August 5, 2005

“I sometimes worry about your youngest brother Philip at school,” said mom, making sure to explain everything clearly enough for the readers of the C-File in which she would be quoted. “He keeps not being aware of due dates, assignments, and occasionally the fact that he is at school.” I'm paraphrasing here, because I wasn't paying altogether too much attention.

What makes this ironic, however, is that later that night at Target (Motto: “If they had what you were looking for, it would be too expensive!”), my mom seemed to ignore the checkout lady with a level of passive aggression not seen since Attila the Hun, if he had been passive aggressive (“It's okay if you don't want me to burn down your village. Really… It's fine…”). But I don't think it was defiance so much as that she just hadn't really heard. The lady explained to us, “I only need one box from each flavor of canned soda,” prompting mom to begin immediately piling every single box of Coke onto the little conveyor belt (and, these being intended to last the Guin family for the next six hours at least, I'm estimating the number of boxes at 8 quadzillion). Having a brief moment of awareness myself, I started unpiling them back into the cart. She also had to be informed of the price several times before she finally remembered to take out the credit card. So, Philip is occasionally a member of the awareness-liberated community, eh? I wonder where he gets it.

I'm one to talk, of course, if not notice. I used to imagine that my perpetual oblivion made me special, but now I think it's congenital. My mom, my youngest brother and I all share that peculiar wandering brain. My suspicions were confirmed when I met a cousin recently at my brother's wedding whom I hadn't seen since he was, well, some age I can't remember. Philip, my cousin and I played video games together one night and magically carried on three distinct conversations at each other, each one of us apparently believing that we were all talking about the same thing. There's no question about it. Detachment from reality has a genetic basis, and I'm a carrier, as can be seen in the following actual Punnett square:

Punnett squares (named after famous 19th century biologist George Square) are immensely useful diagrams that, while they do not describe anything that exists in the real world, are amazing at filling a six-weeks of biology class with busywork. But there's more to basic genetic theory than cross products and phenotypes, of course. There's also moral equivocation.

It seems to be a widely embraced belief among people that if a behavior is shown to have a genetic component (demonstrated through a Punnett square, no doubt), there is therefore no moral basis for proscribing* such behavior. For example, if someone turned up a gene that gave someone a predisposition for committing genocide against, say, Michiganders, then no one would have any basis for condemning said genocide. “They didn't choose it! The Punnett square proves it! Therefore, no responsibility!”

I, however, do not subscribe** to such beliefs. I believe that I am capable of overcoming my genetic disposition to oblivion by sheer force of wi—hang on, I think I just saw a squirrel outside my window. What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, the little trip my mom and I took this past Tuesday. You see, we have this friend that we shall refer to as “Zach Price” who is similarly awareness liberated from time to time, the result being that we are in possession of basically an entire wardrobe of clothes he has left here over the course of the summer. Mom was concerned that he would have nothing to wear at the summer camp where he works, so she asked if I would be willing to drive the 2 hours to Jasper (“The Semi-precious Stone of North Central West Alabama”) to take Zach his clothes. I agreed to help, and so off we went down Highway 69, famous for being narrow, twisty and turny without there being hardly ANY mountains in the area. It was probably paved over a former trail blazed by a Cherokee with an inner ear problem. So after two harrowing hours, we finally arrived somewhere in the vicinity of the camp (at least, we were pretty sure), so we thought we would give Zach a call. When he heard that we had driven up to Jasper to deliver his entire wardrobe to him, he expressed his heartfelt thanks, saying, “You know I'm Tuscaloosa right now, right?” Tuscaloosa, for those of you just joining us, is the place where we started. Nobody thought to call before we made the trip. Well, we tried to look on the bright side, saying, “At least we got to see Jasper!” and “Don't forget Oakman!” But really, I thought to myself, “This is going to go in a C-File.”

Mom and I aren't always like that, though. Our trip to Medford, Mass. (pronounced “Medfid Mass”) to find me an apartment for grad school went off surprisingly smoothly, mostly thanks to our handy dandy new little laptop computer. You see, Mom thought it would be very wonderful for “me” if she were to buy “me” a laptop, and she also thought “I” would like it very much if the laptop were “purple.” Okay, really, it's the manliest possible shade of burgundy, so I'm not too bothered, especially considering how wonderfully useful the machine is. It is SO wonderful, in fact, that right now I am typing this very C-File on my desktop computer, because mom's on the laptop and loving it. The thing weighs, like, 10 ounces, and unlike most similarly sized laptops, the text is legible from a full three feet from the screen. Us Guins may not always be aware, but we know a good electronic toy when we see it!

Speaking of which, I have vague memories of my brother Tyler and his entire set of buddies invading my room to take my GameCube, which they asked for by saying, “You're not going to be using this anytime tonight, right?” Of course, it could have just been my imagination. Knowing me.

* “Writing for.” Don't you know your Latin roots?

** “Write under.” Sheesh.