Bathroom Monologue: Homeopathic Reasoning

I'm a different sort. I remember in high school when an English teacher asked, "What's the difference between a biography and an autobiography?"

The answer was obvious, and I gave it.

"An autobiography can never be complete."

It was not the answer he was looking for. He looked at me like a dog that's been asked to build a rocket ship.

As much as I try to sympathize with other people, I think this instance is a good example of why I’ll never be compatible with them. Another example, from age four, when I discovered that the circular peg was without edges and small enough such that it could fit through the square hole. For the rest of my life I saw no problem in putting it there. It gave the square peg some company in that pocket.

At age six I was auditioned around for kindergartens. I sat in the classroom of one while my mother and the teacher chatted; I built a skyscraper of blocks, taller than myself. The teacher said I might be an architect, just before I roared and knocked it over in grand Godzilla fashion.

Apparently I was one of the only kids that weren’t afraid to be seen with his parents. I’d hold their hands when we went everywhere, even in public and around my peers. On the playground I didn't like the feminist "mother ship," and so my pretend airplane or space fighter always returned to the "father ship." In game books, my little man always made it passed mazes the fastest, because I drew him walking around the outside and waiting by the exit rather than entering and traversing the labyrinth.

My earliest recollection of television is devising that Skeletor could kill He-Man if he'd only save up three or four of his apocalyptic plans and launch them at once, since the heroes barely overcame any individual plot. If only someone would recommend he spend a couple of episodes saving them up instead of blowing them every afternoon. (Though sometimes I have an earlier memory of thinking it was weird that Olympic volleyball and suicide bombings would be reported on the same news show, but it is insubstantial and may be a false memory. At best, it is a parenthetical memory, and I have written it as such.)

Back then I didn't notice this kind of alternative thinking from other kids, at least not applied to my areas of interest. But I think they had it in their own ways at one time or another, and they knew what this sort of thinking was about. There was a time when half of a classroom would immediately agree with my unorthodox babbling, or at least make the "Ohhhh" sound that so soothed the savage ego. Something happened along the way, happened to me and everyone else, which caused that "Ohhhh" to turn into a patronizing laugh, or maybe handful of grins. I don't know what happened. I'm not even sure if it happened to everyone else, but I hope it did. It would hurt beyond reason if it were just me.