All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (9 page)

T
HE
N
AMES OF
T
HINGS

A
NYBODY SEEN A
N
AKED
B
ROOMRAPE,
a Bastard Toad-flax, a Lesser Dirty Socks, or a Crouching Locoweed? These items are listed in various field guides to the wildflowers of North America. I am not making up these names. I can show you the photographs, too. Trying to mitigate my ignorance and to stop asking “What’s that?” of anybody I go hiking with, I’ve been working my way through the field guides and stumbling over these wiggy labels. My suspicions are aroused. Do these flowers with the bizarre names really exist, or is there some conspiracy among botanists to pull the public’s leg?

If the plants are really out there, then I’d give a prize to meet the yahoos responsible for sticking such miserable names on nature’s blooming flora. How could you look at a flowering plant and say, “Let’s call that sucker a Naked Broomrape”? Especially when the purported flower has a pale violet trumpet shape with a dab of purest yellow in the center. You’ve got to be in a bad mood to do that.

Worse, I want to get a look at the crab who had the peevish gall to say, “Well, that looks like a Bastard Toad-flax to me.” The actual plant is small, the complex flowers pale ivory, and the leaves olive green. Come on.

And someone must have had a bad day in the bush when they declared, “See that—I say that sorry sonofabitch deserves to be called a Crouching Locoweed.” Referring to a plant with slender leaves, bearing a tall flower with multiple silvery-white petals.

And as for “Dirty Socks”—a pinkish flower with touches of purple in the middle—I’d like to see the socks of the one who did the christening. I’ve seen ugly and unlaundered socks on some hikers, but I wouldn’t stick the name on a plant.

All I can figure is that some plant mavens have a sour sense of respect for the subjects of their vocation. Field guides are full of mean-spirited adjectives—the “lowly” this, the “false” that, the “dwarf” whatnot and the “pygmy” something else. Wonder what they name their dogs and cats and children?

And I’d sure like to know what was going on in the mind of the guy who named a small yellow sunflower the “Nipple Seed.” I’d like to meet his girlfriend, too. If he ever had one.

So who cares, really? There are lots better things to get stirred up about, aren’t there? I suppose political correctness in naming wildflowers is not a bandwagon with much steam behind it, though dumber matters do get a lot of press.

But I do wonder what would happen if we were to wipe the slate clean of all the names for things around us and start over. If our generation were responsible for labeling the environment, would we do any better, be any kinder to our plant friends? Probably not. Can you imagine the meetings—the congressional hearings?

Besides, the experts tell us that the evolution of living things continues at such a rate that plants and animals and insects come into and go out of existence faster than human beings can catalog them. The number of living things we have identified and named is far outnumbered by those we don’t even know about. Most of what we have named is dead and gone, actually. There may have been a Naked Broomrape once, but it may be extinct by now. Something else will take its place. And we get to name that one. Better job next time.

And sometimes we actually do a better job. My favorites from the field guides are the Rosy Pussytoes, the Enchanter’s Nightshade, and the Chocolate Lily. Progress.

I wonder what flowers would call us? Creeping Fat Farm Fungus? Deadly Sucker Bush? Night-Screaming Doodlebugs? Weeping Wooky Weeds?

Almost every living species has been here far longer than ours—the fossil evidence is clear. And many will likely be here long after we’ve wandered off into the doomsday dustbin ourselves, still sticking names on things as we went. Scientists tell us the Earth has been around 4.5 billion years and has another 5.7 billion to go.

What does a flower care about what label we apply in passing?

The labels only stick to us.

W
ATER

“W
HAT KIND OF WATER WILL YOU HAVE?”
A question asked by my hostess at a dinner party. She offered fizzy or flat, French or Italian, mountain glacial or deep artesian. I could also choose natural or flavored, iced or room temperature, with lime wedge or lemon twist.

Actually, I was surprised at the somewhat limited choices offered by my hostess. Our corner grocery store alone carries thirty-one brands of bottled water—from sources in France, Canada, Wales, Germany, Italy, and Norway, as well as the USA. Even the island of Fiji. The water comes from ancient springs, high mountain streams, and mineralized deposits. Three colors of bottles—clear, sea green, and deep blue—and all with elegant labeling.

This so-called “designer water” has taken its fair share of abuse for appearing to be a pretentious extravagance. But the same criticism could be made of the marketing of beer, wine, and hard liquor. Or even films and novels and music. The appeal is to the imagination—to the romantic side of human nature.

I like fancy water.

I’m delighted to drink a glass of liquid that began as snow in the French Alps hundreds of years before I was born, then became ice in a glacier, melted into deep underground springs, and finally was bottled and hauled all the way across sea and land to sit available on my grocer’s shelf.

For a very small price, I can have a reflective reverie in a glass—an ordinary glass that reveals the wonders of nature, the inventiveness of the industrial revolution and the pleasures of a poetic view of life.

