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My two minutes of dubious fame
I was lying in bed this morning here at the Institution, wide awake and wondering as usual when the heck an aide would come in and get me up. From long experience, I knew that this was a very hit-and-miss thing: even when the regular aide would come early, she might be off today and her substitute might have no scruples about coming later. (Indeed, there was such a substitute today -- we knew her as Big Bertha -- and she had already told me that she would need to feed a couple of people before she came to get me up.)
So I lay there on the bed and seethed for a spell -- until I remembered a math problem I hadn't been able to solve: "Find the value of: ?(5 + 2?6) - ?(5 - 2?6)."
I racked my brain long and hard on this problem -- but still couldn't solve it. How frustrating! In fact, how absolutely infuriating! I began to seethe anew...
But suddenly two nurses entered my room. They were all excited, exclaiming, "Oh my goodness, you have to get up! This is your big day -- NBC news is coming this morning to interview you!"
At first I had no idea what they were talking about. And then I remembered: it all had to do with Sister Bridget and my book.
Sister Bridget is the resident nun here at the Institution. She watches over the general mental and spiritual well-being of the residents. She is the one who writes a new "Think Positive Pause" each week and then posts them in the elevators for everyone to read. (This week's offering: "If you want life's best, then give life your best!" I would sometimes parody these pronouncements; but at their best I had a lot of respect for them.) She is the author of several books whose common theme seems to be highlighting various people from around the world who have demonstrated remarkable courage under extremely adverse circumstances. When she found out that I would soon be coming out with my own book, she proposed a joint book party in the form of an ice cream social.
I wondered whether she was fully aware of the contents of my own book, which could not have been more different from her own. For I begin with the mini-disasters in my own life and then exaggerate them for comic effect. But when I half-seriously asked her whether she really wanted to associate herself with me and my work, she replied breezily, "Oh but of course -- it'll be great, 'The Professor and the Nun'!"
So I was to be interviewed by NBC news. You would expect that I wouldn't be impressed by all this sort of hoopla, since I don't watch TV at all, being disgusted by the sorts of idiocy that it fosters. But the fact is, I have been a part of American Culture for two thirds of a century now; and if there's one thing that members of that Culture have in common, it is the secret or not-so-secret desire to be thrust into the gluttonous maw of the ravenously insatiable search mechanism for the next New Face -- said Discovery to have its fifteen (though often it's more like two) minutes of Fame, thence to be unceremoniously dropped back into the obscurity from whence it came.
But I was different, wasn't I? Couldn't I resist the siren call when they were showing up that morning to interview me? Of course not! I salivated and hopped to it just like the next guy. Did I want that brief fleeting bit of fame, even while I understood perhaps better than most the nature of the Beast? You bet!
Big Bertha had returned and she was even more excited than the two nurses had been. I had to be gotten up all spiffy clean and wearing my best outfit! Unfortunately, Bertha's notion of "spiffy clean" included scrubbing my face as hard as she could using a rough washrag, thereby guaranteeing that my face would be red and raw and blotchy under the klieg lights. As for my "best outfit", she managed to find a knitted long sleeve shirt that was by far the most blasé and ugly one that I owned. As for the pants, she sternly proscribed my beloved blue jeans in favor of a pair of banal khakis. The finishing touch was applied when she rearranged my hair with a sopping wet brush, pushing it back so that I looked like the Godfather.
She even managed to get me up on the wrong side of the bed -- literally. To the right of my bed, my computer table juts out, and my assembly of microphones (arranged carefully in the exact orientation I require) comes out even further. So it is a delicate area, and as a result no one has ever even tried to lift me out onto my wheelchair on that side -- until today that is. Bertha would hear none of my protests about disturbing my computer ("there's always a first time for everything!") -- even as she nonchalantly and unthinkingly pushed my microphones back against the computer screen.
Big Bertha then fed me my breakfast. Today they had given me oatmeal. Now ever since I was in the hospital, I have had to pay a lot more attention to what I eat and how I eat it: I need to chew everything up completely and swallow it extra carefully. So with the oatmeal, I literally need to masticate every single solitary oat. Bertha, however, belongs to the "shovel-it-in-as-fast-as-you-can" school of feeding, even going so far as to press the overflowing spoon against my lips and teeth even while I am still chewing the last bite. This irked me, and finally I exclaimed in exasperation: "You are trying to make me eat faster, thus running the risk that I will aspirate my food and contract pneumonia and probably die, just so that you can get to your circular five minutes sooner and clip a coupon which saves you 15˘ on a box of Tampax?!"
And in that frame of mind and in that (dis)guise (looking as if I were going to my first birthday party), I was sent down to face my interlocutors.
