I have a brother-in-law who’s a really smart guy, a PhD in chemical engineering, a guy who thought our boat house and its porch up in the Northwoods ought to have refrigeration, ceiling fans, recharging outlets and lights, so he built his own solar panels and wired the boathouse for all of the above. Yeah, one of those guys. Anyway, one of his best sayings is, “The trick is to make your dysfunction function for you.” I see evidence of this all around. Look at almost any Olympic athlete. These are crazy people, the physical outliers who have small torsos but long legs, so they can swim like mer-people. Then there are the obsessed children who can flex like slinkies so they become gymnasts until their careers are over at seventeen years old. Yeah, those people.

I think people can use their dysfunctions (special talents, obsessions, physical traits, or just weird quirks) to much greater advantage. For example, what if a person has some tendency for things I just don’t understand; let’s say he likes to do math stuff like adding numbers all day. He could work happily to catch the cheaters in Las Vegas or work in a toll booth. Think of the fun with odds, numbers, license plates, and states. And all he would have to say is number words all day. That would be hell for me, but for a person who can actually add and subtract in his head – wow, what an opportunity.

My kind of dysfunction would tend to other areas. I think writers ought to be the guys who work the night desk at hotels. They should have laptops next to the hotel registry from midnight till dawn (perfect for dysfunctional insomniacs) and work on great American novels. Any weird people who check in after midnight could become another Gatsby or Silas Marner.

Artists should take over for window cleaners and instead of cleaning windows that are dirty by the time they finish, they should paint murals on them, and then hose them off and re-paint them a couple of times a year. They could do tunnels to heaven and other perspective drawings like those guys who do the sidewalk chalk art that shows up on the internet twice a year.

Musicians, most of whom need a day job to survive anyway, should be nannies and baby-sitters, as should those who are bilingual. Think of the possibilities. Babysitters shouldn’t be plunking kids in front of a TV or pushing strollers to the park. They should be talking to little kids in Spanish or Polish and playing music to them.

People who are overweight should be personal trainers. All day long they could be telling clients, “No, do your arm curls slowly – here, let me show you. Joey, that’s not how you do a squat-thrust. Do it like this.” Then when they get too conditioned and toned up to be personal trainers, they could become waiters and waitresses where they eat enough to qualify as personal trainers again. In some cases they might eat themselves silly for a while and then get sick of that restaurant’s food like the kids who work in ice cream shops, and then they could become cooks.

Here’s one of my favorite dysfunctions. You know those people who post all that intense political stuff on the internet and never factcheck anything and think Snopes is a family in a William Faukner novel – those people should work for the IRS.

Here are two real cases. I know of an oral surgeon who also ties fishing flies, and his bug creations are so realistic that they scare people. His nickname is “Doc,” as it should be. If I needed an oral surgeon, he’d be the one I wanted. When I found out I needed cataract surgery I had a recommendation on an eye doctor from my father-in-law, but I was still worried since I’d never been in a hospital except to see babies. In the pre-op interview he asked all kinds of questions about my eyes to see what kind of lens he should put in. When I said, “I read a lot and tie flies,” his eyes lit up. “You’re a fly fisherman?” “Yes.” “That’s great. That means if you tie flies, you need a focal point of 14 inches, so I know what lens to put in.” “You tie flies?” I asked him. “Yes.” That’s all I needed to quit worrying about the surgery. If you ever need cataract surgery, get a doctor who can tie a tiny midge on a size 22 hook. No problem.

Golf courses are a dysfunctional use of land. You can’t farm on them, park cars on them or even picnic on them unless you can dodge little dangerous flying objects. I think we should make the dysfunction work for us by combining golf courses and cemeteries. Instead of a tombstone for a person who moved on, we could put in a little name stone angled toward the green, and then if a ball hit it, the ball would bounce perfectly toward the hole just like the advantage of hitting a golf cart path and getting a kicker. You could call it a “Namestone shot,” a lucky thing and as you pass, you could say a blessing on “John Schlemiel, 1927 to 2011.” If I were a golfer, I think I would like that. It would be killing two birdies…. okay, that was uncalled for, I know.

Think of some of the other possibilities. If you’re a high school kid who is failing math, you should be paired up with a fifth grader to teach that fifth grader easier math and then move along with him through sixth grade and so on until you both graduate – and can do math. If you’re afraid of flying, you’d be the best, the most reassuring pilot in the world. No one could be a better janitor than someone who is obsessive/compulsive. Wow, what a clean school you have here, Mr. Tenbroomholder! The possibilities are endless.

If you’re obsessed with movies, you could work for Nielson.
If you’re a gambler….
If you’re a clutterbug….
If you’re a birdwatcher….
If you can’t help blogging, you could, um, blog. Okay, that was uncalled for, I know.

Dysfunction is such a wonderful thing. Heck, I could have been five or six successful things.