Category: Philosophy

Have Bus, Will Travel

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“Hold on a second, wait, wait, wait, did I just hear you say that you’re choosing to travel by bus?” I asked a fella named Rudy who was speaking to another group of people behind me. I interrupted Rudy. It was rude, but I couldn’t hide my amazement. When I asked him if his decision was based on finances, the fact that he didn’t have a fully functional automobile, or a fear of flying, he said no to all of the above. “Then, I don’t get it. Why would you choose to travel by bus?” I asked.

“I want to see the country,” he said, “and I feel like I’ve never truly seen the country before.” When I mentioned that he could see the country by driving in an automobile, he said, “That pesky chore of having to pay attention to the road gets in the way.” When I said he could take turns driving with his girlfriend, he said, “Long story short, I’ll be traveling alone.”

“Have you ever travelled on a bus before?” I asked him.

“I haven’t,” he said, “and that’s part of the allure for me.”

“Before you purchase a ticket go smell a bus,” I said. “Ask the company if you can have a smellment inside a bus to inhale the interior. Walk around the depot and smell some of its passengers. Have you ever smelled pungent B.O. before? Now imagine that smell crawling all over you for nine hours.

“I jabbed a stick into a bloated, roadside opossum one time, and I could smell the noxious gases that came out of it a week later on my skin, in my hair, and in the clothes I decided to pitch,” I continued. “Even that putrid, eye-watering scent couldn’t prepare me for the smells of the guy who sat in J-4. If we could bottle J-4’s unique combination of gangrene, attic, and a slight touch of what can be huffed on an emu’s undercarriage, after an extensive workout, I think we might make a dent in any overpopulation fears we might have.”

Rudy was listening with an “Okay, but,” look on his face that told me he wasn’t convinced. 

“Trains will make stops, but not at every Podunk town junction. An extended bus ride can make what might be a seven-hour trip into nine hours, which might not seem like much of an addition, unless you’re seated next to the smells of a J-4, and you can’t sleep because you stayed up all night, the night before to sleep the bus trip away.

“We all go a little nutty when we’re sleep deprived, but the nonstop bus stops can mess with your mind, as it might take fifteen to twenty delirious minutes to find sleep, until the next bus stop arrives thirty minutes later, at which point the cycle repeats. Repeat this cycle often enough, and you’ll become intimately familiar with the term hypnagogia. 

“I see it on your face,” I said. “You’ve never heard the term. I didn’t know it either, until I traveled by bus. Put simply, the mind messes with you in the hypnagogic state. I’ve read scientific descriptions that suggest a hypnagogic state can occur anytime in the brief moments we transition to and from sleep. We commonly refer to this brief mental state of moving towards sleep or wakefulness without completing the transition as being half-awake or half-asleep. In my experience, the incredibly surreal hypnagogic hallucinations are most vivid when someone or something abruptly forces us out of sleep. 

“I don’t know about you, but I wake whenever I come to a complete stop, be it after a car ride, bus travel, or anything that puts me in motion,” I added, “I saw most of my fellow passengers sleep through a stop, and I envied/loathed them for that ability. How do you guys escape the laws of nature, I wanted to ask. When I would wake with each stop, my sleep-deprived brain told me that J-4 was getting ready to do something awful to me. This cyclical drama continued for me throughout all the stops the bus made, until I reached a level of delirium where I wasn’t sure if the dead and undead passengers around me were products of my nightmares or participants in it. 

“As I slipped in and out of sleep, I ate, just to do something with my hands. Halfway through, I realized I must be pretty good at eating, because the guy in H-2 leaned up over his seat to watch me do it to a bag of Gardetto’s. I don’t know if this guy was graced with a unique ability to stare his way into dreams, or if he discovered those super powers during our little trip together, but a couple hours into this trip, I was convinced he attained a supernatural form.

“I love the smell of those things,” H-2 informed me. I wasn’t sure what world he said that in, so I gave him the rest of my bag, because I suspected his need for Gardetto’s might lead him to display his ability to alter his ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the way an octopus will to formulate an attack strategy it needs to capture the unique prey it finds.

“I thought conceding might also end the cold war I was having with H-2, until I realized that when I could only smell the Gardetto’s, it only served to increase his powers,” I said. “With the advanced state of delirium I was in, I wasn’t able to tell if I was dreaming or not, but at some point in our travel together he altered into some some form of hybrid that reminded me of a Cyclops in Greek mythology. He had the same face, and the same hands were tossing Gardetto’s back to me in J-3. He fed me in such regular intervals that I came to expect them. When it took him too long to feed me, I cheeped like a baby bird, but he did not regurgitate a Gardetto into my mouth, as I feared he might. He’d just turn around and tossed one back to me. 

“Those cheeps must’ve been aloud, because when I awoke from this half-sleep, half wake state of delirium, the passengers around me were uncomfortably quiet, and a four-to-five-year-old was laughing at me over the headrest. The kid then mimicked those cheeping sounds, while laughing at me, until his mother pulled him back.

“My grievances against bus travel date back to my teen years when my dad forced me to take the city bus to school, but it didn’t dawn on me how deep seeded my bias against bus travel was, until a man named Alex informed me that he wouldn’t walk to a Walgreens with me.

“But it’s right there,” I said, pointing to the establishment.

“I had to walk everywhere I went back when I was poor,” Alex said. “Now that I have money and a car, I don’t want to walk anymore.” I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, and it didn’t dawn on me until later that I have a similar, deep-seeded bias against travel by bus.

“You name the method of traveling a great distance, other than walking or running, and I’ve probably tried it. Check that, I’ve yet to go anywhere by stagecoach or pack mule, but I doubt that they compare to the horrible experience you’ll have on the bus. If I were you, I would seriously reconsider another mode of transportation.”

When One Thing Doesn’t Work, Try Another

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“That won’t work … Yeah, that won’t work either. I tried it,” they say when we offer them solutions to their situations. “Why do you insist on helping me? Why can’t you just listen?”

“When one of my friends has a problem,” we say, “I try to help them.”

“Why do you always think you have to help?” they ask. “Is it because there’s some part of you that needs to be right?”

“If I needed to be right, why would I propose so many, different solutions? If I have an unusual need to be right, I would only pose one solution and insist that you try that. My motto is, if one thing doesn’t work try another. If I thought I was always right, why would I write as much as I do? I’m searching for answers and solutions, and when they work for me I suggest them to my friends to see if it might work for them.”

“Well, you can go ahead and shove your solutions up your nether regions,” they say, “because none of them work.”

“Fair enough,” we say. “What solutions have you found?”

“I’ve tried everything. I have,” they say. “Nothing works.”

It’s simplistic to say that for every problem there is a solution. It’s simplistic to say if one solution doesn’t work, try another? It’s also simplistic to say that some dilemmas are complex and some are very simple. There are only so many facts, and there are only so many solutions. When we argue over truths as they apply to solutions, we think that if all parties concerned dug deep enough, we might eventually arrive at an agreed upon truth.

One agreed upon truth we think we’ve found is that we all want to be happy. Happy, how do I get happy? Happy is a big problem that requires big solutions, and it’s probably something we’ll never achieve … until we start tending to our little things. We can be so distracted by our pursuit of big things that we accidentally allow the little things to accumulate and overwhelm us, which, of course, leads to frustration.    

These little problems might have solutions, but we mere mortals cannot resolve them, because we’re susceptible to the dumb guy/smart guy dynamic. If we cannot resolve a little thing immediately, or easily, we feel dumb, because we imagined that we would be able to solve such things by now, and we feel like dumb guys looking out on the smart guy world that is able to solve their problems. The most frustrating element of this dynamic is that we know some smart guys, and they’re not really that smart. They just have this ability to adapt to variables without the fear that others might consider them dumb for not being able to solve their problems.

What is that? How do they do that? I don’t know if we’re born with preconceived notions about who we are, or if we age into them under the umbrella of idyllic images. We don’t know anything about all that, but we thought we’d be much further along than we are now. We’re not able to figure things out as well as the smart guys who really aren’t that smart. So, what’s the difference? The difference is they approach problem-solving from an ego-less perspective. They’ve been fixing their problems for so long that they know that anytime they try to fix matters there will always be variables that make them feel dumb. They also know that fixing these problems is hard, and fraught with failure. When they fail, they have the same feelings of frustration, feelings of failure, and embarrassment as everyone else. Everyone wants their first solution to work, and everyone feels like an idiot when it doesn’t. The difference between them and us is the “what now” principle. 

What do we do when all of our accumulated knowledge and experience don’t help us fix a problem? First, we curse the manufacturers who created everything from the tools we use as useless to the various swear words we have for product itself, “They shouldn’t have made this so … hard!” When we’re done with that, we might direct our anger at ourselves, our loved ones, and any neighbors who happen to be watching us without offering any help. The next thing we try, following the tenants of the “what now” progressions is to try something else.  

It cannot be that easy, we think as we watch others solve their problems so easily, and they do so with an ego-less approach. That’s disgusting. And we think it is both, especially when their solutions lead to better health, wealth, happiness, and peace of mind. If they don’t like themselves the way they are, and we suspect they do with jealous rage, they appear to know themselves far better than we do, and the most sickening part of it is they want us to be as happy as they are. They want to share their mentality with us and help us shed our complexities. They don’t demand we use their solution, and they’re not hurt when we don’t. Their goal is to join our quest for a solution to that which plagues us, and their solution often involves doing it differently than the way we’ve been doing it.

The problem for the problematic is that they don’t appear as concerned with finding a solution that might work for them, even internally. Their goal, presumably, is to draw attention to the complexities, so they can garner sympathy and attention, and so we all acknowledge their problem for what it is. 

When we reach the nadir of this argument, we have two choices. We can either walk away or acknowledge the severity of their complaint, and offer sympathy. Neither choice solves our problem, of course, but it becomes obvious that we don’t want to solve our problems as much as we thought, and we only want others to acknowledge the severity of our problems as we lay it out. If we perform according to their wishes, our reward is their soothed smile. 

***

I saw that smile once in the otherwise uneventful silence of a hospital’s emergency room (ER). While counting what felt like hours for an ER attendant to tend to me, I overheard another ER attendant inform a teenager that she had a condition. I can’t remember the specifics of her condition, but I remember that it was not dramatic, life-altering, life-threatening, or severely debilitating. “This will require some effort on your part to maintain a modicum of good health,” The ER attendant informed her.

The teenage patient smiled a half-smile that she couldn’t hide, when she received the diagnosis. She turned that smile off quickly as the ER attendant listed off what she would have to attend to to maintain good health. She listened with her serious face on. She didn’t intend to smile, but it happened. She turned it off, because she knew how serious the moment was, but she couldn’t keep it off for long. She turned away from them when the smile rose again. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stop smiling, and she knew it wasn’t appropriate for the situation. 

Before I speculate on what I thought sparked that twinkle in her eye, let me write that it’s entirely possible that the ER attendant’s diagnosis soothed her because it was something, and those of us who have had our body fall apart in small, confusing ways can empathize because we know that something is far better than the fear of knowing nothing. 

Some of us can spend months living in the confusing scary world of knowing nothing before we break down and schedule a visit to our doctor’s office, or worse, the emergency room. We eventually reach a point where we know we need help figuring out what’s wrong with us. We listed our symptoms on various medical websites, trying to come to up with a diagnosis of our own, and we found a whole lot of nothing. Armed with a diagnosis, we, like this young woman, can find some solace, because it puts an end to the not knowing, and a proper diagnosis can lead to specified medicinal care and proactive measures we can employ to maintain some modicum of health that could lead to better health, more energy, and a longer life. A diagnosis and a prescription, or as in this case a prescriptive course of action, are solutions to our problem that can lead to a comforted smile.

The smile I saw on her face was something different however. I saw a little spark in her smile that suggested she couldn’t help but find this a little exciting. We can’t explain such a smile, but we know that this diagnosis will add some dramatic complications to our life. Most of us live simple, boring lives, because we inherited quality genes that provided us with a finely tuned and well honed machine that rarely breaks down. We appreciate the brilliance of the design of our body, on some level, but after living with good health for as many decades as we have, it can be … a little boring at times. When our body breaks down, in small, relatively harmless and painless ways, it can be interesting and even a little exciting for reasons that we know are kind of weird and tough to understand or explain. 

I do not know what was going on in her head, of course, but I imagine that she knew that this condition would not only require attention from her, but her family, her friends, her employer, her school, and everyone else who cared about her. She probably sat in that ER room thinking that she would become the center of attention among those who cared about her. Until they could devise a plan to help her manage her day-to-day activities, she would also be a subject of sympathy from those concerned about her health. She knew she could talk to them about it, and that smile suggested she looked forward to those conversations and all of that love and attention that followed. She knew she would be able to express her concerns, and she knew they would finally listen to her, because this was a big deal. They, along with her doctor, would help her devise a plan that would include a disciplined diet that she would have to follow, and she probably figured she could violate it when she was “feeling a little naughty”, and because she had a relatively mild case, the consequences of these violations would be minimal, but her friends and family would still be concerned when she did that.

She probably also thought about her obnoxious brother, boyfriend, and everyone else who thought they knew what was wrong with her. They probably offered her a guess, and she argued with them and told them that it was far more serious than that, but they wouldn’t listen. They also offered her simplistic home remedies that promised some quick-fix solutions to what ailed her. Her smile suggested that she couldn’t wait to tell them they were all wrong, all along, and her condition was far more complex than any of them dreamed. Armed with ER attendant’s diagnosis, she realized she could now tell them all to go to hell. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. This is a big deal. You have no idea what I’m going through here. I have a condition that requires constant care and treatment.” That smile told me that she couldn’t wait to drop these lines on her obnoxiously simplistic friends and family. And if they continued to argue with her, she could drop some delicious line, such as, “Oh, so, you’re telling me that you know more about this than a doctor?”

***

What is the antonym of solutions-oriented thinking? Is there one? Thesauruses list a number of antonyms for solution, but they have no listings for an antonym of solutions-oriented. These formal sites do not list a term like problems-oriented or problem-centric. Those terms do not exist in their view, because no one is problems-oriented, at least in the sense that they use problems to achieve some happiness. Less formal sites suggest that a problems-oriented person would rather stew over their problems rather “than activate critical-thinking skills to find solutions.” Having problems makes them feel more adult, responsible, and important, and any attempt we make to try to help them arrive at a solution only minimizes their problem in their eyes.

Solutions-oriented thinkers are no smarter, healthier, or in any way better than those who appear to relish talking about their problems. Solutions-oriented thinkers are often quick to recognize patterns and devise an immediate solution, but they, too, have to face the flaws in their pattern-recognition thinking. When those humbling experiences occur, they choose a more methodical approach that includes consulting others, manuals, or another more methodical approach, and they use that information to devise another solution.

“But I thought you just said your initial solution was the answer,” their agitators say. “I thought you knew-it-all.”

“I was wrong.”

Solutions-oriented thinkers are wrong as often as everyone else is, and as we listed above they’re not smarter than us. They might try to find a solution, and they might fail. This leads their agitators to another smile, the inevitable, “See” smile, followed by, “See, you’re not so smart.” 

When I was teaching a bunch of young-uns how to shoot a basketball, I displayed the proper technique. I missed the shot when I was showing it to them them. “Why would I take advice from you?” they asked. “You missed the shot.”

“Just because I missed that particular shot doesn’t mean it isn’t the correct way to shoot the ball. If you use proper technique, your probability of making a shot increases.”

The problems-centric person does not want to listen, and for a wide variety of reasons they prefer to keep shooting the ball the way they’ve always shot it. When their shot never improves, they say, “I just suck at basketball, and the sooner I come to grips with that fact, the happier I’ll be.” The player who wants to get better might not want to take advice from a person “Who missed the shot,” but their best bet will be to try a method other than the one they have, because they will rarely make the shot the way they’re currently shooting it.     

The solutions-oriented thinker might be surprised, confused, and frustrated when their proposed solutions don’t work, and problems-oriented people might enjoy that initial failure, but the solutions-oriented person does something that shocks the problems-oriented person, they try something else. True problem solvers find arriving at a solution an ego-less approach. The recipients of their ideas often believe it is anything but.  

Some solutions-oriented thinkers in solutions-oriented positions, in a Fortune 500 company, decided to put their money where their mouth is by doing away with the traditional interview process. Through trial and error, they’ve decided to do away with the closed boardroom, “hot-seat”,  interview that challenges the potential candidate to solve a hypothetical problem. “This is the problem. Quick, what is your solution?” These Fortune 5oo companies found that this line of questioning doesn’t separate the quality, ideal candidate from the less than. These innovative companies decided to send their questions to their potential candidates’ homes, via email, before the interview, to allow them to process the question, trial and error it, and arrive at what they consider the best possible answer. The Fortune 500 companies now recognize that quick thinking candidates look and sound great in the traditional interview, but that that does nothing for their long-term. The “hot-seat” scenario questions will find the person who “thinks quick on their feet”, and it shows the candidate’s problem-solving hard-wiring. By sending the questions home, however, the companies are now suggesting that their ideal candidate does not have to think quick, and that methodical thinkers often come up with better, more creative, and sometimes more innovative solutions than those who come up with quick, bullet point solutions. The methodical thinkers are trial-and-error processors who diagnose a problem, come up with a solution, recognize the errors of their subjectivity, pose other solutions, recognize the errors of their impulsive, patterned thinking, and arrive at a final solution that the “hot-seat” thinker who “thinks quick on their feet” probably wouldn’t even consider. The take-home method might also allow the potential candidate to forecast variables and diagnose and treat them accordingly. 

The quick-on-their-feet candidate always looks and sounds better behind closed doors. They display confidence, experience, intelligence, charisma, and a number of other intangible qualities we admire in those we meet, but how many quick-thinking, well-spoken, and confident candidates turn out to be the best employees over the long haul? How many of these ideal candidates only display their ideal qualities in the interview? How many of them outperform their peers in the training room, answering every question the trainer asks. We call them hotshots, and hotshots know how to make excellent first impressions. They know how to dress for success, they memorize the answers headhunters want to hear, and they do it all with an award-winning grin. Yet, depending on the industry we’re in, we often find that these types often shine bright and burn out quickly.

Most of the best employees we work with are quiet, unassuming types who offer unique, creative, and innovative approaches to problem solving. They may not be the best employees in the training room, as they may not be the type to raise their hand to answer the trainer’s questions, and they may not be the best employee after the first two weeks. It might take them a little time to figure out the finer points of the machinations of their company, and it might take them a little more time to figure out their role in it. They aren’t the type to dazzle their employer in the early stages in the manner the ideal “hot-seat” quick thinker can, and this frustrates them because everyone wants to make a great first impression. This has haunted them since high school when the “hot-seat” quick thinkers dazzled their teachers. The methodical, slow processors often tried to keep up with them in the beginning, because that’s just what they did in high school. We often had the wrong answer in class, and we were ridiculed for it by our peers, and at times our teachers. We learned to avoid sticking our neck out. Candidates who could absorb such ridicule, and endure the lack of faith they received from teachers and bosses for initially being wrong developed the ability to simply try something else. These candidates, Fortune 500 companies are now saying, are such a rare commodity that they’re willing to upend the traditional interview process to find them. They know such thinkers do not perform well in the standardized, traditional interview format, so they tried another one to find that special candidate who tried something else when their initial, impulsive thoughts didn’t work. The Fortune 500 company doesn’t want people who are always wrong of course, but even the best candidates are going to be wrong once in a while, and some of the times those errors will be humiliating. When that happens, they’re forced to endure the “what now” questions, but due to their mode of thinking, they’re more accustomed to the what-now questions than the “hot-seat” quick thinking dazzlers. What do we do when all else fails? Decades of trial and error evidence have shown Fortune 500 companies that their ideal candidate is an ego-less thinker who already knows what it feels like to be wrong, and they know what to do about it. By changing the traditional “hot-seat” interview format, these companies were trying something else to try to find those who try something else.   

The Unfunny Comedian: I Love to Eat

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“I love to eat. Who here loves to eat?” Barry Becker said to open his first show in Waukee, Iowa. “How many of you live to eat? I’m talking to the people who love to eat tonight. C’mon, how many of you love to eat? Let me hear you!”

“That line never gets much applause. Most applaud politely and softly, thinking, ‘I don’t know where you’re going with this, but yeah, I enjoy eating a thing or two.’ Very few people leave their seat with, “EATING! YEAH! Sing it sista!” Yet, we have to eat food to sustain life. It’s true. Look it up. In your research, you’ll find that not only does eating food sustain life, it provides the protein and vitamins we need to maintain energy levels and strength, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to rise up and scream at the top of our lungs to express our passion for it in an open forum like this one, because people will think we’re pigs

“Even those of you who were on a half-bun, ready to rise up and scream your heads off about the glory of eating, won’t do so on the first date. It’s just … It’s not a good look. Most prospective lovers won’t mind hearing that we enjoy eating, as long as we do so in moderation. They don’t want to hear about our plans for massive weight gain. “You like what you see here, babe, because there’s going to be a whole lot more of it soon. Once you start to love me, and make me more comfortable with myself and my physical appearance, it’s only a matter of time before this,” Barry said loosely circling his belly, “becomes a big mess of Frito’s and Skittles. That’s right, this is only the beginning. I love to eat hon’.”

“Women don’t demand skinny, most don’t anyway, but they don’t want us to be all hooting and woo hooing about it either. They do it, though. That’s right, they don’t mind talking about how much they love to eat, because they’re all thin and stuff. They’re not afraid to share it with the world. “I love to eat!” They say it all the time. Really? You love to eat? I don’t think you do. Here, here’s a rack of spare ribs. Prove it!

“Starting today! Right now! If you’re a little chubby, or planning to be, shout it with me. “I love to eat!” Shout it loud, shout it proud. I like sleeping, and sitting around and do nothing for unusually long, unhealthy stretches, but nothing compares to eating. 

“Have you ever had a friend say, “Let’s go grab something to eat, and then we can-” Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, there little doggie. For me, there is no and then. I don’t know what you plan to do after this meal, but the meal is the event for me, the night out, the fun. I’m sure your other plans will be a blast, but I’m old, and keeping these beautiful curves ain’t as easy as it used to be, so I’m not into your and then. If I’m only going to be able to eat two meals a day now, and one of them has to be a light one, and you’re going to tell me to reduce my sugar intake and cut back on all those delicious, salty snacks that are probably going to lead to a painfully slow, premature death, you better bring your A-game if you’re going to ask me to have a meal with you. Use your words. Seduce me.

“Hey, I want to live a long life as much as the next guy. I want to live so long that someone at my funeral whispers, “Good God he was old!” and I know I’m going to have to sacrifice some to get there. At some point, though, I’m going to have to sit down with a spreadsheet with one column titled, ‘How long do I really want to live?’ and the other titled ‘How much fun am I having here?’ where I add, multiply, subtract and divide the quality of my life from a desired quantity.

“Meals are the event of the day. They’re what we look forward to throughout the mind-numbing hours of inputting data into a computer. The meal is our reward for putting up with the family, home repairs, and the dog that we wanted so bad at one time. We do what we’re supposed to do. We drop the kids off at school on time, pick them up on time, and we work our tail off to crunch the numbers for Mr. Jamison to try to get one small smile out of him, and then we’re supposed to go home and eat a sensible salad with a side of broccoli? Screw that! I want meat. I want a steak. I want a big old artery clogging ribeye, with a side of mashed potatoes and a beer as my reward for putting up with all that.

“I’d love to eat all I want and be as slim and trim as you, so I don’t have to see all of my chins in photographs, but to do that they suggest that we might want to consider skipping a few meals, or at least think about mixing in a salad here and there. Have you heard this joke? This ‘Feel free to mix in a salad’ they say, or, ‘Have you ever heard of a salad?’ Yes, yes, I’ve heard of salad. Somebody, somewhere told me about how they ordered a salad instead of a steak at one of the finest steakhouses in our city, because he thought he could use a little more ruffage in his diet. He didn’t order it as an appetizer. It was his main course. He wanted to be healthy, and he thought it might help him live longer. You can eat salad with a side of broccoli all you want, to live longer, but I got news for you, brothers and sisters, you’re probably not going to outlive me as much as you think. I’m not going to live forever, I know that, we all know that, but while we’re here we should live like we’re going to die tomorrow, and a portion of that means I’m going to eat whatever the hell I want.

“If you don’t view meals as the event of the day, it’s because you’re not married. The first question the wife hits you with when the two of you arrive home from work is, “What do you want to eat tonight?” It happens so often, you should be prepared, but you’re not. “Ah, crap, I didn’t even think about it today, sorry.” It’s almost stressful. You answer, and she immediately vetoes.

“I don’t want to eat there, Henry. We ate there so recently.” Why is it so important to space out restaurants, because if we eat at the same place, in a too narrow a space in time, it will ruin the event of eating that particular meal. “Let’s try something else,” she says, “and I don’t want red meat tonight, and no more pizza, for God’s sakes Henry.” Ok, well, I don’t know where to eat then. You pick. “I picked last time.” This unlocks the dreaded ‘who picked last time?’ phase of the back-and-forth. Why is this important, because you both know your tailbone is on the line to pick the greatest place to eat every time out. She picked last time, and the two of you both know what an epic failure that was, and she can’t take the pressure of picking two times in a row, especially after that last one.

“Do you have these little, internecine battles with currents and undercurrents of tension flowing back and forth between your words? We all do, right? Eating is what we must do, and what we talk about nonstop. The what, when, where, and with whom are we going to eat tonight dominate all discussion topics. “I don’t want to eat at that place, because I hate their side items. The entrees are all right, I guess, but their sides are so ordinary and bland.”

“If you’re anything like me, you take such criticism personal. You have no stake in the success or failure of that restaurant. You don’t own any of the corporation’s stocks, but you love their food, and she knows it, and that agitates us, because she seems to reject everything, we hold dear. She doesn’t do it with that purpose in mind, and we know it, but we like that place so much that it’s kind of our place, and some weird part of us takes proprietary ownership of that place in our marriage to the point that any insults directed at it are personal. Yet, we abide her veto power, and we come up with another place. “I don’t want to eat there, either, the service sucks, and their bathrooms are dirty.” Their bathrooms are dirty? I’ve heard this more than twice. How did the cleanliness of a bathroom become a bullet point in this debate? What are you going to do in there? Exactly! You’re going to do your part to do your part to dirty it up. “Cleanliness of bathrooms, she says,” we mutter as the squabble comes to a close.

“Except, we don’t mutter that, because we know what starts out as a minor rebuttal can turn a back-and-forth discussion into a squabble, which can lead to a back and forth that can somehow escalate into an argument, and on rare occasions even a fight. A fight over where to eat? If that’s not a first world problem I don’t know what is. The larger point is that the two of you will never look back on the incremental progressions of this fight with a laugh, because it’s such a silly thing to fight over. You won’t, because you know that this is the meal, the hallowed parent’s night out meal. The parent’s night out meal is not just important, it’s an existential pivot point. It might not be that substantial, but we know that every time we have to choose that perfect place. If we want to continue to enjoy the freedom and fun that come with our Tuesday nights, and we hope to keep our marriage exciting and new, we know we have to do this night up right. We have to plan, discuss the details of that plan, and iron out any differences to one day, hopefully, look back on this night as that night. “You remember that night, right?” The ‘that night’ designation is the gold standard for all nights in romantic relationships, and those of us in such relationships fear we might never get back to them, and there’s no sense in trying to duplicate them either.

“Why don’t we just eat at home?” she says as we enter the ‘give up’ phase of our process. I do not want to eat at home Mildred, we always eat at home. “It’s healthier and cheaper.” It’s not healthier. Do people ever ask you that question? They ask me that all the time. ‘How often do you eat out?’ It doesn’t matter what we say. We could say we haven’t eaten out since the Coolidge administration, and they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s so unhealthy. You have to eat at home more.’ Screw you, I like to eat out. It’s special, and I’m paying them to treat me special. When they don’t, God help them, I’ll rage. When people say it’s healthier to eat at home, I say, “Doesn’t it depend on what you eat, no matter where you eat it? What if I chose a healthy entrée and healthy sides at a restaurant? Now, I don’t, I won’t, and we all know I won’t, but what if I did?  

“When we’re not talking about what we’re going to eat, we talk about what we ate, and where we ate it. Have you eaten there yet? No, OhmiGod, you must eat there, before they have to start feeding you through a tube, you’ve got to eat there. We argue about the best places to eat and what to eat, because we love to eat.

“You are what you eat. We’ve all heard that. I have a friend who won’t eat chicken. Chicken. I understand not eating red meat and pork, but chicken? She said she doesn’t like the texture. Every time I run into her, ‘How could you not like chicken?’ is the first and last thought in my head. I have more of a problem with her than I do vegetarians. I actually respect vegetarians and vegans. I could never be one, but you have to respect the amount of discipline it takes to go into a backyard brimming with all those gorgeous smells of red meat and pork and say, “I think I’ll take the beans, lentils and organic chia seeds on that side platter over there.” I take my hat off to the, because I could never do it.

“I respect you if you’ve managed to limit your diet to legumes, flax, and chia seeds, and you only drink water that comes from the finest springs in Demark. I respect anyone who can limit their diet in that manner, but my question is always why? Well, to be healthier, they say, and being healthier actually leads to more happiness. I would never say that consumption alone leads to happiness, but it’s definitely part of the equation. If you doubt that, try having someone try to take it away from you. I saw that firsthand. Someone very dear to me told his caretakers he would rather die than give up oral consumption. He went to the extreme of threatening a lawsuit over it, because when someone threatened to take eating away from him, he wrote: “I’d rather die! Eating is the only joy I have left in life, and I’d rather die than have that taken away from me.”

“Some of us who have no limits on our joy of oral consumption choose lentils and legumes over barbecued ribs and steak, because they think those decisions will help them outlive the rest of us. They might be right, if we take accidents and other freak occurrences out of the equation, but will they be happier? It’s a leading question, because I know they won’t. They can’t be happier. We’re talking about the quality of life here.

“Eat eggs,” they say. “Eat tons of them. They’re nature’s perfect food.” “Don’t eat eggs; they’re evil.” What? “It depends on how you prepare them.” Drink coffee, don’t drink coffee. Eat steak, don’t eat steak. Eat butter over substitutes, and everything your body recognizes in the digestion process. Everything in moderation: Eat less, play more.

“Various studies suggest that if you eat less, you will have more energy to play. It makes sense and it doesn’t. We need food to sustain energy levels, but if we eat too much, the digestion of it saps our energy. Even without the science we know what happens when we eat huge. To prove their point, the study brought on some fella who tight ropes the very lowest levels of caloric intake possible. He says he’s happier and healthier than he’s ever been. I don’t question the science, but I know what I know, and I know that if I go out to eat at a big steak house, and I choose salad with a side of broccoli, I’m not going to be happier. I might have more energy, and I might be healthier, but when I’m 105, playing pickleball and parcheesi, I’m still going to be thinking about all the steaks I passed on in life. Healthier? Yes. More energetic and playful, sure, with some asterisks. Happier? No.

***

“You see me here tonight. I could stand to lose what 10, 20 … 30 pounds?” Barry asked. He turned to an audience member with a smile. “You think I could stand to lose 40?” All right, I could stand to lose a lot of weight, but I’m not a glutton. Yet, I receive sensorial joy from eating delicious food, and I find going to a restaurant and eating their food eventful. I, like the distant kings and queens of yore, get to point at a menu selection, “I shall have your finest meal on this eve.” When the server walks out with my food, or what I think is my food, most of them understand how majestic we consider their arrival. The ones who do it up right, share a knowing smile with us, and they add a very subtle element of pageantry to their arrival. If you watch them, the best of them, they have it in their stride, both of us knowing our moment has arrived. They also have a big, glorious ‘your moment has arrived’ smile on their face.

“We all know this ‘your moment has arrived’ smile. When it’s directed at us, it’s glorious. I think, I think she just directed that smile at me. Praise the heavens, she did. When I was younger and more attractive, and young women gave me that ‘your moment has arrived’ smile, it meant something entirely different. It took me a while to deal with the fact that that’s over for me, but I’m okay with it now if it means food. I’m okay with it, because when I see that smile now, it comes after I saw all the other tables around me have had their moment arrive first, while I silently implored my server to bring my food.

That smile suggests she knows what we’ve been through. Even though were good little soldiers, silently waiting, she knows. We know she knows, because she a couple minutes ago she stopped by to say, “Don’t worry, your moment is near. I just checked with the cook. It will only be moments. I promise.” Then it happens. “Look, there she is! She has that big smile and that majestic stride. She knows. She knows, and she’s still young enough, and she hasn’t done this so often that she’s lost her enthusiasm. She loves this moment as much as we do. “Wait a second, did I see pork on her tray. I think I saw pork. No! God, no!” That smile was for someone else. If feels like, in a weird way, that’s hard to explain, that she’s cheating on us, when she gives that big, glorious ‘your moment has arrived’ smile to someone else.

“What the hell is going on here?” we say, rolling our head up to the heavens. “I’m going to say something.”

“Don’t,” the wife says.

“I’m sorry, I have to say something. This is getting ridiculous.”

Then the true moment arrives, and the server knows firsthand what this means after everything we’ve been through together. She has a majestic, almost parade-like stride to deliver our food. How many of us go to the bathroom, hoping, just hoping that our moment will arrive while we’re in there? We all do this right? We all think things up to pass the time until our moment arrives. We talk. We look around at our neighboring tables, and we whisper awful things about them just to waste time, until our moment arrives. We go to the bathroom, and some of the times it works, but most of the time it doesn’t.

“And you, you in your distant, ivory tower of health and nutrition, you want me to give all this up? To what? To live longer? You’re telling me that I shouldn’t go through the cinematic highs and lows of food arrival for nutritional and health reasons? Yeah, I’m not going to do that, and I’m not even going to cut back, even if it means I’ll only live to 65 as opposed to 105.

“The event today was this big, old beautiful ribeye. Ribeye was the word that popped into my head when I woke up today. Do you hate mornings? Everyone does. We hate waking up? Today, I sprang out of bed singing, “Good Day Sunshine, Good Day Sunshine!” and I was doing it with this smile on,” Barry said pointing to an exaggerated, toothy smile. “This is my ribeye-eating smile. Ribeye was the first thing I thought about when I woke up, and it was the only thing on my mind when people spoke to me. They all became a Simpsons’ jokes, talking ribeyes.

“It sang out to me, this ribeye, calling me like some evil siren beckoning me to my doom. I couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I can tell you that she had a beautiful, alluring falsetto voice.  

“When our moment finally happened, the server slid that big old block of meat in front of me. I love everything about that moment, the majestic arrival, the “Who had the ribeye?” question, and the, “Right here!” answer I give with pride and joy of ownership in my voice, followed by the almost cinematic sound of a plate sliding across the table. These are a few of my favorite things.

“When I finally have that big, old before me, I cut the entire thing up into small, serving portions. I no longer have a big, huge ribeye before me. I have all these little ribeyes. It makes me think I have more ribeye. I don’t and I know it, but a secret part of me thinks I can fool myself into thinking I have more. I also want to enjoy chewing each bite as much as I possibly can, and cutting them into smaller portions allows each piece an ability to do that for me. If I don’t cut up my steak before taking a bite, I’ll either cut while I’m chewing, which diminishes my enjoyment somewhat, or I’ll be thinking about my next cut while I’m chewing. Either way, I’ve calculated that I’m diminishing my enjoyment of a chew by fractional percentages by cutting while I chew or thinking about my next cut. By cutting my steak into small pieces before I take my first bite, I also get all the work out of the way, so I can sit back and enjoy those cuts of beef without having to worry about any future cuts while I’m chewing, savoring, and soaking it all in.  

“We all know it’s not healthy to eat large portions, but when that server puts that plate of ribeye before me, I don’t see plate, fixings, or side items. It’s all ribeye. I’m not going to complain. I’m not going to tell that server, “I’m sorry, that’s too much ribeye.” Have you heard people do this? “Oh, that’s too much ribeye.” Excuse me, excuse me, what the hell is too much ribeye? I ask this not to boost a joke. I’m genuinely curious. How can there be too much ribeye? The premise of this guilt makes no sense to me.

“I really shouldn’t have eaten all that,” is another way they express guilt. Yeah, you didn’t say jack when they slid all that in front of you. Some people suffer gastrointestinal issues in the aftermath, and they say that that seductive, siren song I hear is the voice of a gargling monster in their head who says, ‘Go ahead, but you’re going regret it,’ followed by maniacal laughter. Food fights back some of the times. I know that, but I think most people say it just to say it, because they feel guilty eating too much.   

“So, the question I hear in your heads is, do I feel some guilt when I have a twelve-ounce ribeye sitting before me? Some? They stress that word some as if it will unlock some false wall we have before guilt. No! No, I don’t feel guilty. Not only do I not feel guilty, I think I’ve found my purpose in life when a ribeye sits before me. I feel guilty about a lot of things, I’m Catholic, but eating a big, juicy, medium rare ribeye is not one of them. We all think we were put here with a greater purpose in mind. “What’s my purpose?” they say. “I need to find my purpose.” “It’s your job in life to find your purpose.” We all say various forms of that. Well, I found mine. You can laugh and call it stupid and simple, all you want, but when it slides across the table at me, I know I’m going to love that piece of meat so much that I will make noises eating it. “And some of them won’t be what you classify as human noises,” I warn my date.

“They listen, they nod, and do you want to know what they say, it’s so cute, they say, “Hey, I like to eat too Barry, and we all make noises.” They think they know what they’re talking about when they say noises, but they ain’t ready, as evidenced by the fact that they’re all shushing me a couple bites in.

“Hey, I told you I love to eat,” I say, “and I told you that I make noises.”

“I know, but people are staring, Barry. They’re uncomfortable. We’re all … uncomfortable.”

“Then, some busybody saunters over to the table. You know what he looks like. I don’t even need to describe him. The minute he steps up to the table, with his phone out, you just know he’s going to drop some kind of busybody crap on you, talking about how he and his family are trying to enjoy a meal, and how his kid is crying, because she’s scared. He says all that, and then he adds something about public noise ordinances. Noise ordinances? Did you just say noise ordinances? Noise ordinances are about firecrackers, sirens, and barking dogs. It’s got nothing to do with the sounds a fella makes eating a delicious ribeye. Mr. Busybody shows me his phone, saying, “Here you go,” and he conveniently has a copy of section 27 of article 4 of the city’s noise ordinances all pulled up, “And you’ll see here,” he says with professorial authority, “that subsection C of article 4 specifically addresses public eating noises in restaurants.”   

“People like this busybody, some of my friends, and the women who state they’ll never eat with me in public with me again, think these noises are a problem, a real problem. We all know I could control myself, and these noises better, but I have to tell you that I don’t consider it a pressing issue. I wish I could find some way to enjoy eating more, and I fear that if I tried to temper my noises that might diminish my enjoyment of the meal by fractional percentages, and that’s just not a risk I’m willing to take at this point in my life. Because, as great as the meal of the day is, it doesn’t last long. I eat and what seems like a minute and a half later, I’m done. It’s all over. The whole event I looked forward to all day is … over. It was so hot and juicy that I ate it too fast. I didn’t chitchat. Chitchat ends with the sound of a plate sliding across a table. I don’t even look around the room when a big, old juicy ribeye sits before me. Taking in my surroundings is over too. I even forget, sometimes, that I have someone sitting across the table from me. I hate reaching the end of a meal and having to force down the last few lukewarm bites. I want it hot! So, I eat all of those beautiful cuts of ribeye so fast that some of the times I can’t even remember how good they were. I know I just met these delicious, little morsels, but in a strange way that’s tough to describe to those of you cringing throughout my testimonial tonight, I kind of miss them. I miss them so much that, look at me, I’m salivating. I know it’s disgusting, but I can’t help myself. I loved eating them so much that I almost wish I didn’t eat them, so I could eat them again. I apologize for getting so emotional, and I know I shouldn’t get so emotional over such a stupid thing. It’s unseemly and not very professional, I know. I just love them so much that it’s hard for me to accept that they’re gone now. All of them. They’re all gone. I just loved eating them so much.

[Standup comedian Barry Becker is The Unfunny comedian, and this is one of his sets. If you enjoy this style of comedy, there’s more available at The Unfunny.]