I was a lousy student in Lyle Bradley’s 10th grade biology class and he was wildly generous to give me a B-minus, given my ineptitude at frog dissection and tree identification, and since then I’ve descended into superstition and mythology and faith in vitamin E, and chicken soup and in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, the woman created from a spare rib because the man was lonely, but had God chosen, He could’ve made the man capable of creating egg and sperm and combining the two, perhaps by sticking his finger into his ear, and we’d have a world of a billion guys and there’d be no fashion industry, no beauty products and what little opera there would be would not be very grand.

Had I worked hard in Lyle’s class, I might’ve gone on to get a degree in science from a third-rate college and started a mediocre career and who needs that? Nobody. Instead, I looked for a line of work that didn’t exist anymore and became the host of a live radio variety show, of which there were maybe four in the country, and of those four hosts I was pretty good. And this is my advice to the young: don’t be a poet or video producer or proctologist or politician – you’ll find thousands of people ahead of you in line. Chose something very rare – write a Canadian romance novel, make butterfly milk, design an app to tap maple sap, produce a podcast of pure silence. Be distinctive from the get-go. Become a Mob boss. The Mob is dead, so revive it. Some things worked better when the Mob was in charge. Be the guy in charge.

Thousands of young people want to go into literature or the arts, but those fields are overcrowded. The arts aren’t about art, they’re about prizes, the Pulitzer, Booker, Hooker, Smuckers, Emmy, Sammy, Jimmy. That’s all people know about. If someone wins a prize, the name of it will be permanently attached to the recipient’s name: “Sammy-award-winning ceramicist Tammy Lanolin, etc”. It’s all about awards. Nobody knows your work from anyone else’s, the prize is your Get Out Of Anonymity Free card.

A million idealistic young people aim to get into politics, which is a terrible choice.

Politics is a disaster zone. The country is permanently divided between burgeoning totalitarians and weak-kneed democrats. People love conflict, the call to arms, the smell of gunpowder, the chance to despise the despicable and maybe hang them from a lamppost and put their head on a spike.

The Scandinavians avoid this polarisation by having multiple political parties: a dozen in Denmark, a half dozen in Norway, eight in Sweden, eight in Finland, which means that partisans subscribe to a specific platform, campaign on it and then a coalition government is formed that requires extensive compromise. Campaigning is set aside in favour of governance. You settle down and try to make things work. And often you may see people who were skeptics put in charge of the very programmes they were critical of. The anti-immigration candidate is put in charge of Immigration & Naturalization, the coal and gas guy becomes the administrator of solar and wind. Enough with the posturing, let’s make some progress.

This system works in a small country where people live in close contact with others who disagree with them and Socialists run into Nationalists at the bar and they amuse each other, but in America the lefties headed for the coasts and the rightniks took over the interior and we stick to our own and avoid neighbourhoods with the wrong lawn signs.

So I’m out of politics and have begun a new career as one of America’s few octogenarian comedians. While I can still stand up, I walk out on stage and joke about decrepitude and memory loss and flatulence and I do a little tap dance while I sing:

Dig a hole in the ground,

Three feet across and six feet down,

Borrow the dough, pass the basket,

Give the guy a high-class casket,

Kneel and close your eyes in prayer,

Thank God it’s him, not you, up there.

Line up for a last reviewal

Once the man was cold and cruel,

Now he’s sweet, quiet, calm,

That’s what happens when you embalm,

Close the lid and say goodbye,

You really ought to try to cry,

Fold up the flag, give a salute,

There goes the waste of a pretty good suit.

Everybody do the funeral rag. 

I’ve got this field more or less to myself. The competition is dropping like flies. By the time I’m 90, I’m going to be king of the hill, top of the heap, just like whatshisname sang, the guy with the toupee. My hair is natural. You young people, wait your turn.

Originally published on garrisonkeillor.com and reprinted here with permission.