The Thinking Man

The Thinking Man

His problem was that he thought too much. And it made him miserable at times. He thought about the world, about politics, about religion and philosophy, about law and ethics, about the origins of man and his relationship to the universe, and about where all the rubber went from all the tires on all the cars traveling the roads of the world. Surely those fine powdered granules of rubber must end up someplace. What happened to all the rubber as the tires wore down? Why was it not piled up in great heaps along the sides of the roadways? Indeed, it was a cosmic mystery.

He tried to rationalize the source of his misery as something attributable to too much education, to watching too much television. He had simply read too many books, acquired too much knowledge, and the more he learned the more puzzling everything became. If ignorance is bliss, he thought, then knowledge was pure hell. It made him melancholy at times.

He often wondered if he were not on the brink of insanity. Listening, learning, absorbing everything as he sat starring at the great electronic multicolored eyeball and took in the evening news as a war raged in some barren little country on some other far corner of the world, where rounds of mortar shells and poison gas rained down upon some little plot of rock and sand to disrupt the local's way of life. He listened to a story about a group of folks chopping holes in the ice at the top of the world to help out a groupie of whales stranded in a frozen ice field. If only they would expend so much energy chopping holes in the iron curtain, he thought. But, of course, it must have been a question of priorities. The next story showed the starving malnourished bodies of little children in a land where the rain had failed to fall for a long, long time. The commercial showed a sizzling beef burger on a sesame seed bun topped with delectable vegetable garnishments floating in an ocean of soda cast against a mountainous backdrop of golden French fries. It made him think if whale burgers. The newswoman with golden hair and gloss painted lips retaliated with a barrage of observations on the gross national product. Suddenly he felt as if he wanted to scream, to scream and scream and scream until it all went away. But he was afraid the neighbors in the next apartment would call the police, so he held it all inside and began to feel ill, sort of nauseated and depressed.

He clicked the remote and watched the eye die to a pale phosphorescent gray. For a moment he wanted to go to the window, step out on the balcony and throw himself into the street below. Then he thought of the mess it would make and that someone would have to clean it up, and he also thought about what the newswoman would say, reading the story to the masses with her gloss coated lips, of his plummet to the cold hard street, before the station switched to a fast food commercial. No. That would not be the answer, but he thought about it, anyway.

Besides, things were not all that bad, he reasoned. He had, after all, his microwave and VCR, his deluxe quadraphonic stereo and his king size water bed, his ninth floor studio flat and his fuel injected sports car in the parking garage. His job at the computer center provided immeasurable challenge each day, debugging programs hour after hour, searching out and destroying the elusive bug was somewhat like being a jungle fighter, stalking silently after the enemy. At least he liked to think of it in those terms. The job provided him with all the amenities a modern new millennium man was expected to have and left plenty for the payments to his ex-wife so his children could live comfortably in their suburban ranch house with her new husband, a district attorney, and their Irish setter and a gold fish named Max.

But it was okay. He saw the children frequently. His little Sarah, with her youthful innocence, was always glad to see her daddy. Johnny, at the ripe old age of ten at the time of the divorce, had more or less come to accept things with a stoic resolve. Her new husband had seen to it that the children would want for nothing. The judge had given her the house, and the car, and the furniture and appliances, and about one third of his income until the kids reached eighteen, or twenty-one if they remained in school.

He did not blame his ex for wanting a better life for herself. Certainly life with an upwardly mobile district attorney was preferable to that of a computer hacker's mundane existence. He was always away from home for long hours on search and destroys missions trying to capture and kill the elusive bugs. They would infiltrate the most sophisticated systems and wreak havoc with the operating programs. It was true gorilla warfare at its finest. But who would understand such things. She was unhappy with their lifestyle, and the children were wanting for attention from a father who worked too much. Divorce was inevitable, he supposed.

The phone rang. He glanced at the clock. It was past noon. "Oh, shit," he said, as he dashed to the phone and picked up the receiver.

"What the hell are you doing?" snapped the female voice.

"I was just on my way out the door," he said, trying to cover up the fact he had totally spaced out that it was Saturday and he was suppose to pick the kids up at noon.

"Look", she said with that familiar roughness that let him know immediately she was not pleased, "Robert and I have an important engagement at 1 o-clock. I thought you would be here by now. How can you do this to me? You're never on time. If you don't start..."

"Hey," he interrupted, "I'll be there in 20 minutes, I promise. I'll take the freeway. He hung up the phone.

* * *

The little sports car slipped in and out of the afternoon traffic. The freeway was congested, but the small size of the car and a few daring accelerations in the right hand lane had him soon on his way to his destination in the quiet suburbs. He stopped on the street in front of the long brick ranch house. The burgundy Lincoln Towncar parked in the driveway looked like it belonged in a showcase, with its glistening chrome, sunroof, and tinted glass. He walked across the front lawn to the front door and the kids came running from the house before he reached the step. It was a new age. C 1988 Jack Rooney.

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