Hurdles
Everytime I go and stay at somebody else's house, my stomach constricts.
I have to psych myself up for the ordeal that it will inevitably bring : I know, I just know that as soon as my guest leaves the house, I will try and use some appliance or another, and fail miserably, and feel like a complete doofus. I will then have to wait for his or her return and humbly ask for enlightenment.
I hate asking for anything.
I want to be the breezy, cool-headed and perfectly composed specialist of everything. I want to be a plumber/electrician/techno-nerd/master of all appliances. I want to know where everything is, and to have used it all before.
Of course I know how to use this CD player/grill/garage door/time machine - I've built myself the exact same one at home from a kit I got from Woolworths.
This 500-button remote control for your TV/VCR/flying saucer is a piece of cake - I invented it.
So here I am, in somebody else's house, looking after somebody's dog and belongings while he is away on a cruise ship with 4000 gay men; and I, humbly, want to take a shower.
Loaded with all scrubbing necessities, I approach the place of scrubbing. All seems normal, the place is fitted with glass sliding doors, a 3 inch-deep bathtub as they seem to favour them over here ( people must have drowned a lot in the past), a perfectly respectable-looking showerhead, what looks like a tap, and a knob thing that, presumably, one must pull/turn/push, or a combination thereof, to obtain a satisying stream of warm water.
I pulled.
I turned.
I pushed.
I even tugged, for fuck's sake.
Nothing, not even the tiniest drop.
I'm aware that these last four lines could be heavily read into, but honestly - I was defeated.
This is just so humiliating.
Just as well there is another bathroom, with a normal shower.
A few weeks ago my mother came to visit; one evening I found he sitting dejectedly on the sofa. She'd tried to use, in succession, the cd player, the radio and my laptop. In vain. She just couldn't conquer them. I laughed mercilessly at her defeat. Such denial on my part !
I'm off to try and use the CD player now. Wish me luck.
Michel Simon dans un musée du sexe ?
4 years ago
2 comments:
to ask is to learn.
but thanks to the pace of technology, we all know less today than we did yesterday in relation to the available mass of information.
however, is it not true that if you don't conquer the alien device in 60 seconds you decide it cannot be figured out by experimentation?
i am sad that you invoke the cult of the expert here. you have your own little inner nerd who can guide you if you breath slowly and listen for its voice.
jeelypiecemuncher
Ah, but that depends.
The nerd in me rarely throws things against the wall in a fit, because it'd rather figure it out. Learn and conquer. But sometimes the fear of not conquering gets in the way, and I give up before I've tried properly.
Oh, and I now know how to opertae the shower. Superhuman strength was what was required in the pulling of the knob.
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