The first day of my first victory lap is December 17, 2017. That will be the day after I turn 80. I can hardly wait.
What is a “victory lap?”
It’s an old story, well known by my family. Not very well accepted as a metaphor, but I am hoping for progress along that front any day now. Once upon a time, the family lived on “new faculty circle” in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. This was inexpensive housing that Westminster College provided to new faculty for their first few years in town. It was roughly half a mile around the circle.
I was at a place in my running project in 1977 when I needed every extra mile or 
fraction thereof I could manage. I was supposed to run 1776 miles between the 4th of July in 1976 and the 4th of July in 1977. This was to be the kind of thing joggers did to commemorate 1776, the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. I had fallen behind during the winter and I was taking long runs several times a week and no matter how long the run was, I added that little half mile around new faculty circle—just to get the extra milage. And so I wouldn’t be thinking of them as just more running, I called them “victory laps.” This is Brittain Lake. The western part of the victory lap passed just uphill from the edge of this picture. And the picture below–that’s me in 1977 finishing the 1776th mile–is on the far side of the lake.
The victory lap as a metaphor
I got to thinking metaphorically about the victory lap because I noticed that the victory lap felt different, even though it really shouldn’t. I may very well have run the last five miles or so—one of my standard runs was 19 miles—in some discomfort. I had cramping problems at one time or another and blisters and dehydration and whole litany of runners’ complaints. But I noticed that when I was in the victory lap phase, those went away. Not worth paying attention to anymore? Distracted by reflections about how I had run that distance that day? Runners’ high? I never really knew, but I really did appreciate it that all those symptoms were muted once I passed the front door and started around the loop.
Then I got to thinking that with just a few liberties taken here and there, you could divide my life into four laps, like a mile race. Every lap was 20 years long. So I grew up in the first 20. In 1957, I was a sophomore in college and had no idea at all what I was doing. By the end of the second lap, in 1977, I had gained a Ph. D. and three wonderful kids and had lost my marriage to their mother. And I had remarried and gone back to teaching and acquired four stepdaughters. By the end of the third lap, in 1997, I had finished a career doing public policy for the State of Oregon. During this last lap, the one that ends next week, I have lost a wife (cancer) and remarried (again) and picked up two more stepchildren and had a post-career career as an adjunct professor and retired again and sold my house and moved with my new wife (almost 12 years now) into a very good retirement community. And that brings me to my 80th birthday on December 16 and the beginning of my first victory lap on December 17.
Now what?
I was really appreciative of the physical relief I got on the actual victory laps—the ones in the 1970s. I was intrigued by the autobiographical mapping I managed with the aid of the mile run (1500 meters if you really must). The four laps of the race could be seen as marking off the four prominent segments of my life. But now, I am actually going to BE 80 and the “race” is over and I am looking forward to the reflections on that day’s run and the easing of the physical side effects of that day’s run. All of which are perfectly clear to me—in retrospect.
But now we are talking about imagining them in prospect. On Sunday, December 17, I am going to have to start thinking experientially about my first victory lap. What will it be like? What do I want it to be like? Does it matter how many such “laps” I expect to finish?
Well…NO to the last question. I don’t care how many there are. There will be as many as
there will be. It is the quality of the laps that has always mattered. What if, for instance, instead of not paying attention to my blister (until I get home and can put disinfectant and a bandage on it), I decided to not pay attention to some grievance or other that I have been carrying along with me. Not all the grievances. Maybe just one. Maybe one every lap. Would that work? By age 90—imagining for the moment that I get to age 90—I would have decommissioned ten grievances that I would otherwise have been carrying around. That sounds like a victory to me.
I remember running that last half mile and thinking over whether I had run the way I should have. It wasn’t inquisitorial. I was already done. It was just a pleasant reflection and maybe sealing in a lesson of so. Don’t push the hill going up to the Cheese Shop so hard; it costs you over the next highway mile and then you don’t cash in on the final downhill the way you could have. That kind of thing. I kind of like the idea of declaring an end to “the run” and calling the running I continue to do, “victory laps.” Maybe I could reflect on our first year here at Holladay Park Plaza, the way I reflected on that long uphill toward the Cheese House, and make some lazy speculative imaginary plans for the next year. Whatever.
