On and On Until The Break of Dawn

Is the glass half full or half empty?  It’s neither.  It is sitting empty on my desk beside my computer, external hard drive, dental floss, and some moist towelettes.  Also here is Roller Coaster Tycoon, a hole punch, the case for my glasses, four pop cans, some tape, Advil, my bobblehead of Jay from Clerks the Animated Series, and some cookies.  Oh, and my How To Train Your Dragon happy meal toy that I got at McDonalds.

This is a description of how I live.  I wouldn’t call it a mess.  I know where everything is.  Except for my dignity.  I lost that a long time ago.  A time long before I came to university.  I lost my dignity back in high school when people started asking me to play the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game with actors that weren’t Kevin Bacon.  I was damn good at the game but it’s not really something that gets you street cred.  You get labelled as a movie nerd.

I embrace that now.  Yes, I’m a movie nerd.  Sure, I’m not going into a life of film.  My career is going to be somewhere else.  But movies are going to be a large source of stress relief.  I don’t mind being known as a nerd anymore.  I’ve got pictures of Wall-E, Ghostbusters, Planet of the Apes and The Thing in my room.  I just want my dignity back.

Is it possible to steal dignity from someone else?  I don’t want other people to lose their dignity but I’d be willing to take part of people’s dignity and share it like electrons are shared between different elements in a compound.  I could use it some of the time, then let them use it.  Toss it back and forth between us.  It could work as a good system.  If it’s possible.

I also lost my dignity by getting a new set of friends in high school.  I realized my friends were jerks.  Not towards me.  But they could be jerks to other people and I didn’t want to have a part in that.  Now I realize that they fell under the influence of drugs.  Nothing hard, for the most part, but they are still into the stuff.  I’m not so sooner or later I would have phased myself out.  It was better that I did that sooner because I wouldn’t have made the good friends that I had for the remainder of my high school years.

I probably shouldn’t care so much about dignity though.  It’s no longer important.  Who needs dignity in real life?  It’s like high school popularity.  It’s nice to have, but it always fades away.  You become who you will be for the rest of your life.  Life is more fun if you lose your dignity early and learn how to fight it head on.

By the power of Greyskull, I have the power!  Yes.  That is relevant.  I have a Nerf sword and have walked around in public shouting that line.