In 1971, I’d plodded through my emotional life like a somnambulist. I’d dealt with my ever-present anxiety by ignoring all but the most superficial human interactions. Catherine Mancini was a girl of Italian descent who lived with her family a few miles down the road from SIU. She was pretty in a country way and had a cute way of talking, a combination of a Southern and Midwestern dialect. I loved the way she said “quit” (“kuh-wit”). She’d said “quit” to me a lot. But what set Catherine apart from the other girls I’d dated during college was that her personality was made up of a critical balance of empathy and assertiveness that could have awakened me from my emotional slumber, had I allowed her to.
I didn’t remember much about my college years or the drab intervening decades. Liberal doses of vodka and pills had darkened or blotted out most of the memories. But I did recall that Catherine had tried to lead me out of the haze, and I pretty much ignored her. And when we finally broke up I wasn’t even upset about it, because I was smitten with Tammy, and so I relegated the memory of Catherine—who I was much better suited for—to a Kroger bag.
And now I was kneeling at the side of the bed with the mop and staring at the photo of a pretty young girl whose image I hadn’t seen in nearly forty years.
The contents of that grocery bag condensed my life story into a Tweet: Opportunities offered me@frightened. Opportunities terrifying@scared. Opportunities rejected@misery
I thought about my Testing Unlimited! job with c-a-t and r-a-t, Bob with his water filters, Tammy with her house, and me who never mastered algebra or broadcasting or anything else.
I looked at that slim, clear-eyed teenager on the student ID; touched my face, and felt the nerves running beneath my exceedingly thin skin. Muscles corded around the nerves until they tightened into lines of tension on either side of my jaw, like strings on a violin. The strings were wound too tight, so my neck was bent by the pressure. This nervous energy sunk my cheeks until they were hollow cups, traced wrinkles down either side of my nose like gashes, and drew dark rings around my eye sockets, from which crow’s feet radiated like jagged scars.
God, I wish I could start over again!
I dropped my hand from my face and it landed on the pill bottle.
I took two pills, washed them down with a swig of vodka, wound my watch, and stared at Catherine’s face. Soon, voices speaking gibberish and noises that sounded like rushing water and leaky faucets filled my head. I felt a sudden acceleration...
…And found myself sitting upright with my head lolling against a train window. Sunlight was bouncing off the glass of skyscrapers, passing through the window, and refracting deep in my eyes.
What the hell?
I was on some train, passing the massive black column of the Willis Tower—formerly the Sears Tower—in downtown Chicago. The train rumbled over switches and crossed over jammed expressways with ramps twisting in all directions. Soon I could see glimpses of Lake Michigan.
“Theh lake looks a little chee-oppy.” said some guy behind me.
A girl answered, “I think it was the storm that passed through lee-ast night.” The couple had the top-heavy accent that had evolved in this city of big shoulders.
“Deh ya remember last New Year’s when we nearly froze walking across theh Michigan Avenue bridge to theh Hancock tower?”
“Oh God, yes,” said the girl.
“It must have been ten below; theh white caps on the lake had free-OZ-enn. Theh wind cut like a knife!”
“Well, I won’t be missing it. Where we’re going it’ll be like Floridah.”
They must be from the west side.
And, as if in rebuttal, I heard in front of me:
“Can I use your ink pin? I can’t fahnd mine.”
The guy answered, “Here…” And then, “…I figure, if we git into Carbondale ontime, we’ll make Cairo by about 11:00.”
Keh-row? These people are from Southern Illinois!
Above the lake, the sky was crisp and well-defined, and looked colder than I thought it should look in early fall. What was it—September, October? I wasn’t good with dates. A bright maroon leaf drifted past the slowly-moving train. Soon, manicured green lawns appeared, then tract houses, and finally the black loamy Northern Illinois soil, whose furrows passed like rapid little black waves that never seemed to end. Wave after wave, after wave...
I started when I heard: “MAHHHHHHHHH-TOOOON…Mattoon is the next stop.”
The train was in Central Illinois.
I looked at my wrist, but my watch was gone, and I wasn’t wearing my cell phone either. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pocket watch with the fisherman on the cover and snapped it open: 6:56. Somehow I had lost three hours and missed seeing most of the state of Illinois. My pill container was in my pocket, and since dusk was fading fast, I took what I thought were two uppers, and soon was grooving to the cadence of the train wheels skipping over the gaps in the track.
Dah-Dah-Dah-Daaaaaaaah!
It sounded like the beginning of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Dah-Dah-Dah-Daaaaaaaah!
Stupid-assed people with their “Making Fun of the Classics” ringtones.
“Hello?” said a young, disembodied voice in front of me.
Pause.
“….Oh yah, we’re on the Saluki about an hour from Carbondale.”
Pause.
“Not again! OK, you…you’re cutting out. I’ll call you tomorrow and see if we can deal with the issue. Yah, bye.”
Issue?
“Who was that?” said another disembodied voice.
“Kyla. I’m helping her with her term paper. She’s having some issues converting from Mac to Windows.”
And I’m having some issues with calling problems “issues.”
Issues, quality time, texting, gaming, ripping a tune, peeps…terms such as goal oriented, core competencies, thinking outside the damned box, and partnering…all of this grated on my ears like a fingernail scratching slate. Stupid understatements like, “I’m a little bit outraged.” Idiot expressions such as, “Sweet!” and the mere mention of the word frappuccino made me sick. The list was especially disgusting when everything was done at the same time—“multitasking.” And of course, all of it had to be accomplished with speed, speed, speed! It seemed that technology had accelerated the revolution of the world so that each minute was compressed into 55 seconds, each hour was now only worth fifty-five minutes, and every day had only 23 hours, yet people were expected to squeeze 25 hours into that same day. Humans weren’t biologically suited for this, so they either did a half-assed job of it, or went nuts like me.
I glanced out the train window, saw the last flush of a maroon dusk, and found a pink pill to extend it just a little bit more.
Dah-Dah-Dah-Daaaaaaaah!
