Lessons From Lucy

by Dave Barry

  I didn’t have an older brother, but I had friends who did, and we spent many hours enhancing our understanding of human sexuality by staring at heavily airbrushed photographs of naked women with breasts like weather balloons. We were aflame with adolescent hormonal urges, and highly prone to spontaneous boners, which could strike anywhere, anytime, even in the teeming halls of Harold C. Crittenden Junior High School, where you had to be ready at a moment’s notice to hold your Earth science textbook in an unnatural frontal position to hide the tent pole in your khakis.

  So my innocent boyhood was over. Now I was interested—really interested—in girls, especially cute ones. The problem was, cute girls were not interested in me, at least not as boyfriend material. They were interested in the cute guys, the cool guys, the athletes, the studs, none of which I was. I was the small funny kid with glasses. At parties, I could get the cute girls to laugh, but when it was time to play Seven Minutes in Heaven, they always wound up going into the closet with cute guys. I never had any minutes in heaven. I didn’t have a nanosecond in heaven.

  I came to hate the way I looked. Before puberty, I paid basically zero attention to my appearance. But I spent the vast majority of seventh, eighth and ninth grades staring at the bathroom mirror through my thick Macy’s Optical Department lenses, wishing that somebody different were staring back. I wanted desperately to be bigger, handsomer, studlier, more like the guys who the cute girls were interested in.

  You’re probably thinking: How very sad for you, Dave, but did you ever stop wallowing in self-pity long enough to realize that there were nice, smart, funny girls at Harold C. Crittenden Junior High who, like you, didn’t happen to inherit the preferred-appearance genes? Did it ever occur to you to be interested in them?

  Of course not! I was a self-absorbed adolescent nitwit. I hereby apologize to the girls of Harold C. whom I never wanted to go into the closet with, not that you necessarily would have wanted to go in there with me.

  Eventually I got older and, if not wiser, at least less stupid. My self-esteem improved, and I got better at appreciating qualities in other people beyond simply how they look. Also I got contact lenses.

  But I still have emotional scars from those hideous adolescent years. I remain, after all this time, fundamentally insecure about my appearance. I’m still intimidated by really good-looking people. Intellectually, I know the whole concept of “good-looking” is, in modern times, arbitrary and unfair. I know it’s ridiculous that millions of people are obsessed to the point of worship with, for example, Kim Kardashian, who has the genetically desirable waist-to-hip ratio but also the IQ of a lawn ornament. I know that the attributes we should value most in other people are nonphysical: intelligence, sense of humor, honesty, wisdom, sense of humor, courage, generosity, sense of humor and of course sense of humor.

  I know these things, intellectually.

  And yet, when I see an attractive woman—defined as “a woman who is by no means as attractive as my wife”—some primitive Fred part of my brain goes, quote, whoa. If I am being totally honest, I will admit that I’m more interested in talking to that woman than to a woman who does not elicit the whoa. I’m not proud of this; I am in fact ashamed of it. But I can’t deny it.

  And I don’t think I’m exceptional. I think most of us humans have trouble disregarding physical appearance. Whatever genetic tendencies we have are constantly reinforced by a culture that is utterly obsessed with beauty, a culture that bombards us relentlessly in every medium with images of the preferred physical template. One glance at almost any movie or TV show and we know who the heroes are: the hot people.

  Here’s an example that I find particularly annoying: Beauty and the Beast. In theory, this story preaches the right message: looks don’t matter; character matters. The heroine, Belle, who is of course beautiful, overcomes her revulsion at the Beast’s hideous appearance and learns to love him for his inner self. Which sounds fine, except that in the end, the Beast turns back into a handsome prince. It’s a Happy Ending! Featuring an ideal level of facial dimorphism!

  In other words, the message was complete bullshit. If it had been serious, the Beast would have stayed a beast, and he and Belle would have produced unusual-looking hybrid offspring who, when they reached adolescence, would have returned to the castle sobbing after parties because they weren’t chosen for Seven Minutes in Heaven.

  I have the same problem with the fairy tale of the Ugly Duckling, whose life sucks because he is ugly, but then, in the Happy Ending, he transforms into a beautiful swan. Yay for him, but what about all the ugly ducklings that transform into ugly ducks?

