When I was young, I was sure that I was the only oddball. Okay, not: there were plenty of real oddballs to make me look normal. But in crowd that excluded genuine misfits, I looked pretty unusual. I now realize that the operative word in that statement is looked.

Now, when I’m walking down the street, I’m struck by the strangeness of youth. It’s not a strangeness from me, but an absolute oddness. Young people are haunted by the newly-heard rasp of their own windy tunes, and beset by the need to make the music presentable on what amounts to nothing more gracious than a set of bagpipes. Some are better at this than others, and some figure it out sooner. But no one is really good at it. Except, perhaps, sociopaths, who, poor things, haven’t got anything better to do with themselves.

I find myself looking at all the blandly scrubbed — but hoodied — denizens of the Upper East Side and asking: what does this guy expect of life? Is it sex? Money? Showing the folks back home? What’s on his mind? Does he have a clue? About what’s on his mind, that is. After all, the most overlooked fact of life is that most people are the opposite of narcissist: they’re deeply bored by themselves. They don’t find themselves fascinating and they don’t for a moment wonder why the world isn’t quicker to recognize their latent genius. Think about it for a while, and you begin to wonder how anyone who isn’t borderline manages to get up in the morning.

How do we preserve what’s wonderful about the oh-so-adorable Buddha-baby principality of my little man Will from the onslaughts of ripening? How do we teach him that it’s right, when you’re twenty, to think that you don’t know anything?

And not the only one in the room who doesn’t know anything.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Gotham Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.