Depth Analysis

So what do you know son?

What do I know?

Yes. What do you do for a quid?

A quid?

A crust.

What do I for a crust? I’m an accountant. What do you do, for a crust?

I’m in depth analysis.

Depth analysis?

You betcha. I’m a depth analyst – and a damn good one at that, if you’ll permit a little self-promotion.

What kind of depths do you analyse?

The question is less what kind of depths, and more what kind of deep, but the list is near endless just the same.

Oh.

Shall I give you a few examples?

By all means.

I could tell you the depth at which an onion or a scallop had been fried. The depths of sympathy and breath. I can comprehend and catalogue the depths to which beauty can penetrate an epidermis.

Do you know anything about Deep Purple?

I could tell you the depth of the water beneath the smoke. If I’ve got you in the lab – where I’ve got a deep six and a sounding line of one through nine to match

and you are deep in thought, I can provide the absolute location of that thought, and deduct where it will be when it reaches absolution.

Could you tell me how deep blue is?

Not only that, I can compare how deep blues are. Quantify the depth of the blues. I had a client about 18 months ago that had me compile a depth dossier on a blue triptych – the Atlantic, a young Russian dancer’s eyes, and section of sky above San Francisco from the spring of 1991. It was hard work, but fascinating.

So who are these clients?

Well for one, there’s a confidentiality assumed between every depth analyst and client, so I can’t give specifics. But it’s all types. All creeds. You two for example. Well, with you two married now, chances are before too long you’ll want to get a house and start a family.

We had discussed it.

And chances are you’ll be buying out west given the market, which means it’ll be warm.

Uh huh…

And the kids will want a pool. I mean, it’s hot out there, on average six degrees hotter than here in the city.

Okay.

So you want to appease the kids. To beat the heat.

Right. So the depth of the p…

And what with the housing market the way it is, it is almost inevitable that the acquisition of a house, particularly one with a pool, will put you both in debt.

Oh.

I measure the depth of that debt. Shall I continue?

Um.

Or say a few years from now, what with the debt, the depth of which you will be fully aware of thanks to my expertise, and the subsequent sleepless nights and

screaming children and the mounting doubts that one of you is finding comfort in the arms of the pool man or woman you can’t really afford that you nevertheless hire to clean the pool you don’t have time to swim in, you begin to wonder why you still bother, whether you still love each other – I can measure the depth of that love, and of that doubt.

I could plot that information on a graph of three axis: truth, madness, and

depth.

And when it falls apart I can tell you how deep the trouble is.

The feelings of resentment you’ll hold onto after? I can calculate how deep down they will be held.

If and when the divorce happens you will of course want to know the depth of one another’s pockets, and the impact any extramarital impropriety may have had on that depth. This too I could determine.

What about pools? If I took you to a pool where I had obscured all signage, the pool that started all this debt, could you tell me which end was the deep one? Not how deep the pool is, but which end was the deep end?

I couldn’t say.

I never liked that idiom: jump from the deep end. Shouldn’t it be jump to the deep end? Jump in the deep end? You don’t jump from the deep; you emerge. So, could you tell us which end is the deep one?

I… I couldn’t say.

A damn good depth analyst you reckon… But surely there are tests you could run? A machine at your lab? Even a long stick?

I’m allergic to chlorine. I prefer the beach. Are you ready to order?

By Dave Drayton from Australia