The Citizen, 1998-03-25, Page 5A Final Thought
He that falls in love with himself will
have no rivals — Benjamin Franklin
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 1998. PAGE 5.
Arthur Black
The gift that
keeps on giving
One reason people get divorced
is they run out of gift ideas.
Robert Orben
Gifts are like hooks.
Martial
I don't know about you, but I find 'gift-
giving' one of the toughest nuts to crack in
what passes for civilized life these days.
What do you buy for Aunt Ida? How do you
satisfy the carnal cravings of Uncle Sid? Is
cousin Orville even going to unwrap your
gift this Christmas, after what happened last
year?
His'n Hers Sealskin Body Stockings
seemed like a great treat to leave under the
tree. How were you supposed to know he'd
been elected president of the Saskatoon
branch of Greenpeace?
Giving gifts can often be like juggling eggs.
For most of us, that is. Roy Collette and Larry
Kunkel don't have that problem. They've been
exchanging Christmas presents for 11 years.
Actually that should read: exchanging
Christmas 'present'. Roy and Larry swap the
same gift each year. It's a pair of moleskin
trousers. As you might expect, there's a story
behind it.
The story began 'way back at Christmas,
1987. That's when Larry Kunkel first
unloaded the trousers. They'd been a gift from
his mother, back in his college days. Larry
had never liked the moleskin trousers. They
froze stiff as a board in cold weather and
needed too much ironing.
A truly great man
When I was in Vienna last fall, I read about
the death of Viktor Frankl, at the age of 92.
To me his death was far more newsworthy
than others whose death occupied far more
space in the print media, for the simple fact
that in my mind, he was a truly great man.
I first heard of him, then heard him speak
while I was working in Vienna in 1956 at the
time of the Hungarian uprising and I have
been an admirer of his ever since.
I doubt whether many, if any, readers are
acquainted with the name so let me tell you a
bit about him. You can judge for yourself
just why he ranks among the great people of
this century.
Dr. Frankl was arrested by the Nazis in
1942 when he was working in Vienna and
was sent off to one of the death camps
reserved for Jews. Before the end of the war,
he spent time in no less than four of them
including Auschwitz.
During that time he lost his father, mother,
brother and wife. Why he survived is
something of a miracle. But what is even
more important, he used this horrible
experience to devise a therapy that has given
many people a chance to restart their lives
when under any other circumstances they
might well have given up totally with usually
disastrous consequences.
He pointed out that even in the death
So Larry did the sensible thing. He
wrapped the trousers up in Christmas paper
and gave them to his brother-in-law, Roy.
Problem was, Roy didn't much like them
either. He wore them a couple of times,
pronounced them 'miserable' and gave them
back to Kunkel at Christmas the next year.
Larry Kunkel didn't like the trousers any
better the second time they appeared in his
life, so he dug out some Christmas paper,
wrapped them up and waited for Christmas to
roll around.
This ping-pong gift exchange continued for
several years until Roy decided it was time to
make the ritual more interesting. He took the
moleskin trousers, twisted them into a
corkscrew, stuffed them into a 3-foot-long,
extremely skinny cardboard tube and mailed
the Christmas present to Kunkel.
Three hundred and sixty-five days after
that, Roy looked under his tree to see a tiny,
squarepackage with a card that read "To Roy
from Larry".
It was the trousers, painstakingly folded
into a seven-inch cube and wrapped in baling
wire.
The feud was on. The next Christmas,
Collette had the pants delivered to Kunkel's
door by UPS. They were in a 2-foot-square
wooden crate filled with rocks, nailed shut
with spikes and banded with strips of steel
wire.
The next year Kunkel had the trousers
mounted inside an insulated thermopane
window that came with a 20-year guarantee
against accidental breakage.
Calmly, Collette took a hammer to the
window, extracted the pants, stuffed them in a
five-inch coffee can and soldered it shut_ The
camps some freedoms remained, one of
which was the freedom to think. He observed
that those people in the camps who were able
to give some meaning to their lives, even if it
were only some simple task like helping
others get through the day, were themselves
more likely to survive.
In the camps there were many suicides and
the guards refused to let prisoners cut down
anybody who was trying to hang himself. Dr.
Frank] set himself the goal of trying to help
others avoid suicide by giving meaning to
their life. Life, he told them, still demanded
something of them.
You have to go on, he repeated, if only to
be able to tell others what had happened
there during the war.
After he was freed in 1945 he wrote a book
entitled Man's Search for Meaning which to
date has sold 9 million copies in various
languages. He has written 31 other books but
it is his first one that has had the greatest
impact.
He was surprised at its success, saying that
he wrote it in hopes that it might be helpful
to people prone to despair.
His ideas transcend borders; what he says
is as valid in 1998 Canada as it was in
Vienna of the 1950s. He never bent his
thoughts to political needs but his ideas have
been taken over by politicians at times, even
though he emphasized that he was really
concerned with healing the soul.
