Not That You Asked (9780307822215) (9 page)

Has there been a study done at Harvard or Stanford on leftovers?

Congress is working on the tax bill and the President is concerned over what to do about South Africa, but is anyone giving any attention to a major element in all our lives … what to do with what's left that we can't use but is too good to throw away?

The storage shelves in our house are filled with all sorts of good leftovers that aren't good for anything.

I can spot useless junk everywhere in someone else's house. It's difficult to find any in my own. Maybe what we need in this country is some kind of neighborly mutual-help program. It's a lot easier to throw away someone else's leftovers than it is your own. We might work out some exchange program whereby a friend or neighbor comes to our house while we go to theirs. Each would set aside sentimentality and clean the other's house of leftovers.

The most conspicuous and persistent leftovers, of course, go in the refrigerator in little plastic boxes. At any given time, there are eight to ten lumps of leftovers aging on the shelves of our refrigerator. Just last night I put what amounted to about half a serving of squash in a container that was big enough to hold ten times that much. I know perfectly well what the future holds for this pitiful little morsel. It will sit there for a week, gradually finding its way to the back of the refrigerator, where a jar of pickles sits. The pickles were opened six weeks ago. I hope the jar of pickles and the summer squash can find something in common because they're going to spend a lot of time together. Then, some day down the road, I'll be rooting around back there looking for the mayonnaise, and wonder what's in the plastic box.
I'll open it up and detect a strange odor emanating from the lump of yellow in the bottom.

“Yuck,” I'll say to myself and scrape it into the garbage.

When something you've cooked is fresh and your palate is reminding your memory of how good it was, it's difficult to discard it. When that same dish is tired and stale and nothing more than a space-taker in the refrigerator, it becomes a pleasure to cast out.

The trick to getting rid of leftovers is to anticipate how you're going to feel about those items in two weeks.

And it isn't just the refrigerator. There are leftovers in life no matter what we're doing. Every time I buy an electrical appliance, there are parts in the box it comes in that I don't use and can't throw away. As soon as a month later, when I come across them in a drawer, I can't figure out what they're for.

I bought a small antenna for the television set upstairs. It helps the reception, but in the little plastic bag of parts that came with it there are three bolts, a bracket and some kind of insulator left over. These things are all brand new and it would be a crime to throw them away, but the kitchen drawer set aside for miscellaneous items is filled with leftover hardware.

Paint makes a miserable leftover. It's almost impossible to plan a job in such a way that you buy just the right amount of paint and finish with none left over. A quart of paint is so expensive that there aren't many of us who can throw out what remains in the can even though we rarely use it. There's a gallon can in the basement representing what was left over after I painted the twins' bedroom blue fourteen years ago. So much paint dripped down the sides of the can that I am no longer able to read the label. I don't even know for sure whether it's oil- or water-based paint. I doubt if it would make a noise if I shook it. There it is, though. If I ever need it, I know just where to find it.

It's a good thing you don't have to keep paint in the refrigerator.

They're building dams and nuclear power plants and scientists are talking about harnessing the sun's energy to produce electrical power but they aren't doing a thing about the rat's nest of electric cords,
outlets and homemade lash-ups around our television sets, behind our living-room couches and under our beds.

Every time I want to plug something in, I have to crawl under a table, move a chair or go down in the basement to find an extension cord or some kind of converter. Something's wrong with electrical outlets in America.

I'd vote for the presidential candidate who stood on a platform that demanded “enough electrical outlets for all!” It's time for each of us to demand enough outlets in our homes. Not only should there be enough but they should be put where we need them and where we can get at them. Why are they always installed along the baseboard, on the longest section of wall, where any fool should know the couch is going to go? How do they expect us to plug anything into the wall behind the couch? And why did they put two outlets there instead of six?

Is there anyone who doesn't have an electric clock in the bedroom? A radio? Some lamps? Possibly even a television set, a hair dryer or an air conditioner? Then why in the world did the people who built the house only install two electrical outlets? Are they in business with the companies that make those gadgets that convert one outlet into three? Do they get a percentage from the makers of extension cords?

The kitchen in this house is lined with a tangle of power-carrying cords. There's a clock over the stove, a blender, a Cuisinart, a toaster oven, an orange juicer, a small black-and-white television set, a radio and on occasions I bring in an electric griddle for pancakes, a popcorn popper, a deep-fat fryer or a small Waring ice cream maker.

A moratorium ought to be declared on the invention and manufacture of new electrical appliances until they work out a better system for plugging them in. Half the time when you start to connect an appliance, you find the maker was so concerned about the possibility you'd be electrocuted, that he put a three-pronged plug on the end of the cord.

There are few experiences in life more frustrating than having a three-pronged plug and a two-hole outlet. In my lifetime I've bought a hundred three-pronged adapters, but where are they when I need one?

I have no objection to grounded plugs if the experts tell us we should use them but then why do they ever put in a wall plug that isn't equipped to take a three-pronged plug? It should be illegal. I could probably go to jail for it but I confess that in moments of frustration I have gone to the kitchen drawer with the pliers in it and used them
to bend off the offending ground pin so that the plug will fit into the wall socket.

With so many fools in the world, it's impossible to make the world foolproof. The people trying to make the world safe for everyone are fighting a losing battle and one that makes life difficult for the average person.

Fifteen or twenty years ago some electrical genius decided to make plugs whose prongs were a different size. The larger of the two prongs doesn't fit into the old standard wall plug. I have never understood what this latest development in the field of power cords does for me but I managed to stay alive without being electrocuted for many years before we had plugs in which one of the prongs was bigger than the other.

