Skeletons! In The Closet

It's time for a proverbial “bust” on myself.

What follows is an account of myself when I was happily moving about between the mature and wise ages of thirteen and sixteen. Though my wife is convinced that I'm perfect (I'm convinced I went a tad overboard selling myself to her, in fact, let's hope she doesn't read this article), I assure you, as you will soon see, I am most definitely not.

Shall we begin?

When I was an early teen I was ever-so-slightly prone to arguing with people. I had recently outgrown the hollow sham of physical fighting, and was ready to try my hand in, what I considered to be a more worthy pursuit. Now, believing that brains were far more worthwhile than brawn, I began my transition by saying things like “you may be stronger than me but you're still stupid!” I would randomly inject myself into conversations, not because I had anything useful to say, but rather to simply show my mental superiority. For example, if you said something, regardless if I felt it was it was true or not, there would be a good chance that I would attempt to trump up some strange example which would prove what a moron you were. Why? It wasn't because you were necessarily wrong, but rather, because I felt it was my job, being the most brilliant person who ever lived, to show you just how brilliant I was. Wouldn't you have loved to have been my friend?

Over the years I developed some techniques which proved quite useful, had I made a mistake in my reasoning (which, mind you, was not often). I can recall a time when I was arguing with this kid about how to properly “gear a bike for maximum speed” or something (don't ask). I perceived him to be getting the better of the argument, and thus, in a state of panic, pulled out one of my new defensive methods. This particular technique, involved stringing together a series fabricated words, which did not exist, and using them as if I knew exactly what I was talking about. My opponent, would more often than not, be blown away in confusion, and simply throw in their cards, it was sheer brilliance. They had no idea what I said (little did they know I had pulled it out of thin air), and I liked to think (at the time) that they suddenly realized I was beyond them in every respect and they had better just stop talking. To bring back the example with gearing the bike, I said something like “but once you see that the circulators motion inertializor mechanisms reduce the effigerity energy of the elaborativeitron forward motion of the rear derailleur, you'll see that it's just not possible.” I distinctly remember following this up with saying, rather disdainfully, “do you even understand what I just said to you?” To which he replied, “no, I guess you're right though.” BOOM!—SCORE!—WA-BAM! I had it all figured out.

Another technique I developed (which was much more desperate, I admit) was simply accusing my opponents of being complete idiots. In other words, if I was losing an argument, I would quickly respond by saying something along the lines of “listen, I don't think your pee-wee mind can even remotely comprehend what I'm trying to explain to you, so I'm just not going to talk to you anymore.” Mind you, I said this with the utmost arrogance, essentially adopting the attitude that I had been gracious enough to even speak to them, let alone tolerate their idiotic opinions. Unfortunately, most kids, especially at the age of fourteen or fifteen, have little or no confidence in themselves, and this technique would often end the conversation outright, with me, of course, feeling the exhilaration of mercilessly slaying yet another unworthy adversary. I was like Genghis Khan, everywhere I went there were piles of bodies that I had soundly defeated on the battlefield of ideas.

There was another time when I got into an argument with my father. I do apologize, as I cannot to save my life remember the topic of the altercation, but I do remember I was sixteen and was in the car with both my parents. At any rate, after a somewhat heated back and forth, my dad simply stopped talking and several minutes later, began talking to my mom, as if nothing had happened. I was at the height of my mental endeavors, overflowing with pride, as I believed I had swiftly and soundly whooped my own father into silence. (Surely it must have been rather humiliating to be routed so easily by one's son?) I clearly remember my subsequent thoughts being “I actually know everything.” I literally thought that if anyone has a question about anything, they should simply ask me. All I had to do was think, and the stream of truth would flow forth from my lips. I had apparently reached a point, after defeating countless foes and now conquering my own father, where I thought I had entered some kind of “nirvana of wisdom.” Looking back, I think my dad stopped talking because he was simply sick of arguing with his young hard-nosed, moron-of-a-child. Needless to say, “I actually know everything” was a belief which I proudly donned, until it was subsequently beaten out of me through various life mistakes and random occasions of making a complete fool out of myself.

This brings me to my point.

What we have here is a vivid illustration of one of the most self-deceived people on the face of the earth. I was not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination. I liked to convince myself that I was, but I was far too self-deceived to even realize my convictions were based on absolutely nothing (especially considering I cheated myself into victory after victory, none of which were even genuine). Fortunately I was able to get a good taste of deceiving myself at a reasonably young age. Getting kicked in the face by life will do that to you, and as luck would have it, I had enough sense left to put two and two together. Some say that adults are considerably more self-deceived than the youth, for while the youth are simply ignorant, adults are willingly ignorant. While I agree with this for the most part, it doesn't have to be that way. Truly, the unexamined life is not worth living.