The Best Worst Day of My Life
Published March 11, 2004
I still find groups difficult, but over time I've learned to deal with it, either by showing up in a funny-guy mask, or showing up late and leaving early, or by simply standing in a corner and smiling until it's over. Once or twice when the funny-guy mask didn't come off I'd stop showing up and hope somebody would come get me and beg me to return. Sometimes it's happened that way. Other times not.
Withdrawal is awful. Returning to an empty place, once again defeated, is to plunge into the spongy lap of hopelessness and pray to disappear. In this fetid nest I keep the things I've known all along: that I'm no good, that I'm selfish, that I'm a loser and a compulsive basket shooter and the reason nobody likes me is I'm not likeable.
What gets me out of my self pity is more self pity followed by months of additional self pity until my self is worn away and it just becomes pity, at which point I become one with the universe, not the alpha man I'd hoped for but a beta man for it.
The Big Duh us always the same, that We're All The Same. Who hasn't desperately wanted to be part of a group? Who hasn't felt the ice of rejection? Who doesn't fear public humiliation more than death itself or even electrocution?
On television, when somebody gets voted off the island or rejected by the bachelorette, or midgit, or real estate mogul, it resembles real life. Or does it?
Is life just a series of judgements, those laid upon us, and those we lay on others? Is it simply a matter of who goes and who stays? Is this how we actually operate?
Yesterday I lost a friend at Blogcritics. No, nothing like that, he just quit is all, fed up to here with criticism, well, blogcritics would be critical, but never mind that. I wrote him a long letter full of philosophy when I should have been posting, and I'm trying to figure out how to recycle it now that I received a rather perfunctory reply.
There were some good lines, like: "We are all former somethings and current something elses on our way to something better." And "the web is a wicked web of massive deceit, every page another stage for someone else's conceit, and even when we join beneath a banner as a unit, we are liars sniping liars on a battleground of bullshit."
I thought that was pretty good. I might put it to music. Or just add it to the top of the clipboard.
- The Best Worst Day of My Life
- Published: March 11, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Humor and Satire
- Writer: CW Fisher
- CW Fisher's BC Writer page
- CW Fisher's personal site
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When I was a kid, I always thought I was the only one who liked to play "office". All my brother's friends (I claimed them as my friends because I had none of my own) were either playing ball or playing doctor, but because I didn't dare risk a "hostile work environment", I couldn't even play "office" and "doctor" at the same time. I set up a desk with every important-looking piece of gear I could find (an abacus, some papayrus, and an antique rolodex). I sat behind my bed...I mean desk making deals, checking on shipments, and charting my profits. See CW, you weren't the only weirdo on the block.
I have gotten some measure of revenge I suppose on all of those who always chose "the fat kid" last for anything related to sports (which would include anything not associated with spelling or scientific factoids). I have two sons and I coach little league (that would be baseball Curt). I always find the cocky jocky and force him to play right-field (that's a position on the ballfield Curt) and put the nerd on first base (that would be somewhere you "get to" on a date Curt). Of course the nerd always ends up getting hit in the nose with a ball and the self-proclaimed EMT in the group of parents yells "Everyone stand back, we've got a bleeder here!" So I have probably queued the kid up for another round of wedgies and swirlies, but it's the circle of life I suppose.
The really scary part is that one of my sons seems to have this gene mutation as well. He is nine years old and always spends his allowances on anything that "looks important". He bought a label maker, a laser tape measure, any number of calculators, calculators that look like PDA's, watches, watches that look like PDA's, and an endless variety of cell phones. Of course the cell phones were filled with candy, but they made some important sounding sounds. I shove a bat in is hands and he looks at it as if he were trying to calculate the weight of the thing by using the atomic weight of Aluminum. I want to protect him from being....well, from being me. From having to suffer the ridicule of others. To keep him from growing up to be a "freak". But, I know it is like spitting in the wind, I will only end up wet and sticky, and nobody will want to touch me. Of course, in the final analysis, I suppose it takes a geek to actually do the final analysis.