Hammers and Pegs

I have bucked trends all my life, it seems. I always thought of myself as a round peg constantly being pounded into a square hole. Or maybe it's the other way around... Either way, I didn't feel I fit in no matter how hard others tried to make me. Yet, I have gotten sucked into fads and social fancies from time to time.

I jumped on the surfing bandwagon in 1964, for example. Which made me want to have blond hair and a great tan. I took up drugs just a few years later... about the time it seemed that "everyone" was doing that. I wanted to be artsy and deep, profound in my thinking, aloof and mysterious... I wanted to be part of "the scene", maybe even a focal point.

 If you were part of "the scene", you could get the chicks.

I didn't want to be a lemming, I wanted to be a leader of lemmings. Because, as Mel Brooks said as Louis the XVI (in "History of the World: Part I"), "It's good to be king."

As time went on, I changed my outlook. For one thing, those chicks that were part of the scene seemed as shallow and phony as my own persona and probably were. For another, it was hard work being someone you really weren't. And, above all else, I am lazy. After awhile, I gave it up. I suppose I realized it was difficult to lead lemmings if you're a gerbil. It was also pointless. After all, the ultimate goal was to find a cliff to jump from.

Eventually, I stopped fooling myself into thinking I had to fit in.

This began after I had been in the Navy for a couple of years. For the first two years, you pretend you are still a civilian at heart. You change into "civvies" as soon as possible when you have liberty, and you pretend you aren't just a cog in a vast military machine. After a couple of years, you start leaving the base in uniform. You stop pretending. In prisons, they call this becoming "institutionalized." You accept your status.

You still don't try to "fit in", however. But you do begin to realize that you are the "hammer" that's trying to pound you into that hole you do not fit in.