The banana man can

Almost eight years ago now – man, has it been that long? – I was walking down St. Hubert Street in Montreal, Canada, wondering why in the name of Pete there was a strip club sandwiched between a cigar shop and a Foot Locker. Maybe, I thought, it was so professionals in the business district could knock off for lunch, buy a new pair of boots, and suck down a tasty Cuban while enjoying a lap dance from a fetching young vixen named Desire. And perhaps Desire is a down-on-her-luck grad student working her way toward a PhD in mid-17th Century contortionism. Dr. Desire. Now there’s a thought.

 

Lost in this reverie, strolling near an intersection with a group of friends, I heard a voice behind me, gruff and authoritative.

 

“Gimme all your money.”

 

These are words that will snap a man back into the present.

 

No one wants to hear that phrase, especially on vacation in a foreign country, when sustaining an existence turns briefly into a high-wire act, and every five-dollar note is a potential beaver shot glass. The objective on such trips is twofold: Building memories through good times and merriment, and not losing your shirt to a random hoodlum outside a Disney Store.

 

For a moment, I thought the second clause of this noble mission statement was about to be violated. Then I turned around, saw the owner of the voice, and noticed that he was pointing a piece of fruit at me.

 

I was being robbed at banana-point.

 

The man must have seen the confusion on my face, because he immediately lowered the banana and smiled in a shy, forgive-me manner that was momentarily disarming. “Naw, I’m just kidding,” he said. “Just foolin’ around. But if you could please spare some change, I’d really appreciate it.”

 

In that instant, I thought two things. One: I’m really glad you’re not speaking French to me right now. Two: You bastard.

 

It was simultaneously a mean trick and a funny prank, so it was unclear to me what my reaction should be. I could either toss the guy a coin or slug him in the kisser. Both seemed appropriate.

 

The odd encounter was an extreme example of the decision we have to make whenever we meet someone who’s obviously struggling. We either give them money or we don’t. Seems simple enough on the surface.

 

Only it isn’t always.

 

To give or not to give – that, to paraphrase the Bard, is the question, and these diametrically opposite actions each have strong proponents. Both camps, frankly, have a point. Camp One says that we shouldn’t give money to homeless people because they’re likely to spend it on fifths of Johnny Walker, and nobody turns their life around when they’re half in the bag, serenading park pigeons with watery renditions of “California Dreamin’.” Camp Two says that we have an obligation to help our fellow brothers and sisters – that some circumstances are too difficult to overcome with hard work and determination alone. These are each valid arguments. Picking one is like choosing between Justin Bieber and One Direction. There’s no clear winner, and both feel wrong.

 

One group that will always get my money is street performers, and I’ve got to admit, I’m a sucker for this stuff. The last time I was in Boston, I was walking through downtown – dutifully following the Freedom Trail, lest I get lost in a random alleyway filled with used book stands and animal pee – when I saw some acrobats leaping and gyrating in front of Quincy Market. With an eager crowd encircling them, the acrobats solicited volunteers, situated them in the middle of the circle, and took turns flipping and spinning over their heads, in some cases missing them by the length of an aardvark nipple. It was a pretty entertaining spectacle, and this is coming from a guy who’s been jaded by YouTube videos of skateboarding injuries and gratuitous crotch punches. Satisfied, I dropped some money into an empty guitar case and went on my way.

 

But that’s different. These are people who are A), probably not homeless, and B), providing a show in exchange for my loose cash. The decision to give money in this situation is an easy one. Heck, if I’m going to stop and ogle them when I should be out downing beers or buying tacky Red Sox Bobbleheads, then it’s an obligation, really.

 

What makes handouts to the homeless such a dilemma is that it’s not an obligation. It’s a choice based purely on our personalities, our propensity to trust, and in some cases, circumstance. There’s no guidebook, no guarantee that you’re doing the right thing.

 

It’s wishy-washy to chalk the whole thing up to one big crapshoot, and to advocate for one’s “best judgment” – a milquetoast phrase if ever there was one – but we’re left with little choice. In larger cities especially, we’re bombarded with outstretched hands, whether those of individuals or the big-box stores all clamoring for our money. Making the right call 100 percent of the time is impossible without a crystal ball, or the fantastical soothsaying powers of a comic book mutant. I’d like to think the unfortunate soul with upturned palms really is a hard-luck case and not some well-fed charlatan; I’d like to think my dollar will go toward food, or something else that will genuinely help. I retain this optimism because, during the more difficult stretches of my own life, there’s been no better feeling, no more healing balm, than the kindness and understanding of others. Heck, maybe I’m a sucker. But I’m cynical enough already without relinquishing my claim to empathy.

