The Origin Story

They say to write what you know, and I think that’s partially the reason for all the bad writing out there: people don’t know shit. Now, the reason this pertains to me is that I don’t know shit either, and I love to write. That’s an interesting situation for me, because it’s pretty much a given that what I write will be shit and yet I insist upon doing it anyway. I mean, at least with the piano part of the quality relies on how the music sounds.

I feel sorry for my parents. You see: I’m the golden ticket. 16 years old, 4.17 GPA, 2070 on the SAT, blue eyed, blonde. Recipe for success, amiright? I'm just attractive enough to sleep with people in high places to get a promotion. I am the first person in my family to show any sort of intelligence that can be measured by standardized testing. I’ll be the first to go to college. Ideally, I’ll be the first stereotypical success the family has birthed since our lovely founder got kicked out of Switzerland. God, I wonder what the poor people thought when I wanted to learn piano. “Shit. She’s one of those.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, they’re very supportive of the whole thing as a hobby, but I get the distinct feeling that telling them music is what I want to do with my life would be very… awkward.

            “You realize there isn’t any money in that?”

            “Right.”

            “You realize you probably won’t get anywhere?”

            “Yuppers.”

            “You realize you could go to school and learn something useful instead?”
            “Uh-huh.”

            “And yet you still…?”

            “You betchyoass.”

            “Well then.”

            “Well then.”

          

Anyhow, writing. Here’s the run-through. It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon and I don’t feel like doing much of anything. So I was twiddling away the day in the typical fashion: surfing the internet, watching stand up comedy clips, eating bread, fantasizing about being a ventriloquist, and generally basking in a sloppy, wet puddle of self-hatred.

At times like these, you get to a point where actually getting up and doing something with yourself would ruin the beauty of it all. Of course, I could find some way to get off the couch and go socialize with other people my age but shit, is it really worth the effort? Why listen to other people’s problems when I can wallow in my own?

            

Somehow, I got bored and decided to go do something useful.

I tried recording a song, or at least a scratch track of a song, because I felt ugly, and looked ugly, and sounded ugly. And that didn’t work. I tried reading, because I’d like to expand my vocabulary or some line of crap like that. I played with the dog for a while. But you can only pretend to throw a tennis ball so many times before the dog gives a big “fuck you” and pees on your pantleg.

At this point I decided to just write because I had had so little interaction with outside influences that my thoughts sounded fucking brilliant to me. You know those times when you’re alone all morning and you just have this running conversation with yourself in your head? And you’re narrating everything you do in your head, and maybe you’re narrating everything you do in Morgan Freeman’s voice, and it’s flipping AWESOME, and then you start flirting with yourself, and you’re like, “what? Is this normal?” You know those times?

“Dee dee dee, here I am opening the refrigerator. Oh, nothing looks interesting. Well, fuck it. I’ll go flip through Grandma’s encyclopedias. Why are you reading this shit, you sexy girl? You know it all anyway cuz you are one badass chick. Just look at you. You’re frickin’ gorgeous.”

You know those times? No? Well then…