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THESE BATTERIES ARE NOT FOR YOUR WALKMAN
Nov. 7th, 2010 08:54 pmSomeone posted an amusing video on metafilter (my favorite communitarian aggregator of nifty things and insightful, engaged commentary) that addresses the particular affection that the dads of the world have for changes in Daylight-Saving Time, among the other familiar neurotic tics of fatherhood.
As it happens, my dad's dead, so I won't get any notice on this, or any new notes pinned to his Chromega dichroic photographic enlarger explaining to use THIS knob to make adjustments and not THAT knob, which WILL BREAK THE MACHINE! I won't find a yellow sticky note inside the battery case of every portable piece of equipment he owned, warning that THESE BATTERIES ARE NOT FOR YOUR WALKMAN, and I won't find additional handwritten annotations in the rumpled pages of the manual for his '72 Triumph Daytona 500 that announce that he MOVED TURN SIGNAL SWITCH TO OPPOSITE HANDLEBAR TO PREVENT SKINNED KNUCKLES, and I won't find any updates to the two page set of instructions at my swiftly tilting cabin in West Virginia that warn THE PLUMBING MUST BE DRAINED EXACTLY PER THESE INSTRUCTIONS OR PIPES WILL FREEZE!
Life moves on, and you get your warnings elsewhere.
In my capacity of the caretaker and manager of the only giant freestanding novelty clock tower advertising a tranquilizer-laden granular stomach remedy in the world, the city of Baltimore will be my dad.
"Hey there, I just drove by the Bromo tower and the clock didn't fall back."
Sigh.
"Press 7 to delete this message or 9 to save."
7
"I just wanted to let you guys know the clock's still on the old time."
7
"Are you going to set the clock to the right time today?
7
"Hi there, sir, I would like to report that the clock is showing the wrong time."
7
It's not that I'm not glad to have the attention. It's just that a bearing went out in the main gen-set that runs the elevator last night around 5:21 or so and I'm going to have to drive 25 miles to the city, find somewhere to park, climb seventeen stories of stairs, shut the clock down, sit for an hour in the clock room, restart the clock, then climb down seventeen stories of stairs. It's been a long, long week, and I may yet try to see how much trouble I'd get into if I just left it until Monday morning.
My surrogate dads will let me know, so I'm on the knife edge of decision. I do have responsibilities now, you see, and I seem to be on a career path of escalating public awareness of my efficacy on the job. As the facility manager at the American Visionary Art Museum, I had constant problems with the large neon sign spelling out M-U-S-E-U-M on the northeastern point of the building, which would sort of randomly rearrange itself with every hard rainstorm.
"Joe, I left a copy of the City Paper in your mailbox," our illustrious founder's message breathlessly explained. I pocketed my cellphone and went for my mail slot, where the paper, marked with a note, clearly had my troublesome sign in the Whose Responible? photo column for the week, though it was an old photo, as I'd fixed the problem some time earlier. I explained this, hoping to soothe the panic, but it takes a while, sometimes. Besides, isn't it just a little screwed up that when I get behind on my work, it ends up IN THE GODDAMN NEWSPAPER?
It's okay. I like what I do. I've just got a lot of dads looking over my shoulder now.
My own father wouldn't have submitted to the indignity of participating in a video making fun of his rhythm. He happened to have good rhythm, and a grasp of a well turned-out song, with one of the few pieces in his regular repertoire as an amateur pianist being the beloved "Memories of You" by Eubie Blake which he'd play as a sort of a nervous tic, or a strain relief, perhaps, upon finding himself in a quiet moment in front of our old Chickering grand. He'd let the notes run, just following through with whims and flourishes and little explorations of the minor moments of the piece, the way you do with music like this.
His indignities were private, really, though we'd often catch him in his oversized AKG headphones in front of the stereo, dancing and conducting in his Sears yoke-style boxer underpants that were so anachronistic they were a special catalog order even in the early eighties. You'd be somewhere else in the house, reading or indulging in the teenage sport of competition boredom, and you'd hear that he'd cranked it up so high that the tinky-tinky beats and high notes would filter through the whole house, and come down to find him dancing in the way you dance when no one's watching.
