The Playground of War

By Randy Osborne

The day on the kindergarten playground that Mike Baireuther will never forget became, decades later, grist for a hilarious and somewhat disturbing confession that Baireuther, 25, shared during a recent storytelling event.

“I’m a nice boy,” Baireuther asked the audience, as he began.

Buckhead resident Baireuther is a crowd favorite at Carapace, a night of personal true stories held every month at Manuel’s Tavern in Virginia-Highland. Admission is free.

In an interview, Baireuther still sounded sheepish about the episode from his Texas boyhood, in the midst of the Gulf War, that brought laughs from a packed house at Carapace.

“I did something that was so against my entire personality,” he said. “I was committing atrocities before I knew it.”

The story, which deals with individual responsibility and the madness of crowds — even, or especially, pint-sized crowds — became a “touch point” in his memory throughout adolescence, Baireuther said.

“I would think, ‘Oh, I’m acting like that again,’” he said. “It became a self-check. Now, it’s become more like I know I have this in me, but I’m not reminded of it as often.”

Baireuther, a writer and producer of commercials for TNT, thinks of the story when he sees coverage of political marches and wars on television.

“It’s an awesome feeling to be part of a group, especially a group that thinks it’s right,” he said. “That’s where the truth of the story is. You’ve got the high ground, and you’ve got a bunch of people around you confirming it. When you’re given a side and told to be loyal to it, look how far you’ll go.”

Whether it’s the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, sports-team loyalty, or garden-variety patriotism, the group mentality carries danger, which “might be worse than ever” now, Baireuther said.

“People do the hashtag thing [on Twitter] and show up en masse somewhere,” he said. “I don’t know if that necessarily makes it a mature debate.”

The next Carapace event is 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Manuel’s, 602 N. Highland. “Bailouts” is the night’s theme. Volunteer storytellers’ names are drawn randomly from a hat, but audience members are welcome to just listen. Stories last about five minutes each, and are told without notes.

Osborne is the director and co-founder of Carapace.