See Dick Run

This week I’m busy rummaging through the over-stuffed library in my home. Books everywhere, too many books, books never read, never to be read. Wisdom wasted: so little time. New rule: buy a book, shed a book.

Stuffed third-tier back in the shelves are my ancient high school yearbooks. Inside the 1958 one are some crinkled pages of Fun With Dick and Jane. Remember it? It was written in the 1930’s by Dr. Bill Gray, a man who apparently had some psychic powers.

See Dick Run may be some of the first words many of us read in the first grade. Dick was joined in life by Jane, Spot, Tim, Puff, Mom and Dad. Flipping back through the pages, I believe Dr. Gray used ‘Dick’ in a metaphorical sense for ‘us.’ And if you look at it in this way, it’s a relevant reader today.

I wonder why he chose ‘run’ as the active verb? It could have been seeing Dick sit, hide, seek, eat, talk, walk, shop, etc. I think he was preparing Dick for his life’s journey: running. And if Dick were symbolic of our culture today, he’d be a running fool.

Take a look at Dick’s journey:

See Dick Run: helter-skelter for fun.
See Dick Compete: college, job market.
See Dick Balance: a check book, a career, a family…run faster, Dick.
See Dick Exercise: more running, faster, keep the heart fit.
See Dick Borrow: chasing success.
See Dick Buy: cars, houses, vacations, stuff…buy, buy, buy.
See Dick Panic: not enough, not enough…run, run, run.
See Dick Age: the ‘also-run’ generation.
See Dick Retire: but how, where? He looks, he looks.

Dick’s dog, Spot, ran also, chasing his tail but never catching it. Likewise, so did the Prideful Tigers in Helen Bannerman’s tale of Little Black Sambo, written in 1899. We don’t know what became of Spot. But the Tigers ran so fast in a circle they became a pool of butter and spread on the pancakes Sambo ate. Some stories have happy endings. But somewhere Spot is still running.

Poor Dick. He finds that Time is running, too, and he’s about to run out of it. The world of ‘what-if, not-enough, if-only’ gets in the way of retirement. Everything’s expensive, college vaporized his home equity, Visa maxed out and his 401 (K) has that lean and hungry look.

Dick has been running so long he doesn’t know another lifestyle. In desperation he changes Parties and votes Democrat, where the perennial promise of Redistribution is his last hope. In utter frustration he sighs, “Let our children run for a while; I’m out of gas.”

In the background Jackson Brown is singing on YouTube, “Running on empty, running blind; running into the sun but I’m running behind.” Dick replays the video, glad he’s not alone.

Now, See Dick Quit. He sits with a Bud Lite in the declining rays of a Florida sunset in Garden Hills Retirement Village, reading the obits. The whole miserable episode of running becomes clear in his mind. But it’s too late to do much about it. Remorse sets in.

He commiserates with the other Shuffleboard Unfortunates how the deck was stacked against him. The Biblical Job comes to mind and he sighs, “I should have run faster when I could.” His lament blends with the common liturgical voices of his companions.

See Dick Think. In a life retrospective he wonders, “What kind of ending is this for a man who has run all his life?” He wants his epitaph to be the famous words of Joe Louis: “He can run, but he can’t hide.” Like Dick, Billy Conn lost that heavyweight fight, remember?

Some questions remain unanswered in the Dick and Jane primer, like, “What became of Jane?” We can only speculate. But my guess is that she got pregnant, had a lot of little Dicks and Janes and suffered right along with her husband (or husbands)…cooking, cleaning, washing, nursing, enduring and finally getting a night job at Waffle House. Speculation leads down dark alleys.

We like closure with fairy-tale endings, like, “And they all lived happily ever after.” Dr. Gray allows us to complete the sequels. How would we write our generation’s final version? Somehow I suspect it might not be a book for first graders.

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Keep on running while you can. You may not get there before the rest of us, but it will do wonders for orthopedic surgeons. “Hey Jane, another Bud, please. Thanks.”


Bud Hearn
January 19, 2018