"RELAX, DON'T DO IT, WHEN YOU WANNA GO TO IT!" blasted the tiny lyrics out of the leatherette cups of the headphones, and he wouldn't even see you there, looking dour in your parachute pants, until the song would hit a point where he do a little spin, and he'd finally realize you were there, arms folded, with an eyebrow raised.
"Frankie Goes To Hollywood? Seriously?"
He peeled off the headphones and stood there, out of breath, the music still blasting out of the headphones, his baggy underpants criss-crossed with seams that were probably put there for some good reason when yoke-style drawers were conceived, back in 1911 or thereabouts, looking a little irritated to have been knocked off his cloud.
"Son, if you'd stop being such a critic, you'd find that Welcome to the Pleasuredome is a canny statement on the tenor of our times."
It didn't help that he'd grown out a full white beard under his neatly groomed handlebar mustache by that point, which meant he looked more or less exactly like Santa Claus, except that Santa Claus was seldom found rocking out to Frankie Goes To Hollywood in our living room in just underpants and a worn-out undershirt.
"Ugh, that stuff's just beats and sweat, Dad. Jesus, why don't you just go to a gay bar and put on a fishnet t-shirt?"
"You're just showing your ignorance."
"Just sex music, that crap."
Me—I was so very above that sort of thing back then. It was the mid-eighties, I was a maladjusted pretentious homo with a clear conviction that I knew what the whole rest of the world needed to know, but people are idiots, right? I could do the deadpan monologue from "Desire" in perfect rhythm and "Would We Be Alive?" by the Residents would so often blare out of my own stereo at grating volumes that it would trigger my mom to attack the door and scream "HONEY, SHOULD I BRING UP YOUR FATHER'S POWER DRILL AND SKIL SAW SO YOU CAN PLAY ALONG WITH THAT?"
Dancing to a song just because it moves you just seemed so...decadent. I was a revolutionary, you see, someone who finally knew how to fix the world, and I just needed everyone to shut up and listen to my brilliance for a moment.
"See, this song is about Reagan's warmongering. It's not just sex music."
"Sex music," I said, and added, "Gay sex music."
"Sometimes you just gotta let your balls tell you what to do."
I turned a shade paler.
"This is why we say you're embarrassing, Dad."
"What, because I said 'balls?'"
"Yes."
"Half the people in the world have 'em."
"Never mind. Go back to your disco, Dad."
The years roll on by. Once in a while, I find a note in a case for a tool I haven't had a reason to use until now, warning THIS MUST BE CLEANED AND RETURNED TO THE CASE IN ITS PLACE, JOE - CJW. My brother found one not long ago in a light meter among the photographic gear he'd inherited, and it was also personal.
WILL DON'T TAKE THESE BATTERIES-THESE BATTERIES ARE NOT FOR YOU - CJW
We write our own notes now, usually just to ourselves. We make our own warnings, dance to our own gay sex music, and go into ourselves for the wisdom that was once found as easily as you'd catch Santa Claus dancing in his underpants in the living room of an undistinguished log farmhouse in Scaggsville, Maryland.
We write our own notes because we have to.
So maybe today, I have "car trouble," see, and maybe I can't get up to the city to deal with the clock in a giant freestanding novelty clock tower advertising a tranquilizer-laden granular stomach remedy, and I'll just tend to it first thing Monday morning, after the dads of Baltimore have a satisfying opportunity to make a well-founded complaint. Maybe it'll be my gift to cranky old guys everywhere, coming from someone who is, by heritage, a bit cranky, himself.
