Untitled. Can't think of a suitable title.

In one of my earliest memories of being in MRSM, 11 years ago, we had this senior teacher who taught us BM whom after completing the syllabus would share stories about life and adulthood. He was taciturn in nature, calm in temperament and it made him look like someone who had seen the edge of the world, for his quickly waning youth complimented the wisdom often associated with the typical weariness on the face of any pentagenarian who has begun to make physical preparation for that certain tragic end called quietus.

I remember particularly one story about this kid who was a student of his. He was according to him, a bright learner who excelled in just about anything he chose to dabble in. So with friends constantly praising and enemies envying his talent, he grew proud. He was rude to his teachers and supposedly considered his parents intellectually inferior and hence, social misfits.

So this kid graduated from a reputable college and got married. He was no doubt a succesful person, professionally. Unfortunately, the wife gave birth to a child with Down's syndrome. And life became unbearable ever since.

End of story.

But there was an epilogue. This teacher concluded it with a moral lesson. That the kid got what he deserved for being an insolent ingrate. That we as children would be rewarded with a sick twisted end for showing disrespect to teachers and the two people we love the most. That such dramatic seemingly divine retribution was real and imminent. That Down's syndrome was necessarily an act of a vengeful deity and notwithstanding had nothing to do with the random faulty engineering of the genetic configuration during the formation of the reproductive cells.

I was 13 then. My brain was an inadequately filled void, all gullible and hungry for mature adult input. This teacher, with appearance that would faintly remind you of Gandalf, emanated a proverbial aura commanding automatic respect upon being seen. He was polite; his choice of words reflected prudence, his gesture gentle and his gaze endearing. Like a father, his intention was good. It was not difficult to believe whatever he could have said. We were fools.

The following year, a Geography teacher whom I have mostly fond memories of, was a woman with a personality too familiar to dismiss. She was however a lot younger, I dare take a guess of maybe 20 years.

She was enthusiastic in her job, something I found remarkable as such educators were a rare kind. Unlike most teachers in that school, she was pleasant, friendly and in a way mother-like. I liked her almost instantly, and my grades improved too. With that kind of relationship forerunning it was not a problem to put my trust in the course of her job. Everything that came out of her mouth was considered precious knowledge. I was naive and ready to be exploited.

So one day, before the class ended, she as usual would share delightful weird accounts of people in her hometown. I remember one story about a man who died from eating watermelon. Apparently, if you mixed watermelon with honey, the resulting compound would be toxic, at least according to my Geography teacher.

So this man used a knife stained by honey to cut a watermelon which he then ate, and his throat began to erode and he eventually died. It's a true story, she said. What a funny tragedy, I remember thinking to myself whilst mentally creating a permanent entry in my brain about not eating watermelon and honey so that in the future I would not end up like that guy. It was hard to digest, but as I said, I was like a babe in the woods, and my outlook on life was eager to receive a complimentary session of psychological blowjob. I took the tale hook, line and sinker. I have vivid recollection of seeing a few of my classmates who were consonantly childlike in how they processed stories told by a trusted grown up, all agape in the imbroglio of reconciling a ridiculous anecdote with the outstanding reputation of the narrator.

Anyway, not to divert far off topic, the teacher at one point began to talk about how the kind of diet that one adopted, the type of food that a person ate would have direct physiological denouement on the body. Obesity obviously wasn't the point she was trying to make as otherwise it would be purposeless for being axiomatic.

She quoted an example, a living one, specifically a chinese teacher from the Math department. It was a generalization she risked, how the skin of older chinese people would freckle heavily as a result of years of eating pork. And this chinese teacher had that kind of tiny sporadic spots practically all over his visible epidermal organ. I was offended by this cleverly devised post hoc ergo propter hoc, coming from a family that consumed pork like it was the only edible meat on earth. And then the lecture on how pork meat was unhealthy and would cause illnesses and therefore Islam was right to prohibit its consumption ensued.

Tough being a minority eh? Imagine realizing you're one at that age.

Unsurprisingly, everybody experienced the mental orgasm of being supposedly enlightened, because their confirmation bias was endorsed by this masquerade taking the form of an academic persona with a master's degree in geography. It didn't matter to us kids if geography was in no way a scientific discipline. She was a teacher. We respected her and believed her for who she was, not for what she however incorrectly knew.

Of course, she did it all out of love. A product of years of social engineering. A legacy of millenial dogmatic indoctrination. She's a victim of her own upbringing. But imagine the impact of stories so innocuously presented to a group of teenagers like us. Call this whatever you like. I term it brainwashing.