 

It took me a while to decide on what to do with Banana Man. Ideally, I’d like something in return for my money, and this guy was on thin ice already, having put quite the scare into our little clan. Then the “walk” light started blinking at our intersection, my friends began crossing the street, and it hit me: I was getting something. I flipped him a dollar coin without saying a word, and turned to face the cotton-candy lights of the city.

 

I was getting an anecdote, see. It’s not too often you get fake-robbed by fruit. Nearly a decade later, I milked it for a column.

 

And you know what? That’s worth a dollar.

 

But you can call me "Stretch"

Cellars are the bane of my existence.

 

You’d be right to assume there’s a touch of hyperbole in that statement, but trust me: The exaggeration is slight. Obviously there are other, banier banes which are more bane-like. Infectious diseases, Pauly Shore movies, and French fries without ketchup are all somewhere near the top of the list.

 

But there’s a certain dread that accompanies the prospect of delving into a cellar, even if it’s one of those posh, rec-room cellars with a dart board and collectible beer signs. ‘Cause see, this fear has nothing to do with dim light, dank walls, or overall potential creepiness.

 

It’s the ceilings, man. They’re too damn low.

 

Ever hit your forehead on an exposed water pipe? It creates a note that’s almost musical. Somewhere there’s a new-age recording artist wearing silver bracelets and a gold ascot, lips dry from blowing into a pitch-pipe, looking for just such a sonorous clang to complement some trippy meditation on the life-giving properties of tropical rainwater. I can picture the song now. Bubbling streams give way to a chaotic chorus of wind chimes, and then bong. Some dip whacks his noggin on low-hanging metal, hard enough to cause a bump the size and shape of a garage door opener, and voila. Masterpiece complete. For Pete’s sake, I need to stop riding on so many elevators.

 

I don’t blame cellars, per se. I blame height. I’m a tall dude living in a world made for normal-sized people, and the longer you live in the clouds, the more likely you are to encounter some unexpected limitations. It was great when I was a kid, ’cause I could ride all the cool roller coasters while my knee-high friends were all putting around on the antique cars, which provide a thrill roughly on par with darning socks. Back then I thought I was pretty awesome. Now I enter a house with low ceilings and feel like the only way I can escape is via some impossible Houdini-type trick, contorted limbs all tied up in knots. One of the major networks should send a camera crew to film me crawling around a dorm room. David Blane never attempted something so challenging.

 

Yeah, I know, I’m whining about a trait that many people wish they had. But it ain’t all hookers and blow, lemme tell you.

 

First of all, it’s a particular nuisance when you’re a bald man. When your hair’s shaved down to the nitty grit, your head automatically becomes a target, somehow violating the laws of physics by gaining gravity while losing mass. In all the years when my follicles were fertile, I slammed my head on random crap probably fewer than a dozen times, and that includes my early experiments with drinking. Now, with my scalp as naked as a newborn baby (but only half as gross), objects are drawn to it like an asteroid to a barren planet. I’m surprised I can walk outside without being bombarded by a maelstrom of tree limbs, potted plants and air conditioners.

 

More vexing, though, is the scale of things. I’m 6’4”, just shy of freakish, and yet it sometimes it feels like the world is a poorly-made doll house. I can only guess at what life is like for Shaquille O’Neal. Does he even have a cellar? If I were him I’d put my ping-pong table in a bomb shelter and call it good.

 

When I was about 15, I visited the Paul Revere house in Boston. Beforehand, I was warned that colonial dwellings were a bit more snug than I was used to, what with the smaller stature of men and women living in the 1770’s – something to do with peoples’ diets, I was told. I guess you don’t grow much when your food intake consists primarily of squirrel meat and damp wood. But there was no warning that could have prepared me for the shoebox proportions of this venerable patriot’s former home. Because of Revere’s standing in history, we tend to think of him, and other early Americans, as larger-than-life figures, somewhere on a scale between Lebron James and the Jolly Green Giant. If his dwelling was any indication, though, I’m guessing his legend has been exaggerated. The story maintains that he rode the streets of Boston on horseback, shouting warnings that the arrival of British troops was imminent. Judging from his former abode, it seems likely that he actually rode on the back of a house cat, spreading his warning door-to-door in the form of handwritten notes left in peoples’ shoes. He wrote them with mouse whiskers dipped in ink and then sealed them in envelopes the size of mosquito wings.

