FRESH YARN presents: Cheese Mover... by Jeremy Deutchman

FRESH YARN presents:

Cheese Mover
By Jeremy Deutchman

I am not an aggressive person. But something came over me, and I snapped, and I blame it on the one-armed man in the underground parking garage.

We were leaving the bookstore, my wife Michelle dragging me onto the elevator after a 15-minute tirade brought on by seeing someone purchase a copy of Who Moved My Cheese?. The book is about two intelligent, talking mice and their ability to respond to change in their lives, and is supposed to be a metaphor for the human condition. But in my mind, it was simply a waste of ink, more dangerous than Lady Chatterley's Lover or Catcher in the Rye.

It was precisely the type of book I hate. A hokey, simplistic reduction of complex problems into generic, easily digested solutions made palatable for the broadest possible audience. It quickly became an international bestseller. When it first came out, my boss at the T.V. station where I worked distributed copies at the office, where for weeks people walked around suggesting ways to turn our In Baskets into "Win" Baskets.

I knew many people found the book inspiring, but I resented its preachy and self-important tone. As far as I was concerned, it had nothing to say about life's larger questions, and was simply the tragic story of two perfectly harmless mice who were really fucking angry that someone had moved their cheese. It was a vicious act, and in my opinion their frustration was totally reasonable. I wondered how the author would have felt if someone had moved his country house or fleet of "S" class Mercedes.

By the time we stepped out of the elevator and got to our car, I was just barely calming down. I approached the exit kiosk and handed the attendant my ticket; he glanced down, saw my validation stamp and waved us through, raising the skinny mechanical arm that was blocking our forward passage. I inched ahead, moving slowly so I could fasten my seatbelt before pulling onto the ramp that led to the street.

Suddenly, the car rocked violently in place and we heard a loud scraping sound overhead. "Duck," I said to Michelle. "It's an earthquake."

"No it's not," she said, politely refraining from pointing out that, if it had been, ducking would simply have made it easier for falling debris to crush our lumbar spines. "Something just hit us."

We climbed out of the car. It was easy to see what had happened: as we passed underneath, the mechanical arm had come down on top of us, sliding across the roof as we moved forward and finally coming to rest on the trunk. The paint was scratched and peeling where the arm had hit.

The attendant emerged from the kiosk, waving his right arm. He moved it back and forth in long, vigorous arcs, as if trying to deflect attention from his left arm, which was missing entirely. For a moment I thought he must have tucked it inside his shirt, the way I might have as a child playing doctor, or pretending I qualified for the Special Olympics. Perhaps this was what passed for humor in the parking attendant community. But as I approached, it became clear that his arm was, indeed, missing. His left sleeve flapped lazily in the breeze generated by an electric fan.

Even with only one arm, the attendant came out swinging. "What did you do?" he demanded in Spanish. "Why did you break my machine?" He sounded personally affronted, as though he was Eli Whitney and this was his cotton gin.

"What do you mean?" I said, also in Spanish. I grew up in California at a time when, due to changing demographics, Spanish language instruction began at an early age. I had studied conversational Spanish for the entirety of my junior and senior high school careers. In college, I had even spent a year abroad in Spain. So while I wasn't exactly fluent, I was more or less able to carry on a conversation, even one about a faulty one-armed parking machine with an agitated one-armed man. "The arm came down on top of my car. How is that my fault?"

"Fuck," he said, "you waited too long. You have to go through right away. Now you broke it, and it's going to be very expensive." He shook his head as he said this, repeating his concern about the cost -- "muy caro, muy caro" -- so as to allow the gravity of our situation to sink in.

He didn't elaborate, but seemed to be implying that any costs incurred would be billed directly to me. His comment also indicated an apparent disgust with what he saw as my fundamental misunderstanding of modern conveniences. Not only was I financially liable, I didn't even deserve to be part of a technology-based society. If I couldn't properly use an automated parking machine, how could I be trusted with an alarm clock or a toaster?

I identified his strategy right away. Operating from the premise that the best defense is a good offense, his attack was timed to catch me off guard. Without missing a beat, he had managed both to shift blame and undermine my self-esteem.

