Me: Lewis …
Lewis: Help me pull these impatiens out of the ground.
Me: No. Stop that. Leave those shrubs alone.
Lewis: Just take part of this in your mouth and pull on it. I think it is almost loose enough to uproot.
Me: No! Stop it! No! This is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. I realize you’re just out of puppy-hood and all, but you are very destructive, very poorly behaved, and you are costing me an incredible amount of money.
Lewis: Well, this has been fascinating but sorry, I can’t stay. You don’t expect me to sit here and destroy just this one plant all afternoon.
Me: Lewis. Listen to me. I’ve been going through my financial records and it comes to my attention that I’ve been spending several hundred dollars per month on you, minimum. And to be frank, I’m having a great deal of difficulty justifying that kind of financial outlay.
Lewis: Cost-of-living increases. Services rendered. Do I have to itemize them for you?
Me: Services rendered? Yes, do that. Go ahead and itemize them for me. What services rendered?
Lewis: Well, for example, shrub removal runs you eight bucks an hour. It’s demanding work.
Me: You mean you’re charging me for ruining my yard? I already pay a bunch of guys from El Salvador to do that.
Lewis: They’re not thorough. I gotta move. Come with me. It’ll save you money. You know, sitting here at your feet goes for six bucks an hour.
Me: Am I hearing correctly? You charge me to sit at my feet?
Lewis: Of course I charge you. You see anyone else sitting at your feet voluntarily?
Me: I’m stunned. What else do you charge for?
Lewis: Room-to-room barking. You don’t get a service like that for nothing. Ball’s got a ten-buck-an-hour one-hour minimum.
Me: I can’t get over this. You charge me to play ball? I thought you liked ball.
Lewis: Guess again. And it’s seventy-five bucks an hour to sleep on the bed with you.
Me: Are you serious? You mean I am paying you to cover my bed with grime and bugs and hair? What are those little hard chunks anyway?
Lewis: Don’t worry about those. I throw those in at cost.
Me: You know something, I am glad we had this little talk because these are all services I can live without. Plus, you destroy my books. You eat my hats and my shoes. You broke into my closet and ate my souvenir collection.
Lewis: I’m sure there was a work order issued on that. I went into golden time that day. It’s dangerous to eat souvenirs. God only knows what they’re made of.
Me: Well, that’s the last straw. I’ve heard enough. I’m going to have to let you go. You’re fired.
Lewis: You can’t just fire me. I have a contract.
Me: Get out.
Lewis: You’re looking at a lawsuit, lady.
Me: Fine. Sue me. Get out.
Lewis: I’m not going anywhere. Go ahead. Try and move me. Did you ever try to lift a six-hundred-pound sack of lawn clippings? You aren’t going to be able to budge me. I’ve seen you struggling with the bottled-water refills. And even if you do get me out the front door, I’m just going to stand there and whine and bark ceaselessly until all your neighbors get pissed off at you. Believe me, I’m going nowhere. In fact, unless you want to apologize, I might start the barking right now.…
Me: No, no. Wait. Don’t start barking.…
Lewis: Here I go. I don’t hear an apology.
Me: Wait, wait. You’re on probation. Okay, okay … I’m sorry.
Lewis: By the way, “no barking” is three bucks a minute.
A World Without Men
A couple of weeks ago I attended an inventors’ convention at the Pasadena Center Exhibition Building, a large hall crammed with exhibitors’ booths, in which the proud mothers of new inventions were showing off their bright ideas. What struck me about the affair was that the overwhelming majority of these mothers were men.
The inventions were addressed to a wide range of humanity’s needs, but one of the most popular categories turned out to be (for reasons I still haven’t got a bead on, unless it connects somehow to Jonathan Swift’s observation that “man is at his most contemplative when he is at stool”) variations on the toilet. There were two types of “odorless” toilets, one involving filters and one involving vacuums and air fresheners. There was a portable traveler’s toilet, a “multi-user entertainment system super top” toilet, and a toilet-seat alarm system that was activated whenever anyone forgot to put the seat back down. And even that was invented by a man.
Another man, named Sergio Regalado, was at the convention trying to mass-market an idea that he claimed was popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the tongue scraper. “If you never scrape your tongue, you’ll always have bad breath,” he vigorously explained, causing a thoughtful listener to shudder at the thought of a minimum of three decades’ worth of horrible breath she’d been causing loved ones to endure. Perhaps the goofiest new take on the whole better-health thing came from a scientist and engineer called Dr. Edward Richards, who, in addition to having invented some canoe-shaped, wheel-laden airplane-landing-gear deal, had also brought along the plans and prototypes for the “medical muffler device,” which, says the press release, “allows gas from the gastrointestinal tract to escape slowly, silently, continually and odorless.” “My grandchild had a problem with the gas release,” he explained to me in a deadly somber Slavic accent of some kind, “and it was hell for everyone.” And thus was born an invention.
