Meetzorp

“Welcome to Late At Night. I’m Rick Leer, and joining us tonight is Mr. Wayne Thomas. We’re glad to have you here.”

“I’m glad to be here, Rick.”

“Well, let’s get right to the point; you’ve written a book that is a raging success in the literary world. Rarely has a work of nonfiction been such a hot seller. So, Wayne, tell us a little about your new book, The Most Boring Man in America: and Possibly the World.”

“It all began with my mother, actually. Not that she’s especially boring mind you—she’s a very active woman, she’s in a book club and does scrap-booking and goes to a community yoga class three times a week. When I say it began with my mother, I mean it began as an idea of hers. She’d been thinking it would be neat to do a family genealogy, and asked me if I wanted to give her a hand. I thought, ‘what the heck’ and agreed to help her out. Who knows if we might be related to somebody really famous or have some really great stories back in the family history.”

“And so, what did you find?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, not nothing, per se, but nothing outstanding, you know? Like we’re not related to anybody who signed the constitution, nobody in our family ever invented anything revolutionary, nobody was a notorious murderer, and nobody was ever particularly illustrious or famous. Nope, I come of a long line of mediocre, hard-working, average Joes, as far back as we were able to trace.”

“Weren’t there any highlights or events that might make your family stand out from other families, aside from its extreme ordinariness?”

“Of course, we’ve had some highs and lows, and who hasn’t? But nothing to take out an ad for. For example, my great aunt Berenice won blue ribbons at three consecutive county fairs for her lemon meringue pies. My grandpa Dick Berendson bought the first Dodge automobile in his hometown of Freshwater, Idaho. My mother’s great-great-great-grandfather was sent over from Norway to promote a new kind of tin can for preserving herrings.”

“And the lows?”

“Well Nels Olafson, the herring-canner? Landed in New York to learn that an identical tin was already under patent in the USA and went to work in a factory owned by the original tin-creator. Because of his detailed knowledge of canning technology, he rose in the ranks pretty quickly and spent 25 years as a shop foreman. So not a terribly low low. But Nels’s grandson, my grandpa Dick, the one with the Dodge? Well, he lost half of his farmland during the Great Depression. It was under mortgage to pay for a tractor. After he lost that land, he didn’t have enough acreage to raise large enough crops to make a living, so he ended up selling the rest of the land off and moving to town to open a hardware store. I guess you could say we don’t do anything in a big way, success or failure.”

“So, why do you suppose the published history of your extremely ordinary family is such a great hit?”

“I think the average person likes to see a reflection of himself, maybe see somebody who is a little less than he is, and think, ‘well, at least my great-great grandfather invented the wingnut,’ or whatever. It’s sort of like those comedians who make fun of themselves. You laugh, but you think, ‘at least that’s not me.’”

“So you think of yourself as kind of a loser, or not that great of a guy?”

“Well, no, I’m not a loser. I have a decent job, a family I love, and a good, comfortable life. I’m just not that special. I’d say probably the most unusual thing about myself is that I’ve taken my extreme ordinariness and publicized it, and for whatever reason, a lot of people are enjoying reading about that.”

“You’re kind of the anti-antihero?”

“Yeah, I kind of like that.”

“Has your newfound fame changed your life a lot?”

“Well, the royalties from the book sales have been nice. We’ve paid off the rest of the mortgage and set up college funds for the girls. My wife has finally been able to quit her job working for Curl & Swirl and has opened up her own beauty shop, Salon Jo-Anne, and we have set up a standing donation to Habitat for Humanity. But as for people recognizing me on the street, that doesn’t happen. There’s just the one little picture of myself on the back of the book, and let’s face it, how many other 5’10” 180lb, light-brown-haired 40-something guys do you see around? A lot. Mine’s just another face in the crowd. My friends give me a little guff about it, but my family thinks it’s pretty neat. This is the most famous any of us have ever been!”

“That’s nice. So, do you have any plans from this point, on?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking of opening a car-dealership, in honor of my Grandpa Dick. Dodge, Chrysler, Plymouth, of course. And I had an idea for a contest, just because I am kind of a curious sort of guy.”

“What sort of contest would this be?”

“I was thinking that it might be kind of interesting to see if anyone else has a more un-extraordinary family than mine, so I thought what we might do is ask people to send in their family histories and some sort of entry fee, and have a team of genealogy experts go over them and determine which are the most mundane. Then I’ll read through the top 10 to decide which gives me the biggest run for my money, and the top contender gets the prize, which will be a percentage of the collected entry fees.”

“Well, there you have it folks, ‘The Most Boring Man In America,’ Wayne Thomas! Give the man a round of applause!”

Tags: creative writing, fictitious characters, imaginary conversations