis. Only trouble was, all of those attributes were physical.

"Okay," she said, "she's pretty. But what is it about her personality that you find attractive?"

I thought about that. Nobody had ever asked me that before. I had just assumed that I wanted the whole package, I had never even given any thought to what it was, intrinsically about this girl that attracted me so. I was silent, looking at my partially-consumed steak. I was, at first, panic-stricken, and then I sort of internally sunk with the realization that the answer was, really, nothing.

"I... I guess.... not much, really..... I mean-- I.... nothing."

"Good," my friend said, taking a swig of water from her glass, "now you can finally shut the fuck up about that at least."

I've always been grateful to this friend for calling me out on this particular point-- and she did it with grace and intelligence-- all she did was ask a simple question. Sometimes that's all you need to do to people to get them to stop and think for a moment.

So, thanks, Mr. Seb. In answer to your question: "Are you an angry blogger?" I guess I'd just have to say, "I don't know."

But at least you've got me thinking about something.