All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (5 page)

B
ALLOON
L
AUNCH

T
HE FOURTH DAY OF THE MONTH
of June 1783—more than two hundred years ago. The market square of the French village of Annonay, not far from Paris. On a raised platform, a smoky bonfire fed by wet straw and old wool rags. Tethered above, straining at its lines, a huge taffeta bag—a balloon
—
thirty-three feet in diameter.

In the presence of a “respectable assembly and a great many other people,” and accompanied by great cheering, the
machine de l’aerostat
was cut from its moorings and set free to rise majestically into the noontide sky. Six thousand feet into the air it went, and came to earth several miles away in a field, where it was attacked by pitchfork-waving peasants and torn to pieces as an instrument of evil. The first public ascent of a balloon, the first step in the history of human flight.

Old Ben Franklin was there, in France as the agent of the new American states. He of the key and the kite and the lightning and the bifocals and the printing press. When a bystander asked what possible good this balloon
thing could be, Franklin made the memorable retort:
“Eh, a quoi bon l’enfant qui vient de naître?”
(“What good is a newborn baby?”) A man of such curiosity and imagination could provide an answer to his own question, and in his journal he wrote: “This balloon will open the skies to mankind.” The peasants, too, were not far from wrong. It was also a harbinger of great evil for Annonay, which would one day be leveled by bombs falling from the sky. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Some months before that June day, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier sat one evening staring into his fireplace, watching sparks and smoke rise up the chimney from the evening fire. His imagination rose with the smoke. If smoke floated into the sky, why not capture it and put it in a bag and see if the bag would rise, perhaps carrying something or someone with it?

In his mid-forties, the son of a prosperous paper maker, a believer in the great church that was Science in the eighteenth century, a brilliant and impatient man with time on his hands was Monsieur Montgolfier. And so, with his younger, more methodical brother, Etienne, and the resources of their father’s factory, he set to work. With paper bags, then silken ones, and finally taffeta coated with resins. And
voila!
came a day when from the gardens at Versailles a balloon carrying a sheep, a rooster, and a duck went aloft. All survived, proving that there were no poisonous gases in the sky, as some had feared.

The most enthusiastic supporter of the brothers Montgolfier was a young chemist, Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier. He didn’t want to make balloons; he wanted to go up in one. The Montgolfiers’ interest was in scientific experimentation. They were older, wiser groundlings. Pilatre wanted to fly. He was full of the adventure of youth. And so, that fall, November 21, 1783, Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier got his wish. In the garden of the royal palace at La Muette, in the Bois de Boulogne, at 1:54
P.M.
, in a magnificent balloon seven stories high, painted with signs of the zodiac and the king’s monogram. Up, up, and away he went—higher than treetops and church steeples—coming down beyond the Seine, five miles away.

Joseph-Michel and Etienne Montgolfier lived long and productive scientific lives. They died in their beds, safe on the ground. Two years after his historic flight, trying to cross the English Channel west to east in a balloon, the young Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier plummeted from the sky in flames to his death. But his great-great grandson was later to become one of the first airplane pilots in France.

Well, what’s all this about, anyway? It’s about the power (and the price) of imagination. “Imagination is more important than information.” Einstein said that, and he should know.

It’s also a story about how people of imagination stand on one another’s shoulders. From the ground to the balloon to the man in the balloon to the man on the moon. Yes. Some of us are ground crew—holding lines, building fires, dreaming dreams, letting go, and watching the upward flight. Others of us are bound for the sky and the far edges of things. That’s in the story, too.

These things come to mind at the time of year when children graduate to the next stage of things. From high school, from college, from the nest of the parent. What shall we give them on these occasions? Imagination, a shove out and up, a blessing.

“Come over here,” we say. “To the edge,” we say. “Let us show you something,” we say. “We are afraid,” they say. “It’s very exciting,” they say. “Come to the edge,” we say. “Use your imagination.”

And they come. And they look. And we push. And they fly. We to stay and die in our beds. They to go and to die howsoever, yet inspiring those who come after them to find their own edge. And fly.

These things come to mind, too, in the middle years of my own life. I, too, intend to live a long and useful life, and die safe in my bed on the ground. But the anniversary of that little event in the village of Annonay just happens to be my birthday. And on its bicentennial I went up in a balloon, from a field near the small Skagit Valley village of La Conner. Up, up, and away.

It’s
never
too late to fly!

L
AUNDRY

F
OR A LONG TIME
I was in charge of the laundry at our house. I liked my work. In an odd way it gave me a feeling of involvement with the rest of the family. It also gave me time alone in the back room, without the rest of the family, which was also nice, sometimes.

I like sorting the clothes—lights, darks, and in-betweens. I like setting the dials—hot, cold, rinse, time, and heat. These are choices I can understand and make with decisive skill. I still haven’t figured out the new stereo, but washers and dryers I can handle. The bell dings—you pull out the warm, fluffy clothes, take them to the dining-room table, sort and fold them into neat piles. I especially like it when there’s lots of static electricity and you can hang socks all over your body and they will stick there.

When I’m finished, I have a sense of accomplishment. A sense of competence. I am good at doing the laundry. At
least
that. And it’s a religious experience, you know. Water, earth, fire—polarities of wet and dry, hot and cold, dirty and clean. The great cycles—round and round—beginning and end—Alpha and Omega, amen. I am in touch with the GREAT SOMETHING-OR-OTHER. For a moment, at least, life is tidy and has meaning. But then, again . . .

