Time dilates during a Near Real-Time Narration
"Dad, can I tell you something?" my son asked. "Sure, buddy, " I replied, hoping to hear some of the "true facts" and other misinformation that third graders delight in, such as how much killer whales poop. Discussions of these and other slightly naughtier topics (usually booger or poop-related) are accompanied by the special cackle of a kid getting away with something in plain sight and loving it – a sound I love.
The usual data source for this mischief is a charming classmate, the apple of everyone's eye, whom for the sake of privacy we'll call Zbigniew Brzezinski. Of course, Zbigniew doesn’t make up all this stuff himself; his bigger brother imparts this wisdom. (Again, for anonymity, let's call the older brother Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.)
It seems that Zbigniew and Archduke Franz enjoy a pretty tolerant household policy when it comes to movies. Having watched the entire "Blood Spattering Cheerleader Vixens" series one Saturday afternoon, they then proceeded to give an AB-negative pint-by-pint replay to an awestruck kinder-klatch at recess.
So, I'm mentally preparing to debunk, or to defuse, or to warn him never to speak those words again, or to explain that when moms and dads love each other very, very much, they sometimes… "It’s about this Wii game that Zbigniew was playing the other day," my boy begins. "You know that part in Mario Galaxy? With the diamonds? Well, Zbigniew says that when he got to the third level? and goes WHOOSH! around this target?..."
A mixture of relief and dread washes over me. No 'splaining required today; BUT, I've been cornered by the twin specters of the Near Real-Time Narration, and the Dreaded Question Voice.
"And then he pushes the B button?" he continues, "And he goes WHOOSH over this big canyon thing?" The Dreaded Question Voice: Every phrase is a question, a request for affirmation from the listener that the message has been received, absorbed, and understood before the next nugget of knowledge is disgorged. Sometimes called upspeak or High Rising Intonation, it's commonly thought of as Valley Girl speech. No matter what it's called, it drives me crazy, like the overused "like" drives me crazy, like the peculiarly Kenosha usage of past participle "seen" as substitute for the perfect tense "saw" drives me crazy.
"Uh-huh." I mumble, striving to pay some attention. I want to treasure my son, I do, and I want to care about his interests. But hearing third-hand about a video game stretches my feigned interest to the edge, especially when rendered as a Near Real Time Narration: a story whose telling takes nearly as long as experiencing the actions being described. Worst cases of this: plotlines from movies you'd never wish to see are unspooled for your benefit at nearly ninety minutes of painstakingly detailed description; stroke-by-stroke golf match wrap-ups worthy of ESPN announcers; or "this really funny joke I saw on the Internet," which turns out to be not so funny after being dragged through the speaker's narrative wilderness like a buck on a branch A-frame.
To be sure, I rail at this behavior while freely admitting myself to be a horrid perpetrator. "A bore," Miss Emily Post reminds us, "is one who talks about himself when you want to talk about yourself." I too can dislodge the proverbial buzzard from the proverbial wagon by expounding on (choose any): obscure jazz guitarists; ignored speed limits in school zones; the largely unmourned loss of civility; the terrific Battlestar Galactica on Sci-Fi; et endless cetera. And maybe the only difference between the Near Real-Time Narrator and me is that you can close the newspaper right now. You're not trapped into reading more.
I, however, spew forth increasing volumes of narrative, ever since Facebook slapped itself onto my back like the Flying Pancakes on Star Trek, seized control of my higher brain functions and compelled me to share every viral video, favorite album track and way that my life today is described by an '80s movie title. Oh, heavens. I used to be a privacy freak; now my daily count of sneezes, caloric intake and estimated days until haircut have become data points in the cloud. We need not fear the replicating pods from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." No, our places will be taken by impostors who have gleaned from our Facebook pages every detail required to emulate us except the mysterious wine-colored birthmark behind my left knee. Now that's public knowledge too. Honey, I'll miss you.
Sadly, I can't stop. I am the accomplished master of the 250-word article, and this feeds my passion. (That's why less than a third of this essay is coherent; I'm in 'way over my head.) Within the 160-character span of a txt msg, a Facebook status update, or a Twitter tweet, I can encapsulate joy, pain, anxiety, pathos, bathos, Athos, Porthos and Aramis; brew fame, bottle fortune, and even put a stopper in death itself --with 16 characters to spare! Facebook resembles this weird high school reunion where everyone walks around starting conversations, but they're not sure how to keep them going, or whether they're supposed to keep moving around all night. The only solution is to keep adding stuff to keep it interesting; and to add material frequently, as in, curse the luck, Near Real-Time.
Still, as a work-at-home freelance writer, tech geek, and job-seeker (interested? call me!), there are times I find myself morphing into the home-parent who emails the office-working spouse every twenty minutes with just one more detail left dangling from the previous evening. If I could just get my sweet wife to subscribe to my FriendFeed, I wouldn’t have to do this, and she could learn the pooping capacity of killer whales for herself in Near Real-Time, without having to rely on Zbigniew Brzezinski.