I peered down the long, carpeted aisle to the altar. I couldn’t erase an image of me sprawled out a couple of feet from where I was now standing, face down, eyeglasses mangled, hosts scattered on the nice rug, having been undone by the preternaturally sticky soles of my shoes. My reverie, or nightmare in this case, was pierced by the sudden bark of my drill instructor, who had tiptoed behind me until her mouth and my ear were only inches apart.
I think she said, “Don’t screw it up.” People who work in churches don’t say things like that, do they? Unsettled to begin with, I jumped, yelped, and suffered an involuntary episode of flatulence, all at the same time. That was the first (and only) time I saw the church lady smile. My sudden movement caused several of the hosts to fly into the air, but I managed to catch all of them in the saucer with the skill of a pizza maker catching the tossed dough of a new pie being made.
Regaining my composure, I prepared myself for the long walk ahead, already feeling discomforted by the scrutiny of 500 eyeballs on me. It wasn’t until now that I took a good measure of the priest. His head was bobbing. Was he doddering, or was he practicing the upcoming bow? I didn’t recognize his bow; it was not in my repertoire. Could I learn it during the walk to the altar? To give me more time, I could ratchet down the pace of my walk to a shuffle, despite what the battle-ax in the back of the church had instructed.
Forty-eight minutes after taking my first step down the aisle, I arrived at the altar. I had learned nothing on the way down. The priest was as inscrutable as ever. Before I had a chance to hand the saucer to the him, he bows. Not a dodder, but a bow. Wait a second, the shrew told me the bowing comes after delivering the hosts. What should I do? Because the bow came unexpectedly, I didn’t notice the type of bow it was. So I performed an Eshaku, a polite bow.
And the priest bowed once more. Why would he bow again? He must be telling me that I didn’t demonstrate a proper level of deference, so I performed a lower, more respectful bow, a Senrei. But the priest bowed again. So, I bowed lower. This kept going a few dozen more times until I had gone through my entire arsenal of bows. I was now doing uber-Dogezas. I couldn’t bow any lower without ripping up the floorboards and lowering my head into the crypt beneath the church.
This would have gone on forever, and my niece would have never gotten married, were it not for the alert altar boy who seized the saucer of hosts from me and handed it to the priest. With that, I was free to return my seat, which I did at a forty-five-degree angle.
• • •
SECTION 3
WHEN THE GOING GETS WEIRD, THE WEIRD TURN PRO
(WITH THANKS TO HUNTER THOMPSON)
The world has gone nutty. Needing perspective and logic to make sense out of current events, I dove into the Confessions of St Augustine. Failing to find answers there, I pored over the works of Kant and John Stuart Mill. Those, too, left me wanting. But I persevered, expanded my search, and the fog finally lifted. The world became a less inscrutable place when I discovered the philosophy of Inspector Clouseau.
THE WAITING ROOM
My wife, Diane, didn’t have much time to spare that day. She agreed to accompany me on an errand if we could get it done reasonably quickly. Every day is a full day for Diane, who abhors inefficiency and poor service, hates to waste time, and has the energy to make sure she doesn’t. My mission this day was to secure approval to connect my company’s newly installed solar panel energy system to Puerto Rico’s electricity grid. This required the signature of the manager of the Utuado (a small town in Puerto Rico) office of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). Unsure of its precise location but quite sure that I lacked the Spanish language skills to accomplish my task, I beseeched my wife, who has a keen sense of direction and is a native Spanish speaker, for help.
Rarely, in today’s hyper-connected world of the internet, cloud computing, and mobile phone apps for just about everything, does one find a relic of years past, but we found one in Utuado. It was as if, a generation ago, this office fell into some Jurassic Park–type amber, emerging only recently, protected from any technological contamination since its entombment.
