Storytellersunplugged

by Janet Berliner

You want to talk unreasonable? It’s unreasonable to expect me to follow Stan’s debut. Why is my life so h-a-r-d?

As some of you already know, I recently spent two months sans computer. The bad part was that not writing turns me into a roaring witch; the good part was that, since I am confined to quarters, I had a lot of time on my hands. No smoking, no alcohol, a restricted diet. Couldn’t even clean out closets. TV was dull and I could only read a book a day and research just so much without the tools to take and make notes. Myasthenia restricts the amount I can hand write and breathing problems restrict tape recording. And so, as my father-in-law used to say, “Sometimes I sat and thought and sometimes I just sat.”

One of the things I thought about was the roots and progression of storytelling and the tool imperative that rules our lives. There are still cultures, particularly in parts of my beloved Africa, where the storytelling tradition remains the bailiwick of musicians, singers, and tellers of tales around the night fires.

A simple, wonderful, envious avocation.

When my mother was well into her eighties, she talked about the myriad changes she had seen in her lifetime: horse-drawn buggies to Porsches; unicycles to the Concord; roller skates to space shuttles. She mentioned radio, records, and CDs, quills and computers, the telegram man and the telephone. What she found to be most amazing, most magical, most wondrous, was the fax machine. She didn’t like phones much. In her view, they were things that should be used for making and breaking appointments, not for conversation. She lived in Europe and wrote letters–in many languages–until the gift of a fax machine changed her life.

As far as she was concerned, anyone without a fax was just plain ignorant.

Being frugal out of necessity, she refused a new machine and opted for a secondhand one. She wrote faxes with relish and watched them come through to her, applauding like a kid watching a train set. She had a quick mind and read a lot, yet this was always fascinating to her, ever new and useful. Quickly she found herself unable to do without it. When it was out for repair, she went to her travel agent and used his, happily paying for the transmission with cookies here and treats for his dog there, not to mention the many trips she took from Berlin to the U.S.A.

So there she was, happy with the manual typewriter she’d owned forever, the old fax machine, a record player, an ancient tape deck for Nat King Cole and an older radio for Radio America. And you know what? I couldn’t fault her. Ray Bradbury refused to fly for most of his life; a bicycle was his preferred mode of transportation. Harlan uses a typewriter, as does Joyce Carol Oates. I have writer friends who fill yellow pads while propped up in bed for the morning. A chacun au son gout, I say. To each his own.

My story tool history goes something like this:

Oma, my grandmother, was the family storyteller, known far and wide (well almost) as a raconteur par excellence. If only I had written it all down….

But I didn’t.

I started the act of writing on any paper I could find, using an eraserless pencil, which had to be sharpened with a knife. I didn’t draw pictures much because we couldn’t afford Crayolas, so I scribbled. At school we had to use an ink pen, so the care I’d had to take being without an eraser came in handy. My grandfather gave me his Waterman Fountain Pen, which I treasure to this day. Must be an antique by now, I reckon. There were no such things as slide rules or calculators. Instead, we had log books and rulers. Also compasses. I used mine to bore a hole in my desk so that I could put a straw through it and drink whatever I could find. Water mostly, but it tasted so good that way. The pencil had another use, too. I sat for many hours over the course of years with the point digging into my cheek, hoping to create a dimple. Harrumph. That was when I started to put in my order for a new self, should I return to this world after death. I demanded tall, thin, rich, blonde, stupid–and dimpled.

At sixteen, after High School where I had learnt to type, I was forced into servitude at a travel agency. Once a week or so, I was permitted to use my mother’s typewriter, the very portable mentioned above. Buying yellow pads and notebooks became my secret sin until, a couple of years later, indentured by my first mentor–editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper–I gained daily access to an electric typewriter, saw how UPI worked…ye olde teletype…and learned how to set type with calipers.

I was rising in the world. Hallelujah.

As an intern, I earned almost nothing, so it took two years before the next step: a portable typewriter of my own, with a hard case no less. I was in heaven and instantly wrote my first book, a children’s “classic” called “Tales of Timothy.” Wish I could find it, if nothing else to give to my grandchildren. Alas, it somehow disappeared during my last move. Could be that it’s buried in a box in the attic, but there’s no way my wheelchair’s going to make it up there for the search.

Skip to 1975 and a job translating a German engineering textbook into English. My personal goal: An IBM Selectric, secondhand, of course. As I recall, it was bright red. The first owner had sprayed it to match her décor. I refuse to knock that baby. I typed RITE OF THE DRAGON on it, many times over. By the time I got to the final draft, I had myasthenia, which was not being controlled. The messages from my brain weren’t getting to my fingers, so I typed the entire final manuscript with one finger, guiding it with my other hand.

That, Friends, is devotion.

Couldn’t talk, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t do much of anything, but I knew I had to find a way to write so…I put myself in hock ($8,500.00 in 1980!!!) and bought the best–BEST…word processor of the day, an ABDick. What a beautiful mother that was! Is, really, because I wouldn’t part with it for anything. It saved my life. The touch on the keyboard was as light as whipped cream, the screen was huge, the brain as big as small car.

Next, after medication stabilized me, I graduated to an IBM PC. I detested it. I didn’t want to program, I wanted to write. The printer printed in mirror images, no one could fix it, and I went back to my trusty AB Dick. Trouble was, the 8″ floppies didn’t work for anyone else and finding anyone to fix a problem was like searching for a diamond on the pavement in Times Square.

Fahgetaboutit.

With a great deal of whining going on, I bought my first Apple, plus all of the accoutrements, which my resident expert insists I have to keep upgrading. I am now the proud owner of computers, printers, tape recorders, faxes, scanners, Martians.

Okay. No Martians. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

See, here’s the truth of it all: My darling grandmother did it to me. She turned me into a storyteller. A raconteur. When that’s who you are and you’re old and wondering if the vacant look in people’s eyes is boredom and you can’t stop, you have to throw in a Martian or two for good measure.

Thanks for listening.