Buggy Whips

Dear Jack Slain, who fled Cravath, Swain and Moore in the late ’70s for the comforts of teaching corporate law at NYU, also taught accounting for lawyers. In that class he often cited a compelling example of looming obsolescense: the buggy whip manufacturer, circa 1915. Not a trade for the dawn of the Model T era, nor ever again to provide the least prospect for business success.

I have often reflected on buggy whips over the last quarter century as I watched successive loves undermined, left behind, and overtaken by technology or changing tastes: Amtrak; record players; post cards; letter-writing ; home-baking; card catalogues; newspapers; books.

So it is with dread, recognition, and grief that I read this requiem for literary criticism in The Nation. So I’ve chosen a “slowly dying” profession! Another venture in buggy-whip production. Literary criticism joins the museum rooms of my now-middle-aged life.

Homie

Lost my cellphone last month, so we trekked to the Verizon store for a replacement. Blue-eyed, sandy-haired Nelson, dead-ringer for my oh-so-Irish-looking cousin Tom Costello., shepherded me through the upgrade. Twenty if he was a day, and new on the job, Nelson was chipper and personable, and endlessly charmed by my middle daughter R., and her non-stop patter and high octane enthusiasm. I pegged him for a college kid from upcounty. I felt a kinship. His resemblance to cousin Tom established a tribal connection. An entire narrative evolved without conscious effort.

My husband mixed it up a bit, adding an earpiece and new charger for his Blackberry to the sale. My paperwork seemed endless, but the sales pitch was low key. Affable Jalal, a senior sales guy, together with the weekend manager, a white guy like Nelson, stepped in when Nelson needed an assist, but the transaction ended smoothly. As we wrapped up, Nelson urged me to call if I had any questions, or needed to change the package, or to add minutes, or if I found the old phone and wanted to come back and transfer my address book to the new phone. He handed me his card, apologizing for the inky scratches. “Since I’m so new here, I have to write my name on the card. Here you go.” I took the card.

Illegible ink squiggled across the the print. I squinted. Baffled, I looked up. I pointed to the card. “Who’s that?” “that’s me,” said Nelson. I pointed to the cursive. Jalal Aboo. My narrative collapsed. My inner ethno-meter spun wildly. A million conjectures and warm fuzzies and our ancient Celtic connection dissolved in a mash of confusion and bewilderment. Egyptian? Palestinian? Second generation? But that suburban affect! The college-boy ease! The unself-consciousness. The All-American grin. My cousin’s double! Aboo? Jalal? Like . . . Abdul, but with– those sky blue eyes? I gestured at his lapel.

He looked at his pin. He nonchalantly removed it. “Oh, Nelson and I were playing around this morning, swapping name tags. We just forgot to switch back.” He grinned. He swapped pins. Jalal, my Irish homie, happily affixed his name to his pocket.