A new marketing campaign by German state Saxony-Anhalt will focus on famous sons of the region, from Bismarck to Nietzsche.
The Wall Street Journal
We piled the kids into the car and headed out for vacation in Saxony-Anhalt, a compromise I had imposed on the family as the only “Ubermensch” in the Volkswagen.
“I don’t see why we can’t go to a big city that has a ballet,” my wife grumbled as she unfolded an old-style road map. “There’s Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart . . .” Her voice trailed off to a whisper of discontent.
“Who needs a ballet when Magdeburg has the world’s longest zipline adventure?” I asked rhetorically, but she answered me anyway.
“I certainly don’t–I hate rides, and I don’t want the kids risking their lives.”
The four ears in the backseat perked up when they heard that. “Is it really scary?” Scooter asked.
“It’s so scary, they don’t let children under five, people with back problems, wheelchair users, people who are afraid of heights, and people who weigh more than 264 pounds ride it,” I replied.
“Does that mean you can’t ride it?” Skipper asked. I could have taken offense, but we’re going to be together for two weeks, so I decided to elevate family harmony over my ego.
“Skip, your dad only weighs 210 pounds after an intense winter of elliptical, exercise bike and StairMaster workouts.”
“I thought you were our dad.”
“I was just referring to myself in the third person, like all-time leading MLB base-stealer Rickey Henderson. Did I ever tell you about the year I stole fifty bases in ten Little League . . .”
“Only about a million times,” Scooter said, with the world-weariness that only a twelve-year-old can properly express.
“He always leaves out the part about how he was held back a year so he was playing against kids younger than him,” Skipper said, causing his brother to snort chocolate milk out his nose.
“Okay you two,” my wife said, “don’t mock Dad while he’s driving, wait until we stop for lunch.”
I’ve been a huge fan of Friedrich Wilhelm Neitzsche since my second year in college, when I first encountered The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. It was the culmination, in my mind, of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, “Mr. Gloomy Gus” of the University of Berlin faculty lounge.
As Schopenhauer put it, “The effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but music speaks of the thing itself.” Powerful words for a guy who was like totally into the Steve Miller Band at the time.
“I want you kids to absorb a little pessimistic German philosophy while we’re here,” I said to the kids, whose world-view has been formed primarily from Barney the Purple Dinosaur and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I don’t know exactly what “Morphin” is, but from the sound of it, it’s an over-the-counter remedy for menstrual cramps.
“Why do you want the kids to be sad?” my wife–who is responsible for most of the punishment inflicted on them–asked with the affected innocence of a practiced ingenue.
“You . . . you read Aristotle’s Poetics, like I asked you to–right?”
“I couldn’t talk my book group into it.”
“Because it didn’t involve the well-deserved death of a cheating husband–right?”
“We choose the books by consensus.”
“As I said.”
“A little misery never hurt anybody. If you’d read Aristotle like I asked you to, you’d realize that the tragic arts act as a purgative.”
“What’s a purgative?” Scooter asked.
“It’s like a laxative.”
“What’s a laxative?’
“It’s something you put in your mouth that makes you poop.”
Any reference to bodily excretions induces mirth in our two sons, and after they’d calmed down a bit I explained in further detail.”
“The ancient Greeks went to tragedies to experience fear and pity. If you have something deep inside you, seeing somebody else suffer makes you happy.”
“So it’s like going to the bathroom for your soul?” Skipper asked.
“You could say that, yes,” I said, hoping to bring our discussion of excretory functions to a close. “Kids, look–there it is!”
“Wow,” they said together, then began to sing the jingle that plays during commercials for Nietzsche Land:
Mommy, Daddy–take my hand,
Take me out to Nietzsche Land!
The games are fun, the rides are swell,
and life’s a living hell!
“I’m growing less enthusiastic about this by the minute,” my wife said, pressing her lips together in a barely-suppressed look of disapproval.
“We can drop you off in the Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche Blow Dry Bar & Gift Shop.”
Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche: Did they–or didn’t they?
“Who’s she?”
“His sister, who some claim he had an incestuous relationship with.”
“What does that mean?” Scooter asked.
“That he and his sister were . . .”
“Watch it,” my wife cautioned.
“Boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Ew!” the boys exclaimed in unison.
“See, we’ve done a great job bringing them up if that’s their instinctive reaction.”
We pulled into the parking lot, paid the over-educated/underpaid philosophy grad student the semi-exorbitant fee and stopped in front of the “You are HERE” sign to reconnoiter.
“What do you want to try first, the Tunnel of Good and Evil, Zarathustra’s Mountain, or Superman’s Uber.”
“Which is scariest?” Skipper asked.
“I think the Tunnel of Good and Evil, because it’s dark.”
“Okay, we’ll do that while mom does what she does best.”
“What’s that?” Scooter asked.
“Shop,” I said, as I gave her a sidewise glance.
We parted ways and the boys and I walked up to the “You must be THIS tall to ride THIS ride,” sign, and both boys cleared the stripe on the wall with some unusually good posture for once. The ride was a retro-fitted “Tunnel of Love,” a nod to the dramatic decline in dating skills among young men.
“You know guys, mom and I want you to grow up and get married and have kids like you, so we can be grandparents.”
“I don’t like girls,” Skipper said. “They talk too much.”
“And yet, everyone will tell you that it’s men who dominate conversations.”
“Not at our house!” Scooter exclaimed. He frequently eavesdrops on the adults’ conversations when we hold a dinner party.
“That’s for sure, but I don’t mind,” I said.
“Why not?” Skipper asked.
“Well, I make a living yelling at people on the phone, the way I do to you two when you don’t pick up your toys. Mom’s by herself all day with nothing for human companionship but The View, Good Morning America, Today, The Morning Show, and Ellen. It must be frustrating having to listen to so much stupidity and not talk back, so I like to let her unwind her tongue when I get home from work.”
“Does her tongue get wound up?”
“I know mine would. So I let her talk without interrupting for like half an hour, then finally I say something to make her feel better.”
“Like what?”
“Uh, like ‘We have estimated taxes due tomorrow.'”