I want to get even with computers and the people who build them and the people who run them. That desire peaked recently at the airport in Jacksonville, Florida.
I was awaiting a flight. I went into the airport lounge to have my normal six or eight pre-flight double screwdrivers. There was nothing that looked unusual about the bar—just a couple of barmaids serving a weary traveler here and there.
“Can I help you?” one of the barmaids asked me.
“Double screwdriver, please,” I said, “and a little heavier on the screw than the driver, if you will. The weather’s bad out and I have to fly.”
The barmaid didn’t understand my little joke.
“What I’m trying to say,” I explained, “is could you give me a little extra vodka and a little less orange juice in my drink. I’m nervous when I fly, and the more I drink, the more comfortable is my flight.”
“All I can give you,” replied the barmaid, “is what the computer shoots out.”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked, somewhat in shock.
“The cash register has got this computer in it, and it’s hooked up to the little hoses that we pour the liquor out of. All I do is mash the button, and the computer squirts out a shot, and it all gets rung up on the cash register.”
“Let me see if I have this straight,” I said. “You have no power whatsoever over how the drinks are poured? A computer measures the amount of booze I get in my drink, and there’s no way you can change that?”
“Right,” said the barmaid.
“In that case,” I said, “bring me the coldest beer you have.”
“Ain’t got no cold beer,” said the barmaid. “The cooler’s busted.”
The flight was delayed two hours because of the bad weather. I caught a cab to the nearest convenience store, bought two quart bottles of beer, and drank them out of a paper sack, eating peanuts and Slim Jims and watching the rain fall. Computerized drinking is the final straw, I thought to myself, and I prayed silently for the day that somebody, or something, would pull the plug on all this madness.
* * *
My incompatibility with modernity does not cease with airplanes and computers. Here are some other modern conveniences that aren’t.
—Telephones: Do you really think we’ve made a lot of progress in telephones? We haven’t. Telephones, when I was a kid, were very simple to operate. You didn’t even have to dial the blasted things. You just picked up the receiver, and when somebody else came on the line, you said, “Hilda, get me the courthouse.”
Gossip was a lot easier to keep up with then, too, if you were on a party line. And telephone operators would make long distance calls for you, and if the line was busy, they would say, “Would you like for me to keep trying and call you back?” That was service.
I’m very confused about telephones today. I am not certain who’s in charge of the telephones anymore, and there are all sorts of things you have to decide when you have a telephone installed.
Telephones used to be black. That was it. They were sort of short and squatty and black. Today, you can have a telephone in the shape of a pretzel if you so desire. A pink pretzel. “Watson, come here, you savage.”
Telephone numbers used to be fun, too. You dialed PLaza 7-3622, or WEird 9-6238 (if you were calling somebody in California). There weren’t any area codes, either, and there were no such things as credit card numbers.
I have a friend who has one those new Sprint calling services. First, he has to dial a local number to get himself a dial tone (or should that be punch tone?) in order to make a long distance call. Then he has to punch in something called an “access code.” Then he has to dial the number he’s trying to reach.
“First,” he was explaining to me, “I punch in the local number, 355-0044, which is seven digits. Then I punch in my access code, which is 525-833-611, nine more digits. Then I punch in the number I’m calling, say, 1-817-423-5578. That’s another eleven digits, and that’s a total of twenty-seven digits. And just about the time I’m punching the last of them, my finger always slips and I have to start over.”
I hate recording devices that answer telephones, too, because they entice people to create cute recorded messages.
“Hi, this is Bob. Well, actually it’s not. This is Bob’s machine. Bob got it from his mom for his last birthday. Mom said she was going to get Bob a puppy, but she was afraid it would just mess all over the carpet and Mom is very clean-conscious, so she got him this machine. Bob is out right now, but he will be back later, so at the sound of the tone, please leave your name and number and any message, and when Bob comes home he will call you back ... Beeeeeeeeeep!”
I can’t help it. Whenever I call a number and get one of those recordings, I always leave a message designed to frighten whoever owns the contraption:
“Bob, this is Davenport at the IRS, and we urgently need to see you. Do not make any plans that can’t be broken for the next seven years.”
Whoever invented call-waiting for telephones should be taken out and shot. Nothing infuriates me more than to be talking to somebody on the telephone when that little click goes off, and they say, “Would you mind holding for just a second?”
Damn right, I mind holding. You called me; I didn’t call you.
People who have these devices on their telephones have large egos. So what if somebody calls and gets a busy signal because the person is on the phone talking to me? Who could be calling that is that important? I suspect that they really don’t work. People simply have clicking noises put in their phones so that when I’m talking to them, I’ll think they’re very important and popular because a lot of other people are trying to reach them.
—Showers with complicated knobs: These are found mostly in hotels. Remember how simple showers used to be to operate? There was a knob with an “H” on it and one with a “C” on it. You turned the “H” knob for hot water and the “C” knob for cold water, and you could get your shower just right.
