Observations from Terra Incognita of Unexplainable Human Behavior and Phenomena
That No One But Me Cares Much About
Why does every local TV commercial for a car dealership or a plumbing company or a personal injury law firm always have an overweight guy in a cheap suit or a beautiful young girl in a tight red dress tell me that I should use their services because they are a “family business.” Do you know how many dysfunctional families I know, including mine. I know guys who stumbled into their “family businesses,” and who are cheats and liars with the intelligence of a tapeworm and the maturity of a five-year-old on crystal meth. Even well-meaning guys in family businesses can be incompetent. Take me, for instance. If I ran a family car dealership, I’d just want to get the transaction over with as quickly as possible so I could get back to writing, and if you brought your car back complaining about a problem. I’d excuse myself, saying I had to go to the bathroom and instead sit in the car my father gave me and read the short prose of Franz Kafka.
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Why do young guys at the YMCA and at my college gym, after a sweaty workout, try to take showers without anyone being able to look at them and then put on their underwear with a towel wrapped around them. What are they ashamed of? We old guys are shriveling by the second, possess more than just a little flesh around the waist, and have asses that are dropping faster than Dow Jones after an insane Marjorie Taylor Greene statement that Kevin McCarthy will have to hang-doggedly defend, and yet we shamelessly strut our naked selves from the shower to our locker. Dudes, what are you ashamed of.
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People who refer to themselves in the third person. The serial philanderer and Boston Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs was the first guy I remember doing this after he was caught with his pants down, multiple times. Rather than take responsibility, he kept referring to himself in the third person, calling himself “Wade Boggs,” as if this “Wade Boggs” was a doppelgänger prowling the streets of Boston and giving him a bad name. In retrospect, I almost feel sorry for Boggs now, because something that ruined his reputation years ago would get him a lucrative reality-TV show now, probably called “Wade Boggs Didn’t Do It.” It’s not surprising that Donald J. Trump often refers to himself in the third person because he lies so frequently he probably doesn’t know who the “real” Donald Trump is, and what the real Donald Trump thinks, or if there really is a “real” Donald Trump. Also, I’m sure he’s confident that most of his followers, lost in their own manic worlds of space lasers and anti-Jesus liberals with the blood of aliens coursing through their veins couldn’t care less about what Donald Trump says as long as it’s something they can get very, very angry about.
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People not holding the door. Now it would be fair to say, “Petey, dearest boy, with earthquakes, wars, the rise of autocrats, etc. going on, are you really going to obsess about people not holding the door for you?” I would answer by saying that I am not interested in the literal door but in the “act” of not holding the door as a metaphor for a certain kind of attitude that poorly raised people exhibit.
Did you get that, comrades?
Please allow me to give an example. As I was leaving the local Y, I realized I had left my protein shaker in my locker. On my return, I was five feet behind a guy who, instead of holding the door, shoved it forcefully open so that it snapped back and almost broke my hand. He didn’t apologize because, obviously to him, he had at least “tried” to hold the door for me in the only stupid way he could imagine. I could only guess at all of the other thoughtless slights he daily inflicts on others.
“Next time, “ I said, “do me a favor and don’t hold the door for me unless I’m wearing a football helmet with a face guard.”
“Whatever,” he said annoyed. Which is the all-purpose answer white guys give when they’ve been caught being assholes.
On my way back in, the desk clerk said, “That was pretty rude,” referring to the guy, not me.
Which was an invitation for me to give a mini-lecture on the psychology of not holding doors, which was being overheard by a patron scanning flyers taped to a wall. He was a tall skinny guy about 45, whose face couldn’t decide whether it was capable of growing a beard—little patches of hair scattered about like moon craters. He glanced at me, seemingly amused, and, as he left, I followed about ten feet behind him. A test? A challenge? The door was half-closed when he turned around, looked at me, and smiled. I imagined him backtracking to hold it open, whereupon I would dramatically bow and say, “Finally, a gentleman.”
But instead, he took a step toward the door, paused, then turned and trotted off toward his car.
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Actual responses from millennials about why they don’t want to shower with other guys:
People like their privacy. This is why when given the choice of which urinal to use, people pick the one farthest from others. This is also why we have stalls with toilets.
You like to hang out with a bunch of naked dudes? That's fine. You can live whatever lifestyle you want but don't force it on others. And if you like to look at a bunch of wangs, just use the internet.
As a millennial who tries to cover his privates in the locker room, I don't do it for shame. I do it because I'm not sure you want to see my junk. It's called respect.
The locker rooms are disgusting. It's not like those floors are cleaned regularly. Add to that a bunch of old dudes walking around butt-ass naked having conversations, shaving, scratching their nuts, etc. Learn some situational awareness! No one wants to see that shit! So yeah, I don't wanna be naked in that environment.
Do you ever notice the gnarliest old guy in the gym always strolls around naked for an excessive amount of time? I swear, the guys have their nuts out while they do their taxes on the changing bench. Just put your pants on, gramps.
Is it just me, or do I sense some hostility here? Whatever, these deeply philosophical statements deserve an entire essay at some point, though it won’t be written by me. I fear that dwelling any longer on this topic may instigate nightmares of being attacked by young men with tiny millennial penises, all wishing for a better fate than the gene pool has given them.
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“The first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”
That from Franz Kafka. I love the guy but wish he was a bit more upbeat.
But then he wouldn’t be Kafka, and you could argue that the above statement is the perfect example of black humor—the juxtaposition hope and death, the kind of humor we see in Sisyphus’s smile while rolling the rock up the hill.
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Under the category of “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” (William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”), it recently occurred to me that just about anyone can serve in the House of Representatives. Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos are perfect examples. What is truly astonishing is that Ms. Greene represents 777,456 people. Think about that number, which is a testament to how humans have continued to embrace stupidity since the time the first caveman tried to crack open a rock with his head.
To Be Continued . . .
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is Old Man Howling at the Moon
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
As a millennial I agree to all of the above (but am still going to complain about it, whatever)