Main Street Magazine Spring '23

“Who am I?” I asked him, rhetorically. “Well, I’ll tell you—I’m
better than God, is what I am! What a loser God is compared to
me, they should worship me in churches! I have many admirable
qualities, such as that I’m a sweet and caring guy, and that I’m
a criminal.”
“You’re a criminal?” he asked me.
“A reformed criminal, reformed just like the Christian religion
during the reformation,” I told him. I’d narrowly saved my own
ass, while connecting more to his Christian roots.
Of course, at this point I wasn’t super well-trained in leadership.
So, I didn’t get the outcome I expected. What he told me was,
“You seem like a good guy to follow, but God seems like a better
guy. You’re under arrest for blasphemy.”
“Don’t arrest me for blasphemy!” I said.
“Mmm…okay,” he told me. “Just don’t do any crimes and maybe
I’ll let you come be chief of police one day.”
I don’t want to be chief of police, I thought mischievously, I want
to be a bad-ass criminal who pulls big heists. I could pull a lot of
heists if I was a cop, but I wouldn’t get arrested enough for it to
mean anything. I thought then about the failings of our justice
system. But that’s a story for another book—for my other book,
Justice: A Basic Introduction to Our Awesome but Fatally Flawed
Justice System, Volumes I–IX, Part One: The Founding Fathers,
Racism, and Arachnophobia, Second Edition.
Back to my anecdote. I brought the microscopes off-campus
as fast as I could, and in my rushing, I got a little lost. It was
then that I found this weird abandoned warehouse, and an
idea came over me. I decided I would make this place my evil
lair—my villain hideout. I imagined how it would be: a great big
wooden desk in the middle full of cigars for me to smoke, me
with a suit and tie and fedora, and a line of goons who were
insanely loyal to me. I started thinking, why were they loyal to
me? The answer quickly became clear: it was because of my
awesome leadership skills. So, I paused my mental image of
this future reality, as easily as you would pause a movie, and
carefully examined this brand-new version of me. What had I
done to deserve goons? Had I been a good man? No, good men
can’t rule. It says so right here. Don’t believe me? Well, that’s
sad, because I believe in you. In this other reality, I was a bad
guy, but I was also a great leader. How can this dichotomy be
true? To understand that we’ll need to go back to the times of
the big Greek Geek Socrates…then again, maybe in another
article. We’re running out of time! For now, I’m going to tell you
the story of the alternate mob-boss me. I was a good leader
because none of my goons believed in God. To them, I was
God. I’d even written my own Bible for them to read and made
my own churches which believed in my own fucked-up faith.
That’s really where the inspiration for this article came from. I
needed a “religious” text for when I got so good at leadership
that everyone needed something to read from. I hope you’re one
of my goons.
So, I was hiding the stolen microscopes in the warehouse, right?
I logged onto my laptop, listing them on eBay, marking them
freshly-stolen. But not ten minutes later I got a call from my
biology professor. I don’t know how she got my number.
She spoke in a Shakespearean dialect, something I found
immensely odd.
She told me, “Ho, I bequeath unto thee a warrant for thine
arrest.”
I said to her, “What? I’m innocent!”
“You lie,” she said, “and in a poor fashion. Come hither and see
the truth, worthless scum.”
“Fine,” I said.
I knew that if I was innocent, I’d just go to her office, without
a care in the world…so, to make it seem like I was innocent, I
went there, without a care in the world.
When I arrived, she said, “Alas, the thief arrives, and what does
he into this room bring but his shameful self?”
She got a laptop out and put on taped footage of me stealing
the microscopes. In the video, I was wearing my white clothes.
“That’s not me! I don’t wear white, you know that! I wear black!”
I yelled.
“You are wearing white at this very moment,” she told me.
I looked down to see that I was still wearing the same clothes
as when I’d stolen the microscopes, forgetting to change out of
it after getting to the warehouse.
The cop from earlier was at the side of her office. He was
shaking his head slowly. “I saw great potential in you, kid. You
squandered it. Tell me where you put the microscopes, boy. It’ll
give you an easier sentence.”
“On eBay,” I yelled as he grabbed my arms and dragged me out
of the classroom, to jail. ‘On eBay!” It was true, technically. I did
put them on eBay. But for some reason, despite me telling the
truth, he continued dragging me away. What a jerk! But I’d been
caught red-handed.
There are so many more stories I’d like to tell. Like how I
crashed other peoples’ weddings and introduced myself as
the surprise best man to practice leadership. Like how I went
to the Dalai Lama, and he said I was completely right about
everything. Like how, after going to jail, I found God in solitary
confinement (He was under my food tray). But this was the
most important one. It’s really my origin, my catalyst which led
to me becoming who I am today.
Did you see what I did there? I made this entire article about
myself. You thought you were gonna get an objective article
about leadership, and the best strategies to get better at it,
but I led you into my wild life instead. And in a way, that’s
what leadership really is, it’s taking complete control over the
narrative (whether that be in politics, a club, or a friend circle),
and speaking over everyone who opposes you. I led this article
from rhetorical nonsense to personal anecdote. Man, I’m such
a great leader. I deserve every goon that’s coming my way.
73