'I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix.
It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean
by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about things like this.'
She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard.
'Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice.
But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then
not let me talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or
baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting
pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or
at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing,
and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social
to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the
spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not.
They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go
to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes
in the Window Smasher place and wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with
the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying
to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing "chicken" and "knock
hub-caps". I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any
friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is
either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another.
Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?'
'You sound so very old.'
'Sometimes I'm ancient...'
