Permutations
Yesterday I loved her much;
Today I love her not at all!
Tomorrow I'll love her much again,
Should laughter break the fall.
That bit of Grubb Street verse has been sitting on my table for over a month, and rightly so, I suspect, for it probably belongs with behavior modification, about which I have just read a definition in the newspaper today that delights me, makes me laugh: "there's the notion, put forth by psychology, that the same principles that govern the behavior of a caged rat also govern human behavior. This never-proven proposition is known as behavior modification theory. Indeed, behavior modification works reliably with rats and dogs, but it appears to work with a human only if the human decides to cooperate." (John Rosmond, the Herald-Leader, 12/9/15, "Living," 4B, column 3). John Rosemond writes a weekly column on behavior modification concerning small children, and the ignorant ideas many parents have about how to rear them, ideas that mostly arose from the 60's on and usually involve making the child acquire "a high opinion" of him or herself, "specifically, one's abilities and accomplishments." We, for example, have a box of trophies in our back room given to our sons for showing up, warming the bench. Even I, when I could still run, received a ribbon once for showing up to a race, even though I finished poorly, walked part of the course, and only barely stumbled across the finish line after a goodly number of middle and high schoolers. Everyone who participated got ribbons. Mine is still hanging near my desk in an office at home that I only use for storage now. My sons, I am certain, were never taken in by such foolishness and never liked sports that much to begin with, though they did run cross-country, which is how I happened to be running/walking the course that "earned" me my ribbon.
I started running in graduate school after I decided that I really needed to stop smoking, but don't get me going on the pleasures of that vice. I was 16 when I started smoking and 23 when I quit, cold turkey as they say. High blood pressure medicine in my 50's forced me to stop running, though I can't say I miss running too much. My real ribbon exists in my mind. I ran my 3.1 mile course once in 20:04. Try as I might I could not break 20. And gradually as I kept getting older the times kept getting worse too. Now I am excited if Simon and I manage to do a two mile walk, which we did two of in the past 7 days. And my legs hurt and my knees hurt, well, just pick a part and I will explain the kind of pain that goes with it. My right hand, for example. I now refer to it as the claw. Big toe right foot. Toe nail fungus, I think. Disgusting. So it goes. General deterioration of the body politic.