The washing machine died last week. Guess I overloaded it with towels. And the load got all lumped up on one side during the spin cycle. So it did this incredible herky-jerky lurching dance across the floor and blew itself up. I thought it was coming for me. One minute it was a living thing in the throes of a seizure, and the next minute a cold white box full of partially digested towels with froth around its mouth, because I guess I must have fed it too much soap, too. Five minutes later the dryer expired. Like a couple of elderly folks in a nursing home who follow one another quickly in death, so closely are they entwined.

It was Saturday afternoon, and all the towels in the house were wet, and all my shorts and socks were wet, and now what? Knowing full well that if you want one of those repair guys you have to stay home for thirty-six hours straight and have your banker standing by with a certified check or else they won’t set foot on your property, and I haven’t got time for that. So it’s the laundromat over at the mall.

Now I haven’t spent a Saturday night in the laundromat since I was in college. What you miss by not going to laundromats anymore are things like seeing other people’s clothes and overhearing conversations you’d never hear anywhere else. I watched an old lady sort out a lot of sexy black underwear and wondered if it was hers or not. And heard a college kid explain to a friend how to get puke off a suede jacket.

Sitting there waiting, I contemplated the detergent box. I use Cheer. I like the idea of a happy wash. Sitting there late at night, leaning against the dryer for warmth, eating a little cheese and crackers and drinking a little white wine out of the thermos
(I came prepared),
I got to brooding about the meaning of life and started reading the stuff on the Cheer box. Amazing. It contains ingredients to lift dirt from clothes (anionic surfactants) and soften water (complex sodium phosphates). Also, agents to protect washer parts (sodium silicate) and improve processing (sodium sulfate), small quantities of stuff to reduce wrinkling and prevent fabric yellowing, plus whiteners, colorant, and perfume. No kidding. All this for less than a nickel an ounce. It’s biodegradable and works best in cold water—ecologically sound. A miracle in a box.

Sitting there watching the laundry go around in the dryer, I thought about the round world and hygiene. We’ve made a lot of progress, you know. We used to think that disease was an act of God. Then we figured out it was a product of human ignorance, so we’ve been cleaning up our act—literally—ever since. We’ve been getting the excrement off our hands and clothes and bodies and food and houses.

If only the scientific experts could come up with something to get it out of our minds. One cup of fixit frizzle that will lift the dirt from our lives, soften our hardness, protect our inner parts, improve our processing, reduce our yellowing and wrinkling, improve our natural color, and make us sweet and good.

Don’t try Cheer, by the way. I tasted it. It’s awful.
(But my tongue is clean now.)

In reconsidering the Kindergarten book I was tempted to leave this story out. I don’t do the laundry very much anymore. But sometimes I do—and for the same rea-son other people weed a garden or clean out a kitchen drawer. Doing a straightforward, clear-cut task that has a beginning and an end balances out the complexity-without-end that often vexes the rest of my life. Sacred simplicity.

And yes, I still stick things to my body with electricity. Poly-pro really works well. I once got everything in the dryer to cling to me long enough for me to walk through the kitchen and demonstrate my skill. It made my grandchildren laugh, which was the idea.

As to soap, I admit I’ve tried Bold, Power, Tide, True Grit, and Arm & Hammer—just because I like the notion of having muscle in my washing powder, and because I am a sucker for colorful packaging. Any old product that says “NEW AND IMPROVED” on it calls out to me.

I, too, hope to be New and Improved someday.

M
EDICINE
C
ABINETS

I
WAS JUST WONDERING.
Did you ever go to somebody’s house for dinner or a party or something and then use the family bathroom? And while you were in there, did you ever take a look in the medicine cabinet? Just to kind of compare notes, you know? Didn’t you ever—just look around—a little?

I have a friend who does it all the time. He claims he is doing research for a Ph.D. in sociology. He says lots of other people snoop in medicine cabinets, too. And they aren’t working on a Ph.D. in sociology. It’s not something people talk about much—because you think you might be the only one who is doing it, and you don’t want people to think you’re strange, right?

My friend says if you want to know the truth about people, the bathroom is the place to go. All you have to do is look in the drawers and shelves and cabinets. And take a look at the robes and pajamas and nightgowns hanging on the hook behind the door. You’ll get the picture. He says all their habits and hopes and dreams and sorrows, illnesses and hang-ups, and even their sex life—all stand revealed in that one small room.

He says most people are secret slobs. He says the deepest mysteries of the race are tucked into the nooks and crannies of the bathroom, where we go to be alone, to confront ourselves in the mirror, to comb and curry and scrape and preen our hides, to coax our aging and ailing bodies into one more day, to clean ourselves and relieve ourselves, to paint and deodorize our surfaces, to meditate and consult our oracle and attempt to improve our lot.

He says it’s all there. In cans and bottles and tubes and boxes and vials. Potions and oils and unguents and sprays and tools and lotions and perfumes and appliances and soaps and pastes and pills and creams and pads and powders and medicines and devices beyond description—some electric and some not. The wonders of the ages.

He says he finds most bathrooms are about the same, and it gives him a sense of the wondrous unity of the human race.

I don’t intend to start an epidemic of spelunking in people’s bathrooms. But I did just go in and take a look in my own. I get the picture. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. There I am.

Go take a look. In your own Temple of Reality.

And from now on, please go to the bathroom at home before you visit me.

My bathroom is closed to the public.