“And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man.”
         - Henry V, Act II, Scene 2

King Henry V was addressing Lord Scroop, a childhood friend who had sold him out to the French just before the English invasion. If the King couldn’t trust Lord Scroop, who could he trust?

These are tough times for a smartass like me. I want to mock the Kardashians and Newt Gingrich and whatever Twilight movie is about to be released (2 parts? Really? Does she need 2 parts to decide on a crib?). But all I can think about is Joe Paterno. Full story »

It has been quite a week. When things happen that I don’t completely understand, I always go back to my childhood and look for inspiration or understanding. Yep. There it is.

When I was a kid, sports were my life. I have the scars to prove it. Hours under an endless June sky were marked by innings, and days that crept by slow in July heat are remembered as quarters in a never-ending football game. We violently imitated every competition we saw on TV, and when we had to, we invented our own contests. I’m still very proud of my brief reign as grand champion of full-contact croquet, a beautiful sport that drew mothers to our park like June bugs to watermelon rinds. Oh, how they screamed. Full story »

Everything starts somewhere. For us, getting in shape started with bread pudding.

“I don’t think it’s normal to eat that much bread pudding,” I said. “I wonder if anybody else celebrates International Bread Pudding Day?”

“I’m still not convinced that holiday exists,” said Nancy, “But it is winter in Connecticut, and you need your winter fat.”

“Har, har. My feet are cold. Do I have socks on? I don’t think I can move.”

And I didn’t move for hours. I sat there like a gorged tick. Later that evening, I was able to push myself upright and stagger to bed. I’m lying. I staggered to the refrigerator for a few more bites of bread pudding. Hey, IBP day only comes once a year. The next morning everything had changed. Full story »

It’s the beginning of March, and if I was teaching somewhere, which I am not, I would be teaching poetry right about now. There was always a brief window to teach poetry, before the sun rose too high, and I lost my charges to fun and crap like that. So the beginning of March was perfect. Cold, clammy, death-like March, the season of grief and sonnets.

And it was always a hard sell. In middle school, I typically introduced my middle school students to real poetry. For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve waded past Shel Silverstein and into the murky metaphoric waters beyond. It’s also when I am inevitably tricked into reading large tracts of adolescent poetry written about old boyfriends or girlfriends or others “who have done me wrong.” Full story »

I took my family to the aquarium in Mystic last week, because it was Presidents’ Day. I’m lying. I took them because I like the aquarium. True, the price of admission is steep, the fish all look small and terrified, and the over-priced food isn’t very good, but we enjoy the beluga whales, and I can‘t look at penguins without cracking up. A penguin is Nature’s stand-up comic. But at the end of the day, I had to balance the joy of penguins by facing the horror of the gift shop.

“Dad? Can I have this stuffed shark?” Joey asked.

“No,” I said. “How much does it cost?”

“Only $44.95,” he said.

“Oh. Then I’ll change my answer. From no to Hell No.” Full story »

When I turned 16, all my friends assumed I would get a driver’s license. So did The Dad, my brothers and sisters and my girlfriend. The pressure was intense, but I resisted. There was no need for me to drive, since all my friends had cars and they seemed to enjoy driving a lot, so I just went along as the designated passenger. It was great. And since gas cost 27 cents a gallon in 1971, I saved literally dozens of quarters by not driving.

Still, I received lots of concerned stares from my classmates. They didn’t understand, and I couldn’t tell them. I was terrified of driving. I had only driven a car once, in 1972.  David Simpkins and I were in the drive-through lane at the Dairy Delight, when he jumped out of his car to talk to some girls just as the car in front of us moved up. I sat there as the car behind me began to blow its horn. I waved at the driver, but he just honked his horn again. Probably an out-of-towner, I thought.

“Pull the car up,” shouted David. What choice did I have? There were girls present. I broke out in a cold sweat, slid over, threw the car into drive (I think it was drive. There was a D in there, somewhere) and pressed the accelerator. David‘s car jerked forward and plowed right into the side of the building.

“I’m OK,” I wheezed. “I’m not hurt.”  Full story »

I am the most boring person I know. Oh, I’m not complaining, I’m bragging. But it’s not easy being boring. It requires vigilance and constant attention to detect possible danger. Let me explain.

Yesterday, my wife said to me, “Do you know what I’d really like to do?”

“I give up. What would you really like to do?” My danger sense was tingling.

“I’d really like to go to Rockefeller Center.” Full story »

Stop me if I start rambling. Too late.

Through my long and storied educational career, I’ve only ever failed one class. Oh I’ve come close to failing. I made a D in my Bible as Literature class and was damn lucky to get that, a lapse of mine that I hope will not have eternal consequences. You might go to hell for failing The Bible as Literature. But I only ever really failed once. It was typing. I took this class as an elective when I was a senior in high school. Alas, my typing efforts were hampered by the little finger on my left hand. I broke that finger when I was 13, and it healed back at an odd angle that made typing and guitar playing impossible. I would like to be able to play the guitar. But typing? Typing was for girls.  I didn’t need the credit, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when the year ended, and I still owed the typing teacher, Mrs. Hardison, six weeks of work. I boldly backed away from the manual typewriter, looked her square in the eye and said:

“Mrs. Hardison, I’m going to fail this class and I don’t care. It’s 1973. When will a man ever need to know how to type?” Full story »

Something less than 228 hours to go.

