WWTHD
I am not a hotbed of good mental health.
And while genetics has a lot to do with this, I believe culture is at least partly responsible. You know; the old nature versus nurture debate.
When I was roughly ten years old a bombshell exploded in my life; Sean Connery as James Bond. I was immature, impressionable and exceedingly naïve (and yes, I haven’t changed much since) when the first Bond movie, DR. NO, premiered. And basically that was it for me. From that point forward I patterned my self image after Sean Connery/James Bond. A mental template formed in my mind and it was this: a real man smoked cigarettes, drank hard liquor, looked tough and seduced big-breasted women.
Believe me; I am not advocating this as a positive or realistic role model.
For the next three decades this was the operating manual for my psyche. Now, I’m not going to go into a lot of exploration about how well this model did or did not work for me, but by my forties, it had stopped working entirely.
Smoking? In our society, are you kidding me?
Drinking? Let’s not go there.
Seducing women? Uh, not if you want to have any meaningful relationship with a real, live adult woman.
Looking tough? Yeah, all it got me was a permanent crease in my forehead and crows feet around my eyes.
And so I had to find a new role model. And through no fault of my own I stumbled upon an icon who fit my new reality; Tom Hanks. Specifically Tom Hanks as Capt. Miller in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and as Capt. Jim Lovell in APOLLO 13.
Tom Hanks never plays a sociopathic, violent, chain-smoking, alcohol swilling womanizer, so this was a plus for me from the get go. Usually he is an everyman, a role model for my constantly evolving fantasy life that I could easily picture myself – well, my better self – as.
In the former movie Tom is part of the D Day invasion who then takes his small squad of squabbling diverse Americana on a dangerous mission – namely, to save Matt Damon. And I think we can all agree that saving Matt Damon is a good thing. Tom goes about this difficult task with a level-headed reasonableness that is truly heroic. His men fight among themselves – they are Americans after all – and encounter nasty Germans and snipers and what all, but through Tom’s unfailingly stoic and noble example they soldier on until they finally save Matt Damon while stopping the German army from taking the most important bridgehead in the entire history of World War II. Yeah, sure, Tom dies in the end, but this is war after all.
But that’s nothing compared to Tom’s pure-American can-do-itness and composure he shows while on the space ship Apollo 13. This NASA trip is essentially the mother of all clusterfucks. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong. And not only that, but Tom has to deal with a whiny Tom Paxton, who is slowly dying of pleurisy and an inept Kevin Bacon, who has totally honked up their re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. But Tom doesn’t panic, he just stays even-keeled and likeable and leaderly and saves the lives of all while guiding this totally FUBAR mission back to planet earth.
And here is the other thing about Tom Hanks. Unlike Sean Connery, Tom is not an imposing physical specimen. I mean, I’m probably even taller and brawnier than Tom. No, he is your basic average Joe who rises above daunting situations not by force, but by relying on his innate decency and good old American know-how.
At this point you are probably asking yourself; “Okay Jeff, we get how an insecure, immature guy like you inappropriately morphed himself into some quasi-James Bond and subsequently trod the road of wrack and ruin, but how would modeling Tom Hanks ever work in your real life?”
I’m glad you asked, because I have a perfect example.
In this beautiful Indian summer we are experiencing I had the bright idea of taking my year old toddler, Vivienne, and our dog, the inimitable Kebu, to the beach.
This seemed like a good idea at the time.
So I trundled them all into the Highlander, drove out to the coast through our magnificent Sonoma county landscape; rolling fields of green, sheep grazing bucolically, high arching Redwoods, the whole beautiful Northern California scene. It was positively idyllic.
Until we actually arrived at the beach and had the full beach-baby experience. And then my daughter proceeded to eat sand, sea weed, dog poop, and any other unnamable matter she could lay her hands on; including a dead, rotting seal.
I was screeching, “No, no, oh God, no!” like a demented Banshee as she proceeded to sample one toxic substance after another.
It was pure hell.
But at least the dog had a good time; chasing seagulls, wading in the surf and romping with other dogs.
After an interminable time of, oh, say, 2 hours, I had had enough; bundled the kid up, leashed the dog and got back in the car for the drive home. I was never so exhausted in my life – you really can’t believe how much energy you expend chasing a toddler through hot sand while constantly lunging to intercept forbidden articles from entering her mouth.
