Bits and Pieces

by Robert Benchley

  All this will perhaps show you how mystified I am by any time-recording device, even the simplest. And when it comes to chronometers of a more complicated nature, I am frankly baffled. This is probably why daylight-saving not only confuses but irritates me, because I wasn’t really settled in my mind about the old Standard Time and resent any further attempt to make it more difficult. I understand perfectly the attitude of Holland in the matter of so-called “Zone Time.” Or perhaps you don’t know what Holland’s attitude was.

  In 1879 a busybody named Sanford Fleming brought forward a plan for the whole earth which set out twenty-four standard meridians to be fifteen degrees apart in longitude, starting from Greenwich, England. There was to be an hour’s difference in time between each two of these.

  This was the guy who made all the trouble and made it possible for people in California who happened to be in the middle of a big party at midnight call up someone in New York on the telephone and wake him up out of a four A.M. slumber to say: “Hello, you big bum, you! Guess who this is!” Well, all the nations accepted this crazy scheme of time-telling except Holland. Holland couldn’t see any reason for messing around with meridians when there was so much trouble in the world as it was (and is). So Holland, although one of the smallest nations, stood out against the whole world and kept its own time, and, as a result, didn’t get into the War when it came. And also makes delicious cheeses. And tulip bulbs. So you see?

  My plan is to be known as “the Holland of Scarsdale,” and to set all my clocks (except the one which cannot be tampered with) back to the old time we loved so well. They may throw me in jail, or they may cut off my electricity, but I am going through with this thing if it takes all summer. I don’t like Time, and I never have, and I want to have as little to do with it as possible. If I am bothered much more by it, I shall take all the hands off all the watches and clocks in my house and just drift along, playing the mandolin and humming. I’m too busy a man to be worried by figuring out what time it is.

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  Greetings From—

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  During the Christmas and New Year’s season there was an ugly rumor going the rounds of the countinghouses and salons (Note to Printer: Only one “o, ” please!) of the town that I was in jail. I would like to have it understood at this time that I started that rumor myself. I started it, and spent quite a lot of money to keep it alive through the use of paid whisperers, in order that my friends would understand why they got no gifts or greeting cards from me. They couldn’t expect a man who was in jail to send them anything. Or could they?

  I have now reached an age and arterial condition where this business of selection of gifts for particular people throws me into a high fever (102) and causes my eyes to roll back into my head. It isn’t the money that I begrudge. I spend that much in a single night on jaguar cubs and rare old Egyptian wines for one of my famous revels. It is simply that I am no longer able to decide what to get for whom. In other words, that splendid cellular structure once known as “my mind” has completely collapsed in this particular respect. (I am finding other respects every day, but we won’t got into that now.)

  It is not only at Christmas and New Year’s that I am confronted with this terrifying crisis. When I am away on my summer vacation, when I go away on a business trip, or even when I wake up and find myself in another city by mistake, there is always that incubus sitting on my chest: “Which post card shall I send to Joe?” or “What shall I take back to Mae?” The result is that I have acquired a full-blown phobia for post-card stands and the sight of a gift shop standing in my path will send me scurrying around a three-mile detour or rolling on the ground in an unpleasant frenzy. If 1 knew of a good doctor, I would go to him for it.

  On my last vacation I suddenly realized that I had been away for two weeks without sending any word home other than to cable the bank to mind its own business and let me alone about the overdraft. So I walked up and down in front of a post-card shop until I got my courage up, gritted my teeth, and made a dash for it. I found myself confronted by just short of 450,000 post cards.

  Taking up a position slightly to the left and half facing one of those revolving racks, I gave it a little spin once around, just to see if it was working nicely. This brought the lady clerk to my side.

  “Some post cards?” she asked, perhaps to make sure that I wasn’t gambling with the contraption.

  “I’m just looking,” I reassured her. Then, of course, I had to look. I spun the thing around eighty or ninety times, until it began to look as if there were only one set of post cards in the rack, all showing some unattractive people in a rowboat on a moonlit lake. Then I started spinning in the opposite direction. This made me dizzy and I had to stop altogether. “Let me see,” I said aloud to myself in order to reassure the lady that I really was buying cards and not just out on a lark, “who – whom – do I have to send to?”

  Well, there were four in my own family, and Joe and Hamilton and Tweek and Charlie (something comical for Charlie) – oh, and Miss McLassney in the office and Miss Whirtle in the outer office and Eddie on the elevator, and then a bunch of kidding ones for the boys at the Iron Gate and here I felt well enough to start spinning again. Obviously the thing to do was to take three or four dozen at random and then decide later who to send each one to. So I grabbed out great chunks of post cards from the rack, three out of this pack showed a water-colored boy carrying a bunch of pansies (these ought to get a laugh), and seven or eight showing peasants in native costume flying kites or something.

  “I’ll take these,” I said, in a fever of excitement, and dashed out without paying.

