Category: anti-humor

Hoomans, Ha!men, and Humans 

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Taxonomists and biological anthropologists classify modern humans as the Homo sapiens sapiens species. No, that is not a typo. The reason for the double-word is that we are a subspecies of the Homo sapiens species. Taxonomists and biological anthropologists created this distinction to separate Homo sapiens sapiens species from the Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, or Neanderthals, the Homo sapiens idaltu, or Herto man, and the debatable inclusion of the Homo sapiens denisova, or Dragon man. We’re all homos, in other words, under the genus Homo, and the biological anthropologists break us down after that.

Our Homo sapiens sapiens subspecies is characterized by advanced cognitive abilities, language, and complex social structures. We’re the most complex subspecies in this regard, but if aliens from another planet were to meet us, greet us, and play in all our reindeer games, they probably wouldn’t agree that we all belong in the same categorization.

When we talk about Alien Life Forms (ALFs) here, we’re talking about Spock, S’Chn T’Gai Spock from the original Star Trek. Spock was half-human, half Vulcan, but we’re going to characterize our ALF as a full-on Vulcan, a full-on reason and rational thinking Vulcan with no empathetic or sympathetic emotions. In this ALF’s After Earth report home, it would write, “Even Earth’s scientists refrain from proper delineations in their Homo sapiens subspecies, because the scientific community thinks that a proper breakdown of various individuals in their subspecies might hurt feelings, but there are clear delineations. Some Homo sapiens sapiens have not fully evolved to the point that they belong to that species. Others have.”

If we never meet Spock-like ALF, or fail to prove they exist, we’ll never be able to verify this characterization. Thus, we will have to turn to the closest thing we have to an Alien Life Form in our universe, one with intimate knowledge of the Homo sapiens sapiens that is dispassionate enough to provide objective analysis. I would nominate the cat. Anyone who has owned a cat knows that we share an off again relationship with them. The cats definition of our relationship might even be punctuated with a “I really don’t care that much what happens to you” exclamation point that is furthered by a “As long as I get some milk and food every once in a while, and someone or something keeps me stimulated every once in a while I’ll continue to exist near you.”

Some might say the dog has as much, if not more, knowledge of our species as the cat, but the dog is biased. Dogs love us. They are so loyal that if they were commissioned to analyze our species, they would tell us what we want to hear. There’s a reason we call them man’s best friend, and it is largely based on the idea that they accept us for who we are. They don’t analyze us in the manner a cat will, and they know nothing about our inadequacies or failures, because their sole goal in life is to make us happy. They know when we’re happy, they’re happy. Cats are almost 180-degrees different.

Instagram posters have characterized this on again, off again, “I really don’t care that much what happens to you” relationship we have with cats with a somewhat humorous, somewhat condescending term that their cats use to describe us, hoomans. Hoomans is a cutesy eye-dialect, similar to that of the “No Girlz Allowed” sign that moviemakers put outside the door of a boy’s clubhouse. The cutesy error is employed to enhance the cutesy idea that cats and young boys can’t spell. The moviemakers might even add a backwards ‘R’ to further emphasize the cuteziness of the boy’s sign.

Another intent behind the cutesy hoomans contrivance is to inform us that we’re not viewing this interaction from the customary human perspective. We’re viewing this particular interactions from a perspective we may not have considered before, the cat’s.

In that vein, the unsympathetic delineations of the cat would suggest there are Homo sapiens sapiens who fail the “advanced cognitive abilities, language, and complex social structures” standards put forth by biological anthropologists. They might suggest we introduce a Homo sapien confusocortex, or Confused Man, subspecies for those who haven’t evolved completely. 

These hoomans were born at full capacity, and their schooling years proved that they were able to achieve full functionality, but as with any muscle, the brain can deteriorate with lack of use. We’re not attempting to make fun of them, but there is a delineation between those who know how to operate at an optimum, and those who fail to make necessary connections.

In the cat-world, I’m not sure if they would characterize me as a human or a hooman. I think they might develop a separate category for those of us who measure up, but we enjoy disrupting the meticulously crafted model they’ve created for human actions and reactions. The cats view such joyful interference with their carefully designed understanding of human nature and its patterns with something beyond skepticism. They’re alarmed. If we watch cats in the wild, they study their prey carefully to gauge whether or not they’ll get hurt. If after examining us completely, they developed a full categorization, it might be ha!men. My brief experience with cats informs me that they don’t have a sense of humor, so it would be impossible for them to properly categorize ha!men without some form of condescending insults. My guess is they would spit out something like, the symbolic, or ironic inversion of their cultural input often critiques the very idea of cultural output, then twist it into recursive satire. Their social systems resemble Escher prints—technically sound, emotionally disorienting. “They are players, jokesters, and fools,” the cats would conclude, “and we say that in the most condescending way possible.”   

Ha!men know that pets and children create profiles of humans based on patterns, and I think cats are quite comfortable with the thought that hoomans were put on this planet to serve them. Hoomans are to provide the cat food, milk, a place to relieve themselves, and various forms of stimuli. It’s a tenuous relationship that suggests if hoomans fail to fulfill the expectations of their relationship the cat will simply go to another hooman who can. Those hoomans who fulfill expectations can, could, and probably should receive the reward of affection. They know adult hoomans need this every once in a while, and they don’t mind occasionally playing that role for them, as long as the bullet point, requirements are met.

They also know we arrive home at around 5:30, feed them and themselves, and sit before the glowing box for a couple hours before it’s time to go to bed. They grow accustomed to these patterns, the way we conduct ourselves, the way we make sounds at one another, and our gait pattern. When we meet their criteria, they might sleep or find some other stimuli to occupy them, as they probably find most hoomans as boring as any other superior would find the actions of their underlings.

I don’t know cats would characterize me, but I highly doubt they would consider me boring. I’ve been their sole focus more times than I can count, and there have been occasions where these rooms housed a half-dozen people. I noticed how cats study us with more intensity than any other pet at a very young age, and I found it creepy in the beginning. “What are you looking at?” I wanted to ask, as if that would help matters. I noticed, early on, that when I acted somewhat out of sorts it only intensified their study of me. After numerous interactions over the years, I found their study of me fascinating, and I began tweaking my actions to destroy their research.

Just to be clear, I never touched one of these cats. I just enjoyed playing the role of their anecdotal information, their aberration. I exaggerated my differences just to be different than any other human they’d ever met, just to see how they’d react. The minute the cat owner I was dating left the room, I would walk across the room in a decidedly different gait pattern. I might slow turn my head to them in the manner an alien would in a movie, and I’d repeatedly stick my tongue out at them. I might even take a drink coaster and throw it across the room in an erratic manner. The list of things I did just to mess with their heads is long, but those are a few examples I remember. I’ve found that all we have to do is act a few deviations away from the normal hooman actions to make their pupils expand with increased scrutiny or fear.

Do the same things to a dog, and they might raise their head for a second, their ears might even perk, or they might even bring us a toy, thinking we want to play. Whatever they do, their reactions suggest they’re either less alarmed by abnormalities among the hoomen population, more forgiving of those who suffer from them, or they’re less intelligent than the cat and thus less prepared for an eventual aberration that cats foresee. Cats immediately switch to alert status. They don’t care for these games. If they don’t run from the room to avoid what they think could happen, they watch ha!men with unblinking, rapt attention. Even when they realize it’s just an act, as evidenced by our return to normalcy when the woman-owner returns to the room, they continue to study us. “I’ve decided that I don’t like you,” is the look they give us ha!men throughout.

***

Suzy Aldermann wasn’t a ha!men, but we thought she was. When we heard what happened at a corporate boardroom, we thought Suzy’s portrayal of a ha!man might’ve been one of the most brilliant portrayals we ever heard. Prior to that meeting, she appeared to abide by so many of the tenets of human patterns that when she deviated, we thought Suzy was employing a recursive inversion technique known to all ha!men as the perfect conceptual strategy for dismantling normative frameworks from within.

Prior to her “full-fledged panic attack!” Suzy successfully presented herself as an individual of advanced cognitive abilities, language, and complex social structures. So, when she experienced this panic attack, this “full-fledged panic attack!” after she opened the door to a meeting room and saw Diana Pelzey conversating with her chum, we thought she brilliantly portrayed a ha!man to the uninformed. As the report goes, Suzy whispered to a friend that she would not be attending the meeting because Diana was present. “BRILLIANT!” we said. “Absolutely brilliant that Suzy would pick the least threatening person in the room to initiate her alleged panic attack!” We all agreed to keep Suzy’s ruse secret to see how it would play out, and we expected a lot of hilarious high-brow hi-jinx as a result. The joke, it turned out, was on us. We either overestimated Suzy or underestimated her, I’m still not sure which, but it became clear that Suzy decided to run away rather than up her game to match, and/or surpass Diana’s presentation. It was, according to Suzy, a full-fledged panic attack.

In the aftermath of our misreading, anytime we met a melodramatic hooman who was having a “full-fledged panic attack!” over a relatively insignificant issue, our instinctive response, based on our understanding of human patters is to think either she’s a ha!man who is joking, or she probably needs to experience some real problems in life to gain proper perspective.

Yet, when we’d talk to Suzy, she’d detail a relatively rough upbringing that included some eyebrow-raising experiences. Those incidents were real issues that Suzy had to manage, and she had to claw through the tumult to reach a resolution. The normal human progression, for those of us who study humans with relative intensity, is that when a human experiences a number of real problems, they become better at resolving them through experience. Suzy worked her way through all of those problems, but she never developed better problem, resolution skills.

We’ve all heard from other souls who purport to travel some tumultuous avenues. Wendi Hansen, for example, detailed for us her “rough life,” but when she was done, we couldn’t help but think that much of her self-imposed trauma was the socio-political equivalent of first-world problems. Suzy was no Wendi Hansen. Suzy’s issues were real and severe, and they were backed up by eye-witness testimony. Our natural assumption is that if she’s experienced problems far worse than a colleague purportedly interested in stealing her job, it would be nothing compared to what she’s experienced in real life.  

If we were to view the humans, the ha!men, and the hoomans from the perspective of the Alien Life Form (ALF), or the cat, without empathy or sympathy, we would conclude that some humans get stronger, better, or gain a level of perspective that allows them to see minor problems for what they are in the moment. Some hoomen, on the other hand, deploy the tactical maneuver of retreat, and they do so, so often that they never fully develop their confrontational muscles.

After experiencing so many different souls who maneuver around their tumultuous terrains differently, I now wonder if hoomans, who’ve experienced real problems in life, blow otherwise insignificant issues up into real problems, because they’re more accustomed to handling their problems at that level. Either that or they know if they retreat during the relatively insignificant phase, it might never progress into more severe phases. Whatever the case is, their experiences have taught them that they can’t handle problems, and as a result of retreating so often, they never do.

***

“It’s a lie,” Angie Foote told me, regarding something Randy Dee told the group.

“It’s not a lie,” I said. “It might be an exaggeration, a mischaracterization, or something he believes is true but is in fact false. It’s not what I would call a lie.”

“Barney, he told everyone that this is what he does, and I’ve seen how he does it. He doesn’t do it that way. He’s a durn liar is what I’m saying.”

Angie is what we in the biz call a simple truther. She sees everything in black and white. A truth is a truth, and a lie is a lie. There is no grey matter involved in her universe. I respect simple truthers in this vein, because I used to be one. I’m still one in many ways, but experiencing precedents in life can wreck the comfortable ideas we develop in our world of simple math and science. Facts are facts and truth is truth is their mantra.

Some of us hear a lie, and we know it’s a lie. When we’re telling lies, we know we’re lying, and we can’t help but view the rest of humanity from our perspective. When they’re lying, they know that one plus one equals two. I know it, you know it, and most importantly, they know it. We witnessed them doing one thing, and we heard them say they do something else, and they said it as if it was something they truly believed happened! How can they do that with a straight face?

My asterisk in the ointment, my new definition of a lie, is that a lie is something someone says that they know to be false. There are good liars who are so good at it that they can convince themselves that it’s true before they try to convince us. The other liars, the fascinating ones, fall into a greyer area. They don’t know they’re lying.

One of the most honest men I ever met, a Randy Dee, taught me the grey. Randy Dee told some whoppers. He told some untruths to me, regarding events that happened the previous night, and I was there for those events. 

He misinterpreted the truth so often that it affected how I viewed him. When I viewed him, and the way he’d lie, I’d watch him with the rapt attention a cat would when encountering a ha!man who proved an aberration to my study of human patterns. While involved in this study, I became convinced that we could put a lie detector on him, and he’d pass with flying colors. “He’s just a durn liar!” I said to myself. Yet, if you knew this guy, and I did, you’d know he’s not lying, not in the strictest sense of the word. By the standard of taking everything we know about lying and inserting that into the equation, Randy Dee never told a lie.

I knew Randy well for a long time. I knew him so well that I learned he was incapable of lying. He was a law-and-order guy who despised deception and all of the other characteristics inherent in criminality. Yet, by our loose standards of truth v. lying, the man was a big, fat liar.

He was incapable of detecting the lies others told him, because he just didn’t think that way. He was somewhat naive in that regard, and after getting to know him well, I considered it almost laughable that anyone would consider him a liar.

Randy Dee was an unprecedented experience for me, and I would have a lot to sort through before I fully understood what I was experiencing with him. If we took this to a social court with a simple truther sitting in the role of a judge, we would experience an exchange of “He’s lying.” ‘I’m telling you he’s not. You have to get to know him.’ “You’re over-thinking this.” ‘If you know the guy as well as I do, you’d know he’s incapable of lying.’ “All right, he’s an idiot then.” ‘If idiot suggests a lack of intelligence,’ I would reply, ‘You have to meet him to know he’s anything but.’

If this argument reached the point of no-return, one of us might suggest using a lie detector. If Randy Dee passed the lie-detector test, the simple truther would then suggest that there was something wrong with that mechanism, and there might be.

When lie detectors first entered the scene, their findings were considered germane to cases. Judges, lawyers, and juries not only thought their findings should be admissible in proceedings, they considered them germane to findings. 

“Did he take a lie detector test?” a judge might ask. “Yes, your honor,” the defense attorney said, “and he passed with flying colors.” Lie detectors eventually became less prominent, because they were deemed wildly inconsistent. How can a machine with no powers of empathy, sympathy, or any emotions differentiate between hoomens, ha!men, and humans to produce inconsistent findings? What progressions occurred? Were so many Ha!men and Hooman able to beat lie detectors so often that the machines lost their relevance in criminal cases?

Randy Dee, a man who was so honest that it seemed almost ridiculous to suggest otherwise taught me that the reason lie detectors are wildly inconsistent has more to do with the idea that we’re wildly inconsistent. We can convince ourselves of a lie, so thoroughly, that it’s not a lie anymore, and we can do it without ever trying to deceive anyone or anything in the case of lie detectors. Ha!men might do it just to see if they can defeat the machine, and its ability to detect different biological reactions, but hoomens might do it because they lose the ability to make those necessary connections that produce truth. The latter provides a wild ride to those of us who once viewed human nature in the ritualistic patterns cats will, and if we continue to view hoomens with the rapt attention a cat gives a Ha!man, until we find the truth, it will wreck every simplistic truth we thought we knew about lying liars and the lies they tell.  

I am a Cookie, It’s Good Enough for Me

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“Do you have any cookies other than chocolate chip?” I asked the cashier of a popular sandwich chain.

“We don’t,” he said with a smile. The smile appeared to accept the complaint for what it was, but it also asked me why I was just being difficult. ‘Why would you want anything other than chocolate?’ that smile asked me. ‘It’s delicious for criminy’s sake!’

Age has taken away a few of my favorite things (more on that never) and chocolate is one of them. I get minor headaches whenever I eat it, but those minor headaches carry the implicit warning that the more I eat the worse the headache. I farted around found out that my body was serious, serious as a head attack.

I usually simply say no thanks when people offer me some, but some people won’t take no for an answer. ‘Why don’t you want any chocolate?” they ask. ‘It’s delicious for criminy’s sake!’”

When I tell people why, they feel bad for me. Their sympathy is not directed toward the headaches, but the idea that I will no longer be able enjoy chocolate as much as they do. “I don’t think I could do it,” some say with a self-deprecating smile.

“Of all the things age has taken away from me,” I tell them, “I probably miss chocolate the least.”

“How could you not miss it the most?” they say with the same look that that cashier gave me.

“I used to go to the candy aisles at gas stations to pick from their chocolate selections,” I tell them. “Now, I move down the aisle to their non-chocolate ones. It’s easier than you think.”

Prior to that forced transition, I had no idea candy aisles at gas stations were 90% chocolate, not counting gum. The selections at various get-togethers are about 95% chocolate, and the desert items on a restaurant menu are nearly 100% chocolate. Now that I was on the outside looking in, I wondered if we all loved chocolate this much, or if it reminded us of our grandmother, and all of the confections she used to bake, and all of those glorious smells. Did it become such a staple in our diet, because it reminds us those days at the pool with all of our friends, or do we just love it that much? Some questions are complicated that require scientific research, and some are simple. The simple truth about chocolate is we like eating it, because it’s delicious for criminy’s sake!

“It’s all about the chocolate,” a friend of mine, who used to be an event planner, said. She learned the hard way when she offered her client “cookies” for their event. She neglected to inform her client that her cookie offerings would not include chocolate chip cookies or any chocolate. She just listed cookies on the menu items, and her client signed off on it

“Nobody wants sugar cookies, peanut butter, or oatmeal raisin!” her client screamed. “My attendees were like, where’s the chocolate chip cookies? They blamed me for this, not you. We were expecting chocolate chip cookies, chocolate strawberries, chocolate pastries, and even a chocolate fountain. You didn’t give us any chocolate? What kind of outfit are you running here?” 

A poll suggested 35% of respondents said chocolate chips cookies were their favorite cookie, and almost half (46%) said they ate chocolate chip cookies frequently in their childhood. My guess is the latter number was skewed by the vagueness of the question. If the pollsters asked the specific question, “For those of you who had the capability, or permission to eat cookies on a regular basis, how many of you ate chocolate chip?” By better defining that question, me thinks that 46% number might double.

After a couple incidents, my mom learned to preempt our disappointment when she brought cookies home. Before opening the package, she’d tell us that the cookies weren’t chocolate. She had nothing against chocolate. She just thought we might want some different every once in a while. We didn’t, we wanted chocolate. We were disappointed, but she knew if she told us beforehand that we wouldn’t be so angry to find out there wasn’t any chocolate on the way.

That forced transition away from chocolate informed me that we don’t want chocolate. WE WANT CHOCOLATE! If someone doesn’t learn how to soften the blow that there won’t be any chocolate, we’re disappointed, confused, and outraged. “Who do you think you are? What kind of outfit are you running here?” I don’t know if this has always been the case, or if I only see it now because of my new perspective, but it is all about chocolate.

***

We don’t need a different perspective to know that the chocolate chip “cookies” of our world dominate rooms. They are the beautiful men and women who walk among us. We see what happens when they walk down the hall, or into our corporate meeting rooms. If we’re able to view reactions from the outside looking in, it can be quite humorous to watch reactions to them.

Some of us cringe, as we try to deny them entry in our space by telling everyone how awful we think they are, but when they talk to us, we feel an unusual and embarrassing blush come on. They can make us feel, “I can’t believe I’m admitting this,” special for just a moment. Some of us smile and laugh at everything they say, even though we just talked about how we hate them seventy-five minutes ago.

I don’t know if this is endemic to the human being, or if cicadas, squirrels and amoebas share our reactions to the beautiful beings of their species, but I’m more inclined to believe it has something to do with cultural conditioning. The chocolate chip cookies of our society appear to have it all, and as hard as we try to make dents in their impact, no societal cynicism can tear down that wall. We’re not talking those store bought, dry, and crumbly cookies that look so appealing on the shelf, because they’re manufactured and marketed so well. We’re talking the individually wrapped, freshly-baked variety that most sandwich shops offer as a side-item. We’re talking about the type of chocolate that appears so moist that we swear we can see our reflection in it. They’re the most popular, the prettiest on the shelf, and the definition of quality by which all of the others are compared.

Most of us grew up other thans who saw the power of beauty, natural athleticism, and money in our cookie-cutter in our world. We watched those chocolate chips cookies fly off the shelf, and we wanted to be them for just a moment, just to know what it felt like to be a chocolate chip cookie. After learning the harsh realities of the never-will-be’s, we learn to live the life of an other than, until we convince ourselves that we’re a don’t-wanna-be. Our people, along with the cynical comedians, don’t encourage this. They prefer the ‘if you can’t beat them, hate them’ route. Hating them is supposed to make us feel better about ourselves, but it never does. Instead of correcting the course, we double down. We tell one another these lies to help us help others appreciate our gifts and our other indefinable traits to elevate our status from other thans to better thans.

Chocolate chip cookies don’t have doors slammed in their face, or that’s what we tell ourselves. We externalize our hatred to try to minimize our struggle. Yet, we had opportunities, fewer by comparison, but we had some. How many paths were available to us? Did we choose the one we’re currently on, or was it thrust upon us?

Adaptation to the limits of being an other than often requires creativity, and creativity comes and goes. We can also feel it fade with age. Our bountiful brains were once filled with fantastical ideas about how the world could work, and how different it could be if it was different. When that didn’t work, we doubled down, almost in rebellious reaction, until we stepped beyond the border and lost our anchor. Stephen King developed odd theatrics, but he maintained a common man premise from which the spectacular rose. We learned from that, and we adapted, but we were so creative that we could grow a little too creative at times. When we finally found our niche, we enjoyed it, but a niche is a niche, an “other than” as it were that rarely produce a chocolate chip in our nacre formation.

That frustration leads us to wonder how many chocolate chip cookies are 100% pure, and how many are tainted? We take what we want to take from everything, and we want to believe that our favorite chocolate chip cookies were wholesome? The cynics would say that the only 100% pure chocolate chip cookies are those that came from our grandmother’s oven, and the rest are all tainted in the manufacturing process.

“Nothing is pure, and nothing is absolute! You still admire that chocolate chip cookie? Did you know he cheats on his taxes, steps out on his wife, and his children never felt close to him?” This is the cynical side of the “other thans”, and I’m not even sure if those nattering nabobs of negativity truly enjoy twisting their handle bar mustaches in this manner. They enjoyed doing this in high school, we all did, because it made us feel better to know more than the simpletons who believe in nouns, but when does continuing to do what we did in high school becomes so high school?

“There are matters where this matters, but we’re talking about a television star from a television show. Why don’t we just let that guy enjoy his chocolate chip cookie in peace,” we say.

“BOO!” they say. “I’m not going to let that television star off the hook, because that he wasn’t the wholesome cookie he portrayed, not in his personal life.”

“Our friend needs to bake an other than?” they say. “Everyone bakes chocolate chip cookies. He needs to try something different?”

“But everyone loves chocolate chip cookies,” we say. “They’re delicious for criminy’s sake!”

***

As an other than, we learn to use our personality to create something that serves a purpose. We then do what we do, until we reach that “Why am I still doing this?” question. Then we reach a point where we’ve answered every possible question we can think up. At another point, beyond that question, we realize that as confusing and disjointed as all this can be, it’s us. It’s who we are, what we are, and how we conduct ourselves. It’s our element, and how we conduct ourselves when we’re in our element, and until we reach a point where we can all learn how to bake bakery fresh, chewy chocolate chip cookies, through some sort of genetic modification, driven by AI, we’ll be forced to admit that we cannot all be chocolate chip cookies.

Some people actually prefer peanut butter cookies, sugar, oatmeal raisin, and all the other thans. I’ve met them. They don’t develop biological reactions to chocolate later in life. They just prefer an other than, because they find them delicious. They’re anecdotal evidence that not every person in the world prefers chocolate, but if you’re a restaurant, a gas station, or an event planner, you know it’s all about the chocolate.

We all have moments when something other than chocolate chip cookies appeal to us, but do we ever look back with regret that we didn’t try harder to be a chocolate chip cookie in a chocolate chip cookie world? Do we regret not pursuing their ingredients for success, success, SUCCESS? Some of us not only moved past all the resentment and regret, we moved into a middle ground of our own choosing. We’re the ones they call one strange cookie. We not only accepted this idea that we’d never be chocolate chip cookie, we embraced it. Some characterize this midlevel existence as a stuck-in-the-middle one, with its own unique level of suffering, but we chose to view it as us being baked differently. We used our ingredients to come up with something different. I’m not claiming that I built a better cookie, and I can’t say if it’s worse, but it took me a long time to reach a point where I can say it’s mine, “I am a cookie, and it’s good enough for me.”

Eradicating Boredom, Losing Creativity: The Double-Edged Sword of Digital Distraction

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“I’ll never be bored again!” I said the day I purchased my first smartphone. I said that in reference to one of the very few games we play that has no winners: the waiting game. With a smartphone in hand, I thought I could finally resolve one of my biggest complaints about life: waiting.

“We’re not going to live forever,” we complain when someone is involved in the life and death struggles of a grocery store price check. Most of us don’t take out our life expectancy calculator to figure out how long we’re going to live, or to calculate how much of our lives we’ve wasted waiting in line, but we all love sharing that snarky joke about the guy complaining to the clerk that the price tag said asparagus cost $3.47 as opposed to the register’s reading of $3.97.

We’re all waiting for something, all the time, but what makes us angrier, waiting for something to happen, or doing nothing for long stretches of time? We’ve all experienced our frustrations inch their way over into anger, then boil over into rage, and we’ve all experienced that sense of helplessness when it happens to us. With a smartphone in hand, I correctly predicted that I could avoid falling into that trap of claustrophobic silence and inactivity by filling it with something, something to do with my hands, and something is always better than nothing in the waiting game.

Promptness is About Respect

The waiting game is not selective or discriminatory. Everyone from the most anonymous person on the planet to the most powerful has to wait for something, but there’s waiting and then there’s waiting. The waiting game is all about power and the lack thereof. When we’re stuck in line, at a restaurant, waiting for a seat, we experience a sense of powerlessness. We’re so accustomed to having power over our own life, as adults, that when we find out the wait time for that restaurant is forty-five minutes, we exert that power by walking away. When we find out every decent restaurant in town has a thirty-to-forty-five minute waiting time that sense of frustration sets in, and we eat at home. When someone we love leaves us sitting in that restaurant for a half an hour to forty-five minutes a sense of helplessness creeps in when we realize that we’ve accidentally put ourselves in a position of dependence yet again.

I don’t know if everyone feels this way, but I replay a Madonna quote in my head. “If you have to count on others for a good time, you’re not doing it right.” When I’m sitting in a restaurant with patrons passing me, looking at the vacant side of my table, I realize I’m counting on the wrong people in life, the narcissistic, irresponsible, and disrespectful people I count on for an enjoyable lunch. If they leave us there long enough, by ourselves, we’ll start to dream up all sorts of motives and agendas for their tardiness. That frustration can lead to anger and a level of teeth gritting and grinding that damages the expensive and painful dental work the impatient we’ve had done. 

I know that the search for what could tip me over into some form of mental illness is over when I am on the other end of the waiting game, and I eventually hear, “What is the big deal, I was only a couple minutes late, and I had to …” They usually fill that void with utter nonsense that we cannot disprove, so we just let it go. 

Life happens when we least expect it sometimes, and sometimes we’re going to be late. If we respect the other person, we call, text, or email us to inform them we’re going to be late, but that would be respectful on our part. That’s really what we’re talking about here, the respect or lack thereof, on their part. If we respect our employer, we show up on time. If we enjoy the company of someone we’re dating, we show up on time, or early. It’s about respect, the lack thereof, and narcissism. And when they show us this lack of respect, quality friendships can be tainted and temporarily damaged, and dissociations with associates end what could’ve become a friendship. We overreact to such slights, and we know it, but it all boils down to the fact promptness is all about respect.

The Eradication of Boredom

When we’re immersed in the maddening waiting game, the mosquito paradox comes to mind. Anyone who has ever had a beautiful day at the park ruined by a scourge of mosquitoes has asked why scientists don’t find some way to bioengineer an eradication of that relatively useless species? Biologists, with a specialty in mosquitoes, provide arguments for why we shouldn’t, but when we’re swatting, slapping, and running from the scourge, we develop seven counter arguments to every one of theirs. The only vague but true answer we’ll accept is “Anytime we mess with nature, there will be consequences.” We’ve all heard that in relation to the mosquito, but what about waiting and the resultant boredom? Boredom is a naturally occurring event. What could possibly be the consequences of eradicating boredom? We’re not talking about that simple, “I don’t know what to do to pass the time” boredom. We’re talking about levels of boredom that takes us to the edge of an abyss that stares back at us, until it roars to the surface and frightens everyone around us.

Some of us loathe the boredom inherent in the waiting game so much that it whispers some scary things about us to us, but when it’s all over, it dawns on us that something happens to us when we spend too much time in claustrophobic silence with nothing to do but think.

How many useless, pointless thoughts have we had in such moments? We flush most of those thoughts out of our mind after it’s over, as we will with that which our body cannot use, but some thoughts collect, mate, and mutate into ideas that we can use. How many of our more meaningful, somewhat productive thoughts had hundreds of useless, pointless parents conjugating during the waiting game? 

***

The child and I often talk a lot about how relatively boring things were when I was a kid. This involves me recalling for him what we did for fun, and how we thought those things were so much fun at the time. “We had to do these things,” I say when I see his face crinkle up, “because we were all so bored.” These complaints could be generational, as I often hear the previous generation describe their youth as “Such an incredible time to be a kid,” and they were raised on farms! I’ve been on farms, trapped there for huge chunks of my youth, and the only thing I found incredible about it was how incredibly boring it was. It takes a creative mind, more creative than mine, to believe that being raised on a farm is an “incredible” time.

“It’s all about perspective,” they say, and they’re right. If we don’t know any better, skipping stones in a pond and fishing can be a lot of fun. We rode our bikes around the block a gazillion times, and we thought that was an absolute blast, and then we played every game that involved a ball, but they all seem comparatively boring when compared to the things kids can do now. We could argue all day about the comparisons, but they do have better things to fill the empty spaces. Yet, what happened to us as a result of all those empty spaces, and what happens to them as a result of mostly being devoid of any?

How much of our youth did we spend sitting in chairs, looking out windows, waiting for something to happen? Some of us did something, anything, to pass the time until the event we were waiting for could happen, but there were other times when we just had to sit and wait. We’d sit in those chairs and think up useless and pointless crap that ended up being nothing more than useless and pointless crap, but how many bountiful farm fields require tons of useless and pointless crap per acre? 

We have cellphones and smartphones now. That’s our power. That’s how we eradicate boredom. “4.88 billion, or 60.42%, of the world population have cellphones, and the number [was] expected to reach 7.12 billion by the end of 2024. 276.14 million or 81.6% of Americans have cell phones.” We don’t ever have to be bored again. 

We have game consoles. “The Pew Research Center reported in 2008 that 97% of youths ages 12 to 17 played some type of video game, and that two-thirds of them played action and adventure games that tend to contain violent content.” These kids may never have to face the kind of boredom I did as a kid. We didn’t even have an Atari 2600 in our home when just about every kid we knew did, and it wasn’t because our dad wanted to prevent us from becoming gamers. He was just too cheap. So, we were forced to do nothing for long stretches of time.

When you’re as bored as we were, the mind provides the only playground. “Is there something on TV?” There never is, and I don’t care how many channels, streaming services, apps, and websites we have, an overwhelming amount of programming is just plain boring to kids. We could go out and play, but when you’re from a locale of unpredictable climates, you learn that that is not possible for large chunks of the year. The only thing we can do, when we’re that bored, is think about things to do. I invented things to do to pass the time, but they could get a little boring too.

Filling the Empty Spaces 

“You’re weird,” is something I’ve heard my whole life. I’ve also heard, “I’ve met some really weird fellas in my time, but you take the cake,” more than a few times. That’s what I did when I ran out of things to do. I sat around and got weird. Your first thought might be, “Well, I don’t want to be weird, and I don’t want anyone thinking my kid is weird either.” Understandable, but what is weird? Weird is different, it’s having divergent thoughts that no one has considered before, until they grew as bored as we did. Weird is rarely something that happens overnight. It takes decades of boredom, and it takes a rewind button of the mind, replaying the same thoughts over and over, until we’ve looked at the same situation so many different ways, on so many different days that we’ve developed some weird ideas and abnormal thoughts about people, places and things around us. This is what happens when we stare out windows too long, looking at nothing, wondering how the world might look different if it was weird, strange, or just plain different. It’s what happens when someone lives too long in the mind, and their peeps start worrying that they’re not doing it right. 

Some weird, strange, and just plain different thoughts led us to think about the difference between success and failure. Success is a short-term game that will mean nothing tomorrow if you’re not able to back it up, so you better enjoy it while it lasts, because if there’s one thing we know about success, it has a million parents and failure is an orphan. We also realize that, in those dark, quiet moments we spend alone, looking out the car window on the drive home, that failure does define us. Athletes and business people say, “Don’t let failure define you,” but it defines us. Some remember those moments, and some will never forget, but what we do shortly after failing will define us too. The thing that plagues us is, “Was that moment of failure an irreversible blemish?” and when we’re left staring out the window at nothing, it can feel like it is. Some will never forget, and we know who they are, because they always remind us who they are, but most forget. As any trained public speaker will inform us, an overwhelming number of people will forgive, forget, and dismiss errors. Most people aren’t paying near as much attention as we think, and most people aren’t dying to see others commit errors. When we’re left alone for long chunks of time, replaying moments over and over, we can make the mistake of thinking it’s the opposite. 

“Reach for the stars,” they say. “Become the next Albert Einstein, Vincent van Gogh, Isaac Newton, and Leonardo da Vinci, fill your empty spaces, and reshape your world.” It’s great advice, and we think about how we should try to be better today than we were yesterday, and we shouldn’t spend those dark, quiet moments obsessing about trivial notions we consider our limitations. As we sort through those famous names, we ask how bored were they, when they were kids? Those guys had nothing to do either, when they were kids. They didn’t have movies, TV, devices, or consoles to occupy their time. As boring as it could be to be a kid in our generation, we can only imagine those previous generations were just itching with boredom back in their day, and they were so bored that they dreamed up some things that laid the foundation for everything we find interesting now. We can imagine that most dismissed them as dreamers and daydreamers that wouldn’t amount to much, and they ended up conjugating all of those pointless and useless thoughts into something that ended up reshaping our world.    

No matter how much we daydream, or dream up interesting thoughts, most of us will never actually reach those stars. Yet, something happens to us when we’re so bored that we think up weird and interesting thoughts that will never amount to anything. We accidentally, incidentally, or just by the natural course of filling empty spaces become more interesting. Thinking so much that we think too much could lead us to divergent thoughts that some people find so weird, strange and just plain different, but that can lead them to ask us about matters that they consider trivial, relatively unimportant, to important. Our unique perspective often attracts people to us, and it could lead us to have more friends, which could be one of the primary reasons we should consider inserting more boredom into our kids’ lives. Our kids might not know who they are, or who they could be, if they find artificial ways to avoid ever sitting in front of a window with nothing to do but think about everything. Even if they never make it above the lower-to-middle stations in life, they might learn how to make life more interesting, and they might accidentally figure out how to enjoy their lives better, and in the process of being so bored, they might learn how to become happier, more interesting people.