Camping in Maine with my first husband, I settled into my down sleeping bag atop an inch-thick piece of closed-cell foam. He was big on closed-cell foam, a foam-rubber-ish substance somehow constructed so the air pockets are closed and it can't absorb water. An inch of it provides a surprisingly satisfying layer of padding, much preferable to trying to sleep with a hip joint burrowing into the ground, or roots or a pinecone digging into one's back. It also provides insulation -- but not always enough. Maine can be chilly even in July. Instead of drifting off to sleep, I lay awake trying not to notice that the foam wasn't entirely insulating my butt from the ground, and I was cold.
Danny, wrapped in his space blanket, was warm and toasty -- as he wasn't slow to point out. He swore by space blankets, as did one or two other campers I knew. On his advice, I had bought one that afternoon at L.L.Bean, even though I couldn't quite picture how this piece of stiff tinfoil could have the insulating power that everyone said it did.
However that might be, I was in the tent and the blanket was still in a saddlebag on the motorcycle. Feeling chillier and chillier, I pondered whether possession of the blanket would offset the shock of facing the night air, not to mention the risk of stepping on Danny's head on my way in and out of what he referred to as a two-man tent (I would have said one man and one woman, if they like each other and aren't too big).
Eventually, my benumbed consciousness absorbed and accepted that I certainly would not sleep successfully without that blanket. The dash through a few yards of Maine woods was at least as disagreeable as I expected. I crawled back into the tent and wrapped my blanket around, above and below me, and settled again into the bag, now enveloped in reflected warmth from the blanket. It felt almost like a heat source. The last thing I heard was Danny explaining that I had draped the blanket incorrectly and that it wouldn't work that way -- as I drifted off to dreamland.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
CHILD ABUSE
Mom seriously loses face when someone points out her child-rearing lapses -- especially, perhaps, when that third party is her own mother.
Justin and I were in Otter River after a rousing nor'easter. Remembering the five- or six-foot mountain of snow that collects in the angle between the barn and the back porch, I asked him if he would like to jump off the roof. Justin, then two and a few months, was fine with jumping off the roof, as with most things. In August of the same year, the guy running the octopus at Whalom Park observed, "That little kid ain't afraid of nothin'." That wasn't quite the case; but he wasn't much into fear.
We climbed out a window and onto the roof of the side porch. My mother, at my request, closed the window behind us, with that my-daughter-has- lost-her-mind look that I know so well. Justin and I waded through a two-foot snowdrift overlooked by the windows of a couple of bedrooms, and turned the corner onto the roof of the back porch. I proposed to jump with him in my arms so as to land together.
There behind the back porch was the target snowdrift, all right, but a few feet farther away than I remembered. Also, the underpinnings of the roof had come to protrude by most of a foot, a row of metal things a foot or two apart on which, it seemed to me, I would certainly catch my clothing on the way past and thus fall short of the depths of the snowdrift.
Losing my courage, I voted for coming down some other way -- but how? Mother had shut the window behind us, and all the bedroom windows giving onto the roofs were locked in winter (they tended to drop open if not fastened). Near the side porch was Aunt Elizabeth's car, not close enough to climb down onto or padded with enough snow for jumping. We made our way back to the rear porch; nothing had changed. We may have wandered back and forth a couple more times, hoping something would occur to us. It was windy, and Justin declared that he was cold.
At that point -- I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner -- I tossed Justin off the roof into the highest point of the snowdrift, where he lay on his back in his snowsuit, tranquilly contemplating the sky. Then I gathered my coat tightly and jumped myself, taking care not to land on him, and together we made our way through voluminous snow around the barn and into the house. It was all rather anticlimactic.
That may have been the storm of April 6, 1982, the last volley of a particularly snowy winter. A few days after that storm dropped a foot or so of snow on us, the temperature had risen to about 70o; the snow was melting apace; and the asphalt in the driveway was warm to the touch. Walking around barefoot, Justin asked if he could slide down the bank beside the driveway, as he had been doing all winter.
Why not? Warm as it was, there was still plenty of snow. I produced the sled and plunked him into the box my father had attached to it. Instructing him to stay in the box, I pushed him down the hill. We did this a few times. Then my mother came to the door to talk to me about something, and my attention to Justin flagged. The next thing I knew she was expressing horror at something behind me. Sure enough, there was Justin nonchalantly walking around in the snow with his little bare feet. I put a stop to that, wondering, as I have since, if he had any nerve endings.
