Most of us have an inner Robin to our inner Batman, an inner Gromit to our inner Wallace, an inner Watson to our inner Sherlock Holmes. That’s a good thing.
Sidekicks come up with timely warnings when chaos and destruction threaten our world. They stopper the vial of weaponized bird flu about to be poured into an air conditioning intake. They defuse the bomb in the wreath the president is about to place on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They tackle the supervillain behind the wheel of the hijacked semi packed with Christmas presents.
They sometimes even allow us to star in our own inner Marvel Comic book, but even when they don’t, they still manage to keep us out of the supervillain category.
Their voices ask, in chorus, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” when whatever we’re about to do is perfectly legal but not a good look. They note that beauty can be deadly, self-righteousness flat out wrong, power a rotten apple in our moral barrel, wealth the soft, moss-paved garden path leading to all seven deadly sins.
Unlike psychic predictions, sidekick predictions don’t specify what will happen. They simply warn about what could go wrong if any of your plans involve the future.
It turns out that sidekick advice is infinitely more valuable than a hot stock tip from a professional Wall Street prophet or a guaranteed match from an expensive Ivy League dating service.
I’m going out on a limb here, but to celebrate the new year I’m allowing my inner sidekick to list 10 Things You Better Watch Out For in 2024. It’s a public service, based on my experience of listening to my sidekick (mostly happy outcomes) or ignoring him and doing what I want (mostly unmitigated disasters).
But if the following sounds a tad arrogant, didactic, intolerant of fools, and occasionally foul mouthed, remember that it’s not coming from me, it’s coming from him.
Without further ado:
You say you want a revolution? Be careful what you ask for. Every successful revolution that I know of has gone through a stage where it murders its most idealistic and devoted adherents, mostly because these people are fucking impossible to live with.
Don’t vote for any narcissistic jerk who confuses himself with the country he wants to lead.
If you’re female, Republican, and Catholic, you’re supporting two organizations who consider you a second-class human being. You’re not going to live in a better country or go to heaven if you’re the willing victim of an unjust status quo.
You cannot buy reality. You’ll get old and grotesque, even if you’re a billionaire. The more money you throw at reality, the more grotesque you’ll become, _____________. (Fill in the blank with the name of the most grotesque billionaire you can think of. If you can’t think of any, look up grotesque in the dictionary.)
Some people are so damaged that it takes years of psychotherapy before they realize the violence they think other humans want to do to them is really the violence they would like to do to other humans. If you’ve got an enemies list, look in the goddam mirror.
Don’t buy oceanfront property for the next two hundred years. Don’t buy property in anyplace where you’ll die without air conditioning.
If medical science has saved your life once or several times, you owe it a solid. Get your Covid booster.
Don’t look at political parties, countries, religions, dietary habits, and gender identity as football teams. It’s flat out stupid to support your side in these matters no matter what and smash, destroy, or own the other side. Football is one thing, and starting down the road to genocide is another. Remember that other cultures in other times have done a far better and more productive job than we’re doing with these tribal categories, with far happier outcomes. If you’re worried about what would Jesus do, Jesus would wonder why the hell you keep whittling the infinite possibilities of the universe down to two horribly unappealing choices.
If you’re uncertain whether you want to have kids because of the future they’ll face, or you know nice people who had perfectly awful kids, or if you think there are too many people already, or fear that your kids will kidnap your life and wreck your hopes and ambitions, Don’t Have Them.
Not many people have returned from the dead so far, and even Lazarus, who the Bible says did return from the dead, was notoriously closed-mouthed about the experience. When there’s no way to fact check, people make shit up all the time, especially about rewards in the hereafter. Action encompasses its own virtue, provided it’s got any to encompass.
“That’s ten things you should think about in 2024,” says my inner sidekick. He says they were the first ten things off the top of his head, and he could have come up with a few hundred more if he’d wanted to.
“I don’t think people would follow a few hundred more rules,” I tell him. (We talk. All the time. Usually because he’s asked me, “What the fuck are you doing?” and I’m trying to justify what suddenly looks like a terrifically bad idea.)
“They’re not rules,” he says. “They’re just me telling people blindfolded in a dark room where the furniture is. Jesus.”
“The furniture is Jesus?”
He sighs, and says, “It’s not easy being your sidekick, Kemo Sabe. I’d prefer it if you were more superhero than fuckup. I spend my days putting out your fires, cleaning up your messes, telling you not to do the things you go ahead and do. The sad thing is, you’re far from the worst action figure I’ve seen.
“There are people with great power who won’t use it, or worse yet, use it for unmitigated evil,” he goes on. “People hurt the people they love. They tell themselves lies. They cause others to fail rather than succeed themselves. They spend more energy avoiding problems than it would take to fix them. They lie when it would be easier to tell the truth. They cause themselves and everybody around them a lot of pain. The only thing they have to do is just stop. But they won’t.”
“You done yet?”
“Of course I’m not done yet,” he says. “I won’t be done until I stop being your sidekick. I’ll be done when I get my own superpowers and can start fixing things. Things are going to change for the better once that happens, believe me. Starting with you.”
“After this year, I’m not sure I can stand much more improvement,” I say. “Anyway, 2024 looks like a good year for supervillains. They’re popping up all over the place, defeating superheroes right and left. Marvel movies are failing at the box office. After Oppenheimer, it looks like superheroes are out and tormented geniuses are in.”
His face falls, and suddenly he looks tired, hollowed out, ineffectual. “I’m sure you’ll have a very good year then,” he says.
“Wait. Are you calling me a supervillain or just a tormented genius? Is that all you’ve got for me? In an infinite universe, those are my two horribly unappealing choices?”
No answer. He’s gone. Got angry and left. Again.
He did this last year. I finally caught up with him, carrying a sign that read The End is Near and preaching Revelation on a Boise streetcorner, in August. It took a while to coax him into the car.