A Fable

Here, we break from the anecdote format for moment in the name of short fiction. That can happen sometimes.

A Fable

or

A Short, Moralizing Story about Animals

Once upon a time there were a number of animals in a setting appropriate to the species of the animals present. One animal, the Exemplary Animal, embodied a set of characteristics and predilections deemed to be favorable by the Author, but this fact was not revealed by the Narrator, who for artistic and stylistic purposes had a separate point of view and voice altogether. Another animal, the Admonitory Animal, embodied a set of characteristics and predilections deemed by the Author to be dangerous, countercultural, and subversive, but this fact was also excluded from the fable’s introduction by the Narrator. There were also several other animals who were symbolically unimportant, and who merely served as a means of advancing the fable’s plot.

At a certain point, the symbolically unimportant but nonetheless plot advancing animals acted so as to give rise to a particular situation. The situation required action on the part of both the Exemplary and Admonitory Animals, but their course was unclear. The stubbornly moralizing Author caused the Narrator to go to great pains in describing the situation such that it would be apparent that it mirrored a common human situation familiar to the fable’s audience, albeit oversimplified due to a desire on the part of the Author for universal applicability and some general constraints upon short moralizing stories about animals to deal with complexity without becoming arduously long and muddling the all-important clarity of their symbols.

After consideration, the Exemplary Animal responded to the situation in a way consistent with the traits the Author wished to promote in his fable, and was rewarded accordingly: specifically, in a way suggestive of the idea that audience members who act similarly in corresponding situations might also be rewarded thusly. The Admonitory Animal responded in a way that was not necessarily opposite, but was nonetheless consistent with traits the Author did not look as favorably upon. As such, the Admonitory Animal faced repercussions sufficiently harmful and relevant to his actions so as to communicate to the audience that the actions caused the repercussions and that the repercussions were undesirable.

At the conclusion of the fable, the Narrator—acting in a capacity not envisioned, endorsed, nor fully understood by the Author—drew attention to the contrived simplicity of the situation, the unreasonable and unparalleled lack of complexity in the characters, and the arbitrary nature of a medium in which an author (though not necessarily this one) can impose results of actions while the opposite results are perhaps equally likely, thereby calling into question the very relevance of short moralizing stories about animals as a meaningful way of communicating moral truths.

Then, in an attempt to regain control over the content of his work, the Author revealed a brief, easy-to-remember summation of the lesson he’d hoped his fable to teach, but, inexplicably, it rang somewhat hallow. The Narrator wondered if this could be construed as a statement about the intimidating difficulty of genuine ethical analysis, but decided it was best not to read too much into it.

Caution: Wet Floor

This is a story about your friend and mine, Harshvardhan Chowdhary. It’s also a story that Warren likes to tell. What’s more, I learned recently that it’s a story with disputed details. So, what’s not to like?

Caution: Wet Floor

As you leave Collins dining hall, there’s a ledge with rotating tray-holders, where you drop off your tray with used plates and glasses and whatnot. It then rotates everything back behind the scenes to be loaded into a dishwasher. This area is a bottleneck; everyone finishing a meal passes through it, so it’s a likely place for a spill to occur, either because of a collision or a loss of balance in the avoidance of one.

One particular time, Harsh’s tray included a glass with a small amount of remaining water. When I tell this story in person, I hold my fingers closely together and say “this much,” but suffice to say that even the often-cited optimist would describe the glass as mostly empty, rather than a tad full. During the transition onto the tray-rotator, his glass tipped over, leaving a fraction of a percentage of a portion of a puddle on the floor.

Harsh paused over the spill, and the rest of us motioned for him to continue on out of the bottleneck. The puddle was too small to be worrisome, each of us might reasonably have thought. Nonetheless Harsh, polite and other-regarding as he is, started back toward a “caution: wet floor” he’d noticed in the main part of Collins. The floor it was meant to warn about had since dried, and Harsh was going to return the sign to relevance.

So, the rest of us waited. Just as Harsh reached down to pick up the warning sign, a guy approached the spill. None of us knew him, but he was about twice Harsh’s size, so in successive re-tellings of this story he became “a football player.” Anyway, he stepped in exactly the wrong spot, and the events unfolded like you’d expect them to in a cartoon. His arms swing back, his legs swing forward, his tray lurches upward, he lands on his back.

The football player looked around, understandably dazed. As he regained himself, Harsh returned, placed the warning sign next to him, patted him on the head, and walked out.

The aforementioned disputed detail here is that Harsh walked out silently. He claims to have apologized to his victim. I don’t remember it happening- neither does Warren- but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have. Still, I think the image is fantastic: the unassuming hero arriving too late, but, unflappable, continuing on his way with a comforting pat on the head.

