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Once, years ago, a person awoke and came in the kitchen where perhaps one person was eager to engage with you, your spouse, better half, paramour, soulmate, main squeeze. Words were exchanged. A newspaper lay on the table and you read the headline, Talks Resume in Effort to Reach Settlement. Eventually, offspring would appear, the mood would darken, conflicts arise and then subside. The phone hung on the wall and it did not ring. Social interactions developed within familiar confines.
This has now changed, thanks to electronics. The laptop contains numerous newspapers, enough to engage you until noon, and also search engines to serve your random curiosity and then you look up and it's 2 p.m. and you've missed your Zoom meeting and you can't remember what you've been reading for five hours.
Your cellphone is packed with emails and voicemail and texts — thousands of fundraising campaigns share their mailing lists and if you've given $10 to one in the past ten years, you now have a hundred or more awaiting you, which you can easily identify by the first few words:
A massive info-overload has crept into American daily life, tidal waves of distraction, and it feels beneficial, being able to google freely and take in so much and learn new things, but there is a price to be paid and one is memory loss. The emperor is able to turn the page and create dramatic diversions and the overload washes away the story: on January 6, 2021, he encouraged his mob to assault the Capitol to reverse the election and days later he condemned them for it and four years later, reelected, he pardoned them, calling it "a day of love." It defies credibility. And this is how, though unpopular he be, he dominates our daily life, wretched and reprehensible as he is, we see his face in every clod and hear his name in every expulsion of gas.
I used to play on a softball team and after a game we guys would gather for a beer and engage in guy talk, which included some griping and pontification but focused more on telling stories and jokes. The jokes would come in a series — The man walked into the bar with his hands full of dog turds and said, "Look what I almost stepped in!" would lead to a string of The Man Walked Into The Bar jokes, or there'd be lightbulb jokes or Ole and Lena jokes — but the high point was the stories. Some people can tell them and others can't, and out of the twelve of us, there were two, maybe three, who could.
Stories needed to be in the first person, have the ring of truth, and not be self-aggrandizing. The Scoutmaster with his troop on a canoe trip and one Scout is unable to move his bowels out in the woods and needs to be encouraged and defended against bullies but finally, with the help of a stool softener, he takes a crap but is too shy to come back to the campsite for toilet paper and so wipes himself with leaves and of all the leaves G od has created, the Scout chooses the wrong ones and needs the Scoutmaster's personal care. The trip is canceled and they head for the starting point and the Scoutmaster is suddenly overcome by tears. Blinded by tears. Poison ivy in his eyes. He is a helpless passenger lying in the canoe and the bullies are in charge and there is nothing he can do about it.
My softball days came to an end. I got very busy. I had employees and colleagues but a different protocol was in effect. And women were in the picture and the strictness of feminist propriety. The ease of male camaraderie was gone.
I miss those days and now I'm trying to relive them, I tell jokes, stories.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "Cheerfulness". Buy it at a 38% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.
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