Disquiet, Please!

by David Remnick

  Because there you are, gliding along on your bicycle, just a few feet ahead of me.

  You’re obviously not one of those tedious hard-core cycling enthusiasts—no skin-tight black spandex for you. No, just a simple white T-shirt (soaked through to the skin, clinging to the small of your back) and a long blond ponytail, whipping back and forth like the tail of a cartoon pony, as those long legs of yours pump the pedals and you raise your face to the sky, letting the raindrops freckle your cheeks with sweet diamonds of moisture.

  Dare I try to catch up to you? I’m on foot, carrying a bunch of shopping bags, but you’ve paused at a red light, and—what the heck? I don’t know what I’ll say to you, but even the clumsiest of introductions on these glistening nighttime streets will give us a romantic how-we-met anecdote that we’ll love telling for years to come.

  Caught you! Here I am!

  And there you are. I see now that you’re a dude. My mistake. It was the ponytail that threw me off.

  (Duration of crush: thirty-three seconds.)

  ANOTHER restaurant dinner with my boring girlfriend, another lecture about how I never really listen to whatever she’s yammering on about.

  But how can I listen—how could anyone?—when across the room, alone at a table, reading the newspaper and nursing a glass of white wine, is a silent confection like you?

  You, with your jet-black hair (like a latter-day Veronica from Archie) and your skin so pale that the bubble-gummy pinkness of your pouty lips seems almost obscene, especially when you scrunch them up the way you do every time you lick your forefinger and turn the page.

  And I know you see me, too. Your first glance betrayed a glimmer of recognition—as if you knew me but couldn’t remember from where—followed by puzzlement, your eyes entreating me to silently remind you, which I couldn’t do at the time because my current girlfriend was staring across the table at me, apparently waiting for my answer to some kind of relationship question that I thought was rhetorical.

  And so it goes. For an eternity, it seems—through the entire meal, until I watch you ask for the check, and pay it, and get up to walk out of the restaurant, and my life, forever.

  But what’s this? You’re crossing the room toward me? So brazen—just as I knew you’d be. Are you going to surreptitiously slip me your number, written on a sugar packet, perhaps dropping it in my pocket as you fake-jostle me, like a spy handing off microfilm?

  My heart beats like underwater thunder in my ears, until you tap my girlfriend on the shoulder, and she sees you and says, “Hey!” and you say, “I thought that was you!,” and I realize that you are one of my girlfriend’s college roommates.

  After you leave, my girlfriend tells me a hilarious story about how one time in college some guy broke up with you, so you found some photos of him nude with the word “Patriarchy” written on his chest in Magic Marker which you took for an art class, and you sent them to his parents and then posted them on your blog, where you apparently like to write incredibly detailed confessionals about the asshole guys you always end up dating, and also, while you don’t use the guys’ real names, everyone knows that the guy you immortalized as Pencil Dick is actually a guy I used to work with.

  (Duration of crush: forty-five minutes.)

  SO silly does my impatience now seem, stuck as I am in the Starbucks line during the morning rush. But that was before I noticed you in line ahead of me.

  And now that I’ve seen you—with your gossamer hair still damp from the shower, with your well-moisturized ankles strapped and buckled into high heels that make you wobble and sway like a young colt just finding her stride, with your scent of lilacs and Dial, and, most of all, with your infectious sense of calmness and serenity, which makes me wish that the world itself would stop spinning, so that gravity would cease and we two could float into the sky and kiss in the clouds, giddy with love and vertigo—

  Now you’re at the register, and the dreaded moment when we part without meeting rushes toward me like a slow-motion car crash in a dream.

  You’ve been at the register without saying anything for, like, fifteen seconds now, still scanning the menu board with those almond-shaped eyes that would make Nefertiti herself weep with envy.

  Seriously, you’ve been to a Starbucks before, right? I mean, it seems like there are a lot of choices, but most people find a drink they like and stick with it. And order it quickly.

