Perhaps you should consider another line of work …
First, she tries to explain to me how the one-year limited warranty is invalid after you use it once. Since the item in question had already broken once this year, we’d have to pay for this second repair. In my opinion, any reputable organization would consider the warranty renewed after a repair. They should have enough confidence in their product to guarantee it won’t break again within another twelve months. Not here. Once broken, you’re on your own. “Expensive and fragile, so we can’t really stand behind it. Guess you should have thought of that,” they seem to be saying.
Then, this exchange between customer and clerk. Read the first line carefully.
She says, “Would you like to pay for this now?”
“Oh,” we reply, “can we pay for it when we pick them up?”
Nervous glance to coworker. “Um, no. We require prepayment.”
“Oh, so there’s no real option.”
“Not if you want us to place the order. We only order once we get payment.”
“So perhaps you could have said ‘How would you like to pay today.’”
“Well, I didn’t want to just say, ‘Give me $91.’”
“Exactly. And yet, you could have said what you meant. I was offering a suggestion.”
She stares at us like perhaps we could get the heck out of her office. We gave her the money and did. We plan to return once more to pick up the repaired glasses (seven to ten days, don’t you know), and likely to never return again. I get the feeling with this organization, they are just fine with that.
The light at the end of the tunnel is indeed a train coming.
My Grandpa, who passed away when I was sixteen years old, was a railroad enthusiast. He was an engineer. Not a guy who drove steam trains down the tracks, but an electrical engineer who worked for Ma Bell his entire forty-two year career. I believe he enjoyed his job. His love was trains.
He and Grandma took a month-long honeymoon, mostly by rail that included the Grand Canyon and other sites. Christmas and birthday gifts were easy to settle on, so long as we could find a book or video about trains. He and I once visited a model train show at our convention center. We took a ride on a train that traveled to nowhere and back so you could have dinner and enjoy the ride.
It’s only natural he would decide to build a model train, and he did. In 1967 he took the plunge and began construction on 320 feet of portable train track in his back yard. The rail was purchased from a specialty company in Michigan, the authentic trucks (wheels) and couplers from Pennsylvania. Taking his cue from catalogs, magazines and blueprints provided by manufacturers, his first car was a hand-cranked hopper, suitable for riding.
This allowed diversion for the grandchildren while he focused on building an electric power engine with a diesel facade. I’ll never understand why it was bright orange, but we’ve kept it that way ever since. The wiring inside is a mystery to us but each time we pull it out of the garage, attach two 12-volt car batteries and flip the seemingly ancient wooden lever it comes to life. Soon there was an additional flat car and a caboose built from a toy box.
This past week we set up Grandpa’s train again, leaving out 60 feet of track to get it to fit in the smaller yard, and discovering that it made no difference. My eight-year-old daughter was eager to be the chief conductor, her cousin was always in the same seat anytime it ran and, true to form, my four-year-old became enamored only after a couple of days of study, consideration, introspection and, finally, leap of faith.
I had a bit of a moment when my daughter told me that her stuffed animals would be riding in the caboose, heads sticking out. That was where we had always put our as children but I hadn’t even prompted her it was the right thing to do.
And I drove the train. Almost as much as my daughter did. The electric motor whirrs like no other sound in my life; grinding in the low gear to get the slippery wheels turning and humming in the high position with a ferocity that provides a low growl to the ear and steady buzz in the seat. The rails have a song of their own, a futuristic swoosh like how I imagine those electric cars might run when I read Popular Mechanics many years ago – but much more real, a true ringing in your ears. Yet it is ethereal, too, beyond anything near to my daily life. I hopped on one afternoon when everyone else was occupied and let the sounds take me …
Once the track is set the ride will run for hours, and often did. Five grandsons would pile in and ride the wild rails. Smooth and fast (it seems), it never got boring, even though it was the same view over and over again. We could chase baseballs with bats, pretend to be going coast to coast or just lay down in the long flatcar and rest while the sunlight danced on our lids. It has a light for night driving; a near mystical experience of cool air, lighting bugs and blinking stars behind the trees. Sometimes the rides would end only once Grandma came and literally pulled the plug; reaching in to seize an enormous, outdated fuse that makes the entire contraption work, or not. We all knew where it was kept, but when it had been commandeered in this fashion it would require permission to be retrieved, inserted and bring the beast back to life.
I turned forty years old this year and I am in the interesting state of being anxious about the future and drawn to the past. It’s not a unique phenomenon. Books and essays have been written about it for ages. The trick is to discover what strengths of our history we are being called to utilize without being stuck there and simultaneously have enough faith in the future to belie our self doubts about the impact of our lives. This occurs to me while I am taking innumerable revolutions around the circuit, focusing, as I did years ago, on the rails just in front of the cab; watching the ties fly past and the rails guide the unseen wheels without fail. The white noise and gentle rocking (perhaps aided by the glass of wine previously consumed) led me to simple meditation in motion.
And this, among all the memories of bats and balls, construction and mechanics, childhood enthusiasm and exhaustion was the memory that rose to the top. It is not the blithe, almost cliché concept of being able to “act like a kid.” Finding the joy of childhood is a folly, for we are never that child again. Even when we are still a kid, we are not the same kid. When the train is set up again and I am twelve instead of nine or six or four, it’s an entirely different experience. When I am fourteen and helping Grandpa set it up, just him and me, for what will be the final time it is new all over again. When I am forty and suddenly responsible (in association with my own Dad, who helped the original designer bend the rails from straightaway into curve by hand) with making the contraption safe enough for the small children who will run from far and wide to take a ride, it feels like an anachronism. Can I really be in this role?
