Rose-Colored Glasses

by Mike E. Ingles

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A few days ago I was driving east on Main St. in my 1978 Chevy Malibu - it�s a classic - when I was stopped at a red light. There by an adjoining street was a young man. He was about thirty years old I guess, he had his thumb stuck out looking for a ride. I tried my best to avoid him. I pretended like he was not there. My wife had warned me about picking up strangers, �You�re not as young as you used to be. There are crazy people out there that will knock you in the head and take your car!� She went on to tell me that the world had changed and that young people could not be trusted. I remembered Jerry Rubin�s famous quote from the sixties, �Never trust anyone over thirty.� The generation gap was certainly still in play, only now the mantra is �never trust anyone younger than thirty.� Things change.

I picked him up.

He was a good looking kid, but he had a large scar on his face that started at the crown of his head and zigzagged down to the corner of his left eye. He was dressed in what appeared to be half army fatigues and half clothes from The Salvation Army. His pants and boots were regular army, but his tee shirt was yellow and had a slogan printed on it: �Shoot low, they may be crawling.� I remembered when I was young and some of my friends had returned from Vietnam. They never wanted to talk about their experiences of war and so I was not going to question this young man.

�Where are you going?�

�I�m trying to get to the truck stop out by the interstate, sir.�

He called me sir. I liked that. I felt at ease. �I�m going right by it. I can drop you off.�

�Thank you, sir.�

I was smiling. My wife Jackie was a cynic. This handsome young man could have been me thirty years ago. Except for the scar, he could have been a poster boy for this new generation of Americans. My car windows were rolled down and the smell of a crisp Ohio autumn whisked through my old Chevy. The fragrance of that morning, and sitting next to this young man, and driving down Main St., all these things placed me in another place and another time. My best friend Danny Howard had returned from Vietnam. We had left early in the morning. We were headed for �The Woodstock Festival� in upstate New York. We would never get there. Our 1952 Chevy broke down at the interstate by the truck stop.

�I suppose you�re wondering about my wound,� said the young man. He went on to explain about the IED that hit the right rear of his truck. He was driving. The guy with him was from Columbus. The guy from Columbus did not make it. After spending thirteen months in rehab, and then returning home for a while, the young man decided to travel to Columbus to visit with relatives of the boy who was killed. He said it was a sad meeting, full of old pictures and crying and everything. The young man was on his way back home to Nashville, Tenn. He was going to try to hitch a ride from the truck stop. He was broke.

The drive out to the truck stop took fifteen minutes. Along the way I learned that the young ex-solider had worked for a plastics company in Nashville and had been in the Tennessee National Guard before his trip to Iraq. He had been married long before his unit was mobilized. His wife was a nurse. They had a baby girl and a nice house in the suburbs back then. But when he returned from the war, returned from the rehab, the company he had worked for decided to close their division in Nashville and move it to Mexico. The only other jobs he could find were for minimum wages and the young couple fell behind in their bills. They argued a lot. She told him that since he had returned from Iraq he had changed. He was sullen and withdrawn, and he had nightmares and he drank too much. The government gave the ex-solider $794.00 a month for his injuries. They lost their house to foreclosure. She divorced him last April.

I had twenty dollars, what my wife calls emergency money, I keep it in my back left pocket. I keep it there because my wife insists that I always have some extra money on me just in case my 1978 Chevy Malibu breaks down. It�s a classic. I�m not supposed to spend it for any reason other than an emergency. I was trying to decide if I should give the money to the young man, trying to decide if this would qualify as an emergency. I stopped by the interstate to let the young man off at the truck stop.

�Sir,� he said, embarrassed to look me in the eye. �Would you have a few extra dollars so I could get something to eat?�

�Sorry son,� I said.

As he sat inside my car he reached into his boot and took out a knife. It was a long knife with serrated teeth. He said he was sorry, but he would have to take the car. I reached inside my back left pocket and pulled out the twenty. �Will this do?� I asked.

�Sure pop,� he said with a smile. �I didn�t want this old wreck anyway.�

�It�s a classic!� I said.

