Playing the Part (part one)

Being a playwright, I'm attracted to the concept of scripts, and scripts not just on the printed page, but everywhere. I unabashedly generalize the concept. I see scripts in the way people dress, or how they talk to one another in line at the post office. How they celebrate their holidays. Or pray. Or speak to the boss, or interact with the help. So, when I say script, I mean words and actions that are bound to the situation and to the roles we choose to play in that situation. Sometimes we really do know the words or actions by heart ahead of time. Other times, we improvise, but within clear guidelines, and these guidelines help us to know what to do and say. 

• An experienced teacher teaching long division for the seventeenth year is following a script: “So don't forget, this is the hundreds place.”
• A grief counselor expertly helping a child get through the loss of her mother, is going to be following a script: “Is there a favorite memory you'd like to share?”
• A construction worker informing the college student that he can't be walking past the orange warning fence, may also be following a script. “Hey bud. No.”

I'm aware that my definition of script is a bit idiosyncratic. But I find it useful. For me, it calls attention to a fact that a great deal of what we say and do in this life is generated without a whole lot of effort on our part—in more or less the same way as we walk to the park or do the dishes. You just do it. You don't have to think all that hard.

What about the downsides to scripting though? 

They do exist.

This morning, for instance, I had to get a filling done on a tooth. My appointment was for 8:00, and I woke up early to light the stove, have breakfast, and do a little reading—all with an eye to leaving enough time for the walk to the dentist. I walked. And at 8:00 sharp, I arrived. And how much good did all this concern for punctuality do me? 

I waited and waited. And the waiting room was small. And a very loud television was broadcasting very bad news. After forty minutes, I got up and presented myself at the window. You might say I was Disgruntled Patient, speaking to Harried Receptionist. And, true to the part I was playing, I had already put on my outdoor hat, and I had an arm through one sleeve of my coat.

“Forty minutes is a long time to wait at eight o'clock in the morning,” I said.

“I'm sorry, we're behind. But your chart is next.”

I sat back down. Five minutes more and just as I was pulling on my coat again to leave, the assistant poked her head out the waiting room door and called my name. I went with her.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Oh...could be better.”

Well, I suspect news had gotten around, because everyone was polite and kind to me. The dentist was whistling as he shot me up with Novocain. And as I sat in the chair, waiting with a fat lip for the stuff to take effect, the assistant chatted on about the cold weather. And then—and this killed my script—she talked about about her pellet stove: her pellet stove that kept her home warm in the winter! She was a complete geek about her pellet stove. Full of information about it. Full of affection for it. Which of course could have been annoying. Except that for some reason it wasn't. “Okay," I said to myself, "I have a choice. I could rebuff her and continue to follow the script of Disgruntled Patient. Or I can talk to this woman and actually relate. The choice is mine.”

So I started to talk. I talked about my new wood stove at home. I talked about the general project of homesteading. And surprise surprise, pretty much right away the two of us were off to the conversational races: talking pellets, BTU's, the price of corn, and the uses of being off the grid. Within five minutes, Disgruntled Patient had made a full exit, and there I was sitting back in the dental chair, more or less satisfied with my place in life, and ready to get myself a filling. 

Now, please note: we need scripts. We lean on them. They help us through all sorts of situations. They help us to come up with words to make our opinions clear. They help us apologize. They help us get through funerals and weddings. They help us cohere as communities and as colleagues. They help us to ask each other to dance. 

But even the good and helpful scripts sometimes outlive their usefulness, sometimes within minutes. My own (retrospective) opinion is that Disgruntled Patient probably belonged to the category of useful-for-a-time-but-important-to-discard. After all, for a time I did have reasonable cause to complain: the office had probably over-scheduled itself, and no one had apologized, or done anything to make my wait more pleasant or easier. On the other hand, what was the point in perpetuating the business, once I had had my say? Seems to me that, just as with everything else in the world, there are limits to scripts. Limits to how long the show can go on. Or ought to... 

More on life-scripts next week!

HB

(Next Post Saturday, December 6th)