I took a deep breath. I refused to succumb to the parking attendant's campaign of intimidation and fear. Maybe that would work with other bookstore customers, but I had a membership discount card which, the way I saw it, basically made me a silent partner. No one was going to push me around at my own office. I would not allow him to move my cheese.

"I don't think that makes sense," I pointed out, struggling to find the right Spanish words. "These things are supposed to be on sensors. It has nothing to do with how quickly you drive through."

"Son of a bitch," he said to no one in particular. He circled the car to assess the damage. "I don't know what to tell you, my friend," he said after a minute. "What I mean to say is, I don't know where we go from here."

This was an obvious tactical shift; if I wouldn't respond to stern and disapproving authority, he would refashion himself into an empathetic and commiserating ally.

"I think we have to go upstairs and let someone know," I said.

He turned so that his left side was directly in my line of vision, as if he hoped I would see it and reconsider. "Oh, he only has one arm, so let's not make a fuss." I was having none of it.

"Escuche, amigo" I said. "Necesito hablar con su…" I trailed off, suddenly at a loss. My Spanish chose that moment to fail me, and now I was drawing a blank. I could not come up with the word for "manager," or even "boss." I fumbled through my mental dictionary, to no avail. I could remember "scabies" and "vengeful ass licker," but "manager" was just not happening.

I blurted out the first thing that sprang to mind: Necesito hablar con su dios. For lack of a better option, I had just told the parking attendant I needed to talk to his God. I figured he would get the idea that what I meant was someone higher up.

Had he not been a religious man, my linguistic misstep might have gone unnoticed. As it was, it took him several seconds to process what I'd said. He looked stunned, then scared, then pissed. Then he came up and pushed me.

"What do you know about my God?" he asked.

I had not meant to be offensive so much as to convey a general idea. And while I understood why he might have been upset, his reaction struck me as slightly out of proportion. I wanted to tell him that resorting to violence was not the answer, but got stuck on the command form conjugation of "resort." Instead, I pushed back.

Before I knew it, we were fighting. I had never been good at following through with a punch, but remembered from 7th grade soccer that competitors were much less fierce if you forgot about the ball and just kicked them in the shins. For his part, the one-armed man (who, after all, only had one arm) was also relying on his legs, but was aiming his kicks slightly higher. With Michelle our only audience, we looked like a pair of miscast Rockettes, though in our version of the stage show the goal was to bean each other in the groin.

As we bobbed and weaved around the parking kiosk, Michelle followed after us. "What are you doing?" she asked me. "Stop it right now. This is ridiculous."

I knew she was right. I was proving myself to be thoroughly incapable of taking things in stride, and in two minutes flat had allowed him not just to move, but to completely melt my cheese. It was like Michelle had held up a mirror and showed me the person I was at risk of becoming. To continue down my current path was to resign myself to a lifetime of beating up on handicapped people in basements, wine cellars and other subterranean structures. From there, it was just a small step to drowning baby pandas and twisting old people's nipples.

"Look," I said in English, dropping my fighting stance and trying a more conciliatory approach, "I don't want to make any trouble. Just tell me how to get in touch with someone and we'll leave."

The parking attendant seemed as fed up and exhausted as I was. He moved away toward the kiosk. "Okay," he said, speaking for the first time in English. "Just hold me a minute."

I knew he had misspoken, that what he meant was "Just hold on a minute." But his faulty preposition had a drastic and immediate effect; in spite of myself, my animosity faded away completely. Suddenly, the one-armed parking attendant seemed like an ascendant Buddha. "Why all the hostility?" he seemed to be asking. "Couldn't we all benefit from a little extra love and affection?" Just hold me a minute. In that instant, it was all I really wanted to do.

The parking attendant didn't seem quite as moved. "Here, jerk," he said, handing me a small business card. "Take it up with Eduardo."

As we climbed back into our car and drove out of the garage, I began to gird myself to do battle with Eduardo. I gathered from his card that he was some sort of supervisor -- and if the company's first line of defense was a hot-blooded one-armed pugilist, I could only imagine what else might be in store. One thing was for certain: I would have to be on my guard. Assuming Eduardo had two good hands, it would be even easier for him to move my cheese.