Geekish Enthusiasm

For the most part, I find memoirs pretty boring and self-serving. Or narcissistic and solipsistic. I don't enjoy them. But one of the first sets of memoirs I ever remember reading were Richard Feynman's two books of anecdotes, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"

Feynman has a natural curiosity and directness that I find completely fascinating and endearing. There's a particular bit of an anecdote of his that sticks with me quite a bit, from his time at Princeton. It's popped up a few times lately in relation to random bits of Das Binky's life.

In the great big dining hall with stained-glass windows, where we always ate, in our steadily deteriorating academic gowns, Dean Eisenhart would begin each dinner by saying grace in Latin. After dinner he would often get up and make some announcements. One night Dr. Eisenhart got up and said, "Two weeks from now, a professor of psychology is coming to give a talk about hypnosis. Now, this professor thought it would be much better if we had a real demonstration of hypnosis instead of just talking about it. Therefore he would like some people to volunteer to be hypnotized.

I get all excited: There's no question but that I've got to find out about hypnosis. This is going to he terrific!

Dean Eisenhart went on to say that it would be good if three or four people would volunteer so that the hypnotist could try them out first to see which ones would be able to be hypnotized, so he'd like to urge very much that we apply for this. (He's wasting all this time, for God's sake!)

Eisenhart was down at one end of the hall, and I was way down at the other end, in the back. There were hundreds of guys there. I knew that everybody was going to want to do this, and I was terrified that he wouldn't see me because I was so far back. I just had to get in on this demonstration!

Finally Eisenhart said, "And so I would like to ask if there are going to be any volunteers . . ."

I raised my hand and shot out of my seat, screaming as loud as I could, to make sure that he would hear me: "MEEEEEEEEEEE!"

He heard me all right, because there wasn't another soul. My voice reverberated throughout the hall--it was very embarrassing. Eisenhart's immediate reaction was, "Yes, of course, I knew you would volunteer, Mr. Feynman, but I was wondering if there would be anybody else."

Lately, I feeling like that guy A LOT. Which is fun in it's own way, but come on, people... catch the fever! (And read Feynman. And come see Fountains of Wayne or Louis CK with me.)