Here it is verbatim:
It's mine. I stole it from Dave Barry and claimed it for myself with a simple modification at the end:
"Always try to put the funniest word at the end of your sentence underpants."
At first blush, and probably even at fifth and fiftieth blush, this seems clever but non-revolutionary. I’m not going to argue that there is some deeper hidden truth in the statement, but I am going to argue that what makes this advice deserving of the honor “Most Important” is its very simplicity and obviousness.
It reminds me of my 5th grade teacher Mr. Boost. Mr. Boost was memorable for four reasons:
1. his temper
2. his thick mustache
3. his bright orange suspenders
4. motivating his class to win the school’s giftwrap selling competition every freakin’ year.
Those four are more related than you might realize.
The first day of class you knew this giftwrap selling competition was no small thing. (I don’t remember for sure that it was giftwrap, but it was something lame like that. Maybe canned tuna.) He literally hung championship banners from the ceiling in the style of a college basketball team whose proudest achievement was selling lots of festive paper products. He expressed optimism that we – the formidable homeroom class of 1996 – would add our own banner in that conspicuously gaping hole of the ceiling. Legacy was on the line.
And if that wasn’t motivation enough, he told us that the prize for winning the competition would be that, on the last day of the competition, when the winner was announced, right there in front of everyone he would sit at his desk, pull out a razor, and proceed to shave the rodent above his lip. He had our full attention.
He looked over the 20-something championship banners lovingly and confided in us that there was a reason for this success. There was a SECRET. A secret that would be revealed to us when/if we were ready.
Holy smokes. A secret! To a 5th grader’s brain, this is like learning that you are going to see boobies.
In subsequent classes as he was trying to explain the War of 1812 or some shit, I was still trying to figure out what this secret was going to be and when we would finally hear it. How am I supposed to sell giftwrap at a championship pace without The Secret?
The possibilities raced through my mind. Maybe he’s going to teach us to exaggerate the cuteness of our requests with something like, “Buy my giftwrap, pwww-eez.” Maybe he’s going to teach us about up-selling, the foot-in-the-door technique, and the subtle but powerful psychological effects of physical and verbal mimicry. Maybe he’s going to teach us about pyramid schemes and racketeering. Maybe he’s going to tell us where adults secretly hide their money, and how we can trick them by asking for a cookie and then running and emptying the stash.
I couldn’t be sure, but I was confident, given the looming presence of the banners above my head, that it would be revolutionary.
One day toward the end of class, just as he was finishing up lecturing about something to do with Frenchies, he leaned in and said softly that he thinks we’re ready for it. All month long the students had been biting their lips so hard in anticipation that some of us needed band-aids. And now the time had finally come. The Secret would finally be revealed. Doors would be opened and epiphanies would be reached.
“The Secret is this: If you knock on someone’s door and they’re not home, come back later.”
The air instantly vacated the room. I’ve been wearing band-aids on my lip for THIS?! That’s the most underwhelming damn secret I’ve ever heard.
And yet, it worked. Our class won the competition for the 22nd consecutive year or some ridiculous number. We got to see him shave his rodent.
It bothered me for many years (as you can tell) that it actually worked. Sure, I can see how championship banners and rodent shaving can help light a little fire under 5th graders’ butts, but what good does it do to introduce a stupid “secret” after much build-up?
It occurred to me many years later that maybe the reason why The Secret was an important part of the formula is because it reminded you of a simple thing that everyone else was neglecting. Maybe all the other classes were focused on things so heady like “strategy” that they overlooked the basics. When your competitors are a bunch of stupid humans, the most reliable way to beat them is not by improving your technique or your efficiency. The most reliable way to beat them is by remembering to do the simple shit.
I learned in high school that you can beat a lot of people in tennis – at one point I was top-ranked on my team and was playing against some of the top players in the state – by just remembering not to double fault on your serves and by trying more than anything to keep the ball in play, relatively deep, and to their backhand. The basics. Some people called my style “playing defensively.” Others called it “playing smartly.” I called it “not playing stupidly.” But one thing is for sure: People HATE playing against guys like me. Nothing frustrates hotshots more than being beat by a guy who dinks his second serve over the net like a girl with a bummed shoulder.1
This also reminds me of watching professional sports when they take you Into the Huddle or Into the Locker Room and you get to actually hear what sophisticated strategy the coach is sharing with his elite athletes. Usually the grand epiphanies have something to do with “grabbing the rebound” or “running hard” or remembering to “look both ways before crossing the street,” which has kept me under the frustrating illusion that I can coach professional sports. I am not quite prepared to say that even at the highest levels of professional achievement the optimal type of advice is stuff like “tie your shoes,” but I’m closer to that opinion than I was when I started writing this post.
I conclude that, at least when the competition is less skilled than LeBron James, the most important kind of advice is probably the kind that reminds you of the basics. The kind that is so simple and so obvious that most stupid humans are forgetting to do it: Keep the ball in play, come back later if they’re not home, and put the funniest word at the end of the sentence underpants.
***
[1] I liked to call my dinky second serve The Feminine Bulldozer. It’s possible that I may own the record for most second-serve aces of anyone in the Raleigh-Durham metro area, and they were all the really lame kind where the serve was hit so softly that it bounced twice before it reached the opponent. To this day, it is my proudest unverified achievement.