The first thing I noticed when entering this office, apart from the linoleum, the best-selling floor covering in the fifties, blighted with scuff marks from the shoes of that era, was the color gray—not a sleek, silver-gray, but a desolate, Mount St. Helens–after-the-eruption, volcanic-ash gray. Everything was gray: walls, ceiling, window frames, adding machines, steel desks and chairs—even the ashtrays, no longer used, but not yet discarded. The door had barely closed behind us when I noticed that Diane, after quickly sizing up the place, was becoming impatient, and she had developed a twitch that I had never before noticed.
The office was divided by a corridor bordered by floor-to-ceiling glass partitions that connected the front door to a fortified steel door about one hundred feet away. On the door, a large sign announced, in bold letters, “Authorized Personnel Only.” It was printed in both English and Spanish to avoid any confusion. Los Alamos National Laboratory may have had fewer warnings. Something very important and secretive must have been taking place behind that door by some very important people. To the right of the corridor, straining to see through the glass made nearly opaque by age and lack of maintenance, I saw a large open area with five customer service windows in the rear, where two employees attended to a sinuous line of dozens of people waiting to pay their electricity bills. Most looked like farmers, the giveaway being the live roosters and hens in line with them, presumably to be used as barter for electricity. Direct debit was as alien to these folks as air travel was to cavemen. To the left of the corridor, another large room held about fifty metal chairs to accommodate the seventy-five to eighty people who were there with issues concerning their electricity account.
These customers were being underserved by the six customer service windows at the back of the room because there were employees behind only two of them. A flu bug going around Utuado? A handwritten sign taped to the glass divider identified this room as the “Waiting Room,” a name which implied far more activity than seemed to be taking place and insulted the dynamism of waiting rooms everywhere. So torpid was this environment that local people have reported sightings of bears bringing their cubs there to prepare them for hibernation. After explaining our needs at the information desk, my wife and I were directed to the Waiting Room and instructed to take a number.
Diane’s twitches became more pronounced.
Surveying the room, I noticed how docile, almost beaten down, everyone seemed, content to surrender huge chunks of their productive time to PREPA’s ineptitude. I made some small talk with the fellow next to me, a middle-aged man, cleanshaven when he arrived, now with a Methuselean beard and working on his 584th Sudoku puzzle. He was unable to tell me how long he had been waiting. I inquired about the two people in the corner who appeared to be sleeping and was told they had died quietly earlier in the week. Wisely, I decided not to share this information with Diane, who was chatting irritably to a woman knitting a scarf now long enough to cover the necks of everyone in the room. We never looked directly at the people we were talking to, our gazes fixated on the two customer service windows for any perceptible evidence of progress. There was none. Then, I noticed chairs on both sides of the window, a nice customer service touch, although La-Z-Boys or convertible ottomans with bedding would have been more appropriate.
After listening with disinterest to the customer at the window, the employee on the other side would disappear for thirty minutes at a time, presumably to consult with the scientists who must have been behind the Authorized Personnel Only door. This happened just twice before Diane sprinted to the vacated window, yelling for the customer rep to return and demanding attention to our specific situation—the signature of the Head Scientist office manager.
Cutting into the line like this probably had never happened in the Waiting Room, even in the pre-amber days. I worried that our eighty roommates might rise from their lobotomize
d stupor in some real-life version of the Living Dead, and, I don’t know, maybe eat us for jumping the queue. Miraculously, not only were we not consumed, but we were told to wait by the Authorized Personnel Only door, where a man appeared to tell us that the Grand Poobah office manager was at lunch (it was 11:00 a.m.) and that we should return at 2:30 p.m. Diane’s twitches increased markedly, accompanied by wisps of smoke out of both ears. I suggested that we have lunch ourselves, wisely bundling her out of the building before she attempted to unscrew the hinges off the Authorized Personnel Only door and before the zombies started to chase us.
Diane’s day was now shot, and I was the proximate cause. Our upcoming three-and-a-half-hour lunch together promised to be indigestible, at least for me. Attempting to soften the situation, I struggled to find an upscale restaurant in Utuado, but I found nothing more haute than a cafeteria that might do its best imitation of a Michelin star if only the owners knew what one was. I needed every minute of the three-plus hours to get Diane back on an even keel.
