Complex Numbers

Don't You Forget About Me

I find it unlikely that I'll be remembered much at all.

PROMPT September 25th

What specific character traits do you want to be remembered for?

If I am remembered, I'll have no say in the matter. What I want, therefore, is unimportant.

Hell, I'm not even sure what my character traits are. I'm too close to the matter.

When I was in high school, a guidance counselor accosted me after lunch one day. He said something like, "I just wanted to tell you, I was watching you at lunch. You were hanging out with the nerds, then you went over to the theater kids and talked to them. And then you talked to the jocks, the misfits, people in the band, and the minority kids. You seem to get along with everyone, all the different groups."

I hadn't really thought about it like that, and it didn't make a lot of sense to me, but after that, I noticed that yeah, not everyone could talk to just anyone. This was before The Breakfast Club came out, though, and after watching that movie, a few years after the guidance counselor incident, I think I finally understood, at least a little.

See, that movie never made a lot of sense to me, and I'm not just talking about how Ally Sheedy was fucking hot even before her supposed "transformation." It was that the movie made me realize that most people just hang out in their little cliques, but I never really had one, at least as far as I could tell. I just thought everyone was, you know... pretty much just a human.

Which is, of course, not to say that there weren't people I thought were assholes. Or that some people didn't think I was. It's just that I've always been willing to give anyone a chance, regardless of perceived social status or interests.

It's something, I think, that has served me well as a writer -- knowing people from different backgrounds has helped me with characterization and whatnot. But more importantly, it's helped me to put myself in another's shoes, whether those shoes were Reeboks (those were big in the 80s as I recall), sandals, dress shoes, or used footwear from Goodwill.

There is a downside to it, though, which is that I've never really fit in to any one group. The closest I come is when I'm in a brewery, surrounded by other beer drinkers. The next closest is at SF/Fantasy conventions, which I haven't been to in a while, but the people there tend to be accepting of differences anyway -- so long as you don't diss their favorite movies/TV shows/comics/books/whatever. But when you don't pick a "team," people are more wary of trusting you. After all, how do the science geeks know that you won't defect to the band nerds?

As an aside, everyone's a nerd. Everyone. We all have things we're passionate about, be it sports, music, politics, comics or whatever. Someone decided long ago that some interests have more value than others, and those with lesser-valued interests get branded as outcasts. Sports fans lost any right to look down on fantasy cosplayers, though, when they started painting their faces and wearing weird shit to watch their games. Everyone's a nerd about something.

So, if I were able to choose, I suppose that's what I'd want to be remembered for: accepting. It's certainly not absolute; there are some things I can never accept, like people who deliberately harm others, or who are blatantly racist. But if you're not hurting anyone, it doesn't matter to me. And my own interests are so varied that usually, I can find common ground.

Ask me again tomorrow and I'll probably say something else, but this is what came to mind today.