Long before Paula's kids were allowed on the road, they learned to drive in the field behind the house in Otter River. Justin, a dozen years younger than his cousins, watched in fascination. He loved the fact that it's all right for a kid to drive in an eight-acre field that belongs to his family. He sat in my lap to steer until he could reach the pedals and thereafter took the wheel by himself, with me supervising from the passenger seat.
On Easter Sunday when he was eleven, he clamored for a driving lesson after dinner. The holiday at best wasn't all that gladsome at that time: my father's death shortly after Easter half a dozen years before was still on the back of everyone's mind. With nothing festive going on, Justin and I might as well conduct a driving lesson in the field.
Everything was fine until he ventured too far into that low-lying back corner (an outpost of the family Swamp), where the car sank into the mud and stuck there. I took over the driving and did no better. By the time we finished scrubbing and scrabbling around in the mud and moss, the right front bumper was resting on the ground and the left only a few precarious inches above it.
We crossed the field to the house to see what we could do about rounding up help. Paula and Mary rose to the occasion, and off we went across the field in the almost-rain: misting, damp and soggy. As we trooped out there, Mary said in an impatient treble -- this family runs to sopranos -- "Don't you remember Dad telling you, 'It's too wet to drive in the field?'" "No," I snapped, "because I never asked, because I wasn't interested in driving." That's my family: When you get into trouble they'll drop everything and gather to help if they can, and let you know every step of the way just what a stupid thing to do that was.
All four of us together couldn't move the Toyota. This was serious. I had work to do in Medford. I couldn't afford a delay that threatened to extend at least into Monday. I steamed back to the house and called a tow truck.
"Is it solid enough so I can drive out there?" asked the tow truck guy. I assured him that it was, on what grounds I can't imagine. I also, then or later, started researching busses that would get me back to Medford in time to get my work done. There weren't any.
Assuming the car wouldn't be liberated in time to save me, I indulged in a fit of the furious sulks in the unused back parlor. When my mother ventured to make a suggestion, I barked at her and went back to sulking. The first I heard of the arrival of the tow truck was when someone came in to tell me that it, too, was stuck in the family Swamp.
Meanwhile, unknown to me, about the time I called the tow truck, Paula had called her sons. The three of them, in their early twenties at the time, were a decent start on a basketball or football team. She said: "Why weren't you here this morning? You said you were coming to church? Come up here and get your aunt's car out of the mud."
Still sulking and brooding in the back parlor, I didn't see the sons arrive either. I was told later that they began by dislodging the tow truck -- pushed it, I suppose -- and then turned their attention to the Toyota. Mother says they lifted the front end, placed boards under the wheels, and pushed the car out. I never thought until this moment about what Justin was doing all this time; he was probably in the field with his cousins, trying to help and getting wet and muddy.
I'm sorry to say I don't think I thanked my nephews properly. It was Paula who ventured into the back parlor to inform me that my car was now available. I don't remember seeing the guys at all that day.
Justin describes my behavior in a crisis as "running around screaming as if your hair was on fire." I see his point. When I'm tempted to be annoyed with my family, I remind myself of some of the things they've put up with from me.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
CONFRONTATION IN THE SUBURBS: IMPATIENCE REWARDED II
One morning on Old Connecticut Path in Wayland between Route 126 and Stonebridge Road, I noticed something erratic in the operation of the two white cars in front of me: their brake lights flashed a nervous rhythm as they sped up for a while, braked suddenly, sped up again, braked again. As we proceeded, I sorted out what was going on: the second car was tailgating the first, and the first driver was flashing the brake lights deliberately to get the second driver to back off.
You can't pass on Old Connecticut Path. I watched these feuding drivers from a safe distance until the inevitable happened: the first driver braked suddenly, the second driver failed to stop in time, and a minor fender-bender resulted. From the first car emerged a tall, dark-haired man who might be in his thirties, shouting something like, "All right, now you've done it!" As I cautiously made my way past the two stopped vehicles, I glanced through the open door at the driver of the second car, a very unhappy-looking middle-aged woman who might have been a secretary, administrative assistant or schoolteacher.
If these cars had been driven by a couple of teenagers or twenty-somethings, I would assume they were just being stupid and hope they'd live to outgrow it. Between two adults, one of them an older woman, I have to think there was more going on here than meets the eye.
Why was this woman so determined to exceed the speed limit on a narrow, winding secondary road? Had she left a flatiron on, or forgotten to pick up a grandchild from school? Had she been summoned from work by a call from an ailing husband, or the fire department? And why, after the collision, was she just sitting in the car looking unhappy, and not yelling back, or at least trying to explain?
What's the man's problem? Would it kill him to pull over and let her pass, instead of deliberately provoking an accident? I remember a guy that I guess I cut off on Soldiers Field Road, who surged past me and then dodged in front of me and slammed on his brakes. It took me a minute or so to figure out that he had done it on purpose to get even. Some people take their cars and driving very seriously and have a mission to punish others for driving they don't approve of. Or maybe Mr. Thirty-Something lives on this road and is really tired of watching people speed past the lawn where his children are playing.
