Re: Turkish Dinner Tonight?

Audrey,

Although the offer is great, and looking at the menu made me drool like Pavlov's dog, I can't make it tonight. If you do end up going to this restaurant, enjoy the Turkish cuisine.

Now that you've read this e-mail draft over my shoulder as I was writing it, it seems redundant to send it. You probably won't bother reading it from your inbox once again.

But I have a strange feeling. Knowing that you won't read this gives me an immense sense of freedom. I can write whatever I want. I can curse. I can write the lyrics to California Dreaming. I can talk about my childhood memories. Oh, wait! I know! I’ll write about the most important moment in my life.

When I was about five years old, I was going to this kindergarten that had small tricycles for small kids. You know, close to the ground with three wheels. There were three of them. Let's call them awesomecycles, because then, in my eyes, they were totally awesome. The kindergarten was packed with four to six year olds, and we were all crazy about those awesomecycles. Whenever they let us out to the garden, a herd of racing, jumping, stomp-the-other's-foot-pull-their-hair-get-in-front-no-matter-whatting kids would run to the corner where they kept the awesomecycles.

The teachers didn't seem to care. Maybe they were brilliant and wise, trying to teach us kids how competitive and unfair life was. Or maybe they were rather just a bunch of tired young people, relieved that the kids were occupied with something outside in the garden and they could relax for five minutes before they had to go back to the job they hated.

Anyway, I never even reached the awesomecycles. Even if I had, I wouldn't be left to ride it in peace. When the winners of the amazing race grabbed the cycles and started their victory tour around the tiny garden, the others didn't just sit down and watch them, all sportsmanlike. These kids lost the race by a tiny margin, and moments before that they were ready to tear limbs for those awesomecycles. Do you think they would accept their loss in honor? This was not the peaceful garden of a kindergarten. This was the killing fields. This was El Salvador. This was Darfur.

The moment an eager boy jumped on an awesomecycle and started riding it, he was under attack. Others would be running towards him, after him, trying to cut his path, throwing themselves on the awesomecycle to cause the driver to fall or the ride to topple. Pebbles were thrown at the driver's legs and the plastic tires. Flying punches, from 6 year olds that looked like miniature Arnold Schwarzeneggers to the eyes of 4 year olds, connected with the torsos of the poor drivers. So they would fall, their trophy left crashed on the muddy garden, themselves holding their stomach with pain. Another maniac, closest to the now free vehicle, would get it up, holler a crazy victory cry, and then the whole Mad Max routine would start all over again, with this current driver as the new ... Well, I don't know if I should call him a victim or a triumphant winner. The driver would surely suffer a lot of pain from the constant stream of attacks, but I can't remember anyone driving an awesomecycle without a glorious smile on their face.

One day, when in this furious struggle I was thrown to a particularly muddy part of the garden, lying there with my face in the mud, aching all over without moving, I started thinking. It's a shame that I didn't think about anything until I was five, it was an immese waste of potential, but better late than never. And as soon as I started thinking, I found out that I was really good at it. I was analyzing the situation, and with incredible speed, I could see every angle, every possibility, all the options. I was coming up with battle plans to reach the awesomecycles, exploiting the weaknesses of my own plans by creating possible countermoves, finding ways to cope with these counters in seconds, all in a dazzling pace.

After lying down there for three minutes, just before the teacher called us back in, I stood up and cleared the mud from my face. I had solved the mechanics of the kindergarten killing fields. I wanted to ride an awesomecycle, I wanted to ride it without being disturbed, and I wanted to do it for a whole hour. And I would do it the next day.

I could hardly sleep that night. I felt like a cream filled donut, but instead of a donut, I was a five year old genius, and instead of cream, I was stuffed with excitement. When the morning finally came, I went to my father's bed and I explained how my birthday was coming in a month, how much I wanted an awesomecycle, how in a month when it actually was my birthday the weather would be too cold to ride it outside, and how that day, being Saturday, would be the perfect time to buy me this gift. He tried to come up with some counterpoints, but they were no match for my dazzling intellect.

That Saturday, I got to ride my own awesomecycle full of peace and fun, and not just for an hour but two.

I never joined the gladiators in the killing fields of the kindergarten again. I started talking to girls instead, using the rest of my time at the kindergarten honing my pick up skills. I wasn't interested in girls yet, but my observant intellect assured me that I would, so when the time came, I was already a pro. As I grew up, I enjoyed some parts of school, aced a lot of video games, had friends, had girlfriends, had fun, had sex, watched movies, read books, worked, slacked off, lied on a beach under the sun, swam, shopped, ate pizzas, did all the normal things normal people do. Nobody else knew how smart I was, I concealed it well, only allowing it to show in small, controlled bursts. I led a happy life up to this point, and hopefully it will continue that way.

This is the first time I told the story of the awesomecycle, the story of the blooming of a colossal intelligence. My secret is safe, since my enormous brain tells me that you won't even click on this email, Audrey, you won't read any of this. You think you already know what it says, because you've seen me write the first part of it.

Unless I’m a deluded fool or I have multiple personality disorder and one of my personalities publishes this whole thing on my website, there is no way anybody can find out about all this. The gigantic mass of sparkling brilliance that is my mind doesn't worry. After all, if I wasn't really all that smart, how did I manage to ride an awesomecycle just the way I wanted, whenever I wanted?