The Exceedingly Visible Jack Wabash

Jack Wabash is the most familiar man in America. You’ve seen him on line at the bank, waiting in your doctor’s office, chatting up your girlfriend at a local nightclub. He’s not quite as tall as you, unless you’re quite short, in which case he is a bit taller. His hair is dark, but not as dark as yours, and maybe it’s thinning. He tends to dress casual, but is always currently in fashion, because style is very important in his job. “If I don’t look the part,” Jack explains, “I come across as being insincere.” Jack Wabash is Anyman, and he takes his role very seriously.

Shortly after World War II, Jack’s father, Joe, saw the need for Anymen. “Suburbia was just growing, and Dad filled the niche for average guys, who needed to be seen buying new cars or televisions or houses. He excelled at Communist-bashing,” says Jack. Although Joe was a trailblazer, in many ways, Jack feels that his father had an easier time of it. “My dad could just go to work in a suit, and that was all he needed. Sometimes he used a hat or a pipe to fill out his costume, but that was it.” Joe was popular all throughout the Fifties and early Sixties, appearing in newspapers as The Guy in the Background Looking at a New Automobile, or in newsreels as The Guy in the Background Looking at the Pretty Lady. But towards the end of the century, he became increasingly irrelevant. After finally retiring in the late Eighties, Jack took over the business.

“My dad didn’t really change with the times,” Jack says. “I think technology scared him. But me? I embrace it,” he adds emphatically. Among Jack’s sundry innovations to the Anyman retinue are The Guy that Cuts You Off in Heavy Traffic for Little or No Reason, and Someone’s Jamming the Radio Contest Phone Lines. “Speaking of phones,” Jack gushes, “when you’re in a darkened theatre and a cell phone rings, that’s me.” Pride is no small part of what keeps Jack going.

“The pay isn’t great, and I don’t get the recognition that a major player in this field like myself deserves, but I’m constantly working,” Jack says. “Someone has got to be ahead of you on line somewhere. On crowded commuter buses, trains, and plains, I’m the guy taking up two seats will all my crap. Most people think that I’m rude or oblivious, but no one ever thinks that this is my job. I’m just doing the best I can.”

Jack isn’t the only player in this lucrative field. Mrs. Perkins (widowed) plays The Old Lady Who Can’t Find the Dime She Needs on the Crowded Supermarket Line. Jack admires her professional attitude towards her job. “Mrs. Perkins can’t be distracted from her role,” he says. “Pure hell on heels.”

But because Jack is single, he loses out on those family roles that are increasingly popular in America today. “I don’t do as many theme parks or fast food joints as I could,” Jack admits. “The Zuckers have a lock on that with their 2.3 children.” However, he dismisses his critics’ charge that he’s losing the choicest roles by not settling down, “Hey, there’s always a need for the single guy, and besides I can easily get the couples’ parts by going out with your cousin’s friend, or your friend’s cousin.” When dating the receptionist at the office complex where you work, Jack performed his most famous piece, The Homely Couple Arguing Loudly at the Red Lobster. “It ended with food being thrown. Hollywood has really taken a shine to that one,” Jack beams. “Every sitcom ever made uses it in at least one episode.”

Jack Wabash is ubiquitous. Whenever you go out in public, you see him and his handiwork everywhere. If he has one regret, it is simply, “I’m probably more famous than the President, but I’m even less popular. I never get even a simple ‘thank you’ from anyone.” But he hopes that when you read this, you’ll begin to recognize all his hard work, and maybe the next time you’re held up in some local or state government agency by The Guy Insisting that He Knows How to Fill Out the Damned Form, you’ll take him by the hand and say, “You’re the best, Jack Wabash.”