Imagine if you worked really hard to make good things happen in your life. Imagine if you set goals, and trudged away, day after day, through the tedium of hard, boring work, to finally accomplish those goals, and when all was said and done, your successes were only marginal at best.
Got that?
Now imagine that I am a big fat jerk who comes up to you and says, “What? You work really hard to accomplish your goals? Well, I set the same goal, and I never worked a day in my life to meet it until the night before the goal was due, and that night I smoked a joint and had a total breakthrough of brilliance and the next day when I woke up, I found I had achieved my goal in my sleep. And on top of that, all my pimples had disappeared. Also, when I was through with my morning sit on the toilet, I wiped my bum just to find that I had started pooing enormous diamonds.”
What would you say?
Have you ever met a person like that? I have—lots of them.
For some reason, those kind of people at school seem to pick me out of a crowd just to brag to me about stuff like this. Why? I have no idea; perhaps I have a sign across my forehead that read, “Picture of Mediocrity; Easily Annoyed by Others’ Easily-Won Success.” Whatever the reason, though, I just keep finding myself stuck in classes with jerks like this. The other day, for example, I was walking out of my final class and this guy sidled up to me and started making small talk, and this is how our conversation went, not a word of a lie:
Him: So, brutal class today, eh?
Me: Yeah.
Him: I know. Professor So-and-So seemed overly harsh, eh?
Me: Yeah.
Him: I know. [If you know so much why do you keep asking me about it?] She seemed especially grouchy at your comments, Camille.
Me: Yeah. I guess I’m on her bad side.
Him: I know. It’s not easy to get in good with her.
Me: Yeah. [Do you sense a pattern in my responses? I was trying to convey the message that I was disinterested in our conversation topic. But he didn’t get the hint.]
Him: It was funny, though—out of all the kids she snapped at today, you would think she would’ve snapped at me. But she didn’t. Even when I said that totally idiotic thing about the word she wrote on the board…she just sort of gently skirted around it.
Me (thinking that this has probably been one of the most blatant fishings for compliments I’ve seen since Sadie Saget used to hover around during senior year of high school and talk about what outstanding scores she’d gotten on her latest test and badminton game): Yeah. She must really like you.
Him: I know. I don’t know why, though. But you’re right. She does seem to like me. And you know what else is funny? She just keeps giving me high grades! I don’t even deserve them—the last paper I wrote, I started at four in the afternoon and submitted it at midnight, and I got a 97% on it!
Me (I couldn’t take it anymore): That’s ridiculous. I hate people like you.
By this time he had followed me practically to the parking lot, so I was glad when he chuckled (pleased with himself at finally annoying the living daylights out of me, no doubt) and slithered away to harass some other unsuspecting hard-working student with detailed accounts of his glorious glories and jolly good luck, ho, ho!
I always try not to be bitter when I am faced with people like this, but I inevitably fail. I understand the compulsion that we, as humans, feel to brag about our successes (however deserving of them we may or may not be {and sometimes the undeserving successes are the most delicious to flaunt}), but those are the sort of conversations we should have with supportive parents and spouses—people who are by our sides every step of the way—not fellow classmates who are secretly wishing every other student to get a worse grade than them on last week’s midterm.
It irks me. He irks me.
My only consolation is that he probably doesn’t really poop diamonds.
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