The Best of Me(62)

Think Differenter



Of the many expressions we Americans tend to overuse, I think the most irritating is “Blind people are human too.” They are, I guess, but saying so makes you sound preachy and involved, like all your best friends are blind—which they’re probably not. I, personally, don’t know any blind people, though the guy I used to buy my newspapers from had pretty bad cataracts. His left eye had a patch over it, and the right one reminded me of the sky in a werewolf movie, this pale blue moon obscured by drifting clouds. Still, though, he could see well enough to spot a Canadian quarter. “Oh no you don’t,” he said to me the last time I bought something. Then he actually grabbed my hand!

I pulled it back. “Well, excuusssse me.” Then I said, “I think it’s a-boat time I take my business elsewhere.” Normally I say “about,” but I wanted him to think I was Canadian, which could have been true if I was born a couple hundred miles to the north. The son of a bitch half-blind person. I’m through defending the likes of him.

Number two on my irritating expression list is “I’ll never forget the time…” People say this to me, and I think, Yawn. Am I ever in for a boring story. Take this Fourth of July party, the one thrown every year at the apartment complex I live at. I went last summer, and it was me, this guy Teddy from two doors down, and a woman from the ground floor all standing around the pool. The fireworks had ended, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Teddy looks down into the water. “I’ll never forget the time my five-year-old daughter drowned,” he told us, all mournful, as if it happened that week and not an entire year ago.

The woman from the ground floor put her hand on his shoulder. “Oh my God,” she said. “That is the saddest thing I ever heard in my life.”

I, meanwhile, was standing there thinking that you should never say never, especially in regard to what you’ll remember. People get older, and you’d be surprised by what they forget. Like, for example, a few weeks back I called my mother to wish her a happy birthday, her eightieth. “I bet you wish that Dad was still alive,” I said. “That way the two of you could celebrate together.”

“But he is still alive,” she told me.

“He is?”

“Well, of course,” she said. “Who do you think answered the phone?”

Here I am, just turned fifty, and I forgot that my father isn’t dead yet! In my defense, though, he’s pretty close to it. Healthy enough for the moment, but he doesn’t do any of the stuff he used to do, like give me money or teach me to ride bikes.

There are things you forget naturally—computer passwords, your father’s continuing relationship with life—and then there are things you can’t forget but wish you could. Once, for instance, when I was in the third grade, I saw our dog Pepper chew the head off a baby rabbit. I mean right off too, the way I’d pop the lid from an aspirin bottle. That, I can recall just like it was yesterday, while my first child being born—total blank. I know I was in the delivery room. I even remember what I was listening to on my Walkman, but as for the actual kid coming out—nothing. I can’t even tell you if it was a boy or a girl, but that’s natural for a first marriage.

The Walkman, though, I’ll never forget its weight and the way it fit into my jacket pocket. Now, of course, it would be like carrying around a brick, but at the time it was hard to imagine anything more modern. When the first iPod came out, I recall thinking that it would never last. Isn’t that funny? It’s what old kooks thought when the car was invented, only now the kook was me! I held on to my Walkman until the iPod shuffle was introduced, at which point I caved in and bought one.

I got remarried as well, but it only lasted until the iPod nano, which the child from that marriage—a boy, I’m pretty sure—threw into the toilet along with my wallet and my car keys. Instead of fishing it all out and getting my hands dirty, I left that wife and kid and moved to where I live now, the apartment complex I mentioned earlier. I thought of replacing my nano, but instead I waited awhile and got an iPhone, which I specifically use not to call either of my ex-wives or the children they tricked me into having. It’s a strain on the eyes, but I also read the paper on it, so take that, newsagent—I’m the half-blind one now, and you’re out of a job!

The iPhone 2 led to the 3, but I didn’t get the 4 or 5 because I’m holding out for the 7, which, I’ve heard on good authority, can also be used as a Taser. This will mean I’ll have just one less thing to carry around. And isn’t that technology’s job? To lighten our burden? To broaden our horizons? To make it possible to talk to your attorney and listen to a Styx album and check the obituaries in the town where your parents continue to live and videotape a race riot and send a text message and stun someone into submission all at the same time?

Doing it all while driving is illegal where I live, so I’m moving to a place where freedom still means something. I’m not telling you where it is, because I want it to remain unspoiled. I’ll just say it’s one of the few states left where the mentally ill can legally own firearms. They used to be limited to muskets, but now they can carry or conceal everything a normal person can. If you don’t think a mental patient has the right to bring a sawed-off shotgun to the church where his ex-girlfriend is getting married, you’re part of the problem. The truth is that crazy people—who are really just regular people but more misunderstood—have as much of a right to protect themselves as we do.