Many of us in our 70s have favorite stories we never get tired of telling, stories that dramatically demonstrate the important lessons we’ve learned through the years. I recently discovered that maybe it’s not such a great idea to tell these tales to people who used to work for you.
While growing up in Frankfort, Indiana, a poor family lived across the street from us. The Spencers (not their real name) had several kids whose clothes frequently were dirty as were their faces. Although a platitude from those times was “You may be poor, but you’re never too poor to wash,” who knows what went on in that house to keep the family from cleaning up.
One summer day when I must have been 12 or 13 I saw Mrs. Spencer in her yard and decided to yell something at her before racing to hide behind a peony bush. I don’t remember what it was. It certainly wasn’t, “Hello, Mrs. Spencer, you fetching wench. I’d like to hold you tight and then suck on your neck.”
Whatever it was, I made fun of her and my mother heard me. Mom was livid and grabbed a piece of wood and hit me on the legs with it, again and again. She dragged me into the house, shaking with anger and also upset at herself. She was so mad and had hit me so hard that I had welts on the back of my legs. She cried when she saw what she had done.
I recited this story at dinner the other night to two friends from my days at CBS News. Concluding it in a serious voice as I always do, I declared that, although the punishment was too harsh, I deserved to be spanked, “and I never made fun of Mrs. Spencer again.”
“No! But you took it out on those who worked for you and made fun of us,” one of my dinner companions said, beating the other to the punch, but only by a millisecond.
In the hundred times I’ve related that enduring morality tale from my boyhood¸ it has never occurred to me that someone who had to put up with my antics in a newsroom might have a much different assessment of it. Both friends quickly pointed out the lesson I took away from the incident seemed to be it was okay to mock other people as long as it wasn’t Mrs. Spencer and that I didn’t get caught.
I probably should now go through my catalog of oft-told stories and decide which ones are suitable for all listeners and which ones can’t possibly be shared with anyone I spent time in a newsroom with.
Rats! This means I have to stop telling that wonderful episode, where my voice usually cracks, about how I found myself crying one night in the CBS Newsroom during a long writers’ strike. I was very tired, I was angry, I deserved better. To my mind, this account of bawling my eyes out showed me as a sensitive, caring manager, but some member of the Writers’ Guild might bark at me, “You would have cried a lot more if I had anything to say about it. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to take a swing at you. Sensitive, and caring, my ass, you Management stooge.”
The next time I have a meal with former or current CBS News employees perhaps I should stick to innocuous stories about how great the grandkids are.