It's true. I am becoming a curmudgeon. You know, one of those people who is always finding something to complain about.
I am in denial of course. And fighting it. I like to think that I just have a heightened awareness of the incongruities of life or that I am just prone to noticing how strange and or peculiar things are and wondering why. I am not really annoyed so much as amazed.
These things don't consume me or anything. I don't keep harping on the same old annoyances over and over.
With one exception: Why is the NY Times Book Review always folded wrong?
I have tried to overlook it. It's not important that the first half of the pages are wider than the second half or that there is a line showing where the fold should be yet the fold seldom is on that line, or that sometimes it's even more of a mess with pitiful staples trying to keep the pages even which doesn't work.
And if I do try to fold it correctly it never works. It just wants to revert to the incorrect machine fold.
The section of the Times I love, the section I look forward to all week looks careless and undignified as thought this section doesn't matter as much as the rest of the paper.
The rest of the paper is folded properly including the Magazine and the ad inserts. How can this be? Don't they care?
I keep thinking they will fix it. Now and then they do. Sometimes I receive a pristine perfectly folded Book Review and I tell myself “Ah see? I knew they would fix it. Why did I make such a big deal out of this minor little problem?
I bet no one else notices or cares. After all, I am getting older and more easily annoyed. I've always had a thing for refolding a messy newspaper so that it looks unread. Its just a habit I picked up working in libraries."
!/?%$#, gosh darn it, the next week the Book Review was in even worse shape. The staples weren't even on the gray line. It was a disaster.
So I brought this up to my daughter, a graphic designer who said she had noticed the improper folding but didn't think it was such a big deal.
“Not a big deal,” I spluttered - I seem to splutter a lot lately - “this is the New York Times.! The rest of the sections are folded properly. This is a sign of disrespect to the printed book.”
She was kind, she didn't laugh.
But yesterday she called to say she had looked at the folding as she would a project of her own and could see that it wasn't a folding problem so much as a printing problem. Maybe the Book Review has a separate printer from the rest of the paper.
Okay. I get it I suppose. But it still doesn't explain why occasional special sections like Education are folded perfectly.
You may ask why I don't write a letter of complaint. It's probably because I would prefer not to take action over something I truly believe will be ignored, which will make me even angrier. Not much of a citizen I admit.
But the biggie is I don’t want to be a recognized curmudgeon.
Maybe I fear that if I put this aggravation into words I will really become a small time version of Fran Lebowitz. And while I love laughing at her unabashed contrarianism, do I want to be like her: a bona fide grump who makes a living from being annoyed?
Hmm.
