Taken Somehow By Surprise

A Pocket Guide to Trouble

69 i. Genesis: Making Trouble In those first days on the job—when God was just a beginner in a hurry, no real résumé to speak of, when finally it was light enough for Him to see what He was doing— surely He must have been thinking, Don’t let there be trouble, but He blew the line when He delivered the official, out-loud word of God. And there was trouble. He had all the time in the world, but no one knew yet how long that would turn out to be. And after the backbreaking week He’d put in already, He wasn’t about to start over. A Pocket Guide to Trouble 70 ii. The Epistemology If it looks like trouble and it sounds like trouble and you can’t stop yourself from asking everyone you see, What, exactly, seems to be the trouble? then, okay, this time it’s absolutely going to be trouble, or else another one of those goddamn, less-than-obvious ducks. 71 iii. The Mechanics of Trouble From the look on your face, I’m guessing it’s major car trouble— transmission, brakes, or engine. But even a cracked block is nothing, compared to woman trouble, heart trouble that speaks for itself— the kind that’s guaranteed to really set you back: it’s the labor, not the parts. We’ll get to you, one way or the other, first thing in the morning. We’ll let you know whatever we find that’s not quite beyond repair. You’ll tell us what you can and can’t afford. 72 iv. Commuters in Trouble Odysseus found himself going to an awful lot of it just trying to get home. Jimmy Stewart, too, near the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. 73 v. The Worst-Ever Political Advice (U.S. Edition), Expressed Here as a Trouble-Filled Couplet of Epic Proportions Let Nixon be Nixon. 74 vi. At the Border of Switzerland and Trouble Even with millions of those red army knives and no standing army to speak of, the Swiss have somehow managed to stay out of it. 75 vii. Theatrically Speaking, We’ve Got Trouble right here in River City, where the Dejà-Vu-and-Blue-Hair Community Players never seem to run out of musicals. Or else they do. And believe me, that’s trouble too—with a capital T that rhymes with D and that stands for Death of a Salesman, which they’ve overhauled, lightened up, led to its song-and-dance slaughter. In the moving words of Willy Loman’s wife, Attention must be paid—although she sings them now in some unaccountably jaunty Calypso fashion. Willy’s thankfully still a salesman by day, but he’s moonlighting as, of all things, an amateur thespian. Every night he brings down the house, desperately invoking his imagined former glory: They loved me in Oklahoma! 76 viii. Trouble Knows a Few Tricks Because my novelist friend is a fan of those huge nineteenth-century novels, he named his enormous, real-life dog Trouble, as in Trouble climbed into bed with us this morning. Call for Trouble and he comes. Sits. Lies down. But he won’t roll over. Won’t play dead for anyone. Not as long as he still remembers every bone he’s ever buried with a real-life vengeance. 77 ix. What Is the Sound of Questions Getting Harder? A Buddhist who isn’t sure about the sound of two hands clapping is clearly a Buddhist already in trouble. 78 x. The Classic Overachiever Jesus, facing the multitude with five loaves and two fishes long before the advent of cole slaw as a side dish: predictably, another miracle—no trouble at all. 79 xi. Sometimes Trouble Isn’t on the Menu Like decent pizza in Nebraska—by now you should know better than to go asking for it. 80 xii. Like the Mountain Coming to Mohammed, Trouble will certainly find you. It knows where you live. One of these days the roof will spring its leak, the stove will go out for good, the...