E.G. Bell
Here is another very old bit of writing I found in my archives…
Ever hear that old metaphor about deer in headlights? You know… some poor deer wanders into oncoming traffic and, in the glare of onrushing headlights, is unable to move.
I know deer can’t talk, and I have to defer to hunters as to whether they even make noise. But I am sure that in those passionate moments of contemplation, some translation of “Oh crap” is among the things they contemplate. I wasn’t thinking about deer when this topic wafted through my mind. I was in the Mandarin Buffet in the Six Flags Amusement Park in Aurora Ohio. And I was thinking of Chinese restaurants and elevators and state police.
Now, the state police part is probably a pretty easy line for you to draw. Have you ever been cruising down some limited access highway in significant excess of posted speed limits and crested a rise to the sight of a state trooper cruiser sitting unobtrusively over that crest electronically monitoring your progress at that moment? If you have, what did you say? Unless I’m WAY off base, you said “Oh crap!” (or some translation).
This is today’s anthem for yesterday’s “caught with your pants down” or “hands in the cookie jar” or “deer in the headlights” metaphors. There is no direct translation that I have ever been able to make between scatological exclamatory and impending reckoning, but the response seems to be almost universal. (I’m basing the universality thing on sub-titled foreign movies I’ve seen that included “Oh crap!” moments).
Back when I worked for Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh, I made quite a few coworker “friends.” It was actually my first “desk” type job. The kind of job where you have your own desk. And your own coffee cup. And you make friends. And one or more days of the week, you and your friends go out to lunch. Sometimes at Chinese restaurants. Frequently, these restaurants are buffets. All you can eat.
One of my friends was Paul, an ATM technician. Another was Billy O. Billy is Polish. We call him Billy O because his last name is Polish. O is easier to pronounce. It is spelled Olszewski, pronounced Olshefski. Billy O, Paul, and I are men of size. All of us fit through all of the doors in our homes and offices. None of us drove pickups of necessity. Actually, none of us drove pickups at the time. And while Billy and I would, in whimsical moments at company picnics, do the Sumo stomp while facing each other across the corporate volleyball net, neither of us was really built like a Sumo wrestler. (I hasten to say that neither of us could pull off the diaper thing either.)
Of the three of us, Paul was the most substantial. But you get the picture, right? If you do, then you should also be able to visualize the poor owners of the Chinese buffets seeing the three of us walk in. Perhaps you can even hear these owners in their best English, moaning “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh crap!”
The elevator thing is pretty obscure. We worked, at the time, in One Mellon Bank Center, a 50+ story building on Grant Street in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. The first two floors of the building are lobbies for the most part. We were on the 10th floor. So you see, in order to get to a restaurant, we had to get out of our office building.
And I had these Reservoir Dogs/The Right Stuff movie visions of the three of us starting a slow-motion, gait-synchronous march from each of our respective cubicles, finally merging in the main aisle leading to the elevator. All very purposeful and cool. And small ripples appearing in coffee in cups on desks lining that aisle. And the people laboring over those cups thinking and/or communally moaning “Oh crap!”
And I always got the most fun out of the elevator part of the journey… particularly, getting in the elevator on the 10th floor, looking at Paul or Billy O, and commenting on the looks of terror on the passengers’ faces… giving voice to the “Oh crap!” they were secretly mouthing during frantic glances at the capacity sign on the elevator wall.
There are lots of “Oh crap!” moments in life. There are those times when you lash out in the middle of the night in a somnolent stupor at the cat lying on your wife’s pillow… only to discover that the cat was really your wife’s head. There are those times you have to go to the blackboard and discover x-intercepts using the quadratic equation with a huge hole in the seat of your corduroys. (In case you are wondering, the quadratic equation does not have a huge hole in the seat of your corduroys. Your corduroys have a huge hole in their seat, usually when you have to discover x-intercepts. The quadratic equation is just a tool with which you do the discovering. I’m not sure how to solve the corduroy thing.)
There are the off-hour phone calls from work which your child answers with innocent candor, informing that you and the wife are getting a bath. Or something. (And this proves what should be an adage that one person’s ‘Oh crap!’ is another person’s entertainment. For years to follow.)
There is a moment of realization that occurs simultaneously with a door clicking shut that your keys are still in the car. Or the house. Or your zipper is down. Or your dress is caught in your pantyhose. At 3:15 p.m. And your last trip to the restroom was at 2 p.m.
While crap has always been part of the human experience, it took on a whole new importance when it started “happening.” All of a sudden there was a glut of “Crap Happens” T-shirts and buttons and other various and sundry paraphernalia. It somehow gained some kind of respectability. (Well, the word anyway. My son is apparently negotiating with my wife for a puppy, but since I don’t want crap “happening” in my living room, I’m balking. Unless she can find a puppy that doesn’t make it happen.)
With this respectability has come greater usage. Yes, we are finding other uses for crap. Well, the word anyway. Acceptable uses. And there is something intuitive about “Oh crap!” Something universal. Something that crosses cultures. Something that brings us together as people. Something that struck me the other day. In a Chinese restaurant at Six Flags in Ohio. At the buffet.
