I Am the Cheap Man

It happened last Saturday night, as it has happened before.  My wife and I had taken our seats at a nice restaurant, and the waiter asked if we'd like to order drinks.  My wife asked for a glass of chardonnay--whichever was oakiest--and I ordered a cabernet.

"You are so . . . tacky!"

"We have two," the waiter said, as my wife cringed.  "The Leaping Aardvark and the San Clemente" or whatever.

I considered my choices for a second, then asked the question that has brought my spouse so much pain over the years.  "Which is cheaper?"

Price strikes me as a perfectly legitimate "dimension of assessment," to borrow a term from J.L. Austin, the twentieth century British philosopher who began one of his essays with the phrase "In vino veritas" (In wine there is truth) so there's that connection.  If the restaurant served one brand in ten ounce glasses and another in gallon buckets, wouldn't you want to know that?  Of course you would, because it affects the price of each sip you take.

J.L. Austin

John Lennon may be the egg man; he may even be the walrus.  But I am the cheap man.  Goo-goo-ga-joob, as John might say.

I am excused on genetic grounds, however, unlike Jack Benny, who in one famous routine was slow to respond to a robber's question "Your money or your life!"  When Benny didn't answer, the robber repeated his demand.  "I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" Benny replied, irritated.

My last name is derived from the Middle English noun "chapman," which in turn was derived from "cheapman," a later variation of the Old English "ceapman," all of which referred to itinerant peddlers who made the rounds in the manner of Fuller Brush men, Avon Ladies and Daffy Duck calling on behalf of the Little Giant Vacuum Cleaner Company, Walla Walla, Washington.

A chapman, making the rounds

"Cheap" didn't originally mean shoddy goods, or those haggled over or sold for less than the going rate.  It simply referred to the merchandise--pots and pans, simple housewares--sold by the peddlers who hauled it all over Old and Middle England.  When burghers learned how to build Medieval shopping malls, chapmen came to be viewed as the tacky alternative resorted to by those unable to afford an oxen-powered minivan.

"We're on our way to Ye Olde King's Faire Mall!"

At some point, descendants of these hustlers who were embarrassed by the pejorative connotations of their surname elevated the spelling and pronunciation to "Chipman."  There was one such family in my home town, people of whom it was thought that butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.  The rest of us were either proud or ignorant of our humble roots or unable to afford new name tags for our summer camp clothes.

Hampshire House bar

I'm not reflexively cheap, and sometimes go out of my way to overtip, generally when I'm feeling low and looking for some good karma.  When that mood strikes me, look out--I may tip more than 20%!  The bar at the Hampshire House, where the comedy series "Cheers" was set, used to have a bell the bartenders would ring whenever some big spender threw down a memorable tip.  Ask not for whom that bell tolled.  All I know is, it rarely tolled not for me.

Nutmeg:  Accept no substitutes.

At least I'm not as cheap as the father of a former girlfriend of mine.  An out-of-towner from Connecticut, he would judiciously exclude our state's 5% meals tax from the base of his tip.  "The waiter didn't serve it, and I didn't eat it," said the man when his daughter called him on it.  In case you didn't know, Connecticut is sometimes referred to as "The Nutmeg State" because in colonial times sharp merchants from that state would pass off common walnuts as nutmeg, a highly-prized spice, to gullible Massachusetts residents.  I guess he was sore that the bottom had fallen out of the nutmeg market.

John Chapman, a/k/a "Johnny Appleseed"

Not all Chapmans are cheap, but when a streak of generosity manifests itself in one of my relatives, it is usually a symptom of mental decline, as if the two strains can't be combined without discord.  Johnny Appleseed, born John Chapman, planted apple orchards and gave them away, but he was a member of the Swedenborgian Church, which believes that spirits are flying all around us, all the time.  John Jay Chapman, an American essayist profiled by Edmund Wilson in The Triple Thinkers, burned off his own hand, perhaps to impress a girl.  Makes a diamond necklace seem cheap by comparison.  I never did anything that stupid, although I put a dollar bill in a Valentine's Day card to my sixth grade girlfriend on the assumption that, if it made me happy when my grandmother gave it to me, it ought to work a similar magic on Carolyn Stretz.  I was mistaken--nay, insane--but at least I wasn't cheap.

Mark David Chapman

I have assembled a fictional panel of Chapmans to explore the question: "Nature v. Nurture v. Madness: Is Cheapness Learned, Inherited or a Necessary Component of a Healthy Mind?"  Please join me in welcoming Mark David Chapman, assassin of John Lennon (see above); Tracy Chapman, former Harvard Square busker most famous for her semi-hit "Fast Car"; Aroldis Chapman, flame-throwing left-hander for the Cincinnati Reds who currently holds the record for the fastest recorded pitch in Major League Baseball; Duane "Dog" Chapman, famous bounty hunter; and Anna Vasil'yevna Chapman, hot, red-haired Russian spy.  Welcome, all of you.

Harvard Square buskers

ANNA VASIL'YEVNA CHAPMAN:  Dos vedanya.

MODERATOR:  Tell me--have any of you experienced overwhelming feelings of . . . and this is hard for me to say . . . "cheapness" in your everyday lives?

MARK DAVID CHAPMAN:  Not me.

TRACY CHAPMAN:  No, you just shoot a Beatle whenever you want to impress Jodie Foster.

Jodie Foster:  "Why did you drag me into this stupid post?"

DUANE "DOG" CHAPMAN:  Naw, you got him mixed up with John Hinckley.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Anna Vasil'yevna Chapman:  Separated at birth?

AROLDIS CHAPMAN:  Or Squeaky Fromme.

ANNA VASIL'YEVNA:  Can I go now?  I have a photo shoot at Maxim.

DUANE "DOG":  The Ultimate Guy's Guide?

AROLDIS:  If the Russian chick would loan me an "I" and a "Y" and Tracy lends me a "T" you could spell "solidarity" with my first name.  Then her name would be "racy"--like in "Fast Car."

TRACY:  You people must be descendants of that guy who burned off his hand.