“People are walking all over me,” Orlando Johnson admitted, standing at a crowded coffee shop where he couldn’t seem to get to the front of the line. “It’s like I don’t even exist anymore.” Orlando who claims he got stuck at a four-way intersection for twenty-five minutes yesterday afternoon, said he’ll be relieved to collect his ego when his dojo opens Monday evening. “I spent last night watching Eat, Pray, Love with this girl I like.” the once confident martial artist said, dropping his head. “Now I’m gonna get friend-zoned for sure.”
About three years ago, after Orlando’s sensei attended some popular business training classes for martial arts school owners, pictures of eagles soaring and Robert Frost poems and upbeat slogans started appearing around the gym. “He was just going through a phase,” Orlando said, “But the sign asking us to leave our egos at the door never came down.” Johnson said the request seemed reasonable enough until last Friday evening when the trouble started. “We rolled our eyes at first, but after a while it just became a habit, like wearing silly pajamas and colored belts. You don’t understand how important an ego is until you walk around without one for a couple of days.”
Orlando, who described himself as a guy who used to know what he wanted, where he was going and what he believed, now says he knows none of those things. “I’ve signed three petitions today, I became a member of my local co-op, and If I went to a restaurant right now, I’d probably agree to listen to the specials,” Orlando said. Burying his head in his hands, he asked what seemed like a rhetorical question–“I mean, who am I?” But after waiting for a reply through several minutes of awkward silence, he prodded hesitantly, “No, really, I’m serious. Could you tell me who I am?”
Among other changes Mr. Johnson reports noticing over the last thirty-six hours, are general feelings of acceptance for all people and ideas, an inability to distinguish truth from nonsense, and a lack of motivation to argue with people who are obviously full of shit. “I don’t know who’s full of shit and who’s not anymore,” Johnson said, “Everyone seems so reasonable to me and I’m sure from their point of view they’re absolutely correct.” After excusing himself to apologize to a gentleman who spilled a steaming cup of coffee on his lap and called him an idiot, Johnson admitted he thought life was better as an egocentric asshole. “I’ve always worried about it happening, and now, without my ego, I fear I might be turning into a douche,” he said.
For Orlando Johnson, who described the experience as “the vacation from himself from hell,” returning to his comfortable, solipsistic world is just a matter of time. But Johnson fears not everybody he knows is so lucky. “I wonder what happened to Oliver Young,” he said, remembering an old training partner who left for Texas last year. “His ego’s still sitting in the lost and found.”
**We managed to locate this story on Oliver Young, but all attempts to contact him for comments on extended periods of egolessness were unsuccessful.
