"...you're a renter? We're going to need to see written confirmation from the home owner that it's okay to drill holes in his property. The earliest we can reschedule is in three weeks."
"...sorry sir, the appointment was scheduled for 3:oo PM."
"But it's 2:55 and I'm two blocks away."
"Yeeee-aaah...I'm going to have to pencil this in as a 'no-show.'"
Today, the technician was supposed to meet me at my home after work and fearing that I might have to devote yet another weekend to watching games in the smokey bar near my house (where everyone chastises me for asking to turn the one black and white television in the far corner of the room to something other than bull riding or NASCAR), I took off an hour early, tossed caution to the wind as I sped home, and pulled up to the house with a triumphant grin on my face where a portly man in uniform and tool belt was surveying the cable drop. I jumped out of my car with all the excitement of a game show winner. "Hey! Thanks for making it out," I greeted him too jubilantly, "the last two times I tried to get this taken care of it didn't work out as planned and as pathetic as it is, I really can't miss another week of football so I really appreciate you making it out here." The frumpy, overweight cable guy did nothing to acknowledge my existence and ignored my glee-filled greeting. He just shook his Chris Farley-esque head in a mixture of denial and frustration at the giant tulip tree in our front yard that enshrouded the phone and cable lines in a labyrinth of branches, leaves, and mischievous squirrels.
"I always get the easy ones," he mumbled to no one in particular.
"Oh, that's unfortunate. These old houses--"
"I can guarantee," he said loudly with a slight pause to ensure that I knew he was cutting me off, "that the last two installers didn't want to have anything to do with this house because of that clusterfuck of a tree up there." He started to run his dirty hand through his sweaty, disheveled hair but even this seemed as though it was going to be too much of a hassle and halfway through, he clenched his fingers into a fist and left his sweaty locks in a crumpled crown of self-pity. His eyes, beyond exhausted, looked as though he hadn't seen sleep in weeks. This may or may not have caused him to show zero resemblance to the image on his name tag. As we both stood there on the crunchy autumn leaves of the front yard, I wondered if he stood agape at the mess of branches and cable or at God himself for giving him yet another day of misfortune. In a verbal cocktail consisting of equal parts apathy and disdain, Farley explained how involved the project would be and detailed the necessity to remount the existing cable drop in order to coincide with our current internet service. He continued on with a whole slew of other technical jargon that served as a painfully obvious plea for sympathy. When he finally finished mapping out every minuscule detail of his plan, he begrudgingly went to work unlatching tools and ladders from his truck. Still excited about the prospect of watching football from the comfort of my home, I hoped to lighten his spirits and attempted to change the subject by asking him about the perks he received for working at his company. I stepped back and half-smiled at my own genius, fully prepared to listen as he described a near mythical land of free 3G networks, premium movie channels, and crystal clear High Definition sound and picture quality. Surely these things overshadowed the labors of his work. But as I am lately finding is so often the case when I don the ill-fitting hat of optimism, I conduct conversations pretty much the same way I play chess:
Step 1. I make a move with little or no forethought.
Step 2. The opposition does not counteract in strict adherence with my ill-perceived strategy.
Step 3. I spend the rest of the conversation/game backpedaling in despair.
Like clockwork, the best of my intentions detonated the the worst of his emotions and within minutes of meeting this guy, I caused him to erupt in a litany of obscenities about the meticulous protocol and red tape that bound his position.
"I don't even technically work for this company! I'm subcontracted out to them for close to pennies an hour! It's damn near slave wages! And the perks? There aren't any perks! However, rules on the other hand, they have rules for everything! If I lose a tool, I have to pay for it! If I lose a ladder, I have to pay for it! If a traffic cone goes missing, it comes outta my pocket! If I don't wear these damn nonslip, steel toe work boots, I could be fined! If I don't wear this harness, climb up there in that tree and fall and break my back, well that's on me too!"
Perhaps I'm unsympathetic or maybe I just agree with "The Man," but really, everything Farley was complaining about seemed like reasonable rules a company might establish to protect their employees and hardware. Nonetheless, this man possessed the power to provide me with the opiate of college sports, so I tried to sympathize with his despair. Throughout the duration of his rant, he forcefully and impatiently yanked at an extension ladder off the top of his pickup. I offered to help him but he snapped at me like a rabid pitbull. "They have rules against that too! At least when I served in Iraq I knew what I had to do and how to do it!" For a second the impact of his delivery nearly overshadowed the weight of his words. It had not occurred to me that Farley could have been a veteran. It had not occurred to me that his frustrations were misdirected from some other experience. These thoughts were partially eclipsed as I watched him extend the ladder 25 feet into the tree where the cables draped between the telephone poles and a haphazard quilt of tree branches. He clumsily flailed the top of the ladder stays against the cable in an attempt to grasp them. The scene caused me to prepare myself for my first whiff of crisp human flesh. I asked him if what he was doing was safe, half-hoping to suggest that what he was doing was clearly not safe. He grumpily replied, "that's just the thing!" I don't know that this answered anything and jokingly offered, "well, I'm going to go inside and pre-dial 9-1-1 on my cellphone just in case it isn't."
I walked inside, promptly forgot my resolve to dial 9-1-1, and bolted to the office where I spent the next 15 minutes relaying the whole ordeal to my friend Ben on instant messenger.
ME: There's an Iraq war vet with PTSD who's installing my cable and I'm half-expecting that he's going to electrocute himself since he's leaning a metal ladder against power lines in the front yard.
BEN: Dude, you should totally pre-dial 9-1-1 on your cellphone and go watch and see if he gets electrocuted.
