Month: March 2012

Pupamobile

“Shhh! Quiet!”

A woman’s voice in the dark directed me to squat down and be silent.

“It’s happening!” her male companion’s voice chimed in. “I’ve never heard of anyone witnessing this!”

In the pre-dawn dark of the parking lot, we all sensed we were about to behold the rarest of spectacles–the metamorphosis of a pupamobile.

“What stage is it in?” My heart was beating hard now, as I hid behind the hood of a black and yellow Mini.

“We’re not sure,” the woman replied. “We think it’s been going on awhile! The old skin is already starting to slough off!”

Sure enough, beneath the pupamobile’s old skin, wrinkly and starting to shed, a smooth and shiny surface was emerging.

Dyed-in-the-wool automobile enthusiasts only whisper at this apparition. Creepy as the appearance of the horseback-riding wraith of Sleepy Hollow, the transformation usually happens out of eyesight and earshot. Even the hardiest of auto devotees have not witnessed this event.

Like many insects, birds and mammals, automobiles have evolved sophisticated measures to guard against extinction. As a molting snake sheds its skin, certain automobiles secretly undergo metamorphoses and transform themselves. A pupa encapsulates a caterpillar in a chrysalis, leaving its adolescent life behind, transforming into a brand new kind of butterfly creature.

Likewise, this car was leaving its old form behind. The new form was emerging just beneath the tinfoil appearance of the old skin. The sweet smell of caramelized transmission fluid accompanied the mesmerizing transfiguration. A soft puff of air briefly kicked up dust as the reborn auto adjusted to its new springs and footing.

“I feel like I’m on the set of Invasion of the Body Snatchers!” the man whispered hoarsely to me.

I had to admit, it was eerie. There was no grind of metal on metal as one might expect. Instead, there was a gentle sound like the fluttering rustle of tinfoil and the transformative skin texture of something giving birth.

I’ve heard the rumors of such pupamobiles over from the whispers of those who claim to have witnessed strange happenings in junkyards and on remote street corners. Usually, the resulting machinery was hideous and ugly. 1957 Chevy Bel Aires with tiny undersized wheels and bouncy hydraulic suspensions. Ford Coupes, grotesquely jacked up and featuring oversized, monstrous, chrome-plated V8 engines. A rare exception was the Prius, the noblest pupamobile of them all, which evolved when a Toyota was sequestrated overnight too close to an electric trolley line.

But what freak of nature might emerge from this transformation?

I could only hope and pray for a miraculous metamorphosis, an automotive transmutation yielding value and substance.

A train whistle in the distance reminded me that I was about to be late to board my locomotion to the place of my employment. As I apologized to my friends that I would have to dash to the train, I left a final plea.

“The pope is in Cuba,” I whispered. “Have you seen that old thing he’s riding in?” The world-renowned Popemobile had definitely lost its luster. “Let’s pray this automotive transmogrification doesn’t morph into another worthless lowrider. Let’s pray for a miracle–a new Popemobile!” 

“A new Popemobile!“ they murmured excitedly in unison. “Let’s pray!”

As I regretfully hustled away into the darkness, I glanced back at my new friends one more time.

In the dim light of dawn, I could barely make out their profiles, their outstretched fingers frantically crisscrossing their bodies with the Sign of the Cross.

The Fence that Separates

A dog lodged its head in the fence between my neighbor’s  house and mine, and this is what the dog explained to me in a later interview:

I don’t know exactly what drew me down the street and around the corner to the chain-link fence. It may have been the smell of exotic garbage. I’ve got a penchant for bacon grease and a nose for medium rare New York strip steak fat trimmings. Or it could have been the scent of an opossum lumbering just behind the gate.

I can’t remember. My kind is better at sniffing out and chasing down high-curiosity sights, sounds and smells. Immediate gratification is our strong suit. We’re not known for figuring out cause and effect; our only reminders to stay on the straight and narrow come by way of a tug on the leash.

So when I dashed down this street, my nose led me to the gap at the bottom of the metal fence pole, where I dug the black dirt back just enough to fit my head through. The trouble was, with my shoulders wider than my head, I couldn’t move forward. I couldn’t go backwards, either.