  Of course real ducks, as opposed to fairy-tale ducks, probably don’t care that much about physical appearance. Animals generally don’t seem to be nearly as picky about looks as we are. They’re more like, “Hey, we both belong to the same species; that’s good enough for me.”

  Which brings us back to Lucy and her admirer, Brutus. Or Lucy and pretty much any other dog—or, for that matter, any human. Lucy doesn’t judge you by what you look like. And in that regard, she’s a better person than I am.

  So here’s the Lucy lesson of this chapter:

  Try Not to Judge People by Their Looks, and Don’t Obsess Over Your Own.

  I say “try” because I think this is a difficult lesson to put into practice, as it goes against our biological programming. Also, there are times when it’s OK to judge by appearance; if you meet a man with a swastika tattooed on his forehead, you don’t need to seek out his sensitive side.

  But most of the time looks don’t tell a person’s story. Life has taught me that there are plenty of beautiful people who are shallow and boring, and there are plenty of nonbeautiful people who are deep and fascinating and fun. Which of course means they’re the truly beautiful ones. The trick to finding them is to be looking with more than just your eyes.

  As I say, I’ve gotten better about this over the years. And I spend a lot less time than I used to fretting about my own appearance. One of the positive aspects of aging is that, as you and your friends get old, you pretty much give up on being hot; you’re happy just being not dead yet.

  Still, it’s a struggle. Fred and Mabel still lurk in my genes; it’s going to take a conscious effort to overcome them.

  But I’m trying. I’m trying to look at everyone differently. And when I say “everyone,” I mean to include Brutus. Lucy’s absolutely right: He’s a beautiful dog. They’re all beautiful dogs.

  * * *

  21 For all I know this is actually true.

  22 Har har.

  THE SIXTH LESSON FROM LUCY

  While I was writing this book, Florida got nailed by Hurricane Irma. I want to state right up front that my family and I came through it OK. I’m not seeking pity, and I don’t want you to think I’m a sniveling whiner. (I am a sniveling whiner; I just don’t want you to think so.)

  I know that the hurricane season was unimaginably worse for people in other areas, especially Puerto Rico. I also know that other parts of the world have their own kinds of natural disasters—earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, the New Jersey Turnpike—which can be just as bad as hurricanes, or worse.

  But a hurricane is a special kind of torture. A lot of it is mental torture, but it can be excruciating. And the anxiety never goes completely away, because when a hurricane season ends, you know that another one is coming, and that eventually, if you stay in Florida long enough, you WILL get nailed.

  “So why do you stay there?” non-Floridians often ask.

  For one thing, we usually don’t get nailed. We can go years between nailings. And during those years there will be many winter mornings when we turn on the TV news at breakfast and see a headline like BLIZZARD BLASTS NORTHEAST, with video of cars skidding off icy roads and wretched parka-clad people staggering through waist-high snowdrifts pursued by wolves. In Times Square.

  We Floridians see this, and then—as we look outside and see the sun shining down from a bright-blue sky on palm
trees swaying in the gentle tropical breeze—we cannot help but smile and take a celebratory sip from our margarita. Yes, we’re having a margarita for breakfast; that’s how happy we are not to be up north. We wonder why you Northerners stay up there, where there’s no uncertainty about the misery of winter: you’re going to get it every year, for months at a time, forever. We’ll take the occasional hurricane over that anytime.

  Anytime, that is, except when an actual hurricane is heading our way. Then we start to get nervous. Then we panic. Then we go insane.

  I blame the TV news people. Oh, they mean well. They want to inform us and keep us safe. They want to Serve the Community! But what they always do, in the end, is drive the community batshit crazy.

  It starts with the Perky TV Weatherperson. In South Florida this is usually an attractive young woman wearing an extremely form-fitting cocktail dress and approximately forty-five pounds of eyeliner. On most days the Perky Weatherperson’s job is to tell us, via a visual-extravaganza presentation lasting upwards of five minutes and involving a vast array of technology including radar and satellite imagery, dazzling graphics, a green screen and many, many statistics, that it is going to be warm and humid with a chance of thunderstorms. We already know this, of course; Florida has been warm and humid with a chance of thunderstorms basically every day for several million years. If the TV station wanted to cut costs, it could simply record a Perky Weatherperson forecast and replay it forever, using computerized effects to vary the color of her cocktail dress.

  So most of the time we Floridians are paying more attention to the weather forecaster than to her forecast. But our attitude changes radically when a hurricane is coming.

  It starts when the hurricane is maybe ten days away. We notice that the Perky Weatherperson, all of a sudden, has a frowny face. She’s showing us a map of the Caribbean with a little hurricane symbol and a cone showing its expected path. The cone is pointing roughly in our direction.

  Now the Perky Weatherperson has our attention. She shows us computer models, with lines indicating where various computers (some of which have apparently been smoking crack) predict the hurricane will ultimately go. The lines swarm all over the map; some head toward Mexico, some toward the US mainland, some toward Bermuda, with maybe one or two making direct hits on Iceland. Basically the computers think the hurricane could go anywhere. Including Florida.

  “We’ll be keeping an eye on this,” says the Perky Weatherperson.

  At this point we’re starting to feel nervous, but we’re not yet panicking. We’re assuming that the hurricane will go somewhere else. In fact, we are fervently hoping for this. This is one of the ugly truths about hurricanes: you root for them to hit other people. You don’t admit this, of course. But if a hurricane is getting close, and it looks like it’s going to either hit Miami or veer north and nail Palm Beach, I guarantee you that everybody in each of these cities is praying that it will whack the other one.

  Over the next few days everybody gets more nervous as the hurricane creeps closer and the Perky Weatherperson gets frownier. Now the other TV news people are getting involved, offering helpful hurricane-preparedness tips such as:

  • Make sure you have enough food, water and batteries to last for a week after the hurricane passes.

  • Fill your car with gas and get some cash.

  • Remove yard debris and get ready to put up your hurricane shutters.

  • You are GOING TO DIE.

  They don’t say that last tip out loud, but you can see it in their frowns.

  Now the hurricane map is on the TV all the time. The cone is getting closer, and the computer models, even the ones on crack, are starting to agree that Florida is a likely target. This is when we Floridians go from nervousness to panic. We rush to our local Publix supermarket, which is mobbed with other panicking Floridians, and we buy as many items as we can cram into our shopping cart, and then we fill another cart. We buy enough bottled water to fill an Olympic pool. We buy whatever batteries have not already been grabbed. We have been known to buy nine-volt batteries even though we have nothing at home that uses nine-volt batteries, because the TV people keep telling us we need to have batteries.

  All of us buy bleach. We don’t know why. I believe that many years ago a shrewd thinker in the Clorox marketing department came up with the idea of starting the rumor that it was vital to have bleach in a hurricane. So now it’s a tradition among panicked Floridians to grab a large bottle of Clorox and lug it home, even though (a) we already have at least one large bottle of Clorox at home, and (b) we have no earthly idea what purpose bleach is supposed to serve in a hurricane. We put the new Clorox bottle on the shelf next to our previous Clorox bottles and our nine-volt batteries. Preparedness!

  Mainly we buy food. We buy tuna and Spam and sandwich makings and canned soup and many snacks in the form of candy and chips and enough granola bars and peanut-butter crackers to supply a cruise ship for six months at sea. We buy food that we would never buy if our brains were functioning properly. For example, as Irma is approaching, Michelle buys lentils. We never eat lentils; she has never cooked lentils. I am not totally certain what lentils are. They look like a bag of gravel. I ask Michelle why she bought lentils, and she tells me it’s because they don’t spoil. I am tempted to note that the same could also be said of, for example, linoleum. But I do not, because Michelle would not see the humor. She has gone insane. We have all gone insane.

  At this point the hurricane is still three days away, but it’s all anybody can think about. We are definitely in the cone. The cone is everywhere on TV, including Depends commercials. The TV news people are frowning so hard that their forehead makeup sometimes bursts into flames.

