Tag: life

Remember When You Weren’t Offered A Rewards Card at Every Store?

Remember when you weren’t offered a rewards card at every store you went to?

I do.

In the beginning supermarkets offered discounts through coupons, which required clipping and a fair amount of chutzpah at the check out line.  Then one day, a supermarket executive says, “Hey, if we’re going to offer discounts, we may as well track our customers’ purchases so we know exactly how many Tombstone pizzas or Cottonelle moist wipes they consume in a week.”

And an intern asks, “But how will you accomplish that?”

And the executive replies, “Don’t they teach you anything at that fancy Ivy League school?  We will track their purchases with plastic.  Plastic is the answer to all our problems.”

And the intern, stinging, asks, “But what will you call this piece of plastic?”

And the executive leans back in his chair, and laces his hands behind his head, and looks out the large window of his corner office at a brilliant Manhattan sunset, and exhales through his nose.  “We will call it a ‘rewards card,’” he says, “so that the customers think they are being rewarded.”

I remember that supermarkets were the first to offer rewards cards.  Then electronic stores climbed aboard.  Then liquor stores.  Then Panera.  Funeral homes will probably be next, offering a rewards card that can be affixed to a toe.

My wallet is thick enough to give me back problems solely because of rewards cards.  And most of my rewards cards are in my sock drawer.  I keep them there so that no one will steal them and get discounts under my name.  Unfortunately, this arrangement carries the risk that I will go to a store without its rewards card.

There is nothing more devastating than shopping at a store and waiting on the check out line and getting to the cashier and getting excited because the next time you walk through the doors of your home will be with a 36-pack of Coors Light and two boxes of Yodels, and then realizing you left your rewards card next to the argyles.  I was involved in one such incident.

“Sir, do you have a rewards card?” asks the cashier, who looks like the guitarist from Phish.

“Oh, uh, yes,” I say, making a show of looking for the card.  “Yes, I think it’s here somewhere.  I know I’ve got one…” I’m expecting him to say, “Oh that’s all right,” and just swipe the “cashier’s” rewards card that should be attached to the scanner by a piece of twine.  But it’s not there, and he’s not saying anything.  And the people behind me are getting impatient.

A woman offers her card.  “Oh, no,” I say, wondering how much protest is appropriate before I save three dollars under the name of this kind stranger.  I even put up one hand while using the other hand to fish around in a pocket I know is empty.

“No, really,” she says, “It’s all – “

“Well, okay,” I say.  The woman offers her card to the cashier.

“Um,” says the cashier, “I’m really not supposed to do this.”

I’m an adult buying Puffins and getting red tape from someone who probably takes cigarette breaks to watch Lord of the Rings on his cell phone. He repeats that he’s “not supposed to do this” and, after some pleading from everyone on the line and my sworn affidavit that I’ll never do it again, he lets me use the kind woman’s rewards card.

In retrospect, I don’t know why I cared about the discount that much.  Had coupons still been the dominant discount vehicle I would have paid top dollar for my Puffins without batting an eye.  Perhaps I’ve been wrong about these rewards cards.  Perhaps their purpose is not just to track the consuming practices of an unsuspecting public.

Perhaps rewards cards are meant to bring impatient strangers closer together.

Thanks to Jennifer Albright for the topic.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When Memory Was Not the Hottest Topic Around?

Remember when memory was not the hottest topic around?

I do.

A few months ago I saw a segment on 60 Minutes about people who remember the details of every day of their lives, such as what they had for dinner and whether it was a night to put out the regular garbage or the paper garbage.  And yesterday I read a review of a book on the U.S. Memory Championship, where mental athletes compete to see who can recite the most digits of pi and the most items off of the dollar menu at McDonald’s.

The whole world knows about these people and their high-powered memories. But what the world probably does not know is that I was the memory champion of my college fraternity. The primary data I had to recall was which actors had been in movies with Kevin Bacon, and where certain brothers were last seen wearing pants. But there was one incident where my mnemonic powers came in especially handy.

