M’sieur BuĆhar

    When I was a teenager   just a few years back   I was hooked on a French television show that still pops in my head every now and then. Each episode showed M’sieur BuĆhar, a man in his forties, having to endure the presence of annoying characters in everyday situations. He consistently handled stressful scenarios by imagining ways to “off” the annoying person, a defense mechanism that almost everyone uses at some point in their lives. I know I have, many times. My favorite method? Spontaneous combustion, visualizing the offending person in front of me suddenly burst into flames, and vanishing from my personal space with a gust of wind.

M’sieur BuĆhar blew up his boss, drowned his mother-in-law, shaved his wife’s head, stuck a gun in the mouth of the salesman who sold him a crappy car, slit the throat of a boring, monotonous lecturer, knocked out a policeman before he issued a traffic ticket. You get the point? He did that in his head, with a smile on his face. Sometimes, when I suffer a situation beyond my control, I close my eyes, summon M’sieur BuĆhar and let my imagination run rampant.

A few days ago, I didn’t just imagine M’sieur BuĆhar, I wanted to be M’sieur BuĆhar, extending a hand to repeatedly slap the extremely pompous person talking to me. Speaking condescendingly, making assumptions about my life without a single question first, judging my thought process before hearing the reasons behind it, brushing away any comment I was able to articulate as unimportant. Simply, insulting.

I could have spit out something to put her in her place, or simply walked away after giving her a “drop dead” kind-of-look. But I couldn’t. This person held something in her hands. I needed it back, unscathed, untarnished, and pure. A project - my dream project. So I pasted a smile etched on my face, nodded my head like the patient person I was trying to be, looked her straight in the eye and summoned M’sieur BuĆhar to the conference room.

He stormed in, kneeled behind her back and fumbled with something at the foot of her chair. Gradually, this woman started dropping inch-by-inch until only her neck and head remained visible above the table surface. She kept talking, and I looked down at her. M’sieur BuĆhar’s face popped from behind, wiggled his eyebrows at me and then left the room. The meeting was over, I got back what I needed, and left.

Do you have a M’sieur BuĆhar to come to your rescue? I hope everyone does.