The Cat and the Doorknob

I'm going to start off in left-field--humor me.

I love Babylon 5.  Love it.  I shall expound upon this in a post someday.  The end result of my seething fanaticism is that I collect all things B5 [that's what we nerds call it, you know].  One of my prized possessions is the collection of all the scripts to the show written by the shows creator: J. Michael Straczynski.  The books contain many personal anecdotes stories from the show, and a look inside the mind of the man himself.  It is from these books that I got the central motif for the following post.

"The cat and the doorknob"

The story goes something like this [please forgive my butchering in my paraphrasing]... you own a cat.  Cats, as we all know, look pretty smart.  Cats, are dumb as shit [if you are a cat person, you know what I'm talking about--don't deny it].  So, you as the cat's master open a door for a cat.  The cat stares at you.  You can see the thought process going on in the cats mind--"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" the cat is thinking to itself [and yes, cats think in capital letters--dumb, but loud].  The cat looks at the door, sees the doorknob--the cat knows that somehow you did something to this....doorknobby thing to get the door to open, but the cat has no idea what.  The look on the cat's face is...well, its the cat and the doorknob look.  Dumbfounded, flabbergasted, utterly incomprehensibly confused.  Such a simple concept to you and I--an incomprehensible miracle to the cat.

It is one of my favorite metaphors.

The key, though, is to realize that sometimes you are the master, and sometimes you are the cat.

There are times when I am talking to other people and I'm trying to explain something so incredibly simple--and I get the look.  The "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" look [yes, dumb people think in capital letters too]. I recognize the look right away.  The only thought I have in my mind is "oh shit..."  There is no helping the situation, nothing I can do to better explain.  Ugh.  The great barrier, of course, is that I know how the door opens--its a freaking door.  Simple.  The dumb-ass cat has no idea.

There are times, though, that I know that I have that look on my face.  People try to explain something to me, and something goes wrong.  Either, the person is not clear, or I just have no freaking idea what the hell they are talking about..."WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PERSON TALKING ABOUT?"  How can this person be confusing the shit out of me?

Sartre was right "Hell is other people."

Especially when they are stupid.

The unfortunate truth is that most people are dumber than the cats in the metaphor.

That's all I got for now.

E