THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS

THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS                     (Originally posted October 27, 2012)

An Andrew Ramble

“God is present in the sweeping gesture, but the devil is in the details.” 

-Unknown

Matchbox or Hot Wheels?  This question kind of says it all, however, nowadays my expanding waistline would probably be more inclined to ask; McDonalds or Burger King?  When I was a 10 year old, I would have considered sticking a knife in your heart if you asked or even compared; Star Wars or Star Trek? (Well, at least I was a passionate Geek.)  These types of comparisons probably have a name or a classification of some type.  Whatever its name may be, it still eludes me.  I simply call it similar yet different.  For the people who have little interest in the aspects of the world, which present us subtle choices and don't appreciate the minuscule differences, this tirade will likely be of no interest.  My experience has taught me that it’s the folks who don’t get bogged down in the minutia; tend to be the ones that focus on their jobs, their families, and the simple enjoyment of everyday life.  Then there is my group of people.  We fixate on all the differences.  We pick apart our world and often end up spending our lives in a self-constructed prison of analysis.  Our crime?  Believing that the Devil is in the details.

Like so many occurrences in my life, the subtle differences in my world first truly became apparent in the form of cookies.  Oreo’s to be exact.  (This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.)  Back when I was a little guy in the mid 1970’s, it was only the cookies my mother baked that went into the cookie jar.  Mom baked a good deal, but the appetites of my brother, my sister, and me kept us ahead of her production, therefore resulting in a usually empty cookie jar.  In an effort to supplement our cookie deficit, packaged cookies were routinely purchased and kept in the weird middle bread drawer that so many kitchens of that time had.  This was the drawer with the metal top that you had to slide back once you opened it, to reveal an odd blended smell of Thomas’s English Muffins, plastic bags, semi-stale bread, and sweet factory baked Oreo’s.  Delights, which were manufactured in nearby Fairlawn, NJ, just a few miles north of my childhood home.  Considering my proximity to the Nabisco factory, I probably was fortunate enough to have access to some of the freshest Oreo’s in the nation.  (Do they ever go stale?  I’ve never kept them around long enough to find out.) 

On a few occasions, my mother demonstrated a form of passive aggressive sadism that has haunted my development to this day, and has turned me into something of a self proclaimed expert on the subtle differences in the similar, but vastly different products, our world has to offer.  Now hold on, this is what she did; my mother bought Hydrox cookies and placed them in the steel topped bread drawer in place of my beloved Oreo’s!  Hydrox for Christ sake!  These things were a horror!  The sweetener used in their production was completely inferior to that of Nabisco’s magic formula, and left a rancid aftertaste.  The cream was a lard infused white petroleum product that would ultimately give rise to biodiesel fuels, and the cookie portion was hard for about two minutes after the package was opened, then it quickly degraded into a substance which was still hard to the touch, but utterly without crunch when compressed by cookie loving teeth.  The thing was, to the causal observer, with the exception of the imprint on the dark cookie, they were almost identical to Oreo’s.  For close to four decades I have carried this rage in my heart.  Hydrox, you are no Oreo!  You’re nothing but a cheap hustler looking to steal a market share by subverting 1970’s housewives with lower prices and an inferior product.  Shame on you Hydrox!  You were the ruination of innumerable “cookies and milk” times during my after school viewings of Gilligan’s Island.

MOTHER...HOW COULD YOU?

Becoming a child, or rather a child becoming a person is the recognition of these subtleties.  It’s how our personality comes to be formed and depending on which side of the “detail divide” we all landed on, was an indicator of the people we all became.  So let’s step back to the subject of tiny metal cars for a moment.  These things really said a great deal about me, even before I was able to say it for myself.  I have been a licensed driver in the state of New Jersey since January of 1985.  If my math is right, that’s about twenty-eight years.  Now, how many moving violations have I received during these nearly three decades?  ZERO!  Looking back this makes perfect sense.  The reason being is that I was a Matchbox kid.  We were a totally different breed than those Hot Wheels Cretans.  To prefer a Matchbox Car meant you had an appreciation for detail, accuracy, and performance.  With Matchbox, a fire truck was simply a fire truck.  Their 1968 Camaro could have been photographed against almost any backdrop and it would have been essentially indistinguishable from its Detroit daddy.

They were “collectables.”  They were played with, but it was play born out of a simulation and reverence for reality.  On the other hand, Hot Wheels cars were dropped on us from an alternate reality.  The cars, even when they were representations of real world models, were totally tricked out. They had names to fit their odd look, Mini HaHa and the Baja Breaker to name a couple.  They were for the kids that played hard and lived fast.  The Hot Wheels kids grew into the adults that bought Buick Grand Nationals, Dodge Ram 4x4 pickups, and Mustang GT’s.  They got the high insurance rates and the points on their licenses.  We Matchbox types bought Saturn’s, Jeeps, and Chevy Impalas.  We appreciated and accepted the reality, but with those orange tracks clamped to every bookshelf in their homes, the Hot Wheels kids owned the road.

These days, as I walk past one of the several televisions that are perpetually left on in my home, I take little notice of what is actually playing.  (Maybe some mindless cartoon, like the Fairly Odd Parents.  Ugh!)  But there was a time when it mattered if Bugs Bunny was on, and if it was a Bugs of the pre Chuck Jones vintage that made it even better.  Evening viewing was better when The Fonz was just a poor greaser with an inflated ego, rather than a pseudo superhero, who demonstrated omnipotence with a snap of his fingers.  He even used this super power against an extraterrestrial invader of Arnolds.  Take that Mork from Orc!  Even then, I knew the shiny sets and shot on video appearance was nothing like the Rock Around the Clock filmed richness of the first few season’s of the true Happy Days.

ARCHENEMIES IN HAPPIER DAYS

It wasn’t a jumble.  There were and are delineations all over childhood, and they never seem to go away.  Sometimes we should all slow down and really ask ourselves why we prefer soft ice cream to hard, or examine why Google is really better than Yahoo.   Maybe we should stop and listen to our children, because just like us, they are plugged into these details in their own ways and they have their reasons for liking PS3 more than Xbox 360.  Maybe one day one of them will even let me know exactly what it is about Minecraft that is so enticing.  The details on that one aren’t exactly present to me, but despite its exceedingly poor graphic representation, there must be something that makes it special to today’s ten year olds.

Now arriving at middle age, the subtleties of life have mostly shifted from playthings to people.  Politics is as good a place as any to start, but that is a tired topic for another day.  For now, let me suffice to say that all politicians are full of crap in their own intricate, if completely non-unique ways.  These days, I don’t hate one item over the other as much as I once did.  Makers Mark is great on the rocks but sometimes Jim Beam works just as well to soften the rough edges of life.  Style is a good area for a man of my age to focus on, but after receiving a 12 month subscription of Esquire, I have realized that there is such a thing as too much detail for a schlub like me.  Then there are people.  I once either liked or hated my fellow man for any number of reasons.  Now I have arrived at a simple rule.  If you’re nice to me, I like you for the most part.  If you’re a creep to me for any reason, then you can kiss my ass.  So I guess it’s safe to say that I have become what I beheld at the start of this tirade; that being a person where the details of my loves, likes, and wants have been distilled into a mediocre goop of wholesale acceptance.  However, should you ever approach me and even remotely intone that Star Trek is as good as Star Wars, I’ll still stab you in the heart!

"DON'T EVEN START THAT CAPTAIN KIRK IS BETTER THAN HAN SOLO SHIT AGAIN!"