I'm a Stranger Here Myself (3 page)

Going to a restaurant is generally a discouraging experience for me because I always manage somehow to antagonize the waitress. This, of course, is something you never want to do because waitresses are among the relatively small group of people who have the opportunity to sabotage items that you will shortly be putting into your mouth.

My particular problem is being unable to take in all the food options that are presented to me. If you order, say, a salad, the waitress reels off sixteen dressings, and I am not quick enough to take in that many concepts at once.

“Can you run those past me again?” I say with a simpleton smile of the sort that I hope will inspire compassion.

So the waitress sighs lightly and rolls her eyes a trifle, the way you would if you had to recite sixteen salad dressings over and over all day long for a succession of halfwits, and reels off the list again. This time I listen with the greatest gravity and attentiveness, nodding at each, and then unfailingly I choose one that she didn’t mention.

“We don’t do Thousand Island,” she says flatly.

I can’t possibly ask her to recite the list again, so I ask for the only one I can remember, which I am able to remember only because it sounded so awful—Gruyère and goat’s milk vinaigrette or something. Lately I have hit on the expedient of saying: “I’ll have whichever one is pink and doesn’t smell like the bottom of a gym bag.” They can usually relate to that, I find.

In fancy restaurants it is even worse because the server has to take you through the evening’s specials, which are described with a sumptuousness and panache that are seldom less than breathtaking and always incomprehensible. My wife and I went to a fancy restaurant in Vermont for our anniversary the other week and I swear I didn’t understand a single thing the waiter described to us.

“Tonight,” he began with enthusiasm, “we have a crêpe galette of sea chortle and kelp in a rich
mal de mer
sauce, seasoned with disheveled herbs grown in our own herbarium. This is baked in an inverted Prussian helmet for seventeen minutes and four seconds precisely, then layered with steamed wattle and woozle leaves. Very delicious; very audacious. We are also offering this evening a double rack of Rio Ròcho cutlets, tenderized at your table by our own flamenco dancers, then baked in a clay
dong
for twenty-seven minutes under a lattice of guava peel and sun-ripened stucco. For vegetarians this evening we have a medley of forest floor sweet-meats gathered from our very own woodland dell. . . .”

And so it goes for anything up to half an hour. My wife, who is more sophisticated than I, is not fazed by the ornate terminology. Her problem is trying to keep straight the bewilderment of options. She will listen carefully, then say: “I’m sorry, is it the squib that’s pan-seared and presented on a bed of organic spoletto?”

“No, that’s the baked donkling,” says the serving person. “The squib comes as a quarter-cut hank, lightly rolled in payapaya, then tossed with oil of olay and calamine, and presented on a bed of chaff beans and snoose noodles.”

I don’t know why she bothers because, apart from being much too complicated to take in, none of the dishes sounds like anything you would want to eat anyway, except maybe on a bet after drinking way too much.

Now all this is of particular moment to me because I have just been reading the excellent
Diversity of Life
by the eminent Harvard naturalist Edward O. Wilson, in which he makes the startling and discordant assertion that the foods we in the Western world eat actually are not very adventurous at all.

Wilson notes that of the thirty thousand species of edible plants on earth, only about twenty are eaten in any quantity. Of these, three species alone—wheat, corn, and rice—account for over half of what the temperate world shovels into its collective gullet. Of the three thousand fruits known to botany, all but about two dozen are essentially ignored. The situation with vegetables is a little better, but only a little.

And why do we eat the few meager foods we do? Because, according to Wilson, those were the foods that were cultivated by our neolithic ancestors ten thousand or so years ago when they first got the hang of agriculture.

The very same is true of husbandry. The animals we raise for food today are not eaten because they are especially nutritious or delectable but because they were the ones first domesticated in the Stone Age.

In other words, in dietary terms we are veritable troglodytes (which, speaking personally, is all right by me). I think this explains a lot, not least my expanding sense of dismay as the waiter bombarded us with ecstatic descriptions of roulades, ratatouilles, empanadas, langostinos, tagliolinis, confits, filos, quenelles, and goodness knows what else.

“Just bring me something that’s been clubbed,” I wanted to say, but of course I held my tongue.

Eventually, he concluded his presentation with what sounded to me like “an oven-baked
futilité
of pumpkin rind and kumquats.”

“It’s
feuillété,
” my wife explained to me.

“And what’s that when you take it out of the box?” I asked unhappily.

“Something you wouldn’t like, dear.”

I turned to the waiter with a plaintive look. “Do you have anything that once belonged to a cow?” I asked.

He gave a stiff nod. “Certainly, sir. We can offer you a 16-ounce
suprème de boeuf,
incised by our own butcher from the fore flank of a corn-fed Holstein raised on our own Montana ranch, then slow-grilled over palmetto and buffalo chips at a temperature of . . .”

“Are you describing a steak?” I asked, perking up.

