Positive Steps

In which we see that school spirit can be dangerous to your dignity

The Felix Chronicles, # 30

They catch me as I walk by the reception room after getting my mail, my colleagues – previous victims looking for company – shouting for me as loudly as the members of the pep rally organizing committee. I had hoped to escape this meeting, but I’ve been caught. I won’t be the last. I see our Principal, Mary, is here as well. I remember she performed at last year’s pep rally, and swore never to again. Now she’s complaining and being teased like the rest of us as we await our orders from an impressively lively but focused senior who informs us that we’re to be the finale of this year’s rally and that she’s going to teach us a very simple dance. Yeah, right.

Twenty minutes and multiple playbacks of Rihanna's "Disturbia" later, I’m thinking this won’t be so hard, when she says, “OK, now we’re ready for the next part.” Al, the Senior Dean, seeing and sharing our collective alarm, kindly informs her that this as far as we’re going to go. Some protests from the girls, but quick agreement that we can simply repeat the routine we’ve been taught and that should be fine. After that, everyone is to improvise. There’s lots of joking as we leave the room with instructions to assemble two days later for the big event at the gym.

I am not looking forward to this. And yet I seem to find myself practicing my shovel step in front of the mirror after I put on my tie with school colors on the big day, and experiment with hand gestures later alone in the men’s room. At lunch I ask an older colleague, an alum of the school, if there were pep rallies back in the early seventies when she graduated. “Naaah,” she says. “We were way too cool for that, protesting the war and school policies.” I remark that teenagers somehow seemed older back then, and she demurs with the understated certainty of someone who knew that world too well to be impressed by it. She asks me if there were pep rallies in early eighties, when she correctly estimates I was in high school. It was a transitional time, I say. That kind of stuff was coming back, the reinvented nostalgia of the Reagan era.

By the time the school day is over, I’ve reached a state of positive dread. I wander over, late, to the old gym, which by this point is packed – not with only students, but administrators, staff, and parents. Great. The noise of the percussion ensemble – a string of snare drums pounding in unison – is deafening. I can feel my metabolism rising as I take a stand near my dancing partners, joking in each other’s ears like infantry waiting out the artillery barrage before the offensive assault. But I can’t help but be distracted by the festive air of the event. A towering arch of balloons has been set up at one end of the room, with a series of student emcees at the other. Each team is summoned to walk through the arch to the cheers of the gathering, and the players are ready for their moment. The field hockey team is dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and pause at center court to wield their sticks like swords. The volleyball players are dressed as boxers, and stage brief matches. Boys Cross Country are all dressed like Eminem in Eight Mile, their captain – a tentative student of mine – rapping with verve as he calls out the members of the football team. When it’s their turn, the star quarterback executes his play involving the much beloved cafeteria lady, she catching his nerf-football pass at mid-court to the wild approval of the crowd. My son, donning his jersey and looking surprisingly buff, walks through the arch with two teammates, their deliberate pace reminding me of Johnny Cash. Oh boy, am I going to embarrass him.

We dancers get our cue. I turn my head and see Mary walking in the other direction – I can’t believe she’s ditched us! I’m tempted to call her out, but there’s no time. A few minutes earlier, I was helping my colleagues remember the routine, but once the music starts, I find myself hopelessly out of step. The sudden appearance of the school mascot beside me isn’t helping any, nor is the flash of a camera in my face. Before I know it, the routine is over and I’m thinking about making a beeline for the exit. But then I think: The hell with it. I’ve gone this far and I might as well enjoy it. I start dancing in the now-dated way I did when party music meant Kool and the Gang and Whitney Houston. By now whole clumps of people – the pep rally organizers, field hockey players, the emcee – have joined in the fun, and I find myself struck at just how good a dancer my contemporary Phil, a gray-haired math teacher, is. On my way out the door, I hear kind but insincere compliments on my performance.

