Once upon a time there was a little boy who was made of bits of string, paper, household appliances and other odds and ends. When people asked him what he was, he'd say "I don't know. I'm made of flotsam." And so he became known as Flotsam Boy.

Flotsam Boy met lots of people growing up and they always seemed to be one of two kinds of people: One type was confident, strong and whole. They were made of one thing--like Cheese Woman, Hardwood Floor Guy or Octopus Man. He always admired the way they were made of one thing.

The other type was also made of many parts and pieces, but they weren't the same as Flotsam Boy. These people were very different because they thought they were made of one thing, but in fact were made of many different things, and those many things were usually unpleasant things. There was Various Animal Parts and Railway Crashes Person as well as Needles, Buckets and Rotting Turtles Woman. That type of person could look in the mirror and still see only one thing, even though the rest of the world could see a very different picture.

Everyone loved Flotsam Boy, though. The thing people loved most about Flotsam Boy was that he knew he was made of Flotsam. He even talked about it a lot. He learned at a young age that if you spoke honestly about what was wrong with you, while simultaneously admiring others, you could become very popular.

But Flotsam Boy was not happy. Flotsam Boy wanted desperately to be a whole boy, even if he would grow up to be something lame like Republican Platform Wall Paper Man; he would accept that fate rather than grow into Flotsam Man.

So Flotsam Boy decided to interview every whole person he knew, so he could learn what made them into whole people. First, Flotsam Boy met with Artificial Heart Man. Artificial Heart Man was very welcoming and thought Flotsam’s idea was great. He invited Flotsam Boy in for tea and the two sat down next to a window that looked out onto a beautifully landscaped rose garden. (Artificial Heart Man loved natural things.)

The two talked and talked and drank tea together and talked. Actually, Flotsam Boy mostly listened and Artificial Heart Man mostly talked. It occurred to Flotsam Boy at one point that Artificial Heart Man perhaps talked too much. At another point during their conversation, Artificial Heart Man's eyeball fell out onto the tea table, but for some reason Artificial Heart Man didn't notice.

Flotsam Boy was going to say something, but figured that a Whole person must be aware of such things. As the afternoon wore on, however, Artificial Heart Man's body began to crumble bit by bit before Flotsam Boy's eyes. And the whole time, Artificial Heart Man just went right on talking as though everything were fine. Troubled by this, Flotsam Boy bid Artificial Heart Man good day and left for his appointment with News Anchor Woman.

News Anchor Woman was very happy to see Flotsam Boy. News Anchor Woman was much better about not doing all the talking. She asked Flotsam Boy a lot of probing and interesting questions. At one point during their conversation, however, Flotsam Boy got the impression that News Anchor Woman wasn't really listening. She kept looking at herself in the reflection of her shiny cookie tray, and occasionally she'd put her fingers to her lips and use their tips to primp her eyebrows and fix the hair behind her ear.

And then it happened. News Anchor Woman reached behind herself for a moment to pick up a plate of cucumber sandwiches, when her pale blue blazer opened slightly to reveal a maelstrom of swirling, incongruous pieces, parts, odds and ends. Underneath her clothes she was a veritable junkyard of calculator parts, safety pins, neon stockings, tape recorders, monkey guts with apricot, tool belts, Vaseline and just about everything else.

Flotsam Boy was shocked and could only think of one thing to do. He pretended to be queasy, dismissed himself politely and ran home, shattered.

Every time he met with a Whole Person, they turned out not to be whole at all. It was then that Flotsam Boy realized that he was living in a world full of fractured people, all of whom pretend to be whole. Indeed, only some of them pretended successfully, while the rest pretended poorly. He was a boy alone, singular, different, lonely and apparently doomed to forever live in pieces because he had to live honestly. Flotsam boy decided that if all things were really many things, and wholeness was just an idea, then all things, indeed the universe, must be nothing. And that kept Flotsam Boy in bed for weeks.

But then one day Flotsam Boy decided that if all things were nothing, then a person could make nothing into anything. Flotsam Boy decided that if he had to live in a world of appearances, he was going to exercise his right to choose any appearance he wanted so he could become one of the Whole People. After all, if wholeness wasn't really whole, then in the end the thing that he had always wanted was actually easier for him to have than he had ever thought. Yes, wholeness was all a lie, but that only made his dreams more attainable since everyone knows it's easier to pretend to have something, than to really have something.

