Flawed
F. Scott Fitzgerald´s The Great Gatsby opens with the following piece, In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”.
It´s kinda hard then to open up a blog entry with a truism- especially when you borrow somebody else´s, and the audience is basically twisting your arm so you get to the punchline quick enough. People read this at their jobs, you know? And you´re a grade-A prick yourself. And which is more- that´s you talking in my head- you don´t even like The Great Gatsby to begin with, you told me once over croissants and sodas a few years back in College while skipping class, what right do you have throwing this at us like that?
Right. Point taken. But maybe I do, maybe a do have a point there myself, maybe I do have the right.
The first piece of text I ever wrote- I was seven years old- I think it was in March or April, 1987 at school. Half the class did not know how to properly read or write, I did. There´s this bit my grandmother tells me, me being very young trying to read the morning paper at her place after lunch, sitting on the floor with the paper all spread out over the carpet around me, some 1970s cartoon re-running on TV for the Nth time, not being able for the life of me to read aloud some starlet´s name, a foreign one, grandma making fun of me but then helping out.
The composition I wrote was titled- and this is going to kill you- it was called “The search for the golden cobra” or something to that effect. It had to do with me and my friends- everybody´s earliest pieces at school were about themselves. That´s Primeval Blogging 101 for you people- gathering up to go on this crazy adventure after some mysterious golden statue, all very Raiders of the Lost Ark (it was the best of times, after all, if you wanna get Dickensian on me) but then in the end- by line 30 or thereabouts- it turned out one of the kids was daydreaming in the doctor´s office. Shades of Alice Through the Looking Glass and one hell of a cliché, but hey, okay for this 07 years old. The teacher liked, everybody liked.
A few months later this other kid comes up with a text of his own, aptly named “The search for the golden cobra” or something to that effect, with a plot very similar to my own, sans the tricky ending. Boy was I outraged.
That´s one major character flaw right there, isn´t it? A seven year old´s supposed to be so innocent, so pure- it was a homage, the teacher told me- yet I never bought it because I think I was born flawed.
My father has called me a Natural-born killer on occasion in a sense (negative) that I don´t care about other people´s feelings. My ex-girlfriend said something to that effect once or twice or fourteen times as well, and I´ve been deemed Mr. Freeze by a rather compromising number of people too (friends? girls?). My father and I are pretty close but we have been drifting apart for a few years now mostly due to politics; he is hopeful of people yet skeptical for the world, whereas I´m mostly hopeful for the world yet skeptical of people. I think it´s because I was born flawed. But I digress again.
Ten years later.
It was late ´97 and we were all very, very drunk at this party in a nightclub in my hometown, just a few months short of getting the hell out of High School forever (thank god), and that same kid from the composition ripoff a decade earlier turns up to me and says he wants to talk, there´s this thing he wants to tell me for a long time, “Shoot,” I say, and he´s going all like why I´m friends with everybody and say & do cool stuff with everybody but with him? “We´ve known each other for what,” he asks, “Ten years now?”, but when it comes down to him I´ve always been lukewarm at best. So guy wants to know, in a nutshell, why. The classic “What have I done to deserve this” thing.
I wanted to tell him right then & there that it´s not his fault; it was all because he became flawed (blame it on the very society that spawned you for all I care) and everybody comes from a different place & from a different upbringing with different perspectives but I just don´t get it maybe because I´m immature or maybe because I was born flawed, and to hell with you kid for I couldn´t care less if you died right now or opened a bar by the river in five years, see? Can this blue-collar hedonism you got going, people like us, we were born flawed to be salarimen for life, white-collar slaves for the machine, that bit about the composition back in First Grade was just a symptom and you are just a symptom yourself.
I did not tell him that, of course. I was not that drunk.
“Naww,” I looked down & back to him. “Just your imagination,” then turned my back on him- just like that- and mingled into the thronging dance floor below.
It´s kinda hard then to open up a blog entry with a truism- especially when you borrow somebody else´s, and the audience is basically twisting your arm so you get to the punchline quick enough. People read this at their jobs, you know? And you´re a grade-A prick yourself. And which is more- that´s you talking in my head- you don´t even like The Great Gatsby to begin with, you told me once over croissants and sodas a few years back in College while skipping class, what right do you have throwing this at us like that?
Right. Point taken. But maybe I do, maybe a do have a point there myself, maybe I do have the right.
The first piece of text I ever wrote- I was seven years old- I think it was in March or April, 1987 at school. Half the class did not know how to properly read or write, I did. There´s this bit my grandmother tells me, me being very young trying to read the morning paper at her place after lunch, sitting on the floor with the paper all spread out over the carpet around me, some 1970s cartoon re-running on TV for the Nth time, not being able for the life of me to read aloud some starlet´s name, a foreign one, grandma making fun of me but then helping out.
The composition I wrote was titled- and this is going to kill you- it was called “The search for the golden cobra” or something to that effect. It had to do with me and my friends- everybody´s earliest pieces at school were about themselves. That´s Primeval Blogging 101 for you people- gathering up to go on this crazy adventure after some mysterious golden statue, all very Raiders of the Lost Ark (it was the best of times, after all, if you wanna get Dickensian on me) but then in the end- by line 30 or thereabouts- it turned out one of the kids was daydreaming in the doctor´s office. Shades of Alice Through the Looking Glass and one hell of a cliché, but hey, okay for this 07 years old. The teacher liked, everybody liked.
A few months later this other kid comes up with a text of his own, aptly named “The search for the golden cobra” or something to that effect, with a plot very similar to my own, sans the tricky ending. Boy was I outraged.
That´s one major character flaw right there, isn´t it? A seven year old´s supposed to be so innocent, so pure- it was a homage, the teacher told me- yet I never bought it because I think I was born flawed.
My father has called me a Natural-born killer on occasion in a sense (negative) that I don´t care about other people´s feelings. My ex-girlfriend said something to that effect once or twice or fourteen times as well, and I´ve been deemed Mr. Freeze by a rather compromising number of people too (friends? girls?). My father and I are pretty close but we have been drifting apart for a few years now mostly due to politics; he is hopeful of people yet skeptical for the world, whereas I´m mostly hopeful for the world yet skeptical of people. I think it´s because I was born flawed. But I digress again.
Ten years later.
It was late ´97 and we were all very, very drunk at this party in a nightclub in my hometown, just a few months short of getting the hell out of High School forever (thank god), and that same kid from the composition ripoff a decade earlier turns up to me and says he wants to talk, there´s this thing he wants to tell me for a long time, “Shoot,” I say, and he´s going all like why I´m friends with everybody and say & do cool stuff with everybody but with him? “We´ve known each other for what,” he asks, “Ten years now?”, but when it comes down to him I´ve always been lukewarm at best. So guy wants to know, in a nutshell, why. The classic “What have I done to deserve this” thing.
I wanted to tell him right then & there that it´s not his fault; it was all because he became flawed (blame it on the very society that spawned you for all I care) and everybody comes from a different place & from a different upbringing with different perspectives but I just don´t get it maybe because I´m immature or maybe because I was born flawed, and to hell with you kid for I couldn´t care less if you died right now or opened a bar by the river in five years, see? Can this blue-collar hedonism you got going, people like us, we were born flawed to be salarimen for life, white-collar slaves for the machine, that bit about the composition back in First Grade was just a symptom and you are just a symptom yourself.
I did not tell him that, of course. I was not that drunk.
“Naww,” I looked down & back to him. “Just your imagination,” then turned my back on him- just like that- and mingled into the thronging dance floor below.
posted by 186282mps at 7:47 AM
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