Everybody’s behind the eight-ball!

Saroyan’s line turns the idiom “behind the eight-ball” (in a difficult, disadvantaged position) into a sweeping, democratic diagnosis: not just one unlucky person, but everybody. Read this way, it captures a characteristic Saroyan blend of rueful humor and human solidarity—an insistence that hardship is not an exception but a shared condition. The exclamation gives it the snap of spoken dialogue, suggesting a moment of sudden recognition or comic despair. As a standalone aphorism, it can be taken as both consolation (you’re not alone) and critique (systems or circumstances keep people perpetually struggling).