David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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How could a stranger at sunset possibly know what I had to say?

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I was so absorbed in the colorful light show in the sky above me that I didn’t notice when a stranger walked up.

“It’s a different work of art every night, isn’t it?” the man asked. And I was startled to realize he was standing about six feet from me, watching the same majestic sunset with the same awe which it inspires in me.

People rarely join me on this hill at sunset. It’s in the middle of an old cemetery, so I guess I’m accustomed to being surrounded by dead people — but they never speak.

“I didn’t hear you walk up,” I said to the stranger. And then we chatted about the beauty in front of us and how it was surprising that so few people paid attention. I reached out to shake his hand and I introduced myself.

“Oh, I know you,” he said. “I’ve been up here with you before. I’m Darryl. I was with you a few months ago when it was so colorful around the water tower.”

I pulled out my iPhone and showed him my Instagram feed. He spotted the picture from July 8 and pointed to it.

“I was here that night,” he said.

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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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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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