Fanagrams

Dear Sol Hurok,

I know nothing about you except that you are an impresario.  I really don’t know what an impresario is except to say, “It’s someone like Sol Hurok.”  The words Sol Hurok and impresario have been tattooed on my brain ever since they appeared on the 1976 MCAT test, an entrance exam for medical school.  I never think of one without the other.  That’s 42 years ago, which makes me think you must be dead.

I am at least a generation younger than you, but old enough to explore the deep mysteries of reminiscence.  When I first said “25 years ago” to describe a personal recollection, I marveled at the simple fact that I had memories that old.  Those 25 years have now blossomed to 60.  Odd vignettes pop up and I stop to puzzle out why my brain opted to store that random piece of data.

Sol Hurok/impresario

Back in the 1970s, the MCAT had a section called “general knowledge,” presumably to weed out the savants or other social misfits.  Perhaps a command of general knowledge would ensure that prospective medical students had some hope of developing a bedside manner, able to talk soothingly to patients about sports, culture or politics.

This was where I first met your acquaintance, Mr. Hurok, on a list of people I was supposed to match up with a profession.  Yours is the only name I recall.  I suppose I could Google you, but I have resisted.  I don’t need to know anything more about you.  Your name and occupation have served me well.

Sol Hurok/impresario

I confidently filled in the little bleb that matched you up with your profession.  Mr. Hurok, you helped me get into medical school and gave me the confidence to succeed. If I could pluck your name out of the vast unwitting lint trap of my brain, well then I could master the deliberate memorization of all the cranial nerves, the complex of little bones in the wrist and the dense wiring of the spinal cord.  However, I would like to point out my command of General Knowledge didn’t translate to a chatty bedside manner.  I specialized in Anatomic Pathology, where patients have lost the ability to talk.

Your name offered me another point of pride as a Midwesterner.  The word impresario had an international flair.  It sounded like the type of job only a New Yorker would have.  I went to a boarding school on the east coast for high school. My flashy classmates could pop home to New York for the weekend, talk about the energy of New York, that it was the only place to live.  I came from Chicago, stuck on campus.  After I graduated, New York friends would ask when I was coming to visit, as if everyone comes to New York.  There were never any offers to come to Chicago.

Since that little bleb on the MCAT, I felt I could hold my own with New Yorkers.  I knew something about their blessed city.  Anybody who knew you were an impresario could not possibly be a hick from the Midwest.

The General Knowledge section of the MCAT was deleted one year later, criticized as being culturally biased.   Well, of course it was. Don’t take offense, Mr. Hurok, but any test that requires students to know your name and profession favors the elite New York aristocracy.  I somehow managed to nail it, but my command of general knowledge was both my best and most questionable qualification for medical school.  I barely scraped by in the other categories.

Again, please don’t take offense, but your name has never come up since, and there have been many opportunities.  I read the New Yorker magazine and diligently do all the New York Times crossword puzzles, creating an international and multilingual trove of trivia.   “Sol” is a frequent crossword word, but usually clued with a reference to the musical scale, i.e. do, re, me, fa sol, la, ti, do.   I suppose inclusion in the MCAT reflects your cultural legitimacy, but if your name shows up in a New York Times puzzle, well that’s something to be celebrated.   I will keep my eyes open for you.

Sincerely,

Liza Blue

ps: I succumbed to temptation and googled you.  Condolences on your death in 1974.  As a manager and concert promoter, you helped organize one of the first salvos in the Civil Rights movement.  In 1939 Marian Anderson sang “My Country Tis of Thee” in front of the Lincoln Memorial.  Bravo!  I’m sorry that I relegated your name to mere trivia.  You deserve better.

pps:  Mere days after I wrote this, I spotted this clue in the New York Times crossword. “He really gets the show on the road.”  Boom! There it was:  Impresario.  My heart broke at this lost opportunity to bring me full circle.  The clue should had read: Sol Hurok.

Sol Hurok/Impresario

A mother strikes a blow in solidarity for all the discontented snack moms out there!

Dear McNamara Children,

This is a belated apology.  I have been meaning to set things straight, but the right moment never materialized, and now it has been over 50 years.  However, my guilt came flooding back as I watched the recent Ken Burn documentary on the Vietnam War.  Night after night I saw your father, with his slicked back hair, ramrod straight part and rimless glasses.  He was an intimidating figure as Secretary of Defense, standing in front of a map of Vietnam with the menacing China and Russia seeping down from above.

You must understand that I was watching him at the same time our neighbors were building a bomb shelter in their basement and we were having bomb drills at school.  At the sound of the alarm we all rushed to crouch beneath our desks with our hands on top of our heads.  But even at age 12, I knew this was a useless exercise.  That flimsy desk could never protect me from an atom bomb.  I counted on your father to save me.

And then I saw him in the flesh.  Perhaps you remember a family spring break ski vacation in Utah in 1964.  My family was there too.  Your father brought an air of celebrity to the entire resort and everyone treated your family with the utmost deference.  My ski school instructor scuttled us to the side of the slope as your father passed.  I have a distinct memory of his smiling face as he whizzed by in baggy ski pants, his greased down hair totally unperturbed by the blowing wind.  I looked at him and thought, “How can this man be taking a vacation.  How could he be smiling?  Isn’t the Communist threat a serious business?  Who’s manning his post back in Washington?

One day I arrived at the lift line at the same time as your father.  Then he did the unthinkable.  He cut in line.  In my suburban grade school,  my only exposure to social justice was simple:  No cuts.  It was inviolate.  Line cutters were bullies, the worst sort of kids, deserving universal scorn.  I didn’t care whether your father was the only thing between and me and the Commie horde, your father cut in line.  It was unforgiveable.

I fumed.  At lunch I saw my opportunity for retribution.  I couldn’t get back at the mighty McNamara, but you kids were in my ski school and emerged as surrogate targets.  I looked at the youngest and blurted out the meanest thing I could think of.  “You know, there is no such thing as Santa Claus.  I mean it.  He isn’t real. Your parents are lying to you.”  I remember mouths hanging open, and a little drop of milk hanging from one of your lips as you sat in stunned silence.

Yes, it was me.  I was the one who punctured the greatest hoax of childhood, drained the magic out of Christmas.

I immediately felt remorse.  I had turned into a vindictive bully, worse than a line-cutter.  Any regrets quickly turned to abject fear.  What would your father do to me if you told him about my indiscretion?  Robert McNamara, the man who held the fate of nations, who sent young men off to remote rice paddies, there was probably nothing he couldn’t do to me.  Apologizing and admitting my guilt would only exacerbate the situation.  I wanted to slink away and hide forever.

Now I want to make amends.  So here it is.

I am very sorry for my unwarranted cruelty.  I am ashamed that I turned into the person I did not want to be. 

Wait a minute, now I am rethinking this.  Maybe I did you a favor.  My Santa Claus reveal was perhaps your introduction to the fine art of the dissembling and deception of adults.  Maybe it prompted a critical and questioning mind that has served you well over the years. And perhaps you began to understand the tyranny of the lie, that once established it is so difficult undo.  Armed with this knowledge, perhaps you were better able to understand the agony of your father as he absorbed the guilt of Vietnam.

Okay, who am I kidding here? Forget it, I’m overstepping.  Just please accept my apology.

Sincerely,

Liza Blue