I ran through the hallways of Valley Villas this morning, sportively yodeling: "Freedonia's going to war!"
This, of course, is a hallowed reference familiar to all Marx Brothers aficionados, from their greatest film -- DUCK SOUP.
My elderly neighbors, barely out of their Temazepam-induced cocoons, timidly opened their doors a crack to see what that madman Torkildson was up to now, and I blew kisses to them as I skipped past. My euphoria was induced by a paragraph in the venerable New York Times this morning, thus:
Iran shot down a United States surveillance drone early Thursday, both nations said, but they differed on the crucial issue of whether the aircraft had violated Iranian airspace, in the latest escalation of tensions that have raised fears of war between the two countries.
At last something to stir up an old man's curdled blood! I could get out my marshals baton and strategize from my armchair. Unfortunately my baton was not where I last remembered putting it, in my sock drawer, so I had to make do with a capless Bic pen. Still and all the same, it's exciting to think of Uncle Sam squaring off against those lugs in Tehran. We'll beat the sirwals off 'em.
The reason for my unseemly glee at the prospect of destruction and bloodshed is simple -- I had some of the best times of my childhood during the Cuban Missile Crisis back in 1962, when America and Russia rattled sabers over Castro's megalomania.
The whole thing began in October of that year, when President Kennedy got on TV to announce the gravity of the situation. My parents immediately assumed the worst -- a habit they had cultivated during the Great Depression and never saw any reason to give up.
"I told you to have a fallout shelter put in the backyard" my mother said bitterly to the old man. "Now we'll all die, roasted to death by atom bombs!"
"I knew that Irish kid would mess things up for us" dad replied hoarsely. "We're as good as dead right now."
You might think that such an attitude on my parent's part would affect me adversely, but little boys do not scare as quickly as they smell opportunities to run amok -- which was what I was sensing right then.
And I was right. For the next few days, until Kennedy was able to assure the American public that old Khrushchev had blinked first, discipline and schedules went completely by the board in the Torkildson household -- and beyond.
Nobody woke me up for school; fresh underwear was waived for the duration; and I was allowed for the first and only time in my young life to make my own breakfast. Mom was too sunk in despairing gloom to supervise my victualing, so I stirred enough sugar into my corn flakes to jolt a golem.
Dad refused to go in and draw beers for his parched and doomed customers at Aarone's Bar & Grill. He planted himself in an easy chair in the living room, bingeing on Planter's Peanuts and Baby Ruth bars -- and letting me dip my mitt into his stockpile of snacks whenever I wanted.
Things were coming unglued at school, too. Instead of the dreary study of cursive writing that had blasted my hours as a third grade scholar, we suddenly began an endless series of entertaining acrobatics that had us dropping to the floor and rolling under our desks. It was better than a game of tag. At one point a boxy Magnavox was wheeled into our classroom so we could watch, in Miss Grimstead's portentous phrase, 'history unfolding before your eyes.' This from the same woman who had once contemptuously referred to television as a 'boob tube.' Heady stuff for a nine-year-old, yessiree Bob!
A topsy turvy atmosphere prevailed among my friends in the neighborhood. School night curfews were forgotten, as parents gathered in anxious knots on front lawns and porches as weather permitted, chain-smoking and whispering the latest tittle-tattle about the likelihood of Minneapolis being on Moscow's Hit List. I regaled my pals with gruesome tales of what happens to a human being when they become irradiated with neutronium rays -- turning a glowing green and walking around stiff-legged, grimacing as they uproot trees and pull the heads off pigeons. My gullible friends glanced uneasily at each other, silently speculating about which of them would become the neutronium monsters and which would become the victims of neutronium monsters.
I was having a high old time of it. The end of the world seemed like the start of a new life for me. A much better one.
But my hopes for a premature and permanent emancipation came to nothing. In November of that year Washington and Moscow came to their senses and averted nuclear insanity. I was immediately shackled with all the arbitrary rules and burdens I thought to escape. In my case, the Bastille had not been stormed and pulled down.
So I couldn't help thrilling to the strident noises coming out of Washington and Tehran today -- reminding me so poignantly of a time long ago when I ran madly with the Lord of Misrule.
And of course there's nothing really to be worried about this time around, is there? We've got a totally competent administration in Washington to deal with those crazy mullahs. I plan on sleeping like a Duncan top tonight -- with the help of a Temazepam capsule or two.
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Addendum: A strange bit of hocus-pocus has occurred with the above quoted paragraph from the New York Times. Between the time I started writing this reminiscence to the time I posted it today -- about 3 hours, from 10:30 am to 1:30 pm (MST) -- the entire article, under the headline "Iran Shoots Down American Reconnaissance Drone as Tensions Continue to Increase," has disappeared from the online edition of the paper. Instead, it can now be found at outsidethebeltway.com -- a website with no obvious ties to the New York Times. The author is listed as Doug Mataconis. I've tweeted him about this conundrum, and am awaiting his reply. I don't know who to ask about this at the NYT, but I'll find someone there to ask as well.
