Helen Chappell - November 2011

General Manager of the Universe

by

Helen Chappell

I’ve got a great deal to be thankful for this time of year. For instance, if I look in the obituaries and don’t see my name, it’s a good day. I’ve been blessed with many other people and things I’m grateful to have in my life, but the beginning of the holiday season is also a time to take stock of your own behavior and remind your self about one or two tiny, weeny little faults you might have that absolutely no one else would ever, ever notice. No, really! Except for those beensy weensy little chinks in the old armor, you’re just fine. Really.
As I contemplate the Hallmark cornucopia of clichés that define the holidays, I am forced to remind myself that not only am I a recovering drama queen, I have also resigned as general manager of the universe.
Older folks are probably familiar with the long-running comic strip Mary Worth, in which a genteel, white-haired lady meddles in the affairs of her friends and neighbors. Under her gentle pushy guidance, lovers are united, marital problems solved, cures for disease are discovered, the good are rewarded and the bad punished. Is it any wonder I have a T-shirt with a picture of my pop culture goddess saying, “You look like you could use some advice”? Moi, je suis Marie de Worth!
I can’t help myself. I am, after all, a writer, which is the greatest excuse in the world to ask a lot of impertinent questions and try to interfere in other people’s lives. There are things general managers of the universe do. We stay up nights worrying about other people’s problems, and we always seem to know just what other people should do. Ask me! I have the answer!
If the corn crop is ruined and the soybeans are just fine this year, the farmers don’t need my thoughts on it. If my neighbor’s wife runs off with the woman she met in WCI, it’s not my problem and there is nothing I can do about it, and any help I offer will be looked upon as an intrusion into a private and painful matter.
My trainer’s girlfriend is not my business, and he doesn’t have to show me a picture of her if he doesn’t want to. The friend’s wayward child who ends up in the juvenile detention system will not benefit from my “help.”
With my interfering ways, I can just add to the misery. No one wants my opinion on who struck John, and if I learn to just keep my mouth shut and offer neither advice nor help, I could avoid a lot, and I do mean a lot of trouble.
I come by my vocation of general manager of the universe naturally. My mother and the aunt who helped raise me were both general managers. I studied graduate level interfering at the feet of many Eastern Shore ladies who had perfected the art and made ministering to the afflicted, clucking over the affected and generally minding other people’s business with practiced finesse.
You can only learn to be a general manager of the universe from experts passing on their art from generation to generation. It’s kind of like witchcraft, although I shouldn’t say that. General managers only think they can practice magic. It’s good hard work that carries the hapless and the troubled over a bridge they had no idea they needed to cross until you came along.
Some say meddling is a sign of an empty, lonely life, and general managers of the universe have too much time on their hands. A former minister told one example of this to me. It seems his parishioners from Woolford used to creep up to Church Creek at night and check his trash cans for liquor bottles. Empties, one presumes ... dead soldiers. Now, what they hoped to accomplish by this I don’t know. But that’s bad general managing.
If you must be a general manager of the universe, remember that you must use your powers for good, not evil. Snooping in people’s trash cans is not appropriate, unless they are celebrities, who signed up for this sort of thing and should expect it. Or, if you are a hoarder, but that’s another story entirely, and just wait until I tell you that one.
Anyway, like hoarding and other disorders, overcoming the urge to be general manager of the universe takes a lot of practice and constant vigilance. If you hear yourself advising a young friend on what school to attend and what to major in, for instance, you’re having a slip.
If you start telling the cashier at Chic-Fil-A that she needs to change the color of her nail polish, you’re sliding straight to hell. Go ahead. Have a couple of margaritas and tell this guy you barely know that he’s not raising his kids the way you think he should. You’re beyond hope.
These and many other reasons are why we need to periodically take inventory of ourselves and nip that general managing backsliding in the bud, to mix metaphors.
Like hate, general managing only damages the vessel in which it is stored. While the general manager frets and stews over Who’s going to run the Strawberry Festival now that Edna has passed, others are quietly assuming the work. All that fretting, meddling and interfering generally comes to naught, since your victims have long since learned to ignore your advice and offers of help, however well intentioned. People like to make their own decisions, thank me very much. Just thinking about this makes me want to bang my head on my computer screen.
Yes, I am resolved, this holiday season, to have another black rum drink and keep my thoughts to myself. If you want my opinion, you can ask for it.

Helen Chappell is the creator of the Sam And Hollis mystery series and the Oysterback stories, as well as The Chesapeake Book of the Dead. Under her pen name, Rebecca Baldwin, she has published a number of historical novels.