Happy Birthday, Bernie

WC 496

Happy Birthday, Bernie

By Jack Rawlins

“Happy Birthday--my ass! Life begins at forty? Bullshit! Mirror, you are an affront to my body. You make me look bad.”

“Bernie, turn sideways and you’ll look a lot worse. What you see is what you got.Stop kidding yourself. You’ve let yourself go to pot, as in pot belly, pot-bellied pig and other symbols for lardass.”

“All the mirrors in the world, and I end up with a full-length wiseass that’s big on insults. You can’t talk to me that way. I’m already traumatized. It’s my—Oh God!—fortieth birthday.”

“Oh, but I can. Look: read my lips.”

“They’re not moving.”

“Right.”

“I’m talking to myself?”

“Right. It’s your superego here—just to keep your id in line and your ego intact. I don’t need to talk. I reflect the real Bernie.”

“Psycho-babble from a mirror…just what I need to start my rotten day.”

“Look, if you can’t handle the truth, buy a carnival fun-house mirror. It’ll give you the reflection you want.”

“I should get a hammer and shut you up.”

“Whoa! I’ve been your confidant for years. Suddenly you don’t like what you see and hear? You want to blame me? You really are an asshole, Bernie.

“I’ve done my best to help you, and now you want to drop me like a used condom. What a pal you are!

“You want the truth? Ever hear of The Shadow, the old radio show about wealthy Lamont Cranston who learned the secret of how to cloud men’s minds so they couldn’t see him? Bernie, you’ve clouded your own mind; you’re a phony, man. You can’t see the real you.

“I’ve lived with you through teenage acne… showed you your first whisker… watched you flex muscles that weren’t there while you tried to suck in a gut that was. I’ve stopped you from going out before you cut your nose hairs. I’ve helped you see how gross you are when you’re hung over. I tried to show how stupid you look with a gold chain, ponytail, earring and tattoos. And I’ve proved that when you wear your baseball cap backwards it just makes your big nose look bigger.”

“So, what’s your message…other than that I’m a forty-year-old asshole?”

“Look, you’re really a nice asshole. My message is this: You can’t fake cool. It makes you look like a fool. Cool is not the purple body art, duds, blings, or dos; it’s savoir faire…an attitude that shows without showing off. Right now you’re just a copycat, an attempt to clone cool gone wrong.”

“Okay. There’s painful truth in what you’re—I’m—telling me. But do you have to be so honest? How about a little white lie once in a while to make me feel good?”

“Bernie, Bernie, Bernie—that’s not my job. If I fogged up your image that would make me a real fog-up. That would be a terrible reflection on both of us. Nobody wants to be known as a fog-up.”

###