Stupid Is As Stupid Does

by Charley Hardman
by Charley Hardman

Not being the handsomest chap ever to grace the earth, I've sometimes had a bit of luck in temporarily acquiring beautiful girlfriends. Don't know if that's good or bad.

Ever go back through your entire history and think about the many romantic, or at least curious, associations? I think of our neighbor in Arlington, Virginia – the one I got caught with, at approximately age 4, not wearing clothes. She was 5, I think. We were discovered by her grandpappy, who wasn’t thrilled. My parents brought it up in a sideways fashion a day or so later, but didn't make me feel bad about it. Subtle notice, you could call it.

Fast forward to 10th grade, and a pairing that still confuses me – a one-of-a-kind, brown-haired bundle of perfection from Finland. Even her name was pure bliss, though I guess I'm not supposed to say publicly what it was. Can say that I've never heard of anybody else with the same, nor seen a woman whose name so fit the owner. She was in 9th grade, and I, being a typical high school dorkbutt, decided that the first time I would ever speak to her should be by phone. Why did we do such stupid things, fellas? Or was I the only one? I was at least smart enough to send a high school telegram, which is to say that I spoke of my intentions to enough people that she knew I was on the prowl. Word travels faster than thought.

Nervous. Staring at the phone. I don't recall, but it wouldn't surprise me if I unplugged it and practiced dialing her number 50 times, only to quit for lack of spine.

Next day, phone plugged in, seventh digit entered, no turning back: "Um, hi, is [Finnish Knockout] there? Oh, hi! Hey, uh, this is Charley – the guy . . . You know me? Hi! Right, I've seen you too. Listen, I was . . . I was wondering if you'd like to go to a Yes concert with me?"

She said she would (ka-CHING!), but soon afterward her 'rents nixed it when asked for the okay; they didn't want her being driven that far by a stranger, even though I'd told her it would be my brother's college friend doing the driving. Didn't matter. Having a daughter the same age now, I'd like to go back in time and shake their intelligent hands.

There are movie moments in life sometimes where you know you're doing something above what would normally be done. This wasn't one of them. Operating only on instinct, fueled by naïveté, I jammed the throttles to Zone 5 Super Prowl and engaged the target. Guess you'd have to have seen this girl to understand. After arranging permissions and logistics, I called Finnish Knockout back and said that my brother's friend would be happy to call her parents and talk to them so they could see he was a good guy. Or my parents could talk to her parents – whatever made her family happy. Maybe I was too thick to realize that she was trying to duck out of the date, but it didn't seem like she was. Whatever the reason, determination paid off, and her parents gave the okay after talking to my parents, who vouched for college guy.

She told me later that she liked how I tried every angle to get in. "Well," I said, in my best Simon Templar voice, "angles are my specialty."

Do thrills like high school first dates still come around? I don't know, but I'll never forget pulling up to her house to pick up my Swedish-speaking prize. It all seemed so wrong! How was she, a seemingly intelligent, mature young woman, making the horrible mistake of dedicating an evening to being trapped with the archetypal dorkus orungus? The planets must have stumbled in their orbits that day.

We dated for a couple of months, and I got to know her best friend as well. Her best friend was, in my opinion, a nice, somewhat cute girl with a goofball older brother. And that was all she was, thought I. As knockout girl and I drifted apart according to nature's plan, I began hanging out more with the best friend. I remember dropping by her house unannounced with my best friend. We chatted awkwardly for 10 minutes as her smirking brother and uncomfortable parents pretended to not notice anything out of the ordinary.

At a night football game she suggested that we go out afterward and get something to eat. Here's an incident I'll never understand: I said to her, "Sure, that's fine. But it's not a date. Just remember that it's not a date," like I was some kind of prize and she was dirt. Worse, I said it in front of other people. How do people say things that are so obviously self-damning when read back to us (as she later did to me), but seem when they first strike the atmosphere to be merely maddeningly awkward? What a jerk.

So we would see each other now and then, meaning she was overly tolerant of screwballs. One Friday evening I invited her over to watch TV. I won't forget how she looked. Walked over to her house miles away to get her, and she was wearing a neatly pressed white blouse, like a men's shirt but feminine – probably feminine only because she was wearing it. Damn feminine. Her hair was . . . well it bugs me just to think about it. Slightly naturally curly, long blondish brown, with the timeless, unexplainable aura of a female closer to woman than girl. She was beautiful, though I was still too smoked by her friend to know. Not beautiful like you would ogle her for 2 seconds and then nudge the guy next to you about the hot broad across the way. Beautiful like I can still remember her – a young, earnest, slightly bashful heartbreaker, wasting her evening with a guy seriously disabled by timing and stupidity issues.

