“But what are you trying to say?”

I love my questioner and his question. He cares enough to take me seriously. Many people don’t take anybody seriously, even themselves. Hey-ho, we are all billiard balls colliding, veering – or ants on an anthill – what’s the big deal? Life is made to be enjoyed, not brooded about – so lighten up, fella!

Humanity may be divided between the serious and those who aren’t. The division’s unequal. Unserious people I’ve little time for. I value them as slightly as they seem to value life. I neither hate nor condemn – they can live as they like – just let them go their way and I mine.

Seriousness – my focus this morning – is not the same as intelligence. Many intelligent people are irretrievably trivial. Have I told you the story about the brain surgeon on the boat? This goes back more than fifteen years, before Jane and I were married. Jane was guest speaker on a luxury cruise of the South Seas, so she got to bring along her squeeze. The South Seas are among those destinations you’d maybe like to visit but are low on your bucket list. I hate that term “bucket list” but it’s crept into the language and made a place for itself, so it’s hard to evict. It spread, like a virus, from a movie of the same name and refers to the things folks hope to achieve before they “kick the bucket.” My OED isn’t sure where “kick the bucket” derives from. Some say that “a person standing on a pail or bucket with their head in a slip noose would kick the bucket so as to commit suicide.” Others argue this “bucket” is not the predictable pail, but “a beam from which a pig is hung by its feet prior to being slaughtered… to kick the bucket originally signified the pig’s death throes.” The lexical whizzes at OED, who debate such hypotheses, have yet to achieve a confident consensus, so take your pick or derive your own fantasy etymology as a party pastime.

But about that brain surgeon. Because Jane was a distinguished guest speaker she and I were seated at the captain’s table, where we were joined by passengers who’d paid the most for their cabins. Some of these passengers were spending their foreseeable future on this giant boat, adrift as the Flying Dutchman. I wanted to hear from the brain surgeon beside me his story – why brain surgery, the field’s development, his outlook on America, why this cruise, etc. Everybody has a story worth hearing if they’d only tell it. The surgeon, who’d taught – I guess with distinction – at a prestigious university, wanted to discuss… the Trivial Pursuit club, which met daily on such-a-such a deck at nine a.m., don’t forget now, I had no idea the fun, laughs, nutty back-and-forth… On and on, he recruited me – volubly, interminably – from appetizer to main course to… I glanced at Jane frantically, who was nodding flatteringly to the captain, who was likewise babbling on (as in Babble-on).

Latching our cabin door – finally! – I screamed as loud as I could scream. “I can’t take one more meal next to that airhead, I can’t, I’d sooner jump!” I was sweating, crazed, this entrapment – in a Hieronymus Bosch hallucination, only worse – for four more days! – made death feel preferable, no kidding. That this was the takeaway from a life of responsibility and rewards… Trivial Pursuit? Thereafter we hid in the ship’s alternative eateries, furtively dining a deux.

What I’m trying to say is… I have no idea – but I’m trying. Seriously.