Geniuses and organizations like to generalize about people. Jung had his system, dividing people into extroverts and introverts, among other things. Freud had his categories, too. And my favorite of the early shrinks, Karen Horney, even divided neurotics into those who moved away from people, toward people, in a dependent posture or against people.
And it wasn't just godless (not necessarily unspiritual) docs who tended to categorize.
The Catholics who raised me had saints and sinners. Pat Robertson and his ilk have God, themselves and sinners (everybody else). Middle Eastern fanatics have God and themselves on one hand, infidels on the other.
I'm less regimented than the great shrinks (some might say quite a bit less intelligent, too). And although death scares me, I am less terrified of hell and damnation than most religious folk I know.
Yet I, too, look to the past. To Aesop, who I believe was the author of the ant-and-the-grasshopper fable. You remember, it's summer and the ant is working away storing up goodies and necessities for winter, while the grasshopper, mocking Brother Ant, is out playing golf and chasing grasshopperettes.
Then winter comes, as it and other not-so-nice things always do. The ant is warm and cozy in his well-stocked anthill, and Brother Grasshopper is in deep trouble. Such deep trouble that he implores Brother Ant to save him from the elements and his own lack of preparation.
I don't remember exactly how Aesop handled this, but if memory serves, the ant turns a righteously cold heart against the grasshopper (no prodigal-son stories for the relentless Irish Catholics who raised me) and leaves the rascal out in the rain and snow and ice and sleet.
The feckless grasshopper probably died while the ant and his brood sat around eating their workaholic selves into obesity.
I was raised by ants. But I have always been a grasshopper, and both times I hitched myself to a long-term relationship with women, I selected fellow grasshoppers.
Maybe I went that way because of pure anti-genetics. I have been in a semi-gentle, turn-away-rather-than-burn-down rebellion my entire life. During my teens, my parents often expressed doubt that I was truly theirs. My sergeant in basic training sort of adopted me, named me White Dog (he had a Black Dog, too) and pushed me to graduation. But he also couldn't resist telling me that although I was "a tough, funny-assed kid" (I was so proud that day), I was also "the poorest excuse for a soldier of any Caucasian boy he'd ever seen in 18 years of drill instructing."
I was perversely proud of that assessment, too.
I've been thinking a lot about my grasshopper-ing lately. My savings are almost nil and it's my fault, not whipping-boy stooge George W. Bush; 'cause it's me, not the draft dodger, who quit two newspaper companies that wanted to give me a good retirement plan.
And not long ago I passed on a serious relationship with a woman six years younger than I, and instead embarked on a seven-month affair with a girl 30 years my junior. And there must be no grasshopper like an old grasshopper, because I was still surprised when that ended, after she belatedly and suddenly realized a month or so ago that I was too old for her.
Ants and grasshoppers are front and center now because I am working at a large assisted-living facility in the North End. My residents are all successful folks - it's an expensive place. They and their families have all saved money and had good insurance plans. These people planned for the future. But the one thing they didn't plan for was Alzheimer's. We treat them well and the families are grateful. But the residents themselves (we mustn't call them patients) don't realize that fact.
In fact, they mostly don't even know where they are, or when they are. And many don't really know anymore exactly who they were.
Alzheimer's reinforces my grasshoppery tendencies. I just don't think you can really plan for anything in this life. You can hedge your bets by quitting heroin, not having that seventh beer before you drive, and not marrying that girl you met at Bo's bachelor party, the one in the bikini who came up out of the cake. You should quit heroin and not drive drunk. The entertainment chick's sort of a judgment call. Much more than that, you cannot do.
So I will envy the gilded ant I played golf with at Jefferson last week, the guy who, at my age, is already retired and is heading for Maui in the fall to play more golf, while I write columns in the rain and work at the assisted-living place.
But I probably would not have been able to do whatever the heck my golf buddy for a day did for 30 years to get loose - unless he simply inherited the money; he didn't say.
I am a grasshopper. I tried to live fast, but I didn't really want to die young, however pretty my corpse would have been (I was a real good-looking kid).
And now, I just want to live full-out (whatever that means to the rapidly aging me) until my days are gone.
Sure, I wish I was playing golf every day and dating Mick Jagger's exes. But since I am not, this grasshopper will keep playing golf on his days off and keep looking for that Miss Right of my age, or any age for that matter.
I am a proud grasshopper.
