I, Meatball

I once had a job balancing the daily income and pooled tips of a saloon.

At the time, it was the earliest morning job I'd ever had. 

They gave me a key and the entry code, and I would let myself into the bar, sometimes when it was still dark outside. 

Kind of an old-timey place. "Wild west" ambiance. Not unearned, either. There was some legitimate history, there.

I'd go and turn on the kitchen lights. Get things going. The place had a menu. "Buffalo" burger. "Rattlesnake" wings. "Prickly pear" potato skins. That sort of thing.

Every morning when I'd turn on those kitchen lights, the walls would run away from me.

It was incredible how efficient cockroaches are at running away. Top-tier scattering skills. 

It was a historic building on the national registry. It makes it hard to renovate and properly exterminate pests in old buildings like that. Expensive. Especially in a facility serving food and beverages. 

Being a "historic building" means a lot of time for the foundation to settle. For cracks to spread throughout the cornerstones. Dark little enclaves where the vermin can really dig in and get a lot of good breeding done.

Once the lights were on, I'd go upstairs and open the safe. There, I'd find the total previous day's earnings in a canvas bank bag. 

I'd sit down at the accounting table, turn on the little creaky aluminum lamp, and tally everything up. 

It was an entirely new type of job for me, when I took it on. I waited tables at that same place, in the evenings, so I could handle my own tips and give change back to guests out of my private bank, but handling the entire earnings of the bar, over the weekends (their busiest days), breaking it all down and dividing it into percentages took a great deal of effort and wasn't something I was naturally oriented for.

I don't even think I had a bank account of my own at that time. I kept all my cash in an aluminum pig in my closet at home. Such was my life in those carefree days.

Those were also the days of the late nights of my youth. Who knows what kind of adventures I had been up to only a few hours earlier, prior to opening up the tavern that morning? 

The entire ordeal would take me a while. Sometimes the bottom line wouldn't balance out nice and even by the end. This would trigger an automatic recount, prompting extravagant double-checking and anxious hair-pulling just to get things right, or as close to right as I could reach.

I'm still not sure why my name had come up as a candidate for this kind of work. It was like they needed someone, looked around and I just happened to be working that day. They asked, and I said yes. 

If someone recommends me for something, I have a bad habit of thinking they know what they're talking about, and agreeing.

It was tough. But I did it, probably for about a year.

Best case scenario: I'd separate out the income from the cash tips and then distribute the tips to yesterday's crew, by percentage, depending on how long each individual worked. 

I'd wrap up little piles of cash and write their names on a little band of paper taped around them.

"Stacy"

"Nathaniel"

"Kim"

"Neil"

It wasn't a perfect system. Not everyone liked the pooled tip method. I had no say—the policy predated my arrival.

Even on the occasions when the books didn't balance completely, somehow it all worked out, though not through me. I never got the full picture. I was only there to do it on weekends. "That's okay," I gathered, even though no one ever said so explicitly. Maybe I was a useful, ignorant cog in their money laundering scheme. The perfect fall-guy, in the dark about everything, if things went south.

After all, I was only trained as the "back-up to the back-up." 

The full-time bookkeeper didn't work weekends.

The part-time bookkeeper had gotten pregnant. 

I was 19 at the time, worked weekends, and would not get pregnant.

Yeah, maybe a little suspicious.

But every weekend morning, once I had turned on my little creaky lamp and started counting, alone, I'd hear the door open downstairs, and a familiar voice would call out, almost ceremonially:

"Hey, Meatball!" he called out—to anyone who would listen. It didn't matter who, exactly. Everyone was "Meatball". 

His sing-songy voice bounced off the high aluminum honky-tonk ceilings, booming cavernously.

Not like a stereotypical Italian ("That's a spicy Meat-a-ball")... but a down-note, up-note, and another down-note. 

"Meat Ba-All!" v ^ v

The AI overlords fell short of Meatball's true essence (naturally), but it did render the tavern I worked at remarkably well. It looked a lot like this.

No need to poke my head out and look. It could only be Meatball. 

"Hey, Meatball!" I'd call back from my desk upstairs. 

"How's it going, Meatball?" he'd call up. To him, I was just a disembodied voice. I was the voice of "Meatball". 

"Doin' alright, Meatball!" I'd assert, whether or not I actually was. As though trying to convince myself.

To him, everyone was Meatball. I never learned his "real name" was (if he had one). Everyone just called him Meatball. As far as I knew, his birth certificate actually read: 

FIRST NAME: MEAT | LAST NAME: BALL

Then, Meatball would get out the vacuum cleaner from the tavern's utility closet and begin his work.

Just as I had my job to do, so, too, did Meatball.

Meatball was part of a special community program that employed the mentally disabled.

