Letter from the Editor

Guess Who's Coming to Sauna

Welcome to False Choice where we are dedicated to the mad notion that there are infinite choices in life, and most of the time we are only aware of the two worst ones, which we are asked to choose between. At any rate, I recently started to visit a local sauna as a palliative to snow shoveling, which has beat me down a little this winter. While resting my head against the wall and enjoying the hot, sweaty air two elderly men came in. Well, they were about my age actually, and they had the following conversation which I here regurgitate as accurately as humanly possible, for your entertainment and also your spiritual edification. You hot young things could learn valuable lessons from my generation. Enjoy, and if you do, please

“Man, that letter from the editor, it’s like back in the day when I heard my name over the school intercom and then Please Come to the office. Once in a while it turned out ok; my Dad would be waiting for me in the office to take me out of school because he needed a strong, strapping sixth grader to perform some dangerous home repair task that he couldn’t of course risk himself, being the sole breadwinner. But normally it was a good dressing down and the dope slap because my incorrigible self had done something really remarkable, like reaching under a Susan Deeb’s uniform skirt to pull down her undies! Remember how short skirts were in ‘71, begging us, imploring us to give it a try?”

“Oh yeah, I remember,” replied the friend.

“Well, that little tart turned and gave me a pretty good crack across the chops, so why I deserved another from the Principal was never explained. At any rate it all turned out ok, that girl became my wife. No sorry, that’s a lie. She hated me after that, so I was eventually engaged with her sister Helen. But she found me irresistible all the same so I cheated on Helen with Susan, and now I don’t hear from either of them. At any rate, the letter in my hand from the editor held a similar promise of livid denunciation, so you can imagine my excitement.”

“Sure, very exciting,” said the friend.

“At any rate, writing a letter to the editor is a fairly common practice among American adults of a certain age, mostly between the age of 28 and 60, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh, yes, I definitely agree.”

“Those 32 years are the prime years of a ‘letter writer to the editor’ type. Hell, I had a mortgage at 28, a job that took up all my time when I wasn’t repairing my house, a job which I hated by the way; and at 29 we were pregnant, and at 31 she hit the terrible twos, my daughter, that is; the wife hit the terrible twos three decades earlier and still has them. All at once the whole universe began to annoy me. Man, I searched the heavens for answers but all I saw in that frigid Michigan sky was a trillion brilliant diamonds shining brightly. Dammit, I thought, I’m not going to take it anymore. So somebody was going to pay, and I determined it was going to be the editor, whoever the hell that was or is.”

Sometimes life is a little too close for comfort

“Oh, sure, given’em hell!”

“Right, so my letter writing began, and there was a mountain of complex arguments and accusations to make. The editor, now he was a sly little chameleon. One week he was a red little communist, and the next a deep green capitalist. Oh, I saw all his colors, nothing got by me. Week after week I sent the missives, multi page letters brimming with vitriol and biting sarcasm. Then just after my 39th birthday two of Traverse City’s finest stood on my little front porch, a junior officer who looked about 12 struggling with a heavy cardboard box, and the senior man who used his nightstick to rap on the screen door.

“Can I help you,” I asked, tentatively.

““Are you Matt Trombley?””

“I am.”

““Maybe you’d like to step out and talk on the porch so your family doesn’t have to hear this.””

““Ok.” I walked out on the porch and closed the front door behind me. I could see my wife and the kids looking out the picture window and grinning at the proceedings. Daddy didn’t get a lot of attention from the police, so they were hopeful for a little drama like a taser shot.”

“Yeah, those taser shots are cool,” the friend said.

““Look, Matty,” the officer started, “I can still call you Matty right, the Editor called us and made a formal complaint against you; he says that your letters have become more colorful recently, with some violent overtones…”

“And I suddenly realized that the man below that stiff, formal police cap and trimmed blue uniform was my best butt of a joke from grade school, Jerry Colston. I hadn’t seen him in years after his family moved away.”

““Now look Matty,” he went on, “I don’t know what’s going on man, but I read the last few letters and frankly you seem like you’re on the ledge man, ready to jump. You gotta back up buddy, get off the ledge and tell me what’s going on.””

““We’re pregnant again, number three,” I told him.”

““Ohhh, Ok, Ok, I get it now. Alright, let me help you out here Matty. Do you have a dog?””

““No, we don’t,” I told him.”

““Perfect, now you get over to the Humane Society and get one of their pups, try to find an aggressive little guy. Then see, you go over to the pet store and buy one of those dog toys, the kind they like to chew on. Bring it home and then get on all fours in the backyard with that toy in your mouth. The dog will know what to do; it’ll grab on to that toy like its life depended on it and the two of your can work out all your aggression together, see, that’s what I do every night after work.””

