I spent a lot of my early 20s (as I remember it anyway) piling too many friends into some Pontiac P-O-S of considerable vintage, or similar rickety transport. My friend Todd had the prime example: none of the locks worked. None! How does that happen? Shouldn’t one forced entry point be enough? And if this is my ride, what are the chances there’s something you want to steal inside? This ugly brown automobile also sported a non-working heater. And if we, crammed two-people deep in the back seat, forgot and asked Todd to turn up the heat, Todd would do his best to oblige:
“Fiddle, fiddle!” he would sing optimistically, waggling his fingers in the direction of the heater. And then once more, with a bit of doubt in his voice: “fiddle…?” It was more a concerted aspiration to produce heat than any physical attempt to restore the heater to working order. It also had a welcome bit of Gone With the Wind “fiddle-dee-dee” in it.
I loved it then, and still do. I particularly like the sheer cheerfulness in the face of grievous obstacles – as if Todd lives in a world where the heat may in fact respond. (You don’t know; it could happen.) It suggests all the complexity of playing a nimble violin. Still, “fiddle fiddle” is a playful opportunity to do one’s best – it says “I’m game” or, in the words of one of my favorite songs “better to be a rotten egg than to skip the race.” This is an important attitude to maintain if I’m going to participate in the world. The likelihood of failure is high in my life (I put this down to being talentless), but it turns out that’s where the fun is.
Though I’ve since graduated from the era of ramshackle, unheated transport, I continue to find “fiddle, fiddle” the best response to many a daunting challenge. It’s what I do at work when I don’t know what I’m doing – and more often than not it works. It’s even fitting for a bad hair day.
I don’t have a temperament suited to an infinite amount of fiddling, though. If pressed, I will eventually yield a bored sounding “futz, futz,” and this is not the direction in which one hopes to be headed. Futzing lacks the patient hopefulness of fiddling. Futzing may be serious and can lead to annoyance.
Nobody wants that.
4 comments:
Funny that all these "Learn how to play the fiddle" ads came up on the page with your blog...
Yeah, Google ads try to match ads to content. I hear the associations are sometimes riotously funny -- that's most of the reason they're there. I'm hoping for automated irony...
I am hopeful over time that I will have a pithy remark for many of your blogs. In this case my economic health has driven me. Please keep saying "fiddle, fiddle" with the software company and program you advised me to buy. No futz, futz here. Also please say "fiddle, fiddle" at my blackberry please.
"I put this down to being talentless"
Pshaw! Maybe not at fixing heaters or controlling shoes, but in other areas (such as the writing that draws me here), that couldn't be more untrue.
(What does it mean that my word verification is feces?)
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