11:33 PM 8/19/07
Teriffic. Just teriffic.
I went straight from church to my dad’s house today, and spent the rest of the day there. I was all ready to go to the movie, although I admit I was a bit nervous. But I had everything set; one of my friends’ brothers even offered to drive us there.
Unfortunately, a half hour before he was due to arrive, I realized that I had forgotten my ID at my mom’s house. Without my ID, I wasn’t getting into any rated-R movies.
I know, I could have just gone to another movie. But I had already told everyone that we were going to see Superbad. One friend (who drove himself there) even called me from the theater wondering where I was. I am glad he took the bad news (that I wasn’t coming) so well. He just told me he hated me (he has been known to be quite facetious).
I was really depressed; my evening was ruined. So I decided to watch some movies on YouTube to cheer me up. But then I got the urge to relieve myself sexually and began to scower Facebook for pictures of my friends (it’s always more fun when it’s someone you know). But looking at people’s pictures and seeing them smiling and laughing, in groups, at other people’s houses(!) was a real turn-off, not in the sense that it was not as sexually pleasing, but rather it only made me more depressed, in fact, to depressed even to beat meat.
I remembered Dale Carnegie’s words that I had read yesterday. The chapter was entitled, “How to make people like you instantly,” and the lesson the chapter teaches is to “make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.”
So I was reading along, when I arrived at this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.”
I applied this to tennis. I know a great many people who could easily beat me in tennis with one hand tied behind their back. These people were superior in tennis, and I could learn about them from their achievements. Then I read Carnegie’s next sentence, and found, to my horror, that it descibed my life in that one sentence.
“And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating.” (How To Win Friends and Influence People, page 103)
I thought of my family calling me selfish, and my attempting to give orders to my mother and sister. I was later reminded of my performance in Team Sports. During the classes themselves, I hypothesized that the reason for my behavior (which was to become overly aggressive and attempt to ram the other players, with possible intent to injure) was to attract attention from the coaches. It certainly did not make me popular with the other students! However now I know that I was just trying to “bolster up my ego,” because I have little to no “feeling of achievement.”
Freud said that everything people do is based on one of two desires: the desire for sexual gratification and the desire to feel important. I was trying to feel important in Team Sports. I remember thinking to myself while I was playing, usually right after I had missed a basket or a goal or dropped a pass (or simply failed to catch a pass; this was of course before people stopped passing to me because they realized that I hardly ever caught it, and when I did, nothing productive came of it). I remember thinking things like: “Aaron, you are not an asset to this team. You don’t wonder why you are picked last, even after the girls, when teams are chosen. You know it is because no team captain would willingly pick someone for his or her team who would not be an asset. You are a de-asset, in fact. Your mere presence on the field is the equivalent of the other team having a power-play situation. They might as well have one extra player on their team, because you are utterly useless. Nobody passes to you, and why should they? When they do, you drop it, or worse yet, you duck because you see the ball flying at your face, and then you get laughed at. This is why you have never been on the winning team once this entire semester (I finished the semester being on the winning team a grand total of once). It is because the other team has an unfair advantage: they don’t have you.”
And I remembered that sentence which describes my life to the last minute, and I remembered that people are naturally very proud of their achievements (and this is what gives them confidence). I was still browsing Facebook, and I found people declaring things like “I love tennis!” or “I enjoy watching women swim,” or “I am awesome at bowling.” These sentences made me sad:
“I love tennis!” tells me that this person (who is one of our county’s tennis champions) really enjoys tennis, and is proud of her achievements on the court.
“I enjoy watching women swim” tells me that this person (who is a lifeguard at a pool) has the confidence to sit and watch the ladies swim around, without feeling at all like they should outdo him. Besides, he could always save their life if they’re drowning. I would sit there, watch the women swim, and get depressed because I would get the feeling that they are simply trying to show off for me (perhaps this is more conceit).
And “I am awesome at bowling” tells me that this person is so proud of her achievements and skills in the bowling alleys, she would post this as one of her main interests on her Facebook profile. It also serves as an open challenge, and therefore also tells me that she is confident that she could outscore any challenger.
Then I retreated to what I thought was safety: the profile of my first-choice homecoming date. However I was met there by comments from a fellow from a boys’ school, who seemed to be getting along quite well with her, as well as a man who I work with! This second guy already had a girlfriend, and I knew that, so it wasn’t jealousy that he was commenting her that made me so upset (that’s shallow even by my standards). It was that he had obviously seen and talked to her (he even knew somehow that she was on pain medication), and when I looked at his page, her response had included a reference to his house.
His house.
His HOUSE!!!
I looked through his pictures and apparently his house was a welcome place for many guests, both male and female. There was one picture of him laying on the floor and two girls sitting on a couch, all three looking in the same direction as if at a television, with an open bag of chips on the floor near them.
That setup would require:
1. A clean house.
2. A presentable couch.
3. Locality (as in his house is not miles away from theirs’)
4. Something to entertain them (assume TV)
5. Chips to eat.
I have problems with fice out of the five requirements above.
1. My house is NOT clean. (and it is NOT my responsibility to clean it!)
2. Our couch is faded, ripped up (and from 1980)
3. I don’t live anywhere near any of these girls, who apparently live in Crofton.
4. Our TV has a very limited span of channels. If we were to watch a DVD it would have to be either Dr. Strangelove or Mary Poppins, because those are honestly the only two DVD’s we have.
5. Chips are extremely hard to come by in my house. Whenever my mom buys them, she eats them. For me to buy them, it would require my mom taking me shopping when she happens to go shopping (which coincidentally is usually about the time I am at work). I cannot drive myself, as I have no car, as I have no insurance, as I have no money. Also the chips themselves cost money.
I really don’t know where to go from here, except to perhaps reschedule movie night.
12:25 AM 8/20/07
