One Begins To Suspect Somebody Is Putting Them On

Adults knew to be on their guard whenever I entered family gatherings with my portable tape recorder in hand back in the salad days of the late 1980s. From an early age, I had not only been fascinated by the workings of magnetic tape, but I had also developed an unhealthy obsession with documenting accidental and ambient sounds – what one might refer to as audio vérité. To capture conversation carried on unaware of any nearby recording device was my attempt at approaching the reality of a given situation. As annoyed as my grandmother was when she inevitably discovered the tape recorder tucked under a blanket on the couch, recording every word as she snapped at my younger brothers for ringing the doorbell one too many times or complained about the summer heat, these unguarded comments seemed to me a much more accurate impression of her than a carefully scripted address into a microphone or a frozen smile for the camera. The result of this fascination is several boxes worth of cassette tapes filled with long stretches of tedious silence or mere bumps and shuffles, interspersed with brief flare-ups of family realism. How else could one capture unique moments and one-off routines, such as my five-year-old younger brother, coming under merciless teasing from two bored older brothers, (i.e., “Why are you such a toad?”) sagely opining, “Well, people are born different”? Or my grandmother disputing another brother’s response to some forgotten query, to which he replies, in his toughest little boy voice, “You’re asking me questions, and I’m giving you the answers.” Or a much later event, which finds me holed up with a high school buddy as we desperately attempt to slog our way through the Lennon-McCartney classic “Help,” in which a brief conversation about the saxophone leads me to offer the following nugget of mush-headed philosophy: “The guitar and the sax are the two best ways to express yourself.” My friend responds with utter disdain dripping from the corners of his mouth, “You can express yourself in a lot of ways, Jason.”

These days, of course, I don’t lug portable recording devices around with me – what might once have been charming at the hands of a young boy would probably be viewed as felonious behavior at best. While I’ve still been known to swing my video camera in the general direction of unaware strangers to grab a few precious seconds of eccentric behavior, I largely rely on my ears and memory to document memorable encounters, which so often stem from casual eavesdropping in public spaces. Just this morning, what might have been a routine transaction between patron and coffee shop employee turned into a longer conversation about sore muscles from helping one’s mother move into a new apartment.

“I recommend Vicodin,” the coffee shop guy said. To which the patron responded, “The crazy thing is, my father just had back surgery and is completely loaded up with painkillers, so I could tap into that. But he won’t let me touch them.”

“Ah, he wants them for himself.”

“No, he just won’t give them to me if he knows I need them because I’m helping my mom move. He doesn’t want her to have any help.”

This, to me, is a fascinating exchange – one of these brief glimpses into someone else’s life that brings home the messiness and casual cruelty that makes up so much of human interaction. A father denying painkillers to a son because he’s lending a hand to his mother? That’s the kind of back-story that might inspire a nineteenth century Russian novelist.

When the details or the conversation is flowing fast and thick, I find memory alone can’t keep up, and at times I’ll reach for the notepad or a piece of scrap paper to jot down stray comments or observations, figuring I may need to quote them later. Half the time, the encounter is forgotten, or upon further reflection one discovers the comment wasn’t actually all that memorable. But sometimes, you strike gold. Like this week.

I’ve been volunteering my time and considerable skills as an Information Professional at the library of a local art museum, in an effort to explore a new area of study, contribute to the health of the community, and spend a little bit of time in the subterranean (read: air-conditioned) depths. Shifting the collection, helping catalogue new arrivals, and digging through seventeen boxes of donations from a local professor that for some reason included cassette copies of George Michaels’ Faith and U2’s October, I’ve been busy familiarizing myself with yet another wrinkle in the library realm. But no use denying it – I’ve also been busy witnessing and observing what appears to be a rapidly disintegrating effort by the head librarian to coordinate the activities of a fellow volunteer transferred over from some shadowy agency to lend a hand and gain some apparently much-needed work experience.

