On Account of Age
EPurSeMouve
The third was a boy-not-yet-a-man, with light peach fuzz and Buddy
Holly glasses. He glided through the West Wing - the West Wing! - on
roller blades so well-oiled, he looked like he was flying.
"Seaborn?" he called out as he flew through the halls, and Sam dropped
a lapful of notes onto the floor so he could catch up with the courier.
He tripped over a pile of files on his way to the door.
"You could have left this with my assistant," Sam muttered as he signed
for the package.
The courier shrugged. "Sorry, but I got class in an hour, and you were
right here."
And Sam finished signing his name, with a firm dot at the end, so firm
that the pen's impact shook the clipboard. "You know," he said in the
same tone, "your attitude could use a little work."
The not-quite-grown-up pushed off, making his way down the hallway with
the grace of an angel. "No time for love, Dr. Jones."
Donna was passing, and they both watched the courier's retreat.
"How old would you guess he was, Donna?" Sam asked.
She frowned, considering. "Nineteen at the most. Nineteen at the
least, really. I didn't think you were allowed to skate in here."
"Oh, I'm fairly sure you're not."
"Pity." She smiled. "You got the thing?"
Sam ripped open the envelope, and soon had more information than he'd
ever needed about the President's Volunteer Action Award and this
year's recipient.
There were even more files on the floor now. It was almost starting to
look like Josh's office. Or a teenager's bedroom.
-------------
After the fifth one, Sam started a tally on the white board in his
office.
"Who was number six?" Josh asked in between HMO policy debate and
slices of pizza.
"This blonde girl with a video camera near GW - she was filming
something for a class and apparently I was in the background, so she
started yelling about how I was destroying her, uh, mise-en-scene."
"Mise-en-scene." Josh's French was awkward, to say the least.
"It refers to the space within the frame. A director attempts complete
control over it in order to make an expressive point."
"So you interfered with her expressive point."
"Apparently so," Sam said. "And she yelled."
"Only the second yeller, so far."
"Yep."
"Yep." Josh took another bite of pizza. "You know, a good friend
might point out, at this point, that it's highly unlikely that all
people born in the year 1981 have a personal vendetta against you."
Sam nodded. "You're absolutely right."
Josh set the pizza down. "So, patients' bill of rights?"
-------------
"I don't think the Starbucks boy counts," Josh was saying as they
hurried across the Mall, shivering into their overcoats.
"He used skim rather than two-percent," Sam said. "And his manner was
decidedly curt."
"A Starbucks boy's mistake is no fourteen-year-old intern spanking,
though."
"They're baristas, you know, and she was nineteen. They're always
nineteen."
Josh stopped, then, hesitating with a gentle smile and cunning eyes.
"This is coming from somewhere, I'm sure. This isn't just because of
Winifred Hooper, wonder intern."
Sam shrugged off the look and kept walking. "I need real milk. With
fat in it. Let's get back."
Josh's eyes, enigmatic. Processing, processing, before shrugging
deeper into his coat and shouldering on. "Whose idea was it for us to
walk, anyways?"
Sam wrinkled his forehead. "Cathy?"
"It's the sort of insidious thing Donna does, really."
"Maybe Cathy's learning from her."
They waited at the crosswalk, watching the cars pass by. "Or maybe she
thought we needed the exercise."
Sam paused to consider. "We are a bit pale. Peaky, even."
Josh laughed. "Speak for yourself, old man. I have a surfeit of
life."
"Surfeit?"
"High school French class."
Sam shook his head. "You choked on mise-en-scene."
"Languages were never my thing." And Josh bounded across the street,
full of youthful energy, and Sam scurried to catch up.
-------------
Yet another morning, yet another meeting. CJ ran a hand through her
hair. "So, tomorrow there's the majority leader's lecture at Johns
Hopkins - and I'd really like to have someone there in case he decides
to start, I don't know, inciting the students to revolt or vote
Republican or something. Josh? You're not doing anything then,
right?"
