The Missing Piece.

What they don’t tell you is that seeing the good in people is not about seeing the good in people as much as it is about how people aren’t strictly good. There are no good people, but there isn’t one person in the world who’s managed to eradicate any and all trace of goodness in them, just yet.

It may be the saddest alteration of a glass half full, but then again, if you’re thirsty enough, you wouldn’t notice the first bit.

The World Would Be Easier.

‘The world would be easier if the homeless were all just lazy and all they needed to do was just get a fucking job.

The world would be easier if evil were a real thing, instead of just confusion, misunderstanding, miscommunication and misplaced desire.

The world would be easier if you could just be happy for what you had, while you had it. If you could eat memories like flowers to keep your heart alive.

The world would be easier if comfort didn’t rest on the backs of the broken, if your swimming pool was dug by soft hands that never worked a day in their life.

The world would be easier if we all just got rich and famous and we were all each other’s #1 fan.

The world would be easier if it were an automatic.

The world would be easier.

But it isn’t.

The world is hard because it requires real human effort to make it turn.

The world is hard because you may wake up today but not tomorrow. And yet no one will accept “fear of death and a futile existence” as a reasonable excuse to miss work.

The world is hard because you will have to fight for the things you love or worse, fight the things you love.

The world is hard because the things you love will kill you.

The world is hard because it was made that way by thousands upon thousands of hard men and no one wants to admit we have no idea why we’re doing the things we’re doing anymore.

The world is hard because it’s hard to forgive and even harder to forget.

The world is hard and you should just give up, right now. Just lay down and die. Nothing will ever be easier.

But, you don’t.’

- I Wrote This For You.

Perfection.

‘Yet you still value the things you’ve lost the most.

Because the things you’ve lost are still perfect in your head. They never rusted. They never broke. They are made of the memories you once had, which only grow rosier and brighter, day by day. They are made of the dreams of how wonderful things could have been and must never suffer the indignity of actually still existing. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating.

Only the things you no longer have will always be perfect.’

- I Wrote This For You.

Substance.

‎'I am a part of the part that at first was all, part of the darkness that gave birth to light, that supercilious light which now disputes with Mother Night her ancient rank and space, and yet can not succeed; no matter how it struggles, it sticks to matter and can't get free. Light flows from substance, makes it beautiful; solids can check its path, so I hope it won't be long till light and the world's stuff are destroyed together.'

- Taken from the speech by Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust.

Midget Pains

Of Rambling, What Is & What Is Easy.

I’m not sure how or why I ended up here, and maybe one of these two will have an answer if I let go, just for once, but I don’t work that way. I’ve always resented it, but never could change it, although somehow I’m grateful for it, because it has protected me like nothing and no one else has, or will. I hate it and I love it, sort of like the same relationship one might have when they’ve been in prison for too long and have come to depend on the confining walls for survival, as if they’ve somehow become part of the wall, and the wall has become their very being. That’s why they can’t leave, because if they do, they’ll auto-exorcise.

Do we really have a choice? What’s a choice? I used to tell myself that one has a choice with everything, he just chooses not to call it a choice when the stakes are too big, or when it requires too much effort on his part. I used to believe that acceptance is proclaiming defeat. I used to ridicule how a person is willing to put in that effort if he had to but not if he so wished. But think about it, do we really have a choice, in anything that we are, have, don’t have, want, need or resent? Or are we just making it harder on ourselves? I still believe in those things, the only difference is that now, I’m willing to question them.

Why is it so hard for me to give up on anything, no matter how trivial? It can’t just be the inner child whining a little too loud for too long. Why do I never stop fighting? The right phrasing would be this: Why can’t I stop fighting? Why is acceptance of all things as is the hardest endeavor for me when it’s the go-to solution for everyone else? Am I wrong? Are they right? Are the last two questions really the same?

I’m rambling, that’s progress.  It’s the beginner’s level of letting go. I usually get to this part then I somersault back to square one. I’ve been trying to look through my coding and see where the loop is, but it feels like I’ve gone all Zaphod Beeblebrox on myself. Smart, a little too smart. I never really got past the restaurant at the end of the universe so I don’t know whether he’ll eventually unlock the part of his brain that he’s hidden from himself, and now it feels like reading the books would unlock an achievement. Funny, how the mind works, or rather, malfunctions. Do I have to get past the restaurant at the end of the universe to find out? Or rather, would getting past the restaurant at the end of the universe help?