Impetigo is hard to miss, especially on a six-year-old's face -- but I was getting married at the end of the week, and my attention was fragmented. I did, on somebody's advice, buy a tube of some kind of goo and apply it to his lesions per the instructions. It didn't do much. On my last day of work before the wedding, I took Justin and his impetigo and tube of goo to day care, without much hope that they would buy into this program. I was right.
"Unclean!" said the day care center, refusing to accept him, tube of goo notwithstanding. So I took him to work, settling him as best I could while I tried to finish what I had to do. As seen above, Justin was never big on quietly staying in one place. I think one or more of my co-workers amused him from time to time. I did get the work done, and took Justin and his impetigo home.
After the wedding, my sister took charge of Justin for a week, as planned. She surveyed the impetigo with horror and at her earliest convenience took him to her doctor, commanding him to "Fix this!" The doctor prescribed an antibiotic, and by the next time I saw Justin his face was back to normal.
A few years after that, he developed poison ivy on the top of his foot. There was nothing much in that; Justin was always developing poison ivy. He said this one hurt and itched severely. I could believe it did. It looked awful; but Justin's poison ivys always looked like that and most were a lot larger than this one. I offered sympathy and calamine lotion.
The difference between this poison ivy and its predecessors was that, subject to friction with his chronically wet shoe and sock -- I never understood how he managed to be wearing wet footgear so much of the time -- it had become infected. When Mother pointed out the angry red streaks up his leg from the poison ivy site, I bundled him into the car and off to the doctor.
In spite of the instances of neglect confessed to above, Justin came to think of me as prone to unnecessary hovering and worriting, and in late childhood and early adolescence stopped mentioning his poison ivys and sprained ankles (a specialty he developed after taking up basketball; maybe white men really can't jump). He doesn't believe in dressing for winter, but wears T-shirts and shorts year-round. Any horror-stricken comments now are directed to him. If anyone says anything to me, I shrug my shoulders and point out that he's an adult and I can't help what he does.
I
Justin and I were in Otter River after a rousing nor'easter. Remembering the five- or six-foot mountain of snow that collects in the angle between the barn and the back porch, I asked him if he would like to jump off the roof. Justin, then two and a few months, was fine with jumping off the roof, as with most things. In August of the same year, the guy running the octopus at Whalom Park observed, "That little kid ain't afraid of nothin'." That wasn't quite the case; but he wasn't much into fear.
We climbed out a window and onto the roof of the side porch. My mother, at my request, closed the window behind us, with that my-daughter-has- lost-her-mind look that I know so well. Justin and I waded through a two-foot snowdrift overlooked by the windows of a couple of bedrooms, and turned the corner onto the roof of the back porch. I proposed to jump with him in my arms so as to land together.
There behind the back porch was the target snowdrift, all right, but a few feet farther away than I remembered. Also, the underpinnings of the roof had come to protrude by most of a foot, a row of metal things a foot or two apart on which, it seemed to me, I would certainly catch my clothing on the way past and thus fall short of the depths of the snowdrift.
Losing my courage, I voted for coming down some other way -- but how? Mother had shut the window behind us, and all the bedroom windows giving onto the roofs were locked in winter (they tended to drop open if not fastened). Near the side porch was Aunt Elizabeth's car, not close enough to climb down onto or padded with enough snow for jumping. We made our way back to the rear porch; nothing had changed. We may have wandered back and forth a couple more times, hoping something would occur to us. It was windy, and Justin declared that he was cold.
At that point -- I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner -- I tossed Justin off the roof into the highest point of the snowdrift, where he lay on his back in his snowsuit, tranquilly contemplating the sky. Then I gathered my coat tightly and jumped myself, taking care not to land on him, and together we made our way through voluminous snow around the barn and into the house. It was all rather anticlimactic.
II
That may have been the storm of April 6, 1982, the last volley of a particularly snowy winter. A few days after that storm dropped a foot or so of snow on us, the temperature had risen to about 70o; the snow was melting apace; and the asphalt in the driveway was warm to the touch. Walking around barefoot, Justin asked if he could slide down the bank beside the driveway, as he had been doing all winter.
