Save it for the Season Finale

An entire movie industry sprang up around the concept of the death-bed confession.  I believe this phenomenon was at its peak when I was about nine, but I'm sure we've all seen at least one variation on a thread that has woven its way into the closing scenes of grand Epic Adventures, sit-com season-enders, and every single episode of every single soap opera ever made.

It goes something like this:  The ancient, dying person sits up suddenly to a chorus of, "Dad!  Dad!  Don't sit up, you're dying!"  But Dad simply must confess that he has hated the living room drapes since the moment "those zig-zaggity-striped abominations" went up five decades earlier.  He flops back down on the pillow and dies.

The children *gasp* in unison.

Naturally, Dad is forgiven for lying all those years about his wife's wretched taste in window dressings.  He's dead.  But the wife must pay for ruining his exit, and so the children tear those drapes into a zillion ziggity pieces to use as handkerchiefs for what will be a longer-than-usual mourning period, thanks to this new information.

Scenes are often very touching (like when that dying angel-saint, Melanie, somehow forgave that witch, Scarlett, for making googly eyes at her husband, even though his name was Ashley).  Other scenes are beyond shocking (dying people at the end of soap opera episodes sit up in caskets at their own funerals to make announcements).  (Sometimes twice.)

Thanks to celebrity trailblazers, we know we can say whatever we want on our way out, which guarantees that this 'special' episode in our lives is the best place to tell those stories that nobody else on the planet wants to hear.

Can't decide which story is the most 'special' offering in your collection?  Just choose one.  They're all the same anyway, and here's why:  THEY'RE ABOUT THE PAST.

It's time to rewrite the death-bed scene.  Yes, we can still pinch our cheeks to attain that feverish aura and arrange our hair just so on the pillow, but why not turn the spotlight around and make the spectators glad they came?  Ask when her baby is due, whether you can please have his shrimp scampi recipe, and find out if they like the living room drapes.

When I was little, I had those allergies that make grown-ups recoil in horror.  Even when I wasn't sneezing or trying to breathe - everyone grimaced because 'Puffs with Aloe' had not yet been invented, so the skin between my nose and mouth was perpetually aflame.

I was allergic to everything that bloomed during Wyoming's all-at-once growing season, and by first grade I was up to four allergy injections per week.  One in each arm on Tuesday, and one in each arm on Friday.

I memorized the days of the week.

I also became one of those rats in the famous 'learned helplessness' experiments, which meant if I had accidentally fallen into a bucket of mop water at the clinic, I would have just gone ahead and drowned.

My most vivid memories from 'shot days' include the nurse's words as she shuffled slowly toward me from the cabinet where glass cookie jars sat inexplicably crammed with tongue depressors.  She strained under the weight of both syringes (carrying one on each hip at my eye-level), until the 15-inch needles would reach my skinny deltoids.  On approach, she cheerfully fired off a variation on one of these questions (depending on the time of year):

"How is school?" or "What did you get for Christmas?"

I memorized seasons that way and became proficient at guessing individual months, thanks to her creative rearrangement of key words:  "When is your last day of school?"  "How do you like your new teacher?"  "What are you asking Santa for this year?"  And once in a while, she'd lob a real soft one with, "Do you have any candy left in your Easter basket?" or "What are you going to be for Halloween?"

So, even though I knew the day and month every time she opened her mouth, I quickly garnered that she never listened to my answer.  ("I'm planning be a serial killer of nurses when I grow up!")  And a follow-up question?  Did not happen.  She just stuck me with the needles and went to find my mom.

Sometimes a different nurse was there and I learned the only thing worse than not being heard was listening to somebody's stories about wishing she could have worn real shoes to school, or how her parents never let her dress up like a saloon girl, or the time her brother shot a real rabbit and stuck it in a basket of grass and told her it was You-Know-Who....

It's hard to be a six-year-old therapist for a deeply wounded person who's about to jab needles completely through the alleged fattiest parts of your arms.

Let's do something different.  Let's stop beginning each of our stories with, "I've probably already told you this, but ...," even if that technique does help separate those who love us from those who send Christmas cards with fake return addresses.  (Spoiler alert:  Anyone still living with you after more than three decades of stories loves you the most.)

Let's instead start our open-ended questions for the next generation (and each other) with, "What do you think of ..." and listen to the answer.  You'll know you've listened correctly when your next question asks about something the person you're staring at just now said back.  I know, I know.  I make it sound easy.

I've probably already told you this, but ... I'm still trying out most of my big ideas.

My thought here is that if we are interested in what the young people think, they may be more inclined to tell us the good stuff on their own.  We can finally find out where all that Easter candy went, which cool stuff Santa dropped off, and exactly what they think of their new teachers.

Better practice not looking shocked.

(What says "I have arrived!" before you even enter the room?  Purple hair, if it's long enough.  Next Friday we'll discuss strategies for chatting up a young person's head until the face shows up.)