As We’re Walking On By

My room smells of chocolate chip cookies and cigarettes. I’m only responsible for the cookies. I couldn’t tell you who’s responsible for the cigarettes, as I live directly above a myriad of 17 or 18-year-old boys who probably enjoy a good smoke when they’re playing Super Mario 3 on their computers and listening to the soundtrack to Les Miserables. One would think that those two activities would not mix well, but then again, one has never really tried it, has one?

I don’t know who ‘one’ is.

As we coast on this ocean and watch the seagulls chase the setting sun, I am reminded of so many things. But mostly K’Nex, Lego’s bastard cousin. Do they still make that stuff? It was cool.

I’ve decided I pretty much have to end up as a writer because I really don’t have the patience for five-day weeks. Nor do I really care for eight-hour days, for that matter. Or, even, four-hour days. When the hell are you supposed to contemplate life if you’re working so damn much? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

So I took today off, and I don’t want to hear any holier-than-thou “School is cool!” chuckleheads telling me I was wrong to do so. It’s not like anything really important happens on Friday anyway. It is a fairly useless day in the grand scheme of things, and it has been ever since they stopped making new episodes of Teen Angel and Boy Meets World.

Speaking of contemplating life and also of segueways, boy have I been trying hard to figure things out this past week. I have taken a lot of time to just sit and think about what kind of man I want to be and what kind of life I should be living and the ratio of gold coins to gold bars I should maintain in my giant vault/swimming pool.

In order to review my conclusions on these subjects, and more, I find it best to grab any blank piece of paper — computer, construction or lined; it doesn’t matter — and hold it up in front of you. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have nothing.

But I’m starting to think that maybe that’s okay. Maybe my problem is expecting something. Maybe it’s that everyone — be they young, old, attractive, ugly or duck-like — has nothing. Nobody really has the sort of intimate understanding of things that I search for, but the difference in their lives versus mine is that they don’t obsess over their not knowing like I do. Or maybe they DO obsess, but just aren’t so darn whiny about it.

I’m working on this theory, because I like it so much. It’s the “Everybody’s messed up” theory and it posits very simply that everybody, deep down, is a messed up emotional wreck who can remember things they did wrong in middle school that still bother them and sometimes gets up three times a night to make sure their refrigerator is indeed closed. Perhaps it is mostly for my benefit that I’d like to believe this, but the idea certainly makes one feel less lonely and weird.

So what I’m saying, really, is that you’re messed up. Yes, you. I know you think you do a good job of pretending to be a well-adjusted happy individual but deep down you want to write poems about the crumbs on your floor and sing songs about the way she touched your elbow in the cafeteria. And you sometimes want to sit down and cry when you run out of Purple Kool-Aid, and you have to admit that you enjoyed the movie My Girl even if only for Dan Ackroyd. You too can recite back inane television trivia and remember the lyrics to all the sappy love songs your mother played on the radio in the car. You miss people you’re standing right beside, and wish for hugs whenever they’re not being given. You wonder if how people see you is actually representitive of who you really are.

You are a confused, insecure, emotionally tortured individual — as pathetic as you are awkward — and, god, do I love you for it.

Matt