In years to come, I’ll remember this week as the time I broke the Hemingway Rule.
I was driving past the mall and remembered something I needed to pick up. There was only one problem. I’d been working on the house all day, and I looked sweaty and bedraggled. And I had the attire to match: sandals, running shorts, and an old T-shirt, all of which were daubed with grime and the house paint of projects past.
Should I run in and take care of business, or should I put it off until a day when I’m freshly bathed and better dressed?
In case you’ve never heard of the Hemingway Rule, it’s one I came across many years ago when I was reading a biography of the great writer.
One day, or so the story goes, Ernest Hemingway had hired a man from the neighborhood to help him put a new roof on his house in Key West. The day was blistering hot, and by mid-afternoon the two men pretty much looked a mess. That’s when they realized they needed another bucket of roofing tar.
Hemingway handed his helper some cash, and asked him to run into town and buy the tar. The man hesitated.
“Well, I can do that,” he replied, “but I’ll have to go home first and clean up.”
“Nonsense!” Hemingway told him. “I go into town dressed like this all the time.”
“Yessir,” the man said, “but a-body has to have a whole lot of money to go around looking as nasty as you do.”
So, back to my predicament: I was looking nasty, but with not much money, and the mall was a mere turn signal away. I hemmed and hawed a moment, but then I went for it. I broke the Hemingway Rule, in a most blatant and brazen fashion.
And…nothing happened.
The sky didn’t fall. There was no film of my transgression on the 10 o’clock news.
In fact, everybody including the sales clerk treated me with the utmost courtesy. I didn’t even catch any customers grimacing at the fact that I looked like I’d come there straight from working on the railroad. Or at least, from painting one.
I was actually back in the car and driving home, feeling a little smug, when the truth dawned on me: I’d gotten away with it because I have white hair.
It’s such an important corollary that I’ve mentally added it to the Hemingway Rule, i.e.: “To get away with going around looking nasty, a-body has to have a whole lot of money. Or, white hair.”
The silver lining (so to speak) of our impatient and road-raged society is that we still tend to cut a lot of slack for somebody with white hair. Unless that person is, say, frothing at the mouth, sleeping in our carport, or openly carrying a loaded firearm (none of which I’ve done…well, not lately), we tend to look over them.
And that’s all to the good. Because by the time a person has white hair (although mine started turning when I was 30), he or she has a lot more problems on their plate to worry about than being stylish at all times.
As just one example, there’s the problem of trying to write as well as Hemingway. The secret to that, of course, is the same as the answer to the famous joke about, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Which, come to think of it, is what turned my hair white in the first place.
I was driving past the mall and remembered something I needed to pick up. There was only one problem. I’d been working on the house all day, and I looked sweaty and bedraggled. And I had the attire to match: sandals, running shorts, and an old T-shirt, all of which were daubed with grime and the house paint of projects past.
Should I run in and take care of business, or should I put it off until a day when I’m freshly bathed and better dressed?
In case you’ve never heard of the Hemingway Rule, it’s one I came across many years ago when I was reading a biography of the great writer.
One day, or so the story goes, Ernest Hemingway had hired a man from the neighborhood to help him put a new roof on his house in Key West. The day was blistering hot, and by mid-afternoon the two men pretty much looked a mess. That’s when they realized they needed another bucket of roofing tar.
Hemingway handed his helper some cash, and asked him to run into town and buy the tar. The man hesitated.
“Well, I can do that,” he replied, “but I’ll have to go home first and clean up.”
“Nonsense!” Hemingway told him. “I go into town dressed like this all the time.”
“Yessir,” the man said, “but a-body has to have a whole lot of money to go around looking as nasty as you do.”
So, back to my predicament: I was looking nasty, but with not much money, and the mall was a mere turn signal away. I hemmed and hawed a moment, but then I went for it. I broke the Hemingway Rule, in a most blatant and brazen fashion.
And…nothing happened.
The sky didn’t fall. There was no film of my transgression on the 10 o’clock news.
In fact, everybody including the sales clerk treated me with the utmost courtesy. I didn’t even catch any customers grimacing at the fact that I looked like I’d come there straight from working on the railroad. Or at least, from painting one.
I was actually back in the car and driving home, feeling a little smug, when the truth dawned on me: I’d gotten away with it because I have white hair.
It’s such an important corollary that I’ve mentally added it to the Hemingway Rule, i.e.: “To get away with going around looking nasty, a-body has to have a whole lot of money. Or, white hair.”
The silver lining (so to speak) of our impatient and road-raged society is that we still tend to cut a lot of slack for somebody with white hair. Unless that person is, say, frothing at the mouth, sleeping in our carport, or openly carrying a loaded firearm (none of which I’ve done…well, not lately), we tend to look over them.
And that’s all to the good. Because by the time a person has white hair (although mine started turning when I was 30), he or she has a lot more problems on their plate to worry about than being stylish at all times.
As just one example, there’s the problem of trying to write as well as Hemingway. The secret to that, of course, is the same as the answer to the famous joke about, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Which, come to think of it, is what turned my hair white in the first place.