Little things. Sorting cans at dollar stores. Cleaning windows at pet shops. Vacuuming floors.

Meatball was there every morning. He did a good job. Like me. But better—because when he was done, the carpet was actually clean. 

When I was done—it wasn't always a sure thing that the books would be completely even.

Before long, someone else would arrive. 

"Hey, Meatball!" I'd hear him call out, his voice echoing through the big open tavern interior. Like a doorbell, someone else entered the bar. 

Back in the days these old saloons were built, they weren't just taverns. They were community centers, gambling halls. It was also a mercantile and general store. In fact, the office I was dutifully counting all the money in had previously been the bordello rooms. 

The building, when empty, felt massive. Like the Overlook Hotel. There would be an uncanny intimacy between the few small people who shared such a big open space together on those early mornings.

Even up in the second-story office, the building was so still that I was cognizant of what was happening downstairs as though I were seated right at the bar, watching it all unfold.

"Hey, Meatball," came a response: hoarse, shrill, tired, but not without its charm. 

That was Bev, the prep-cook.

Bev may have been 50, but looked 80. Barely over four feet tall and maybe 80 pounds with an apron on, Bev had lived through a lot—but had more zeal for her work than the rest of us.

Bev's task was to go downstairs, with the cockroaches and the rodents and the other undesirables, and prepare the home-made "Redskin" potato salad. 

Remember, this was the "Wild West."  

Bev wasn't just proud of her recipe. It was her claim to fame. How she would go down in the history books. And she did not suffer criticism or recommendations about how to improve her craft. Bev's potato salad was very dill-forward. Even if there was a handwritten note left on her prep table downstairs, asking her to "go easy on the dill." 

"Don't tell me how to cook my potato salad, ya ol' Buzzard," she'd grumble, flicking the paper off her prep table with a chipped, pink nail, where it slowly wafted to the uneven floor beneath her for the rodents to gather for their nests in the walls. Bev's voice was a heavy rasp, a sandpaper vibrato that could only be earned from years' worth of smoking the smooth tobacco blend of Montego light 100s. 

Potato salad wasn't Bev's only responsibility, but it was her singular vanity project. She'd come in, whip up a huge batch of it in gigantic plastic drums big enough for her to lay down in., and then, an hour or so later, she'd emerge, smoke half a pack on the patio, and leave right as the first customers arrived, satisfied with another job well done.

Since it made her happy, I made sure that anytime anyone said anything even vaguely complimentary of her potato salad, I'd let her know. Everyone may have been a "Buzzard" in Bev's book—and I was no exception—but because I paid proper homage to Bev's potato salad prowess, I was a tolerable buzzard.

The only exception I knew of was "Meatball", who Bev still just called "Meatball." 

"I'll be downstairs, Meatball," she'd say. Down she would descend into the ossuary-like depths of the old building, reconstructed after the fire of 1900. There she would remain, to mix another huge batch of potato salad in a bowl big enough to bathe in, wearing gloves that hung loosely around her forearms and—seem to talk to herself.

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Eventually, I'd do as much damage as I could manage. It was time to wrap-up. My final task was to procure "Cowboy" Roy's signature on the final bank deposit slip. I'd go descend to the bar floor, salute Meatball, pass through the kitchen, slide down the old staircase bannister, weave through the tavern catacombs, and usually have a Bev encounter on the way to "Cowboy" HQ. 

It wouldn't be uncommon to hear her squelching out against all Buzzards, both real and imaginary. "Get outta here, ya Buzzards!"

"Who ya talkin' to, Bev?" I asked once, after working there a long enough time to feel comfortable asking such things.

"Oh, just them mice," she'd answer. Then, halting with a quizzical tilt of her head, she'd add, as a confessional aside: "Ya know, they all listen to me."

Meaning the mice. 

Once, I asked, "Do you listen back?"

She laughed.

"No! They ain't got nothin' to say!"

Careful not to brain myself on the low ceilings, I'd slink down the old stone passageways and find the short wooden doorway, painted with lamb's blood, marking "Cowboy" Roy's office. 

Roy would be inside, tinkering in his little workshop full of old antiques that I guess came with the building when he bought it in the 90s. Artifacts. 

He had a workbench, and he'd look up at me with bulging eagle eyes, magnified into globes underneath the bifocals perched on the bridge of his hooked nose, nestled amid a broad face bristling with steel-wool stubble. 

"Yeah?" He'd bark. I showed him my work. 

Immediately, he'd spot two or three errors I'd made. As soon as the paperwork his the palm of his hand, he found something amiss. 

The first words out of his mouth would be: 

"Mah—" (some indecipherable utterance of annoyance.) "What's this? This isn't right," grumbling. 

He'd deftly work the discrepancy out, switching some bills around, as I stood there and apologized, stupidly. 

