I wasn’t expecting a knock on my door that evening. Before me stood a bantamweight male specimen of Teenus Americanus, a nimble adolescent with hyperactive eyes and short spiky hair. Human hair doesn’t spike by itself in the natural world; what he did required laborious applications of mousse or beeswax. There was a time when I didn’t trust males with styled hair: as I saw it, they were fit only to serve as local TV news anchors. (If I adhered to the same standard today, three quarters of the under-thirty population would be reading me the headlines at 11.) 

Anyway, the kid looked me in the eye and went into his act. His high school was running a campaign to raise money by selling magazine subscriptions and whoever sold the most would win a trip to Paris and he was almost in the lead and if he won then it would be like the greatest experience of his life so wouldn’t I help him out? Or something like that. 

He spoke with such energy, such fevered enthusiasm, such relentless visceral drive that he struck me as one of those prodigies of nature, and especially of American nature: an authentic, unalloyed, 24-carat, 200-proof go-getter. No matter that his sales approach was all wrong; the first thing I learned as an advertising copywriter was to sell BENEFITS to the consumer. His pitch should have been all about ME. What would I gain if I helped the kid win the contest? How would my chosen magazine enlighten, entertain or otherwise profit me? Would I learn to take better pictures, discover the best Bulgarian wines, attain optimum cardiovascular fitness through power-walking? That should have been his angle, but somehow his raw energy and brazen self-interest worked in his favor. Like all natural leaders, he managed to persuade me that his goals, not mine, were the central issue here.

I confessed that I already subscribed to more magazines than I could read if I did nothing but read magazines. I really couldn’t take on another one, I told him, but I still wanted to help him get to Paris. (How is it that a go-getter always manages to enlist the aid of allies? It’s as if we realize that his chances in life look better than ours, and we want to see SOMEBODY from our own species win at this game.) The kid said I could buy a subscription and have it donated to the local hospital. I thought that was a fine idea, so I invited him inside to fill out the subscription form. Thanks to me, the sick people of the Lehigh Valley would have a chance to aid their recuperation by reading ‘Smithsonian’ when they weren’t busy throwing up or slipping into comas. I basked in the knowledge of my own good will.

The go-getter stepped inside and gazed around at my place, which probably looks like a miniature Smithsonian to the first-time visitor. He thought my detailed three-foot high model of Eiffel Tower was especially cool, and he looked forward to seeing it in person. Then he pointed to a portrait of a mustachioed gentleman on the wall. He wanted to know who it was. That’s Teddy Roosevelt, I told him. ‘Was he the head of the FBI?,’ my young friend asked. I politely clarified Teddy’s credentials. Then he spied a wooden model of a white house with a terraced garden in the back. ‘That’s a model my mother made of her old house in Istanbul,’ I told him. ‘What state is that in?,’ the go-getter asked. I was tempted to say Delaware, but I told the truth. 

While he was filling out the subscription form, the kid asked me where Lehigh Valley Hospital was located so that the magazine could be sent there. I told him Cedar Crest Boulevard. ‘How do you spell that?,’ he asked. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?,’ I teased him. (Cedar Crest is the main north-south route through the West End of Allentown, a fact that any Allentonian over the age of six would know.) ‘I’m from here; I just didn’t know how to spell it,’ he explained. I looked over at the subscription form and saw him cross out ‘Ceader.’ At least it was phonetically correct.

After the young go-getter went on his way, I thought about his gift for persuasion and his astounding innocence of common knowledge that you and I take for granted. He probably wasn’t unusual for his generation, but I had to marvel at the fact that an American kid could attain the exalted age of 16 without knowing who Teddy Roosevelt was or that Istanbul is in Turkey. 

Then I realized I didn’t have to worry about him. The gods love his type. In America at least, ignorance plus energy plus social skill will almost always beat pure knowledge. (Think of Bush vs. Gore.) The ones I should be worrying about are the bespectacled young scholars who memorize the names of all the U.S. presidents in order, along with their birth and death dates and their years in office. The young go-getter who didn’t know how to spell ‘Cedar’ will probably end up as CEO of his own firm. If the current occupant of the White House is any example, the kid could even become president. He’d hire the bespectacled ones to work under him, unknown and unrewarded, correcting his spelling and filling him in on who his predecessors were. Maybe he’d even hire me in case he needs to find Istanbul on a map.

Cynic's Pick of the Week

Congressman Gary Condit took a lie detector test to prove that he played no role in the disappearance of missing intern Chandra Levy, with whom he had had an affair. It should be mentioned that the test was arranged by Condit and his lawyer with a private polygraph expert, and that no police were invited to be present. Isn’t that like hiring the guy who sits next to you when you take your driver’s test?