We returned to the elephant graveyard, opened the front door, and then dropped to our stomachs to slither through the corridor to avoid detection by the denizens of the Waiting Room. Arriving at the door marked Authorized Personnel Only, we stood and wiped off the grime on the front of our shirts and pants, to no avail, and knocked expectantly. The Grand Marshall office manager had not yet returned from lunch, came the reply. This posed a problem because we did not dare return to the Waiting Room, so we waited in line with the chickens in the bill-paying area.
About thirty minutes later, a functionary summoned us into the inner sanctum, where we discovered that Utuado was unaffected by the flu, with most of the town’s population congregated—on the payroll, but not at work—behind the imposing door. What we saw inside was less imposing—dozens of steel desks and chairs, gray of course, people milling and talking to each other, the rotary telephones dead, the adding machines silent. The secret being kept here, better than Los Alamos kept its secret, was not that something important was taking place, but that nothing important was taking place. Finally, we were ushered into see the Lord High Priest of Everything office manager, a short, portly man by the name of Jose, who was having trouble breathing and speaking after four hours of dining.
Diane was anxious, irritated, and ready to pounce, but I counseled deference to this man who was managing such a large office, single-handedly responsible for its tempo. I kept the chloroform I brought ready for use should that become necessary.
Torpor of the kind afflicting Jose has its advantages. Uninterested, but mostly unable, to read the fine print, he quickly signed everything I put before him. By now, a commotion was developing outside the office. The zombies from the Waiting Room, resenting our preferential treatment, found out where we were and threw their bodies against the Authorized Personnel Only door.
Diane and I snuck out the back, leaving Jose, a potentially tasty treat, to confront the devouring herd.
• • •
SCHOOL DAZE
Elementary school is a dangerous place. Only now do I realize the toll these early school years have taken on my physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. It didn’t have to be that way, had my school put in place the proper safeguards many learning institutions do today. Because of my school’s negligence, I now suffer from migraine headaches, I have difficulty sleeping through the night, and I tremble violently whenever I relive the frightful experiences of the past.
This unfortunate breakdown in my health has left me with no choice but to sue my elementary school, The Academy of Most Solemn and Holy Angels and Archangels in Heaven and a Few on Earth, for the irreparable emotional and psychological damages I am now suffering. I have assembled an expert, experienced legal team for this effort, and they must be top flight to deal with one especially inconvenient obstacle: my elementary school no longer exists, having closed its doors thirty years ago.
My psychiatrist says that it is therapeutic for me to confront the newly discovered horrors that preyed on me as a youth. Every day, it seems, I recall new examples of my school’s negligence, increasing both my mental anguish and the frequency of my visits to the psychiatrist. Writing about them, as I do in this essay, not only helps me but, hopefully, countless others who suffer in silence, unable to make sense of the trauma that they are dealing with, and who perhaps might be willing to join me in a class action.
My legal complaint follows:
School in British Columbia bans holding hands; principal says it could put child at risk of injury.
In second and third grades, I was bewildered when my classmate, Bubba, who was much bigger than I, insisted on holding my hand. Then, it seemed inappropriate and unnatural, particularly when the other boys (and even some of the girls) taunted me. Now, I realize, thanks to the British Columbia school principal, the discomfort I felt was due to my fear of injury.
School in Washington bans swings; principal says they are the most unsafe of all playground equipment.
I can vouch for this. At my school, I spent a lot of time hanging around the swings, the centerpiece of our playground area. And so did young Maria Angelucci, who had a crush on me. One morning, our conversation was interrupted by Bubba demanding to hold my hand, prompting Maria to angrily push the swing at him. Bubba sidestepped the hurtling object, but I didn’t. I received it with my head. No blood, but some dizziness that afternoon caused me to do poorly on a quiz, which depressed my grade point average, eliminated my chances of attending a top-tier university, and capped the potential of my future earnings stream.
School bans Wonder Woman lunchbox; principal deplores Wonder Woman as a person who solves problems using violence.
