Roy Exum
One night about 25 years ago, I offered a very pretty girl $20 if she would sit in a movie with me. “It will be dark and you won’t even have to talk.” She called me a goof ball and that night we went to see a movie just out, “The Prince of Tides.” The movie made me horribly uncomfortable and several times I asked her if she wanted to go drink some beer. She was captivated and I’ve never be as glad to get out of a theater in my life.
The next day I went back to the movie taken from a Pat Conroy novel and sat through two showings. That was how I found out that I suffer from depression. And that is how I discovered Pat Conroy, a brilliant writer who has probably had the biggest influence on my career as a wordsmith than any other person I can name. If Pat Conroy wrote it, I have read it twice.
Over 20 million of his books were sold prior to his death on Saturday and, the greatest by far, was “The Price of Tides.” I tell people I have read it more times than my Bible and “Beach Music,” that came along a little later, is in my Top Ten of all time.
You see, Conroy suffered from depression and that connected our souls. Anybody who doesn’t have depression cannot possibly understand it. Winston Churchill called it “The Black Dog” and when that hound starts circling, it is tough to handle if you are not taking medicine to help manage it. Conroy said he always had “a nervous breakdown” every time he wrote a book, which is probably one reason I have never tried.
But when his books would appear, I could sense his pain and passage and I pored over every page. “The Lords of Discipline” reminded me so much of a military boarding school I attended and “The Great Santini,” which exposed the sordid relationship with his father, may explain the distance I had with mine, although my Dad never abused me or hurt me in any way. Maybe that is depression, too.
I never got to meet him, which is one of my life’s regrets. We had planned to get together a couple of times through mutual friends and, had I know he was going to die from pancreatic cancer, I would have made it more of a point. The last I heard he was writing “one more” and I was looking forward to that.
In his book, ‘The Last Losing Season,’ he revealed why he was so successful. “Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Hemingway didn't know he was Ernest Hemingway when he was a young man. Faulkner didn't know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it's necessary.”
It most certainly is.
Now, let me give you a helping of stories I wish I had time to write about from last week alone:
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THE ALABAMA Legislature passed a bill the other day that makes it fully legal to drive around with a loaded gun on the front seat. You don’t even need a permit. So why have a gun permit? But it is still against the law not to wear a seat belt.
FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY Lawrence Summers is pushing hard for the United States to quit printing cash bills for more than $20. He claims it will make life harder for terrorists, smugglers, human traffickers and others who know that the most popular piece of paper around the world is a U.S. $100 bill. In any country you can visit “a Benjamin” is the only universally accepted exchange for robbers, murderers and the like.
SOUTH DAKOTA lawmakers are making sense. Rather that impose “unisex” rest rooms on the state where less than 1 percent of the populous is transgender, a new law will require anyone who is confused “to use the restroom of your gender at birth.” Is that brilliant or what?
THE TENNESSEE STATE Board of Education admits the state’s inability to do proper background checks on teachers. As a matter of fact, a USA Today investigation gave Tennessee an “F” and the Nashville newspaper, the Tennessean, just ran some names through the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification and found 18 “bad apples.” Worse, NASDTEC’s database didn’t have 1,400 teachers guilty of misconduct that USA Today located and some are thought to be teaching in other states.
NANCY REAGAN WAS the best “First Lady” in my lifetime. What a marvelous woman. Maybe that’s because when Ronald Reagan said stuff like, “I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress,” my heart used to soar. Jackie Kennedy was very beautiful and I felt like Barbara Bush sure raised a dandy family. But there was something about Nancy that made you feel everything was going to turn out to be just fine.
“SUPER LICE” HAVE now been discovered in 30 states and the mutated strain of these ‘head itchers’ doesn’t respond well with over-the-counter lice shampoo. But you needn’t call Ghostbusters. There is a prescriptive shampoo readily available, but kids are warned not to share hats or hair brushes. The CDC tells us that kids between the ages of 3 and 11 or most susceptible and between 6 to 12 million outbreaks happen each year.
A BEAUTIFUL STORY is making the rounds about a bunch of fifth-graders at Mark Bills School in Illinois who give up one day of recess every week for a buddy. Classmate Rhemy Elsey is almost completely deaf so some of the guys in his class started the American Sign Language Club. Once a week they go into a classroom and start with the Pledge of Allegiance in hand signs. Then, with the help of the gleeful Rhemy and his interpreter, they are learning how to talk with each other. In the deaf culture, a deaf person has to come up with a unique sign as another person’s name. Rhemy has named all of his pals and, when they see him in the hall, they sign: “How are you today?” The kid is on cloud nine.
THE ‘BAD LITTLE JOHNNY’ who saw his teacher’s unattended phone, got it to open, and shared her naked pictures with his classmates in South Carolina may have cost the woman her job but last week the cops came to the school and shackled the juvenile. The unnamed minor has been charged with computer crime and voyeurism. Now parents are petitioning the school to take the teacher back, saying she was a victim. RULE ONE: Never, ever allow a picture to be taken of you naked. It will be face-up in the collection plate the very next Sunday.
THE LONGEST LEGS in the United States of Women belong to a 26-year-old model in Houston. From her hip to her bare foot is 49 inches. Lauren is six-feet-four from the top of her head to the floor. Can you imagine trying to shave those stems or how about buying blue jeans? The bigger question is how many people you think you know that have measured a leg?
PASTOR ANDY STANLEY, who leads the huge mega-church in Atlanta, North Point Community Church, has flipped his lid. During a sermon two weeks ago, he proclaimed, "When I hear adults say, 'Well I don't like a big church, I like about 200, I want to be able to know everybody,' I say, 'You are so stinking selfish. You care nothing about the next generation. All you care about is you and your five friends. You don't care about your kids...anybody else's kids.' You're like, 'What's up?' I'm saying if you don't go to a church large enough where you can have enough Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers to separate them so they can have small groups and grow up in the local church, you are a selfish adult. Get over it. Find yourself a big old church where your kids can connect with a bunch of people and grow up and love the local church." (Sure does sound like greed around my campfire.)
DURING A RECENT doctor’s visit, I was told that the only way I’ll ever have a smoking hot body is to be cremated.
royexum@aol.com