Here’s a very different version of the Cinderella story. From a very different classroom. Its cast of characters are grown-ups; it’s the school of hard knocks, and it happens on the street, not onstage.

  “Mister, you got a sense of humor?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll tell you most of a joke for a nickel.”

  “Most of a joke?”

  “Right. And then for twenty cents I’ll tell you the punch line.”

  “What if I don’t want to know the punch line?”

  “Hey—it’s up to you. Take a chance, give me a nickel—what have you got to lose?”

  Whenever I walk across this small city park, I get hit for a handout by those we commonly label “winos”—those burned-out, torn edges of the fabric of urban life who use this green square as an office, bedroom, social club, and toilet. As one explained to me, “We’ve gone to the dogs and even the dogs don’t want us.” The usual request is a muttered “Spare change?” or a more specific asking for a quarter for coffee. To cross the park is to cross an invisible toll bridge. I pay. And sometimes get a kind of fraternal blessing for my coin. “God bless you, brother.”

  It is not a joyful matter, this awkward asking and giving. And I know I could choose to walk around, instead of through, the park. Yet they are there, and I know it. I have spare change, and they know it. So we do what is to be done in the world-as-it-is-just-now. No matter what one does on behalf of the down-and-out and homeless, there is always this inescapable one-human-being-to-another engagement. This asking hand outstretched. At those times I cannot walk by and think or say that I gave money to some fund and voted for some laws and that I’ve done enough. I’d like to, but it just doesn’t work that way.

  Back to the park and the man offering part of a joke. I gave him a nickel, and he gave me a tale about a rabbi, a nun, a pig, and a chicken in a phone booth in Detroit. Outrageous joke. And he told it so well that I paid him five bucks for the punch line. It was a bargain. I laughed most of the rest of the afternoon as the story came back to mind. And I sent a few friends around to the park to check it out. I wasn’t about to tell them the joke or the punch line for free.

  The next day I learned that a small-scale vaudeville show was now part of the life of the park. A waitress in one of the nearby cafes, who daily went to smoke a cigarette there on her coffee breaks, befriended several of the winos. She actually talked to them.

  She thought they were people. She convinced them to be more creative with their panhandling. They could be making twice as much for the same effort and have some fun as well. Why not? What did they have to lose?

  This explains Mr. Part-of-a-Joke.

  Other offerings from the cast include short poems, songs, advice, directions, excuses, card tricks, and quick fortunes. One guy offers to “laugh with you or at you for twenty-five cents.” People now are attracted to the park who once avoided it. The new spirit may not last long, but for the time being, it is springtime there.

  That waitress is a fairy godmother.

  Not armed with a fancy magic wand, but with compagination—compassion mixed with imagination.

  She touched the winos—not on their heads, but on their self-respect.

  She did not give them pumpkins or shoes, but ideas about how they might come by these things.

  She did not solve their problems but resolved the problem of food for one day.

  She urged them to fish instead of begging for fishbones.

  She offered them a glimpse of the truth that there are always options—which is called hope.

  I’ve never much liked the conventional Cinderella story. Not the one that’s most commonly told in the United States. The American Cinderella is a victim of bad luck. Her mother dies. Her father remarries badly—to a wicked woman with two narcissistic daughters. Cinderella is relegated to the role of mistreated servant, sleeping on the ash heap by the hearth. There’s nothing she can do but accept her fate.

  About all Cinderella does is wish for luck, even though she doesn’t expect any. She doesn’t run away. She doesn’t sabotage her living companions with clever moves. She doesn’t cut their evil hearts out with a steak knife, which is what they deserve. Oh, no, nothing of the sort. Cinderella is a nice girl. She wimps around and takes it. She’s waiting for something to happen to her.

  For no particular reason, the fairy godmother shows up so Cinderella can go dancing up at the king’s house. Cinderella doesn’t ask, “Where the hell have you been, lady, and how about some warm underwear and a couple of cheeseburgers with a side of fries instead of some see-through slippers and a ride in a jazzed-up pumpkin?”

