When I was young, I asked myself a perplexing question: Which sense would I give up, if I had to give up one of my six senses?

First, I would give up my ability to see dead people.

Then I would give up my sense of smell, because I think that would be the least debilitating. Think about it. The worst part about not being able to smell stuff is that every time I go to a wine tasting, I’ll enjoy the appearance of the liquid in the glass, but then I’ll skip straight to the tastes, forgoing the part where I swill the wine to impart the aromatic elements. I would not dip my snout into the glass, because I wouldn’t be able to smell anyways.

They say when it comes to tasting, smell is the most important part, but hey, I can just fake it. I can tell people I taste [insert obscure descriptor] and lie and nobody will know. That’s the magic of smelling. Nobody knows what I smell, unless I tell them. That’s why they call it the nose… because nobody knows your nose.

But alas, I still have my sense of smell. To my misfortune, it is my sense of sight that has forsaken me. It didn’t happen gradually over the course of a lifetime of seeing. It wasn’t as though there was a dimmer switch. No, with a flick, now I am blind.

 

We rely on our sight a lot. Think about it. Right now you are using your sight. And you know what, you are taking it for granted. Try closing your eyes right now and continue reading this sentence. You can’t do it. You can’t fake it like you can for smell.

Irony. I kind of understand it and I think I’m an example of irony — and arrogance, but we won’t get into that right now.

See, before I went blind, it was my dream to be amongst the athletic best. I wanted to run, skate, and dipsy-doodle with them on the field, court, and monkey cage. I wanted to be a world class referee.

I believe every kid wants to grow up to be an authoritative figure. You know, to power trip every once in a while. That’s a good feeling. Not necessary to get what you want but to refrain others from getting what they want. It makes me feel like I exist. It makes me feel like a big man. And at 5’7” 140 pounds, I am average, if not under average depending on the sample size you are comparing me to.

So here’s a story: I remember as a child, my parents would take me to the store. We would get lunch and they will always buy me the kid-sized meal. “I’m not a kid anymore,” I would shout at them, adorably. “I want a large!”

They calmly explained to me that if I can finish my kid-sized meal then they will happily buy me another kid-sized meal if I’m still hungry. I thought that was bullshit. I didn’t want two kid-sized meal. I wanted to be treated with respect for who I was. I mean, I wasn’t a “kid” anymore. Sure, I wasn’t making any money, didn’t have to pay taxes, couldn’t be trialed as an adult if I was to commit a heinous crime, but still, in the eyes of me, a soon to be blind person, I was an adult.

So, I did what any self-motivated kid would do. Yep, I didn’t ask for permission to throw a tantrum, I just did it. In front of all the people at the food court.

Did I get the large size? No. Did I ruin my parent’s day at the mall? Yes.

That’s when I knew, I had an extraordinary gift. I’m going to be a referee when I grow up. Think about it. Yes, true you don’t know me that well, but it really is the culmination of all my skills. I’m handsome, athletic, charismatic, dashing, large penis having, and at an angle, kind of look like Daniel Craig coming out of the ocean. I was destined to be a sport guy referee of some sort.  

At least, that was the dream. The thing they don’t tell you is that you can’t be a referee if you are blind. You sometimes watch a sporting event on television and you see that the referee made a ridiculous call or completely missed a penalty or whatever happens to cause or not cause an infraction in a sport game. It’s not uncommon for you to shout out that cliche remark, because you are so unoriginal: “What the hell, ref?! Are you blind?”

Turns out, the answer will always be “no.”

I know this now.

I went blind in my last year of high school, where I was reffing the regional championship game. Points were scored, sweat did dripped, and I went blind. Although it was my eyes that suffer the brunt of the poky fingers, it was my heart that was broken.

It was horrific. One moment I was brushing some eye booger from my optical glands, the next moment I have blinded myself. I was carrying the sword that slayed me. I don’t remember screaming, but apparently I was. Screaming like I did when my parents wouldn’t get me a large? Nobody can be for sure.

Rehabilitation took months. At the end of it all, I was a shattered version of the man I used to be. Picture me: sitting on a wheelchair placed in front of a window. What’s the weather outside? I couldn’t tell you. Why was I in a wheelchair? I don’t know, hospital sometimes have wheelchairs left in the hallway, so I guess I was just lead to one and placed there. Sitting, I decided I’m not going to give up on my dreams. People will respect my authority!

But they didn’t. I applied to be a referee for every league possible, but none even gave me a pity acceptance. Sometimes you can do that with job applications. If you look really sad and desperate and say things like “It was my dream to do this…” the employers will hire you. Trust me. It works sometimes. But I guess, not this time for me.

