Being There

About

Chance. the gardener, “knows not whence he came.” His only memories are of his room, his television set, the garden that he tends, the old man who owns the house and garden, and a cook/housekeeper. The sum of all his knowledge comes from what he sees on his television set and what he has learned tending his garden. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t write. He really doesn’t know that there is a world outside of his garden. When the old man dies, Chance is thrown into a world about which he knows nothing. His one advantage coming into that world is that he has the old man’s hand-me-down suits which are impeccably tailored and are old enough to have come back into style. By chance, Chance is injured by a chauffeur driven limousine belonging to a very rich and influential man. (Thank goodness for the suit he is wearing! Through no fault of his own, he looks rich and successful.) He gives his name as Chance, the gardner and it is misunderstood as Chauncey Gardiner. His vast experience in things worldly, gained from viewing television, tells him that if someone tells him that is his name then that is his name. Whenever Chance, now Chauncey, enters into a conversation, he speaks of what he knows, the garden. Within a very short time, his replies, such as, “For everything there is a season,” in response to a question about the future economic climate, are taken to be the astute observations of a brilliant man. These meaningless utterances, coupled with his total lack of a background, make him into a media idol and, seemingly, the ideal candidate for Vice President of the United States. After all, if he has no background, there’s nothing in it for the opposition to attack, and his garden variety, visionary, comments don’t have enough substance to be contradicted.