When I got off the elevator on the ground floor, Sister Bridget was standing right there with a young African-American woman who was holding a video camera. Bridget introduced me as "the only person outside my family who has my permission to call me 'Duchess'."
The camera woman asked me about my book, and I gave her the spiel that I had rehearsed in my head during my morning of frustration. Actually, it was the comic stuff I've been using for years now. For example, my motto is always good for a laugh even if someone had heard it before. And I have long been entertaining people with stories of my botched interviews and bizarre disciplinary situations in school. So my reply to the question about my book had been well-rehearsed -- unlike this camerawoman's inner ruminations, which I attach here with some reluctance:
"Well, it's a collection of humorous writings called 'Amusings'."
(Oh dear, not another cutesy title for a book! There's just a little bit too much whimsicality about book titles these days. Why not just call it "Laughs"? As for the subject, do we really need yet another book proving to us that people confined to wheelchairs have a sense of humor?)
"My family actually published it themselves. I did all the writing, but they and a friend did the editing and design. I think it turned out very well."
(There it is, how could I not have guessed? A family endeavor -- it warms the cockles of my heart! How enterprising, how resourceful, how -- amateur. For let's call a spade a spade: this was published by a vanity press.)
"It consists of mini disasters in my life which I have exaggerated for comic effect."
(So there you are, the comic fool. I suggest you change the title of your book to "Goofaus" -- pun intended.)
"It's in line with my motto: 'The situation is hopeless-but-not-serious.'"
(I get it: it's an inversion of the common mundane phrase, "The situation is serious-but-not-hopeless." Hmm -- that's not bad, not bad at all: it's witty and clever and devil-may-care. In fact, it seems to be a little too good for our friend here to have made it up all by himself. I wonder where he got it? Probably from a movie title -- I'll check in Leonard Maltin when I get home.)
"Have you ever had an interview which you failed because you said the wrong thing?"
(Oh no, not another situation in which the interviewee attempts to interview the interviewer! If these people only knew how annoying, bothersome, obnoxious it is to us, as well as how pervasive and commonplace the practice is, maybe they would stop doing it!)
She replied (I was glad that she was a good sport and so didn't mind being interviewed herself) that she probably had had one of those.
"Well I have had about eighteen such failed interviews, and most of them are in the book!"
(He can consider this his nineteenth! I'll never forgive him, wheelchair or not, for getting me to admit to that embarrassing and humiliating event in my life. And the bizarre fact that he has flunked eighteen interviews seems to show not only that he wants me to envy him for that silly feat, but as well the obvious fact that he has never been able to learn from his mistakes. That is not funny, it's pathetic! In fact, because of the excessive negative narcissism, I now think his book should be called "Self-Abusings".)
"In my book I also describe bizarre disciplinary situations when I was teaching (or trying to.) The most luminous example was when a large ball of paper was set on fire in my classroom; and when I asked who had done it, everyone in the class yelled 'I did!'"
(Egads, this is beginning to get out of hand! If I let him go on, he might start offering lurid tales of human sacrifice taking place in his classroom! Best to nip this in the bud right now!)
And at this point she politely thanked me for the interview and (rather hastily, I thought) moved on to someone else. As far as I know, she had had absolutely no interest in what I was wearing or in my appearance in general. As for my voice, I had not been aware of it for the entire interview. This must mean that it must have been strong and articulate; for I usually speak in something approaching a hoarse whisper and worry about being understood. (Is show business the field I should have chosen for my career?)
I should confess a couple of things about the above "interview", which was in reality a monologue. First of all, I found myself wondering how well "mini disasters in my life exaggerated for comic effect" might be playing with this young woman who was clearly on her way to having a great career with a major television network because of her absolute competence. Did she harbor a subconscious maternal suspicion that my string of failures was not so much funny as sad, and that I was not so much a comedian as I was a revealer of hard personal facts, not so much playful as thought-provoking? If that is true, then no doubt she would harbor a great deal of sympathy for me. And it would call into question the whole theme of a book which was named "Amusings": more aptly it should have been called "Musings". Indeed, there is probably a very thin line between self-deprecating humor and confession.
The second thing she was probably thinking was the irony, in this day and age, of holding a media event because someone was publishing a book they had written. "How Gutenbergian!" she must have been thinking. But now with a twist: in the old days (that is, before ten years ago), a budding writer had to either publish his book with a bona fide book publisher (a difficult thing to do); or they had to hire what was called "a vanity press" to "publish" the book in a very amateurish-looking production. That was Then. Nowadays, anyone with a computer and very good editing skills can hire, for $600 or so (as we did), a company to publish their work; and the result is, depending on the editing, professional-looking. (I was lucky with my editors. For example, our daughter is a professional web designer.)
