The Misuse of Two Important Permissions

I received two important permissions when I was six or so: the first permission was to use the word "heck," and the other permission was for spitting. Significantly, the latter permission was implicit; I assumed, since my parents had probably seen me spit at some point, that they condoned it, provided I didn't spit on other people. Both of these allowances, to say "heck" and to spit, were important to me for being in line with an idea I had of a grown-up tough-guy, which was then a projection of future self-image. I actually asked them specifically, "well, can I say it like, what the heck, or, oh heck, or in other ways too?" They were confused, as anyone would have been, because they didn't have a view of the mental movie playing itself out as I asked, in which a man wearing jeans and a leather jacket strolled down between two rows of RVs, spitting in between puffs on his cigarette and saying "what the heck, oh heck" just before breaking into a full run and disappearing offscreen. Even so, they permitted a whole spectrum of inflections, so long as I did not use the word against another person. I was not yet ready to pick up smoking; however, I figured "heck" and spitting were within the domain of viable action as demarcated by my extra-sensitive conscience, even if "heck" and spitting were pushing the envelope more than any prior choices of personal behavior. 

The implicit aspect of the second permission, to spit, got me into trouble not long after I believed myself to have received it, in an event that produced a crucial explicit modification. We were at a furniture store in a nearby town, and a salesperson was talking to my parents about dresser options. I was in a rebellious mood. I strutted around the store, believing myself to be above the conventions that apparently had my parents and this salesperson by their throats. To demonstrate my sense of superiority, I walked up to where they were talking, looked at both parties, looked at the dresser, and finally, after mumbling something with "heck" in it, I spat on the floor. 

My parents were shocked. "Martyn Wendell! Why did you do that?" "I needed to spit. I had something in my mouth." Wry shrug. "I want you to apologize to this man, and never do that again. Spitting inside is offensive. You should only ever spit outside." "Okay. Sorry sir." Smirk. As I walked away, I'm sure I mumbled something ending emphatically in "heck."

Knowing I was in view of my siblings, I maintained my tough-guy exterior, but inside I was torn up over the possibility of having offended or harmed someone. The shame made my face hot and I kept my arms crossed for the rest of our visit to the store. There was no reason to have acted out in the way that I had, but my pride prevented me from offering an apology that was anything but ironical to the man in whose store I had impertinently spat. And it did my soul no good to think back on all the allusions to eternal judgment that I had casually cast about the place, as though making glib predictions about the ultimate state of the salesperson's soul. 

Because of the relative triviality of the incident, it was not brought up again by my parents. In some ways I wish it had been, because without a chance to talk about it, I was unable to unravel the twisted knot of my motivation; the memory of it became a slimy black stone that weighed down my opinion of myself in moments of real moral reflection. I would think: "I'm not really a good kid, I'm a kid who spits in well-meaning furniture makers' stores while needlessly consigning them to infinite torment, all in the name of a grown-up version of myself I wouldn't feel safe to be around were that character to approach me now."

Where does one go from there? Towards a different future, one would hope, and hope does not disappoint. Seeing as I currently do not smoke, rarely use "heck," categorically avoid leather clothing, and have never visited an RV dealership, I think it's safe to say that my early prophecies did not culminate in self-fulfillment. 

Revelations

I went to Missouri yesterday with my roommate Steve to visit his house and pick up some of the things he left behind last time he was home. Two other friends came. We stopped at a Denny's when we were still in Illinois but far away from Chicago and were being a little obnoxious as we sat down. John imitated a Missouri accent (pretty badly) and gave some guy the wrong idea, because he came over (a little drunk) and asked us in his outside-voice if any of us could tell him how a person gets to Pi. We didn't know, even after he came back from the bathroom and asked us again, so he explained it to us (sort of) and the more he spoke, the angrier he became.
"I thought you said you were smart."
"I'm from the South, and I'm an engineer. You smart kids can't even tell me how to get to Pi!"
"and how many times does seven go into thirty?"
He went on for a while and made us so uncomfortable that we could only let the pressure out through unintentional steam-releases of painful giggles. This probably made him angrier. He told us he was here to pick up his son and reiterated that just because he was from the South, it didn't mean that he was stupid. After going on long enough to be sure of having won (which he had), he walked away, ate, put on his feathered hat and left. The hat complimented his leathery face, white hair and goatee, brown cowboy boots, and attitude. We sat in our booth, wide eyed and pathetic and confused and a little indignant.

