(Happy Birthday to my twin sisters!)
So last Saturday night, I went with my parents, my aunt, and my three boys to the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. (Mrs. Cornell stayed home with the girls, who were either sick or uninterested.) It was a lot of fun, but I couldn’t help wondering why this was considered such a highbrow, cultured sort of event requiring non-profit status. Storytelling is, essentially, stand-up comedy, albeit squeaky clean, outdoors, and somewhat NPRish. None of the storytellers were under 50 years old, and some were considerably older. Maybe storytelling is where the stand-ups go to die.
Anyway, it was thoroughly delightful. We heard stories about Boy Scouts getting in trouble for sneaking off with Girl Scouts, about how George Washington was really a ukelele player who used to shout “Red Hot Mama” at inopportune times, about how Maine is different from Brazil, about how a woman was freaked out as a kid when her dad read her “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, and about a retiree who accidentally walked into a hotel swimming pool with his clothes on. The only one that qualified as “storytelling,” as far as I could tell, was a woman telling a male version of Cinderella with a hideous Irish accent.
The best guy came last, of course. Named Kevin Kling, he had been in a motorcycle accident and had no use of his right arm and limited use of his left. But holy living crap, the guy was funny. He told the story of running a marathon, and how after he hit “the wall,” he discovered that the hormones that gave him his “second wind” released a flood of auto-eroticism, and “suddenly, everyone was really, really good looking.” He finished with a truly inspiring poem called “Tickled Pink,” which I have tried, and failed, to find online.
All of that, however, is merely prelude.
When it was over, my boys were cold and tired. Thus we left my parents behind and walked briskly so we could get to the car and bring it around for them. On the way, I fell into step next to a familiar face, who was chatting pleasantly with his wife.
It was Moe.
Unless you’ve been reading from the beginning and remember everything you’ve ever read here, you may not recall who Moe is. Moe is not his real name – it was a code name I used in this 2007 blog post describing how much this man well and truly hated me. As of 2007, his hate was still current and intense, beyond the despisal of any rational person. In the intervening years, I had always wondered what would happen if the two of us ever came face to face.
Now I was about to find out.
I had a choice, though. I could have just kept walking. I could have pretended not to see him. After all, he still hadn’t seen me. But curiosity got the better of me.
“You’re Moe,” I said, and he and his wife turned to face me. “It’s me, Stallion.” (Again: Code names are being employed here, both for me and for Moe. I actually called them by their last names to include Mrs. Moe. But if I’d written “you’re the Moes,” you wouldn’t have known what I was talking about.)
If Moe was startled or disturbed, he didn’t show it. He immediately broke into a large smile, as did his wife, and we began chatting like old pals, or at least like old acquaintances that had very little to say to one another. Mrs. Moe, for her part, seemed genuinely happy to see me. Moe himself was harder to read. He had this large, plastic smile on his face, but, then again, he always has a large, plastic smile on his face. I don’t think I was a brilliant conversationalist, as my mind was in a different place.
“This is Moe,” I kept thinking to myself. “He wants to kill me, and here we are, chatting like old pals – or at least like old acquaintances, yada yada yada.”
Imagining the situation in my mind in the years prior to this event, I wondered how I would react. I wondered if I would have the urge to punch him in the face or tell him off or do something to get even. I had no such urge. It was surreal, as if I were standing outside my own body, judging my behavior. “Good for you,” I kept telling myself. “You’re being such a big man about this! Aren’t you proud of yourself?”
That may be why I stumbled in an attempt to answer simple questions. I can’t know for sure, but they may now think that Mrs. Cornell is dead, as I had no coherent explanation for her absence, and as I tried to explain my employment situation to them, I may have left out some necessary verbs.
I was too distracted; I just wasn’t paying attention. I just couldn’t get over how much this man didn’t matter to me anymore.
I found this instructive, because I grew up admiring people who could say, “I don’t care what other people think of me.” Because I certainly cared what other people thought of me. And, regardless of this moment, I still do. I think everyone does. Nobody likes to be disliked, and having people think well of you is very helpful in business and in pleasure. Of course I care.
Where I’ve changed, I think, is in my unwillingness to be defined by what other people think of me.
When Moe wrote me that letter, I was devastated. Because if someone like Moe thought I was evil, maybe I was evil. The only way not to be evil was to get Moe to think better of me. Without thinking, I handed him the keys to my soul so he could drive it into a ditch.
Today, I can say that it would be nice if Moe didn’t hate me, but if he does, that’s his problem, not mine. I’m not a perfect guy, but I’m not the devil Moe thinks I am. Finally, I know myself well enough to trust my own opinion of me more than Moe’s. In any case, barring physical violence that I don’t think is in Moe’s character, he has already done everything he can possibly do to hurt me. He’s shot his wad of cruelty.
So all that’s left is surreal, polite conversation on the way to the car.
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