The Burly Unknown!

Hello friends.  How are you?  Are you enjoying the DGTC series?  You should be.  I sure am enjoying writing it for you.  All of these happy little entries.

Now that I’m done with my Bob Ross impression.  I would like to introduce the fourth installment of my heartbreaking insightful story: Sell Out with Me.  This is a reference to a Reel Big Fish song for all of you aficionados.

Once again, if you would like to start from the beginning, go here.

For your reading edification:

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Right.

I got into a good university. Ok, now what? Time to learn, right? Well, I have several options here. Shall I try to find something that inspires me? Something that I can become passionate about? Well, let’s think: my passions include reading, math, and physics.  Three subjects that I actually get excited about and can spend happy hours studying.

This is naturally a very difficult decision for every neophyte collegian. So, after serious contemplation, I enthusiastically sold out. Most college freshman either (a) choose what they think their parents want them to do, (b) choose what will be the easiest path through college with the least work, or  (c) choose what will make them the most money out of college. Very few decide on majors that they will enjoy. And who can blame them? I certainly wasn’t mature enough to make that kind of decision when I was 18. I’m 27 and I still giggle maniacally at my roommates’ farts. But I digress.

I chose the third option. I was going to be a financial genius and make a shit ton of loot. I would be a millionaire by the time I was thirty. This, it follows, would get me a lot of women.  I would find time on the weekends to spend said loot and fondle said women.  

Little did I know that business degrees will typically earn you a sweet middle management position for most of your life, contemptuous of those below you and despising your superiors. The best you can hope for is a bloated sense of self-importance.

I don’t know when we convinced ourselves that we can spend 75% of our time working at an unfulfilling job and be happy just because in the remaining 25% we can spend more money.  This is a myth that I completely bought into.  I was marginally interested in finance.  It had a little math and a little economics, both subjects I enjoy.  I quickly found out that it is extremely difficult to immerse yourself in something that you’re marginally interested in.

Tune in next week to see how this disaster played out!

Hello my stinky little friends.  This is part three of my Don’t Go to College Series.  This one is short, so I’ll give you a bonus one on Friday.  If you are new to the DGTC scene, you’re a turd.  So go here and catch up.

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Hello friends, this is part two of my “Don’t Go to College” series.  If you are late to the party and want to start from the beginning, please go here.

Without further adieu…

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The path that led me to buy that one way ticket actually started in high school, I think. Bear with me on this.  As a semi-overachiever, I wanted to get into the best university possible. Looking back, I really only wanted to get into a good school so I could prove to everyone that I was as smart as I thought I was.

In middle school, I wasn’t very cool or popular. In fact, I was distinctly uncool and unpopular, and suffered the common afflictions associated with those qualities. Luckily, I left my little private middle school behind and went to a big public high school. My older sister was already cool there, so I figured if I kept my mouth shut and my head down, I might be considered cool as well. Gods above but did my scheme work! I played a couple of sports, sat at the cool table at lunch, and wore t-shirts that cleverly displayed alcohol products. My stock was rising. By my careful calculations, I was somewhere near the middle/bottom of the cool kids hierarchy. A self-styled sub-lieutenant of popularity.

Now, how to improve my position. I’m not the best athlete, nor the best looking. The whole “bloody coup” idea is all played out and might affect my chances of graduating. I know: I’ll be the smart guy. Honestly, it wasn’t hard. Middle school was more difficult than this high school. I sold sodas at lunch to pay for our physics trip to Six Flags and didn’t bring a gun to school. Piece of cake.

I want to tell you a story. Some of it is true. Some of it is based on personal experience. A few of the characters are based on people I have met. A lot of it is bullshit. I want you to be keenly aware of that. Bear with me.

This is the story of how I came to the point where I am today.  It is a semi-harsh criticism of the current prevailing attitudes about education, fulfillment, and the American dream.  It is about expectations and disappointment and, ultimately, disillusion.  This cutting critique is interspersed with a chronological account of my travels through Central America.

Some of it is funny.  Some of it isn’t.  More than a little bit of it is bittersweet and depressing.  There is a fair amount of cursing in it because the emotions experienced (and re-experienced through self-examination) merit something more than cheap euphemism.  Sorry mom.

