So long and thanks for the attitude, Coach.

It has taken me a few days to process this, since I learned about it from my sister. Lanny Landtroop has now passed.

His impact on my life has been…significant.

It’s not like I’ve somehow spent the last thirty-plus years thinking about him specifically, but in the best tradition of the best teachers having an impact that lasts for a kid’s whole life…well, he absolutely did that and more, and furthermore he did it with his attitude.

It is because of Coach Landtroop, after all, that to this day, I still think of the forbidden c-word as…”can’t“.

I swam under him, at Clear Lake High School, for four years, and it was certainly one of the top highlights of my school experience. Over that period, if I had to reckon a guess, I’d say that you could count on one hand the number of times I ever saw him without his attitude all the way on–and you’d still have fingers (plural) left over. He always seemed to be the living embodiment of the PMA (positive mental attitude) that he taught us; I never remember him calling any attention to it himself, but he led by his own example, and he did it without apology.

Upon reflection, I think that–the continued example of unapologetic personal commitment–is what has stuck with me the most, from him. And I’m not even talking about the substance of what he was committing to, either; today I struggle more than ever with my own PMA toward myself (even aside from the current clown-show dystopia daily besieging the remaining sane)*. No, I simply mean the long-term, lasting power of one individual’s unapologetic personal commitment to a principle.

It can’t have been easy. To a high school kid just learning the ropes to functional cynicism in “adult” society, his PMA can look Pollyannish, or at least unrealistic, in an increasingly insane world, but there he was nonetheless, seemingly unfazed, every day. I’ve no doubt he was at least somewhat aware of the little digs and petty caricatures that we whispered about him because of it. (Yeah, “we”. As straitlaced as I was at this point in my life–and I was–even I had my moments where, love him though I did, he just seemed, you know, a little over the top with it.)

But he outlasted us. He certainly outlasted me. And I admire him for that in a way I wish I could express to him now.

He also believed in us. My best and most amusing Lanny Landtroop story is actually not from high school at all, but from when I first learned how to swim. Because it’s fair to say that Lanny Landtroop is who got me swimming in the first place.

I had been taking swim lessons for weeks, and to be blunt, was fully capable but simply and stereotypically afraid to let go and do it myself, to the understandable frustration of all involved. At one point my mother even let him know that he had her complete trust and could do whatever he thought it would take.

So, he picked me up and threw me about eight feet out into the pool, by myself.

And I immediately swam to the wall.

Now, I suspect I was maybe just a wee bit upset about this, but swim to the wall I did, and whatever unsavory things I may have thought or said at the time, the point was made, and the one credit I can take for all of this is that I did, at least, ultimately get the point.

And the more I think about this, the more difficult it is to overstate, just how important that moment is in a kid’s life: that moment when you prove to yourself, QED, that you can, in fact, do it. Parents, of course, perform this service for us many times, for many things, but sometimes it is only getting that lesson from someone else, which makes us see the bigger picture. And of course not all examples are quite as…impactive, as the first quite-literal sink or swim moment.

For me, that was Lanny Landtroop. A bit more than just a swim coach.

In the beginning, he showed me that he believed in me. In high school, he showed me how to believe in myself…in attitude itself…in principle itself. And if I think about this, I believe I can see the results of that today, behind my own otherwise Quixotic (if not fully Sisyphean) dedication to the most important things I want my own kids to not just do but to see me do…things like leading with kindness, of personal comportment and humanity, of caring about the details…and about how one person, just by commitment to his own example, can make that much difference to someone else.

How on earth can one say thank you, enough, for that? I’m not sure it can be done, but one thing I can do is to not fail to learn the lesson all over again.

Rest in peace, Coach. And seriously, thank you for the attitude.

_______________________________
* It is not lost on me, either, that his passing is a reminder to me both of how important he really is, in my life, and also how much I need that influence even now. I can do better by you, Coach, and I will.

From the ‘Wish I’d Said That’ files…

I haven’t seen this much “wins the Internets” in a while. Tablet magazine, about which I knew nothing at all until this, has an article titled “The Nanny State Meets the Marquis de Sade”.

The article is interesting in itself. Therefrom:

Are “trans women of color” and “dommes” genuine authorities in America? No, but they are made into public idols that real power can hide behind.

Indeed, that is at the very least the sober way to look at this idea, and it’s not the only such observation in Siegel’s article. But for me, it was really the title which absolutely captures the essence of the problem like nothing I’ve yet seen. Its literary image is so powerful, in itself, that it’s almost impossible to avoid cheapening it with actual examples.

And it seems frightfully real. Whether it’s “social justice” or relentless “pandemic power-ups”, it sure does seem. sometimes, that the only way to explain the degree of mendacious, power-drunk madness we see in some people today is to consider some level of actual sadism at play.

Look, nobody wants that idea to be more of an over-reaction than me. But until very recently, even the hard-core statists (on both sides of the aisle) simply didn’t act like this. Either they didn’t fully believe it, or they were at least astute enough not to say the quiet part out loud. Now, though…

And we’re quickly reaching the point where people who just treat each other as equal individuals (quaint concept, I know) cannot simply ignore the authoritarian creeps any more. It’s clear that the Hive Mind senses its advantage, its momentum, and is simply going to push right up in everyone’s face, with as many government guns as they can muster, until a truly large-scale something awful happens. (It’s not even about meeting goals any more–their goals shift immediately upon even the approach of success, a sure sign that what is spoken is not what is real.)

The most terrifying observation I can make, about this current push of whatever you may wish to call it–“woke-ism”, “cancel culture”, or whatever–is that it appears to be a religion without a redemption story.

Think about that for just a minute. What path to redemption is there, for sins against the almighty woke? And does this pattern seem somehow…familiar, to even a basic review of human history?

I’m seriously tempted to copy the entirety of the second chapter of Solzhenitsyn’s The GULAG Archipelago, and just replace the names and examples with current “cancel culture” details. The comparison differs in degree only, not in principle, and anyone who is paying attention can see how easily the modernized details would fall right into place.

Either the people pushing this “let’s you and him fight” narrative, with religious-level fervor and intransigence, do not understand where it is inevitably headed, …or they do.