Knicker von Nickel had eleven reasons to be miserable and only one to be happy.
The first reason mirrored the last. He was miserable simply because he was Knicker von Nickel, and misery was all he knew.
The second reason was his face. In his own, well-informed opinion, Knicker von Nickel had the world’s most average face. His cheeks were neither round nor sunken, his eyes neither expressive nor mysterious, his nose neither hooked nor pug nor long nor short. His chin might be the most notable feature of his entire body, but only because the faintest cleft at its center sometimes drew attention away from the other bland protrusions and mundane appendages scattered across his body in all the proper and ordinary places.
The third reason was style. Knicker von Nickel had none. From head to toe he wore a motley collection of articles that never quite jibed with the adjacent pieces. His brown suede shoes always clashed with his burgundy plaid socks that somehow lacked the banana yellow of his trousers, and that banana yellow slipped awkwardly into an eggshell and blue striped shirt supplemented by a black cashmere vest over which hung a green army surplus jacket and thick rimmed eyeglasses that didn’t sit properly on his face and rode high above his eyebrows.
The fourth reason was women. Like style, Knicker had none.
The fifth reason was one particular woman. She had brown hair, brown eyes, a glorious smile, and style.
The sixth reason was intelligence. Though his enemies, of which he had few, and his mocking acquaintances, of which he had many, often enjoyed a spot of humor each time they referred to him as Knicker Know Nothing, Mr. von Nickel was rather brilliant. At the very least, he was smart enough to know he had every reason but one to be miserable.
The seventh reason was history. As an afficianado of all things historical, and of all the ages past in which a person such as himself might have thrived, Knicker von Nickel understood his position in life on its grandest scale. He was not a great man, nor a commanding leader, nor an innovative thinker with an ability to communicate his ideas to the masses. He had no armies at his control. He had no grand rhetoric with which to inspire. He had not the wit for political debate nor the eloquence to be a poet. Gallantry did not emanate from his aura, nor did masculinity flourish in his awkward gate. How then, he wondered, might he entice that one particular woman? The lessons of history, and the disinterest she so often displayed, hinted that the odds were not in his favor.
The eighth reason was that very same woman. Her name was Anienna Ackinson, something of a strange moniker in the opinion of Knicker von Nickel, who, whether he admitted it or not, knew something of strange monikers.
The ninth reason, acting as an addendum to the eighth, was romance. Like style and women, Knicker had none. He could light candles. He could prepare a decent dish. He might even whisper seductively and know the perfect time to breathe upon a lady’s neck. In his mind he spoke like Casanova and charmed every lass who dared fall victim to his mighty allure, but in practice he was a mumbling fool, awestruck by beauty and incapable of finding anything in his average face, mismatched clothing, shy nature, and conversational ineptitude that might even remotely appeal to a woman. Thus, he had very little opportunity to practice his charm, and that lack of practice had eventually eroded every last hint of the confidence needed to act in a romantic fashion. One failure fed the other, and their gluttony resulted in daily feasts of patheticism.
The tenth reason was a collection of all the uncategorized reasons he invented every day. It consisted of fear, humility, self-deprecation, cowardice, lust, delusion, desire, perfection, illness, disease, wrongheadedness, dehydration, complexion, magnetism, magic, allergy, confinement, free will, fate, religion, humanity, universality, and all words to denote everything. He always had an excuse. He always had a reason to act the way he did. He could justify anything and convince himself of the lie. Nothing was ever his own fault, not even his own failings, but at least he was miserable about it all.
Thus we fall to the eleventh reason, and again it was Anienna Ackinson. She sat beside him on the train to work almost every day. Her perfume mesmerized him the first time she sat down, and in the five months since, after nearly a hundred encounters and hundreds of near knee touching incidents, he had learned little more than her name. Anienna Ackinson. She smiled at him when she sat down, but only because she was polite. She laughed if he made a joke, but only because the joke was funny, inciting others around them to laugh as well. She was stunningly beautiful, though he rarely saw more than half her face and even then it was only in his periphery. When he had asked her name, they made eye contact, and his breath betrayed him. The next day he accidentally kicked her in the leg while adjusting his pants. Once he elbowed her in the breast when he unexplainably twitched while pretending to read his book. Always she seemed distant. Always she seemed uninterested. And for five months, he used that apparent disinterest as an excuse, because he was Knicker von Nickel, and that’s what he did.
So what then was his only reason for being happy? What grand occurrence might allow a man like him to experience joy? Well, quite simply, he was Knicker von Nickel, and despite all his reasons for feeling miserable, when he finally stopped making excuses, gathered his limited courage, prepared himself for rejection and proceeded to ask her on a date, Anienna Ackinson said, “Yes.”
Found this one in the archives. I've always liked it. May 17, 2009.