With Contempt
A friend of mine recently challenged me to a duel. “Here he said, I bet you can’t think of nothing like I can!”
I gave this ridiculous question / statement / whatever it was the contempt (I thought) it deserved and predictably an argument promptly began, me calling him various things which now, looking back, seem more than a bit unkind, and him getting aggressive as he does, and being all smug and annoying in that way that really cut through to the bone. In the end, after a long and still unsolved existentialist debate where we tried to agree on specifically what “nothing” truly was, and for the sake of preserving our friendship because sometimes it was actually quite worth having, I gave in and agreed to compete against him just this once. So there we were, the pair of us trying very hard to think exactly about nothing. It was tense.
Then, something remarkable and a bit frightening happened: I was thinking mainly of nothing, and every so often the nothingness would be invaded by a somethingness…Stupid things really, nonsensical things, things like the words london immigration and what is bigger, a wandering Albatross or an Andean Condor? (The Albatross wins hands down, says Google.) This proved troublesome to say the least…
And the worst thing was, my friend knew it, as every time I would think of something, however small, he would say “see! I told you, I’m winning!” and I would be forced to deny it and call him another nasty name again. And it went on.
My point? You can’t think of nothing, and it is best not to try when competing against a competitor who has obviously been unemployed for too long and has far more practice.
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