When I first read Fahrenheit 451, I was in grade nine, and though I liked it, I was too young and inexperienced a reader (and person) to get much more than the basics of the plot from it. When I tried again in university, I abandoned the protagonist, Guy Montag, and his wife, Mildred, in their parlour, hashing it out over the books Guy had been secreting away in the duct work. Finally, in October of last year, while visiting with my grandparents in Stratford, Ontario, I saw a copy of the 50th anniversary paperback of Fahrenheit 451 sitting on the shelf in Fanfare Books and I bought it (my previous copy was lost in one of my many moves all over Ontario) and tried reading it again.

The third time was the charm; this time, I really read it. I didn’t just skim it, I didn’t turn the pages and let osmosis do the rest, I really read it. I really thought about what I was reading, and the more attention I paid to the words and ideas, the more I felt like I was seeing pieces of our present and glimpses of our future.

This books gave me the chills.

The plot is still more or less as I remembered it from grade nine: Guy Montag is a Fireman, and his job is to start fires. He burns books that have been banned, because their contents make people think, and that makes them unhappy. It isn’t until he meets Clarisse McClellan, a young girl considered crazy because she enjoys thinking and imagining, that Montag begins to question the world he lives in, but when he does, his world falls apart pretty quickly.

As the story moves forward, as I met all  the characters and really listened to what they were saying and thinking, I kept being surprised by the parts that were so much like our own world. Consider this passage from the book:

Montag’s wife has overdosed on sleeping pills, and Montag has called in help to rescue and revive her. Two machines are brought in by two operators: one to pump her stomach clean, the other to replace her pill-saturated blood with clean blood.

The operator stood smoking a cigarette…”Got to clean ‘em out both ways,” said the operator, standing over the silent woman. “No use getting the stomach if you don’t clean the blood. Leave that stuff in the blood and the blood hits the brain like a mallet, bang, a couple thousand times and the brain just gives up, just quits.”

“Stop it!” said Montag.

“I was just sayin’,” said the operator.

“Are you done?” said Montag.

…”We’re done.” His anger did not even touch them. They stood with the cigarette smoke curling around their noses and into their eyes without making them blink or squint.

“That’s fifty bucks.”

…”Neither of you is an M.D. Why didn’t they send an M.D. from Emergency?”

“Hell,…you don’t need an M.D., case like this, all you need is two handymen, clean up the problem in half an hour.”

It’s as if an overdose is no more problematic than a leaf-clogged gutter. Just clean it up, and bob’s yer uncle. No need for a doctor, or personalized attention at all. Just send in a couple of guys with a machine.

While I sincerely hope that our health care system will never get to this point, I can relate to the impersonal treatment that Montag’s wife receives. I know not all doctors are like that: bored, indifferent, and kind of rude – but too many of them are. I’ve had appointments with doctors who spent the entire appointment staring at a laptop and barely even glanced at me. I would have bet money that if you’d put me in a line-up five minutes later, they wouldn’t have been able to pick me out.

This passage about schooling in Montag’s world (as spoken by his boss, Beatty) caught my attention too:

“School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected…Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright’, and did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.”

Sounds like our modern ideas about social promotion to me. And given that classes are getting larger and that teachers have very little authority over their students, I could see there being a proposal to shorten the school day, lighten the homework requirements, and forego discipline altogether – and I could see that proposal getting some serious consideration, too. I know, and have known, teachers – even English teachers – who have overlooked poor spelling and grammar because “the ideas were good”. They didn’t want to fail a student and deal with angry parents, hurt feelings, or the possibility of having what little authority they do have undermined by an unsupportive administration who passes the kid anyway. I could talk for pages and pages about the bullying epidemic going on in our schools today – and it’s not just the “bright boy” who is being bullied either, there’s a lot of kids who get tormented everyday by their so-called peers for a lot of different reasons, or no reason at all.

And Beatty says this to Montag in regard to books:

“You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right?…Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book…Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information…And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”

We still – still! – ban books because the subject matter is upsetting in some way; because the book might bring to light or trigger our less than savoury characteristics and beliefs:  racism, homophobia, cruelty, murder, greed, corruption, religious intolerance, cowardice, rudeness, selfishness, and any number of other flaws. We seem to prefer that the uncomfortable bits of books be taken out, or cleaned up and sanitized. We would rather speak incomprehensible, ‘politically correct’ gibberish to each other than speak plainly, because we don’t want to risk upsetting anyone. We’d rather ban a book (or burn it) than explain it or learn from it.

Montag and Beatty, their observations and explanations, the similarities of their world to mine…this book raises so many questions for me! It makes me wonder, is Ray Bradbury right – are there too many machines now? Are we in the process of building Montag’s world for ourselves? Is our technology helping us, or holding us back?  Are we getting further away from each other despite all the technology that is supposed to make it simpler to come together? Have we developed too many ways for us to escape real life and forget how to be truly human? Are there too many false things to lose ourselves in? Are we going through life with our eyes shut? Do we ever really see anything, or are we just taking a quick glance at things because that’s what everyone else is doing? Are we becoming more stupid, more insipid, more greedy and entitled and remorseless?

Some days, the pessimistic and melancholy days, I think we are up the creek as a species and I simply assume that this vision of ourselves will one day be a reality. Other days I feel hopeful that we’ll be OK, that’ll we’ll stop before it’s too late to take it back, and that we’ll avoid forcing ourselves to live in Montag’s world. But, most days, I wait to see what happens, and I try to keep from becoming part of the problems we have, I try to avoid the things, and behaviour, and stupidities that could lead us to Montag’s world.

