Why I don't drive.

In high school I took a driver's training course. I was scared to drive, but I did relatively well. Except for one time.

I don't know what was with me that day. I guess I was in a bad mood. The whole time that I was driving I just felt pissed off. I don't even remember now why I was so mad.

It was one of my first times driving on the freeway, and I was cruising right at the speed limit, heading toward a familiar exit. I took the exit, which would lead me to a traffic light. The light was red, but for whatever reason, I did not want to stop, or even slow down. I could see no cars coming from the left and decided I would make a right turn at the light without stopping.

Suddenly I was aware that the car was braking to a stop. The instructor grabbed the steering wheel and wrenched it out of my grip, lurching us to the side of the road onto the gravel. Then he started shouting at me, chewing me out for not stopping at the light and not even slowing down. I didn't say a word. I didn't try to explain myself to him or even say I was sorry. The realization that I was in the wrong was slow to dawn on me.

I wonder sometimes about what was wrong with me that day. Driving on the highway, I had felt overconfident, cocky I guess, like I could do whatever the hell I wanted and get away with it. When the instructor pulled the car over and yelled at me, I still felt mad, like someone had taken something of mine away and I wanted revenge. When I started to calm down, my anger was replaced by a sort of gnawing dread. It was like I'd abruptly turned evil and not noticed until it was too late. Later on I felt horrified that I had been so stupid, and so uncaring about anything.

I had to drive a few more times before the course was over, and of course I made a point of not letting anything like that happen again. If anything, my driving was more timid than before. I got a good grade for the course. But once it was done, I didn't want to drive again. I was just too scared.

It's just so easy to feel drunk with power behind the wheel of a car sometimes. This is also why I don't want to learn how to use a gun. You can do everything right, learning how to handle a firearm safely and responsibly, but all it takes is one burst of anger while you have a gun in your hand to do some serious damage. How well do you trust yourself?

Fear of me.

Someone once told me, "You remind me of one of those guys that when you ask him how he is, he says 'fine', and then he goes out and kills people." Then he laughed.

Someone else once asked me why I'm always writing in the little notebook I carry around with me. Because I consider myself to be a writer, I sometimes jot down story ideas when they occur to me. Other times I like to make lists of things I need to do later. But apparently the first thing that occurred to this other person was that I was making a hit list.

I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised. I'm an introvert, who keeps to himself, and who isn't terribly good at making friends. But I didn't think everyone thought I might suddenly snap, or that I was already snapped.

Sometimes I'm afraid that those people are right about me, that I'm not just a failure, but that I'm actually an evil man. How much pressure would it take for me to snap? What if I suddenly flipped and started killing people?

That's another reason I believe in gun control. I don't trust anyone to own one. Anyone could snap like that. All it takes is too much anger and not enough love.

On failure.

Sometimes I wonder if I have unintentionally modeled myself after Charlie Brown. He was the cartoon character I related to the most when I was a kid. He was a self-professed loser, always getting knocked down, but always getting our sympathy.

Then again, maybe I already felt that way before ever discovering Charlie Brown, and simply gravitated to him afterwards. Like him, I often feel like I'm a born failure, like failure is my destiny. But why? Why do I feel like a sub-par human being?

On losing faith in myself.

Why did I give up on being an artist?

I guess I lost faith in myself and my talent. When did that happen?

In my final year of college, I took a life drawing class. Yes, there were nude models. After a few weeks I just stopped going. I didn't even bother to officially drop the class, I just stopped showing up.

I guess I was embarrassed. I took a break from my drawing and looked at the drawings of the other artists. They all looked so much better than mine.

I've heard that seeing the work of other artists can be inspiring; that it encourages some people to work harder to reach that next level of greatness. But for me, it just made me want to give up. So I did.

It was the same with music. My school had a focus on opera. There were students I met there with voices that would blow you away. I was not one of those people. I never got a leading role in the operas; I was always in the chorus. I decided not to go to graduate school because I knew no matter how hard I worked, I would never be great.

Performing probably wouldn't have worked out for me anyway. I didn't want to travel the world touring. I wanted to stay home. But I still wonder sometimes if I gave up too soon.

Foolish faith in the system

I thought getting a good job would be easy. It is in the movies. A guy walking down the street sees a 'help wanted' sign in the window of a business, walks in and gets hired. Right?

I guess I just trusted the world to look out for me. I believed I would be steered in the right direction by someone and naturally end up where I belonged. Maybe retail is where I belong, but I hope not. Twelve years in the same job, and I still haven't graduated to the next level up.

Aspirations

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cartoonist, working on animated films. In my teens, I wanted to make comic books. I also had dreams of becoming an actor or a musician. In college I tried to do a little of everything. Painting, singing, writing, acting. And now I work in a department store.

Why? Because I'm a failure, of course.

Random whim

Sometimes I wish I worked in a museum instead of a department store. Then I could tell people not to touch anything.

About working.

Customers can be nice and polite and appreciative, but they can still be sloppy. If they change their minds about a pair of pants, they usually discard it far far away from where they found it. That's why the bulk of my time isn't spent talking to customers, but cleaning up after them.

On weekends, if I'm the only person in the men's wear department, it's almost impossible to get the whole department looking good at the same time. The more time I spend in one area, the less time I spend at the other end of the department. So if what's in front of me looks perfect, the rest of the department is probably trashed.

Like I said, it's a puzzle game.

About customers.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a sales job. I have a service job. My job is to help people find what they need quickly and easily. "Do you have this in a medium?" "Let me see."

Keeping the shelves neat is one of the best ways to help the customers, because if everything is where it should be, in size order, customers can find what they need without even asking for extra help. But retrieving items from the stockroom can be the most satisfying thing, because the customer will smile and thank you when you hand him what he wants.

Usually.

Sometimes you get a customer who is already disappointed in you as soon as he walks in the door. He sees the worst in people and treats you like you're an obstruction preventing him from getting what he wants. I want to make this clear: I want everyone to have what they want. But I'm not the gatekeeper to your happiness, folks, I only work here.

My job is like a puzzle game.

My job is like a puzzle game. If I fold the clothes properly, and organize them by size and color, then I get the correct picture, and I can fold the clothes on the next shelf, and the next, until the whole department looks good and I win. To make the game more difficult, the department gets visited by customers.

There was a game I used to play.

There was a game I used to play on the computer where a picture was divided into fifteen tiles mixed up on a board. You had to rearrange the tiles into the right order to make the correct picture, but none of the tiles could leave the board, and moving one tile meant displacing another.

Prologue

Once I heard about someone who was constantly reading new books, on a wide range of subjects, from history, to science, to philosophy, to art. Somebody asked him why he was always reading book after book. He said, "Maybe the meaning of life is in there."