Finishing thoughts

There's a pretty good episode of Seinfeld, in which Jerry confronts a car rental counter clerk who has no cars available to fulfill Jerry's reservation. He points out to her that taking the reservation is really only half the deal. The more important part, he says, is actually having a car.

While I've always thought Seinfeld was a funny show, rarely did it's star's "observational" humor ever go to a topic which I think has such universal application. Everyplace I go (including in my own little house), I see phenomena that reminds me of this Seinfeld episode.

Take bill-paying for example. There are times in my house when hours are spent in the process of something we inaccurately call "paying bills." The truth is that the real activity is simply writing out checks, putting them in envelopes, putting stamps on the envelopes, putting return addresses on the envelopes and sealing the envelopes. Clearly, all this envelope handling isn't quite the same as paying the bills. Paying the bills actually involves mailing the checks.

That might not sound like a profoundly difficult step. But just take a look at our dining room table (not right this second -- we're not expecting company). What will you find there? I'll tell you. You'll find a glass half-filled with water, some vitamins, a fruit bowl with fruit in various stages of ripening and decaying. . . . and you'll find unmailed envelopes containing checks.

Trust me, the nice people from Mastercard differentiate between actually receiving a check and assurances that it is written. Our process doesn't even qualify for the hackneyed "Oh, sorry, the check is in the mail." You just don't get anyplace explaining that the check is on the table next to the vitamins.

This is just one example. Actually, if you had trouble computing that yourself, then you've been skimming. I only say "this is just one example," because it's a way of getting to another example, without having herky-jerky prose. Transitions are always difficult, both in relationships and writing.

And now, in the interest of making an acute statement about transitions, I've blown the last one and there's no good way for me to get to another example of what I was talking about in the first place. I could say "Meanwhile." That word almost always works when I can't come up with some way to get from one thought to another, both in spoken and written prose. In fact, that seems like just the ticket.

Meanwhile, I've taken US Airways quite a bit lately, and I've found that their wonderful little kiosks that give you a boarding pass have the same kind of difficulty differentiating between activity and result. It tells you, after you've swiped your credit card that it is "searching" for your reservation. On the whole, this "searching" process seems like it's none of my business. I don't really want to know that it's searching. I want to know that it's actually "finding" my reservation. Note to US Airways: Please change your kiosk programming to read: "Please wait while I find your reservation."

There's more both from the outside world and my own life. Here's one of each.

From my own life: We seem to have difficulties with manilla envelopes. We use manilla envelopes from time to time (not in any kind of zealous fashion. We are not compulsive users of manilla). Nearly every time we need a manilla envelope, however, there are none to be found. We search for a little bit until Ben's Mom and I have a little fight about it, which is resolved generally with a few moments of tension and then the settling realization that manilla envelopes aren't important enough to either of us to risk disturbing the peace and equanimity we both crave. And then I order more manilla envelopes from Staples.

And here's the disconnect. When I order the envelopes I believe, in my heart, that I have now procured them. Actually, all I've done is ordered them, paid for them, and eventually picked them up from the doorman who doesn't want the box crowding up his little closet. But it's the next step that's problematic. Frankly, I don't know what the next step is. All I know is it doesn't lead to actually having a single damn manilla envelope the next time we need one. Perhaps one of us chronically mistakes manilla envelopes for a dead plant and we throw them away (See "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," for insights into a similar malady). Or perhaps one of us is playing some kind of a joke on the other one. Or perhaps there are night visitors (yikes) who sneak into our apartment for the express purpose of stealing stationery supplies.

Don't know. Only know that this is the same kind of deal.

As for the last real world example, the one that probably give me the greatest level of agitation takes place in restaurants, where the server confuses the ordering of the food with the delivery of the food. If given a choice between these two operations, I'd far rather that someone bring me a random sampler of foods than someone who takes my carefully considered order and then brings nothing to the table for an indeterminate period of time. Once, Ben's Mom and I were in a restaurant where the hungry gap between order and food took so long that we inquired of the restaurant manager, who informed us that, actually, the waiter had quit after taking our order. It seemed odd that nobody else in the restaurant thought about picking up on the waiter's unfinished work. It also troubled me somewhat, not knowing what caused the waiter to quit. I could develop mental images ("Listen, Boss, I'm not going to give those nice folks at Table 3 that fish. It's putrifying.")

In truth, this is just my idea of a funny thing for the waiter to have been saying, that I just came up with right now. Mostly in order to use the word putrifying. I don't recall what we thought at the time, except to hope that the waiter hadn't left on account of something we said.