I'm a Stranger Here Myself

by Bill Bryson

  Sure enough, about thirty minutes after he arrived he came to my study holding something metallic and oily.

  “Well, I found what it is,” he said. “You’ve got a broken fly valve in your transverse adjudicator.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding gravely, as if that meant something to me.

  “And I think you may have some seepage in your distributor sump.”

  “Sounds expensive,” I said.

  “Oh, you bet! I’m going to have to shut off the water.”

  “OK.”

  “So where’s your auxiliary shut-off valve?”

  I looked at him dumbly, my heart simultaneously sinking and beating faster with a sense of panic at the thought of an impending humiliation. “The auxiliary shut-off valve?” I repeated, stalling for time.

  “Yes.”

  I cleared my throat. “I’m not entirely sure,” I said.

  He cocked an eyebrow in a way that indicated that this was going to make a story for the boys back at the depot. “You’re not sure?” he said, a disbelieving smile tugging at his lips.

  “Not entirely.”

  “I see.” Not only would there be a story in this, but the extra charges would fund a very nice Christmas party, possibly with dancing girls.

  It was clear from his expression that no householder in plumbing history had ever not known the location of his auxiliary shut-off valve. I couldn’t bear to be the first.

  “The thing is, actually, we don’t have one,” I blurted.

  “You don’t have one?”

  I nodded with great sincerity. “Seems the builders forgot to put one in.”

  “You don’t have an auxiliary shut-off valve?”

  “Afraid not.” I made an expression to show that I was as incredulous about this as he was.

  I had hoped that this would lead him to come up with some alternative way of making the repair, but this was a line of inquiry that he wouldn’t drop.

  “Where’s your primary shut-off then?”

  “They forgot that, too.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “Well, what would you do if you had a burst pipe?”

  Now this I knew. First, I would hop around excitedly, going “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” as you might if, say, you looked down and unexpectedly found your legs on fire. Then I would try to stuff something like a sofa cushion into the leak, making it worse. Then I would hop about some more. Finally, I would dash out into the street and flag down passing vehicles. At about this point Mrs. Bryson would return home and sort everything out. That, at any rate, is how it has always been in the past when we have had a water-spraying event.

  Obviously I couldn’t admit this to the repairman, so I tried a new tack and said: “Wait a minute. Did you say auxiliary shut-off valve? I thought you said ancillary shut-off valve.” I feigned a hearty chuckle at our comical misunderstanding. “No wonder you’re looking at me like that. It’s in the attic.” I started to lead the way.

  He didn’t follow. “Are you sure? Normally they’re in the basement.”

  “Yes, exactly—in the basement,” I said, immediately changing direction. I led him down to the basement. I should have thought of that in the first place. The basement was full of mysterious things—pipes and spigots and boilers—any one of which might be a shut-off valve. I trusted that he would spy it immediately, and I would be able to say: “That’s it. Yes, that’s the one.” But he didn’t do anything. He just looked to me for guidance.

  “I think that’s it over there,” I said uncertainly and pointed to something on the wall.

  “That’s the fusebox, Mr. Bryson.”

  The trouble with lying, as our own dear president has learned, is that it nearly always catches up with you in spades. Eventually I broke down and admitted that I didn’t have the faintest idea where anything in my own house was, other than the refrigerator, television, and garage. As ever, I ended up seriously embarrassed and hundreds and hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

  And the worst of it is, I didn’t even get invited to the Christmas party.

  TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF KIMBALL UNION ACADEMY, MERIDEN, NEW HAMPSHIRE

  I have a son who is about your age, who in fact will be graduating from Hanover High School in a couple of weeks. When I told him, rather proudly, that I had been asked to give the commencement address here today he looked at me with that special incredulous expression young people are so good at and said: “You? Dad, you don’t even know how to turn off the back windshield wiper on the car.”

  And it’s a fair point. I don’t know how to turn off the back wiper on our car, and I probably never will. There are lots of things I don’t know. I’m kind of an idiot and there is no sense denying it.

  Nonetheless I have done one thing that neither my son nor any of you graduating seniors have yet done. I have survived twenty-eight years after high school. And, like anyone who has reached my time of life, I have learned a thing or two.

  I’ve learned that if you touch a surface to see if it is hot, it will be. I’ve learned that the best way to determine if a pen will leak is to stick it in the pocket of your best pants. I’ve learned that it is seldom a good idea to take clothing off over your head while riding a bicycle. And I have learned that nearly all small animals want to bite me and always will.

  I have learned all these things through a long process of trial and error, and so I feel I have acquired a kind of wisdom—the kind that comes from doing foolish things over and over again until it hurts so much you stop. It’s not perhaps the most efficient way of acquiring knowledge, but it works and it does at least give you some interesting scars to show at parties.

  Now all of this is a somewhat hesitant way of coming around to my main point, which is that I am required by long tradition to give you some advice that will inspire you to go out and lead wholesome and productive lives, which I assume you were intending to do anyway. I’m very honored to have that opportunity.

