Out of My Mind (7 page)

As I stood by the checkpoint for a few minutes after I was found not guilty of weapons possession it became clear to me that no one but women security guards ever patted down women suspects. This is when I became determined to get a job as a security guard myself. More than that, I am determined to break down this sexist hiring practice. Am I any less capable of detecting a dangerous device hidden on the person of an attractive woman passenger than a same sex-security guard?

We men have got to face the fact that sex discrimination is a two-way street and too often, we are the victims. We should stop taking it lying down. There are no organizations demanding equal rights for men. Why? For what reason are men not allowed to do the job of patting down women in public places?

But seriously:

As I've said before, all frequent travelers who pass a test that indicates that they are not now and never will be terrorists, should be issued cards bearing their picture and fingerprints. These cards would allow them easy passage through security checkpoints and access to the aircraft loading area without having to go through the ridiculous and humiliating pat down process. The airlines have already established this as a possibility by allowing their crews easier access.

Air travel has become such a tedious and unpleasant experience that Americans are going to start staying home.

Since searches began, airport personnel have probably searched 50 million without finding one single terrorist. It is my sense that they never will find one because if someone wants to blow up an airplane, they'll find a way to circumvent the pat down procedure.

I'm treading the ragged edge of ineptitude. I may have to step back and watch the world go by because I'm too dumb to be part of it. On every hand, I have machines I don't know how to work, gadgets that are smarter than I am, tools that are more complex than the job I want to do with them.

In a box under my desk I have cords, cables and connectors for dozens of pieces of electronic equipment that I have long since replaced with newer models that use different cords, cables or connectors. It's apparent they are too important to throw away. And they don't go to anything anyone else owns. Their computer is the same make as mine but it's a different model. It is apparent the makers of computers redesign their products every few days.

I have a new, digital camera, but I never know whether I've taken a picture or not because it doesn't click when I press the button the way my old film camera did. I used to take the film to the drugstore in the morning and went back to get the pictures in the afternoon. Now I don't know what to do with the images in my camera.

Four months ago, I bought a new car. I still don't know how to turn the air conditioner on, off, up or down. I just keep pressing buttons until I get a desirable result. Evidence of the fact that change and progress have outpaced sales and service in cars became evident to me last week when I finally took the manual out of the glove compartment.

I spent fifteen minutes trying to match the pictures in it with the dials and buttons on the dashboard. I finally realized it was for the past model. The manufacturer had changed the dashboard without updating the manual.

This week, I'm going through a traumatic experience in my life as a writer.

Ten years ago, I made the difficult but successful transition from the typewriter to the computer, and I reluctantly concede that the computer is a better tool for a writer than the typewriter ever was.

I was introduced to the program called WordPerfect for DOS and became familiar with the keystrokes involved in writing using it.

A lot of people are now using a word processing program called Word. Word for Windows is a more complicated, user-unfriendly program that seems to have been developed by the Bill Gates organization as a way of forcing WordPerfect for DOS users to convert to a program compatible with Bill Gates' operating system. Word is, on all counts, not as good or as easy to use as WordPerfect. (I notice that the New York Bar Association has officially stuck with WordPerfect in preference to Word.)

The name of the old musical rings in my ears: “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.”

When I read statistics about the number of unemployed people in the United States, I never feel very bad about it.

It always seems to me that, in most cases, they aren't working for some reason other than that they can't find work.

There's so much work that needs to be done that anyone out of work ought to be able to find the work that needs to be done if they really want to work.

The problem, of course, is that a lot of people who are capable of doing one job, cannot do another.

I'd like to see someone start a college that taught young people nothing but how to fix things.

Of the 3,463,000 times Americans have called repairmen (my estimate) and made a date for them to come to the house, only nine of those millions of repairmen came when they said they would.

The rest of the time, we waited in vain all day for them to show up.

We have two telephone lines in our house in the country so I can leave our private line available to friends who want to call when I'm
working online writing something. Last Wednesday, the line I use for my computer was dead.

I called the telephone repair service and the person who books the repair work told me they'd come on Thursday between 8 A.M. and 6 P.M.

On Friday morning, I called Verizon repair again in the Albany area. The woman taking calls said that the repair crew had been too busy to come Thursday.

“Do they have a telephone with them?” I asked. “Couldn't they have called when it became apparent that they weren't going to make it, so I didn't have to waste a whole day waiting?”

“When will they come?” I asked. She assured me they would be at our house Friday or Saturday sometime between 8 A.M. and 6 P.M. They did not come Friday or Saturday.

When I called Verizon telephone repair again, I told the woman who answered that I was recording our conversation. She immediately put me on hold. Three minutes later, she came back on and told me her supervisor had advised her that it was illegal for me to record our conversation without her permission and she was not giving it.

I'd like to print a verbatim transcript of that conversation. If the phone company decided to sue me, I wouldn't worry. They probably wouldn't show up in court that day.

Most of us like our names. We can't imagine being called anything else. I'm ambivalent about my name. I like “Andrew,” but only a few close friends and family members call me “Andrew.” To everyone else, I'm “Andy.” While I don't want to be called “Andrew” by everyone, I never warmed up to myself as “Andy.” It always sounds to me like someone else. It's a name I use for commercial purposes. A few good old friends call me “Roon.”

Most first names like Andrew are replaced in casual relationships with a nickname. It seems friendlier, I guess. William becomes “Bill,” John is “Jack,” “Hal” for Harold, “Ed” for Edward, “Joe” for Joseph, “Mike” for Michael. There are dozens of them. Occasionally, someone who takes himself seriously objects.

