The Unpardonable Sin
Lloyd:“What happened to you? You used to be fun. You used to be warped and twisted and hilarious... and I mean that in the best way - I mean it as a compliment.”
Constance: “I was hilarious once, wasn't I?”
-“Say Anything”
I find myself at a strange age. Not young, by no means old, but old enough to start searching for euphemisms for my age like “not getting any younger” or “of a certain age” or “Sorry, honey, they say this happens to guys my age sometimes” (though not to me, just so you know).
And there’s one thing I’m starting to notice about guys “of a certain age.” A horrible and frightening condition that by my observation afflicts about one-in-twenty otherwise normal, healthy American males in my demographic group.
Boringness. Call it Chronic Adulthood Boringness Syndrom. CABS. Pervasive, deadening, wretched, excessive, dreary tediousness just seems to worm its way into the souls of some previously hilarious guys, and infect their entire beings until it turns them into insufferable, life-sucking dullards. I’ve seen it happen to some of the single most entertaining guys I’ve ever been around. And like alcoholism, boringness destroys lives, tears families apart and leaves the wreckage of friendships floating in its hideous wake.
I have to be careful here, because I write for a media conglomerate that rates behind only the King James Bible and The Remy Report in its worldwide appeal and influence. I don’t want to expose anyone or betray any confidences. But then again, the people I know who suffer from CABS are too hopelessly dull to read anything like Barstool, so I probably have nothing to worry about.
For example, there’s a guy I’ll identify merely by saying he’s “a guy I know,” who has the severest case of Chronic Boringness I’ve ever seen. He used to be bizarre and strange and off the wall. Once, trying to describe him, my mother, as only a mother can do, butchered the phrases “off beat,” and “dances to a different beat” and said of this guy “I always thought he was a beat off.” (To which I made her promise never to say that around anyone but me...but I digress.) As a kid, he was funny. As a teenager, he was goofy fun. Into his 20's, he was a howl to be around. Then sometime around his mid-30s, the peak time for the onset of CABS, he changed. No one knows exactly how he contracted this dreaded disease, but I’ve always assumed it was the day he got dumped by his last real girlfriend. I was with him within minutes of this life changing event and he was never the same guy after that. In the years since, and they’ve been a lot of years, he just sort of wanders the Earth, showing up at parties sipping Cokes and telling anyone who’ll listen about how much money he makes and how much he spends on the things he buys to bring some artificial joy into his miserable life. To stand in his vicinity at a cookout is to feel him absorb the happiness from everyone else, like a Black Hole of fun.
More common is the guy who contracts Chronic Adult Boringness Syndrome from a woman. There’s not a man among us who hasn’t lost at least one friend to a woman who extracts the life force from his body like a Succubus, and leaves just his empty shell to follow her around to her family get togethers, antique shops and garden centers. I once knew a guy who within weeks of dating a chick, asked that we all stop calling him by his nickname and start using his real name. I say “once knew” because after that, we had no idea who this emasculated caricature was anymore and we parted ways for good. Enjoy those nights of scrapbooking, pal.
I’m not saying all loving marriages cause boringness. But I have friends whose marriages have been the equivalent of two cats fighting in a burlap bag who’ve never given their idiot buddies a dull moment. (Which would explain the recent rash of divorces, I suppose. Oh, well.)
The fact is that there is no worse sin a guy can commit than boringness. One thing women don’t get is that every guy has friends that he doesn’t like. There are guys I’ve had as friends since first grade, that’ll be my friends until the day we die, and I’ve never once enjoyed being in their company. Obnoxious, pains in the ass whom I can barely stand, but we’re Carl Spackler-like “buds for life” because at least they’re never boring. I can suffer the insufferable, but life is too short to hang with tedious dullards.
What are the symptoms of CABS? Talking about your job is an early warning sign. Everyone has a job. Everyone hates their job. Everyone’s boss is an a-hole for asking them to do actual work. All these things are the Wikipedia definition of “Goes without saying.” Honestly, if we haven’t talked for a while, do you think you need to bring me up to speed on how much your job sucks? Or do you think I can just leap to the assumption it sucks and we can get back to the important business of tinkering with the Red Sox lineup? By the same token, before you use “How’s work going?” as a conversation starter, assume the same and start seeking treatment for CABS.
An advanced form of CABS can be identified by the inability to answer this question: “What have you been up to?” I know guys who haven’t gone golfing since the ball was stuffed with feathers. Who last fished with a brand new Ronco Pocket Fisherman. But who spend 20 hours a week on their kids sports. If the most interesting sporting activity story you have from the past month involves Pee Wee soccer, don’t be surprised if I end our conversation by faking my own death.
Along those lines, a sign of severe, advanced CABS is never hanging out with your friends, never going out to a bar, never hitting a place with a liquor license unless the waitress brings you crayons and a kiddie placemat. I’m not saying that you have to be drinker to be interesting...OK, maybe I am saying that. Unless you’re a very hot chick worried about getting sick on herself because she’s a light drinker, the lack of booze in your system only exacerbates your boring condition.
Chronic Boringness can also infect groups of people. Consider the 2007 Yankees. When the Yankees were still Top of the Heap, A-Number One, they built their team around decent, diligent, non-controversial guys (plus uber-jackass David Wells). That was fine while they were winning. As with the Patriots and Spurs dynasties that followed, excellence is never boring. But now that the Yankees are struggling to get to .500, no more than a pinstriped version of the Orioles, their fans are stuck with a bloodless, conservative, disinteresting bunch of inane corporate drones. Give credit to ARod and his F-bomb tossing wife for realizing that if you’re going to be a loser, you might as well be interesting about it as they embrace their inner a-holes.
I try to be tolerant and understanding of the frightfully dull; I really do. I appreciate that not everyone can live the exciting, fast-paced, madcap, whirlwind life of a Barstool writer. Where every day is an non-stop banquet of fame, hot women and unimaginable riches. I just want this to serve as a cautionary tale to every guy who starts hitting the age that separates the dull from the interesting. Chronic Adult Boringness Syndrome is a disease that affects one-in-twenty men, but if detected in the early stages it can be curable. So get checked for it today. The other nineteen of us are counting on you.