Casual
Epstein, Joseph
Casual SITUATION COMEDY This morning, out for a walk in wintry weather, I discovered a young student from the Northwestern School of Music struggling on the icy sidewalk while carrying a double...
...Barnes," I said, "I'll read them here...
...Ain't heard that one yet," he says, grinning...
...Later the same day, finding myself in a large yet crowded Chicago butcher shop called Paulina Market, my package under my arm, I said to an older couple as I was leaving, "I'm getting out of here...
...I don't seem to mind recycling, either...
...That's all right, Mr...
...A look of disbelief is followed by a small shock— ten watts, let us say—of recognition, as the waiter realizes he is dealing with a genial but authentic screw-off...
...I don't carry pepper-mill insurance...
...Too many vegetarians for my taste...
...The waiter might have noted that I made the same joke seven months ago, after which, near as he can recall, he spat in my entrée, the lin-guine and seafood dish...
...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...
...The man who brought them to me asked if I wanted them in a bag...
...The bagger, in my kindly reckoning, goes home that night to tell about this nutty dude at work who asked for a suede bag (you had to be there, I'm afraid he'll have to add...
...Casual SITUATION COMEDY This morning, out for a walk in wintry weather, I discovered a young student from the Northwestern School of Music struggling on the icy sidewalk while carrying a double bass...
...At the supermarket, the bagger, a tall, thin kid with dreadlocks, wants to know what kind of bag I want...
...The fellow at the bait store might have asked if, with my worms, I preferred regular or Poupon mustard...
...He took it, as the Victorians say, in good part...
...I fancy myself like the old lamplighter, only working a double shift, making the day a little brighter for the people on whom I try them...
...The trick, as I see it, is to continue to do so for as long as possible without getting punched out...
...I've hauled out the pepper-mill bit no fewer than two or three hundred times...
...My model here was Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the actor and older half-brother of Max Beerbohm, who once came upon a mover bent almost double because of the grandfather clock he was toting on his back...
...So instead I try, as best I can, to amuse myself, and fairly often succeed...
...And why should they...
...I please myself," says Frank Cow-perwood, in Theodore Dreiser's trilogy, The Titan...
...My good sir," Beerbohm Tree is supposed to have said, "wouldn't it be much more convenient to own a wristwatch...
...While my material is, I hope, original, I don't seem to mind reusing it...
...he asks each of the six of us in turn, twisting the pepper on four of our salads...
...When he gets to me, I say, "No thanks...
...Are these remarks merely a form of showing off: Yo, look at me— clever little mother hub-bard, am I not...
...Two weeks ago, I bought two dozen night-crawler worms for my turtles at a fishing equipment and bait store...
...Instead of answering either plastic or paper, I say: "Suede...
...The bookseller, a rather dour New Englander named Richard Barnes, asked if I would like him to wrap them for me...
...More likely one turned to the other, asking, "Who was that maniac...
...a moment of tension...
...A pause...
...In the restaurant, salad dishes set before us, the waiter comes round with a particularly large pepper mill...
...Yet my motive, I swear, isn't to put anyone down...
...Wish I could say the same, but, alas, I am not always able to arrange it...
...Then he smiles...
...The bagger might have asked if I'd like to try one of his plastic bags over my face...
...Not too bad...
...A number of years ago I bought two two-volume sets of the letters of Justice Holmes—the Holmes-Laski Letters and the Holmes-Pollock Letters...
...I had a cousin who was killed by a waiter wielding a pepper mill only slightly smaller than this one...
...What I have in mind is the gratuitous remark, in response to nothing but the scene in which one finds oneself...
...I'm far from sure that they got the joke...
...It would be a companion to the French phrase esprit d'escalier, which refers to one's regret about coming up with witty remarks or rejoinders only when it is too late to deliver them...
...I seem to have become something of a specialist at these remarks...
...Did it only later occur to the boy with the double bass to say, "No, but would you mind terribly if I smashed it over your head...
...Excuse me," said I, as our paths crossed, "but have you ever considered taking up the harmonica...
...I thought I noted the slightest hint of a wisp of a smile play at the left corner of his mouth, though I could have been mistaken...
...I wonder if the effect of these various bits isn't to put the people on whom I use them in an esprit d'escalier frame of mind...
...No thanks," I said, "I'll eat them here...
...Pepper...
...A phrase is needed to cover this sort of thing, preferably one in English...
...Barnes needed only to have kept a stiff lower lip to have brought me down with a thump...
Vol. 7 • March 2002 • No. 24