Maybe these two know each other; maybe this is the latest chapter in a decades-long neighborhood feud (I once typed a bunch of documents for a lawsuit involving a forty-year war between neighbors). Maybe she's his mother-in-law, or ex-mother-in-law, or becoming-ex-mother-in-law, tailing him for some reason. Maybe she's somehow protecting her daughter and her grandchildren, or thinks she is.
Of course, I never heard anything more about this incident. I sure would be interested to know what it was all about.
You can't pass on Old Connecticut Path. I watched these feuding drivers from a safe distance until the inevitable happened: the first driver braked suddenly, the second driver failed to stop in time, and a minor fender-bender resulted. From the first car emerged a tall, dark-haired man who might be in his thirties, shouting something like, "All right, now you've done it!" As I cautiously made my way past the two stopped vehicles, I glanced through the open door at the driver of the second car, a very unhappy-looking middle-aged woman who might have been a secretary, administrative assistant or schoolteacher.
If these cars had been driven by a couple of teenagers or twenty-somethings, I would assume they were just being stupid and hope they'd live to outgrow it. Between two adults, one of them an older woman, I have to think there was more going on here than meets the eye.
Why was this woman so determined to exceed the speed limit on a narrow, winding secondary road? Had she left a flatiron on, or forgotten to pick up a grandchild from school? Had she been summoned from work by a call from an ailing husband, or the fire department? And why, after the collision, was she just sitting in the car looking unhappy, and not yelling back, or at least trying to explain?
What's the man's problem? Would it kill him to pull over and let her pass, instead of deliberately provoking an accident? I remember a guy that I guess I cut off on Soldiers Field Road, who surged past me and then dodged in front of me and slammed on his brakes. It took me a minute or so to figure out that he had done it on purpose to get even. Some people take their cars and driving very seriously and have a mission to punish others for driving they don't approve of. Or maybe Mr. Thirty-Something lives on this road and is really tired of watching people speed past the lawn where his children are playing.
Maybe these two know each other; maybe this is the latest chapter in a decades-long neighborhood feud (I once typed a bunch of documents for a lawsuit involving a forty-year war between neighbors). Maybe she's his mother-in-law, or ex-mother-in-law, or becoming-ex-mother-in-law, tailing him for some reason. Maybe she's somehow protecting her daughter and her grandchildren, or thinks she is.
Of course, I never heard anything more about this incident. I sure would be interested to know what it was all about.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
THE SUV AND THE TRASH TRUCK: IMPATIENCE REWARDED
I am traveling west on Massachusetts Avenue in North Cambridge after one or more major snowstorms. Snow is piled on the center strip and at the sides of the road, reducing the usual two lanes to one and three quarters or so. The car in front of me is an SUV driven by a possibly thirty-something guy with an incipient bald spot at the back of his head. In front of him, a large, slow, dignified orange trash truck is making its way in the same direction.
The young man isn't satisfied with the deliberate pace of the trash truck. He steers left toward what used to be the center strip and is now a snowbank, with intent to pass. But simultaneously the trash truck also moves to the left, blocking and thwarting the SUV and its driver. Nothing daunted, the SUV moves to the other side, apparently to pass the trash truck on the right.
The trash truck, serenely making its rounds on behalf of the City of Cambridge and probably not aware of the zig-zagging SUV, had moved to the left to provide itself with a better angle for turning up a narrow side street. By the time the SUV gets to the trash truck's right side, the truck has turned in front of him, momentarily blocking the whole street. There's nothing for it but to fall back and wait while the trash truck ponderously makes its way into the side street.
With the trash truck out of the way, the driver of the SUV pours on the coal and accelerates down Mass Ave, and a few blocks later fetches up against the light at Route 16. I, meanwhile, watching this microdrama as I proceed down Mass Ave in my doddering elderly-lady fashion, am still immediately behind him. That's all the good his itching at the trash truck did him.
The young man isn't satisfied with the deliberate pace of the trash truck. He steers left toward what used to be the center strip and is now a snowbank, with intent to pass. But simultaneously the trash truck also moves to the left, blocking and thwarting the SUV and its driver. Nothing daunted, the SUV moves to the other side, apparently to pass the trash truck on the right.
The trash truck, serenely making its rounds on behalf of the City of Cambridge and probably not aware of the zig-zagging SUV, had moved to the left to provide itself with a better angle for turning up a narrow side street. By the time the SUV gets to the trash truck's right side, the truck has turned in front of him, momentarily blocking the whole street. There's nothing for it but to fall back and wait while the trash truck ponderously makes its way into the side street.
