For Whom Bell© Tolls
The time for vacation was over, and fairly enough, for I had an examination in less than four days for which I was flagrantly underprepared. I was leaving from a place I had visited but once before, with no one guiding me. I wasn't lost, exactly, I just didn't know where I was going, and had every intention of asking.
Moose: Excuse me, which gate does the bus to Montreal leave from?
Daniel: Let me see your ticket.
I would have simply told him what time I was leaving and on which bus line, but perhaps there were multiple, which was why an employee of the bus company would ask to see my ticket. Then I noticed his clothing's lack of indication as to whether he truly did work for the bus company or not and questioned whether handing him my ticket was a mistake. Too late, I had already done so.
Daniel: You're here in arrivals, you need to get over to departures. It's a big building, this one, you could be walking around here for days. Let me show you where to go.
The tall, overbearing man, still holding my ticket, manoevred his way through the dense crowd to the escalator, where I followed him, finding keeping up with his broad steps to be somewhat tiring as I was carrying two stuffed bags of luggage, wearing boots which were just as well as wearing ten-pound weights on my feet, and hardly feeling rested from my last night's sleep, not to mention the toxicity of the air.
Shira: They've done studies which have shown that air indoors is one hundred times more polluted than air outdoors.
And this was New York City, after all, a city not known for its cleanliness. I had a mild headache and felt more fatigued than I felt I should have since I arrived, and I blamed the city. One gets used to walking outside and having the air smell like trees. Here, the trees didn't even smell like trees.
My guide stepped over ropes which sliced the floorspace into aisles to approach the front desk.
Daniel: Hey, could you-
Nadine: No. Go back and get in line.
Daniel: Come on, I have a fellow here who's going to… Hey Phil, could you-
Nadine: Phil, don't help him. He can wait until you're finished with the customer he's attending to.
Daniel: You need to get a different job.
I wondered what I had walked into, and if I should ask for my ticket back. If this man could skip to the front of lines for me, that would have been a great help, as my bus was to depart in twenty minutes, but he did not even seem to have that power, nor was there more than one single person waiting in line that he had skipped past.
Moose: I just need to know what gate the bus leaves from.
Daniel: Yes, I know. Phil, this kid's going to Montreal.
Phil: Montreal? Okay… we have buses at 5:30 and 9:30 tonight, then 12:15 tomorrow morning, and those all leave from gate sixty-three.
Daniel: Okay, follow me. Sixty-three is over in the other building. See, you could have been walking around this building all day and not found it.
I saw a sign fifty feet down the hall indicating gates 47 through 80, in a direction we were not traveling. The man walked up a set of stairs and down a hallway, straight, then to the right around a corner, and right around a corner again. It occurred to me that we were now backtracking, and I tried to think of things to say that would make the man not run away with my ticket.
Moose: I don't see any sign for gate sixty-three.
How much was I sounding like my father? I had the same tone of annoyance when he is being led in a direction that does not fit with his model of the mapped area. It happened when I led us to the Fort Covington port of entry to Canada, and I didn't like how he was talking to me in that manner then. So should I not speak as such? Is it worthwhile to actively resist our parents' habits and attitudes which we fear have reflected in us?
Vince: Your aunt and uncle complain so much about how they were raised as children, and how they aren't going to raise children that way, and yet they're blind to the fact that they turned out perfectly capable human beings and the children they're raising are downright hooligans.
So then it depends on how well I think I turned out. My self-image has never been my strong point. But I think, that aside, I turned out decently. The distinction must be made between things I feel my parents did which helped me become a better person, and things which were destructive to my progress. A difficult distinction to make as the subject, like a hand attempting to touch the elbow it is attached to. Where is my life economist?
Daniel: I don't need the signs. I've been doing this for four years, just working for tips. I know this building - we take that elevator right there, and gate sixty-three will be right in front of you.
He seemed to pause and stare directly into my eyes when he said the word 'tips'. So he wasn't going to steal my ticket, so long as I gave him something, was that how it worked? I had spent the last of my American money that afternoon, but had a good bit of Canadian change in my pockets. He mumbled something in his rapid New York accent that sounded like his typical expectation for a tip was eight and a half dollars. Seemed somewhat rude to tell me what sort of a tip he should be getting - he was serving me, and I hadn't even asked him to do so. And I didn't like how he had handled the situation. He did nothing I couldn't have done myself, and was yelled at by the service counter attendant, which I most certainly would not have done. I began to walk to the line to wait to board my bus when I finally grabbed my ticket back and placed it in my coat pocket. I had rearranged the items in my pockets so as to minimize pickpocket damage; while I typically kept most items in my pants' pockets, I felt these were the most vulnerable, and thus took the most valuable items, that is, my passport, my wallet, my bus ticket, and placed them in zippered pockets. If I was pickpocketed out of a zippered pocket, I would be more impressed with the stealth of the thief than frustrated with the loss.
Daniel: You have a tip for me?
Moose: All I have with me is Canadian money.
I pulled out some coins, which he turned his nose up at and walked away. Perhaps he wasn't quite aware how much I was offering, as it was but five coins, and the greatest value of five commonly used American coins would be a dollar and twenty-five cents. I have a great many Sacajawea dollar coins in my possession, which I found I could obtain by placing a dollar bill in the vending machines at Canisius College and pressing the coin return. I don't use these to pay for anything, though. I wonder if they are depicted in elementary school mathematics textbooks, in the sections where they deal with money. I probably saw ten times more half-dollar coins in textbooks than actual half-dollar coins I have ever handled in my life. I recall my third grade teacher, Mrs. Andujar, telling our class that she found her students more able to grasp concepts when they dealt with money. A sad sign of capitalist brainwashing in our society's youth.
