by Bill Bryson
Anyway, you are probably wondering about this secret of aging I alluded to in the opening paragraph. According to the newspaper account, it appears that a Dr. Gerard Schellenberg at the Seattle Veterans Administration Medical Research Center has isolated the genetic culprit behind aging. It seems that embedded in each gene is something called a helicase, which is part of a family of enzymes, and that this helicase, for no good reason, peels apart the two strands of chromosomes that make up your DNA, and the next thing you know you are standing at the kitchen cupboard trying to remember what the heck brought you there.
I can’t give you any more details than that because naturally I have mislaid the article, and anyhow it hardly matters because in a week or two somebody else will come along and uncover some other secret of aging, and everyone will forget about Dr. Schellenberg and his findings—which is, of course, precisely what I have begun to do already.
So in conclusion we can see that forgetfulness is probably not such a bad thing after all. I believe that’s the point I was trying to make, but to tell you the truth, I don’t remember now.
In order to make the world a better place, the following rules will take force with immediate effect across the planet.
1. It is no longer permitted to be stupid and slow. You must choose one or the other.
2. People who wear articles of clothing on which the manufacturer’s name or logo is prominently displayed must also wear a badge saying: “Yes, I Am an Idiot.”
3. If in the course of parking your car you are not able to maneuver the vehicle into a space in less time than it takes to undergo and recover from open heart surgery, it is not permitted to park in that space.
4. When standing in line at a retail establishment, it is a requirement that you familiarize yourself with the currency of your nation before attempting a transaction. It is not permitted to engage the sales assistant in conversation regarding the weather, the health or personal relationships of mutual acquaintances, or other matters not relevant to the purchase. When purchasing food or beverages, anyone who has to leave the line to ask his or her partner whether the partner wants a sugar cone or a plain cone, or a small, medium, or large macchiato, or anything like that, will be escorted from the premises. Anyone who reaches the front of a line and says, “Now what do I want?” and purses his lips thoughtfully or drums his fingers on his chin while studying the ordering options as if for the first time will be taken outside and shot.
5. If you are waiting for an elevator that is slow to come and you are the sort of person who pushes the call button repeatedly in the sincere belief that that will make a difference, you are no longer permitted to use elevators.
6. Martha Stewart is, with immediate effect, illegal.
7. All hotel room lights will switch off by the door, by the bed, and in an easily identifiable location on the light fixtures themselves. If a hotel patron climbs into bed and discovers that a floor lamp across the room cannot be turned off from the bed, he is entitled to a free night’s stay. If he then must spend five minutes or more figuring out how to turn the floor lamp off, he is entitled to help himself, gratis, to the contents of the minibar.
8. All instruction booklets that say “Attach lock washers D1 and D2 to hub seal J by means of spindle brackets H-4a and H-5,” or anything remotely similar, are illegal.
9. Boxes of Christmas cards that carry messages like “May your holidays be wrapped in warmth and touched with wonder” must bear a large label on the outside of the box saying: “Do Not Purchase: Message Inside Is Embarrassing and Sentimental.”
10. All cars will come equipped with gas caps on both sides and at the rear, and gas station hoses will be at least six feet longer.
11. Any electronic clock or other timing device on which the time is set by holding down a button and scrolling laboriously through the minutes and hours is illegal. Also, when you are trying to set the alarm on such a device for, say, 7:00 A.M., and the numbers get to about 6:52 and then suddenly speed up and you discover to your dismay that you have gone past the desired hour and have to start all over again, that is extremely illegal.
12a. The following are, with immediate effect, free of charge: airport baggage carts, any kind of operator assistance involving a pay telephone, plain bottled water, airline headsets, room service, any portion of a consultation with a lawyer, doctor, or accountant that involves the lawyer, doctor, or accountant talking about his golf game or other aspect of his personal life.
12b. The price of the following will immediately be reduced by two-thirds: movie theater popcorn, alcohol in restaurants, orthodontia, airline flights of more than two hours in which no food is served, carbonated bottled water, vending machine products (especially those little packets of peanut butter crackers), college textbooks, toast as a side order, any portion of a consultation with a lawyer, doctor, or accountant not specified in 12a.
13. It is no longer permitted to pronounce et cetera as if it had a “k” in it, as this is beginning to annoy the author. Also, it is not permitted to use absent at the start of a sentence, as in “Absent a change of direction by the government . . .”, to urge the author or any other living person to “have a good one,” or to say in any context whatever that one is seeking closure.
14. Supermarkets henceforth are required to put everything where a middle-aged man who doesn’t shop much can find it.
15. Revolving doors must go in both directions, the direction to be decided by the author. Giant revolving doors that take ten people at a time are illegal unless the occupants are known to each other and have agreed beforehand to move at the same speed.
16. Americans who intend to travel abroad in a group with other Americans must first clear their wardrobes with the author. British men must secure written permission to wear shorts outside their own country.
17. That shrill, piercing noise you get when you mistakenly dial someone’s fax number is, with immediate effect, extremely illegal. Also, it is illegal to play music, commercials, or promises that an agent will be available shortly to anyone you put on hold on a telephone. On second thought, it is illegal to put anyone on hold on a telephone.