With the trash truck out of the way, the driver of the SUV pours on the coal and accelerates down Mass Ave, and a few blocks later fetches up against the light at Route 16. I, meanwhile, watching this microdrama as I proceed down Mass Ave in my doddering elderly-lady fashion, am still immediately behind him. That's all the good his itching at the trash truck did him.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
ALL NATURAL
Once upon a time, largely under the tutelage of Adele Davis, the 1960s and 1970s guru of unrefined and otherwise natural foods, refined carbohydrates and especially white sugar were anathema to the nutritionally correct. Extrapolating from the body's rapid digestion and absorption of refined sugar and the increased incidence of diabetes in people who eat too much of it, Davis and others proclaimed white flour and bread, white rice, and particularly white sugar to be something like addictive drugs. Refined carbohydrates were supposed to be responsible for a dizzying variety of ailments and nutritional deficiencies; I don't even remember hearing that much about diabetes.
The faithful eschewed "poisonous white sugar" in favor of brown rice, brown bread and brown sugar. Some enthusiasts went so far as to favor brown eggs over white ones. (In point of fact, dark bread is usually produced with caramel coloring and often a minimum of whole-grain flour, if any; almost all brown sugar is white sugar with a bit of molasses added back into it; and the color of an egg is a function of the breed of chicken and has nothing to do with the nutrients inside. Debate continues, as far as I know, about the relative merits of whole and refined grains.)
In the days when the gourmet health food chain then called Bread and Circus still made a fetish of avoiding anything that had to be called "sugar," two women approached the bulk bins, surveying the selection of chocolate candies.
"It's all natural," one enthused to the other. "There's no sugar -- it's just all natural."
A third woman, apparently unknown to them, happened by and made her way into the conversation.
"Oh, there's sugar in it. It wouldn't be sweet if there wasn't. It's fructose, fruit sugar, which is a little easier on your teeth, but it's still sugar."
"Oh, no," the first woman persisted. "It's all natural. It's much better for you."
"Yes, but if you look at the list of ingredients, the second one listed is dates. Dates have a whole lot of sugar. That's why they're sweet. It's still sugar."
"Oh, but it's all natural."
"So," the interloper put in, "is deadly nightshade." End of conversation.
Bread and Circus eventually figured out that the case against refined carbohydrates had been overstated; acknowledged that all that ruckus about "poisonous white sugar" was never altogether defensible; and explained that the familiar yellow Domino bags would henceforth appear on the chain's hitherto pure shelves. Within the same time frame, curiously, Bread and Circus's stores were bought by and renamed Whole Foods -- ironically, just as more refined carbohydrates crept onto the shelves, whole grain pasta, e.g., retreated, and whole food was exactly what they weren't selling as much of.
Hype notwithstanding, those "all natural" date-sweetened candies were wonderful. Like all-fruit jams -- which cost more than their fruit-flavored-sugar-syrup counterparts, have almost as much sugar, and probably aren't any healthier -- the "all natural" chocolates aimed at a niche that required them to forswear not just sugar but also suspicious-sounding concoctions like the "sugar alcohol" that figures in sugar-free candies for diabetics. Health food store candy has to be made of ingredients recognizable as food.
Either because an excess of date purée would noticeably flavor the chocolate; because dates are no cheaper than the other ingredients; or for some other reason, the "all natural" chocolate was just a bit less sweet than those whose manufacturers feel free to add as much high fructose corn syrup as the traffic will bear. And while there was no detectable flavor of dates, one could imagine that the complex flavor of the chocolate carried the faintest fruity undertone.
I don't know what's in health food store candy now, but it isn't nearly as good as those date-sweetened chocolates. It's too bad that reason and common sense prevailed in the chocolate department.
The faithful eschewed "poisonous white sugar" in favor of brown rice, brown bread and brown sugar. Some enthusiasts went so far as to favor brown eggs over white ones. (In point of fact, dark bread is usually produced with caramel coloring and often a minimum of whole-grain flour, if any; almost all brown sugar is white sugar with a bit of molasses added back into it; and the color of an egg is a function of the breed of chicken and has nothing to do with the nutrients inside. Debate continues, as far as I know, about the relative merits of whole and refined grains.)
In the days when the gourmet health food chain then called Bread and Circus still made a fetish of avoiding anything that had to be called "sugar," two women approached the bulk bins, surveying the selection of chocolate candies.
"It's all natural," one enthused to the other. "There's no sugar -- it's just all natural."
A third woman, apparently unknown to them, happened by and made her way into the conversation.
"Oh, there's sugar in it. It wouldn't be sweet if there wasn't. It's fructose, fruit sugar, which is a little easier on your teeth, but it's still sugar."
"Oh, no," the first woman persisted. "It's all natural. It's much better for you."
"Yes, but if you look at the list of ingredients, the second one listed is dates. Dates have a whole lot of sugar. That's why they're sweet. It's still sugar."
"Oh, but it's all natural."
"So," the interloper put in, "is deadly nightshade." End of conversation.