Josh scribbled down something on his pad - then tore the top sheet off.
"I got lunch with the whip and a meeting with the guy that afternoon.
And Baltimore's far."
"Baltimore is not far. Baltimore is a hour's drive."
"By myself? In a car?" He started to crumple the piece of paper into a
ball.
She sighed. "Fine. Sam? You'll fit right in."
The brilliant line of rhetoric Sam had been scribbling ended with a
startled slash of the pen. "I resemble a college student?"
"You're in shape and you have all your own hair. You'll blend," CJ
said.
Josh rolled the ball in his hands, attempting a spherical shape and
trying to ignore that hair comment. "Sam's afraid of teenagers."
Sam raised his pen in objection. "I am not afraid of teenagers."
CJ turned to Josh. "Is this because of the intern thing? Because that
was a while ago."
"It's not just the intern thing," Josh said. "It's something else."
Sam raised his voice. "I am not afraid of teenagers!" CJ and Josh and
Toby and a few passersby stared, and he took a breath before
continuing. "But I have this speech that's not done, and it'd probably
be good if that changed before Tuesday."
When CJ ran her hands through her hair this time, she seemed ready to
pull a chunk of it out. "Toby? What are you up to?"
"Something very important that I cannot be dragged away from," he
replied.
"If you're referring to the NCAA championships, Toby, then you most
certainly can be dragged away from them. By me. Using force, if
necessary."
Toby made one of those faces. "Okay, then."
Josh tossed the paper ball towards the trash can - rim shot. "Claudia
Jean with the sports info."
"I see the patterns. The headlines, the chatter, you and your
perpetual trash bin slam dunks. I observe. I research. I learn."
"Who are you rooting for?" Josh asked, rebounding the ball.
"The Lakers, of course."
Josh's next shot made it in. "There's improvement, at least."
As they were filing out, CJ pulled Sam aside, eyes on a level with him.
"Is this teenager issue something real, or is this just Josh being
Josh?"
"It's nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing."
"You sure? Do you wanna talk about it?"
"You've got a briefing. It's nothing."
"Okay." And she strode away, and Sam went back to his office to
continue writing the speech saluting the accomplishments of Caroline
Lee, accomplished violinist, volunteer, and activist, a model citizen
for young and old alike.
Number ten.
-------------
Number twelve had fluffy brown hair and a strong dislike of Macs. She
poked at Sam's laptop obstinately.
"So your screensaver keeps crashing," she said. "Is it affecting any
of your other files?"
Sam skimmed a review of Caroline Lee's performance at Carnegie Hall.
"No, not really."
The computer beeped happily under her ministrations. "Then why do you
need a screensaver, then? This is a laptop. You just close it up and
you're fine."
Sam looked up from the article. "When I'm stuck on something and I'm
staring into space, my screensaver comes up, and it reminds me to start
writing again."
"So it's an unnecessary program that you're making into something
necessary?"
He sighed. "It IS necessary."
She lifted her hands from the computer, which chirruped in protest.
"Mea culpa."
The pronunciation was flawless. Sam looked up again. "Are you an
intern?"
"I work part-time - it's a light semester for me." She typed quickly,
her fingers moving faster than her mouth. "I have an FBI file now and
I'm not even twenty."
"That's quite a thing."
She fidgeted a bit. "It's pretty scary, tell you the truth."
"It is?" he asked, surprised.
She shrugged. "I'm not a grown-up. I am in no way adult. So what am
I doing here?"
"Fixing my computer."
"It isn't very hard." One last happy purr from the computer, and she
shut it down with three fingers and a pleased half-smile. "I debugged
the source code. Soon as it reboots, it'll be good as new."
They both got up at the same time. "Did anyone ever tell you that you
couldn't do this? Fix a computer in the West Wing?" he asked.
"Only myself. Whenever I let me."
He shook his head briefly, thinking. "You're no Winnie, Kathleen."
Her eyes widened when he took her hand and shook it. "What?"
"Never mind."
-------------
Josh came in that night, eating an apple and reading from a file.
