Worry, an Incurable Affliction

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the editorial/opinion page staff

published by the StarTribune

April 9, 1967

   A VAPID BIT of advice was given to a high-strung ball player the other day by his manager. The fellow was told to "quit worrying."

   This automatically disqualified the manager as a psychologist.  The worrier, as anyone should know, does not quit worrying on command.  He may be told half a dozen times a day to forget his problems and relax  All this does is anger him and increase his worry.  If he could shut off his worry as he shuts off the tap, life would be beautiful.

   According to psychologists there's nothing abnormal about worry and one should not be ashamed of it.  This is comforting to know.  Worry has been my portion ever since I got my first report card.

   My wife scoffs.  "The only thing you worry about is whether you'll get a night's sleep.  Your worrying act strikes me as strictly phony."  

   BUT I MAINTAIN that anyone who out-worries me needs a psychiatrist.  It's all very silly, I tell myself, but I worry anyway.  What gnaws at the innards is of little importance, really, and vanishes as soon as I'm out of bed.  If I got up instead of tossing for half an hour worrying about the window screens and the garage roof I'd suffer a lot less.

   It's only when worry gets in the way of thought, say the experts, that one is in trouble.  This means that you should attack the roof problem from which worry springs.  And if you must worry, worry creatively.

   The challenge seems plain.  He who worries about not having enough money to pay the bills should solve everything by making more money.  It's as simple as that.  Maybe a bit of moonlighting at Joe's Bar would turn the trick.  Or maybe the worrier should sink his all into Consolidated Pig Iron or Allied Spaghetti so he could worry about invesrments instead of athlete's foot.  Or maybe he should send

the kids off to summer camp and worry less about the population explosion. 

   One of my pet worrries involves the car.  I fret about dents and scratches, about tires and wheel alignment and spark plugs and gas mileage.  I checked the oil the other day and the level seemed too high.  Next morming before getting up I realized the worst.  Water was getting into the crankcase.  The head gasket was shot.  Also the car had started shifting from high to second when speed was reduced. Obviously I faced a major repair bill.

   I kept chewing on the problem morning after morning.  Finally my mechanic looked things over, said the head gasket was okay and that no water was getting into the crankcase.  The transmission oil was low, though, because a part which contained a diaphragm which controlled the gear shift was defective.  This was replaced at small cost.  My worry had been for nothing.

   WE'LL START DRIVING to the cabin again soon, the weatherman willing, and I'll worry about that.  You can't drive 200 miles time after time without eventually getting smeared by some crazy driver or being a crazy driver yourself.  The law of averages can't be repealed.

   "That's what we have insurance for," said my wife.

   "But insurance doesn't guarantee life.  Statistics show that--"

   "Statistics show you can kill yourself tripping over the cat or having a brick fall on your head.  There's danger in everything.  But you can't be immobilized by risk.  If you stayed home and just sat you'd eventually die, too--of starvation."

   That's another thing that worries me--losing arguments.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of  the StarTribune.

Fourth of July--Then and Now

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

Published by the StarTribune

July 1, 1961

   MY SON will be able go get a few rolls of ammunition for his cap gun--if he's not too old to disdain such--and perchance may acquire some sparklers.  But that will be the extent of his Fourth of July do-it-yourself pyrotechnics.  Most kids will be similarly restricted.  

   In the course of human progress, Independence Day has become relatively safe in the fireworks department.  Thirty-eight states have laws so restrictive that the celebrator can do little more than pop his knuckles and in most others there is some degree of control.

   Since we value human life, this is all to the good, but as I ponder my progeny's pallid efforts to mark this milestone in our history, I cannot forget that traffic now kills more people on July 4 than fireworks ever did.

   This doesn't mean I'd want the holiday to be celebrated with the no-holds-barred abandon it once was.  If it were, I'd not permit a child of mine out of the house and would be loath to leave it myself.

   BUT BACK in the boom-boom yesterdays any kid who roamed abroad with nothing more lethal than sparklers or a cap gun would have been judged insane and laughed out of town.  To qualify for the demolition corps you had to stick to firecrackers a minimum of two inches long (usually lighted in the hand), torpedoes which exploded with shattering violence when thrown against a hard surface, and giant crackers the size of stove wood capable of lifting a privy from its moorings.  

   Loud noises frightened me when I was tiny.  Luckily I conquered the phobia.  Otherwise the Fourth of July in Choteau, Mont., where they did everything but burn down the courthouse, would have been intolerable.

   A MAJOR part of the  celebrating was done around the saloons, the kids shooting firecrackers outside while the menfolk got shot within.  On one Fourth that I well remember a bunch of the boys were whooping it up outside the Family Liquor store and Wallace Coffey, a lad who put heart and soul into the observance, tossed a king-size boomer into the entrance of the place just as Ewing Steel, who drove the stage between Collins and Choteau, was coming out.
Ewing was an angular, rough-hewn character who got more mileage out of profanity than anyone I ever encountered.  He was visibly shaken by the blast but after satisfying himself that he hadn't caught fire and was only slightly crippled he rent the air with a string of epithets that scattered the firecracker set like prairie chickens.

   THE LADIES AID always had a picnic in the park featuring lemonade in washtubs, potato salad, watermelon, ice cream and an oration..  There was a greased-pig chase with the winner getting $5 from the Rod and Gun club, a ball game complete with rhubarbs, horse races and usually a rodeo.

   The day was concluded with father officiating at the fireworks ceremonial in the back yard--roman candles, skyrockets and pinwheels.  After it was over, mother put salve on your burns and you went to bed with a sense of completion.

   It was a more memorable day, certainly, to you who lived it, than you'll have next Tuesday, not merely  because you then had the bright-eyed wonder and enthusiasm of youth but because the Declaration of Independence is now more remote in time and we observe it with a more sophisticated calm.

   There are now more diversions and complexities, more worries and more of everything to swivel the mind from simple things enjoyed in a less cluttered yesterday, a yesterday when doing one thing at a time was considered enough.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune