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Steamship
Roulette Opinion
- By Sam Low You all know that tune, right? It's code, of course. Like all good music it contains hidden meanings, subtle nuances of excitement, passion, despair. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA Got it? 509 693 9130 It's the number of the steamship Reservation Bureau - on a Saturday afternoon - calling to see if I can get home to the island the next day. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA At 8 AM I hear it 28 times - hitting redial - until this: "All lines are busy…." Pause. Then: "Your call is very important to us…" To them? What about me? Pause Then a real voice. No luck. "Try calling again," she suggests. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA Now it's 8:30 AM. Forty-eight times hitting the re-dial. Is there significance in these numbers. A cycle? Even my phone, an ordinarily inanimate device, is getting tired. It goes: TA TA DI (burp) DA DO (pause) DI DA (pause-static) DO DE DI DA "I'm sorry, there is nothing available. Try again." Here's the scene. I've been away from the island for a month. Of course I tried to get a return reservation - about two months in advance - but no luck. I know. I know. You need to get a reservation for mid August in mid December. But, really, who makes plans that far ahead? I have been wait listed. I called last week to check. Nothing available. The nice voice told me to begin calling for a cancellation about 24 hours before I wanted to go. It's a democratic system, based on luck. Like roulette. The rules are simple - keep calling. If you time it right your ball will fall into the empty slot on the spinning wheel (emblematic of that wondrous empty space on the ferry) at the precise moment you reach a clerk and s/he checks for a cancellation. "Keep playing," they advise, "step up. Try your luck." The chips are purchased with my time and my AT@T calling card. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA The music somehow inspires empathy. What's It like for them, the ones on the other end of the telephone line? There's no music, no Ta Ta Di Da… just the harsh ringing of the phone. I know the sound because I hear it occasionally in the background during the moments I get through. It's not gentle like my phone. There's a shrill quality to it. While I'm talking to the nice female voice, I hear a man answer the other phone. He sounds weary. I imagine them strapped into their chairs, in "THE PIT" - a hell hole deep in the bowels of an Authority building somewhere. A gritty chiaroscuro film-noir kind of place. Airless. Are there glowing computer screens? Must be. Strapped into their seats, they are forced to listen to us all day. Tensions mount as the clock ticks. Players become hysterical. Lose it! Are even downright rude. They forget the etiquette of the game - always be polite - your fate is in the hands of the croupiers. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA Between calls I pass the time doing many things. Some of them are none of your business, but I can tell you that I read Bill Brysons new book - "I'm a Stranger Here Myself." Bryson loves statistics and I find empathy with this because I'm clearly involved in a game of chance with statistically predictable odds. Here's an interesting one - "according to the latest statistical abstract of the United States," Bryson writes, "every year more than 400,000 Americans suffer injuries involving beds, mattresses or pillows. …In the time it takes you to read this article four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding." I do some statistics of my own. Reading the article takes me 20 minutes. I've spent an hour so far playing steamship roulette and thus avoiding the grisly fate of 12 other Americans fooling around on their mattresses. Maybe somewhere, someone is making a similar call while in bed. Does s/he know the risk? According to Bryson 31,000 people are injured a year by their grooming devices, 50,000 by pencils, pens and desk accessories, and astonishingly 142,000 people go to the emergency room after being injured by their clothing. But Bryson is no real help to me because the odds for getting a reservation playing Steamship Roulette have never been calculated. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA My thoughts reach a wider plane. I see the blue marble earth from space. I zoom in - powers of ten - to the Northeast Corridor. A ganglia of highways, dense nodes of cities, tiny towns, isolated homes - connected by gossamer wires through which our pleas for limited ferry space flow like blood. I see people like me everywhere - phone in hand. Dialing. Dialing. Dialing. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA All of us are playing the same tune. Often in unison - how else to explain so many busy signals? A rising chorus. Connected invisibly we are a small nation, or a large clan, united by a need for home, for a way to get there. Please, please, please let me win just this once. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA Thank god for fiber optics. Normal coax would clog like New England sewers in April. Here's an elderly woman at her kitchen table in Vermont, a teen pacing amidst thumping loudspeakers in a Cambridge town house, a middle-aged man in Maine brushing his teeth, phone in one hand, brush in the other. We are the wired nation! What would happen if we could connect to THE PIT and back to each other? Share stories? Console each other? Join in righteous anger, leaning out windows all over America, wailing: "I'm fed up and I'm not going to Take it anymore." That was a movie, wasn't it? Clearly I'm beginning to Hallucinate. I sit down, take the toothbrush out of my mouth, breathe deeply, recite my mantra. TA TA DI DA DO DI DA DO DE DI DA Author's message to The Authority. My byline is a nom de plume. Sam Low does not exist, although there may be a person by that name in your records. If he does exist, he is not me. I made him up. Actually, I made this all up. It's fictionalized non-fiction, a new genre of journalism. Forget me, OK? Or at least forgive me. Well, if not, let's talk about it. Call me. Here's my number. TA TA DI DO DI DI DA DO DE DE DO |
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