As I recall, Maria brought a similar lunch box to school, which undoubtedly accounts for her violent reaction to Bubba’s interference. Had she been banned from bringing that lunchbox to school, she would not have tossed the swing at Bubba, saving my head from injury and allowing me to take that afternoon’s quiz without dizziness, score a good grade, and ultimately prevent any loss of future earnings.
School in London bans “best friends”; headmaster says it could leave others feeling ostracized and hurt.
I sure could have used this fellow’s enlightened thinking when Bubba declared me his best friend. I am unsure whether my classmates felt ostracized and hurt as much as they felt fear, but Bubba’s actions were clearly putting a crimp on my social development.
School in Nebraska bans use of terms “boys” and “girls”; principal says important to celebrate gender diversity of all students.
With Maria wishing to hug me (now banned in many schools) at every opportunity, and Bubba lurking around every corner waiting to force me into holding his hand, I was having some difficulty understanding the meaning of the terms “boys” and “girls,” not to mention the whole concept of gender.
School in New York bans backpacks; principal says can be used to conceal drugs, alcohol, and firearms.
Unfortunately, this is the only safeguard that elementary school had adopted, and it prevented me from bringing in the pepper spray I intended to use on Bubba the next time he grabbed my hand.
School in California bans wearing of American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo but allows Mexican students to wear Mexican flag t-shirts; principal says did not want to offend “Mexican” students on “their day.”
Every day, when I was in school, we sang the American national anthem and recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the US flag, even on the Italian Feast of San Gennaro. Rocco, Giuseppe, and I were never allowed to have “our day” to celebrate Italian customs, traditions, and great leaders like Dean Martin and Rocky Balboa. The three of us thought about hosting a culinary event for the class—spaghetti and meatballs—but we could never agree on whether the pasta should be cooked al dente or alla gomma.
School in Oregon bans peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; principal says they are a subtle form of racism and ties the sandwich to white privilege. Must be sensitive to �
�Somali or Hispanic students who might not eat sandwiches. Maybe they eat torta or pita.”
What about the sensitivities of the Italians? All of this talk of PB&Js made Rocco, Giuseppe, and me feel ashamed of being seen in the lunchroom, huddled in a corner, eating a meatball hero (not sandwich), a block of provolone, and a few garlic breadsticks, which we washed down with three to four ounces of chilled Chianti. Anyone, white or otherwise, who regards a PB&J sandwich as a privilege over a meatball hero hasn’t tasted my mother’s cooking.
Not far from us were the Mexican students, sporting their Cinco de Mayo t-shirts, similarly ostracized as we were, lunching on pulled pork tamales with corn salsa and a side of guacamole picante.
School in Virginia bans packed lunches; principal says school lunches are healthier than lunch brought from home.
When I was in third grade, the meatball heroes stopped. There was a huge crackdown on the Mafia that year, and in an odd coincidence, my uncle Sal, who was supporting our family financially, seemed to have lost his job. From that point on, my mother weakened me with a steady diet of liverwurst, olive loaf, spam, and baloney stacked limply on two pieces of the whitest of breads. Even today, we are not quite sure of the long-term effects of prolonged consumption of liverwurst and other processed “meats.” But I am certain that had my school prohibited packed lunches, then I wouldn’t be suffering from chronic intestinal flatulence since my teenage years.
School in Massachusetts bans Valentine’s Day; principal says school has students of many nationalities and cultures; therefore, we shouldn’t honor specific holidays.
Valentine’s Day deprived me of that time of innocence when little boys admired the curls of little girls. In my elementary school, everyone brought Valentine cards and candy to school. No matter how many strings I tied on my fingers, I could never remember this date. So, when Maria, with a full heart, gave me her creative and painstakingly prepared card, and I delivered nothing, I encountered, well before my time, the scorn of a jilted female. This scenario played out annually from first grade to eighth grade, doing untold damage to my ability to secure and maintain female relationships in later life.
Adding a Little Levity Page 9