Another Bad-Dog Book

by Joni Cole

  “It turns on, but nothing shows up on the screen,” I tell him.

  “What kind of computer is it?” my computer guy asks.

  “A laptop,” I reply impatiently. Even I know that much.

  My computer guy is really nice, but sometimes I get the feeling he’s trying to avoid me. After walking me through the steps to determine the brand (something called a “Hewlett-Packard”), he insists I’d be better off calling the company’s technical support center. Then he hangs up.

  He has got to be kidding! I’d rather phone my mother-in-law and listen to her retell the story of how she saved $1.25 on a box of fire logs by going to four different malls.

  With no alternative, I dial Hewlett-Packard’s 1-800 number. “Due to heavy call volume, all of our lines are busy,” a recording tells me. Now what does that say about the company’s quality control? I fume. My laptop shouldn’t even be on the fritz, given that it’s only three years old, and my mother paid good money to buy it for me.

  Finally, someone takes my call. “I apologize for the delay,” says an accented voice. “My name is Prakash. How may I help?”

  Oh good lord. I have enough trouble understanding foreigners face to face, let alone across phone lines. I tell him about my blank screen.

  Prakash requests that I unplug my computer’s power cord and remove the battery.

  “Battery? What battery?” If I had wanted to know about the inner workings of my laptop, I would have looked at the manual. Then I would have killed myself.

  Prakash informs me that he will need to run a remote diagnostic test. “This will require a few more minutes of your time,” he apologizes. While he runs the test we wait in silence, until it feels too weird, like two heavy breathers on the same line.

  “Where exactly are you located?” I ask, having read that most American computer companies try to save big bucks by basing their call centers overseas.

  “India,” he says.

  Oh. I can’t help but think of the recent terrorist attacks there. “I’m sorry for your country’s tragedy.” I don’t refer to Mumbai specifically because I’m afraid I’ll mispronounce the word.

  “You know of the attacks?” he sounds surprised. “Do you subscribe to the Indian news channels?”

  At first I don’t understand his question. Then I catch on. “No, the attacks were all over the American news.” Could people in other countries really think that Americans are that self-absorbed as to ignore world events of this magnitude?

  Prakash shares that he is from Mumbai.

  “I hope you and your family were safe,” I say. Suddenly, what was just another horrendous headline has a real person attached to it, or at least a real voice at a technical support center.

  “We were fortunate,” Prakash responds. Then he tells me that my computer has failed the diagnostic test. It will require a new hard drive.

  “How much will that cost me?” I try to keep my irritation in check. What if my city had been attacked by terrorists? I think. What if gunmen had seized the White River train station or the Hotel Coolidge ten minutes from my house? The last thing I would need is some woman from thousands of miles away giving me grief about her laptop.

  “I will be happy to find that information for you,” Prakash says. “May I have just a few more minutes of your time?”

  It turns out that a replacement hard drive will cost about $300. When I ask Prakash for advice, he suggests I consider purchasing a new computer. Hewlett-Packard is having a sale, so I could get a better laptop with free upgrades at a very good price. “Shall I connect you to our Home Office Store?” he asks.

  By now, the last thing I want to do is spend more time on the phone talking about stupid computers. I have things to do. Without a working laptop, I have an excuse to take the afternoon off, watch a movie, or maybe take a long nap. Still, I find myself saying yes. Before Prakash transfers me to a sales agent, I tell him to take care. I want to say more, do something to convince him that I really am sorry for his country’s tragedy, but what?

  When I hang up the phone a few minutes later, I am the owner of a brand new HP Pavilion dv5z Entertainment Notebook with a Windows 32-bit Vista® Home Premium operating system, 3GB DDR2 System Memory, and Wireless-G Card. I have no idea what any of this means. I also can’t really afford a new computer, and suspect that my regular computer guy could have fixed my old laptop for considerably less. Still, I feel better having spent the $649 plus tax, a small price to pay to offset my feelings of learned helplessness.