I won’t give details, of course, but suffice it to say that this individual has forced me to re-think any and all preconceived notions I had concerning volunteering. For although volunteering is theoretically among the most helpful, selfless and noble actions individual citizens can undertake, in practice, it can just as easily unravel into showcasing people at their most bored and difficult, a mere excuse to stay busy, get out of the house, and to harbor deeply flawed delusions about one’s self. All of which help describe the individual in question, who I’m going to refer to as Mr. Altruism for the duration of this piece. He is a senior citizen, perhaps on the younger side of 70, who arrived with a clutch of paperwork and odd demands one hour before his interview was scheduled to take place. Any hopes that Mr. Altruism might be able to lend a much-needed hand to an ongoing computer-based inventory project were shattered within the first few minutes of conversation, in which he noted several times that he had been self-employed for thirty-five years, that he had no interest in anything having to do with computers or math, and that he needed to be awarded one specific job that would not change or vary during the entire period of his volunteer service, which was to be of undetermined length. When told the library was willing to offer twelve hours a week of supervised volunteer work, he dismissed this as a mere technicality and said he was going to be here at least twenty hours a week. When informed that the museum opened at 10 AM, he responded that was too late for him, as he “will not deal with traffic,” and would therefore like to come in much earlier. When asked what special skills or areas of interest he had that led him to volunteer at this museum, he replied he was a “people person” and was a “toucher”. He repeated this several times; “I am a big toucher. I touch people”.

Busying myself along the bookshelf, I listened in as, with remarkable restraint, the librarian (who I’ll refer to as Ms. L) managed to steer the conversation away from Mr. Altruism’s people-touching abilities and more towards things like weekly schedules and his familiarity with computers. It soon became clear that Mr. Altruism had some firmly held beliefs on what sort of activities were appropriate for museum volunteers and those that were not. He insistently returned to the topic of math, at one point driving his fist gently but firmly onto the table to emphasize that he would not agree to performing any math. Ms. L. attempted several times to assure him that quadratic equations played a very small role in art museum volunteering duties, but one could sense Mr. Altruism had his guard up. “Believe me,” he said, “I know a thing or two about people. I worked in retail a number of years back, and I put dresses aside for the ladies, and don’t you think they didn’t respect me for that and remember my name. I knew their names, they knew my name. That’s the sort of thing I hope to do here.”

When Ms. L. suggested the museum was less in need of setting dresses aside for the ladies and more in need of simple timesheet-related data entry (not expressed exactly in such terms), Mr. Altruism burst into a disturbingly long peel of laughter that involved the shaking of a finger in the librarian’s direction. “I can do anything you want,” he chuckled, “but that doesn’t mean I will do anything you want.”

“What are some things you would like to do, then?” she asked patiently.

"I’ll do anything you want.”

“Well,” Ms. L. said, seizing the opportunity, “we need help with entering things into the computer –“

“That’s not what I would prefer to do,” Mr. Altruism warned, veering suspiciously into Bartleby the Scrivener territory.

Ms. L. pushed on. “We also need help during openings and events, things like helping serve refreshments or pouring wine for people.”

Mr. Altruism raised his hand to stop her. “I am not a caterer. I do not do any catering.”

“I wouldn’t call this catering…”

He studied the table and his paperwork for a second. “We need to make this work. We need to figure this out. Without any math and without any catering.”

The patience was wearing thin, but Ms. L. pressed on admirably. “Why don’t you tell me what you are interested in doing?”

Long pause. “I’m a people person, you see. And I’ve written a book. I should say, I am writing a book.”

Perhaps sensing neutral ground, Ms. L. took the bait. “And what is the book about?”

Head shaking, hands waving. “No, no, no, I’m not going to tell you that. That is not something I am going to tell you. Not yet, not now.”

Totally bewildered, Ms. L. refused to give up. “Is it set in the past?”

Head shaking. “That’s not the sort of thing I can tell you. Maybe someday.”


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At this point in the narrative, my duties took me away from the volunteer interview, so I can’t document how it ended, although one can certainly imagine. For whatever reason – undoubtedly tied up in some murky collision between museum policy and volunteer outreach programs – Mr. Altruism returned the following week, necessitating an impromptu session of desperation involving data entry instruction and long spools of unrelated querying, during which a fellow volunteer and I waited patiently for our turn. As the brief explanation turned into an hour-long slow burn, I reached for a nearby piece of paper to record the comedy gold taking place at the computer terminal. For as poor Ms. L. attempted to walk Mr. Altruism through the simple steps of entering people’s timesheet information from paper to computer, roars of laughter came from our intrepid volunteer.

“So, you look at this number here, and that’s what they worked for that shift…..”

“Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha haaaaa ha!”

“And so you just add that number into this column. Right here.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

“If it’s not a whole number, if it’s something like six and a half –“

Mr. Altruism managed to speak through his mirth. “I only asked that I not ever have to deal with math. No math, ever, I said. And what does the universe do? It slaps me down, slaps me with the math!”

“Well, yes –“

“Math!” he repeated, incredulously.

Ms. L. said, “It’s math, but it’s barely math.”

Shaking his head. “No, it’s math.”

“It’s numbers more than math.”

Mr. Altruism insisted, “Math math.”

“….with a calculator.”

Sinister chuckles. “ Oh, I’m not going to win with you. I can see that. You and the universe.”

The lesson continued in fits and starts. Ms. L. would attempt a simple navigation. “So, let’s enter this number here.”

Long sigh from Mr. Altruism. Somewhat philosophically, he countered, “Now, here’s a recommendation I have.”

“Let’s just enter this number into this column, please.”

“I would probably prefer to see your instructions written down.”

Ms. L. took a breath. “Enter this number here.”

Long pause as Mr. Altruism sat motionless. “Is there a booklet or a pamphlet?”

“Let’s just enter this number here.”

He shook his head in wonderment, at the futility of it all. “Remember,” he said, “I’ve been self-employed for thirty five years.”


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And so the afternoon dragged on, each polite request from Ms. L. being swatted away mosquito-style, each attempt at instruction countered with laughter or vague threats. At one point, Ms. L. asked him five different times to delete one number and add another one. His stony silence and loud sighs were the only response.

“It’s a simple thing,” she said. “Take that last number out and put this one in.”

“I’m resisting,” he said finally. “I’m resisting you. I always seem to resist when I’m being taught. When someone tries to teach me, I resist.” He seemed genuinely proud of himself. “See, I know this about myself. I’ve been this way all my life.”

Ms. L. had apparently decided to just play along at this point. “I think you do know what you need to do, am I right?”

“I resist instruction.”

In a voice remarkably pleasant, Ms. L. said, “When I walk away, you’ll be fine.”

Long painful pause. “I hate to admit these things,” Mr. Altruism said.

“You will get your own space in just a second, after I’ve seen you change this number.”

Mr. Altruism mused, “There are no time outs. There are no time outs.”

We teetered on the brink of chaos. “I’m sorry?” Ms. L. asked, no longer capable of hiding confusion laced with exasperation.


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Again, this nightmarish back-and-forth continued through the afternoon, and I soon found myself too far from the action to overhear every word. I stopped scribbling notes as the conversation lagged. We busied ourselves in the Middle East shelving section, checking Object ID numbers as the lesson dragged on. At one point, I suddenly realized the room had been deathly still for some time, with no movement or sound issuing forth from the computer terminal at which Ms. L. and Mr. Altruism held court. I leaned over to catch a glimpse of whatever action might currently be going down.

It is an image I will not soon forget. Ms. L. stands over Mr. Altruism, to his left, hands at her side, looking down at him with a complete absence of emotion. Mr. Altruism sits in front of the screen, hands in lap, motionless, looking directly up at Ms. L. Not a word is being said. Neither party blinks. The silence extends, becoming first embarrassing, then painful, eventually worrisome.

It is Mr. Altruism who breaks the silence. “I really don’t believe in this,” he broods.