I’m tired of people apologizing to me. Just like I’m tired of verbs. Verbs are the root of all problems, you know. They report the action, and actions mess things up. No theory ever got anyone into trouble, not anyone who wasn’t Greek anyway. Theories are intelligent, they’re the nouns of life, but they’re cowards, they’re inanimate and frustratingly stationary. They never take risks. But where have risks got me? A better place, sure. A happier place? No, that would be too easy.

Now you see, if I weren’t me, I wouldn’t think inanimate stationary states of being are frustrating. And oddly that’s the one thing I’ve never regretted, I’ve never regretted being me, with all my blunders and train-wrecks, I’ve always been satisfied in who I am; rough around the edges but always preferring straight lines. I stumble around the rubble every once in a while, but then again it’s a building site and rubble is good news.

What scares me is this, will I question this too?

Why are easy things cursed? It can’t be another little life joke, now can it? It feels that a foreboding air lingers around all things easy. But then again that also comes with the package, I wouldn’t feel that if I weren’t me.

Which gets us back to the main point, the one that started this post, do we really have a choice in who we are? Surely, what we have, don’t have, want, need or resent are what makes us who we are, but if I’m questioning the choice in the elements, doesn’t it follow that I question the outcome?

I don’t like rambling. And it makes sense that I don’t, because rambling doesn’t work in straight lines. Straight lines aren’t easy. It all fits. In fact, it’s such a snug fit that it’s making me question if it was the work of man. Or man’s choice.

Of Loops, Cycles & A Sad Truth.

Oh the irony, the sad irony called the cycle of life. You'd think it'll get creative after a while, but it doesn't. Luckily for you, that is. For what’s worth, stop complaining about the monotony of life. Trust me, if it were indeed ever-changing, judging the rate of evolutionary progress you’re exhibiting, you’d all be dead by now.

It’s a sick joke, I’ll give you that, but you have to admit it’s true. If it weren’t a cycle, if it weren’t mundane and holding a certain air of plagiarism, there’d be nothing to look back on and maybe draw some survival boons from. Even then, some people don’t quite get there.

I’ve also noticed how most, if not all, good people are rendered rather heartless by time, and that’s the only way it can make sense, if you really think about it. I mean, it goes against nature to be giving, hence the only compromise they can make without losing their inherent goodness is by acquiring a shield, that little defense mechanism that parses their code into something that wouldn’t kill them. You see the logic behind the metamorphosis goes as follows: The person goes through enough crap to prove his straightforward goodness to be impractical, the person believes that change is immoral and is stuck in an impasse, hence the psyche does a little tumble and solves the puzzle: There would never be a problem if the person never cares in the first place.

And that’s usually how they’re made, that little psychological loop that sets things straight. Cycle, loop, it seems like the go-to solution for everything, no? The same way round shapes take up the least energy, and how if every centripetal and centrifugal force on earth disappeared, all elements will curl up into a ball to .. survive, for lack of a better verb.

If you give it some thought, you’ll see that the only change people see in life wouldn’t be really change if they lived past 60, or 80, and even then, they start to see the cycle and things stops seeming new. Ever wondered why your grandma’s an undercover shaman? Or maybe how your dad managed to install those wondrous dadoscopes that save years off your calendar? It’s because they’ve seen it all, and it didn’t really take them that long to see it. That could only be possible if life is a cycle. It would also explain my theory that if it wasn’t, half of us would be dead by now, that is if they existed in the first place because half of our predecessors would have died before us trying to figure out how to live day in and day out.

That’s also why the biggest mistake anyone can make is thinking that they outsmart those around them. It’s a true mark of an idiot to believe that they could get ahead of the pattern, just because they’re under the impression that they see some things that others don’t. It never occurs to them, however, that seeing things doesn’t mean they’re right, it’s highly probable that others have seen the same things and had enough common sense in them to disregard them on the spot for being oh so damn moronic. Common sense, I may add, that wasn’t bestowed upon the aforementioned eponymous evolutionary at hand.

