Thursday, March 01, 2012

A Stroll Down the Primrose Pathology

We all have our own little pathologies, those character flaws which define us as much as our talents do. If I were to name one of mine (and trust me, I am well aware I possess more than one) I would have to say I care an inordinate amount about having people like me. Not just the people in my family or circle of close friends or co-workers I also mean the guy who rolled up to the four way stop just a hair after I did but I still wave on ahead of me because it is very important that a person I have never laid eyes on in my life and very well may never see again and all I know about him is he, for reasons passing understanding, decided it was a good idea to buy a car which is roughly the size of a small apartment building and a color not found in nature, unless you count a Las Vegas casino as nature, thinks I am truly swell. Yep, that makes my life better.

I don’t really have any idea why I am compelled this way. It could be a birth order problem, a nurture (I was raised that way) problem, a nature (I was born that way, in reference to DNA hard-wiring not in reference to a Lady Gaga song) problem, or a none of the above problem.

Kindness is one of the things I value most in others and I strive to be kind in all of my interactions, even when a phone sales person calls and will not take the first “no, thank you” as a definitive answer but quickly chimes in saying there is another payment plan that might better fit my budget and simply looks upon the second “no, thank you” as a very pale “yes” and continues to explain how important it is that my money becomes their money. It is possible the “thank you” part of the “no, thank you” is perceived as a sign of weakness marking me as the sick gazelle ripe for the marketing lion to catch and empty its checking account. The metaphor got muddled at the end there, but you get what I mean. Even though it is commendable to be kind it is possible I take it a tad further than is necessary.

I think it was Plato who said, “Be kind and rewind”, no, wait, that was something I learned from my days working at Popingo Video (remember Popingo Video before it became Popinwent Out of Business). Plato said “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” That is a philosophy I take to heart. It is important to me that I do what I can to avoid making other people’s lives harder. I am not always successful, just ask people I work with, but I try. At least I try when it doesn’t come into direct conflict with another of my chief pathologies, a weapons grade level of procrastina
tion. See, I even put off typing the end of the word itself. That is pretty horrible.

A lot of my personal heroes are people from the world of comedy. I have read lots of interviews with comedians and comedy writers, listened to dozens and dozens of talk shows on television and via podcasts with people who make their living doing funny things and one thing shared by a vast majority of them is a insatiable need to be liked. Some of them come from homes where there was heartache and pain making them reach out to strangers for positive emotion. That is not me. But others are like me in that they cannot really tell you why they crave acceptance from everyone. Laughter at something I do is ambrosia for my psyche if I meant it to be funny.

This brings me to my next personal pathology. I have an intense, irrational, incontinent (whoops, one “i” word too far, sometimes assonance can make an, oh nevermind) aversion to embarrassment. This is another trait shared by many comics. I may be misattributing this quote (darn, another opportunity for embarrassment) but I think it was Harry Shearer who said comedians do funny things in order to control how and why they are laughed at. If I can do something or say something funny on purpose that gets you to laugh I can avoid having you laugh at me for reasons I do not control. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me while at the same time sounding perfectly sad with just a soupcon of pathetic thrown in.

Christopher Pyle appreciates this opportunity to work through some issues. It is much cheaper than real therapy. You can diagnose him via occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.

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