Selling the Victory Laps
My kids have never been comfortable with the victory lap idea. Either they can’t believe that I really feel that way or they can’t imagine feeling that way themselves or they can’t imagine me doing anything at the finish line except dropping dead. I experienced the victory laps as wonderful in every way, which is why I have continued to pursue the metaphor. I am hoping that when they see me enjoying the victory laps, as I have every intention of doing, they will begin to relax into the concept and enjoy it along with me.
Let me begin by rejecting the sentiment in this picture. I think this is what my kids think I really mean. Maybe it is what they aspire to themselves and can’t imagine that I don’t. I don’t really have a lot of fatherly responsibilities left and my life with my kids has been defined for many years now as more like dear old friendships than anything more clearly paternal. Still, this is an experience I will be having that they will be having (eventually) as well. So…there’s no point in denying that my experience of it is going to be a major factor in how they think of their own retirement. Might as well do it right.
My kids haven’t made running a part of their lives in the same way I have, so the mile race metaphor might not be the right one. But I think the discipline of using the resources you have during “the race,” whatever that is for them, so they can look back on it with satisfaction, is a really good idea. And living the years after finishing it in a celebrative and thoughtful way sounds like another good idea.
When they were little, I would teach them to do things by doing them myself, then turning it over to them to try. And I’d “coach” a little. “No, no, not so high up on the handle or take more of a backswing or ask yourself a bunch of questions you should know the answers to when you have finished the chapter.” Implicit in all the coaching was that if they would begin by doing it the way I did it, they could adapt it to their own style once they got the hang of it.
That still sounds like a good idea and I will imagine hearing the starting gun go off first thing Sunday morning, December 17, and I will try to lay down a really good victory lap for them in that first year. I won’t be doing it for them. It wouldn’t be a victory lap if I did. But if they can find value in the way I do it, it would make the victory a little sweeter.
Invictus, President Mandela (Morgan Freeman) instructs his head of security, Jason Tshabalala in the need for white people in the security detail. “Forgiveness starts here,” says Mandela. In the second one, Pay It Forward, Arlene McKinney (Helen Hunt) comes to the railroad yard where the homeless gather to offer forgiveness to her mother, who lives there. There are more than 40 seconds of wordless images, showing first the mother’s face, then the daughters, as both women realize what has been done. Here is Angie Dickinson as the mother, talking to the reporter who broke the story.
I have found very few people in the category I would call “non-Christian” who are not members of some other faith. But there are some–really, there are– who have had so little contact with Christianity than they have no feelings for or against it. They are the missionaries’ dream of primitives who have no religion at all. Blank slates waiting to be written on.
think it will offer the largest challenge. A bunch of Christians with different backgrounds, different traditions of scriptural interpretation, different ways of making their faith make sense, will see these simple film fragments differently. And these differences may be fanned into disagreements. There is no way of telling, really.
describing—and have thought there was no way they could get there with integrity, I’d be happy to offer my own experience to them as an encouragement. [6] I can do that because I am aware, more than most people, of how I got where I am. I like being where I am even while I know it won’t do for everyone what it has done for me. Robin the Brave, here, with Princess Melora.
what I feel and what I know and what I do are always in some kind of tenuous balance—very much like the BOSU ball shown here.
I began my trip toward this destination while watching an episode of The Mentalist. Patrick Jane, who has done his share of onstage magic, asks why it is that magicians are accompanied on the stage by beautiful young women in skimpy outfits. The reason he gave is that the more time the audience spends looking at the assistant, the more leeway the magician has for managing his feats of illusion without being caught at it. The presence of the young woman means that the “eyeballs,” in the current phrasing, are going to be over there while the things the magician cares about are over here.
topic from the violence against blacks to whether Robert E. Lee should be revered as a patriot (Virginia, his highest loyalty) or decried as a racist and a traitor. Similarly, CHEB changed to topic from the rising militancy of the White Supremacy movement to “a clash of forces” in which both sides—remember that is the pro and anti Robert E. Lee “sides”—have honorable people. As horrible as those statements are, they are the assistant. What is the magician doing while I am gazing spellbound at the assistant?
