In many ways, the social pet evolved into an explicable thing. Remember, to an outsider, most things remain inexplicable until, after great patience, those things can be explained. However, should the investigation take too long or need too many resources, the realm of the inexplicable has been entered. When there's no longer contact with the sources who knew, the absolutely inexplicable has been reached.
"He's like the guy who is hired," Frank interrupted, "can't do the job, but the employer can't get rid of him. That's why he is continuing to write this column. Not because anyone reads it. If the Sardine had a large following, he would be famous and we wouldn't be having this conversation."
Frank has a point. The Sardine is like Bartelby the Scrivener, except that I haven't gotten fired. And taking Frank's lead dealing with the general category of the incompetent or troublesome person who manages to hang onto a job, the specific example of Wal-terr presents itself.
It's known the strange hold he has over people, but what possessed the Attic's owner to hire him? Did someone give Wal-terr a good recommendation? But wasn't his exploit with his former employer's niece well known? What moved us to believe it would be different this time with a faithless lover or employee?
Anyone outside the Attic, also, might wonder about our original social pet, McNulty? How did this guy rate such attention while he put the bartenders, including the imperturbable Wal-terr, through paces unacceptable by any other patron? You could read Sardines 14 & 15 to get "the explanation," but how does one explain our capability for accepting obnoxious behavior?
L-I P: Since you have allowed a few inexplicable things to slip out, why not give us the rest of them?
One has an irresistible desire not to have one's ideas rejected. In part, this explains the my reluctance in holding back those nominees for inexplicable distinction.
L-I P: You never minded irritating people before or caring whether we accept anything you say.
I want no contradiction! Beyond that fact, I didn't really have many inexplicable things to mention. McNulty, well, he entered through the back door of this phenomenon. Same with Wal-terr remaining at the Attic for so long. My foremost choices were two comic strips: Nancy and Henry.
L-I P: We love them.
See!
L-I P: Just kidding. For once, we're in complete agreement with the Sardine.
Didn't realize you had a sense of humor.
L-I P: That's because you are usually pissing us off.
Now, here's the real test of our concord. Which of the two's continued existence is the most inexplicable?
L-I P: Nancy's jokes are older than Galapagos turtles.
Yes, but since Henry doesn't speak, that lends him to being more unfunny? But going back to my original point. People who thought that either comic was funny are no longer alive or have lost their mental faculties.
L-I P: And they are the only inexplicable things you had!
On a secondary level, what about the buttons which control the traffic lights for pedestrians at busy intersections. Has a cause and effect relationship ever been seen between a person pushing the button and the traffic light changing immediately for the person?
L-I P: Maybe not at all of them.
Or just a few of the several million in operation. A ratio that qualifies it for our own bit of immortality. What's inexplicable is why those few actually worked!
*
Many readers were amazed by McNulty's drinking regimen and the demands he placed on the bartenders. Would it have amazed you more to learn that upon reading articles about himself, his habits and demands have not changed an iota? If anything, he's accentuated his fussiness by finding other problems.
Suddenly, the air-conditioner is too cold. While he has never been free of aches and pains since I've known him, his conversation used to be free of them. Now all he talks about is his sinus and aching back. To cap it, inevitably, because he is seventy plus years old, he's feeling his mortality. Less does he speak about his own pending death than enumerating the sicknesses of old friends who had died in the last five years.
L-I P: Maybe he's too old to change.
That might be part of it. He's too old to change and feels he doesn't have enough time to change. Sure, he might survive another twenty years, but in his mind he's going more quickly than that.
L-I P: Joe T.'s getting married. Didn't you write critically about him? That must have had a positive effect.
Antigone might be the one who should read them. Joe doesn't seem to have changed. Nor was my criticism necessarily meant to reform him. He's his own social pet! Uncriticizable. Beyond criticism. I was only hoping a part of him, an unpolluted, authentic aspect of himself, would absorb my depiction of him in the column and quietly, invisibly, effect some change in his personality.
L-I P: Good luck. Getting married was something you thought he could never do.
His marriage is merely another manifestation of his self-love. People don't change the way we've traditionally learned how they've changed. Change is very undramatic and unnoticable. Why? We don't want to humiliate ourselves by suddenly renouncing what we've been.
L-I P: What about all the autobiographies proclaiming the very thing you are denying? People who were following the wrong path have suddenly seen the light?
I don't believe it. That is, I don't trust any person's account of their own change. First, there's the inevitable egoistic distortions. Second, the change is always seen as more dramatic if only to heighten the appeal of the account (the autobiography) of the change.
No, real change comes furtively, slyly, like a thief. McNulty or Joe. T or Frank Weathers or Wal-terr at best might steal a few hints from the way I've characterized them and faintly realize something's amiss. If they actually look for what's wrong, the glacier of their personalities will remain.
L-I P: I bet their friends would be upset if they did change.
Maybe "change" is the wrong word.
L-I P: "Transformation"?
Mutation. But whatever could happen, it does seem unimaginable.
Bob Castle is the author of A Sardine on Vacation. He has had two other books published this year: The End of Travel, a comic memoir and send up of traveling abroad (Triple Press) and Odd Pursuits, a collection of stories (Wild Child Publishing). He is regular writer for Bright Lights Film Journal and has over one hundred fifty stories, essays, and articles published. The first fifteen installments of his saga can be viewed at the old Unlikely Stories. A Sardine on Vacation is also available in book form.