Silly Old Stupid

Leaves from Mr. Hatt's Marvellous Miscellany

I have done quite a few stupid things in my life – at least three times I have come within a whisker of killing myself, including nearly walking off a cliff in Majorca in a sun-induced daze – but I think it's the stupid things I've said that really make me cringe. There have been rather more of those, too, and for some reason they tended to occur at work.

One gem of embarrassment that I recall quite frequently occurred while I was giving some induction training to a new recruit. She had never heard of the 80:20 rule, perhaps the most useful analytical rule of thumb I know. You know the sort of thing: 80% of the wealth is owned by 20% of the population, 80% of library loans are generated by 20% of the stock, and so on. It's not so much a rule of thumb as a profound insight into the workings of society, the universe, and everything.

Anyway, this keenly attentive young lady was duly impressed. Which is always a trap for the susceptible middle-aged man; I should have sensed the danger. But, like a true fool, I began to improvise upon this idea of proportions. Yes, I said, it's interesting, how certain proportions keep coming up when you analyse stuff. There's 50:50, of course, and 60:40. As well as 80:20 I quite often see 70:30, and occasionally 90:10... At which point, I realised I had covered the entire range of possibilities without adding anything by way of insight and hurried on to the next topic.

Then there was the period when, raising small children, I had trained myself not to swear by substituting nursery equivalents, using gritted-teeth endearments in extremis like "sweetheart" and "darling" (as in, "Put my silly old camera down, sweetheart, before you break it!"). I found this started to bleed over into my work life, however, which could get acutely embarrassing when, squashing annoyance, I began to sound like some theatrical luvvie: "You've entered the wrong code again, my darling! That's why your silly old terminal has frozen!" What a relief it was when my kids started to swear like troopers themselves, and I could finally uncork. Fucking hell! Although, it has to be said, this was not so much of a relief for my staff.

Sometimes, though, it can seem as if "stupid" and "embarrassing" have been brought explosively together by some internal, malevolent imp that lives, like a comedian of genius, one beat ahead of the action. Once, in front of a visiting class of 12-year-old schoolchildren, I carefully spelled out "DICK,HARD" on a computer screen, proudly showing off how our new library system could find any book, just by entering the first four letters of the title and the author's name. I have no idea what made me choose Hard Times by Charles Dickens on the spur of the moment. I hadn't even read the damn thing; still haven't. But, what? What's so funny?? Ah!  Ff... Heh... Silly old me!