Back at the administration building I run into Mary, and tell her that I’m deeply disappointed by her failed leadership. “I suddenly had to go to the bathroom,” she says, not even having the decency to suppress a smile. “I almost didn’t make it.” She pauses, finally rendering a mischievous grin. “But you, I see, were feeling pretty good, bustin’ a move out there. Who would have figured?”

“What the hell,” I reply, heading out the door for home. “You’re only middle-aged once.”

Takin' care of business

In which we see the rest room is really a very busy place

The Felix Chronicles, # 18

I have a few minutes between classes in room 211, and take the opportunity to go upstairs to the main reception area of the school for a quick pit stop. I want to grab a cup of coffee from the machine in the faculty lounge, but first branch off to the faculty men's room. It's small -- two urinals, two stalls, and a sink -- but convenient, and the only one reserved solely for faculty use.

When I enter, I find Hal, my colleague in the English department, drying his hands with a paper towel. We've been working on trying to team-teach a course. "Hey. Glad I ran into you," he says. "I finally had that meeting with Diane and Rafe, and I've got them on board with our course for next year. Can you make the pitch at Wednesday's curriculum meeting?"

"Sure," I say, making a mental note to draft a memo. "But have you cleared it with Tom?" I ask, referring to the head of his department.

"Yeah. Tom is on board." Hal crumples a paper towel and tosses it successfully into the wastepaper basket. Tall and largely bald, I sometimes imagine Hal as a high school basketball player with a nickname of "Stork," though I have no idea whether he ever actually played the game. It's just something I like to think. "After we run the department gauntlet, then it will be on to the parents and students to see if, when we build it, they will come. Then all we have to do is actually design and teach the course!"

"Piece of cake," I say as I saddle up to the urinal, beginning to worry about actually having to do this course. I hear the friction of Hal's shoes on the tile floor as he heads for the door. "Hey Fred," I hear him say, the colleague who has apparently entered behind me.

"Hey Hal," he says as he pulls up beside me. "How ya doing,” he says to me as Hal exits.

“Okay Fred, how ’bout you?”

“So did I hear that you're good to go on that English/History course?”

"Well, we're making progress, anyway."

"Good for you. But there is something I've been meaning to ask you."

"Shoot."

"Back in the joint department meeting last month, you said that you were comfortable with the idea that the class would not proceed chronologically, because you don't think kids actually learn history that way."

"That's right."

"And I do remember you saying things like that at different points in the last few years. I remember you saying that a kid might learn American history one year, take an elective in European history the next, and then do ancient Rome or Chinese history after that."

“That's right. I take exactly that approach in my Biography elective,” I tell him. “We move from Genghis Khan to a Maine midwife to Jesus Christ, because the curriculum is driven around questions rather than topics or chronology."

"I get that. And it makes a lot of sense to me. But I also remember you telling me that the 10th grade US history survey still makes a lot of sense as a chronological course, as one key course a student will have for sure that actually does proceed in such a fashion and provide a foundation for whatever else may follow."

“Well, yes, I do remember saying that," I acknowledge.

"So what changed?"

I step back and pull up my zipper. I don't really have a good answer for him. "I guess I'm thinking it's just time to be doing something new." Left unanswered is whether I'm referring to the school curriculum, my own inner restlessness, or both.

“Well, more power to ya. I didn't ask at the meeting because I didn't want to pour more fat on the fire. I myself am reasonably satisfied with the course as it is, so I don't anticipate any big changes. But I'll be curious to see how it works out for you."

"Thanks, Fred,” I say as I take my own turn with the sink. I'll be glad to hear what you think."

"Oh -- one other thing," he says. "I saw you were reading that Amy Chua book on Empire. Any good?"

"Not bad. I think the Charles Maier book Among Empires is better."

"Could ya send me the complete titles of both? I'd like to order them on Amazon."

"Sure, Fred." I make another mental note as I grab a paper towel after washing my hands. I shoot; it hits the rim of the wastepaper basket and spills over to the side. "There goes the soft-drink endorsement," I say to myself as I dunk it in, dodge Fred, and head for the door, thinking about that cup of coffee.

