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Aug 18, 2003 I've always been sort of a loner. Part of this is by choice. There are really very few people that I feel comfortable being around and often times I don't really want to deal with people's crap. I work with the public everyday so a lot of times when I get home I don't really want to deal with people's quirks and idiosyncrasies; thank God I married a woman with very few herself. Part of it, however, is just how things worked out. My parents were in their forties when I was born, see my article “How To Be Successful Parents,” and I grew up in a neighborhood of mostly older people so I wasn't around kids hardly at all before I started Kindergarten, so my social skills with people my own age weren't really what they should have been at the point, there are some people who say they're still lacking. I've always thought that me never really being that popular with my own age group went back to this. Most of my friends in high school were younger than me, and come to find out all they wanted was a ride home, so I mostly hung out with family who were all a great deal older or younger than me. I don't really lament this fact. In fact I think that it made me a better person, but I've always wondered why I never seemed to fit in. Because I was never around people my own age growing up can't be the only reason why people in elementary, junior high, high school and college seemed content to let me go on my merry way, no matter how cordial I tried to be. When I was a teenager I was branded with the label that spells social death for any adolescent: “Weird.” "Don't hang around that Jon guy," I would hear people say when they didn't think I was listening. "He's weird." What made me weird? The people who called me that seemed to be the strange ones. When you get to be an adult it doesn't really matter anymore although I always thought that it would be cool to have a buddy or two to go have a beer with or go bowling or generally make nuisances out of ourselves like in the sitcoms. Again, however, being unpopular is not as devastating in adults as in teenagers. When people blow me off these days I no longer sniff my armpits to make sure that I don't have B.O. Still I always wondered where I fit in. It seemed that so many people belong to some sort of group. There are civil rights groups, special interest groups, gangs, organizations and clubs that represent pretty much everybody, but I still couldn't find a group that accurately described me. Demographically I'm a straight, white, male, SWM if this were a singles ad, but I wouldn’t really be able to join or form a group on the basis of that alone or I'd be labeled an "ist" (sexist, racist etc.). I'm a southerner and a NASCAR fan so I should be able to fit in with the redneck crowd, but I’m a librarian and I like to read so there goes that idea. I’m also a Republican, which alienates me among librarians who often times lean to left. Also the GOP isn’t really a social type of organization, and I’m not very active within the party. I belong to a church, but that doesn't really count because we don't really see church members outside of church functions. My two best friends live in Monroe, NC (about an hour and a half away) and the Washington D.C. area, a little far to drive just to hang out. I get a long with my family well enough but most of them have their own lives and their own friends except my parents so as far as hanging out on a day to day basis it's them, my wife, my daughter and me which is fine, but still I didn't have a group to belong to. I still hadn't found my nitch. My problem was solved, not really increasing my number of acquaintances, but assigning a name to a group that I can belong to, just a couple of days ago. I was going through some of my old cassette tapes. My two friends and I are riding to Darlington at the end of the month for the last Southern 500, and I was looking for some tapes that we could listen to on the way. We like to listen to comedy on our long car trips, we go to a race every year, so I was looking through the tapes for various comedians that I knew I had but I was having a little trouble finding them. I finally scraped one off the bottom of the box that I hadn't listened to in awhile. It was a monologue by Lewis Grizzard who is one of my favorite all time humorists and a definite influence on my writing. On this particular tape Lewis was pondering over the exact same situation that I have been speaking off. What group did he belong to? According to Lewis the then mayor of Atlanta, Andy Young (the first African-American mayor of Atlanta) gave him his nitch, he put a name to it. Mayor Young said that the reason the Walter Mondale campaign for President was going so poorly was because it was run by: "Smart Ass White Boys." EUREKA!!!! As Lewis said in his monologue: "Finally I know what I am. I'M A SMART ASS WHITE BOY! And I have a feeling that there are others out there so S.A.W.B.'s be united, stand and be counted! I can see it now S.A.W.B t-shirts, bumper stickers and hats; whole S.A.W.B conventions. Now I know what some of you are saying but it isn't a racial thing. It's not about the color of your skin but a frame of mind. You don't have to be white, or a boy for that matter to be an S.A.W.B.
So if you're like me, Lewis Grizzard, our
patron saint, or many others out there and don't
know what group you belong to then look down
deep. Do some soul searching, step outside your
body and look at yourself because you just might
be a S.A.W.B. If you are then rock on brother!
Stand tall and say it loud. I'M A SMART ASS
WHITE BOY!
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