Everywhere I turn lately I am reminded of what a dick I used to be. Then I say to my accusers, “But, hey, I’m much nicer now, right?” And lately said accusers have been ROLLING THEIR EYES. There’s a lesson in this, but fuck if I care.
Because everyone has been so happy to remind me of tales of my former state of Dicktitude (or my former Dicktatorship, heh heh- I’ll bet no one’s thought of that one before.) I have decided to beat everyone to the punch and recount an old favorite that my relations love to dredge up whenever it needs to be reestablished that I am, always have been, and always will be, an Asshole.
My sister has always been a good student. A regular Polly Perfect one might say. By the time she was five she was completely outshining me academically, which is really bad considering I was in the 10th grade. One year, I believe she was about seven, she was required to participate in the science fair. As usual, she prepared for it weeks in advance and her little bean sprout-growth project was coming along swimmingly.
I was glad to have escaped into high school; at this point science projects became optional. When they were required I would take the informational sheet every year, and guiltily tuck it away into a folder or shove it under my bed. I knew myself well enough to know I wasn’t even going to start thinking about a project idea until the weekend before it was due. My project was always the half-assed one sitting in isolation at the edge of the row of tables everyone else’s was proudly diplayed upon. Other kids were hoping for trophies; I was hoping for invisibility so I could go home and get back to devouring Stephen King novels and setting things on fire in the backyard as soon as possible.
I remembered all of this whenever I saw my little sister dilligently cutting and pasting at the kitchen table, and flipping through a large-print copy of Fun ‘n’ Easy Science Projects For Kiddies Under Twelve. The little sprouts sat on the window sill week after week, taunting me.
“Don’t you realize all of this science fair stuff is meaningless? You are wasting your time. If you lived in France they’d have you reading Sartre by now.”
She was undaunted. “I’m gonna win a ribbon!”
“The token reward of a ribbon is a training device to make you want to gladly assimilate into a capitalist society.”
“I made the honor roll again!”
“Oh shut up.”
At this point in my high school “career” I was often out carrousing with my friends into the late hours of the night. Every night I would try to make it home by curfew and down a few glasses of water by the kitchen sink to try and avoid a hangover. I would stare at her sprouts and recall something I had learned along time ago when I was still paying attention in school. I remember a teacher putting celery into some blue water; a while later the celery turned blue from drinking up the water. Hmmm… what would happen if… well, one drop of blue food dye a night wouldn’t hurt anything, would it?
“AGGGH!” my sister screeched one weekend morning. “My plants are blue! My project is ruined!”
In my mind, it seems like she should have gotten extra points for having a project that was not only well-prepared and executed, but also with plants that were a highly festive shade of blue. She blubbered on the kitchen floor while my Mom dressed me down for extreme meddling with malicious intent. But, I still say my sister was always prone to overreacting.