The Ransom of Red Chief

This will be my last post of the semester. I think I've already covered all of the required blogs, but I wanted to mention The Ransom of Red Chief as it was one of my favorite readings of the semester. O. Henry's writing is clear and concise, so I was able to read through the story quickly without any struggle. More importantly, I was able to imagine the entire scenario, especially when the boy rides Sam for ninety miles. I was a huge fan of Cowboys and Indians as a child, which is why this story resonates with me, although I don't consider myself as big of a pest as this boy. O. Henry sets up a backwards situation that is very similar to the Home Alone movies. Eventually the "bad guy" becomes the one in need.

O. Henry set the story up for a standard ending. Logically, I was expecting the kidnappers to receive ransom for the child. It threw me off, and made me laugh, when the child turned out to be such a pest that the kidnappers paid his parents to take him back. I guess that's what they deserve, right? In fact, they were so relieved to get him off their hands that they ran away from town. The word cognitive shift has been thrown around quite often throughout the semester, and rightly so. It seems that humorists of all sorts rely on an incongruity to produce laughter. In keeping with that theme, O. Henry threw me for a loop. The Ransom of Red Chief also supported the superiority theory. In other words, the story was funny because I didn’t have to handle the child and I wasn't the one paying ransom.

I've enjoyed looking back at the readings throughout the semester and applying the theories espoused by John Morreall. Furthermore, the Humor Around the World presentations have given me a deeper world view, enabling me to further interpret the humor of each reading.

Broken Window

I’ve shattered a window or two throughout my years of playing lacrosse. Each time, I’m almost positive my mom’s forgiving nature is going to give out (I’ve tested it a lot over the years) and she is going to explode on me. After a tongue-lashing I agree to pay for a new window. Apparently I never learned my lesson because I kept breaking them, mostly while practicing lacrosse in the backyard. I would play catch with myself off the back wall of our house. This is honestly some of the best practice you can get as a lacrosse player. I picked out a brick and hit it over and over again from varying distances. It also fine-tuned my catching skills.

The only problem with this otherwise perfect practice method was the row of windows on the lower half of the wall. It didn’t affect me too much, as I picked a brick above the windows so that the ball would return to me high enough to catch easily. Sometimes I got lackadaisical and fired a pass too low. CRASH, the window would shatter and the ball would shoot into our backroom. My mother must have had an ear for this sound because, no matter where she was in the house, she came running outside to chastise me.

One time in particular stands out. I was shooting on a goal I had in the backyard. The goal was a good distance from the back patio, which extended well beyond the back of our house. I was finally paying head to my mother’s warnings. I was aiming for the corners and having a good deal of success. Occasionally, I’d miss high or wide, or hit the pipe. This time, I released a fireball. I mean that ball was moving. It rocketed off the top crossbar with a high-pitched “ping” sound. It must have come off with some funky spin because it bounced off of a chair on our back porch and, sure enough, through a window on the back of our house. Like usual my mother ran outside to yell at me again. “I promise I wasn’t throwing at the back wall,” I pleaded. It was no use.

The topic of broken windows came up several months ago in conversation. My mom and I were cracking up because we had plenty of experience with shattered windows. I brought up this scenario and told her that I really wasn’t throwing at the back wall. After all, why would I lie about it now? She shook her head but I’m still not sure if she believed me.

Swimming Lessons

Learning to swim was miserable. All I remember is my eyes burning and snot all over my face. I can’t even tell you at what age I learned to swim, but I remember the experience vividly. Each Tuesday my mother drove corralled me from the backyard, fed me supper and then drove me to the pool. I stared up at the stars with disgust from the backseat of my mom’s car. I didn’t like doing things late at night when I was young, but she insisted.

I hesitantly pulled my shirt over my head and kicked off my flip-flops. It was always ten or fifteen degrees too cold. I plopped into the frigid water alongside three strangers of the same age. I had a death grip on the wall. I had to be pried off when it was time to tread water. I learned quickly though, and before I knew it I had graduated to the deep end. It didn’t have any effect other than psychological intimidation. I couldn’t touch in the shallow end, so why did it matter if I was in deeper water? It didn’t. Perhaps the swim across the pool and under the rope separating the deep end from the shallow end was what intimidated me the most. Once in the deep end I coughed up the water that had made its way into my mouth on my swim over. The instructor grabbed me underneath my arms and placed me in the middle of the deep end. She told me I had to tread for thirty seconds. I didn’t take my eye off the massive clock hanging at the other end. As if watching the clock wasn’t enough, I counted to thirty in my head. Time was creeping along. I was so desperate to get out of the pool I must have counted to thirty twice.

Treading was the most difficult thing to learn. It was also the most exhausting. After that came the doggy paddle and then freestyle and backstroke. It all came easy to me except for backstroke. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept of breath control. I would inhale and exhale sporadically causing my body to sink and then float and sink again. I wound up with a nose full of water and snot covering my upper lip.

It’s strange how things like swimming or riding a bike stay with us throughout our entire life. I can’t think of the last time I swam, and by that I mean more than stood in the shallow end or paddled my way over to the other side. Somehow I still remember it all. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here. It’s important to put in the time and struggle to learn necessary skills. Eventually these skills become second nature and it’s difficult to imagine them every posing a challenge. 

