Literature / You're Only Human: A Guide to Life

The Gecko: What was I thinking, signing a book deal? I'm not an author.

Narrator: He wasn't an author.

The Gecko: I don't even know where to start.

Narrator: He didn't even know where to start.

The Gecko: Where's that voice coming from?

Narrator: But sometimes, you have to reach deep inside to find what was there all along.

— Trailer for the book

You're Only Human: A Guide to Life is a book written and illustrated by the beloved and most well-known advertising icon of GEICO, the Geico Gecko. It was published by Workman Publishing in 2013 and takes place after "The Gecko's Journey" advertising campaign.

The book details the Gecko's views on humans as he shares various bits of wisdom and philosophy that he has gained and learned over the course of his life, from job interviews to dreams to adversity and everything in between.

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Examples:

• Afraid of Blood: The Gecko talks about a time where he once gave blood (not much, since he only has .32 ounces inside of him), and ended up fainting at the sight of seeing his own blood. The good news, however, is that he got a lemon biscuit upon awakening.
• Artistic License – Biology: The Gecko states that he sweats often, which he questions, as he's not sure if geckos even have sweat glands since he's cold-blooded. He's justified in doing so — geckos do not have sweat glands and their skin is meant to be cool and dry.
  • He is also a Diurnal Nocturnal Animal, being active during the day and at night, although he makes mention that he's nocturnal.
• Attack the Tail: It's all but stated that the Gecko has lost his tail before, and has had people stare at his butt for a few weeks as the tail grows back. If the illustration in the book is to be believed, he ended up losing his in the doors of an elevator at one point.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: On the page where the Gecko thanks those who helped him with the book, he mentions a man named Raymond McKinney, who helped him with writing a lot of pages in a short amount of time. He then brings up the reason why he needed such a skill to begin with.
  Raymond McKinney, who taught me that the secret to writing a lot of pages in a short amount of time is to focus- oh look a butterfly.
• Backing Away Slowly: It's implied that the Gecko's squirrel friend ended up becoming rabid from hunger, to the point where he saw the reptile as a potential meal. The Gecko's response? He nodded, and then slowly backed away.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: The Gecko gets distracted by watching funny cat videos, then funny baby videos, then videos of funny babies interacting with funny cats.
• The Captain: One segment has the Gecko give advice on how to be an effective captain of a spaceship.
• Civilized Animal: The Gecko, as a character, tends to fall under this trope instead of being a Funny Animal like in the commercials. He has predators like hawks after him, he understands how small he is and questions his own species' biology, and it's implied that he wasn't born with the ability to talk and had to learn it.
• Comically Missing the Point: The publishers approach the Gecko and ask him to write a book. What they get, however, is a Romance Novel featuring a gecko in love with another gecko named Josephine. He writes 873 pages of the book and gives it to the publishers...but he's corrected: they want a book written from the perspective of a gecko.
  So there you have it, folks. My first bit of wisdom. Before you begin the task at hand, make sure you understand what, exactly, the task at hand is.
• Continuity Nod: The segment on "Work" expands on the GEICO commercial "Mailroom", where the Gecko flashes back to when he first started working at GEICO in the mailroom and ended up getting sucked through a mail chute. According to the book, the chute took him up to the 27th floor and made him land smack-dab in the middle of the marketing department, who was about to name a new advertising spokesperson. Since their first choice, Beauregard the Badger, mauled several focus group members, they decided to go with the Gecko.
• Fearsome Critters of American Folklore: One of the Gecko's "Top-Secret Billion-Dollar Inventions" is a jackrabbit, which is depicted as a jackalope head mount.
• Fun with Homophones: At a golf course, the Gecko ends up hearing the word "fore" from a golfer. However, he misinterprets it as the golfer saying the word "for", and yells back at him, "For what?". He then gets bopped in the head by a golf ball, causing him to become dizzy and fall into a hole, where a man picks him up and promptly screams.
• Height Angst: Quite a few pages of the book go into detail about how life for the mascot isn't so great since he's a small gecko and has to adapt to how big the world is.
  I don't live in a tiny house. I don't work in a tiny office. If you're going to survive in the world, you have to adapt to your environment.
• Hidden Depths: The book goes deep into the Gecko's life beyond him working for GEICO and talking about insurance, as he shares life lessons he's learned over the years.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One segment has the Gecko expressing his dislike of acronyms and telling people to spell things out instead. Cut to a few years later, and GEICO has created an ad specifically focusing on people using absurd acronyms (albeit not a Gecko-oriented one).
• Hypocritical Humor: One page has the Gecko saying, "Don't be a hypocrite when you say 'don't be a hypocrite'."
• Literal Metaphor: The "Life Lesson #1" segment features a drawing of a horse wrapped in a bow and ribbon, demonstrating the metaphor of "don't look a gift horse in the mouth".
• Literal-Minded: The Gecko tends to take words at face value, such as mistaking a golf course greens fee for having to pay a fee because he's green, or wondering why bald eagles are called just that when they don't like being told they're bald.