But I have to step back as Raphael pushes the door just as I'm about to open it. “Jim, I'm glad I ran into you," he says, repeating Hal’s greeting. He suddenly modulates his voice, as deans so often do, though unnecessarily in this particular setting. "What can you tell me about our friend Louis? I saw your e-mail to his mom from a few days ago."

“I'm afraid no news is bad news. Even when he's there, he's not there, if you know what I mean."

“It's not just you,” Rafe tells me. “He's having trouble in all his classes. Mom tells me that she's adjusted the medication, but that was a couple weeks ago now and I'm not hearing of any improvement. If things don't improve by the break, I'm going to have to raise the question about whether Louis really belongs here." Fred makes a silent gesture of greeting to Rafe as he glides by us.

“Sorry to hear that," I say. "Truth is, he's been a little warmer to me since I sent an e-mail home explaining that I like him, but fear that I'm going to have to fail him. Yesterday on his way out he smiled at me on his way out, as if to tell me it’s nothing personal.”

“That's the problem," Rafe says sadly. “After a certain point, it really isn't. And he's getting real close. Anyway, thanks for your help.”

“No problem," I say as he makes his own trip to the urinal. Now officially late for class, I nevertheless do not want to return to 211 without that cup of coffee. I turn into the faculty lounge, where I find Fred in front of the coffee dispenser, pouring cream into a paper cup of tea. “Maybe we should just put your desk in there in one of the stalls," he jokes. “Seems to be the place where you conduct all your business.”

The Window

[In honor of our Founding Fathers, an archive edition of American History Now]

So there they are, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, one a youthful 70 and the other a fussy 41, sharing a bed at an inn in New Jersey. They’re on their way from Philadelphia to Staten Island, part of a delegation sent by the Continental Congress to negotiate with Admiral Lord Richard Howe of the Royal Navy, in the hopes of avoiding a full-blown war between England and her American colonies. Two weeks earlier, George Washington’s fledgling army escaped seemingly certain destruction in Brooklyn and is for now, at least, alive to fight another day. Lord Howe hopes he can talk his American friends out of making a huge mistake. Adams considers Howe a phony, his overtures nothing more than “Machiavellian maneuvers.” That’s why he was chosen to be one of the negotiators. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, a man who had been reluctant to support independence (he has, and will, worry about the preservation of slavery) is another. And old Ben Franklin, who knew Howe back in England, will be the third.

It is the evening of September 9, 1776. The negotiators pause in their journey to spend the night in Brunswick, New Jersey. Unfortunately, there’s not much lodging to be had in the local taverns. Franklin and Adams agree to share a tiny room, no fireplace, with a single bed and a single open window. It is chilly, and Adams, a self described invalid, is “afraid of the air in the night” and shuts it. “Oh!” says Franklin. “Don’t shut the window. We shall be suffocated.” When Adams relates his fears of coming down with an illness from the bad night air, Franklin, ever the scientist, replies by saying that the air in the room is far more likely to be a problem than that outside. “Come!” he tells Adams. Open the window and come to bed and I will convince you. I believe you are not acquainted with my Theory of Colds.”

Adams complies and joins Franklin in bed. He is curious, even at “the risqué of a cold,” to hear Franklin’s reasoning. Lying there in the dark, side by side, Franklin begins his explanation, which, while apparently of some interest to Adams, literally puts him to sleep (“I left him and his Philosophy together,” he will later write, hearing Franklin trail off just as he does.) They will argue the point again, and in his account of their exchanges Adams will muse on Franklin’s reasoning but remain unconvinced.