My friends and I thought about this event for some time after the man departed. After replaying it in our minds, we came to a difficult realization: that we were really the bit players in his unfolding story, credited after the movie as Obnoxious Guys at Denny's #1, 2, 3, & 4. We observed only the tip of the narrative iceberg, which was undoubtedly complex and dramatic. He had us beat the minute we started talking about mathematics. And our behavior was so typical, the audience would have known from our entrance whom they were supposed to be rooting for, and it wasn't us. We were small-timers; meanwhile here was a man on a journey with the spiritual dimensions of a Russian novel.

The moral of the story is that it's unwise to imitate regional accents at a high enough decibel to be heard in a restaurant that lies along an important national highway. And furthermore, it may be just as unwise to assume that you're the main character in every scene of your own story.

Mr Engineer from the South, I hope you find your son, and whatever else you're looking for.

The Aldi Gauntlet

The other day I was getting groceries at Aldi when I experienced a sudden bout of anxiety. It happened as I approached check-out with my cart; I had engineered my shopping pattern for last things in such a way as to guarantee an arrival in line behind, at most, one other shopper, in order to minimize waiting and self-consciousness around such obviously experienced pros. This worked as I had intended. However, the deftly-handled canned goods and bottles, the implicit camaraderie shared by seasoned mom and late-twenties cashier, and the mutual understanding of a need for quickness and efficiency in their totally ordinary transaction scared me. There was obviously a secret code! An order of adulthood into which I had not been accepted! This real-person's world, real living grocery-purchasing "I'm making it okay for now and ps can cook for myself" person's world had no current vacancy for me, and I was left with two options: fake it, or wear my incompetence endearingly on my sleeve, possibly damaging my delusional aspirations to mature personhood forever.

I chose to fake it. These were groceries, for the sake of everything good and important; if I couldn't handle groceries, how in the world of God's strange design could I handle my bank account, or having a legitimate job?

I resolved, and then acted. I started putting my things on the belt from the back of my cart, then thought, wouldn't this be easier from the front, before moving around to the front to unload other items from the front of the cart. This was going as well as I could hope, but with a loaf of bread in my temporarily palsied hand I realized the woman in front of me was paying and about to leave with her own cart - I would need to replace her cart with mine in order for the cashier to put my paid-for goods back into my cart! So with a willful and inefficient movement I rolled the cart back in front of me while simultaneously pulling out cartons of juice and apple sauce cups. The look the cashier was giving me at this point was, in a word, disinterested, until I ran over my right foot. Her eyes grew with concern. This guy just ran over his own foot with his shopping cart. I gave no indication of having felt anything and continued to drop cans and cartons on the moving surface, vacantly smiling in order to comply with the demand of my rapidly heating face and doing my best to make occasional non-threatening eye-contact. My hopes for her having not noticed my idiocy were broken with the first two words to be directed at me.

"Okay, honey," she said as she leaned into the accumulated groceries and began to ring them up. This unfortunate pair of words was a sledgehammer to my pride and pretense of self-possession. My acutely-felt failed performance of competent adulthood was emphasized further by the care she took during my purchase to be accommodating. I replied to her kind rapport in the barely-audible mouse voice of the recently shamed.

"You take it easy now, honey," followed me out the automatic doors with the escaping wind of the A/C. It seemed to be a sincere and well-meaning instruction, primarily for the sake of those unfortunate enough to care and destined to be nearby during my next demonstration of ineptitude in something totally ordinary and adult.