  Oh, no, none of that. Cinderella does just what she’s told and goes off to the dance.

  Now I’d think twice about trying to dance in glass shoes, but I’m not Cinderella. And I’d think twice about dancing with some unknown cutie-pie who showed up at my party in glass shoes; at least the fairy godmother could have come up with dancing shoes— gold lamé alligator pumps with a strap across the instep. But then, I’m not the Prince, either, and apparently the fairy godmother had the Prince pretty well figured out. Because the Prince went out of his mind over Cinderella, and you know what happened next.

  Cinderella sits home and waits. Never says a word about where she’s been or what she knows. She waits.

  “Maybe something will happen” is Cinderella’s motto. She waits some more.

  Until the Prince shows up. Him with the foot fetish. He doesn’t look in the door and see two ugly girls and one dirty one and move on. Oh, no, not him. He doesn’t care about beauty or character or cleanliness. It’s the right foot he’s looking for. And Cinderella doesn’t care either. If it’s what the Prince wants, then she’s going to go along with it.

  “And they lived happily ever after,” says the story. I don’t think so.

  We always come in at the middle of a story and always have to leave before it really ends. In fairy stories. In the history of the world. The story always goes on. Shoe size is a lousy basis for love, but maybe Cinderella could live with that, and who knows? Stranger marriages than hers have made it, and maybe the Prince and Cinderella did die happy, with thousands of pairs of shoes.

  But as a fairy tale for the young, I’ll take any one of about five hundred other versions of this drama over the one we know best. Because most of the rest have an active heroine, who takes the initiative and works for her release from bondage. She doesn’t just sit there. She knows she’s got class and she understands that the relatives she’s living with are dirtbags, and she isn’t counting on anybody else to do something about her situation. In all the European versions, Cinderella looks for a way out by being clever and by being true to the good memory of her noble mother. It’s true she has good luck, but it’s also true that she deserves it. She goes for the slipper in the end—”Here, that’s mine, let me try it on,” she says. She even forgives her two stepsisters and finds a couple of dukes for them to marry. About the luck of such people as this Cinderella, we say it couldn’t happen to anyone who deserved it more.

  The passive, helpless, waiting version of Cinderella is poison.

  Even God is more likely to help those who help themselves.

  Norman, the barking pig, is my idea of Cinderella.

  The teacher who recognized him is my idea of royalty.

  And those who help winos help themselves are my idea of fairy godmothers.

  To insist on one’s place in the scheme of things and to live up to that place.

  To empower others in their reaching for some place in the scheme of things.

  To do these things is to make fairy tales come true.

  YOU MIGHT AS WELL KNOW NOW. A CIGAR IS THE centerpiece of what follows. And you might as well also know that I have been known to smoke one of those things from time to time, despite what I know about all the good reasons not to. I’m just assuming that you sometimes do something of your own that you shouldn’t do, either, and will understand. Moreover, I only had one puff from this cigar. Yet it was the cigar I will never forget.

  One fine fall morning in San Francisco. I had taken a cable car from Union Square to the foot of Columbus Street, intending to walk back through the old Italian quarter of North Beach. In a great mood. A week of hard work had gone well, and now I had a couple of days off to myself. So I had gone into Dunhill’s and bought the finest cigar in the shop to smoke on an equally fine walk.

  If you happen to appreciate cigars, this was a Macanudo, maduro, as big around as my thumb and six-and-a-half inches long—a very serious cigar. If you do not appreciate cigars, this one is best described as one of those cigars that would make you say, “My God, you’re not going to smoke that thing in here, are you?”

  After a few blocks’ walk, it was cigar time. With care I removed the cellophane, squeezed the cigar to check for freshness, and held it to my nose to make sure it wasn’t sour. Perfect. Leaning against a tree, I cut the end off the cigar with my pocketknife and carefully lit up. One puff, and I said aloud to myself: “Now that, THAT, is some cigar!”

  It so happened that I had been standing in front of a coffeehouse. A cup of fine espresso would add the final right ingredient to a recipe for a memorable morning. Placing the lit cigar carefully on the wide brick window ledge of the coffeehouse, I went inside to order. While waiting at the counter, I glanced out the window to check on my cigar. Gone. My cigar was gone.

