With most of stories, there are points that remind us of our own life experiences.  Often these are things that are broad enough that they could elicit such feelings in a huge portion of the population.  Chuck Klosterman’s “Downtown Owl” hits very specific notes from my life.

Take the case of Julia and Vance, two single people talking in a bar.  Vance is enigmatic, and during a conversation in which Julia tries to draw him out, they talk about music.  He says he likes the Rolling Stones, and only the Rolling Stones.

“That’s impossible,” Julia says.  “No one only likes one band.”

This is possible.  My college roommate Shawn L. liked only one band: Megadeth.  He does appreciate others, and I’m pretty sure he listens to more now, but at the time if you walked into our room and he were playing music, it was Megadeth.  Vance also mentions in this exchange that he doesn’t like female singers.  Same with Shawn L.

Vance is a former football player in this tiny North Dakota town, and despite the fact that he made exactly one good player in his entire career, he is revered.  Julia tries talking about football, and mentions that she’s a huge fan of flea-flickers.

There is not a play I enjoy more than a flea-flicker.  When I was in high school, we had Madden ’98 for Nintendo 64, and nothing made me happier than discovering that the Green Bay Packers had a flea-flicker in their playbook.  I ran that play over and over, no matter how often it failed.  It’s just that much fun.

Julia teaches at the local high school.  She mentions that before classes began, teachers would stand outside their rooms to monitor the hallways, and she noticed a pattern:

“Every morning from 8:10 a.m. until the first bell at 8:35, certain students walked laps around the halls in a continual loop, half of them moving clockwise and half in the opposite orbit.”

Freshman year of high school, my friend Dan and I did this every day.  Every day.  There was no rhyme or reason, just chatting and roaming from hallway to hallway until it was time to head to our 1st period class.

Monday is a holiday here in the U.S.  There will be no mail delivery.  Like many such days, I will check the mail anyway.  Klosterman’s story has a group of older guys who hang out in a diner discussing many unimportant topics.  One of them is Columbus.  This sentence is probably the best thing I could ever hope to say to anyone who asks why I never remember to avoid the mailbox on national holidays:

“I just think it’s idiotic that we don’t get mail today, simply because Columbus was a bad explorer.”

Speaking of great sentences, I’m not sure why I find this other one so amazing, but I’m sure the other passengers on the Metro who saw me chuckling thought there was something wrong with me when I read it.  One of the high school students, Mitch, is talking about his English teacher, Mr. Laidlaw, who constantly makes fun of the kid.

“‘He doesn’t hate me,’ Mitch replied. “He just knows I don’t care what he says.’ As he said these words, Mitch imagined how wonderful it would feel to jam a screwdriver into Laidlaw’s eye socket.  He imagined pushing Laidlaw down a flight of metal stairs, possibly toward a bear.”

The threat of bears is always hilarious.

Finally, if you’ve read any of Klosterman’s non-fiction work, you know he often discusses the way people interact with media and pop culture, and what effects those interactions may have.  He sprinkles those kinds of thoughts into his characters’ minds in this story.  Vance has a profound moment explaining why he has no business being “famous” for his one good football play (which ended up on television):

“It’s hard for Americans to differentiate between talent and notoriety; TV confuses people.”

Truth.