Broken Glass

If there is one thing that I resent (and there is), it is to be told that I resent being told anything. It drives me crazy.
-- Robert Benchley

Wednesday, September 15, 1999
Two years ago: O Comfort-Killing Night

I got quite a shock when I walked out to my car this morning. Someone had heaved a rock through the right front window! It was shattered, and glass was all over the inside. I think the sleeping bag, still in the back seat from the camping trip last weekend, had been irresistible to some homeless person, because that was the only item taken. I was bummed! I'd lived with a broken rear quarter-panel window for a long time, partly because of laziness and partly because a new one would have been over a thousand dollars. I'd finally had it repaired by Jack's father and his friend, the other week. So I go for a few weeks with all windows intact, and now this! The large rock used to do the job was still on the front seat.

So I drove to work with a missing window. I knew it needed to be repaired right away, so I looked up glass repair places at the Yahoo yellow pages. I found Mobile Auto Glass and called them up. To replace the window would cost around a hundred fifty dollars, and they could come to my house this afternoon!

I do find the Yahoo yellow pages handy, because I can have stores sorted by location, with the ones closer to me being listed first.

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Shortly after I arrived home, the glass guy buzzed my apartment door. I showed him where the car was, then went back inside to get a broom, dustpan and trashcan. He would be vacuuming the inside of the car, but I wanted to sweep up at least some of the broken glass that was on the street. It's better for the neighborhood.

I was impressed by the care he took to get the glass out of the car; part of the service, I guess! Then he slowly disassembled the door, and spent a good long time vacuuming up the the glass fragments from the inside. It was interesting to look at the interior mechanisms of my car door; rather like watching the surgery channel on TV! In about an hour he got the mechanism working, slipped the new window in, and cleaned it with glass cleaner, to boot!

So things worked out much better than I'd feared, and I still had time to do a lot of cleaning up during the rest of the evening.

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As I was sorting through rubber stamping stuff, I heard Garrison Keillor on the radio, saluting Robert Benchley on his birthday. I have a bunch of Benchley essays that I transcribed a while back, and I'll put one here in celebration.

Eat More Worry

And now it turns out that we must worry! Worry is the new health fad. That much-maligned emotion has come into its own as a body-builder, along with yeast-eating, nudism and bending over twenty times to touch second base.

All this comes from a doctor of psychology, so it must come pretty straight. Doctors of psychology are the ones who have been telling us all along not to worry, so they certainly ought to know what's what in the worry racket.

"When we worry," says the doc, "every gland in the body pours energizing juices into the brain. It is the body's way of preparing the mind to meet an emergency. The biological purpose of worry is to enable you to get up steam.

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Following are a set of worrying exercises for sluggish natures. Get those energizing juices flowing!

Position No. 1 -- On arising stand facing an open window. (Not too wide open, as, if you get to worrying too well, you may fly out.) Place the hands lightly on the hips and think: "On the fifteenth that big insurance premium comes due. On the fifteenth the income tax is due. On the fifteenth I shall be just eight hundred dollars short of meeting them." Repeat this ten times and then exhale.

Position No. 2 -- Lie flat on your back, with your legs in the air, and run over in your mind the age at which you find yourself, the amount of money you have saved, the probable number of years left, and what chances you will have of getting a ten-year guest-card at the Home for Aged Men. As soon as the energizing juices have reached your feet lower them and adopt a sitting posture on the floor. Sit that way all day, with your chin in your hand.

Position No. 3 -- Stand in front of a mirror and look at your stomach.

Position No. 4 -- Wake yourself up in the middle of the night, lie flat on your back in bed and look at the ceiling. Then figure out just how you would get out of the house in case of fire, what you would do first if that pain in your side should turn out to be acute appendicitis, or how you would face an actual werewolf.

Position No. 5 -- Just stop to think about anything.

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If you will conscientiously follow these instructions day by day, supplemented by our special worry-gland tablets, which are guaranteed to pour energizing juices into the brain, it will be no time at all before you are a new man, and one that you will not like.