Stupid

When I was a small kid I protested: it isn't so, I am not stupid. My face shines intelligence, I talk consistently and I don't walk on my hands on the streets.

Since then I grew up and I am not so sure anymore.

I walked on the street, enjoying my chocolate after its hard hunt, protecting my hands with its cover paper, and after eating up the inner part I aimed the paper at a walking by street trashcan. Missed. I bow down and pick up the litter and replacing it into the trashcan. "Aww how stupid!" I hear the giggling at my back from the group of youth wearing bomber jackets (footnote) walking by. But really, I thought about it, there can be a truth about it.

Because last time, when on the train there were 50000 people pressed together and only lacked the olive oil that the world would have formed a nice tinned fish-like box, that old fella grabbed his cigarettes with a sensual look on his face and lit it. The silent murmur of the other people cannot reach his nicotine misty brains who might escaped down even to his rectum, breaking away in his fear from the tarballs the man inhaled. So I asked the man to be thoughtful of the other fourty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine and kill off his pollution. He unlit it in the waves of the sounds of agreement from the other victims but he rippled between his teeth: "Stupid." I think he might know something important.

In the past when I was sane, or I thought I was, I never did such things as refusing the big heap of mouthwateringly smelling macaroni milanese which after more detailed inspection turned out to be a good candidate for hundred meter swimming in the fat liquid below it. Back then I eat the fatball instead of the meat but nowadays my mental state just worsened. A while ago I don't even accept the bread fallen to the floor. I think I should meet a specialist. The normal people see I'm stupid and they outnumber me.

My confidence is raising. Do you know how does it feel when you realise you are stupid, and you are unlike all those happy normal people? When you stand at the Don't Walk, when your brainstorm hit you and you can't move while those normal people trying to walk-by you and rush towards their important goal? (footnote) "Stupid", told rightfully that citizen who had to sidestep not to hit my pegged down body which was only relieved by the relaxing green light of Walk sign from its paralysed rigidness. At this moment I knew I am stupid. And they knew it as well.

Well everybody knows I'm stupid. You know, it's easy to spot. Almost at the first glance. Me, the stupid is someone who isn't normal. And normal is a person who are many. Outnumber the stupid. So I am stupid, a bad exception. How stupid.

The final advisement was told in the supermarket, it was Final, without leaving any possible place for doubt. In the pathological seizure of politeness I happened to thank the services of the saleslady with "thank you very much" (footnote), and then from the far end of the misty back of the queue I heard the voice of the young couple when the woman (must have been a professional neurologist) whispered into the ears of the man (possibly a psychiatrist): "hey he's completely stupid".

Its all over for me. I try not to be blat, sometimes I throw happily some smaller litter on the streets, cautiously, because larger ones might cause me to fall in hysterics again and I'd run panic-striken to take it to the trashbin; or I try to cross the street when it's Don't Walk but very slowly, watchfully, only at silent streets since I don't want me to be paralysed again and with shaky eyes waiting for the Walk sign, run back there where I started from.

I'm diligent. But I believe the world have rushed from me, and as that nice walkby person commented: "...and you'll die stupid as well..."

I nodded. Yes I know. I'm at peace with that. I got used to it. And I helped the old lady to pick up her rolled off crescent rolls.


(1996 October)

Footnotes for the unaware

Bomber jackets to be wear by skinheads, those (sometime neo-nazi) folks who usually beat color-skinned people, break things on the street or people. They never attack alone.


Dunno about your country, here still expected not to walk at Don't Walk. This is Europe. :) Or, hm, used to be. Walking all over is american. And american means, well, shit.


Well actually the original wasn't that, but something literally "kiss the hands" or like. It's a rather old form of very polite thankyou for females, hardly used by mere (under 40) people. Actually, those hardly ever say thankyou to the clerks.


General notes

Hungarian cities are usually full of trash. People don't care, and I hate it.


Translation is dedicated to Teo Ze Hui (TiZzIe), who is not already stupid, but chose the right track to go. (97 April)