It seems inconceivable to me that the minds that came up with the fantastic array of electrical appliances available to all of us couldn't come up with some new idea for wall sockets that would be convenient, safe and good-looking. It should not be necessary to hide them under the bed, behind the couch or in the next room, where you can't get at them.

A year ago I was walking along a street in Greenwich Village having a good time doing not much of anything when a man wearing a sweater and blue jeans and carrying a violin case grabbed me by the arm.

“Hey,” he said, “aren't you Andy Rooney?”

It seems presumptuous of anyone to grab me under any circumstances but even more so when the person doesn't even know for sure who he's grabbing.

“A lot of people ask me that,” I said, and walked on.

“Hey, no kidding,” he said, grabbing my arm again, “are you Andy Rooney?”

“Look,” I said, “I'm minding my own business. Why don't you mind yours … go play your violin.”

The young man looked shocked.

“You ought to be in some other business,” he said, and walked away.

Should I be in some other business? Does a stranger have a right to grab me by the arm, stop me in the middle of a pleasant, private walk because I appear on television and write a newspaper column?

I have been with close friends, far better known than I am, who are unfailingly gracious in these situations. Walter Cronkite will charm a stranger with his smile, sign his name on a sheet of paper and listen as though he were interested to silly small talk from anyone who stops him. If I could be like Walter, I would be, but I can't.

This all comes to mind because I've been reading about a lawsuit brought by the author of
The Catcher in the Rye
, J. D. Salinger. Salinger, a notorious recluse, won't give interviews to newspeople or appear on television. He certainly won't talk to strangers. He wants to be known for what he writes, not for what he looks like or sounds like. I admire him for it.

The story was about an unauthorized biography of him, publication of which he tried to stop. Most of us would be flattered by even an unflattering biography, but Salinger wants no part of it.

I'm on J. D. Salinger's side and yet the question from the man with the violin often comes to mind after I've been rude to a stranger. Have I sold my right to privacy by appearing in public for money?

A couple named Lipovsky wrote from Vancouver, British Columbia, after I'd laughed at some letters I'd received, to say how pompous and arrogant I was for not appreciating the people who had taken the time to write.

Well, I appreciate about half the letters I get and I get some that I actually treasure but I get a lot of mail from idiots, too, and I see no reason why I should pretend I'm grateful to the people who wrote them.

Considering how desperately hard people work to get themselves a reputation and to become widely known, it's interesting how empty a thing well-knownness seems to be once you have acquired it. I'm nervous every time I sit down to write or do something on television. At that very moment I am nothing until I've produced something. If what I produce is poor it makes my semi-well-knownness seem all the more hollow to me.

There seem to be thousands of people in the United States whose only job in life is to get people with familiar names to loan them out for some good cause. Anyone with any kind of public name at all gets hundreds of requests a year from well-meaning organizations that wish to use the person's name in a long list of names that goes down the left-hand side of their stationery.

It embarrasses me to turn down charitable organizations that ask if they may use my name as a sponsor or honorary committee member on their fund-raising letters, but it doesn't embarrass me nearly as much
as seeing my name used that way, endorsing something I know nothing about and in whose work I have taken no part. It's a minor fraud.

It seems to me anyone who becomes well known through what he or she has written owes the people who have liked it nothing but to continue to write as well as possible.

We've gone crazy with keys. If we want to get in, we're all forced to carry eight or ten keys around with us. We carry keys all day, every day, that we don't use once every six months. I don't notice the number of thefts going down because of our keys, either.

If keys and locks were the answer to dishonesty, we'd have a theft-free country.

The drawers in which everyone keeps life's bric-a-brac and memorabilia have keys in them we haven't used in years. In many cases we no longer know what it is the keys unlock but we're afraid to throw them away.

Between the dresser drawers, the kitchen drawers and the small, thin drawers in hall and living-room tables, there must be thirty dead keys in our house. I still keep the keys to a couple of cars that were probably turned into scrap and melted down ten years ago. Is there a market for the key to the trunk of a 1957 Ford Fairlane?

People have a terrible time throwing a key away. A key seems like such an important item even though it no longer fits anything we own. If I saved money the way I save keys, I'd have enough to make a takeover bid for IBM.

Most of us have at least seven basic keys. We have two house keys, one for the front door and one for the back door. We have one for the garage, whether we lock the garage or not. We have two car keys, one for the ignition and one for the trunk. (This isn't counting the backup set that comes with the owner's manual.) Many Americans have at least one key that opens a door or a locker at work, and usually we have a small key that opens some kind of padlock we own.

Those are the basic keys, although there may be many more. If you own two cars, you have a total of eight car keys. Often there are two locks on the door of a house, and an office in a city building can mean
you'll have to carry three keys. You'll need one to get into your office area, another to get into your office door and a third to unlock your desk.

We pretend keys are more important than they are. How serious an impediment to entry is a lock and key when the only thing that stands between a burglar and the possessions in your house is a pane of glass?

I often ride a train to work, and I'm amused to see businessmen carrying little briefcases with tiny, expensive brass locks on them. It's ridiculous for the same reason a lock on a suitcase doesn't make any sense. If someone wants to steal something in a briefcase or a suitcase, the thief isn't going to stop to unlock it. He's going to take the whole lot in the handy little carrying case you've provided for him. He can open it later, at his leisure, with an ax.

There must be ten tiny keys in my dresser that came with suitcases I've bought. I've never locked anything with them and I've never thrown them out. I always ask a luggage salesman for a suitcase without a lock on it and suggest to him that it should be cheaper. Most suitcases, of course, have locks.