  • One page has him describing an interaction with a man who asks him if he tweets — or in other words, if he has a Twitter account. He responds by saying that he's a gecko and the sound he makes is more of a chirping sound than a tweet is. The man then tells him he's confused and that he wanted to follow him, which the reptile views as creepy.
• Manchild: The Gecko calls out these kinds of people, saying that people shouldn't act like babies unless they're actually babies.
• Metaphorgotten: Try as he might, but the Gecko has a bit of a hard time completing metaphors that double as good life lessons.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One segment on determination has the Gecko talking about how he always had dreams of being the spokesperson for a major company, and how he managed to achieve that dream with "single-minded belief and burning laser-like focus". However, he also states he achieved his dream by having a name that is easily confused with that of a major company, which harkens back to early GEICO Gecko ads and how the schtick was that people kept calling him thinking he was GEICO and getting confused.
• Non-Indicative Name: Lampshaded on one page, where the Gecko talks about why American football is played mainly with hands and not with feet, like football in other countries (i.e., soccer) is.
• Noodle Incident: The Gecko makes mention of an incident where he tried to fist-bump a member of the royal family and ended up getting in trouble with security officers for it, but doesn't elaborate further.
• Parental Substitute: The Gecko's loyalty to GEICO hits a point where he views the company as a second mother, only below his actual mother.
• Plot Allergy: The Gecko manages to find out he has a gluten intolerance by tasting the cake batter he allowed himself to be made in, out of nothing more but sheer curiosity.
• Prehensile Tail: The Gecko can use his tail for balancing himself on windy days as well as getting change that is stuck under vending machines. He's also skilled in self-defense with it, practicing a martial art known as "Tail Kwon Do".
• The Reveal: The Gecko is revealed to both live and work in Washington, D.C. — and it's safe to say a lot of his commercials for GEICO likely take place there as well.
• Ridiculous Procrastinator: The Gecko put off writing thirty more pages of his book, which is due to the publisher by the afternoon's end.
• Separated by a Common Language: Words that mean certain things in Australia mean different things in America ("chips" being known as "fries" in America, for example), which causes the Gecko to get confused, as he is Australian. One such incident regarded a friend who had called him and said he had gotten a flat under a highway overpass, only for the Gecko to bring him a pie as a housewarming gift, then tell him to look in his boot when he tells him he needs a jack, then for the reptile to suggest that his friend search his bonnet. According to him, this was what ended their friendship.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the celebrities the Gecko compares his height to is Shrek.
  • One page has the Gecko listing a bunch of titles he had considered for the book, including Fifty Shades of Green, The Girl with the Gecko Tattoo, and Chicken Soup for Dummies, among others.
  • A segment on determination features the Gecko talking to none other than the Energizer Bunny about becoming an advertising icon like him. He responds by saying there's no way he'll be an advertising icon in the small suit he's wearing.
• Shrunken Organ: Subverted. The Gecko's brain is the size of a raisin, but he's a Civilized Animal who has smarts and knowledge that far exceed what one would expect from a creature whose brain is that small.
• Stock Animal Diet: One page talks about a squirrel who ate acorns often and made foods with acorns (acorn sorbet, acorn marmalade, etcetera).
• Take a Third Option: When asked about the "catsup or ketchup" pronunciation, the Gecko says to just call it "tomato gravy".
  • On the topic of "is the glass half-empty or half-full", the Gecko says, "Ask the fly, he's closer." Depicted on the next page is a fly in a glass of water that is half-filled who can either say "I'll be rescued from this half-full glass" or "I'm gonna die in this half-empty glass".
• Tastes Like Chicken: The Gecko comments on how people say rattlesnake meat tastes like chicken, but perhaps chicken tastes like rattlesnake meat. He doesn't know whether it's true or not, but resolves to start saying "tastes like rattlesnake" instead because it sounds tougher.
• Weight Woe: When the Gecko attended university, he relished in the freedom to eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. This caused him to go on a pie and chips binge and gain his own "freshman 15" — which, due to his small size, was really .15 ounces that all went straight to his tail. He then learned about eating in moderation and lost the weight, causing his tail to return to its normal size and for him to invent a "tail wheel" to help his tail stay slim.
• Workaholic: Downplayed. The Gecko absolutely loves his job and wakes up every morning thrilled to go to work, but he also has much of a life outside of GEICO and the commercials he makes promoting them.
• Writer's Block: The Gecko gets this near the end of the book, and so, two pages are dedicated to random doodles of everything from dogs to a key of happiness.
• You Must Be This Tall to Ride: Part of the Gecko's Height Angst. He wants to open an amusement park where, if you're over a certain height (i.e., that of a bipedal gecko's), you will be barred from going on any of the rides.
• You Say Tomato: Referenced in the book, although since it's a print medium, it's hard to tell which one the Gecko prefers more. The next couple pages have him doing the same thing, only with "poe-tay-toe" or poh-tah-toe".

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