I was stuck in the fence long enough to work up a panic. The more I struggled, the more I drooled. The more scared I got, the more I had to pee. So I did. I was fast becoming an unsanitary disaster.

It was getting dark, and I realized that I am perfectly morsel-sized for a wandering coyote or two, so I started frantically hollering for help. My yelps eventually brought a guy dressed in lounge pants out the door of the neighboring house. Stooping down, he spied me, stuck in the fence and petrified. He closed in, and I wanted to either bite or run. Of course, I couldn’t do either. He quickly disappeared and returned with his wife, a glowing flashlight strapped to his forehead.

I was surprised to suddenly see the guy’s wife peering at me from the opposite side of the fence–from the inside the fence, the side that my head was on. With her was the woman who owned the house. I gulped. What could this mean? I peed again.

The owner reached down for my head, and I wanted to bite. I don’t know what came over me, but I found myself licking her hand instead. I was ashamed. Ugh! I was acting like a puppy!

I felt the guy with the flashlight on his head tugging at my legs. He was pulling them—trying to collapse them from under me. I fought back, straightening them with all my might. What was he trying to do?

With the woman forcing my head down and the man forcibly pulling and crumpling my legs from beneath me, the pressures were too great. I snarled, then collapsed. Someone pushed my head downward and backward, toward my body, back into the shallow ditch in the dirt that I had originally excavated. Of course! They were pushing my head back through the widest part of the hole!

Suddenly, my head let go of the fence. I jerked my legs down and propelled my body backwards. I was free! Gloriously free!

My legs started pumping on their own, carrying me away from the hole and the fence and the people. Halfway across the lawn, I paused and looked back. The man and two ladies still knelt beside the chain-link fence and post, looking back at me. For an instant, I felt that I owed something to someone. I should find some way to express my thanks.

But I knew little about gratitude. I only knew about survival. Like a fence that separates, I could not grasp the sort of emotionally-charged grateful recollections of life and living that is reserved only for humans.

My instincts took over instead. There! What was that sound? Was it a cat? An opossum? I hurtled myself down the street into the darkness and never looked back.

We’ve Been Harding-ized

In 1865, perhaps the homeliest of all American presidents died. He was also possibly the most capable, brilliant and beloved man who has lived in the White House. At 6 feet 4 inches tall, he was impossible to ignore, and socially awkward by all accounts. 

He was a man of exceedingly humble origins, and he never forgot it. He was the third president to die in office.

In the same year that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Warren G. Harding was born. He grew into a man of striking appearance. In stark contrast to Lincoln’s physical ugliness, he was described as “more than handsome.” “His suppleness, combined with his bigness of frame, and his large, wide-set rather glowing eyes, heavy black hair, and markedly bronze complexion gave him some of the handsomeness of an Indian.” “His voice was noticeably resonant, masculine, warm.” “His manner…suggested generous good-nature, a wish to give pleasure, based on physical well-being and sincere kindliness of heart.”

In the deadlocked Republican Convention of 1920, supporters of the two leading candidates were forced to find a compromise presidential candidate. They landed on the sixth candidate in the field of six, choosing Warren G. Harding because he looked so much the part of a president.

In contrast to Lincoln, Harding is widely considered to be one of the worst American presidents. His speeches were “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.” His merely average intellect appeared overwhelmed by the rigors of the job. His administration was riddled with scandal and corruption.

He did not have the chance to complete his disastrous first term. Two years into his presidency, Harding suddenly died from a probable heart attack. He was the sixth president to die in office.

We live in a day in which we are encouraged to set great goals by stretching our wings wider, achieving ever more significant accomplishments. We are told that if we believe in ourselves and try hard enough, we can attain anything, whether pushing for that job promotion we believe we deserve, or hoping to gain the recognition of a hard-fought achievement.

That may all be well, but sometimes that “anything” we are encouraged to accomplish at great personal expense might be best left for another. Like Harding, we could be extending ourselves beyond our gifting and flirting with disaster–in Harding’s case, overreaching beyond his abilities may have caused his heart to finally give out.

Perhaps it is better to do lesser things with greater excellence, to know the limits of our reach, to recognize and accomplish that which is truly within our ability and scope to do, and to do it well.