Bread and Circus eventually figured out that the case against refined carbohydrates had been overstated; acknowledged that all that ruckus about "poisonous white sugar" was never altogether defensible; and explained that the familiar yellow Domino bags would henceforth appear on the chain's hitherto pure shelves. Within the same time frame, curiously, Bread and Circus's stores were bought by and renamed Whole Foods -- ironically, just as more refined carbohydrates crept onto the shelves, whole grain pasta, e.g., retreated, and whole food was exactly what they weren't selling as much of.
Hype notwithstanding, those "all natural" date-sweetened candies were wonderful. Like all-fruit jams -- which cost more than their fruit-flavored-sugar-syrup counterparts, have almost as much sugar, and probably aren't any healthier -- the "all natural" chocolates aimed at a niche that required them to forswear not just sugar but also suspicious-sounding concoctions like the "sugar alcohol" that figures in sugar-free candies for diabetics. Health food store candy has to be made of ingredients recognizable as food.
Either because an excess of date purée would noticeably flavor the chocolate; because dates are no cheaper than the other ingredients; or for some other reason, the "all natural" chocolate was just a bit less sweet than those whose manufacturers feel free to add as much high fructose corn syrup as the traffic will bear. And while there was no detectable flavor of dates, one could imagine that the complex flavor of the chocolate carried the faintest fruity undertone.
I don't know what's in health food store candy now, but it isn't nearly as good as those date-sweetened chocolates. It's too bad that reason and common sense prevailed in the chocolate department.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
ECLIPSE
The summer before my son turned eleven, a total eclipse of the sun crossed our planet over an area that included Hawaii and Baja California. Our former downstairs neighbor, Peter, a freelance audiophile, reviewer and writer, had begun life as an astronomer and still followed things solar, planetary, stellar and universal. Knowing of Justin's interest in astronomy, he had given him a telescope when he moved to San Diego a year or so before. He now planned to take in the eclipse, traveling with a busload of scientists going south from Berkeley by way of San Diego, and offered to take Justin along. He even offered to make the travel arrangements.
Peter put off making Justin's reservation until, for some reason, he could only order a ticket for his own use. He explained to me matter-of-factly that Justin would have to fly under his, Peter's, name, and that we would explain to the airline that Justin was Peter's nephew and was named after him. It was my idea to add to the official story that young "Peter's" middle name was Justin, which was the name he went by. I knew that Justin wouldn't remember for five minutes that he was supposed to answer to "Peter," even if I remembered, which I wouldn't. In the event, as we stood in line at the airport, I found myself reciting our usual litany to my excited young traveler: "Justin, come here"; "Justin, please don't do that"; "Justin, get over here"; "Justin, quit climbing on that, it won't hold your weight"; Justin, I asked you not to do that"; "JUSTIN. . . .!!"
Through age ten, a child traveling alone is eligible for the airline's escort service. I'm sure some eleven-year-olds are level-headed and attentive enough to get themselves onto and off a plane and even to change planes in Chicago or wherever it was. Justin's capacity for sustained attention to anything not chosen by him was just this side of nonexistent. Fortunately, he qualified for the escort service by four months, and the airline agreed to keep an eye on him. They gave him a plastic bag on a strap to keep important things like his ticket in. That didn't mean he couldn't lose it, but it improved the odds.
A day or two before Justin was scheduled to leave, he developed a sore throat worthy of a throat culture. The next day I got a call from the doctor, invoking some magic words: strep, antibiotic, contagious, immediately. I called Justin's summer school in Framingham and suggested that they keep him away from everybody until I got there. The doctor gave him an antibiotic and told us it would be all right to send him to San Diego in a couple of days.
It may have been that same day that I got a call from Peter. It had come to his attention that the Mexican government takes a dim view of foreign children traveling with adults not related to them. To take Justin out of the country, Peter would need (1) a notarized affidavit stating that Justin had my permission to go to Mexico, and (2) either a similar affidavit from Justin's father, or a copy of the divorce decree giving me custody and thus the authority to grant permission.
My affidavit was easy: I borrowed some wording from a lawyer I worked for at the time, and he notarized it for me. An affidavit from Justin's father, however, was out of the question. He'd refuse to do it just because I asked. The box of papers relative to the divorce was not in Medford, where we lived, but in my mother's attic, sixty-three miles away. I dropped everything and drove up Route 2 that night, taking Justin and his antibiotic along. He slept in the passenger's seat most of the way.
Back in Medford, I extracted three documents from the box: the final Judgment of Divorce, dated February 24 of whatever year it was (my sister's birthday; her divorce was final on my birthday in a much earlier year); a second Judgment of Divorce dated June Something of the same year "as of February 24," having to do with a loophole in the original Judgment that Justin's father tried to drive a truck through; and the all-important judgment in the child custody action, dated three years later. On the advice of my lawyers at the time, I had obtained from the Court three official copies of the custody decree, all with gold seals. I still had at least two of them. Since sending Justin's documentation along with the most scattered ten-year-old in Middlesex County was not to be thought of, I packaged up everything and delivered it to the post office before the witching hour of 3:00 PM. The post office swore that Peter would have it by the time he had specified.