means. Particularly, I am interested in what “and” means. What is the relationship between Joseph’s righteousness and his mercy—his choosing the quietest, least painful way available to treat Mary’s “infidelity.” [2]
The second is that “and” means something more like “but,” or “even though.” Joseph showed mercy to Mary “even though” he was a righteous man. Righteous in this sense means “knowing and observing the Law of Moses.” We know what the Law of Moses says could be done—the actual practices may have varied by region and certainly varied by historical period—to Mary because of her obvious infidelity. She was, in fact, pregnant, and Joseph was not the father, so we find ourselves in “the usual suspects” territory.
it, I should tell you that this is not a spider. It is a decal representing a spider. The decal does everything you want it to do. It affects people who know they are being affected by it and people who don’t know. And everyone it affects is affected in the same way. Their marksmanship improves whether they are attending to it or not.
device. People like to aim at targets. But targets have two disadvantages that spiders do not have. First, you know they were put there in an attempt to manipulate you. Not everyone likes that. Second, if there is a place you are supposed to hit, there is the chance that you could miss it. You could, in other words, fail. Not everyone likes that either. And besides, what good does it do anyone for you to hit a target.
nevertheless, have views on how children should be raised, have a dilemma. I learned what the right goals of childrearing are from my parents and got a refresher course by being a parent and a step-parent. I know what is right and why it is right. I have never asked what would be the right kind of childrearing if the goal were, as in the case of the working class, to ensure that no one sinks to “hard living.” So in confronting this question, I am facing a question I have never faced before. I need to ask, of the child rearing practices of the working class, “Will they meet the goals of the parents?”
But there are some differences as well. Lubrano’s father raised him to be a really good bricklayer, but Lubrano became a journalist instead. A father in our society in preparing the sons to do the same kind of work he does, is closing off a lot of other economic choices that the sons might prefer. That’s not true of the hunter.
the same problem I have. We need to be able to challenge these childrearing practices on either instrumental or on normative grounds. Those are the two I introduced above. We need, in other words, to say, “I understand your adopting those practices as a way to prepare your children for working class life, but actually, they won’t have that effect.” First, I’m not really sure that is true. Besides that, I am sure I am not in a position to say it even if it were true. So the instrumental case against those childrearing practices falls apart.
Starbucks grappling with the recent spate of sexual abuse accusations made against public figures. A small party came in to sit at the table next to us: a young couple, a small child and an infant. The mother had scarcely settled in her chair when she came over and asked us to watch our language, there being a small child within earshot.
It’s hard to say that her fears were unreasonable, given that the topic—which, I remind you, was allegations of sexual abuse made about public figures—was potentially offensive. I good way to approach this would be to ask how likely it is that offensive things will be said, how harmful it would be if offensive things were said. Since she didn’t have any way to judge either question, she set the bar for her own action very low. These six old people might say something I would not want my child to hear and it might damage him or her. [2] I am trying to imagine the six of us having the kind of impact on this mother that this picture is intended to have.
After the woman had gone back to her table and her infant and her preschooler and her husband, some members of our group recovered a little from the shock and engaged in a brisk game of Shoudasaid. We shouldasaid, “Everyone here is a parent and a grandparent. We don’t need your guidance about what kind of language to use.” We shouldasaid, “We will be careful not to say anything we wouldn’t want our own grandchildren to hear.” We shouldasaid, “Thanks for sharing your feelings, but we are going to have the conversation we had begun and if you don’t like it, there are other tables you might occupy.” We shouldsaid, “You want us to what? Really?”
the meadow. The first 33 were headed to the woods to cut firewood and bring it back home by the armload. The second 33 were all a man named Per [1] who was sneaking off to meet Par [2], a beautiful Persian girl whom Per’s parents would like him to avoid. The third set of 33 trips were taken by a physicist deep in thought. She found the predictable walk to the woods and back…oh…restful. It cleared her mind to work on the space-time continuum.
and there are only two teams the left and the right. The people who have been calling themselves umpires, are actually members of the left—they have been “irredeemably corrupted by an alien enemy.”
woman could have been raped and her account of what happened to her could be true—UNTIL IT WAS REPORTED IN THE PRESS. Then it isn’t true anymore. When it is reported, it is an act of political aggression and the truth claim is buried in politics.
The Dilettante's Dilemma 