Kindergarten

“Get your head out of bed and your feet on the floor,” my mom whispered. After receiving no reaction she followed with a more abrupt approach, “Get out of bed now!” My eyes struggled to open as if weights had been glued to my eyelids. After all, it wasn’t everyday I woke up at seven in the morning, but I was ready. After removing the weights from my eyelids I situated myself in the blue jeans and flannel shirt my mom had laid out the night before. As it was only a half-day, there was no need to take a lunch to school. Before I knew it, I was in the car, heart beating and mind racing, on the way to my first day of kindergarten otherwise known as a fiasco.

Upon arrival, after releasing my mom’s hand of course, I feasted my eyes on the maze that was the legs and feet of the parents. Winding through the maze like a snake through grass, I found the chair that had my name on it, “NICKY.” In front of it was a #2 pencil and a blue folder stuffed with miscellaneous paper. I began to take a seat to investigate the contents of my blue folder. However, before I had fully situated myself in the chair, I was pelted with a barrage of questions. From whom you may ask? You tell me. I later discovered the wiry red-haired senior that had provided the ammo for the barrage was my teacher, Mrs. Mendola. Some saw her as a mess, her hair was always elegantly disheveled, her clothes hardly formfitting, but I saw her as brilliant. She had an uncanny ability to connect with her students.

Although I did not know how a kindergarten day typically went, the four remaining hours went somewhat uneventfully. We covered “the keep your hands and feet to yourself rule.” Discussed introductions to organization (basically where the art supplies were located), followed by snack time and concluded with a sound from what, in later years, would become a familiar friend, the bell. The peal of the bell took to life at precisely 12:00 just as Mrs. Mendola had promised. With McDonalds on my mind I threw my 8 pack of Crayolas in the plastic backpack labeled NICKY and rushed out of the kindergarten exit (we were too small to go out of the same door as the older kids).

Looking for my mom I marched two rows over and looked four spots down to the parking spot where she told me she would be. It was empty; I was curious but by no means too worried to pass up the dodge-ball game that was forming. One by one the kids were pulled away from the riveting game. Eventually, there were so few players the ball seemed to find a hole in the ring we had formed almost every other time. Before I knew it all of my fellow players had vanished and it was just I in an empty parking lot. Having watched too many Barney episodes in my days as a preschooler and developed a confidence that the world was full of friendly purple dinosaurs to point me in the right direction, I then set out to find the yellow house I called home.

It began as a relaxed stroll out of the parking lot towards a street swarming with lunchtime traffic. Although I did not know where I was going, I remembered a sign that read “St. Ann School,” and headed for that. After reaching the sign it was a toss-up, left or right. I chose right, which led me past two retirement homes and a Starbucks. Completely lost and still in search of a pleasant dinosaur to lead me home I continued down the road for what seemed to be a marathon length. Trying to block out the nagging noise that was a car horn behind me, I sat down to strategize my next right or left. I rose to my feet and continued to the intersection and veered right. My ears again recognized the high-pitched horn; before I could turn to locate the source of the noise a black Toyota Camry (resembling my mom’s) whipped in front of me. Too my surprise the car that resembled my mom’s car was in fact her car. It turns out my mom was on her way to pick me up from a 2:00 dismissal when she saw the giant letters reading NICKY on my backpack.

So she took me home, the car ride was enjoyable excluding an extensive spiel about how the world had no friendly dinosaurs and was not a safe place for me to be running around. It was not until well after the lecture that the absence of McDonalds set in as a disappointment. Upon the conclusion of the following day I had learned that a typical kindergarten day did not entail an excursion throughout Prairie Village, but I did find the remaining months to be quite fascinating.

Mountain Mayhem

A group of eight of us had managed to escape to Aspen for a weekend of skiing and relaxing. Seven of us had skied before, one had not. It will become apparent which one of had not. It turns out that the one of us responsible for training our novice neglected to mention the “pizza” technique of slowing down. When in doubt, point your toes inward and make a pizza slice with your skis. According to our friend responsible for training him, he looked good during his practice run. It turns out that the mini-hill flattened out towards the bottom so he didn’t need to know how to stop to look solid. Wanting to see what he was made out of, our friend took him to a hill that was well beyond his skillset. The rest of the group was off on another part of the mountain. We figured he would spend the morning on the mini-hill and possibly join us on some of the easier runs later in the day. We were wrong.

I looked down the mountain and saw a hefty man barreling toward the bottom. Though he remained upward on his skis, it was clear that he was out of control. It was his flailing arms that gave him away. His hands were extended outward, shaking in all directions in an effort to stabilize himself. Every time he moved his arm, his ski pole swung around his wrist like a fan. After a second of watching, I realize that this rotund skier was my friend, and gravity was favoring him as he picked up speed by the second. Hopelessly out of control and quickly approaching a crowded bridge, he did the only thing he could do. He threw himself to the ground in an explosion of snow and ski equipment. His skis shot in opposite directions upon impact and his poles spun wildly. He rolled what looked like 20 feet, and sat up with his goggles around his mouth. A look of bewilderment turned to pure laughter. As we approached we could hear the gasping sound of him cackling.

Much like the bike crash that I blogged about earlier, this scenario presents the relief theory and the superiority theory. Ironically, this story goes against the concept of a cognitive shift. What were we expecting when we took a novice skier to a moderate run without telling him how to slow down? We were only able to laugh only after discovering that he was not injured. After all, his crash was so nasty looking that it looked like her snapped every bone in his body. His laughing was an indication that our feelings of fear could appropriately be manifested as laughter. Additionally, I was happy that it wasn’t me that wiped out, sending my equipment in all direction. I have no problem laughing at myself, but it was much funnier that it wasn’t me, maybe because I got to see the scenario play out from afar.