Little did I realize the gift being offered. A sweet, gorgeous girl had done that thing girls do (getting ready and all that mysterious routine) to be with me. It was obvious she had done it up extra fine, but I just walked next to her without conscious appreciation.

We watched TV for a while at my parents' house. During a commercial I showed her how to play drums, which gave me an opportunity to put my arms around her from behind and move her hands as she sat at my borrowed set. Touch. We were alone. "Well," I said, "you ready to walk back?"

That's what I said! Months later she entered a long-term relationship with a guy who wasn't a fool. I'm not torn up about this. It's not that I think she was the one. What frazzles me is the F word. That should be my epitaph when it's time: Fear. One word says it all. I've seen people all around who are only unhappy because they're afraid. I'm unhappy right now because I'm afraid. I have been scared since at least the age of 3.

Knowing it and admitting it freely doesn't necessarily help, though it's possibly an essential ingredient to getting moving. It sounds so powerful and direct to use the word fear. But like the crazy illusion of medicine only doing what you want it to do (no side effects), fear is wrapped up with other negative powers, breeding consequences that beget consequences. What is it that normalons pray for when making up their ideal political mix? Security. Longevity. Getting far from those things we fear. The Crimson Permanent Assurance.

People are striving for security and stability, yet I've never noticed more insecurity. The societal medicines prescribed and forced on others are only fertilizer for the same things people are trying to wave away through wretched manipulation. But you'd never know it to read their press releases.

Ever been alone in the mountains in the snow? I was this year for the first time, in Montana – snowshoeing by myself to 10,500 feet, listening at night for grizzlies outside the tent, loaded .45 in easy reach. [Full disclosure: I had a cell phone, a GPS, and enough flashlights and batteries to wave-in several squadrons of F-14s during night field carrier landing practice.]

As I made my way toward the mountain peak the first afternoon, it started to get cold and dark faster than I thought appropriate. Better make camp, I told myself between gasps for breath. Tramping down a flat spot in the snow for my tent took longer than expected, and I felt the first tingles of a warning flag as my aching body started trembling a little from lack of food. Snowshoeing over winding trail with deep snow had just totally jammed me, though I'm a cyclist in good shape.

"Don't scare the wildlife unnecessarily," the brochure at the airport had said. "They are fighting to survive the winter with limited food and energy reserves. Stress from seemingly harmless human interaction takes resources they can't afford, sometimes causing the death of an animal that otherwise would have made it."

"Blah blah blah," I thought at the airport. But as I prepared to spend my first night alone in strange, snow covered, wild woods, I got that real-life religion well enough. Wasn't so worried about the food situation, though I did break out an energy bar to ease back the hypoglycemic tremors until I could cook dinner (freeze-dried delicious, mixed with boiled snow which, I found out, can burn when not mixed with a little water). What worried me was that I was really alone up there. What if I broke a leg? Just making camp in the snow with a healthy, tired body had been tough, and I was miles from help. Nine-one-one would definitely have been a joke in my one-human town.

Fred Reed:

Unbearably soft and ridiculous are most Americans today. We are dumbed down on the survival scale, with umbilical cords of dependence we don't even notice. I didn't truly notice them until I was out in the snow hearing nothing but wind and the faint laughs of my hillbilly ancestors. "There ya go, city boy! Starting to understand just a touch?"

Yes, sir – just a touch. Hard to get it completely though when my phone rang at sunup the next morning. I lay in my tent trying to stay placed exactly on the foam pad between me and the tent floor, which was right cold. Since answering it in time might have required sliding off the foam pad, I let it go to voicemail, and I understood in a flash the plight of energy-conserving, Montanan deer. (It was my cousin calling from Delaware to tell me about a great place to buy tires.)

The more we cling to each other, by force or otherwise, the more we need to cling. Taking it too far makes us closer to babies than men; it makes us afraid of the frivolous, and unable to reach as we should. I am fearful of losing my "life," to the point where I don't have one anymore. I used to, but that was when life was forward, not back. High school, I was unstoppable. Now? Dried up, with reserves I don't even feel, though I know they're there. Is this how we accept the federal and state bottle, doing what mommy government tells us is best? Is this lack of fundamental survival skills the fear driving our sickening dependence?

You watch; I'm going to figure it out. It's time. But when will it be time for America? America will figure it out when it has completely lost the façade of security and its illusion of wealth – an illusion achieved through lowered expectations and blinded awareness. When people have to worry whether they can make it through the winter, you don't get much call for making sure you've hired enough left-handed Lithuanians with the correct sexual alignment. Maybe making it through the winter is one of the worst things that can happen to some people.

I'll spare you the compulsory tie-in to my lost high school girl. There isn't one.

November 3, 2003

Charley Hardman (send him mail) was born in Washington DC.

Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com

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