;)

I often find it fascinating the expense that one has to pay to find social approval of his, at this phase I suppose, mere presence, or intellectual significance. Or come to think of it, his last-ditch attempt at maneuvering to be seen as the opposite of an awkward misanthrope. I wish he would understand that nobody would care if he was abducted by aliens in the middle of the joke he so hard tried to make only to be met with an insincere cacophony of laughter donated pro forma. All in the name of fitting in. This epiphany came to me at a recent birthday party organized by a host who obviously had invited as many acquaintances as possible to heighten the likelihood of a larger pile of gifts. She must have been very disappointed.

I admit that depending on the level of perturbation introduced by my often wanton hormonal configuration I could be a reclusive neurotic, which is always the case when meeting intransigents at a party which I have carefully chosen to attend to increase the odds of countenancing awkward situations and awefulkward people, so I could over-analyze the details before I resign to bed at the end of the day. I digress. I have finally found a cure for my conniving insomnia. 

I hate it when my interjectory correction of a tete-a-tete rife with factual inaccuracies to which I was uninvited, is hijacked by said conversationist by way of a convenient plagiaristic restatement embellished with a holier-than-thou overtone. Immediately after I would immerse myself in an endless soliloquy of "fuck you, I just said that!" in my head as a sign of protest. It never worked.

In the presence of butch women or openly gay females that I do not know, I often subconsciously feign machismo, one of the effects of which I would begin to move away pretending I was handsome and ergo sexually desirable. It is embarrassing how irrelevant my natural response to female transvestism is, especially after taking into consideration how much I lack in that particular department. But on the sociological perspective, it creates potential exploration into whether reverse attraction would yield a promising marital expectation if a gay male and a lesbian were to be confined together and be fed sexual hormones in a controlled lab. 

I was tethering our Tiger (a dog) to a table in the porch one fine morning when it occurred to me the double standard in the practice of animal restraint. My fascination was immediately vivified into how it would look like if Chibi (our Persian) was tied on a leash, preferably a metal chain robust and heavy enough to tug at a hyperactive mongrel to remind him that getting too excited is not a favorable idiosyncrasy for a house pet. Yes, the one used to make Tiger feel extremely uncomfortable every time he espies the gate open. I chuckled a little. It would be advisable for Chibi to start hiding at this juncture.

I can sing like Adele. I personally believe her nasal prowess is inferior to mine, and the range of her timbre is limited severely by her fixation upon her depressing yet monochromatic diction. I can juggle with both, not that anyone asks. All I need is a vagina to sleep my way to a Grammy's. Don't get me wrong, I think Adele is poignantly talented. It's just that I have more talent than she does. Dans un monde parfait.

I am an excellent nail-biter. It's a terrific way to recycle protein and keep salmonella from setting up illegal residence under my otherwise unkempt and arguably vestigial keratin. Anyone who believes contrariwise has obviously fallen victim to the marketing strategy of owners of mani-pedi salons. Or who is an expert in nose-picking slash pimple-squeezing who thinks that a hand sanitizer works only for after a poo-poo. My only objection is to how addictive it can be, and how destructive it is to my front teeth. Many, many years ago I did extend my unassailable habit to my toenails (out of curiosity), but it gave me dorsalgia. Plus I discovered about the ludicrous thickness of the toe nail the hard way, which means they are structurally impossible to penetrate with the bare teeth. Oh, and not to mention their impossible hygienic upkeep! So I had to abandon the idea. It is also important to also highlight that such a mundane yet highly profitable past-time activity can only achieve its objective if the nail-biter maintains this cannibalistic relationship only with his OWN fingernails. I can't highlight the word "own" enough to emphasize its semantic significance in the previous sentence. 

I have come to realize that I often start my paragraph with the letter "I". My theory is that I have narcissism and would be proud if someday I could associate with the word "psychopath". In a perfect world, the alphabet would have to undergo a thorough shuffle, and of course it would begin with "I" and then naturally "M". I fervently believe that the modern Roman alphabet is a furtive Jewish conspiracy. 

79.45% of the people who peruse this essay will have to read again in order to convince themselves that they are not stupid or have in the past overlooked the possibility of latent dyslexia. Although at least 90% of them would be correct to assume that I just made this up, an inference correctly derived from my inability to explain simple algebra to myself without experiencing an episode of trepidation. If you are the remaining 10%, go play in traffic, or seek to get yourself spayed.