Another irony related to printed books is the relatively rapid decline of the printed newspaper. Did I detect the slightest hint of a smile on the face of my questioner when, as she wielded her video camera, I spoke about something in the print media (which reminds her of the Age of the Dinosaurs!)? After all, although network television is not doing all that well, it is a far cry from the condition of the printed newspapers, which measure their continued existence from week to week. So this young woman could at least take consolation in the fact that, relatively speaking, she was in the right profession.
A further irony is this: thanks to my daughter, I have my own website on which I have "published" all of my writings. Anyone in the world can read them free of charge simply by accessing them on the website. So why on earth would I want to pay to publish a book of mine which only contains a fraction of my writings found on the web? I'll tell you why: nostalgia -- a yearning for the good old days when, in order to read something, we picked it up and held it in our hands. It was, so to speak, concrete. (Here's a meta-irony: I can no longer use my hands; so I can't pick up my own book and peruse it.)
But perhaps I am seeing too much irony in all this. For, after all, don't the two versions of the book -- electronic and print -- complement one another? Sure, the website is accessible on a computer anywhere; but there are few things as comforting as the sight of a book you're enjoying reading, sitting on the night table beside your bed!
Anyway, that was about it -- the Big Interview that every one had been hyping all morning, done in less than two minutes. It did not escape me that there was no reporter on hand to do the interview, or director to try different shots and formats. Heck, there weren't even any klieg lights! I began to get paranoid and suspect that my little segment might be a miniscule part (if indeed it is used at all) of a much larger program (which itself will probably be cut down to two minutes or so) having to do with the Institution in general. I felt my ego draining away...
I was not far wrong. During the day I saw interviews with a multitude of other residents on a variety of topics -- and they hadn't even written any books. Often the figure of Sister Bridget would be hovering over these encounters, just as she had hovered over mine; but more often than not she was one of the actual people being interviewed.
And then, near dinnertime, I was sitting in the Garden Room with a few others when a news trio came in and set up bright lights (the ones that should've been mine!) in preparation to film the beginning pitch for the whole program. A young well-dressed man who looked like Mitt Romney must have looked thirty years ago, and who was probably just as disingenuous ("I hope I don't screw up!" -- said Mr. Perfect) did a few takes of his opening spiel.
"Three, two, one..." This last word was a signal for a pre-chosen resident to drive his wheelchair in the background over to the elevator, thereby showing that at least some of us can move about all by ourselves; the rest of us in the Garden Room there were apparently just functioning as static window dressing. (I noted sadly to myself: "How far I have fallen!"]
"At this Institution, all the residents have lost a good part of their physical abilities," he began. "But, as Sister Bridget will show us, most of them have not lost their mental abilities or their spiritual striving." (The young MC had not nailed down whether or not to use his hands to gesticulate meaning: he used them in about half the takes.)
Well -- it was Sister Bridget after all! She was the glue holding all of the multitudinous strands relating to the various residents together; and there was no other glue like her at the Institution. Indeed, she was playing the medium of TV -- that most pernicious of media -- like the conductor of a virtuoso orchestra. But she was doing it for a good and selfless cause: to advertise to the world the acts of heroism large and small of the residents in this institution. And of course I am a part of that -- not any better, just more visible than many.
And if by necessity Sister Bridget becomes the central focus of all the media attentions today, I would call that the final irony; for she may be the only person here who does not desire the limelight for her own sake. (Although, I must confess, I briefly harbored the sneaking heretical suspicion that "Duchess" had succumbed to the Media Monster herself and bought into the notion of Instant Fame. But I quickly realized how absurd that was: quite simply, it was utterly contrary to her whole being, to the ethic on which she has built her life's work.)
As for the poor attention-craving saps like myself, I have only this to offer as consolation:
"Vanity, Vanity, All is Vanity."
(6 July 2009)
PS: I did manage to solve the math problem in bed that night. (The answer is: 2?2.) As for the frivolous assumption on the part of the woman wielding the video camera that I must have lifted my motto from the words of a movie title, she is at least half right: a movie by that title actually exists. But I only became aware of it long after I had adopted my motto.
The two-minute program on Sister Bridget, called "Making a Difference", aired on NBC a couple of weeks later. There was one two-second camera shot of me which only showed my face in profile; that was it for me. Did that cure me of my insatiable vanity? Hardly! I simply began telling acquaintances, with all the casualness I could muster: "Did you know that NBC did a profile on me recently?"
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