Critical Tom

On being a terrible person

Imagine you’re at a meeting of a large number of people you’ve never met before.  Someone makes an announcement, then says their second-in-command also has an announcement.  That man stands up.

 

Clearly nervous, he takes a second to begin.  After a few tentative sentences, he begins pausing before every word.  “Good god this is going to take forever, you think.”

 

Then the man begins to  pause after the first syllable of each word, before repeating and spitting out the word.   This is not good.  You just made fun of someone with a speech impediment in your head.  The fact that it was in your head won’t save you.  You’re going to hell.

 

He continues.  For quite a while.  “You know, if I had a speech impediment, I probably would really ensure I could keep things brief,” you think, knowing full well you can’t go to hell twice.

 

Then he starts listing the past locations for the event you’re at.  Last year it was at so-and-so, the year before that it was at this-other-place, the year before that it was this-other-fucking-thing.  “No it wasn’t!” someone else chimes in.  “It was at the fucking-other-thing.”

 

“LET HIM FINISH,” you want to scream.  Now he’s even more flustered!  He’s explaining that it’s true, but that he was confused, because the year before the year she just mentioned was the year it was at this-other-fucking-thing.  That’s what caused the mix-up, you see.  You want to die.  You weren’t in danger of laughing before but now you are.  Please, someone make it stop.  Now you know the truth: you can go to hell twice; in fact, you can go to hell any number of times.  This is only one of them.  You’re already in hell; it’s your reality because that’s what it’s like for awful people like yourself.  You’ll change, you swear, if you can just make it through the remainder of this speech without laughing out loud - you’re already smiling for fuck’s sake, it’s going to escape, cover your mouth you idiot, people will see you

 

After a few hours’ reflection, all I know is,  just, like, keep it brief, you know?  My sympathy goes rancid pretty quickly…