Funny thing, life is. A child’s play, maintained by the ingenious mechanism of growing up and losing that child-like clarity. Remember how easy things were when you were a kid? How the line between right and wrong was 60 feet tall and unmistakable? You don’t think you were less of a human back then, do you? I daresay you were more of a human, and got chipped off along the way. And if you weren’t chipped off, you'd malfunction and life would need to give you a proper pounding just so you’d lose the extra weight you’ve reared round the edges, rough you up a bit so you’d be flexible enough to get through the hole that it really wouldn’t care enough to customize on  your behalf. You’re not supposed to stay whole, that’s called incompetence, in the most pragmatic of canonical logistics. Proof of which is how the most successful at this life game are malevolent to the core, because only by being incredibly flexible will you reach the ultimate yet natural destination of malevolence. It’s against nature to be kind, it’s against survival of the fittest. Goodness is being morbidly obese, in that context.

Either way, you’ll be made heartless, because as much as I, you, or anyone would like to differ, sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side. But I may be wrong, and I hope to be, but I’m usually not. God knows I wouldn’t like to believe that the perfect outcome of life is turning everyone into robots. Even apes know better.

"Ecrivain raté, destin raté. Comme j'aime ce mot, 'raté'. La destinée humaine ça conduit comme ça, en ratant. Et de ratage en ratage, on s'habitue à ne jamais dépasser le stade du brouillon. La vie n'est que l'interminable répétition d'une représentation qui n'aura jamais lieu."

Of Old People, Debates With Old People & Getting Lost.

It’s grandma’s birthday today, shopping for her birthday gift turned out to be quite problematic, because what could a 74-year-old possibly want out of life, really? Few things are truly new when you’re 74. We’ve had a lot of suggestions, ranging from therapeutic pillows to massage therapy gift certificates, a book full of crossword puzzles, a pair of medical shoes or maybe new seeing glasses. However, I’m yet to think of a gift that wouldn’t inevitably incur this reaction:

It’s such a long time, 74 years. I’m almost 20 and it feels like I’ve lived forever. I like old people, they’re like babies, except with better conversational skills. You’d think conversations with old people should provide enough material for revelations that could give you a brain stroke just trying to process them, or maybe go down in textbooks as one of the steps you have to go through to reach ultimate enlightenment, but you can’t help but notice how they’ve somehow transcended the concept of boredom. They’re never bored, or amused. They’ve reached this state that scholars have yet to coin in their latest dictionary updates. I wonder what it’s like to be 74. Oh well, I guess I’m gonna have to wait it out.

Speaking of new things, I’ve recently been watching hip-hop dancing tutorials, trying out this new amalgam of having fun and staying fit, and it’s proving to be way harder than it looks. The most logical conclusion would be that I’d lose half my current weight before I effectively learn how to shuffle, but that’s definitely a win-win I suppose. For someone who has the physical coordination of a zombie and looks like she’s kicking invisible gnomes to death trying to shake it, looking on the bright side does help sometimes.

I have a fortnight off from uni for Adha, and I find it depressing how every time I talk to a friend, they’re always resenting the fact that they’re gonna have to spend it with family. I mean, being visited by the ghost of Christmas honesty is one thing, and intentionally catching a cold to stay home and get out of family dinners is another. I’m not gonna pretend that they’re always fun and I’ve somehow stood apart from my angst-writhing generation, but then again family gatherings aren’t that bad. They’re enjoyable, with a little effort. And in most cases, it’s one of the few occasions when family remembers they’re family, if that makes sense.

I still haven’t quite found my feet with the whole university life, I've only adjusted in the sense that now, I know how to avoid whatever it is that I wish to avoid without necessarily sticking out of place. It also helps to think of people as moveable objects who have stories. If you’re lucky, the stories are mostly funny. However, I haven’t met anyone that I’d let into my life if I could help fight them off with a baseball bat and a Taser gun. The exchange students would vouch for that, the German ones hold the record of getting out of a conversation in less than 2 minutes. It’s admirable.

I got lost again, this time it was in el Nozha el Gdeeda with five strangers for two hours shortly after the bus got caught in a traffic jam in an uncharted territory that had a building site on the right side and a desert clearing on the left. There was nothing too special about it other than the fact that I had to run every two minutes to catch up because power walking with tall people doesn’t work, and fighting for midget rights in the middle of nowhere with absolute strangers  is counter-productive. I know what you’re thinking, how hard can it be to get on the right bus for once? If it helps, I’m a freshman with zero knowledge of maps.

I got into another debate with the teacher, this time it was about how I thought none of the newspapers stick to the general format that’s being taught in our textbooks. She got a little defensive when I suggested that the only surviving conformists to the true essence of journalism are independent newspapers, but then she turned the argument around by saying that the only thing that’s differs independent from government newspapers is that they’re biased to different sponsors. That led us to argue how she claims that newspapers are still the best form of news today if they’re all just brainwashing the public through different filters, and the only thing I got out of that debate is that now, I understand why I’m not fitting in; it’s not because of my ideologies, it’s that I have any.

Priceless :D

The Boogeyman.

It’s a quiet night, one of those slow nights that one would feel bad about wasting by sleep. However, I admit I should have known better than to pick up ‘Clash of Kings’ for light reading before bed. Although I wouldn’t be too hard on myself, because regardless of my better judgment, I’ve already lost the ability to fall asleep on cue, but apparently that comes with the package. According to a friend, growing up is when kid you gets used to feeling ripped off.

I used to be scared of the dark, but then I had my first job interview and well, kids, the boogeyman's real. I must admit though, it felt good..in retrospect. Don’t be mistaken, a couple of more minutes of probing and I would’ve shat my pants right then and there, but walking out, after I’ve gone through the excruciating process of thinking of all the questions I could have answered better if I had a better reign of my wits under life-draining fluorescent lights, and after my memory of the incident had conveniently warped itself into a good-cop-bad-cop scenario, it felt rather pleasant. I felt..big, kind of like how Tyrion Lannister feels on his borrowed destrier. The term ‘happier than a poodle on stilts’ comes to mind. Walking out of there, I probably looked like this:

It’s odd how the past month has been packed with so many firsts, almost as if I’m a toddler again. First time visiting campus, first lecture,  first fight with college professor, first college-boy crush, first time using public transportation, first paycheck, first time getting lost in Cairo alone, first time reading a map correctly, first time stopping a cab, first job interview, first migraine, oh so many firsts. Do people ever run out of firsts? I wonder how it feels, to run out I mean. Does it feel satisfying or depressing? Does it feel as gratifying as crossing out all the items on a checklist or completing all the objectives and milestones in a videogame? Or does it feel like your time is up and you start to wonder how it went by so fast and feel ripped off? I guess I’ll have to wait it out.

It might be a little too early for this, but I already miss a stupider time when I had less memories and experiences and more tummy for ice cream.

Of A Bleep Called You.

The worst thing you could possibly do to yourself is to expect better, even if the odds allow it, no matter how many signs may point to it. It never ends well, even when it does, if that makes sense. You’re supposed to have a windshield, you don’t keep taking it out and storing it because you won’t get past 60 mph and you like the wind in your hair. It doesn’t work that way.  How it works, however, is you taking it all however the hell it comes and then somehow managing to remain standing. That’s how it goes, or else you’ll go soft.

Life, I’d be lying if I said it’s had ups and downs; recently it’s been morbidly invariable, a never-ending beep. The same patterns, unraveling over and over again no matter how differently you try to tackle them. And one day, you just stop trying, and it doesn’t feel any different. That’s the irony of it all, how it makes you realize, in full momentum, how insignificant you are. How pathetically insignificant, with or without your efforts against a monstrous avalanche. It makes  you wonder whether people who chose a bohemian lifestyle at an earlier point in their life went through some sort of enlightenment that you were deprived of. It’s always the same, and it will never change. People go through their own phases of anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance, hamburgers and ice cream to try and find a way around, under or through it, but they all come to the same point, and they give up. It will always be the same, and that’s why you go through hell and back to understand it.

