'Adolescently misunderstood.' Last year someone labeled me that, and I wonder how long it took for him to come up with the phrase. I think it's poetic, but I don't know if it's true.
I think I fall more along the lines of 'derogatory and ignorant' or perhaps 'deceptive,' but I didn't call myself any of these things. I just read them in the letters to the editor.
I've also read that I'm 'bitter' and pushing my own 'personal agenda against pro-gressive politics.' Wow, I've learned a lot about myself since I began writing a column for the Cardinal.
I'm glad so many people I've never met know so much about me, because I really haven't got a clue. If you ask me, I'm just pretty typical for this campus. I am the root of the problem of diversity. I am the white Midwestern male.
An ex-roommate told me I'm not normal, but I don't know if I can believe that. Actually, he said, 'it's not normal for a 21-year-old guy to have no interest in dating but to be entirely amused by his stuffed raccoon puppet.' I told my ex-roommate that Roi the Raccoon is greatly offended by the words 'stuffed' and 'puppet.'
As far as I'm concerned, I'm more normal than I want to be, and for that reason last year I badly wanted to keep myself out of this column. I couldn't see why anyone would want to read about me.
But, in the end, people read about me, while I struggled to write about anything other than me.
A year later, I'm still writing about me, and I'm not trying so hard not to. I'm just writing about what I feel, and if it's good maybe someone will read it. If it's really good maybe I'll read about it in the letters to the editor.
