DATE: Thursday, November 27, 1997           TAG: 9711250016
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B13  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Patrick Lackey 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

TO BE THANKFUL THIS THANKSGIVING, LIKE WHAT YOU'VE GOT

The man who played tuba at my wedding grew up poor in Maine, the son of a lobster fisherman.

Every schoolday his mom packed him the same lunch - a lobster sandwich.

``The other kids get peanut butter,'' he told her.

``Shut up,'' she said. ``There is nothing wrong with lobster.''

He begged for peanut butter, but his family couldn't afford it.

At school he tried to trade lobster for peanut butter, but with no takers.

The other kids knew peanut butter cost more than the few pennies a pound that lobster fishermen were paid.

Even as the boy sustained himself on white bread and lobster, he practiced his tuba and dreamed of better times.

Today, I'm delighted to report, he holds a tuba professorship at a Big Ten university and can afford all the peanut butter he wants.

Now if he could only crave peanut butter half as much today as he did as a child, he would be the happiest man on Earth. He would slap that sticky stuff on a fluffy slice of Wonder Bread and achieve ecstasy. But, of course, the craving for peanut butter is gone, replaced by a taste for fresh lobster.

Fulfillment still escapes him.

There is no question about it: Humans are idiots, with few exceptions, none of whom springs to mind.

In the face of all logic, we crave most what we can get least. That way we guarantee our unhappiness. And what do we then seek in life? Happiness.

It is the supreme stupidity of our brief, brutish lives that we most value whatever is most rare.

In the simplest terms, we want what we can't have. We devalue what we can have, simply because we can have it.

If pearls lay in piles by the road, no one would be caught dead wearing them. The pearls would be just as beautiful common as they are rare. A pearl is a pearl is a pearl. I'd go so far as to say a pearl is a pearl is a pearl is a pearl. But to be highly valued, pearls must be beyond the reach of most.

If there were but one pearl in the world, it would be priceless. The world's wealthiest women would daydream of wearing it just once. The man who possessed it could get a date.

If there were but one dandelion in the world, the owner of the lawn where it grew would charge people to see it.

There was a year in my life, the sixth grade, when I had everything I wanted that could be bought. I just wish I were as rich today.

My paper route paid $25 a week. A movie was a quarter, and a meal at the finest cafe in town, with fresh milk, was 50 cents.

I got free keep for my horse in exchange for chasing home cows on a farm at the edge of town each evening. More accurately, they trotted docilely to the barn at the sight of me and my two dogs.

For clothes I wanted and got T-shirts in summer, flannel shirts in winter and jeans year-round. For sports I wanted a bat and a glove and a basketball, and they were cheap. For my hair I had a burr cut that required no care. For transportation I had a hand-me-down bike.

My pets were wonderful dogs and cats that showed up at the house, got fed and stayed.

That was in a small Kansas town early in the 1950s, before we had television. No drumbeat of commercials attempted to fill me with discontent.

What I didn't have I didn't know about. I had what the other kids had. They had what I had. I never met a boy who didn't have a baseball glove and a bike.

What's needed now are TV commercials that make us desire things we can have for free.

McDonald's commercials are terrific at capturing warm moments: boy getting puppy, girl getting clarinet, or whatever.

Once in a marketing class I watched McDonald's commercials for a half-hour straight, with no program interruptions, and I never felt so warm and loving. I wanted to hug a tree.

Maybe the people who do those commercials could do spots for free stuff: sunsets, evening strolls, card games among friends, kisses. (What a switch: a commercial for a kiss, rather than a kiss to help sell a product.) Maybe some kid would want a sunset for Christmas. Kids want whatever is on TV.

What the world needs most is a good cheap thrill.

Pass the peanut butter. MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. This

column originally appeared in 1989.

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