Note: As the title says, this forthcoming rant is intended to be a work of satire. It is supposed to be funny, not that I can make any actual promises that you will laugh. Maybe a chuckle or two. A slight grin would also be satisfactory. My parents raised me quite well, I do think, and I love them dearly. That said, this is all their fault. Not mine. At all.
Second note: This is a rant. I’m writing it free-dorm, as things come into my head. I offer no guarantee that there will be any structure. I’m pretty much throwing the rules out of the window, and writing this as I would scream it verbally. Things will jump from one topic to the next. So read at your own discretion. Enjoy!
Dear Mom and Dad,
You know how much I love you. I love you more than any cheesy, overpriced Hallmark cards that I buy every Birth/Mother’s/Father’s/Holi Day can possible surmise. But, you made a mistake when raising me. A fairly large one. You let me be who I wanted to be, and follow my own path, and take up the cause of being a writer. Whoops.
I came to this conclusion that everything is going wrong for me just a few minutes ago, as I was in the shower, listening to the Blue Danube Waltz as I thought about a story I’m working on, about pixies and elves in a contemporary setting, or something to that extent, and I thought: This is all wrong. Not my story, it’s freaking brilliant, I tell you! If only I got around to writing it rather than only thinking about it on my drives to work and in the shower. My life is wrong. Why am I a writer? A creative minded spirit? I woke up today, on a Friday, at about 2:00 pm. Shouldn’t I have been at a job, at oh, let’s say 09:00 am? I mean, I a have a job. A good one. Nice retail work. Good hours, good pay, great co-workers. Pays the bills (kinda) while I can work on my stories (kinda). But if I hadn’t decided to be a writer, to dedicate my life to a not-so-reliable career path, I could be at a desk in a cubicle, surrounded by things that make it known that the desk is mine (a few Batman figures, a poster of a cat with a humorous caption under it, things like that), doing office-type work. I’m not entirely sure what that would consist of, but I’m fairly confident it would involve reading technical e-mails and moving some paperwork from one stack to another. My concept of the traditional office job is pretty much limited to the movie Office Space, but I know it has to be far less witty.
But no. Such was not to be my life, and I’m pretty sure, Mom and Dad, you are to blame. I think I know where it began to. The first problem was that you guys chose to live in a house with a small woods behind the backyard. This fostered my imagination from the get-go. The backyard itself was already a marvel. A perfectly formed, metal gated cube, with several trees in it, making it my own personal chunk of the forest beyond it. Where I could enact whatever cartoon or video-game adventure I had earlier been subjected to (another problem I’ll get back to). My friends could come over, or I would be alone, but either way in this forest I was anything I wanted to be. A Jedi on Endor, Robin Hood in Sherwood, or a Jedi on Endor (that one came up the most, so it deserves several mentions). I would create my own characters, live my own adventures, and at the end of the day, when it was time for dinner and bed, be content that my life would one day indeed be one of these lives. And you let that happen! You didn’t stop to warn me that no, I couldn’t be a Jedi, or a wizard, or a space wizard (which I think is more or less still a Jedi). I could be anything! That noise should have been put out long ago. Should I have children, we will not live in a nice suburban house with a woods nearby. Terrible idea. My kids will pretend to be C.E.O.s and members of the House or Senate. That should sufficiently foster greatness. Guaranteed jobs. No tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt for them, no how! Straight out of Ivy League and into the field. I think We’ll live in one of the tiny cube box hotels like that have in Japan. Might have to move to Japan, but I don’t want them being exposed to video games or anime. I know what that does to a child. Which is my next point.
Mom and Dad, you guys let me watch cartoons and play video games! Like a lot of them! Sure I had to get my homework done, read some books, and do well in school (until High School, where I became all rebellious and shit, but I digress) and then get to play games or watch TV. This would allow me to immerse myself in more worlds that can’t exist, and when I came to age and realized that, I decided, hey I want to create my own worlds like the ones I see in TV, movies, and games, because they show me possibilities I find fascinating and amazing. For goodness sake, you even encouraged my shitty doodles of Mario and Batman! As if Nintendo and DC would hire me based on my amazing crossover of the two worlds! “Mr. Morton,” an executive would say, “this merging of our two companies worlds is a smashing success, here’s a bajillion dollars, you creative genius!” Wasn’t going to happen, and I suspect you knew it! Still, you let me draw, and later, writer, and then go to University to write. University! Shouldn’t that shit be for business, engineering, you know, things that make the world turn?
Nope. I can go and learn to write. To take my real life experiences, or things that inspire me, be it video games or some obscure mythological beings, and turn it into some sort of written work. With a plot, characters, exposition, foreshadowing, all those fancy techniques I learned. In the meantime, I will write in a blog about stuff I like, and work retail. And not be able to pay my loans back. I will submit stories, and get rejected, and work on more stories, and submit them, and get rejected again. And again. But one day, someone will read something of mine, and maybe give me money for it. Then I’ll be famous. And life will be solved.
This all sounds great, but you know, again, if we skipped all that hullabaloo, and you two encouraged me to go into something with guaranteed results, I wouldn’t be creating the worlds that I do. I would be at work, right now, over at J.F. Doberman’s Network and Solutions Firm. It’s a well-known business, with all sorts of projects under it’s management. I personally work for the Automotive Tech Advertising agency. Basically, our job is to take all the data from automobile sales advertising, and turn it into data, and charts, then hand it back to the auto companies to they know how to better cater their cars and services to customers. It takes a long hours, lots of coffee, and lots of staring at computer screen without blinking. It’s 04:00 pm now, only another hour or so left. But man, I’m really behind on this week’s data. Jeep’s are shown to be more popular with females than ever before, but I need to show comparisons of that with other similar size vehicles. Gah, What a headache, and there’s this stack of paperwork that’s been on my desk since noon and I haven’t even looked at it, That shit needs filing. Boss’ll probably make me stay late until it’s all done. Fuck, I can’t wait to get home, put on the TV, and drink a beer to it until I fall asleep. I mean, it’s Friday, and I have the weekend off, but I’m tired. It’s been a long work week. Boss is ragging on me, I’m not sure I’ll get a raise this January, or get the promotion to Senior Department Resource Manager (I think that’s a thing) that I’ve been working my ass off to get since day one at this job. I bet Dave will get it, that kiss ass. Man. I’m lonely, trying to flirt with that cute girl, Lisa, in Human Resources, but I don’t even think she knows my name (what kind of HR worker doesn’t know her co-workers names?!). You know what, fuck it. I’m done. This world is exhausting. I’m going to go back to being a writer. I’m going to go back to my elves, and space explorers, and super powered misunderstood teenagers, who solve problems with their firsts, and through each other. Something like that. Then I’m going to go wander around a park in the early evening hours on this beautiful fall day, let the crunch of the autumn leaves and feel of the cool wind narrate my walk, give me some ideas to run with. Then with any luck, I’ll scribble them down in my sketchbook. I’ll write and draw it all down, and whether or not any large amount of public ever read’s my story, I’ll know I have crafted something beautiful, something fun. Something I can be proud of, Something can show my kids, that they’ll be inspired to. I’ll let them run around our nice backyard, with big trees, and maybe a little swing set, and enjoy as they pick up sticks and pretend they are knights of the round table.
I can’t think of anything better than that. A child’s imagination at work, creating worlds that bring endless amounts of joy. So thanks, Mom and Dad, for letting me do that. I mean it.. I may not have accomplished all that much yet, but I know deep down, I’d be a hell of a lot more miserable if you didn’t let me take those silly drawings of mine, and those adventures in the backyard, and let me run wild with them. All the way through my education, and adult life. Thanks.
cokewest 