The 25 worst things that can happen to you.

Many years ago, I read a column by a long-ago newspaper writer whose name I think was L.M. Boyd. It was titled "Worrisome" and listed the 25 most traumatic events that can happen to us, according to "a team of scholars". I re-read it recently and thought it worth reading again and maybe re-thinking. Here they are:

1. Death of a child.

2. Death of a spouse.

3. A jail sentence.

4. Infidelity of a spouse.

5. Big financial problem.

6. Business failure.

7. Getting fired.

8. Miscarriage or stillbirth.

9. Divorce.

10. Marital separation.

11. A court appearance.

12. Unwanted pregnancy.

13. Major illness in the family.

14. Out of work for 30 days.

15. Death of a close friend.

16. A demotion.

17. A major personal illness.

18. Beginning of an extra-marital affair.

19. Loss of a valuable object.

20. A lawsuit.

21. Failure at school.

22. Child married without famly approval.

23. A broken engagement.

24. Necessity to make a large loan.

25. A son drafted.

This list was compiled by Mr. Boyd probably 30 years ago. I'm amazed at how many of the items are still true today.

But the list needs to be up-dated and added to.

The death of a child, for instance, is a given: there's no way to deal with it. And a jail sentence is probably as traumatic now as it was back then. But "big financial problem" and "business failure" may, these days, just mean you have to declare bankruptcy and be back in the black a few years later. Miscarriage or stillbirth is still an awful thing to happen to a happily expectant mother. But "infidelity of a spouse" and "marital separation" and even "divorce" have beome common in our society. Half our marriages end in divorce. And "unwanted pregnancy," which used to mean social isolation and maybe even having to marry that dweeb you had sex with when you were drunk is now totally accepted: even movie stars have kids together with no intention of getting married ("out of wedlock," is used to be called).

And, of course, there is no draft these days, so scratch #25.

I'm thinking we need to re-think and re-draft this Top Twenty Five list of worst things that can happen to any of us. For sure we'd have to add something about the terrorist threat to our country, post 9/11/2001, when our uniquely American idea of security was dramatically shot down. What else? I see no mention in this old list of drugs: what about the meth epidemic that decimates not just inner-cities but even small Western towns? What about illegal immigrants who are routinely deported, often leaving members of their families behind? There are all sorts of issues today that Mr. Boyd, in his time, never could have imagined.

What about being abused as a child, sexually or physically, by a family member or someone you trusted (e.g., a priest or babysitter or boyfriend of your mom)? That kind of trauma, occurring when we're young, can wreck a life. And what about being the victim of a crime? Being assaulted or raped, or both? Maybe Mr. Boyd and his "team of scholars" were being too delicate in their categorizing, or maybe they just weren't digging deep enough, because you know as well as I do that those horrible things were happening thirty years ago -- centuries ago -- just as they're happening now. And why didn't he include genocide, where you may watch your whole family murdered before your eyes? He had to be aware of the Nazis and Stalin -- and yes, that sort of thing still happens today, all over the world.

Or what about the plight of the homeless, those families who lose their homes, or never had one, who end up living in cars or under bridges?

It's time to come up with a new list, for sure, and I could draft one, but so could you, if you have the stomach for it.

Imagine yourself homeless. No, really, try it.

Let's say you've been working at a job for a while, and things are looking good for you and your family. Then suddenly you lose your job. Maybe sales are not so good, or whatever, but you're now un-employed. Probably you and your family have based your future on you having this job as long as you wanted it. (Maybe you were even looking to move ahead, get a better job, take your family into a nicer living space, buying a house instead of renting.) But wham! Out of the blue, you don't have a job.

Of course you reassure your spouse that all will be fine, that you'll find a job even better than the one you just lost. But then your spouse is laid off, too. Just not enough business to keep all these workers. Sorry. So the two of you find yourselves at home, in the middle of the day, looking at each other, thinking: What if neither of us finds another job? Is that possible?

Weeks go by and nobody is calling you back. Nobody is calling your spouse back, either. And, of course, the bills keep coming. Not just the rent but the electricity and water and gas bills. You have a little in a savings account but not that much. You and your spouse have already agreed
that you can't take the kids out to dinner anymore on Friday night, at least until this is resolved. But now you're faced with cutting down on groceries, too. Meat only on sale. No more of those packaged salads: only fresh spinach or lettuce from now on, which are better for you anyway.

Another week goes by, maybe two. Still no paychecks. The savings account is being tapped, all that money -- not much -- that you had set aside for your kids' college fund. Another week or two and that's gone, too.

