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O P I N I O N

NOT THAT PROFOUND

By Nathan Graziano

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One of the most adult traits is the ability to bite our tongues and not express every thought that passes through our minds. 

For example, let’s say you’re at the supermarket, strolling down the cereal aisle, when you notice a person who is morbidly obese riding a motorized shopping cart in the opposite direction. 

A thought pops into your head: That is a very large person. This, in Freudian terms, is the id at work, an unconscious, uncontrollable thought. A child, who has yet to learn how to filter these thoughts through the ego before speaking, might point at the large person and say, “That person is fat.” 

Adults, meanwhile, have the ability to use discretion, and we keep that thought to ourselves. We consider the person’s feelings, and we know that making a comment is offensive and potentially hurtful. 

We use our critical faculties and empathy to hypothesize that, perhaps, the person is, perhaps, obese due to some glandular condition that is beyond their control. Or maybe they’re trying to lose weight and have already lost 50 pounds and feeling good about themselves. Therefore, not only would expressing the initial thought be offensive, but also ignorant. 

Still, most of us have found ourselves in situations where our inner-10-year-old blurts out something that was better left unexpressed, and we’re caught with our foot in our mouth. 

On Saturday, while out for drinks at Chelbys with my wife and some friends, my inner-10-year-old—or my id—took control of my mouth and blurted out a comment that was better left kept to myself, and I will likely regret it for many years to follow. 

Let me preface this by explaining a little bit about my wife. Politically, Liz aligns herself a little left of Bernie Sanders, Jane Fonda and the hosts of “Morning Joe.” If she sees an image of Donald Trump or hears a soundclip of his voice, she has a visceral aversion, like a full body dry-heave. 

So we—my friends Brian and Collin, Liz and myself—were sitting a table in the back of the bar area, playing music on the TouchTunes jukebox and idly gabbing when I mindlessly picked up my phone and glanced at my Facebook news feed where, for some reason, a picture of the U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert popped up. 

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While no one, except me, saw the photo, I still felt the need to express the thought that passed through my mind. “I think Lauren Boebert is attractive,” I said. 

Liz whipped her head around and shot me a look like she just caught me clubbing baby seals. 

“You are so disgusting,” she said. “How can you possibly be attracted to someone so vile, offensive, racist and ignorant? Why the hell would you say that aloud?”

And my wife was right. I do not, at all, find any of Boebert’s politics or her worldview desirable, and from what I’ve seen from her in interviews, I can’t imagine we would have a lot to talk about if we were ever at the same dinner table. 

However, it isn’t my brain that finds her attractive.

Meanwhile, Brian and Collin sat across from us looking much like two of the Three Wise Monkeys, unwilling to dive into the water, where I was treading, alone. 

I was desperate to get my foot out of my mouth. “Do you know who else I find—”

“Shut up,” Liz said. 

And, for once, I did.