DavidBoyne.com | Free Funny Essays like essays by David Sedaris, Tina Fey, Woody Allen, Nora Ephron, Dave Barry, and Mark Twain. Only not.

Kindle Books by David Boyne

Happy Accidents

Resistance Is Futile!

Travels in My 3 Pound Universe

Velocity Stories

X Marks the Spot

Buy a Kindle Now! (Or just check them out.)

BackTalk db |David Boyne's Blog: I Could Be Wrong, But... | David Boyne's paperback book, I Could Be Wrong, But... | Complaint Department | Like Wow Totally FREE Essays! | Velocity Stories | Happy Accidents | X Marks the Spot | Travels in My 3 Pound Universe | Resistance Is Futile! | You Must Be Present to Win | Share | Follow @DavidBoyne

You can read more free essays on David Boyne's blog, I Could Be Wrong, But…

Running Away

An essay from the Kindle book, Inside My 3-Pound Universe

© David Boyne

Tweet

“Your work is to discover your world
and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”
—Buddha

All my Life, I have been a student of the gentle art and practice of Running Away. I hold a black belt, 7th degree.

So.

When I hear people attach that yuckiest of emotions, shame, to the gentle art and practice of Running Away, I fail to understand. In my view, Running Away is nothing more and nothing less than a course correction. And, given that every person in motion around the earth right now is, like every plane, or rocket, or boat, off course 95% of the time, it’s clear that if we want to get where we are going, we must be willing and able to make course corrections. To not make course corrections is at best incompetent, and at worst, incompetent.

I could be wrong, but if we were to examine every act of Running Away in the entire history of that gentle art and practice, we would find there is but one desire driving every Running Awayer: They have, to varying degree, lost control of their once-in-a-lifetime Life. And they want it back.

Yet, somehow, in the swinging of pendulums, the reversing of magnetic poles, and the attention deficits of public opinion, an expert and expeditious exiting that would once have been admired, even envied, is now derided as irresponsible, immoral, even craven. I fail to understand. What could be braver, or more responsible, than to take on the challenge and chore of being in charge of one’s Life?

Once upon a time, Running Away, and Running Awayers, were honored figments of the American imagination. Our history includes a bunch of smart rich white guys Running Away from being subjects of the British monarchy, to become the Founding Fathers; and Pilgrims Running Away from terrible persecutors in the Old World, to become terrible persecutors in the New World. Our myths include Huck and Jim rafting down the mighty Mississippi; Eliza crossing the ice pack on the same metaphorical river; Shane riding into town, and riding out; and Norma Jeane Mortenson catching a bus to Hollywood.

The gentle art and practice of Running Away is how we create Change—in our selves, and in our world—without the use of force.

Here is a fast, and loose, and by no means complete, list of the many splendored forms of Running Away in America:

Playing Hooky is Running Away from school. Perhaps because we do it when young, and new to the gentle art and practice of Running Away, Playing Hooky gives us an ineffable—something—we can never fully recapture later in Life. No matter how hard and often we try.

Calling in Sick is Playing Hooky from work. Calling in Sick is the ultimate reverse commute; while everyone else is driving to work, you’re driving away.

Quitting is how we Run Away from a job. There is no shame in quitting, provided it is done with élan. Storming out the door and leaving behind an angrily scrawled resignation letter in which you blame everyone else for everything that has gone wrong, is Quitting. Giving two weeks notice, having drinks with your boss and colleagues on your last day, then setting up shop with all your old firm’s best clients, is Quitting with élan.

Getting Fired is when your employer Runs Away from you.

Immigration is Running Away from where you were born. No one should ever be punished for choosing to immigrate, as it is hard-wired into our DNA. It’s why we got out of Africa, and why someday we will be selling low-interest, no-income-verification mortgages for houses on Mars.

Slipping Away is a subcategory of Running Away, in which we only briefly absent ourselves. And drive to the local NoTell Motel.

Divorce is Running Away from the stranger you woke up married to.

Bankruptcy is Running Away from your creditors. Curiously, it is also one of the few forms of Running Away written into our Constitution. Another being Impeachment, which is Running Away from the bums we elected.

The list goes on, but I believe the point is clear: Running Away is the ultimate Do Over. (This explains why California, the Do Over State, is our most populous.) And while Running Away always rewards us with adventures, on a deeper level, it can give us a heightened sense of Being Alive And In Charge of Our Once-in-a-lifetime Life.

I remember how, at the malleable age of 7, I discovered the gentle art and practice of Running Away.