I go into hotels now where it would take a degree from MIT to figure out which way to turn the handle to get hot and cold water. I’m surprised that scalding hasn’t reached epidemic proportions in this country.
—Self-service gas stations: You go to one pump if you have a credit card, another if you have the correct cash, or another if it’s Tuesday and you’re wearing green slacks. I have closed deals on houses in less time than it takes to figure out how to pump ten gallons of gasoline into my automobile.
—Beepers: You can run these days, but you can’t hide.
—Eyeglasses that are supposed to turn dark when you walk outside and then clear up when you go back inside: They never clear up enough when you go back inside. I had some glasses like that. Every time I walked inside a building, somebody tried to buy pencils from me.
—Talking soft drink machines: I like to put my coins in the machine and get a soft drink. If I wanted conversation, I’d talk to my car.
—The designated hitter in baseball: This has nothing to do with gadgetry, but it’s another ridiculous modern idea. It keeps too many old, slow, fat people in the game.
—Electric shoe shiners: They don’t work. When I have my shoes shined, I want to hear a rag pop.
—Beer with lower alcohol content: This allows too many sissies into good beer joints and taverns.
—Automatic pinsetters in bowling alleys: They put a lot of good pin boys out of work, and how do those things operate in the first place?
—Commodes in public places that flush automatically: I think it is my right as an American to be able to flush any commode I might be using when I’m good and ready.
* * *
There rests in most of us, I suppose, a longing for the simpler past. I’m convinced that simplicity breeds contentment, but how can one be content when constantly befuddled by a thousand different electronic gizmos that we really don’t need, and by a constant stream of new ideas that don’t give a national damn for tradition?
As I grow older, I become more and m
ore comfortable ignoring these changes and trends. I don’t have to do things any more just because everybody else is doing them. Who knows? Maybe by the time I’m forty, I will be able to tell somebody who wants me to be in Bakersfield by five o’clock to go stick their head in their Jacuzzi; I’m taking the train.
The thought is a delicious one.
15
You Can’t Trust a Psychiatrist with Cats
I HAVE A theory about time: The longer you live, the faster it passes. When I was fifteen and wanted my driver’s license more than anything in the world, it took me exactly seventeen years to reach age sixteen. After I finally became sixteen, I wanted to be twenty-one so I could go into a bar and order a beer without fearing the Gestapo would show up at my table and take me off somewhere and beat me with rubber hoses. They could have rerun the Thousand Years War during the period it took me to go from sixteen to twenty-one.
Then things began to speed up. It took about six months for me to become twenty-five; twenty-six through twenty-nine went in about a week; and the next afternoon, I turned thirty.
Turning thirty does have some benefits. For one, it means you can smoke cigars. I have never smoked cigars, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for anyone to smoke them until after they’ve turned thirty; there’s nothing more obnoxious than some juvenile puffing on a big cigar and pontificating about world affairs — which inhaling cigar smoke apparently makes people do. After thirty, however, a person is finally old enough to light up a Cuesta Rey, lean back in his chair, and say the president is an idiot. Even if he is completely misinformed, people will listen to what he has to say and nod in agreement.
Another good thing about turning thirty is that you’re finally old enough to realize the truth about life: It isn’t fair. All young people think that Moses brought down an extra tablet from the mountain, and written on it by the hand of God was, “Life is Fair.”
When my cousin got more banana pudding than I did after supper because she had eaten all her turnip greens and I had just picked at mine, I would complain to my mother, “That isn’t fair.”
When I was twenty-five and had cornered a beautiful young woman at a singles bar and was regaling her with my interesting tidbits of knowledge, but she wound up leaving with some guy who had large muscles and a Porsche, I turned to the bartender and said, “That isn’t fair.”
By the time I turned thirty, however, I had learned that what actually was written on that other tablet was, “If life had been meant to be fair, there never would have been such a thing as a proctoscopic examination.”
There are some negative aspects to being thirty, of course. For example, young girls start calling you “Mister” and asking you if there was such a thing as television when you were growing up. Your parents and friends stop forgiving you for doing stupid things because you were too young and didn’t know any better.
When you’re thirty, you finally realize there is no chance you’re still going to be discovered by a major league scout while playing recreation league, slow-pitch softball and wind up in the big leagues and on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
When you’re thirty, in case it hasn’t happened already, you know the time is coming when you will be unable to perform sexually one evening, because your older friends have already started talking about it. The simple knowledge that it could happen to you will eat away at your mind, and soon that evening will come and it will go something like this:
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it me?”
“Of course, it’s not you.”
“It must be me.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter.”
“Has it happened before?”
“Of course, it hasn’t happened before.”
By this time, a cold sweat has covered your body and what you really want to do is hide under the bed in the dark until she leaves, and then have a nervous breakdown in private.
“Why don’t we wait until morning,” you say.
“I have to be up early for work.”
“You don’t hate me, do you?”
“Of course, I don’t hate you.”