That day was a Monday in April. On Tuesday, Flotsam Boy woke, closed his eyes and said to himself "today, I am Bicyclist Boy." And so he looked in the mirror and gone were the bits of string, gone was the paper, gone were the household appliances and the other odds and ends. In place of the flotsam in that mirror were a pair of gleaming black spandex shorts. Under his arm was a fancy black helmet. On his hands were those cool Velcro gloves, and behind him, on its very own kickstand was a lightweight, electric-blue hybrid that one might say was profoundly awesome.

And Bicyclist Boy grew into Bicyclist Man. And he rode and rode. He pedaled and pedaled. In no time at all people stopped calling him Flotsam Boy. And he was admired for his speed, his confidence and endurance. He was admired for his ability to memorize where all the potholes were. He would even win races and be interviewed by News Anchor Woman behind the big news desk the next day. He was happy. He was whole. And life was good.

Or so it seemed from the outside. Bicyclist Man couldn't help but notice that people didn't love him as much as they did when he was Flotsam Boy. There were times when Bicyclist Man was feeling tired or insecure, when he would look in the mirror and for a second see all that flotsam again but this time it was strange and rotten.

He became pre-occupied with people's perceptions of him. He always wanted to be completely sure that he was Bicyclist Man in everyone's minds, so he visited Mind Reader Man almost every week. Mind Reader Man would inevitably tell him the same thing. "Bicyclist Man," He'd say. "Don't worry. Everyone in this town is too busy worrying what everyone else thinks of them to be thinking of you." Despite his reassurances, Bicyclist Man was never convinced that he appeared as whole as he wanted to appear.

And Bicyclist Man would meet women and fall in love with them. He would either fall in love with someone who was in obvious pieces, and would eventually leave because he was tired of being the whole one; or he'd fall in love with another whole person, and the relationship would end because they fought too much. It was always the same type of argument: Motorway Chick wanted to drive to the movies. Bicyclist Man wanted to bike. Neither would for a moment sacrifice their precious wholeness for the sake of the other's needs, so their relationship would end.

Bicyclist Man eventually developed what one might say was a profound depression. So one day he gave up. He threw his bicycle off of a very tall bridge and watched it sink to the bottom of Looks Just Like a Huge River Man.

He came home, sank to his knees and cried. He tore off his clothes and he let his parts fall to the ground. He was Bicyclist Man No More. He cried for fourteen straight days, stopping only to drink water and occasionally go number 1.

And when those fourteen days were up, he cooked himself a huge pile of banana pancakes and ate them. While he ate those pancakes, he made a promise to himself. He would go on living, and he would live without a name. He would live for the pancakes he was enjoying. He would live to give love to others, not for the opinions of others. He decided that wholeness should be forgotten. He decided that pieces should be forgotten.
He decided never to live within the reflection of another person's eyes ever again. He would inhabit his parts as a dog inhabits its tail, nose, ears, eyes and tummy--without question, without disappointment, without pride.

He would eat and talk and love and care for his parts as long as they could hold him steady. He was a man. He was a person. Above all, he was.

And strangely, after he made this promise, no one seemed entirely together, but no one seemed like a liar either; and everything everyone wanted seemed both an illusion and important all at once. The sun rose. The sun set. And no one who spent a moment with him for the rest of their lives didn't leave feeling a little less lost, and a little more love. The rest of his life, one might say, was profoundly awesome.

George Washington still kicks ass.

It can't be disputed that he was regarded almost as a demigod two hundred years ago. And it is silly to revere the man in the same fashion today.

A playwright once wrote George Washington as a character into his play and the public panned the production because he dared do more than have a George Washington figure walk accross the stage. He actually made Washington talk like a man. That offended the public. That might give you a slight sense of how much this man was worshipped.

But I am not immune to the fashionable late 20th/early 21st century cynicism that pervades our history lessons today. Though I was born a month and a few days before Nixon resigned, I still feel the effects of Watergate when I regard my political representatives. I like my history dirty, bloody and real. I like the insecurities and faults. I appreciate the embarrassing anecdotes.

But I do believe that some revisionists go too far.