Maybe tomorrow morning, I'll get off the train, head to the Tower, climb seventeen flights of stairs, turn off the clock, climb down fourteen flights to my office, put on "Memories of You," and wait out the hour while playing back my messages, listening for a familiar voice that's just not going to be there, not like I remember hearing it, at least, alone in that little bubble of stalled time before I climb back to the top and set the world in motion again.
As it happens, my dad's dead, so I won't get any notice on this, or any new notes pinned to his Chromega dichroic photographic enlarger explaining to use THIS knob to make adjustments and not THAT knob, which WILL BREAK THE MACHINE! I won't find a yellow sticky note inside the battery case of every portable piece of equipment he owned, warning that THESE BATTERIES ARE NOT FOR YOUR WALKMAN, and I won't find additional handwritten annotations in the rumpled pages of the manual for his '72 Triumph Daytona 500 that announce that he MOVED TURN SIGNAL SWITCH TO OPPOSITE HANDLEBAR TO PREVENT SKINNED KNUCKLES, and I won't find any updates to the two page set of instructions at my swiftly tilting cabin in West Virginia that warn THE PLUMBING MUST BE DRAINED EXACTLY PER THESE INSTRUCTIONS OR PIPES WILL FREEZE!
Life moves on, and you get your warnings elsewhere.
In my capacity of the caretaker and manager of the only giant freestanding novelty clock tower advertising a tranquilizer-laden granular stomach remedy in the world, the city of Baltimore will be my dad.
"Hey there, I just drove by the Bromo tower and the clock didn't fall back."
Sigh.
"Press 7 to delete this message or 9 to save."
7
"I just wanted to let you guys know the clock's still on the old time."
7
"Are you going to set the clock to the right time today?
7
"Hi there, sir, I would like to report that the clock is showing the wrong time."
7
It's not that I'm not glad to have the attention. It's just that a bearing went out in the main gen-set that runs the elevator last night around 5:21 or so and I'm going to have to drive 25 miles to the city, find somewhere to park, climb seventeen stories of stairs, shut the clock down, sit for an hour in the clock room, restart the clock, then climb down seventeen stories of stairs. It's been a long, long week, and I may yet try to see how much trouble I'd get into if I just left it until Monday morning.
My surrogate dads will let me know, so I'm on the knife edge of decision. I do have responsibilities now, you see, and I seem to be on a career path of escalating public awareness of my efficacy on the job. As the facility manager at the American Visionary Art Museum, I had constant problems with the large neon sign spelling out M-U-S-E-U-M on the northeastern point of the building, which would sort of randomly rearrange itself with every hard rainstorm.
"Joe, I left a copy of the City Paper in your mailbox," our illustrious founder's message breathlessly explained. I pocketed my cellphone and went for my mail slot, where the paper, marked with a note, clearly had my troublesome sign in the Whose Responible? photo column for the week, though it was an old photo, as I'd fixed the problem some time earlier. I explained this, hoping to soothe the panic, but it takes a while, sometimes. Besides, isn't it just a little screwed up that when I get behind on my work, it ends up IN THE GODDAMN NEWSPAPER?
It's okay. I like what I do. I've just got a lot of dads looking over my shoulder now.
My own father wouldn't have submitted to the indignity of participating in a video making fun of his rhythm. He happened to have good rhythm, and a grasp of a well turned-out song, with one of the few pieces in his regular repertoire as an amateur pianist being the beloved "Memories of You" by Eubie Blake which he'd play as a sort of a nervous tic, or a strain relief, perhaps, upon finding himself in a quiet moment in front of our old Chickering grand. He'd let the notes run, just following through with whims and flourishes and little explorations of the minor moments of the piece, the way you do with music like this.
His indignities were private, really, though we'd often catch him in his oversized AKG headphones in front of the stereo, dancing and conducting in his Sears yoke-style boxer underpants that were so anachronistic they were a special catalog order even in the early eighties. You'd be somewhere else in the house, reading or indulging in the teenage sport of competition boredom, and you'd hear that he'd cranked it up so high that the tinky-tinky beats and high notes would filter through the whole house, and come down to find him dancing in the way you dance when no one's watching.