The Universal Appeal of Ice Cream

The Universal Appeal of Ice Cream

As far as I can tell, I am half Italian and half Hoosier. I say “as far as I can tell” because my mom’s family is definitively Italian, but my dad’s family didn’t bother to keep records, so we can only look a couple generations back, and they’re all from Indiana. I’m not sure if it’s because of the uncertainty about where else I’m from or the fact that in Indiana being a good cook is putting more butter in the grits, but I tend to skip the details and self-identify as an Italian.

I used to get up to Indiana every so often for family reunions or my grandparents’ annual Christmas party. These trips yielded several worthy anecdotes about my interactions with Hoosier culture, but for this story the relevant details concern my impression of extended family. Those impressions are, in a certain way, stereotypically American. For us, family are the people who you don’t see except for special occasions, and are happy to joke around with, but at the same time know you’d be uneasy with if you spent more than a day or two together. Add to this that our Thanksgiving table typically only includes neighbors and friends with similarly disconnected families, and you can understand why I take the expression “they’re family” to mean only that they’re related to me, and not to imply anything in particular about how I ought to feel about them.

It was a shock, then, the first time we went to Italy. The story goes that my grandmother on my mom’s side was in regular touch with her family in Italy, but never passed this connection on to my mom and her brother. She didn’t so much as speak Italian at home. So, when a pile of old letters were discovered, it was a revelation. At first mom used Microsoft Word’s awkward translation feature to restart communication, but soon started to work on her Italian and rekindled the association. She visited once on her own, and later brought me and my stepdad.

Real Italians have a different sense of family than I do. Having been out of touch with us for all of mom’s adult life, you might expect that the visit would be jilted, much like the broken sentences they’d read about us. I, for my part, contributed by knowing only just a few words of Italian, certainly not enough to express my amazement and gratitude as we were treated like we’d known them since birth. For them, “they’re family” was an appeal to duty, a reason to love. Apparently they didn’t need any other reason.

One person we met on this homecoming was my cousin Tomaso, who now, six or so years later, speaks wonderful English while my Italian is still rudimentary at best. At the time, though, he wasn’t much closer to being able to communicate with me than I was with him. We resorted to activities we could share without much speaking: passing a soccer ball, shooting hoops, watching his llamas.

Once, after scoring easily on me in our shootout, Tomaso remarked abruptly, “It’s hot.” I agreed, but had to search for a bit before coming up with the right response. Eventually I came up with “Che caldo” (literally, “What heat!”).

Tomaso motioned toward the house, and I followed him inside, where he looked around in the freezer for a minute before emerging with two ice cream sandwiches. It’s weird to think of Italians, the culinary artists, with ice cream sandwiches melting in their hands; but after all, Americans export culture. Maybe he just wanted me to feel at home.

It worked. It’s the image I now associate with the idea of family: two kids who can barely speak to each other smile and eat ice cream together just because they’ve been told they’re family.

The Adlai Stevenson Game

The Adlai Stevenson Game

It used to be that when someone got up to get more food at dinner, my friends and I would pick a phrase to try to get that person to say, or some type of information to get them to volunteer. We’d then direct the conversation toward accomplishing that goal, with the one observed rule that no one was allowed broach the target topic directly. This was called the Frary Game, because of the dining hall it originated in, and it quickly fell out of favor because it was too easy. To win, each conspirator simply volunteered information related to the target information, and the target’s desire to participate in conversation did all the work. The game was also susceptible to self-reference: once people knew about the Frary Game, they either became obstinate about not speaking, or spent the whole time guessing what we were trying to get them to say.

When the Frary Game first appeared to be reaching the end of its viability, my then-roommate Warren and I spent some time trying to come up with a suitable replacement. We liked that the game promoted confusion in people who weren’t in on it, but other than that did no real harm. We also weren’t ready to let go of the snickering satisfaction that comes from being among a small group of people in on something, even if that something is trivial.

It occurred to us that one way to address the problems the Frary Game had encountered would be to increase its scale. We could, we thought, designate an arbitrary number of target people and things for them to say, score a point for a player when they report success, and take that target off the master list. After a predetermined amount of time, or the exhaustion of the targets, we’d declare a winner and come up with new goals. This would solve the self-reference problems and offer a bigger challenge.

While the Macro Frary Game would have been fun, we tabled it when we realized that it failed to capture the best aspect of the initial game: that it was cooperative. The aforementioned snickering satisfaction is derived not just from knowing about something that other people don’t, but from working with other people in light of this information. The Frary Game allowed us to laugh about something together, rather than to take turns laughing at each other.

This realization led us to what was eventually called the Adlai Stevenson Game, named for its first and most successful iteration. Warren and I gathered several players and decided on our friend Ilan as the first participant. I can’t quite remember how, but we settled on a target action as well: getting Ilan to express frustration about Adlai Stevenson.

