Getting Results: A Cautionary Tale

By Alex Krasser

                  Written for an Alexander Technique class

Humberto Grouchberg was born on the same day as his soon-to-be-lifelong buddy, Freddy Alexander. They were born in different hospitals, and perhaps their respective fates, the winding paths that their lives would follow, were set down for them right then and there.

Freddy’s hospital made sure the doctors spent plenty of time with each of their patients, so that they could allow the birthing process to happen as smoothly as possible. Humberto’s hospital was a very busy place, where the doctors didn’t know the patients, and they performed unnecessary C-sections because it was faster.

As babies, there was little discernable difference between the two boys. Both crawled gleefully, efficiently, and squealed with delight as they played impulsively with Paws, the Alexander family’s kitten. But soon enough, they began down the paths that fate had contrived for them.

In the Alexander household, Freddy crawled until he was three, when he figured out how to walk on his own.

In the Grouchberg homestead, Humberto was forced to his feet at the age of one-and-a-half, his parents driving him to be the first on the block to take their first steps.

Soon the boys went to school, where they began their formal education.

“What did you learn in school today?” Freddy’s parents would ask.

“How to multiply,” Freddy would reply.

“So if Mommy had twelve jars of honey, and each jar held eight ounces, how many ounces of honey does Mommy have to pour all over herself?”

Freddy would think for a moment, then respond, “Four-hundred and twenty-seven ounces!”

“…well, no, but that’s okay. Slow down for a moment and think about it. Do you know where you went wrong?”

Freddy would think for another moment or two. “Ninety-six ounces?”

“Excellent!” Freddy’s parents would exclaim. “Now let’s all go for a walk to the grocery store to buy more honey!”

Humberto’s parents were less concerned with what he learned, just so long as he knew the right answer.

“What’d you learn in school today!” Humberto’s parents would demand.

“Uhh, uhhh, nine times five is forty-five?” Humberto would reply. His father would look dumbly at his mother for confirmation. She would glare at Humberto with pinprick eyes.

“Did the teacher say that?”

“Yes, I think so,” he would reply.

“Then it’s right. Remember it right so you’ll get an A so you can go to college so you can get a good job and make a lot of money.”

“Yes ma’am,” Humberto would say, shoulders shrugged up to his ears, and go to his room to memorize the facts.

As they grew, the boys would play in the woods behind their houses.

Freddy started out wanting to build a Lego racetrack for his Hot Wheels. He gently pressed two blocks together, and they didn’t look like a racetrack anymore, they looked like they wanted to be a rocket ship! He shoved his fingers into the pile of Lego bricks, relishing the feeling of the cool, sharp corners, and the sound of glassy rain, and then pulled out a few blocks in the pile that grabbed his attention. Soon his Lego rocket ship became a dragon! Then a printing press! Then a collegiate football stadium, then a Klein bottle, then a Drive-In Movie theatre!

Humberto wanted to build a parking garage for his cars. He spent four minutes peering stonily into the pile, searching for the perfect pieces. He found two that would almost work, but weren’t quite what he wanted. He jammed the two pieces together, realized he’d made a mistake, but couldn’t pry them apart. He got frustrated, threw them into the pile, and, knowing it was impossible to make it perfect, gave up on his parking garage. As he watched Freddy play with his Drive-In, he felt a dull pain begin to manifest itself at the back of his skull.

The boys became teenagers, and lived close enough to school that they would walk in the mornings.

Freddy would set his alarm to go off at 7:00 AM, and when it would go off, he would shut it off without complaint, calmly rise out of bed, and take his time making coffee and slicing up bananas for breakfast. He loved the smell, and took about two minutes every day to just stand there and smell the coffee and the bananas, rich and sweet. He would be out the door by 7:45, leaving plenty of time to walk to school the scenic way through the public park.

Humberto’s alarm was set for 7:30 AM, giving him just enough time to wake up, shower, and rush out the door to class. He would burst outside in the morning, on the brink of being late, and then realize he had forgotten his lunch money. By the time he had it in his pocket, he was already late to class. He would run down the sidewalk, gasping for air, heavy backpack hanging low on his shoulders (as was the style at the time). He would think about the test he hadn’t studied for, whether he had shut the tap off in the bathroom all the way like his Dad wanted, and never took the long way through the park. In class, his head would throb and his shoulders would ache, and he wouldn’t question it because that’s just how life was.

Both teenagers got decent grades and decided to attend the same state school.

