Michael Malice

Was every Dilbert hilarious?

No.

So what?

Some were really good and memorable, and some you forgot about them the second you finished reading them.

I'm sure Scott forgot a lot about them too, that if he went back to read some of them, he'd think, well, that wasn't very clever.

The good ones he'd remember well and have a story to tell about how he wrote them.

Some of the good ones probably came to him in a flash, while the others he had to work on the exact wording for weeks or months.

The other thing Scott tried to do was to make people think and to make people think about how they thought.

Again, not everything he said was on the money, but how would that even be possible?

No one can say smart things all the time, but when you're dealing with a smart person like Scott, you remember those smart things they said for the rest of your life.

You might also remember those dumb things because it's surprising when a smart person says something dumb.

It's not a surprise when a dumb person says something dumb.

You just go on thinking, yep, there they go, being dumb.

But when a smart person says something dumb, you think, huh, that's odd that this smart person said a dumb thing.

And if you really want to get into it, you wonder, hey, maybe I'm the one being dumb here.

Maybe he sees something I don't, or maybe I'm just misunderstanding what he means.

I've seen both situations happen more times than I can count.

But Scott never tried to make people sad or depressed.

Not once.

It wasn't part of his vocabulary.