“Not a term we care to use, sir, but yes.”

Of course. It was all becoming clear now. There was real food to be had here if you just knew the lingo. “Well, I’ll have that,” I said. “And I’ll have it with, shall we say, a
depravité
of potatoes, hand cut and fried till golden in a medley of vegetable oils from the Imperial Valley, accompanied by a
quantité de bière,
flash-chilled in your own coolers and conveyed to my table in a cylinder of glass.”

The man nodded, impressed that I had cracked the code. “Very good, sir,” he said. He clicked his heels and withdrew.

“And no
feuillété,
” I called after him. I may not know much about food, but I am certain of this: If there is one thing you don’t want with steak it’s
feuillété
.

Here’s a fact for you: According to the latest
Statistical Abstract of the United States,
every year more than 400,000 Americans suffer injuries involving beds, mattresses, or pillows. Think about that for a minute. That is almost 2,000 bed, mattress, or pillow injuries a day. In the time it takes you to read this article, four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding.

My point in raising this is not to suggest that we are somehow more inept than the rest of the world when it comes to lying down for the night (though clearly there are thousands of us who could do with additional practice), but rather to observe that there is scarcely a statistic to do with this vast and scattered nation that doesn’t in some way give one pause.

I had this brought home to me the other day when I was in the local library looking up something else altogether in the aforesaid
Abstract
and happened across “Table No. 206: Injuries Associated with Consumer Products.” I have seldom passed a more diverting half hour.

Consider this intriguing fact: Almost 50,000 people in the United States are injured each year by pencils, pens, and other desk accessories. How
do
they do it? I have spent many long hours seated at desks where I would have greeted almost any kind of injury as a welcome diversion, but never once have I come close to achieving actual bodily harm.

So I ask again: How
do
they do it? These are, bear in mind, injuries severe enough to warrant a trip to an emergency room. Putting a staple in the tip of your index finger (which I have done quite a lot, sometimes only semi-accidentally) doesn’t count. I am looking around my desk now and unless I put my head in the laser printer or stab myself with the scissors I cannot see a single source of potential harm within ten feet.

But then that’s the thing about household injuries if Table No. 206 is any guide—they can come at you from almost anywhere. Consider this one. In 1992 (the latest year for which figures are available) more than 400,000 people in the United States were injured by chairs, sofas, and sofa beds. What are we to make of this? Does it tell us something trenchant about the design of modern furniture or merely that we have become exceptionally careless sitters? What is certain is that the problem is worsening. The number of chair, sofa, and sofa bed injuries showed an increase of 30,000 over the previous year, which is quite a worrying trend even for those of us who are frankly fearless with regard to soft furnishings. (That may, of course, be the nub of the problem—overconfidence.)

Predictably, “stairs, ramps, and landings” was the most lively category, with almost two million startled victims, but in other respects dangerous objects were far more benign than their reputations might lead you to predict. More people were injured by sound-recording equipment (46,022) than by skate-boards (44,068), trampolines (43,655), or even razors and razor blades (43,365). A mere 16,670 overexuberant choppers ended up injured by hatchets and axes, and even saws and chainsaws claimed a relatively modest 38,692 victims.

Paper money and coins (30,274) claimed nearly as many victims as did scissors (34,062). I can just about conceive of how you might swallow a dime and then wish you hadn’t (“You guys want to see a neat trick?”), but I cannot for the life of me construct hypothetical circumstances involving folding money and a subsequent trip to the ER. It would be interesting to meet some of these people.

I would also welcome a meeting with almost any of the 263,000 people injured by ceilings, walls, and inside panels. I can’t imagine being hurt by a ceiling and not having a story worth hearing. Likewise, I could find time for any of the 31,000 people injured by their “grooming devices.”

But the people I would really like to meet are the 142,000 hapless souls who received emergency room treatment for injuries inflicted by their clothing. What
can
they be suffering from? Compound pajama fracture? Sweatpants hematoma? I am powerless to speculate.

I have a friend who is an orthopedic surgeon, and he told me the other day that one of the incidental occupational hazards of his job is that you get a skewed sense of everyday risks since you are constantly repairing people who have come a cropper in unlikely and unpredictable ways. (Only that day he had treated a man who had had a moose come through the windshield of his car, to the consternation of both.) Suddenly, thanks to Table No. 206, I began to see what he meant.

Interestingly, what had brought me to the
Statistical Abstract
in the first place was the wish to look up crime figures for the state of New Hampshire, where I now live. I had heard that it is one of the safest places in America, and indeed the
Abstract
bore this out. There were just four murders in the state in the latest reporting year—compared with over 23,000 for the country as a whole—and very little serious crime.

All that this means, of course, is that statistically in New Hampshire I am far more likely to be hurt by my ceiling or underpants—to cite just two potentially lethal examples—than by a stranger, and, frankly, I don’t find that comforting at all.

