In Persuasion Nation (2 page)

Sincerely yours,

Rick Sminks

Product Service
Representative

KidLuv Inc.

I
had brought my grandson to New York to see a show. Because what is he
always doing, up here in Oneonta? Singing and dancing, sometimes to
my old show-tune records, but more often than not to his favorite CD,
Babar Sings!
, sometimes even making up his own steps, which I
do not mind, or rather I try not to mind it. Although I admit that
once, coming into his room and finding him wearing a pink boa while
singing, in the voice of the Old Lady, "I Have Never Met a Man
Like That Elephant," I had to walk out and give it some deep
thought and prayer, as was also the case when he lumbered into the
parlor during a recent church couples dinner, singing "Big and
Slow, Yet So Very Regal," wearing a tablecloth spray-painted
gray, so as to more closely resemble Babar.

Being
a man who knows something about grandfatherly disapproval, having had
a grandfather who constantly taunted me for having enlarged
calves—to the extent that even today, when bathing, I find myself
thinking unkind thoughts about Grandfather—what I prayed on both
occasions was: Dear Lord, he is what he is, let me love him no matter
what. If he is a gay child, God bless him; if he is a non-gay child
who simply very much enjoys wearing his grandmother's wig while
singing "Edelweiss" to the dog, so be it, and in either
case let me communicate my love and acceptance in everything I do.

Because
where is a child to go for unconditional love, if not to his
grandfather? He has had it tough, in my view, with his mother in
Nevada and a father unknown, raised by his grandmother and me in an
otherwise childless neighborhood, playing alone in a tiny yard that
ends in a graveyard wall. The boys in his school are hard on him, as
are the girls, as are the teachers, and recently we found his book
bag in the Susquehanna, and recently also found, taped to the back of
his jacket, a derogatory note, and the writing on it was not all that
childish-looking, and there were rumors that his bus driver had
written it.

Then
one day I had a revelation. If the lad likes to sing and dance, I
thought, why not expose him to the finest singing and dancing there
is? So I called 1-800-CULTURE, got our Promissory Voucher in the
mail, and on Teddy's birthday we took the train down to New York.

As
we entered the magnificent lobby of the Eisner Theatre, I was in good
spirits, saying to Teddy, "The size of this stage will make that
little stage I built you behind the garage look pathetic." When
suddenly we were stopped by a stern young fellow (a Mr. Ernesti, I
believe) who said, "We are sorry, sir, but you cannot be
admitted on merely a Promissory Voucher, are you kidding us, you must
take your Voucher and your Proof of Purchases from at least six of
our Major Artistic Sponsors, such as AOL, such as Coke, and go at
once to the Redemption Center, on Forty-fourth and Broadway, to get
your real actual tickets, and please do not be late, as latecomers
cannot be admitted, due to special effects which occur early, and
which require total darkness in order to simulate the African jungle
at night."

Well,
this was news to me, but I was not about to disappoint the boy.

We
left the Eisner and started up Broadway, the Everly Readers in the
sidewalk reading the Everly Strips in our shoes, the building-mounted
mini-screens at eye level showing images reflective of the Personal
Preferences we'd stated on our monthly Everly Preference Worksheets,
the numerous Cybec Sudden Emergent Screens outthrusting or
down-thrusting inches from our faces, and in addition I could very
clearly hear the sound-only messages being beamed to me and me alone
via various Kakio Aural Focussers, such as one that shouted out to me
between Forty-second and Forty-third, "Mr. Petrillo, you chose
Burger King eight times last fiscal year but only two times thus far
this fiscal year, please do not forsake us now, there is a store one
block north!" in the voice of Broadway star Elaine Weston, while
at Forty-third a light-pole-mounted Focusser shouted, "Golly,
Leonard, remember your childhood on the farm in Oneonta? Why not
reclaim those roots with a Starbucks Country Roast?" in a
celebrity rural voice I could not identify, possibly Buck Owens, and
then, best of all, in the doorway of PLC Electronics, a life-size
Gene Kelly hologram suddenly appeared, tap-dancing, saying, "Leonard,
my data indicates you're a bit of an old-timer like myself! Gosh, in
our day life was simpler, wasn't it, Leonard? Why not come in and let
Frankie Z. explain the latest gizmos!" And he looked so real I
called out to Teddy, "Teddy, look there, Gene Kelly, do you
remember I mentioned him to you as one of the all-time greats?"
But Teddy of course did not see Gene Kelly, Gene Kelly not being one
of his Preferences, but instead saw his hero Babar, swinging a small
monkey on his trunk while saying that his data indicated that Teddy
did not yet own a Nintendo.

