The Other End Person

On Monday, I was doing some serious gardening—the kind you have to do when spring finally, slowly, reluctantly staggers into the backyard. It turns out that, when I wasn’t looking, a whole bunch of the wood dividers, planters, and wooden whatnots in the garden had been rotting and secretly turning into topsoil.

I had to decide what to do. Then I had to do it. I had to hack away, pull out, and drag to the front of my building all these disintegrating planks. You know how they talk about ribs just falling off the bones? These were planks just falling off the nails—you could just twist them off.

At many points that afternoon, I surely could have used a helper. You know, the helper who would be right there when you said, “Could you just get the other end?”

The Other End Person. There are so many times in life when he or she would come in so handy. For instance: to hold down your T-shirt while you pull your sweater off. To hold the freezer door open when you need two hands to jostle your heavy casserole in. To scratch a sudden itch while you are washing dishes. To check the back of your outfit for cat hair. To tell you if you have on too much perfume.  And, of course, to help you lug heavy things in the garden, including the things made of concrete.

Now, here would be your perfect Other End Person—they would be there just for that moment. You would not have to maintain a relationship with them or help them with their chores. They would simply materialize when you needed them. You could summon them with a thought: Here, take that end. Hold the heavy door while I bring my bike in.

If you are married, technically you have a helpmate, but they are not always handy when you suddenly need someone to hold something.

When you don’t have that person, you have to hold doors open with your elbow or maybe shove a rock into the corner of the doorframe to keep it open. First, of course, you have to find a suitable rock. Without the rock, you have turn off the light with your chin, hold the door open with your knee, then whang it wide open so that you can manoeuvre your way out with the bike before it slams shut.

The Other End Person could just hold that door for you—and carry in the third heavy bag of groceries.

I know, I know. I am wanting to live in an alternate universe.

We do get to visit an alternate universe every night when we go to sleep and dream, where we find ourselves in the oddest predicaments: half-naked while shopping for groceries, unable to remember which bus to take or where to catch it, having forgotten to attend classes at university and now here is the exam, or falling from great heights. Or, for me, I am back practising law and something is going sideways. I like the dreams where I am levitating—flying.

Meantime, life goes on in the here and now. At the moment, I am ready to accept reality. I don’t really have any other choice. But inside me there is always this schemer looking for some improvement or other.