One fine day I was back in the repair lab, merrily spilling the guts of a ¾-inch VCR across the bench in front of me, when an odd thought crossed my mind (stapled to the chicken trying to get to the other side): I was enjoying myself. I turned that notion over, examined it closely from all sides, and poked it curiously in the bladder: there was no escaping it, I was actually happy in my work. I realized that this was not, in fact, just “one fine day” after all, but rather one of a number of such fine days. It was an unfamiliar but pleasant sensation.

My contentment arose from more than the mild euphoria you get from prolonged exposure to volatile audiovisual repair chemicals; you know the kind of smells I mean, that cheerful cocktail rising from acetone, lithium grease, isopropyl alcohol, liquid graphite, silicon oil, metal dust, and burnt electricity. I was having a wonderful time digging around in that myrioramic electromechanoscape, buried up to my elbows in neoprene o-rings, copper-and-felt clutch bands, cylindrical bearings, brass and plastic gears, clickety little microswitches, and of course that friendly little plague of metric Phillips screws. This was a universe in which I felt comfy-cozy… except perhaps for those rare electrifying moments when I would brush up against a transistor case and send a jillion volts zishing through my arm. But other than that, I was comfortable and happy.

To make matters even better, I was working with people who were, on the whole, funny, competent, patient, and above all, rarely crabby. I learned a lot from them.

And even when it came to dealing with members of the faculty, I must say that almost all of them were clear about their AV requirements, and it was a pleasure to help them with whatever they needed. Even when the equipment broke down, most of them still tended to exhibit some amount of grace while I fixed the problem. A jittery film to be steadied here, a concert to be recorded there, and videocameras to be set up somewhere else… it was all very straightforward.

Yes, I was happy working with the machines, and I was happy with the staff and the faculty… except for every rare now and again, as I said, when I would brush up against a transistor case.

Let me tell you about one of those times, involving two such cases.

* * *

On one of those fine days mentioned above, my pleasant reverie was disturbed by the Media Checkout Guy (MCG), whose forefinger was pointedly menacing my shoulder. “Hey… you,” he prodded, “there’s a teacher out here who’s having some sorta deal with his tape.” The cracking of his gum lent him a nostalgic aura of old-time radio static.

I resignedly started putting away acetone and swabs, because this familiar jab signaled the beginning of an equally familiar process of negotiation: I would try to find out what was wrong, and he would try to keep from telling me.

To be honest, I don’t think that he was really trying to be a pain, he was just “kind of like that.” I mean, anyone can be obtuse now and again, and there are times when I, as someone who appreciates the finer shades of ambiguity, will pretend to misunderstand, but only for the sake of being funny. Really. When I do it, it’s cute. Ask anybody.

So the MCG wasn’t evil’s plaything. Not truly. He simply found it so difficult to express himself in sufficient detail that it was easier for him to work on the assumption that those aspects were already clear to everybody else. (I don’t know; maybe it was just me.)

With that dynamic in mind, I dove cautiously into the current of the conversation, asking, “What’s the guy’s problem?”

“I dunno,” he shrugged.

“You didn’t ask, or he wasn’t clear.”

“Yeah.”

“Which one?”

“He said something about black-and-white.”

“Okay,” I surrendered, “where is he now?”

He pointed back over his shoulder through the doorway, but as it turned out, the teacher was not outside the door. He also wasn’t across the room at the checkout counter, or anywhere else within view. The MCG followed me as I walked around the Media Center, looking for anyone who seemed to be in need of help, but I didn’t see any teachers. I gave up, turned around, and made the universal eyebrows-and-palms-up gesture for “where?”

There’s something to be said for nonverbal communication.

He nodded heavily toward the door of the Viewing Room on the other side of the AV Center, scowling darkly at me because he knew where the teacher was, so obviously I was just being difficult.

Fine. Let it be my fault. How was I to know that the MCG was a telepath?

His quest at an end, he jabbed me in the shoulder to signal his departure, and with a sullen snort he lumbered off sasquatchily (moodwise, at any rate).

At least his part in this whole process was over, and I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore.

I opened the door to the Viewing Room, and adjusted slowly to the dim, flickered black-and-white lighting. I tried to focus on a slight silhouette next to the TV, because it was peeving at me, “Must we suffer all of these insufferable interruptions?” (No, I’m not making that up.)

Swearing telepathically at the MCG, I retreated, “No, no, not at all… just thought you had a ‘black-and-white problem’. Sorry for the interruption. If you’ll just excuse me.”