At sunset of a hot summer day, I stomped across the kitchen and out the back door, yelling over my shoulder to my mother, “I’m leaving! And I’m never coming back!” (I was 7, and had no idea my dramatic exit line was one of humanity’s oldest clichés.)

My mother gasped, leaning over the kitchen counter, crying and sniffling, using the back of her wrist to wipe tears streaming from her eyes. She was chopping onions for dinner.

Once outside, our familiar backyard seemed new, vast, and, strange to me. The departing sun had, like a spiteful arsonist leaving town, torched the blue sky into Technicolor® fire. I experienced a sensation at once thrilling, and, threatening. I felt an Invisible Hand pressing on my chest and making my heart beat strong and hard and fast. It would take a few more years, and a few more Runnings Away, before I could put a name to that Invisible Hand: Freedom. Simultaneous with the strong and hard and fast beating of my heart, there was a strong and hard and fast beating of my mind, as I ran smack up against the nagging question every free person faces in every moment: What the hell do I do now?

My best answer was, “Keep moving!”

I stomped through our backyard, cut across the neighbor’s freshly mown lawn, and came out on Long Hill Road. I kept walking, and as I walked, I squeezed in my small fists the red-hot coals of my anger. I faltered only when I heard small rustlings of unseen animals in the brush beside the road, or when the taunting, teasing songs from unseen birds inside the plush green trees seemed to be calling my name. Distracted by the world around me, my anger cooled, and soon my clenched fists were filled with coal dust. I wiped my hands on my jeans, and kept walking, proving the law of inertia.

A sound-filled, sight-filled, eternity later, I had crossed the half-mile suburban savannah between my parents home and where Long Hill Road ran across a short bridge high above the four lanes of Interstate 95. As I approached the bridge, the familiar noise of large trucks, family-burdened station wagons, and hippie-filled Volkswagen vans, buzzed the air like a swarm of mechanical bees in a cheap science-fiction movie. On the high hill to the side of the bridge, I saw a boy I knew. Dougie French, two years older than me, had the same ultra-short haircut I sported, although my hair was brown, and Dougie’s, even at the age of 9, was pure white. I felt then, but only fully understand now, that Dougie French was an “old soul.” The amused disdain he had for everyone and everything, and that both attracted and repelled me at age 7, I have since observed in many others, who carry the ennui of the experienced traveler having to find something new while, yet, again, passing through an overly familiar land.

From Long Hill Road, I watched as Dougie French picked up a sharp-edged gray rock from the thousands that covered the hillside beside the bridge, having been spread there to keep the hillside from washing down onto the highway. I watched as Dougie French tossed that sharp-edged gray rock up in a low, lazy arc, just to the right of himself, and swung a yellow whiffle-ball bat. The plastic bat connected with the rock, making a thwunk sound, and sent the rock arcing through the air. I lost sight of it  somewhere above the cars speeding along the highway.

While gravity took charge of the sailing rock, I walked over to Dougie and asked, “Why are you doing that?”

“Don’t know. Bored. It’s fun.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Why?”

Not experienced with being on the receiving end of the Multiple-Why debate technique, I was stymied.

Dougie held the yellow whiffleball bat out to me. “Here. You try it.”

I was 7, almost everything that happened every day was new. I tried it.

The first five stones I lifted, tossed up, and swung at, fell harmlessly at my feet. Then I connected, and the sixth stone shot high into the air—straight up. Dougie and I covered our heads and bumped into each other as we hopped and dodged the stone that was falling back down on us like a flaming space capsule re-entering earth’s atmosphere at 17,000 miles per hour. The rock smacked down in the gravel, inches from my black Keds® sneaker, instantly anonymous among the field of gravel from whence it came.

“Scheisskopf!” Dougie yelled, grabbing the whiffleball bat from me.

“Huh? What’s size-cough?”

“Shit head.”

“You shouldn’t swear.”

“Why not?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Why?”

Stymied again.

Dougie French said, “Shit for brains.”

While Dougie French and I were laughing and yelling at each other, “Shit for brains!” my mother drove up in the family station wagon and pulled to the side of Long Hill Road. She got out of the car, walked to the front of it, stopped, and yelled, “Get in the car!”

So that there could be no mistake, she pointed at our family station wagon, in the same rigid, imperial way I would point at the ground when I wanted Patches, our family dog, to stay, or to lie down.

“I gotta go, Dougie.”

