The Traveler

“You haven’t gone yet? You should go. It’s the right time of year. It’s wonderful with all that space, and those views, and not a tourist in sight. I wish everybody could go.

“What? What did I…? Oh. That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? Like ‘nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.’ But that really is how it goes. Whenever we find something that’s really a jewel, people just descend on it until they suffocate it. I can’t even go to Venice anymore. I swear it’s sinking out of embarrassment.

“If we were smart, really smart, we wouldn’t blab about things like that. We’d organize a guild or a secret society. We’d have apprenticeships and an initiation. Seven years of studying languages, and etiquette, and survival skills to become an Honorable Traveler with the right to visit. Plus another ten years of study before you get to take a camera.

“Instead, we love it so much we have to tell somebody about it. And they have to tell somebody and we all love it to death.

“Maybe that’s too harsh. I don’t want to seem elitist. The fact is I pity the tourists even more than I pity the places they ruin. They have no way out. They cross oceans and continents but they pack their boredom, and ignorance, and petulance.

“I don’t know why they bother, unless it’s because they still have that instinct that tells them growing up means leaving home. But no matter how far they go, they drag home along behind. It’s not even travel; it’s just a change of venue.”

The Entrepreneur

“Did I ever tell you about my grandfather? Of course I didn’t. He was nobody. He spent his whole life at the factory, retired, boom, dropped dead. That’s the one thing I’ve been afraid of my whole life, turning out like him, a nobody with nothing to show for himself, nothing to show he ever existed except for a chip of stone at the veterans’ cemetery. Which one? I don’t know. I have his medals around here somewhere.

“After I’m gone, people need to know I was here. They need to know my name, and remember me. I want to be up there with the greats. I want to leave a legacy. For all he did with his life my grandfather might as well never have been born. My life has to mean something. The world has to be different because I lived in it. So thanks for your concern, but I’m fine. And I kind of have to get back to work, so if that’s all…”

The Early Adopter

“People are afraid of the future. I can understand that. The one thing we know for sure about the future is that everything’s going to go wrong, am I right? You’re going to get older, and your marriage will fall apart, and your kids will speak a different language and listen to bad music.

“But I’m in love with the future, because while I’m getting older, and getting shaky and confused, something else is happening. Technology is accelerating so fast that even as I’m coming apart the space of what I can do gets bigger and bigger.

“I may need thicker glasses, but I can talk to somebody in China on a video phone. I may be out of shape, but I can carry a thousand books in my pocket. My hearing, maybe, isn’t as good as it used to be, but I have my own personal pocket radio station that plays all my favorites and follows me everywhere.

“So, sure, it’s true. Maybe if I wait a year the next model will be better and cheaper and they’ll have the bugs worked out and that thing everybody hates, they’ll have changed that. But I’m not getting any younger in the meantime.

“You be sensible. What’s one more year of circling the drain? Mine’s on pre-order.”

The Miser

[New feature; the idea is something between Theophrastus and Browning, like the “letters” in the periodical essay series without the framing device.]

“I learned something very early on. I saw that you can survive without friends, and you can survive without money, but it has to be one or the other. And I turned out to be much better at making money than I was at making friends.

“I don’t have anything against people who go the other way. Everybody wants to give you a hand – great! Nobody ever gave me a hand. They wanted me to beg and I wouldn’t beg. So I did it on my own, and then – it’s true – I rubbed their noses in it. That’s only natural, if you don’t take it too far.

“I’m not happy; who’s happy? I know money isn’t happiness; I’m not stupid. But I don’t have any regrets because I never had a choice. I wish you people understood that. I wish you people didn’t look at me like I’d gone over to the dark side.

“I know what it is. It’s because you need me and you don’t want to admit it. It’s resentment. Your friends can’t do anything for you unless they have money, and when you follow the money what do you find? You find me. If I tagged my money the way they tag migrating birds, you’d be amazed how far it goes.

“Miser? I’m the most generous guy in the world. In fact I’m the only generous guy in the world, because it’s my money to start with. It doesn’t count when it’s somebody else’s money.”