It was believed at that time that one of the best ways to extend the warm embrace of brotherhood was to make the pledges get the brothers food from the dining hall. At college, food was purchased with cards instead of cash to train us for life in the real world. And it came to pass that one day during my pledge term, one of the brothers handed me his ID card with an instruction to toilet paper the dining hall and then bring back a turkey club.

In those days the students’ social security numbers were written their ID cards, something that now sounds like my parents telling me about the days when no one locked their doors. On the walk to the dining hall I memorized the brother’s social security number. Like a modern memory champ, I used the expert technique of rubbing my temples and imagining the digits involved in lewd acts with other ASCII characters. By the time I had returned with the sandwich, I knew that brother’s social security number better than I knew the casts of JFK and Flatliners.

It was nearing the end of the semester and was time to register for the next round of classes to sleep through. Registration was easy; it was all done by computer. And to make sure that students signed up for only their own classes, a social security number was required. In a stunning display of perfect recall, I used Brother Turkey Club’s social security number to sign him up for a series of classes that I thought he would find interesting. It was always possible to go back into the system and change the classes, and so the prank would come to its hilarious denouement when the brother signed in to the system to sign up for his classes.

My anticipated punchline, however, had been based upon the assumption that Brother Turkey Club would remember to sign up for classes. That assumption turned out to be wrong. A week into the following semseter, when I was a brother myself and could send my own pledges for turkey clubs, even though I did not care for turkey clubs, I overheard the victim of my prank talking about how he was stuck taking organic chemistry, advanced Hebrew, and a seminar on gender issues and amphibians. Word soon got out—as it usually does when alochol is mixed with speech—that I had been the mystery registrar, and how I had performed my feat. The brotherhood was impressed. I still get requests to recite that brother’s social security number, and the numbers roll off my tongue as easy as pi.

I am still waiting for a call from 60 Minutes.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember Your First Answering Machine?

Remember your first answering machine?

I do.

In the days when I was still watching new episodes of Thundercats, if someone called and no one was home, or if someone was home but was in the shower and did not hear the phone ring, or if they did hear it ring but were afraid of getting electrocuted by picking up the phone with a wet hand, then the phone just rang and rang until the caller got tired of hearing the phone ring and went off to do something more productive with his or her life.

Close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine what it was like not being able to record a message with your voice on it. Imagine the inconvenience. Imagine the missed opportunities. Imagine the bliss.

Answering machines were marketed upon the assumption that you wanted to receive telephone calls. But not all calls are wanted. If you don’t pick up your phone and the caller leaves a message, you have no recourse. When you don’t return the call or do what was asked, the caller can say, “Well, what you mean you didn’t return the 500 fake birds and tree branches we ordered for my baby shower? I left you a message.”  You can run, but you can’t hide.

Before answering machines, however, you could let the phone ring, and ring and ring and ring, and with each ring sense that the caller was getting tired, like a boxer hanging against the ropes in the tenth round, and would eventually go away. And when the phone stopped ringing, that was it. You could continue watching the Flintstones Meet the Jetsons or whatever, safely insulated from any constructive knowledge that you were supposed to call someone back or perhaps even do something for someone.

And then one day it all ended. They invented these machines upon which you would record a message.  I remember my band director’s answering machine played a steel drum band version of the theme from “Peanuts” that I heard about fifteen times when I tried to tell him that I was going to miss the Memorial Day parade because my cat was stuck behind the dryer.

My father’s greeting was robot-style. “I can’t come to the phone right now, but please leave your name, tel-e-phone number, and brief mes-sage after the tone. Here is the tone.” And true to his word there would be a tone.

My grandparents called leaving messages “talking into the machine” and they would shout into it as if the answering machine was hard of hearing, just like all of their neighbors at Westwood 21 in Ft. Lauderdale.

People today are so used to leaving messages that they speak onto the digital medium just as if they were talking to me in person. That is why I have no trouble ignoring them.

Thanks to Maria for the topic. She does a great treatment of it here.

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Remember Audio Cassette Tapes?

