Drivers Seize Opportunities

Barbara and I fly up to New York to see some plays,
and on our first night we’re sitting on the left in row four,
and as we wait for the play to begin, I start thinking about
an old friend I’d lost touch with but who was born and raised 
and went to school here in the city and made his living thereafter
as a journalist, writing books on, among other topics, the Hells 
Angels, and once he told me that he’d heard more “philosophic 
bullshit” from the brothers of that fraternity than during his entire 
time in the Philosophy Department at Columbia University, 
that guys with names like Sonny and Rusty and MC Dave 
spent hours talking about what it means to be a man, 
how a man carries himself, what a man does if another man 
smashes into his bike, how a man treats his woman. Philosophy, 
philosophy, philosophy: when they weren’t breaking pool cues 
over each other’s heads or giving the finger to Sunday drivers 
or riding en masse up to that big biker rally they have every year 
in Sturgis, SD, the Angels talked philosophy: how a man eats 
and drinks and dresses, how his taste in music and movies 
and TV say what kind of man he is, how a man raises his son 
to be a man and his daughter to tell the difference between 
a good man and a bad one. Anyway, there we are in our seats,
waiting for the start of the play—it was O’Neill’s A Touch
of the Poet, if I remember right—and I’m thinking about
my friend and wondering if I can find him on the internet
and if we could meet for a drink or, even better, for breakfast
at the Astro Diner on 6th Avenue and West 54th Street with
its piled-high platters and those grumpy waitresses who only 
seem to like you when they bring you the check, and just
before the curtain rises, a well-dressed couple enters and sits
in row two, all the way at the far end. The woman is aghast:
“These are our seats?” she says. The man throws up his hands 
and says, “What are you gonna do?” The woman leaps to 
her feet, fishes a credit card out of her purse, and says, 
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do!” and vanishes and appears 
in the aisle a couple of minutes later and waves frantically
to the man, beckoning him toward what I can only assume 
are much better seats. The play, if you don’t know it, 
is about a man who served gallantly in the British army 
until he was kicked out for dueling. He has come to America
and opened a tavern that is failing because he drinks 
to excess, plays no part in the operation of the tavern, 
and lavishes his money on an expensive thoroughbred horse. 
This is a man without a plan. He lives in a fantasy world,
and of course everything comes crashing down at the end. 
What is philosophy anyway? You don’t have to be a Columbia 
professor to know the word literally means "love of wisdom" 
and, to most non-professors, denotes an activity people undertake 
when they seek to understand the truth about themselves, the world, 
and their relationships to the world and each other. Thus even 
race-car drivers have philosophies: an article on NASCAR driver 
Jeff Gordon, who had a record-setting 93 career wins and then 
went on to make millions in various business ventures,
is titled “Jeff Gordon’s NASCAR and Business Success Started 
With the Same Philosophy: Drivers Seize Opportunities,” that
being what Jeff said when the interviewer remarked that Jeff
must have had “a pretty concrete plan” when he hung up
his helmet and went into business, but the veteran racer said no, 
he didn’t have a plan, and that was the race driver in him,
because “drivers seize opportunities,” as when, say, Dale 
Earnhardt, Jr. gets distracted for a second when he remembers
that hot number who came up to him at the bar last might,
and Jeff Gordon whips in front of him and heads for the final 
stretch. That’s Jeff Gordon’s philosophy, that and something else
he said when the interviewer asked him if he weren’t afraid 
of dying on the track the way Dale Earnhardt, Sr. did 
when he collided with Sterling Martin and hit the wall head-on
at the Daytona 500 in 2001, and Jeff Gordon said, no, he isn’t 
afraid, that death is a question, really, that your life is the answer,
and you’re writing it every day. Just kidding. Jeff Gordon didn’t
say that. Anyway, ever since we came back from New York, 
whenever a tree branch falls on our deck or a package 
is lost in transit or dinner gets burned, one of us will throw up 
his or her hands and say, “What are you gonna do?” and the other 
says, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do!" and gets out the chainsaw 
or calls the post office and yells at whoever picks up the phone
or orders a pizza. What’s your philosophy? I haven’t come up 
with mine yet—maybe after the pizza. When the pizza guy
rings the bell, I step to the door with a five in my hand,
and Barbara says to give him a ten, he needs it more than we do,
so I do, and the pizza guy looks at it and says, “Ten bucks, wow.”