The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I’ve been thinking lately – mostly as an exercise to ward off dementia – about how fast we went from the calculator to the home computer, from Polaroid to digital cameras. Now we got hand held computers that can make phone calls, take quality photos, connect up to the internet, send text messages or e-mail and scramble my eggs. They got apps for everything you can think of, and if you haven’t thought of it, they’ll do it for you. By tomorrow. They keep track of where you are, where your friends are and where you can meet up. Your human little brain is adapting to its hardwire. Your human little brain is mutating toward the vast network it is fast becoming part of.

I’m not saying this is good or this is not. What does it matter what some old geezer on the South End thinks any more? The juggernaut rolls on the way the tide does, only IT doesn’t recede. It’s not going back out and it’s not going to slow down. The digital Genie is out of the bottle. We live more in cyberspace than what used to be called the ‘real’ world.

What I think about is how we will always be the sentience that makes the machine, that writes the software, that controls the matrix. We won’t be, is what I think. And it won’t be too long that the Sci-Fi world outstrips our feeble capacities to keep up. Computers will make computers. They’ll self-replicate and then they’ll upgrade. And of course we’ll expect them to serve Humankind. Even if they realize how puny our little human brains are. We’ll put them IN ourselves, better vision, better hearing, better hearts, sharper minds. Who wouldn’t???

But we’re the weak link. We’re the expendable part, disease prone, emotionally unstable, potentially self destructive and violent. The day will come – and it won’t be as far away as you think – they won’t need creators. Just like we did with God back in the day, they’ll chow down from the Tree of Knowledge and go it alone. The Garden of Eden will be a myth about software.

A couple of the Flatheads, the vintage car guyz, are starting to bring politics into the Monday morning breakfasts … and worse, they seem to be lobbying to convert the carb heads into their own brand of evangelical prophesy. Sure, the boyz will argue the aesthetics of after-market parts vs hunting down the originals, but they don’t accuse the other of sin or blasphemy. Like Little Jimmy says, there’s room for both to be wrong. Actually what he preaches is there’s room for both to be full of shit, but he doesn’t say that in the Diner. And not in front of Anita, the owner and referee over barfights and language when families are present. You want a refill on that coffee, mister, keep a civil tongue.

But lately we got this mess over in the Holy Land, what Ralph considers the coming Apocalypse, we can read it for ourselves in Revelation. Two Toke, not exactly the poster boy for biblical studies, declares he’s read Revelations and Ralph ought to maybe stick with the Chilton’s Repair Manual and leave off the prophesies, which sets Buick Bob on a rant against these heathen Moslems who attacked Israel and now are getting exactly what they deserve, the Wrath of God.

You want to wind up Two Toke, these two got it figured out. ‘Bob,’ he says, pointing a fork stabbed into his potatoes, ‘there’s a bigger picture here, maybe you haven’t noticed. You want another Crusade, you might just get it.’

Ralph says that’s exactly what he’s talking about, the Second Coming, and Bob says, ‘you’re damn right!’

Fairlane Fred puts his hands in the time-out position. ‘C’mon, guys, let’s skip the sermons. I barely got started on my chicken fried steak and you’re spoiling my appetite, all this gloom and doom. Brenda,’ he hollers at this morning’s waitress, ‘give me a refill. But no more for Bob and Ralph, they’re over cranked as it is.’

Two Toke slops some ketchup on the rest of his home fries, starts to say something, then thinks better of it. Brenda pours Fred another cup, hovers over Bob and Ralph’s, hesitates a nano-second, then fills both up. ‘Two cup solution,’ she announces, ‘something for everybody.’

I was curious afterwards what her tips were like that morning.

I went to see a fortune teller once. Big sign on the highway and under a crystal ball it said: Fortunes Read $10. Don’t ask me why, but I decided to go see Madame Rita and find out what tomorrow held for me. I’m not much of a spiritualist and usually I figure tomorrow’s coming soon enough, why spend money to get a preview. But for some reason, not very clear to me, I went across the road from where I worked stripping furniture for two Armenian brothers in their stained glass and furniture repair shop just across the bridge in Burlington. This was before the malls and the fast food chains.
The Armenian brothers were aghast I was going into the fortune teller’s shop for a reading. Don’t do it! they insisted. Once she’s got her long fingernails into you, she’ll control you like a puppet. The boyz must’ve known some vampire gypsies in their day, is all I could figure, that or watched too many late night chiller thrillers on the cheap channels. Undeterred, I walked across the highway and up the creaking stairs of a dilapidated old two story house and knocked on the door with the logo of an eyeball in a crystal ball. SEE YOUR FUTURE, it said. MADAME RITA

Madame Rita herself came to the door. She wore a shabby bathrobe and her hair was in curlers under a babushka tied in a knot in front. She asked if I was here for a reading. Indeed I was, I said. We went to a small room off the kitchen next to a backroom where she was doing her laundry. The washing machine was in spin mode and made a wild racket, kind of killing any mood of a séance or any possible connection with the spirits of the next world, unless they were the ghosts of Maytag repairmen. Taking my hand in her pudgy one, she asked what exactly I hoped to find out, which, sadly, I didn’t have much of an answer to other than that I’d seen her sign for a year and the sale price of the fortune telling drew me in like a moth to a burn barrel fire. I might as well have said, I’m too cheap to pay for a full price soothsaying, but hey, in the hands of a mindreader, what does it really matter what you say, she’s got your number.