Remember when people listened to music on cassette tapes?

I do.

The first cassette tape I ever bought was the album Appetite For Destruction by Guns ‘N’ Roses. I had never heard their music. But my friend said the band was cool and I did whatever my friends told me. After a few weeks of saving my allowance, the plastic Hess truck finally had the eight dollars I needed to buy the album in that innocent time when recorded profanity had to be bought in person.

I barely had the tape out of the cellophane when I realized that my family’s sole cassette player belonged to my father, and that this cassette player was in his car. Driving myself was not an option, as I had poor motor skills and was in the fifth grade. Listening to tunes like “Nightrain” (Wake up late/Honey put on your clothes/And take your credit card/To the liquor store), “My Michelle” (Your Daddy works in porno/Now that Mommy’s not around/She used to love her heroin/But now she’s underground), and “It’s So Easy” (Cars are crashin’ every night/I drink and drive/Everything in sight) with my father in the car next to me was a little uncomfortable at first, but soon he was whistling along just like he did to Roy Orbison.

One of the things I remember most about cassettes was making mix tapes. A mix tape was a recording of assorted songs on a blank tape, usually of different artists, and frequently made for a member of the opposite sex, or, if you were me, made just for yourself. The main character in the film High Fidelity lists a number of rules for making mix tapes. I, however, had only one rule: Arrange the songs so that I would not have to flip over the tape in the middle of a song.

With only this one rule to obey, the mood of my mix tapes was a little erratic. For example, one of my mixes started out with “Dead Souls” by Nine Inch Nails, then “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, then Metallica’s “Blackened,” and then “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper. Another one of my mix tapes opened with “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, then the main theme from “The Marriage of Figaro” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then jumped to “Hammer Smashed Face” by Cannibal Corpse, and finally “V’Shomru” by Cantor Joseph Kanefsky. That mix was for my grandmother.

The other thing that stands out in my memory about cassettes was how they would get caught in the spokes of the tape player. I’d be pacing back and forth across the campus green, listening to The White Album over and over again instead of doing my Spanish homework, when all of a sudden Paul McCartney’s vocals on “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road” would be replaced by a loud crunching sound, and then there would be no sound but my own profanity.

Oh the humanity! I felt as if it were my arm that had been caught in the spokes, although because of the size difference only the end of my sleeve would get wound up. Try as I might to unwind the tangled tape and restore my beloved music, it almost never worked again, and even when it did the tape never sounded right. On some of the tracks it sounded like Paul was just screaming.

I no longer use cassette tapes, and even my compact discs are being featured on Antiques Roadshow. I now carry thousands of songs on my telephone. It takes seconds to arrange them in a mix, and I don’t have to flip over the phone unless I feel like drawing attention to myself. The only thing missing is the sound of cassette tape getting mauled by tape player spokes.

But I’m sure they’ve got an app for that.

Thanks to Jessica Buttram and Maria for the topic.

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Remember When You Could Bring Lip Gloss On An Airplane?

On the occasion of my 50th post I would like to thank you all for reading, and especially those of you who took the time to comment.  For the first few months of this operation the only person reading my posts was my mother, which was a little awkward since she does not have a computer.  I would have to print the post and mail it to her along with a self-addressed stamped envelope for comments.

Blogging is easier when the only reader is your mother.  But it is not nearly as fun.  You all have made this worthwhile, and I hope that you’ve found at least one or two things here that did not put you to sleep or make you ill.  As long as someone’s still reading, I’ll keep posting.

And on that note…

Remember when you could carry things like lip gloss, hand moisturizer, and water on an airplane without incident?

I do.

When I was a kid and my parents felt like putting me on a plane, the only items I ever carried on were paperback novels, Esquire magazine, and, just once, the Etch-A-Sketch Animator, which interfered with radar and necessitated an emergency landing in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I did not know that lip gloss and hand moisturizer even existed, and I would not have believed that people would one day pay for bottled water.

