Years ago at Utah State University, Leaun Otten — a religion teacher — told us of the day he came home after getting his car windshield replaced. He pulled into the driveway, turned off the key and watched as his son cracked the fresh windshield with a baseball.
He said he sat in the front seat of the car, head on the steering wheel, and quietly said, "Lord, help me find the proper way to react here."
I said pretty much those same words the other night as I listened to someone describe the hottest show in London, "The Jerry Springer Opera."
British citizens, it seems, are turning out in busloads to watch a full-blown opera based on the "Jerry Springer Show." The opera spoofs America. The performers are all overweight. They carry guns. They sing soaring arias about their bathroom habits while a large chorus chants profanity in the background. The Ku Klux Klan shows up to do a dance. In the final scene, Adam, Eve, God and other religious figures get into an obscene brawl.
If the show comes to America, I'm told, armed guards will be needed at the doors to keep Americans from burning down the theater. Those who don't leave in tears will leave angry.
So, as I sit here typing this column, I'm asking the question: "What's the proper way to react here?"
The easy response would be anger. We could all sing a chorus of Randy Newman's song, "Let's Drop the Big One."
Boom goes London and boom, Paree,
There'll be more room for you
And more room for me;
They all hate us anyhow,
So let's drop the big one now.
Anger is an option. But then blowing a fuse never solves anything. It just leaves everyone in the dark.
No, the key — I think — is to ask the right questions. And one of those questions would be: What can I learn in all this?
The British, our dear friends, are "having us on" for being overweight, reckless, coarse, anti-religious and prone to violence. They're poking us in the eye with a sharp stick, in a sporting sort of way, and laughing at our foibles.
We could ask "Who do they think they are?" Or maybe "Do they think they're so wonderful?"
But those would be the easy questions.
The hard question is painful. The hard question is "Do they have a point?"
Randall Hall, poet, author and — to bring everything full circle — friend of Leaun Otten, once told me one of the most difficult things to do is to listen carefully for the truth as you're being ridiculed, then change your ways if the scolder is right.
Do we Americans tend to be overweight?
Are we too enchanted by violence?
Can we be coarse, low and anti-religious?
If the answer to those questions is "yes," then we have two options.
We can "drop the big one" on London. Or we can hear the truth in the ridicule and do what we can to change our ways.
Leaun Otten didn't explode. He turned that "re-broken" windshield into a lesson in life. He used it to find a better way to behave.
The wise among us, I suspect, will do much the same when "The Jerry Springer Opera" comes to town.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com