 

It’s a small house, in other words.

 

And if you haven’t been there, you should go sometime. Not just to soak in some early American history, but to experience the life of the vertically endowed: bumping shins on tiny rocking chairs, walking around with knees bent at 45-degree angles, and shimmying past microscopic writing desks to get to the living room, which is only a hair larger than a box of dog biscuits. Good times.

 

I should probably devote some minor effort to acknowledge that, yes, height has its advantages. The greatest benefit is at standing-room-only concerts, where my view is very rarely obstructed by the obscene neck tattoos of my fellow rockers; there’s generally nothing between my eyes and the stage save for maybe some acrid smoke and the flying bra or two. I just wish it was  a power I could turn on and off – scaled-up for live shows, diminutive for those times when I have to ride in the back seat of a Pinto. It would also come in handy if I were ever stuffed in a trunk with a burlap sack over my head, but so far I’m only running that risk in New Jersey and Mexico. Thank goodness for borders.

 

What freedom that power would grant. It’s a nice fantasy, anyway – to walk through a cellar without the threat of brain-scrambling head whacks. As always, a man can dream.

 

A chilling diagnosis

I’m not a doctor, but I play one in a column.

 

This means I get to identify new diseases and diagnose them accordingly. I possess no advanced degrees, have no medical training, and become squeamish at the sight of needles, but because I’m playing a doctor, I get to make all the rules. Unsurprisingly, the rules give me near-unlimited power. It’s my own special brand of B.S., and in this context, that definitely doesn’t mean Bachelor of Science.

 

With this me-given ability to define various illnesses, there’s an epidemic afoot which warrants investigation. I highlight this scourge purely as a public service, because I’m an incredibly caring and empathic person. I’m also a generous tipper and have calves like a Roman foot soldier, but those traits are quite unrelated.

 

You’ve witnesses this disease before, but until now it never had a name. I hereby call it – drum roll, please – Premature Springjaculation. That may just be dumb enough to necessitate future tweaking.

 

Here’s how it works: You’ve spent a long few months indoors, huddled over a space heater in your Doritos-stained Snuggie, vainly attempting to warm your winter-chilled bones. Sometime in mid-March, a relatively warm day sneaks through the cracks – one of those mid-50’s surprises that shocks you into believing spring may indeed be imminent. Excited, you cast aside your winter coat in favor of a light hoodie and take a walk around the neighborhood, doing various spring-like things, like patting neighbors’ dogs, and not drinking before noon. It’s glorious. You feel renewed, ready to take on life with a fresh heart.

Only there’s a catch. You become so accustomed to wearing your spring duds that you just keep on wearing them, even though the very next day it’s once again cold enough to freeze Junior Mints to your forehead. Through several more weeks you suffer this way, ’cause you’ve cast aside your mittens and ski mask, and dammit, you’re not going back.

 

Congratulations. You have prematurely springjaculated.

 

Don’t feel bad; we all do it. I do it every year, even though by now I should know better. About a month ago, I had a random day off in the middle of the week – lately, that’s about as rare as seeing a sub-Saharan tiger hiding a four-leaf clover in Bigfoot’s ass – and it just so happened to be the first truly nice day of the year. I tossed my winter coat into a corner, flipped it the bird, and felt like I weighed about fifty pounds as I walk-skipped to a friend’s house to do a little dog-sitting. Every spring feels like the first, and I was ready to embrace this one with the fervor of a passionate lover, minus the kissing, because trying to kiss weather is stupid.

 

The very next day, Mother Earth once again shoved me forcibly into her frigid icebox, needling my disappointment with her merciless cackle. Or maybe that was a dream about my Aunt Bertha. Either way, someone was being a real jerk. And I was cold.