  But maybe I’ve caught you on a day when you’ve decided to make a fresh start. To make a fresh start, to try a new drink, to walk a different way to work, to finally dump that boyfriend who doesn’t appreciate you.

  Okay, even if that were the case you could have picked out your new drink while you were waiting in line, right? I mean, come on.

  Well, you’ve won me back, my future Mrs. Me—by turning to me and mouthing, “Sorry,” after you finally noticed me tapping my foot, looking at my watch, and exhaling loudly. Sensitivity like that can be neither learned nor taught, and it’s a rare thing indeed. The rarest of all possible—

  Jesus Christ, you’ve ordered your drink and paid; do I really have to stand here for another forty-five seconds while you repack your purse, the contents of which you’ve spilled out on the counter like you’re setting up a fucking yard sale or something?

  That’s right, the bills go in the billfold, the coins go in the little coin purse, the billfold and the coin purse go back in the pocketbook—no, in a side pocket of the pocketbook, which seems to have a clasp whose design incorporates some proprietary technology that you haven’t yet mastered.

  I think I hate you now.

  (Duration of crush: five minutes.)

  2007

  CHILDREN’S HOURS

  CALVIN TRILLIN

  STAGE FATHER

  BY now, my wife’s policy on attending school plays (a policy that also covers pageants, talent shows, revues, recitals, and spring assemblies) is pretty well known: She believes that if your child is in a school play and you don’t go to every performance, including the special Thursday matinée for the fourth grade, the county will come and take the child. Anyone who has lived for some years in a house where that policy is strictly observed may have fleeting moments of envy toward people who have seen only one or two productions of Our Town.

  One evening this spring, though, as we walked into an auditorium and were handed a program filled with the usual jokey résumés of the participants and cheerful ads from well-wishers, it occurred to me that this would be the last opportunity to see one of our children perform in a school theatrical event. That view was based partly on the fact that the child in question is twenty-six years old. She was about to graduate from law school. I was assuming that the JDs slogging through the bar-exam cram course would not decide to break the tedium with, say, a production of Anything Goes.

  As I waited for the curtain to go up on the 1995 New York University Law Revue, entitled The Law Rank Redemption, I found myself thinking back on our life as parental playgoers. I realized that I couldn’t recall seeing either of our daughters in one of those classic nursery-school-pageant roles—as an angel or a rabbit or an eggplant. I thought I might be experiencing a failure of memory—another occasion for one of my daughters to say, as gently as possible, “Pop, you’re losing it”—but they have confirmed that their nursery school was undramatic, except on those occasions when a particularly flamboyant hair puller was on one of his rampages.

  I do recall seeing one or the other of them as an Indian in Peter Pan and as the judge in Trial by Jury and as Nancy in Oliver! and as the narrator (unpersuasively costumed as a motorcycle tough) in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat and as a gondolier in The Gondoliers. We heard their voices in a lot of songs, even if a number of other kids were sometimes singing at the same time. We heard “Dites-moi pourquoi” sung sweetly and “Don’t Tell Mama” belted out. All in all, we had a pretty good run.

  I don’t want to appear to be one of those parents who dozed through the show unless his own kid was in
the spotlight. To this day, when I hear “One Singular Sensation,” from A Chorus Line, I can see Julia Greenberg’s little brother, Daniel, doing a slow, almost stately tap-dance interpretation in high-topped, quite tapless sneakers. I’m not even certain what my own girls did in the grade-school talent show at P.S. 3 which I remember mainly for the performance of the three Korn brothers. One of them worked furiously on a Rubik’s cube while his older brother accompanied him on the piano. The youngest brother, who must have been six or seven, occasionally held up signs that said something like “Two Sides to Go” or “One Side to Go.” I have always had a weakness for family acts.

