My Point...And I Do Have One

EOPLE
    Impatience
Intolerance
Infidelity
Insecticides
    I don’t like to generalize, but you can always tell people’s personalities by the cars they drive … and the bumper stickers they put on their cars (Sometimes it’s no more than pure sexual advertising: “Honk if you’re horny.” You never see people putting those stickers on their front door: “Knock if you’re nasty.”) … and the clothes they wear … and the music they listen to … and the way they walk … and what they say … and what they do. But, once again, that’s just a generalization.
    Here’s what I’m really trying to say: If we don’t want to define ourselves by things as superficial as our appearances, we’re stuck with the revolting alternative of being judged by our actions, by what we do.
    Now there are the big issues of good and evil. (Murder is evil; donating blood is good. If either of these statements is news to you, put down this book, go to the nearest police station, and turn yourself in—they’ll know what to do with you there.) However, I’d like to deal with the smaller issues. I want to talk about the things that are neither good nor evil but by which we judge ourselves anyway—the little things we do and the countless situations we find ourselves in that conspire to make us feel like idiots.
    Do I feel like an idiot? If I had a nickel for every time I felt like an idiot, I’d be very rich. But I’d be too embarrassed to spend any of what I’m sure I’d refer to as my “idiot money.” If I were to spend it, buying an expensive item like a car with about 800,000 nickels would make me feel even more like an idiot. Though the good news is, I’dget another nickel for doing it. This might be a moot oint.
    We all feel like idiots at one time or another. Even if we feel we’re cool 98 percent of the time, that 2 percent doofus is poised to take over our bodies without any warning. It just takes a crack in the sidewalk—one little trip. We feel like fools, turning back to look at it. “There’s a pebble, somebody better put up some orange cones to warn the others. Everybody’s gonna trip like I did.” Then we look back that one more time to show the pebble who’s boss, “Damn pebble, why-I-oughta …”
    We do that because we think that people are staring at us, sensing our inadequacy, noting our flaws, mocking our clumsiness. But perhaps, sadly (though, for the purpose of this book, perhaps not—perhaps humorously instead), nobody is noticing. Everybody is too busy worrying that they look like idiots to care about you.
    If you think that none of this applies to you, just take a look at your picture in your high school yearbook. Because closer to the surface than you think is that awkward adolescent hoping that people like her and praying that nobody notices how much she hopes that people like her and knowing that if people knew what an idiot she was, they’d never like her. Or maybe not. Maybe you’d just see how funny you looked back then and have a good laugh. Either way it’s worthwhile.
    O ne activity that can bring out feelings of idiocy is singing. Sometimes it’s because you’re belting out a tune to yourself (That sounds violent, doesn’t it? “You’ve been a very bad tune. I’m a gonna give you a belting that you won’t soon forget!”) and you’re feeling good—you’re sure that you sound just like Whitney Houston. Then you look up and realize that you’re not by yourself—people are watching you (if you’re in a car or a house with pictureWindows) and perhaps even hearing you (if you’re in a plane, wearing headphones, and listening to “Pop Goes the Country” or “The Now Sound”).
    Sometimes it’s because you’re singing with a group of people and you don’t know the lyrics to the song. Then you have to play that little game we always play. We mumble through the words we don’t know, but then to make up for it, we sing the chorus really, really loud.
    We’re hoping the others are thinking, “I guess she didn’t wanna sing on that little mumbly part back there. Obviously she knows the song—she sang the chorus
really
loud. She is cool.”
    Have you ever heard somebody sing some lyrics that you’ve never sung before, and you realize you’ve never sung the right words in that song? You hear them and all of a sudden you say to yourself, “ ‘Life in the Fast Lane?’
That’s
what they’re saying right there? ‘Life in the Fast Lane?’ ”