Column 16

As I watched the Andy Holt refugees march slowly away from their apartments on Monday, it brought to mind other refugees of power failures in recent years, and I wondered, not for the first time, just how far twenty dining dollars would go in the Sudan. With that sort of perspective, it’s difficult to raise too much ire towards our beloved Big Orange Screw, but resentment’s easy when it’s not aimed at yourself, and as I reset my clock for the fifteenth time (so to speak), I couldn’t help but expect a bit better.

I will admit, one of my first thoughts during the recent shutdowns was to wonder whether this was some thinly veiled attempt to save money on energy consumption, thus keeping tuition down or enabling some poor, downtrodden sports coach to buy another pleasure barge in the South Pacific (don’t think I haven’t seen the satellite photos, Phil). But, when it comes right down to it, something failed. UT, KUB, NBC, who knows? Conspiracy theories aside, it wasn’t intentional. Something just went wrong. And, as much as it pains me to say (although I do enjoy any excuse to up my medication), it’s an all too common fact of life.

Which is odd, because it’s rare that personal failure is sincerely discussed. We eagerly lick our chops when a politician sticks something in a hole where it shouldn’t belong (damn you Sen. Biden (D-DE), my ear is no place for your car keys!). We’re all too keen to mock sports figures, celebrities, and other drains on social priorities when they screw the proverbial pooch (or “lady/gent of the evening,” as the case may be). But when’s the last time you read a column, saw a news story, or had a conversation about personal failures? Hopefully it was last week when I, once again, was incapable of discerning the proper application of pants to body, but otherwise?

Sure, you’ll see them occasionally, stories about moral failure, relationship failure, bowel failure (censorship depending) almost invariably followed by a bit of uplifting didacticism. But how often does a cliché really help? If my friends are to be believed (and their track record indicates a resounding “Hell no”… inflammable underwear means fireproof my butt!) there will always be more fish in the sea. Even if the sea is filled with 25M hydrochloric acid right after a grizzly bear pool party, there will still be more fish than you can shake a stick at. A really, really big stick. Manufactured specifically for shaking. (It’s a lot, ok? Sheesh…)

It’s not just fish, either. There are saddles to get back on, bootstraps to pull up, and tries to be tried again and again and again until they’re more worn out than a universally applicable double entendre (that’s what she said!).

If it’s not clichés, it’s spin. Sure, you can consider failure a “new experience.” But when you’re three thousand dollars in debt, majoring in English with a minor in Turfgrass Management, and your toilet is overflowing for the third straight hour, I’d say that your “new experience” is crap (pun ever-so-emphatically intended).

And you can always try to learn from your mistakes/change your approach. I’ve been dissatisfied with the imbalance of entertainment and “point” in my columns, so I’m trying a new tone. But it’ll still be too frivolous for some, too disheartening for others, and never quite good enough for me. (That’s the thing about this “improvement” stuff: there’s always more to be done).

So I don’t leave you with an uplifting message, inspiration, or even a wry deflection, just an acknowledgement of the universality of failure. (And a salute to hot water: I never knew I loved you so until I found you had to go.)