So this week was maybe the craziest week of all weeks. Hurricane Sandy came pummeling through the Northeast leaving millions without electricity. Manhattan was eerily quiet and abnormally dark. I traveled uptown and camped out at Sam's apartment during the storm. We stocked up on dry foods and lots of bottled water, all ready to brave Sandy together. We kept busy more or less, did some yoga... more like TRIED TO DO some yoga, stuffed my face with Honey Nut Cheerios, and played lots of Boggle. We took full advantage of this "Hurri-cation" (get it?) and watched lots of movies, walked around, (when it wasn't a torrential down-pour with 80 mph winds) and obviously ate a lot!When I was finally able to make it back down to my apartment, I was relieved to find that my building was fortunately up and running, however, my internet was all messy. I called my mom with every intention to complain about my internet woes. Before I could even begin to drown her in my sorrows she started to tell me about all the people we know who are dealing with the aftermath of Sandy. Family whose houses are in shambles, friends with destroyed roofs from fallen trees and neighbors whose cars are totally mangled from the flying debris. She said that she and my dad were keeping positive, that they are alright, just without power. She practically sang the following words into the phone, "Problem or inconvenience...right?" And just like that, I felt like the biggest ass. I'm over here with a cold refrigerator, hot water and lights while some people don't even have a home to go to. I could not believe I was being so ridiculous, that something as insignificant as getting on the internet seemed like a big deal to me. I very quickly, shut up.
"Problem or inconvenience" refers to a story I was told the summer I was 16 years old. A very wise individual read this small anecdote to myself and my group of friends. It changed our lives. I then read it to my mom, she said it changed hers. Maybe it'll change yours.
Sigmund Wollman's Reality Test
by Robert Fulghum
One week the employees had been served the same thing for lunch every single day. Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut and stale rolls. To compound insult with injury, the cost of the meals was deducted from our paychecks. I was outraged.
On Friday night of that awful week, I was at my desk job around 11 p.m., and the night auditor had just come on duty. I went into the kitchen and saw a note to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut were on the employee menu for two more days.
That tore it. For lack of any better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman.
I declared that I had had it up to here, that I was going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and wake up the owner and throw it at him. Nobody was going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and this was un-American and I didn't like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat them one day for God's sake and the whole hotel stunk and I was packing my bags for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn't feed that stuff to pigs. Something like that.
I raved in this way for 20 minutes. My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk with a fly swatter, the kicking of chairs and much profanity.
As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman sat quietly on his stool, watching me with sorrowful eyes. Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman. He had a good reason to look sorrowful. Survivor of Auschwitz. Three years. German Jew. Thin, coughed a lot. He liked being alone at the night job. It gave him intellectual space, peace and quiet, and, even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to - all the wieners and sauerkraut he wished. To him, a feast. More than that, there was nobody around to tell him what to do. in Auschwitz he had dreamed of such a time. The only person he saw at work was me, the nightly disturber of his dream. Our shifts overlapped an hour. And here I was, a one-man war party at full cry.
"Lissen, Fulchum. Lissen me, lissen me. You know what's wrong with you? It's not wieners and 'kraut and it's not the boss and it's not the chef and it's not the job."
"So what's wrong with me?"
"Fulchum, you think you know everything, but you don't know the difference between and inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire - then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy."
"Learn to seperate the inconveniences from the real problems. You will live longer. And will not annoy people like me so much. Good night."
In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed.
Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes so hard with truth. There in that late-night darkness of a Sierra Nevada inn, Sigmund Wollman simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind.
For 30 years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I'm ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks, "Fulchum. Problem or inconvenience?"
I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality. Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, and lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.
Good night, Sig.
Stay safe everyone, good luck with getting back into your regular routines and if you can check out the music below!
Take a listen!
Runaway, Mr. Little Jeans
Not In Love (feat. Robert Smith), Crystal Castles
Angels, The xx
Never Mess With Sunday, Yppah
Oblivion, Grimes
DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!
