46 pages • 1-hour read
Big Dumb Eyes: Stories from a Simpler Mind
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Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Bowling 101”
After graduating from high school, Bargatze attended a year of community college before transferring to Western Kentucky University with his friend P-P. Bargatze and P-P lived together in the college’s dorms, away from home for the first time in their lives. At the beginning of the year, they went to the local Goodwill to get a coffee table for their dorm. The Goodwill had a sign posted outside with the name of their “Employee of the Month,” Michael Loafmen. The cashier, whom they assumed was Loafmen, was not very competent, and “’Employee of the Month,’ Michael Loafmen” becomes a longstanding joke between the two friends; they even characterize him as a “superhero.”
Loafmen “set a standard for lazy excellence” that Bargatze himself later tried to match in college. He took a bowling course that he expected to be easy. Confronted with the sport’s theory and scoring system—rather than actually bowling—Bargatze failed the class, along with the rest of his first-year classes, before dropping out of school.
Later, Bargatze and P-P saw the name “M. Loafmen” on a plaque dedicated to the campus bowling alley’s all-time highest scores. Bargatze writes that Michael Loafmen played a significant role in his life from that point forward. Even now, in the present, Bargatze uses the name whenever he needs a fake name, and he even has a fake ID card with Loafmen’s name.
Later in life, Bargatze and P-P start bowling as a hobby. Bargatze only achieves a score of 300 points over two consecutive games. This would be a perfect game in Michael Loafmen’s eyes, “Precisely because it’s so blatantly not perfect” (82).
Chapter 12 Summary: “Random Food Thing 2: I Hate Onions”
Bargatze dislikes onions and recalls a period when chives were banned across the US because they were contaminated with listeria bacteria, which Bargatze thinks “is a mouthwash or something” (82). This was a happy period for Bargatze, but chives are now a common ingredient in restaurant meals. The only form of onion he enjoys are onion rings because he likes anything deep fried.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Kiss the Girl”
Bargatze met his wife, Laura, when he was 20 and a working as a host at Applebee’s. Laura was a waitress and a little bit older than Bargatze. One day at work, Bargatze changed the channel on the TV because “it just kept showing these numbers scrolling across the bottom” (90). Annoyed, Laura informed him that it was the stock market. To this day, Laura tells people that she thought Bargatze was “dumb” when she first met him.
One day, Bargatze was driving Laura and a few of their coworkers around in his old Buick, which he named “the Real Car’s Car” after the wrestler William Regal. Bargatze played the soundtrack of The Little Mermaid, which he had because he often took Abigail out for drives to listen to Disney music. He played the song “Kiss the Girl,” and noticed Laura smiling at him from the backseat. Bargatze knew in that moment that they had a strong connection.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Get Your Head Above Water”
[This chapter is composed of blank pages.]
Chapter 15 Summary: “Help Wanted: Must Love Snacks”
After dropping out of college, Bargatze realized that he was always going to work the kind of job “where the title of the job is exactly what you do in that job” (99). Sometime after working at Applebee’s, Bargatze became a water meter reader. He drove around reading water meters, and the work was so easy that he was often finished by midday. After, he either napped in the truck or went to his friend P-P’s house. Bargatze enjoyed this and considered staying at the job for as long as he could.
Bargatze was working this job during 9/11. In the days after the attack, Bargatze and the other employees of West Wilson County were required to stand guard at the county power plant overnight, in case of a local attack. Bargatze writes that “whenever anyone suspicious approached [he] would puff up [his] chest, hold [his] clipboard at the ready, and confidently announce: ‘Hello.’” (105). No one genuinely suspicious ever came, but the event made Bargatze realize that he might not be cut out for the job after all. Shortly thereafter, Bargatze told his manager, Trey, that wanted to try comedy, and Trey set Bargatze up with a friend, Michael Clay, who was moving to Chicago to do improv.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
Though Bargatze cites his failure to pass college courses as proof that he is unintelligent, the fact that he barely attends class in the first place suggests that it’s really due to a lack of commitment. The running joke about Michael Loafmen exemplifies Bargatze’s tendency to process personal shortcomings through humor. It’s ironic that Loafmen (or at least the fictionalized version of him in Bargatze’s mind) is somehow both an outstanding employee and an absurdly bad one. The name Loafmen suggests a man who “loafs,” or is lazy. This emphasizes the comedy of him becoming employee of the month at Goodwill despite being rude to customers and not knowing what the store carries. All these ironies lend the Michael Loafmen joke its humor. Bargatze relates to the imagined Loafmen’s mix of failures and successes, as Bargatze himself was once the top student but later lost interest in academics. Coincidentally coming across Loafmen’s plaque in the bowling alley reminds Bargatze that people are complex. Michael Loafmen is simultaneously a horrible and exceptional employee, and he can play a perfect game in bowling. Creating an image of this imperfect yet successful man inspires Bargatze to continue to pursue his dreams. It reminds him that having weaknesses in some areas doesn’t have to hold him back in others.
The chapter “Random Food Things 2: I Hate Onions” is an example of Bargatze using food as a motif to characterize his personality and background. He writes about being glad when there was an outbreak of listeria among onions in the US. Playing up the joke that he is unintelligent, Bargatze jokes that he thinks the bacteria “listeria” is a mouthwash. The joke is, of course, that listeria sounds like Listerine, a brand of mouthwash. Despite his hatred for onion, Bargatze enjoys onion rings. This ties the chapter back to his upbringing in Tennessee (where deep-fried foods are common), highlighting his theme of Taking Pride in Southern Culture Despite Its Stereotypes.
When Bargatze first meets his wife Laura, it takes a while for her to reciprocate his interest. The first time they truly bond is when they share a moment together in Bargatze’s car, “The Real Car’s Car.” He named the car after his favorite professional wrestler, William Regal, whose nickname was “The Real Man’s Man.” Bargatze nicknaming this car draws a parallel between it and his previous car, Old Blue. Both cars are old and used, but the Buick still signals progress, as it is nicer than Old Blue was. Cars are another motif that Bargatze uses to show the progress he makes as he matures. The fact that Bargatze shares a significant moment with his future wife in the Buick shows how cars are linked to his major life events.
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