On Fitting In
It was a big week for me culture-wise. I not only read a book about Louisa May Alcott I also went to a lecture about her pops Bronson, one of the most ineffectual men ever to draw breath. This lecture was held in a place I have gone to before, not just to hear talks but to sit in that one leather chair by the window and think long thoughts. (The graveyard on the other side of the glass helps with that.)Anyway, throngs of people came to hear about old Bronson who never did an honest day's work after about age 37. And yet he loved himself always. (His Concord neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that he was always feeling about his shoulders to see if wings had sprouted.) And he didn’t just keep his wife and four girls in poverty; he made them subsist entirely on a diet of raw fruits and vegetables. He also thought sex put a crimp in the life of the spirit so he denied his wife that as well. He wouldn’t eat any dairy or wear any wool - didn’t believe in the servitude of animals - and the one year Fruitlands was up and running he wandered off with his crackpot pals to New York for all of August instead of bringing in such harvest as they would have had. (He didn't believe in the use of manure - again too exploitative of Bessy and Elmer.)But folks are fascinated by a nutcase so the place was SRO - and I guess that's why the man at the front desk sort of lost it. His job: to be sure no one ever brings in any kind of bag in which s/he can stash and make off with any rare and precious objects.I have never minded taking out my laptop, hanging my power cord around my neck, and stuffing all my books and notebook into the little see-through bag they give you but I didn’t expect to be yelled at three times in 20 minutes. Yup, yelled at. First for trying to bring the laptop into the Reading Room (Ma'am! Excuse me, Ma’am!”), then for trying to pull its rolling laptop bag around the man's desk rather than hoisting it over the top. (He thought I was attempting to take it inside) and finally for using my phone to take this picture which act almost got me wrestled to the ground by a short young lady in sensible shoes.It was this picture, of the Marquis De Lafayette looking pretty above-it-all himself which is certainly how the guy at the desk came across. I know he was just doing his job and probably hates having to speak to people but still. It was a good reminder to me of how it feels to be a newcomer in a culture you don’t know you way around in. “There are many rules here but they are all unspoken.” We say that in all but words to people new to our shores and, I mean really, how fair is that? It's like when Steve Martin used to suggest in his early stand-up routines that we should teach babies to talk wrong so as to have the fun of mocking them later.