A family of four stood in front of me. The two girls, neither appearing more than five years of age, stood in absolute silence, wandering an occasional figure eight around their parents' legs, while their parents' mouths emitted harsh, profane words I was surprised they allowed the children to hear.
Harold: How come my mother knew before I did? I looked like a fool talking to her because she knew more about your encounter than I did.
Rhonda: It wasn't an encounter.
Harold: Well, whatever happened, I'm not even sure at this point. Did you tell him that there is already a man in your life who loves you?
Rhonda: There is? Who is that?
One of the children finally spoke, and I realized that their first language was French, hence the parents could argue in English without consequence of being overheard, at least until the children could discern the meanings of the words. Children raised learning two languages, I have heard, go through a stage where they pick the shorter word in each language when assembling a sentence. I am inclined to believe that English has some of the shortest profanities of any language.
My first venture through the bus station came at my arrival to New York four days earlier. My bus arrived sooner than on time, something nearly unheard of. So I stood by the gate and waited for the one person who I knew would be in New York for Easter weekend. A man in a camouflage sweatshirt and jeans that looked like they had been sewn together from six pieces of fabric approached me, squinting suspiciously.
Sam: Do you need help with something?
Moose: No.
I considered elaborating on my situation more fully, then I realized my surroundings and evaluated the sketchiness of the man standing before me and decided against it. He walked through the employees only entrance to where the buses arrived, so I assumed him some sort of employee to the bus company. It was two minutes later when I saw a police officer putting handcuffs on the man when I decided he was not.
I stood. I waited. I checked the time compulsively and studied the demographics of the crowd. I needed to make a phone call, for it was clear the person I was meeting with and I had no idea where the other was.
The only American money I had with me was a ten dollar bill. A phone call would cost a single dollar, in change. I looked around to places that might have change. I must have looked lost, because I was an instant target for beggars.
Arnold: Hello, sir.
Moose: Hello.
Arnold: Do you know why I'm here? I used to live in a chapel, you know. Did what I could to just get by. Then one day I blacked out, had no idea what happened. Woke up in a hospital, and told me they had pumped six litres of fluid out of me. I didn't know the body could hold that much water. Well, they weren't going to do that at no charge, and I haven't had insurance in all my life. So now they expect me to pay a hospital bill. I have no family, all I had was the church, and they don't pay people's personal expenses for them. Can you help me out?
Moose: Perhaps I can, and you can help me out at the same time. See, I need change to make a phone call. Surely you have change on you. Could you give me most of the change for this ten?
The man pulled a fistful of folded bills out of his pocket and handed them to me, then vanished. I thought at first I was holding perhaps seven dollars, but as it turned out, the man was very good at folding money to make it appear as though it was more than it was, and I had instead four dollars, and none of it was in coins. That was awfully foolish of me. Make change with the beggar, there's no way he's going to turn that one in his favour. I approached a magazine kiosk, then turned away and approached a different magazine kiosk upon seeing that the first one was selling magazines of a certain variety.
Moose: Hello, can you make change for a dollar?
Betsy: You're going to have to wait until the next customer comes and I can open the register.
So I stood, but I was feeling particularly impatient, so I paced. Then I picked up a packet of Starburst and took it to the register to make myself the next customer. And I received my change, which I took to the phone booth to place my call.
Shira: Hello?
Moose: Hello, where are you?
Shira: I'm at the bus station, where are you?
Moose: At a bus station, couldn't tell you if it's the same one you're at.
Shira: It has to be the same one.
Moose: I'd like to be certain, though. This phone call cost me seven dollars and ninety cents, with a free package of Starburst included.
I wouldn't have had to go through the trouble of making change, however, if I simply owned a cellular phone. Well, to be sure, I do own a physical phone, but its service was cancelled seven months ago, and it's not even any good as an alarm any more since it no longer picks up the time from whichever satellite it used to, and is now inexplicably never more accurate than three hours off, and it doesn't allow me to change the time, though it somehow changes the time itself every now and again.
I'm cut off. People survived for centuries without phones, but now that they do exist and are very much a part of everyday life for a great many people, those people interact with other people who also own them because it is easier, and people like me without them have to compete with the portability of this form of communication for the attention of our generation's very busy people. Who do I talk to anymore? Nowhere near the number of people I had kept in some state of consistent contact last year. That is probably as much the fault of my lack of effort to maintain this as anything, but the lack of a phone makes such matters difficult.
I miss Molly, my old phone. The extensive directory of people I used to see and talk to. The beeping like a javelin through the eardrum to awaken me each morning. The extremely low-resolution billiards game which kept me occupied for hours on uneventful weekends. And yet it would be terribly impractical for me to own one again. I don't know and talk to enough people around the Montreal area, which is where I would be using it, for me to feel it would be worth it. And to use a United States phone number in Canada would be the equivalent cost of paying a second rent for a mansion.
I'm cut off, but it's because I cut myself off. I'm sorry. I miss you, especially if you're reading this, but even if you're not. I want to talk to you, but I have made it difficult. I want to feel as though it's not too late, the distance hasn't become too far yet.
My father said this would happen. He said the chances of me seeing more than a very small handful of people after high school would be close to zero, reunions aside. And not many people fit inside a very small hand. Our generation is different than his, because we have the Internet, and the means for rapid communication just as well to the other side of the world as to across the street. But are we using it? Find at least one person today who you haven't talked to in more than a year. Or tomorrow, since I post this awfully late at night. And contact this person, and find out where they are today compared to when you saw him or her last. If they ask why, tell them it's because you care. Or if that sounds horribly out of character for you, tell them it's because this fellow who posts his journal online is having an identity crisis.