And then I got married. My wife carries around a CVS in her pocketbook, and engages in what I call “guerilla moisturizing.” Sometimes when I’m not looking she’ll apply some Neutrogena to my hands and say, “Rub it in.”

The other day we were at the airport, flying somewhere. We walk up to the security line and start placing into the gray plastic bins our shoes, belts, wallets, keys, cell phones, iPods, magazines, fuzzy dice, tongue scrapers, Texas Chainsaw Massacre bobble head dolls, Smucker’s jars containing embryonic aliens, and chewing gum.

Three items in my wife’s pocketbook catch my eye: a plastic bottle of lip gloss, a plastic bottle of hand moisturizer, and a plastic bottle of water. I consider telling her that these items might be a problem, but elect to remain silent. You learn certain things when you are married, and I know that it will be better for me if I let someone else tell her she can’t take something on the plane.

I’m directed to stand in this apparatus that looks like an upright magnetic resonance machine. Obviously I’m either going to travel through time, or be subjected to a full body scan. There is a whirring noise and I close my eyes. When I re-open them I am still in my own time, but they catch me trying to smuggle an ATM receipt onto the plane. After a TSA worker pats me down and then buys me drinks, I re-don my shoes, belt, et al.

I’m ready to graduate to the Food Court/Hudson News phase of air travel, but my wife has been detained by a TSA worker who does not look as nice as the one who patted me down. “Do you have a re-sealable plastic bag?” my wife asks me, as if I was supposed to have packed one.  I reply that, alas, I do not.

Spread out before her are the lip gloss, hand moisturizer, and bottled water. “They’re saying I have to put these things in a re-sealable plastic bag. I have to go through security again.” I ask my wife why she doesn’t just throw out the water. “Are you kidding? I paid three dollars for this!” The humorless TSA worker starts leading my wife back into the pre-security area. The chivalric thing to do would be to follow her, but chivalry is no match for Cinnabon.

A few minutes later I’m stuffing my face and wondering where my wife has gone. I see her standing just before the conveyor belt, chugging her water. I wonder if she’s going to start applying all her hand moisturizer, perhaps offering it to the passengers around her. “Excuse me,” she would say, “but I can’t take this on the plane, and your hands look dry.” Then she goes through the time warp again, and I’m about to breathe a sigh of relief, but she is detained again, this time by a different TSA worker.

I’m halfway through Steig Larsson’s “The Girl Who Tried To Bring Moisturizer On A Plane” when my wife gets through security. She tells me that she had to take a taxi to a local convenience store to buy Ziploc bags. I tell her how unfair it all is, how making her go through security three times is a waste of valuable resources, and inconveniences people for no gain. I put my arm around her and she smiles a little.

But let’s see her try to moisturize me now without my hearing the plastic bag.

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Remember When Airplane Meals Were Included With the Price of the Ticket?

Remember when meals on an airplane were included with the price of the ticket?

I do.

I don’t recall the airplane meals being anything like what I would normally consider food. But still I liked them and looked forward to them. Airline food had a special taste and consistency that I could enjoy back in the days when my digestive system could still hit a curve ball.

If the flight was long enough to be considered meal-worthy, the “steward” or “stewardess” (the ancient names for flight attendants) would serve each passenger breakfast, lunch, or dinner, depending on the time of day. My favorite meal was dinner, followed by a distant lunch and an even more distant breakfast. Lunch was just some turkey with a squeezable packet of Hellman’s, and breakfast was allegedly “eggs” and “sausage” but no laboratory could confirm this. But dinner was always great, and the main reason was because of the dessert.

Dessert was the crown jewel of the plastic divider plates, and carrot cake was the dominant dessert. I was on a flight to Florida to see my grandparents and eat ice cream every day when I had my first taste of airplane carrot cake. I went down the aisle of the plane, asking people if they were going to eat their carrot cake, or if they were going to finish their carrot cake if they had already started on it but looked like they might be full.

