A Common Unity

It seems as though there is so much disunity in the world today - far from being brave, it is a very cowardly world where couples divorce, churches split, and families disintegrate. The problem usually lies in a person's (mis)understanding of what he or she deserves. This could range anywhere from a stick of gum to a bigger house, but the real issue isn't really the deserved stuff, but the attitude that gives rise to the demand for it. I know enough to know that I know nothing, and I know enough to know that I deserve nothing. Everything I have has been given to me - if not by other people, then by the benevolent hand of God. I know better than to boast in the work that my fingertips render, for it is fleeting and always lackluster compared to my indebtedness.

End confession.

Blasting Atomics

I bought a new watch the other day. Turns out the six dollar stopwatch I bought a few months ago doesn't appreciate being bent sharply backwards twice a day, as evidenced by its split band. After learning that all but one of the replacement bands available cost more than the whole watch originally did, I surmised that watch-buying season was nigh. Goodbye, old friend.

Now, on to the new stuff. As I peruse my choices, I'm immediately tempted by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle watches on the display by the shoe department (where I work, if I haven't mentioned that trivia nugget yet). There are two kinds, which pose a problem. One has a cool dial, but the band looks like it's made of the same material as my old watch. The other one has what looks to be a durable band, but the dial is so-so. Resisting the urge to strip them apart and reassemble them to my liking, I put them down and continue my search.

What I am looking for is just a plain old watch with a white face and black numbers, but alas, they can't make simple things anymore. I skim past the Fossil knockoffs, the calculator watches, the hopeless let's-stuff-ourselves-with-chronometers-and-compasses-and-the-like watches, and the pseudo-trendy asymmetrical watches (I am, with pride, a symmetry freak). I finally decide upon a nice black faced Armitron watch with Indiglo. I'm a little hesitant about the velcro closure system, but it was either that, more cracking rubber, or a heavy Chinese Fossil clone. Plus, this way, if I get ravaged by killer bees and my left wrist swells to the size of a small canteloupe, I might still be able to note the timeliness of the ambulance.

As I haul my find out of the jewelry department, I stop to look at a new display. Eighty-six dollars? For a watch? In Wal-Mart? Looking closer, though, I see why they're so proud of it. It's not just a watch. It's not even just a solar watch. It's an atomic solar watch.

Now, I've got nothing against atoms, or their constituent parts, for that matter. They're to be commended for their...being in stuff. But do I really need to be informed as to what time it is, exactly? Right down to the millionth of a second? Do I need my watch to pick up radio waves that inform it of its miscalculations and inconsistencies? When did quartz become insufficient?!?

Now, atomic timekeeping devices have their place. I lobbied for atomic clocks at the college I used to go to, because the clocks scattered around campus were ridiculously misaligned - sometimes by as much as ten minutes, which forces students to memorize the clocks in between four and six classrooms if they don't want tardies to pile up. But on your wrist? Denying yourself the ability to set your watch five minutes fast to keep yourself from being late? Or setting it five minutes slow after you're already late to give yourself an alibi?

No, no, thirty-seven times no. I like being able to manipulate time. I mean, who's to say that time is standardized? Why is there no metric expression of time? There is really no way to stop me from inventing a new standard. So I will. My new basis of time measurement is the time it takes for a sixty watt lightbulb to drop one foot in Earth's gravity: one bulbdrop. Opening a book takes about one bulbdrop; writing a sentence takes about twelve bulbdrops. I can make watches that tick on bulbdrops. I could probably get the United Arab Emirates or the Azores to standardize to bulbdrops if I was really nice. Before you say it, yes, I do have better things to do than standardize marginal countries to a new time format. But you can't make me swallow your preciously precise seconds.

Not that I'm an anti or a disestablishment crusader - I just don't like having to map time out. I like living life at life's pace, instead of a project's pace, a deadline's pace, or a clock's pace, for that matter. I like sitting down and eating slowly, savoring the compliments and contrasts between flavors before washing them down with a good, full bodied tea (I like Earl Grey and Darjeeling, personally). I like sitting down with someone and playing a leisurely game of chess (so few chess players...everybody's thumbing around on their stupid PlayStations all the time). Or really absorbing a good book (or three - Brian Herbert's Dune prequel trilogy is breathtakingly lush). Or literally kneeling and taking in an orchid's scent. Or throwing some smooth, classic jazz on the turntable (yeah, mp3's work, but it's just not the same).

Now, I know you're saying to yourself, "No time for that fluffy bunk - got stuff to do." Maybe. There is a real difference between frenzy and productivity - in fact, half of the time you would class under "busyness" is probably just you carrying your frenetic pace into time that should be set aside for leisure. So stop. Relax. Drop the needle on some Nat King Cole. Grab a book and a cup of tea. And take that blasted atomic watch off of your wrist, for crying out loud.

It'll only take you a few bulbdrops.

Hyperbolic Excesses, and Other Torments

I actually got a bonus check from Wal-Mart yesterday. Not that it amounted to anything - about half of a normal paycheck - but I certainly didn't wad it up and chuck it back at them. Which would have been impossible anyway, because I had to talk through a sliding drawer to a disembodied voice to get it. That was before I accepted a clipboard from a disembodied hand and initialed that I received it. The whole process was too stupid to tolerate for very long, so I scribbled and briskly walked away. I'm lucky to have had about four inches of wall between me and the Wal-Mart Fiscal Wizard of Oz - otherwise she would have gotten two sockets full of the most obnoxious eye roll ever produced by anyone over the age of fifteen. I remember walking away thinking, 'You know, I understand the need to keep thieves, hobos, and riff-raff out of the Waltons' Monetary Panic Room, but would it kill anybody to slap a square foot of plexiglas in the wall so I don't have to stand behind the customer service desk and talk to a drawer like a moron?