And just as it slowly kills you, you’ll notice a lot of other insignificant things, like how you’ll lose the will to speak even though you may have a lot to say, just because you don’t see the point in talking when you’ll never be met half way, it’s just wasted air. You’ll stop living and you’ll exist instead, and it won’t feel like a waste because you know for a fact that nothing will ever change. You forget to eat and that’s alright, because you didn’t even notice you were hungry in the first place. You fail to remember the last time you slept but that doesn’t matter, because what’s there to wake up to? You stop reading and that’s alright, because what’s the use of all the knowledge if you have no place to share it or put it to use for anything other than numbing your cranial engines? You stop trying and that’s alright, because of all the things you’ve tried, not trying is the one thing that feels right, because what’s the point in running when you can’t see the finish line? It’s funny. It’s funny how the body and soul don’t shut down at the same time, but each of their own accord, without even taking  your permission. Yet another reminder of how insignificant you are.

Nothing matters. Absolutely nothing. Such a scary thought that people would sacrifice an arm and a leg for hope of a more digestible alternative, then accept it two limbs short of a full package. And what’s the point? Why should you fight it when you’ve got no reason to prove it wrong? Why should you look for an alternative when all the flashing billboards are pointing right at it? Just an egotistical misconception that your life has to be worth something, it just has to. But it isn’t, because why should it? Have you ever had any proof other than your own groundless frustration? Accept that, and you’ll stop being so tired all the time. The living dead are never tired, not that I’ve heard of anyway, ever heard of a zombie stopping for a drink?

What’s the fucking point?

Of Turtles & Demons.

Much like every other regular blogger out there, you come to the point where a blank post is only a portal through which terrible monstrous creatures can jump in at you from unforeseeable dimensions. I know that because I’m staring right at it, and I can see a couple of imps climbing in.

Another speed bump is that fact that as you grow up, you get a firmer grasp of the fact that nobody gives a shit what you have to say about the world, and that kind of milks you dry. Newsflash, buddy, no one will ever patent your suggestion of adding burgers and ice cream to the kubler-ross model. I know, life’s a bitch.

It usually hits when you’re thinking about what you wouldn’t like to include in, or even how to begin, a blogpost. And just as you’d think about penguins the minute you’re asked not to think about penguins, because human brains are assholes, all you’re thinking about is a way to go around it without betraying the efforts of  playing whack-a-mole with your demons.

That kind of reasoning would rule out so many noteworthy life incidents and somehow an otherwise potential-choked unlimited blank post is fighting with your better judgment for custody of the many temporarily awesome stories that will eventually be filed as junk by your goldfish memory in a couple of years. It’s fair to say that writer’s block is kind of like divorce, in the same way your inventory will always be missing a couple of irreplaceable possessions.

So life, well what about it? I realized that things don’t seem so big once you’ve jumped in. To further elaborate, I saved a turtle the other day from a bunch of senior mofos only to have the campus laugh at me for standing up for a strange turtle’s rights and voicing its severe dislike of heights and being waved around when it’s spent its 3 digit life span a mere 5 cm from the ground. On the bright side, they didn’t look so big while I was looking up at them as I kept in mind how the turtle might be feeling in comparison. The poor thing couldn’t even down my Caesar salad afterwards.

I realized a lot of other little things, like for instance how stroopwafels are the Anglo-Saxon version of good old Freska, the negotiable assumption that dragons could have just been friendly over-sized canines, how the world doesn’t offer the courtesy of walking on eggshells to cater for your withdrawal-induced irritability and will relentlessly produce more people that you’ll see with a target circle tattooed on their forehead, how you’ll never be met halfway because as far as anybody’s concerned you’re just another fart waiting to happen. Other facts include how cookies and corndogs were not made for the purpose of socializing, and no I’m not talking about Twix’s ‘not made for two’ slogan. And last but not least, how coffee-specialized cafes are the worst coffee makers in the world is not the only living oxymoron that will piss you off as a blue-collar in the making.

I’ll come back when I can make sentences. And by ‘when I can make sentences’ I mean when I stop getting the irrepressible urge to cave every person’s face in with a baseball bat.

How Does It Feel Like To Go To College, You Ask?

You Were Paid.