I don’t always succeed in this, but I always try.

Of course, this sensible attitude goes right out the window when it comes to books, or art/office supplies.

So, the other day as I am walking around North Vancouver, I see a big group of smokers standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Normally this irritates me – I despise having to walk through clouds of smoke coming out of people’s mouths. I always want to yell at them, “Thanks for making my hair smell like the inside of your mouth, you cretin!”

But, this time, they were standing a few feet away from the entrance of an art store. So I thought, “I’ll just pop in here and have a look and when I leave, they will have left.” I was just escaping the cigarette smoke you understand. I couldn’t possibly be expected to just go around them, right? Right?

So anyhow, weak excuse in hand, I walk in.  Art stores are the perfect place to make your credit card company love you. All those pens, pencils, fancy paper, water colour paints, paint brushes and ink. I know right then and there that I am not leaving until I have purchased something. It doesn’t have to be much – a gum eraser, a mechanical pencil with neon pink leads, a small notebook – I’m not fussy, but I will be bringing something home with me.

I say hello to the woman sitting behind the counter and I hope to have the following exchange:

Me: Hello.
Her: Hi there. How are you?
Me: Good, thanks. You?
Her: Oh, can’t complain. If you need any help, let me know.
Me: OK, thanks.

This is my ideal shopping experience. Say hello, maybe tell me what’s on sale, and then leave me alone. I’ll ask for assistance if I need it – I’m good like that.

Sadly, this was not the experience I had. That part where she was supposed to say, “Oh, can’t complain. etc.”? It went more like this:

Her: Oh just feeling kind of crappy – one of those days, you know? My boyfriend’s daughter is thirteen and I’ve known her for, like, …well, she was born in…I can’t remember now, but I’ve known her, like, forever. Anyway, he wants her to play soccer, but she doesn’t want to and he can’t really afford it anyway, but he keeps pushing, you know? And I told him if you keep pushing her, you’re going to lose her. I mean, she’s really tiny, like not even five feet and her Dad is huge – like, nearly six feet tall and at least 225 pounds, so he can be really intimidating and she just talks back and says no, but he keeps bullying her anyway. So, I told him off, I was rude to him actually and I’m never like that, and he told me he didn’t want to hear my opinion, so I made him get out of my car…”

Even worse than listening to her personal life and that of her 225 pound boyfriend and his short-but-feisty 13 year old daughter, was how oblivious she was to my discomfort at hearing all this. I wandered away, not looking at her – she followed. I made totally non-committal noises in response to anything that sounded even vaguely like a question – she kept talking.  Finally another customer asked for her help, and I fled with a “seeyoulaterbyebyenow” and I hadn’t purchased a thing.

If this was a chain store, I could just go to a different location, or complain to a manager, or even just  hope that one day she’d be let go for scaring customers off, but this is an independent store – the sort of place I generally feel strongly about supporting – and the chances of her being fired are pretty much nil; she’s the owner’s daughter and, I believe, part-owner herself.

I wish I could say this time was the first time I’d had an uncomfortable experience shopping there, but it wasn’t. I’ve listened to rants on many things there: people who shop at the big art chain store, how much they despise the chain store and the most of the suppliers and all the jerks with art supply warehouses on the Internet who undercut their prices. I’ve also weathered unasked for opinions on politics, weather, local news and religion.

I’ve also been given what I call the “jammy-handed child” treatment: “Please don’t touch that paper. It’s expensive. We don’t want your finger prints on it.” Really? Sorry, but I buy paper based on how smooth it is – textured paper and pencil crayon look bloody awful together – if I’m going to ensure I’m making the right purchase, then I need to touch the paper. Period. You’d think I came in cradling a bucket of KFC under one arm while licking my fingers and making a beeline for the expensive paper so I could use it to wipe my mouth on.

At any rate, this latest display of un-professionalism has cemented my decision to not go back. I probably should have said something like, “I’m really not comfortable hearing this much about your personal life, but I hope it all works out for everyone involved.” But, even that seemed rude somehow and I couldn’t bring myself to do more than wait for a good opportunity to run.

Bottom line? I’m willing to pay more elsewhere – even a chain store – to have the sort of shopping experience I want.

I approached with a smile on my face and offered to take a picture of the two of them together.

The gentleman smiled back – a little hesitant to hand his camera over to a complete stranger. I set my purchases on the ground and he shrugged, grinned and handed me the camera as his wife came over.

“This nice young lady said she’d take our photo!” he said. His accent seemed to be somewhere from the southern United States.

His wife smiled and started pointing out what she’d like for me to get in the photo with them.

I took two pictures, including the boats and mountains, and handed the camera back.

“You Canadians are so nice!” the wife said.

The husband laughed and said, “I’m moving to Canada! You guys are just so sweet and helpful.”

I couldn’t help but laugh myself – it’s the old Canadian stereotype: we’re polite and friendly. However, if making that stereotype a reality for visitors to Vancouver makes their day, I’m happy to do it.

I wished them a good visit and as I picked up my things and started towards home, I heard them offer to take another couple’s photo in-front of the ships. “‘That nice young lady took our picture and we’d like to do the same for you.”

The other couple happily accepted and I continued on. I have to admit to feeling absurdly happy; it really is the little things that count.