“Don't waste that food,” my mother repeatedly told me as she looked at my half-eaten plate.
One day I said, “But if I eat something I don't need, it ends up going to waste. It goes down the drain anyway.” I must have been a cheeky kid.
My mother, naturally, ignored him, because our town didn't have a sewer system (septic tanks were the order of the day) and we didn't have a garbage disposal, so kitchen scraps were just dumped into big barrels with other trash and burned. Leftovers and excrement never met.
She rolled her eyes. “Eat your whole plate.”
I said, “But…”
“If you don't eat it, give it to your father.”
He lit a Lucky Strike and nodded, which meant, “Do as your mother says, and don't upset her.”
But I wasn't done yet. “So if Dad eats it, it's just going to the septic tank, not the barrel. Either way, waste is waste.”
“Don't provoke me,” she said. This is one of my favorite responses from her. She's said it to me many times.
And yet, as the youngest, it was my duty to inspire her, the spoiled brat who had always gotten more than her older brothers. I thought I was smart enough to apply clear logic to the waste problem and outdo my parents with a solid argument. But I remembered my father nodding and saying, “I'll eat it,” as I watched my special cleverness go to waste. So sad, I thought.
A few years later, I started paying attention to politics, and I noticed a group of self-confident people sitting in lofty places and making grand speeches full of lofty arguments boiled down to a few pithy phrases. I was impressed with this special group of people. They were smart people, I thought.
I voted in my first election when Nixon, Humphrey and the racist George Wallace ran for president. I attended Wallace's rallies and heckled his antics that I saw on television, when he said the usual, “Black kids have their own schools.”
“Boo!”
Wallace pointed at the protesters and said, “You guys need to get a haircut!”
“Yes,” said his supporters.
It felt good to boo, but the real boos were just gathering among themselves, Wallace said.
But the nightly newscasts featured many of the same moron, just from different towns. Did Wallace personally bring out his opponents in a planned showdown? Was there a way to win an argument? Was he staging the show?
For a while, I tried to debate with Christian fundamentalists because I knew I could defeat them with facts and logic and disprove their doctrines. But I realized that toying with someone's religious beliefs could strip them of their moral foundation and comfort. Who am I to tell people what to believe? I realized that arguing just to win is dangerous. What would be gained by doing so?
Now my debating skills are pitifully poor. I don't try. I'm tired, and I barely value winning these days. And what do I have to prove, anyway? Almost nothing, if you think about it. And yet I'm glad that not everyone is like me. I'm glad that there are special people out there who can win, and I often marvel at how clever they are, how right they are. I even envy them. But when I look around me, I see so many empty victories, so many empty conquests. Just for show. To brag. To boost self-esteem. So much useless stuff.
Michael Pooley lives in Springfield and can be reached at mpulley634@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared in the Springfield News-Leader: Michael Pooley: It's all for naught