Why not? Warm as it was, there was still plenty of snow. I produced the sled and plunked him into the box my father had attached to it. Instructing him to stay in the box, I pushed him down the hill. We did this a few times. Then my mother came to the door to talk to me about something, and my attention to Justin flagged. The next thing I knew she was expressing horror at something behind me. Sure enough, there was Justin nonchalantly walking around in the snow with his little bare feet. I put a stop to that, wondering, as I have since, if he had any nerve endings.
III
Impetigo is hard to miss, especially on a six-year-old's face -- but I was getting married at the end of the week, and my attention was fragmented. I did, on somebody's advice, buy a tube of some kind of goo and apply it to his lesions per the instructions. It didn't do much. On my last day of work before the wedding, I took Justin and his impetigo and tube of goo to day care, without much hope that they would buy into this program. I was right.
"Unclean!" said the day care center, refusing to accept him, tube of goo notwithstanding. So I took him to work, settling him as best I could while I tried to finish what I had to do. As seen above, Justin was never big on quietly staying in one place. I think one or more of my co-workers amused him from time to time. I did get the work done, and took Justin and his impetigo home.
After the wedding, my sister took charge of Justin for a week, as planned. She surveyed the impetigo with horror and at her earliest convenience took him to her doctor, commanding him to "Fix this!" The doctor prescribed an antibiotic, and by the next time I saw Justin his face was back to normal.
IV
A few years after that, he developed poison ivy on the top of his foot. There was nothing much in that; Justin was always developing poison ivy. He said this one hurt and itched severely. I could believe it did. It looked awful; but Justin's poison ivys always looked like that and most were a lot larger than this one. I offered sympathy and calamine lotion.
The difference between this poison ivy and its predecessors was that, subject to friction with his chronically wet shoe and sock -- I never understood how he managed to be wearing wet footgear so much of the time -- it had become infected. When Mother pointed out the angry red streaks up his leg from the poison ivy site, I bundled him into the car and off to the doctor.
# # #
In spite of the instances of neglect confessed to above, Justin came to think of me as prone to unnecessary hovering and worriting, and in late childhood and early adolescence stopped mentioning his poison ivys and sprained ankles (a specialty he developed after taking up basketball; maybe white men really can't jump). He doesn't believe in dressing for winter, but wears T-shirts and shorts year-round. Any horror-stricken comments now are directed to him. If anyone says anything to me, I shrug my shoulders and point out that he's an adult and I can't help what he does.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
SOARING (with apologies to Robert Schumann)
A student reported to his college's health services office with multiple abrasions and contusions from capsizing his motorcycle, and a bee sting in his throat. The doctor cleaned and disinfected his injuries, washing out gravel as necessary and bandaging as appropriate, and did whatever is done for bee stings in the gullet. He also suggested that in the future the young man ride with his mouth closed.
"I was singing, Doc," his patient explained.
That's motorcycles for you. If you've ever dreamed about flying and wished you could, riding a bike is the nearest experience in real life (or parachuting, probably; I can't answer for that because I've never done it). Motorcycles are, in Marshall McLuhan's phrase, an involving medium. You roll along on a summer day, leaning with every bend in the road. Warm air flows through your clothing and caresses your skin. You feel a delicious chill when you pass a body of water, and the pleasant shock of an unexpected sprinkling of droplets from a lawn-watering system. A motorcyclist experiences a mystical sense of oneness with the world as it glides by.
Then in a second or two everything changes. Gravel or leaves or water on the road, a pothole, a piece of the underpinnings of a car not seen in time, or something unfamiliar in the respiratory tract -- not to mention the things other motorists do -- and the biker is sliding down the road leaving skin on the pavement and thinking about compound fractures.
As the saying goes, "You can always tell a happy bikey by the bugs on his teeth" -- but maybe not for long.
"I was singing, Doc," his patient explained.
That's motorcycles for you. If you've ever dreamed about flying and wished you could, riding a bike is the nearest experience in real life (or parachuting, probably; I can't answer for that because I've never done it). Motorcycles are, in Marshall McLuhan's phrase, an involving medium. You roll along on a summer day, leaning with every bend in the road. Warm air flows through your clothing and caresses your skin. You feel a delicious chill when you pass a body of water, and the pleasant shock of an unexpected sprinkling of droplets from a lawn-watering system. A motorcyclist experiences a mystical sense of oneness with the world as it glides by.
