A Brief Vignette

Everyone writes memoirs, it seems, nowadays. Even the owners of brothels. Everyone thinks they have some story to share. My ten year old nephew is already writing about how awesome it is to be him. Assigned by Ms. Mathews. He only barely scraped a B.

Wouldn't it be amusing if I could go on from there and say, "Well, everyone, you thought your memoirs were great--look at mine! Ms. Mathews and I, oh man! Ours was a love which surpassed all sticks of chalk and dry eraseboards! (And it was kinky, too.)"?

No, the only reason I even know about Ms. Mathews is because my sister complains about or praises her every time I'm visiting.

"Oh, Robert! Look at what Ms. Mathews gave Bobby! Did you see? He got a gold star for his homework. I tell ya, that woman is a genius. Bobby is getting smarter and smarter."

Or, if you prefer.

"Robert! I don't know what the hell she thinks she's doing to these kids, but she's not going to give Bobby a silent lunch just because he was talking to his friend for one second! I don't know why that school board hires people like that. They were probably all on those illegal drugs they get as incentive."

You see, if I attempt to immerse you in my life, I will only diverge into that of another. It will never be a story about me.

You know, they say that Lord Byron had a club foot. He was supposed to have said, "Well, even I must have an imperfection, and this is it, alas!" Surely he thought himself an adonis, and a veritable Don Juan when it came to the ladies. The club foot didn't matter, though everyone would have noticed it.

Again, what does this have to do with me?

I remember walking with my toe inward when I was told this story in high school. I was a rational young man at the time, but I was so afraid of my poetry, of these poems I had within me and which I could never share, that I thought that maybe if I pretended to have a club foot like Byron, I'd have the guts to show it to somebody--anybody. It wouldn't have made sense without talking about Lord Byron.

"Robert, you have the most lovely poetry." A girl from college. We were kind of almost sleeping together.

"Well, I've never seen such drivel." A professor from the same college. Until then, I had seen him as a genius.

The fact of the matter is, their perceptions become my reality. My poetry isn't mine. Instead, it's the good poetry of the women who want to sleep with me, and the crap poetry of the arrogant professors who can't see past their egos. It certainly isn't what I say it is. It's incidental.

The thing to know about Robert is that he is merely a coincidental figure. I'm some guy who just happened to be there at the beheading of Charles I. I'm some guy who happened to be in the plane when they first dropped the atomic bomb. I'm some guy who happened to be standing in the general vicinity when they were taking a picture of Hilary Clinton. I'm just here, and a witness to the struggles and triumphs of others.

I'm an afterthought. No use writing a memoir about an afterthought.