Bob Skaggs had a mouth shaped like a jet engine intake. If you ran next to him during PE, he sounded like one, too.
A nice guy, but he got excited about unusual things.
Like the time we were supposed to give a presentation on “the most important thing you don’t know about me” in high school freshman speech class. Elizabeth Payne—sweet, willowy, straight brown hair down past her shoulders and doe-eyed Elizabeth Payne—had confided in us her infatuation with the singer songwriter Dan Fogelberg, and now it was Bob’s turn. Wearing a leather jacket and slacks, he strode confidently to the front of the room and said, “You can’t tell, but I have a lot of stuff in my pants.”
Bob got the biggest laugh of the year in that class. He seemed a little surprised but rolled with it, reaching into his inside jacket pocket and pulling out a thin, black wallet, some silverware, a pair of scissors, and a box of Jujubes. He laid them down on the teacher’s desk, looking up and smiling as he finished. Then he reached into his front pants pockets and extracted a Payday, a small notebook, a couple of pens, a roll of Sweettarts, and a long small black bat that looked like something he might beat us with.
He really did have a lot of stuff in his pants.
“I would like to introduce you to the fine art of boosting,” Bob said with an excitement that practically showered the room. We would learn that boosting was slang for what most of us call stealing and that it required special clothing.
“These are called booster pockets,” Bob said, pulling out the front pockets of his slacks. They stretched past his knees.
Then he stepped forward and opened his leather jacket like a fashion model turning on the runway. Sewed into the liner were two large pouches big enough to carry baby wallabies.
“And this,” Bob said, “is a booster jacket.”
Bob explained that you can buy a booster jacket, but he had made his own. I think he just added the pockets.
Bob got an “A” on the speech (“Interesting Topic;” “Clearly explained;” “Great props;” “Enthusiastic!”). But for the rest of his high school career he was known as “Booster Bob.”
And all of us learned that the most important thing we didn’t know about Bob Skaggs was that he might be taking things that don’t belong to him.
I’m not sure why this story came back to me last Monday in Walmart. It’s probably because I was waiting in line for my Covid booster shot. Or at least I was trying to find the line.
When I got my first two shots of Moderna, it was a big deal. The health department leased and set up in the old Sav-A-Lot store, giving new meaning to the “Sav-A-Lot” sign out front. You scheduled your appointments online, and when you arrived it was like a masked family reunion. People who hadn’t seen each other in months got together and gave elbow shakes. You checked in, registered, sat and waited for your shot—and twenty minutes after—among your friends and neighbors, all chattering, all excited to be taking at least a first step out of the pandemic.
This booster shot experience is less festive. It’s being given through pharmacies and doctor’s offices at all hours, so you’re not likely to encounter friends. I sure didn’t know anyone in my “line.” I had to ask if there even was a booster shot line, because most of the people seemed lined up for prescription.
“Oh, this is the line,” a middle-aged woman in jeans, t-shirt, and a green facemask worn like a beard assured me. “Its just taking forever.” She pointed to three or four other people scattered randomly nearby, all filling out paperwork. It took me a while to realize they were all registering there, and I had pre-registered online, so I could go to the window first.
“Is this the window for Covid boosters,” I asked through the 1/4-thick plexiglass dividing me from the pharmacist. She said something from behind her mask I couldn’t make out. My hearing isn’t good, even with hearing aids, much less when the speaker is masked behind a plexiglass shield.
She spoke again, I still couldn’t hear.
“I’m sorry, I don’t hear well,” I yelled.
She said something again, seemingly unmoved.
Hoping to improve my comprehension, I tried to squeeze my left ear and accompanying head through the 6-inch space beneath the shield. I looked like a dog trying shove his snout under a chain link fence.
That got her moving. The pharmacist lowered her mask, I withdrew my head and I read her lips.
“Ah—you need my insurance card?” I said.
“Yes,” her lips and nod said as she pulled her mask back up.
So, not a great start.
I eventually got the shot in-between the times my fellow old folk picked up their prescriptions. I barely felt the needle; the anticipation was worse. As a kid I was petrified of needles, and even the guns they used for the tetanus shots and the slew of other vaccinations we got. As an old man I’m always pleasantly surprised—amazed, actually—at how little these things hurt.
But it wasn’t the joyful experience those first two Moderna vaccines had been.
Even the wait after was no big deal. No sitting there talking to old friends or folks I hadn’t seen since I retired from Wabash College. At Walmart there were two chairs to sit in while you were observed for side effects. But as long as you were going to be in the store for a while, you could shop if you wanted to. (“Clean up on aisle 7, Seizure on Aisle 6.)
It was a perfect match for the ambivalence I felt about getting this shot.
I’m grateful to be so well cared for, glad this will reduce the likelihood of my giving Covid to others, particularly my three-year old grandson, who is too young to be vaccinated, and my daughter, who is immuno-compromised.
But at first I wasn’t going to get the booster. I’d heard that taking it meant there would be less of the vaccine for those who hadn’t gotten it yet. Here in Indiana, elsewhere in the country, and across the world in places like Kenya, where I visited and have friends, and who still don’t have enough syringes and other “vaccination commodities,” let alone vaccine, to take care of their people. Only 6 percent of Kenyans have received one dose of the vaccine. Not by choice. Whether it’s necessary or safe enough; or whether “everybody’s gonna die some time, so if it’s my time, it’s my time,” or whether “the Lord will keep me safe”—they don’t have the luxury of those conversations. They don’t get to roll the dice to see if it’s their time or not. They don’t get to use the pandemic as a test of their ideology or faith. Faith is tested in slums like Kibera in Nairobi every hour.
I got the free shot. I salved my conscience by donating enough for many more to an organization that’s doing that work. But as I walked between the aisles of abundance and even overabundance in Walmart, picked up some carrots, cookies, and hamburger buns in the grocery section, I thought of something I’d read the night before by the climate activist Tim DeChristopher: That we’re “bad activists” because “we have more stuff. We have much higher levels of consumption, and that’s how people have been oppressed in this country, through comfort. We’ve been oppressed by consumerism, by believing we have too much to lose.”
Fifteen minutes later I wasn’t feeling any ill effects from the shot except a sore arm, and that’s just part of the experience. So I headed for the self-checkout and grabbed a Payday from the candy rack.
Maybe that’s when I thought of Booster Bob. All those candy bars pouring out of his booster pockets. Or maybe random memories like that are just part of growing old, a rogue synapse firing a previously dormant set of cells in the hippocampus.
I did wonder how many Paydays I could stuff in there if I had a booster coat instead of my fleece.
But I didn’t have to worry about whether or not I’d get my Payday. I just slid my card through the reader, waited for “Approved”, grabbed my stuff out of the plastic bags and headed out, grateful for the choices I have, and those I don’t have to make, yet.