I remember when I was in grade school student back in the day. I had a friend named Eric who had this amazing vision of a distant future filled with hatred for the proletariat. A time where the government forced the society to think in a homogenous manner. A place where language as we know it was dead, conspiracies ran rampant and “doublethink” was the order of the day. Odd, scary, but genius nonetheless.
Anyway, there was this girl we both liked. One day, I found out he was going to take her to prom. I didn’t like finding that out. I mean, this girl was amazing. She took my breath away from the moment I saw her. I think from then on, I had tried to gather to courage to ask her to the prom.
But Eric beat me to it. No, I didn’t like finding that out. Not at all.
One day, Eric told me to take the final version of his novel to the publishing office over in the next town. I had taken his first novel, something about pigs and horses, as well. Apparently he didn’t like his name much and would use George to sound manly and all. So, in the process, he would make me his secretary so he could remain “anonymous.”
As it happened, along the way to the publishing house, I opened up the package full of papers and went through it. Hell of a great story. But I wanted him to be wrong in what he said. Or something. I guess I just wanted to annoy him, at the very least. After all, I didn’t like finding out about the girl. So I went through and changed all of his 20’s to 19’s. I suppose I thought that a hundred years wouldn’t make much difference, especially since it was still fifty years away.
Well, I’m alive now. He’s not. I’m sure you’ve read his book. I know a lot of you think he was wrong. I don’t think he was, though. Just wait. We’ve got 83 years to go. He’ll pull through. He’ll make a believer out of all of you yet.