by Rob Gunther
But it didn’t matter, because the next year I started high school. A clean slate. All I had to do was make sure I severed all contact with anybody from grade school and it would be a done deal. Goodbye, Robbie, hello Rob G.
And for the most part, the reinvention was a success. Every once in a while Robbie resurfaces. Like I said, I’ll always be Robbie to my family. I used to try and fight it, but it was a losing battle. It’s like I’ll never stop calling my little sister Jessie, even though she hates being called Jessie. These aren’t even conscious decision, those family dynamics impossible to shape.
But the rest of the world is totally mine to mold. And I have to constantly be on guard. My life will be going great, I’ll have a solid group of friends, no problems, when out of nowhere someone might drop Robbie in, trying to be overly informal, joking around. Maybe somebody else will hear it and it’ll spread. Pretty soon everyone will be calling me Robbie, and I’ll be feeling like a little kid again, and so I’ll call all of my friends in for a group meeting, and I’ll say, “Thanks for coming everyone. The reason I called you all in here is because you’ve been calling me Robbie a lot lately. I just want to state, for the record, that my name isn’t Robbie, it’s Rob, and I would appreciate it a lot if you didn’t call me Robbie ever again. Thank you.”
Everyone will stare at me and say, “You actually called a meeting over this?” And they’ll laugh and think it a little crazy to go through all of this trouble over a nickname. And it’ll have the unintended effect of actually strengthening the nickname, because now nobody can stop talking about that stupid group meeting I called, how I really need to get over myself. And then I’ll have to get a whole new group of friends and reinvent myself all over again. It’s taxing after a while.
One time I got my sister Emily’s boyfriend a job at the restaurant where I worked. He didn’t know any better, and because he’s dating my sister, he came in and said that Robbie told him to come in. And everybody at work was like “Robbie?” And it just snowballed, everybody calling me Robbie. So I thought, OK, if I address it, it’s just going to get stronger. So I pretended to ignore it this time. Like any time somebody called me “Robbie!” I would have absolutely no reaction. But people must have caught on to this also because they’d be like, “Hey Robbie, how come you get so quiet and red-faced every time somebody calls you Robbie?”
So I had to quit that job also. And now I’m at another job. I guess it could be worse. Robbie’s a lot better than Bobby. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody in real life who goes by Bobby. It’s like a cartoon character’s name. And I’m not a cartoon character. I’m a real-life person. An adult. A real-life adult man. And my name is Rob, not Robbie, definitely not Robby. Got it? Cool?
I just had a great idea for a tattoo
I’m trying to think of a cool tattoo. I really want to have a one done, but I’m never able to think of anything cool. Not cool enough, anyway. If I do think of something cool, I always wind up thinking it’s cool for maybe an hour or so, and I’ll get really hyped up about it. But the excitement eventually wears off, and I’m left with this vague feeling, like I had a great thought somewhere in my head but I’ve lost it. Maybe I’ll never be happy with a tattoo idea because I’m constantly overthinking it.
A while ago I had this plan: the next time I found myself really excited about a tattoo idea, I’d just go and seize that moment. I’d run off to a tattoo parlor that second and have it tattooed immediately. Just doing it, just actually going out and getting it done, it would eliminate that inevitable diminishment of enthusiasm. Maybe about a week or two later, I had it, a really great idea. So I ran out the door, but I got stuck in heavy, heavy traffic on the way there, and while I was stopped at a light, a little voice popped inside my head somewhere and whispered, “Rob, is your idea really that cool?” And that was all it took to send my attitude into a death spiral of self-doubt and eventual apathy.
A few years ago, I decided that I would have my whole body tattooed. But it wouldn’t be a design or anything, it would be a tattoo of a single color, a perfect tan. This wasn’t concept art or anything like that. I wasn’t really trying to make a statement either. My reasons were practical. I’m pasty white. I didn’t want to really tan, like sun, like sunburns and stuff. Tanning machines were out of the question, and I didn’t want to spray-tan either, that’s a terrible lifestyle choice. You’ve got to join a spray-tan club, right? You’re going to like, get to know the spray-tanning people. And eventually someone’s going to take a photo and put it on Facebook and even you won’t be able to deny that, yeah, you look orange. But how else do you commit to having a great, natural looking tan all year round? That was the idea. I figured it would make a ton of sense to tattoo myself a permanent bronze.
I was worried that the tattoo artist might be skeptical, but it turned out she didn’t give a shit what I did to my body, and so she started on my back. After an hour or so, she had completed an area only about the size of a baseball. I didn’t anticipate it taking that long, and I was getting bored. I started complaining and asking how much longer it would be. She told me I should figure probably several sessions over the course of a couple of months.
“What?” I asked. “That’s totally crazy.” And then I asked how much all of these sessions might cost. And she told me how much, and I realized that I didn’t even have enough money to cover the session I was currently in the middle of.
So I did what I always do in situations like that: I faked a seizure until somebody called 911 and an ambulance came to take me away.
When I got to the hospital, I played dumb. The doctor checked me out and, obviously, couldn’t find anything wrong.
