My Flawed Flair

By Steve Eskew

Life frustrates me. It’s hexed me with the weird flair for excelling at things I loathe but  loving the things I’m only satisfactory at. At? What a dunce. I should  know by now that a preposition sucks as a word to end a sentence with.

All right already, so I ain’t so great at grammar, but I’ve always adored it. Known as the quirky nerd who loved to diagram sentences, my highest aptitude grudgingly  emerged in math––and oh, how I abhorred math. Zero social life. Cheerleaders dated athletes, hated mathletes.

Corrupted by other unwanted talents, my nose somehow got glued to the wrong grindstone. In lieu of becoming a rock star, I ran two successful businesses. 

Success as a businessman meant many times treating wretched people politely when I wanted to dip them in hot tar. Profit  required great regrets, such as firing a favorite employee for not sticking to the expected rhythm. I still rue the day I gave the ax to our amusing but unproductive stock boy, Guthrie. A smart kid, but simply not cut out for the retail humdrum.

A likable lad with schmooze to spare when he wasn’t hungover, Guthrie schlepped along on the job, dragging his keister, as if he were moving to the tune of Brahms’ lullaby.

Sorry Guthrie boy, but profit demanded an intense racing to the rhythm of the William Tell Overture––like the Lone Ranger and Tonto did.

To promote a lively tempo among employees, I loudly and proudly rolled my tongue to the tune of that Lone Ranger theme. Da-rrrun-Darrrun-Darrrun-Da-Da. 

T’was tempting but I resisted saying “You guys must be taking your drugs backwards. Henceforth, remember to take the quasudes at night and the amphetamines in the morning.” 

Yeah, I possessed a weak wit even in fantasies. 

Business ran me ragged. Being in charge bored me to lunacy. Sternly bossing people around ran contrary to my goody-three-shoes nature. Basically, I’m sickeningly humorous.

My definition of success included neither money nor prestige. Success for me equalled a thing called “happiness.”

Happiness? Ha! Who could be happy working 19 hours a day? I craved a precious entity known as free time. I became obsessed with an abnormal drive for whimsical ways. I wanted out. I would have headed for the hubs of hell to mine a merrier life.

I sold my businesses and became the proud owner of the free time I so hungered for. 

Guthrie and I had stayed in touch. He snickered when I announced that I simply planned to bum around and use up all of my precious free time as I searched for the lost Me. 

“Good God,” said Guthrie. “Another dude trying to find himself. You’ll  find yourself all right. You’ll find yourself sitting on a curb in skid row, with a bottle of rotgut in one hand and a self-rolled cigarette in the other. So hop to it, Boss. Go bumming.”

“Not that kind of bumming, you dolt” I said. “A college bum. I want to absolutely absorb knowledge by going college to college. I want to wallow in intellectual bliss.”

Guthrie grunted. “Duh, it’s ignorance, not knowledge, that yields bliss.” 

My obsessive/compulsiveness begged to differ. No threat to Einstein but I loved college. In my mania, the perpetual student within took twice as many courses that each degree demanded.

I buried myself with knowledge. Texts reigned as my favorite toys. My drug of choice? Knowledge. Stupidly  studious.

Write a book? Sorry. Would love to write it, but hate to pitch it.

Fresh from my Guinness book-like stint in college, I moved my mature but bonny body to New York. Not to produce my plays nor work for major publishers. Not to work at all. To romp and rage within New York’s cultural playground. To absorb and relish the Big Apple. Yum-yum.

Meanwhile, I had escaped the exhaustive experience of a bloodsucking career. Whew! No longer a role model, but I’d accumulated self-respect, self-admiration and a bigly lack of self-loathing. I fell head over heels in love––with my new self, the new Me.

Guthrie visited us last week. When he saw me, he said: “Good God, Boss! You’re 15 years older than I am but you look 15 years younger. It must be your total lack of stress all these years.”

“That and being married to a plastic surgeon,” I quipped coyly. 

Guthrie, now financially comfy, said I’d inspired him to retire early: “Boss, I may be 40 years late, but I’m gonna check out this free time thingy you’ve got going for you. I think it’s time to go find the real Me.”

As a retirement gift, I sent him a bottle of rotgut and a tobacco rolling kit.