There are fewer nicknames for girls, I think. Elizabeth gets to be “Betty” and Katherine “Kate,” but you can't do much with Helen, Joan, Mary, Doris, Mabel, Ruth or Anna. I don't know how some nicknames come about. Why is Sarah “Sally,” or Elizabeth “Betty”?

The ten most popular boys names chosen by parents in recent years, according to Social Security records, have been Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew, Andrew, Joseph, Ethan, Daniel, Christopher and Anthony.

The ten most common girls names now are Emily, Emma, Madison, Hannah, Olivia, Abigail, Alexis, Ashley, Elizabeth and Samantha. I'm suspicious of this list. I've never known a girl named “Madison.”

President George W. Bush was lucky his parents gave him the middle initial “W,” standing for “Walker.” It inhibits anyone from calling him “Junior.” A President shouldn't be called “Junior.” As a matter of fact, no one should be called “Junior.” It has always seemed to me to be wrong for parents to give a boy his father's name and tack “Junior” onto it. A kid deserves his own name. He shouldn't be burdened with his father's. For all his life there is confusion between the two men and there is something demeaning about “Junior,” anyway. In order to differentiate between father and son, the kid is often called by some silly name or, perhaps worse, he's called “Junior.”

Girls are not so often given their mother's names and, even though the word is not gender-specific, no one ever calls a girl “Junior.”

Sometimes a nickname seems totally wrong. You wouldn't dream of calling some actors by a nickname. How could you call Robert Redford “Bob”? Richard Burton was never called “Dick.” It would seem strange to call Sir Laurence Olivier “Larry.” And imagine calling Ernest Hemingway “Ernie,” William Shakespeare “Bill,” or Edgar Allen Poe, “Ed Poe.”

I envy people with three names. It makes them sound important. As a kid, I read Hans Christian Anderson and Louisa May Alcott. Then
there's Johann Sebastian Bach, Edgar Rice Burroughs, James Earl Jones, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Joyce Carol Oates, George Bernard Shaw and Martin Luther King Jr., of course. If I were really important, I'd be Andrew Aitken Rooney. “Aitken” came from Scottish great-grandparents.

We are victims of our parents when it comes to the names we're given. They give it to us and, like it or not, we're stuck with it. The only way out is a nickname and nicknames are not something we give ourselves. They come about naturally because that's who we seem like to the people who call us that. I'm uneasy about seeming like “Andy.” I take myself more seriously than “Andy.”

It's easy to think you prefer summer to winter when it's 10 below zero and the wind is howling, and it's easy to think you prefer winter to summer when it's 94 in the shade, but I've set aside those factors that alter our ability to think straight while we're enduring them. I've decided that under any conditions, I prefer zero to 100.

It hasn't been 100 yet where I write, but it's been too close for comfort and I hate it. There's no limit to the clothes you can bundle up in when it's cold outside, but there is a limit to how many clothes you can take off to stay cool. Naked doesn't help. Even sleeping without pajamas is no comfort. No pajamas only makes things worse; you stick to yourself instead of to them.

Air-conditioning was a great invention and a relatively new one. (I think of anything that came along in my lifetime as recent.) We never had it when I was growing up, and even now, there's no central air-conditioning in our good old house. We make out with a few unattractive air-conditioning machines hanging out the windows, whirring away all night. The furnace that warms the house is a far
more satisfactory piece of equipment than the air conditioners. Air conditioners are intrusive. You're always aware of their presence. Radiators don't make a sound or blow anything at you; they quietly exude warmth.

I even recall with affection some of the cold weather clothes I had as a kid. My mother bought me a three-quarter-length sheepskin coat that kept me warm for five years, and I had a wool hat with flaps that covered my ears when they buttoned under my chin. I don't remember anything special I wore in hot weather.

On these hot days of summer, I find myself driving somewhere that I don't really have to go because the air-conditioning in my car is concentrated and a relief to be in. The system works well because the interior of the car is a small, closed space that cools readily.

One of the great pleasures of cold weather is a fireplace. Not many fireplaces are being built into new homes, and most of those are more decorative than functional. A gas-burning fireplace is not a real fireplace but a real one is a lot of work.

Swimming pools, lakes and ocean beaches are pleasant places in summer, but no warm weather pleasure compares to the healthy fun kids can have playing in the snow. I've always felt sorry for people who raise children in the parts of our country that don't get any. I'd rather have snow than oranges.

Nothing brings a community together like a heavy snow. You're all in it together, and a bonding takes place. The “good mornings” exchanged are more genuine after a snowstorm. On hot days, the “good mornings” are what I'd call desultory.

I've never wanted summer to end because I've always been on vacation, but I wish there was some way I could have my summer vacation with some snow instead of oppressive heat.

It occurs to me, I don't even write well when it's hot.

The size of something is of first importance to whatever it is. Some things are too big and others are too small. It's a pleasure to get something that's just the right size, but it doesn't happen often.

Size is a big problem when it comes to clothes and shoes. I have trouble with shoes because I have wide feet. It's easy to get the right length, but few companies that make men's shoes give you a choice of width. There must be a lot of people walking around in shoes that don't fit. Women's shoes bear no resemblance to the size of their feet.

Some of the manufacturers who make socks have given up on sizes. Socks that say, “Fits size five to twelve” are too long for a size 8 and too short for a size 10. A lot of them say, “One size fits all,” but it has been my experience that if the label says, “One size fits all,” whatever the size is, the socks don't really fit anyone.