Enjoying my irrelevance, thank goodness

The Column: 08.12.22

“You are the only person I know who gets dressed up to go to the doctor’s,” my wife told me the other day, and I pointed out to her that I was not wearing a tie, only a gray pinstripe suit and white shirt, top button open, and dark cloth shoes, not wingtips. Still she was impressed.

This is a feature of marriage to a much younger woman: her frequent wonderment. I remember Harry Truman, she grew up with LBJ. She’s a late boomer, my generation doesn’t have a name because we predate narcissism, the country was too busy fighting fascism and saving the world, they didn’t bother to hand out generational identities. My wife is astonished that when I visited my grandma on the farm and I had to get up in the night, I went to the foot of the bed and used a chamber pot. To her, this places me back in the 19th century and I don’t mind. Great things happened back then, indoor plumbing being one of them. So I wear a suit to the doctor’s to show him that he’s dealing with a historic personage, a man who carries a piece of our nation’s noble heritage, not some yo-yo or schlump

.I led a free and independent boy’s life, growing up, back before parents read books about parenting, and after my morning chores, I got on a bike and joined other boys and we played cowboys and Indians or we played Civil War, and I usually was an Indian or fought for the Confederacy, so I grew up feeling romantic about Lost Causes. As a white male novelist, I am very comfortable today; my books sell in the low four figures and this gives me the same sense of validation I got when I was nine and fought for Stonewall Jackson.

My wife grew up in a feminist household and so she is the fixer and planner, she walks into a hardware store with complete confidence, she issues crisp orders to plumbers and painters. They glance at me, sitting in a dim corner with a pad and pencil, chuckling to myself, and ask, “Do you need to run this by him?” and she says, “No, he’s an essayist.”

She runs our life while I fight for lost causes, my current one being the plague of impactfulness, the use of “impact” as a verb, mostly by millennials writing mission statements, trying to put some muscle into paragraphs of limp macaroni.

Impactfulness is the result of the flood of Canadians coming over our undefended northern border, tens of thousands of hockey players seeking warmth and music and sophistication, but bringing their Canadian censoriousness with them. Northerners have always claimed moral authority over others, the inevitable result of wall maps and their impactful verticality. I’m from Minnesota, I know about supposed moral superiority, and I know that my crusade will have the impact of wet Kleenex trying to stop a speeding locomotive, that a younger generation is impacting like a steam hammer, or imagines it is, and “impactful” is gaining popularity and my opposition is totally irrelevant.

Well, I enjoy my irrelevance.

I got a letter from a candidate pleading for $25, accusing his opponent of getting millions from wealthy celebs such as Ryan Seacrest and Kendall Jenner and I was pleased that I have no idea who those two are. I am not a TV watcher, I don’t tune in talk shows, I don’t walk around with earbuds. I watched the Jan. 6 hearings, which were riveting television, and I watch baseball, which Abner Doubleday designed for TV. In fact, it’s better on TV because you can turn off the announcers, silence the crowd, walk away during an endless inning and make yourself popcorn with real butter on it and a glass of ice water, chat with your dear wife who is reading through a plumbing supply catalog, step outside and look at the Milky Way, and return to the TV for the 10th inning, the team at bat awarded a baserunner on 2nd, a new rule that makes great sense. (And how many new rules can you say that about?)

It’s a good life, the Seacrestless and Jenner-free life, the woman in charge of practical matters as God intended her to be, the old man penning an essay as the batter lofts a fly to right and the baserunner tags and takes third. Our shortstop comes to bat, swings at the second pitch and makes impact and the runner scores and I’m happy. There’s injustice in the world and plastic particles poisoning the dolphins but I’m okay for now. We’ll get to the rest tomorrow.

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