"Who Are You? Who. Areyou?"

Two Faces - Bruce Springsteen (mp3)
Who Knows - The Replacements (mp3)

There's this scene early on in The Breakfast Club involving my alter-ego, Brian Jones (Anthony Michael Hall). In it, the geek is contemplating the essay topic assigned by his principal for detention: Who do you think you are? Brian is sitting in his chair, screwing around with a pen and clasping it to his lip and teeth, and asking himself, "Who are you? Who. Areyou?" And he looks over to see the cool street-smart John Bender (Judd Nelson) staring hot needles into his soul. Brian shamefully removes the pen from his mouth, avoids eye contact, and huddles back over his solitary sheet of paper.

In that one throwaway moment of an arguably throwaway movie, Brian's question is asked twice and answered twice. It's first answered by how he's comfortable seeing himself: goofy, internal, capable of entertaining himself with otherwise tedious academic assignments. The second answer comes from the Bender's stare and Brian's reaction: aware of his inferiority, ashamed of his geek-ness, afraid and easily intimidated yet so eager to please in the hopes of just moving one rung up the social ladder. His weaknesses and flaws seem less acceptable under the glare of someone else's biased and calloused stare.

Comic books have always owned my heart because, at their core, most of them serve to remind the reader that a person is usually more than what any single person knows or sees. Oftentimes, the superhero side and their alter-ego have different personalities and different interests, and the public usually has opposite opinions of one versus the other.

Batman (scary, vigilante) and Bruce Wayne (popular corporate rich boy).
Clark Kent (awkward, homely) and Superman (composed, alien).
Hulk (huge, stupid, green) and Bruce Banner (brilliant, scrawny-ass white boy).
Ironically, some of the best villains have the same problem.

I could go on, but I noticed you yawning.

Point being, this is on my mind is because I just saw The Wrestler, which blew me away. In this movie, the two main characters -- played by Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei -- both struggle with the shitty side of being a superhero. Mickey plays both trailer park grocery store clerk Robin Ramzinski and veteran pro wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson. Marisa plays both single guarded-heart mother Pam and hot aging stripper Cassidey. Both are constantly struggling to figure out how to balance their dual personalities.

If you watch the movie in the near future -- and if you haven't, you really should -- I beg you to pay attention to just how many times these characters struggle with their names, with who they are and who they want to be. It was heartbreaking.

I'm not a very phobic person. Can't think of many things that scare me unreasonable amounts, that wake me up in the middle of the night, that paralyze me. But here's one: the fear of not being known. And I'm not talking about fame or popularity, not remotely. What I'm talking about is being understood.

Much like my beloved superheroes, whose inspiration for do-gooding stems from some tragic past experience, my fear seems to drive my personality. I'm extroverted; I share embarrassing stories; I write silly confessional blogs; I try -- too hard, often -- to stand out, in the hope that just maybe I can get out there enough to be, ultimately, understood. If I can just get enough of the puzzle out of my head and into the hands of all the people I meet, all the people who know me, just maybe the puzzle can be put together eventually. I'd sure as hell hate to die holding onto too many of the pieces.

And I find myself holding onto puzzle pieces even when I think I'm being honest and revealing. Or, as one friend put it, many of us think we're being open and revealing, but we're just opening and revealing very particular things we want people to see, which makes it all that much easier to hide the parts we want to keep hidden.

Even when we're out there in the open, we cast shadows.

We're all puzzles, and no matter how romanticized your notion of life, you can't just hand over that whole puzzle to just a single person. We're too complex and contradictory and confusing for one person to utterly grasp. Hell, most of us can't even manage to figure ourselves out without relying on those around us who know us and deal with us regularly.

Thank God we don't have to be utterly grasped in order to be utterly loved.

The list of possible songs to go with this topic are legion, and most of them pretty darn good, so I went with a crowd-pleaser and a personal favorite. Both bands should be a part of any collection, so head over to iTunes or Amazon.com!

"There Are Two Kinds of People In the World"

Two Points for Honesty - Guster (mp3)
Not That Funny - Fleetwood Mac (mp3)

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who lump all of humanity into two kinds of people, and those who don't. (Nope. I didn't make that up. It's entirely unoriginal, but I don't know who originated it.) I'm more the latter than the former, but I figured I'd waste a day drumming together some good ones just for the hell of it. Seemed like a good light-hearted option after all that education mumbo jumbo.

There are Two Kinds of People in the World:

• Those who tear out all magazine inserts before reading a single page, and those who don't
• Those who crumple their TP and those who fold it
• Those who use straws in nice restaurants and those who don't
  
• Those who prefer stick and those who like it automatic
• Those who like Hanson and those who wish they'd die bathing in hydrochloric acid
  
• Those who like a Bon Jovi song and those who deny it
• Those who eat sushi and those who call it "soochee"
• Those who believe the hype, and those who don't
• Those who Tom, and those who Jerry
  

And finally, the coup de grace: Those who drive away from the gas station with the pump still in their tank, and those who haven't. Yet.

Yes, as of December 31, 2008, at roughly 4:45 p.m., while stopping off of I-40 outside of Knoxville to get gas, I joined the Dumbass Drives Off With Pump In Tank Club.