In meditation, I am all of these roles at the same time. It is not youth I am seeking; it is permission to spend time exploring the space between things and between activities. I was fortunate that Grandma didn’t come out after just a few minutes to slow the action, claiming we must engage our minds more. She came long after we were allowed to go beyond the simple tasks of playing. There, without interruption or even wondering what we were doing and, especially, without asking why we were doing it, we found peace and contemplation and expansion and mystery and joy and enlightenment. Rhythm, light, motion, noise, blur and mechanics combined to allow us transcendence.
Now, reaching back from atop that bright orange machine tracing a track built by loving hands before I was born, I find renewal. Enough blasé commentary about midlife and how it should make me feel; here is the tangible question, action and answer all in one odyssey. What should I remember? Why this desire to reflect back on my life? By building a train, literally, we take action. It is tangible in the present and based on the past. It serves others and ourselves, if we let it. It teaches: Remember not the emotions, but the connections and fundamental insights that all people have and children retain closer to the surface. The emotions are a siren, calling us back to the knowledge that we are One and capable of all things. Take action to recall these talents, this fundamental strength, the empowerment of man by God.
Sometimes spiritual action looks like play. It’s not. It’s the work of living openly, honestly, lovingly, and emotionally. All aboard.
Glory Days
I don’t know if you’ve been pulled into the deep pit that is Facebook, but let me give you a few warnings before you get sucked into the abyss of long-lost friends and over bearing memories that exist there. With Facebook, you are just a few clicks away from a tangled web of middle age confusion. Friends you haven’t had in years emerge from the cosmic ether and into your life. Sure, you can post pictures, share with family, keep in touch with former exchange students and even provide the universe with details about every move you make! This is the outward shell of the site, designed to lure unsuspecting grown ups by appealing to their inbred pragmatism. “Finally,” we say, “a use for this internet thing. I’d just about grown tired of instant news, email and porn!”
Yet there is a dark side, and it applies especially to people age 30 t0 50. Scads of books have been written about the mid-life crisis, but when it happens on line the results are dizzying. The questions that naturally arise at this time in our lives (Have I lived up to my potential? Am I happy? What is happy? What would the people who knew me 20 years ago think of where I am today?) now have a forum for discussion! This, by the way, is not the way introspection is meant to be resolved. That’s why it’s called INTRO – meaning inner – spection – meaning digging around in your psyche to figure out if you really want to go forward as a person or toss all your cookies to the wind and follow Chris McCandless into the wild.
While it beats going to a reunion (virtually shaking hands with people and then being able to turn completely away without having to learn about last summer’s fishing trip to Northern Minnesota is a nice benefit), Facebook seems to carry the same pressures and anxieties. What are my favorite books? Oh man! What should I put that expresses my intelligence without seeming snotty? My religion? Are you kidding me. It took me a three hundred page book to express my view in this area, and you’re looking for a single word. And, of course, the pictures. As we buy our gym memberships, visit the doctor more often and cut back on cupcakes, we simultaneously scour our hard drive for the picture that best resembles who we were while showing our best side. Thank goodness for children who’s pictures are universally receive oohs and aahs, even if they are ugly.
Speaking of ugly, nothing counteracts the long-lost shot of you at the prom or the school play. Now your “today” life knows all the stuff about your past you’ve been trying to keep a secret! You’ve been warned.
It Sucks … and that’s good!
I admit it: I purchased a vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman. He didn’t surprise me or sucker me. We were in the market for a new vacuum cleaner anyway. And he went away the first time, when he knocked on the door while I was trying to put my daughter down for a nap. He made an appointment and kept it. My brother sold books door-to-door in college and my Mom bought her last vacuum from a guy at the door. I guess it’s in my blood.
And he showed up with a really kick-ass machine. Once you get past the embarrassment of how much dirt he’s pulling out of the carpet, couch, mattress, and ceiling fans, it gets kind of fun to see how it all works. The guy cleaned our whole living room – a nice bonus – and then pulled out the shampoo attachment. We were agog! “Sell us one!” We practically yelled at the guy.
Our beloved new vac is a Kirby, available only door-to-door. Here are some of the many things they have done right in engineering this machine. First off, the motor that creates the suction is amazing. We were so used to having our old machine simply kick dirt around without actually picking it up that we are now overjoyed to use this thing. It has a long hose for attachments so using the many attachments is easier, even though you have to pull the unit around which is kinda clunky. It has a really long cord, so only really have to move the plug when I change levels of our house. Oh, there’s more about hypoallergenic cleaning bags and reversible drive motors … but mostly it is just the best vacuum in the world and we’re thrilled. I have even done the car with it.
It’s also better be the last vacuum we ever own, because now comes the red faced part: It seems impossible to have paid as much as we did for Kirby. We looked on the internet and found that we paid below the average (we negotiated quite a bit), and yet it was way more than I ever thought I would pay for a household appliance that didn’t store food or cook it! Just go to any vacuum cleaner aisle and find the one that is beyond what you would pay – then double the amount (or even triple, depending on how much you think a vacuum is worth).
