I'm compelled to start this post with a predictable quote from Charles Dickens, like "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," but it would seem hackneyed, so I'm much more willing to use easily-decipherable aliases, like, say, "Neil" & "LNE." Like the hilariously obvious "Lisa S.," & then, "L. Simpson," in The Simpsons, I chose pseudonyms that are similarly transparent. Anybody with a pulse can clearly make out who I'm talking about, so, since I won't be bad mouthing either of them, I'm content to let the paper-thin aliases stand. They know who I mean, anyways, so I'm fine with being lazy.
The first, "Neil," is someone I've known since high school. We took many of the same classes, & quickly became friends. We have similar senses of humor, so getting to know him was a slam dunk--effortless, in fact. What's truly incredible is that he's the one person that I remain in contact with from that period. Sure, we have many of the same friends, but, oddly, none of them went to the same high school that we did. You see, we attended a parochial school, because the public high school, at least in my hometown, was terrible.
We took many of the same classes, because we were both intelligent, & fell in the same advanced ones. Many a night in high school was spent renting (that's an obsolete option) & watching movies, old & new. We also had siblings that were the same age, so that made our friendship all the more easy. When I was first diagnosed with MS, I had no qualms about disclosing it. For one thing, it was a hard fact, so I never thought about hiding it; also, I didn't even consider concealing it, because the manifestations were not something I could deny. Hence, I was okay with disclosing it.
The same could be said about LNE. We shared an office at a large downtown law firm, so I was preternaturally inclined to tell her about the diagnosis as well. There's an old adage that says that "familiarity breeds contempt," but I had no issues with her at all. Plus, she was (& is) exceedingly nice, so telling her was not a big deal.
Quick digression: she's Greek. Very Greek, in fact. When I once inspected a book she was reading, the text looked alien. Greek characters resemble, well, Greek, & outside of physics, I refused to believe that the letters had meaning outside of that context. It's hard to believe that anyone, let alone someone my age, could see assembled words, & even sentences, amid that insanity. & not only does she read Greek; she speaks it fluently. When she spoke to her parents on the phone, it sounded like gibberish. It was like she was talking to them in an obsolete language; I'm pretty sure Nell would have thought she was just bat-shit crazy. Now, I took Spanish in college, but nothing seemed discernible to me. Even before college, my grandparents spoke Spanish to each other, so I had some familiarity with a language other than English, but this sounded as strange as African bushmen conversing in Swahili. I had nowhere to start, so it just sounded like nonsense. I half expected to hear a nondiscriminate series of clucks & whistles.
For about ten years, niceness seemed anathema to me, so seeing somebody act genial filled me with reactionary repulsion. I didn't actively seek out misanthropes, but being consistently agreeable seemed unnatural. I viewed affability as a cover for stupidity, but neither of these people were dumb. In fact, they were both incredibly smart, & no matter how contumacious I was, this was a stark fact.
I think that, over time, one finds that he need not attribute geniality to stupidity. In fact, I think that doing so in itself is stupid. Ironically, thinking so is, actually, quite stupid. Therefore, when I thought being mean was something of a badge of honor, I was thinking like an idiot.
R