At this point in his life, Adams admires Franklin. He likes to say that had Franklin done nothing more than invent the lightning rod, the world would justly honor this “great and good man.” But the next time they team up again, this time in Paris to negotiate an alliance with the French government – a phase of the two men's careers brilliantly captured in the 2008 HBO series, John Adams, from which the above photo was taken – Adams begins to have his doubts. Mr. “Early to Bed and Early to Rise” sleeps late all the time. (He slept through a lot of the Continental Congress, and though Adams will not be there to catch him, Franklin will sleep through a lot of the Constitutional Convention as well.) He drinks too much; he spends too much. And his behavior with French women is downright embarrassing. Adams feels self-conscious about his French, but as he learns it himself he begins to realize that Franklin understands a lot less than he lets on. And when Adams – once again playing bad cop, albeit a bit over his head – annoys the French foreign minister, Franklin writes a letter to Congress telling them that Adams is foolishly tampering with Franklin’s own delicate diplomacy. Adams will never forget or forgive Franklin for that.

Franklin is probably right to dump Adams. Adams probably knows Franklin is right, too. He is over his head. Adams is an intelligent and decent man. But he’s too stubborn, moralistic and vain to be a successful diplomat. He’s honest to a fault – he can’t play the game the way Franklin, who laughs right along when the King puts his image on the bottom his courtesan’s chamber pot, does. He tries not to lie, even to himself.

Part of the reason why someone like Franklin is such a trial to Adams is that he understands that the man really does exhibit traits Adams himself would be lucky to have. Franklin’s cool cheerfulness is a rebuke to Adams’s repressed stolidity. But a hunger for recognition, a hunger that’s never really sated, will not give Adams rest. His wonderfully acidic expression of resentment in 1790 encapsulates his frustration: “The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod and thenceforth these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures, and war.” (It was Adams who had proposed Washington take command of the Continental Army – an excellent idea, and one he can’t help but at least partially regret.)

Adams had about as successful a career as any person could ever rationally hope. From modest beginnings as a shoemaker’s son, he became a self-educated lawyer, political activist, and diplomat. He collaborated with Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence, and his work on the Massachusetts constitution was a major influence on the federal one. He managed to spend eight years generally keeping his mouth shut as vice president (no small achievement, particularly for him), and went on to become president himself. And he had the good sense and good fortune to marry Abigail, who brought wisdom, humor, and joy into his life. He lived to see his son John Quincy, become president. We should all be so lucky.

But somehow, you rarely get the impression that John Adams was happy. To be sure, he had legitimate sorrows, among them a son who drank himself to death and a daughter who died of cancer. He had powerful enemies, notably Alexander Hamilton and his erstwhile friend Thomas Jefferson, who, despite hating each other, worked to deny Adams a second term as president. (It’s to their credit that Adams and Jefferson were later able to patch things up – though perhaps it’s no accident that they did so while remaining 500 miles apart.) Still, you get the sense that the hardest single thing about John Adams’s life is that he had to live with John Adams. Feeling that way is hard enough. But it’s even harder when you’ve got people like Franklin, so seemingly self-assured, by your side.

Adams recorded the scene of his night with Franklin in the autobiography he began writing after his forced retirement from politics following his failed bid for re-election in 1800. Though he had a diary to draw on, the editor of the Adams Papers, L.H. Butterfield, reported in 1961 that he wrote this scene “from unaided memory.” I see him at his estate, Peacefield, in Quincy, Massachusetts, an old man remembering himself as a younger one, with Franklin, who had been dead for years, alive and likeable. Adams had been upset earlier that September day when he saw what he regarded as the indiscipline and “dissipation” of the American soldiers he had seen on the road (my guess is that he was being prudishly unrealistic). But he was “determined that it should not dishearten me.” I can’t be sure, but it seems like he’s succeeding, and that the memory of that night brings him pleasure and maybe even comfort in the long twilight of his life. Writing it down gives him something to do.

And us something to celebrate. Thank you, Mr. Adams (and Mr. Franklin).