Then in a second or two everything changes. Gravel or leaves or water on the road, a pothole, a piece of the underpinnings of a car not seen in time, or something unfamiliar in the respiratory tract -- not to mention the things other motorists do -- and the biker is sliding down the road leaving skin on the pavement and thinking about compound fractures.
As the saying goes, "You can always tell a happy bikey by the bugs on his teeth" -- but maybe not for long.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
TAX PARTY
Does anyone but me remember the carnival atmosphere that used to prevail at the South Station Postal Annex in Boston on the night of April 15?
At least a couple of times I found myself dashing for the post office as midnight approached, promising myself never to put it off like this again. Lots of other people were no better than I. The streets and byways in the South Station area looked like the gas lines of 1973, choked with procrastinators' cars trying to get into the tiny parking lot. I seem to remember a band playing somewhere on the premises, balloons and confetti and food, and people sitting on the cement wall that bordered the parking lot -- young guys, mostly, with no particular business there, dangling their feet and watching people come and go.
Inside the post office would be a long line of taxpayers snaking between posts that divided the usually empty and echoing space into lanes. It didn't take long to get through -- the clerk just weighed the envelopes, stamped them, and took your money, and you were on your way. There was probably even a system for weighing and stamping it yourself. I wouldn't have used it. I never understand such things. The postmark machine kept stamping April 15 until everybody and their taxes had finished.
For a bunch of years I did in fact do better and wasn't a participant in the April 15 melee. Then a small business I worked for put off its tax return to the last minute, and I was commissioned to run it to South Station.
No longer did the channel area look like a late-night party -- no band, no gawkers, no balloons. I don't remember anyone outside at all except taxpayers coming and going, matter-of-fact and rather tired. The lines were in place inside; but the postmarking machinery had been updated and now chugged along automatically, changing the date promptly at midnight. If you failed to get to the head of the line by twelve, your postmark was late (anyway, do we believe that the IRS has time to scrutinize everybody's postmark and come after people for being a few hours late?). If your tax return will be dated the following day anyway, you might as well drop it in the mailbox down the street.
At least a couple of times I found myself dashing for the post office as midnight approached, promising myself never to put it off like this again. Lots of other people were no better than I. The streets and byways in the South Station area looked like the gas lines of 1973, choked with procrastinators' cars trying to get into the tiny parking lot. I seem to remember a band playing somewhere on the premises, balloons and confetti and food, and people sitting on the cement wall that bordered the parking lot -- young guys, mostly, with no particular business there, dangling their feet and watching people come and go.
Inside the post office would be a long line of taxpayers snaking between posts that divided the usually empty and echoing space into lanes. It didn't take long to get through -- the clerk just weighed the envelopes, stamped them, and took your money, and you were on your way. There was probably even a system for weighing and stamping it yourself. I wouldn't have used it. I never understand such things. The postmark machine kept stamping April 15 until everybody and their taxes had finished.
For a bunch of years I did in fact do better and wasn't a participant in the April 15 melee. Then a small business I worked for put off its tax return to the last minute, and I was commissioned to run it to South Station.
No longer did the channel area look like a late-night party -- no band, no gawkers, no balloons. I don't remember anyone outside at all except taxpayers coming and going, matter-of-fact and rather tired. The lines were in place inside; but the postmarking machinery had been updated and now chugged along automatically, changing the date promptly at midnight. If you failed to get to the head of the line by twelve, your postmark was late (anyway, do we believe that the IRS has time to scrutinize everybody's postmark and come after people for being a few hours late?). If your tax return will be dated the following day anyway, you might as well drop it in the mailbox down the street.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
SPRING IS SPRUNG
March 21, 2011: It's snowing. That's one of the ways we celebrate spring in these latitudes. In Otter River we have similarly celebrated Palm Sunday, Easter, Mother's Day, and conceivably Memorial Day. I remember a snow shower on May 22, and concern about frost and the newly planted flowers at the cemetery in the last days in the month. I also remember my grandmother expressing concern that the marchers in the Memorial Day parade might faint from the heat -- it had happened, she said.