 

Northeasterners like to think of themselves as a tough breed, stoically braving the chill while ignoring the fact that their fingers are slowly turning the deep purple hue of a Valentine’s Day hickey. For the most part, I guess we are kind of tough, what with our propensity for chopping wood and shooting things. But part of this is a front. It has to be, because every year around this time, everyone’s a little too happy. There’s happy and then there’s certifiably happy, akin to the nervous joy someone feels when they’ve narrowly escaped a brush with bad news. It’s like being in a doctor’s office, and the doctor says, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cheesebelly, but you have an advanced case of bubonic plague. You’ll be dead within the hour. Whoops, wrong chart! You’re dehydrated. Here’s some Gatorade.” That’s spring relief in a nutshell: The feeling that you’ve gotten away with something.

 

It doesn’t matter how acclimated we think we’ve become, how thick our calluses or ruddy our wind-blasted complexions – we yearn for that relief. We pine for it. And we fool ourselves into thinking the moment of our deliverance has arrived.

 

There’s a certain age group that seems more susceptible to this false hope than others. Those of us with a healthy number of winters under our belt suck up our disappointment and pick our coats up off the floor; those still young enough to have their wardrobe selected by their parents are bundled up and cozy because they lack a choice. Between 14 and 19, though, there exists a contingent that insists on wearing basketball shorts even in weather that could kill a mountain yeti. I see them all the time on my commute to work in the mornings: Shoulders slumped under the weight of heavy backpacks, hair making visible the wind of a dying season, and the heaviest garments on their bodies are faded Iron Maiden T-shirts with holes in the armpits. They come out of the woodwork as early as February, these people. Their insistence on walking to school without protection is so brazen it’s almost impressive. It’s like stepping into a batting cage and trusting a Jewish yarmulke to protect your head.

 

High schoolers. They’re the most egregious springjaculators of all. That seems nicer than calling them dufuses.

 

Fortunately, Dr. Jeff has proclaimed this to be a true-blue affliction, and like many afflictions, this one has a treatment: A coat that weighs more than a fire ant.

 

A coat’s side effects may include warmth, contentment, and lack of uncontrollable shivering. Women who are pregnant or nursing should definitely not consult their doctor before wearing a coat. Do drink alcohol while wearing a coat, as this masks the effects of thinning blood. If warmth lasts for more than four hours, do not consult a health professional, as that would be extremely stupid. If warmth does not occur immediately, wear some mittens. Those help, too.

 

So enjoy the early spring again. Ask your doctor if a jacket is right for you.

 

The mother tongue

The word “email” used to have a hyphen in it. “E-mail.” We all wrote it that way for years. Then, seemingly without warning, the mysterious “they” decided it was time to drop the hyphen, sparing humanity from that one extra keystroke. I was never notified about this. Never got a text, never got a phone call ... never even got an email, which, if you stretch your imagination, is sort of ironic. Plenty of tax season reminders and fake Facebook notifications from solicitous robots in the ol’ inbox, but no language alerts. It peeves a guy, being caught unawares like that.

 

I simply read it one day and thought it was a typo. Thankfully, I was surrounded by editors at the time who were somehow appraised of this subtle linguistic evolution. “The hyphen’s been dropped,” they told me. A minor betrayal bubbled under my skin. I kept writing “e-mail” for weeks because it was burned into my muscle memory, like the invincibility code for Grand Theft Auto III. (Holy crap that’s a specific reference.) I didn’t want to let it go, because not only did the old way feel right, but “email” is just a strange-looking word. I’m pretty sure it’s a common middle name in many French-Canadian families.

 

It’s no secret that language evolves over time, like animals and styles of pants. Just crack open some Dickens, or read through Benjamin Franklin’s old correspondence. Many of the words are the same, and the meaning is comprehensible, but it clearly doesn’t resemble our modern tongue, with our shortcuts and smiley faces and fragmented lingo. You don’t expect to hear anyone in modern day America exclaim, “Forsooth and verily! A weight must be lifted from your unconscionable bosom, you scallywag, for you’ve absconded with the queen’s jewels!” Likewise, you’d never hear Thomas Jefferson utter, “Dude, this is whack, yo.”

