chapter 14

Note to reader: The narrative of the adventures of Mr BooHoo is linear, despite the fact that each chapter is an individual story, so I would advice you-in order to make justice to this character- to start from chapter one. I would also like to mention that the thirteenth chapter has been temporarily hidden, not because I am some sort of superstitious freak but due to its spiteful content. Therefor I choose to keep it in place for my personal archive but make it unavailable to the general public.

Chapter!$ (14): science fiction

Mr BooHoo could not stop feeling disappointment for the world in which he was living in. The place was crowded with idiotic, immoral and bad people. Refusing to let himself "grow up"(or what was generally accepted as such, some characteristics of which state were a hardening of heart and lose of taste), he did not accept the disillusionment that this was just the way things were and there was nothing to be done about it. He did not want to kill anyone, although he wouldn't mind giving a good fright and maybe a better spanking to a few people, but the chances of him building up the proper musculature were lame. Thus he often fondled in the following idea:

Somebody, somewhere, would do something silly and release a toxin or a substance of some sort that would infect the majority of the human population, reducing their intelligence somehow. This "element" would have a strange side-effect to another population as well, that of the rabbits. Yes, we are referring to the popular small furry creatures, most often white with red eyes, famous for their dexterity with magic tricks, fond of lettuce and unfortunately considered a culinary delicacy. Now, rabbits have two great advantages in comparison to other species; they can jump really high in analogy to their size and they copulate and multiply in extreme rhythms. Rabbits would start growing until they reached human height.   Then they would jump to the upper floors of buildings and they would also adopt  human speech for the sole purpose of saying "Who's cute now?" while demonstrating their glistening, blade-sharp teeth...       

chapter 12

If this is the first time you are visiting, please do your self a favour and start from chapter one. If you are mentally challenged and don't understand how, find the list of posts and from there go to the oldest one.

charter !@(12): the days of the week

Mr BooHoo decided that the weekend was too short. Thus he took another decision, to add a second Saturday to each week and a special extra Sunday whenever he thought he needed one. He was not a bourgeois, to be able to do this. Just...problematic and since he worked mostly from home it was no biggy  to rearrange time. You see during the weekends public services and most shops were closed and this gave him a sense of freedom as if there were no obligations or consequencies. To name a weekday Saturday meant that he could go shopping etc in the morning but that he would go nowhere unpleasant and on his spare Sundays he would not leave the house at all. This way he could afford a three-day weekend every week and a day-in every now and then. Saturdays were to be on Mondays or Thursdays because he was working at a school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Fridays were usually tranquil enough as they were.

We can picture Mr BooHoo on a nice gloomy Monday morning, that he had just renamed Saturday, thinking of a past Thursday that had been transformed from a silly fourth into a lovely sixth day of the week.

He had opened his eyes at half past eleven. Outside a bright, sunny day was taking place, exactly a month before Christmas. He felt glad to have survived another week and that it was only two more days to the weekend truce.

In Mr BooHoo's perception to wake up after ten o'clock was late. He felt clearer during the day-time and therefor he tried to prolong it as much as possible. He liked sleep as much, though, and there was a conflict.

The previous day, Wednesday it was, he had decided that he would postpone every disagreeable errand until the following week. Specifically, he had to go to a public health institute for the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, the junkies and the artists, with two photographs (eventually they only needed one), his i.d. and a photocopy of a protocol form that was given to him the first time he went there, three months earlier, to collect his health benefits booklet. He did not really want that because he did not really plan to use it. He was terrified of public hospitals, despised queues and furthermore, when ever he went to one he was worried he would catch some new strange and maybe even lethal disease. In addition to the above he would have to go to a massive, ugly public building, wait in line for hours among the previously mentioned miserable social groups, get into a dingy room crowded with desks and talk to a despondent public servant that would hate his or her job along with the rest of the humanity and be in a constant search of an opportunity to spit his or her moodiness to the face of an innocent by-stander. The last time he was there a large, deranged blond woman who looked and acted like a pimp and might have been a prostitute had been blocking his way in for almost half an hour, until one of the people that worked there took pity of him and invited him in to get his last stamp and leave. The whole experience was rather unpleasant and he was not looking forward to repeating it.