  With that in mind, I would like to offer ten very small, simple observations—passing thoughts really—which I hope will be of some use to you in the years ahead. In no particular order, they are:

  1. Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.

  For endless eons there was no you. Before you know it, you will cease to be again. And in between you have this wonderful opportunity to see and feel and think and do. Whatever else you do with your life, nothing will remotely compare with the incredible accomplishment of having managed to get yourself born. Congratulations. Well done. You really are special.

  2. But not that special. There are five billion other people on this planet, every one of them just as important, just as central to the great scheme of things, as you are. Don’t ever make the horrible, unworthy mistake of thinking yourself more vital and significant than anyone else. Nearly all the people you encounter in life merit your consideration. Many of them will be there to help you—to deliver your pizza, bag your groceries, clean up the motel room you have made such a lavish mess of. If you are not in the habit of being extremely nice to these people, then get in the habit now.

  Millions more people, most of whom you will never meet or even see, won’t help you, indeed can’t help you, may not even be able to help themselves. They deserve your compassion. We live in a sadly heartless age, when we seem to have less and less space in our consciences and our pocketbooks for the poor and lame and dispossessed, particularly those in faroff lands. I am making it your assignment to do something about it.

  3. Don’t ever do anything on principle alone. If you haven’t got a better reason for doing something other than the principle of t
he thing, then don’t do it.

  4. Whatever it is you want to do in life, do it. If you aspire to be a celebrated ballerina or an Olympic swimmer or to sing at Carnegie Hall, or whatever, go for it. Even though everyone is tactfully pointing out that you can’t sing a note or that no one has ever won the 100-meter dash with a personal best time of seventy-four seconds, do it anyway. There is nothing worse than getting to my age and saying, “I could have played second base for the Boston Red Sox but my dad wanted me to study law.” Tell your dad to study law. You go and climb Everest.

  5. Don’t make the extremely foolish mistake of thinking that winning is everything. If there is one person that I would really like to smack, it is the person who said, “Winning is not the main thing. It’s the only thing.” That’s awful. Taking part is the main thing. Doing your best is the main thing. There is no shame in not winning. The shame is in not trying to win, which is of course another matter altogether. Above all, be gracious in defeat. Believe me, you’ll get plenty of chances to put this into practice, so you might as well start working on it now.

  6. Don’t cheat. It’s not worth it. Don’t cheat on tests, don’t cheat on your taxes, don’t cheat on your partner, don’t cheat at Monopoly, don’t cheat at anything. It is often said that cheaters never prosper. In my experience, cheaters generally do prosper. But they also nearly always get caught in the end. Cheating is simply not worth it. It’s as simple as that.

  7. Strive to be modest. It is much more becoming, believe me. People are always more impressed if they find out independently that you won the Nobel Prize than if you wear it around your neck on a ribbon.

  8. Always buy my books, in hardback, as soon as they come out.

  9. Be happy. It’s not that hard. You have a million things to be happy about. You are bright and young and enormously good-looking—I can see that from here. You have your whole life ahead of you. But here’s the thing to remember. You will always have your whole life ahead of you. That never stops and you shouldn’t forget it.

  10. Finally—and if you remember nothing else from what is said here today, remember this—if you are ever called upon to speak in public, keep your remarks brief. Thank you very much.

  (And a bonus point for readers: If you write for a living, never hesitate to recycle material.)

  Today marks the third anniversary of our move to the States. It occurs to me that I have never explained in these pages why we took this momentous step and that you might wonder how we decided on it. Me, too.

  What I mean by that is that I honestly don’t recall how or when we decided to transfer countries. What I can tell you is that we were living in a farming village in the comely depths of the Yorkshire Dales and, beautiful though it was and much as I enjoyed having conversations in the pub that I couldn’t begin to understand (“Aye, I been tupping sheep up on Windy Poop and it were that mucky at bottom sinkhole I couldn’t cross beck. Haven’t known it this barmish since last back end o’ wittering, and mine’s a pint of Tetley’s if you’re thinking of offering”), it was becoming increasingly impractical, as the children grew and my work took me farther afield, for us to live in an isolated spot, however gorgeous.

  So we made the decision to move somewhere a little more urban and built-up. And then—this is the part that gets hazy—somehow this simple concept evolved into the notion of settling in America for a time.

  Everything seemed to move very swiftly. Some people came and bought the house, I signed a lot of papers, and a small army of removal men took everything away. I can’t pretend that I didn’t know what was happening, but I can clearly recall, exactly three years ago today, waking up in a strange house in New Hampshire, looking out the window, and thinking: “What on earth am I doing here?”

  I felt as if we had made a terrible mistake. I had nothing against America, you understand. It’s a wonderful country, splendid in every way. But this felt uncomfortably like a backward step—like moving in with one’s parents in middle age. They may be perfectly delightful people, but you just don’t want to live with them any longer. Your life has moved on. I felt like that about a nation.

