I was on a wicked tear of dad jokes the other day when my four-year-old shushed me. Shushing the hand that feeds. Outrageous, I say.
Not long after, I was talking shop with someone, shoveling clod after clod of advice onto them, and it took me a good long while to feel the chill in the air emanating from my poor friend's direction. Mr. Advice strikes again.
Some years after school ended, I ran into someone from back then who told me, perhaps meaning it as a compliment, or perhaps as well-earned revenge, that I seemed a lot less annoying now than I had back in the day. "Seriously, nobody liked you." Said with a laugh, maybe to lessen the sting, or sharpen it.
The hardest part about "know thyself' is what it is one comes to know. After a while, each "know" makes me wish for that much less "thyself".
I wrote a little crumb of fiction about this, about being a bad fit but failing to sense it. I called it "Virus sin nombre", which is the actual name of a real virus, albeit one that has nothing to do with my story. The unnamed virus. The unidentified malady.
The Red Lemon Review was kind enough to publish the piece in their inaugural issue. You can read my piece here, or go here for the whole issue.