  I won’t pretend that all school performances were unalloyed joy. We used to go every year to watch our girls tap-dance in a recital that also included gymnastics, and the gymnastics instructor was an earnest man who seemed intent on guarding against the possibility of anyone’s getting through the evening without a thorough understanding of what goes into a simple somersault. He described each demonstration in such excruciating detail that I used to pass the time trying to imagine him helplessly tangled in his own limbs as the result of a simple somersault that had gone wrong:

  “Untie me,” he is saying.

  “Not until you take an oath of silence,” I reply.

  Even so, I came to believe over the years that my wife’s policy on school plays, which sounds extreme, actually makes sense. It used to be that whenever young couples asked me if I had any advice about rearing children I’d say, “Try to get one that doesn’t spit up. Otherwise you’re on your own.” I finally decided, though, that it was okay to remind them that a school play was more important than anything else they might have had scheduled for that evening. I realized that school plays were invented partly to give parents an easy opportunity to demonstrate their priorities. If they can get off work for the Thursday matinée, I tell them, all the better.

  1995

  SUSAN ORLEAN

  SHIFTLESS LITTLE LOAFERS

  QUESTION: Why don’t more babies work? Excuse me, did I say more? I meant, why don’t any babies work? After all, there are millions of babies around, and most of them appear to be extremely underemployed. There are so many jobs—being commissioner of major-league baseball, say, or running the snack concession at the Olympic synchronized-swimming venue—and yet it seems that babies never fill them. So why aren’t babies working? I’ll tell you. Walk down any street, and within a minute or so you will undoubtedly come across a baby. The baby will be lounging in a stroller, maybe snoozing, maybe tippling a bottle, maybe futzing around with a stuffed Teddy—whatever. After one good look, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that babies are lazy. Or worse. Think of that same baby, same languid posture, same indolent attitude, but now wearing dark sunglasses. You see it all the time. Supposedly, it has to do with UV rays, but the result is that a baby with sunglasses looks not just lazy but lazy and snobby. Sort of like an Italian film producer. You know: “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Baby isn’t available at the moment. No, Mr. Baby hasn’t had a chance to look at your screenplay yet. Why don’t you just send coverage, and Mr. Baby will get back to you when he can.”

  This is right about when you are going to bring up statistics about show-business babies. Granted, there are some show-biz babies, but their numbers are tiny. For one thing, there isn’t that much work, and anyway most of it is completely visual-driven, not talent-driven. And everyone knows that babies lose their looks practically overnight, which means that even if Baby So-and-So lands a role in a major-studio feature she’ll do the work and go to the big première, and maybe even make a few dollars on her back-end points, but by the next day she’s lucky if she’s an answer on Jeopardy. Modeling superbabies? Same. Remember those babies zooming around in the Michelin tire ads? Where are they now?

  The one job that babies seem willing and eager to do is stroller-pushing. Well, big deal, since (a) they’re actually very bad at it, and (b) am I the only one who didn’t get the memo saying that there was a lot of extra stroller-pushing that desperately needed to be done? Besides, it’s not a job, it’s a responsibility. For a baby to claim that pushing his or her own stroller counts as gainful employment is about as convincing as for me to declare that my full-time job is to floss regularly. Elevatorbutton pushing? Not a job: a prank. Unless you really need to stop on every floor. And have you ever watched babies trying to walk? Is it possible that they don’t work but still go out for a three-Martini lunch? Of course, babies do a lot of pro-bono projects, like stand-up (and fall-down) comedy, and preverbal psycholinguistic research, but we all know that pro bono is just Latin for Someone Else Buys My Pampers.

