Ordinary Sins (2 page)

JIM HEYNEN

Note: There is now a six-hundred-page work devoted to these fourth-century BC short-shorts:
Theophrastus Characters
, edited, commentary, translation and introduction by James Diggle (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 43, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Diggle suggests that the title,
Characters
, is misleading, and could more accurately be
Behavioral Types
or
Distinctive Marks of Character
. My quotations are from Diggle's book.

ORDINARY SINS

WHO JINGLED HIS CHANGE

This man jingled the change in his pockets.

It was not as if he were generally a fidgeter. He was not running for political office and afraid that his past would be revealed. It was not as if he were being audited by the IRS. He hadn't just quit smoking. He didn't have a bleeding ulcer or a bad stock portfolio. He had not forgotten to renew his driver's license, or homeowners' insurance, or health insurance, or life insurance, or disability insurance, or car insurance.

Outward appearances said this man had a secure and balanced life. He was ahead in his mortgage payments, just had his teeth cleaned, his lawn fence was in good repair, basement cleaned up, laundry folded, garbage taken out, pets vaccinated, warranties on appliances in order, shingles on his house patched up after the storm, recycling set out on the street the night before the recycling truck would come by, birthdays of his friends and family circled on the calendar, flu shot gotten two weeks before the seasonal outbreak, shoes polished, light bulb in the closet replaced, windshield repaired, oil changed, radiator flushed before winter, crabgrass gotten out of his lawn, tulips planted before the big frost, photographs for the year put safely into an album, workouts at the gym strictly adhered to, thank-you notes sent to the last three dinner hosts, all disagreements with in-laws put to rest, fresh batteries in all the flashlights, toenails clipped and the clippings placed in the wastebasket—and these were just the beginning of what this man had right in his life.

And still he jingled his change, constantly, just jingled and jingled, not even in a comforting rhythm, erratic but constant jingling of change.

THE HOARDER

And for years people thought she was simply a collector!

That was before they started counting: 550 coffee cups, some in cupboards, some on tables, some on bookshelves, and some dangling on hooks. Bathrobes might be a great comfort on a chilly morning, but twenty-three of them? Eighteen ice cream scoops? And two little teddy bears on every step leading upstairs? Collecting knickknacks is not unusual, but a dozen shoeboxes bulging with tiny owls? And what's in all the bigger boxes stacked along the walls? You can't even see out the windows.

By the time it was obvious the hoarder was more than a collector, no one knew what to say. The last person who visited found a narrow path from the front door into the other rooms. Then she stopped allowing visitors because there was no place for them to sit if they did manage to find the path from one room to the next.

The hoarder had enclosed herself with stuff. Teetering stacks and mounting mounds. She was practically smothering herself.

Or was she?

She's sort of like a caterpillar making a cocoon, someone said.

Single-minded in her mission, she went on filling the remaining gaps bit by bit, knitting herself in tighter—eagerly, like one who was preparing for that glorious warm day when the world would burst open around her and she could fly into the unencumbering sky on wings of many colors.

WHO LOVED HER DOG

It was a little wiry dog. A yapper. With big bulging eyes. Not a purebred, just a tiny thing she picked up at the pound when it was the size of a rat. It was the only survivor of a litter of eight, and the mother had died at the pound after delivering. It would have been hard to imagine what the ones that didn't survive looked like. The woman chose this leftover. She called it Pee-Wee then, and the name stuck.

She took Pee-Wee home from the pound in a shoebox with tissue paper on the bottom. The dog was so small that she wasn't sure of its sex until Pee-Wee lifted its leg over her two-inch high bronze fireplace cricket.

So you're my little boy, she said, though gender and size were never factors in this woman's affection for Pee-Wee.

When Pee-Wee was full-grown—or at least as big as he was likely to get—he was not only a wiry yapper with bulging eyes, he was a shiverer. He yapped and trembled and trembled and yapped, all the while glaring at strangers with his bulging eyes. Pee-Wee had long toenails that clicked like little icicles and scratched the wood floor. When he ran around yapping in a state of great excitement, he had bladder control problems.

Nothing about Pee-Wee bothered this woman. She held his shaking, wiry, yapping tiny body as if he were the most precious creature on earth. She cradled Pee-Wee on her lap when people visited, constantly stroking his trembling body, and saying, There there, my sweet. There there.

She had pictures of Pee-Wee sitting on her piano. She had an assortment of little sweaters for Pee-Wee hanging by the front door. She had a lavender silk-covered cushion for Pee-Wee to sleep on, though Pee-Wee rarely settled down long enough for a nap.

