Message For You People - Friday Flash
School had been useless on the subject. In a set of lessons puzzlingly labelled ‘Civics’, he learned about responsible sex, the perils of smoking and the importance of jury service if you are called. So when his first general election loomed as the country lurched from one crisis to another, he was none the wiser as to whom he should cast his vote for. But at least he didn’t smoke and practised safe, textbook sex wholly within marriage.
He decided reading newspapers ought to be a good place to educate himself. He bought those that could be rolled up and slipped into the back trouser pocket. And he bought those that opened out like a miniature tent in front of him and which on Sundays came with a million different pull out sections, although most of these seemed to wholly contain adverts and articles about how other people lived. At the end of any day trying to fully imbibe the contents, his hands were covered in black ink, the inside of his rear trouser pocket smeared in red ink from the masthead.
But it was when he went outside for his commute to work that he was really assailed by newsprint. The free sheets given out by vendors and readily discarded by the train travellers, scooped up from the pavement by the gusts of air pushed up from the subterranean tracks as the trains headed for the tunnels, circled him like predators and plastered themselves to him. He became like a papier mâché man, covered head to foot in cloying print. But none of it was able to inform his political choices.
Once the election campaign got underway, he was besieged by candidates and their foot soldiers door stopping him. He was powerless to resist, since Jehovah’s Witnesses had pinned him to their discourse for hours on end because ‘Civics’ hadn’t taught him how to disengage from importunate solicitations. The difference this time was that these door-to-door pedlars were on a tight schedule, so that they were loath to stray from their doorstep roster. Little more than a handshake, a mention of their name and a pointing to the colour of the rosette on their lapel and then they pressed their leaflets and pamphlets into his hand, or anywhere on his body. And since he lived in an important marginal seat, the flow of such political opportunists was never-ending. Barely had he closed the door on one group, when their adversaries were knocking at the door and he opened it still with the rival paperwork in hand. Gradually his fists were so full of glossy paper, they started thrusting their anywhere they could make it stick on his body. Under his armpits, between his knees. They even started planting them on his face. He himself looked like a political billboard where the parties wages war to make their handbills the most prominent. It was only the thoughtfulness of the Green candidate who gingerly poked a hole through the bills covering his mouth and nostrils so that he could breathe. But for all their commitment to recycling and conservation of scarce resources, the Greens too pressed their tracts upon his person.
Politics was making him angry. Now when he sat down in front of the television, it was no longer to try and understand the policies and the philosophy of each party, but to rail at their representatives. And when the Prime Minister himself appeared on screen and began to project his platitudes, he shouted at the set. He demanded to reverse the flow of the cathode rays, or the plasma ions or the higgs boson or whatever powered the image, and beam his views back to the transmitters, back, back through the studio, further back through the camera lens. He wanted his primal scream to deafen those assistant producers and floor managers through their headphones, to squeal his pain strident enough to burst their eardrums and for it to reverberate across the airwaves of the country. His message for the people.
His wife shouted at him to stop shouting at the telly.
He decided reading newspapers ought to be a good place to educate himself. He bought those that could be rolled up and slipped into the back trouser pocket. And he bought those that opened out like a miniature tent in front of him and which on Sundays came with a million different pull out sections, although most of these seemed to wholly contain adverts and articles about how other people lived. At the end of any day trying to fully imbibe the contents, his hands were covered in black ink, the inside of his rear trouser pocket smeared in red ink from the masthead.
But it was when he went outside for his commute to work that he was really assailed by newsprint. The free sheets given out by vendors and readily discarded by the train travellers, scooped up from the pavement by the gusts of air pushed up from the subterranean tracks as the trains headed for the tunnels, circled him like predators and plastered themselves to him. He became like a papier mâché man, covered head to foot in cloying print. But none of it was able to inform his political choices.
Once the election campaign got underway, he was besieged by candidates and their foot soldiers door stopping him. He was powerless to resist, since Jehovah’s Witnesses had pinned him to their discourse for hours on end because ‘Civics’ hadn’t taught him how to disengage from importunate solicitations. The difference this time was that these door-to-door pedlars were on a tight schedule, so that they were loath to stray from their doorstep roster. Little more than a handshake, a mention of their name and a pointing to the colour of the rosette on their lapel and then they pressed their leaflets and pamphlets into his hand, or anywhere on his body. And since he lived in an important marginal seat, the flow of such political opportunists was never-ending. Barely had he closed the door on one group, when their adversaries were knocking at the door and he opened it still with the rival paperwork in hand. Gradually his fists were so full of glossy paper, they started thrusting their anywhere they could make it stick on his body. Under his armpits, between his knees. They even started planting them on his face. He himself looked like a political billboard where the parties wages war to make their handbills the most prominent. It was only the thoughtfulness of the Green candidate who gingerly poked a hole through the bills covering his mouth and nostrils so that he could breathe. But for all their commitment to recycling and conservation of scarce resources, the Greens too pressed their tracts upon his person.
Politics was making him angry. Now when he sat down in front of the television, it was no longer to try and understand the policies and the philosophy of each party, but to rail at their representatives. And when the Prime Minister himself appeared on screen and began to project his platitudes, he shouted at the set. He demanded to reverse the flow of the cathode rays, or the plasma ions or the higgs boson or whatever powered the image, and beam his views back to the transmitters, back, back through the studio, further back through the camera lens. He wanted his primal scream to deafen those assistant producers and floor managers through their headphones, to squeal his pain strident enough to burst their eardrums and for it to reverberate across the airwaves of the country. His message for the people.
His wife shouted at him to stop shouting at the telly.
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