Pirandello, Where Are You Now When We Need You

   The world today is like a play from the Theatre of the Absurd. We are millions of actors in search of a Playwright. We have neither script nor playbill. The author is not available to explain or answer questions. All we have is a CliffsNotes collection of inferences.

    Borrowing from Kurt Vonnegut's, Books of Bokonon , "Beware of the man who works hard to learn the right way, learns it, and finds himself no further ahead than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who ignore the right way and are at the head of the pack without even trying to do it right."
       
    There was a time when young men were told that being courteous, polite and respectful was the way to achieve harmonious interactions with young women and that 4-letter-word vulgarity and grossness particularly in the presence of women was totally verboten. Yet today it seems the vulgarity formerly to be avoided is now issuing forth from the mouths of those very same women. Is this equality gone too far? Are the gals trying to be one of the guys?

    I’m no prude and as a former sailor and a truck driver, I doubt there are any verbal constructions or collections of formerly vulgar words that I haven’t heard. I don’t cringe. I’m beginning to expect it. Yet what I find baffling is that not only are the encouraged behaviors absent, but the completely opposite behavior is being adopted and is achieving what the good behavior was supposed to. The observation that ‘Nice guys finish last’ seems increasingly truer every day.

    I recently overheard a young man recounting an experience he had with an attractive woman who he asked, point blank, "Do you like bad boys?" Whether he got anywhere with that opening was not revealed but to hear that the 'bad boy' description he labeled himself with was expected to gain him more ground than previously acceptable behavior was enlightening in a sort of negative way.

    I'm often told that "I'm too nice" and "I'm too old". Maybe I should paraphrase Charles Schulz' Peanuts character, Snoopy, and say, "Yesterday I was an old man. Today I'm an old man. Tomorrow I'll probably still be an old man. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement."

    I can't do a damned thing about being older. Being nice? Maybe I should look for a night course on how to become a 'Bad Boy'. Even-79 year old Charles Manson has had a girlfriend for more than 5 years. She's 54 years younger than him. Although I seriously question her mental stability and definitely could not consider someone so young for a date, I have a hard time understanding why an older nice guy like me can't escape the friend zone. Manson's a monster. I'm not.

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