 

But it seems like language is evolving at a faster clip these days, and I’m putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Internet – that cats-and-smut behemoth that’s shrunk the globe to about the size of a tight-knit hippie commune. Linguistic tweaks have accelerated along with the pace of everything else, bullied along the breakneck highways of fiber optic cables and Wi Fi connections. The changes are hard to keep up with, and when they come, it’s usually some foul degradation, like NSFW, which is shorthand for “not safe for work,” and “JLIASM,” which means “Jeff Lagasse is a stud-muffin.” All right, so the latter’s not so bad.

 

In days of yore, when shepherds quaffed muddy mead and a gimpy donkey wagon was considered speedy travel, words were slow to spread; in turn, any changes were mostly local and slow-moving. Remnants of this hyper-locality are around today. Just look at Great Britain. It’s mostly confined to a couple of small islands in the north Atlantic, yet it’s home to so many dialects and accents it strains the ear to keep them all straight; English is routinely stretched and warped as if in a funhouse mirror, leaden and bulky in one territory, sinewy and lithe in the next. It’s a living fossil of the language’s roots. The difference is that, rather than being displayed in a museum, it’s preserved in the conversation of locals, strained through mouthfuls of meat pie and laden with colorful curse words that could make a sailor blush. Note to self: Visit Great Britain, soak in the salty talk, and use it in rush hour traffic.

 

Decades ago, my grandfather married a delightful woman from Scotland. She had lived in the United States for most of her adult life, and was pretty well assimilated, but there remained in her speech a thick soup of old-world dialect. Once you got over the fact that she put ice cubes in white wine, you honed in on her conversational style, which was casual but informed by a certain correctness that’s all but missing now. Her long O’s and A’s were squashed under the muddy bootheel of her Scottish inflection, but if one were to read her words in print, they’d be crisp and clean, unencumbered by the shortcuts and abbreviations of so-called netspeak. She said “Oh my God” instead of “OMG.” Hand her a chat room transcript and her brain would explode. Let’s all take a moment to consider how bodaciously gross that would be.

 

The reason is evident: These new-fangled linguistic quirks took place within  a couple of generations, not stretched over centuries of gradual refinement. There’s been a lot of talk about the generational divide that’s taking place, but much of it is focused on the day-to-day use of technology itself, not on how that technology has affected our communications. “Bits” and “bytes” are words in common usage. “Streaming” now refers to more than just rivers and pee. It’s an exciting time to be working at Merriam-Webster.

 

There’s something else happening, too. With people from across the world maintained in constant connectivity, the language is slowly being homogenized and stripped of its local character. Evidence of this is smattered throughout the Internet. There’s a young woman named Melissa who keeps a vlog on YouTube (“vlog” is short for “video blog”), and though she’s British, her admittedly accented speech is riddled with Americanisms and jargon birthed in the great digital ether – like, totally. She is, in part, a product of a connected age. Colloquialisms are no longer forged within physical boundaries on a map, but in a nebulous networld, one in which everything influences everything else. Imagine a world in which “Ayuh” ceases to be a hallmark of Maine slang. It could happen. And it’ll be a sad day when it’s uttered no more.

 

It’s hard for a guy to keep pace with all the changes. There needs to be some notification system in place, a framework for letting us all know what’s happening to our increasingly unfamiliar tongue. Email alerts would probably be the best bet. Or is it “EmAiL” now? I can never keep track of these things.

 

He's more machine now than man

Things change as we get older; we all know that. Our habits are different. Our styles are different. We party less and plan more, and we learn an entirely new vocabulary – phrases like “automatic withdrawal,” and “I should probably stop at three Heinekens.” If we’re lucky, we see the age at which our biology changes, with tufts of hair growing in absurd places, and weird pockets of wrinkled skin that look like rhinoceros necks. Makes bar pickups a little more difficult, but hey, that’s the breaks.

 

It’s this bodily degeneration that we look forward to the least, and with good reason. Not only does it make the little things more difficult – like bending over to sort through gummy bears on aisle six – but our health care becomes more complex. We’re introduced to machines and gizmos that look as though they’re designed to pump milk from the udders of obstinate cows, and every procedure becomes suddenly invasive. It’s like we’re the unwitting test subjects aboard a ship of perverted aliens.

 

This was one of many thoughts I had during my recent MRI. I had time to think plenty of them, because an MRI is a lengthy ordeal, and not particularly pleasant – the medical equivalent of an art house documentary about the invention of perforated toilet paper.