ME: Yeah, that's what I told him I was doing.
BEN: Did you?
ME: No, I'm chatting with you.
Being both a recovering Catholic and lover of words, this is what I do. I speak as though nothing is sacred. I say things for shock value, and say things that maybe I don't necessarily agree with but say them anyways in fear that they might go unsaid. Then I immediately feel a tide of guilt and remorse for fear that I might have offended someone which is only resolved by my re-realization that organized religion is ridiculous and that humor has always been my saving grace. This has a varying degree of success as I often possess more sympathy and introverted reflection than I allow myself to admit. I am convinced by adroitly compartmentalizing my thoughts in the fashion of a well-organized tackle box, I will be able to absolve myself from this condition.
Suddenly I heard Farley enter the house. He asked if he could use the restroom and I told him where it was. After he finished, I heard him walk back towards the living room but oddly enough his footsteps stopped on the linoleum of the kitchen floor. Thinking he might be thirsty, I offered him a glass of water. He politely declined but I heard no sound that would indicate he was leaving and returning to work. I peaked over my shoulder to see what he was up to and saw that he'd stopped and was looking at our photos on the fridge. For some reason this made me uncomfortable despite the fact that that is exactly what they are for. I guess it was because I'd rather open up to people than have my kitchen appliances do it for me. What must he have been thinking as his eyes swept over images of smiling long-haired college friends crowded around a bowl of liquor, happily panting dogs amidst golden autumnal aspens, giggling nieces in front of Christmas trees, post cards of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the sunset on a beach in Hawaii, grinning couples in front of the Grand Canyon, Lake in Hanoi, and mountains in Colorado? What line of fiction was he using to connect those scenes? After a long period of time in which his distant gaze finally swept over the last photograph, he sighed deeply and turned back to the living room where I was comforted to hear him resume drilling holes and snaking coaxial through the newly formed outlet.
After a few moments he finished and called me into the living room for a tutorial. I found him sitting on the floor in front of the television sweating, slouched, and disheveled from work. He programmed the remote in his right hand as it rested on his slightly bent knee and explained how it would be a few minutes before all the information downloaded to the box and a continuous image reached the screen. I began to feel that sense of remorse creep over me for having relayed the story to my friend and laughing at the mans expense. "Tackle box! Tackle box," I tried to remind myself as I thanked him for all his work. Again, I thought to say something that would brighten his afternoon, "well, I hope you have a nice relaxing evening. Maybe go home and have a beer and just chill for a while huh?" "Fuck no!" he yelled back in what seemed to be a seamless continuation of his earlier rant. "I have at least two more of these things today! That's how they get'cha. It's damn near slave wages and there are so many damn rules! Some days I wish I was back in Iraq so I could just pick up my gun and go to work!" He must have sensed my immediate emotional recoil or suddenly realized the gravity of what he had just done by associating the devastating purpose of a gun to a word as harmless as "work." Without looking at me he just stopped speaking and stared at the television. His reflection in the smokey grey glass of the screen was blotted by the staccato images of Rachel Ray which started to tap out like Morse Code. I probably should have feared for my own safety and asked him to leave but in our fragile communion of silence I could see tears welling in his eyes and for a moment he looked like a scared, overgrown child. There have been so many times when I have failed as a son, and a brother, and a boyfriend, and a friend to offer some meaningful words of sympathy, or consolation, or simply an empathetic touch of a shoulder when an emotional situation could not indicate its necessity more clearly. This time was no different. We both sat silent for a moment before he finally got up and politely asked me to sign some forms. I obliged and in a soft almost apologetic voice he simply thanked me for my time and quietly left.
A few hours later, I found myself smoking an uncharacteristic cigar on the front porch watching the cold fall wind send tides of wilted leaves from our yard tumbling into the street. I like the transitional seasons best. I'm certain it has to do with my inability to stay focused on one thing for too long. I thought about a conversation I recently had with a friend concerning my desire to make the right decisions and how I often distract myself from doing so and am relegated to time making them for me. I wondered about Farley and how a man transitions from wearing dusty fatigues going door-to-door looking for terrorists to wearing a tool belt going door-to-door installing digital cable. I began to construct my own fiction to fill in the blanks of what I knew of him. Farley had given me new perspective--tuned my focus in such a manner as to see things in myself when the reason why he came in the first place was to enable me to escape from doing so. I selfishly shelved all concern about Farley's mental health as the thought of a week night college football game, already underway, crept into my mind. I rolled the glowing ember of the cigar back and forth against the edge of the terracotta pot that sits on the edge of our stoop. The cooling ember fell harmlessly into the potting soil and I walked inside, collapsed on the floor, and fired up the television with the bracing anticipation of a heroine addict. One drug, and then another.
"Third and goal. Ganz fades back to pass, looking for an open receiver. Fires a rocket--" the announcer's voice is silenced as the screen abruptly goes blank. Instead of seeing a cornerback heroically bat down the ball or a receiver reel in the game winning touchdown, I see my own pathetic reflection. I stare in awkward silence just as Farley did with the same deflated look of self-pity just a few hours ago. I should go cook dinner, start a load of laundry, pay some bills online, and go through the otherwise robotic motions of my afternoon. Tomorrow on my lunch break I'll have to call the cable company and reschedule a fourth appointment to have our cable installed correctly. They'll ask me why and I'll attempt a long-winded explanation of the failed mechanics of the initial installation while I silently contemplate the moral weight of Farley's frustrations against my own. I'll be a bit humbled and a bit ashamed at my lack of action and my lack of patience when I realize I'm missing yet another game and yet another opportunity for a convenient escape.
