One More Thing (28 page)

Today, I am a former millionaire living in an air-conditioned apartment not far from the historic town of Patchogue, New York. Would I give it all up to change places with you, a gifted teen on the cusp of an unforgettable summer of priceless, idle pleasures? Of course not. Being a gifted teen is a walking, waking nightmare. But perhaps, with some time and effort, you can change places with me.

Remember, there is no adult supervision at Camp Fantastic, so be sure to keep an eye out for your own safety and best interests.

As a favor to me, please do not kill yourself at Camp Fantastic.

Have a fantastic time.

Pugel Karnopovich, Jr
.
Founder, Camp Fantastic

There Is a Fine Line Between Why and Why Not

“There is a very fine line between why and why not,” said our graduation speaker.

And the secret of life was to live right on that line.

Or on the “why not?” side.

Or on the “why?” side, but you’re always looking over at “why not?” and wondering.

Something like that. None of us remembered. All of these made a lot of sense. Whatever it was, it was a great speech, and if we ever need to know it exactly, we can look it up.

The Man Who Told Us About Inflatable Women

“Why do I prefer inflatable women?” asked the old man with a torn-throat chuckle, as if surprised, yet in a way not surprised, to have posed himself this question. “Why do I prefer inflatable women?” he asked again, this time with a shake of his head, as though he just couldn’t help being charmed by himself, despite his better wisdom, despite knowing himself all too well.

It was a question on none of our minds. We shot each other little “get me out of here” glances. We didn’t want to know. But now, at this point we also didn’t want to
not
know, because then we’d always be thinking about it: working it into our group emails as that inside-joke reference you all just had to refer to, eventually out of tradition, long after it had stopped being charming; waking up in the middle of the night with that sudden, quarter-conscious certainty that we had solved it!—but then forgetting the theory by morning; eventually, if it came to this, paying to see one of those “Joke Man” acts that come through the local comedy club from time to time, where the audience is invited to shout out the first parts of jokes so that the Joke Man can prove he knows all the jokes there are to know, and shouting out “Why did the old man prefer inflatable women?” and taking the risk
that the Joke Man might actually have the integrity to simply stand there alone in the silence and admit “I never heard that one. What’s the punch line?” and you’d have to say, in front of the whole comedy club, that you didn’t know either, that it was just a real thing that had genuinely been on your mind.

No, it could only get worse if we didn’t find out now.

But it turned out that we didn’t have to ask.

“I don’t prefer them because they’re inflatable,” continued the old man, now all of a sudden more than able to answer the question that had seemed to baffle him only seconds earlier.

His old eyes smiled and his old mouth crackled with decaying mischief as he savored one last second of mystery. “I prefer them because they’re
deflatable
.”

Oh, gross.

He laughed and rotated his cigar slowly, as though examining it to make sure it was burning evenly, but which he couldn’t have been doing, because when he finished rotating it he nodded at it firmly, sure and pleased, even though the cigar wasn’t burning even close to evenly by any measure. Then he slid another sip of whiskey down his mouth, and then he laughed some more, softer and softer, until he was laughing in perfect silence, as if a skilled DJ were slowly turning his volume knob down to zero.

It was a tasteless thing to say, but I had to admit he said it in a cool way.

Also, who invited this guy? This was supposed to be a party celebrating Mike’s two-year-old’s birthday, and I thought he said he was going to keep things small. Mike said he didn’t know him.

A New Hitler

We need a new Hitler.

Let me explain: a new Hitler
nothing
like the old Hitler.

I think we can all agree that the old Hitler was a monster, a maniac, and an evil man.

I’m talking about a
new
Hitler.

I’m talking about a Hitler who’s
against
genocide. I’m talking about a Hitler who’s
opposed
to world domination. Now, that’s the kind of Hitler I might be able to get behind! A Hitler who wants to improve our schools. A Hitler who understands that ordinary Americans need more access to health care—and isn’t afraid to tell that to Congress! A
new
Hitler! A
good
Hitler.

Hopefully, the new Hitler would not have the name “Hitler,” because I think people might find that distracting.

Constructive Criticism

When it was almost complete, Don took his ten-year-old son to see the office building he had been supervising for almost two years.

Don Junior wanted to be an architect. Just like his dad. That’s what he had declared one night over spaghetti and ketchup, and every birthday and Christmas since then—five, in total—had been devoted to toys, then posters, then books about architecture and construction.