The young solider walked away from me and my car and disappeared into a row of trucks a few hundred feet away. I drove home, a bit shaken, but otherwise fine. There was no need to call the police, they could do little, and besides no one was hurt, not really. I decided it would be prudent not to tell my wife about the experience. She would say that he was not a solider at all. She would say that he was some gang member, who preyed on innocent people, knocked them in the head and stole their cars. �You can�t trust young people,� she would say.

I don�t know if the story he told me or any part of his story was true. It matters little. What does matter is the lack of humanity. What does matter is that there are people, otherwise nice people, who are out there in America, lost in something they cannot understand. That something is as thick as the February clouds in Ohio. That something is gray, and formless, and is as complicated as any maze ever conceived. That something is Capitalism. Somehow, this something is broken. Young men should not be reduced to criminality to satisfy their needs. But it is happening more and more. 40% of wealth in America is controlled by 1% of the population. The disparity between the rich and the poor has never been greater. Middle-class wages are stagnant and have been so for almost twenty years. Yet medical cost and the cost associated with food and clothing and durable goods and almost anything else you can think of have increased markedly over these past twenty years. The growth markets in Middle America have been reduced to second-hand stores, and check-advance stores, and liquor stores. But the saddest development in all of this confusion is the lack of civility, our people�s lack of humanity.

When the Soviet Union was about ready to implode in 1991, it was already understood that Communism, as an economic system, was an abject failure. Real wages for the Russian people had been stagnate or declining for the past 20 years. The disparity between the political and the working class was cavernous. The cost of all goods and services were inflated to the point that the average worker could not afford bread. Many people, otherwise good and noble people, turned to crime to satisfy their needs.

Can it be that Capitalism, this great economic engine which has driven democracy for the past 225 years is broken? Can it be that like the political class in the former Soviet Union, our wealthy class in America is so full of greed and want and privilege that they are helping to destroy what they are best at creating? Can it be that Capitalism will someday implode? ��

A few nights later I was at my computer outlining a short story I would entitle, �Rose Colored Glasses.� It is about a man who buys this pair of sunglasses at a flea market. They are not good sunglasses and fail to block out the hot August Sun. However, each time he puts the glasses on the world changes. It becomes a better place. People are kind and friendly and talkative. But when he takes them off, people are sullen and hateful and mean. He decides never to take the sunglasses off in public again. But on his way home, as he is crossing a busy street, he is blinded by the light of the Sun and is hit by a truck. He is okay, but the glasses are smashed into a million tiny pieces.

I like to work at night. My wife is asleep and there are no phone calls, or visitors or salesmen at my door. The night is quiet and peaceful. Sometimes, say around 1:00 a.m., when I�m a little tired of writing, I will venture out to a little donut shop about a quarter of a mile away. There are always a dollop of people there willing and able to talk, tell jokes and smile at one another. It is a warm place, with sweet sticky smells, and the clatter of silverware on cheap china. I like it a lot. My wife says I should not go there, especially at night. �You don�t know anything about those people. There may be drunks and whores and murderers in there, you never know, the place could get robbed.� Jackie is the voice of my conscience. After 35 years together, you would think I would know better than to disregard her advice. Of the two of us she is the smarter one, and her insights are invaluable to me.

I walked down to the donut shop.

Rose is fat and pretty. She pours the coffee and gets my Bismarck donut out of the display case. She wipes the counter clean with a wet towel and smiles when she says, �How�s life Shakespeare?� She calls me Shakespeare because I am a writer, but as far as I know she has never read any of my stories or articles. I like that about her.

Tonight the dollop consists of three guys and a small woman. The woman and Rose are looking at a fashion magazine. The guys are talking about the cost of gasoline. At the extreme right of the counter is a man talking to himself. He is drunk. He is happy and laughs a lot. The three guys are complaining that the price of gasoline goes up on payday, every Friday, so the oil companies can get all of the extra money the people might have. Economists call this extra money, which the three guys have, Disposable Income. The three guys are complaining that their income is too disposable. I listen to their conversation, but I don�t add much. Jackie and I have 23% Disposable Income or so Jackie tells me. That means that after all of our monthly expenses, we get to keep 23% of our net income. I guess that is pretty good.