He didn't. He claimed the post office was incompetent. I reserved judgment on that point; Peter has been known to mess up. I put together a second set of documents, including the remaining gold-sealed custody decree and a second notarized affidavit, and then, against everyone's better judgment, shipped out this active and selectively oblivious child with his documents (like Miss Flite in Bleak House): the legal documents in one name, and his airline ticket and related form(s) in another. If he goes astray, I thought, I wonder what the authorities who find him will make of it all.
He didn't go astray. He had a wonderful time at the eclipse, totally focused and businesslike throughout, hopping to do Peter's bidding. After it was over -- maybe eighty seconds of eclipse, after all that preparation -- he let loose and ran around saying, "That was so awesome! That was so awesome!!"
Back in San Diego, he developed an ear infection and required yet another antibiotic ("The meaning of life is infections," he said when he developed an eye infection on another trip) and was instructed not to travel until the antibiotic had done its work; so he got to hang around Peter's swimming pool for an extra week. Swimming apparently was all right, at least with the doctor Peter took him to.
When I picked him up at the airport, wearing sunglasses and an Eclipse 1990 T-shirt, he reported having learned on the bus what a German scientist says when somebody upsets a gallon of water onto his newspaper. He says scheiss. He says it a lot. I hope Justin learned more than that. At the very least, he had a good time comparing notes on eclipse experiences with his fellow astronomers at the club he belonged to. He remembers the trip fondly and thinks it may have contributed to his present conviction that complicated and difficult things can be accomplished.
My sister, a mother of boys, says anyone but me would have abandoned the eclipse trip, if not at the first sign of trouble, at least two or three troubles down the road. My position was that the opportunity to travel to a total eclipse in a bus full of scientists wouldn't knock again, and come hell, high water, streptococcus, airline hassles, or the Mexican government, he was going.
Peter put off making Justin's reservation until, for some reason, he could only order a ticket for his own use. He explained to me matter-of-factly that Justin would have to fly under his, Peter's, name, and that we would explain to the airline that Justin was Peter's nephew and was named after him. It was my idea to add to the official story that young "Peter's" middle name was Justin, which was the name he went by. I knew that Justin wouldn't remember for five minutes that he was supposed to answer to "Peter," even if I remembered, which I wouldn't. In the event, as we stood in line at the airport, I found myself reciting our usual litany to my excited young traveler: "Justin, come here"; "Justin, please don't do that"; "Justin, get over here"; "Justin, quit climbing on that, it won't hold your weight"; Justin, I asked you not to do that"; "JUSTIN. . . .!!"
Through age ten, a child traveling alone is eligible for the airline's escort service. I'm sure some eleven-year-olds are level-headed and attentive enough to get themselves onto and off a plane and even to change planes in Chicago or wherever it was. Justin's capacity for sustained attention to anything not chosen by him was just this side of nonexistent. Fortunately, he qualified for the escort service by four months, and the airline agreed to keep an eye on him. They gave him a plastic bag on a strap to keep important things like his ticket in. That didn't mean he couldn't lose it, but it improved the odds.
A day or two before Justin was scheduled to leave, he developed a sore throat worthy of a throat culture. The next day I got a call from the doctor, invoking some magic words: strep, antibiotic, contagious, immediately. I called Justin's summer school in Framingham and suggested that they keep him away from everybody until I got there. The doctor gave him an antibiotic and told us it would be all right to send him to San Diego in a couple of days.
It may have been that same day that I got a call from Peter. It had come to his attention that the Mexican government takes a dim view of foreign children traveling with adults not related to them. To take Justin out of the country, Peter would need (1) a notarized affidavit stating that Justin had my permission to go to Mexico, and (2) either a similar affidavit from Justin's father, or a copy of the divorce decree giving me custody and thus the authority to grant permission.
My affidavit was easy: I borrowed some wording from a lawyer I worked for at the time, and he notarized it for me. An affidavit from Justin's father, however, was out of the question. He'd refuse to do it just because I asked. The box of papers relative to the divorce was not in Medford, where we lived, but in my mother's attic, sixty-three miles away. I dropped everything and drove up Route 2 that night, taking Justin and his antibiotic along. He slept in the passenger's seat most of the way.
Back in Medford, I extracted three documents from the box: the final Judgment of Divorce, dated February 24 of whatever year it was (my sister's birthday; her divorce was final on my birthday in a much earlier year); a second Judgment of Divorce dated June Something of the same year "as of February 24," having to do with a loophole in the original Judgment that Justin's father tried to drive a truck through; and the all-important judgment in the child custody action, dated three years later. On the advice of my lawyers at the time, I had obtained from the Court three official copies of the custody decree, all with gold seals. I still had at least two of them. Since sending Justin's documentation along with the most scattered ten-year-old in Middlesex County was not to be thought of, I packaged up everything and delivered it to the post office before the witching hour of 3:00 PM. The post office swore that Peter would have it by the time he had specified.
