It has been my considerable misfortune to spend the better part of four decades watching my fellow creatures go about their business with the solemn determination of ants who have convinced themselves they are building cathedrals. I have sat in rowboats and in drawing rooms, in taverns and in church pews, taking notes with the feverish dedication of a naturalist who suspects his specimens may be evolving backward.

And I must confess, though it pains my pride to admit it, that after all these years of careful observation, after cataloguing the follies of mankind with the thoroughness of a librarian organizing sins, I am still caught off guard by the regularity with which people behave exactly as I expect them to.

There is a particular flavor of astonishment that comes from watching a man step into a hole you have pointed out to him not five minutes prior, and then watching him emerge from that hole with mud on his boots and indignation in his heart, cursing the hole as though it had been dug specifically to inconvenience him, rather than being the very same hole he had dismissed as “not deep enough to matter” when you mentioned it over breakfast.

I recall a particular instance involving a politician, a fella whose name I shall withhold out of respect for his widow, and also because I have forgotten it, who spent three hours at a dinner party explaining to the assembled company that honesty was the foundation of good governance, that a man’s word was his bond, and that he would rather lose an election than compromise his principles. The speech was delivered with such conviction that three women wept into their handkerchiefs and two men declared they would vote for him until their dying day.

Not four hours later, the same pillar of integrity was discovered in the pantry, stuffing his pockets with the host’s silver spoons while simultaneously signing a contract to sell the local orphanage to a railroad company for the price of a mule and a broken truck. When confronted, he expressed shock that anyone could doubt his character, suggesting that the spoons had jumped into his coat of their own accord, and as for the orphanage, he was merely trying to relocate the children to a “more vertical living situation.”

The remarkable thing was not that he lied, as any fool could have predicted that, but that I stood there in the pantry doorway, my mouth actually hanging open, as though I had just witnessed a dog walking on its hind legs, rather than a dog doing exactly what dogs have been doing since the Creation. It is the great joke that Providence plays upon those of us who make our living by observation: we accumulate knowledge the way a river accumulates driftwood, certain that we have seen all there is to see, only to discover that each new day brings fresh evidence that human foolishness is not a finite resource to be exhausted, but rather a renewable energy source, like the wind or the sun or a child’s capacity for asking inconvenient questions at funerals.

I have watched merchants cheat their customers with scales weighted by the tears of orphans, then go home to beat their children for stealing cookies. I have seen preachers thunder against the evils of drink from pulpits built with whiskey money.

I have observed marriages founded on love that lasted until the wedding cake was cut, and marriages founded on mutual contempt that endured like granite, simply because both parties enjoyed the argument too much to let the other party win. And through it all, I have remained, against all reason, against all experience, against the mountain of evidence I have compiled with my own two eyes, genuinely surprised when the leopard reveals that its spots are, in fact, permanent fixtures.

There is a certain dignity in being a fool who expects wisdom from the wise. But there is something far more ridiculous about being a man who expects folly and is still astonished when it arrives on schedule, wearing the same coat it wore yesterday and the day before.

It is as though I have spent my life studying the almanac, noting that the sun rises in the east with the reliability of a banker demanding payment, yet still find myself standing on my porch each morning, pointing at the horizon and exclaiming, “Well, I’ll be damned, there it is again!”

My friends, those few who have not yet fled my company, tell me I am too cynical, that I see the worst in people, that I should have more faith. They say this while borrowing money they do not intend to repay. Meanwhile, I listen with the attentive patience of a man who knows exactly how this story ends, yet still turns the page with trembling hands, hoping, against every instinct, against every lesson the world has taught me, that this time, the ending might be different.

It never is, of course, but Lord help me, I keep reading anyway.