 

I walked into the radiology wing not knowing what to expect, exactly. Over the phone, they warned me not to wear pants with metal buttons or zippers, so I showed up clad in jet black sweatpants, which right away made me feel somewhat diminished. Nobody with self-respect walks into a building wearing sweatpants and feels good about themselves, especially is said building is crawling with professionals who frequent golf courses and get their shoes shined. There I was in the waiting room, surrounded by doctors with fancy hybrid cars and watches that monitor stock prices, decked out in a Metallica shirt and the kind of trousers you wear while eating ice cream in front of “The Maury Povich Show.”

 

It was seeing the machine for the first time that made me feel truly displaced, though. Any Star Wars geeks out there? There’s a scene in “The Empire Strikes Back” in which the morally ambiguous rebel Han Solo gets lowered into a metal chamber, where he’s suspended in a fictional alloy called carbonite. It’s similar to being cryogenically frozen, only way cooler. The MRI machine is like a sideways version of that whimsical sci-fi doohickey: a big gleaming tube that you slide into with the help of a noisy, mechanized tray. There was a brief moment when I thought I’d enter this drainpipe-looking monstrosity and emerge sometime in the distant future, surrounded by talking robots retrofitted from old Ford Broncos.

 

Earlier in the week, the woman I spoke to at the hospital said it would be a good idea to bring some music; I figured the suggestion was meant to spare me  boredom, seeing as how an MRI takes about 45 minutes – 50, if you want it to recite your horoscope. Having a nostalgic affinity for mid-90’s technology, I dug out an old portable CD player and rooted through my disc collection, looking for a mix that was on the mellow side. My thought – which seemed brilliant to me at the time – was that if I had to lie perfectly still for that long, I didn’t want any music that would inspire headbanging, limb thrashing, or Tarzan-esque chest-pounding. Better, I reckoned, to bring along tunes that would chill me out, inspire a state of relaxation. The Eagles and Pink Floyd were in. Megadeth and Slayer? As fun as it would have been to blast “Set the World Afire” in a clinical setting, they, sadly, were out.

 

Turns out this was a mistake.

 

The one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the noise. Oh, the noise. The eardrum-shattering, brain-splitting, shoot-me-in-the-head-with-a-bazooka robot noise. As first I thought some hidden nuclear reactor on site was having a spastic malfunction, and I frankly wouldn’t have been surprised had I wrested myself from my mechanized confines and seen men and women in airtight hazard suits throwing buckets of water on glowing fuel rods. I quickly discovered this is just an MRI’s base soundtrack, a John Williams score from hell. 

 

The tones kept changing. Three minutes of blaring beeps, two minutes of booming boops, and so on, in an ever-changing auditory assault. The evolving sound patterns were a blessing in a sense, because if they had remained constant for 40 minutes, they’d have shredded my sanity like so much grated cheese; I’d have walked out of the hospital a babbling ninny, walking an imaginary dog and singing choice numbers from the musical “South Pacific.”

 

That was when I realized the mistake in my music selection. The MRI noises were an incongruous accompaniment to the honeyed tones of “Peaceful Easy Feeling” – better if I had gone with Megadeth after all, or some other tunage abrasive enough to cut through the cacophony. An undiscovered group that uses chainsaws and jackhammers as musical instruments, perhaps.

 

Strangely, the whole experience wasn’t as off-putting as the details may imply. That may be an odd thing to say after making the ordeal seem about as appealing as a punch in the teeth from Zeus, but it’s true. My ability to get through it intact was due mainly to the technicians and staff, who, simply put, were fantastic; they were helpful, understanding, and seemingly concerned with my well-being. If you’re going to spend the length of a “Mad Men” episode getting beamed up by Scottie, it helps to have a good team looking after you.

 

The results of the MRI weren’t as conclusive as I’d have liked; more tests may follow, depending on how things go. But next time, I’ll be prepared. Heavy tunes, gym pants, and a T-shirt without skulls on it will carry me through; I guess I’ll file this one under “live and learn.”

 

What’s scary is that, as I get older, medical technology will only get more advanced. Will these tests be performed by ever-smaller machines – an iPhone-sized MRI wand, perhaps? Or will they grow to obscene proportions? If ever I saunter into radiology and see a contraption the size of an army tank, I’m bolting.