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My Fidget is the Best

I hate the Bouncers, those people who can’t sit quietly without jittering one of their legs up and down, balancing on the ball of the foot, a repetitive motion that you can’t ignore once you notice it. Oh so annoying, especially when you sit next to them on the subway – then in addition to the jiggle-jiggle-jiggle, there’s rub-rub-rub against your knee. Those damn Bouncers need attention, a daily walk, something to keep them in line.

Then there’s the Shifters, the folks who don’t know how to stand still. It’s a constant series of movements, shifting the weight from side to side, crossing and uncrossing the arms, sighing and flailing and generally crying out for a pair of leg shackles. You’re standing behind one of these cats at the bank and it’s all “What’s that over to the right? Oooh, look, it’s a line! How ‘bout here on the left? Hey, check that out, more line!” The worst are the ones who don’t realize that their little personal rhythmless two-step is causing them to move backward, until you have to poke them with your book to retain your personal space. Then of course it’s you getting the offended glare, as though you had not been standing here, mature and stable, two feet planted firmly on the ground, minding your own business. Shifters are just ne’er-do-wells, never done an honest day’s standing in their life.

We mustn’t forget the Pickers. As soon as a Picker feels a moment of repose coming on, he or she busts out the nail-cleaning (especially irksome when performed on manicured talons – oh, that clicking sound), the hair-twiddling, the zit-finding missions (the slow, contemplative stroking of the skin, the pause as the fingertips encounter a protuberance, the faraway eyes as the Picker ponders future extraction). Pickers have no boundaries, and worse, no sense of humility: do they really think that the rest of us care to observe their mundane grooming habits? Do they imagine that we can make an in-depth exploration of their split ends without thinking a little less of them as a person? We are not all aestheticians, after all.

I am a Fiddler. When I’m restless or distracted or watching something boring on tv, no pen or paper clip is safe. Caps are there to be opened and closed repeatedly. The battery cases on all the remotes in the house are loose and degraded from the constant opening and shutting. I play with zipper pulls; I snap snaps; I peel off strips of tape from the roll so I can tape, untape, tape, untape on the desk or on my hand. As I refine my bottle-cap spinning upon the smooth accommodating surface of my desk, I see you looking at me: you with the leg, you with the flaky scalp. I know what you whisper about me to your fellows: property-destroyer! Wastrel!

You can say what you will, but when the chips fall, when the shoe drops, when the inevitable days of revolution come and it’s fidget pitched against fidget, who do you think will have the advantage? The jittery Bouncers, restless and unable to focus, are emotionally unstable already, it’s clear. The Shifters – what will they threaten us with? Interpretive-dance-fighting? And the pickers, what do they propose to do, groom us to death? Massive wedgie assault, perhaps? No, it’s clear that the Fiddlers will have the advantage. We have tools, my friend, and have put in the practice to wield them formidably. We can improvise, adapting nearly any office supply or small household gadget to our advantage. We are not to be taken lightly, whatever aspersions you cast upon our characters now. You just watch yourselves. There’s a rubber band and a toothpick with your name on it, and don’t you forget it.