"Ah, okay. Yeah. I figured that wasn't right... Okay, I see now. Yeah—next time..." I'd say, standing there with nothing to do except watch as hours of my work, undone and re-done in an instant.

"Mah—" he'd repeat, though this time more as acceptance than annoyance. "Don't forget to clock out," he'd say before returning his attention to his soldering gun and whatever wrought iron heirloom was laid out on the torture table.

I always felt in over my head in that role, but "Cowboy" Roy never canned me. Maybe I was just the teenage math-imbecile he needed to keep the whole historic building from crumbling down on top of our heads.

Roy would release me, and I'd wind my way back up to the bar floor upstairs, saying bye to Bev—exiting the kitchen and crossing the freshly vacuumed carpet floor. Crimson red. 

"Bye, Meatball!" I'd say to Meatball. Sometimes he couldn't hear me, if he was still vacuuming.

"Bye, Meatball!" he'd reply, if he was already winding up the cord, finishing up, himself.

And I'd be out the door, down the street, walking two blocks up and one block over to the corner bank, dropping off the deposit down the overnight weekend chute.

Just another odd job, starting my days with Meatball and Bev and "Cowboy" Roy and the cockroaches and mice and whatever other ol' Buzzards had showed up.

I don't know where fate has befallen them since those bygone, halcyon days, but looking back, I'm certain Meatball had it right.

"Hey, Meatball!" 

Didn't matter who it was.

If you knew him, and knew the game, you'd respond in kind. 

When in Meatball, do as the Meatballs do.

CUM IN METBALL ES, FAC QUOD MEATBALL FACIT.

(That's Latin, by the way—"cum" wasn't involved, beyond whatever transpired in those bordello rooms a hundred years before.)

It was interesting to see how the uninitiated, men and women unfamiliar with the custom, would struggle to respond to Meatball's greeting.

"Oh," they'd say—wondering if they had heard him right. Meatball? You'd watch them give Meatball a look, deducing his mental acuity. "Good morning," they'd say, smiling. 

Overpolite, and not a part of the game.

"Good morning, Meatball," he'd say back, and return to his designs. 

No judgment. No condescension. No correction.

Keep calm and Meatball on.

Everyone was Meatball. I was Meatball. He was Meatball. 

Believe it or not, you'd be Meatball, too.

There was a leveling effect that came from calling everyone "Meatball." 

Rich or poor. Handsome or ugly. The wise and the foolish alike.

They put the "all" in "Meatball." 

Being called "Meatball" puts you in your place. It framed things in a unique perspective.

After a while, you'd think of yourself as Meatball. 

"I am Meatball," you might admit to yourself, consciously—a little ashamedly at first, perhaps, if you felt the burden too heavy to bear upon your shoulders alone.

That's okay. You wouldn't be alone. Everyone is Meatball. We were in this together.

But there's a humility to that kind of absurd admission: Discard your old self. Become the Meatball you were born to be.

Like that anecdote about Einstein having a whole closet full of the same outfit to ease his mental focus away from the menial toward that which truly mattered (not shirts and pants, it seems).

So, too, does shedding your personal identifiers and assuming the collective identity of "Meatball" become an elegant act of self-selected simplicity.

What if everyone actually was Meatball? 

What if everyone gave up their real names and became a mutual "Meatball", together?

A Special News Report:

Good evening. I'm Meatball, and here is the news. 

Today, President Meatball discusses a bipartisan bill with Senator Meatball and Speaker of the House, Representative Meatball. 

The initiative has met substantial resistance from Congresswoman Meatball, whose criticism of President and Vice President Meatballs has escalated since they defeated candidate Meatball last November.

A Scene from a classic Christmas film:

MR. MEATBALL:

Meatball, I’m offering you a three-year contract at twenty thousand dollars a year starting today. Is it a deal or isn’t it?

MEATBALL:

Well, Mr. Meatball, I... I know I ought to jump at the chance, but I just... I wonder if it would be possible for you to give me twenty four hours to think it over.  

MR. MEATBALL:

Sure, sure, you go on home and talk about it to Mrs. Meatball. In the meantime. I’ll draw up the papers. Okay, Meatball?

(Meatball stands to leave, but then stops, turning slowly back toward Mr. Meatball.)

MEATBALL:

No... no, now wait a minute here! Wait a minute! I don’t need twenty-four hours. I don’t have to talk to anybody. I know right now, and the answer’s no. NO!

(voice rising)

Mr. Meatball, you sit around here and you spin your little webs and you think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn’t, Mr. Meatball! In the whole vast configuration of things, I’d say you were nothing but a scurvy little meatball!

The Name Game Song: 

Come on, everybody!

I say now let’s play a game

I bet you I can make a rhyme

Out of anybody’s name!

