In Persuasion Nation Read Free Page A

no blood, just
keep the legs moving and soon enough you'll be there. And off we
went, me hobbling, Teddy holding my arm, making decent time, and I
think we would have made the curtain. Except suddenly there appeared
a Citizen Helper, who asked were we from out of town, and was that
why, via removing my shoes, I had caused my Everly Strips to be
rendered Inoperative?
    I
should say here that I am no stranger to innovative approaches to
advertising, having pioneered the use of towable signboards in
Oneonta back in the Nixon years, when I moved a fleet of thirty
around town with a Dodge Dart, wearing a suit that today would be
found comic. By which I mean I have no problem with the concept of
the Everly Strip. That is not why I had my shoes off. I am as
patriotic as the next guy. Rather, as I have said, it was due to my
bleeding feet.
    I told
all this to the Citizen Helper, who asked if I was aware that, by
rendering my Strips Inoperative, I was sacrificing a terrific
opportunity to Celebrate My Preferences?
    And I
said yes, yes, I regretted this very much.
    He
said he was sorry about my feet, he himself having a trick elbow, and
that he would be happy to forget this unfortunate incident if I would
only put my shoes back on and complete the rest of my walk extremely
slowly, looking energetically to both left and right, so that the
higher density of Messages thus received would compensate for those I
had missed.
    And
I admit, I was a little short with that Helper, and said, "Young
man, these dark patches here on my socks are blood, do you or do you
not see them?"
    Which
was when his face changed and he said, "Please do not snap at
me, sir, I hope you are aware of the fact that I can write you up?"
    And
then I made a mistake.
    Because
as I looked at that Citizen Helper—his round face, his pale
sideburns, the way his feet turned in—it seemed to me that I knew
him. Or rather, it seemed that he could not be so very different from
me when I was a young man, not so different from the friends of my
youth—from Jeffie DeSoto, say, who once fought a Lithuanian gang
that had stuck an M-80 in the ass of a cat, or from Ken Larmer, who
had such a sweet tenor voice and died stifling a laugh in the hills
above Koi-Jeng.
    I
brought out a twenty and, leaning over, said, Look, please, the kid
just really wants to see this show.
    Which
is when he pulled out his pad and began to write!
    Now,
even being from Oneonta, I knew that being written up does not take
one or two minutes, we would be standing there at least half an hour,
after which we would have to go to an Active Complaints Center, where
they would check our Strips for Operability and make us watch that
corrective video called Robust Economy, Super Moral Climate! ,
which I had already been made to watch three times last winter, when
I was out of work and we could not afford cable.
    And
we would totally miss Babar Sings !
    "Please,"
I said, "please, we have seen plenty of personalized messages,
via both the building-mounted miniscreens at eye level and those
suddenly outthrusting Cybec Emergent Screens, we have learned plenty
for one day, honest to God we have—"
    And
he said, "Sir, since when do you make the call as far as when
you have received enough useful information from our Artistic
Partners?"
    And
just kept writing me up.
    Well,
there I was, in my socks, there was Teddy, with a scared look in his
eyes I hadn't seen since his toddler days, when he had such a fear of
chickens that we could never buy Rosemont eggs, due to the cartoon
chicken on the carton, or, if we did, had to first cut the chicken
off, with scissors we kept in the car for that purpose. So I made a
quick decision, and seized that Citizen Helper's ticket pad and flung
it into the street, shouting at Teddy, "Run! Run!"
    And
run he did. And run I did. And while that Citizen Helper floundered
in the street, torn between chasing us and retrieving his pad, we
raced down Broadway, and glancing back over my shoulder I saw