““Really, every night?””

““Every night ,” he told me, “why that damn pup of mine even pulled out one of my teeth,” Jerry said, turning a little sideways and smiling to show me a missing chomper.”

““My goodness,” I yelled.”

““Oh yeah, and you won’t have any reason to write all these damn letters to the editor anymore. Now you take these letters Matty, and get rid of them, man. Nobody wants to read a lot of vitriol and biting sarcasm. You think the editor doesn’t have a bunch of screamers at home, too, and a broken shower head and leaks in his damn roof? Of course he does Matty, of course he does.””

“Well, I never thought of the editor as a man like myself, with a mortgage, kids to feed and school and a petulant wife, but I guessed it was more likely than not.”

“So with that the junior officer, sweating profusely under the weight of my voluminous Pulitzer Prize winning dispatches, threw the box into my arms with an appalling attitude of disrespect, and the two of them stomped off to their squad car.”

“Appalling disrespect,” the friend affirmed.

“The next day I brought home a little dog from the shelter. He didn’t seem too aggressive but he was just a pup. The kids loved him, the wife hated him, but two months later there we were in our corner lot backyard tugging away at a chew toy. I had a pair of knee pads from a home repair tile job a few years back and they came in very handy out on the dirt. Before long our little game became quite popular and people often stopped at the fence to view the action. Raisin, the dog, as in raisin’ cain, loved the extra attention and would make a lap of the yard and then return to the toy with renewed vigor. I didn’t mind the spectators, though my wife noticed that police cars went by very regularly, the officers laughing uproariously. Little did they know it was their Lieutenant’s idea!”

“Sure, the Lieutenant’s idea!” the friend reiterated.

“And I’ll tell you, the afternoon matches with Raisin did the trick. I gave up the letters to the editor for several years, but finally Raisin lost interest in the chew toy fights. I probably should have let him win a few times, but a new neighbor had two dogs and Raisin figured out how to jump up on top of the fence and then over it. He preferred his own kind I guess. Eventually I once again found myself annoyed at everything, and the typewriter came out of the attic. I was back, baby, and determined to make up for lost time!”

“He’s back, damn right,” cried the friend.

“After that long vacation the anger just poured out of me. I didn’t realize how much the world annoyed me until I started writing again. I saw new irritations everywhere, family, old friends, neighbors, you name it. There was no small rub or main insult of life that I didn’t capture on paper and put a stamp on to the editor.”

“I hear that,” said the friend.

“At any rate, I finally opened the letter from the editor and was enormously disappointed by the short message: “Please, only one letter per week per subscriber. We do not have a large staff.” I couldn’t believe it! How I had slandered the man, the ad hominen personal attacks, the character assassination and defamation, the many years long smear campaign, and all he has to say is this little complaint: “We do not have a large staff.” I’ve been despondent for the last several days. It’s one thing for the world not to love you back, but unrequited loathing is unacceptable!”

“Unrequited,” the friend repeated, shaking his head.

“At any rate, maybe it’s a good time to hang up the old typewriter and move on to some other hobby. The mortgage is paid, the kids, God love ‘em because someone has to, are gone and the house doesn’t give me too many headaches anymore. I’d like to take up golf again, but I’ll have to make a public apology to the Women’s Senior League about that little incident a few years ago. I mean I had no idea that my short break in the trees on the 9th fairway was visible and audible to the 10th tee. I also started a website. I noticed that the signage at these various protests marches was weak and not pointed enough to really get things stirred up, so I’ll offer raunchy, sarcastic, angry slogans, and I cover both sides, being a businessman of course. It should really hop things up. It might even be worthwhile to watch the evening news again, if it takes off.”

“Oh, it’ll take off alright,” replied the friend.

With that the man with the letter got up and walked out without a so much as a take care. The friend and I sat silently for several minutes until I was forced by curiosity to mention that “your friend seems like an interesting fellow,” to entice a conversation.

“Oh, I have no idea who that guy is,” the friend started, “we just happened to walk in at the same time. I’ve noticed that there are two kinds of men who take a sauna. Some men, like you and I, like the sweat and solitude, content to let the burdens of life melt away in here while we hear an old favorite tune in our heads, like for me it’s Miles Davis’ So What. Others, like the gentleman with the letter from the editor, use the heat of the sauna to revel in the memories of whatever their life was. I guess it’s always been like this, probably from the first fire they lit in a cave.”

“Take care,” I mentioned, doddering away.

“You, too, friend!”

Special for Sunday, February 23, 2024: Guess Who’s Coming to Sauna, by Darrel Syria (Warning: Finnish Reggae)