I guess that’s my sad story. My broken dream. I saw my potential as clearly as a Windex sales associate, but it was the world that was blind. It’s the world that couldn’t see what I could do. I could have blazed the trail and inspire a whole generation. I could have been the greatest blind referee to ever live. In a way, I still am! If life is a sport, then I am the ref. For now, I sit there and shout things at people on the street, blowing my whistle, and being crazy for loving what I do.

 

What you’ve just read is the fifth post in a series entitled “A Fan Fiction of My Life by My Number One Fan, Me.” Please check out the first four posts from the series:
Me, A Doctor
I Am A Controversial Artist, AMA
A Well-Respected Elderly Man, It’s Me
Bringer of Bad News, I’m the One

 

Did you enjoy it? Yes, subscribe to this blog, sign up for my newsletter or follow me on Twitter, stalk me in real life to get the latest update. 

Look, I don’t know how to say it so I’ll just say it. I don’t know because nobody taught me. They should really teach you how to give bad news in elementary school. After 4th grade it’s all downhill, so might as well learn how to tell someone that you have horribly murdered their whole family.

So yeah… there you go… that was how I said it.

Sorry. Okay? Sorry. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t wake up this morning, get out of bed, did my usual 150 pushups while counting all the original Pokemon, and decided to go on a murderous rampage, okay? That’s not me. That’s not my style.

Why did I do it then? What was my reasoning? Because the devil told me to, okay?

Yes, the devil.

He told me to, and yes, the devil is a man, thank you very much. And there is only one. There aren’t multiple devils like they believe in those other countries, you know? There is only one devil and he has a sharp looking goatee and his face is red and his tail is cloved. He is exactly how he is portrayed in American television.

Anyways, he told me to do it. I had to, you know… I had to… When someone tells me to do something I do it! I don’t care if it’s illegal or if it’s incredibly mundane, I do whatever people tell me because I’m a people pleaser. I like making people happy. Get this,  it actually hurts me when I say “No.” Even the idea of saying no is painful. It’s a horrible curse.

Like I’m saying, I’m really bummed out that you no longer have a family. I asked the devil if he could fix it, and he said no. See, he’s not dependable like me. He made up some excuse. Classic.  He said he knew a guy, but he doesn’t really do that kind of stuff anymore and it would be a huge bother just to even call and ask, but fuck… I tried, we both tried.

Look, we’ll make it up to you, huh? Why don’t you come hang out with us? Just come and chill with us for a few hours and if we don’t totally jive, we can forget about it and go our own way.

No… come on, give it a shot. Give a brother a chance to make amends, what do you say?

For reals? You’ll do it? Okay, dope, I promise you are not going to forget this. This is going to be amazing this is going to be so much fun. The devil just downloaded the latest video game, Fortnite, and we should go over to his place and play it and livestream.

What do you mean, you don’t like video games? It’s a game, everybody likes games. Humans are biologically designed to like games. It’s science. Read a blog post for once in awhile, eh?

Games are good for you. They help you think better in real life situations, like deciding whether or not it’s a good idea to play games on a weeknight like tonight or do acid and wander around naked.

By playing games, I get to make decisions. I’m working out my decision-making muscles, so when it comes time to flex it around my woman — such as when she asks me what do we want to eat and I say, “Oh, let’s just eat here,” and so we both sit down at the bar and have a nice meal at the strip club — I’ll be ready.

Do you have bus fare on you? I don’t have any change, and it’s about a 45 minute walk to get to the devil’s place.

You okay walking? I don’t care. I walk all day, but I know some people hate walking like it’s torture for them. I think it’s amazing how far people can walk, you know, and not even notice. We hate it, but we can walk far if we really wanted to. Right now, in a few hours I can walk all the way across the city. If i wanted to, I can do that. Can you believe it? The miracle of movement. We are lucky. We are lucky when can travel and move around and see the world. Some people don’t get to do that, and it’s sad when you think about it, right?

It’s important to find little things and appreciate it, you know. I think that’s the lesson in all of this, is to appreciate what we have every day because we will never know when a psychotic, satanic lunatic snaps and wreaks havoc, injuring and killing many.

You just don’t know. Nobody knows. Not even the crazy guy knows. Even if you know and you tell the police, they aren’t going to stop him. They are going to assess the matter and conduct an investigation. Gah! Don’t even get me started on the police. Anyways, I think I learned a lot from this whole sequence of events. Take a deep breath and really appreciate it. Sweet sweet life. Feels good to be alive. Beautiful day.

 

What you’ve just read is the fourth post in a series entitled “A Fan Fiction of My Life by My Number One Fan, Me.” Please check out the first three posts from the series:
Me, A Doctor
I Am A Controversial Artist, AMA
A Well-Respected Elderly Man, It’s Me

Did you enjoy it? Yes, subscribe to this blog, sign up for my newsletter or follow me on Twitter, stalk me in real life to get the latest update. 

Everybody keeps talking to me about the same thing. That thing I did in ‘79, gah! Is that all I’m ever going to be known for? I mean seriously!

That time I did karaoke and sung the shit out of Rockwell’s Somebody’s Watching Me. That was unreal. Everyone was singing along. Somebody was definitely watching me that night, I was entertaining as fuck.

Yeah, what a night that was. Unforgettable. But… nooooooooo…. People are still hung up by my “greatest” accomplishment and totally forgot about that performance.

You know what’s funny about greatest accomplishments?

Everybody’s definition of that is different. Some people’s greatest accomplishment is not dying when they were an infant. That’s their greatest accomplishment. For others it’s inventing the lightbulb.

Yeah. That’s me, the guy who invented the lightbulb.

Was it hard? Nah! People invent stuff all the time.

Like my cousin, Ren, he invented his own language, with swear words and everything.

He would always call me the direct translation of a Mother Fucker. There was literally a single word in his language for someone who does that. We don’t have that in our common tongue, English. We need two words to explain that concept.

First we need to know what it was that was fucked. Second, we need to know what was done to it, which was the fucking. The concept is a thing doing. Fascinating, huh?

That’s the beauty of language: I can say something and you can understand it. Now that, my friend, is an amazing accomplishment.

Of course, I wouldn’t boldly tell Ren that his greatest accomplishment was creating a whole language. That would be presumptuous.

Only the man who’ve lived the life can decide what he claims to be his greatest accomplishment.

Wow! That sounded wise. That’s deep too, right?

What if I decided that what I said right there is my greatest accomplishment. I can totally do that. My life, my choice!

Isn’t weird that we have to do this: ranking our lives. Trying to make every year better. Humans, so sad. Why can’t we be satisfied where we are? Why must we run on this hedonistic treadmill? What happiness am I chasing?

All my life I wanted to invent the lightbulb, now that I have, what more can I do?

It’s like by helping the world shine, I am left in the shadows. OMG. Was that just poetry? I’m not smart with this stuff, but that definitely sounded a little poetry to me. I feel goosebumps. Shit! This poetry shit is potent.

I guess, it could be worst. I could have never invented the lightbulb at all. Then what would I have done?

Then, would I even be remembered at all?

Think of all the people you’ve met. How many of them do you actually remember? Not many right? That’s a lot of fucking people — and you don’t even know anybody from India.

Imagine if you knew everyone from India… just pretend. I bet that Indians in India don’t even know every Indian in India. If I didn’t do something special, nobody would remember me at all.

I should be grateful that I am associated with something so essential to daily living. I mean, I invented something that is used by everybody — except the Amish and the poverty stricken. My invention is used by more people than Steve Job’s invention, the computer. That’s unreal. I’m not niche. I’m fucking mainstream as fuck! I should be hella more famous than I am. WTF.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little pissed right now.

Why am I here talking to you dumb pieces of shit? I should be in a castle or something. I should be in a jacuzzi with well-paid, fully qualified female supermodels. I got ripped off! I can’t believe it.

You know where I went wrong? Here is where I went wrong, I got a patent before I got an agent. I needed someone to manage me. I had no one. I wung it. I wung it pretty good, I thought, but… holy shit, that is why you need a representative. I should have got one. I put so much work into it as well. See that’s the thing, that was time I could have been inventing more stuff or singing karaoke. Wasted time, wasted effort, poor results.

I’m pretty sad right now about my life. I go and invent one of the most revolutionary things in all of humanity and all I get is this, a slow sad death of me being reminded of how great my invention is.

Fuck! It’s pretty good, i guess, but can’t we talk about me? Can’t we talk about my crippling depression? That’s the thing about depression for old men. There’s no point helping you anymore. You sucked it up for this long, you can do it for a few more months.

Okay… enough, I don’t want to think how other people see me anymore, that’s such a sad and horrible way to think. I’m going to be myself, just an honest version of me from here on out. I’m going to think positive. I’m going to think about happy stuff like being in a jacuzzi with well-paid, fully qualified female supermodels.

Damn! I’m still pissed.  

 

What you’ve just read is the third post in a series entitled “A Fan Fiction of My Life by My Number One Fan, Me.” Please check out the first two posts from the series:
Me, A Doctor
I Am A Controversial Artist, AMA 

Did you enjoy it? Yes, subscribe to this blog, sign up for my newsletter or follow me on Twitter, stalk me in real life to get the latest update. 

It’s good to see that my father is finally impressed. It’s such a nice feeling knowing that your parents are proud of you. Like, I finally know that.

Now, it was a lot of work. School, I’m talking about.

But boy, to genuinely know that your parent’s life goals are accomplished, hell, there is no better sensation. Honestly, this feeling, uhmm! It’s is like ten orgasms.  

Ten orgasms. And think, it only took one orgasm to make me, a doctor.

I save lives now. I save orgasms.

When you think about it, that’s pretty cool.