I step outside, away from the donut shop and Rose and the guys and my Bismarck. I�m full and as happy as the drunken guy inside the shop. I begin to walk across Broad St. or Route 40, or the National Road, as some people call it. It is a four lane road that cuts Columbus, Ohio into two halves. There is little traffic, but I see a new black Cadillac Escalade heading east. Two guys are in the vehicle. The four-wheeled monster is moving slowly, and I feel the sting of the shot hit my left arm and then another sting hit my stomach. I did not hear any shots, just a whistling sound, before I felt the sting. I am not hurt, not really. The bee-bee that hit my arm became lodged there. The pellet that hit my stomach bounced off my jacket.

I walk home.

I dab the antiseptic on my forearm and can see the pellet stuck inside my skin. I can�t get it out and that means I�m going to have to go to the hospital and get treated. I don�t want to wake Jackie and so I am in the downstairs bathroom. Jackie would say she told me so. Jackie would say, �You don�t know what type of people frequent a donut shop at this hour! There were probably drunks and whores and murderers in there.� I�m as quiet as a church mouse. No need to wake my conscience.

She walks in.

I like doctors and I especially like nurses. They help people. Their Disposable Incomes are much grander than mine. And they like to talk, especially at 3:00 AM. The doctor and I talked about golf. Doctors like golf and so do I. Jack Nicklaus; the famous golfer, is from Columbus. Both the doctor and I are proud of that. The nurse talks about child care, and how hard it is to find a sitter for her daughter. Her husband is a fireman. Her husband is also a national guardsman. Her husband is in Iraq.

Aetna Insurance, my insurance company will pickup the tab for the hospital. On the way home Jackie explains to me that there is no co-pay for the hospital. Now if we were to have waited until morning and went to our family doctor, we would have had to pay the $30.00 co-pay. Our doctor would have charged the insurance company about $200.00 for his services, instead the hospital will charge over $1,000.00 for their services. Overhead, I suppose. None of it makes any sense to me anymore. All I know is that our monthly premium is over $500.00 and that seems like a lot of money. But Jackie handles all of that, she is smarter than me, and I�m glad she is.

I try to imagine what was in the mind of the guy who shot me. What type of person randomly shoots another human being, even if it is just a pellet gun? What thrill or joy does it give to inflect pain and suffering to another human being? What of their humanity?

America was always something I could trust. I was free to move around in it, feel it, and touch it, converse with it. It was open and honest and helpful. That something is broken. That something that was once transparent and whole and noble has turned into a gray cloud of confusion, brought about by privilege, by ignominious people adrift in self-absorption and a self-want and a conscious notion that this country is theirs to destroy, like a cheap toy given to a toddler.

I�m not allowed to go to the donut shop anymore.

Someone has smashed my rose-colored glasses into a million tiny pieces. I want my glasses back, but like Humpty Dumpy they have fallen off the wall and can never be put back together again. I am in mourning for America and for me. Is the death of civility, of common humanity, a direct result of broken Capitalism? Do wealthy young men go around shooting other human beings for the sickened joy of hurting someone they consider less than they? And do young soldiers, who have learned the craft of violence, use those skills to survive a broken economic system?

Politicians know that there is something wrong in America. They know the statistics on the distribution of wealth. They know that violence is on the rise, they know that homeless men are targets of perverted teenagers. They know that unions are all but dead with less than 12% of Americans represented and most of those represented are the political class. They know that middle class Americans are losing their homes in record numbers. They know that 50 million Americans have no health care coverage. They know that they, the politicians, do not suffer from these maladies, and so there is little need to fix what does not trouble them. �Let them eat cake,� I�ve heard said.

America is like a great battleship that cannot be easily turned. But this rocky ship has an enormous hole in its bow. It has been damaged by intolerance and inequality. It has been torpedoed by indifference and ignorance. It quakes in turbulent seas. The working crew longs for the safe harbor of shore, but the captain and his officers are oblivious to all of this. They are not about to remove their rose-colored glasses.� ��

© Mike E. Ingles
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