Itty-Bitty

By John Skow

UH-OH

by Robert Fulghum

Villard; 244 pages; $19

"Hey, honey, do we really need any more philosophical tofu?" (Henry Featherless and his wife Glenda are browsing in the Just Barely Books store at the shopping mall. He flips through a demure volume she has chosen, suppresses a snicker and gives her the business.) "Says here on the dust jacket, Itty- Bitty Insights, Part 3."

"It does not. And a few insights of any size wouldn't crowd your psyche at all. Lots of room in there."

"Yeah, well I'm not going to be read to at the breakfast table from a book called Uh-Oh. Unh-unh."

"Grunt all you want. Millions of people were helped by Robert Fulghum's first two books, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It."

"Millions of lip movers, right? Suckers for weensy wisdom."

"What do you have against Fulghum? He sounds like a very nice man."

"His essays are feel-good pills."

"What's wrong with feeling good?"

"Nothing, if you don't make a habit of it. But -- notice that I am opening Uh-Oh at random -- right here he's in a grocery store, holding a can of tuna fish and being sensitive. He thinks about 'all the incredible learning and working and the machinery and the processes and the fishing boats and fishermen and factory ships and trains and trucks that brought it here from so far away.' When I read that, I don't feel so good."

"He's just being sincere, and you hate it."

"You bet. Also, I don't believe his stuff. I don't believe that sensing a need to take himself less seriously, he walked downtown wearing a suit and tie and a little kid's cap with a propeller. Or that he wears a watch with a face but no hands, to remind himself that time is eternal. He makes it all up."

"So did your hero, Herman Melville."

"Melville doesn't make my teeth hurt. Fulghum belongs in greeting cards."

"He'll be sad to hear that. And now I'm going to the toy store, to buy you a beanie with a propeller."