The Window

In honor of our Founding Fathers, an archive edition of American History Now

So there they are, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, one a youthful 70 and the other a fussy 41, sharing a bed at an inn in New Jersey. They’re on their way from Philadelphia to Staten Island, part of a delegation sent by the Continental Congress to negotiate with Admiral Lord Richard Howe of the Royal Navy, in the hopes of avoiding a full-blown war between England and her American colonies. Two weeks earlier, George Washington’s fledgling army escaped seemingly certain destruction in Brooklyn and is for now, at least, alive to fight another day. Lord Howe hopes he can talk his American friends out of making a huge mistake. Adams considers Howe a phony, his overtures nothing more than “Machiavellian maneuvers.” That’s why he was chosen to be one of the negotiators. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, a man who had been reluctant to support independence (he has, and will, worry about the preservation of slavery) is another. And old Ben Franklin, who knew Howe back in England, will be the third.

It is the evening of September 9, 1776. The negotiators pause in their journey to spend the night in Brunswick, New Jersey. Unfortunately, there’s not much lodging to be had in the local taverns. Franklin and Adams agree to share a tiny room, no fireplace, with a single bed and a single open window. It is chilly, and Adams, a self described invalid, is “afraid of the air in the night” and shuts it. “Oh!” says Franklin. “Don’t shut the window. We shall be suffocated.” When Adams relates his fears of coming down with an illness from the bad night air, Franklin, ever the scientist, replies by saying that the air in the room is far more likely to be a problem than that outside. “Come!” he tells Adams. Open the window and come to bed and I will convince you. I believe you are not acquainted with my Theory of Colds.”

Adams complies and joins Franklin in bed. He is curious, even at “the risqué of a cold,” to hear Franklin’s reasoning. Lying there in the dark, side by side, Franklin begins his explanation, which, while apparently of some interest to Adams, literally puts him to sleep (“I left him and his Philosophy together,” he will later write, hearing Franklin trail off just as he does.) They will argue the point again, and in his account of their exchanges Adams will muse on Franklin’s reasoning but remain unconvinced.

At this point in his life, Adams admires Franklin. He likes to say that had Franklin done nothing more than invent the lightning rod, the world would justly honor this “great and good man.” But the next time they team up again, this time in Paris to negotiate an alliance with the French government – a phase of the two men's careers brilliantly captured in the 2008 HBO series, John Adams, from which the above photo was taken – Adams begins to have his doubts. Mr. “Early to Bed and Early to Rise” sleeps late all the time. (He slept through a lot of the Continental Congress, and though Adams will not be there to catch him, Franklin will sleep through a lot of the Constitutional Convention as well.) He drinks too much; he spends too much. And his behavior with French women is downright embarrassing. Adams feels self-conscious about his French, but as he learns it himself he begins to realize that Franklin understands a lot less than he lets on. And when Adams – once again playing bad cop, albeit a bit over his head – annoys the French foreign minister, Franklin writes a letter to Congress telling them that Adams is foolishly tampering with Franklin’s own delicate diplomacy. Adams will never forget or forgive Franklin for that.

Franklin is probably right to dump Adams. Adams probably knows Franklin is right, too. He is over his head. Adams is an intelligent and decent man. But he’s too stubborn, moralistic and vain to be a successful diplomat. He’s honest to a fault – he can’t play the game the way Franklin, who laughs right along when the King puts his image on the bottom his courtesan’s chamber pot, does. He tries not to lie, even to himself.

Part of the reason why someone like Franklin is such a trial to Adams is that he understands that the man really does exhibit traits Adams himself would be lucky to have. Franklin’s cool cheerfulness is a rebuke to Adams’s repressed stolidity. But a hunger for recognition, a hunger that’s never really sated, will not give Adams rest. His wonderfully acidic expression of resentment in 1790 encapsulates his frustration: “The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod and thenceforth these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures, and war.” (It was Adams who had proposed Washington take command of the Continental Army – an excellent idea, and one he can’t help but at least partially regret.)

Adams had about as successful a career as any person could ever rationally hope. From modest beginnings as a shoemaker’s son, he became a self-educated lawyer, political activist, and diplomat. He collaborated with Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence, and his work on the Massachusetts constitution was a major influence on the federal one. He managed to spend eight years generally keeping his mouth shut as vice president (no small achievement, particularly for him), and went on to become president himself. And he had the good sense and good fortune to marry Abigail, who brought wisdom, humor, and joy into his life. He lived to see his son John Quincy, become president. We should all be so lucky.

