Lost in the foam

Oh, to have your own sycophants.

My husband Bill and I were hanging out in bed, passing review the big blunders committed by the second richest man in the world, once presented as a genius, now suspected of being well below this term. Bill was trying to figure out how such a thing could happen. "It's like you initially succeed by surrounding yourself with smart people," he said, "but once you get super rich, you surround yourself with sycophants."

Then we lay there silently, staring out our tiny bedroom window at the great oak trees quivering in the autumn wind, and I tried to imagine smart people leaving and sycophants taking their place.

"I want that kind of money", I finally said.

"Which would you do with it?

"Surround me with sycophants".

I meant it. I would make the best tech brother in the world. I would build an office complex that looks like that castle of ice on top of the mountain in "Frozen", and I would fill it with men yes, flatterers and pimps and yes-yes- yes men. I wore an ice princess dress to work every morning and glided through the office hallways of my ice castle singing Italian opera in my searing ice princess voice.

Amarilli, mia bella,

Uncredited , o del mio cor dolce desio

D'esser tu l'amor mio?

And even after my uplifting, earth-shattering technologies collapsed and my glass office kitchens ran out of kombuchas, microgreens and microbrews, and none of my remaining 15 yes men had the energy to micromanage or microblog or microwave the last remaining lunch items in the glass kitchen cupboards, I would still put on my dress and slip into this Glass hallways and sing my morning KEEP YOUR SPIRIT! team building and world building memo in the form of Italian opera:

Credilo pure: e se timor t' vente,

Dubitar non ti vale.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Aprimi il petto e verrai scritto in core!

You You may not know it, but ballgowns and Italian opera and a castle full of flattering minions are the only surefire cures for burning out and losing it. If you think about it long enough - if you really ponder that you too deserve to be flanked by a bunch of sycophants - you might start wondering how someone puts their pants on in the morning without them.

>< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">That's why people marry and have children: to create their own thriving microcosm of sycophants. Any microchipped spouse worth their salt doubles as an admirer of yes, a microanalyst dedicated to predicting microvariations in the microclimates of his bride's micromoods, micromanaging every microscopic dip and variation in microstates of mind. of his true love.

Later that day, around 5 p.m., I find myself waiting in the very, very, very long line for service at the driving Starbucks with my two teenagers. We've been sitting in the car for 30 minutes and counting. The line barely moves. And suddenly I'm having one of those weird out-of-body experiences, Talking Heads, where you look at yourself from a distance and wonder:

What bad life choices led to a glorious ice princess to this sad fate?

Which brings us to the moral of our story: anyone who aims to be flanked by sycophants eventually becomes one. Because what else explains landing in an eternal drive-thru queue just because my teenagers experienced a few microseconds of inconvenience in their brick fortresses of public education today so now they crave unnecessary, expensive and frothy comfort? Otherwise, why would a former demigoddess willingly submit to such indignities, just to send a KEEP YOUR SPIRIT! team-building, world-b...