Halfwit and All Man

by Peter Rodman

  Optimal Pessimism

  My friend Sardo Weems is a cockeyed optimist. He claims I made him that way, but I don't buy it. And even if it's so, I don't think I bear the full burden of blame.

  Sardo sees the good side of everything and is open- minded about most misery. If I take the pitcher of orange juice from the refrigerator and the juice is so old and fermented that it plops into the glass in chunks and six fruit flies immediately materialize and hover near the surface feeling maternal, Sardo will say (backing away from the fumes of rotting fruit), "Gee, at least there's only half a glass that went bad."

  I'm the other way. I'll answer, "Yeah, but in that half glass is the juice of four dead oranges. Wasted. And I bet those fruit flies are medflies looking to spawn their ilk."

  My pessimism has served me well. I usually expect the worst, and if it happens, I have the comfort of knowing I was right all along, and have gloating privileges. If I'm wrong and things turn out better than I expect, I balance the failure of my omniscience with the pleasant surprise that the situation worked out the way I wanted it to--even though I knew it wouldn't.

  My pessimism also drives me to surpass myself. For instance, one summer as a gloomy little boy I was standing on a rock about forty feet above a river, looking down. It was probably possible to jump from the rock into the river. To my knowledge, no one ever had. I was going to try it. I didn't know if I should jump off feet-first holding my nose with my eyes closed and screaming all the way down (to equalize air pressure in the inner ear), or dive head-first, hands out, eyes closed, and screaming. I chose the scarier head-first dive, because (I reasoned) the fall was going to kill me anyway. And it did.

  TODAY'S VOCABULARY WORDS

  ilk

  omniscience

  GLAAAR

  look them all up!

  Obviously a person of profound pessimism (me) can't tolerate too much bright side of things at one sitting. Sardo and I usually start out civilly, but any discussion between us has to quickly turn into an argument over expectations.

  At the time of Sardo's conversion I was drinking a glass of water and trying to get Sardo out of the house before he irritated me any more than he already had. I drank a little more water and put the glass down on the table.

  "The glass is half full," Sardo said.

  "The hell it is," I said. It's half empty. Shouldn't you be leaving?"

  "Bursting with promise: not only half full of clean, cool water, but with the chance to hold even more."

  I drank down most of the water in the glass. "Okay, now the glass is a lot more empty than full, and I'm not going to fill it up again, so you can go home and take your silver lining with you."

  "With the worldwide shortage of water and our own drought, to have any water at all is lucky," Sardo said.

  I poured the last half inch of water out on the table and put the glass in the middle of the puddle. "Get out. Do it now."

  "What a wonderful glass," he said. "In the middle ages glass was so hard to come by that a common clear tumbler like that would belong to a king."

  I threw the glass at his head, but he ducked. (I knew I'd miss.) It broke on the wall

  "It's great you can express your frustration," Sardo said. "So many people keep it bottled up so that--"

  I lunged across the table and caught him.

  "GLAAAR!" he said. "Mmmph . . . glurgle . . . gak, gak, gak." I had my hands around his throat and my thumbs on his windpipe.

  It was then (he claims) that something went "sproing" in his right eye. A muscle sprain, perhaps. Anyway, from then on his eye would drift up and away when the conversation got a little tense and he was ladling out the hope a little too generously. Which is handy, because now, if Sardo works the rosy outlook to death I only have to stare at something behind him over his shoulder, and when he turns to see what I'm staring at, I can blindside him with a smack to the cockeyed side of his head. But I still deny I made him cockeyed.

  It was only much later that I learned the secret of being an optimist. I learned it with Sardo, but not from him.

  Sardo and I were driving down the freeway to the state fair. He was driving. He was driving his Renault, which demonstrates exactly how hard his optimism pushes stupidity sometimes. He was in the fast lane, not going particularly fast by V-8 Oldsmobile standards, but moving pretty well for a Renault.

