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October 2006

By Tom Snyder

From the depths of one man’s patheticnessof the “confessional” on these pages as a way of illuminating some hapless loser of a man ­– an imaginary man based not entirely on me, but based on my joy of contemplating pathetic characters.

I always pretend to be that guy. In fact, since 1992, I have made a second career of writing animated sitcoms that feature highly defective types who are, hopefully, also loveable. I admit that they are none too different from me, but I’m not so brave to share this since they are none too different from any grown male. My specialty is pathetic males.

My production company is called Pathetic Men, Inc. That’s the truth. I don’t won’t to brag, but I honestly believe that I know more about pathetic men than anyone else on earth. I have nothing against pathetic women; I just find pathetic guys to be infinitely entertaining. Plus, it is always open season on guys. Pathetic Female Season is only open for three days a year and the dates are never published until afterwards.

But now I am having trouble living with something pathetic that happened recently on my boat. I can’t find the humor in it because it was so stupid and 100 percent my fault. I ran aground in my home waters at the very peak of high tide. I did this despite three tools at my disposal: paper charts, a GPS chart plotter, and 10 years of local knowledge.

For the six weeks since it happened, I am surprised daily by sudden, self-generating full-body shudders that attempt to slough off the memory.

Here is what happened. Under sail, I turned my boat into a cove while totally ignoring a ledge that I have seen 100 times before at low tide. The keel struck the rock ledge and the boat would not budge. I could not power her off, and the tide was on its way out. Two motorboats rushed over, their owners offering to help pull me off. I was grateful for their quick generosity and I accepted their offer. But now I was running around on my boat preparing to do something that I had no interest in doing. The last thing I needed was two motorboats with little two-bladed propellers trying to pull my heavy sailboat through a rock ledge.

The smallest waves would lift and drop me onto the rocks below. The sound was thrillingly awful. In six hours this ledge would be eight feet out of the water, yet there I was, with every minute counting, preparing a strategy that I already knew was useless. Why? Who knows?

The well-meaning motorboat engines took up the slack in my towlines and proceeded to scream bloody outboard murder as they tugged impotently. Why was I doing this to my beautiful boat, which was not going anywhere? I knew better. Where was I? Where was I when I had steered over the ledge? Where was I for 10 noisy minutes as the tide rushed away? I don’t know what to say other than that this was a new class of pathetic.

Then it was like waking up. I was aware of lots of folks doing lots of things, and I just waved to them all that this should stop. They freed the lines and I thanked them. Mercifully, time shifted back to my favorite speed aboard the boat in good times and bad: slow. I slowly walked to the helm, put the engine in reverse, centered the wheel, eased the boom out to the side, carefully crawled out to the end of it, felt the boat tip, pivot and come free, slowly crawled back to the deck, walked aft, and took her out of gear.

I anchored nearby to survey the damage beneath. It was like looking at a wound on your own kid: white stuff where it was meant to be blue, fluffy stuff that should have been smooth. Back aboard, I started compulsively phoning all of the people to whom I must confess this event. I just had to rat on this guy who had steered over a reef and then farted around for 10 minutes doing things he didn’t want to do.

Nothing loveable. Just kind of unexplainable. Mindless. How does this happen? Who was that guy? Not even fun to wonder.

I know running aground in a boat is not such a big deal in the scheme of things, but it is curious to me just how badly it could make me feel. I had thought I was immune to self-recrimination in dumb situations where no one got hurt. After all, I do know what pathetic feels like. It got me wondering if I’d lost a fascination that had underwritten my livelihood. What fun was pathetic?

But speaking of someone getting hurt, this morning I heard Dick Cheney being asked what he would do differently in Iraq if he could start over. He said he wouldn’t change a thing. “Not a thing?” he was asked. Nope. Not a thing.

Well now, that’s some serious immunity to feeling bad. I’m thinking, thank goodness! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! I’m back in the career saddle, because there, my friends, is the fun kind of pathetic that is worth laughing at.

I feel better.

Tom Snyder sails out of Peaks Island, Maine.