Federal court makes right call on evolution in school

Being Fank/Frank Ameduri

To get by in a world with too much to do and too little time, we must objectify one another. The humans we meet become simply part of the mechanism we use to get from one task to the next.

Even if you put a name tag on her, the checker at the market is not Thelma; she's a part of the cash register, and we expect her to function properly. We don't expect the cash register to forget the code for Tanzanian Milkwart Fruit, or to stop and have a conversation with one of the other shopping things in line in front of us.

These dehumanizing thoughts often create unreasonable expectations - after all, the truth is we really are just a bunch of stressed-out, fragile humans. Objectification allows us to forget that, and it makes us believe the rest of the machine is only there for our benefit.

During college I worked as a bellman for a major hotel chain. One day I was standing out under the carport, waiting for someone with luggage and tip money to arrive. Not a person, just a human thing with bags and cash.

A car sped into the parking lot and screeched to a halt in front of me. It was the frantic sort of driving undercover cops are wont to do in the movies. A woman emerged from the driver's side. Her hair erupted in a wild plume on one side of her head, obviously ratted by sweaty, manic fingers.

"I need to get back to the airport," she shouted. There were sweat stains under her armpits, and I thought I could see two or three false fingernails sticking out of the steering wheel.

"Well," I said. "There are two different ways to go … "

"I want to go back the same way I came!" The woman was nearly psychotic at the possibility of missing her flight.

"Hmm," I said. "I can get you to the end of the parking lot, but I'm kind of at a loss after that."

It was true. I had no idea how she had gotten to the hotel, and by the looks of her, it wasn't by one of the preferred routes. She jumped back into her car and squealed out of the parking lot.

She'd needed me to be a fully functional direction-and-information kiosk, and I'd turned out to be only a starving college student/bellman. I wore a name tag, but to her I was just a faulty piece of equipment in the grand machine that was ruining her life.

Another person ran afoul of a slipping human gear over this Christmas holiday.

I received a short letter from an unidentified person. For the sake of simplicity, I'll guess it was a woman, but there's no telling.

She explained an emotional run-in with Santa Claus. She'd taken her child to the mall to see the Jolly Elf. It was the end of a long day. The child delivered the sacred list and then there was a negotiation over the photo. Santa wanted four bucks for the standard photo, and the woman didn't have the cash. Santa apparently wasn't bursting with holiday generosity. The woman asked if she could just take her own photo. "Ho, ho, ho" started sounding like, "No, no, no."

It wasn't in the spirit of Christmas, the woman insisted. What about the fragile psyche of this child who might get the idea Santa was little more than a materialistic money grubber. Never mind that the young man had just delivered a laundry list of goodies he'd hoped to nab free of charge.

The thing is, I did some checking. The guy in the mall wasn't the real Santa that day.

The real Santa was in New York State Supreme Court, fighting a copyright infringement suit filed by Mattel. The photo Santa was just some guy trying to make a few bucks for the holidays. He spent long days in a ridiculous red felt suit, dealing with an onslaught of cranky children and crankier parents. He was asking $4 per photo for his trouble. He was selling an enchanted illusion for less than the cost of two Happy Meals.

But we forget that, because we're too busy. To the photo Santa, the woman was part of an economic process. To the woman, the guy was a holiday prop. He could have been made of plastic, with a speaker instead of a mouth. They each walked away with the wrong impression. They each walked away thinking they'd simply gotten their fingers caught in a clanky part of the great machine.

I guess what I'm saying is, "Sorry Thelma. The truth is, I don't know the code for Belgian Tree Mushrooms either."

Frank Ameduri malfunctions on a regular basis … get over it.