My bear Ted had a lead nose, which was what caused all the problems because, I found out shortly after I got him, I could write with it. You could just stick his nose up against a surface and scribble away.
One of the best writing spots was the top of the Ben Hur freezer, the most important new appliance in my parents’ collection of not-so-fancy appliances. It was the ’50s, and we had not yet become flush on railroad union money. We were still waiting to get our first new car.
This story is actually about Vice President Dick Cheney and why it was foolish to wait so long to tell America that he had committed a terrible blunder that led him to spray a buddy with birdshot. It was an accident. But it took an eternity in modern media time for the vice president’s accident to be announced, and even longer for the vice president to talk about it.
I was willing to abandon this subject to the fabulously suited spot emoters of TV news until I read the Monday New York Times and found out that GOP public relations pro Mary Matalin was called in at about 8 a.m. a week ago Sunday. She read a proposed announcement from the vice president’s staff, but found it inadequate, so the idea of an immediate announcement was trashed.
Instead, Cheney and his staff decided to make a statement through a local Texas paper, which would be contacted by one of Cheney’s hunting partners. It being Sunday, it took until 1:30 p.m. for the paper to post the story on its Web site.
What ensued was the lingering sense that the vice president is way too mysterious for public office and that something untoward was involved in what was clearly a serious hunting accident, but not as serious as it could have been. Anyone who has ever walked the woodlands in hunting season is never very far from the thought, “Geez, I could be killed.”
So, sorry that happened, Mr. Vice President, but things like that do happen.
What doesn’t happen so often is that someone writes with something on the top of a new freezer. I think it was just an angular scribble in the silver gray of my bear’s lead nose.
The incident exploded with a fury that transcended its weight, particularly after I was confronted by my father at the scene of the crime, my bear under my arm.
“Did You Do This?”
How many times would I hear that in my life?
Maybe a thousand?
My father was an astute observer of things I had messed up, from his tools to his fishing gear to his poorly hidden pistol and even his peace of mind as I moved into my relatively wild teen years.
“No,” I lied. “I didn’t.”
The evidence was right there under my arm. The bear’s nose had white paint on it and the freezer had lead scratchings on it. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out. And so, my butt was kicked in an appropriate way, after which there was a conversation.
“Don’t lie,” my father said, and I remember it to this day as though it were recorded on a chip in my brain, the tone, the determination. “People won’t know whether to believe you if you lie. Did you write on the freezer?”
“No,” I lied again.
“Holy Jumping Judas Aged Priest,” he exclaimed. (Not what he actually said.)
And that was it, because we simply couldn’t stay mad at each other for long. Later, I told him I did it and he said: “I know. Just don’t lie.” And I said, “OK,” and I meant it because being in his favor was better than facing his wrath.
Dick Cheney went into this event with a huge credibility problem on many serious fronts. How much better it would have been if he had just come out immediately and said: “I shot my friend. I am in agony about it and I am sorry and I am praying for him.”
Some of us learn from our mistakes. Some of us don’t.
