Sputterpub's Blog

Both John and Jen annoyed me. I felt impatient with each. But then I’m an impatient person. I think there may be a gene for patience/impatience. But since the trait doesn’t lead to social dysfunction, there’s no scientific grant money to find it, the way there are funds to find the “impulse gene.” I think it’s possible that the (im)patience gene influences our compatibility with others. I think we live at different rates, and we find our friends among our own velocity. Philosophers have spent too much thought on space and not enough on issues of time, duration, velocity. But that’s another monograph.

John and Jen annoyed me and intrigued me. Why did each persist with an insignificant issue, in the face of interlocutor disinterest?

First I tried to answer my own question. I thought John might be doing the Alzheimer’s-dance – he’s 66 and probably that much more concerned about any inability to remember little things. I’ve noticed that concern can produce quite a bit of tenacity about conversational recollection. But Jen couldn’t remember something she never knew – where Paul’s opera seats are – so I couldn’t make dementia issues explain both their behaviors. Could it be simple passive-aggressive stubbornness in response to my attempt to shut them up? Were they additional examples of what I often notice: people who appear to be conversing but who, for reasons of ADD or OCD or some spectral condition, are really just thinking out loud in my presence?

Then I tried to get an answer from another. I described the conversations to my business colleague. “So what do you think?” I asked Robin. “Why did they persist?”

She looked at me across her cluttered desk and announced, “They need to be right.”

***

Maybe. Probably all of the above. John and Jen each like to be authoritative. They’re fixers. They’re rationalists. They try to remember what eludes them. They probably resent my forcefulness.

But Robin’s words produced a resonance in me that I cannot ignore. I hear myself having an opinion on all subjects, and offering it without reservation or consideration. I see myself as a purveyor of unsolicited advice. I recognize myself as a dispenser of unwanted wisdom.

I now want to learn to stop asserting my knowledge or proclaiming my opinion. If I already know it I don’t need to say it.

I want to be quiet. Let some questions lie. Let some others answer. Unless asked. Until certain.

I will not attempt to stop opining within. I’d fail if I tried. I’ll be the Walter Mitty of righteous indignation. Around my soul as I live my days will float a fantastic field of strong, funny, indulgent, silent judgment.

I will learn to be less right.

That’s an affectation, and I hate affectation, but I think affectation has an effect (at which moment it becomes effectation). At least I admit it when I affect. One must be allowed to effectively affect, provided one owns it.

I state, “I want to learn to be wrong.” Here is what I mean:

Two days ago, I lunched with an old acquaintance in a good restaurant. It was John’s turn to buy, so he picked the place and made the reservation. After we were seated and had made our individual decisions about whether to hang our jackets on the old-fashioned wall-hooks or on the backs of our wooden chairs, he started one of those chef conversations.

“There’s a new chef here,” he said. “What’s his name?”John aimed his eyes upward without lifting his chin. “He used to work at that place in Sonoma; oh… what is it called?”

“It doesn’t matter, John.” I tried to knot that conversational thread. “This is San Francisco, there are a thousand great chefs, I don’t know their names so I can’t help you, and the name won’t mean anything to me. I expect we’ll eat good food.”

He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Oh, you know who I mean…” he prompted as he looked at me shaking my head in disagreement. “He started that place…”

***

Later the same afternoon, I returned a telephone call from a business friend. Jen regularly attends opera, symphony and ballet performances. I don’t; at age 47, my friend Paul had just taken me to my first opera the weekend before. She asked me how I liked it.

I said, “The opera. Oh boy. I read the review beforehand and went into it understanding that the performance was not considered admirable. I agreed with that opinion. But what did I know? I didn’t realize that the director reworked all the chorus parts and transformed the production. I was amazed that Paul found it wonderful. He applauded with his arms out, hands clapping up and down. It reminded me of a trained seal. I was also reminded of the description of a Navajo sweat lodge ceremony: after I adjusted to the confinement of the narrow seat, the restriction of my legs and feet in small uncrossable space, the beading of sweat on my face (around my hairline, in the creases beneath my eyes and beside my nose), the moistness of my hands as I tried (so discreetly) to wipe that face, after I accepted all that and slowed down to where I could appreciate the six molecules of cool air convecting about me, I believe I achieved a minor trance state which enabled me to tolerate and partially enjoy the experience.”

“You were too warm?” Jen asked, unnecessarily I thought.

“Oh, yeah. Me and everyone else. Apparently the renovated opera house is already famous for abysmal ventilation (actually, an abyss is probably better ventilated).”

“Where were you sitting?”

“I don’t know what it’s called. Third row something, not down on the bottom.”

“Grand tier?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Balcony?”

“Jen. I don’t know. Paul has had season tickets for 20 years now. I think we can count on him to have done as well for himself as he could. They’re respectable seats.”

“Must be balcony.” There was no deflecting her.

And so it came to pass. The friends decided they should limit their action to just one of Melissa’s corners. Rose put in the work order and although the city crew of three didn’t see any obvious problem with the hurdle they removed, they also didn’t wonder that the order specified use of the taller model for replacement. They performed their tasks and left.

Melissa wasn’t there to witness the first scraping incident, but she later understood it didn’t happen to too many cars before word got around. Nineteen citizens signed the complaint, and nine of them had had to pay for chassis work.

