Being Morally Opposed To The Walkman Carries With It Certain Responsibilities
by Penn Jillette
Published 1989
From Penn and Teller’s Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends, Page 178
I was leaving my business manager’s office. The elevator arrived right away and I got on to find there was another passenger. She was black, she had a beautiful smile, her headphones blended with her hair, and she was listening to some pop love song on her Walkman. It was loud, but I couldn’t make it out. Maybe I’d never heard it before, but it was a love song. I smiled, slipped on my super-cool candy-red headphones, and turned the Clash’s London Calling way up.
We had ridden together for several floors when we were joined by one of those bicycle delivery guys. He had a little hat, the tight black bicycle pants with the reinforced crotch; he was Hispanic and had the little tiny headphones that fit right in the ear so you can only see a couple little spots of blue and some wires coming out of the ears. He looked at us, wrote something on a manila envelope, put it in his backpack, and turned up his music. I have no way of knowing what he was listening to, because “Revolution Rock” was filling my head. But whatever it was he was enjoying it. We swayed our heads together in different rhythms.
The three of us rode a few more floors, then were joined by a businesswoman type. She had on one of those female biz suits, and her hair and makeup were soft and natural. I think she ran every morning or at least took a dance class. Through the light tint of her glasses, I saw her look at each one of us and roll her eyes up. Then she started shaking her head like we weren’t going to notice. My fellow passengers didn’t notice, but I slipped my headphones down around my neck and said, “It must sound like Charles Ives out here, huh? Is it too loud for you?”
She gave me this little condescending smile through her tastefully lipsticked mouth and said, “You people just cut yourselves off from everybody, don’t you? I mean, it’s really bad enough that no one even makes eye contact anymore, but you people just walk around in your own little worlds. We’re a culture of very lonely people. It’s sad. It’s really very sad.”
Since the other two people in the elevator were still in their own respective little worlds, I appointed myself spokesperson for us three lonely people. “You were really dying for human contact here, weren’t you? Huh? You walked on this elevator and said to yourself, ‘Oh, Jiminy Cricket! I really wanted to talk to this delivery boy, this receptionist, and this big ugly son of a bitch with a square head. But alas, they’ve cut themselves off from my personal contact. I guess I can’t have any meaningful dialogue with them. Darn.’ You don’t give a yuppie-tweed-fuck about the three of us! You just need something sensitive and humanitarian to talk about over your fuckin’ power lunch…. I’ll make a deal with you - we’ll take our headphones off and we’ll listen to you, but you better have something to say. And when you ask him what kind of bike he has and he tells you, you better really care. And you better keep us entertained… do a little fuckin’ dance if you have to! When each of us walked onto the elevator we smiled at one another and you just rolled your fuckin’ eyes. So, you want personal contact? Shoot!”
So, this was another elevator ride in the big city during which I didn’t fall in love, make a friend, or even set myself up to get laid. But I do enjoy the Clash.