“Wait! Come back! I thought you were one of those… those… oh you know, those whaddayacallems. Well nevermind what I thought you were. We’ve got a disaster here. Look at this,” as he Vanna-ed his arm across the screen. On the bright side, I noticed that he spoke in my native language: Italics. “How can I lecture about fashion without color?” Models (of the not-so-super variety) were cat-walking in shades of grey.

I brought the lights up and searched the TV for color adjustment knobs. I did a thorough, professional job of failing to find ary a one. (“Ary a one” is a version of “ever a one” hailing from the early 1800s, similar to “nary a one,” and it means that I found bugger all. “Bugger all” means that I didn’t find any.) With this damning evidence to hand I was able to come to a startling conclusion, the acuity of which would mark me as a genius in any Bronze Age culture. “This,” I opined astutely, “is not a color set.” (“That,” my brain quoted the old punchline at me, “is not my dog.”)

The teacher breathed deeply, once, into the palm of his hand, and it occurred to me that we now had a common enemy: the MCG.

“C’mon,” I offered in a comradely fashion, “Let’s go get this straightened out.” I love championing the downtrodden. It’s fun. You get to ride a high horse and everything. In this case, I rode out to the checkout counter, teacher in tow.

At the very least, despite our difficulties in communicating, I knew that I could count on the fact that the MCG and I would both hold one piece of information in common, namely that there was a particular color monitor that was dedicated to the Viewing Room, and that this specific monitor should have been in there. In fact, the MCG had lectured me at length about how that monitor was never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, to be removed from the Viewing Room. And I knew that it wasn’t being fixed, because my boss was the one who would have been repairing it.

This time, the MCG could assume that I already knew something, and he would be right.

This situation would be easy to deal with.

With that optimistic mindset, I nicely told the MCG, “Someone took the color monitor out of the Viewing Room.”

“Yeah. I moved it.”

A jillion volts really wakes you up. “Why?”

He nodded towards the teacher behind me, “Because he signed up to show a tape.”

“A black-and-white tape?”

“No.”

“No? But you assumed it was black-and-white?”

“Well, he didn’t say.”

This was getting bad, “Then why did you put in a black-and-white monitor?”

“Just for in case.”

“Just for in case of what?” (“Famine, fire, flood, foe?” my brain offered.)

“Just for in case it was black-and-white.”

“But what if he needed color?”

“Then he should’ve asked for it.”

He was trying to trick my brain. He was trying to get me to ignore the real issue, maybe not maliciously, but at the very least he was nurturing a very cunning ignorance. You see, it would have been all too tempting to be lulled into thinking something along the lines of, “Hey, shouldn’t color be the default? Shouldn’t you get color unless you ask for black-and-white?” But here’s the twist: what your brain really should be thinking is, “Hey, wait a sec, a color set will show black-and-white tapes without a problem, so why do we need to get out a black-and-white monitor for black-and-white tapes?”

At times like these, I have to screw my eyes shut tightly to keep more information from coming in while I’m still trying to get the current mess sorted out. The messier the situation, the tighter I have to make the barrier. In this case, I was pushing the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. Don’t ask me why my brain seems to think that this will help at all, but it is firmly convinced of the necessity.

“Okay, look,” I hazarded, holding my eyeballs in place, “let’s just get this fixed. This guy has a color tape to show, so could we just swap out the black-and-white monitor for the color one… you know, the one that you told me was never, ever supposed to be taken out of there?” And damn me anyway. I had started off so well, but I just had to let that snide comment slip out, didn’t I? Sometimes, I am my own worst enemy. All I could do was wince and try to ride out the backlash.

“I didn’t say it couldn’t be taken out of there.”

“Yes you did!” I squeaked mightily, hands flying out. “Just a couple of days ago you went on and on about it. You said “never’. You said ‘ever’. You spray-painted ‘Viewing Room Only’ on the bezel! You said it wasn’t to leave that room!”

“Well, yeah, except for when I need black-and-white in there.”

I covered my eyes again for a moment and prayed, swiftly and silently. I then tried again, patiently, delicately, even sweetly, placing my hands palm-down on the counter so that he could rest assured that I was wielding no weapons, “But the color monitor will show black-and-white.” If we could just get past this one little point...

“No it won’t. It’s color.”

