I have an ATM card, to withdraw money from ATM robots. The card doesn’t dance, doesn’t sing, doesn’t “credit” or “debit,” doesn’t launch nuclear missiles at our enemies abroad (not that they don’t deserve it).
That’s the kind of card it was when I first got it – and I hate change. There was that time when I “lost” my ATM card – I slipped the card into the inside pocket of my sport coat and then hung up said sport coat. I wore several other sport coats before I noticed that the ATM card was no longer in my wallet; which is to say, I had “lost” it.
The nice bank lady got me a brand new ATM card (no debit, no credit), but it came with a different PIN number. I hated that. Markets would crash, cabs would go unpaid, three-martini lunches with the editor would be a thing of the past. I hate change. I wanted my old PIN, as God intended.
After several meetings of the bank’s board of directors, a review by internal audit and a promise that I would beef up my passbook savings account, the old ATM PIN was restored and all was well with the world.
There are many people like me. Change is to be viewed with suspicion. When downscale discounters attempt to go upscale; when “family” restaurants attempt to spiff up the menu; when your friendly community bank removes the coffee and cookies from the lobby, there is inevitably hell to pay. Change? No, thank you.
Think about Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy would have been re-elected to the U.S. Senate every six years until he was 150 years old. While the “change” to a Republican (whatever that is) was interesting, its excitement was somewhat muted by the fact that Ted had to die before it would happen.
I learned the brutal truth from my father, whose idea of an exciting change of cuisine was to switch from beef brisket to, well, some other kind of beef. A forceful man, but I watched him crumble in the old days when he would go the local Catholic hospital cafeteria on a Friday. Oh, my. No hamburger. No meatloaf. It was like picking up a copy of Banker & Tradesman and finding no Cohen the Columnist.
Fishing For Change
Things do change, of course. Grudgingly. Many young Catholic kids probably don’t even know why every restaurant within 150 miles of Boston serves clam chowder on Fridays. Ah, the good old days. In May, the Vatican correspondent for Religion News Service reported that British Catholics were pondering a return to “Meatless Friday,” on the theory that “opting for fish and chips instead of beef stew at Friday lunch will be a signal of religious allegiance.”
In fact, while business enterprises can embrace change – at least in theory – when young MBA consultants come in and beat them over the heads with 500-page reports, religion represents the most painful, jarring environment, when change comes knocking at the door.
Ask any denominational leader: Even the most docile, God-fearing, observant, kindly little old lady in the pews turns into a lion when the prayer book is tweaked.
As any retailer can attest, even the most loyal of customers will stray, if the signals prod them in a different direction. As Harvard’s distinguished Harvey Cox, emeritus professor of religion, told the Boston Globe last month, “as people become aware of the fact that there are various religious world views out there, far more than had been aware of a generation ago or more, they become suspicious of the pretentiousness and exclusive truth that some religions have…”
Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston College, wrote last year of the wrenching nature of change in Massachusetts school systems, as they pondered whether to include Muslim holidays as a day off, or whether to stick to the major Jewish and Christian holidays – or whether to risk the wrath of God and give no days off at all.
In May, the United Protestant Church in Duluth, Minn., switched its Sunday services to Wednesday. More convenient.
I hate change.