“See you around, kid,” Dougie French smirked, leaning on the yellow whiffleball bat as if he were a tap dancer dressed in a tuxedo and the bat was his walking stick.

I got in the car. All the windows were rolled down and my mother said nothing to me, yet the force of her silent anger made the air inside the car too thick to breathe, a magic trick I had been a captive audience to many times before. As she made a sharp u-turn back toward home, I risked a glance back, and I caught a snapshot of Dougie French, as graceful a juvenile delinquent as Mickey Mantle was an athlete, lazily tossing a sharp-edged chunk of gravel in a low-arc to his side, and making what seemed a slow-motion swing of the yellow whiffleball bat.

The mental snapshot of Dougie exploded in stars when the hard-knuckled back of my mother’s hand smacked into my turned aside head.

But it came too late. I had discovered the possibilities of Running Away.

The trick, it seemed, was to master the gentle art and practice of Staying Away. Tweet

Buy a Kindle Now! (Or just check them out.)

Mean People Suck

An essay from the Kindle book, Happy Accidents

© David Boyne

Tweet

Share on Facebook

When science discovers the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it. ~Bernard Baily

Who invented the bumper sticker?

Bumper stickers are smugly moralistic and self-absorbed. I could be wrong, but I suspect an American must be responsible. Possibly an Australian. But I cannot imagine anyone in Peru or Japan or Finland being the first to think, "Hey! I can print a terse message on opaque weather-resistant material with an adhesive backing then slap it on the bumper of my car and Shout My Truth® and Values™ to the World!"

I've had two bumper stickers in my life. The first one I made in my high school graphics class and slapped on my wreck of a 1965 Mustang. It read, Save the Wolf, and it had an image of a howling wolf that I had pirated from a Paul Winter Consort album.

When I was 17 and felt compelled to tell the world (or at least whoever was behind me breathing the noxious exhaust from my car) to Save the Wolf—what was I really saying? How could the words on that bumper sticker have "saved" even a single wolf? That bumper sticker did not have anything to do with wolves. It was—as I have come to believe that absolutely everything in Life is—about me.

I was telling the world something about me, myself, I. But what?

Did the bumper sticker I had made tell the world that in my junior year in high school I had read the biologist Farley Mowat's book, Never Cry Wolf, five times, as well as every other semi-scientific or popular work on wolves that I could find? Did it tell anyone how I had repeated Mowat’s experiment and gone on an all-meat diet for two months, just to see what it was like to eat as a wolf would eat? (Note to Dr. Atkins's estate: I lost weight!) Did the bumper sticker somehow reveal that when in school and diligently studying the view out the classroom windows, I was daydreaming of walking out of school, hitch-hiking to Alaska, amassing mounds of camping gear and grub—including some strange, life-sustaining thing Jack London's books called pemmican—and disappearing into the Arctic wilderness to spend my life in the company of wolves?

A few years ago, I purchased the second-ever bumper sticker of my life. I freely admit that I felt a smugly moralistic and self-absorbed pleasure as I slapped that message on my wreck of a 1986 Volvo: Dog Is My Co-Pilot.

But why, out of all the terse messages in the world that have been printed on opaque, weather-resistant material with adhesive backings, did I select that one? What am I telling the world about me, now? Am I saying how, at parties, I like to tweak intolerant Islamists and Born Again Christians by delving into the mysterious implications of God being Dog spelled backward? Or am I simply saying that, more often than not, my dog is riding with me in my car? But co-piloting? Would someone reading my bumper sticker seriously believe—should I have a heart attack while blasting down Interstate 5 in heavy traffic—that my golden retriever is poised to stop drooling, to switch on the emergency blinkers, and to expertly paw the steering wheel, maneuvering the car safely to the side of the crowded freeway? (Reality Check: My dog is lolling his head out the window compulsively gulping blasts of air and glancing over at me every three seconds, employing dog-to-human mind-melding to communicate his stream of consciousness: How much longer 'til we're at the beach, huh? Got any biscuits? You brought the float toy, right? Whoa! Lolling my head out the car window and gulping air at 70 miles per hour is awesome! Dude, I cannot wait to run across the hot sand and hurtle my body through endless Space and Ka-Splash into that cold frigging Pacific Ocean! )

I am considering buying a new car. But if I do, I won't be able to remove the Dog Is My Co-Pilot bumper sticker from my old car. It has, as the cultural anthropologists say about elderly people who won't leave their neighborhoods, "aged in place."

