Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Every now and then a book comes out that is so wonderful I have to tell everyone about it. Dave Barry Turns 50 made me remember vividly what it was like to be alive through the 50s, 60s, and 70s, those confusing decades that mysteriously defined us Boomers. Somewhere between trying to figure out why the grownups kept electing Richard Nixon for president and sending boys my age to Vietnam to die while writing commercials about not squeezing the Charmin and making programs like “Father Knows Best” and “The Flying Nun” and singing about buying the world a Coke, trivializing and capitalizing on sincere youthful yearnings for peace and harmony, I learned that the only way I was ever going to survive on this planet was if I escaped. I fled to birds while Dave Barry fled to humor, but he has the same memories as me, and was shocked and dismayed and disillusioned and amused and amazed by the same things I was, and put it all together into a book that made me laugh more deeply and ruefully than anything I’ve read since someone left the cake out in the rain.

It’s hard to explain why Dave Barry Turns 50 is so good from a birder’s point of view, except that the ridiculousness and sheer intensity of growing up in the shadow of the bomb and Ipana toothpaste and ring-around-the-collar and assassinations of some of the few public people I actually trusted and admired made it abundantly clear why the natural world was a safer and more coherent place to be.

I’ve come face to face with bears and wolves while birding, but never felt nearly as scared as I did one October afternoon in 1962, or, come to think of it, at the American Booksellers’ Convention in 1994, when I met book marketers who looked at sections of my book and said, “That’s really funny” with eyes utterly devoid of expression. I met Dave Barry in the flesh there, and though he wouldn’t remember it today, what I really liked about him was that after signing books for something like 500 people in front of me, he still seemed nice and somehow real when he gave me a signed copy of his book and shook my hand—maybe because I hadn’t yet told him I once sent him a nighthawk tapeworm.

Marketing has always seemed to me to epitomize something smarmy that started earlier but took over in the 60s—an insidious something that has metastasized and gotten even more malevolent over time. Birds can be trusted to NEVER market anything. That’s because they don’t have pockets and they can’t keep their rolodexes balanced on tree branches. Birds won’t even tell you to buy a Dave Barry book—they’ll leave your purchases up to your judgment every time.

Of course, it’s hard to justify reviewing Dave Barry Turns 50 on a bird program, but I knew if I read it close enough, I’d eventually come across a reference to birds that would justify it. Sure enough, on page 213, Dave Barry gives his suggestions for how we can live longer, by no longer wasting valuable time on meaningless tasks. He says:

I’m not saying this new, no-wasted-time philosophy will make your life perfect; what I’m saying is that at least you’ll be living. True, you might soon be living in an appliance carton, but big deal! There’s more to life than material comforts! Get off the damned money treadmill and experience the world around you! Stop to smell the roses; feel the sunshine; listen to the birds. Do not mess with hornets.

All in all, that sounds like good advice for anyone of any age. So get out there and smell some roses and listen to some birds and read Dave Barry Turns 50. You deserve a good laugh.