18. Photocopiers will clearly indicate where you are supposed to put the piece of paper you want copied and will provide an immediate refund and spoken apology each time they produce a horizontal photocopy when a vertical one is desired. Any user of a photocopier who instructs the machine to produce a tablecloth-sized photocopy or one hundred copies of a single document, or anything like that, and who then does not reset the machine to its normal settings will be hunted down by the photocopier police and made to drink a cup of toner.
19. In office buildings and retail premises in which entry is through double doors and one of those doors is locked for no reason, the door must bear a large sign saying: “This Door Is Locked for No Reason.”
20. For an experimental period of ten years, smoking will be permitted in all those places where it is now banned and banned where it is now permitted. Nonsmokers who find smoke disagreeable will be permitted to step outside and loiter by the main entrance for ten minutes each hour.
21. Pedestrians will have the right of way at all times and in all places. Anyone who honks at a pedestrian (but especially the author) at any time for any reason will have his or her car taken away.
22. All microwave ovens will automatically recognize whatever food is placed within them and cook accordingly. All washing machines will wash any article of attire, including neckties, business suits, and leather footwear, without shrinkage or running of colors.
23. Any symbol on any button on any automobile dashboard that involves wavy lines, a triangle, or any other depiction that means absolutely nothing to anyone is no longer permitted. On unfamiliar vehicles, such as rental cars, the lever that activates the turn signal will be whichever one the author deems it to be.
24. In a public rest room, when you have washed your face as well as your hands and then discover that there is only a hot air dryer, that is ver
y illegal.
25. Liver and goat cheese will no longer be regarded as foods. In fancy restaurants, salads may no longer contain anything that can be found growing at the side of any public highway.
26. Until further notice it is illegal to talk with enthusiasm about any aspect of e-mail, personal organizers, cellular telephones, online shopping, or anything with the word digital in it.
27. All reviews of the author’s work will, with immediate effect, be submitted to the author for correction and helpful revision before publication.
28. All Americans will appreciate irony. Britons will understand that two ice cubes in a drink is not nearly enough.
Thank you for helping to make the world a better place. Your cooperation is appreciated.
I have just been reading a fascinating tome called, with engaging redundancy, “The Town of Hanover Annual Town Report,” which is sent to every household in our community at this time of year. Running to 132 pages, it is packed with graphs, tables, and charts concerning matters of municipal life that I mostly don’t understand—“sewer rental abatements,” “vehicle reserve code administration allowances,” “shared revenue block grants”—and am pretty happy not to.
But tucked away among the abstruse figures are some heartwarming nuggets of real information. I am happy to report, for instance, that of the 13,397 “incidents” the police dealt with last year, the overwhelming majority—virtually all, in fact—were in a benign and helpful role: attending to minor accidents and breakdowns, accompanying ambulances on emergency runs, rounding up lost pets, unlocking cars for the absentminded.
In much the same way, the valiant members of the fire department were mostly engaged with good works. Of the brigade’s 565 call-outs last year, only 30 were for fires. The rest were concerned with flooded basements, stuck elevators, rescue calls, and “extrication”—i.e., getting cats out of trees.
All in all, the report provides a statistical confirmation of what I see every day with my own eyes—that this is a safe, well-ordered, thriving little community.
We have, for instance, the best public library I have ever seen in a town of this size. It has, the town report notes with justifiable pride, over 73,000 books, tapes, and other related items and last year checked out over 206,000 volumes—impressive numbers for a small-town library. It is open 56 hours a week, 335 days a year. Last year it offered 244 programs and other events and its public meeting room was used 815 times. These are all figures to be proud of.
Hanover is also the only town I know in which the movie theater is owned by the local civic improvement society, and the profits are used to enhance the town. There is a certain real satisfaction in knowing that if I am dragged to see Godzilla this summer (as I most assuredly will be) and if I hate it (as I also most assuredly will) the cost of my tickets will be converted into a tub of geraniums by the Town Hall or something else esthetically pleasing.
But what I really like about Hanover is that it is just the way small towns are supposed to be. It has an agreeably yesteryear Main Street with a post office, a drugstore, a rambling bookstore, a wonderfully snug and convivial bar-cumrestaurant called Murphy’s, an equally cherishable cafe called Lou’s, a couple of banks, and our lovely old movie theater. The buildings are mostly unassuming brick structures, with green canvas awnings to give shade from sun and cover from rain. Together they provide a cozy ensemble that is at once welcoming and convenient. It is a scene that you have seen in the movies a million times.
You wouldn’t believe how rare these places are becoming. Small towns everywhere are dying. Just since 1991 America has lost nine thousand corner drugstores. That’s nearly one-third of the small, independent neighborhood drugstores in the country. That’s an awful lot of drugstores in less than a decade. Most other types of locally owned businesses have been hit as hard or harder. Independent bookstores, for instance, have seen their share of book sales fall by half in less than a decade.