The most memorable airplane experience was when I flew to Vancouver Island the summer before my senior year of high school to spend two weeks studying killer whales and whether they preferred cable or satellite. The in-flight desert was a Table Talk apple pie. I wolfed mine down and then asked my classmates if they were going to eat theirs. Word spread quickly throughout the Boeing 747 that I was willing to eat unwanted Table Talk apple pie, free of charge, and the white and red boxes were piling up on my fold down tray. I was only halfway done when they announced that we were landing and had to put the tray tables back in their upright positions and that our Captain had turned on the “no-gluttony” sign.

Those days are over. Today, the flight attendants go down the aisle asking if anyone wants to purchase food. I don’t know if they sell dessert because I am too cheap to find out. I’m sure that some economics professor could prove to me on the back of a napkin that tickets would just be more expensive if the meals were included, and that this pricing model is really more efficient because people who don’t want meals can elect to forgo them and thereby reduce their flying costs. Of course, the professor would have to bring the napkin because I won’t pay for that, either.

Soon you’ll have to pay extra for a seat. The passengers will be standing on the plane as it taxis towards the runway, and the flight attendants will go down the aisle, asking three passengers at a time whether they would like to purchase a seat for the flight. Most people will decline the offer, because they will refuse to pay for something that used to be included. I know this because I will be one of them.

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Remember Choose Your Own Adventure Books?

Remember the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of books?

I do.

Choose Your Own Adventure was a novel series geared towards children and young adolescents.  These books were not like regular books.  First, the reader was the main character, which fancy people call the “second-person.”  An opening sentence would be something like:

“You are a world famous scientist”

“You find a satchel filled with a million dollars”

“You are born to a family of complainers”

A Choose Your Own Adventure book would begin just like a regular novel, but when at the end of the first scene, “you” would be faced with a choice between two options, or between three options if you happened to read the super deluxe version before I took it out of the library and then left it on the table at Fuddruckers.

“Go to the left (turn to page 28)” versus “Go to the right (turn to page 1,139)”

“Follow the strange man” versus “Tell the strange man you’re not allowed to drink soda during the week”

The reader was always a different character. I remember one where I got to be a monster, and another where I was a gunslinger in the Old West. I also recall one where the reader was that furry creature from the Punky Brewster cartoon, but I could just be making that up.

The first choice would lead to another scene with another choice, and on and on, such that each book had numerous endings. Some of the endings were good endings. Others were not so good. There were endings that ended in death. These were a little disturbing. There were also endings that ended ambiguously and open-ended.

“You follow Boink to the planet Cereal, and spend the rest of your harvesting Rice Krispies.”

“You commence a lawsuit in state court.”

They should have “Choose Your Own Adventure” books for adults. The characters would be appropriate for adults:

“You are always cold.”

“You are a tier-three pensioner.”

“You are one of those people who winks at everyone.”

And the choices would be adult choices:

“Arrange to get your tax refund by direct deposit” versus “Wait for the check in the mail!”

“Pay the full balance on your credit card” versus “Ignore the letter and get another credit card!”

“Go gluten-free” versus “Step in front of oncoming traffic.”

I do not think the Choose Your Own Adventure series for adults would sell very well. No adult would want to read them. The characters would be too real, the scenes too close to home, the choices too much a reminder of the difficult choices that all adults must make in life, but without the ability to turn back a single page.

That, and the fact that it would be a series of books.

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Remember Voltron?

Remember the 1980s cartoon Voltron?

I do.

Voltron was a cartoon about five robot lions that combined to form a giant robot humanoid warrior named Voltron. The lions were not self-animating but were each piloted by a human being. I did not really care about the human beings. I don’t profess to know the history of Voltron, the story of Voltron, or even the names of the characters. In this pillar of geek culture I am, at best, a dabbler. Doctoral dissertations have likely been written on this subject and I am humbly aware that there is nothing that I can say that will contribute anything new to the analysis of 1970s anime that evolved into this show and its progeny.

All I can contribute is what Voltron meant to me. And what it meant was five robot lions forming a giant humanoid robot warrior with lion-heads for hands and feet, all to very awesome music.