Once home I changed her poopy diaper, bathed her and then hopped in the shower myself while I let her crawl around our bedroom in a fresh diaper. I could hear her babbling happily as I dried off post-shower and I made the mistake of thinking to myself; “See, self, that wasn’t so bad. Yeah, it was tough at the beach, but here you are now and all is well; the baby’s singing in her Chinese Opera voice, the dog is lying majestically upon our bed, safe from the terrors of the toddler, and you are showered, refreshed and a really competent dad.”
And with that self satisfied mood I existed the bathroom and stood transfixed, naked, and absolutely mortified to find that my sweet daughter had yanked off her diaper, had a bout of truly copious diarrhea – no doubt caused by all the noxious elements she had consumed at the shore – and now was sitting happily amid the reeking mess and gleefully eating her own excrement.
And upon sight of her dear old dad she extended her foul hand towards me and with a beaming brown smile squealed in evil merriment, as if to say; “Here, Dad, you should really try some of this, it is super good!”
At this point two thoughts simultaneously entered my mind. Thought one; it is probably not a good thing for a child to eat fecal matter. Thought two; if my wife comes home from work to see this scene, I will be subjected to my third divorce.
This is what writers frequently call a ‘sobering moment’.
And that is when I thought; What Would Tom Hanks Do (WWTHD)?
Clearly, the Sean Connery/James Bond model was not going to help me at all in my current circumstances. But Tom had faced a lot worse in outer space; at least I didn’t have an incompetent Kevin Bacon to coach through re-entry. I just had to get my shit be-smeared baby and her ungodly mess cleaned up before the wife got home.
I glanced at the clock; I had one hour before my space capsule entered the atmosphere and I burned to a cinder. I could do this, I just had stay level headed, not lose my cool, just think like tom Hanks/Jim Lovell and deal with the situation, as awful as it was.
I didn’t yell at the baby; Tom Hanks never yells at babies. I calmly picked her up, while cooing at her in a phony happy voice, deposited her in the tub and hosed her down. Once I had her cleaned up, I dressed her and placed her out of harm’s way in her playpen.
I now had 45 minutes before re-entry and certain death.
Still naked, I hustled down to the kitchen and from under the sink grabbed every solution and implement that might assist the cleanup effort in the bedroom. I stood pondering a not inconsiderable brown stain while the Akita looked on from our bed with an expression of disdain.
“You’re not being a lot of help,” I told the dog.
Then I set to work, spraying rug cleaner on the offending stain, scrubbing and sweating, working like a Trojan. I didn’t panic, but worked methodically; a naked man in his mid 50’s, on his hands and knees, cleaning crap from his cream-colored carpet and trying to maintain a Tom Hanks-like sense of Wah.
With 5 minutes to spare I arose, dressed, deposited the horribly stained cleaning cloths at the bottom of our trash barrel, replaced all the cleaners under the sink and surveyed what I had wrought. There was a stain, yes, but I could deal with that.
Knowing my ever-observant wife would note the stain; I looked at the dog and said, “Bad Kebu.”
The wife entered our happy abode to find me calmly doing a crossword puzzle on the couch, the baby sucking happily on a bottle at my feet and all seemingly placid. When she asked about our day I answered we had enjoyed a swell day at the beach, basking in the great weather; not a word about our child eating dead seals.
She came back down the stairs after changing out of her work clothes and said, “There’s a brown stain on our carpet.”
In my most measured, Tom Hanks voice, I answered; “Yeah, Kebu must have drank a little too much salt water at the beach and she had a little diarrhea while Viv and I were in the shower.”
My entire manner said it was no big thing; I had dealt with it calmly and efficiently. Just another minor obstacle in the day of the Dirty Diaper Dad, aka Tom Hanks.
“Oh, poor Kebu,” said the wife. “I hope she’s okay.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I put her out on the deck just to be safe, but she hasn’t been sick since then.”
And I nodded sagely, like the super-competent and level headed Tom Hanks dad that I am, and went back to my crossword puzzle while my wife got down on the floor to play with our excrement-eating child.
Houston, I thought, we have a successful re-entry.