I found a gypsy. That is, I think she was a gypsy, although she maintained she was Lithuanian. I offered to escort her to the train tracks, which was obviously a Lithuanian idiom I didn’t know existed, because it meant something altogether different than the sum of its parts. We made a quick exchange of funds, and I ran, her Eastern European “conductor” right behind me.

For those of you who think I’m making light of a situation I consider as serious as any I have faced, let me point out that this very morning, I read an obituary of some poor individual who died yesterday. He was 55. He seemed fine yesterday, but now he’s dead. I felt fine yesterday, but today I woke up with a cold, that I am sure will turn to pneumonia and put me in the ground in just a few days. Full story »

            As 2010 draws to its dark and inevitable end, I would like to take this opportunity to say farewell to all my friends and readers at Scholars and Rogues. It was a great run, far better than I ever deserved, but it’s over now. I cannot fight the Ouija board.

            Let me explain. I have mentioned in earlier posts the great, traumatic event of my childhood. In 1965, my two older sisters came into possession of a Ouija board. They asked various girly questions such as who liked who, who really liked who, who would marry first, and who would be the first to have children, then moved to more worldly matters. It predicted that a movie star would one day be president, the collapse of the Soviet Union, how a television station would one day rule the country. You know, ridiculous crap.  I scoffed and guffawed. So, to quell my laughter, they asked the board “How old will Terry be when he dies?”

The board replied “55.”

“You made it say that,” I jeered. “What year will I die?”

The board replied “2010.”

I ran to get paper and pencil, and added 55 to the year of my birth, 1955, and got…OK, I must have added wrong, so I erased that problem and added 55 to 1955, carried the 1 and got…

Damn. You see, the recessive math gene runs deep in the Hargrove family, so I didn’t think my sisters could perform such a complex calculation in their heads. Maybe the Ouija board was right? But what did it matter. 2010 was 45 years away. Full story »

When we first married in 1995, Nancy and I put our unattainable romantic crushes out on the table. I told her that I had a thing for the figure skater Dorothy Hamill. True, I’ve never met Dorothy Hamill, nor have I ever talked to her. Still, she’s been my dream girl since 1976. I was afraid Nancy might laugh at this juvenile crush, but she understood perfectly well.

“It’s funny you should mention that,” she said. “Because I also have a secret crush. Oh, it’s silly. Let’s talk about something else.”

“No, it’s not silly at all,” I countered. “I mean, knowing who we admire says a lot about who we are as individuals. Dorothy Hamill has such grace and style. I know it sounds childish, but there’s a part of me that will always love her. So who is your secret crush? Dennis Quaid? Ronnie Howard?”

“Firemen,” stated Nancy directly. “Would you pass the peas?” Full story »

When I was a kid, giants walked the earth, and I knew one of them. He was my junior high school football coach and on a warm September night in 1969, I made him very angry. His name was Bo Culbertson, and he was angry because I missed a block. Now, in my defense, I did block somebody, and it was a fine block. I was assisted by Ronnie Dalton, our right guard. Ronnie was blocking who he was supposed to block and I was helping, and we blocked that poor kid from Pulaski nearly all the way to the sideline. But the person I blocked wasn’t the person I was supposed to block, and the game we tied, we should have won, and would have won if not for me.

Let’s go back to the beginning. In the Tennessee of my youth, a football coach was one of the most revered people in the whole town. The first football coach who ever yelled at me was Coach Bo. I think he enjoyed yelling at me, because he did it a lot, but my dad assured me that what I was doing was good for Coach Bo, and therefore good for the team. I was his emotional outlet. He was a good coach, and for the two years that I played at Connelly Junior High School he had a record of 12 wins, 3 losses and 1 tie. Even though he is credited with the tie, that tie was really mine. I did it, all by myself. I know, people say it takes 11 players to win or lose a football game, but we all know this is something we made up so our field goal kickers won’t leave the team to join the French Foreign Legion after a chip shot sails wide right. One person, all by himself, can do a lot of damage to the team. Full story »

Last Friday, I received one of those automated calls that has in the last two months given me the illusion of having lots of friends. This one was about a Tennessee politician named Ty Cobb, and what a miserable Democrat/alleged human being he was, and why I should vote for his opponent, Sheila Butt (real names, I promise).