  For four days, I avoided sitting down at a desk to write those cards, but at last a terrific mountain storm drove me indoors and the lack of anything to read drove me to the desk. I took the three dozen cards and piled them in a neat pile before me. Then I took out my fountain pen. By great good luck, there was no ink in it. You can’t write post cards without ink, now, can you? So I leapt up from the desk and took a nap until the storm was over.

  It was not until a week later that I finally sat down again and began to decide which cards to send and to whom. Here was one showing an old goat standing on a cliff. That would be good for Joe, with some comical crack written on it. No, I guess this one of two peasant girls pushing a cart would be better for Joe. I wrote, “Some fun, eh, kid?” on the goat picture and decided to send it to Hamilton, but right under it was a colored one showing a boy and girl eating a bunch of lilies of the valley. That would be better for Hamilton or maybe it would be better for Charlie. No, the goat one would be better for Charlie, because he says “Some fun, eh, kid?” all the time. . . . Now let’s do this thing systematically. The goat one to Charlie. Cross off Charlie’s name from the list. That’s one. Now the boy and girl eating lilies of the valley – or perhaps this one of a herd of swans – no the boy and girl to Hamilton because – hello, what’s this? How about that for Hamilton? And how about the boy and girl eating a herd of swans in a cartful of lilies of the valley on a cliff for Eddie or Joe or Miss McLassney or Mother or Tweek or –

  At this point everything went black before me and when I came to I was seated at a little iron table on a terrace with my face buried in an oddly flavored glass of ice. Not having had a stamp, I didn’t send even the card I had written to Charlie, but brought them all home with me in my trunk and they are in my top desk drawer to this very day.

  The question of bringing home little gifts is an even more serious one. On the last day before I start back I go to some shop which specializes in odds and ends for returning travelers. I have my list of beneficiaries all neatly made out. Here are some traveling clocks. Everyone has a traveling clock. Here are some embroidered hand bags. (As a matter of fact, I have come to believe that the entire choice of gifts for ladies, no matter where you are, is limited to embroidered hand bags. You ask a clerk for suggestions as to what to take to your mother, and she says: “How
about a nice embroidered hand bag?” You look in the advertisements in the newspapers and all you can find are sales of embroidered hand bags. The stores at home are full of embroidered hand bags and your own house is full of embroidered hand bags. My God, don’t they ever think of anything else to make?)

  I roam about in shop after shop, thinking that in the next one I shall run across something that will be just right. Traveling clocks and embroidered hand bags. Perfumes and embroidered hand bags. Perfumes and traveling clocks. And all of them can be bought at home right down on Main Street and probably a great deal better. At this point, the shops all close suddenly, and I am left with my list and lame ankles to show for a final day’s shopping. It usually results in my sneaking out, the first day that I am home, and buying a traveling clock, some perfume, and an embroidered hand bag at the local department store and presenting them without the tell-tale wrappings to only moderately excited friends. This is why I pretend to be in jail around Christmas and New Year’s. It may end up in my pretending to be (or actually being) in jail the year round.

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  Defying

  the Conventions

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  With the advent of the political conventions there are three courses left open to the General Public (recently reduced to Major General Public on a private’s pay). The private citizen who is not impressed by these two great gatherings of nominators may (1) tell the boy to stop leaving the morning and evening papers until further notice; (2) go up to the attic and hide in trunk until it is all over; (3) go to the conventions in person, take a seat up front, and when, if ever, there comes a moment of comparative quiet, deliver a long and resounding “bird,” using one of those rubber contraptions especially designed for the purpose. Perhaps if enough private citizens went to the conventions in person there would be no room for the delegates and then we wouldn’t have to have any election!

  But since there is small chance of getting enough volunteers to crowd out the regulars, we might as well brush up on the details of how, according to the Constitution (the document, not the frigate), our Presidential candidates are nominated. We learned all about this in school, of course, but we also learned how to erect a square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle and prove something by it – and where did that get us? I could entertain you for hours telling you where my geometry got me, but this is a political treatise.

  According to the Constitution (the frigate, not the document), “each state will appoint, or shall cause to be appointed, or shall appoint to be caused, or shall go jump in the lake, as the legislature thereof may direct—” I guess that isn’t the clause.

  Anyway, every four years (it seems oftener, but that is because time passes so quickly when you are enjoying yourself), every four years a mysterious list of names appears in the papers, names of people who claim to be “delegates,” seemingly empowered to go to the conventions, eat nuts, and vote for candidates for the Presidency. Just how they became “delegates” nobody seems to remember, but there must have been some ritual gone through with at some time, otherwise they would be just ordinary citizens like the rest of us. And when I say “ordinary,” do I mean ordinary!

  There is one explanation of the problem of where their delegates come from in the theory that they are chosen by taking the names that were left over in the hat after the drawings for the Irish Sweepstakes. Another school of political economists claim that they were the first ten to send in post cards making the greatest number of words out of “K-L-E-E-N-C-H-I-N Toothpaste – No More – No Less.” My personal theory is that they were elected by being changed from mice into delegates by a good fairy who got to changing pumpkins into coaches and couldn’t stop.