“It’s just that I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“I understand. I really do.”
She doesn’t really understand, of course, and she really hates you and thinks you’re a wimp, and what if she goes around telling everybody? This is the stuff suicides are made of.
I had flirted a bit with adulthood before I hit my thirties. I got married for the first time when I was only nineteen. An insurance man followed me around for a month and made me feel guilty until I finally took out a policy that would make certain my bride would be kept financially secure should I die.
Should I die? The thought that I might actually die one day had never occurred to me until I took out that insurance policy. Realizing mortality is a giant step toward adulthood.
I got my first divorce when I was twenty-three. Something like that will wear off a little of your tread, too. I got married again when I was twenty-six and got divorced again when I was twenty-nine. Then something quite adult happened to me: I stopped for a few moments and had a long talk with myself to determine what it was about me that had led to two marriages and two divorces before I turned thirty.
Self-analysis is a very adult maneuver, although in my case, self-analysis did me little good. I couldn’t come to any conclusions because I always was arguing with myself.
“Maybe it’s because my parents divorced when I was six, and I really haven’t had a role model to teach me how to fashion a happy marriage,” said my ego.
“Quit making excuses. The truth is, you’re a selfish, insensitive person, and nobody can live with you more than three years,” said my alter ego.
“But I really tried to make a go of it.”
“Tried nothing. You never tried until it was too late and you were afraid of being alone.”
“I wasn’t afraid of being alone.”
“Yes, you were. You realized all of a sudden that if you were alone, there wouldn’t be anybody around to keep your underwear clean.”
“I can take care of my own underwear, thank you.”
“How? You’ve never washed a pair of dirty underwear in your life. Your mother washed it for you and your wives washed it for you. When you weren’t married and your underwear got dirty, you simply went out and bought new.”
“So look what I did for the underwear industry. I’m basically a good person.”
That sort of thing went on for months without resolution, so I did something that all modern adults eventually do. I went to see a psychiatrist.
I didn’t tell anybody about this plan, however, because I was reared to believe than anybody who went to see a psychiatrist was admitting that he or she was some sort of screwball, soon to be admitted to a home where they would be kept very still and quiet. Milledgeville, a pleasant little village in central Georgia, was where the state sent its loonies when I was a kid. Anybody who went to Milledgeville for observation or admittance automatically was deemed completely out of focus.
The old men at the store:
“Heard about Tyrone Gault?”
“What happened to him?”
“They done took him to Milledgeville.”
“When did he go crazy?”
“Said it come on him real sudden. He come in the house from the barn one day and told his wife one of his cows had just told him to go to town and buy a new tractor, and he thought it was the Almighty that was talking to him. He was back in a hour on a new John Deere.”
“I heard about a fellow could make animals talk.”
“You ain’t never heard of no such thing. You ain’t crazy like Tyrone Gault, are you?”
“Naw, it’s a true story. There was this Injun and he was sittin’ out by his tepee and this fellow walked up and said, ‘Can your horse talk?’
“The Injun said of course his horse couldn’t talk, so the fellow turn
ed to the horse and said, ‘Horse, is this Injun good to you? Does he ever put you up wet? Does he feed you plenty of oats?’
“Well, the horse spoke right up and said, ‘Yeah, I can’t complain one bit. He’s pretty good to me.’
“The Injun couldn’t believe his ears. Then, the fellow asked the Injun, ‘Can your dog talk?’ The Injun said of course his dog couldn’t talk.
“So the fellow turns to the dog and says, ‘Dog, does your master treat you all right? Does he give you plenty to eat and does he scratch your ears?’
“The dog said, ‘He treats me just fine. Ain’t a thing in the world wrong with the life I got.’
“The ol’ Injun was amazed. The fellow asked him then, said, ‘Can your sheep talk?’, and the Injun said, ‘Yes, sheep talk, but lie like hell.’“
“Get away from here with your foolishness.”
“It’s a shame ’bout Tyrone Gault, though.”
“I feel sorry for his wife and children. Don’t reckon he’ll ever get out of Milledgeville. They say once you’re down there, you don’t ever get back right.”
“I heard tell the same thing. I wonder what his wife would take for that new tractor?”
Even from a background of complete misunderstanding about mental health, I figured I had no choice but to seek psychiatric help. I decided, however, to pay cash for my treatments and not give my real name, in case the psychiatrist wanted to have me committed.
I was living in Chicago at the time, which added to the possibility that I might be crazy. I looked in the yellow pages, found a psychiatrist’s office near my apartment, phoned him, and made an appointment.
I should have expected something was wrong the moment I stepped into the psychiatrist’s office, which wasn’t an office at all but the man’s apartment. There were two cats sitting on the couch. A cat never has done anything all that terrible to me personally, but I don’t like cats because they’re sneaky and snooty, especially if you’re a man. Women and cats seem to be able to get along together, to understand each other. Most men don’t understand either one.
Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself Page 21
