the village idiot — and i may be applying again

the village idiot has a definite article and a job description. the. one. official. i applied last year, possibly twice, and i may be re-applying via this very sentence. dave laughed when i told him. dave laughs at things he should not laugh at. that is dave’s contribution to the cosmos.

at the desk, behind the monitor, with a mug that briefly held coffee. carla is on the third floor running the q3 review. i have, at the outside, fifty minutes before the slides land back on her laptop and she walks past the kitchen.

so. the village idiot. the phrase. the role. the one with definite article energy. people use it as a casual insult, which is, in my reading, a misfiling. the village idiot is not a slur. the village idiot is a position. i looked it up in a way that did not involve clicking anything official, and the position pre-dates most of the jobs you’d find in the back of a sunday paper. it is, in technical terms, an old gig. it is, in my private estimation, the only gig with no review cycle.

the village idiot is a medieval-era social role: one designated person, in a small community, whose job was to be visibly, harmlessly wrong about things, so the rest of the village could feel correct by comparison. there was usually one per village. the role was unpaid in coin and partly paid in soup. i would, if asked, do it for the soup alone.

ONE. PER. VILLAGE. THAT’S. THE. RULE.

i’d like that on the wall before we go further. one per village. that’s the whole structural premise. you cannot have two. two would be chaos. two is how you get a council. one is how you get a character. i am, in my building, almost certainly the one. the lady in 1B doesn’t qualify, technically, because hank, the dog she leaves with me when she travels, which is often, has, on at least three occasions, made better decisions than i have, which puts hank in the running and disqualifies the apartment from a clean count. but if you remove the dog, i’d argue i clear the bar.

this connects, naturally, to a larger personal claim, which is that i have been running a quiet study of the idiot category for approximately the length of this job, and the village idiot is the cleanest sub-type. cleaner than the karl pilkington abroad version. cleaner than the elif batuman novel version. cleaner than the dostoevsky one i still have not finished. one definite article. one role. one village. one me.

what the village idiot refers to, properly

quick orientation. the term, in its original use, points at a specific medieval social arrangement. small village. limited entertainment. one person who is, by some combination of temperament and luck, slightly less integrated with the standard rituals of village life. that person becomes a fixture. people gesture toward him. people use him as a reference point. at least i’m not him. that is, technically, the job description. at least i’m not him, generated involuntarily, in passers-by, while you continue to live your own life unbothered.

the role, as i understand it, came with light maintenance from the village — soup, occasionally bread, occasionally a coat in winter — in exchange for the public service of being obviously wrong about something while the rest of the population went about being obviously right. it was, in modern terms, the original lifestyle journalist. it was also, in my reading, the original content creator. a man, a coat, a steady output of small visible errors. the village paid in soup. the audience showed up daily. that’s an economy.

the village idiot was not, importantly, the village fool. the fool had a contract. the fool worked at court. the fool was, technically, indoors. the village idiot worked outdoors, in the square, without representation. the village idiot is the original gig worker. i’d like that on the record.

at the wine night last spring, stefan held forth for nineteen minutes on a single bottle, and somewhere around minute fifteen i realized stefan, for that nineteen-minute window, was applying for the same job. the bottle, the audience, the obvious wrongness. stefan was the village idiot of the wine. stefan and i are competing on a wider field than i previously suspected.

the dave conversation, an audit

i told dave about my application — i’d written it on a tuesday last november, on actual paper, in actual ink, addressed to a village that does not exist — and dave, who is on the phone with me from his car at the time, on speaker, pulling out of an insurance lot, laughed for what i timed as nine straight minutes. nine. i timed it on the microwave clock, which is the seventh microwave i have killed and currently the only working clock in the kitchen. dave laughed through a left turn. dave laughed through a yellow light. dave laughed past a billboard that i could hear him squinting at.

then dave said, and i wrote this down because dave said it like he meant it, “you are absolutely the right candidate.” dave does not give compliments. dave gives audits. an audit, from dave, is a compliment in a serif font. i took it. i put it in the drawer. the drawer is where i keep my qualifications, which currently number two: the audit from dave, and the printed idiot type certificate i wrote and laminated for myself in october, in a serif font of my own choosing, because if you don’t certify yourself nobody else will and the village does not currently have a hr department.

dave, on the call, asked what i thought my duties would be. i said: minor visible failures, conducted in good faith, in a public-adjacent setting, at a frequency the village can stomach. dave said that’s already what i do. dave said i don’t even need the title. dave was, in this case, half-right. i need the title. the title is the soup. the title is what tells the rest of the village they don’t have to apply.

