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a letter — rants — home last changed 25 December 2007 |
Please excuse Joel from growing up.
When Joel was four years of age, he was happy and carefree. He got up at first light to watch the sun come up, flooding the darkness with shapes and sounds. While the rest of the world was groggily drinking coffee, taking showers, and driving to their meaningless jobs, Joel was building spaceships and civilizations out of Lego blocks and Lincoln logs.
Joel went to Hamilton Elementary School, about a mile from his house. The first day was a traumatic adjustment. He had never seen so many children before. Big kids and little kids, rich kids and poor kids, nice kids and nasty kids. There were no Legos at school, just desks arranged in rows and columns. He couldn't play; he had to sit quietly for hours and listen to an adult who only had a last name. School was scary. Joel didn't like school.
Joel was sitting in class one day when somebody came from the Principal's office to whisper in the teacher's ear. The teacher got this look on his face like somebody had punched him, and he turned on the television set. The whole class sat frozen in their rows and columns and watched the news replays showing the Challenger shuttle exploding.
Joel didn't make friends. It wasn't just that he had difficulty adjusting to social situations, or just that he was shy around girls. It was just that he saw everybody's problems. Brooke was a ditz, David was a jock, Brian was a pretty boy, and Kara was an elitist. What was the point of being around someone he wanted nothing in common with? Some of them really did have problems… Ronald was a pyro.
Joel went to high school in the pretty little town of Fallbrook, where everybody knew everybody and nothing exciting ever happened. There was a little theatre on Main Street that showed movies that had stopped playing at the big multiplexes, and a little bookstore where they had used paperbacks for a quarter. Then one day there was a riot at the high school, and the news vans showed up, and everything changed.
Joel dropped out of high school and started college when he was 16, with high hopes of getting a degree in computer programming and a lucrative job in systems analysis. He had dreams of writing a new operating system that would replace Windows and ultimately bankrupt Microsoft. Taking stuff apart, making it better, and putting it back together was his life's ambition.
Joel screamed at his father in a parking lot in front of a Barnes & Noble. All the words of frustration and pain that had once eluded him were now a torrent of fury. Bloody, torturous, bone crushing agony of the worst sort imaginable, described in minute detail at 90 decibels in front of a mainstream bookstore on a comfortable saturday evening.
Joel gradually realized, over the next few years, that nobody is perfect, and it isn't his personal lot in life to hold everyone to the highest standards. Everyone, on the whole, seems to do the best they can with what they've got. Joel finally understood that there wasn't really anything wrong with everybody else, and that he didn't really hate his dad.
Joel has been to five different colleges, in five different towns. He's had a dozen different jobs, with a dozen different bosses. He's been across the country, and seen thousands of different faces. Computers, with their rows of keys and lines of code, aren't for him. The business world, with its pinstripe suits and bottom lines, isn't his world.
Joel just wants to live a simple life, with just enough food and just enough time. No Starbucks and no McDonalds, no fancy cars and no satellite tv. No deadlines and no commitments. No boss, and no corner office. Joel wants to get up at first light to watch the sun come up, flooding the darkness with shapes and sounds. While the rest of the world is groggily drinking coffee, taking showers, and driving to their meaningless jobs, Joel wants to build spaceships and civilizations.
You see, Joel has already done more growing up than he cares to do.
Respectfully,
The Voices In My Head