Thursday, August 15, 2013

Superfulous Dictum


For those of you who have a passion for writing, you will most probably in very short order recognize this missive as an exercise in narcissism if you have not already.  The topic of this week’s self-indulgence is writing; or more specifically, why I write.
Do you remember in your days of youth (not so long ago for some of you, eh Swee’pea) the pain you associated with written assignments; book reports, themes, essays?  Are you still the victim of psychosomatic hand cramps and migraines delivered of minimum page counts?
Well, I was like you at one time.  My parents could drive me to a desk with whip and chair.  They could super glue a Bic pen to my hand.  They even threatened to confine me to my bedroom during the Thursday televising of Batman (always the sucker for a good cliff hanger, I am).  But they could not compel me put words to paper.
“What changed?’ you ask.
Hmm, I don’t know.  But I do remember that I was not a reader either. In the days of my elementary school studies, I would never read the assigned text book passages.  I would go to the end of the chapter and see how much of the material tested in the study questions there I could answer without benefit of the prescribed lesson. If I was successful at conjuring up reasonable answers to say seventy percent of the questions, I considered myself well versed in the topic and therefore in no need of further edification.  On the other hand, if my life experience proved a bit lacking, I would scan the assigned reading material for key words mined from the study questions and commit a few passages to memory.  That was me, the “C” student par excellence.
The same pattern seemed to work through most of high school.  I was compelled to read a few books though.  It seems I remember A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, I recommend it) and The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare… skip right over this one and go to Hamlet… just as much carnage and way more humor, in a sick and twisted way); I was able to successfully avoid Great Expectations (Dickens again… too many pages) and Les Miserable’s (Hugo… more pages than GE, and way more depressing). To this day I cannot differentiate the Greek Gods from the Roman Gods and have no idea how Thor is related to Aphrodite.  But for the quirky ability to remember key phrases from the teachers’ classroom dissertations and regurgitate them during the appropriate test, I would not have graduated High School.  My 3.0 GPA was purely a gift of the Criminology vocational program in which I spent my Senior year.
My first tour of Community College was a snap as I didn’t encounter any knowledge not previously mastered.  Achieving an Associate’s Degree with honors proved not that difficult and lulled me into a false sense of my own academic prowess as I transferred to San Diego State University.  I flunked out in two semesters. Can you imagine, those professors actually expected written demonstration of assimilation of concepts and original thinking to boot?  I was mortified too!
Once it became clear that I was not suited to a life-long career in Law Enforcement, I felt compelled to return to academia and secure a degree with some market potential.  I used a very scientific method to determine which career path offered the greatest opportunity for gainful and continued employment.  I perused the San Diego Union help wanted ads.  Now for you youngsters (yes, you Swee’Pea), back in the days before personal computers and the World Wide Web (yes, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth), the prescribed method for recruiting workforce talent was to place and ad in the local newspaper.  During this time, solicitations for accounting positions consistently comprised an average of one-third of the job offerings.  I therefore surmised that the best course of action was to obtain a degree in accounting.  I mean, how hard can it be to count money?
Well, I quickly learned that business school is not like any other academic program I had previously defeated by use of the above listed techniques.  For the first time I was compelled to read, study, produce.  Unlike history, literature or the behavioral sciences (snicker, snicker), business professors actually assign homework… especially for accounting classes.  And I dutifully put every effort into this iteration of my academic career even while working full time and supporting myself.  “What,” you may ask, “Precipitated this change?”  Did business foster some previously untapped scholastic passion?  Was the spirit of personal achievement suddenly awakened in my breast?  Could the proximity to attractive coeds fuel my efforts to excel?
No to all of these!  I was scared; scared that this was my last chance to avoid a life of menial, low-paying, unrewarding jobs. So I embraced the challenge and chewed my way through the curriculum, twelve units per semester, three semesters per year (yes, I attended summer school… I wanted this chapter of my life to close as quickly as possible).  This self-induced stress was unbelievable. I was so addicted to constant cerebral activity I found I could not relax my brain during the semester breaks.  To fill the vacuum, I began to revisit the literary tomes I had avoided earlier.  I wanted to read something that would soften the edge of business school.  And as I worked my way through Dickens and Scott and Dumas, and yes even Mallory, I found that it wasn’t just the story, but the language they used to tell it.  I fell in love with words.
I am sad to say, I have no talent for fiction.  I have tried. But I find I bore myself because everything I write feels like something I’ve read. Why not?  George Polti (French writer, 1867-1946) identified thirty-six dramatic situations as the limit for story plots. But as you have witnessed, I have no lack of energy (I’m not sure it qualifies for talent… you decide) for recounting stories of my life and sharing my observations on societal behavior and the current state of human knowledge.  And I do it all for you.
Well, that’s not entirely true.  I do it to show off by using big words and elegant phrasing.   Like the title of this missive promises: Superfluous dictum.
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This week’s punch line: “…be a shame to eat him all at once!”  

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