MAX AND IMPORTANT THINGS

I know it’s been a long time since the last time I made contact with the mother ship, and I’ve got a lot to tell you about my continuing battle with modern medicine – but forgive me, this is more important. At this moment it’s much more important.

I’ve got to tell you about Max, the 14-year-old kid who hangs around here every other week, playing baseball, football and computer games while firing paintball and bee-bee guns that are more deadly (and expensive) then the weapons carried by 85 percent of the world’s armies. It’s an amazing thing to watch him eat enough food to allow his body to grow at a faster rate than a genetically engineered bamboo shoot.

It’s something he just did. And itt might not be a big deal to others, but it will always be one of the most magical moments in my life. Like most kids, I guess, Max falls in that giant group of his American peers who doom the newspaper industry I owe so much to. Kids don’t like to read -- unless it's about superheroes, teenage magicians and vampires and is accompanied by lots of pictures. (For some reason that clearly escapes me, they especially like vampires, who would hold majorities in both houses of Congress if they were the least bit politically inclined.)

I’ve spent the last 10 years watching young Americans lose the joy of learning. Living during a rare, wonderful moment in history when all the world’s knowledge can instantly be accessed by anyone on the planet with opposable thumbs, most kids frankly couldn’t give a shit. There are lots of reasons for what’s happened, but let’s face it, those clueless schmucks trapped by Jay Leno into taking and flunking ridiculously easy street quizzes are now the rule – not the exception. You know: Q: What's the Gettysburg Address? A: Main Street? Just appearing on TV has become the important part of life. It seems to mean they’re important. The fact that most animals blessed with backbones know more about the world they live in doesn't count.

Incidentally, I first noticed this terrifying phenomenon while Max’s older sister was attending a well-regarded, very expensive, Jewish private school up to the eighth grade. During all those years I never once saw a single kid in that school who ever looked like he or she was having fun. It was painful to see that the self-important jerks running those classes had sucked every last bit of the joy of learning from every one of those blank-eyed, smart phone-equipped "over-achievers" quietly marching (shuffling?) from class to class. I couldn’t imagine any one of them going home and Googling something just to find the answer to something they were curious about. (“Will this be covered on the final?”)

But back to Max. Remember Max? Out of nowhere earlier tonight he asked me to take a look at a spider web he had just watched being constructed on our front porch. Max has a lot of unexplained fears he’s acquired over the years and spiders are definitely high on that list – right between germs and not being like (and liked) everyone else. Almost every other time we’ve talked about arachnids before, its involved killing them and what would happen if you’re bitten by one of them.

But this time it was different. He literally dragged me outside to see it. He showed me the spider, the web it had built outside our front door and described how he had watched the spider weave his dew-covered home and set up house. It was a pretty decent web too and when Max showed me how the nice-sized spider sitting off to the side was patiently waiting for a meal. He didn't ask me "what would happen if? He told me he thought the web was beautiful. And it was.

I have had a fascination for spiders ever since my father brought home the Insects and Spiders edition that became one of my precious collection of the Golden Books of Animals– which I think I read until I was 35 years old. (I still remember my absolute favorite, "Reptiles and Amphibians" which me raise the countless snakes, newts, lizards and turtles I found wandering the streets of the Bronx where I grew up.)

I could actually feel Max's interest as I explained how there were two types of silk the spider spun and how one kind held the web together and fixed to nearby objects and the spider used the other kind to feel when a hapless future meal was struggling to escape from the spider's sticky trap. I told that even though spiders and eight eyes, they actually had very poor vision. I touched and broke one of the web’s supporting lines and we both watched with a boyish excitement (that I miss very much) as the spider suddenly dropped down one of his silk girders and quickly and efficiently repaired his work.

Max and I talked for a long time and it was great. He really wanted to learn and he asked excellent, probing questions. Five minutes after we said goodnight I went to his room to say:

“Ya know, when you watched that spider and showed it to me before … ah … ya know, that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen you do. I was prouder of you tonight for that than I was when I saw you hit that giant home run a few years ago.”

Sort of confused, he looked at me and said: “Really? Thanks, I guess.”

“No, thank you,” I said as I walked away.

“I just wanted to know stuff,” he said. I barely heard the remark. He whispered. But there were fireworks going off in my head.

"Yeah kid. That’s the point! It's okay to want to know stuff.

There is hope. Way to go Max. Don‘t take it the wrong way, but I love you pal.