  Suddenly the back of the car on my side started thumping--hard--over and over again. Thud! thud! thud! thud! thud!

  Sardo jerked the wheel to the left and veered off into the center divider towards the oleanders, raising a huge cloud of dust--then changed his mind. As the dust drifted over the lanes of traffic behind us, blinding them, he turned on his right turn signal and pulled back into traffic with a flat tire.

  "Oh GOD," I screamed, "I'm going to diiiiiiie!"

  Thud! thud! thud! thud! thud!

  "In a stupid damn RENAULT!" I screamed.

  Sardo went across four lanes of traffic and parked on the right shoulder as easily as if he had taken the tin roof sundae ice cream out of his shopping cart and walked over to the cold counter to exchange it for vanilla.

  He turned on his emergency flashers and got out to look at the tire. I got out to criticize.

  "Are you blind? Or crazy?" I shouted at him.

  "What do you mean?" he said, oblivious to the traffic around us and with his right eye wandering up and away to the depths of space.

  "Oh," I said.

  He stared at the tire for a full minute. "The tire's flat," he said.

  I was quiet for a moment, not knowing if I should answer. Finally, I had to; it just welled up out of me. "Well," I said, "it isn't all flat. Most of the tire is still round, only the bottom part is flat."

  He actually tried to get his fingers on my throat. If he'd been quicker, he could have hurt me. I hate to think what he would have done if he had the lug wrench in his hand. I went back to sit in the car when he calmed down a bit.

  And that's the secret of being an optimist: you always see the good points of everyone else's disaster.

  When I Grow Up

  In the 1950's and early 60's we had hope. Not much for the day--the Reds were everywhere and they had the bomb--but hope for the future. Hope for 1990.

  The end of the century would be paradise. Moving sidewalks would take you everywhere around town, and if you had to go more than a mile or two, you flew. You'd go to the garage, push the nuclear-powered helicopter out into the street, unfold the props, get in, and fly anywhere you wanted.

  Come home and the place is a mess. "Rover," you shout. "Clean up the living room!" and the Robot Operated Vacuum Earth Remover comes from its closet and cleans the house.

  By the 1990s atomic energy will be harnessed for peaceful use, and as a spin-off of Project Plowshare (the digging of the new Panama Canal with atomic bombs) homeowners will be able to buy little bittie atomic bombs eight feet apart on a string to take the drudgework out of digging fenceposts. Lay down the string, duck and cover, and detonate.

  One of the most fascinating predictions was "Three-quarters of the jobs people will do in 1990 don't even exist today!" That seemed like a great reason to stay home from school--how can I learn to do a job that doesn't exist yet?-- but somehow mom never saw the logic of it.

  Some of the new jobs were pretty obvious. We'd need nuclear helicopter mechanics and Rover repairers and atomic bomb stringers, but I used to lie in bed at night and wonder what the other jobs would be. Little did I know then, but I sure know now. Here are just a few.

  Cellular Phone Antenna Curler Few people realize how important that little spiral of wire is at the base of a cellular telephone antenna. It makes the difference between a quick dialtone with clear reception and people thinking you talk on some kind of trucker's CB. Technology has not been able to produce those twists on a machine; they have to be curled by hand, usually by people who have taken at least two years of high school French.

  Face Pai
nter The professional face painter lives a wanderer's life, moving from faire to festival to celebration to jubilee, but the work season is only about six months long and the money is very good. You can spend the other six months at your place in the face painters' colony on Malibu Beach.

  Detail Specialist This is the person who digs the weeks of accumulated dirt out of the cracks in a Mercedes dashboard with a gold toothpick. The D.S. has moved up from reconditioning ashtrays, to removing caviar stains from the carpet, to true detail work. Because this job is at the top of the field, a few years of a foreign language--usually French--is a big help towards advancement.

