Tuesday, 12 February 2002 | Element

The people I spend time with and communicate with are not the people who work behind the counters at army surplus stores with the buzz cuts and gun racks. They're not the people in the long mid-afternoon lines at Wal-Mart, buying plastic and wrappers and grams of fat. They're not the clean-cut golfers at the country club; the thirty-something mothers at the Baby Gap; the blue-haired women walking in packs at lunch buffets; the Vietnam veterans on street corners; or the sparkly ladies at jewelry stores, covered in ornaments like human Christmas trees. A million places where I feel uncomfortable. invisible. misunderstood. moody. A handful of places where I manage to forget and enjoy.

For years now, I've been whittling away at my surroundings, amputating environments that aggravate my cynicism, phasing them out, one by one. I'm tired of that feeling that creeps over me when I am out of my element, that mixture of disdain and resentment for values so different from my own. And so I shed the disagreeable components and gather the good things around me like a warm comforter: the people I like, the music, politics, food, and concerns, the things that make life pleasant.

Only in rare moments—when I find myself standing in the middle of the mall, dining in an overpriced restaurant, pulling into a highway truck stop in middle America, strolling past one of the frat parties on my street, or peeking inside courthouses and prison fences—do I realize how out-of-touch I've become. From my position on the outskirts of the party (watching it, I imagine, like a sober person watches drunks), it all appears ugly and pathetic. The rich seem shockingly arrogant, and the poor seem shockingly ignorant. Yeah, and I seem shockingly righteous. Perhaps I would reject my own world in the same manner, if only I could step outside of it as well.

***

On a lighter note, today I saw this in one of the teacher's manuals I was editing:
For a student who may become ill and vomit on his or her test and/or answer booklet and is not able to continue with the test, do not give the student a new test and/or answer booklet. Put the soiled test and/or answer booklet in a plastic bag, seal it, and return the booklet(s) to the scoring company. (That's us!)