Moreover, this liquid is good for me. It is me, as a matter of fact—90 percent of my body is water. I’m please to have my essential juices get an occasional transfusion of fanciful pizzazz.

There is a high end of the water market as yet untouched: rare and historic water. I’m thinking beyond natural purity—of water that has value because of its age or its association with special events or because there simply is no more of it ever to be had. This is the fine-wine division of bottled water.

A few examples: Several years ago, a former student brought me a liter of water all the way from the spring at Delphi in Greece—a source from which the noble Greeks of the fourth century drank when they went to consult the oracles of fate. I drink a little on April Fool’s Day.

One Christmas my wife gave me a bottle of water from the creek we hike alongside in summer. She had carefully filtered the water and filled the bottle on my birthday. I’ve great memories of fine days in that valley. We drank a toast with the water during our Christmas dinner—a toast to past happiness and present joy.

I know a man who saved a bottle of Colorado River water from the days when the river ran free—before the Glen Canyon Dam turned it into a silty lake. That bottle sits on a shelf in his office in a place of honor—marking both his younger days and the time of an American West that’s gone forever. Sometimes he smiles when he sees it. Sometimes it brings tears to his eyes.

Once I participated in a christening ceremony that used baptismal water that had been collected from the rain dripping off the fly of a tent during the camping weekend when the couple conceived their first child.

And I attended a first anniversary dinner celebration of an April wedding that had been turned into a magical occasion by an unexpected snowfall. The bride’s father had collected the melting snow and now brought the bottle of water as an anniversary gift. Priceless.

There’s no commercial value in water of this kind. There are two secret ingredients, which can’t be manufactured or bottled: imagination and memory. Such vintage refreshment is always a product of home brewing. The liquid is flavored by experience and given character by the creative effort it takes to fill the wine cellar of the heart.

Let the glasses be filled and lifted—Cheers!

T
HIRD
A
ID

M
Y WIFE HAS TRIED
for some time to get me to read news stories about people who live long and healthy lives. She’s a doctor. And a semi-vegetarian. She’s excited about studies of isolated groups of people who dwell twelve thousand feet up in the Andes or way out in the Russian boondocks. They eat chickpeas and gravel, and walk six miles a day to get water. Shriveled up old prunish people whose life secret seems to be that they never change clothes or take baths. Not my idea of a long and happy life. They look ugly and unhappy and bored. I don’t want to be one of them. Or married to anybody like them, either.

I think long life is as overrated as natural childbirth. I’ll pass on both of them. Most of the really old people I’ve known are a royal pain in the butt. Oh, sure, tell me about your sainted mother or your wonderful great-grandfather and how they lived to be 150 years old. I said, “most.”

My personal plan is called Third Aid.

Not First Aid. That’s what you do in immediate crises. If you cut yourself, you spend a half hour looking all over the house for a Band-Aid and settle for Scotch tape.

Second Aid is calling the doctor because you’ve got the flu. By the time you actually get in for a checkup, the flu is gone. While you’ve been waiting, you’ve got some extra sleep, been patted on the head, taken some aspirin, and eaten some chicken soup. You’re cured.

Third Aid is my version of preventive medicine—so you don’t need as much First and Second Aid. I read through my wife’s medical-school textbooks. And I noticed that in just about every crisis the drill was the same: have the patient lie down in a comfortable place, make sure the patient can breathe, make sure the patient isn’t bleeding, and is kept warm and dry. I think this is called the ABC checkup—for Airway, Blood, and Comfort or something like that.

In addition to this ABC business, I read about the Placebo Effect. That’s where no matter what you do, anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of what gets wrong with you heals itself if you just give it time and think good thoughts. It’s kind of like staying amused while your body does its thing. See, doctors can really do something with only about 15 percent of what ails you. Your body does the rest. Or else you die.

If you want to practice Third Aid, what do you do?

First, realize
your body makes house calls
—
so does your brain
. This is crucial.

Every once in awhile, when you’re not sick, lie down and examine yourself.

Ask yourself three questions: Am I breathing? Am I bleeding? And am I comfy? If your answers are Yes, No, and Yes, you’re going to live a while longer. Then ask: Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Is there anything in the house to eat?

If yes, eat and drink. If not, don’t.

This is important: If you know something isn’t necessary or isn’t good for you, don’t get up and do it. If you do it anyhow, don’t complain about it, just lie down and shut up and wait. It’s elemental:
When in doubt, get down
. Take a nap.

Try reading a human body manual—you’d do as much for your car, why not your body? I read that 90 percent of doctors’ visits depend on their giving attention and getting our trust. I figure if I pay attention to myself and trust my body, I don’t have to bother the doctor.

But, suppose I have something serious and really need a doctor?

I’m personally ambivalent about calling on a doctor. I live with one.

I’m told that most of us will die in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes and wires. Not me. I want my body to go before my brain. I want to die at a dance or a delicatessen—from too much fun or food.

Of course I won’t live to be a hundred.

So, who would want me to?