  Owl Pellet Collector When owls kill mice, gophers, voles, insects and birds, they eat them whole. There comes a point in the meal when all that's left of the swallowed critter is indigestible--fur, beaks, bones, feathers, ligaments, little tiny fanny packs, mouse crutches--that sort of thing. The owl compresses these remains into a ball then vomits it out onto the ground.

  Owls have been doing this for ages, and people who knew about the disgusting process kept it quiet or just talked about it among themselves. But today twisted science teachers get some sort of weird thrill by having children pick apart and look at balls of--that kind of stuff. There's actually a demand for owl pellets, which means people collect them. I suppose it's a good thing, they could be doing something even worse.

  Frajitist As fast-food places have become more and more important to American hot cuisine, a hierarchy has grown and solidified. At the bottom of the heap is the counter kid breathing in the drive-up window microphone while taking your order. At the top is the frajitist, the specialist, the one who gets to cook meat that is recognizable as meat and who never, ever, has to ask if you want fries with that.

  Backwoods Consultant It isn't clear what a backwoods consultant does. He doesn't dress for felling and bucking trees, that work would ruin his suit, manicure and shoes. Yet wherever he goes, he drives his four-wheel drive, ready at any moment to take his expertise to clients in the wild, however remote and rugged the trail.

  Supervising Staff Obstructionist Years ago this was not a job by itself, it was just one of the duties of the boss's secretary: "Make sure nobody bothers me!" But in today's business world the job is much more difficult and is now even a civil service job classification. It involves designing voice mail systems to drive callers crazy (". . . and if you would like to speak to the weekend janitor please press '62' on your touch-tone phone NOW. . ." as well as scheduling every employee with a correct answer to a question for vacation, meetings, or business trips out of town. In short, it involves anything that will make the office impenetrable to customers and to the public.

  Associate Halfwit When you finally do get through to a real human being in a modern office, it's usually an Associate Halfwit (my job classification), who not only doesn't know the answer, but who will probably answer the phone, "Bonjour!" The job requires no practical training, just an M.A. in French with a minor in Esperanto.

  C'est tout. Au revoir.

  A Foreign Missionary

  The office is a side street off Freeport Blvd. There is no sign outside saying it's a doctor's office, and I had to agree not to mention the address. Even if you know the doctor's name, you can't find the number in the phone book--

  I got the phone number from a friend, which is how everyone gets the phone number. I've looked in a reverse directory that gives the name and addresses when you look up a phone number. The number is listed, but it's listed under a common name--a Jones, or Wong, or Smith. When I asked the doctor about it, he just smiled and said, "It costs more to be unlisted, than listed and lost."

  At 6:15 in the evening the receptionist scowled at me when I came in. "No more patients! No more patients at all today. Go away." She looked tired.

  "I'm not a patient," I said. "I'm here to talk to the doctor. He knows. Ask him." She called the doctor on the intercom and he came out from the back.

  "Go home Lisa," he said. "I'll lock up. Leave the rest for tomorrow." He was small and thin, maybe 130 pounds, with very dark skin, straight black hair, and even white teeth. He had only a slight Indian accent. "I am Dr. K--, please come back."

  He led me to the examination room. The smell I noticed in front got very strong. It was an odor I remember in hospitals as a kid in the '50s, before today's more stylish disinfectants. He was washing down the examination room and sterilizing instruments.

  "Please take the stool," he said, "I sit there all day." He got up on the examination table and lay back."I should not do this," he said. "I will find it hard to get up. I try to lie down only once each day--at night." But he stayed flat. "What do you wish to know?"

  I asked him, "How do you get any patients?"

  "They find me. They are the ones who fall through the cracks. They work, so cannot qualify for MediCal, and yet cannot afford health insurance. They are the store clerks, the lawn maintenance men, typists, mechanics, waitresses, cooks, taxi drivers. So many people who need healing and cannot have a doctor. I do my best for them."

  "So why all the secrecy?"

  "Because they are so many. I work many hours a day, many days each week. The ones who are to find me, find me. I am in no danger of running out of the sick and injured. I must also not be obvious if I am to continue working and continue charging so little money.”