I found the experience confusing for several reasons. First, I assumed Ty Cobb was a great, but dead, baseball player, and given his penchant for sharpening his cleats to maim second basemen and his all-around foul disposition, I always assumed he was a Republican. I mean, he had balls. Second, I haven’t lived in Tennessee for five years, so I’m getting twice as many of these calls as my fellow Connecticutters. Some people might think that’s unfair, but to me it’s glorious. Full story »

Previously…

I don’t care what he says, Steve’s sectional sofa bit me. Despite the injury to my hand, I was able to help him get the sectional sofa into my abode. It wasn’t easy, since my apartment was on the second level of a refurbished antebellum home, and the only access was a winding, open air, metal staircase that was half covered by the drooping limbs of a willow tree. When we finally got it through the door and pushed it into place, I thought I liked the sofa just where it landed. And there it sat, heavy and brooding, a massive lump of fabric and concrete wood. Full story »

As a man, there are some things I simply can’t do. I can’t bake a cake. I can’t sooth a crying infant. I can‘t be expected to bypass a potential short cut, nor should I ever be seen asking for directions. I can‘t ignore a football game, nor can I live, for even a short period of time, without sports. But I can cry. Why is it OK for this man to cry? Because this man can‘t pick furniture.

When I was suddenly single in 1993, I did the decent thing and allowed my soon-to-be ex-wife to take whatever furniture she felt she couldn’t part with. Little did I know the strong emotional attachments she had formed, for when she was done, I had my clothes, a Beta tape player, and two seats from our kitchen table. But that didn’t bother me, since I had, deeply rooted within my being, the old hunter-gatherer gene, so I was off to scrounge for any scrap of wood I could find. I mean, that’s all a table is, right? Just the top of a tree with a few limbs left over. I called my friend Steve to ask if he could help. Full story »

The new Batwoman is gay. Really. I don’t have an opinion about that, since I don’t read comic books anymore. Still, I can remember when she carried her crime fighting equipment in a purse.

When I was a kid, video games were called comic books. They were great because they were filled with superheroes who didn’t require an emotional investment, they were very cheap and they were full of advertisements. The ads were the second best part of the comic book. We all wanted some X-ray glasses, or free chameleons, or a Charles Atlas guide to beating the crap out of beach sand-kickers. Every guy in my neighborhood wanted to win the huge chest of plastic army men, over 288 pieces, that could be yours if you only sold a few Grit magazines or packs of seeds or boxes of Christmas cards. And when it came right down to it, who didn’t need magazines and seeds and Christmas cards?

But the best thing about comic books was the dream, intoxicating almost to madness, of being a superhero. I was hooked as were we all. More than that, we believed superpowers were attainable, and already enjoyed by a lucky few of us. Full story »

When the first George Bush was president, I was a Dan Quayle fan. Not of his policies mind you, but of his speeches. The former vice president turned saying just the wrong thing into high art, such as when he tried to remember the motto of the United Negro College Fund: A mind is a terrible thing to waste. For Vice-President Quayle, this somehow jumbled in his mind and came out of his mouth as “What a waste it is, to lose one’s mind.”

I miss Dan Quayle because, in some quantum way, I’m just like him. When my greatest desire is to be profound, the weirdest things jump right out of my mouth, and I wonder how Vice President Quayle kept his composure, knowing that wherever he went, hundreds of cameras and reporters were waiting to pounce on his verbal gaffes. One of the hardest truths about people is that they never forget the truly ridiculous. Neither does my wife. Full story »

Christmas is less than four months away. Damn. I’m up to my neck in toys from last Christmas, and all I want from Santa is some kind of guarantee that no one in my family is going to be a hoarder. I had to use a snow shovel this morning to clear a path to the refrigerator, and along the way I saw a football, basketball, baseball and bat, a pirate ship, a pirate cave, a helicopter, a bottom of the sea explorer ship, a dozen stuffed cats, a truck, some books, some trains, some games, and four fully equipped, 12-inch tall Marines. I’m not quite sure where the marines came from, but they‘re here now and I have to find a place for them. Oh, and my son, Joey, got a few toys, too. Full story »

Who are you? You are who your friends are. I don’t know who invented that saying, but I know it’s true because I know Disaster Dave.

Dave’s mom died in 1957, so he lived with his dad in affluent Hickory Heights, and spent his summer vacation with his grandparents one block north of us. He was very friendly, didn’t say much, and he grinned all the time. But everybody has something that makes him special, which is just another way of saying everybody is a freak, and Dave was no different. He was born with four toes on his left foot. When he told us, we didn’t believe him, so he pulled off his Red Ball Jets to prove it. Wow. Four toes. I guess that little piggie really did run all the way home, because it wasn’t there anymore. It didn’t take much to impress us in 1966, and four toes made Dave an instant celebrity.

But it also made him clumsy. He was always falling over things and strolling into the paths of bicycles. He was useless in sports, because he couldn’t run a straight line. At first, we thought this was kind of funny. After a loop single, he’d run to first base, but end up getting tagged out on the pitcher’s mound. Full story »

One Saturday morning in 1965, mom dragged us to the Western Auto Store on the Lewisburg square. I was 10 and Glenn was 12, so we were really too old to be taken shopping, but make a single mistake with a bottle rocket inside the kitchen, and suddenly you can’t be trusted.

“Why are we going to Western Auto?” asked Glenn.

“To see something,” said mom.

“What?” I asked.

“The future,” she replied. Full story »