March 24, 2020

Being Weird

I have been working with Jules Lewis. He is a Canadian novelist and playwright. His book, Waiting for Ricky Tantrum, is very good. You should look it up. He has suggested I read memoirs in order to get a better feel for the genre. So it is what I have been doing. Turns out, if I want to be a memoirist, I really don’t have very much going for me.

I am not an alcoholic. I am not a recovering alcoholic. I am not a drug addict. I am not a recovering drug addict. My parents were neither alcoholics nor drug addicts. They did not beat or abuse me. I did not grow up very poor. I was not the youngest of twelve children. I am not from Appalachia. I am not from Ireland. I am not a gay man in a straight world. I am not a black man in a white world. I am not a woman in a man’s world. I did not escape from a war-ravaged land. I was not smuggled into the country. My parents were not hippies. I am not a stranger in a strange land. I did not discover anything. I have not won a Nobel Prize. I am not a famous actor, athlete or musician. I am certainly not a famous writer. I am not a famous anything. Nor am I infamous. I did not rob a bank or a train. I am not on the lam.

I am, to be fair, a Jew. But not one from the Warsaw Ghetto, the former Soviet Union, or pre-independence Jerusalem. I am, for God's sake, from Canada. At the end of the day, all I am is a little weird.

The end.