  A Real American Idol

  A few summers ago, my two daughters and I went to the American Idol concert at the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, over two hours from where we live. This was the closest venue that wasn’t sold out by the time I called for tickets, so I bought three seats for an exorbitant price. I love American Idol, mostly because the show takes nobodies and turns them into instant mega-stars, which is something I constantly fantasize for myself.

  The DCU Center—billed the nation’s premier entertainment complex—accommodates 11,000 attendees. As it turned out, 10,998 of them had better seats than us. My daughters and I were stuck in the highest row, so close to the roof rafters we could hit our heads on them. Plus, we were so far to the rear of the stage that we couldn’t even watch the concert on the giant projection screen suspended from the ceiling, given that we were seated behind it.

  While we waited for the concert to begin, the girls spotted two empty seats one tier below, so they moved down, figuring they could always leave if the real ticket holders showed up. I probably could have found a better seat as well, but stayed put, preferring to be a martyr than a squatter (though I did refuse to give up the binoculars).

  Right after my daughters abandoned me, who should appear but the man and woman with the only two seats worse than mine. They carried cardboard trays loaded with food and sodas, and had bought one of those commemorative American Idol books with glossy pictures of the performers and their bios.

  The woman sat beside me, securing her Big Chug between her thick thighs. “Is this your first time?” she asked me.

  “First time?” I asked.

  “We saw the concert in Manchester a couple weeks ago,” she enthused. “It’s a great show!”

  What are you so happy about? I wanted to ask. You have the absolute worst seats in the house, the last thing you need is that Big Chug, and nobody except maybe Erin Brockovich is going to care whether you get cancer from inhaling all these loose paint flakes on the rafters. Still, I kept my thoughts to myself, rather than risk appearing judgmental.

  The woman and her companion started chowing down on their nachos and hot dogs, while skimming through her commemorative book. I tried to snatch glances of them, too, but her super-sized breasts didn’t make it any easier.

  Eventually, the house lights dimmed and one of the performers—the first of the ten finalists to get voted out of the competition—came onto the stage. Clearly, I had time to kill, given that I’d only come to see the winner. I’d voted for him every week during the show because he was a good singer, and because he’d suffered the most tragedy in his life.

  I scoped out the audience with my binoculars. This was a G-rated crowd, full of parents and kids (sitting in their own seats, I presumed). One tier below me, people in wheelchairs had their own section, with a terrific view of the stage. Maybe I’d get lucky next concert, I mused, and be hit by a bus and paralyzed from the waist down.

  Near center stage, a sea of young people in identical blue t-shirts hogged a primo section of seats. Probably some church youth group, I assessed. So why weren’t they out working for Habitat for Humanity or some other do-gooder cause? Considering the cost of all those American Idol tickets, they could have built an entire bedroom community in El Salvador.

  And there! In the very first row! A baby on its mother’s lap! And it wasn’t even listening to the concert, thanks to a pair of noise-canceling headphones protecting its delicate baby ears.

  The singer
s came and went, but I couldn’t stop obsessing about the audience. Why should all these people have better seats than me? I fumed. It’s not like they were celebrities or VIPs. These were just ordinary folks, the kind of people I needed to feel superior to, otherwise I felt ordinary myself.

  Normally, I have no trouble honing in on other people’s inferior qualities. Sure, I tell myself, that woman is better looking than me, but at least I don’t have downy arms. Or, So what if that writer has more talent; who wants the hassle of a second home in the Keys? But tonight, I felt like the loser among 11,000 people, including Mr. and Mrs. Big Chug whooping it up beside me.

  Eventually, the winner of American Idol came onto the stage and everybody cheered. A young man with Downs Syndrome raced to the railing of the nosebleed section. He wore a t-shirt with an image of the singer’s face, tucked into white shorts worn way too high. When the winner started singing, the young man danced and played air guitar, just like a developmentally disabled rock star.

