Sometimes I screw up. Here – in my tidy six-hundred-word plot. To others, my mistake may appear trivial, negligible, not an error, no big deal; yet it sticks in mind like the thorn in the lion’s paw. The memory wakes, stabs, mocks. How could I have!

            My response is disproportionate, you might think. I think so myself. I am “overreacting” – a curious verb, under cross-examination. A misspelling, a semi-colon instead of a dash, a fuzzy antecedent, the presence or absence of a paragraph – c’mon, Carll, I chivvy myself, the world has bigger worries and you bigger fish to fry. I know, I know, I concede, only I can’t get this niggling idiocy out of my head. How could I have been so – what? Negligent? Careless? Dumb? No, I cannot forgive myself – will eventually, sure – all memories fade – but not yet. I will beat myself up, gnash my teeth, I can’t help it. Only I’ll shut up about it, even to Jane, for I really am being too absurd.

            I remember from forty years ago – yes, forty! – a restaurant where I used to take customers to lunch. It had high pretensions, its proprietor was a chef from France, its food was good, better than other local options. I enjoyed eating there. It flattered my customers to be invited there. Plus, the chef traded his food for advertising in my newspaper, so the cost felt like nothing. I was a regular, a friendly acquaintance of the owner, if not a friend.

            Then one day there appeared in my soup a fingernail. Quite a large fingernail. Busy with conversation, my guest didn’t notice my chagrin, which I quickly masked. That I didn’t finish my soup I ascribed to being “off my feed.” We ended lunch with the usual smiles. I never ate there again. A while after, I learned the owner had impregnated a waitress (he had a family), failed to pay his taxes, and decamped to Martinique. I wasn’t surprised.

            Sometimes a fingernail isn’t just a fingernail or a semi-colon a semi-colon; it’s an indictment, which strips our pretensions and reveals who we “really are.” Serious practitioners of this art, whatever the art may be, would not fumble thus! We may forgive ourselves more consequential errors in areas in which we don’t specialize; shit happens, right? But this is “what we do,” what we’re “known for,” our identity somehow. A golfer, otherwise middling, takes pride in his short game, then misses an easy putt. How could he! He cannot show his face, he’s so ashamed.

            “What we do” is who we are. What we do may be a sport or interest, not our work. Others may not respect our fixation (“You collect Victorian cigar-cutters… I see.”). But somehow, for reasons we mightn’t fully comprehend, this is our “claim to fame,” where we “hang our hat.” When folks ask us what “makes us tick,” it’s this.

            Pride differs from vanity. Vanity focuses on others’ opinions of us; pride on how we rate ourselves. Vanity may bandy unmerited praise; pride, knowing better, shakes its head sadly. Disparage my cooking, no worries – though I cook, I’m no cook; deride my prose and I – I – I don’t know what!

            I have little vanity and loads of pride – about what I’m doing now. This is my thing. And if I can’t do this to my satisfaction, if I don’t meet my mark, well, shoot me. Your compliments encourage, every “like”, thumbs-up, and smiley emoji – thanks! But if I bore or bewilder myself, who – or what – am I!

            “The only shame is to have none,” said Pascal.