“Each holiday tradition acts as an exercise in cognitive development, a greater challenge for the child. Despite the fact most parents don't recognize this function, they still practice the exercise.
Rant also saw how resolving the illusions is crucial to how the child uses any new skills.
A child who is never coached with Santa Claus may never develop an ability to imagine. To him, nothing exists except the literal and tangible.
A child who is disillusioned abruptly, by his peers or siblings, being ridiculed for his faith and imagination, may choose never to believe in anything- tangible or intangible- again. To never trust or wonder.
But a child who relinquishes the illusions of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, that child may come away with the most important skill set. That child may recognize the strength of his own imagination and faith. He will embrace the ability to create his own reality. That child becomes his own authority. He determines the nature of his world. His own vision. And by doing so, by the power of his example, he determines the reality of the other two types: those who can't imagine, and those who can't trust.

By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child's faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust in a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money.
From a man to an animal to a fairy.
From toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairy-dom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels... dimes... and quarters.
In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency. ”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant

Ah Les Hommes..

Story Of My Life.

The Y’s Behind The X’s.

People would stop judging a lot of things if they realized that we’re all the same. The same reason that got one person to pursue a career and lose their loved ones on the way is the same reason some never had a future planned because they thought family is more important, it’s also the same reason some walked out on both and got drunk and high till they couldn’t see straighter than the sidewalk they’re already stumbling on. The same reason people go out and buy stuff they can’t afford or learn things they don’t give two shits about, is the same reason one would suddenly walk out on all of it and break a couple of hearts on the way just to get even. People fuck up, in lots of ways, ways that are a train wreck waiting to happen and other ways that are socially acceptable and somehow lead to furthering their career in their obsessive ways or building their whole life on one person, one idea or one thing, or nothing at all, only to have it crashing down because the foundation wasn’t set in stone. All of these people are the same person, and that person just wants to be happy, and doesn’t really know how.

If you knew that their reason is your reason, would you still judge them so damn harshly? Well, now you do.

You Make Me Go All ..

Why Growing Up Is Poop.

As a kid, you except realizations to come in lightning packages, storming down with a bang that make you stop dead in your tracks and see the world in a different light. As you grow up, you learn to play dead when they saunter by. Little did I know that growing up isn’t as fun as they made it sound when I was a kid, I feel ripped off and the only reason I’m not suing is because I don’t know who to sue and am not grown up enough to know how to hire a solicitor just yet. Caution is advised for kids who stumble upon this post, I’d recommend you keep an inhaler close by because I will not be held responsible or, what you will come to know as being legally implicated, for having a kid think that if they hold their breath long enough they won’t turn into what I shall elaborate as the woes of grown-upsy.

I now know that time travel is possible, and it’s not just because of the fact that I slept for 18 hours that were so strategically lodged in the natural order of waking hours between Thursday and Saturday to have me skip Friday altogether, it’s the little déjà vus that have you standing there and seeing your younger self getting the same talk or lost in the same problem, only to be sucked into the present by the talker’s baffled face at your utter lack of reaction, which is another pooper, you hardly have any fits because your experience made it possible for you to be ‘mature’ about shit that would have had the kid you swing a baseball bat in the person’s face and not go to jail or be held remotely responsible  for caving it in. For the record, you can’t swing a baseball bat at people anymore either, and I still haven’t begun about the lost fun parts.

I now also know that when grownups say they’re busy, they’re actually busy. It’s usually a fleeting change but if you pay close attention, you realize that kids don’t really know what busy is outside of the realm of not wanting to hang out with that person and not wanting to admit that they don’t wanna hang out with that person. It’s funny hearing myself tell people I’m busy, and actually meaning it.

You also know that you could miss a social gathering because your overworked brain thought it plausible to have a big bang theory marathon just so it can fart around in its folds and not be required to perform the chore of shutting down and letting you sleep before it gets its own playtime, extorting you to yield by convincing you that you’re a Leonard and having you stay up just to find clues that’ll prove to you that you’re not a Leonard. You know that running through sprinklers feels like a dinosaur peeing on you and actually consider opting out for a relevant amount of time that kid you would slap you for, not to mention that you start to not roll down the car window so it wouldn’t mess up your hair. I used to make fun of chicks who did that, now I do it myself knowing that the rush of air at 60 mph would turn my short afro into a bouncy pompom. You’ll also lose your innocent and seemingly god-given effortless ability of spotting right from wrong or good people from bad people because by the time this post makes sense, you’ll have gone through every single thing you ever judged and pointing it out would only have you realize that you just called yourself an asshole.