Maybe we’ve been “Harding-ized” just a bit–to believe the hype that there is more importance about ourselves than we are given credit for, so we pursue a never-ending, impossible quest to rise to the top.

There’s something to be said for recognizing and living within our own abilities. It’s better to be remembered for who we are–not for how we’re perceived.

Outcast Trash

“Whose trash is this in my trashcan?”

The outburst erupted from my neighbor, whose office is just across the hall from mine. My hallmate is typically kind, reserved, and polite. But not today.

“Look at this stuff in my trashcan! Who has the right to dump their stuff into my trashcan?” She was furious at the fact that someone, apparently walking down the hall and in need of disposing of rubbish, spotted her trashcan just inside her unlocked office door and discarded unwanted items in her personal trashcan.

I had never before pondered the concept of personal trash, especially when the offices are housed within a state agency.

On the other hand, maybe working in a state agency adds legitimacy to the notion of personalized trash. Perhaps, since none of us owns anything in the building save the clothes on our back, our trash becomes a desperate expression of our individual identities.

So—perhaps there should be a certain sense of injustice when someone disposes of something in our trash can without permission, mingling their unapproved garbage with our own. Sure, in a sense we’ve already disowned our trash by disposing of it in the trashcan, but just before that, darn it, it was ours! We had the power to choose whether to keep it or lose it; we enjoyed total dominion over it while it was still ours. It was our gum wrapper wrapped around our discarded gum that we chomped like cud all the way to work after the near-mishap with the eighteen-wheeler on the freeway. It was our own t-shirt, shredding from wear, that we had worn to the concert with that special someone who broke our heart; when the arm pit fabric ripped at work, we covered ourselves in a too-warm sweater as we grieved and fended off quizzical looks from our coworkers the rest of the day. It was our broken porcelain mug from that once-ever trip to Prague that fell off our desk and shattered.

And now our sacred trash is being spoiled by fabric-staining used tea bags and filthy scum-soaked paper towels. What gives them the right?

To be fair, there was nothing sacrosanct about my hallmate’s trash. Had we been in India, it would have qualified in the lowest-caste variety—the “untouchables” of the trash heap. It held no higher pedigree than the vagrant off-cast that she deemed had polluted her own particular rubbish. Sure, there might be a gaping hole in the logic of personalizing discarded waste, but somehow, the co-mingling of deposited trash can rile us.

The “not my trash” movement has finally made it into the office building. For decades, we’ve managed to avoid the personalizing of our own trash by exporting it all over the globe for disposal. Let Thailand take our toxic rubbish, whether computer monitors, decrepit cell phones, or toys gently emitting low levels of radiation into the cribs of unsuspecting babies. Bare-footed men on the coast of Bangladesh bust up our rusty old retired marine vessels, recycling their carcasses, eventually to create brand new ships. Let somebody else die from this dangerous and polluting stuff instead of us!

This morning, when I arrived at my office and the fluorescent lights flickered alive, I realized with a start that the “not my trash” anthem had taken a shocking and unwelcome further advance—it had entered the bowels of my own office.

There before me—in my own circular trashcan—lay the hideous vulgarity of Not-My-Trash! At first, all I could feel was the obscene sense of having been personally violated by an unapproved discard. What could it be? Loathsome, unidentifiable green scum from an ancient lunch bag discard? The disposed carcass of a squashed cockroach? Plasticized remains of melted and reconstituted petrified Jujube candies?

I moved closer to my trashcan, squinting through half-closed eyes to dilute the grisly vision of what illegal trash dumping I would identify.

And—there it was—something I did not expect. A handsome Starbuck cup with striking green logo, barely used, stared back at me from the bottom of the trashcan. It was a high-class discard, having only recently treated its former owner to a five-dollar-and-change extravagance on the way to work. Inwardly, I writhed in embarrassment. It was a good and honorable discard; I wondered if I could provide the same sense of joy to someone today, a joy that this disposable cup of java had already contributed.

It was time, too, for my hallmate to learn the lesson that I had just learned—that all trash that’s not my trash is not bad trash. It, too, used to be somebody’s treasure.

So I did the only reasonable thing. I gingerly picked up the Starbuck’s cup and went to the hallway, checking both ways to be sure no one observed me. Then I carried it across the hall and dropped it into my hallmate’s trashcan.