“Except,” he said, “I’m a little concerned about a patch of skin on your back. I think we should perform a biopsy to make sure everything is OK.”
And I started freaking out. Skin cancer? But I’m always so good about staying out of the sun. That’s when I realized that he must have been talking about the unfinished tan tattoo on my back. I started laughing and told him all about my plan. He listened politely and then told me to stop, that he couldn’t, in good conscience, not object to me having every square inch of my body tattooed. I told him not to worry, that it wasn’t going to happen anyway, because I realized too late that I couldn’t afford the time or money necessary to complete the project. Then some hospital staff member came over, asking me to fill out some forms, to let him see my insurance card.
“Insurance?” I said. “I don’t have any health insurance.”
And the staff member said, “OK, well, we need your information so we can send you a bill.”
And I said, “Bill?”
So I did what I always do in situations like this and faked another seizure. But nobody called an ambulance this time because I was already in a hospital, surrounded by doctors. They immediately grabbed my flailing limbs and belted me onto a stretcher.
“This is perfect timing,” I heard one doctor say. “Let’s run some tests while he’s having this seizure. We should be able to get to the bottom of it.” And I knew that I should have stopped at that moment, the flailing around, the making spit bubbles come out of my mouth, the urinating my pants, but I couldn’t think of a way out of the situation that didn’t involve a seizure within a seizure.
They ran the tests and found out that I was faking the whole thing. I kept denying everything – denying, denying, denying. While I was faking the second seizure, they must have grabbed my wallet to notify my next of kin. They found my address and filled out all of the forms for me. Now tons of bills keep piling up on my door. My wages are automatically garnished by the state. Goddamn big government. There’s also something about a fraud charge, but I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on with that.
I just had a great idea for a tattoo. It would be around my arm. From a distance, it would look like a thin red ring, but if you moved in and took a closer look, it wouldn’t be a ring at all, it would be The Flash
running supersonic laps. It’s not a new idea. I think I’ve had it before, but I forgot about it, or I lost that excitement that I was talking about earlier, so I don’t know. I don’t want to jump into anything else. I’ve still got that weird patch on my back. I always think, what if I get real skin cancer on the tattoo, but the dermatologist dismisses it when I explain my plan? And where am I going to get this done? It’s not like I can just show up at the same tattoo parlor, “Hey remember me? Yes? So, I’m guessing you won’t be interested in my Flash tattoo? No? Yes? No? No. OK.”
Biscuit
One time I was driving my car and I stopped at a red light. While I waited for it to turn green, this bum came out of nowhere and started smearing grease all over my windshield. I’d heard of this trick before – the guy expected me to hand over a dollar or two before he’d wipe the glass clean – but I thought this practice had been largely phased out years ago when the city cracked down on street side frontier entrepreneurism. Sure enough, the guy came around to the driver’s side window and held out his hand. I said to myself, you know what? You’re not getting pushed around by anyone. Not today. And I told the guy to take a hike.
The cars behind me started honking, so I assumed the light had turned green, but I couldn’t really tell, because that guy had done such a good job of greasing up the windshield. I put my foot on the gas and immediately crashed into something.
It had to be a police horse. What a mess. I got out of the car. The horse was on the ground, clearly in agony. Its front leg was broken. These two cops were just staring at me, mouths wide open. One of them started to cry and knelt down to try and comfort the animal.
“Biscuit!” he wailed, “Oh my poor, precious Biscuit! You’ll be OK! Everything will be OK! Just hold on, I’ll …”
BAM! The other cop took out his pistol and put the horse down with one shot to the head.
“Joe! How could you?” the first officer sobbed. “We could have saved him! We could have … Biscuit!”
“Jesus, Johnny, I had to! You know police horse protocol. Broken leg. It’s the same as at the races. We had no choice!” Now the second cop was crying also. They both collapsed into each other’s arms, hysterical.
The car, surprisingly, hadn’t really sustained that much damage from the horse. I mean, yeah, there was a dent, but it was totally drivable. With a rag I found in the backseat, I tried to wipe the windshield clear so I could make a subtle getaway while the cops consoled each other, but the grease was just way too thick, it wasn’t coming off.
Then the officers both turned their attention toward me and said in unison, “You!”
“Listen boys …” I raised my hands out in front of me. “I can explain.”
I turned to point at the homeless guy with the squeegee, but he was gone. The next thing I knew I was in handcuffs standing before a municipal judge. Some court-appointed attorney stood next to me, whispering in my ear something about a plea bargain. I tried to tell him about the windshield, how it wasn’t my fault, but he seemed totally overworked and completely uninterested. If I agreed to a deal, my license would be revoked and I’d have to pay a hefty fine. But I said to myself, again, I said, you’re not getting pushed around. Not today.
I told the judge I’d like to waive my right to an attorney and that I’d be representing myself. The lawyer shrugged and walked away as I began setting up my defense. The judge banged his gavel and sentenced me to three months behind bars.
When I got out of jail, I discovered that I had been replaced at work. Since I had no way of paying my rent, my landlord busted into my place and threw out all of my stuff. I found myself wandering the streets, unable to come to terms with how my very normal life had taken such a bizarre twist. Days blurred into nights, and I feared I was starting to lose my concept of time and date. I had a full beard. My one pair of clothes was reduced to rags.