"Is that the latest amendment from the committee?" Sam asked.
He looked up from the file. "Remember when we were kids, and you'd go
to the doctor, he'd take your temperature and look in your ears, and
you'd get a lollipop?"
"Yeah?"
Josh sat down. "I wonder if HMOs budget for lollipops."
"It's probably in the deductible."
Josh leaned back and put his feet up on Sam's desk, taking a moment to
peer at Sam's white board tally. "You're up to twelve?"
"Technical support. She fixed my screensaver."
"I didn't know we had nineteen-year-olds in technical support."
"Only exceptional ones. You want a napkin for that apple?"
"Please."
They worked in comfortable silence for a moment - Josh reading his
file, and Sam staring at his computer, willing the speech to write
itself. But then little trumpets flared as Sam's screensaver turned
on.
"'America the Beautiful' plays as your screensaver?" Josh asked.
"It's inspiring."
"It's cliched."
Sam sighed. "Not as cliched as this last sentence reads."
"I take it that it's not going so well," Josh said, making a face as he
reached the apple's core.
Sam watched Josh chew for a minute before closing the laptop, running a
hand over his face. "Were you an exceptional nineteen-year-old?" he
asked.
Josh grinned. "Extraordinary, maybe. More extraordinary than my
roommate sophomore year, though he could speak in tongues." He paused,
thinking. "Which was really creepy at the time, especially when he'd
do it in the middle of the night, but in retrospect, it could have
been considered exceptional..."
Sam got up, pacing. "See, that's the thing. What is an exceptional
nineteen-year-old? Is it their potential? Their accomplishments? Or
just the fact that this person is there, trying, when so much of their
age group considers it quite permissible to do nothing and let the
world pass by?"
"You know what I think, Sam?" Josh closed his file. "I think you're
expecting far too much of an age group that's just barely out of
infancy and can't really be expected to live up to any sort of ideal.
That's why we notice the exceptional nineteen-year-olds - because there
just aren't a lot of them."
"But why is that?" Sam said. "Is it because they're intimidated, or
shy, or lazy, or bored? IQs don't increase with age. But voter
turn-out does. Thirty-two percent of 18 to 24-year-olds voted in the
last election. Thirty-two percent! And those are just the ones who
bothered to register in the first place."
Josh's eyes followed Sam as he paced, and he lifted his feet off Sam's
desk. "Look, I understand where you're coming from, but these are just
kids we're talking about. Voter turn-out in '96 was below fifty
percent around the nation, and it hasn't gotten any better since. If
it weren't for the exceptional 25 to 100-year-olds, we'd all just vote
for each other and it'd be one big popularity contest."
"Isn't it already?" Sam asked, frustrated.
"Not really - but it'd be less biased than campaign financing. And the
girls would be cuter."
"They're already pretty cute. Why would they be cuter?"
"So they'd be more popular, dude," Josh said, pausing at Sam's lack of
comprehension. "You can't have forgotten this - you don't get to block
out your adolescence until you're at least 38 and old."
"I can't skip ahead?" Sam asked.
Josh scoffed. "What could you possibly need to forget?" He paused.
"Aside from that Gilbert and Sullivan thing, that is."
"I'll have you know that being recording secretary of anything for two
years looks good on a resume," Sam said. "Probably got me into law
school."
He smiled. "I doubt that. I highly doubt that. I am skeptical in
the extreme. And what's this big thing you need to block out? A
roommate thing? I know I wouldn't mind forgetting about the tongues
guy."
Sam opened his mouth - then stopped, thinking. "Do you really want to
know? Because we should be doing this other thing..."
"My interest in health care minutia pales in comparison," Josh said.
"You're going to use this to embarrass me someday, aren't you?"
"Only because you have more hair than me."
Sam sighed. "Look, there was this thing one of my professors said to
me," he said. "Back in the day."
Josh raised his eyebrows. "When you were nineteen, I'm guessing."
"Yeah." He paused. "'Kiddo, it's not like you're old enough to make a
difference.' That was what he said."