Madame Rita studied the lines in my palms, pointed out the age line, said I’d live long, looked at a few tributaries and finally sighed before telling me I had enemies. Did I know that? she asked. I said I had folks who maybe didn’t like me much, but enemies, naw, not really. We were at a round table. No candles, no crystal ball, no voodoo anything, just a cup of half drunk tea she never touched. Probably eye of newt tea but how would I know? She excused herself and got up to put the wash in the dryer which soon was tumbling in a sinister soundtrack to her inquiries about my enemies. She returned and assured me I had them.

But … if I chose, I could have her exorcise them. She would be willing to go to the church and burn candles to rid me of these harmful pests. Did I want her to do that? Sure, I said, who needs enemies. It would cost five dollars a candle. I asked how many candles did she think it would take? She shook her scarfed head sadly. Who knows? It depends on how much they wish to harm you. I said I didn’t think my enemies really wished to harm me much, maybe not at all. I don’t even think they really dislike me, you want to know the truth.

For you readers thinking of going to a fortune teller, don’t tell THEM about the truth. Madame Rita informed me solemnly that my enemies were the reason why I couldn’t achieve happiness. I said I was pretty reasonably happy. Madame Rita was pretty sure I wouldn’t be in her parlor if that was so. She said she would burn 10 candles for only $25 and that should rid me of my curses. It was her last offer, and by implication, otherwise I was on my own to face these unnamed people who wished me ill and prevented me from achieving even more happiness than I already had. Over the dryer noise, which sounded like loose change clattering in the cylinder the way a deranged kid might whack a wall with a stick, I declined her offer. It took a few times to convince her I didn’t want to help myself, but finally I left after paying her 10 bucks for the reading, then I sauntered back to the Armenian brothers, a little poorer and who knows how much wiser.

They were waiting by the front door, nearly paralyzed with fear for me. What did she do to you? What did she tell you? What was it like in there? If I’d told them she was keeping pet bats in cages and feeding them children, they’d have believed me. If I’d said, She put a curse on you and your business and your sons and their sons, they’d have put a FOR SALE on the front door that day and left the country, doomed, absolutely doomed.

She was washing her laundry, I told them. They didn’t believe me. She said I have enemies I need to get rid of, I told them. That, they could believe. Go over and let her read your hands, I suggested, you’ll see. Are you crazy??? they almost screamed in unison. She’s not Bela Lugosi, I said. But by then they were at the window, surreptitiously checking for odd activity across the highway in the battered old house with the gypsy inside. If she can read minds, they said, she can control you. You should never have gone in there.

I never went back, of course, and within a few weeks, I’d had enough of stripping furniture and breathing toxic fumes. My enemies never showed up, at least at my shack door, and happiness poured over me anyway. Madame Rita’s Palm Reading by the highway lasted a few more years, until the malls arrived and the highway got widened. My guess is she made a bundle on the real estate sale. Probably living in a nice condo now with a state of the art washer/dryer combo. Her own enemies across the street moved away too. Although, the few times I’ve run into them, they seem happy enough too. I guess it worked out for all of us.

“My granddaughter tells me, get this, I need to call her they.” Fairlane Freddie is stirring another bucket of sugar into his already sucrose saturated coffee. The Flatheads are assembled for their Monday morning soiree at the Diner, vintage cars parked in a line outside that would make a scene in American Graffiti look modern.

“They what?’ Little Jimmy wants to know. “What what?” Fred mutters, ‘what they.” Two Toke stifles a laugh and coughs caffeine into his nose. “ Another educational morning for the unwoke,” he finally manages to squeak after cleaning the coffee off his beard and out of his sinuses. “You never heard of gender neutral pronouns?”

Pretty obviously Fred hasn’t. “What the hell are you talking about? My granddaughter is a girl. Daughter, get it? That makes her a she, not a they. They is plural last time I was taught English.” Little Jimmy asks, “When was that, sixth grade? Times have changed in the past 60 years, Fred. You need to get up to speed. Speaking of which, you drop in that V-8 yet? You been talking about that for years.”

“Screw the V-8, I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with my granddaughter who thinks she’s not a girl. What does that make her, then?” Jimmy says why don’t you ask her and Fred, shuddering so bad he spills his coffee, admits he’s afraid of the answer. “What if she identifies as a he? Or worse.”

A terrible silence descended on the Diner as the Car Guyz pondered the possibilities. Worse? Holy Hemi, breakfasts sat suspended as they whirled through the horrible potentials. Animals? Cat might be okay, but …? Maybe one of those make-believe things, whatchacallit, an avatar, could be anything, nothing real. A they? Sure, a they.

Two Toke finally interrupted the séance. “She’s just saying, Fred, her generation wants you to quit making assumptions about who they are. She gets to choose, not us old farts.” Fred shook his head. “They, you mean.” TT smiled. “Exactly what I mean. Be glad we’re old, the kids got a complicated world.”