I guess there’s nothing you can do about your genes. It’s not bad enough that I was a nonconformist in the days of my youth; time is supposed to take care of that, a la measles and mumps. But not me. The reflexes grow weaker with each passing year, and the bifocals stronger, but the same old rebel blood apparently still flows in my otherwise arteriosclerotic veins. How it has managed to survive the pall of conformity (so ably exposed by such smog experts as Henry Commager and Elmer Davis) which covers the intellectual horizon of America today is a mystery, but there you are; I don’t pretend to explain-it any more than I can explain Dunninger.
What makes it worse is that I am basically gregarious and crave, more than I care to admit, popularity. It would be wonderful to have people cheering as I enter a room, instead of screaming “Unclean!” and fleeing as though the plague had struck. If they must go (and, alas! they must), why can’t they go quietly ?
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