Page 34 - Dainfern Precinct Living 3 2021

HUMOUR
THE NEED

FOR FAILURE

BY JAMES CLARKE

value of what we mistakenly regard
as ‘failure’. I said how a supposedly
successful waiter would never drop
a tray or spill soup. Yet a waiter
who trips over his own feet would
create jobs. Carpet cleaners and dry
cleaners would have to be called in;
more food would have to be cooked;
more plates bought.

Minutes later, after I had sat
down, a waiter waltzed in bearing
above his head a tray of really
expensive liqueurs. And, I kid you
not, he tripped over the carpet
with spectacular results and, to
his utter puzzlement, received a
spontaneous standing ovation.
Failures, you see, at least help the
world go round.

Pile cites an instance in Pillsbury,
North Dakota, where on Election Day
for the six-person council nobody
voted, not even those manning the
booth. The mayor, a farmer, had
or 30 years (I’ll have you plane in the entire war – an Italian been too busy in the fields to attend
know) I was President- Airforce plane. On board was the and his wife too busy running her
for-Life of Densa, the club chief of the Italian Airforce. shop.
I founded for those of us
Ftoo stupid to pass the IQ But I have now come across a whole So the county auditor ordered the
test to qualify for Mensa. Mensa, as catalogue of new failures: Stephen defunct council to appoint six people.
everybody knows, is the international Pile’s The Ultimate Book of Heroic They appointed themselves. They
society for the unusually intelligent. Failures. Pile, a fellow journalist were each paid about R400 a year
in London, was self-proclaimed which, they said, went mostly on
And for 30 years I tried to organize president of the Not Terribly Good doughnuts for their meetings.
‘the Great Densa Congress’. Club in Britain (our similar roles were
I failed. But failure is Densa’s code. purely coincidental). Pile agrees with Pile recounts a failed stage
me that failures play an important production in Frankfurt’s prestigious
I was planning to feature some of role in society. Schauspielhaus where vodka,
this country’s greatest and most as an experiment, was used as a
glorious failures. I was going Some years ago, I was invited to prop instead of water. After all, the
to ask the fellow in charge of deliver the after-dinner speech at production was about binge-drinking
Johannesburg’s potholed suburban Mensa’s national annual gathering. Russian workmen.
roads and the municipality’s ‘The Need for Failures’ was my
chaotically dysfunctional traffic lights theme. At first, the audience enthusiastically
to deliver the keynote address. applauded the acting. Then the actors
The theme: ‘Failure as an Art’ but, The problem with intelligence began falling about and forgetting
unsurprisingly, nobody knew how to (I told them) was that it was limited. their lines. One, unaccountably
get hold of him. Mensans have to have an IQ of stood on a table and then fell off.
over 135 and I have met one with Another fell off the stage. The star of
I also had in mind an Italian barber in an IQ of 185 – the absolute limit of the show began ranting and raving
Pretoria who spent three years in the intelligence. But stupidity, note, has like King Lear. The backstage crew
Italian Airforce during World War 2 no limit. had to call for an ambulance. The
– in command of a large anti-aircraft actors objected, so the ambulance
battery. His unit shot down only one I gave an example of the economic crew called for police back-up.

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