On the spectrum of the universe, I’m on the exact opposite side of a cockblocker. I’m on the opposite side of the universe.

Man, that’s almost as good as being a doctor — not being a cockblocker. Is there a word for that? I should know, I’m a doctor.

I always find it weird when a name for something is that it’s not something else. Take the word “non-fiction” for example. Oh I read a book, and it was non-fiction. That’s like saying, I read a book and it was non-good. See? Weird. And for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about and can’t follow along, what I’m saying is we have a word for non-good, it’s “bad.”

What I do like is how we have the same word for different things. Homonymous, they are called? I have trouble saying that word. Look at it: Homonymous. How would you say it? Say it out loud right now: Homonymous. Yeah, you don’t know if you are saying it right either.

I like homonymous, that’s why I think a non-cockblocker should be called a doctor. Same word, different meanings, same mental image. Like when you see someone helping you get laid, that guy is a doctor. He’s a miracle worker. He’s a man of God and science. I like that hahaha! I’m going write that definition in Urban Dictionary when I get home. Remind myself to set a reminder for that. I’ll totally forget, I forget everything.

Anyways, what was I talking about before I got distracted. Oh yes, my happy parents. They are so happy. I can remember the day they told me they wanted me to be a doctor. They made that claim in front of my family and friends when I was too young to even know which part of my body I was standing on. I now know, because I have gotten an extensive and expensive education since. They said, “Elliot is going to be a doctor, because doctors make a lot of money.”

Well, mom and dad, prepare to have a son with a lot of money, because as of today — which I am graduating from doctor school at my university of choice — I start my journey to great wealth.

Now that I’m a doctor, it’s going to be smooth sailing from here. You get pampered if you are a doctor. You aren’t only wealthy, but you are also respected. People treat you well. One way they treat you well is that they have to say a title before your name.

For example, if my name was Kern Eberhart, they will have to call me Dr. Eberhart. That’s good, because Kern is such a bad name. It sounds like a move you make with a piece of heavy machinery. I guess, the word kerning relates to the printing press, and I guess that is a heavy machinery. Wow, did I just prove myself right? Ha, that’s why people like me.

Another way they treat you well is with respect, and the respect comes from the fact that — yes, you are rich — and that you are now credible.

A doctor knows what he (or she) is talking about. You can say what’s on your mind and people have to take you seriously.That will be such a nice experience, being at a party and Tommy Wong starts rambling about some crazy conspiracy theory, and I’ll butt in with some hard truths. “No Tommy,” I’ll say, “it’s actually us humans that are controlling the lizard people.” And everybody will nod, but Tommy Wong will still go ahead and pull out that smartphone and Google. Then he pulls up some dark web post affirming his theory, but nobody believes it because that post was not written by a doctor. I guess, the moral of that story is that you should not be a Tommy Wong and you should listen to your doctors.

Oh and lastly, there is the saving people part. I find that part quite satisfying as well. Maybe not as much as having everybody address me as “doctor,” but still pretty good. Honestly, okay… I know we were just talking about truths over there in the previous paragraph, but I’m going to lay some hard truths on you right now. Ready? Okay, here it is: I’m not a people person. I’m actually very introverted. I know, right? You think someone who dedicated his life to saving people is going to like people. That my friend, is irony. If a child or a more feeble-minded friend asks you what does irony mean, please use that example. I think it captures that word fully.

Needless to say, it was worth it, mom and dad. I couldn’t be more happy that you steered me onto this path of becoming and now being a doctor. You called it! You guys were gamblers and you put all the chips on that one card and I flipped it over and it was the doctor card (Ace of hearts). You win the game of life. It’s every parent’s dream to have their offspring be doctors and my parents achieved that mission.

I’m proud of them. In fact, I’m probably more proud of them then they are of me. They really stuck to it. At any point, as they watched me studying, could have came over to me, tapped me on the back, and said, “No, that’s enough son, why don’t you focus on your illustrations for a while? I think that picture of your family in front of our sad-looking house is a project worth bringing to life… in completion.” I could have been a caricature artist, but I turned out to be a doctor. It would have been so easy to have that conversation. I think if she said that to me that day, I would have stopped. Then where would I be? Maybe still a doctor. Maybe dead. My mother could have killed me that day. I’m proud of her for not. Killing me would be the exact opposite of wanting me to be a doctor, if it was my parents. They really didn’t want to kill me.

It’s been a really good day thinking about how happy my parents are and how much money I’m going to have and how much respect I’m going to get and how my parents didn’t want to kill me. I’ll have to say, being a doctor is pretty sweet so far!

 

What you’ve just read is the first post in a series entitled “A Fan Fiction of My Life by My Number One Fan, Me.” Did you enjoy it? Yes, subscribe to this blog or follow me on Twitter to get the latest update. 

 

Read the second in the series: I Am A Controversial Artist, AMA