My brain blew a fuse. I had tried to avoid getting into it, but I was sucked right back in, sunk by the weight of my righteous indignation. My hands and my voice both started going up. “Black and white are colors! A color program just looks black-and-white on a black-and-white set! Millions of people still watch color shows on their old black-and-white TVs. They just LOOK black-and-white!” I collapsed across the counter, making an effort to draw in a couple of deep breaths. That calmed me down just enough to continue with some residual politeness, “Look, you can show a color tape on a black-and-white set, and it will still show, it will just look black-and-white.”

“But he didn’t ask for black-and-white.”

You see? All I had managed to do with my loss of control was to confuse the poor MCG. Of course the teacher hadn’t asked for black-and-white: it was a color tape! That part was supposed to be clear! The MCG was really lost now, so much so that he was suddenly trying to have a completely different argument!

Okay, okay, enough with the exclamatory commentary (…expialidocious). The point is, I had only made the problem worse by getting upset.

I should learn to give up and fix the symptom, without trying to cure the disease, but I tell myself that if I could just treat the disease itself, then I would no longer have to face the same symptoms over and over and over. In cases like this, though, I shouldn’t listen to myself. The disease is too powerful. So I gave up and went for the symptom.

“Fine. Fine. Fine. Look. Just put a color set in the viewing room, will you? Color? Now? Yes? Good. Great. Fine. I will leave you to work out the details.” I massaged my temples on the way back to the repair room, where I wrapped my head in several layers of duct tape and clamped it firmly in a vise. Ahhhh…

But this peaceful interlude was not to last. Just a few minutes later, both the MCG and the teacher were at my door. It had become a conspiracy.

The MCG poked me in the shoulder, saying, “It’s still black-and-white.”

“And it’s a color tape?” I asked, evidently hoping for abuse.

The teacher insisted, “Of course it’s a color tape; I’m not styew-pid.”

“Okay, okay, let’s try adjusting the set.”

As it turned out, no amount of adjustment to the color set would bring out the color in that picture.

“And you’ve shown this tape before?” I asked the teacher.

“Yes.”

“In color?”

“Yes!”

“Alright, alright, just asking.”

So I swapped out the first color set for another one, and still, no amount of adjustment would colorize their chi-chi fashion world.

At that point, it occurred to me that it was far, far beyond time to check the videotape.

By sheer force of will, I herded the MCG over to the VCR room, dragging the teacher along in our wake. The MCG popped out the tape, glanced at it, handed it to me, and rushed off. I stared at the tape for a moment, and then said to the teacher, “You’ve shown this tape before?”

“Yes.”

“This tape here?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“You’re absolutely sure? And it was in color?”

“Well… maybe not this exact one, but other fashion tapes, and they were in color.”

Zish! I could feel Kermit creeping up behind my eyeballs again, preparing to flail my arms in the air, but I kept him subdued, holding the tape so that the teacher and I could both see its face, pointing for clarity, “You see what this says here? This says ‘b/w’ for black-and-white, and this says ‘color’. These little box thingies next to the names are check boxes. And this,” I pointed triumphantly, “is an ‘x’ in the check box next to ‘b/w’, which means that this is a black-and-white tape!” Once again, logic was triumphant, and my genius knew no bounds.

“No, no,” he insisted. “You see, it’s a process of elimination; the black-and-white box is crossed off, so it’s color.”

Kermit burst forth, no longer to be denied his say, “No, no, no, no, nooooo! That does not mean color! How do you take a multiple choice TEST? Do you cross off all the answers except for the one you want? Hey! Come back here! I’m not done yet! I’ll show you a process of elimination…”

I had a lot more left to say, but as it turns out, the MCG had had the presence of mind (or functional substitute) to alert a rather burly co-worker to the potential danger of the situation, and it was at that very moment that I found myself being gently but irresistibly belly-bucked out of the room. At the time, I was about six-two and maybe 160 pounds, so I had no belly with which to buck in my own defense. (I have since taken care of that little problem.) Sometimes, life’s not fair, but I suppose that he meant well.

For several minutes thereafter, much to the amusement of others, all I could do was lie down on the floor of the AV room, clutching my head and groaning, “Black-and-white. It was black-and-white. I asked him if it was black-and-white, but he said it was color. Was it color? No, it wasn’t color. It was black-and-white…” and other things of that nature. I am given to understand that electroshock therapy will do that to you.

In fact, to this day, whenever I see a nun rolling downhill, I shriek like bad brakes and faint dead away.

Now, what does this story teach us? Well, I’m a Winter, and I used to be able to pull off a black-and-white ensemble like nobody’s damn business, but now I can’t wear a tuxedo without risking flashbacks.

See? There’s a simple explanation for everything. It’s all as plain as… nevermind.