GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #700: WALTER BISHOP IN CHINATOWN

 There's an episode of Fringe in which Walter Bishop gets lost in Chinatown. Remember, when we first met him, he was on a psych ward and had been for almost two decades. Now he's been out for a while, but people have to keep a close watch on him because, well, he's an old man with the sensibilities of a child. He yearns for more freedom, but he just can't have it. So in this episode he defiantly goes to Chinatown on his own, and sure enough, he gets lost. He's stranded without any hopes of contacting his son Peter or the rest of his Fringe Division team. He's a brilliant scientist who figured out how to go to a parallel universe, but when it comes to more mundane things? He doesn't have a good grip on things. He's practically helpless.

It reminded me of Gramps from a long time ago. Back then he worked at Dulles Cleaners in Elmhurst. The store he used to work at is no longer there. I think the flagship still is, but I'm too lazy to look it up now. Regardless, from my house to Dulles is a five minute drive, and that's allowing for a lot to go wrong. It's about a mile and would take me--in my prime--about 30-45 minutes to get there by foot.

Gramps needed a ride to work, and I told him I would give it to him when I got back from running errands. He expressed some concern that I would not be back in time, and I told him that would be no problem. I'm usually very punctual. When I'm hanging out with friends, I usually arrive to the minute I say I'm going to be there. When it's something else, like work or a signing or some kind of event, I'm almost always early (except for Printers Row, but that's a story for another day).

I ran my errands, but I did run a little later than I expected. I told Gramps I would be there at 4:50 pm, and he had to be at work by 5. I said this expecting to be done with everything by 4:30, but like I said, I ran a little late. I still made it back at 4:49. I honked the horn. Gramps didn't come out. The clock switched to 4:51, and I went inside to find out what's going on.

Gramps wasn't there. I searched around until I found Grandma in the basement with the laundry. She said that Gramps left a half an hour ago ON FOOT to go to work. That stubborn old man guessed I wouldn't be there on time. I asked her why she didn't stop him, but I needn't have.

Angry, I got back in my car and sped down the road, keeping an eye out. I found Gramps about three-quarters of the way, and he was looking rough. By that point in life he was already bowlegged, and he struggled to keep moving forward. It was more of a hobble than a walk. There was no way he would have made it.

I pulled over and unlocked the door, pushing it open and shouted to get his attention. When he saw it was me, he got in the car, and I drove him the rest of the way. I was so fucking angry with him that I let him have it with both barrels. Not a second went by without me yelling at him, not even when I pulled into the lot by the side of Dulles. I sat there for a little while longer, because I had another couple of minutes to rant at him. I forget how much time has passed, but he was probably in his early eighties at the time. How could he think that he could have walked all that distance when he had difficulty going up and down stairs? He could have been hurt. What if I didn't see him? What if he fell down and had to be brought to a hospital? What if . . . and so on. I can still feel the heat of my anger right now as I type this out.

And he sat there and took it without a single fucking word. Finally, when I ran out of steam and it was 4:58, he said, "I'm sorry, Dodge. I am. But I have to go into work now."

And so he went. I was his ride home that night, and I spent a lot of my time thinking about other angry things to say to him, but when I picked him up we didn't say anything.

And now here I am, a few weeks from turning 45, and I understand why he did it. No one ever wants to admit that their best days are behind them. Someone who used to walk miles and miles all the time doesn't want to get used to the fact that they can't do that anymore. No one wants to admit to themselves that age is getting the better of them. That they can't do the things they used to. That youth is gone and all that remains is the time you have left with your own ever-increasing decrepitude and how long that takes to wear you down to the pencil nub they'll put in the ground at the end of your life.

Because I feel that now, and I'm only half the age Gramps was when he went out for his walk. I, too, used to walk a lot. At least a mile a night. Just for the fun of it. I can't do that anymore because of my bad foot. My joints are going bad on me. Not too long ago I thought I had rheumatoid arthritis, but it turned out to be trigger finger instead. Still, it's pretty debilitating. I'm going under the knife for one of my hands soon, and I've been advised that it will be out of commission for a while so it can heal. My right hand. The one I write with. One of the hands I need to type with. I thought about just ignoring the doctor's warning, but then I thought of Gramps on his way to Dulles. Walter Bishop lost in Chinatown.

And I thought about the years ahead of me. What happens if my bad foot needs to be amputated? What if I lose the other one, too? What if my hands go so bad on me that I can't just charge forward, doing whatever I want to do anyway? Who is going to do these things for me?

I don't want to admit that one day, if I live long enough, I'm going to need someone to take care of me because this getting old thing doesn't show any signs of stopping. And I don't want to give up and sit in bed and wait for the end to come. I want to walk to fucking Dulles, for Christ's sake!

But I can't. The world has moved on and will always move on. I, too, have moved on.

O Discordia!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #672: WALTER BISHOP

 

I'm almost done with Fringe, and I've really enjoyed the experience so far. Fringe has shown me some pretty fucking weird things that I would never have seen otherwise. For example, have you ever wondered what interrogating a corpse would look like? Holy shit, it looks so wrong there's an atavistic reaction from my lizard brain to it.

There is a lot of gross stuff on this show, and some of it isn't necessarily gross, but it is very uncomfortable to look at, like the people with the see-through skin. Some of this stuff I wonder how they got away with on network TV.

But there are two things that really stood out for me. Both involve the character, Walter Bishop. The other I'm going to talk about some other night, but I wanted to talk about a moment late in the first season that I think was handled like no other show would.

If you haven't watched the show, when we first meet Walter he's been in an asylum for almost two decades. He's a mad scientist who did some pretty fucking crazy things before his lab exploded, killing someone, sending him to the asylum for all those years. He doesn't have a lot of his memories because his partner, the Steve Jobs-esque William Bell (played by Leonard Nimoy!!!!), removed parts of his brain at his own request so he wouldn't have to remember certain things.

So a lot of his past is shrouded in mystery. When we discover that one of the things he didn't want to remember is the horrible child experimentation he did back in the day, it's kind of awful. We've grown to love this eccentric old man who does drugs (a lot) and sometimes doesn't believe in clothes (OK, maybe a lot). We don't want to believe that he's capable of such things. And then we find out that he experimented on Olivia, one of his colleagues in the Fringe department, when she was a kid. She, also, didn't have memories of this until late in season one. And now they both know what happened way back when.

There is a scene where, full of rage and rightfully so, she confronts Walter at a diner about what he did to her as a child, and Walter responds in the most unexpected way. In my experience when someone is confronted with the horrible deeds of their past, they react in one of two ways: complete denial or righteous indignation with an unhealthy dose of self rationalization. 

Walter does neither of these things. Instead he breaks down and cries with shame and guilt. I've never seen that before, in real life or in fiction, and I'm kind of jealous that I never wrote anything like that. Who knows? Maybe I'll rip it off at some point.

As for the other thing about Walter, that's for another night.