At the other end of the calendar, we have had frost before the end of August. My father didn't attempt to grow pumpkins, as much we kids wished he would, because, he said, the frost always got them. What kind of growing season is too short for pumpkins? New England pioneered in manufacturing for good reason. By contrast, the year I bought my motorcycle it was 100 degrees on Labor Day. At the family reunion I gave rides to anyone brave enough to accept.
My mother reports seeing snow in Otter River in every month of the year except July -- and frost in July, once. I remember as a child being impressed by a change of temperature of almost 100 degrees within a week or two.
Meteorologists love New England weather for the challenge of trying to figure out what it will do next. The rest of us accept it more or less philosophically, and newcomers get used to it. I remember a woman from Poland taking exception to snowstorms through March and into April, after what had looked like the dawn of gentler weather: "In my country, yes, it is cold in the winter, but when spring comes, it's spring." What must a person from India think when they step out the door into one of those crystal-clear, still days with the thermometer below zero, especially if their car won't start? From Poland as well as India, our weather looks like some kind of mistake.
Today's snow doesn't bother me. How much harm can there be in an inch or two of soggy snow that melts on contact with blacktop? The crocuses and daffodils go about their business, snow notwithstanding. And for a day or two it'll whiten all those dirty snowbanks.
At the other end of the calendar, we have had frost before the end of August. My father didn't attempt to grow pumpkins, as much we kids wished he would, because, he said, the frost always got them. What kind of growing season is too short for pumpkins? New England pioneered in manufacturing for good reason. By contrast, the year I bought my motorcycle it was 100 degrees on Labor Day. At the family reunion I gave rides to anyone brave enough to accept.
My mother reports seeing snow in Otter River in every month of the year except July -- and frost in July, once. I remember as a child being impressed by a change of temperature of almost 100 degrees within a week or two.
Meteorologists love New England weather for the challenge of trying to figure out what it will do next. The rest of us accept it more or less philosophically, and newcomers get used to it. I remember a woman from Poland taking exception to snowstorms through March and into April, after what had looked like the dawn of gentler weather: "In my country, yes, it is cold in the winter, but when spring comes, it's spring." What must a person from India think when they step out the door into one of those crystal-clear, still days with the thermometer below zero, especially if their car won't start? From Poland as well as India, our weather looks like some kind of mistake.
Today's snow doesn't bother me. How much harm can there be in an inch or two of soggy snow that melts on contact with blacktop? The crocuses and daffodils go about their business, snow notwithstanding. And for a day or two it'll whiten all those dirty snowbanks.
Monday, March 7, 2011
DOG ABUSE
A television documentary about guide dogs some years ago showed a dog leading its blind owner through a field crossed with parallel ditches, jumping each ditch with its owner a second or two behind, to illustrate the training of dogs for their owners' specific needs. Presumably, if someone wanted a motorcycle-riding canine for a sensible reason, Seeing Eye could train one from puppyhood for the purpose. When Natalie and I lived in Berkeley, we joked about how convenient it would be if her Seeing Eye German Shepherd could be persuaded to ride my Lambretta so I could drive them home when we met unexpectedly.
At the time, I might or might not have seen You Are What You Eat, a hip and trendy movie circa 1968, which keeps showing a small dog -- one of those white curly things as I remember -- riding on the tank of a Harley-ish bike. I had seen, in a motorcycle parking lot on the Berkeley campus, a young man mount his scooter and gesture to his dog, which jumped onto the floor in front of his feet and happily rode off.
One idle afternoon behind Natalie's apartment on Dwight Way in Berkeley, we decided to try introducing the dog to two-wheeled travel. With the engine running and me in the driver's seat, Natalie lifted the dog in her arms and climbed aboard. I don't speak dog and couldn't see the animal -- it was behind me -- but I could tell that this was not, so to speak, a happy puppy.
I pulled in the clutch and shifted into gear. The dog had heard that clunk many times and knew as well as we did what came next. It shook free of Natalie's grasp, leapt to the ground, bolted up the stairs to the apartment, and betook itself to some favorite safe and comfortable corner. Natalie and I laughed long and loudly, and made no further attempts to make a biker of the poor beast.
At the time, I might or might not have seen You Are What You Eat, a hip and trendy movie circa 1968, which keeps showing a small dog -- one of those white curly things as I remember -- riding on the tank of a Harley-ish bike. I had seen, in a motorcycle parking lot on the Berkeley campus, a young man mount his scooter and gesture to his dog, which jumped onto the floor in front of his feet and happily rode off.
