FOR as long as I can remember, I’ve been known as a man who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Not suffering fools gladly has sort of become my trademark, the first thing people think of when my name comes up. You know how Tonya Harding will always be known for the time Nancy Kerrigan got bashed in the knee with a metal rod? Well, replace “metal rod” with “not suffering fools gladly” and that’s me in a nutshell.
At first, I was flattered that people thought I didn’t suffer fools gladly. Not suffering fools gladly implies expertise and discernment, since knowing a fool when you see one is a pretty crucial prerequisite for not suffering them, gladly or otherwise. Plus, not suffering fools gladly suggests that you have far, far better things to do with your time—important things, even. People who think I don’t suffer fools gladly probably imagine that I’m husbanding every free moment to find a solution to global warming or to sort out that intractable Social Security mess. In reality, I spend most of my spare time eating Nilla Wafers and watching ESPN2, but my reputation as someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly keeps that evocative image at bay.
As flattering as it seemed at first, though, this whole not-suffering-fools-gladly thing has really come back to bite me on the ass. People keep a wary distance from me, and it’s no great mystery why: Your average person doesn’t enjoy being pegged as a fool. As my reputation for not suffering fools gladly has ballooned, I’ve become a social pariah, untouchable and unapproachable. I’m rarely invited to parties, but, when I am, I’m really easy to pick out: I’m the one surrounded by the twenty-foot “no-fool” zone.
Sometimes, in my darker moments, I wonder how this business about my not suffering fools gladly ever got started. You see, it’s completely untrue. Not only do I suffer fools; I suffer them gladly. I suffer them so gladly, in fact, that it really can’t be considered suffering at all. In my book, fools represent entertainment in its purest form. The time you spend talking to fools, I’ve often said, should be subtracted from your time in Heaven. Back in the good old days, when people at parties still talked to me, I used to hope and pray that I’d wind up talking to a fool. And when he’d mispronounce the title of a foreign film, or misuse the subjunctive mood, or get the name of a Plantagenet monarch wrong, did I “suffer”? I’d hardly call laughing until bourbon came out my nose “suffering.” And it wasn’t the supercilious laughter of someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, either. It was the roar of a guy who knows he’s just hit the hilarity mother lode.
But, sadly, those innocent days are long gone. My reputation for not suffering fools gladly precedes me now, and when people meet me they just zip up their pie-holes and turn tail. I’d love to take them by the lapels, look them in the eye, and say, “I know you think I don’t suffer you, but I do—I suffer you gladly.” But I never get the chance. The fact is, fools don’t suffer me gladly, and the irony’s not lost on me one bit.
2001