Avoiding pain, both physical and mental, was instinctive for all living organisms. Mr BooHoo could tolerate physical pain but was very sensitive when it came to insults. As some would say, he tended to take everything way too personally. For example he would repeat random dialogues with total strangers that had been rude to him (and apparently had forgotten of him the very next second) for days on end, as if they had slapped him in the face and he had done nothing to avoid it, but in the meantime he was boiling inside. Not only he felt helpless and stunned at the moment when the incident took place but it haunted him for the rest of his life, like a misplaced scar. ( Well-placed physical scars can be sexy). He was also unlucky enough to live in a city where people were edgy and loud. This situation made his life difficult. An acquaintance had suggested that he managed his errands by doing one obligatory unpleasant thing every week. On that particular week he had gone to the bank to pay the rent and had made two unpleasant phone-calls. Enough is enough, he thought, and took the decision in question. He had been good enough to go to work, take care of the house, walk the dog two to three times per day (the night-walk was his partner's responsibility), so on that ex-Thursday, now Saturday, he could do nice stuff.

He combined the dog's walk with a cup of coffee by him self. He had found a nice cafe on a nice location, under a record-store. From his table he could see the passers-by and a dirty old building. The coffee was all right and cheap. The radio was playing"Heroes" by David Bowie. Then he went back home to make Christmas ornaments and experimented on a chicken-pie recipe (eventually it came out too dry but his next attempt was a success) Somedays, life could be all-right for anyone.    

chapter 11

Post Scriptum at the top of the page: Towards the bottom of the page there is a link-button to older posts. Feel free to start reading from chapter no 1. 

Chapter: !! (11): difference and public acceptance


Mr BooHoo was terribly off-put by another type of person (apart from bureaucrats, fascists, know-it-alls and all the other types mentioned in previous chapters). He was terribly annoyed by people who did not accept the fact that not all of us think the same, like the same or have the same aspirations and ambitions. Lucky for him he had been raised in  a tolerant family that had taught him that he shouldn't expect from others to have the same taste as him, neither should he try to force acceptance. To have an individual personality was more important than being part of a pact.

Being poor and closed as a person did not make him popular at primary school. His clothes were different from these of his classmates and he spent more time reading than socializing. If he had the money and the right influences (there was no internet back then) he would have been a first class traditional geek. Yet, he never wore braces (his teeth were everything but straight, still, as I said before he couldn't afford most things, let alone cosmetic procedures), his eyesight was perfect and he used too much foul language for a toddler. Of course back then he desperately wanted to fit in, to have friends and not to have the popular children of the school treat him like shit. This had as a result a lot of embarrassing memories because on occasion he did buy uninteresting magazines, wore the wrong clothes, sang ugly songs and watched silly sitcoms. When he went to high-school he made real friends and figured out that he was not an alien, he just happened to be in a really idiotic environment. He also thought that all this judgement upon the fact that he seemed to think in a different manner than the mass was a thing of the past. He knew that there would always be people whose narrow-mindedness would form the general opinion and the contemporary notion of "ordinariness" but he also thought that being considered different would not be an alienating factor because mature individuals know that diversity is not a synonym of wrongness.

Thus, for a few years, the world was a happy place where he could go round with his hair really long or really short, handmade clothes and odd make-up and not only have friends and partners but actually earn people's respect with his good manners and ethical behaviour. It always hurt him whenever he came across someone who rushed into conclusions or who considered that being odd was illicit.
Trying to find a job suggested to him that maybe he should work a bit more on making a good first impression. Yet, most restrictions included nudity and extreme make up and Mr BooHoo understood that and accepted it without boohooing.
The god of odd luck brought things that way, once, that he had to work with two nuns! This came as a shock initially but he rather enjoyed it as an opportunity for sociological research and again, his good manners and intense sense of morality helped him manage adequately.

And after all that he came upon a small group of people, a family to be more precise, that after knowing him for a few years still refused to accept him. Not only did they take advantage of every opportunity given to tell him off and alienate him but they also tried so hard to impose their lifestyle on him, repeating directly and indirectly that most of his decisions and manners were immature, inviting him again and again to do the same things they liked and making a huge fuss when he declined some of these suggestions.

To sum up, Mr BooHoo felt anger for another type of person: the ordinary one. The sort of people that will give you things regardless whether you like them or need them or not. The sort of people that believe that all boys should have nicely combed short hair and all the girls long, that all girls should like the color pink and take care of the house, while the boys should be out working in their properly ironed fashionable uniforms, that homosexuals should stay hidden in the cellars and that being part of a pact is the most important thing. The people that judge you from your clothes and not from your manners, the people that take a step back when you reach your hand out to them saying "my name is (your name here), nice to meet you" just because you happen to have a part of your hair shaved (this is a true story, an actual fact. It really did happen). The very same sort that slows the world down and for whom imagination is an admirable quality only when it belongs to someone from another country.  Such a sad affair...