This proved to be a great choice because it required that the group succeed in creating a situation that would not exist independent of the game. Rarely do people express frustration with presidential candidates that lost fifty years ago. In fact, they don’t usually come up at all. Better yet, we were pretty sure that had he been around at the time, Ilan would have voted for Eisenhower, so there was no chance of getting him to express frustration about Adlai’s losses.

The right strategy, then, was to get him frustrated with the idea of Adlai Stevenson. So, that’s what we did.

Things started off somewhat innocuously. Dan was writing a paper on Stevenson, so he asked Ilan to read it for him. I read enough about him to cherry pick some esoteric facts and brought them up in conversation. “Hey, Ilan, did you know Adlai Stevenson was a Unitarian Universalist? I know; I thought it was interesting too.”

Eventually we ran out of casual ways to bring him up, so we alternated between being more creative and more direct. Grant and I took to shouting “Adlaaaaaaaaaaai Stevensooooooooon!” while throwing off during games of Ultimate Frisbee. Warren and I would run into Ilan and ask who’d win in a fight, Adlai Stevenson or the Fantastic Four.

“Okay, but what about Adlai Stevenson and the Ninja Turtles? You have to admit that one would be a toss up.”

Harsh once stopped him in Collins and exclaimed “The soups are so much better than usual today. They must think Adlai Stevenson is coming or something.”

Once, Matt ran out of ideas and went with “Hey Ilan, ADLAI STEVENSON!”

This kept up for a couple of weeks.

I wasn’t there when Ilan finally cracked. From what I hear, the last straw was a question: if given a choice, what type of sandwich did he think Adlai Stevenson would be? The story goes that he threw his arms back and cried out in frustration.

“Why is everyone talking about Adlai Stevenson?”

Grant and Harsh had the good sense play dumb and ask what he was talking about. We never mentioned the name to him again.

Step #1

Preface: This story is about my grandfather and something very important he always used to tell me. That something was ‘Step #1, get their attention’. He told this story to someone else, and I was there (4 or 5 at the time) but it stuck with me. My grandfather’s ability to tell a good story was probably one of the early factors in setting up my love of story.

My grandfather Ray (my Mom’s father) worked as a Union organizer for local 1262. Some of you may recognize that as being the local from your supermarket. He was pretty high up on the Union ladder, and would go and speak to store owners, managers, or other people of importance to get the store organized as part of the Union. Many employers were uninterested in getting the Union since it simply meant they’d be paying more to their employees in most cases. So in most situations, my grandfather was not a welcome man on business.

One time though, my grandfather had scheduled a meeting with the top person at a local Grand Union. Upon arriving he said hello to the man’s secretary, and began to patiently wait for him to finish with his other business. My grandfather was normally not a patient man, but he had arrived early and could be understanding of someone having a tight schedule and other obligations. Fifteen minutes after their meeting should’ve started, my grandfather had become decidedly less patient. He inquired with the secretary, “does he know I’m here?”

She at this point was offended, and replied “yes, and you’ll have to wait your turn.”

Surpsingly, my grandfather sat back down. For a few more minutes. After about five minutes he said “I’ll be right back,” and proceeded to walk outside of the store. He took one of the shopping carts from outside, and hurled it though one of the front windows of the store. The manager proceeded to run out front, yelling “RAY, I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.”

An old woman yelled, “I saw him do it!”

My Grandfather replied “You want to be next?” to the old woman, and “No, I need to talk to you,” to the manager.

The moral of course, is first, get their attention.

The Old Bird

The Old Bird

It takes me about ten minutes to drive home from the United Way of Morris County office: about ten minutes or exactly three stoplights. At one of them, I turn off of a relatively busy street on to a relatively small one, so the light lingers on green and often I don’t have to stop. When I do, it’s only momentarily, because I’m making a right turn and can do it on red.

Just to the left of the intersection in question is an exit from national highway 287. 287 has a speed limit of 55 miles per hour where it passes Morristown, so cars on the exit ramp are usually in the process of decelerating from 80 to 40 mph. This makes the right turn in question a subtle one to make on red, as you have to inch far enough into the intersection to see that the exit ramp is empty, but not so far that you get clipped by an exiting car that doesn’t realize (or care) that the ramp leads directly to a light.

Nonetheless, usually you don’t have to wait for a green. The only thing that can disrupt the process is the presence of a truck or van in the lane to your left, as they frequently pull up too far and block the view requisite to make a right turn viable.

A few weeks ago, exactly that happened. A van pulled up to my left, and another car behind me with its right turn signal on.

I couldn’t see around the van and wasn’t in a hurry to get home, so I decided to wait it out. This didn’t sit well with the car behind me, and my decision to wait was punctuated with a sharp car horn. I glanced up at my mirror to confirm that it was an impatient horn rather than any more important kind, and encountered a woman who could not have been younger than eighty staring back at me.