  Abandoning my coffee, I rushed to the door. And stopped short. There on the other side of the glass was an old man examining my cigar with the skill of an aficionado. He held the cigar with respect under his nose and smelled it with eyes closed. He smiled. He squeezed the cigar to check for freshness. He smiled. Looking carefully up and down the street, he took a puff. And smiled again. With a heavenward salute with the cigar, he set off down the street. SMOKING MY CIGAR. I followed, not knowing quite what to do. I really wanted that cigar back.

  The old man. Salt-and-pepper hair, with grand mustache and eyebrows to match—jaunty black longshoreman’s cap, white long-sleeved shirt, black suspenders, and dark brown pants and shoes. Short, plump, wrinkled, walking with a slight limp, the old man ambled on into the morning, unaware of me lurking furtively a few yards behind.

  Italian. First-generation immigrant probably. As were the friends he visited to report the good news of the cigar that fate had prepared for him that fine day. I got a tour of the old Italian quarter of North Beach I had not anticipated—the real thing. A pasta shop, a fruit stand, a hardware store, a bakery, and the local priest. At each stop, in passionate terms, he exalted the cigar, his good fortune, and this lovely day. Each friend was offered a sample puff. The fruit vendor squeezed the cigar and approved its ripeness. The baker puffed twice and pronounced the cigar “Primo, primo.” The priest gave the cigar a mock blessing.

  In time the old man turned toward the bocce ball courts north of Ghirardelli Square, and when he arrived, he repeated for his compatriots his ritual celebration of the cigar and his good luck. The cigar burned down to a short stub. As it came his turn to play, the old man meditated upon the end of the cigar with clear regret. He did not toss it to the ground and grind it underfoot as I might have. No. Solemnly, he walked over to a flower bed, scooped a small hole beneath a rosebush, laid the cigar butt to rest, covered it with dirt, and patted the small grave smooth with his hand. Pausing, he raised his cap in respect, smiled, and returned to play the game.

  The old man may have smoked it, but I’ve not enjoyed a cigar more. If having a lovely memory is the best possession, then that cigar is still mine, is it not? It remains the very finest cigar I never had.

  HICCUP. OR HICCOUGH, IF YOU WANT TO BE STYL ish. Hikke is what the Danes write. In Spanish, hipo. Hoquet in French. Shihuk is Hebrew. And the Russians say iknutz. Singhiozzo in Italian. And singultus is the term doctors use—it’s Latin, of course, nicely avoiding the whole problem of getting the sound right. But, like sneezes, yawns, burps, and farts, hiccups are usually benign, self-limiting events of more concern to amateur therapists than the serious medical community.

  “A contraction of the abdominal and thoracic respiratory musculature, particularly the diaphragm.” “A diaphragmatic spasm causing a sudden inhalation which is interrupted by the spasmodic closure of the glottis.” That pretty well sums up the technical description of hiccups. I haven’t found any good hiccup stories in joke books. No quotations in Bartlett’s either. The medical literature is comparatively thin, as well—dealing mostly with chronic cases and desperate measures of cure, including surgery. Seems odd that such a common and socially powerful phenomenon is so overlooked in literature.

  Hiccups have been recognized as a medical concern since Hippocrates’ time, and though they are associated with an almost unlimited number of diseases, conditions, and circumstances, nobody knows what causes them. There are as many cures as there are apparent causes. Everybody hiccups. Even infants still in the womb hiccup. The reason most cures work at some time on some people is that hiccups usually last from between seven and sixty-three hics before stopping of their own accord. Whatever you do to pass the time while the episode runs its course seems to qualify as a “cure,” so the more entertaining the cure is, the better. It’s a self-limiting condition. Like the common cold, which will usually run its course in seven days if you do nothing and which will also clear up in about a week if you follow medical advice.