On the drive home I found myself wondering why it was that so few women had seen fit to contribute to an event such as this. To be fair, there had been a couple. Offhand, I could think of two I had seen. Both had invented new types of dolls. This, as compared with one wild-eyed man who had bothered to reinvent the alphabet and intended to try to push it forward until every single piece of printed material in the world had been redone to his specifications. The explanation I came up with for the paucity of female crackpot inventors was that they probably had something better to do. Women just didn’t want to bother inventing a toilet-seat alarm when they already had devices such as yelling, pouting, and brooding resentfully in pretty good working order. As for the grandchild’s problem with the gas release, I don’t think a woman would have felt the need for a peculiar plastic muffler deal if she knew about the bran muffin.
As I continued to conjecture along these lines, I began to construct my own crackpot theory with regard to the essential nature of the sexes. My theory is that the very structure of daily life on the planet would have been totally different if there had never been men, since men think so extremely differently from women. To illustrate this, I have compiled a short list of things I feel would never have existed at all had there never been any men.
Mealtimes. Women might have toyed with the idea of sitting down to big plates of several kinds of food three times a day but almost certainly would have rejected it right away because it was so fattening. Instead they would have opted for a few spoons of cottage cheese at 10:30 A.M., an apple at noon, a couple of bites of chocolate-chip cookie at three, forkfuls of whatever someone nearby was eating at around five, and then random nibbling up until bedtime. This syndrome also makes men the rightful heirs to the TV dinner, as I have never met a woman who cared about having a small amount of peas and a tablespoon of mashed potatoes with her Salisbury steak.
Projectile Weaponry. I don’t think women would have come up with guns. Maybe not even bows and arrows. In their quest for food, I think, women would have developed concepts along the lines of fly-fishing, wherein one makes little miniatures of the diet of the intended prey to trick it with. But then we might have ended up liking the little miniatures so much that we would keep them for accessories or collectibles, rationalizing that, after all, a handful of grass or berries would be a lot less effort than fish, a lot fewer calories than another plate of greasy ground squirrel.
All Those Different Sports Involving All Those
Different Kinds of Balls. Women would have invented one, at most two, really good ones—volleyball and soccer, let’s say—and then, figuring that two seemed like plenty, probably would have plowed ahead and developed a multitude of hair-care products. Men, on the other hand, almost definitely would have called it a game after the invention of one shampoo, never even bothering to write up the concepts for creme rinses, finishing rinses, or extra-body conditioners, let alone styling gels and mousses.
Various Forms of Entertainment Involving Car Explosions. This category includes TV, movies, races, Grand Prix, and toys that simulate all of the above. I would venture to say that if there had been no men, there almost certainly would not have been any nitro-burning funny cars. In fact, when you consider how enamored women have traditionally been of horses, it makes you wonder if cars would have been invented at all.
Armies. I don’t see women dreaming up a highly disciplined, drably outfitted, ordeal-oriented, well-oiled fighting machine. Nah. I also don’t think women would have bothered with long-range missile systems—especially after we had worked out all the details of other systems, such as slapping and scratching.
VCRs. Since women have so much trouble operating them, I am going to assume that we wouldn’t have bothered with them at all. Though we might have encouraged the invention of TIVO.
All of the above are clear-cut examples of the distinctive approach to logical thought that is unique to men. Of course, this extends into behavior too. Take interior decoration. I don’t think the woman has been born to whom it would occur to substitute sports equipment lined up next to the wall for furniture groupings and area rugs. And yet I have frequently visited the “home” of a man who thought this was a fine idea.
It is thought processes like these that eventually find creative release in the invention of tongue scrapers and multiuser entertainment-system toilet-tank tops. Not to mention telephone systems, stereo equipment, and electric carving knives. Those darn men, God bless ’em.
Conversation Piece
I recently spent one of those weeks where I hardly spoke a word out loud. This is the sort of life experience that is almost totally unimaginable in New York City, where one’s proximity to complete strangers causes a regular number of pointless verbal exchanges. I call them verbal exchanges because I don’t think “I was here first.” “Well, what do you want? A medal?” can be classified as a conversation per se.
I have been giving some serious thought to the nature of conversation (as serious as I am capable of) just in case I ever have one again.
First, it is important to note that men and women regard conversation quite differently. For women it is a passion, a sport, an activity even more important to life than eating because it doesn’t involve weight gain. The first sign of closeness among women is when they find themselves engaging in endless, secretless rounds of conversation with one another. And as soon as a woman begins to relax and feel comfortable in a relationship with a man, she tries to have that type of conversation with him as well. However, the first sign that a man is feeling close to a woman is when he is comfortable enough to admit that he’d rather she please quiet down so he can hear the TV. A man who feels truly intimate with a woman often reserves for her and her alone the precious gift of one-word answers. Everyone knows that the surest way to spot a successful long-term relationship is to look around a restaurant for the table where no one is talking. Ah … now that’s real love.
But to get to that blissful state, the relationship usually passes through a conversational stage first, which is why I thought I’d take this opportunity to present:
The Merrill Markoe Course in Conversation
What Is a Conversation? For our purposes, it is any exchange of more than two remarks that does not end in an act of violence. The successful conversationalist always remembers to first remove all extraneous objects from the mouth (and hide them, unless you are prepared to make that the topic of the conversation, and quite frankly I have found that admitting “I just like the feel of packing materials between my teeth and I don’t really care that they’re made of toxic chemicals” is not the sort of opening remark that shows one off in the best light).