He didn't. He claimed the post office was incompetent. I reserved judgment on that point; Peter has been known to mess up. I put together a second set of documents, including the remaining gold-sealed custody decree and a second notarized affidavit, and then, against everyone's better judgment, shipped out this active and selectively oblivious child with his documents (like Miss Flite in Bleak House): the legal documents in one name, and his airline ticket and related form(s) in another. If he goes astray, I thought, I wonder what the authorities who find him will make of it all.
He didn't go astray. He had a wonderful time at the eclipse, totally focused and businesslike throughout, hopping to do Peter's bidding. After it was over -- maybe eighty seconds of eclipse, after all that preparation -- he let loose and ran around saying, "That was so awesome! That was so awesome!!"
Back in San Diego, he developed an ear infection and required yet another antibiotic ("The meaning of life is infections," he said when he developed an eye infection on another trip) and was instructed not to travel until the antibiotic had done its work; so he got to hang around Peter's swimming pool for an extra week. Swimming apparently was all right, at least with the doctor Peter took him to.
When I picked him up at the airport, wearing sunglasses and an Eclipse 1990 T-shirt, he reported having learned on the bus what a German scientist says when somebody upsets a gallon of water onto his newspaper. He says scheiss. He says it a lot. I hope Justin learned more than that. At the very least, he had a good time comparing notes on eclipse experiences with his fellow astronomers at the club he belonged to. He remembers the trip fondly and thinks it may have contributed to his present conviction that complicated and difficult things can be accomplished.
My sister, a mother of boys, says anyone but me would have abandoned the eclipse trip, if not at the first sign of trouble, at least two or three troubles down the road. My position was that the opportunity to travel to a total eclipse in a bus full of scientists wouldn't knock again, and come hell, high water, streptococcus, airline hassles, or the Mexican government, he was going.
Monday, October 26, 2009
MURDER WILL OUT: A TALE FOR HALLOWEEN
One August day some years ago a young man murdered his girl friend. Apparently this crime was committed on impulse, since he seems not to have considered the question of disposal of the body. Until something better turned up -- one has to assume that he didn't think of this as a permanent solution -- he stuffed her into the trunk of his car.
Either this young man was slow of thought and action, or he had other matters on his mind. He didn't come up with a better plan right away but drove around for a few days with the remains of his late inamorata in the trunk of his car.
Then the car developed some problem. He took it to his mechanic and left it there for repairs. By this time, the girl friend in the trunk was, you might say, making her presence felt. The mechanic checked it out and notified the police, and the young man's arrest, trial and conviction followed.
This tale comes from a textbook for police officers that I typed for the lawyer who compiled the book. You come across the damndest things in the typing business.
Either this young man was slow of thought and action, or he had other matters on his mind. He didn't come up with a better plan right away but drove around for a few days with the remains of his late inamorata in the trunk of his car.
Then the car developed some problem. He took it to his mechanic and left it there for repairs. By this time, the girl friend in the trunk was, you might say, making her presence felt. The mechanic checked it out and notified the police, and the young man's arrest, trial and conviction followed.
This tale comes from a textbook for police officers that I typed for the lawyer who compiled the book. You come across the damndest things in the typing business.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
WAITING FOR A-163
It looks like the good old days at the Registry, with people lined up out the door and down the corridor of the Watertown Mall. I, like them, am waiting to take a number and then sit on a bench and listen to that computer-generated bedroom voice: "Now serving B-210 at Window Number Nine. . . ." Half a dozen different categories of Registry business are identified by
different letters, each with its series of numbers. I am number A-163.
At least the numbers go quickly. At least there is a take-a-number system, and benches. The air conditioning doesn't matter in this weather but would have been very material to me all the times I stood in line for an hour or two on some hazy-sunshine August day telling my unique story to a series of bureaucrats who were as hot as I was and had been there longer. Bureaucrats don't like unique stories. Mine usually involved some motorcycle. It seemed to me in those days that no motorcycle is ever more than about half legal.
Those were the days of the Woburn Registry. I remember a cartoon in the paper depicting that highly recognizable round building just off the highway in Woburn with "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" inscribed over the door. That was about the size of it: people packed into a small space and stepping on each other, the line out the door and around the building from before 8:30 AM until closing time. It was a happy day for Massachusetts when they closed the Woburn Registry and set up all those systems for doing motor vehicle business on line and by mail.
The Watertown Registry's problem this morning is that bugbear of the modern world, the-computer-is-down. Only the driver's license function is affected, but that's enough to create a crowd of frustrated people and a feeling of hasslement among Registry personnel. A tense-looking forty-ish blond woman is trying from inside the office to make herself heard by the straggling and meandering line, over people talking and the Mall music system playing Come Softly to Me and other 1950s favorites.
