评论
打印
He was my inspiration when I was a boy —— a worrier to look up to. He used to visit me in my room, where he would examine my homework and then shake his head and say, "You'll never get through medical school with spelling like this."
当我是一个孩童的时候，祖父是我的灵感之所在——他是一个令人尊敬的生性爱忧愁的人。他惯常到我的房间看我，检查我做的功课，然后摇摇头说，"像你这样的拼写，想读完医学院是绝对不成的。"
"But these are brand-new words," I would tell him in a worried way. "Spelling is harder this year than it was in the second grade."
"不过这些都是些崭新的词儿"我总是不无忧愁地告诉他。"今年的拼写比二年级的时候难多了。"
He would sigh and say, "I don't know. I'm not even sure you should be a doctor at all. I just read that they have the highest rate for dropping dead."
他便叹口气说道，"我不清楚。我甚至说不准你该不该当医生。我刚刚读到医生的猝死率最高。"
My grandfather's quaint worries about me and Mel Ott and Eleanor Roosevelt are enough to make a contemporary worrier weep with envy. I wonder what he would have done if he had read a recent prediction by Gunnar Myrdal that the American economy could utterly collapse within five years —— just before the Eastern tidal wave but shortly after the arrival of the bees. Probably he would have adopted something like my own advanced worrying posture and learned to make room for each new worry by letting it trump one of the old ones. For example, when I read about the inundation of the East I forgot about my overdue Bloomingdale's bill; when I read Gunnar Myrdal's warning I decided to stop worrying about what would happen if Connecticut ever ran out of antiques. When I heard about the bees I eased off my worry about a root canal of mine and let the Panama Canal replace it on the Top Twenty.
我祖父对我、梅尔·奥特，以及埃莉诺·罗斯福的那些古怪的担忧，足以使当今的忧愁者羡慕得流下泪来。我不知道，如果他读到冈纳·默德尔新近关于美国经济在五年内——刚好在东部海啸之前、毒蜂到达后不久——完全崩溃的预言时怎么办。很可能他会采取与我本人的先进的发愁姿态相仿的办法，学会用新的忧愁覆盖掉旧的忧愁，从而为新的忧愁腾出位置。譬如，当我读到东海岸将被海水淹没的时候，我就忘了我拖欠的布卢明代尔百货公司的账单;当我读到冈纳·默德尔的警告时，我决定不再为康涅狄格州古董弄光了该怎么办而犯愁;当我听说毒蜂时，我慢慢放松了对我的牙髓管的忧愁，并让巴拿马运河取而代之，成为我二十大忧愁之一。