Always remember to ENUNCIATE clearly. If you notice that the person to whom you are talking is reacting with a blank stare, repeat the phrases “Can you hear me?” and “Do you understand?” in louder and louder tones of voice until you ascertain that your conversational partner (a) does not have a language in common with you, or (b) is in some kind of a stupor. (The former condition is more frequent on the East Coast, the latter on the West. Either situation renders the whole thing pretty hopeless and gives you permission to call a cab.) Which brings us to another basic point: Remember that the creation of new language is the sole domain of advertising copywriters and desperate Scrabble players. And that the words created by these people, such as Scrumdiddly-umptious, FUNtastic, and CHOC-o-licious—or, in the case of Scrabble, zziquox—should never be spoken aloud, even in the privacy of your own home.
Now that we have discussed form, let’s move ahead to content.
An important part of any successful conversation is, of course, a good opening remark, one that is designed to intrigue, inspire, and delight. Which is why “Leave me alone,” “Please leave me alone,” and “Won’t you please, please leave me alone” are not good opening remarks. Oddly enough, the opposite—as in “Please, I beg of you, talk to me!”—does not work either. It is considered a turnoff by many. The best opening remark, therefore, is on the surface cheering and neutral but contains an essentially truthful subtext that says, “Do you have the time to listen to me drone on ceaselessly about my problems for as long as I find it convenient?” Examples of this type of opening remark are “Hi. How are you? You look great. That’s a very nice purse. Where’d you get it?” and “Hey, what’s happening?”
Okay! Now that we’ve got the old conversational ball rolling, your next important task is to figure out something to say. If you have nothing to say but still feel the need simply to hear yourself talk—maybe just for the facial exercise, or to prove that you’re alive—then the appropriate outlet is, of course, talk radio, where a handsomely paid professional moderator is willing to pretend to care about your views on the finalists on American Idol or the inflated salaries of professional athletes.
“But,” you may say to me, “Merrill, Merrill, Merrill … What if I see someone I barely know and want to talk to them? Then what?” And I would say back to you, “First, don’t ever use my name three times in a row like that. It puts you well over the legal lifetime limit for using my first name in a sentence.” And then I would have to say that this is the best time to use:
The Merrill Markoe Sociological Stereotyping Chart
Clever sociological stereotyping can help you make the sweeping generalizations that are useful conversation starters. Or they will get you a punch in the mouth. Either way you have had that important initial contact with the person of your choice. What I am referring to is the fact that certain types of people are more likely to be interested in certain topics. For example, if you choose “Methods of Scoring Hockey” as your topic of conversation with the average middle-class woman, you’re probably making a bad choice. Which is not to say that the average middle-class woman for whom this is a passionate topic does not exist. (Okay. The woman does not exist.) But just as the average middle-class man does not like to talk about his emotions or anything of importance except methods of scoring hockey, there is a reason why hockey scoring is the only topic never addressed by Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Regis.
Presented below is a short reference chart indicating some topics and the corresponding demographic sampling that may find them interesting. You will probably want to make up your own list. Or maybe not, if you have any kind of a real life.
Topic Who Will Talk About It
What we as individuals can do to make this planet called Earth a better place to live Students under the age of twenty-five and sit-com stars who ar
e not getting enough media attention
The plots of highly rated network TV shows such as Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond No one. Being forced to listen to this is considered grounds for justifiable homicide in eighteen states
How they score televised sports Men between the ages of twenty-five and sixty
Why the men in their life won’t talk about anything but televised sports Women between the ages of eighteen and seventy
The weather Employees of dry-cleaning establishments or the U.S. Postal Service; your parents or, if they’re not home, my parents
The deteriorating health of people you barely know Your mother or, if she’s not home, my mother
What it means that all your man will talk about is sports and all your parents will talk about is the weather and the deteriorating health of people you barely know
Mental health professionals; me
All righty, now that you have successfully initiated the conversation, another problem is likely to present itself. More and more it seems as though a person (and of course by “a person” I mean “me”) runs into someone who tells the same story over and over, beat for beat. They never even bother to say “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before” and do not feel the least bit deterred when they notice that you are mouthing along with them as though you were an audience member at a sing-along. What do you do?
I recommend an exercise that I call creative conversational visualization. As the person drones on, imagine that he is being squashed flat as a bug by a giant steamroller. Now, as you gaze downward at a two-dimensional aerial view of your formerly three-dimensional friend, see if you can answer the following questions: Would he make an interesting piece of abstract art? What sort of frame would you buy for him, and where would you hang it in your home? And, while you’re at it, how much do you think you could get for the piece at an art auction? While you proceed with the answers to these questions, do not forget to meet the traditional obligation of “Mmm hmm” and “I see” at five-second intervals.
What the Dogs Have Taught Me: And Other Amazing Things I've Learned Page 12