Walter Mitty

[dramatic music] Everyone has fantasies, daydreams.

We even, like Walter Mitty, act them out sometimes.

It's an inexpensive, harmless enough pastime, and may even be very good mental therapy.

Except, except if we start to believe our fantasies.

But that one move is pretty extraordinary, and it's the kinda story you don't forget.

You know, I, I put it in the, almost in the category of, like, like Walter Mitty or, or, or there's a wonderful, um, story by Can Themba, the South African writer, called The Suit, which, uh, you know, it just, it, it makes one, it does one thing, but it does it so extraordinarily well that it's, that it, that it, it creeps under your skin for good.

Mm-hmm.

And this, of course, like you said, is, is all about the typewriter, which he hates.

He's overdramatic, you know, in his mind.

And so I think it was, like, waiting for him to become, you know, this other person.

Again, like this Walter Mitty idea where you, where you immediately just, just transform yourself in your mind as someone else, and that, you know, I think is, is a, you know, a beautiful thing, you know?

Yeah.

He'd also been reprimanded during his training for wearing nurses epaulettes before he was qualified to do so.

And again, that to me hammers home that it's a bit Walter Mitty-esque of I'm more important than I actually am.

So I'm not a qualified nurse at this point, but I'm going to wear the epaulettes to have everybody believe that I am a qualified nurse.

Yeah, it's that, like you said, hero complex, like that status thing.

See, I'm a Meet the Parents girlie.

And even Walter Mitty, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty that he did, that's one of my favorite short stories.

I loved the movie.

Yes, I saw the first one of that.

I'm gonna get the med kit out and go try to render aid." But you have the opportunity in your daily life to actually create these plans and to mentally rehearse them, so the idea that you don't have that opportunity is false.

It's just people don't think about it as a mental rehearsal, and sometimes they get accused of daydreaming or, you know, Walter Mitty scenarios or stuff like that.

Right, right.

But to me, there's a really significant difference between what would I do in this, you know, somewhat feasible emergency scenario versus 12 gunmen burst through the door of the Applebee's.

He's not interested in him anymore.

Oh, and that he's like some sort of Walter Mitty, like a complete liar, terrible liar about all sorts of things.

Moving on, moving on.

Why did I even spend that long on it? Why did, why? You don't care.

And actually, the reason people are upset was not Jason Arday, which no one really, you know, no one really cares about some guy who worked the system.

He could have just been a Walter Mitty character or something like this.

It's more that this represents the corruption of academia and of the wider culture, that the equal outcome emotional harm protection for minorities ideology trumps everything else, standards, merit, reason.

It's the dominant value and you have to bow down to it.