Those revisionists not only strip away the myths that surround the men, to make them flesh and reveal their insecurities and dirty habits, but they also go one step further and measure their subjects' actions with a contemporary ethical yardstick. That's when these historians lose me. When you make a myth a man, I call that history. When you make a man a monster, I call that dimestore fiction. I call that biographic myopia.

But what's great about Washington is that you can't make him a monster. He has survived the worst of the revisionists (as I believe the fad is swinging toward the middle now, thank goodness) and he has never come out worse than a mere man.

He had a temper. He was in some ways vain. He made a few mistakes--one of which started the French and Indian War back before the Revolution. He may not have loved his wife very much. The negative anecdotes are few and usually pretty funny. He snapped at the man who painted his portrait, for example. Wooo.

And here's the worst thing, in my opinion, that you can say about him, the type of thing that folks (particularly young students) today are so fond of latching onto: He may have been incredibly aware of his own role in shaping the history of our country to the extent that he created a kind of persona so that he could be deified. He may have even refused to run for a third term partly because he wanted to preserve that status, as the public was just becoming capable of anger toward his administration. The essence of this accusation is that his humility was all an act.

Wow. From that to Watergate. What a monster. How naive of me to think that Washington kicks ass. Seriously, if you're a student today, try talking to your classmates about how Washington was a great man, still worthy of attention, praise and celebration. Call him a hero. You will not be taken seriously. Even one of the co-writers of 43 Presidents reacted with a kind of smug, knee-jerk acedemic cynicism to my musings about the old General.

Let's assume for a moment that people in history for some reason are less complicated than you or me, and CAN be reduced to uni-dimensional motivations, that they can be reduced to a formula that somehow explains the motivation behind all their deeds. Let's assume that General Washington's reluctance to serve as our first president was 100% vanity and 0% humility. Let's assume that his stepping down from office was the same.

Measure the man's actions and they are still those of an unparalelled hero.

He wasn't much of a warrior. That can't be disputed. His victory over the British was owed mostly to his habit of strategic retreat.

But Washington was fortunate enough to be remembered mostly as our President, as a leader, and those qualities no revisionist, no smug cynic with eyes to read could dispute.

As a Neo-Futurist, (a company that has its artistic shit together but is always on the verge of falling apart organizationally) I have sat through countless hours of furious meetings, heard bitter rumblings I felt would surely lead to mass retirement. And I have longed in those moments, to be led by a man or woman who could turn my heart around. What must that be like?

During the tail end of the revolution, while the British were negotiating their peace, Washington stood among rumblings so much more severe, from men who were convinced they would not be paid, would not get pensions from Congress. Some of the men even wanted to sieze power and overturn this slow, pathetic deliberative body.

General Washington, in one speech, was able to stand before a hostile, bitter and unwelcoming crowd of angry soldiers, and turn them into cheering, happy men unanimously in favor of sticking it out and giving Congress a chance. Some of them even weapt. It is easy to say that I have never met a person who in any way possesses the kind of greatness that George Washington possessed, that left everyone who met him with a lasting impression, inspiring them to use words like "majestic". But I would give up my life in the Neo-Futurists for one fifth of that greatness to be hired into our company's Valley Forge. It is badly needed.

I know of no other military leader who successfully overthrew his government and then did not rule it afterward. Even Cincinatus had been appointed interum dictator of Rome. But Washington, who could have been crowned king in an instant, resigned and went back to Mt. Vernon. King George III, upon being defeated by Washington's army, heard of Washington's intention to resign. He was in disbelief. The king said "If he indeed does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

Was Washington an actor? I don't think so, but I can't prove it. I do believe this, though: He did the right thing at the right time and it wasn't an accident. Does the reason entirely matter? His most honest desire was always to do what was right in those moments when he was so needed. And he was actually capable of doing those things. Does it matter that his motivation may have been in part or wholy selfish?

What have we come to expect from our heros? Are we not still in possession of those unrealistic ideals when we allow ourselves to be so cynical and unforgiving? Because with that cynicism, we laugh at what we call blind reverence, while we turn a blind eye to the essence of true human greatness (which is, I humbly suggest, all too human.) We make the mistake of comparing everyone to an ideal which doesn't exist--which, again I humbly suggest--is all too naive.

I will say it again, and I will say it proudly. George Washington still kicks ass. I will even go so far as to say he remains, unshakably, my hero.

(I created a T-Shirt design that makes me laugh. Check it out here.)