But wait. If I get a new car I could get the third bumper sticker of my life. After all, I have changed, I have grown, I have evolved. Perhaps there is a bumper sticker that would sum up for the World everything worth knowing about me, myself, I?

What new message shall I choose? What message would be eternally True, deep with layers of Meaning, and stand the test of Time? Yet, would also be available in a colorful assortment of opaque weather-resistant material with adhesive backing?

Perhaps something about the central ambition of my life?

I'd Rather Be Schtumphing Marisa Tomei!

Wait. I meant—I'd Rather Be Writing!

Perhaps a direct command?

Kill Your Television!

Nah. I'm not going to put a message on my car that both the Taliban and fanatical Christians would approve of.

Maybe something Zen?

My Other Car Is A Car

Or something cynical?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel is an Oncoming Train

It has always been a challenge for me to take seriously those folks driving around with Love Your Mother and a green and blue image of Earth on the bumper of their gross-polluting Volkswagen vans. So I doubt I would follow the hippie path with something like, You Can't Hug Your Kid with Nuclear Arms.

Perhaps, instead, something nihilistic?

Elvis is Dead

Something passive-aggressive?

Yes, I Do Own the Road

Something political?

Voldemort is a Republican

My favorite quote is something supposedly said by a Jewish guy who supposedly lived in the Middle East about 2000 years ago. No, not that Jewish guy—this Jewish guy was and remains far less popular. His name was Philo of Alexandria, and he said—

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."

That dense message is True, deep with layers of Meaning, and has stood the test of Time.

But it's too long, and it’s phrasing is too lyrical for these attention-deficit hyper-active times.

Yet, perhaps Philo of Alexandria's wisdom has already been modernized, that is, dumbed-down and sexed-up, in three emphatic words:

Mean People Suck

Now, what car should I choose to go with my new bumper sticker?

Buy a Kindle Now! (Or just check them out.)

How Would Buddha Drive?

An essay from the Kindle book, Resistance Is Futile
© David Boyne Tweet

Share on Facebook

"It is better to travel well than to arrive. "
—Buddha

Recently, a friend of mine who is a kind and gentle man and who practices meditation daily and attends dharma talks on Breathing…and Peace…and being fully present in the Present…asked for my help.

He told me that a traffic cop had pulled him over and cited him for driving 49 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone.

He wanted my help in composing a letter that would persuade a traffic court judge to invalidate the ticket.

“Were you driving that fast?” I asked.

“Yes, but that’s not the point.”

“Was it a 35 mile per hour zone?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.”

“Was the cop rude or abusive?”

“He was a cop! When he handed the ticket to me he grinned and said, ‘Have a nice day.’ But that’s not the point.”

I said, “So you were speeding, and you got a ticket, and you—”

“It’s unfair,” my friend interrupted, his voice cracking. “I feel violated.”

This confused me. So I submitted a request that my friend explain. I said, “Huh?”

My friend began reciting the alphabet. “A: There were hardly any other cars on the road. B: Where he pulled me over doing 49 miles per hour was just half-a-mile before the start of a 45 mile-per-hour zone. C: He should be arresting criminals and drunk drivers, not ticketing good drivers.”

Having read several books by Buddhist teachers that my friend had loaned to me, I had learned of a concept called something like ‘full mind-body non-judgmental compassionate listening’. “Hey,” I said to myself, “Now might be a good time to try this stuff out.”

So I nodded thoughtfully at my friend. And I kept my mouth shut.

It worked. My attentive, non-judgmental listening encouraged my friend to tell me more. “I can’t go to Traffic School again!”

I absorbed this new information and, like a $300-an-hour therapist, I repeated my friend’s words in the form of an open question. “Traffic School? Again?”

“They only let you go to Traffic School once. Now my insurance will go up!”

“You have other tickets?”

He looked askance at me, as if a person without driving citations were as suspect as one who made his living as a telemarketer.

I made my expression vacuous, which, fortunately, comes naturally to me. This encouraged my friend to try to fill the vacuum that was me by telling how, along with the new $200 ticket for speeding, his driving résumé also included two recent citations for having failed to STOP. At red lights.

This information tripped up my novice skills of full mind-body non-judgmental compassionate listening and I was unable to keep my eyes from going wide, my eyebrows from arching, and the skin on my forehead from wrinkling.

Which made my friend indignant. He answered the accusation my misbehaving body had blurted by stating, “I have never intentionally run a red light.”

He then explained that both his tickets for running red lights had come when his intention had been to speed through an intersection under a yellow light.