  It must be nice, I thought sarcastically, to be so oblivious; to not care about all the things that other people have that you don’t, including the correct number of chromosomes. But then it occurred to me: Yes, yes it would be nice; not to be developmentally disabled, but to be free of jealousy and resentment. I watched the young man rock out, arms flailing, hips gyrating in his high-waisted white shorts, having the time of his life. And at that moment I felt sorrier for myself than I had the whole evening—but it had nothing to do with my lousy seat.

  Still My Dad

  My dad lived in a nursing home for six years. He wound up there because of a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side and did a number on his brain. In the hospital during his long and rocky recuperation, the visiting psychiatrists weren’t sure how much of his mind remained intact. When they asked him to name the Vice President of the United States, or what day Christmas fell on, often he’d stare into space. But after the psychiatrists left, I’d ask him for some five- or six-letter word I needed to complete my crossword puzzle, and plenty of times he’d give me the right answer. Then my mother would yell at him, “Myles, stop being so bullheaded.”

  My dad was an engineer; he designed farm equipment for New Holland Machine Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After he took early retirement, but before his stroke changed everything, he had about ten great years. In retirement, my dad’s social life took off. Every Wednesday at six a.m. he’d meet his buddies for breakfast at Friendly’s, where they’d solve the world’s problems from their regular booth. My dad competed in golf tournaments. He played Around the World with his sons and grandsons at the basketball court in the park. Occasionally, my dad would win—and gloat, as was his right as a short, pudgy, Jewish great-grandfather pushing seventy.

  When I visited my parents from Vermont, my dad would take my family and I on road trips to the Philadelphia Zoo, Hershey Park, the Strasburg Railroad. He let my two little girls play horsey on his back. He chauffeured my mother and me to the mall because we both refused to drive on Route 30 with all the construction. While I tried on clothes at the Gap or Victoria’s Secret, my dad loitered by the cash registers. He always insisted on paying for everything. One time we were at a drug store and I tried to sneak to the checkout to buy some tampons, but my dad intercepted me at the counter. He wouldn’t let the clerk take my money.

  My dad had a woodshop in his basement. He built nice things: TV cabinets, wooden-handled trays, conjoined dancing teddy bears, a sleigh bed with his grown-up grandson. “Myles,” my mom would call down to him from the top of the basement stairs, “Don’t track up any sawdust.”

  My dad taught his youngest grandson to fish. He baked homemade bread two or three times a week in what had to be the world’s first bread machine. He drove a friend’s son to all his orthodontia appointments because the boy’s mother had to work. He and my mom took bus trips to Atlantic City, to Dollywood, to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. My dad went to funerals, more and more with each passing year.

  Every day, my dad walked his sweet-natured dog, Hannah, a mile to the park and back. Then he would set out again to walk Sir Isaac, the lunging black lab my mother had insisted on adopting, even though my dad didn’t want him. Every day my dad made at least one, sometimes two trips to the grocery store to fetch a can of stewed tomatoes or low-fat whipped cream for some new recipe my parents wanted to try, or to pick up more laundry detergent because my mom did four loads of wash a day, even after it was just the two of them at home.

  Every day, my dad worked the Jumble and the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. Every day, he would fall asleep sitting up on the couch, with Law and Order blaring from the TV. But then my mom, who had watched him like a hawk since his heart attack when he was in his fifties, would call out, “Myles! Are you awake?” And if he didn’t answer immediately she would yell louder, “Myles, are you all right? Wake up!”

  After my dad’s stroke, after weeks of ICUs and respirators, and after my mom told the hospital administrators once, then again, to resuscitate if necessary, my dad’s health stabilized. But he failed to show any signs that he would regain the use of his left side or much of his independence. So my mom put my dad in a nursing home. Then she bought a $35,000 wheelchair-accessible van.

  The first year my dad was in the nursing home, he drove everyone nuts. “Let’s go! Let’s go!” he pounded the armrest of his wheelchair with his good hand. At night, he beat on the bed rail, prompting the aides to ask, “What are we going to do with Myles? He’s disturbing the other patients.” My mom lived in fear the nursing home people would kick him out, like the disruptive child in day care. She was the one who had first saved his life, but when he behaved this way she’d threaten to kill him and almost mean it, at least in the heat of the moment.

