Confessions of 349-18-5171

I’d like to tell you how things are with me
I have to go back a way to do it
I was born in a very small town in Iowa--
Cherokee, Iowa, population five thousand then… well, that’s a lie
Actually, there are only three thousand people in the town
The state insane asylum was on the hill
And it was civic pride that made us add the other two thousand
So that when you drive in it would say five thousand
We were pretty well-set there, in Cherokee
My father was a minister
People used to say he’d only have to work one day a week
And he’d, you know, smile
But he wasn’t, uh, Jewish, or Catholic, or Protestant
So everybody who wasn’t anything came to our church
It was very grounded
And I figured that I’d follow in my father’s footsteps
And I might’ve, except one day a horrible thing happened
Some pitchman came in to town
Who was an atheist
And he challenged anyone in the town to a debate as to the existence of the almighty
Well, we’d never heard of anything like this
We stood there on main street like so many gaping Iowan idiots
While this atheist was haranguing the crowd
No one would take his challenge
So finally, a quiet meek voice from the back of the crowd said
“I’ll debate with you.”
Imagine my surprise, it was my father!
We all got together in the local gymnasium
I’ll never forget it; the torches were flaring there in the wall
The American legion band, all eight of us
Playing something by Sousa, almost in tune
The first five rows was filled with older ladies
The ladies’ aide society
Knitting for other pregnancies
And I listened to my father and this atheist on the stage
In this ridiculous William Jennings Bryan Clarence Darrow bit
And I heard my father stumble over arguments that any child, using only half his intelligence, could answer
Like, “What about Jonah and the Whale?” and that sort of thing
Because this atheist with his shallow understanding, but his sparkling wit
Somehow twisted my father around his finger
And when he left, the atheist laughing
He figured he had won the debate
My father got smaller and smaller through exit
Lost his job, left town and us
And that’s the last we ever heard of him
That’s his problem:
The sins of the father are visited upon the son
I found that out from reading, and it’s true!
Do you know life for me in Cherokee from then on was a kind of torture?
Children would throw gravel at my bedroom window of a Sunday morning
Knowing I had no place to go
Members of the finger-pointing society
Would say, “There goes that son of a minister who left for Washington, D.C.”
And I couldn’t get a legitimate job
So I had to leave Cherokee, and I came to the big city
And I got my first legitimate job selling encyclopedias from door to door
I don’t know if you know how it feels to have all the world’s knowledge under both arms
Knock on someone’s door
And have a lady in pincurls come out with this kid screaming in the background say
“Thanks a lot, but no thanks”
And slam the door in your face
But my attitude was wrong, I guess
Something was wrong ‘cause I lost that job
And I went down the ladder of employment until I reached the bottom
I was cleaning up in a pet shop
And I was happy
No responsibilities
I could go home and listen to anything— FM
I could stare at television
I could even work crosswords puzzles without cheating
But even there, my attitude was wrong
I’ll never forget, I- I was holding this Pekingese when it happened
That needed a bath so badly
And the woman was standing there chattering
And the smell of Chanel was waving across me
And something inside of me flipped
I became aggressive
I dropped that silly dog and I said, “I quit!”
And I walked out of that pet shop, four and a half stars above the sidewalk
And as I came closer and closer to the city
With the streetlamps passing the retina of my new sensitivity like so many stationary stars in a constellation
I looked up, and there was a huge, undulating halo over the entire city
Going from oval, to circle, to oval, to circle
And this halo was talking to me!
It was saying, “Ken, the trouble with you is you’re different, and you wanna be the same.”
I said, “yes!”
Fortunately for me, just at that moment
Three men were tormenting a young waitress
I went up and tormented her too
They were so pleased with me that they invited me to go bowling
That’s when I took my sensitivity and thought of the “human bowling ball,”
With your own face, or someone else’s face on it-
Whether you’re a sadist or a masochist— so when you hit, that strike would mean something!
My necktie began to look like everybody else’s necktie
And they admired my good taste
I was democrat with democrats, republican with republicans, independent with the disinterested
I had discovered a great secret:
That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else
And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like them!
And it worked!
This new philosophy, this sensitivity brought me back up the ladder
Rung by rung I made that Horatio (?) climb the place called pinnacle
And here I am
I can say with understandable pride that I’m the voice that says
“Poof! There goes perspiration.”