idiot board — 1 thorough investigation

idiot board, the term used in television for cue cards, is something the barista helped me design for a coffee order i could no longer remember out loud. the man in 4B was workshopping something percussive, books on tape are cheating per my standing ruling, and eight cards exist now.

i do not know when i lost the ability to order a coffee. i suspect a wednesday. it crept up on me the way most defeats creep up on a person who lives alone — quietly, while i was busy being confident about something else.

this is a serious investigation, conducted at 4:08pm on a thursday, into the small flat rectangles of paper that television hosts read from when their faces forget what their mouths were supposed to say. carla is in the annual planning meeting on the third floor. i have until she comes back, which by experience is the rest of the lunch window.

writing this from the desk. carla took the binder and a pen with two clicks. the lunch window is the rest of the morning, technically the rest of the early afternoon, which is the same window i always have.

before this gets ahead of me, the cluster pillar — the post about the word idiot and what it actually does in a sentence — already covers the broader theory of why this term arrived in my life and refused to leave. consider this the field manual.

idiot board, the broadcast tool

the idiot board, in television, is the off-camera card a person reads from when the teleprompter is broken or the segment is improvised or the host is, in the technical sense, an idiot. saturday night live used them for decades. they exist in network too, as a kind of background prop nobody explains. anchorman has a whole bit about reading whatever lands on the glass. the term is real. the term is in the credits of certain shows. i looked it up.

i was vaguely aware of it the way i’m vaguely aware of most useful information — as something that lived on a different shelf, in a different room, in a building i did not own. then i went to my coffee shop. then i stood at the counter. then i made eye contact with the barista, who knows my order, and the order left my head entirely. it left like a guest who suddenly remembered a thing in the car.

the barista waited. the barista is a professional. the barista said, gently, “the usual?” and i said, also gently, “what is the usual.” this is not a sentence a regular customer should ever produce. she made it anyway. it was correct. i drank it slowly, like a man under observation.

CARDS. SOLVE. EVERYTHING.

on the walk back to the office i decided, with the seriousness of a person who has just lost a small piece of himself in public, that this would not happen again. the solution arrived fully formed, the way most of my solutions arrive — borrowed from television, applied to a life that does not technically need them. i would build cards. i would carry cards. the cards would speak for me when i could not.

eight idiot boards i would carry through life, in order of usefulness

i made the list at 1:38pm during a quiet stretch. the list is now eight cards. it could be more. it will not be fewer. each one solves a specific failure i have already lived through, which is the only research method i trust.

1. the coffee order card. oat latte, large, no sugar, one of those small cinnamon things if it’s tuesday. the barista does not need this. i need this. i hand it over the way a foreign exchange student hands over a passport. she nods. dignity is preserved. the line moves. the cinnamon thing is acquired.

2. the small talk card. three pre-approved sentences about the weather, one about the elevator, one about how busy things are without specifying. it is a flat 12% tipping situation in the sense that you give the minimum and everyone leaves satisfied. i keep this card laminated, because small talk is a wet activity.

3. the dave call card. “what did you do” is dave’s opening line every time he picks up. my card has the response — pre-written, pre-edited, removed of every detail that might extend the call. dave laughed for nine minutes the last time he heard the truth. i do not have nine minutes. i have a card. i read it. dave hangs up. peace.

4. the meeting card. three phrases a meeting requires: “good question”, “let’s circle back”, and “i’d want to see the numbers”. every meeting could be a 3-line email, but the meetings continue, so the card continues. carla has never seen this card. carla also takes notes the way a court reporter takes notes, which is why she gets the third floor and i get a desk near the printer.

5. the apology card. generic, dateless, applicable to any of the men in 4B who keep workshopping percussion at hours that violate every reasonable expectation of building life. apology in this case is not for me. it is for whichever neighbor i have to confront next, because i have a card and they have a snare drum, and the card is, technically, more polite.

6. the supermarket card. milk. butter. one tomato. nothing else. i have failed at this list eleven times this year. the card does not stop the failures. it does, however, give me something to point at when i unpack a frying pan i did not need and a third yoga mat i absolutely should not have purchased again. the cards are not magic. the cards are evidence.

7. the doctor card. the doctor asks how i am. the doctor is a man with a job. the card says “fine, mostly”. the card is a lie. the doctor knows it is a lie. the doctor and i have an arrangement, mediated by a small flat rectangle of paper that says the thing we both want to say so we can move on to the part where i get a prescription.

8. the existential card. for the moments when someone — a stranger, a barista, my mother on a sunday call — asks the question my brain does not have an answer for in real time. “are you okay” is the usual phrasing. the card says “yes”. the card says it confidently. the card has saved me, by my running count, four conversations this season.

that is the list. eight cards. they fit in a wallet. they fit in a pocket. they do not fit in my head, which is the entire point.

the barista who agreed with my plan

i went back to the coffee shop the next morning to test the first card. i ordered. i used the card. the barista — same one, no judgment — read it, made the drink, and said, casually, “i have one of these.” she pulled a small folded square out of her apron. it was her own list. it had names on it. customers, presumably. with notes. she let me read one. it said: tall man, black hat, oat flat white, never small talk, do not ask.

i have, somewhere in this building, an entry on a barista’s idiot board. i would like to know what it says. i suspect it is unkind. it does not matter. the system works on both sides of the counter. she has cards. i have cards. the transaction proceeds. nobody has to remember anything. this, i submit, is civilization.

she also said, unprompted, “books on tape are cheating, by the way” — which is unrelated, which is the kind of thing baristas say when they trust you, which i took as a small medal. it confirmed my long-standing position. it confirmed her membership in a specific type of person. the karl pilkington school of stating the obvious, idiot abroad division, is alive and well in the coffee shop next to my office, and i think that’s worth noting in the small private log.

closing pulpit, books on tape are cheating, also relevant

the books on tape thing connects, somehow, to all of this, and i’ll tell you how. an idiot board is a card that does the work your face is supposed to be doing. books on tape are a recording that does the work your eyes are supposed to be doing. both are, technically, accommodations. both are, in my long-considered ruling, a form of cheating. both, however, work.

i hold these positions simultaneously and without apology. the barista holds them too. the man in 4B does not hold them, but the man in 4B holds a snare drum at midnight, so his opinions are not weighted equally in this investigation. by the time carla gets back from the third floor, the idiot board collection will be at eight, and i will have used seven of them, in this exact order: small talk, meeting, dave call, coffee order, apology, supermarket, existential. i ran out of cards before i ran out of conversations, which is the only growth metric i’m currently tracking.

so yes. cards. flat. small. silent. carried in a wallet that already contained too many receipts. i’d recommend them to anyone who has ever stood at a counter and forgotten the word for the drink they have ordered four times a week for three years. you know who you are. the cards are for you. the cards are for me. the cards are, possibly, the best idea i’ve had since i decided not to put a fork in the seventh microwave, which i then immediately did anyway, because i didn’t have a card.