EVERY DAY MATTERS -- This One Perhaps Most of All

BY EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 18th, 2007

Yah, I know, my ex-wife -- a lady of uncommon judgment and uncanny foresight -- IS right—I must have way too much time on my hands when I do what I did today.

The problem is that I have an ingrained obsession about the significance of historic events and the dates on which they occurred. Thus, I hit the internet to learn what important or significant events had taken place on May the 18ths of the past. As usual, I was fascinated. Not only that, I almost decided for myself what I believe to be the most significant event that occurred in history on this date. However, since I couldn’t quite make up my mind, I did what I always do in such instances.

I went to my local watering hole to find my buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead—and there they were. Lunkhead was looking a little grim leaning on his left elbow, the fingers of his left hand spread through what little hair he has, a dead cigar poking out of the left side of his mouth, and his scotch glass about a third empty. Dunderhead was leaning on his right elbow looking to his left along the bar at Lunkhead with a self-satisfied smirk on his thin face as though he’d just said something very clever to Lunkhead. There was a nearly full glass of beer in front of him.

“What’s up?” I asked, as I took the stool between them and ordered a beer.

“Oh,” said Dunderhead, “Lunkhead is in mourning for both the San Jose Sharks and the Golden State Warriors.”

“I’d be lucky if that’s all it was,” muttered Lunkhead. “My wife didn’t care about the hockey playoffs but, as you’ll recall, she’s from Salt Lake City and I was dumb enough to bet her that the Golden State Warriors would beat the Utah Jazz in the recent basketball playoff series. Unfortunately for me, they didn’t. Now, I have to do anything she tells me to do for a week beginning tomorrow. She generously gave me a few days to get ready and tomorrow -- on a Saturday, of all days -- it starts,” Lunkhead moaned.

“Well, perhaps this’ll take your mind off your troubles for at least awhile, Lunkhead,” I said, handing both fellows printed copies of the historic events I had printed from the website. The lists are broken into three major categories: significant May 18th births, deaths, and historic events both here and abroad.

“So,” I suggested, “what do you say if we first decide on the most significant May 18th birth?” and they both nodded.

Suddenly, Lunkhead sat up straight and laid his cigar on the bar and Dunderhead lowered his exotic beer. They both began running their forefingers along the first column of names.

“Good God!” said Lunkhead, “Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was born on May 18th, 1868, and Bertrand Russell, the British mathematician, Nobel Prize winner, and pacifist philosopher was born on the same day in 1872—hmmmm.”

“Neither one of those guys,” said Dunderhead (having obviously started from the opposite end of the list) can hold a candle to Jennifer Streblow, Miss Wisconsin of 1997. And Lunkhead, look -- here’s a Golden State Warrior for you -- Donyell Marshall was born May 18th, 1973. How about that?”

“He’s long gone to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and what’s worse, his team is still in the playoffs,” said Lunkhead hanging his head again.

Both men continued to run their fingers along the May 18th births:

Baseball slugger Reggie Jackson, 1947; Albert Hammond of “It Never Rains In Southern California” fame, 1942; Frank Capra,1894, producer of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Arsenic and Old Lace”; the late Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York, 1904; and Brooks Robinson, 1937, the Baltimore Orioles “vacuum cleaner” at third base for almost twenty-two years now in the Baseball Hall of Fame (along with Jackson); former Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, co-author of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced budget act of the 1980’s GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.

Suddenly, the silence was interrupted and, for the next ten or twelve minutes, I had to listen to both Lunkhead and Dunderhead singing songs like:

“Catch a Falling Star”, “Tom Boy”, and “Hot-Diggity, Dog-Diggity, Boom What You Do To Me!”

Long before they got to “The Bluest Skies You’ve Ever Seen Are in Seattle”, I knew that Perry (Pierino) Como (May 18th, 1912) -- the singing barber -- was their choice for the most significant birth I was just grateful that they stayed away from “Ave Maria,” not because I dislike it, mind you, but rather because it’s a beautiful hymn.