  One recent summery morning, I walked across Central Park on my way to my own place of employment—where, by the way, I have to be every day whether I want to or not. The Park was filled with babies, all loafing around and looking happy as clams. They love summer. And what’s not to like? While the rest of us, weary cogs of industry, are worrying about an annual report and sweating stains into our suits, the babies in the park are relaxed and carefree and mostly nude—not for them the nightmare of tan marks, let alone the misery of summer work clothes. And what were they doing on this warm afternoon? Oh, a lot of really taxing stuff: napping, snacking on Cheerios, demanding a visit with various dogs, hanging out with their friends—everything you might do on a gorgeous July day if you were in a great mood, which you would be if you didn’t have to work for a living. That morning, I was tempted to suggest a little career counseling to one of these blithe creatures, but, as I approached, the baby turned his attention ferociously and uninterruptibly to one of his toes and then, suddenly, to the blade of grass in his fist. I know that look: I do it on buses when I don’t want anyone to sit next to me. It always works for me, and it worked like a charm for this I-seem-to-remember-telling-you-I’m-in-a-meeting baby. I was outfoxed and I knew it, so I headed for my office. As I crossed the playground, weaving among the new leisure class, I realized something. The reason babies don’t work? They’re too smart.

  1996

  JOHNNY CARSON

  RECENTLY DISCOVERED CHILDHOOD LETTERS TO SANTA

  December, 1932

  Dear Mr. Claus,

  I don’t believe I would be disingenuous or resorting to tergiversation if I maintained that I have been a paradigm of meritorious behavior in the past year. I do not wish to expatiate on this entreaty ad nauseam, but I remain sanguine about your decision to accede to my request.

  Admiringly,

  William Buckley

  1880

  Dear Santa,

  I hope you can find the way to our house. Most people take the wrong road. You will be pretty tired after travelling all those miles, but then you’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep.

  Robert Frost

  1931

  Dear Santa,

  Please bring me the following toys for Christmas: Hopalong Cassidy six-shooter, Daisy air rifle, J. Edgar Hoover model tommy gun, Tom Mix model Colt Army revolver.

  Chuck Heston

  1786

  Dear Santa, St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle,

  I have been a good, fine, virtuous boy, lad, child, youth. I want, desire, wish for a set, complete assortment, collection of books, tomes, editions, publications of the medical art, healing, therapies, and curatives.

  Thank you, many thanks, much obliged,

  Peter Roget

  1934

  Listen, you fat hockey puck, if I don’t get what I want for Christmas I hope you get fleas in your beard and your lead reindeer gets a hernia.

  Donald Rickles

  2000-01

  CARINA CHOCANO

  HOW TO LAY OFF YOUR KIDS

  HOUSEHOLD budget cutbacks, loss of primary parental income, excessive consumer debt, and other events that may result in the layoff of children can create stress for both parents and their offspring. But child layoffs need not be harrowing experiences. If handled tactfully, they can be conducted in a sensitive and professional mann
er, minimizing the risk of an unpleasant aftermath.

  A preliminary notification of an anticipated reduction in family personnel can help reduce stress and increase morale as final layoff decisions are made. That said, parents should take care not to let information leak out prematurely, as this could result in unwarranted day-long tantrums and protracted retention of breath, particularly in those who cannot tie their own shoes. The following sample may be used to introduce children to the possibility of a layoff.

  TO: The (FAMILY NAME) children

  We have been analyzing our family’s budgetary situation over the past few months and are making decisions about how we will cope with a current revenue shortfall. Consequently, there will be a great deal of discussion around the house in the coming weeks about what measures will be undertaken to safeguard the future of our family. There may also be some screaming. We would like to assure you that the situation is temporary and that we have reason to be optimistic.

  One way to cope with a revenue shortfall is to reduce the number of our dependents, i.e., you kids. After careful consideration, it appears that some of the positions you currently occupy will have to be eliminated. This is a painful process for everyone involved, and we hope you will remember in the weeks ahead that this hurts us more than it hurts you. We want to assure all of you that Mom(my) and Dad(dy) love you very much, and that we will conduct a thorough review of your contributions to the family before our final decisions are made.

  We hope you will feel free to communicate openly any questions you may have. Your cooperation and understanding during this difficult time are greatly appreciated.