Plastics

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look.  It works in reverse, too.  When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.  ~P.J. O'Rourke

 

When I studied Shakespeare in school we spent a lot of time talking about appearance versus reality.  Nothing unusual about that I know but I've been thinking on it lately--how the idea applies in my own life.  I got started on this when a friend, who has recently taken up mountain biking, was talking about how scary it can be zipping around on a narrow trail with only a helmet and gloves for protection should your zooming result in flying over the handlebars or picking bark out of your facial tissue.  I am sadly familiar with both of those scenarios.  But it reminded me of the insane rush and excitement of mountain biking and then my poor little wandering brain began comparing it to the similar but completely different exhilaration of riding a roller coaster. 

 

It is completely different because a roller coaster only presents the appearance of danger whereas mountain biking has the real thing.  I suspect more people get hurt in line waiting to get on the roller coaster than on the silly thing itself.  Certainly I've come pretty close to administering some injuries to bratty little kids and/or people from Boston in those lines.  But once you're on the ride safety equipment, physics and engineering all combine to ensure that you only appear to be at risk.

 

Same thing with Vegas.  You can appear to be partying wildly and out of control but if you actually put one toe out of line large men wearing blazers, ties and ear pieces will swoop in with remarkable speed and demonstrate just how under control you really are there.  They have cameras everywhere.  Everything is monitored and everything you do has to be approved by someone.  Otherwise your visit will come to an abrupt end.  It is the appearance of wild partying not the reality.  The reality is that people stream in and out of that town like salmon swimming up and down rivers.  I'm sure each fish feels like it's the marvelous adventure of a lifetime but in truth, it's the same thing everyone else does and there is nothing remarkable about it.

 

Facebook offers a stunning array of opportunities for people more concerned with appearance than reality.  Not only do you get to pick and choose those elements of your life which are presented to the world but you even get to frame them however you please.  Did you have lunch at the same restaurant you always go to with the same three people you always eat with?  Well, if you say that on FB people...pardon me....friends might think you're boring.  No, no...that will not do.  Jazz it up a little.  Just say that you had the most spectacular culinary experience in the history of mastication [McDonalds] with three of the most wonderful people on Earth [coworkers].  See?  Isn't that better?  Now everyone thinks you're cool and have things going on in your life.

 

But, like I said, this got me thinking about my own life.  Of course we all do this to some extent--like Billy Joel said in The Stranger, "...we all have a face that we hide away forever...." but this problem of fake people seems to have reached epic proportions in my life.  Everyone so concerned with keeping up appearances that the substance that should support the image instead becomes a hindrance and is allowed to atrophy.  It rots away from right under the skin leaving only a shell of a human that is incapable of withstanding a stiff wind much less the turbulent storms that life sometimes tosses around.  Shallow, flaky people.  Shakespeare, can you help me out?  I'm looking for a little reality my friend.