I'll Try Anything

AM's Writing > I'll Try Anything I'll Try Anything © 2004, A. Mead
	I'm a very sophisticated person. I went to a very well known college in Connecticut where I majored in Literature. I've traveled abroad fairly extensively, and lived for a year in London. I listen to NPR and read the New Yorker every week from cover to cover. Given all this, you might think I'd be a little stodgy or snooty, that I'd shun certain activities because I'm too good for that sort of thing. That's completely untrue. The truth is that I'll try anything; the truth is that I enjoy many things just the same as the common people. A few weeks ago, my friend Curtis organized a bowling party for his 26th birthday. Can you imagine anything more tacky and lower class? But contrary to what you might expect, I was more than game for it! I even bought a monogramed bowling shirt so I could fit in with the crowd. I only bowled a 76, but I loved it. The people around us, in their satin bowling league jackets, were just so amusing -- they'd jump up and down and do these little dances when they got a spare or a strike. There was one guy that I called Mr. One-Fist because after every frame, he'd pump his fist in the air like some blue-collar Billy Idol. I'd never had such a great time immersing myself in townie culture before! But that's just who I am; I'm open to anything, no matter how mainstream or plebeian. Last Fall, I decided to partake of that modern mass ritual -- a Pro football game. How better could I merge into the hive mind than by diving into that sea of seventy thousand, half drunken, half frostbitten, red blooded Americans, who are only too happy to blow their meager wages to watch gangs of violent, steroid-popping thugs assault each other on the field below. Oh, I don't remember what teams were playing or who won; you couldn't see what was happening on the field very well anyway. I just remember yelling my fool head off, surrounded by wave after wave of colorfully outfitted telephone linemen and delivery truck drivers, all the while thinking to myself, "God, is this authentic, or what!" I must admit though, some of the insipid stuff I've exposed myself to, has actually grown on me. I started going to garage sales and flea markets for the sociological thrill of it -- seeing those poor common people scrounge like rooting pigs through their fellow commoners' tasteless, used belongings -- all those pathetic discards from those peoples' tiny, broken lives. After a while though, I starting finding some really good bargains. All of my old completed Paint-by-Number pictures came from those rummage sales and the thrift shops I discovered later. My favorite is the one of the rabbit, where the artist confused two of the colors -- I suspect I have the world's only painting of a rabbit with purple eyes and pink tail! Now, if I were a snooty elitist snob, would I be telling you about my Paint-by-Number collection? Knowing my way around the garage sales and thrift shops has become quite useful recently. My lifestyle doesn't fit well with the constraints of typical employment situations, so I've actually been a bit pinched. Mother and father still help out some, but they don't seem to understand how difficult it is for a person like me to find the proper kind of work environment to fit his talents and personality. I hope someday they wake up and realize that I've just outgrown their little suburban middle class mind set. Fortunately my apartment is close to the neighborhood food bank; I just tried going in there on a lark one day, and found they have loads of perfectly good groceries, very reasonably priced. The cute girl that works there in the produce department -- I'm pretty sure she wants to get to know me. I think she's just holding back because she thinks I'm a TV star. I wore my mirror shades in there one time and she asked me: "Hey, did I see you on the Jerry Springer show?" The other thing is she might think I'm gay, because of that time I went in there with Gary and we were kind of grab-assing around. I'm not gay. But, I'll try anything once ... or ... twice. I'm glad that Gary decided to go back to college in Wisconsin. He was great looking and all, but otherwise, a very blah, ordinary person once you get to know him. Try to follow me here: what I'm realizing as I get older, is that being different and superior to others doesn't mean I have to feel separate and isolated. True, my vision of life towers over the smaller lives of those around me, but part of me also totally enjoys that mundane level with all its little trivialities. Things like window shopping at a mall, watching conventional crowd-pleasers like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," eating at Taco Bell, drinking beer with my roommate while we watch Oprah in the afternoon -- may seem like lowbrow wastes of time for a person like me. But, if you can do such things, and enjoy them, without losing for a moment the sense of your own specialness -- that's living. This is an extensive revision/expansion of an article that appeared without attribution in The Onion, Vol. 38, No. 41, 2002, and was reprinted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, 2003, Dave Eggers editor, Houghton Mifflin. Email comments to vamead@well.com. AM's Writing > I'll Try Anything

AM's Writing > I'll Try Anything

I'll Try Anything

I'm a very sophisticated person. I went to a very well known college in Connecticut where I majored in Literature. I've traveled abroad fairly extensively, and lived for a year in London. I listen to NPR and read the New Yorker every week from cover to cover. Given all this, you might think I'd be a little stodgy or snooty, that I'd shun certain activities because I'm too good for that sort of thing. That's completely untrue. The truth is that I'll try anything; the truth is that I enjoy many things just the same as the common people.