  For a couple years, my mom tried to bring my dad back to their house almost every day, or take him out shopping, or to lunch. Sometimes these outings were nice, but just as often they would lead to the kind of fights between my parents that used to embarrass me as a kid. My dad’s good leg would start bouncing on his footrest. The fist pounding would begin. He would yell about real and imaginary pain. He would obsess about having to go to the bathroom. “Myles, be still!” my mom would shout back, “You’re in the middle of Home Depot for God’s sake!”

  On the thirty-minute drives back to the nursing home, my dad often would be seized by dusk anxiety or some other form of panic disorder. “I’m falling!” he would cry out from the back of the van, even though he was strapped in tight. “Help me! I’m falling!” he’d smack his armrest. If I was the one behind the wheel, he would say what he always said to me since I first started driving, “Not so fast! Not so fast!”

  Over the years, my dad’s health went more and more downhill. He used to push himself short distances in his wheelchair, but eventually stopped trying. His eyesight deteriorated to shadows and forms. He could no longer feed himself. His face displayed the doughy pallor of a nursing home resident. He stopped having so many panic attacks, or complaining obsessively about pain, but when he did, one Oxycodone—and a word from my mom—usually set him right. For some reason, my dad found comfort in holding his toothbrush.

  Year after year, my mom drove to the nursing home five mornings a week to be with my dad from seven until two in the afternoon. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she hired a caretaker to sit with him and feed him his meals. She instructed the woman to make sure his TV set was tuned to his favorite country music channel or the ball game, and to always press the call button right before she left. My mom never wanted my dad to be alone.

  When I visited from Vermont, I watched my dad nap in his leather recliner in the sunny corner of his room and I knew, or at least I hoped, that he was someplace else. Maybe the chicken farm where he grew up. Maybe playing drums in the jazz band he formed at the University of Illinois, which is what he was doing when he met my mom and stole her away from the fiancé she already had.

  The stroke took away most of what my dad cou
ld do, and a lot of who he was. But even as he declined, he could still make me laugh. One visit I was looking at old photos of my dad as a boy, and I mentioned a resemblance between him and my then seven-year-old daughter. “Give her my apologies,” he joked, and I felt a rush of gratitude, as I always did when I saw these glimpses of the dad I knew before he got sick. To the end, my dad still loved country music. He still favored the Cubs over the Phillies. He still had a sweet tooth and enjoyed a good cup of coffee, though it was hard for him to steady the cup. He still made my mom furious, and he still loved her and remembered to tell her so.

  He was still my dad.

  During my last visit with him, I sat with him in his room, while he reclined in his chair, covered in a heavy, fleece blanket. Some talk show hosts chattered away on the TV.

  “Mommy and I are going shopping this afternoon,” I told him, by way of making conversation. “I think I’ll buy a new pair of jeans.” When my dad didn’t answer, I started flipping through the channels. These days he rarely responded. But a few moments later, my dad’s toothbrush tapped a few times on his armrest. “Mommy’s got my wallet,” he said, his eyes still closed, his voice weak. “You make sure she pays for everything when you go.”

  Tween a Rock and a Heart Place

  For months I had been struggling to adjust to the realities of parenting a “tween,” a word my then eleven-year-old daughter forbade me to speak aloud. “I hate that word!” she announced when we were shopping at J.C. Penney’s. “Never, ever say that word again!” This, after I had simply suggested we head to the Tweens section to buy her some new jeans. Who knew? I thought, as we drove home in sullen silence. I had simply been reading a sign above the clothing racks for girls sized 7 through 16.

  “It’s hormones,” my friends with their own tweenage daughters reassured me. Eleven-year-old hormones are to blame for those radical mood swings and that look on her face that spoke volumes—Your existence horrifies me; why can’t you spontaneously combust, or at least be normal like other moms?