Josh took his feet off the desk. "A professor said this to you?
What'd you do, try too hard or something?"
"I argued with him."
"You didn't like this professor?"
"Actually, I revered the guy. But he was wrong one day, and I
corrected him - however, it was an embarrassing mistake, and I didn't
think about how it would make him look or feel. So afterwards I went
up to him - to apologize for maybe being too forward..."
"But it didn't make a bit of difference," Josh filled in.
"It didn't make a bit of difference, kiddo. And I have no doubt that
it didn't - that I didn't affect him in the slightest."
"You probably didn't. Some of my professors, you could have thrown a
rock at their heads and it wouldn't have mattered," Josh said.
"It was just the phrasing. And the 'kiddo.' A great thinker of our
times, I thought then, and he just..." Sam shrugged, unable to
complete the sentence.
"It's a horrible thing to say to a person." Josh's voice expressed an
odd kind of sympathy - his own brand.
"Exactly!" And Sam's gestures became large and grand, as he wrote a
speech with the movement of his arms and the words he spoke. "We
should be telling young people that they're powerful, complex,
intelligent individuals, who make a difference every day and can be an
even greater influence upon the world with just a little extra effort.
We should be calling them by their proper names and pushing them
forward into an intimidating world, standing behind them because we
were there ourselves only just a few years ago."
"As I understand it, you called Winifred Hooper 'Winnie'."
Sam sighed. "And maybe I shouldn't have."
Josh's eyes flickered back towards the white board. "So these kids..."
Sam followed his eyes. "I can't imagine they were ever told that they
didn't matter. Even if they did mix up coffee orders and yell."
"Well, if arrogance is exceptional, then I don't see why we're worrying
about this generation at all," Josh said, smirking a little.
"It's not the arrogance, I think," Sam said. "It's just something.
Not to be so intimidated at that age. Not to be intimidated at any
age."
"Well, I think you recovered from the kiddo thing remarkably. Though
as things go, this wasn't a big one."
"Yes, well... I wonder, sometimes." Sam looked like he wanted
something to slam or hit - to express his frustration in a more
dramatic way. "I mean, I write speeches. I don't give them myself.
Speaking through some else... It could be considered hiding, if one
wanted to argue about such a thing."
"Sam..." Josh opened his mouth, but stopped himself, brow furrowing,
as he considered the words. "Even at the ripe old age of 32, you
manage to be exceptional."
It was a moment between them, a nice moment, and it held until Donna
walked by and poked her head in, her hair drifting downwards a moment
after the movement of her head.
"Are you guys coming?" she asked. "They're getting started in a few
minutes, and I've already sent a present for you, Josh, so if you don't
go, it'll look like your assistant just sent a present because you were
too busy to remember about it."
Josh shook his head. "Wait. Okay. Back up. Remember about what?"
"Zoey's birthday. There's a party in the mess."
Josh paled. "Oh, crap. I've become one of those people whose
assistants send presents for important birthdays because they're too
busy to remember."
"Is it an important birthday?" Sam asked.
"Well," Josh said, "She must be turning twenty, because wasn't she
number four?"
Sam looked over at the white board. "Number two, actually."
"Sometimes, you guys..." Donna trailed off. "Yes, she is now twenty
years of age, which is indeed extremely important, numerically."
"Though it means nothing in the real world," Josh added.
Donna frowned. "She's a year older. A year wiser. No reason not to
celebrate. You guys coming?"
The two men looked at each other. Each other and Sam's laptop and the
piles and piles of files surrounding them.
"There's this thing-"
"We shouldn't-"
"There's cake," she said, and they were on their feet.
"Just for a few minutes," Sam said as he grabbed his coat. "To give
her our best and so forth."
"I bet it's chocolate cake," Josh rambled. "With fudge icing." He was
first out the door, but Sam was right behind him.
Donna smiled a bit at their retreating backs, watching them rush down
the hall.
"Kids," she said to herself, then sped to catch up.
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