Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin (42 page)
Read Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin Online
Authors: Calvin Trillin
1981
A couple of weeks ago, Harold the Committed asked me again if I wanted to see civilization as we know it destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, and I had to admit that I didn’t. He always asks me that question, and I always give him the same answer. I can’t imagine what led him to think that my position on the destruction-of-civilization issue might waver. What kind of person does Harold the Committed think I am? Sure, there are days when things don’t go quite the way I had hoped they would. Occasionally I go through what I think of as a multi-motor day: The automobile repairman says we need a new motor, the dishwasher repairman says we need a new motor, the clothes-dryer repairman says we need a new motor. Even on a multi-motor day, though, I don’t sit down with a drink when it’s all over
and say to myself, “Well, if that’s the way it’s going to be, I would like to see civilization as we know it destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.” I’m much more likely to say something like, “But didn’t we just
get
a new motor for the dishwasher?”
I didn’t go into all of that with Harold the Committed, of course. What I said was, “I’ve given this issue a lot of thought, Hal the C, and I remain firmly opposed to the destruction of civilization as we know it in a nuclear holocaust. You can count on me on this one.”
“What are you doing about it?” Harold the Committed said.
“As it happens, you’ve caught me at a bad time, Harold the Committed,” I said. “You know I’m not very political just before Halloween.”
I wasn’t just spinning an alibi for Harold the Committed. Just before Halloween, I always have a lot on my mind. For one thing, I have to decide on a costume for the Halloween parade. Are people getting tired of my ax murderer’s mask? Should I take advantage of my uncanny ability to bark like a dog by going as an unhappy Airedale? Harold the Committed finds it difficult to understand how I can spend so much time agonizing over a costume for the Halloween parade; he goes every year as an unemployed coal miner.
My Halloween responsibilities go well beyond my own costume. I have to be a consultant to my daughters in the matter of their costumes, since my wife’s attitude toward Halloween, I regret to say, borders on the blasé. I have to take part in serious discussions about the possibility that my daughters and I might encourage my wife to wear something more appropriate than a token witch hat.
“Daddy, I don’t really think you’re going to be able to persuade Mommy to wear that long, crooked witch’s nose with the warts on it,” one of them is likely to say.
“Well, how about these individual, rubberized, easy-to-remove face warts?” I say hopefully.
“Halloween can be approached as an opportunity,” Harold the Committed was saying. “Like any other public event, it can be used as a platform for making a political statement.”
The last time Harold the Committed started talking about Halloween that way he ended by suggesting that my ten-year-old daughter,
Sarah, go to the Halloween parade costumed as Emma Goldman. She decided to go as a chocolate-chocolate-chip ice-cream cone with chocolate sprinkles instead.
“What’s your daughter Sarah going as this year?” Harold the Committed asked.
“She’s leaning toward the idea of going as a jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Hal the C,” I said.
“She really doesn’t have a lot of political awareness, does she?” Harold the Committed said.
“It’s not her awareness she’s worried about, it’s other people’s,” I said. “Last year not everybody was aware that she was supposed to be a chocolate-chocolate-chip ice-cream cone with chocolate sprinkles. A couple of people thought she was a tube of toothpaste. She figures a mayonnaise jar would be a little more explicit.”
I knew what was coming next, and, sure enough, Harold repeated a suggestion he seems to make every year: “Maybe your daughter Abigail could go as the dangers posed to our society by the military-industrial complex.”
“We don’t have anybody at home who can sew that well, Hal the C,” I said. “Abigail’s going as an M&M.” Abigail has never been much impressed with Harold’s costume suggestions, particularly since he persuaded his niece to go as a peace dove and everyone thought she was supposed to be Donald Duck.
“It’s a matter of paying lip service or making a political statement through every aspect of your life,” Harold the Committed said. “Everyone must make a decision.”
“I’ve decided, Hal the C,” I said. “I’m going as an ax murderer again after all.”
1982
(
A new holiday classic, for those tiring of “White Christmas” and “Jingle Bells”
)
VERSE:
The shopping starts, and every store’s a zoo.