  At any rate, along about February every four years they spring up and begin giving off hints as to which one of the candidates they favor, or, as the kidding phrase goes, “are pledged to.” The pledge of a delegate to a national convention is embossed on tissue paper and, when rolled up, can be exploded by pulling little strings at either end. Inside will be found a motto reading: “If in January you were born, then blow a toot upon this horn. I love you.” This makes it clear which candidate they are supporting. The rule is that each candidate must either keep his pledge or else give it back to someone who will keep it for him until he gets back.

  At the conventions, the main feature is the marching around the hall. No one can be a delegate who cannnot march around a hall and sing, “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!” This is what is known as the dignity of Democracy. There has been some talk of dispensing with the delegates entirely and just getting the Boys’ Fife and Drum Corps of each community to go to the conventions bearing signs reading, “We want a touchdown!” and “Kiss me again!” thereby giving the same effect as the delegates and yet maintaining a certain feeling of genuine youth. If the idea is just to be boys again, why not get real boys and not fifty-year-old men in Ferris waists? A good convention of sixteen-year-old boys, with their girls, would be a relief. Then we should know where we stood.

  The party system in the United States is rather complicated right now, owing to there being no parties and very little United States. The Republican and Democratic parties, ancient rivals, do not exist any more as such, there being more fun watching Harvard and Yale. This has brought about a condition where Republican conventions are sometimes attended by Democrats by mistake, and Democratic conventions attended by Republicans on purpose. The only way to tell them apart is by the conditions of the hotel rooms after the convention is over. The Republicans have more gin bottles and the Democrats seem to have gone in more for rye.

  The hotel room as a factor in the political conventions can hardly be overemphasized. The main assembly hall or auditorium (so called because no one can hear anyone talking in it) is used chiefly for the marching and fist-fighting, with an occasional round dance or hockey game. It is here also that all the photographs are taken. In the 1936 conventions it is planned to use the photographs of the 1928 and 1932 conventions and not use the auditorium at all, just sticking to the hotel rooms where the real work of the session is done. In fact, in 1936 it may not be necessary for the delegates to go to the convention city at all. They can just stay at home and march up and down in their own rooms until instructions come from the leaders as to how they are to vote.

  But, you may say, what about the applause? How can there be a convention without the regulation applause which lasts ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes as each candidate’s name is mentioned? This is a tough one, but there ought to be some way around it. Each delegate, if he stayed in his own home town, could send a telegram reading, “I am applauding for fifteen minutes,” or “Consider that I am giving the name of George W. Glib an ovation.”

  This, however, will probably never receive the support of the newspapers, as attending political conventions is the only form of fun that many reporters get. In fact, if it weren’t for the newspapers there would be no convention at all. With a man from each paper or news syndicate to cover the political angle, the personality angle, the woman’s angle, the ginger-pop angle, the angle angle (that word is beginning to look as if it weren’t spelled right), the resultant unemployment among newspaper men if the convention were abolished would be frightful and might end up in a revolution. It has been estimated that at this year’s conventions there will be more newspaper men than delegates, many of them depending on the hand-outs from the various headquarters for their sandwiches and coffee for the coming year.

  A revolution of half-starved and wholly parched convention reporters would be the biggest thing since the Union Square riots.

  Thus we find that, for the present at any rate, it will be necessary for the so-called “delegates” to take their instructions right in the convention city itself.

  And when the whole thing is over and the radio programs have settled back into the regular run of pancake recipes and Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life, At Last I’ve Found You without being broken up by Alabama�
�s twenty-four votes being announced every five minutes, and when all the bottles and sevens of spades have been picked up off the floor along with some of the older delegates who haven’t been able to stand the heat, and when two candidates have been chosen to carry the banners of their respective parties in the great 1932 Presidential campaign – then we can start reading the papers again.

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  Ill Will

  Toward Men

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  Nobody would like to see the Brotherhood of Man come to pass any more than I would, for I am not a very good fighter and even have difficulty holding my own in a battle of repartee. I am more the passive type, and I would be glad to have everybody else passive too.

  But I am afraid that it can’t be done. I am afraid that there are certain situations in which a man finds himself placed by chance where there is nothing left for him to do but hate his fellow man. It isn’t that he wants to hate him, but certain chemical reactions take place in his system.

  Take, for example, the case of the dining car. You come in alone and the steward waves the menu at you in a friendly fashion indicating that you are to sit right down here opposite this gentleman. At the very start, this gentleman resents your sitting opposite him and you resent his having got there first.

  He doesn’t take a good look at your face, or you at his, but you both concentrate an ugly glare on the buttons of each other’s waistcoats. If he happens to have a fraternal watch charm on his chain you appraise it critically and say to yourself, “Oh, one of those, eh?” In the meantime, he has worked his inspection up to your tie, and you are conscious of the fact that he doesn’t like it at all.