Future Doc : ‘Gee, Mister,’ the Boy Went On, ‘Everyone Knows What a Lamborghini Is’

I HAD JUST cinched myself into Flight 147 to Minneapolis, the seat belt dividing my paunch into a northern and southern hemisphere, which reminded me of the arthritis, the little veins on the nose, the creeping baldness, bifocals, wrinkles, cholesterol--all the anxieties of a modern, educated man coming up on 40, the top of the Great Divide when your 20s get sight of your 60s off in the distance, everything made dim and hazy by the cultural smog of the ‘80s; the pursuit of pleasure while the population explodes, nukes multiply, crime spreads. As I said, I had just cinched myself in when a clear, high-pitched voice shattered my concentration and said, “Hey, mister! Can I get in?”

I looked up to find myself facing a boy of about 12 clutching an airline ticket in one hand, a tote bag in the other, and radiating pure, uncontaminated youth. His skin was as fresh and clear as an apricot’s; his hair hung shiny and brown over his forehead; his wrists stuck out from the sleeves of a plaid polyester jacket; his clear, brown eyes darted back and forth from my face to the seat next to me. It was probably his first flight, and his enthusiasm was somehow catching, even to a man slipping down the hill. So I did what the old must do: “Sure,” I said.

He clambered over me using the break-dance method, and then he settled into his seat. This means that he immediately began to investigate the buttons, levers and twist-tubes the airline offers for the satisfaction of its customers, and after several minutes of flashing lights, cold bursts of air pulsating on top of my head and several seat-back wallops to the knees of the man behind, the boy turned his attention to me.

Was I going to Minneapolis, too? What was I going to do there? Where did I live? He was going to visit his “real” dad and wondered how three hours in the air felt. Despite myself I began to develop an affection for the boy, and while the plane took off and he sat with his forehead stuck to the window I began to wonder about his future. What would become of him? What were his ambitions, his desires, his tastes, his values? Here was a young Homo sapiens in the process of being shaped into a human being, and molding his values were the late ‘70s and mid-’80s. He had been nursed on TV and movies, punk rock, video games and other cultural junk food. He had cut his teeth on divorce, TV news, chain-saw massacres, the rise of drugs and a whole lexicon of undistinguished turpitudes. It was odd, though--he looked normal. I had to find out if he was. I wanted to see what kind of a job my generation was doing.

“So--what do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked with calculated offhandedness.

“A doctor,” he replied, without missing a beat.

“A doctor, huh? What kind of doctor? There’s all different kinds, you know.”

“Well--I don’t know how to say it--you know, when people want to be perfect?”

This was no ordinary kid. “Want to be perfect? No--well, I’m not sure I do. I’m just trying to stay the way I am, never mind being perfect.”

“You know,” he persisted, “the kind of doctor who makes people perfect !”

“Perfect--no, I can’t come up with it. Can you guess what these doctors are called?”

“I don’t know what they’re called. They just make people perfect!”

Apparently we had reached an impasse, and as there was only one kind of doctor remotely associated with perfection, I took a stab at it.

“Do you mean a plastic surgeon?”

“Yeah, that’s it! A plastic surgeon! And then, in about 20 or 30 years, I’ll become one of those sillo-, those soli-, sig-. Darn. I can’t ever say that word. A sillogist?”

“A psychologist,” I announced, figuring that one out right away.

“No--that’s not it.”

This time I answered with considerably less confidence. “A psychiatrist?”

“Yeah! A psychiatrist!” A short pause while he recharged. “Then I’ll get me a Lamborghini!”

“A Ligger-, a Lagbur-. A what?” I asked, caught completely off guard by this six-foot word from a boy who couldn’t say “plastic surgeon.”

“A Lambor ghini ,” he repeated. “You know--the car !”

He stopped for a second and gave me a long, curious look.

“Gee, mister,” he went on, “everyone knows what a Lamborghini is.”

I sat back for a moment to think about that. It was one thing for a boy to want to be a doctor when he grew up, but this avalanche of ambition was more than I had bargained for. It was the values that made me pause. It was almost like working in a darkroom, bathing a print in developing fluid: The notions and values that the times had exposed him to were now taking active, living shape in his emerging mind.

“So, you think doctors make a lot of money, huh?” I asked, wondering how deep the medical ambition lay.

“Yeah,” he said, matter-of-fact. “And then I’ll get me a couple of houses. One on the West Coast and one in the East.”

“Where do you think you’ll buy--what cities?”

“Well, I’ll want to be in a city that’s not too backward and not too modern, either.”

I was amazed at the kid’s sophistication and said, “You mean a place like Long Beach?”

“No--too crowded. I want a place with lots of bushes and trees--someplace like Yosemite.” There was a delay of a few seconds while the significance of what he’d just said sank into his mind. Then he boomed out: “Yeah! That’s what I want! I’ll live in Yosemite!”

“You’ll have to be careful,” I said, playing devil’s advocate. “If you get too far away from your patients, they won’t be able to get to your office for the plastic surgery. Then you won’t make any money.”

“No problem. I’ll get a private jet.”

“But then you’ll need an airstrip for the jet to land, with a hotel and all--a regular little airport, and--”

“And a mansion, too!” he interjected. But then there was a shift of mood; something seemed to interfere with his reveries and his forehead wrinkled with frustration.

“Nah,” he said after maybe five seconds. “Actually, I don’t want a mansion--too hard to keep clean.”

Despair never had a chance, though. “I know! I’ll live on a boat!”

At this point the stewardess arrived with a meal cart, cutting the conversation cold. My young friend required several minutes to devour dinner, and then he squirmed out into the aisle to visit the restroom. He spent the rest of the voyage exploring the aircraft and talking with the flight crew.

And so it was until the captain recalled us to our seats for the approach to Minneapolis. I sat strapped into my life, my age, my seat, the Earth rushing past at 250 miles per hour, my knuckles white with rock-crushing anxiety, and I glanced over at this child of the ‘80s. He sat there transfixed, staring out the window with not a concern in the world for the physics of landing, for that awful moment when man and machine pay the non-negotiable price of physical reality and the hurtling aircraft drags its momentum along the concrete strip of destiny. But as the moment of truth approached, a feeling of great, analgesic relief swept over me, for I knew that despite growing up in these times and picking up some of its values, underneath it all he was pure goodness with a core of enthusiasm, ingenuity and vaulting ambition. “A nose job in Yosemite!” I blurted out. “What a smashing idea!” The kid would go far in life.

Then I sat back, and relaxed in the absolute confidence that I would be in good hands someday, when I had run up many more miles and become a really old man.