"RELAX, DON'T DO IT, WHEN YOU WANNA GO TO IT!" blasted the tiny lyrics out of the leatherette cups of the headphones, and he wouldn't even see you there, looking dour in your parachute pants, until the song would hit a point where he do a little spin, and he'd finally realize you were there, arms folded, with an eyebrow raised.
"Frankie Goes To Hollywood? Seriously?"
He peeled off the headphones and stood there, out of breath, the music still blasting out of the headphones, his baggy underpants criss-crossed with seams that were probably put there for some good reason when yoke-style drawers were conceived, back in 1911 or thereabouts, looking a little irritated to have been knocked off his cloud.
"Son, if you'd stop being such a critic, you'd find that Welcome to the Pleasuredome is a canny statement on the tenor of our times."
It didn't help that he'd grown out a full white beard under his neatly groomed handlebar mustache by that point, which meant he looked more or less exactly like Santa Claus, except that Santa Claus was seldom found rocking out to Frankie Goes To Hollywood in our living room in just underpants and a worn-out undershirt.
"Ugh, that stuff's just beats and sweat, Dad. Jesus, why don't you just go to a gay bar and put on a fishnet t-shirt?"
"You're just showing your ignorance."
"Just sex music, that crap."
Me—I was so very above that sort of thing back then. It was the mid-eighties, I was a maladjusted pretentious homo with a clear conviction that I knew what the whole rest of the world needed to know, but people are idiots, right? I could do the deadpan monologue from "Desire" in perfect rhythm and "Would We Be Alive?" by the Residents would so often blare out of my own stereo at grating volumes that it would trigger my mom to attack the door and scream "HONEY, SHOULD I BRING UP YOUR FATHER'S POWER DRILL AND SKIL SAW SO YOU CAN PLAY ALONG WITH THAT?"
Dancing to a song just because it moves you just seemed so...decadent. I was a revolutionary, you see, someone who finally knew how to fix the world, and I just needed everyone to shut up and listen to my brilliance for a moment.
"See, this song is about Reagan's warmongering. It's not just sex music."
"Sex music," I said, and added, "Gay sex music."
"Sometimes you just gotta let your balls tell you what to do."
I turned a shade paler.
"This is why we say you're embarrassing, Dad."
"What, because I said 'balls?'"
"Yes."
"Half the people in the world have 'em."
"Never mind. Go back to your disco, Dad."
The years roll on by. Once in a while, I find a note in a case for a tool I haven't had a reason to use until now, warning THIS MUST BE CLEANED AND RETURNED TO THE CASE IN ITS PLACE, JOE - CJW. My brother found one not long ago in a light meter among the photographic gear he'd inherited, and it was also personal.
WILL DON'T TAKE THESE BATTERIES-THESE BATTERIES ARE NOT FOR YOU - CJW
We write our own notes now, usually just to ourselves. We make our own warnings, dance to our own gay sex music, and go into ourselves for the wisdom that was once found as easily as you'd catch Santa Claus dancing in his underpants in the living room of an undistinguished log farmhouse in Scaggsville, Maryland.
We write our own notes because we have to.
So maybe today, I have "car trouble," see, and maybe I can't get up to the city to deal with the clock in a giant freestanding novelty clock tower advertising a tranquilizer-laden granular stomach remedy, and I'll just tend to it first thing Monday morning, after the dads of Baltimore have a satisfying opportunity to make a well-founded complaint. Maybe it'll be my gift to cranky old guys everywhere, coming from someone who is, by heritage, a bit cranky, himself.
Maybe tomorrow morning, I'll get off the train, head to the Tower, climb seventeen flights of stairs, turn off the clock, climb down fourteen flights to my office, put on "Memories of You," and wait out the hour while playing back my messages, listening for a familiar voice that's just not going to be there, not like I remember hearing it, at least, alone in that little bubble of stalled time before I climb back to the top and set the world in motion again.