It took less time than I possibly could have imagined for them to decide on the most significant May 18th death. At least they didn’t settle for Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit Missionary. (Dunderhead made the derisive comment that he’d been turned down at Marquette when he’d applied for admission to the university back in the 1960s.) Indeed, Mary McLeod Bethune of education and civil rights fame who died May 18th 1955, and Jeannette Rankin, the maverick GOP Congresswoman from Montana who had been elected to two terms in the House of Representatives in 1916 and 1940 so she could vote to keep us out of both World War I and II before being denied re-election both times, got no reaction at all. Not even Wilbur J. Cohen, the first employee of the Social Security Administration who died on May 18th, 1977 got the slightest sniffle.

Then, suddenly, it came.

“Oh, no,” Lunkhead and Dunderhead cried together, as if it had happened on May 18th, 2007 rather than on May 18th, 1988. They were talking about the death of Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear and Huckelberry Hound.

“But,” I cried, “Why not Lawrence Welk who died of pneumonia on May 18th, 1992 at the age of 89?”

“Naah,” said Lunkhead, “I couldn’t vote for anyone who had lemons for sisters. The Oak Ridge Boys are more my type of music anyway.

“Lunkhead,” said Dunderhead, “They were the Lennon Sisters, not the Lemon sisters! Open your ears and your mind might follow!”

“Yah, but they were lemons just the same as far as I’m concerned,” Lunkhead growled, retrieving his dead cigar from the bar and putting it back into his face.

The pick for the most historic event was, of course, going to be the toughest and probably the most significant choice. The possibilities included:

The 1631 election of John Winthrop as the first governor of Massachusetts; the 1652 decision by Rhode Island to make slavery illegal; the May 18th 1804 crowning of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor of France; the infamous decision of the people of Massachusetts on May 18th 1852 requiring all children of age within the state to attend school; the beginning of the siege of Vicksburg by General Grant during the Civil War in 1863; the panic by many in 1910 when the earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet; the 1934 reference to the Academy Award Statue as “Oscar” for the first time in print by Sidney Skolsky — none of which got any reaction from either man.

The 1953 breaking of the sound barrier by Jacqueline Cochrane, the first woman pilot to do so, did get a reaction from Lunkhead who said that his wife had broken the sound barrier many times without thinking anything of it. Both men thought it was remarkable that Catholic Italy had approved the legalization of abortion as early as 1977—and both thought it was quite “manly” that Chung Kwung Ying had performed 2,750 “atomic” hand-stand push-ups on Sunday, May 18th, 1986. The amazing thing is that they missed it -- both of them.

There was dead silence. They couldn’t make up their minds. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar name that had caused their attention to skip over it. I pronounced it—Edwin Budding. Then I pronounced the year—eighteen thirty.

I thought Lunkhead was going to pass out. Suddenly he saw it: in 1830, an English engineer named Edwin Budding from Stroud, Gloucestershire had invented the lawn mower -- the bane of every husband nearly every Saturday of his life between May and October. Yes, indeed, that was it. I hadn’t known about Lunkhead’s pickle before presenting my lists, but what can one say or even do when history proves so real and relevant?

Suddenly, there we were, me on one side and Dunderhead on the other, leading Lunkhead home to face the first chore Bertha Lunkhead would surely demand of her groggy husband tomorrow morning.

“I can just hear her now,” Lunkhead cried. “Before you do anything else, mow the lawn dear!!!”

“Lunkhead,” I asked sweetly, “what price would Bertha have had to pay had the Warriors and not the Jazz won the recent series?”

Oh, that’s easy,” shot back Lunkhead, “she’d have had to do anything I wanted her to do for a week beginning tomorrow, of course. After all, I’d have given her prep time, I’m not a brutish man you know,” he insisted.

“Okay,” I said “then what would you have asked her to do first that she never does?” I inquired as I snickered at Dunderhead over Lunkhead’s bent head.”

“Oh, hell, that’s easy, too. Mow the lawn, dear,” he said with just the slightest tremor in his voice.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY