Tag: conversation

Transmissions from the Outer Rim

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“I know you’re going to consider me a spoiled Notre Americano, but I’ve decided I’m done trying to convince people that I have a diverse, worldly palate,” Zachary said. “I haven’t tried too hard to this point, to be completely honest. When we went to the most ethnic place my girlfriend could think up, I ordered the least ethnic item on the menu, and I quietly loathed every bite. I’ve tried to eat ethnic Chinese and Mexican food, and I’ve tried to say I enjoy it, just so I could say it, but I’m old now, and I’ve passed the finish line on that whole subject. I’m not just a meat and potatoes guy, but when I venture out from those inner circles, I prefer the Americanized, Anglo versions of what we might call foreign food.”  

“A food xenophobe is what you are,” Xavier said. 

“Call me whatever names you want,” Zachary said. “I’m done pretending.”

“You’ve never been the worldliest fella,” William said.

“I’ll take those charges. I have a very xenophobic palate,” Zachary said. “I fear the insomnia brought on by explosive diarrhea.”

“Did you have to add the modifier explosive?” Xavier asked. “Was that absolutely mandatory for your description? What’s the difference between explosive and other non-combustible forms of diarrhea?”

“It’s like pain,” William added. “Doctors ask us to scale our pain. On a scale of one to ten, how bad is your pain? I’d like to talk to a family physician to find out how many patients “off the chart” their pain with an answer like 55. No, for medical purposes, Mr. Jensen, we need you to stay within the parameters of our pain scale. “I’m telling you Dawg, it’s a 55.”

“Pain charting cannot capture the pain I’ve experienced here Dr. Moreau,” Xavier said. “I’m experiencing a level of pain that might be foreign to the ideas you’ve learned in western medicine.”

“I think I can only talk about explosive diarrhea with someone who’s gone through the experience,” Zachary added. “It’s like old faithful blowing out your butthole.”

“You can confide in me blowhole brutha,” Xavier said. “Been there dung that.”

“You’re lucky nothing explosive came out your hoo hoo,” Willam said.

“What exactly is a hoo hoo?” Zachary asked.

“The hoo hoo and the hee hee both make the wee wee.” William said.

“There is no hee hee,” Zachary corrected. “There’s a hoo hoo, but if we follow the grammatical gender words in the Spanish and Italian languages, the hee hee you talk about is actually a hoo ha. An ‘A’ is used in feminine words and the ‘O’ is used in masculine words.”

“But, if we follow modern political prescriptions for linguistics of those languages, shouldn’t we refer to them as the hohinx?”   

“The point I’m trying to make here is I didn’t just wake up and decide that I no longer going to enjoy ethnic food,” Zachary said. “It’s after decades of my enteric brain and my central brain battling over what food I should eat. I never wanted to eat ethnic food, but I thought I was supposed to. I ate it, so I could tell people I just ate it. It’s something we say to impress our friends and make new ones. How many things do we do, so we can say we did it? “What did you eat again? Wow, you’re a lot more adventurous than I thought.” Yep, put it in my mouth and chewed it up is what I did. Please think more of me, because I didn’t enjoy it, and I’ll probably never do it again. I have to get as much mileage out of this as I can. Some people might genuinely enjoy ethnic food, but they talk about it so much that I think I’m onto something here. You enjoy Thai? Really? Or, do you enjoy the Americanized version? The exotic, ethnic food I tried was at a restaurant with a grill in the center of table. We cooked it ourselves. I put it back on the grill about three times, because I didn’t think I cooked it long enough. The woman I was with eventually said I overcooked it. The only reason I did was because it tasted like a latex glove to me.”

***

“I don’t know if modern TV represents young people well, but I now see them giving us the bird on TV all the time. In the intros of the characters of a reality show, a mother complained that her daughter was so out of control. “She’s too opinionated,” the mother complained. It was obvious how much that characterization meant to the producers of the show, because they cut to the daughter in iso, with rock music playing in her background and hot rocking graphics around her image as she lifts her middle finger in defiance. What was she defying? As with most teenagers, she probably knows as much about substantive defiance as we did in our misinformed and malformed youth. The bird is not an opinion in and of itself. If she starts with the bird I have no problem with it, until she uses it as punctuation for the end of her rebellious statement. All she did was give us a bird sandwich without saying anything in between.” 

“And we all know that most birds don’t have much meat on them,” William added.

“We’re all about short cuts now,” Xavier said. “We have buttons to like and dislike, and we have emoticons. The idea of full expression is not only dying, it’s unnecessary. We just flip them the bird, and the discussion is over.”

***

“I had a shortcut conversation between two hep cats,” William continued. “They had it all figured out, as hep cats do. They knew I had no idea what they were going on about, and they enjoyed it. The two of them were good looking young men with fine hairdos and fashionable duds, and they spoke with a hep cat lexicon. I stood in the middle, a man without a hairdo, and a contrast to the hep cat world. I didn’t speak their language. I was the normal shirt-wearing fella in between, trying to figure them out. I played right into it, as I have too many times in my life. I realized halfway through that we were playing roles, all three of us were characters in a short, illustrative skit. Their questions were all leading questions that guided me deeper into their dark forest. I answered. They laughed. Well, it wasn’t a laugh so much as a condescending chuckle. You know the laugh I know the laugh. No matter what age we are, we’re all freshman in high school trying learn how to hold our arms when we stand around. They didn’t really know each other intimately, and they didn’t know me any better. No, this was a hep cat conversation with two of them trying to define themselves as know-somethings by using me as their definition, and they enjoyed watching me flop around on shore.”

“You should’ve flipped them off,” Xavier said. 

“They were pretending to know what it’s all about,” Zachary said. “The ones who talk rarely know the walk. What’s it about? I don’t know, and either do you, so we mimic those who think they do. And who thinks they know more about what it is than actors in movies. They have the force of a screenwriter’s research behind them, a director’s framing, and a supporting cast. So, we mimic their situations and statements, until our supporting cast believes in us as much as we believed the dialog of screenwriters.”

“What’s the difference between a star and an artist?” Y asked. “Most celebrities are stars, nothing more than vehicles of light. It’s their job in life to make their stock profitable. If they go out for a bite to eat, they know they have to give huge tips to the servers who talk, it helps the value of their stock. There have been numerous genuinely intriguing characters in the history of cinema however. Marlon Brando, for example, displayed a dynamic personality, and he didn’t seem like the type who said what he was supposed to say. He seemed like a genuine person who happened to be one of the biggest stars in the world.  I didn’t know half of what he was talking about, and I think he thought he was far more intelligent than he was, but seemed like a very curious, observant person. He seemed to genuinely want to know how it all worked. Elvis Presley, on the other hand, was a star. You can tell me that he was bullied into doing what Colonel Tom Parker wanted him to do, but it seems to me he was easily bullied. I’ve heard people say he wanted to be Brando and James Dean, but I’m guessing that Parker told him you’ve not going to get there until you have box office, and those arthouse scripts aren’t going to get you there. Elvis wanted to be a star, and say what you want about the career-defining movies he did, almost all of them made money, and they made him a huge star. I liked Elvis. He had a preternatural charisma about him, a natural animal magnetism and an incredible voice. He seemed blessed with these attributes, but we don’t know how hard he worked at it. He put out some quality material, but he didn’t write his own music, and most of the movies he was in don’t hold up well. He was a star and Brando was an intriguing artist.”

“How many intriguing artists have been outshined by stars?” Xavier asked. 

“Exactly, but as I said, Brando wasn’t half as smart as he thought he was, as evidenced by the fact that controversial ideas seduced him,” William said. “He was the type who thought controversial ideas made him appear smarter, worldlier, and so controversial that we wouldn’t view him as commodity. He might have genuinely believed what he said, and I’m not saying he was wrong, but if he were alive today, and I was afforded the chance to speak to him, I would say just because your ideas are controversial doesn’t mean they’re true. How many good ideas have been rejected, because they were too common, and so fundamental to good and honest living? They’re not all lies concocted by the establishment to keep us quiet.” 

“But, if everyone knows these ideas, where’s the juice?” Xavier asked.

“True. I guess my greater point is just because it’s negative doesn’t always mean it’s true.”

“Too many people focus on what it’s not,” Zachary said. “It’s not true that … they say, but how about we focus more of our energy on what it is? They don’t tell us what it is, because they don’t want to be wrong. Even Marlon Brando, who sat in the throne at one time, never had the courage to try to predict what it was all about. He devoted most of ramblings on what it’s not.”

***

“Someone, and for the life of me I can’t remember who, said that heaven didn’t exist until we created it,” William added. “It’s such a far-fetched idea that it’s intriguing. We created, through some kind of mass subconscious, consciousness, the ultimate reward for good living. We needed the hope, the focus, and the idea that it’s all for something. An extension of this far-fetched idea is that if we can physically create everything from our homes, to a McDonald’s franchise to skyscrapers, why can’t we create an equally impressive structure with our minds? The theory suggests that if there never was a reward for good living, we should probably create it.” 

“And we believed it so much that we manifested its creation,” Zachary said. “I have heard the theory.” 

“If that’s true, I’ve created a manifestation of another world of normalcy, so I can sit on the outer rim. Millions claw at one another for the center of absolute normalcy, and I use them as leverage to keep my position on the outer rim.”

“You’ve already created that world,” Xavier said. “Trust me.” 

Everything from Z to A: Who are you? Who Who? Who Who?

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“What would you say if I told you that I see you,” Z said after biting into a chicken sandwich he purchased at the food court, “and I know who you are.”  

“Oooo! Spooky intro,” A said with a laugh. “I’m going to say you don’t know me, because you don’t know the first thing about you.” 

“You’re right, of course, but what would you say if I told you I could find you without ever talking to you? If we put those you know any love through a series of tests, surveys to arrive at assessments based on observational data from a study of a sample size regarding their tendencies, patterns and routines, we might arrive at an evaluation that might surprise you.” 

“I would say that you’re so full of beans you stink!” 

“Want me to take a shot?” Z asked. 

“No, but who’s we?” A asked. “You said we. Who’s we? Wait, let me guess, Psychology major?” 

“Master’s degree.” 

“Of course.” 

“Oooo! That sounds confrontational,” Z said.  

“It is actually,” A responded. “But my confrontational response is a result of psych majors thinking they know the first thing about me. You don’t know squat. You take your textbook knowledge out to the streets to predict how we’re all going to act and react, but you don’t know the first thing about me. Psych majors think they can study tendencies, patterns and routines, and with some variance predict who I am and who I’m going to be. I just think it’s absolutely ridiculous.” 

“I view Psychology as the study of choices,” Z said, “and I’d agree with everything you say about the textbook approaches. I’m not a textbook student of the mind. I’m fascinated with creative approaches to problem solving and study. I try to avoid textbook as often as I can. I, slash, we study the choices people make, why they make them, and the rewards of consequences of them. If you don’t care for the methods we’ve devised for studying human nature, how would you do it?” 

“I wouldn’t,” A said. “I would consider it an utter waste of time. With the world population currently clocking in at just under 8 billion, and the United States at 328 billion, I wouldn’t even pretend to know anything about anyone. There are simply too many people, with too many different backgrounds and experiences in life to know any one person.”  

“Research scientists take a sample of the population, and they factor in a plus minus ratio for margin of error,” Z said. “Now, you can argue the sample size, but with that many people in the world, how can you say you’re immune to their findings?” 

“How can you say I am not immune?” 

“You see that guy over there eating a slice of pizza?” Z asked. “Did that guy sample it first? If he sampled it, was it a decent representation of the rest of the pizza?” 

“I’m not arguing methods of operation,” A said. “I’m arguing about the assumptions psych majors make.”  

“Let’s flip this around then,” Z said. “What do you think of the guy eating that pizza over there?”  

“All right, I’ll play,” A said, agreeing to this exercise after some back and forth. He turned to look at this pizza-eating man in the food court they sat in, and then he flipped completely around to examine the man.

“What are you eating, sir, and what are you eating?” A whispered loud enough for Z to hear. “I love pizza as much as the next fella, but are any of those ingredients real? Does the meat on it even merit a grade? And what are you eating? Are you eating some form of pain you could never digest properly? Did your dad tough love you into a man? Are you eating those times your mother told you that you were too old for hugs and kisses? Are you eating that time you walked up to a girl and she said, “Move along!” A guy that pale should not be wearing a bright, neon yellow T-shirt. The fella needs to contrast his skin with dark colors. Then you have the baggy khaki shorts, and the three-day growth, and you have to assume the man is a divorcee dining with his estranged kid. No wait, the child is an out-of-wedlock birth. That’s my guess, because his father obviously never had a wife influence the appearance he should present to the public. I’m guessing he gave up making discerning choices long ago, and he has issues with self-discipline.” 

“I know you’re trying to be funny here, but you just told me a lot about you,” Z said. “I have no interest in whether you’re right or wrong about the pizza-eater. I have no interest in the pizza-eater at all, except what you say about him, because it tells me something about you. Hold on, hold on, let me finish,” Z said to interrupt A’s grumbling. “This particular pursuit suggests that if I ask you direct questions about you, you’re going to give me idealized answers. You’ll either say what you think I want to hear or what you want to say about yourself. Your analysis of Mr. Pizza-Eater tells me more about you than I could ever achieve through direct Q&As. All analysis is autobiographical.”   

“And you think this is an exact science?” A asked. 

“Of course not, but why did you focus on those characteristics of the pizza guy?” Z asked. “What is he eating, and what is he eating you asked? What are you eating? What assumptions did you make about the man’s plan in life through his diet and his desire to ingest his pain? You assume this man might have a better life if he had a better diet, a wife, and if he shed the yellow shirt and baggy khakis. What does that say about you? It’s not an exact science, but it’s a lot closer to a truth than if I said, tell me about yourself. What makes A tick? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

“I was hired as a consultant some years ago,” Z continued. “I sat in on some interviews they conducted, and they asked me to determine how they could interview prospective candidates better. Most of the interview involved in-house questions, and then they asked the standard what are your greatest strengths and weaknesses question. I suggested that they flip this question around and ask the candidate to name their favorite manager and what made them a great leader? They should then ask the candidate who their least favorite manager was, and I said they should inform the candidate to avoid using names in this case. I said that demanding that the candidate avoid using names would free the candidate up to be as candid as possible in their critique of that manager. They could add a question like, “What did they do right, and what did they do wrong, and how would you do better?” I suggested that might throw the candidate off the trail of the true nature of the question, but the meat of their answer will be can be found in their analysis of their previous managers. All analysis is autobiographical.”

“That’s not exactly groundbreaking, but I’d agree with some of your analysis,” A said. “Only because your preferred form of testing gets closer to the subjects analyzing themselves, even if it’s incidental, but if I were in charge of a research group, I would go one step further. I would study group C, the interviewers, the Human Resources department, or whomever designed these questions. What questions did they design for the interview, why did they choose those questions? I would also interrogate my interviewers before they conducted the interview to see how well they know themselves. How well do any of us know ourselves? Noted psychologist Abraham Maslov suggested that around 2% of the world population practices rigorous self-reflection. In my experience, I think that number is high. Psych majors love to study others, but they’re not so great at studying themselves. How can anyone know anything about anyone else without knowing themselves first?” 

“I know myself,” Z said. “I know myself better than anyone else in the world. Why would I spend time understanding myself better? Isn’t that a little narcissistic?” 

“True reflection goes beyond narcissism,” A said. “You’ve no doubt heard people repeat the ‘You can’t handle the truth’ line? And you’ve heard people say, “They don’t want to ask me questions,” and the ‘they’ in their statement often involves an employer, or someone with some intimate knowledge of their particular brand of honesty. “They don’t want to know what I think, because they know I’m too honest. I am brutally honest.” They usually laugh after saying such things, in some self-congratulatory way, as if to say we all know how brutally honest they are. “Well, you may be brutally honest,” I say, “with others, but are you as brutally honest with yourself? Have you taken the time to sample size of your actions and reactions in the same way you do others?” 

“We all examine ourselves to some degree,” Z said. “We all think about the things we do, and we all examine ourselves.” 

“I’m talking about rigorous examination,” A said. “I’m talking about knowing what’s your fault? You’re not doing well in life, and you’re not happy. How much of that is your fault? You’re not getting along with your parents? How much of that is your fault? How many people fail to recognize their role in something as simple as a family squabble? I’ve witnessed family squabbles where my friends knew, absolutely knew, they were 100% in the right. 

When I was young and stupid, I’d ask them, “How can you not see your role in this matter?” I learned from that, let me tell you, I learned. I learned, first and foremost, never to ask that question again, because it opens a whole can of, “My parents, my Aunt Judy, or my Uncle Biff, are awful people,” they say. “Do you have any idea what they’ve done to me? Do you have any idea what they’ve done to me in the past?” I don’t do ask them this anymore, and I involve myself as little as possible now, because it’s pointless. Because when you’re intimate enough with the situation to know their role in the family squabble, you learn that most people don’t consider the role they play in it. I now know that I was around 50% responsible for just about every family squabble I was in. They don’t see it. Are they lying? No, they’ve just  completely blocked that part of the squabble out.”   

“What good does it do to dwell on our negatives?” Z asked. “Isn’t it better to move past them and forget them?” 

“How do we learn from our mistakes?” A asked. “What happens when the next family squabble arrives, and we’ve learned nothing?”  

“There is that of course,” Z said, “but we’re finding that in the debate between remembering and forgetting that Freud was just wrong. Focusing on our failed moments to the point of obsessing over them, to find some kind of truth about our current state is often more harmful than just putting the whole sordid affair behind us and moving on.”  

“I’d agree with that,” A said,  

“Thank you, Jesus.” 

“If you’re going to analyze me though,” A continued. “I expect you to thoroughly analyze yourself first. If you’re going to pretend like you know me, I ask you if you know yourself as much as you pretend to know me. I will no longer accept analysis from someone who has failed to analyze themselves properly.” 

“That’s a bold statement,” Z said. 

“Well, let me ask you this, what is a psychiatrist, psychologist, or any professional analyst?” A asked. “If we dig down to the nuts and bolts of these professions, what are they? Some of them provide technical, textbook answers, others act as our friends who guide us to therapy, but when we clear all that out, what are they? They’re listeners. The best of the professions just let their clients talk. They’re great listeners in a world where no one else listens. They teach us how to analyze ourselves and they try to teach us how to help ourselves by viewing matters more objectively. If we can learn how to achieve that level of objectivity on our own, when we analyze ourselves, we could nullify the need for analysts. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s quite difficult to achieve objectivity when it comes to examining ourselves. Some say it’s utterly impossible, but I think they’re thinking in absolute terms. Is it possible to be objective in an absolute manner, probably not, but we can make great strides if we want it bad enough. That’s the key, Z.”     

“In one sense,” Z said. “We should all take some compliment from a research scientist’s desire to study us. People want to know who we are. They want to know what makes us tick. They’re curious-” 

“They’re not curious,” A said. “Let’s not get nuts here. I know your goal is to have a civil conversation here, but I gotta tell you that if you want us to go down this road together it will not be hand in hand.”    

“It’s obvious you’ve had some bad experiences,” Z said, “but the idea that you’re insulted by someone analyzing you in a casual way is a bit much.”  

“I’m not insulted by it,” A said. “I just consider it ridiculous. When we sit down in a research clinic and voluntarily subject ourselves to their findings and evaluations, I have no problem with it, but when psych majors think they know who we are after talking to us over our backyard fence for ten minutes, it gets a little silly. I’m talking about the people we meet on the street, in our place of employment, and at family reunions. They have degrees in psychology, and they have their little knowing smiles that suggest they have some insight into who we are.” 

“And you think they’re all wrong?” 

“Of course not,” A said, “but I think they’re wrong almost as often as they’re right, which puts them about two steps above a guess. It’s what we might call an educated guess.”   

“What is an educated guess though,” Z said. “Some are based on anecdotal experience, I will grant you that. The over-the-backyard-fence psychologists making guesses is one thing, but some educated guesses are just packed with a portfolio of data. There’s the educated guess that you’re on the insecure side, and that many of the things you’ve said today support that. That educated guess is worth about as much as the person giving it. There’s also, hold on, hold on, let me finish. There’s also the assessment that a psychologist can make, based on where you were born in your family. Where you the oldest child of your siblings? Were you an only child? If you were the oldest child, you’re more likely to exhibit certain characteristics, if you were a middle child, you often exhibit middle child, Jan Brady characteristics, and if you were the youngest, you’re likely to exhibit other characteristics. Psychologists pack those educated guesses with decades of sample data. There are too many variables to list here, and they all matter, but the characteristics of where a child was born in the family are so consistent that some psychologists suggest that it might define you for the rest of your life. That’s an educated guess based on studying patterns and tendencies that I find fascinating.”  

“It is an interesting idea,” A said, “but it’s still just a theory, and all theories are guesses, some more educated than others, but they’re still just guesses.” 

“And Einstein made some guesses too,” Z said.  

Are You Superior? II

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“Hey, how you doing?” a couple of bandannas, beneath hats turned backwards, and sunglasses asked after pulling their truck over in a neighborhood to talk to me. 

I’d love to tell you that when I braced for the worst, it had nothing to do with their appearance, but that would be a lie. When a couple of young fellas, who were my age at the time, if not slightly older, approached my van with their hats turned backwards, over bandanas, I imagined the encounter a modern-day equivalent of bandits pulling over a stagecoach. I tried to put that over-informed stereotype behind me, and I tried to maintain the belief that they were just customers.

“I’m great,” I said as genuinely as I could. “How can I help you?” I was the ice cream man, the ding ding man, the good humor man, or whatever you call the ice cream van driver in your locale, and they were presumably customers. 

“Do you have a screwball?” one of them asked. I said we did and pointed to the display on the side of the truck for their verification and pricing needs. “I used to love the screwball, with not one but two gum balls at the bottom,” he added

“Not one of my best sellers,” I said to stoke conversation, “but I agree with you. I used to love them too.”

“The Choco Taco,” the other said, as if that’s all he needed to say, and they both swooned with sarcastically romantic smiles.

This brief conversation evolved into other, casual conversations about the business end of selling ice cream products in a van, my compensation, and other such nonsense that lowered my guard. The moment after I felt my initial suspicions subside, I reinforced them, thinking that the only reason they stopped me “just to talk” was to allow their stickup man enough time to sneak around the back of my ice cream truck to complete the heist. I divided my attention between them and my mirrors as a result, watching for any movement behind the van. This hyper-vigilance was the product of the cynical, conspiracy theory guys who lived on the opposite side of street of my sheltered existence. They coached me in the belief that most people are not good until we discover otherwise. “It’s quite the opposite,” my cynical friends informed me, “Quite the opposite.”  

“You guys don’t believe in anything,” I said. “You don’t see anything wrong with that?”

“There might be,” those cynics conceded, “but I will tell you this, two seconds after you lower your defense shield, we gotcha!” They got to me, over time, and in numerous discussions of scenarios and real-life, told-you-so instances, they inched my inches until I saw these two hats turned backwards, over bandanas, as sharks circling, studying my strengths and weaknesses, waiting to see if they could get hurt, seeking points of vulnerability, until they spotted a gotcha moment.    

When I saw no movement around my van, I began to wonder if they were feeling me out, to gauge if I was an easy roll for a future heist. All of this may have been unfair, based almost solely on superficial appearance, but I could find no reason why they would want to stop their truck in the middle of a neighborhood street “just to talk” to someone like me.

I never understood the subtle differences and wide divides between the worlds of cool and nerddom, “And you probably never will,” more than one observer has informed me. In the company of these two bandit looking fellas, it was pretty obvious that I was on the outside looking in. They wore it so well too. They were so calm. Everything they did was so calm. They appeared so comfortable with who they were that I thought of the term radiating self-possession that students who paid far more attention in literature class knew and used. Those two also spoke in an ethereal tone that suggested they were probably potheads, and as one attuned to pop culture references, and pop culture characterizations, I knew that meant that they were way cooler than me. If all of this was true, I thought, and they were thieves, and I was the modern day equivalent to the aproned shopkeeper of the ice cream van, their comparative cool points were through the roof.

We view the world from the inside looking out, of course, but according to my metrics, I should’ve been their superior. I wore better clothes, and I figured I had a better education, but these guys had intangibles that I couldn’t even imagine attaining. They had a look about them, a strong sense of cool, and an aura that suggested that they were just fun loving, party-going types. Such characteristics threw my metrics right out the window. They weren’t stupid, however, and that fact was evident minutes into our conversation.

They asked me questions about how I was compensated. That, in and of itself, is not an informed question of course, but it was the way they asked those questions. It was a feel that cannot be explained that suggested their leading questions were such that they knew more about the business side of life than the average bandanna, beneath hats turned backwards, and sunglasses dude. I gauged their questions appropriately, but I maintained that there was no way their education was as expensive as mine. Plus, I thought, If they were potheads, they probably spent a lot of time equivocating moral issues, and those who equivocate –my Catholic school educators informed me– have fundamental flaws about them that they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to overcome and hide. In my world of proper metrics, I thought I was, check, check, check, superior.

Except for one tiny, little nugget, I conveniently neglected to input into the equation: on this particular day I was also wearing sunglasses and a bandanna beneath my backwards facing hat. The only difference between the three of us was that I didn’t wear this ensemble on a day-to-day basis. I wore it for the sole purpose of concealing my true identity. I was so embarrassed to be a ding ding man that short of wearing a fake beard and a Groucho Marx nose and eyeglasses, I had every inch of my identity concealed from the public.

They didn’t know any of that of course. They probably thought I was a bandanna, beneath a backwards facing hat brutha, and that may have been the primary reason they decided to stop and chat with me in the first place. It may have been the reason they were so relaxed about their status, and my status, and the superior versus inferior dynamic influencing our approach to one another. Within the internal struggle I experienced in this interaction, was a ray of sunshine. I felt superior, because this was a get up for me. This was not my every day apparel. That moment was fleeting even while I basked in it, for I realized that if I was superior I wasn’t doing anything with it, and that fact led me to be embarrassed that I was now wearing a bandanna, beneath a backwards facing hat, and sunglasses. I wondered if I input that variable into the equation if it might actually make me inferior to them.

“Who is your primary customer?” the one who spoke most often asked.

“Kids of course,” I said. I then relayed a number of stories about how my trainer taught me to take advantage of the naïveté of children. “I told him that I was not going to conduct business that way, and he said, ‘You have to. That’s how you make money for your business.’ I reiterated that that wouldn’t be how I conducted business.”

They were fascinated by my stories, hanging on every word, and reacting accordingly. Fellas who feel insecure and inferior, generally tend to try to prove their intelligence by speaking so often that we don’t search for their weaknesses. These guys listened, and they listened so well that it was obvious how comfortable they were in their own skin. I watched them react, and I couldn’t believe it. I realized that when we tally points for determining who is superior and inferior, we often fail to account for how comfortable people are with themselves, regardless the relative circumstances. We input data every day and in every way, calculating our strengths and weaknesses, and some of us find ways of achieving happiness within our dynamic. We’ve been led to believe that achieving vast amounts of money, power, and the resultant prestige are an endgame, and the ultimate goal, and anyone who says otherwise is lying. Very few would deny wanting such things, of course, but some don’t need them for that sense of spiritual completion in the manner others do. Some of us just want enough disposable income to do something with the family on weekends, and what we do on weekends can be as fulfilling, if not more so, than that which the most successful business man achieves during the week.

These two were probably a little bit older than me, but they were still young, and as such, the opportunities for them in the future were as wide open for them as for me, but they were still much more comfortable in their current situation than I was. They learned to live with their limitations, until they were so comfortable with who they were that they were radiating self-possession. I realized that in my bandanna, beneath a backwards facing hat, and sunglasses disguise, I lost so many points in this category that it would be impossible for me to recover in time.

