Petri - A Field Guide to Awkward Silences

1. I have no idea.
2. Well, how about this? Dont do any of the following.

I am afraid of many things. Drowning, fire, the disapproval of strangers on the Internet, that Ill be hit by a bus without having had a chance to clear my browser history, that one day everyone else on the subway will suddenly be able to hear what I am thinking and turn on me. You know, the usuals.

One thing Im not afraid of? Looking like an idiot.

See, I knew I was a writer. That was protection. No matter where I went, no matter what I did, I could turn it into a story. Fall through a hole in the sidewalk? Story. Make the worst Final Jeopardy! wager of all time? Story. Anger the lord of the ocean, stab a one-eyed guy, and get very, very lost on my way home to Ithaca? Epic story.

Those were the two things I knew about myself: that I was a writer, and that I didnt mind looking stupid. Growing up, you figure out pretty quickly which of your friends is the person who doesnt mind looking like an idiot, and that was me, hands down. I was the one going over to strangers and asking if the mothership had landed. I was the one standing in an airport with a giant foam cow hat on my head, accordion open, ready to greet friends as they landed, and not even because Id lost a bet. Mortification was a poison to which I had built up immunity after years of exposure. Besides, it was much less embarrassing to be me than to have to stand next to me and admit you were with me.

And the writer in me had noticed that the bigger of an idiot you appeared to be, the better the story was. Nobody wants to hear, And everything went smoothly, just exactly according to plan. Something had to go wrong. You had to trip up. That was where the excitement lay.

I collected experiences the way some people collect old coins or commemorative stamps.

One year, for fun, I called the ExtenZe male enhancement hotline every day for a month, with different voices, just to see what would happen. (What happened, if you want to know, was that Phoebe, who worked the dinner shift, got annoyed when I identified myself as Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a fun fact about the ExtenZe male enhancement hotline is that they make you identify yourself before you start your call) and threatened to transfer me to the police.)

All of this seemed to be leading to some kind of grand adventure. I sat there, glumly, waiting for a wizard to drop by the house and invite me to steal dragon-gold, or a wise old man in a brown hoodie to offer to teach me the ways of the Force. But no one showed. I would have to strike out on my own.

What was a field in which a willingness to look foolish might come in handy?

Of course! Reality television.

Like anyone growing up after 1980, I always had the dim, nagging sense that I was supposed to be famous for something. A certain measure of fame just seems like our birthright these days, next to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Food, shelter, Wi-Fi, and the sense that someones watching; these are the modern requirements for survival. The only thing more terrifying than the feeling youre being watched is the feeling that youre not. Privacy is just an uncomfortable reminder that youre not a celebrity.

My portion of fame, I knew, was waiting somewhere, neatly labeled in a holding facility. To claim it, all Id have to do would be to fill out some sort of form and show up in the designated audition city. And until that moment it was my right, as an American, to stare at the television and mutter, I could do that.

If I were being really honest with myself, these people I saw competing on television all possessed skills that I lackedwhether on American Idol or Americas Got Talent or even Americas Most Wanted. I could hold a tune, but only the way you hold a strangers cat: not closely and not long (not to mention the strange yowling noises). I Got some talents, all rightexcellent grammar, for onebut they werent the kind of thing that would exactly sing on the national stage. Whenever I tried to smize, model-style, people asked if Id been possessed by an ancient and evil spirit. I had never murdered anyone, to the best of my knowledge, and if I did I would certainly not elude capture for long.

But there are always two ways of making it on the air: to be spectacular, and to be spectacularly bad. The second group was more fun to watch anyway. Why be Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood or that one ventriloquist guy whose puppets all seemed oddly racist (get new dummies, Terry Fator! Then you wont have to sit there with a pained expression while they rant about the people taking our jobs), when you could be short, sweatshirted William Hung, wrangling his painfully earnest way through She Bangs! or Leonid the Magnificent, dropping his equipment as the big red Xs buzzed above him, weeping profusely and promising that next time, I will be perfect? Sure, on one path lay Kellys international fame and Terrys bucket-loads of gold, but on the other lay Williams Christmas album, Hung for the Holidays. Now that was what I called a career trajectory. That was a story!

And that was going to be my way in.

I was going to seek failure outon the national stage, with a glowing neon X attached.

The plan was simple. I just had to become dramatically, unquestionably, horrifically bad at something. I had to get myself in front of the judges and flop like no one theyd seen before.