  However. If you don’t stop around sixty hics, then you have a chronic case and have moved into the major leagues of hiccup history. The Guinness Book of World Records reports the case of Charles Osborn of Anthon, Iowa, who has hiccuped every twelve minutes since 1922. It started when he was slaughtering a pig. He’s led an ordinary life otherwise. Got married and had children and so on. Mostly the hiccups bother him now because he has trouble keeping his false teeth firmly in place when he hics. Despite the best efforts of the medical community, no cause or cure has been found for Mr. Osborn’s hiccups. He has received tens of thousands of letters offering an astonishing range of cures. Other than the equally vexing common cold, no medical problem has as many prescriptions for treatment.

  My own interest in hiccups lies in their social context. Hiccup Power. The capacity of hiccups for changing the dynamics in any gathering of people. I am fascinated by what happens in a room full of people when this phenomenon occurs. Hiccups are an instant attention-getting device. Just hiccup a couple of times and those around you will rush to your aid, offering cures and interventions. A case of hiccups will alter a cocktail party from a bus-stop mood of lethargic small talk to an emergency-room atmosphere. People will offer to pound on your back, bring you water, or put a paper bag over your head, among other things. “Stand on your head,” “Hold your breath,” “Jump up and down,” and all the rest. People will start telling hiccup stories and sharing remedies. The hiccupper will be treated with great solicitation while in the throes of these mini-convulsions, and the shaman who has come up with the winning cure will be looked upon with the respect accorded witch doctors and faith healers. A new vitality will have come upon the group, energizing it. Above all, people will laugh. Hiccups are funny.

  (Note: Since there is no adequate written expression for the real sound each individual makes when hiccuping, I would like to ask your help in bringing life to the following story. As you read to yourself please make the appropriate hiccup sound aloud in your own way whenever you encounter the word hiccup in the text. From experience, I can tell you it works out especially well if there is another person in the room with you while this is going on.)

  It happened at a wedding. Serious wedding. A by-the-book wedding that was beginning to get long and tedious. The time came for the vows, and the bride turned her pale face toward me.

  “Please repeat after me: I, Mary, do take you, Jack, to be my husband.”

  And the bride responded.

  “I (hiccup), Mary, do take you (hiccup), John, to be my (hiccup). …”

  Somebody in the back of the church giggled. A couple of sniggers were heard. I looked at the congregation and saw row after row of tight-upper-lip grins. A few had their hands locked onto their mouths. Uh-oh.

  I paused. Took a deep breath. Composed my face and mind. Waited for things to settle down. The congregation reached deep down inside for control. The bride repressed her spasms, subtly twitching from time to time as if receiving a slight electric shock near her navel Her life energy had shifted from the awesome experience of getting married to the simple matter of controlling her diaphragm and glottis.

  A little voice in the back of my head warned me that we were sitting on a social time bomb here, and if the bride opened her mouth and laid one more hiccup on us, we were going over the falls. Time stood still.

  I weighed my options. I could acknowledge her condition, call for some water, and ask everyone else to take a deep breath. People would smile, chuckle politely, relax, and the wedding could go on by the book. Or, I could cover up the problem and simply say the vows myself and ask the bride and groom to say “yes” or just give me an affirmative nod. I like to think that I surely must have considered these options before I decided to go ahead and “let ‘er buck” as we used to say in the rodeo.

  Looking straight at the bride, deadpan, I continued: “In good times, and in bad.”

  The bride, bless her heart, went for it: “In good times (hiccup), and in (hiccup) …”

  Somebody in the front row tried to suppress a giggle and failed. Someone else let out one of those expelled-air sounds diesel locomotives make when they release their brakes. And a guy about ten rows back lost it. No giggler, he, but a belly laugher. To his credit, he tried for the exit before he blew, but he never made it. Waves of laughter sloshed back and forth across the church. I laughed, the bride and groom laughed, and the attendants likewise. Up in the choir loft the organist was hysterical. People rose out of their pews to breathe—people wept, snorted, brayed, hooted, howled, honked, and dabbed at their eyes with handkerchiefs. And every time some semblance of quiet and order seemed to be returning, the bride did it again. “Hiccup,” and pandemonium would resume.

 

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