Freddy would go to class and learn, taking in what the teachers had to say, without judgment. He agreed with some, disagreed with others, but objectively found everything they had to say interesting in some way or another. He also had removed subjective judgment from the weather. It was never ‘good’ weather or ‘bad’ weather; it was simply warm or windy or drizzly to him, and as he walked to class through the myriad of conditions, he found it all satisfying in some way or another.

Humberto was a very confrontational student. He had strong beliefs about what was right and what was wrong, and when a teacher posited something contrary to his beliefs, he would take it as a personal offense and argue. He loved the sun and hated overcast days, and couldn’t remove himself from subjectivity so much that when a girl with an ugly set of freckles (who would soon become the first female President) asked him on a date, he saw the freckles and could not say yes, because she was not the girl he had created as his perfect mate. His head throbbed, his shoulders ached, and soon his lower back began to cramp. But for Humberto Grouchberg, this was just a part of life, and he never questioned it.

The college students soon became men, graduated, and moved into the rat race of the real world.

Freddy moved to Capitol City, where he found an unpaid internship for a little-known performance artist. Freddy was thrilled with this, because he wanted to learn. He waitered on the side to make money for rent. He found pleasant conversation easy with his customers, and was tipped well. He felt good about where he was at this stage of his life.

Humberto moved to Capitol City as well, where he found a paying job working as a secretary in an office building. He worked overtime, nights, weekends, fifty, sixty hours a week to make extra money. He pounded down the rough sidewalk before the sun was up, and rarely saw the light of day in the steel and glass canyons. His schedule was packed airtight, and the only moments he had to think were when he realized he had forgotten about a meeting. Holes wore into his shoes on the inner-edges of his feet, and soon he began to suffer knee problems.

Soon, Freddy’s parents fell ill and died. Freddy had enough money to buy a car, a little blue Geo Metro, which he loved with all his heart. The second-gear synchro was off, but as Freddy drove home, watching the green green world slide past him, he paused and thought about his connection with the car, and about how he was going to change gears. He shifted gently with his fingertips, and soon the synchro healed itself. Carrying his parents’ coffins, Freddy used his skeleton efficiently, lifting no more than was necessary. He felt the texture of the brass rods, and the true weight of the caskets. He was sad, but he was also hopeful. He knew they had gone peacefully, and that he would join them at some point. He did not know when, but he knew that he would allow the world to fill him with life until then, just like they had taught him.

Humberto, too, bought a car. A BMW M3, just like his peers in the office. He drove it aggressively, jamming the transmission into second, and soon it became more and more difficult to get into second gear without some grinding vibrating up the shaft into his hand. But Humberto gripped the shifter knob so heavily that he never noticed the grinding, and within a few months Humberto’s Beamer was in the shop getting a new transmission. He paced angrily outside the garage, waiting for the car to be fixed. Time was money. So was a transmission flown in from Germany. And when he got home that night and sat down, his whole body ached like there was no tomorrow.

Freddy’s employer, the performance artist, recommended a stress-reducer class to Freddy. Always open to new things, Freddy attended. He recognized a lot of things in it that helped not only him, but that he knew would also help his friend Humberto, who had been complaining of stiffness and cramping all over his body. Once concept he found especially helpful was the idea of allowing the body to lengthen and widen, and he shared this with Humberto one evening over a pitcher of strawberry daiquiris.

Humberto initially balked at the idea of taking some mamby-pamby-bitch-girl relaxation class, but decided to trust his friend Freddy and at least try out that lengthening and widening thing. Humberto tried his best to lengthen himself, stretching his head up and forward, jutting his chin out, and he didn’t really think it did anything for him, so he didn’t try widening, and instead went to his doctor to see what he could do to fix the pain.

Humberto’s doctor gave him some pills for the pain. He was to take five pills a day for nine days. Impatient as he was, he wanted the pain to be gone much sooner than that. He was suddenly struck by the power of a memory from his childhood, back so many years ago. And for the first time in his life, a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

He had remembered his multiplication tables.

“Five pills a day for nine days!” he exclaimed. “That’s …  forty-five pills!” He quickly counted out forty-five pills and swallowed them gleefully, one after another.

Days later, when Freddy was lifting Humberto’s casket, he lifted in a way that utilized his skeleton to its maximum potential. The weight transferred from his hands to his shoulders, riding down his springy spine, into his hip joints that bore the load like a Roman arch, down his legs into his foot, where the weight was evenly spread out across his feet. He lifted with no more energy than was necessary, and while all the other pall-bearers were sweating and heaving, Freddy still had breath left to smell the fresh cut grass on the neighborhood lawns on that fine summer morning.