I put the pump in. I went in and got some mints and Mountain Dew Code Red. I paid. The dude wished me a Happy New Year. I made some silly remark about how I hope I have so much fun I can't remember it. I walked back to the car. I put the soda in its lovely holder and the mints in the passenger seat, started the car and started to drive away to the sounds of Kelly Willis. Then... CHKKKUNNK!

I knew what I'd done instantly. I said a bad word. The world moved in slow motion. I looked around at the various witnesses. One studly male in his late 20s driving a Land Rover, trying not to chuckle. A completely unattractive mother with strawberry blonde hair, working to put her infant back into the carseat, looking up in panic to make sure terrorists hadn't attacked. And the attendant inside, looking out the window, just beginning to shake his head in that "Oh shit here we go again" kind of way.

When I got out of the car, Land Rover Dude chuckled and said, "Would you believe you're not the first person I've ever seen do that?"

I think he was trying to comfort me... in the same kind of way one of the super-attractive stud brothers at the Sigma Chi house might have tried comforting me after some really hot Alpha Chi sophomore threw beer on my freshman face after I tried dancing with her. (Not that the latter actually happened. I don't think.)

The attendant, the same genial greasy-lookin' fella who had wished me a Happy New Year! mere minutes before, now looked at me as if I were the bastard son of Joan Rivers and Gomer Pyle, but he was doing it in as kind a way as he could muster. He was already on the phone with the manager. "I don't usually work at this one. I'm just fillin' in for the dude who's sick."

I left my name and contact information. No, I left my real name, and my real contact information. He said they'd be in touch if the repair went beyond the simple fix or wasn't covered by whatever insurance they had. Considering I hadn't done any Jack Bauer-esque destruction of the entire friggin' pump, and considering that Land Rover Dude has a penchant for witnessing these moronic moments, I figured the odds were pretty good that gas stations are prepared for this.

It's been a week. No one has called. I might be in the clear.

But there's two kinds of people in the world: those who get the bad calls when they least expect it, and those who keep waiting for the bad calls that never come. In this situation, I'll go for option #2.

Please feel free to pass along your favorites -- or make up some new ones -- in the comment section.

Charts stolen from the amusing GraphJam.com. Guster's song is from their album Lost and Gone Forever. "Not That Funny" is from Tusk. Both can be found at iTunes or Amazon.com's mp3 site.

Outside Looking In

Green Cat's Eye--"Fallen On Deaf Ears" (mp3)

IX
I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
and carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, “Comrade! Brother!“

--Stephen Crane

Or did he?

Something funny happened on the way to graduation. I got the time wrong.

After the initial surprise, then embarassment, then panic, then temptation to just leave, I went to get my gown on, encountered another guy who got the time wrong, and we took the back way upstairs and stood behind the crowd to watch our students graduate in front of our colleagues while we lingered in the distance.

Except for one former student who gave us an evil glare, the people around us didn't know who we were or where we were supposed to be. And so we became part of the clapping, cheering, wandering-to-and-from-the-bathroom, distracted masses that make up a graduation audience. In the stands in front of us there were juice boxes, snacks, programs either dropped to the floor or being used as fans. In front of us, people formed groups of family and friends, and they only came alive for the 15 seconds when their graduate's name was announced, when he crossed the stage to get a diploma and a handshake, and when he walked back to his seat. And then they returned to whatever they had been doing--texting, fiddling with cameras, or, in the case of the young woman below us, just plain moaning.

The enlightenment for me, though, was not about the crowd. My binoculars, so to speak, were zoomed in on my fellow faculty, on the events up on stage, on the mass movements of students and faculty. I have such a mentality of not wanting to get in trouble, not wanting to be embarrassed publicly, that I spent several moments focused on where I should be sitting. Was there an empty seat there? should I have walked in late? did the headmaster or upper school head up on stage notice that I wasn't there?

But then my perspective shifted. It no longer mattered where I supposed to be and what would happen because I wasn't. Instead, I had more of a Dickens' Christmas Carol moment, where I got to see what life would be like if I wasn't there, but without all of the negative flow charting. I'll admit I like to think that I am part of some grand endeavor that is making a difference somehow. In cynical terms, I'm a necessary cog; in idealistic terms, someone who tries to make that endeavor better. Anytime I start pondering my work role, though, Willy Loman starts talking in my head, and this time he's saying, "I'm vital in New England." Those of us watching the play know that he isn't. It's self-delusion, and tragic at that. I don't have to deal with that yet. I'm not worn out. But as more and more I start to see myself moving away from my endeavor, there is a kind of release in watching the whole grand machine churn on with me nothing but an observer. So the funny thing that happened at graduation was that maybe I graduated from thinking that I had to matter so much. Maybe it's time to stop investing and to start withdrawing some funds.

After the ceremony had ended, my fellow miscreant and I joined the seniors. We were the first to congratulate them. They seemed surpised that we were there already. That lasted for about one minute and then the overflow crowd descended and we were back in the flow. I did get some teasing from friends at a dinner later that night, but that was the only recognition of my absence.

Now that it's days later, my perspective has been somewhat confirmed in an additional odd way: no one has commented on my not being with the faculty at graduation--not the people I started with 25 years ago and always sit with, not any of the other administration, not even the busybodies of the faculty.

Maybe, when you are on the outside looking in, the view, though at first isolating, reminds you of your freedom.

Green Cat's Eye is not really a band; it's a couple of students who composed a song about society for the final project in my class. But the song seemed appropriate to this post in any number of ways. And, they're talented students.