■收费员的美好生活
A Place to Stand

◎Charles Garfield/查尔斯·加菲尔德

If you have ever gone through a toll booth, you know that your relationship to the person in the booth is not the most intimate[42] you’ll ever have. It is one of life’s frequent nonencounters: You hand over some money; you might get change; you drive off.

Late one morning in 1984, headed for lunch in San Francisco, I drove toward a booth. I heard loud music. It sounded like a party. I looked around. No other cars with their windows open. No sound trucks. I looked at the toll booth. Inside it, the man was dancing.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m having a party,” he said.

“What about the rest of the people?” I looked at the other toll booths.

He said, “What do those look like to you?” He pointed down the row of toll booths.

“They look like ... toll booths. What do they look like to you?”

He said, “Vertical coffins. At 8:30 every morning, live people get in.

美丽语录

My secret to a long, healthy life is to always keep working. It keeps me busy and happy, and gives me a reason to stay alive.

我长寿健康的秘诀在于总是不停地工作，它给予我忙碌和愉悦，并给了我一个继续生活的理由。

如果你曾开车通过收费站，你就了解收费员与你的关系可谈不上密切；他不过是我们生活中遇到的众多陌生人中的一员：你递给他一些钱，他找你零钱，然后你便驾车离去。

1984年的某天上午晚些时候，我驾车前往旧金山去吃午餐。途中经过一个收费站时，我听见阵阵音乐声，音量开得很大，听上去像是在开派对。我伸出头去四处张望，没看见别的车开着窗户，也没见有广播车经过。我看了看收费亭，原来里面有个人在跳舞。

“你在干什么？”我问。

“我在开派对。”他说。

“那么其他人呢？”我看着其他收费亭。

他用手指着一整排收费亭，说道：“你觉得它们看起来像什么？”

“它们看起来像……收费亭啊。你怎么看？”

Then they die for eight hours. At 4:30, like Lazarus from the dead, they reemerge and go home. For eight hours, brain is on hold, dead on the job. Going through the motions.”

I was amazed. This guy had developed a philosophy, a mythology[43] about his job. Sixteen people dead on the job, and the seventeenth, in precisely the same situation, figures out a way to live. I could not help asking the next question:“Why is it different for you? You’re having a good time.”

He looked at me.“I knew you were going to ask that. I don’t understand why anybody would think my job is boring. I have a corner office, glass on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate, San Francisco, and the Berkeley hills. Half the Western world vacations here and I just stroll[44] in every day and practice dancing.”

他说：“它们像一个个竖起来摆放的棺材。每天早晨8：30，活人走进去。然后，他们在接下去的8个小时里变成死人。下午4：30的时候，他们像拉撒路一样死而复生，他们又活过来，回家去了。在那8个小时里，他们的脑子停滞了，像死人一样机械地重复着工作时仅有的几个动作。”

我很惊讶，这个收费员自己想出了一套哲学，或者说有关工作的一则神话。16个人在工作时死去，还有另外第17个人，处于完全相同的境况，却想出了活过来的方法。我忍不住问他：“你为什么如此特别呢？你看起来很享受工作，过得很愉快嘛。”

他看着我，说道：“我就知道你会这么问。我不明白为什么每个人都觉得我的工作很枯燥。我有一间角落里的办公室，四周都是玻璃窗，能看见金门海峡、旧金山，也能看见伯克利山。西方世界的很多人都前来此处观光度假，而我则每天漫步走入办公室，练习舞步呢。”