My entire reason for watching Voltron was to watch them form Voltron. I watched He-Man for the moment when [spoiler alert] Adam turned into He-Man, and I watched Voltron for the moment when the five robot lions formed Voltron. These lions would be fighting some evil force in the universe – a giant alien monster, a giant alien robot, Grendel – and things would not be going well, and all of a sudden one of the lion pilots would suggest forming Voltron.

I never understood why they did not form Voltron the minute they saw the evil-doers coming over the Throgs Neck Bridge. But I will try to describe the experience. The pilot of the leader lion would press some controls, the key to his lion would shift around in the ignition and glow, there would be a collage of all five pilots of the robot lions saying “Voltron Force,” and then the music would start.

Oh that music. All great cartoon moments involve music. Voltron formed to electronic trumpets, guitars, and drums, and my image of the battle between good and evil formed to Voltron forming. The pilots of the robot lions would talk the audience through the formation.

[Trumpets, trumpets]

“Form feet and legs!”

[Guitars, drums]

“Form arms and torso!”

[Trumpets, guitars, drums]

“And I’ll form the head!”

I remember that Voltron was formed in exactly this manner in every single episode. I don’t recall any “express” formation of Voltron where certain steps were truncated. I don’t recall ever seeing Voltron show up to the party already formed, smoking a cigarette and sipping a giant robot martini.

The moment Voltron formed was the most exciting moment of my life for that day. There was nothing more satisfying to my pre-adolescent mind than the combination of electronic fight music and robot lions interlocking to form a giant humanoid robot warrior. But as happened with so many shows for me, the plot of Voltron became too complicated to follow. Something about a love story and zoning regulations. Perhaps I sustained brain damage from eating bowls of Count Chocula. Whatever the reason, I did not care about the story. I just wanted them to play the music and form Voltron, again and again. But alas, my family did not have a VCR at the time, and thus I had no means of recording the show. The forming of Voltron would be just another childhood gem that would live only in my fading memory.

And then along came this thing called YouTube, where an adult can be a kid when he’s supposed to be working. It did not matter that there was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and a pile of dirty snow in the driveway. I had returned home, at last, rocking back and forth in my chair, heart racing along with the music, watching them form Voltron again and again, and remembering the days when, in between commercials, good battled evil.

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Remember Writing With Pen and Paper?

Remember when people wrote things down on paper instead of typing into a cell phone?

I do.

Throughout much of my life I have carried around a little notebook to record my thoughts, make grocery lists, and calculate how many degrees from Kevin Bacon my family members and I are removed. Sometimes I have used an inexpensive spiral notepad from the drugstore. Other times I have used the fancy schmancy leather-bound notebooks with the attached elastic band, used by great artists such as Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and “Wendy” the Snapple Lady. The only criteria for my notebook was that it was easy to carry in my pocket and could double as a wedge to prop up a rickety table.

In my experience, being at a social gathering and taking out a little notebook and writing in it is kind of like setting yourself on fire. It tends to get attention.

“Are you writing about me?” my friend asks.

I assure him that I am not writing about him.

“I don’t believe you,” he says. “I want to know what you are writing. Let me see.”

I assure him, again, that I am not writing about him and that he cannot see my notebook. I say this because my work is private. I say this also because I have written things about him. To be careful, I close the notebook and focus my attention on the South Park rerun we’re all watching.

A few moments later I feel a tugging at my pocket. I turn and it is the same friend trying to pull the notebook out of my pocket. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“I want to see what you’re writing about me.”

“You’ll never see what I’m writing about you. And I’m not writing anything about you.”

I get up and move to another part of the room. Although standing in the closet might be considered a bit strange, I figure that this is the only way I can write unmolested. Unfortunately, there is no light in the closet so I must make my best guess as to how to form the letters on the page. Soon there is a knock at the door.

“Yes?” I reply, scribbling in the dark.

“What are y0u doing in there?” asks my curious friend.

“I’m doing research on coats of North America. There are some interesting specimens in here.” I rattle some coat hangers to support my story.

“Are you writing in there?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

“I want to know what you’re writing about me.”