How could she or Rose have known about the ordinance? Berkeley has as many laws as Macy’s has items; no one has the energy to view them all (Melissa knows a lot about Macy’s and other department stores; she’s the daughter of a shopaholic mother still active and driving at 83; all her life Melissa has been coerced to stride those halls). It turns out that it was okay to install the taller hurdle, but not to omit the sign warning the drivers about the change in height in the equipment the driver wasn’t supposed to drive over anyway.

The work order was examined. Rose was interrogated. Melissa advised her to come clean; their little escapade wasn’t worth sacrifices. But once the complainers knew two city employees were involved, conspiracy was added to the accusations.

The situation tipped almost to viral. Both Melissa and Rose were suspended with pay. Each was summoned to the hearing.

Melissa awoke that morning tense. She hadn’t slept well, and her mood didn’t improve when she discovered that her favorite blouse, the one she intended to wear for luck during this dread morning, had lost a sleeve button. An unusual irreplaceable button. It was a loss that could only be accommodated if she changed the button arrangement on both sleeves, which she didn’t have time for then, so she’d have to wear another.

But the capper came when Melissa made the third worst mess in her life. She always shook the coffee grounds from the filter cone into the tall garbage can in her kitchen, before she left her place. This time her lower back tweaked just as she was dumping the grounds. The pain caused her to jerk slightly, removing her foot from the pedal and allowing the garbage can lid to begin its noiseless descent. At least a third of the wet coffee grounds made it into the garbage can. The rest hit the can top, the walls, and the screened windows like wet beach sand.

It was dreadful. Impossible. Laughable. And laughing is what Melissa did.

After it was all over, both lost their jobs. The barriers stayed up and the hurdles stayed low. But nobody died. Kim returned from Germany a wiser and nicer daughter. Rose volunteered in a community dance program, and that led in a surprisingly short time to a low-paying but permanent position. Melissa is still looking. She lives inexpensively, and she will inherit a fair amount from her mother. She and Kim may open a shop.

Melissa was irritated even before she left her place. She hadn’t slept well. She discovered when she pulled on her new tights that she’d accidentally purchased control-top. And then she chipped her favorite coffee mug. She was eating peach yogurt and drinking French roast while moving around getting ready for work, and her 58-year old brain confused the consumables; she lifted her mug with her muscles expecting the light-weight yogurt container, and her grasp failed.

So when she witnessed a law-breaker in her neighborhood, she wanted a consequence to fit the crime.

The city of Berkeley maintains traffic-calming devices. Residential streets between the hills and the bay feature roundabouts or barriers at many corners, forcing drivers to slow in the intersections or to make turns athwart their intended direction. Melissa’s street had barriers at each end. There was a gap in the blockade large enough to admit a fire engine or other emergency vehicle, and planted in the center of the gap was a raised little hurdle of steel, intended to prohibit regular vehicles from using the gap.

Since the installation of the barriers, cars had gotten taller. More folks were buying van-type vehicles with higher clearance. Most vehicles bigger than roadsters could make it over the steel hurdle. That’s what Melissa witnessed: a woman driving a white Subaru, ignoring the warning sign and the threat of a fine, surmounting the hurdle and defeating the barriers.

With impunity. Melissa felt outrage. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen such a maneuver. She was pretty sure that if she hung out at her corner with a clipboard she could log dozens of such events each day.

“Or a camera instead of a clipboard,” she thought as she proceeded down the hill toward her office. If she could get pictures of these drive-throughs, with the license plate included, she wondered if the city would issue tickets.

One of the benefits of working for the city of Berkeley is the free Y membership. Melissa used hers. That’s how she met and befriended Rose, who had a position with DPT. They got together for lunch.

“Oh, I don’t think your picture plan will work,” Rose said after Melissa described her morning. The two women were eating matching salads while they waited for their mushroom pizza. “Citizens’ arrests are rare, and citizens’ citations more so.”

“Well something should be done,” Melissa countered. “I mean, I’m not a huge fan of the barriers and I doubt that my little street would be much worse without them, but if they’re there they should be enforced.” She poured half a packet of sugar into her iced tea and stirred it. “It’s like the Ashby Avenue thing – posted at 25 mph but all the traffic goes faster if it can, so everyone is forced to “speed” and that’s taught us all to ignore the signs – we need to mean our rules or dump them.”

“Whoa, girlfriend. Are you okay? This campaign seems a little extreme…” Rose paused as the waiter approached, and helped him rearrange their table to receive the pizza. “Is Kim hassling you again?”

That made Melissa smile. “Actually no. For the first time in awhile we seem okay. She’s even been asking my advice. Dieter’s been pressuring her to come to Germany and she’s not sure what to do.”

“Now? What’s Kim: 40?”

“Thirty-eight. And he is her father. I know he’s a flake, but I can understand Kim’s ambivalence. And she’s between jobs now. She has some time.”

“Do you want to go?”

“God no. I saw enough of Dieter back then. Everyone admired those year-abroad programs when I was in college, but I wonder how many dual-citizenship babies came of it. Almost like war kids.” Melissa took a messy bite of her pizza slice and kept talking around it. “I’m okay. I’ve just really had it with some drivers in my neighborhood.” She put her food down and gulped iced tea. “Wait: what if we could get the city to raise it?”

“The fine?”

“No. The steel hurdle that’s supposed to stop the cars. What if they just replaced what’s there with something a bit taller? Oh, I’m loving it: not only would that stop the maneuver, but the first time the asshole driver tries it, she or he will damage their car. What a way to learn!”

Rose considered. Drank some of her own iced tea. “You know, that could be arranged.”

Melissa smiled wider than she had all day. “You think?”

“I know. Don’t forget where I work.”