Having regained my composure, I simply absorbed this, and allowed it to fall down the deep well of my egoless listening until I heard a distant kerplunk.

My friend said, “Come here. I want to show you something.”

I followed him into his clean and well-organized garage. I looked at his car, a 10-year-old, fuel-efficient, modest little white sedan. It was the kind of car a citizen who meditates, goes to dharma talks, and votes a straight liberal ticket would drive. But in my imagination it now seemed a potentially lethal and wildly unpredictable weapon, and the metallic clicking of its still cooling engine sounded like a ticking time bomb.

My friend plucked a spray can from a shelf and handed it to me.

I wondered, was my pacifist friend now going to tell me that he had also been ticketed for spray-painting the word WAR on STOP signs? I covered my concern by asking, “What’s this?”

“Read the label.”

I read the label. While I recognized the tiny text on the label of the can as English, it was clear the author of it had—no doubt in the effort to graduate law school— perfected a way to use language without conveying meaning.

As I struggled to decode the label, my friend said, “I bought it somewhere on the internet. Right after the first red light. Paid $30 or $40 for it. What you do is you spray it on your license plates. Understand? And the photos that the red light cameras take of your license plates are rendered unreadable.”

I looked at my friend. “Rendered unreadable? How?”

“That’s not the point.” He took the can from me and slowly waved it back and forth before my unblinking eyes, as if trying to hypnotize me. “I don’t know how it works. It’s patented. It’s supposed to make the license plate number blurred if you take a photograph of it.”

I nodded dumbly, realizing that I was in shock. Which actually made the work of being a non-judgmental listener much easier. I asked, “And it works?”

“No! It-did-not-work! That’s the point!”

We had, at last, arrived at the point.

The second time my friend had intended to speed through an intersection under a yellow light—but had unintentionally sped under a red light—the photographs which the automated traffic cameras had taken of his license plates had been clear and readable. Despite having been covered with the Magic Spray.

My friend sighed, “I should sue the manufacturer. But first I need you to help me write the letter to get the speeding ticket dismissed.”

As I drove home, I struggled to fit the very square pegs of my friend’s tickets for speeding and for running red lights, and his attempt to thwart the intersection cameras—into the round hole of the person I knew who meditated for hours, always spoke softly and thoughtfully, and who went for month-long retreats at his guru’s compound in Colorado.

Which may explain why, when I got home I sat down at my computer and, rather than writing the firm, persuasive, irresistibly logical and heart-rending letter to a traffic court judge that my friend wanted, I began writing this pointless essay.

And as I wrote, an email from my friend arrived. It was clear that he had seen through my attempt at full mind-body non-judgmental compassionate listening and had intuited my dismay over his dangerous driving. As if in the middle of an argument, he wrote:

Heck, it was a left turn and I thought it was still yellow. You needn't act as if I was going to kill someone. Besides, if you're going to act as my "defense counselor/editor" I need you rooting for me.

I considered replying to my friend’s email: Do you think any of the drivers who ran red lights this year and sent 700-plus Americans into sudden and violent exits from this world intended to kill someone?

But instead, I returned to composing this essay, filled with a new appreciation for society’s complex, flawed, and vital infrastructure of traffic laws, and motorcycle cops; of speeding tickets, traffic schools, and traffic court judges; of insurance companies who raise their rates on drivers who erode their profits. And the thought crossed my mind that all these people and systems were dedicated to getting drivers to do the very things that any good Buddhist teacher tries to get her or his students to do:

STOP. Pay attention. Slow down. Be mindful. Everything is about the drive and nothing is about the destination.

I emailed my friend:

I recuse myself from the case.

Buy a Kindle Now! (Or just check them out.)

Click this link to BackTalk db!

Was $13,375.95— Now just $3.95 on Amazon! (While supplies of electrons last)	Was $23,975.95— Now just $3.95 on Amazon! (While supplies of electrons last)	Was $17,615.95— Now just $3.95 on Amazon! (While supplies of electrons last)
Was $39,975.99— Now just $3.95 on Amazon! (While supplies of electrons last)	David Boyne has failed at everything he has tried. He once considered becoming a better person. But when told identity theft was illegal, he abandoned the idea. When not boldly staring into Space, being distracted, or scheming for Total World Domination, he exposes himself in public at DavidBoyne.com and ICouldBeWrongBut.com	Was $3,982.99— Now just $3.95 on Amazon! (While supplies of electrons last)

>>Back to Top<<