So
that was fun, that was very New York, but what was not so fun was, by
the time we got through the line at the Redemption Center, it was ten
minutes until showtime, and my feet had swollen up the way they do
shortly before they begin spontaneously bleeding, which they have
done ever since a winter spent in the freezing muck of Cho-Bai,
Korea. It is something I have learned to live with. If I can sit,
that is helpful. If I can lean against something, also good. Best of
all, if I can take my shoes off. Which I did, leaning against a wall.

All
around and above us were those towering walls of light, curving
across building fronts, embedded in the sidewalks, custom-fitted to
light poles: a cartoon lion eating a man in a suit; a rain of gold
coins falling into the canoe of a naked rain-forest family; a woman
in lingerie running a bottle of Pepsi between her breasts; the
Merrill Lynch talking fist asking, "Are you kicking ass or
kissing it?"; a perfect human rear, dancing; a fake flock of
geese turning into a field of Bebe logos; a dying grandmother's room
filled with roses by a FedEx man who then holds up a card saying "No
Charge."

And
standing beneath all that bounty was our little Teddy, tiny and sad,
whose grandfather could not even manage to get him into one crummy
show.

So I
said to myself, Get off the wall, old man, blood or no blood, just
keep the legs moving and soon enough you'll be there. And off we
went, me hobbling, Teddy holding my arm, making decent time, and I
think we would have made the curtain. Except suddenly there appeared
a Citizen Helper, who asked were we from out of town, and was that
why, via removing my shoes, I had caused my Everly Strips to be
rendered Inoperative?

I
should say here that I am no stranger to innovative approaches to
advertising, having pioneered the use of towable signboards in
Oneonta back in the Nixon years, when I moved a fleet of thirty
around town with a Dodge Dart, wearing a suit that today would be
found comic. By which I mean I have no problem with the concept of
the Everly Strip. That is not why I had my shoes off. I am as
patriotic as the next guy. Rather, as I have said, it was due to my
bleeding feet.

I told
all this to the Citizen Helper, who asked if I was aware that, by
rendering my Strips Inoperative, I was sacrificing a terrific
opportunity to Celebrate My Preferences?

And I
said yes, yes, I regretted this very much.

He
said he was sorry about my feet, he himself having a trick elbow, and
that he would be happy to forget this unfortunate incident if I would
only put my shoes back on and complete the rest of my walk extremely
slowly, looking energetically to both left and right, so that the
higher density of Messages thus received would compensate for those I
had missed.

And
I admit, I was a little short with that Helper, and said, "Young
man, these dark patches here on my socks are blood, do you or do you
not see them?"

Which
was when his face changed and he said, "Please do not snap at
me, sir, I hope you are aware of the fact that I can write you up?"

And
then I made a mistake.

Because
as I looked at that Citizen Helper—his round face, his pale
sideburns, the way his feet turned in—it seemed to me that I knew
him. Or rather, it seemed that he could not be so very different from
me when I was a young man, not so different from the friends of my
youth—from Jeffie DeSoto, say, who once fought a Lithuanian gang
that had stuck an M-80 in the ass of a cat, or from Ken Larmer, who
had such a sweet tenor voice and died stifling a laugh in the hills
above Koi-Jeng.

I
brought out a twenty and, leaning over, said, Look, please, the kid
just really wants to see this show.

Which
is when he pulled out his pad and began to write!

Now,
even being from Oneonta, I knew that being written up does not take
one or two minutes, we would be standing there at least half an hour,
after which we would have to go to an Active Complaints Center, where
they would check our Strips for Operability and make us watch that
corrective video called
Robust Economy, Super Moral Climate!
,
which I had already been made to watch three times last winter, when
I was out of work and we could not afford cable.

And
we would totally miss
Babar Sings
!