--

The first letter of the name

I treat it like it wasn’t there

But a “B” or an “F” or an “M” will appear

And then I say the name like this…

--

Meatball! Meatball, bo-Beatball

Banana-fana fo-Featball

Fee-fi-mo-Meatball!

Meatball! 

People would resist at first, of course. People enjoy their individuality. People find sanctuary in their identities. 

They've spent their lives cultivating their personalities. Carefully, too: caring for this, not caring for that. Their name starts to reflect that care, becoming an extension of themselves.

But a lot of ego gets tied up in that identification process. You draw lines in the sand, based on your habitual likes and dislikes, and you cling to them. They become a part of you. Letting them go feels like saying goodbye to an old friend.

"I'm Jack and Jack hates rutabagas! I've always hated rutabagas. I will never eat another rutabaga as long as I live, or my name isn't Jack!" 

Okay, that's fine. This is Jack and he fucking hates rutabagas. Maybe a tad overstated, but not out of the realm of believability. 

People, with their particular tastes and distastes, hate any number of things. It doesn't have to make sense because everyone has something they don't like and can't exactly articulate why. Some hatreds go deeper than reason can account for.

But if you're Meatball, these individual hang-ups, shortcomings, grievances and peccadillos cease to have any real meaning, especially when telling them to other Meatballs. 

Imagine hearing someone named Meatball making the same claim.

"I'm Meatball and Meatball hates rutabagas! I've always hated rutabagas. I will never eat another rutabaga as long as I live, or my name isn't Meatball!" 

It's ridiculous! Nobody could take themselves seriously saying something like that and keep a straight face. 

As Meatball, maybe they'd rethink their stance on rutabagas. If they abscond being Jack and assume the identity of Meatball, and if other Meatballs actually like rutabagas, then it follows that maybe rutabagas aren't to be despised. 

And even if they aren't delicious, maybe they're at least tolerable.

Maybe the new Meatball formerly known as Jack might give rutabagas another shot. 

That might be something that Meatball would do.

Imagine how intimate you would feel toward even the most fleeting of strangers you would pass on the street.

You'd actually know them. 

More than know them, you'd actually be them, in a way.

"Good morning, Meatball."

"Howdy-do to you, too, Meatball."

"Well, au revoir, Meatball."

"Toodle-oo, Meatball-arino!" 

You'd perhaps realize that your little Meatball problems aren't unique to you—that every Meatball you meet shares the same struggles, the same hopes and dreams and fears and wants and needs as every other Meatball in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours.

You may be prepared to afford them a little leniency. 

Or, if you're the type of Meatball that holds yourself to a higher standard than other Meatballs, you'd realize that you, too, are Meatball, and that you might also deserve a little forgiveness and leniency, yourself.

St. Meatball. King Meatball III. Sir Meatball, Esq. Princess Meatball. Madam Meatball. Professor Meatball. Meatball, A.C.E. Dr. Meatball. Grandma Meatball. Pope Meatball XIV. Lord Meatball. Meatball, attorney at law. Meatball & Bros. Farmer Meatball. Governor Meatball. Principal Meatball. Sensei Meatball. Meatball Jr. Queen Meatball. Supreme Leader Meatball. Judge Meatball. Meatball-samma. Chef Meatball. Heavyweight Champion of the World, Meatball. Grand Master Meatball. 

Sovereignty is nice. Our individualities have a lot to offer.

But they can also leave much to be desired.

Consider how liberating being Meatball could be.

When I think back on ol' Meatball, coming into the tavern in the mornings to vacuum the floors, he seemed to be doing just fine.

He emanated an easygoing gravitas, perhaps a natural consequence of not overcomplicating life with menial concerns like people's individual names. 

People have so many names, anyway. Stacy. Nathaniel. Kim. Neil. And you're telling me each one of them is different? 

How different could they possibly be? And who has the time to find out?! 

Think of how easy things can be, when you—and everyone else—agree to be fundamentally the same.

Not everyone becoming someone so lofty as Lord Alfred Tennyson, Oliver Cromwell, Blackbeard the Pirate or Tony Danza.

No. We become "Meatball." Easy. Unassuming. Comfortable and content.

The full-time bookkeeper had her thing. The part-time, pregnant bookkeeper had her thing. 

I had, and continue to have, my thing. 

Bev had her thing. The mice and the cockroaches and the vermin had their thing. 

"Cowboy" Roy had his thing. 

Stacy and Nathaniel and Kim and Neil had their things (whatever those entailed; I always had my suspicions about them). 

Meatball had his thing, too, but—the thing was, Meatball's thing was everyone's thing, because everyone was Meatball.

He was Meatball.

I was Meatball. 

You may not have known it then, but you were Meatball, too.

We were all Meatball.

And, here's the meaty little secret:

We could all be Meatball again.

If we want to be.