One idle afternoon behind Natalie's apartment on Dwight Way in Berkeley, we decided to try introducing the dog to two-wheeled travel. With the engine running and me in the driver's seat, Natalie lifted the dog in her arms and climbed aboard. I don't speak dog and couldn't see the animal -- it was behind me -- but I could tell that this was not, so to speak, a happy puppy.
I pulled in the clutch and shifted into gear. The dog had heard that clunk many times and knew as well as we did what came next. It shook free of Natalie's grasp, leapt to the ground, bolted up the stairs to the apartment, and betook itself to some favorite safe and comfortable corner. Natalie and I laughed long and loudly, and made no further attempts to make a biker of the poor beast.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
HE DID WHAT?? THINGS I WOULDN'T HAVE THOUGHT ANYONE COULD DO
I
The train sat in the old Harvard Square station, thinking about moving. Just as the bell rang, a young man with a large suitcase in each hand started down the stairs leading to the platform, in a very great hurry. He didn't even slow down as he approached the turnstiles. Holding the suitcases high enough to clear, he gave a mighty leap; cleared the turnstiles; landed still running; and flung himself into the train just as the doors were closing.
II
Justin was about fourteen. We were leaving for school, running late. This wasn't unusual. He hopped down the stairs, one shoe on his foot, the other in his hand. This, with variations, wasn't unheard-of either. It was sort of raining -- misting and dripping, and the front walk was damp. Not wanting to get his sock wet, Justin hopped down the walk to the gate.
The chain-link fence was about three feet high; the gate closed with a horseshoe-shaped latch that hinged down to embrace the fencepost. Justin usually, in one smooth, graceful, and noisy motion, kicked the latch up and the gate open. My position was, "Justin, do you have to do that?" Apparently, he did.
On that soggy morning, Justin hopped up to the fence and considered the available ways of opening the gate. He denies adapting the Crane Kick from one of the Karate Kid movies, much as it looked like it; he also says that he tried his method again a day or two later to establish that he really could do this, that it hadn't been a fluke. He jumped up and, in one smooth, graceful, and noisy motion, with the foot he had been standing on, kicked the gate open and came down on the same foot, crouching low, but without dropping the shoe, putting his foot down, or losing his balance. "I don't lose my balance," he commented.
III
And then there was a former associate of a friend of my first husband. Six feet eight inches tall, I think Ray said he was -- think of Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey in The Green Mile. The local junkyard stacked car engines against the back wall of the lot; Ray's friend would reach over the wall and literally and figuratively lift engines.
***
The consensus on the subway platform (I wasn't there but was told about it by someone who was) was that the traveler with the suitcases must have been a trained athlete -- track, presumably, a broad-jumper or hurdler, or possibly a pole vaulter. He must have been sure that he could clear the turnstiles, suitcases and all; he could have been badly hurt if he'd miscalculated. It's safe to conjecture that he really needed to catch that train.
Justin had had some martial arts training and watched Bruce Lee movies intently and analytically. He'd done a lot of kicking and punching at imaginary enemies, to the detriment of anything in his room that wasn't mounted on the ceiling.
Both Justin and the track star were applying skills from another context to a real-world problem. I know nothing about the engine thief's background. He could have been a weight-lifter. My guess, based on what I knew of Ray, was that his friend was just a big, strong guy testing himself against the world.
Could anyone really lift an engine over a fence? (Clearly, the possibility didn't occur to the junkyard.) According to Wikipedia, the Olympic weightlifting record is 436 kilograms, or nearly 1,000 pounds. My mechanic estimates the weight of an engine at 400 or 500 pounds. Of course, there is a great difference between an athlete doing, under controlled conditions, something he's trained to do, and a guy swiping engines in the dead of night under conditions with a lot of variables.
Ray recounted his friend's activities as something he definitely knew about and, I think, had witnessed. But maybe he'd just been told about it; maybe the guy was lying, or contemplating engine-snatching as a nifty idea that he meant to try someday. Maybe he did it once when the engines were piled particularly high, and out of respect for his back didn't try it again. Anyway, like so many good stories, if it isn't true it deserves to be.
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