The Lesson Of The Six O'clock News
The garage afforded no cover. I was caught. Interrogation was unavoidable.
She plied me with questions and scribbled vigorously without bothering to look down at her notepad. How long had I lived here? Where had I come from? Why did I move? All very personal.
Act naturally, they advised. Meanwhile, the camera missed nothing of my planting monkey grass, watering flowers and carrying tools. Its ubiquitous glass eye faithfully captured every word and movement, even Brudderman the furtive cat scrambling for cover under a low bush.
The mysterious duo disavowed spy connections, claiming instead to be an out-of-town television news team. Having wandered into our neighborhood, they had merely stopped on the street to hash out details of a story about growth and expansion in our city. "See you on the six o'clock news!" were their parting words.
Video snippets of upcoming stories flicking across the screen heralded the appointed hour. "There's our house!" we shouted in unison. And so it was.
What happened next defies comprehension. An oldish, balding fellow slouching in front of the house mumbled halting phrases into the camera. Both attire and demeanor suggested a legitimate contestant for Bum of the Year. Yet he had a vague familiarity--like someone I see daily but don't take the time to observe too closely.
But his voice--a deadly mix of Southern drawl tinged with country hayseed--struck the hardest blow. No doubt the words were mine, but somehow the camera had stripped them of the rich oratorical flavor and flawless enunciation I remembered.
In the late 1780s, Scottish poet Robert Burns dedicated a poem to a louse he had spotted on a lady's bonnet at church. Roughly modernized, the last verse begins this way: "Oh, that God would give us the very smallest of gifts to be able to see ourselves as others see us."
Reality lands hard as I ponder The Lesson of the Six O'clock News. Looking beyond the façade of words and clothes, how do others really see me? I'm afraid it's not with the winsome attractiveness of one who has tasted life's bitter waters and come away smiling. Instead, the camera lens of their eyes exposes stark truth: an undesirable, lingering hardness apt to spawn, as Burns' poem continues, "many mistakes and foolish thoughts."
The gift of God would be to see ourselves as clearly as others do, and, in Burns' closing words, "change the way we look and gesture and to how and what we apply out time and attention." And I'd be grateful for the grace to make the right adjustments to become what I ought to be. The camera doesn't lie.
Copyright 2002 James McAlister
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