Much of the line is in the corridor; the blond woman remains in the office. She doesn't know how to project her voice, and thus sounds tense and strident. After three or four repetitions, I gather that the driver's-license hopefuls are being offered some options. I'm registering my car. When I hear "license renewal" I tune out.
The bedroom-voiced computer -- was it Alien that had the computer with the sexy female voice, in parody, I'm told, of Star Trek's female but relentlessly chaste computer? -- the computer, that is, announces Number A-152 at Window Number Three. I am seated directly in front of Window Number Three. A young woman squeezes past me between the benches, weighed down with a purse, a black nylon bag, and a couple of coats. She trails a child of eight or so, the top of whose head is about level with the counter.
Boy or girl? I wonder idly. The red shirt and blue jeans and the collar-length blond-ish-brown hair, could belong to either. Then the child gives a little hop and lands, hands flat on the counter, arms straight, feet dangling above the floor, peering over the foot-high fence that runs parallel to the edge of the countertop between Window Number Three and Window Number Two. A boy then. My son would have done something like that. By the time he was at four, he could pull himself onto any counter he could get his fingertips over before I, in my slow way, caught on to what he was doing. This boy is pretty quiet, really. At his age Justin would have been doing Bruce Lee in the aisles.
At his age I would have thought about climbing the counter. I was strong in the hands and arms but too heavy to jump that high or pull myself up the way Justin did. My sister might have been light and agile enough, but she wouldn't have thought of it, or dared do it in public at her mother's elbow. That combination of strength, agility and audacity seems to be the property of slender, wiry males.
The boy lunges at the top of the divider but fumbles and descends to the floor. Mom tells him he can't get up there and instructs him not to try. I note, with a smile, that she doesn't tell him to abandon the counter-top as well. I so recognize this pattern. If you sit too heavily on one of these high-energy kids, the pressure builds until there is a noisy explosion. A child like that is a crash course in picking your battles.
The boy jumps to the counter again and walks from side to side on his hands. Mom turns to pick up the coats from the floor. I catch her eye, smile at the boy, and remark, "I used to have one of those."
"We've been here for an hour and a half already," she answers. She hands the boy a manila folder and a pen, and relocates the coats to a bench behind me.
The boy's way of amusing himself with the materials provided is to stab the pen into the folder and, clutching it with his fist, carve dark blue W-shaped trenches into the folder.
"Don't break it," admonishes Mom. "If you get ink on the floor . . . ."
I turn my attention to the book in my lap and don't notice Mom and the boy again until I slowly become aware that there is unhappiness at Window Number Three between Mom and the woman behind the counter. I can't hear what they are saying; but the forty-ish blond supervisor, as I now conclude that she is, is trying to handle the situation from Window Number One, speaking loudly to Mom across Window Number Two: "Ma'am, I'm sorry, I can't take your application, you'll have to go back to your insurance company, we have to follow certain rules, I'm sorry, Ma'am, it isn't our fault, you'll have to take it up with your insurance company. . . ." Mom is determined not to leave the Registry, drive to the insurance company, return to the Registry, and go through the whole shebang all over again.
I can absolutely relate to Mom's position. I went through one of those scenes once, between the Registry in Quincy and my insurance agent in Bedford. The gigantic difference between her situation and mine is that my son was a dozen years older than this woman's counter-climbing, folder-and-pen-destroying brown-eyed mop-head. Mine was happy to take a day off from school, the more so since our old car would descend to him if we managed to get the new car registered. Even dealing with a horrible hassle -- is there, this side of Kafka or the Soviet Union in the 1950s, any hassle more horrible than those generated by the insurance industry and the Registry? -- loses its edge if Justin is keeping me company and doing the driving.
I've been in the supervisor's shoes as well, trying to keep order in some paper-and-pixel record-keeping system. There have to be non-negotiable rules, even though any such system creates absurdities and hardships in some cases. Without procedures that are always the same, a big, complicated system like the Registry will crumble and nobody will know what's been done or what's going on.
Mom eventually collects her bags, coats, and son, and leaves. I wonder if she took the day off from work to get this done. It's mid-afternoon now. She can probably beard the insurance agent in his den, get whatever the Registry wants, and make her way to the head of the line at the Registry again before closing time, if her son doesn't absolutely melt down along the way. Silently sympathizing, I return to my book and wait for A-163 to come up.
different letters, each with its series of numbers. I am number A-163.
At least the numbers go quickly. At least there is a take-a-number system, and benches. The air conditioning doesn't matter in this weather but would have been very material to me all the times I stood in line for an hour or two on some hazy-sunshine August day telling my unique story to a series of bureaucrats who were as hot as I was and had been there longer. Bureaucrats don't like unique stories. Mine usually involved some motorcycle. It seemed to me in those days that no motorcycle is ever more than about half legal.