I’m frantic, too: I haven’t got a clue
Of what to get for Dad, who’s got no hobby,
Or why Aunt Jane, who’s shaped like a kohlrabi,
Wants frilly sweater sets, or where I’ll find
A tie my loudmouthed Uncle Jack won’t mind.
A shopper’s told it’s vital he prevails:
Prosperity depends on Christmas sales.
“Can’t stop to talk,” I say. “No time. Can’t halt.
Economy could fail. Would be my fault.”
CHORUS:
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar,
Or someplace else that Santa won’t find handy.
Qatar will do, although, Lord knows, it’s sandy.
I need to get to someplace pretty far.
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar.
VERSE:
Young Cousin Ned, his presents on his knees,
Says Christmas wrappings are a waste of trees.
Dad’s staring, vaguely puzzled, at his gift.
And Uncle Jack, to give us all a lift,
Now tells a Polish joke he heard at work.
So Ned calls Jack a bigot and a jerk.
Aunt Jane, who knows that’s true, breaks down and cries
Then Mom comes out to help, and burns the pies.
Of course, Jack hates the tie. He’ll take it back.
That’s fair, because I hate my Uncle Jack.
CHORUS:
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Tibet,
Or any place where folks cannot remember
That there is something special in December.
Tibet’s about as far as you can get.
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Tibet.
VERSE:
Mom’s turkey is a patriotic riddle:
It’s red and white, plus bluish in the middle.
The blue’s because the oven heat’s not stable.
The red’s from ketchup Dad snuck to the table.
Dad says he loves the eyeglass stand from me—
Unless a sock rack’s what it’s meant to be.
“A free-range turkey’s best,” Ned says. “It’s pure.”
“This hippie stuff,” Jack says, “I can’t endure.”
They say goodbye, thank God. It’s been a strain.
At least Jack’s tie has got a ketchup stain.
CHORUS:
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Rangoon,
Or any place where Christmas is as noisy
As Buddhist holidays might be in Boise.
I long to hear Der Bingle smoothly croon,
“I’m dreaming of a Christmas in Rangoon”—
Or someplace you won’t hear the Christmas story,
And reindeer’s something eaten cacciatore.
I know things can’t go on the way they are.
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar.
1994
For Christmas, I took over Iran for Alice. I don’t mean I went there with a band of mercenaries recruited from the better Manhattan saloons, took over the government, and presented Alice with all of the rights and privileges accruing to the Peacock Throne. I try to avoid travel during the holiday season. What I mean is that I took over keeping up with what was happening in Iran, giving Alice a little extra time to devote to the Middle East peace talks and the January sales.
On Christmas, there was a moment when I feared that I had not chosen well. As I watched her open the package containing Iran—I had wrapped it in some rather colorful paper whose print, it seemed to me, suggested a Persian rug if viewed in that spirit—I thought I saw the flicker of a frown on her face. “She was hoping for the SALT talks,” I said to myself.
I had thought about getting her SALT instead of Iran. I knew she despised protracted negotiations. Once, having heard on a talk show that presenting surprise gifts for no particular occasion was one secret of keeping the romance in a marriage, I had returned from the office on a rainy, uneventful Tuesday and announced to Alice that she need no longer concern herself with a British coal strike then in its third week. She was ecstatic. SALT, I realized, was a drearier subject than Iran—lacking even the stimulation of a story now and then about some particularly revolting act of conspicuous consumption by the Shah and his family. But the papers had not been carrying much about the SALT talks, and there were thousands of words daily to read about Iran. Somehow, SALT had seemed a smaller gift.
“Actually, I thought about getting you the SALT talks,” I said tentatively.
“Oh, no. This is much nicer,” Alice said. “It was just that the wrapping seemed a little tacky.”
“You said a few weeks ago that you hated worrying about how to pronounce Ayatollah Khomeini. Was that a hint?”
“Well, it’s certainly true, anyway,” Alice said. “Also, plowing through those oil production figures was a bore, and all of those endless speculations about whether or not ‘American intelligence was caught napping’ just made me sleepy. This is perfect. Really. I love it. Just think of not having to concern myself anymore about knowing whether the Shah is about to leave and where he might go! I was beginning to feel like a travel agent.”