But somehow, you rarely get the impression that John Adams was happy. To be sure, he had legitimate sorrows, among them a son who drank himself to death and a daughter who died of cancer. He had powerful enemies, notably Alexander Hamilton and his erstwhile friend Thomas Jefferson, who, despite hating each other, worked to deny Adams a second term as president. (It’s to their credit that Adams and Jefferson were later able to patch things up – though perhaps it’s no accident that they did so while remaining 500 miles apart.) Still, you get the sense that the hardest single thing about John Adams’s life is that he had to live with John Adams. Feeling that way is hard enough. But it’s even harder when you’ve got people like Franklin, so seemingly self-assured, by your side.

Adams recorded the scene of his night with Franklin in the autobiography he began writing after his forced retirement from politics following his failed bid for re-election in 1800. Though he had a diary to draw on, the editor of the Adams Papers, L.H. Butterfield, reported in 1961 that he wrote this scene “from unaided memory.” I see him at his estate, Peacefield, in Quincy, Massachusetts, an old man remembering himself as a younger one, with Franklin, who had been dead for years, alive and likeable. Adams had been upset earlier that September day when he saw what he regarded as the indiscipline and “dissipation” of the American soldiers he had seen on the road (my guess is that he was being prudishly unrealistic). But he was “determined that it should not dishearten me.” I can’t be sure, but it seems like he’s succeeding, and that the memory of that night brings him pleasure and maybe even comfort in the long twilight of his life. Writing it down gives him something to do.

And us something to celebrate. Thank you, Mr. Adams. And Mr. Franklin.

The Window

Franklin. Adams. Roommates. Summer, 1776



[In honor of our Founding Fathers, an archive edition of American History Now]

So there they are, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, one a youthful 70 and the other a fussy 41, sharing a bed at an inn in New Jersey. They’re on their way from Philadelphia to Staten Island, part of a delegation sent by the Continental Congress to negotiate with Admiral Lord Richard Howe of the Royal Navy, in the hopes of avoiding a full-blown war between England and her American colonies. Two weeks earlier, George Washington’s fledgling army escaped seemingly certain destruction in Brooklyn and is for now, at least, alive to fight another day. Lord Howe hopes he can talk his American friends out of making a huge mistake. Adams considers Howe a phony, his overtures nothing more than “Machiavellian maneuvers.” That’s why he was chosen to be one of the negotiators. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, a man who had been reluctant to support independence (he has, and will, worry about the preservation of slavery) is another. And old Ben Franklin, who knew Howe back in England, will be the third.

It is the evening of September 9, 1776. The negotiators pause in their journey to spend the night in Brunswick, New Jersey. Unfortunately, there’s not much lodging to be had in the local taverns. Franklin and Adams agree to share a tiny room, no fireplace, with a single bed and a single open window. It is chilly, and Adams, a self described invalid, is “afraid of the air in the night” and shuts it. “Oh!” says Franklin. “Don’t shut the window. We shall be suffocated.” When Adams relates his fears of coming down with an illness from the bad night air, Franklin, ever the scientist, replies by saying that the air in the room is far more likely to be a problem than that outside. “Come!” he tells Adams. Open the window and come to bed and I will convince you. I believe you are not acquainted with my Theory of Colds.”

Adams complies and joins Franklin in bed. He is curious, even at “the risqué of a cold,” to hear Franklin’s reasoning. Lying there in the dark, side by side, Franklin begins his explanation, which, while apparently of some interest to Adams, literally puts him to sleep (“I left him and his Philosophy together,” he will later write, hearing Franklin trail off just as he does.) They will argue the point again, and in his account of their exchanges Adams will muse on Franklin’s reasoning but remain unconvinced.