I did a foolish thing the other afternoon. I went into one of our local cafés and seated myself without permission. You don’t do this in America, but I had just had what seemed like a salient and important thought (namely, “There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube—always. Think about it”) and I wanted to jot it down before it left my head. Anyway, the place was practically empty, so I just took a table near the door.

After a couple of minutes, the hostess—the Customer Seating Manager—came up to me and said in a level tone, “I see you’ve seated yourself.”

“Yup,” I replied proudly. “Dressed myself too.”

“Didn’t you see the sign?” She tilted her head at a big sign that said “Please Wait to Be Seated.”

I have been in this café about 150 times. I have seen the sign from every angle but supine.

“Oh!” I said innocently, and then: “Gosh, I didn’t notice it.”

She sighed. “Well, the server in this section is very busy, so you may have to wait a while for her to get to you.”

There was no other customer within fifty feet, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I had disregarded a posted notice and would have to serve a small sentence in purgatory in consequence.

It would be entirely wrong to say that Americans love rules any more than it would be correct to say that the British love queuing. These things are done not with enthusiasm or affection but out of a more or less instinctive recognition that these are useful ways of helping to achieve and maintain a civilized and orderly society.

Generally this is a very good thing. There are times, I have to say, when a little Teutonic order wouldn’t go amiss in England—for instance, when people take two spaces in a parking lot because they can’t be bothered to park correctly (the one offense for which, if I may speak freely here, I would support capital punishment).

Sometimes, however, the American devotion to order goes too far. Our local public swimming pool, for example, has twenty-seven written rules—twenty-seven!—of which my favorite is “One Bounce Per Dive on Diving Board.” And they’re enforced.

What is frustrating is that it seldom matters whether these rules make any sense or not. A year or so ago, as a way of dealing with the increased threat of terrorism, America’s airlines began requiring passengers to present photographic identification when checking in for a flight. The first I heard of this was when I showed up to catch a plane at an airport 120 miles from my home.

“I need to see some picture ID,” said the clerk, who had the charm and boundless motivation you would expect to find in someone whose primary employment perk is a nylon tie.

“Really? I don’t think I have any,” I said and began patting my pockets, as if that would make a difference, and then pulling cards from my wallet. I had all kinds of identification—library card, credit cards, social security card, health insurance card, airline ticket—all with my name on them, but nothing with a picture. Finally, at the back of the wallet I found an old Iowa driver’s license that I had forgotten I even had.

“This is expired,” he sniffed.

“Then I won’t ask to drive the plane,” I replied.

“Anyway, it’s fifteen years old. I need something more up to date.”

I sighed and rooted through my belongings. Finally it occurred to me that I was carrying one of my books with my picture on the jacket. I handed it to him proudly and with some relief.

He looked at the book and then hard at me and then at a printed list. “That’s not on our list of Permissible Visual Cognitive Imagings,” he said, or something similarly vacuous.

“I’m sure it isn’t, but it’s still me. It couldn’t
be
more me.” I lowered my voice and leaned closer to him. “Are you seriously suggesting that I had this book specially printed so I could sneak on to a flight to Buffalo?”

He stared hard at me for another minute, then called in for consultation another clerk. They conferred and summoned a third party. Eventually we ended up with a crowd scene involving three check-in clerks, their supervisor, the supervisor’s surpervisor, two baggage handlers, several inquisitive bystanders straining to get a better view, and a guy selling jewelry out of an aluminum case. My flight was due to take off in minutes and froth was starting to form at the corners of my mouth. “What is the point of all this anyway?” I said to the head supervisor. “Why do you need a picture ID?”

“FAA rule,” he said, staring unhappily at my book, my invalid driver’s license, and the list of permissible photo options.

“But
why
is it the rule? Do you honestly believe that you are going to thwart a terrorist by requiring him to show you a laminated photograph of himself? Do you think a person who could plan and execute a sophisticated hijacking or other illegal airborne event would be unable to contrive some form of convincing artificial identification? Has it occurred to you that it might be more productive, vis-à-vis terrorism, if you employed someone who was actually awake, and perhaps with an IQ above that of a small mollusk, to monitor the TV screens on your X-ray machines?” I may not have said all this in exactly those words, but that was the drift of my sentiment.

But the requirement, you see, is not simply to identify yourself but to identify yourself in a way that precisely matches a written instruction.

Anyway, I changed tack and begged. I promised never again to turn up at an airport without adequate ID. I took on an attitude of complete contrition. I don’t suppose anyone has ever shown such earnest, remorseful desire to be allowed to proceed to Buffalo.

Eventually, with reluctance, the supervisor nodded at the clerk and told him to check me in, but he warned me not to try anything as slippery as this again and then departed with his colleagues.

The check-in clerk issued me a boarding pass and I started toward the gate, then turned back, and in a low, confidential tone shared with him a helpful afterthought.

“There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube,” I said. “Think about it.”