You learn that the key to understanding personal statements in news articles is all in skipping the nots, you find a chocolate smear on your thigh and it automatically registers as one of the reasons why you can’t get a date when kid you would’ve probably licked it off, you know how to professionally tell a person to shove it and not lose your job, or have a fight at a restaurant over a wrong order without having the waiter spit in your food.

You learn that the whole ‘when one door closes, another one opens’ shit is only possible if they’re connected by relays, there’s a motion sensor installed or the room is pressure-stabilized and the evacuation at one end incurs an equal and opposite reaction at the other.

You learn that Spanish doesn’t have a word for ‘fuck off’, and many other famous cuss words, only to come to the realization that getting angry in Spanish requires you to be fluent enough to form a complex set of elaborate interconnected adjectives that together imply a pejorative context, and the things that come to mind after ‘how do people get mad in Spanish’ are ‘Somebody should have told me before I started learning it’ and ‘It’s a plan so you don’t score any latinas’, in that order.

And the most annoying change of all, when you think before you actually do shit, you start to know better. You don’t walk in some people’s shoes because even your toes knew better and you miss thinking about something only to come up with nothing of merit and do it anyway only to have a great story to tell the kids and something to smile about when you’re an old fart. That’s when things stop being fun, and it’s not because you stop doing things that are fun, it’s because the things that used to be fun are, by a twist of age and experience, not so fun anymore. Yes, kids, you’ll be fun-uly celibate. And don’t google celibate, you’ll only know that exists when it hits you in the face with a pillow and have you grateful for affording airbags.

You also know that everything you think you know now may change in a couple of months, because grownups are complicated, and being one is like being given a contraption that you’re supposed to figure out without the manual that has been lost somewhere down the generations that have manhandled it. People don’t say what they mean or do what they love, and they don’t necessarily do the opposite of that either in case you’re looking for the easy way out. You’re aware that you have no idea what you’re getting into but you wanna get into it anyway, only to grow old and wish you lost your speech functions at goo goo ga ga, and that’s when  you’ll realize that you can’t be a kid again because it’s generally frowned upon once you’ve lost the kid license.

And because you’ve seen it all, you’ll probably never have one of these moments, that you’ll come to miss, again:

You also lose your faith in humanity when you realize you’ve lived long enough to see Snoop Dogg turn into Snoop Lion and read the news because you have to not because you like to see people blow shit up out of the middle east. You have a full-fledged to-do list that doesn’t include decorative slots filled with ‘take a shower’ and ‘download tech n9ne album’ to make you look busy. You purchase books that are convenient for escaping social obligations, meaning the chubby ones that you can look engrossed into enough to have the approacher think twice about stepping into your antisocial bubble, and it doesn’t work half the time and you can’t tell them to go away because you’re not a kid anymore and that would fuck shit up.

And here’s the major party pooper, you actually start to care about what might happen if you fuck shit up.

Word.

‘Shall I tell you who the worst losers are? They are the ones whose works in this life are totally astray, but they think they are doing good.’

How To Handle Nice People.

“This army of clumsy lovers means well, but always manages to drop the ball in the clutch. Worse still, nice people think their good intentions make up for their pathetic failure to deliver. They're the Democratic Party of People.

I suggest a sharp rap on his skull from the reality stick. Try breaking up with him a week before you take a spring break trip together. Then, while he tries to wear the mask of sanity, hook up with a mutual friend. If his dedication to you remains strong, you may have to subject him to a 24-hour bus ride home staring at the back of your snuggled heads.

Sure, it sounds cruel. But believe me, in the weeks that follow, he'll wander zombielike through the most vicious neighborhoods at dim hours, seeking his own destruction. When he can wake up without gasping like a drowning swimmer every morning, balance is restored, and he is now a man willing to roll the dice. Or your new boyfriend will, as Community pointed out sometimes happens to adults who assert themselves, get the back of his head grabbed and pushed through a jukebox. Either way: No scuff on your shoes.”