David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

David McElroy

Shock of seeing ‘Airplane!’ was realizing that I wasn’t all alone

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Watching “Airplane!” for the very first time was an emotional experience for me. It was the first time in my life when I realized there were other people whose inner thoughts were just as strange as mine.

All at once, I didn’t feel so alone in the world.

It was the Christmas break of my sophomore year. I was home from Tuscaloosa, where I was a student at the University of Alabama. I had been away from home in the college world for long enough to be disappointed to realize that college students weren’t much different from the kids I’d gone to high school with. I was feeling a little lost in the world to realize I hadn’t really found “my people” in college.

I was bored and restless when I flipped on the television that afternoon. As I flipped through channels, I came across a movie that was just starting. I saw clouds and then I heard the melody of the theme from “Jaws.” There was the tail fin of an airplane instead of a shark.

The airplane dramatically burst onto the screen and I burst out laughing. This felt like humor from a kindred spirit. The next 90 minutes would change me.

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Briefly: On lousy days, I need silence and solitude if I can’t have love

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When I have a bad day, my first reaction is to want to turn to someone I love. But my next instinct is a paradox. If I can’t call someone and I can’t touch someone and I can’t be with someone who loves me, I have an overwhelming desire to be alone. Tuesday was an unpleasant day. I had to argue with my bank about something. (I won, but still.) Something happened at work that made me want to walk out and never return, although I understand that nobody else involved would understand. Tonight, someone on Facebook who I barely knew reacted badly to something I said — for reasons I’m completely baffled about — and called me a “jackass” and unfriended me. I’d like to talk with someone I love. I’d like to spend time with a loved one and feel safe and understood. But since I can’t do that, I crave the opposite. I want to find a cabin somewhere and disappear for a month. We humans are social creatures. We need each other. But there are days when others cause enough hurt that a few weeks of silence would be a relief. This has been one of those days.

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Midlife becomes big crisis when our self-deception stops working

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For most of my life, I was a liar.

A more charitable person might simply say I was full of delusions. Whatever you want to call it — lies, deceptions, delusions — I was full of them. The normal rules of life didn’t apply to me. I was going to be instantly successful at whatever I tried. People were going to recognize me for the superior person I was. They were going to love me, praise me, follow me, adore me.

I believed I was special. I believed others would see that.

When I was a small boy, I used to put myself to sleep every night making up stories. I was always the hero. I saved people in trouble. Other men wanted to follow me and emulate me. All the women wanted me to choose them. One of my earliest consistent stories was of rescuing a girl from a burning building. She was a classmate on whom I had a crush. After the rescue, she adored me, of course.

I grew up. I quit fantasizing about rescuing Wendy from burning buildings.

But what I didn’t realize is that the delusions didn’t go away. They grew into bigger delusions. I was still sure I was special. That faith carried me. I didn’t know the day would come when my self-deception would all come crashing down.

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