A few weeks ago, my friend Curtis organized a bowling party for his 26th birthday. Can you imagine anything more tacky and lower class? But contrary to what you might expect, I was more than game for it! I even bought a monogramed bowling shirt so I could fit in with the crowd. I only bowled a 76, but I loved it. The people around us, in their satin bowling league jackets, were just so amusing -- they'd jump up and down and do these little dances when they got a spare or a strike. There was one guy that I called Mr. One-Fist because after every frame, he'd pump his fist in the air like some blue-collar Billy Idol. I'd never had such a great time immersing myself in townie culture before!

But that's just who I am; I'm open to anything, no matter how mainstream or plebeian. Last Fall, I decided to partake of that modern mass ritual -- a Pro football game. How better could I merge into the hive mind than by diving into that sea of seventy thousand, half drunken, half frostbitten, red blooded Americans, who are only too happy to blow their meager wages to watch gangs of violent, steroid-popping thugs assault each other on the field below. Oh, I don't remember what teams were playing or who won; you couldn't see what was happening on the field very well anyway. I just remember yelling my fool head off, surrounded by wave after wave of colorfully outfitted telephone linemen and delivery truck drivers, all the while thinking to myself, "God, is this authentic, or what!"

I must admit though, some of the insipid stuff I've exposed myself to, has actually grown on me. I started going to garage sales and flea markets for the sociological thrill of it -- seeing those poor common people scrounge like rooting pigs through their fellow commoners' tasteless, used belongings -- all those pathetic discards from those peoples' tiny, broken lives. After a while though, I starting finding some really good bargains. All of my old completed Paint-by-Number pictures came from those rummage sales and the thrift shops I discovered later. My favorite is the one of the rabbit, where the artist confused two of the colors -- I suspect I have the world's only painting of a rabbit with purple eyes and pink tail! Now, if I were a snooty elitist snob, would I be telling you about my Paint-by-Number collection?

Knowing my way around the garage sales and thrift shops has become quite useful recently. My lifestyle doesn't fit well with the constraints of typical employment situations, so I've actually been a bit pinched. Mother and father still help out some, but they don't seem to understand how difficult it is for a person like me to find the proper kind of work environment to fit his talents and personality. I hope someday they wake up and realize that I've just outgrown their little suburban middle class mind set.

Fortunately my apartment is close to the neighborhood food bank; I just tried going in there on a lark one day, and found they have loads of perfectly good groceries, very reasonably priced. The cute girl that works there in the produce department -- I'm pretty sure she wants to get to know me. I think she's just holding back because she thinks I'm a TV star. I wore my mirror shades in there one time and she asked me: "Hey, did I see you on the Jerry Springer show?" The other thing is she might think I'm gay, because of that time I went in there with Gary and we were kind of grab-assing around. I'm not gay. But, I'll try anything once ... or ... twice. I'm glad that Gary decided to go back to college in Wisconsin. He was great looking and all, but otherwise, a very blah, ordinary person once you get to know him.

Try to follow me here: what I'm realizing as I get older, is that being different and superior to others doesn't mean I have to feel separate and isolated. True, my vision of life towers over the smaller lives of those around me, but part of me also totally enjoys that mundane level with all its little trivialities. Things like window shopping at a mall, watching conventional crowd-pleasers like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," eating at Taco Bell, drinking beer with my roommate while we watch Oprah in the afternoon -- may seem like lowbrow wastes of time for a person like me. But, if you can do such things, and enjoy them, without losing for a moment the sense of your own specialness -- that's living.

This is an extensive revision/expansion of an article that appeared without attribution in The Onion, Vol. 38, No. 41, 2002, and was reprinted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, 2003, Dave Eggers editor, Houghton Mifflin.

Email comments to vamead@well.com.

AM's Writing > I'll Try Anything