It suddenly occurs to me that if I had been typing on a cell phone instead of writing with a pen and paper, no one would have said anything. They would have thought I was just being rude by texting instead of being rude by writing. I feel like I’m going to get sent to the Gulag if I don’t change my act. When my friend opens the door I have my notebook pressed against my ear as if it is a cell phone, and I’m talking into it. “Mm hm. Okay. Sounds good. Let’s circle back sometime next week.” My friend looks confused and closes the door. I keep talking for a few more minutes so that my ruse is not exposed.

A month ago I bought one of those cell phones that is basically like a hand-held computer. Now, whenever I want to take notes I can pretend I’m just texting or emailing or searching for videos of street fights between Mets fans and Yankees fans.

“What are you writing?” my friend asks me while I’m writing on my cell phone.

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m just texting or something.”

“You can’t fool me. The screen is lighting up your face. I want to know what you’re writing.”

Alas, the technology change has not worked. There is nothing I can do to hide my compulsion to take note of the world around me. But I will never tell him or anyone else what I’m writing. That is for me and me alone. And whoever reads my blog.

Thanks to Chris Calabrese for the topic.

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Remember When You Could Not Instantly Settle Arguments on the Internet?

Remember when people couldn’t instantly settle arguments on the Internet?

I do.

Sometime during the 90s, when my friends and I had started to resemble adults, I got into a disagreement with a close associate of mine, whom I will call X. The nature of my disagreement with X related to Jambi, a character on the award-winning television program Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Jambi was a disembodied head floating inside a bejeweled box in the corner of the Playhouse. X and I disagreed over the color of Jambi’s skin.

I said, “Jambi is blue.”

X said, “Jambi is green.”

Thus we disagreed, even wagering $5 on the outcome. Had our dispute arisen just five years later we could have resolved it instantly with a search on Google, the same way we would later resolve disputes over song lyrics or whether whales have penises. But at the time we had no way of quickly resolving the issue. Pee Wee’s Playhouse had been canceled a few years earlier, and I had not thought of taping it. Not that I would have known how to work the VCR anyway.

Although X and I remained cordial to each other, the disagreement simmered. Our mutual friends were compelled to take sides. After a while I would get invited to things only after it was assured that X would not be there. Sometimes one of us would be arriving while the other was leaving and it would be awkward. People begged us to reconcile. But I was adamant. I knew Jambi was blue, just as Neo from The Matrix knew he was the One. I just knew.

And then one day X invited me to his house. I figured he wanted to make up and serve up some of his famous iced tea – an old family recipe that called for six times the legal limit of iced tea mix. I walked in his door and he greeted me not with iced tea but with a remote control and a smirk. He pressed a button and Jambi appeared on the TV. And the Jambi on the screen was undisputedly green.

X was triumphant. “See? Jambi is green. Now pay up.”

I handed over a five-spot and began the long walk home. I thought that there was something very unsettling about what I’d seen. The show on the screen was definitely Pee Wee’s Playhouse, but it seemed just a little different from the one on TV that I’d watched every Saturday morning for a year. Perhaps I was just sore from losing money. I would have to accept defeat gracefully.

Years passed. I went to college and forgot about the Jambi wager. Then I graduated and went to work. By this time Google had been invented and I had gotten into the habit of searching for random things on the Internet when no one was looking. Finally it occurred to me to search for Jambi. And lo and behold, the Jambi that Google revealed was blue. Blue! And as I scrolled down to find less common results I discovered why I had lost that bet. The tape that X had showed me was of the HBO special, done live on a stage, where Jambi was green. But on the TV show, Jambi was blue. I was right. Well, maybe we were both right. But I was more right. I wanted to call up X and tell him. I wanted to gloat and feel vindicated. I wanted my five dollars back with interest compounded monthly.

But when I did see X and told him my big news, he just shrugged his shoulders. He would not give me any satisfaction. There would be no gloating, no vindication. Just lost years and a lost five-spot.

All because there had been no Internet to instantly settle our dispute.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 0