You call your moms and dads, but their retirement accounts have been decimated by the current financial crisis, and they're reluctant to give you money they may need as they get older and have no income but rising medical needs. They're really sorry but . . .

And every day you're out on the street trying to find another job, not one like you had before but just something to put food on the table. Your spouse is looking, too, but jobs are scarce these days. And who's supposed to look after the kids while you're both trying to get these jobs you really don't even want? And now the people you pay to look after your kids are demanding you pay up or else.

Another week and neither of you can even find the most menial of jobs. You can't even be hired to bus tables at the all-you-can-eat restaurant.

Now you're desperate. You're two months behind on rent, and the landlord is threatening to evict you, to put your belongings on the street. After a nasty argument you never thought you'd have with your spouse -- that boy/girl you fell in love with all those years ago --you load all your stuff into your old SUV or station wagon - if you were smart enough, back in the time of cheap gas, to buy a big vehicle -- and one bright morning you all set off in it, not knowing where you're going but knowing that you only have about a hundred dollars and no jobs and no place to live.

So you and your kids spend the next few weeks in that vehicle. Where else could you go? It's not comfortable, and you have to make all kinds of excuses to the kids, who complain about no TV and no bathroom -- except for the nearest gas station -- and about how they're going to explain this to their friends, who are used to coming over on weekends to play video games.

You and your spouse are constantly at each other now, blaming first one and then the other, but still nobody will hire either of you to do even the shittiest of jobs. You have no money. None. You're broke. And you have kids in school who have no lunches.

In desperation, you go to the city or county to try to get food stamps and maybe subsidized housing. After a few humiliating hours of waiting and then being questioned about every detail of your lives and your situation, you do get some food stamps, but the housing will have to wait: there are lots of people ahead of you, and not enough units available right now.

So you have some food, at least for a while, but no place to live. So it's back to the car and sandwiches in the parking lot. And school the next day in dirty clothes.

What should these parents do?

What would YOU do?

Whatever happened to instrumentals?

In case you're too young to remember, instrumentals were songs that had no lyrics/words. They were purely instrumental, played on the guitar and drums and other instruments. They were very popular in the fifties/sixties but don't seem to be nowadays. If you take a look at any current list of the Top 10 or even Top 50 songs most played in the U.S. this week, I doubt that you'll find a single one that is purely instrument-based.

For the record, I don't include jazz or classical recordings here, as those are largely instrument-based (except opera, which is classical but with words/lyrics, albeit often in a foreign language.) And I know that great instrumental music is still being composed/recorded/sold -- but not to the fans of popular music, especially the young who download thousands of songs onto iPods. Virtually nothing of what they download qualifies as "instrumentals".

What I mean is that, forty or fifty years ago, when young people were first listening to songs on the radio -- rejecting Bing Crosby and Sinatra in favor of rock and roll -- many of those songs that were popular and that set us to dancing were instrumentals. They competed on the pop charts with Elvis and Dion and the Belmonts. If you're any kind of student of rock and roll history, I'll bet you recognize at least a few titles: "Walk, Don't Run" by The Ventures or "Pipeline" (by the Chantays?) or "Raunchy" by Bill Justis or "Rebel Rouser" by Duane Eddy (and his twangy guitar) or "The Happy Organ" by Dave "Baby" Cortez or "Sleepwalk" by Santo and Johnny or "Memphis" by Chuck Berry or "Apache" (by who?) or "Telstar" (by who?) or "Tequila" by The Champs or "Rumble" by Link Wray, or even Mason Williams' "Classical Gas."

And this is only a sampling: they were everywhere, all over the radio, played at so many proms.
Wasn't that final dance of the night always Floyd Cramer's "Last Date," played soulfully on the piano? Try it out for yourself and see if you can resist the impulse to pull your best girl or guy closer. They were part of the soundtrack of an age gone by, but they stick in the mind and the viscera.

So why no instrumentals in this current age of music? Again, I mean popular music, what's being bought and/or down-loaded by the younger generation. Was it because early rock and roll was just experimenting with the possibilities of the guitar, and that caught everyone's attention? Think Jimi Hendrix and his electric rendition of the national anthem. Maybe. And a lot of those songs I just mentioned are guitar-based. But not all. Ever heard "Stranger on the Shore," (by Mr. Ackerbilt, I think, whoever he was)? The horn in that song is plaintive and sad and so evocative that it transfixed young people a few decades ago. But what else comes to mind in the past couple of decades? Marvin Hamlisch plunked out Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer", a catchy song with no words. But can you name another purely instrumental tune that has caught our attention lately and made anybody any money? I do recall one more: "Cast Your Fate to the Wind", but I have no idea who did it -- do you?