After days of begging, I finally saved up close to five bucks in spare change. I decided I needed to turn things around. I used the money to buy a squeegee and some Windex at a ninety-nine cent store. I figured I just needed to clean windshields for a while to save up some money for a new shirt and a razor.
The light turned red, and I approached a car. I got the windshield all dirty and then walked around to the driver’s side. But the guy in the front seat was shaking his head. He whispered to himself, “Not today. Not today.” And I realized all too late what was going on. There was still time to change everything. I tried to clean off his window, to get his attention, to tell him to hold on for just a second. But the grease was too thick and wasn’t coming off. Somebody behind him honked, and he ran right through the light, right into Biscuit’s front leg, right into our twisted, broken future.
I made a break for it, but I got stopped by some different cops a few blocks away. They told me it wasn’t the nineties anymore. They told me I couldn’t go around bothering drivers with squeegees. I started freaking out, telling them about the horse, about the car, about the plea bargain, about how my landlord threw all of my stuff out. They told me to stop flailing around, to stop resisting arrest, to stop asking what the date was. One of them took out a Taser. I lost control of my bodily functions as the electric barbs dug into my skin.
Universal translator
I think probably the best ability any human being could ask for would be the power to understand and speak fluently in any language. You could jump in at any point in any conversation and just completely amaze whoever you’re talking to with your grip on their native tongue. You could interrupt complete strangers mid-conversation and correct their grammar.
I can just imagine myself standing on the subway next to somebody talking to somebody else in some exotic language, some distant dialect of a niche Creole spoken by only a few scattered mountainous communities in a faraway land. And the two people are thinking to themselves, we have to be the only people in this city that speak this language. And actually they’re not thinking it, they don’t think anything. So sure are they that nobody has even a slight chance of understanding them, all of their thinking is done out loud.
But I’ll be standing right there, listening to them boast about their total anonymity, their freedom to express themselves and opine and make fun of everyone else. And I’ll just stare at them, right at them. Directly at one of them, right in the eyes. And I’ll hold my gaze until it gets really uncomfortable for everyone standing around us. The two of them will have stopped talking to each other, and the person’s friend might say something to me in English, like, “Hey buddy. What’s your problem?”
And I’ll answer back in his native dialect. “Nothing’s the matter. Nothing at all. Just listening to some friendly conversation. By the way, you should watch out for your reflexive pronouns. I’ve noticed you used them incorrectly three times in the past ten sentences.” And I’ll watch as the blood drains from both of their faces as they stand there in shock.
One of them will say, “But … how could you … that’s impossible … I … I,” speechless from the insanity of the situation. And I’ll just stand there and smile. Finally I’ll get off at the next stop and walk away. “Wait!” they’ll shout. “We need to know! Who are you?”
But I’ll lose them in the crowd, leaving them to wonder for the rest of their lives, to try to make sense of that random guy on the train that somehow spoke that crazy language better than they did.
That’s what I would do on my first day with this ability. I would have all of these other plans with what to do on my second and third days, but something is going to go horribly wrong, something I hadn’t considered before I imagined myself acquiring this special talent. I’ll be walking down the street after I get off of the subway, and I’ll hear all of these whispers that at first don’t seem to make any sense at all. And the intensity and the volume of this babble will ebb and flow so I’ll just try and brush it off and tell myself that, hey, you’ve just evolved further than any other human being, just try to take it all in a little bit at a time. It might calm me
down for a second, but the whispering will get louder.
And then I’ll realize where it’s coming from. Every time I pass an ATM, the noise gets stronger. Every time I’m standing too close to somebody’s cell phone or computer, I’ll pick it up, loud and clear. I’ll have realized all too late that when I had been granted the ability to understand any language, I forgot that computers consist of binary and trinary codes – their own unique sets of languages. And it will be overwhelming. I’ll have a panic attack and feel like I’m actually going to die right there on the street, so I’ll try to yell out for help, but it’s all going to come out like, “000111101011101101010010010010010010010!” and everyone will stop and look at me like I’m a lunatic.
A crowd might form, asking if I need help, thinking I’m having a stroke or a seizure or an acute crazy episode. But the group will be too diverse in origin, and I’ll be responding to a Chinese guy in Swedish and to a Lithuanian guy in Klingon and when the cops finally come and try to make sense of the situation, I’ll start babbling at them in HTML5, which they’ll mistake as some sort of a terrorist message, and I’ll be arrested and locked up and held indefinitely without ever being charged.
I’ll be in solitary somewhere, which, after the nonsense I will have gone through on the street, will at first seem like a welcome moment of peace. But then I’ll hear it, faintly at first, but ever-present, as usual. And I’ll realize that the roaches in the corner of the cell are talking incessantly, not about anything intelligent – nothing I could make a decent conversation out of – but about crumbs of food and drops of water and shadows that they can hide behind. And they’ll just talk and talk and talk and they won’t shut up. And the lock that they use to keep me behind bars is computer controlled, and it keeps saying out loud, “System: locked – system: locked,” without pause.