The World According to Chuck

I assume this is manifestation of my advanced age, but I’ve noticed that my brain is leaking lately. All sorts of vignettes, narratives, scenes, and high school dates that didn’t end well pop up at the strangest times. This is probably why I look like this.

This morning I was minding my own business when a couple of (until now) forgettable novels made their appearance, Avery Corman’s Kramer v. Kramer and Darryl Ponicsan’s Cinderella Liberty. I have no idea if I read them before or after their film versions, but this is definitely about the books.

Something similar happens in each, something that has strong echoes of another time in that trivial way that seems significant and means nothing to your children. Age, again.

Ted Kramer finds himself a single parent and temporarily unemployed. Trying to make ends meet, he finds out that an upscale department store sells gourmet frozen food. He has a credit card with aforementioned store. He and Billy eat dinner bought on credit. What a concept.

John Baggs, Jr., the sailor on limbo leave in Ponicsan’s book, is in worse straits. He’s trying to support a couple of kids who’ve been dropped into his care by his long-gone prostitute former girlfriend. He can’t get work because he’s active duty Navy, but he can’t get paid because his records have been misplaced. But he can get credit by virtue of his uniform, so he buys stuff from stores and then resells it on the street for a loss, floating his family while he tries to hang on.

What made these interesting plot points, of course, was that this idea of leveraging credit to survive day to day was, well, novel. It demonstrated the characters’ desperation and ingenuity. Who would think to buy food with a credit card?

Dunno. I was going somewhere else with this, all about some techie things going on in my life, pushing forward into the future, but I think I’ll leave it here. Just some mental doodling on how quirky behavior from 30-odd years ago seems awfully acceptable now, and how maybe I shouldn’t reread Orwell any time soon, or maybe I should.