For some reason, instrumental music has ceased to exist in the pop arena. Try to imagine crowds of fans nowadays filling an arena and listening to a song with no words. No way. Maybe I'm just out of touch -- a distinct possibility -- but it seems to me that we're not hearing the kind of purely instrumental music we used to hear and that, in its time, was as popular as any pop song.

Rock has transformed into rap and hip-hop, but neither features instrumentals. It's all about the words now, which isn't a bad thing -- being literate is actually always a good thing -- but where are the composers who put together purely instrumental songs that lodged in our memories and had us humming along?

In the meantime, there have been memorable instrumental movie theme songs -- "Rocky" and "Chariots of Fire", among others -- but, for the most part, we're bereft of those composing instrumentalists that define a generation. Are they waiting for themes worthy of composition? Hello, they're all around us: bad wars, unemployment, disillusionment, moral decay. Or are they holding fire, waiting for a new generation of lyricists to give them the words? My advice: don't wait. The words will come. Give us your music.

One question you don't want to ask of your writer friend.

Assuming you move in a more or less literate circle, meaning that you all read books, you probably have at least one friend who fancies himself or herself a writer. Maybe that person has actually had something published or, more likely, is hoping to someday.

So let's assume you haven't seen that person in a while and meet up with him or her. After the usual pleasantries, you say, remembering that he or she was/is/hopes to be a writer: "Are you still writing?"

It seems like the most innocent thing to say, expressing your interest, reminding him or her that you remember that he or she was/is/hopes to be a writer.

Wrong!

What you have just asked implies that you don't know if that person is still writing because you haven't seen anything he or she has written or read anything about what he or she has written. Your question implies the awful obvious: your friend has not achieved any kind of recognition. Otherwise, you would have heard.

Your friend is probably painfully aware that nothing he or she has written has risen to the level of public attention, probably hasn't even been published. But that doesn't mean that he or she has given up on writing, as if it were some kind of hobby that went by the wayside, like knitting or hang-gliding. People who write do it pretty much their whole lives, and they're always hoping against hope that what they write will someday come to the attention of readers like you. It's very embarrassing for them to have to acknowledge that the reason you don't know if they're still writing is that nothing they've written has come to the attention of anyone but their mothers.

The same holds true for artists. Never say, "Are you still painting?" "Are you still working in clay?" "Are you still doing that graphic art stuff?" What you're saying is that nothing they've done is visible to you, an informed patron of the arts. Implied, again, is that nothing they've done has proven worthy of being displayed. What you're saying, without saying, is something like this: "Have you finally given up that stupid dream you had of being famous? Are you back to being like us, just making a living and counting down the days until you die, when you'll be utterly forgotten except for your relatives, who will also eventually die, leaving you unknown forever?"

Ouch!

That's the last thing a writer or an artist wants to hear: that someday it will all be over, and he or she, who gave up so much to produce what he/she considered to be important art, will be swept into the dustbin of history. And all artists do give up a lot -- time, mainly, all that time not spent in front of the TV or even having fun with friends -- and don't expect much in return. Money, too. Very few writers or artists earn much from their art; they do it because they think it matters. Real artists do what they do because they think they're interpreting life in a way no one else has done before and just hope lots of the rest of us agree with them and pay them for their efforts, or at least pay attention.

Alas, it doesn't work out that way for most writers and artists. Most who pursue their own visions do so at their peril, financially and socially and otherwise. Most are not understood or appreciated. For every prize-winner, there are a hundred -- a thousand? -- maybe equally talented but without the contacts, who live and work and die in obscurity. And often what they did write or paint or sculpt or photograph or orchestrate is discarded when they die, along with their old books and bedding and underwear.

And in the meantime, they've often sacrificed relationships, because they were too consumed by their art to pay proper attention to their loved ones, and they've missed all those great new shows on TV because they were too busy working on their art. Yes, they bring it on themselves -- nobody asks them to be artists, after all -- but, if they're serious, they can't help it. (And, to their credit, the worthiest of them admit to feeling bad about being so selfish and apologize, publically or privately, to those they've hurt or neglected.)

So don't say to your writer/artist friend: "Are you still writing/painting?" Say instead, "What are you working on now?" And be prepared for either a vague answer or one that goes on so long that it makes you wish you hadn't asked in the first place. Writers and artists aren't the easiest friends to have, but the best of them are what makes life worth living.

Indulge them, up to a point. Just don't ask them if they're still writing or painting or whatever.