tirsdag, marts 18, 2008

Just a bit (of) Kinky

I was halfway to the grocery store when it started to rain. I never run when it starts raining. I just keep to my same leisurely pace and try to walk between the drops. You get about equally wet either way, but if you run, you look stupid. If you walk you just look crazy. There's more dignity in crazy, and it's also less strenuous. (Kinky Friedman, "A Case of Lone Star")


I'm not usually one to write down a quote or a line. I'm actually the type to be sure that I'll remember whatever it is later when I need it, and then forget about whatever it was mere seconds after. But when going through a stack of (in some cases, very old) papers, I found this quote, which I had written on the back of a receipt (from somewhere in Portugal, which means the quote writing was done pre-2001).

I don't remember anything about the novel (except that Kinky is marvelously funny, and witty, and punny), nor do I remember what inspired me to find the book (in a bookstore in San Francisco), find the quote in the book (which I seem to recall I found surprisingly quickly), and write it down. But it ages well, the quote. It seems like it could apply to just about any uncomfortable situation, not just rain, and it's an image and an idea that I've been trying more consciously since re-reading it, that of walking between the drops. It does just seem to epitomize the dignified approach.

3 kommentarer:

Devil Mood sagde ...

It's great. That theory of getting more wet when we run in rain was very popular at some point, perhaps everyone was reading that book, which by the way, I'll have to look up.
I'm trying to think of other situations when we should just pretend nothing's happening rather than run away.

Scholiast sagde ...

There's so much that Kinky says that I want to keep in mind... Love the Lone Star Trilogy -- and though it's not very useful in any other aspect of life, my fav quotes of his are how he answered the phone - "I was just in the middle of someone!" (...) and then, his pondering about his now very drunk companion --

"Saint Kinky. Patron saint of large, exuberant Irishmen in small Village coffee shops."

If I ever go to NYC and Greenwich Village I'll have to bring a big Irishman :)

kimananda sagde ...

Ms. Mood, I think it's a very applicable theory. Maybe to pretend that nothing's happening, but also it can be to accept that whatever is happening is in fact o.k., and nothing that should be run away from. I find that this kind of thinking makes a lot of potentially embarrassing situations not nearly as bad.

Scholiast, I didn't realize that you are a fellow Kinky fan. It's amazing how books with so many truly bad puns can be so wonderful, both funny and serious at the same time.