When people first saw this woman with her dog, some thought she was more than a little strange to love an uncontrollable freak of nature named Pee-Wee. Those who saw them together often felt something else happening. Their eyes moved past the jittery dog and to the calm hands and eyes of the woman. Her affection for the dog moved out and around her like an aura that filled the room. Some felt their own eyes staring, almost bulging, in the direction of the lady, as if they were trying to understand the small creatures that trembled inside themselves.

WHO LOVED COMBUSTION ENGINES

This man loved combustion engines. All kinds. All sizes. He loved the sound of ignition, the firing up—from the calm purr of his large car engine to the fierce whining of his chain saw. He loved them all equally, like children with different but admirable talents: his self-propelled lawn mower, his leaf blower, his Jet Ski, his snowmobile, his speedboat, his motorcycle. He had a combustion engine for his wood splitter. He had a combustion engine for his back-up electrical generator.

This man understood not only
how
but
why
a combustion engine works. He knew which lubricants were best for the tireless throats of the cylinders. He knew the kind of exercise and treatment the knuckles of the pistons needed. He knew how every flexing muscle of the combustion engine needed a regular workout, pumping iron. Use it or lose it, he said, as he fired up one of his combustion engines to fit his mood and the occasion. He was an expert on nutrition and preferred the high-calorie fuels to the wimpy low-octane blends. He knew the delicate ecology of the combustion engine, how everything needed to stay in balance to keep the world moving, to keep
his
world moving. He loved the world of combustion engines the way an eagle loves the open sky. He loved the smell of gasoline as it went in. He loved the smell of the exhaust as it came out. He loved the circulation of the combustion engine, the natural cycle of things.

While others might plan to eat and drink their way through their storage cellars if calamity should strike, for him the key to survival was in the spark and explosion of the combustion engine. Let them eat and drink, he figured. I'll turn to my combustion engines, and I'll be out of here! He kept spare combustion engines sealed in plastic on his cellar shelves. Just in case. Just in case.

THE HELPER

This man always wanted to help, whether he was asked or not. It made sense when someone was stuck in a snowbank or had trouble opening a stuck door. Just the decent thing to do. But there were other times when he surprised people with his smiling face and helping hands. Once he took the lawnmower from the grip of someone who was sweating profusely.

I'm all right, the man protested. I'm in shape and have a strong heart.

Take a break, said our helper, you deserve it.

The helper mowed the lawn and asked for nothing in return. The two parted with a handshake and a mown lawn.

It was when he picked lint off people's sleeves in a department store or stooped to tie a runner's shoelace that people looked at him suspiciously. There was something unthreatening about him, though—mostly his voice and the comfortable way he moved—that made it easy for people to trust him. After he helped a woman scrape ice off her windshield in midwinter, she asked him if he had read that study about how unselfish goodness released endorphins and extended a person's life.

No, he said. When someone needs help, it's like one person is a dusty rug and the other one is a vacuum sweeper.

One day the helper saw a toddler weeping pathetically in a crowded aisle of a grocery store. He swept up the toddler and put her on his shoulders.

Don't cry, little one, he said, I'll help you find your mother.

He held her feet in his hands and turned in circles so that her eyes could be a periscope checking out the sea of heads around them. Look for your mother, he said. Just look around and she'll see you way up there.

The toddler was afraid of heights and screamed loudly and beat the top of the helper's head with her small tear-drenched fists.

The helper felt someone from behind scoop the child from his shoulders. He assumed someone was there to help him in his helping. One officer was taking the child from his shoulders and, just as quickly, another put handcuffs on his wrists.

The strange thing about this story is that you'd think the helper would have learned a lesson. He didn't. He was careful around little children after that, but his need to help was an addiction that no one and nothing could remedy.

WHO LOVED ANIMALS MORE THAN PEOPLE

They're my little darlings, she said. People can defend themselves; animals can't.

Tell that to a mountain lion, said a friend.

How many mountain lions have you met lately? she asked. I rest my case.

She didn't let her case rest very long. The farther an animal lived from people, the more she protected it. Wild horses ranked high. Polar bears ranked even higher. Narwhals were practically sacred.

Closer to home, she set out bird feeders that squirrels couldn't reach, squirrel feeders that cats couldn't reach, and raccoon feeders that horses couldn't reach. She defended all animals, but she didn't like what she called the “devolution” of some. Like domestic cats.

Cats are an extension of the human psyche, she said. We made them middle class. So now they get cancer and arthritis. They get kidney stones.

Her voice rose as she went on: They're procreating like mosquitoes! Over a hundred million in America! A hundred million! A bored middle-class cat kills a thousand wild little darlings in its lifetime. Cats are the most species-destructive animals on the planet, and yet we supplement their diet with what they don't kill! You could feed five third-world nations with the money Americans spend on cat food! Not to mention the annual veterinary expenses! More billions!