"I started this piece last night with no concrete ideas in mind. I just started writing and let whatever came to mind come out. It may be something or may not, but here is the first part that I will attempt to add to."
-Part 1-
“You know, George, you are pretty narcissistic.”
“What do you mean, narcissistic? Explain yourself.”
“You have a critical theory about everyone. You know everything about everyone, down to when they last bought their groceries to when they last had sex. What kind of god do you think you are being able to make such predictions about people?”
“Come on James, look around you. Everyone is performing within these social boundaries that govern all of our lives. Why do you work, clean yourself, mow your lawn, or do anything that you do? You are a victim like everyone else, trapped in this unfair system, just trying to survive.”
I watched James eyes stare up towards the sky in thought. He has never been the brightest guy, but always a good listener. He used to be a star athlete, but as life has been taking over, he has aged quickly, and you could tell something was tearing him up inside. He has slowed down physically as well, lacking in energy. He looked towards me with his fist clenched, ready to attempt an argument.
“You can’t say that. If you were so engrained in the system, you couldn’t possibly have that much insight into it. You do everything within boundaries also, everyone struggles.”
I interrupted, “Not everyone struggles as we do. The system was developed to benefit certain social statuses, certain images, class structures, and being a young poor adult, this makes us the scum of the system. There must be some kind of way that we can find the loop hole to make this system benefit us...”
“How do we do that?”
“I don’t know the answer to that yet, James. I need you to help me think of something. Let’s start by looking around at the social ties and connections with other people and try to find a connection that we can use to benefit us.”
“Okay... How about Martha, from across the street, how is she effected by the social system by your interpretation?”
I looked across the street at the tall mediocre green house across the street where Martha lived. She was an older woman that nearly everyone in the neighbourhood noticed, but no one talked about. She was a bitter old woman, and extremely obese. She was mean, fat, and severely unfortunate on her looks.
I looked over everything that I could see about her, analyzing her past actions, trying to think of an explanation for what she was. The only few times I’ve seen her are when she is outside her house in her driveway. Her husband, some guy who weighs like 90 pounds, is part of some huge company and loves to make sure that he puts himself into his social rank. He’s probably 200 pounds lighter than his wife and he is one of the angriest people that I have ever met.
“Forget about Martha, what about that douche bag Bill.” I blurted out, thinking about the past encounter that I had with him. It was when I was younger, maybe grade seven. A couple of friends of mine and I were lighting firecrackers in the park at night after we snuck out of the house and this guy came rolling up out of nowhere. It was dark, I was a little kid, and I was scared. This guy just comes in screaming, I thought he was going to kill us. He was in our faces yelling at us about how incompetent all of our parents are and calling them out. It was the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever witnessed. I was pissed off, being bullied by this guy. That was pretty much my only encounter I have ever had with the guy, but I have avoided him ever since.
James must have noticed the look of anger building up in my thoughts.
“Don’t start some rant about him. I know how much you hate him, you’ve told me one hundred times already. I want to hear your story on Martha.”
“What? I don’t have that much hate built up man. You are talking like I’m Charles Manson or something.
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