Dec 23
I am disappearing into the snowy wastes of central Michigan for the weekend and will not be back until Christmas. I promised you a gift on Monday, though, and a gift you shall have. My fanciful notions of actually doing some editing before then were hilariously misguided, but if I were to wait to post the document until I actually felt comfortable with other people seeing my work, it is very likely that nobody ever would.
Anyways, while you can expect the real deal when I get back into town on Christmas, here is a little taste. This is chapter number one, which really serves more as a general introduction to the story… but not really, because as it turns out the first chapter has absolutely nothing to do with what comes later. However, if you find yourself reflexively gagging at this, don’t even bother coming back for the rest on Monday.
Oh, also worth mentioning – and there will be another half dozen disclaimers in my next post – not only did I not edit any of this, I have not even read it. What you find here is exactly as it was the day, nearly two months ago, when it came pouring out of my ass.
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I guess for me to answer your question – for you to truly understand who I am and where I’m coming from – it’s important to start by saying that I have never been very good at making friends. That’s not to say that people don’t like me, and it certainly is not true that I don’t get along with others. No sir. In fact I am quite an exceptional team player. I work well in groups and it’s been said that I demonstrate excellent leadership qualities. No, what I mean to say is that, for me, getting along with people is easy. But to earnestly befriend them: to trust them, to know them, to confide in them, and in turn be trusted and known enough to be confided upon; well, that has always been more difficult. And as a result of this difficulty, I have never been able to get very close to anyone. I have always been that way; I suppose that is just who I am.
Sometime during my freshman year of high school the teachers made everyone sit down and take a personality test. The test was supposed to determine what kind of person we were, which personality traits we most exhibited. After answering fifty multiple choice questions the test would then tell us which careers we would most effectively pursue. I remember thinking it was complete bullshit at the time. I think we all did. I remember one kid in our class was told that he would grow up to be a garbage man. Honestly, what the hell kind of test is used to tell a kid that he is best suited to cleaning up trash? Sorry, son. Sure you are a straight A student, you work hard and everybody likes you, but you answered C on question fifteen so you had better forget about becoming a doctor. Everyone laughed when that kid’s test results were announced. I laughed, too. It was pretty funny after all. But, even though we all knew that the test was bullshit, and even though we all knew that the results were meaningless, I think we were all a little bit relieved that our tests did not come back saying Garbage Man.
I don’t know what happened to that kid after high school. Who knows? Maybe the test was right.
Even though I knew the personality test was total bullshit, I remember being nervous about taking it anyway. I mean, I was only fourteen at the time. Yeah, I was a pretty smart kid even then, but my education to that point came almost entirely from textbooks and television. The realities of a life after high school were a total mystery, let alone what it meant to be an adult with an actual career. And so, despite regular attempts to act more mature than my current experience should warrant, from time to time my naïveté would inevitably show through. That innocence was most notably demonstrated by the acute fear and trepidation consistently felt whenever a teacher made mention of my Permanent Record. I don’t think any of us actually knew what a permanent record was or what it looked like. We didn’t know who would ever look at it or why it should matter. We did know, however, that if we ever misbehaved, ever did anything truly bad, our transgressions would be recorded for all eternity, etched deep upon the pages of our permanent record. How could it be otherwise? The teachers told us so.
And so, even though I knew the personality test was probably a complete waste of time, the teachers all said it was important, and so maybe, just maybe, it actually was. That sliver of doubt was enough to make me nervous. I did not want to be a garbage man.
In the years since high school I have retaken that personality test several times. With the development of the Internet it is now possible to take a thousand different variations of that exam. Not every test variation is accurate, and the results are not always consistent, let alone scientific. However, it seems to me that each and every personality quiz has at least one question in common. The specific phrasing varies, but it always sounds something like this, “Would you rather have 2 close friends or 10 casual acquaintances?” Whenever I come to that question I get mad. The question itself is harmless enough, the answer mind-numbingly obvious. I can’t imagine that anyone would ever prefer a casual acquaintance to genuine friendship. No, it isn’t the question that bothers me. Instead, I detest the thought that all across the world people are choosing two friends over ten acquaintances and believing that it makes them somehow unique. As if picking friendship before isolation makes them any nobler, any less shallow. I suppose, to be completely blunt, what truly bothers me about all these people and their two hypothetical friends is that I very much doubt nearly any of them understand what it would actually be like to only have two friends; or to have only one friend.
Or no friends at all.
Like I said before, I have never been very good at making friends. And as a result, I did not have many while I was growing up. In fairness, though, that wasn’t entirely my fault. My family moved around a lot, the result of being born to a man who proved incapable of holding a job and to a woman unwilling to do likewise. I changed cities and schools so frequently during my early years that around third grade my parents withdrew me from public school altogether and instead decided upon a volatile mixture of home schooling and private tutors. Weekday mornings I would jump into my father’s car and then drive with him across town on his way to work. Along the way we would pull into a small neighborhood; and there he would leave me, standing on the steps of an old house where I would spend the entire day taking lessons from a local tutor. The tutors were usually nice, although not always, and for the most part I enjoyed the time spent in their homes. It sure beat going to a real school. Being always on the move, my experiences with public school to that point universally involved the cruelty that school children always reserve for the New Kid: bitter isolation when the other students chose to ignore me, relentless taunting and public humiliation when they did not. Private tutoring, though it took place alone inside the old homes of much older strangers, was a welcome alternative.
I did not acquire all of my education from these tutors, though. After a few weeks of daily visits to a tutor I might awaken one morning to find my father not yet dressed for work. On those days I knew not to bother getting dressed either; we would not be going anywhere. Instead, I would climb out of bed and head down to the kitchen where my mother had breakfast already waiting for us. The three of us would quietly eat; my mother sipping her coffee while my father read through the morning’s classifieds. At first they tried to offer an explanation. Eventually, there was no point. I understood the situation, accepted it. I would never see that particular tutor again. My mother would be teaching me today, tomorrow, and deep into the foreseeable future. Eventually my dad would find a new job. Soon enough we would be living in a new home, probably in a new city, and there would be new tutors to visit.
I don’t blame my parents for my childhood. I used to, but not anymore. They did their best for me, and for that alone I will love them always. No, I don’t blame them; not for how they raised me, and not for the person I am today. That I grew up alone and on the move, well, that is just the way it goes I guess. The truth of the matter, though, is that while my parents may have raised me, in the end I became my own man. I have recently come to understand that while the path to my manhood didn’t follow a storybook route, that it took a few unconventional and perhaps unhappy detours along the way, I still arrived at my destination. And who’s to say that I’m not a better man because of it.