"Please,"
I said, "please, we have seen plenty of personalized messages,
via both the building-mounted miniscreens at eye level and those
suddenly outthrusting Cybec Emergent Screens, we have learned plenty
for one day, honest to God we have—"

And
he said, "Sir, since when do you make the call as far as when
you have received enough useful information from our Artistic
Partners?"

And
just kept writing me up.

Well,
there I was, in my socks, there was Teddy, with a scared look in his
eyes I hadn't seen since his toddler days, when he had such a fear of
chickens that we could never buy Rosemont eggs, due to the cartoon
chicken on the carton, or, if we did, had to first cut the chicken
off, with scissors we kept in the car for that purpose. So I made a
quick decision, and seized that Citizen Helper's ticket pad and flung
it into the street, shouting at Teddy, "Run! Run!"

And
run he did. And run I did. And while that Citizen Helper floundered
in the street, torn between chasing us and retrieving his pad, we
raced down Broadway, and glancing back over my shoulder I saw a
hulking young man stick out his foot, and down that Helper went, and
soon I was handing our tickets to the same stern Mr. Ernesti, who was
now less stern, and in we went, and took our seats, as the stars
appeared overhead and the Eisner was transformed into a nighttime
jungle.

And
suddenly there was Babar, looking with longing toward Paris, where
the Old Lady was saying that she had dreamed of someone named Babar,
and did any of us know who this Babar was, and where he might be
found? And Teddy knew the answer, from the Original Cast CD, which
was
Babar is within us, in all of our hearts
, and he shouted
it out with all the other children, as the Old Lady began singing
"The King Inside of You."

And
let me tell you, from that moment everything changed for Teddy. I am
happy to report he has joined the play at school. He wears a scarf
everywhere he goes, throwing it over his shoulder with what can only
be described as bravado, and says, whenever asked, that he has
decided to become an actor. This from a boy too timid to
trick-or-treat! This from the boy we once found walking home from
school in tears, padlocked to his own bike! There are no more
late-night crying episodes, he no longer writes on his arms with
permanent marker, he leaps out of bed in the morning, anxious to get
to school, and dons his scarf, and is already sitting at the table
eating breakfast when we come down.

The
other day as he got off the bus I heard him say, to his bus driver,
cool as a cucumber, "See you at the Oscars."

When
an Everly Reader is reading, then suddenly stops, it is not hard to
trace, and within a week I received a certified letter setting my
fine at one thousand dollars, and stating that, in lieu of the fine,
I could elect to return to the originating location of my infraction
(they included a map) and, under the supervision of that Citizen
Helper, retrace my steps, shoes on, thus reclaiming a significant
opportunity to Celebrate My Preferences.

This,
to me, is not America.

What
America is, to me, is a guy doesn't want to buy, you let him not buy,
you respect his not buying. A guy has a crazy notion different from
your crazy notion, you pat him on the back and say hey, pal, nice
crazy notion, let's go have a beer. America to me should be shouting
all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of
them nuts, but, please, not just one droning glamorous reasonable
voice.

But do
the math: a day's pay, plus train ticket, plus meals, plus taxis to
avoid the bleeding feet, still that is less than one thousand.

So
down I went.

That
Citizen Helper, whose name was Rob, said he was glad about my change
of heart. Every time a voice shot into my ear, telling me things
about myself I already knew, every time a celebrity hologram walked
up like an old friend, Rob checked a box on my Infraction Correction
Form and said, "Isn't that amazing, Mr. Petrillo, that we can do
that, that we can know you so well, that we can help you identify the
things you want and need?"

And
I would say, "Yes, Rob, that is amazing," sick in the gut
but trying to keep my mind on the five hundred bucks I was saving and
on all the dance classes that would buy.

As for
Teddy, as I write this it is nearly midnight and he is tapping in the
room above. He looks like a bird, our boy, he watches the same
musical fifteen times in a row. Walking through the mall he suddenly
emits a random line of dialogue and lunges off to the side, doing a
dance step that resembles a stumble, spilling his drink, plowing into
a group of incredulous, snickering Oneontans. He looks like no one
else, acts like no one else, his clothes are increasingly like
plumage, late at night he choreographs using plastic Army men, he
fits no mold and has no friends, but I believe in my heart that
someday something beautiful may come from him.