She made eye contact, held it for a second, and then flipped me off.

At that point, the light turned green and I made my turn, but I can’t help but wonder what the appropriate response would have been, if I’d have had time to make one. Is it ever justifiable to give the finger to someone old enough to be my grandmother? Then again, does not responding mean that I’m not as tough as an old woman? And, doesn’t her taking the initiative in the confrontation constitute forfeiting her right to be treated reasonably?

As I reflect on it, the best response would have been to one up her and simply smile and wave. How frustrating it’d have been to watch some carefree young’un in front of you, waiting out a red light for no reason, nonplussed by your old bird.

Price Discrimination

Price Discrimination

There are several differences between New Jersey and Colorado. Chief among these is each state’s respective attitude toward communication in public spaces. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I learned that the number of people around is a problem, and the corollary that it is polite to avoid interaction in crowded places. Thus, to protect against over-stimulation, New Jersey residents have developed a simple unspoken policy: not speaking. We recognize regulars on the PATH train, but know they’d prefer that we didn’t say hello.

Colorado is different. Buses from the parking lot at the ski area to the gondola are among the chattiest places in Steamboat Springs. My parents meet people in Costco by trading hints about the best frozen food. Grocery clerks ask about what you’re planning to cook and people in line chime in with recipe advice.

When I visit my parents, this discrepancy jars me every time. It’s not—or at least I hope it’s not—that I want to be left alone like I would be back east. Instead, I like to think that it’s just a matter of getting used to new surroundings. Having a stranger strike up conversation with me is still a new enough experience that it’s unexpected. I suspect this reaction is shared by Coloradans who pipe up at the wrong moment when visiting New Jersey; I’m happy to play by the new rules, but it takes a second to realize when I’m breaking them.

Take, for example, the time I was waiting to pick up a pizza from Domino’s. At first, I stuck to my instinctual script and kept to myself in line, quietly brooding about how long the line was and how all that stood between me and dinner were these other people. Soon enough, though, the woman in front of me broke what for her must have been an unexpected silence. “Did you get the email with the coupons?”

Unsure at first if the question was directed at me, I took a moment before explaining that I usually avoid Domino’s if I have a choice in pizza, and so I must not be on the email list. “Oh,” she remarked “I feel the same way. The coupons are why I’m here.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, but, thankfully, I didn’t have to say anything. She continued, “You’re supposed to print them out, but I’m just going to tell the guy that I got the email. That’s the same, really.”

I was skeptical that those things really were the same, but I would not have been shocked to learn that Colorado cashiers are more accommodating than their New Jersey counterparts, so I didn’t voice my skepticism. Instead, I went with “Yeah, sounds like a plan.”

As it turns out, cashiers are bound by the same regulations in all states. The cashier refused to take five dollars off her total, and she was unwilling to accept his refusal. They went back and forth a few times, he repeating that he could not give her the deal without the coupon, and she that the email signaled a lowering of the price, that the coupon was a silly formality.

“Coupons lower the price. That’s what they do.”

After a few rounds of this, the cashier disappeared to pass the problem on to his manager, leaving her with no one but me to hear her case. “Can you believe that? Who does that guy think he is?”

“A coupon lowers the price.”

Now, I’ve told this story to several friends, framing it each time as if it were a story about a stranger being ridiculous. Each time, they’ve come back to me with the observation that it’d be better described as a story about my own social failure. Their concern comes from my need to equivocate, and my delusion that other people are as nerdy as I am, and would prefer to better understand the world around them than to have a stranger back them up over five dollars.

“Actually, I can see where he’s coming from,” I began. “The reason a company prints coupons is so that it can charge everyone the most they’re willing to pay for a pizza. So, those who don’t print the coupon are demonstrating that they’re willing to pay full price, while those who print it are likely the same people who would not come in at all if not for the coupon. It’s just price discrimination.”

I thought it was a good explanation.

She didn’t. In fact, apparently the only part that was clear was that I’d used the word discrimination, and that in most contexts discrimination is bad. Thus, her response: “Yeah, it is discrimination!”

I didn’t ask what she thought the discrimination was based on. There are several answers she could have gone with: those who are environmentally sensitive enough to minimize printing, the forgetful, those without degrees in economics.

Shortly, the clerk came back with the manager, who backed up his employee and refused to honor her theoretical coupon. It turns out that issuing a coupon and lowering the true price are not the same thing.

See, it is price discrimination.

Welcome

It seems you’ve stumbled across pencilgeist.

This site is intended to serve as something of a written photo album: a place for Jimmy O’Brien and I to preserve stories that we like telling, like hearing from our friends, or occasionally just stories that we happen to make up.

Every storyteller needs a listener, so feel free to bookmark this page and check it obsessively. You can also stop by a normal amount; we’re not picky.

Cheers.