I love this little thowaway sketch from the Kids in the Hall :
It’s not one of their top skits. It’s more or less a, “yup, that’s the premise” skit.
But I love it because I identify with it. Not that I have ever been afflicted with sarcasm that I can’t turn off, but that could still be me because it is only through iron self-control and discretion that I avoid being that guy.
Because I have a strong urge to lash out verbally. It is something I have noticed about myself and something I know I really have to watch out for sure I ever get into a more intimate relationship because I can totally imagine myself, in the heat of the moment, saying the sort of thing that destroys relationships forever.
The kind of thing that you can’t walk back. And apologizing can’t fix it because the damage is already done. Having a rapier wit is a great thing if you’re writing desk jokes for Colbert but a lot less good when you can “nail” someone you love right between the eyes with a remark so cutting that it cuts right into their heart.
It gives me great power. And thus, like Uncle Ben said, great responsibility.
And I did not learn this lesson in a vacuum. There was a period of my life, in my late teens and early twenties, where I was in danger of going in a very neckbeard kind of direction where I was really reveling in my newfound verbal might and starting to feel like if people couldn’t keep up with me in conversation, too bad, so sad, but I am going to keep “being me” so you can suck my dust, losers.
In my very partial defense, I had felt extremely powerless for most of my life and I was emerging from the shadow of teenage depression when I went to UPEI and discovered that in this tiny pond, I was a pretty damned big fish.
So I was definitely heading in a bad direction. But then, one memorable day, TWO of my philosophy professors, completely independently of one another, pulled me aside to talk about how I was dominating classroom discussion and denying the quieter students a chance to speak and generally being a giant dillhole.
My words, not theirs.
And if it had been just one of them, I might not have learned my lesson. Or if I had, I would have learned it in a really half-assed, “oh well, I guess to be a nice guy I should let the peasants speak” kind of way.
But when the second professor started giving me a remarkably similar lecture on the exact same subject, I was like, “OK, I get it, I really have been being a verbal bully and throwing my considerable weight around and I need to change that. ”
It helped that the second professor was Professor Koch, a super sweet and sensitive Seventies kind of guy who was clearly nervous to be telling me all this but was doing it because he was sticking up for the meeker students.
It made him practically their poster boy. His words went straight to my heart. I have always been very open to appeals to empathy and consideration.
I’m a liberal, after all.
So I reformed myself. But that sarcastic prick is still there inside me, ready to lash out, and arguably is only kept in check because my sad isolated life makes sure I am never “pushed” particularly hard.
Romance or even just dating might change all that.
And I am afraid of what I might say.
More after the break.
Getting out of here
Lately I have been wrestling with an old foe or not, namely how to focus on things and get them done without it turning into a form of pressure on myself that I then avoid.
I know the answer : it has to come from my own intrinsic internal motivations and not from some idea of what I “should” do then being imposed upon me by my highly untrustworthy ego and superego.
But I keep falling back into the old pattern anyway because it’s easier. Making brand new neural pathways is hard, especially at my age.
Falling back into the old ones, no matter how horrible there are, is always going to be easier, and the forces of evil in my bran know this.
And the bad guys in my head are so good at keeping me in check. No matter what move I make or try to make, they negate with the opposite move, and as a result, I never get anywhere.
Especially if it’s negative. My brain is way better at killing positives with negatives than it has ever been at killing negatives with positives.
It’s very biased that way. The negatives pretty much run the show.
A related issue is whether or not to view my situation as a crisis.
On the one hand, crises can motivate people into action. And to a certain part of me, it feels like nothing short of freaking out can break the deadly stalemate I am in.
I sure as fuck can’t do it myself.
But the problem with crisis motivation is that if it DOES NOT clear the blockages inside me, all that motivational pressure has nowhere to go and I end up anxious in an extremely non-productive way.
So take it easy and be mellow, right? Maybe. Probably, even.
Assuming I can do that. And I am not sure that I can. I might be too damned high strung for any passive kind of mellowness to take hold.
What I need is some way to express all these high voltage energies that is productive or at the very least harmless so I can get on with life.
But getting things flowing in the right direction is incredibly hard to do when so much of me is crosswired , backed up, clogged, misdirected, and ultimately self-defeating.
I am slowly working my way out of this straightjacket, but it takes so much time and energy to make even the tiniest bit of progress that it is easy to feel discouraged.
But there is no stopping me now. The processes already in motion cannot be stopped, and they will grind inexorably onwards no matter what.
And someday, I will be a real person.
Until then, I will, alas, remain dormant.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.