AH, THE CLASSICS

A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist…

Giving life the Dickens

It all started with a leaflet. Photo by Taha on Unsplash

I’ve discovered that there comes a point in adult life when you stop speaking English and start speaking the outdated speech of dead people.

You see, it’s a tragic and totes unnecessary hybrid of modern inconvenience — first world problems, if you will — and Victorian drama.

And it starts subtly.

Your phone battery goes into life-saving mode as it hits 5%, and instead of acting like a rational adult, you whisper to the air:

Pray tell, oh charging cable! Where hast thou abandoned me in this hour of my despair?

It’s in the other room.

No, the other room.

It’s always in the other other room!

And that’s how it begins. Next thing you know, you’re narrating your own life (alarmingly loudly) as if you began a career as an unpaid Dickens intern.

Behold! A man, patience all but lost, approaches the sacred appliance known as ‘router’ hoping — nay, praying — that restorative connection be made peacefully, without incident.

Translation: The internet’s down and my morning coffee and writing time became a frantic button pressing game of monkey see, monkey do, monkey guess.

With hope.

Modern problems just aren’t designed for this level of theatrical nonsense, and yet, somewhere around 50, this is where we find ourselves.

Take texting, for example.

A normal person writes: “Running a few minutes late.”

I, however, feel the need to type:

Dearest Associate,

Fate hath conspired against any yearning on my behalf for punctuality, much to my chagrin. I shall arrive anon… if traffic doth cooperative be.

Autocorrect gave up trying six months ago. The spiral is all-consuming.

The true Dickensian underworld of modern life???

Customer service.

It’s banal and annoying numerical heirarchy begins with “Press 1 for English.”

Ah, yes… the King’s English. Language of monarchs, poets, and people screaming for a real person into their phones like Victorian lunatics.

Then they have the audacity to lie.

“Your call is important to us.”

And I’m off again:

If t’were true, fair Margaret, why dost I find myself on minute 43 of listening to renditions of AC/DC and Metallica on yon pan flute?

Even grocery shopping isn’t safe from me giving it the Dickens. Something as simple as buying food has become a linguistic identity crisis.

I pick up a block of Canadian cheddar and suddenly I’m in a novel:

Good sir! Dost thou truly and without consumptive madness request eight dollars for such modest dairy brick? Hath it been churned by monks? Be it blessed by clergy? Whispered to and comforted at night by large bosomed nursemaid?

The cashier looks at me in that way one does when contemplating calling security.

The worst part?

I find myself unable to stop.

I’m fully committed to narrating minor inconveniences like they’ve set me back in time due to their tragic nature.

Spilled coffee?

A dark liquid hath bestained my garments!

Stubbed toe?

I have known pain. Deep, intimate pain. I thus feel an overwhelming, immediate longing for the peace that once held my heart and mind as a mere boy.

Phone dies.

Please, sir… might I charge some more?

And yet, there’s something oddly satisfying in this overuse of language.

Life’s rarely as dramatic as we make it out to be… but it’s also rarely as boring as we like to pretend sometimes.

So, why not give it the Dickens??

Why not turn a delayed text, a weak signal, or even just a missing charger into a full-blown literary event?

Hell. If we have to suffer the modern inconveniences of life, we might as well do so theatrically.

I gotta go. My phone is at 3%, my charger is still at large, and I must prepare my conclusion…

Pray you tell my browser history for me… I regret naught, but kindly wipe free of all things memorial anyway.