“Here. You’re gonna have to put this on,” said Don, picking up a pair of hard hats from a steel table. “That’s the rule.”

Yellow hard hats. Standard issue. Just like in the books, in the posters, on the Fisher-Price men.

“Okay, now pull the strap … Click it into place. There you go. All set.”

It was a special moment, all the more so for how simple it was: handing his son a hard hat on his first visit to a real construction site. But Don couldn’t let on how much this moment meant to him, because that would mean letting go of that straight face, and he knew that straight face was a big part of the moment.

Don walked his son through the site, pointing out different things he had built and the different decisions that had led to them.

Don Junior took it all in without offering a word or expression.

Don showed him more and talked a little quicker, and Don Junior took that in, too, with the same focused look.

The straight-faced thing apparently came a little easier to his son than to him.

“Well, what do you think?” Don finally asked.

“Can I give you some con-struct-ive criti-cism?” said Don Junior, pronouncing the term carefully.

“Of course!” said Don, smiling and then erasing the smile once he felt his straight face crinkling. “Of course. What do you think?”

“I think the drop-ceiling isn’t necessary,” said Don Junior. “It kinda just looks like extra empty space.”

“That is a very smart observation, Donny! Now, there’s an important reason why we used the drop ceiling.”

“Oh, I know why you did it,” said Don Junior. “It’s because you figured you’d run your HVAC through the soffits.”

“Exactly right!” said Don.

“But take a look at the width of the elevator shaft,” said Don Junior. “That’s at least a foot wider than you need for handicap accessibility. You could have run your HVAC up along the sides of the shaft. See?”

“That’s good thinking again, Donny. The reason we made it wider is because some tenants have equipment they’re going to want to move up and down.”

“Then why do you also have a service elevator?”

“That’s a good question,” acknowledged Don.

“Add up that extra height on each floor, you could have added a ninth or even a tenth story. Too late to do anything about it now.”

Don Junior rapped his knuckles on a wall. “Now, what’s the function of this wall here?”

“That actually isn’t a load-bearing wall,” Don explained.

“Yeah, no kidding,” said Don Junior. “If you had made it load-bearing, then you could have knocked down this beam in the middle of the room. Or you could have put shear walls on either side of the room, kept the post, and knocked
this
thing down. In either scenario that’s an extra fifty square feet of potential space lost on each floor. Too late to do anything about that.”

Don Junior pointed to the main entrance. “Nonfritted single-pane glass for the main atrium.”

“Yes. Double pane would have been unnecessarily expensive for this climate,” said Don.

“Double-pane or fritted single-pane glass would have qualified you for LEED certification and that would have more than made up the difference with tax incentives. Too late to do anything about that now.”

Don looked down, and Don Junior followed his father’s eyes. “This,” Don Junior said, kicking his foot. “This concrete isn’t a 3500 mix, is it?”

“2500,” said Don.

“For an
eight-story building
?”

Don said nothing.

“Okay, I know I don’t have to tell you this, but you’re going to start seeing problems in the foundation after about ten, fifteen years. It’s beyond me why you wouldn’t have gone with 3500 mix for the same cost. This is going to end up being a very expensive mistake. It’s a foundation issue, though, so it’s too late to do anything about that.”

Don tried not to look at anything.

“Crew seems nice,” Don Junior offered. “Energized, good communication.”

“They’re the best,” said Don, once again turning to face his son. “Gilbert’s guys. I use them for everything.”

“Are they union?”

“Yes,” said Don.

“Look me in the eye,” said Don Junior. “Are they a union crew?”

“No.”

“Well, too late to do—”

“Let’s go home,” said Don.

As they began the walk to the car, Don turned abruptly toward his son.

“Hey. I thought that you said ‘constructive criticism.’ ”

“Yeah!” said Don Junior. “I was criticizing your construction.”

“That’s, no. That’s … I guess, that would be ‘construction criticism.’ ”

“What’s ‘con-struct-ive criti-cism’?” asked Don Junior.

“ ‘Constructive criticism’ is when you give criticism when the person still has time to make it better. It’s meant to be helpful, not hurtful.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh,” said Don Junior, sounding like a ten-year-old again. “We just learned about it in school. I must have gotten it mixed up.”