Proverbs 29, Verse 13
"Rich and poor are alike in this: each depends on God for light."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
I heard on the radio today some stuffed shirt talking about how, typically, young men tend to get radicalized nowadays somewhere in their early twenties, and that extremist radicalization occurs at this point not just because young men are susceptible to fanatical idealism, but because this is when young men are starting to grapple with whom they are, they're struggling with their place in the world and the meaning of it all, and they've gotten angry and frustrated by inequality and failures.
Always ahead of the game, I got radicalized at fourteen.
These days, twenty-something men get radicalized, according to this guy on NPR, over the internet. In 1994, there wasn't all that much internet to speak of. I got radicalized under the hot lights of my middle school's theatre. I needed no anti-capitalist literature or bomb-making diagrams/instructions. At my fingertips, I held perhaps the most powerful tool I could have possibly come into contact with at that extremely sensitive and formative time in my life: the script and score of "The Pajama Game".
While the idea of 100 (seriously, there were 100 of us) pre-and-barely pubescent children running around onstage singing about how "seven-and-a-half cents doesn't buy a *HECK* of-a-lot" might just be funny enough on its own, I was cast as the comedic lead to end a bit more humor to the already extant comedy of the situation. Vernon Hines is his name and, as his introductory song reveals, he's a "Time Study Man". An efficiency expert. Vernon's job at the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was to make sure that work moved along at a reliable, consistent, brisk clip.
Hurry up.
Hurry up.
When you're racing with the clock, and you're racing with the clock.
And the second hand doesn't understand that your fingers ache and your back may break
It's a losing race when you're racing with the, racing racing racing with the clock!
Vernon Hines is ever-present. His well-worn clipboard clutched tightly against his chest like a baby's bankie, his pocket watch hardly ever resting inside his vest pocket. In Act II, Hines interrupts a meeting to complain that the elevator is stuck, which, obviously, is throwing off productivity at the pajama factory. Which Hines can't have. During the scene, Hines is convinced to remove his trousers and model a pair of pajamas, which he grudgingly does at first, and then finds he enjoys the attention. The comic highlight of our middle school production of the show was a wordless bit of panto where my, um, pants are removed onstage to reveal boxer shorts featuring two enormous pocket watches on them. After I model the pajamas, which slide down to the ground, I hastily put on my pants, backwards, not realizing, and try to zip up the fly, which is behind me. I then remove the pants again, put them on correctly, zip the fly only to catch my cuff in the zipper (which, by now, is also slowing down productivity). I try in vain to remove the cuff from the zipper and get tossed off stage by the woman playing my character's fiancee. And she throws my shoes at me while I'm off stage. It was the first time I had ever done a scene and received applause on an exit, and it was drug-like.
Obviously, I'm still talking about it, and it was almost twenty years ago.
But aside from that being the moment I decided to bite into acting and not think about removing my teeth, it was also the moment that I found religion. And it wasn't a quaint, peaceful relationship either. It was fanatical. Radical. When I got cast in "The Pajama Game", I went with my father to a jewelry store. I used $300 of my Bar Mitzvah money from the year before to buy a gold-filled antique Elgin pocket watch, which I wore, strung across my vest, in the show. I wore it in lots of shows thereafter, too. There were other pocket watches to come, and wristwatches, too. There's an Ogee clock on our mantle from somewhere around the 1880s downstairs.
Tick tock, tick tock, tempus fugit.
Tick tock, tick tock, time goes by.
Aside from the accouterments, which are almost always expensive, there was a very clear and very strange relationship with the abstraction of time. I began, almost instantly after the close of the show, to become obsessed with it. Controlled by it. I walked down to the bus stop a half-an-hour early in 9th grade. Once I could start driving, the time I would show up to school was, um, not normal. Let's just say I sometimes beat the janitor. And everybody else.
And I liked that.
Instead of wasting my free time after school and rehearsals on homework, I did it the morning it was due, sitting on the floor in the hallway outside my locked homeroom. When I was too early to access the building at all, I scribbled my history or English work on my 5-Star notebook in my car.
And, nearly twenty years later, it hasn't gotten any better. I wake up at 4:37 in the morning. I'm out of the house by 5:15. I'm at work by 5:40. I come down to the chartroom by 5:52. The night-shift nurses know. They probably think to themselves, "Jesus-- this is one sick bastard."
And they're psych nurses. They know. And, you know what? They're right. I am. I can't help it.
I mean, I can. But I choose not to.
I choose this. I don't know why. Anxiety? Fear? Identity? Had Vernon Hines become who I was, or wanted to be, or am today? Can I really blame a musical from 1955 for the mess I am today?
Maybe.
I don't know. I do know that I don't believe in God, and I don't believe in Judaism, but I do believe in time. And I suppose that's just as well, because time is just as man-made as the 1967 Seiko 5 Automatic on my left wrist, or the Festina 17-jewel dark-blue dial Automatic that's on its way to my doorstep from Oviedo, Spain and it's just as man-made as God and Judaism, too. I hope one day that my fanatical devotion to the 12 and the 1 and the 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 and 12 again becomes more taciturn as I grow older. Maybe one day I'll realize that it isn't so important when I show up for things, that people won't judge me if every task isn't done just so, that everything won't come crashing to a fiery end if I show up on time as opposed to forty-five minutes early or, God forbid, on time, or Christ help us: late.
Right. Maybe. Maybe not. I don't have time to think about that right now. I have to empty the dishwasher.
One thing, though, before I go. I did have time, while writing this, to reminisce a little bit about that production of "The Pajama Game". Remembering that moment onstage, with my pants off in front of my parents and yours and around 500 other people howling in laughter at my Gumby legs and my clowning and my pretending to be older even than I am now-- that might have been the happiest I've ever been. Thanks for helping me remember. That was nice.
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