Lessons From Jack: Memoirs of a Stepfather in Training

by David Boyne

"Beautifully crafted, poignant, and humorous. Essays by David Boyne
capture the magic in daily life, if we stop and pay attention. He
reminds us that happiness, indeed, is not an accident."
-- Paula Margulies, author of Coyote Heart

Four seriously funny essay-stories filled with scenes  of a young boy's life , from the ridiculous to the sorrowful, from a walk in the park to a 3am rush to the emergency room. 

An excerpt, Lesson From Jack, Memoirs of a Stepfather in

Dancing in the Street


If something catches Jack's
attention, he becomes an instant authority on that subject.


He has patiently instructed me in
the differences between plant eating and flesh eating dinosaurs. He has
lectured extemporaneously on helicopters, panda bears, snakes, and pianos. He
also gives dance lessons.


My dance lessons occur while we wait
downtown for our bus home from Jack's day care. Jack climbs to the flat top of
a nearby concrete wall.


"Watch me. Do what I do." He dances,
his head bobbing, his arms flailing, his sneakers dragging and scuffing. He
dances in one sustained burst, until he can barely stand, barely breathe.


Then he looks at me. "Your turn."


Sometimes, I beg off. But my
cowardice shames me. I worry I'll pass my inhibitions on to Jack. I see
flashing memories of myself, eleven-years-old at a dance in a school gymnasium,
in my twenties in bars and clubs and at the weddings of my friends. In every
remembered scene, I am constructing Byzantine rationalizations to prove that
dancing is not cool, not required to get girls or have fun. Secretly, I have
always wished I could dance, and dance well. Once, I spent fifteen hundred
dollars on dance lessons at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio on West 57th Street
in Manhattan. I learned that love is not the only thing money can't buy.


But sometimes, there on the busy
sidewalk, I do take my turn.


Then, as the cars and taxis and
buses pass, I flail my arms and scuff my shoes. Jack stands on the high wall
above me, arms crossed, a master choreographer looking down on an inept
student. As I dance, I sneak glances at the very adult faces in the windows of
the passing buses and puzzled, amused, blank, smirking.


I keep dancing. I think how, if I
behaved like this when not in the company of a six year old boy, I would need
good lawyers to keep me out of society's assorted institutions for those who
dance, go about naked, or converse with imaginary friends, in public.


As I dance, I imagine myself being
arrested, hauled before a censorious judge in a packed, hostile courtroom. I
stand, accused, alone. Suddenly, Jack arrives. He takes the stand as my
character witness. Then I see him in the jury, and he winks at me. I turn, and
he is beside me, in a three-piece chalk stripe suit with gold cufflinks and
blue silk pocket my four-foot-tall defense attorney.


Jack gets me off. In no time at all,
I'm back on the streets, dancing.


And this time, as I dance on the
sidewalk, an admiring crowd encircles me. Every person I glimpse through every
window of every passing bus and car is smiling, laughing, approving.


I'm dancing. I'm having fun.

46 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 2, 2012

About the author

Outside of his published writing, very little is known about David Boyne. He did once try to be a better person, but when told identity theft is illegal, he abandoned the effort. It is reported that he has appreciated every food he has tried, except Jell-O and sea urchin. His greatest achievement may well be having kept himself perpendicularly tangential to the gutter…but for that weekend in Amsterdam. When not writing, or boldly staring into space, he exposes himself in public—at DavidBoyne.com