Buster’s new motto and all-purpose metaphor

Was in the emergency room again with Buster – because what is life if we don’t visit the ER every few months for fractures, suspected fractures, deeply embedded ticks and whatnot – this time because he’d slid into third base and somehow crashed into the other player. Both went down, with many moans and grabbing of knees.

Everyone is fine, just banged up.

But while we waited Buster and I spoke of many things, from school to girls, to his job, to John Paul the Great, to his brother’s serious romance. Back to girls, and to some concerns he has about a few classmates and his generation, in general. In the course of conversation he said, “you know, there is nothing you can learn that a slap across the face won’t teach you faster.”

Turns out, Buster had gotten his face slapped by a girl who completely misunderstood what he was saying. Chatting up an Asian student he’s had a crush on since 5th grade, she – at some point in the conversation – said, “yellow is beautiful!”

And Buster, thinking he could finally tell this girl that he thought she was the most gorgeous creature on the planet, said, “yes, like you!”

Apparently, upon hearing him say it, this tiny, demure little girl I see kneeling at church with the look of an angel on her face, belted him across the kisser.

She thought he was calling her “yellow” because she is Asian.

He just thought he was telling her she was beautiful.

It took several days to get this sorted out. She felt bad for smacking him. He felt bad for not being more clear. They both felt bad because when you have been friends for 5 years and suddenly hormones might be entering into things, no one is comfortable.

But the smack did him good. Buster learned a lesson about making himself clear, and about being sensitive to the possibility of insulting another, no matter how inadvertently. The smack taught her something, too, that sensitivity and over-sensitivity are different and that striking out at another often has the effect of rebounding on one.

But Buster has embraced the lesson as a metaphor for life, and I think he is on to something. When I remember the awe-struck expression on the face of Cardinal Ratzinger, near the conclusion of the funeral Mass of JPII, when the crowds began to make their feelings heard – when the staggering number of people began to cry out, “Sancto! John Paul the Great,” I believe the Cardinal – ALL of the Cardinals – received a metaphorical face-slap at that moment, a slap which told them that for all of their talking, all of the theories, all of the politicking, they’d better not lose faith with these people, that they’d better go into that conclave leaving their agendas behind, armed only with prayer and a sense of duty.

A mother I know, too demanding of her oldest son, didn’t hear from him in a while and succumbed to the terror that so many parents know so well, the “something bad has happened and he’s lying dead somewhere” one. She got herself so worked up, into such a wail of fear and also of repentence and remorse, “what if he is dead and I didn’t get the chance to tell him that it didn’t really MATTER to me if he didn’t make the Dean’s List! What if he didn’t know that I would still love him the same, even if he were digging ditches, somewhere!”

When he finally called, he got the full thrust of her pain and her regret as she worked herself into a hyperventilating howl of apologies and proclamations of love, in between her gasping, “you’re all right? You’re ok?”

His being out of touch for a few days was a slap in the face for mom. Perhaps they had had this conversation a thousand times, that she had expectations for him, that he was feeling too pressured by them, but nothing ever brought it all home for her as the thought that – somewhere, in all of her careful parenting – she had perhaps not been as clear to her son that she loved him madly and unconditionally, as she had meant to be.

And her son, who simply got too engrossed with school and life to realize that his phone battery was dead, got a slap, too – one that made him realize his mother is getting older and his grandparents are, too, and maybe he should be a little more accessible to them. He also got the other message, too, and began to worry less that he was on a career path only to please his mother, and so began to enjoy his studies once again. He learned that he was in school for himself, after all, and that all of his mother’s mother-ness was aimed at helping him, regardless of how annoying she’d been about it. She might have overdone the carping but he understood now, that it was all rooted in love.

She has backed off, and no longer constantly asks him about school and his classes. Consequently, his performance has risen. Three years of intensity came down to one face-slap of fear and regret, a slap which had the effect of bringing perspectives and feelings into crystal clarity, and everything changed.

Or, let us consider the 1990’s in America, a so-called of “peace,” which found American interests, or embassies, or naval vessels under sneak attack every 20 months or so, with accompanying loss of human life. The attacks went unanswered, time and time again, until some factions believed that America had become a weak horse, unwilling to defend itself. Confident in that supposition, yet another attack was launched, the most horrendous one, yet, targeting two cities and designed to kill tens of thousands.

A slap in the face for America. All the talk, all the mettings, all the press, all the spin, all the bombings to “send a message,” all the lip-biting came down to a hard smack that demanded a recognition the nation had previously been loathe to make, that we were at war, that we had been for many years, and that it was time – finally – to engage.

And when American engaged, and daisy cutters did what even the Soviet army could not do in Afghanistan, you could call that a slap in the face, too, a wake up call that things were going to be different.

And when two years and some months after the initial invasion of Iraq, the world watched purple-fingered Iraqi citizens take part in a democratic election, an election of large turnout, demonstrating with heart-stopping accuracy how deeply these folks wanted to be free, that was a smack in the face, too. In the months leading up to the election, the endless talking heads and the elitist press had determined that such elections were an impossibility, they anticipated rivers of blood, a staggering failure of massive proportions.

Instead – SMACK! – They got an “Arab spring” that will not abate, and suddenly even the New York Times, if you look deeply enough into the middle section of the paper, will admit that Iraq is going well, and that the entire middle east region is showing signs of hopeful promise.

“There is nothing you can learn that a slap in the face won’t teach you faster,” says Buster.

He keeps telling me he is going to be President of the United States, someday. In thirty years, if you see that as a campaign slogan, you’ll know…that’s my boy.