Ten Things That Light My Fuse 
By Charles Wellborn

    In a recent issue of this journal my good friend, Foy Valentine, wrote a delightful article entitled "Ten Things to Light Your Fire," in which he described a number of homely human experiences that add greatly to our personal enjoyment. I read his article with appreciation and sheer pleasure. But, curmudgeon that I am, I was also inspired to write a balancing article in which I could talk about the things that light, not my fire, but my fuse.

    My fuse has grown noticeably shorter as the years have passed. I have concluded, based on my own experience, that one symptom of aging is a steady increase in the level of irritability. Things that I once could shrug off with indifference now sometimes drive me to the point of distraction. It is perhaps as a means of mild catharsis that I share some of them here. Actually, my list could go on almost indefinitely, but I will restrain myself. Some of my "flash points" have to do with inanimate objects, but most concern people. Some are inconsequential; others are perhaps a bit more important.

1.     Gadgets.  The modern world is constantly inundated with a deluge of new and innovative gadgets, all presented to us in the name of the great god Progress. I must be a primitive man, for I am constantly frustrated by these “convenience" devices. I fight a continuing and unhappy war with milk cartons that apparently require a hacksaw to open, "child-safe" medicine bottles that defy my every attack, and mayonnaise jars that obviously should be supplied with a wrench, if one is to actually get into them.

2.     The Telephone. This indispensable instrument of modern communication is my personal "bete noire," I hate it with a vengeance. My principal complaint is the automatic priority over all things which the telephone assumes. Whatever you are doing, no matter how important, you are supposed to interrupt it if the telephone begins to ring.

    Two personal illustrations. Some time ago I made an appointment with the manager of my bank to discuss some important financial matters. I kept my appointment on time and was ushered into the manager's office. We had hardly begun our conversation, however, when the manager's desk telephone sounded. He immediately ignored me, with hardly a nod of apology, and spent the next five minutes chatting with his unseen caller. I wanted to shout at him, "Look, I took the trouble to make an appointment and travel across town to see you personally on an important matter. I deserve first consideration here." I did not, however, vent my irritation. I realized that both of us were the slaves of that inanimate object on his desk.

    Some years ago I was in the Miami, Florida, airport, waiting to catch a flight. An unexpected difficulty had arisen and I needed urgently to talk to someone at my airline, and I had limited time. When I made my way to the counter, I found myself at the end of a line of some twenty people, all waiting to speak to a rather harassed young lady. My anxiety increased as the line moved with snail-like pace. As I waited impatiently, I glanced at my travel documents and spotted an information telephone number which I could call. I quickly made my way to a nearby telephone and dialed the number. I was answered immediately and put my question to the person on the line. From where I was making my call I could see the airline counter I had just left. To my amazement I realized I was talking to the young lady at the counter. She had interrupted her dealing with a another passenger in order to take my call. Moments later I was on my way, looking with a twinge of guilty sympathy at the long line of waiting people.

    One other caveat about the telephone. My day has often been ruined by the experience of ringing a business phone, only to be greeted by a disembodied mechanical voice which instructs me to go through a long menu, in the course of which I am required to press nine different buttons. More often than not I hang up in frustration, having not achieved my goal and having never succeeded in speaking to a single living person.

3.     Cashiers. I am offended by the theater or restaurant cashier who automatically gives me a senior citizen discount before I even ask for it.  I know I've lost most of my hair and the age lines are on my face. I just don't like being reminded of it every time I turn around. I long for that never-to-be-realized moment when I do ask for the discount, only to be met with the response, "Do you have any proof of your age?" Oh, what joy!

4.     Computers. I am computer-illiterate. I realize what a monstrous confession that is to make in these technological times, but it happens at the moment to be my choice. It does get to me when some of my friends, who apparently spend hours glued to the computer, surfing the Internet, ask me for my e-mail address. When I confess that I have no such thing, only an ordinary street address, their looks of pitying sympathy give me the message that they consider me somewhat retarded.

    We may well be a dying breed, but some of us still prefer to do our writing in other ways. I have a successful author friend who refuses even to use a typewriter, writing his manuscripts with an ordinary pencil on a yellow legal pad. His creative juices don't flow in front of a keyboard. I'm on his side.

5.     Television. Television supplies me with almost unlimited points of irritability. I am upset, for instance, by the makers of commercials who apparently believe that sex, in one form or another, will sell everything from toothpaste to automobiles. Equally offensive are lengthy, sensationalized advertisements which, so far as I can determine, have absolutely no relation to the virtues of the product being advertised.

    But my biggest complaint has to do with television "talk-shows." Hours of viewing time are used by pathetic individuals pouring out to the nation the sordid stories of their failures and depravities. I believe less than 10 per cent of what they say, and I have a sneaking suspicion that some of these people, using wigs or other means of disguise, move effortlessly from one program to another, making up new tales as they go. I suppose all of this is symptomatic of what appears to be a world-wide phenomenon: the apparent need of so many people in public life to bear their souls in well-publicized confessionals. Does it never occur to these people that stories appropriate to a counseling room or a psychiatrist's couch are not necessarily fit subjects for public discussion?

    If I had my way, Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, Montel Williams et al. (including even, perhaps, the sainted Ophra) would be locked up together in a small room, without a television camera, and forced to listen interminably as each one of them confessed in detail every unsavory and sordid detail of their own personal and private lives.

6.     Politicians. I confess that almost all politicians irritate me a good deal of the time. I have a particular animus against the political candidate who uses the last two weeks of the campaign to air television commercials proclaiming every negative aspect of his opponent, with blatant assertions that reflect what he believes, surmises, or even imagines from his totally biased viewpoint, to be true.

    I profoundly distrust the politician who speaks in well-worn clichés, indulges in populist rabble-rousing with little regard for the truth, or relies upon carefully crafted "spin-bites" to put his case across.

    And I long for politicians who are also statesmen, exercising their own consciences and careful judgment about important matters. The Clinton affair--clearly a complex and ambiguous morass of constitutional issues--is a case in point. It says little for the wisdom and patriotism of the United States Congress that virtually every vote in the whole was cast along strict party lines. So that I may not be misunderstood, that's a bipartisan condemnation.

7.     Proof-texts. In the narrower field of my own profession I am constantly upset by preachers and would be theologians who build doctrinal arguments on the basis of carefully selected snippets of Scripture, often taken completely out of context. Don't these individuals understand that a legitimate Biblical affirmation must be supported by the overall tone and teaching of the Scriptures, rather than by one obscure verse from the Book of Daniel and another from the Revelation of St. John the Divine?

8.     Millennial "bugs." So far as I am concerned the most frightening thing about the approaching millennium is not the possibility something may go wrong with our computers when the date changes to January 1, 2000, but the irrational significance that sensation-seeking doomsday prophets apply to that date. Calendars and clocks are purely human contrivances, designed to measure human time. They have nothing to do with eternal time, and I seriously doubt that God ever looks at a calendar. If these people had any sense of history, they would realize that the same hysteria over “magic” dates has occurred again and again, always resulting finally in bitter disappointment and disillusionment for the credulous who have once again been cruelly misled.

9.     Super-churches. I have a real thing about super-churches. I'm sure there are people who profit spiritually from their involvement in them, but I can't escape the feeling that there is something terribly incongruous about a Christian church which spends millions on an elaborate facility equipped with every possible recreational device and headed by a pastor who, far from being an humble servant of the Lord, has become a corporation entrepreneur, paid an inordinate salary, dressed in an Armani suit, and driving a Jaguar.

    I often remember an experience with my old friend, Carlyle Marney. As we strolled through one of these mammoth religious monuments, surrounded by the trappings of affluence on every side, Marney smiled wistfully, raised his head piously toward Heaven, and murmured, "Lord, we have left all to follow Thee."

10.  One-eyed academics. I spent more than 25 years of my working professional life on a university campus, where I constantly brushed shoulders with men and women from other disciplines than my own--the natural sciences, sociology, economics, business studies. I say "brushed shoulders" because, with a good many of these individuals, there could be little interchange of ideas or dialogue. They had long ago decided that truth was their own special province.  Nothing could be regarded as having intellectual worth unless it had been verified in their laboratories or supported by long tables of statistical data. Many of them were historically illiterate in the broad sense and had no concept of the centuries of careful thinking and experience that have gone into building up a vast body of spiritual and philosophical knowledge. They had cut themselves off from the most important part of the human story, and they were intellectually and spiritually impoverished. They looked at all life through only one eye.

    I knew when I started writing this article that I could easily get carried away, and so I have. I have no time or space to finish my list of "flash-­points." I haven't talked about men and boys who wear baseball caps backward, older women who plaster their faces with heavy make-up in a vain attempt to look a mite younger, parents who take their children into public places like restaurants and then don't control their behavior, men who sport obvious hairpieces, telephone salespersons who ring me up at the dinner hour and try to sell me double-glazing, people who let their mobile phones ring in the middle of theater performances or concerts, etc., etc., etc. I would have no stopping point.

    In airing my personal peeves and prejudices, I have probably revealed more about myself than I wanted anyone to know. But I take comfort in two things. First, aging has brought me the luxury of not worrying too much about “political correctness.” I also feel no compulsion to be overly tolerant of those things in life that don't really deserve tolerance. And, second, I am rather certain that "lighting my fuse" once in a while is a thoroughly therapeutic exercise, making me, in the long run, a more balanced human being who is, perhaps, easier to live with.

            And so, "happy irritations" to one and all.

Updated Tuesday, January 02, 2001