🎧 227: “Peter,” called my father ...

13

“PETER,” called my father from the foot of the stairs. “What are you working on? Homework?”
     “No,” I said. “I finished my homework.”
     “Are you working on the Tars Manual?”
     “No,” I said. “I’ve got that finished too. I’m working on the log.”
     “The log? What do you mean?”
     “Well,” I said, aware that what I was doing could be considered ridiculous, was likely to be considered ridiculous by anyone I knew, and was certain to be considered ridiculous by my father, “I’m—um—trying to make it a little—better.”
     “Better?”
     “Yeah,” I said. “Whenever I look back at the early meetings, I see a lot of places where things could have gone better, and I remember things I left out, and I think of things that would have made the meeting smoother or more fun, and the rules have changed a lot since the early meetings, so—”
     “Peter,” called my father, “wait a minute, wait a minute.” He began walking up the stairs. “Do you mean to say that you’re changing the log?”
    “Well,” I said, made wary by his tone, “yes.”
    “You can’t do that,” he said. He stood behind me, looking over my shoulder at the work on my desk. He reached over me and picked up the spiral-bound notebook in which I was writing a revised version of the log. “Peter,” he said, exasperation and surprise driving the anger from him, “you just can’t do this. A log is—well—it’s something sacred, it’s like history. It is history. You can’t rewrite history, can you?”
     I didn’t say anything. I just sat there, looking at my desk top, letting my eyes drift out of focus.
     “Of course you can’t,” he said. “It’s wrong. It’s—well—it’s just wrong. You know what the poet says, don’t you?” I didn’t answer. “Well?” asked my father. He poked me on the shoulder. “Do you?”
     For a moment I thought of saying, “Every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better,” but decided against it. “I guess not,” I said.
     “‘The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on,’” he said. “That’s what the poet says.”
    “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I have heard that.”

In Topical Guide 227, Mark Dorset considers Self-Improvement from this episode.

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