I hated reading those books. There was always that hazy, vague sense of frustration. You couldn’t even be fully frustrated because you didn’t know what you were so frustrated about in the first place. Like an incomplete…School made me feel that way too. A particularly difficult lecture and I was in a twilight trance, except no one was going to yank my wisdom teeth out. It was the endless waiting in the cool leather of the dentist’s chair as a small part of your brain panicked and told you to get the hell out of there. There are berries to gather, woman.
But the university demands it so you slug through caffeine fueled day after caffeine fueled day. Slugs, funny creatures. Homeless and slimy. They eat our berries, woman. You might gather with fellow sluggers and rant about how unfair it all was. It’s not like we’ll be using this stuff. Any extra knowledge and surely you’ll just collapse. The bare essentials, sir, please. Just the berries, woman.
There’s a lot you could do to protest this injustice. How dare they educate you in this free country? You have a right to remain ignorant and you’ll damn well use it. Words are cheap, so you’ll puff out your feathers but do as you’re told. Can’t trust the others. They might be just pretending with their multi-coloured plumage, to get ahead of the rest, of you. You’ll slug along. But you won’t be happy.
And that’s the big, final parlour trick isn’t it? To be happy? I heard you can find it at the bottom of a bottle. It shimmered at the bottom of mine once, in the final drops of sweet delusion. But what’s a shimmery drop in an ocean? Everyone’s got it better. Pick those berries faster, woman. I reckon I saw a foreign feather float by.