The principal culprits in this are big discount chains like Wal-Mart, the most successful retail group in America. Although it is moving increasingly into urban areas, Wal-Mart traditionally has specialized in erecting gargantuan warehouse-type stores just outside small and medium-size communities, offering cutthroat prices, bigger choice, and lots of free parking. Since 1980, Wal-Mart’s sales have gone from $1.2 billion a year to about $120 billion a year, roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Greece. The bulk of that—80 percent, according to one study—is money that was once spent in scores of different businesses in the middles of towns. According to Kenneth Stone, an Iowa State University economist who has specialized in the impact of Wal-Mart on small towns, general merchandise stores typically experience a decline in sales of 34 percent after ten years, which is of course more than many of them can bear. In lots of communities, in consequence, Wal-Mart has effectively become the new downtown.
Small-town businesses simply can’t compete with the ease and cheapness of the large chains. But even those enterprises that are insulated from direct competition have been abandoning town centers in droves. The Postal Service, for instance, has been closing down old post offices all over the country and rebuilding on new sites outside town. A typical case was that of Livingston, Montana, whose residents discovered one day late last year that their post office—a lovely old building that had been at the heart of the community since 1914—was to be shut and the business transferred to a zone of shopping malls on the periphery. There are at least four towns here in our corner of New Hampshire that have suffered this unkind fate, and all of them have downtowns that are struggling.
Hanover, miraculously, has so far managed to escape most of this. However, a new shopping mall opened a mile or so outside town recently, and I would be astonished if at least some of the local merchants don’t drift out there in the coming months and years. A new Wal-Mart is about to be built in the next town down the highway, which will further erode local loyalties, and our local bookstore—which just happens to be the oldest family-run bookshop in the nation—is continually and publicly worried by rumors that one of the large chains is planning a megastore nearby.
There are no plans, so far as I know, to close the post office—but then no one in Livingston, Montana, knew that their post office was to close. The postal authorities informed the town council on a Tuesday and advertised the premises for sale the next day. That’s the way it goes.
It’s an odd thing really because people in the United States venerate and adore small towns, at least in theory. Ask an American to conjure up an image of quintessential Americana—a Fourth of July parade, the paintings of Norman Rockwell, the movies of Jimmy Stewart—and it is as likely as not to involve a small-town scene. It is no accident that the Walt Disney Company puts a classic, picturesque Main Street at the heart of every one of its amusement parks.
Most people think they want Main Streets but won’t make the small sacrifices in terms of time, cost, and footpower necessary to sustain them. The sad fact is that we have created a culture in which most people will happily—indeed, unthinkingly—drive an extra couple of miles to walk thirty less feet.
Perhaps Hanover can resist the trend. I have no idea, but I hope so. One thing is certain: If it does, it will be an exception.
Have you ever noticed that some words sound perfect for the things they describe and other words don’t sound right at all?
I had occasion to reflect on this the other morning when I passed through the kitchen and my wife asked me if I cared to join her in a bowl of muesli.
“Oh, but I don’t think we could both get in,” I replied, quick as anything. The joke, alas, was wasted on her, but it did set me to thinking what a curious term muesli is. It is not a word we use in America. When we sweep up after we have been doing woodworking and put it in a bag with mixed nuts and a little birdseed, and pretend it’s a healthful breakfast product, we call it granola, which frankly I think is a much superior word. To my mind, granola sounds precisely like a crunchy cereal involvin
g bits of grain and chaff, whereas muesli doesn’t sound like anything at all, except perhaps a salve you would put on a cold sore (or possibly the cold sore itself).
Anyhow, it got me to thinking how some words do their job very well and others don’t seem quite up to the task.
Globule, for instance, is a nearly perfect word. It just sounds right. Nobody has to tell you what globule means for you to know that it is not something that you want down the front of your shirt. Scrapie is another excellent word. Scrapie clearly couldn’t be anything but a disease. (Though on reflection it might be a Scottish cut, as in “He fell down and got a wee scrapie on his knee.”) Snooze, likewise, is also first rate, as are chortle, clank, gasp, dribble, and bloat. To hear these words is to know what they describe.
Then there is a whole group of words that are not particularly descriptive but are for some reason just very agreeable to say. Galoshes. Pandemonium. Transubstantiation. Rudimentary. Palpitation. Kiosk. Quisling. These are all good words.
For a truly bad word, on the other hand, I would suggest balaclava—a term that we in America have wisely and instinctively abjured. We use the term ski mask, which may not be poetic but does at least have the virtue of clarity. A balaclava, on the other hand, could be almost anything—an obscure root vegetable, a type of geological formation peculiar to the Tibetan steppe, the basic unit of currency in Albania, the sound of a large load of rocks coming off the back of a dump truck, almost anything at all. It certainly doesn’t sound like something you would want to put on your head. No, the word you want for a kind of pull-down hat is haggis.
Haggis, you see, is not a good word for a food—too sporty, too rakish—but it would be an ideal word for a piece of knitted headwear. (“Oh, Tom, you look so handsome in your new haggis.”) Haggis simply doesn’t sound like a food (but then, as anyone who has eaten haggis will know, it doesn’t taste like a food either).