I originally wrote this piece because I had grand illusions that I was going to turn it into a book and revitalize the idealism and individuality that made America great.  Then I read this article, which forced me to laugh at how ridiculously cliched that would have been.

After a little soul-searching and a fair amount of waffling, I decided to share it anyhow.  I will continue to write and post as usual my random musings.  These installments will update every Wednesday.  I encourage you to comment and participate so that we can create a forum to voice our dissatisfaction with the status quo and create an environment of challenging the norms and working toward a more ideal life.

Friends and family, I give you the first installment of:  Don’t Go to College

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Fuckfuckfuckfuck. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. FUCK! Fuck me. What the fuck am I doing. This is the type of thing that people who know what they’re DOING do. Not me. Who the hell do I think I am?

This is what was going through my head on the plane. My one way plane. To Guatemala City.

I was paying for false bravado. Scared shitless.

I hadn’t really made any plans as to what I was going to do once I got there. I had spent the previous weeks and months blissfully putting off thinking about it and basking in the adulation of those who I imagined were enamored with my dash. When asked what my plans were by friends and family, I’d adopt my best conquistador stance, squint into the distance, and reply, “The plan is to not have a plan.”

Yeah it sounds stupid to me as well. I had chosen Guatemala City because the ticket was only $150 dollars. In hindsight, this should have been a warning.

Oh, I’d gone and bought a travel guide for Central America. I just hadn’t cracked it. I was frantically rifling through it under the amused gaze of the Guatemalan couple next to me.

“Adonde vas?” they asked. I wanted to scream, “I have no fucking clue. I’m going to some country where I’m going to die or get lost. I’ll be the missing white kid all over the news. Move over Natalie Holloway. Except I’m not a pretty blond girl. I’m a short, stubby dude with a pathetic travel beard. Not exactly Fox News material. Oh dammit I’m so screwed.”

“No se,” I replied philosophically, with a faraway look. Apparently my come-what-may façade was still holding up. Of course I didn’t fucking know where I was going. I was still operating on my no-plan plan.

Neato Twitter widget! Now you don’t even have to leave my site ever! —–>

Hello readers.  I have some news.  Many of you will not like it.  Several of you will probably just stop whatever you’re doing, walk out the door, and never return, somnambulant in your purposelessness.

There are several things you take for granted in this life:  the earth is round, the sky is blue, bears on motorcycles are funny and sad.  I’m afraid I’ve taken one of these certainties from you. 

David no longer has a beard.

…

Take a moment to breath.

Now that you’ve calmed down some (those of you who haven’t wandered off in a spate of bleakness), I’m here to inform you of several things:

My chin is effing awesome.  Or should I say, “chins.”  The only thing better than having a majestically sculpted and splendidly masculine chin is having a multitude of them.  All of this time, beneath the concealing cloak of luxurious facial hair, my chin has been breeding.  Now there is an entire family of chins adorning the southern hemisphere of my terrible dome.  I can only suspect that my chins have been plotting an entire takeover of my person, thus resulting in a body where chins can come and go as they please, never to be terrorized again by pimple-popping fingers or snot-flinging noses.

While I admire their grim purpose and courage, the chin rebellion has been brutally repressed. 

Another new development is that I look to be around 14.  I rarely carry identification with me in Telluride, and so far this week, I’ve been turned away from two bars and a liquor store.*

The clerk at the liquor store even went so far as to make fun of me.  Awesome.  Look who’s laughing when I’m 58 and look 55 AHAHHAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA (sob).

Third development: I am very aerodynamic.  Almost too much so.  My face actually tends to pull my body along now by virtue of it’s own sleekness, whether or not I want to go anywhere.  I can actually levitate by merely turning my face upward. 

Fourth:  My facial hair grows incredibly slow.  Dammit.  It may have been the slash and burn technique I used to put down the chin rebellion. 

* After leaving the liquor store, one of the customers who witnessed my cash register humiliation tried to console me by telling me how he used to get turned down trying to buy liquor underage.  Needless to say, he did not survive the encounter.