The bandanas, with hats on backwards, and sunglasses did not wear shirts, and they were riding in a beat up, old International truck, that rattled in idle. They were construction workers with deep, dark tans that made their teeth appear whiter then they were when they smiled and laughed. My guess, watching these two twentysomethings speak, was that even though they appeared inferior, they had no trouble landing women. My guess was that among those women who knew them well, there was a whole lot of adulation going on. I didn’t know that to be a fact, of course, but guys like me –who were always on the lookout for what we missed in life– were always looking to guys like these for ideas.

They laughed a genuine laugh at some of the things I said. The matters I discussed had something to do with the business side of being a ding ding man, and how I loathed my current station in life, but I can’t remember specifics. I remember their laughter, however, and I remember wondering if they were laughing with me or at me. At this point in my life, I just escaped a high school that contained a large swath of fellas who were laughing at me. This casual conversation reminded me of those fellas I just escaped, and it revealed the shield that I erected whenever I thought one of them neared.

That takeaway didn’t strike me as a profundity in the moment. It crossed my mind, but I didn’t grasp the totality of what happened between us until they told me they had to leave.

“All right, we have to go grab some lunch,” the one who did most of the talking said, finally ceding to the one who had been attempting to draw the proceedings to a close at the tail end of our conversation.

“Oh, of course,” I said. “We’ll see you later then.” I tried to remain casual, but I actually wanted to keep talking to them. In the beginning, most of my participation was clipped to end the casual conversation as quick as possible to thwart their ability to find an angle on me. By the time they suggested they had to leave, I flirted with trying to come up with a conversation topic that might convince them to stay. I obviously dropped all suspicions at that point, and I actually missed them before they drove away.

As I watched them drive away, it dawned on me that the preconceived notions I had about them were based on my experiences in high school, and I thought about all of the hang-ups and insecurities that plagued me. I realized that these two were just a couple of good guys, and they appeared to think I was a pretty good guy too. I didn’t expect them to want to talk to me, but when they did, I expected them to lose interest quickly. When they didn’t, I realized I liked being the guy they thought I was. Other than appearing to be a bandanna, beneath a backwards facing hat brutha, I wasn’t sure what it was they thought they saw when they sidled up next to me to chat, but I liked it, and while I watched them drive away, I realized I wanted to do a retake of the whole encounter. The next time I saw them, I decided, I would enjoy our conversation from beginning to end, without any hang-ups or preconceived notions, but I never saw them again.

The idea that most people speak in superlatives was not lost on me, but most people who knew me well, at the time, said that I might have been one of the most uptight, frustrated, and angst-ridden individuals they’ve ever met, and the costume I wore that day supported that characterization more than I cared to admit. Very few of those who knew me well have ever accused me of being too relaxed.

It wasn’t until these two were long gone that I realized that my inability to put high school behind me prevented me from enjoying simple, casual conversations with some decent guys who just want to chat. I wondered how many other casual conversations I ruined on that basis. Thanks to my cynical friends teaching me the ways of the world, I learned how to play a proverbial king of the mountain game, a game I often lost in high school, and I was so locked into that defensive position that it ruined my life for years.

Is it true that we’re all searching for a point of superiority, or inferiority, in even the most casual conversations? I don’t know, and some would say no, and others would say hell no! “I’m just asking you what you think about the latest wheat and grain prices on the commodity markets.” So, why do we loathe speaking to some people? Why do we try to avoid them as often as we can, and when we can’t, our goal is to end those conversations as quick as possible. Do they make us feel incomplete and inferior? Why do we enjoy casual conversations with others we deem inferior so much more? The tricky, sticky element of this argument is that we think that in some way, shape, or form the elements of superiority and inferiority manipulate just about every conversation we have, and when we’re proven wrong in some instances, we wish we never discovered it. Now that our mind’s eye is open to this idea, we wish we could turn it off, and enjoy the fruits of casual conversations again.

If it is true that every single conversation has these elements in some form, where was I in this casual conversation with two guys who wore a bandanna, beneath a backwards facing hat and sunglasses? That was never established in a substantial manner, but my takeaway from this particular encounter was that for a very brief moment in my life, I didn’t care, and that might be why I enjoyed our conversation so much that I missed them as I watched them drive away.