He spent about 20 years as a visiting
professor at Harvard where he once
suggested that the Americans should erect a
coffee can was then put in a five-gallon
ntainer filled with concrete and reinforcing
rods — and delivered to Kunkel the following
Christmas.
For Christmas of 1995, Kunkel inserted the
pants in a 225-pound stainless steel ashtray
made from eight-inch steel casings. He had
"Merry Christmas, Roy" brazed in bronze on
the top.
Kunkel got the pants back for Christmas of
1996 of course. Eventually. Collette found a
600-pound, second-hand safe in which he
placed the trousers. He then had the safe door
welded shut and delivered to Kunkel's place
of business.
Last December, Kunkel got his revenge.
The pants showed up in Collette's driveway
in time for Christmas Eve. They were in the
glove compartment of a 1984 Dodge Dart.
Or ... what used to be a Dodge Dart.
Kunkel had mashed the car into a 2,000
pound cube measuring three feet by three feet
by three feet.
Mind you, Kunkel had the junkyard dealer
attach a testimonial certifying that the
moleskin trousers were indeed in the glove
compartment.
Is Collette whipped? Not on your life.
"This will take some planning" he says. "I
will definitely get them out. I'm confident."
I believe him. I also believe that Roy
Collette will come up with an even more
ingenious 'delivery system' for the moleskin
trousers by next Christmas.
And that Larry Kunkel will come up with
something even better the year after that.
I mean, you can just tell these two are the
kind of guys that put their pants on one leg at
a time.
statue which should be called the Statue of
Responsibility alongside the Statue of
Liberty.
In the course of his teachings he received
honourary doctorates from no less than 29
universities. He took up such things as
climbing mountains and, at the age of 67,
learned how to fly. Both activities frightened
him but I am sure that he had learned to
conquer fear long ago during his three years
in the death camps.
In one of his last interviews he revealed
that he was receiving, on average, 23 letters a
day from people telling how his teachings
had changed their lives.
He also said that he pitied those young
people who had never experienced the camps
nor the war to compare with any present
hardships.
"What I would have given," he observed,
"if I could have no greater problem than I
face today."
On my door hangs a statement by Dr.
Frank], one which I think has to be
remembered by everybody. "Everything can
be taken from a man or woman," it says, "but
one thing: the last of the human freedoms —
to choose one's own attitude in any given set
of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Dr. Frankl, you were a truly great man.
The
Short
of ►t
By Bonnie Gropp
A disillusioned generation
Gen-X — the disillusioned, over-educated,
under-utilized, over-worked, under-paid
group of young adults who achieved so
much and have found so little.
The Gen-X kids, while perhaps not having
grown up firmly rooted in reality, have
certainly been introduced to the world's
bubble-bursting truths.
And yet, while they struggle on, facing
employment frustrations and uncertain
futures they are determinedly building some
mental muscle. This generation who came
through healthier decades as pampered,
designer-wearing teens, has put their
university and college-educated minds to
work in fast food joints and factories. The
hands accumstomed to holding books and
pens, are now digging ditches, washing
dishes and moving livestock, both into and
out of this world.
Coddled no longer, they are showing
admirable adaptability, strength and
patience.
Perhaps it is for these reasons that Gen-
Xers, as a recent report claims, are less
inclined than their parents to divorce. The
report stated that while the older generation
tends to throw in the towel quite easily, Gen-
X partners dig in and try to work through the
tough times.
So, if it is life's lessons that factor into
this, could the same be said for the much-
married baby-boomers? Let's consider.
Baby-boomers were raised by the stalwart,
stern and perhaps stodgy post-war parents.
They saw hard times and wanted better.
They saw discipline and wanted a more-
generous spirit. They saw inhibition and
wanted freedom.
They saw what they thought was wrong
and wanted to make it right.
Baby-boomers were an idealistic lot,
particularly those who grew up in the late
1960s. They had dreams and visions. Shell-
shocked they watched their plans for utopia
fall. The dangers of free love and
irresponsible hedonism have become
paramount issues. With youths' lack of
respect for authority questioned, the
boomers' permissive views when raising
their kids might have been better coloured in
shades of grey than black and white.
The generation that sought equality and
peace in a non-materialistic environment
watched the ideals fall one by one. Jaded by
the loss of dreams, surprised that the future
came out so differently than they had hoped,
they still seek the elusive bliss.
Their parents accepted marriage's lows,
sometimes when they indeed should not
have. 'Til death do us part, was more than
words, it was commitment. Conversely,
boomers sometimes seem to be giving up
too easily.
Baby-boomers are not a miserable lot, just
folks who reached maturity with high
expectations and a tendency to consider
certain things expendable in their quest for
ultimate happiness. Reality may have
squelched idealism, but boomers appear to
always be searching for something they
believe will be better.
Maybe Gen-Xcrs aren't the disillusioned
generation, after all.
International Scene
By Raymond Canon