Flimflammer...and my lost shot at greatness.

"i am not what i am"
--Iago in Othello

All our lives we are told to "just be yourself" and "Be you." But isn't it just way more appealing to be someone other than you. I guess it's the whole desire-for-something-new-until-you-get-sick-of-it-and-want-to-move-on-like-a-four-year-old-with-ADD syndrome that we humans have. Your whole adolescence you want to be old and then suddenly you are old and you want to be young. So why not be Iago? We all love costume parties (actually, i have never been to a costume party, in fact, i havent even dressed up for Halloween the last few years. i am going to rephrase thsi sentence). We all love actors and actresses. Some of us even enjoy acting. For me, that thrill comes from being not me. Seriously, i am me 24 hours a day, how great is it to be not me for 2 hours on stage (or if you get a really long, mediocre script like Scottish Chiefs, 3+ hours). This brings me to an ideal profession, that of the flimflammer.

Flimflammer, matchstick man, con artist, call it what you will, but these guys get to go around for hours eac hday be not themselves. These are the men Dr. Pepper commercials aren't made of. How wonderful? Granted, most of the time they play the sleezy salesman or government worker, but they get to work people over. It's like a giant poker game where every hand you are bluffing and they end up folding because they are so into you!! THese con-men see all the angles way before their marks. Man i love it. Go watch The Sting and Matchstick Men. Post-viewing, you will want to call your friends and screw them out of a lot of money, just for the heck of it. Friends, after all, are the easiest marks because you have all that built up trust. Now i turn away from my Machiavellian thoughts.

In our Great Ideas reading, Kreeft mentioned that the three greatest teachers and maybe thinkers ever (sorry Mr. Schneider, you didnt make the cut), Jesus, Buddha, and Socrates, never wrote anything down. When i read that i thought "Man, all we writer wannabes here in blogdom have no shot at greatness all because we picked up that pencil in first grade." And i thought Mrs. Jernigan was a good teacher...she killed my shot at greatness when i was 6. i leave you with my poem about a certain con artist.

Allison
the almost sonnet

Deceptively young, you appeared inside
My life without warning, a real tom-boy.
Fake. Frizzled hair and a satchel by your side
you deceptively leeched my trade. Oh boy
did you ever, like real parasites would.
Only Allison looks good; feels better.
Her bite is satisfying. If I could
only accept its poison...then, wetter
than I wished, and emotions wasted,
I zapped the tube, discovered your real age,
moaned in disappointment, quickly pasted
your name on my wall of shame, flipped a page,
read about poker theory for a while,
soon to return to your fake sappy smile—
reality for an hour and a half.