On Saddling a Horse to Cross the Street: Idle vs. Active

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“The Lord is my chauffeur—I shall not walk.”—Bil Keane

“For the night cometh, wherein no man can [walk].”—Thomas Carlyle

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/16/12—A friend of a friend said that when he started teaching 40 years ago, he taught six days a week, but he soon changed to a five-day schedule. After winning tenure, he arranged a Monday-Wednesday-Friday program, followed a few years later by Tuesdays and Thursdays. Finally, à la one-day-a-week Henry Thoreau, he consented to teach two seminars on Wednesday afternoons, with office hours between classes.

“How’s that working out for you?” my friend asked.

“I hate it—it ruins two weekends.”

My friend quipped that, before you know it, this leisure-holic will only work on days that don’t end in a “Y.” We both laughed, but not out of sympathy because we’re both “Thank-God-it’s-Monday” drones. I didn’t mention the old Dutch “drowning cells,” but I believe that that one-day-a-week fellow might have been a good candidate. In the 16th century, an employee who refused to work was locked in a sea-level room that filled with water when the tide rose. There was no danger to the “gentleman of leisure” as long as he manned the hand pump with Calvinist conviction.

The Dutch are among the world’s most industrious people, probably because one quarter of the country is a “drowning cell.” Knowing that, I imagine, must focus the mind on the essential work that needs to be done—keeping the sea beyond the seawalls. To the best of my limited knowledge, there is no Dutch equivalent for “play brain golf,” “spud out,” “hunker down,” or “spaniel,” four American slang terms of recent coinage. In the summer, many Dutch bicycle to work; in the winter, they ice skate.

Given this Lebenskraft, or life force, in northern Europe, the few Dutch and many Germans I know are puzzled by people like the boy who trashed a fishing cabin on the Saluda River a couple of years ago.

This adolescent and his 15-year-old girl friend broke into the cabin of a neighbor, cracked the toilet tank, bent the stainless steel sink, and emptied food all over the floor. Their motive: “We had nothing better to do.” Anyway, the vandals left an engraved tackle box beside the river, so the owner had little difficulty identifying them. He locked their equipment in what was left of the cabin and said he would return it when the repairs were completed. Before the work had even begun, however, the father of the boy telephoned and asked if he might borrow the tackle box—father and son wanted to go fishing. You can imagine the answer he received, and the owner isn’t even Dutch.

Americans are reputed to have invented the “working vacation,” but they’re also notorious for often taking a “duvet,” “pajama,” or “ad-hoc” day.

Several years ago, at mid-week, I overheard an engineering student saying that he planned “to call in well and take a personal day.” Had he graduated, this student is the kind of person who might have developed the motorized wine opener for Sharper Image or the battery-powered watch winder for Brookstone.

The winner of the holiday sweepstakes, however, is a friend of our son who loves to tailgate about 50 yards from the Clemson University stadium. If this guy were any more relaxed, his DNA would unwind.

On game day, he drives his camper “Scout” to the campus a few hours before kickoff, erects a canopy, inflates his screen, unpacks a television projector, and watches the TiVo’d game. His wife and children grill the wings and stock the drink container. Though he pays thousands a year to buy 40-yard-line tickets, he seldom leaves his recliner to enter the stadium. The cemetery is just up the hill. Before he dies, however, he jokes that he wants to endow a chair in Parks and Recreation. He says the chair he funds will be a Lazy-Boy.

If a flood were imminent, our son’s friend would sit on the roof chewing his regurgitated hot wings. If it were I, I’d be filling and piling sandbags regardless of the odds. My old mentor, James Dickey, was unreservedly convincing when I spoke to him about doing a creative dissertation at the University of South Carolina in 1972. Dickey said he’d done his share of appreciating the work of others, but nothing quite matched the satisfaction he received from creating something from nothing. Like Yeats, he continued to teach and write almost to the day he died.

Several years after I graduated, I telephoned him about throwing my hat in the ring for an administrative job. Dickey asked me how many hours I was averaging a day teaching and writing. I said eight or nine. “Well, as a department head, you’ll probably average ten to twelve, and you won’t be reading Yeats and Eliot either; you’ll be slogging through faculty evaluations, applications for work, and the latest self-study.” I promptly retrieved my hat. Dickey was right, of course: interesting work is worth more than an extra 10K a year, especially since it means telling colleagues who resent coming to work on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday what you think of them.

Monday lover that I am, there is work that I would not do. I would not have applied to be Marie Antoinette’s ornamental hermit, nor would I last long as a Jain “blood bar” for insects; nor does the pharaoh’s naked, honey-slathered fly catcher have much appeal, and I’d rather have starved than collect excrement for London tanners.

I’ve never been to Japan, but I’ve long admired their work ethic. A visiting Japanese graduate student told me that when his “salaryman” uncle decided he was “retiring” in his 50s, his doctor ordered him to bed for a week with no visitors, no television, no internet, and nothing to read. Three days before his sentence was up, the uncle returned to his cubicle, a cured man. Extreme boredom may be the closest thing we have to a panacea.

In March of 2009, Harper’s Magazine reported briefly on a Tokyo hotel that had closed for lack of business. The loyal and determined staff, however, kept the establishment open for three months after receiving their last pay check. Finally, the owner called the police to have his employees ejected. It took them 15 minutes to clear the premises because some had to be pried from the furniture.

Ridiculous as that scenario sounds, I’m sympathetic to the staff. A year after I retired from full-time teaching, I learned that my former department was $400,000 in the red, so I volunteered to teach a class (without pay) which the department could not cover. With 30 students enrolled, I stood to earn the school about $30,000. When word circulated, I was accused of “scabbing for free,” though I searched in vain for a union or a strike. Curiously, no one seemed to mind if I were paid, and so I was. My critics were more concerned with protecting a future hiring line than cost-effectively educating students. All wised up with nowhere to go, I just wanted to get back behind the lectern.

People resemble stone arches. Though anything can be overdone, the more weight added above the keystone, the stronger the arch becomes. However, if one removes that burden, a strong wind may topple it. Without responsibilities to bear and worthwhile work to complete, humans are likewise nudged towards the grave.