Nothing That Hovers Is Good

A mere two years back, the new and hip way to get around was on a hoverboard. The word was first popularized in 1989, in the time-travel comedy Back To The Future II. Coincidentally, the segments of the film that took place in 2015 featured a “hoverboard” (from Mattel).

Rumors persisted for decades that Mattel actually produced a real hoverboard, for use on-screen, but parents’ groups kept it off the shelves. The truth is that the technology as depicted does not exist and never has, unless it’s among Tesla’s experiments. The fated hoverboard of 2015 was actually a board with wheels. It did not hover. Or work very well.

You know what does both exist and hover? Drones.

Drones went from cool to creepy in record time. Good thing they’re as loud as a wood chipper, because they can carry a camera and spy on people remotely. The bigger ones can shoot people. Remotely. 

What ever happened to just making an object fly, like a kite? Or a gas-powered plane? My uncle sent me a mini-drone, which I managed to successfully operate for a total of twelve seconds. How satisfying that short time was, though, especially following the unavoidable acclimation period with the controls. It must be wicked awesome to fly a big one.

Some things hover metaphorically, like worried parents. “Helicopter Parents”. 

Hovering parents raise weak kids, plain and simple. One of the harshest realities of life is that bad experiences make you a stronger person. These bad experiences can take a number of forms, and a warning will only weaken your reactions. Bad experiences build character. You’re reading this site. You’re seeing the result.

If somehow my mom or dad had been alive and pulled me aside in 2010 to tell me “Son, in the next decade you’ll experience brutal assault, eviction, jail, and the murder of your best friends, so you better nut up”, there’s decent odds I’d have quit while I was ahead and eaten a bullet. Instead, I had to deal with these events more or less solo. Now I make jokes about them to entertain you. That is called the building of character.

It cannot happen under the aegis of a hovering parent. How would it? Does anyone really worry about falling off the tightrope, if they can see the net? Of course not.

All the greatest writers experienced character-building events during their childhood, involving farms, family tragedy, or famine. Most writers today were coached from childhood by a hovering parent, who believed in them beyond the shadow of a doubt. They grew up dreaming of becoming a famous writer, because that’s what their parents wanted for them. Then after one or two books, they break away and turn into someone else. They rarely make the long haul, because they never fully committed to their dreams. They just went along.

Nothing that hovers is good. Bees don’t hover; they float. Even actual hovercraft are suspect, thanks to a horrible comic book ad from snake-oil days, a lesson in disappointment on par with the truth about Santa Claus. (SHH!!!) Fun, low-cost, and unseen by myself or any other kid, ever.

Look at that monstrosity. The frame looks like a Penrose triangle, and the seat doesn’t line up with that cylinder. Where would your legs go, to one side? Are your feet on the ground? What a mess. No one ordered this thing.

I once asked my dad about it, and he looked over my shoulder (not hovered) at the ad, replying “no way that thing works. If it did, everyone would have one. Plus all you get is the plans.”

There are small exceptions to the Nothing That Hovers Is Good rule; genitals. Depending upon your preference, hovering breasts or a hovering erection can be very appealing. The all-too-brief moment where a girl hovers her love nest over a waiting boner.

You know which body part is terrible when it hovers? Hands.

We all came down pretty hard on Duck Lips a few years ago, and it worked; girls don’t lapse into that awful grimace for photos as often anymore. On the men’s side, it needs to happen with the phenomenon known as Hover Hands.

It’s not just limited to fat or ugly guys, like I thought it was. It’s a widespread, ingrained, imaginary force field. Guys who do this are one of two types.

1. Guys so terrified of the “bad touch” accusation, they can’t make contact
2. Guys who subconsciously believe they are unclean by comparison.

The media makes endless noise about women’s emotions and feelings, while treating men like aggressors. What you’re seeing is the outcome. A generation of men afraid to touch women, even casually. Way to go.

If you have any kind of a heart, Hover Hands should break it. It is submission to stronger men, who will think nothing of resting their hand on a woman’s shoulder. It’s cuck-fu. The Way of the Beta.

It broke my heart seeing Mike Bocchetti, the hilarious announcer on The Nick & Artie Show, hovering his hands while being fed pastry by Maxim models. I guarantee these girls would not have cared if he touched them, but Mike keeps his mitts a-hover. I actually screamed at the screen JUST MAKE CONTACT, YOU POOR BASTARD! 

When I was a theater actor in the 1990s, a large percentage of my motivation was getting to kiss girls on stage. There was one production where I fought tooth and nail for the lead role… so I’d get to make out with the female lead, one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, several nights a week. There was another show where I got to kiss three. The possibility of kissing females was my reason for being an actor. Everything else came second. This became obvious over a short amount of time.

This era, marked by great character development through both success and failure, would never have happened if I had a complex about touching girls while growing up. If my mom had been constantly hovering over me, I might never have developed a yearning desire for females in general. I might have grown to resent her, and taken it out on women by breaking from them. I might have become a gay!!!

Nothing wrong with that, I mean. Gay guys only hover when they’re fixing something, like an unkempt lapel or a tchotchke shelf. A gay dude might hover a moment (or “mo”) with a drink in hand, before delivering a perfectly laconic, withering bon mot. Lesbians don’t hover unless they’re protecting something from a fixed position, like maybe a greenhouse or a garden. Not because they’re growing anything illegal; because they busted their ass raw building it up, and the city is being difficult about a permit or something. All these things I just made up are positive forms of hovering.

Otherwise, hovering is a negative thing indeed, and a hoverboard is nothing more than a board with wheels.