Discovering Yourself for Dummies

There's nothing better than self-help books to help solve all your greatest problems.

I know you--you are just like everyone else. Since you came
from your mother's womb, you wondered what made you
different from anybody else. Sitting here, you've been
thinking and thinking. Your television runs from one
program to the next in front of you, maybe some never
ending romance story on Grey's Anatomy with a backdrop of
the fact that these people are actually doctors, or
possibly some filthy looking beings fighting for one
million dollars after weeks of little food and necessities
on Surivivor. The fan twirls quietly above you, sending
down it's God-sent breeze in spite of the new found summer
heat. Your cell phone is calling, calling, calling. Text
messages and voicemails leave this little life saver
vibrating till the end of time. Maybe your dog or cat or
hedgehog or cute slave animal is staring at you, expecting
something. Food sits over on the table across the room,
beckoning your appetite. Every object demands your
attention, and how could it not?

Basically, what needs to be done here is that we need to
eradicate all this honkey-dorey business. All the fluff.
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Get yourself off the couch and
take a walk. Please don't drive in your car, we don't need
that unenvironmentally sound gas guzzling machine. Humans
were made to walk, right? Then you shall.
Ok.
Time to start looking at a place where you (the dummy)
might begin to understand your identity. Staring at your
face in the mirror is completely overstated, so much better
can be done. If you are in a city, good luck. You are going
to need to find some sort of open field, something where
nothing is around, low on animal visitation, and has no
roads around it. Found it? Good. Quickly now, throw out
what is little left of your surroundings. Still, maybe an
open field has the wrong connotations, maybe you personally
think that the wind indicates you are to be a free spirit,
or the birds chirping give some kind of pleasant happiness.
No, this isn't what we want, let's move on.
So.
Now maybe you are in luck if you're from the city. Find
something abandoned, forgotten. Warehouses, subways,
anything. Find the absolute darkest place in said abandoned
building, and take a seat. Much better now, isn't it? Now
let's take a moment to...
Well, wait. This really can't be how to do it. This place
makes you feel like the building itself, this lonely,
abismal place. Now you're wondering if some hobo is hiding
in the corner, ready to fight for his turf. Shoot.
Now.
Think, think hard. Who says you need to leave your home?
Get a box, put yourself in it. I suppose,if you have any,
you'll need a friend for this, or possibly just pay the
hobo you found in the abandoned building. Tape the outside
and let no light in, absolutely none. It might be good to
sound-proof your box. Excellent, now all is quiet and you
might possibly get a good chance to figure out who you are.
Except.
There's just one thing. One minor thing. Damn five senses.
The box still smells, the sides give that unrelenting
cardboard-y feel, and you still can taste the musty air.
You're going to have to acquire a decent amount of novacane
to knock out some of these things, and then maybe you won't
need to worry. Bring in the needles, maybe the hobo has
some of these things too.
All right.
Currently, you can't feel, smell, taste, or see anything.
The walls are sound-proof. Nothing to give you bias when
you make your judgment. Still, there's just one more thing.
Definitely miniscule, but still there. Damn humans, they
have this thing called memory. And consequentially, you are
beginning to remember everything you once were. You
remember when you could feel, the abandoned warehouse, the
open field, even watching survivor. You knew these things
once, and even now, when you've rid yourself of any
influence, these memories do almost the same job as reality.
 

For the last time.
 

You are going to need that hobo, and hope he knows how to
brainwash people. And let's just say the hobo does actually
brainwash you, and you are just a human drone thing.

And so, staring bleakly, still messed up from rediculous
amounts of novacane, stuck in a sound-proof cardboard box.

...this is you. no fluff. no honkey-dorey.
 

Author's Note

I'm too lazy to fix the spacing.

Reviews

[Judy Maxwell]

This is great. It made me laugh, which is always a good thing. I liked how you gradually came to your point, which wasn't exactly what one would have expected at the beginning of the story.

I also enjoyed imagining sharing a small cardboard box with a random hobo -- who may or may not have provided drugs, as well.

The only problem that I saw with this was the title. I like the idea of parodying the "For Dummies" series, but your story didn't really follow the "dummies" formula. I would expect a sort of check list from one of those books, where if you do everything on the list in that specific order, you can accomplish whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. What you wrote was a little broader than that, and it seemed to be not as much instructional as it was satiric of human nature.

Sorry if I'm rambling here -- I'm having trouble phrasing what I mean. But hopefully you get the picture.

The bottom line is that I quite enjoyed it. :)