Those were the days of the Woburn Registry. I remember a cartoon in the paper depicting that highly recognizable round building just off the highway in Woburn with "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" inscribed over the door. That was about the size of it: people packed into a small space and stepping on each other, the line out the door and around the building from before 8:30 AM until closing time. It was a happy day for Massachusetts when they closed the Woburn Registry and set up all those systems for doing motor vehicle business on line and by mail.
The Watertown Registry's problem this morning is that bugbear of the modern world, the-computer-is-down. Only the driver's license function is affected, but that's enough to create a crowd of frustrated people and a feeling of hasslement among Registry personnel. A tense-looking forty-ish blond woman is trying from inside the office to make herself heard by the straggling and meandering line, over people talking and the Mall music system playing Come Softly to Me and other 1950s favorites.
Much of the line is in the corridor; the blond woman remains in the office. She doesn't know how to project her voice, and thus sounds tense and strident. After three or four repetitions, I gather that the driver's-license hopefuls are being offered some options. I'm registering my car. When I hear "license renewal" I tune out.
The bedroom-voiced computer -- was it Alien that had the computer with the sexy female voice, in parody, I'm told, of Star Trek's female but relentlessly chaste computer? -- the computer, that is, announces Number A-152 at Window Number Three. I am seated directly in front of Window Number Three. A young woman squeezes past me between the benches, weighed down with a purse, a black nylon bag, and a couple of coats. She trails a child of eight or so, the top of whose head is about level with the counter.
Boy or girl? I wonder idly. The red shirt and blue jeans and the collar-length blond-ish-brown hair, could belong to either. Then the child gives a little hop and lands, hands flat on the counter, arms straight, feet dangling above the floor, peering over the foot-high fence that runs parallel to the edge of the countertop between Window Number Three and Window Number Two. A boy then. My son would have done something like that. By the time he was at four, he could pull himself onto any counter he could get his fingertips over before I, in my slow way, caught on to what he was doing. This boy is pretty quiet, really. At his age Justin would have been doing Bruce Lee in the aisles.
At his age I would have thought about climbing the counter. I was strong in the hands and arms but too heavy to jump that high or pull myself up the way Justin did. My sister might have been light and agile enough, but she wouldn't have thought of it, or dared do it in public at her mother's elbow. That combination of strength, agility and audacity seems to be the property of slender, wiry males.
The boy lunges at the top of the divider but fumbles and descends to the floor. Mom tells him he can't get up there and instructs him not to try. I note, with a smile, that she doesn't tell him to abandon the counter-top as well. I so recognize this pattern. If you sit too heavily on one of these high-energy kids, the pressure builds until there is a noisy explosion. A child like that is a crash course in picking your battles.
The boy jumps to the counter again and walks from side to side on his hands. Mom turns to pick up the coats from the floor. I catch her eye, smile at the boy, and remark, "I used to have one of those."
"We've been here for an hour and a half already," she answers. She hands the boy a manila folder and a pen, and relocates the coats to a bench behind me.
The boy's way of amusing himself with the materials provided is to stab the pen into the folder and, clutching it with his fist, carve dark blue W-shaped trenches into the folder.
"Don't break it," admonishes Mom. "If you get ink on the floor . . . ."
I turn my attention to the book in my lap and don't notice Mom and the boy again until I slowly become aware that there is unhappiness at Window Number Three between Mom and the woman behind the counter. I can't hear what they are saying; but the forty-ish blond supervisor, as I now conclude that she is, is trying to handle the situation from Window Number One, speaking loudly to Mom across Window Number Two: "Ma'am, I'm sorry, I can't take your application, you'll have to go back to your insurance company, we have to follow certain rules, I'm sorry, Ma'am, it isn't our fault, you'll have to take it up with your insurance company. . . ." Mom is determined not to leave the Registry, drive to the insurance company, return to the Registry, and go through the whole shebang all over again.
I can absolutely relate to Mom's position. I went through one of those scenes once, between the Registry in Quincy and my insurance agent in Bedford. The gigantic difference between her situation and mine is that my son was a dozen years older than this woman's counter-climbing, folder-and-pen-destroying brown-eyed mop-head. Mine was happy to take a day off from school, the more so since our old car would descend to him if we managed to get the new car registered. Even dealing with a horrible hassle -- is there, this side of Kafka or the Soviet Union in the 1950s, any hassle more horrible than those generated by the insurance industry and the Registry? -- loses its edge if Justin is keeping me company and doing the driving.
I've been in the supervisor's shoes as well, trying to keep order in some paper-and-pixel record-keeping system. There have to be non-negotiable rules, even though any such system creates absurdities and hardships in some cases. Without procedures that are always the same, a big, complicated system like the Registry will crumble and nobody will know what's been done or what's going on.
Mom eventually collects her bags, coats, and son, and leaves. I wonder if she took the day off from work to get this done. It's mid-afternoon now. She can probably beard the insurance agent in his den, get whatever the Registry wants, and make her way to the head of the line at the Registry again before closing time, if her son doesn't absolutely melt down along the way. Silently sympathizing, I return to my book and wait for A-163 to come up.
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