The Spy in the Ointment

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I was trying to fix the damn mimeograph machine when the doorbell rang. It wasn’t the crank this time — usually it’s the crank, falling off or disengaging or whatever — but something in the inking process. (Oh! Did you think I meant the man at the door wasn’t a crank? No no, I meant the machine. People at doors are always cranks. In fact, people everywhere are always cranks, one way and another, if you stop to think about it. Aren’t they?) At any rate, the machine wouldn’t ink. I’d crank and crank, and into the chute would slide an endless stream of blank paper. (Of course, for all the effect I’ve had over the years, I might as well have been rolling out blank paper from the beginning.)

But never mind that, that’s neither here nor there. (The main obstacle to my effectiveness, I’ve always felt, has been this uncontrollable tendency of mine to go off on tangents, stray from the subject, lose — as Christopher Fry puts it — eternity in the passing moment. [Minute? Moment? (There! See what I mean?)]) The point here is the doorbell, and who rang it.

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