The Squareness of Fulton Biddle

When Fulton Biddle claimed to know nearly everything that was worth knowing, it was more than merely an idle expression of shameless conceit on his part. It was, as it happened, an utterly honest expression of straightforward truth. By the time Fulton attained the age of twenty-one, he had read every book that had ever been written in every language. He had read many of them twice. His range of knowledge was enormous.

The only thing that Fulton did not know was how to be hip. Fulton was a square, and he knew it. It was written all over his face. As soon as people saw Fulton, they would quickly think to themselves, "That guy is a total square." Fulton excelled at many things, but unfortunately for him, the thing at which he most excelled was squareness.

The more that Fulton longed to be hip, and the more that he actually tried to achieve a degree of hipness (for example, by choosing to use a hip brand of after-shave), the more it seemed that he was fated to be a square forever. His knowledge of everything else was second to none, but being hip remained beyond his grasp. He began to fear that his squareness might turn out to be a lifelong curse from which there was no hope of escape.

"I suppose there are things worse than being a square," Fulton said, in a weak attempt to make himself feel better. "Although I must admit that, at the moment, I am unable to think of what those things might be."

In a fit of desperation, Fulton swallowed his pride and sought help for his problem by going to a nearby chapter of Squares Anonymous. "My name is Fulton," he said at his first meeting of SA, "and I am a square." The other squares at the meeting welcomed Fulton with open arms, and assured him that, if he worked at it, his unremitting squareness could be remedied.

Fulton did learn to live with his squareness, and in time he even succeeded in lessening it to a considerable extent, but he was never able to completely overcome it. With Fulton, it was clearly a case of, "once a square, always a square."