You Have 47,000 Points In Your Account! When You Die, You Will Have Qualified for a Blender!

     There are plenty of movies and books and other defunct artifacts of the culture that appropriate as a central plot point the depiction of a recently-departed soul reviewing their life's summary in the company of a well-paid, private spirit guide.  (Nota bene: You never see any tipping). In these scenes, the protagonist is often shown a kind of highlights reel wherein the whole worth of their existence on Earth is revealed to them through the device of statistics: how many people they have helped;  how many mitzvahs they have performed; how many lives they have pulled from the brink of ruin, and so on and so forth.

        But what about the rest of us? We who have pretty much coasted. What of us? What sort of reckoning might we expect when the lights go out and, before the feature film begins, crackling forth from the cosmic movie screen comes the over-decibled 32 year-old animation about the location of the fire exits starring an anthropomorphic orange flame whose lip movements are not in synchronization with the sound  (just like everybody in the movies) and who looks suspiciously like the anthropomorphic blue flame from television public service announcements who talks like he just took a hit of helium, and, ironically enough, is constantly sounding the alarm about gas leaks.

       The Kabbalists say that on a certain level, life is all about numbers. 18 for example. Thus, even for the below-average, the unremarkable, the slackers, as it were, there awaits in the world beyond a life tally of sorts. And what might that tally look like for those of us in this group -- Group D (aside from the fact that priority seating is pretty much out of the question)? Let us consider a sample.

Number of hours stared at rotating hourglass on computer screen: 476,342


Number of times Lord's Name  (or reasonable facsimile thereof) taken in vain for stupidest of reasons, such as missing the wastebasket after attempting a Karim Abdul Jabbar-type basketball hook shot with a wadded-up piece of paper --  even tho standing right over it (the wastebasket, that is) 9,003.

Number of pens lost: 5 million.

Number of calls from Special Olympics and B'Nai B'rith, and the Policeman's Benevolent Ball Committee screened and not answered: 42,003.

Number of people addressed as "hey!" because, even with a loaded gun pointed at your head, you could not remember their names: 978.

Number of double-A batteries purchased unnecessarily because the ones taking cover under the plastic take-out menu from the HFTKH (Happy Fun Time Kosher Hunan) in the middle kitchen drawer under the counter where the fruit bowl lives refuse to step forward, and, in a nice clear voice, announce:  "Yoohoo!  Here we are! Over here! We've never been used!  We're still in the original sealed container!")  14,576.

      You get the gist.  The little things in life add up. But unless you go around keeping track in spiral notebooks wrapped in brown paper packages tied up with string and stacked efficiently but uselessly at the bedside, you don't know the sum total of their weight until it no longer matters. As Moss Hart reminded us, you can't take it with you.

     Still, aren't you dying to know the number of times over an entire lifetime that the waiter averted his gaze and pretended not to hear you calling him by name ("hey!") despite your aura of self-importance tinged with starvation (771)? Wouldn't you, at long last, like to be reunited with all those socks (536)? Would you not like to know just how many minutes you waited for your call (the one that is very important to us) to be answered by "John" (104,976)?

     True, there is no life-saving in the kind of production described here. Mostly finger-tapping and suchlike.  But My Dinner With Andre was just a couple of guys sitting in a restaurant talking for 110 minutes (exclusive of the credits), and the critics who use words of many letters fawned all the same.

     Thus, even the unremarkable have a tale to tell. It's just that, deciding whether to go to the restroom in the middle isn't so much of a dilemma.




(number of words wasted on this post:  2,345).