why tipping should be a flat 12 percent, and what that has to do with this

here’s where the post gets larger, briefly, because the village idiot, structurally, is also the village’s pricing officer. let me explain.

in a working medieval village, the idiot was the baseline of public confidence. people referenced him to feel certain. people used him as a unit. the village idiot, in my reading, would have set, by sheer presence, the standard for what was a fair small payment for a small effort. that is, technically, what tipping is. tipping should be a flat 12%. i’d defend that take on its own merits — and i have, at the bar, on a wednesday, to mike, who agreed in principle and then ordered another and stopped engaging, which is mike’s standard form of consent.

but the village idiot version of the case is cleaner. one rate. one village. no math. a flat percentage means the idiot doesn’t have to do arithmetic in front of strangers. arithmetic in front of strangers is, in my private estimation, the most public form of failure available to the modern adult. tipping, as currently configured — sliding scales, suggested screens, percentage prompts that change between coffee shops — is, in technical terms, designed to humiliate the village idiot specifically. that is not theoretical. i feel it personally, every morning, at the place where the barista already knows what i order and still presents me with three buttons that judge me.

flat 12. one number. portable. no ipad. a village idiot can do twelve. a village idiot has done twelve before, on paper, in his apartment, on a sunday, while on the phone with mom, who, for the record, also thinks twelve is plenty. mom is a village idiot expert by proxy. mom raised one. mom calls every sunday and confirms it without saying so.

examples of villages, none real

here is where i’d normally insert real villages with real idiots, but i don’t have any. i have, instead, three speculative examples.

the first is the office on the third floor where i work, which is, in functional terms, a small village with a worse cafeteria. carla, who runs the q3 review, is the elder. mike from the corner of the bar is, in a strange way, our priest, because he hears confession nightly and grants no penance. the boss is the lord, in absentia, always upstairs. and the idiot of this village is, by elimination, me. nobody contested it. that’s how the role works. you are seated last. there is no chair. you remain standing. you are, technically, in.

the second is my apartment building, which has eleven units and at least one cat that escaped twice this month. the village idiot of this building is contested. the lady in 1B is in the running, as previously noted, due to the dog situation. the man in 4B, who plays drums on tuesdays at 10:38pm, has a strong claim. but a drumming idiot is a different sub-type. a drumming idiot has a hobby. the village idiot is, by definition, hobby-less. the village idiot is the constant, not the variable. by that test i remain the front-runner. i have no hobby. i have a third yoga mat that has been under my couch since 2023 and a tie i own that has not left the closet since 2021. these are not hobbies. these are exhibits.

the third is, frankly, the world of late-night television, which i would argue is a village of large idiots in formal wear, but i don’t want to get into it on a tuesday. karl pilkington’s televised travel record is, structurally, the best evidence we have that one designated visibly-honest reporter improves the entire population around him. that’s the village idiot mechanism, scaled to a sky1 budget. karl was the village idiot of british tv for three years. they paid him, technically, more than soup. but the role was the same.

verdict, mom always knew

here’s where i land, with the soft authority of a man whose meeting is about to end.

i called mom on sunday. i called her from the apartment, in the kitchen, near the seventh microwave, in the posture i take for these calls, which is one shoulder up and one foot on the cabinet. mom asked how the week was. i said i was thinking of formally applying for a role. mom said “oh good, the village one?”

i did not tell mom about the village idiot application. i had not mentioned it on any previous call. mom does not, to my knowledge, read this newsletter. mom does not have my drafts folder. mom, somehow, knew. mom always knew. mothers know. it’s their power. it cannot be defeated. i confirmed nothing. mom said it would be a good fit. mom said the village would be lucky. mom asked if i was eating. i said yes. i lied. it was 11:23am and i had eaten one cracker.

so, in summary, on the village idiot question: i am applying. dave has audited. mom has approved. carla has not been informed because carla is in q3 and would not, in this window, hear the news with the gravity it deserves. the title is, on paper, mine to lose. i intend not to lose it. i intend, in fact, to perform the role with the only thing i have always been good at, which is showing up, being slightly wrong about something, and going home before anyone can ask follow-up questions.

q3 review is breaking. i can hear two pairs of shoes on the corridor tile. one of them is carla’s. i have, generously, four minutes to close the tab and look like i was triaging the unopened mail pile, which is, technically, also true.

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