“Probably the United States, although Gstaad has also been mentioned by informed observers in Tehran,” I said.
“What?”
“I was just telling you what’s in the paper this morning,” I said. “The gift has begun.”
Alice started it all some years ago by giving me Cyprus for my birthday. I was delighted—and only partly because I had somehow got it into my head that she was planning to give me an orange vinyl tie. For some years, I had been thinking that the task of being a well-informed citizen was particularly onerous when it came to Cyprus. On the Cyprus question, I craved ignorance. I was tired of the Bishop. The history of Greek and Turkish settlement failed to fascinate. Any analysis of the effect a Greek-Turkish conflict might have on NATO caused me to long for the Arts & Leisure section.
Sometimes, Cyprus seemed to disappear from the papers for years, only to surface in an even more desperate crisis, full of pathetic refugees and ponderous United Nations debates. Cyprus had begun to remind me of some dreadful old uncle who is always alarming the family with emergencies that are invariably described as beyond solution: Something must be done immediately before Uncle Jack’s behavior drives Aunt Thelma to violence. How long can a man continue to shoot at postmen with a crossbow before tragedy occurs? Can a fanatic Christian Scientist and a homicidal podiatrist live together for another day? Then, people in the family become distracted by their own problems, everyone forgets about Uncle Jack for months, and suddenly he reemerges—with problems just as insoluble as ever. Who
solved the insoluble emergencies in the meantime? Should citizens who already have Uncle Jacks be expected to worry about Cyprus as well?
“
DON’T GIVE IT ANOTHER THOUGHT
,” Alice’s birthday gift to me had said, printed in colorful letters on a map of the dread island. “
LEAVE IT TO ME
.”
“Could that really be?” I had asked incredulously. I was almost overcome with gratitude—not to mention a little guilt for having thought, even for a moment, that a woman who could think of such a gift might have stuck me with an orange vinyl necktie.
“You just tell me now at which point you care to be informed,” Alice said. “I can let you know when it appears that they’re going to start fighting again, for instance, or I can let you know when it’s getting to the point at which the NATO alliance might be seriously weakened.”
I thought about it for a while. “Worldwide nuclear conflagration,” I finally said. “If it appears that, because of Cyprus, worldwide nuclear conflagration is imminent, I would appreciate being informed. If not, I’ll just give it a skip, thank you very much.”
After all of those years of freedom from the wretched Cypriots, I found it gratifying, of course, to begin a Christmas Day by presenting Alice with a gift that would lift from her shoulders the daily strain of distinguishing between General Gholam ali Oveissi and General Manuchehr Khosrowdad. I was filled with Christmas warmth as I opened my own gift. It was a map. I recognized it immediately from my research: Iran.
DON’T GIVE IT ANOTHER THOUGHT
, the printing on it said.
LEAVE IT TO ME
.
1979
This was the year I was going to be nice about fruitcake. “Just try to be nice,” my wife said. My younger daughter—the one who is still in high school, and talks funny—said the same thing. Actually, what she said was, “Cool it, Pops. Take a chill on the fruitcake issue.” That’s the same thing.
They were right. I knew they were right. It’s not that I hadn’t tried to be nice before. It’s not my fault that some years ago I happened to pass along a theory about fruitcake I had heard from someone in Denver. The theory was that there is only one fruitcake, and that this fruitcake is simply sent on from year to year. It’s just a theory.
But every year, around this time, someone calls up and says something like, “I’m doing a story on people who make fun of the holiday symbols that so many Americans hold dear—symbols that do so much for warm family life in this great country of ours and remain so very meaningful to all decent people. You’re the one who maligns fruitcake, right?”
“Well, it’s just a theory,” I always mutter. “Something someone in Denver said once.”
Who in Denver? Well, I can’t remember. I’m always hearing theories from people in Denver. People in Denver are stinky with theories. I don’t know why. It may be because of the altitude, although that’s just a theory.