  As I stood there in a state of unfolding dismay, my wife came in from an exploratory stroll around the neighborhood. “Oh, it’s wonderful,” she cooed. “The people are so friendly, the weather is glorious, and you can walk anywhere you want without having to look out for cow pies.”

  “Everything you could want in a country,” I remarked queasily.

  “Yes,” she said, and meant it.

  She was smitten, and remains so, and I can understand that. There is a great deal about America that is deeply appealing. There are all the obvious things that outsiders always remark on—the ease and convenience of life, the friendliness of the people, the astoundingly abundant portions, the intoxicating sense of space, the cheerfulness of nearly everyone who serves you, the notion that almost any desire or whim can be simply and instantly gratified.

  My problem was that I had grown up with all this, so it didn’t fill me with quite the same sense of novelty and wonder. I failed to be enchanted, for instance, when people urged me to have a nice day.

  “They don’t actually care what kind of day you have,” I would explain to my wife. “It’s just a reflex.”

  “I know,” she would say, “but it’s still nice.”

  And of course she was right. It may be an essentially empty gesture, but at least it springs from the right impulse.

  As time has passed, much of this has grown on me as well. As one of nature’s great skinflints, I am much taken with all the free stuff in America—free parking, free book matches, free refills of coffee and soft drinks, free basket of candy by the cash register in restaurants and cafes. Buy a dinner at one of our local restaurants and you get a free ticket to the movies. At our photocopying shop there is a table along one wall that is cluttered with free things to which you can help yourself— pots of glue, stapler, Scotch tape, a guillotine for neatening edges, boxes of rubber bands and paper clips. You don’t have to pay an extra fee for any of this or even be a customer. It’s just there for anyone who wants to wander in and use it. In Yorkshire we sometimes went to a baker’s where you had to pay an extra penny—a penny!—if you wanted your loaf of bread sliced. It’s hard not to be charmed by the contrast.

  Much the same could be said of the American attitude to life, which, generally speaking, is remarkably upbeat and lacking in negativity—a characteristic that I tend to take for granted when I am in the States but am reminded of not infrequently in Britain. The last time I arrived at Heathrow Airport, for instance, the official who checked my passport looked me over and asked: “Are you that writer chap?”

  I was very pleased, as you can imagine, to be recognized. “Why, yes I am,” I said proudly.

  “Come over here to make some more money, have you?” he said with disdain and slid back my passport.

  You don’t get much of that in the States. By and large, people have an almost instinctively positive attitude to life and its possibilities. If you informed an American that a massive asteroid was hurtling toward Earth at 125,000 miles an hour and that in twelve weeks the planet would be blown to smithereens, he would say: “Really? In that case, I suppose I’d better sign up for that Mediterranean cooking course now.”

  If you informed a Briton of the same thing, he would say: “Bloody typical, isn’t it? And have you seen the weather forecast for the weekend?”

  I asked my wife the other day if she would ever be ready to go back to England.

  “Oh, yes,” she said without hesitation.

  “When?”

  “One day.”

  I nodded, and I must say I felt exactly the same. I miss England. I liked it there. There was something about it that just suited me. But if we were to leave America now, I would miss it, too, and a very great deal more than I would have thought possible three years ago. It’s a wonderful country, and my wife was certainly right about one thing. It’s nice not to have to watch out
for cow pies.

  Now please—and I really mean this—have a nice day.

  BY BILL BRYSON

  THE LOST CONTINENT

  MOTHER TONGUE

  NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

  MADE IN AMERICA

  NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND

  A WALK IN THE WOODS

  DON’T MISS IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY, BILL BRYSON’S ADVENTURE DOWN UNDER

  Trading Little Debbies for Vegemite, Bill Bryson hops from Bondi Beach to the outback for a brilliantly comic take on Australia.

  Praise for Bill Bryson:

  “Bill Bryson is great company

  . . . equal parts Garrison Keillor,

  Michael Kinsley, and Dave Barry.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  AND BEAR IN MIND . . .

  A Walk in the Woods, the runaway New York Times bestseller

  “A funny book, full of humor. . . . The reader is rarely anything but exhilarated.”

  —The New York Times

  “A laugh-out-loud account.”

  —National Geographic Traveler

  BROADWAY BOOKS

  Go to the Next Page to Read Chapter 7 from

  Bill Bryson’s At Home

  Coming in October 2010

  An Excerpt from Bill Bryson’s At Home

  THE DRAWING ROOM

  I

  If you had to summarize it in a sentence, you could say that the history of private life is a history of getting comfortable slowly. Until the eighteenth century, the idea of having comfort at home was so unfamiliar that no word existed for the condition. Comfortable meant merely “capable of being consoled.” Comfort was something you gave to the wounded or distressed. The first person to use the word in its modern sense was the writer Horace Walpole, who remarked in a letter to a friend in 1770 that a certain Mrs. White was looking after him well and making him “as comfortable as is possible.” By the early nineteenth century, everyone was talking about having a comfortable home or enjoying a comfortable living, but before Walpole’s day no one did.