  We spend a day putting up shutters and bringing in loose objects from our yard, because we have been told countless times by the frowning TV people that during the storm these could become Deadly Missiles. We bring everything inside. We bring in filthy insect-infested potted plants that have been festering and rotting in the subtropical swelter of our yard for years. They are disgusting, but we welcome them into our home because otherwise we fear that they will become airborne Planters of Doom, hurtling through the neighborhood and crashing through somebody’s wall in a deadly hail of ceramic shards and irate millipedes.

  You think that’s crazy, right? I agree! It’s crazy! That’s my point. We have gone completely insane.

  Now the hurricane is two days away. On the TV news they’re showing us video of desperate people lining up at Home Depot to buy plywood. We wonder: Should we go to Home Depot and line up to buy plywood? We already have window protection, so we don’t know what we would DO with the plywood, any more than we know what to do with the bleach. But still the worrying thought nags at us: The hurricane is coming and we have no plywood. WE HAVE NO PLYWOOD!

  Now the hurricane is one day away. We are done preparing; we have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Schools, businesses, stores and restaurants are all closed. We are nervous and bored at the same time. We feel helpless, just sitting around. We want to take action.

  And so we do. Specifically, we eat. It is a statistical fact that the average Florida household consumes 93 percent of its emergency post-hurricane food reserves before the hurricane actually arrives. I think this might be a primitive survival instinct: our bodies want to become much heavier, so that the hurricane winds will be unable to pick us up and turn us into Deadly Missiles. Whatever the cause, we spend the last pre-hurricane day eating our food supply, starting with the most desirable items and munching our way down the hierarchy, as follows:

  1. Candy

  2. Cookies

  3. Chips

  4. Sandwiches

  5. Tuna

  6. Soup

  7. Spam

  8. Potted plants

  9. Cannibalism

  10. Lentils

  Now the hurricane is only hours away. The TV news people are receiving on-air forehead Botox transfusions from fifty-five-gallon drums. Every few minutes th
ey cut away to one of their excited reporters standing on a beach, wearing a rain slicker with the station logo on it. The excited reporters always make two observations:

  1. The wind is starting to pick up!

  2. Everybody should stay away from this beach that I am standing on!

  These observations are, even by TV news standards, remarkably idiotic. But they are part of the traditional Kabuki theater of hurricane coverage in the hours just before the storm. We Floridians find them almost comforting as we stare at the TV screen and chew, cowlike, on our post-hurricane food reserves.

  Night falls. Outside it’s getting windy and rainy, but the brunt of the storm is still not here. To pass the time, we decide to watch a DVD of the 1958 film South Pacific, which tells the story of a group of plucky World War II American naval personnel on a South Pacific island who thwart the invading Japanese troops by staging elaborate musical numbers.

  JAPANESE SCOUT (peering at the American base through binoculars): I don’t like this one bit.

  SECOND JAPANESE SCOUT: What is it?

  FIRST SCOUT: Take a look!

  SECOND SCOUT (peering through binoculars): It’s an American sailor . . . He’s wearing a grass skirt and . . . is that a coconut-shell brassiere?

  FIRST SCOUT: They’re up to something! We need to tell headquarters!

  SECOND SCOUT: Wait, how come we’re speaking English?

  South Pacific is a fine musical, and it helps us take our minds off Irma for a couple of hours. We hum along with the show tunes, munching our post-hurricane food reserves in a more relaxed manner.

  Then the DVD ends.

  Then Irma arrives.

  She blows hard all night long. She blows like a banshee for twelve solid hours. As a professional writer, I am required by union rules to describe the hurricane as sounding like a freight train. And it does, sort of. But Irma sounds more like a huge, clumsy ghost, moaning and howling and making loud thumping and crashing sounds in the dark. What is truly weird is that, over the howl of the hurricane, we can hear a very loud chorus of . . . frogs. Ordinarily we never hear frogs, but during the hurricane, with monsoon rains fire-hosing against our windows and wind gusts approaching one hundred miles an hour, the frogs are croaking their lungs out, as if to say, “THIS IS OUR TIME, BABY! WE’RE PARTYING AMPHIBIAN STYLE! WE’RE POOPING ON YOUR PATIO! WE’RE LICKING THE STEAK JUICE OFF YOUR BARBECUE GRILL WITH OUR ICKY FROG TONGUES, AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!!”