Not Like I'm Self Involved

Tonight, I'm going to a movie.

When I announced this to a coworker, she responded, "Wow, are you in a dry spell or something? It's not like you to work so hard to get laid."

To which I responded, "Actually, I'm going by myself. I just bought a ticket to 'Clerks 2'."

"Oh," she said. "That's cool."

And then another coworker of mine chimed in with the following: "What does it say about Nathan that we think it'd be weak for him to take a date to a movie but totally cool if he goes by himself? How come the typical standards get flipped when we're talking about him?"

Hey, I thought, that's a good question because it's interesting, poignant and about me. That's the kind of question I can get behind. As I thought about it, I realized that this has been happening for years.

At my job, as I mentioned in a previous post, they have six rules that were created because of my behavior. Instead of firing me, which may be a smart move, they simply adapt their standards to my oddities. That's nice.

Back in college, because my roommate was very smart, he got us an apartment that was slated for reconstruction (our apartment came with holes in the walls) and not only did the apartment complex keep its promise and refrain from raising our rent for four years, they also gave me a job and a discount on my rent. I paid $65 a month for rent in college. They could have given that job to any number of responsible college students. And yet they chose me. The morons.

In high school, I was kind of a problematic kid. Because of this, instead of the typical suspensions and Fs that most teenagers received, I received a giant butt load of independent studies, all focused around the idea that I should just be writing. They even let me take an entire semester from home because, and I quote numerous people here, I was "a threat to the teachers and students." As my buddy Ty from St. Louis once said, "If I had done half the shit you did, I'da been kicked out of school. But with you they were all like, 'it's okay, he's just different.' And I was like, 'he's no different; he's just as drugged up as the rest of us.' That school catered to you, asshole." Ty's still a little bitter about failing Home Economics.

Perhaps I'm just different than most of the people around me. Perhaps I challenge social norms without even knowing it. Whatever the case, at least we can all agree that I'm self-involved.

Oh, and I'll let you all know if the movie sucks or not.

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