I Suck!

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all.

We’ve all heard that saying a million times, yet people say the darnedest things.

I’ve hated my curly hair since I was a kid. It’s nappy and grows all over the place. There’s not much I can do with it. I try to keep it short. But it grows fast -- and big.

When it’s long, people like to remind me to cut it. “Your hair’s getting nappy,” they say. When I cut it, other people tell me to let it grow.

“Yo gangsta,” they say mockingly in bad imitation. “Where’re yo Dickies pants and black Nike Cortez shoes?” I can’t win. How about I just become another person?

The other day, a co-worker asked me about the film school I spent so much money on and what it was like to be a failed director. Who says that kind of thing to your face? And how do you respond to that? Do you strike back? Or do you follow your conscience: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all.

I wasn’t going to ignore this guy like I usually do when people say rude things. But I wasn’t going to attack him either. Instead, I decided to turn his negative comment into a positive.

“Okay,” I said, “so I’m a failed movie director -- true. But you have to fail early in life before you can succeed later. That’s what I’m doing right now.” My co-worker was quick to shoot that down with a quote from author F. Scott Fitzgerald: “There are no second acts in American lives.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald said it, which can only mean one thing: It must be true -- I’m doomed to be a failure.

But, thanks to an instant Internet search on my smart phone, I discovered that Raymond Chandler turned writer at age 45, Paul Gauguin was 43 when he became a painter, Martha Stewart was originally a caterer before becoming -- much later in life -- the superstar business magnate she is today, and Ray Croc was 52 years old, selling milkshake machines when he set out to build the McDonald’s brand.

My co-worker’s not-so-nice comments actually led me to something inspiring. I wondered where I could get more painful criticisms.

I turned to my good friends. We met at a coffee shop for some sandwiches and hard truths. I got a healthy serving of both.

Right away my friends told me to get a haircut. Then came the juicy stuff: At 35 years old, I’m not making enough money, my house is a shack, and I’m a terrible parent because I’m leaving my 8-year-old son an only child.

Well, my wife and I physically can’t have another kid. But that’s beside the point. Thanks to another quick Internet search on my smart phone, I discovered that my wife and I are really good parents for only having one child. The world has shown us many incredible only-children, including Franklin Roosevelt, Lance Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Cary Grant and John Lennon. Those are just a few recognizable names.

“How else do I suck?” I asked my friends as I wolfed down my BLT. With my smart phone nearby, I was hungry for more truth. My friends dished it out. But they served more than I could chew. Even my phone choked.

In the end, I came to the conclusion that I just suck. I suck at my job. I suck as a dad. I suck as a husband. Sure, I’m lucky to have a great wife and a great kid. I live in a great area. But my friends convinced me that those great things are there to help me see how much I truly suck.

As the awareness of my suckiness sank in, I came to realize something cool. Without digging, I unearthed a positive aspect of sucking: If I suck at everything, then I don’t have to be good at anything.

So I took advantage of my suckiness. When the bill for our sandwiches arrived, I informed my good friends that they’d have to pay my portion. “Sorry,” I said. “I have no money. I know -- I suck.”

A few days later, my wife nagged me about my sucky driving. I pulled over and let her drive. My son said I wasn’t being fair. I told him, “I suck, don’t I? When we get home, you can clean your room.”

That brings me to a recent piece of sucky writing I shoved in front of my wife for an honest opinion. I wrote the piece, so I knew it sucked. And I knew I couldn’t fix it. Because I suck. But I showed my wife anyway, maybe just as one last proof to confirm that I do, in fact, suck.

“It’s really good,” she said. She didn’t say she was confused. She didn’t say it wasn’t funny. She didn’t even say I needed a haircut. She just said she really liked it.

Finally, someone had something good to say about me, something nice, which, really, could only mean one thing: My wife was lying.

-November 2011