At this point in his life, Adams admires Franklin. He likes to say that had Franklin done nothing more than invent the lightning rod, the world would justly honor this “great and good man.” But the next time they team up again, this time in Paris to negotiate an alliance with the French government – a phase of the two men's careers brilliantly captured in the 2008 HBO series, John Adams, from which the above photo was taken – Adams begins to have his doubts. Mr. “Early to Bed and Early to Rise” sleeps late all the time. (He slept through a lot of the Continental Congress, and though Adams will not be there to catch him, Franklin will sleep through a lot of the Constitutional Convention as well.) He drinks too much; he spends too much. And his behavior with French women is downright embarrassing. Adams feels self-conscious about his French, but as he learns it himself he begins to realize that Franklin understands a lot less than he lets on. And when Adams – once again playing bad cop, albeit a bit over his head – annoys the French foreign minister, Franklin writes a letter to Congress telling them that Adams is foolishly tampering with Franklin’s own delicate diplomacy. Adams will never forget or forgive Franklin for that.

Franklin is probably right to dump Adams. Adams probably knows Franklin is right, too. He is over his head. Adams is an intelligent and decent man. But he’s too stubborn, moralistic and vain to be a successful diplomat. He’s honest to a fault – he can’t play the game the way Franklin, who laughs right along when the King puts his image on the bottom his courtesan’s chamber pot, does. He tries not to lie, even to himself.

Part of the reason why someone like Franklin is such a trial to Adams is that he understands that the man really does exhibit traits Adams himself would be lucky to have. Franklin’s cool cheerfulness is a rebuke to Adams’s repressed stolidity. But a hunger for recognition, a hunger that’s never really sated, will not give Adams rest. His wonderfully acidic expression of resentment in 1790 encapsulates his frustration: “The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod and thenceforth these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures, and war.” (It was Adams who had proposed Washington take command of the Continental Army – and excellent idea, and one he can’t help but at least partially regret.)

Adams had about as successful a career as any person could ever rationally hope. From modest beginnings as a shoemaker’s son, he became a self-educated lawyer, political activist, and diplomat. He collaborated with Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence, and his work on the Massachusetts constitution was a major influence on the federal one. He managed to spend eight years generally keeping his mouth shut as vice president (no small achievement, particularly for him), and went on to become president himself. And he had the good sense and good fortune to marry Abigail, who brought wisdom, humor, and joy into his life. He lived to see his son John Quincy, become president. We should all be so lucky.

But somehow, you rarely get the impression that John Adams was happy. To be sure, he had legitimate sorrows, among them a son who drank himself to death and a daughter who died of cancer. He had powerful enemies, notably Alexander Hamilton and his erstwhile friend Thomas Jefferson, who, despite hating each other, worked to deny Adams a second term as president. (It’s to their credit that Adams and Jefferson were later able to patch things up – though perhaps it’s no accident that they did so while remaining 500 miles apart.) Still, you get the sense that the hardest single thing about John Adams’s life is that he had to live with John Adams. Feeling that way is hard enough. But it’s even harder when you’ve got people like Franklin, so seemingly self-assured, by your side.

Adams recorded the scene of his night with Franklin in the autobiography he began writing after his forced retirement from politics following his failed bid for re-election in 1800. Though he had a diary to draw on, the editor of the Adams Papers, L.H. Butterfield, reported in 1961 that he wrote this scene “from unaided memory.” I see him at his estate, Peacefield, in Quincy, Massachusetts, an old man remembering himself as a younger one, with Franklin, who had been dead for years, alive and likeable. Adams had been upset earlier that September day when he saw what he regarded as the indiscipline and “dissipation” of the American soldiers he had seen on the road (my guess is that he was being prudishly unrealistic). But he was “determined that it should not dishearten me.” I can’t be sure, but it seems like he’s succeeding, and that the memory of that night brings him pleasure and maybe even comfort in the long twilight of his life. Writing it down gives him something to do.

And us something to celebrate. Thank you, Mr. Adams (and Mr. Franklin).