The need for security? Acknowledged. Talking drawer in the wall? Hyperbolic excess.

Since they refused to Direct Deposit my bonus check (thereby necessitating what I call the Drawer Debacle), I then had to go to the bank. Walking under the awning covering the approach to the door, I heard something akin to a cross between techno and jazz being piped out of an overhead speaker. Puzzled, I paused for a moment. What is being conveyed here? Are the tellers and loan officers inside trying to get me to believe that there's a party inside? That the sign proclaiming the building to be a "BANK", the drive-thru lanes, and the ATM are all just a con to keep schmuck losers out of the hippest club in town?

Whatever the case, I don't get my hopes up - which is good, because once I'm inside the interesting music mix fades in favor of ink jet printers, keyboards furiously clicking under the rhythmic taps of fingertips, and conversations muffled by either distance or glass. Maybe the whole scheme isn't designed for people like me who actually think - maybe it's designed for emotion-driven automatons. You know, the guy (we'll call him Mortimer) who's hacked off and ready to tell Hillary the teller that she needs to either dump a lot of money into something portable, or face the wrath of his index finger, which he hopes will be mistaken for a .45 when he pokes it through the fabric of his jacket pocket. As Mortimer walks up, though, he hears that music mix with a funky beat, stops and says, "Hey, I'm happy," and opens a checking account instead. Maybe that was the plan.

The need to defuse Mortimer before he savages the tellers? Acknowledged. Piping club music to the bank porch? Hyperbolic excess.

Walking up to the desk, I'm frightened by a secretary in her mid-twenties wearing a fire engine red business suit. Noting my entry, she flashed at least 23 teeth and said, "Good MORNING!" with such enthusiasm that you'd think we'd slept together the night before. I tried to reply with like enthusiasm, but I failed. I knew it was a con, too. One, she couldn't be happy to see me as a customer (or client, or whatever they refer to me as in their banker meetings), because I'm just a poor college student who produces little to no income for them. Two, she couldn't be happy to see me as a person, because I was wearing a grungy gray Hanes pocket tee, beat down blue jeans, and my five year old New Balance sneakers that reveal a good square inch of sock through their many holes. Plus, I hadn't showered or shaved for the day. She wanted me to think that seeing me made her day. But I know that a black mood equals a pink slip for my would-be mistress.

The need to welcome me? Acknowledged. Making me wonder whether I'd cheated on my wife the night before? Hyperbolic excess.

As I filled out my deposit slip (yes, people, I actually deposit money when I go to the bank, as opposed to getting cash for fireworks and cigarettes), I noticed that there is a forty-some-odd inch plasma television bolted to the wall about twelve feet up, pointed at the floor where a gathering line would be, but wasn't at 8:30 in the morning (yes, people, I get up before noon). I guess it's there to keep Mortimer from changing his mind while he's standing in line.

The odd thing, though, was the fact that it wasn't turned on. Two thousand dollars of television, impotent to televise. It's usually tuned to some news station or another, complete with a scrolling ticker telling me horrible things that I really could have gone without knowing. As I stifled an urge to make a running jump and push the power button (I could have gotten it, I swear), I wondered if it wouldn't have been easier to have someone at the door handing out yo-yo's and superballs to line-dwellers, and collecting them as they exited. They could even yo and bounce to the beat of that funky music that was playing on the porch. But no. They opted for the screen that cost two grand and is too much of a hassle to turn on. Maybe they carpeted over the remote.

The need for technology? Acknowledged. Turning into some hipster-doofus of a bank with a blank plasma screen? Hyperbolic excess.

Then, as I left, I passed the bank's popcorn stand. Yes, that kind, complete with the wagon wheels and the Westward Expansion-era lettering. (Did any of the oxen on the Oregon Trail pull popcorn machines? I bet there's a popcorn machine somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas that the Donners had to abandon.) I quietly chuckle at the accompanying signage: "Please ask bank associate for assistance with the popcorn." Yeah. I'm going to walk thirty feet out of my way, tap a loan officer who's on the phone with someone on the shoulder and say, "Excuse me, but I'd like a tub of popcorn. Oh, and extra butter, please." I know, I know, appease the kids - but if they're too young for the yo-yo's and the superballs, give the guy at the door pacifiers, too.

The need to satisfy children? Acknowledged. Making parents curse you and your institution as they vacuum popcorn kernels out of the crevices in the backseat of their car? Hyperbolic excess.

As you go through life, you will occasionally be blessed (or cursed) with some sort of power (Yes, you will. Yes, you will. (yesyouwill)*(∞!) [ask your local math whiz - he or she will laugh, and then tell you why]). Just remember that there comes a point when practicality is saturated and excess leaks out. Take care that you don't unleash a dragon when a salamander would have done the job. Then irritated college students, not unlike myself, won't have to vent about your overambition on their blogs. I thank you. Mortimer thanks you. And society at large thanks you, too.

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
--Abraham Lincoln