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "I cannot afford all that the law and the medical profession requires and also provide care to these people. I have no malpractice insurance. I violate zoning ordinances. I do not file reports as required by law. My equipment is not inspected as it should be--I make my own tests to assure its safety, but cannot afford the daily costs of doing business as a doctor, so I avoid them."

  "Do you get help from other doctors?"

  "I also avoid them. My equipment was donated by a friend several years ago, I have had no contact with him since."

  "How did you end up here in Sacramento?"

  "I came here eleven years ago to learn to be a doctor, expecting to return to India and start or join a clinic."

  "What happened?"

  "That is still my intention. But India is not the only place with sickness. During my internship I found people needing healing--or they found me. Over the years I have made a small amount of money to help with the clinic when I return home. The money is safe. Should they deport me, I will have it available. But I cannot ignore the sick."

  "Wouldn't it be easier to join another doctor's practice? Couldn't you make more money, faster?"

  "I heal the people who cannot get a doctor. The point is not money, or even a clinic. To be a healer is a vocation; to be a doctor is a profession. They can mix, but with difficulty in me."

  "Wouldn't a big story in the newspaper help with donations? Wouldn't you like recognition?"

  "You worry too much about my poor clinic, about my money. None of that is necessary. The money is almost there. As for recognition, people bestow awards to give recognition to the presenter, not the receiver."

  "Okay, drop that," I said. "What happens when you have the money you need?"

  "I go. Simply, one day I will be at work, then gone. Soon. Very soon."

  "And your patients here?"

  "They will continue to live and die. There is no end to sick people; they are even in India, you know."

  "Do you do any good here?" "I think so. I can heal some, ease others' worries, prescribe the least expensive drugs, and if the treatment is beyond my abilities or their purse, refer them to MediCal as hardship patients. I am a doctor, so my patients honor my judgment more than their fears."

  "Everything is on a cash basis?"

  "Necessarily. I cannot bill. People pay as they leave, cash or a check."

  "What if a patient pays with a bad check?"

  "That has happened. Oddly, when those people call again, we have never found a vacant appointment time. We are all booked up with patients who pay."

  Dr. K
-- sat up with a groan. "A mistake to lie down. You must go now. This is foolish, and I have work to do. An office consultation is $7, leave the money on the desk on your way out. Lock the doorknob please."

  Fighting For Justice

  I was in Miss Fox's third grade class with Marvin and David. They were both my friends, and both a little odd.

  Marvin was the only little kid I ever met with body odor. He always seemed to be bursting out of his clothes, straining the seams with his body. He was short (but still a few inches taller than me) and burly, the strongest person I knew.

  Marvin could hit things with a rock at twice the distance I could. He was always coming up with sad ideas like, "Let's go throw rocks at the cat by the sewer pipes."

  Walking with Marvin was astonishing. He loved lifting things, shoving things, raising a boulder over his head and smashing it against another to see which one would break. Uprooting shrubs with his bare hands. He liked to fight, but quickly ran out of challengers.

  I was small, weak, and inaccurate with my rocks. I never got any joy out of playing King of the Hill, because I never won. But I didn't envy Marvin's power; it must be a terrible temptation to have so much power--you have to want to use it.

  David was Marvin's opposite. Tall and thin, he had pale white skin and black hair and eyes. He talked carefully and quietly and walked slowly.

  David's misfortune was that he was smart. He learned things immediately, and was interested in every small detail of schoolwork. Each new topic in every subject excited him and he mastered it while the rest of us were still trying to figure out why Miss Fox was teaching us this stuff and if it was going to be on the test.

  David also quickly ran out of competitors, and in his way was as embarrassing as Marvin to be around. David shoved facts around, he raised up ideas and threw them against one another to see which ones broke apart. He was always confusing teachers with his questions and boring and delaying our class with questions no one else understood.