Shticks

Bob got me thinking the other day. Although that is generally an activity that I try to avoid, most of the time it is impossible to see coming.  He was telling me how his one of his big gimmicks on his blog was that he named every post after a song title.  I don't do anything like that, so I got to thinking: what would my gimmick be?  My first thought was that my gimmick could be that my blog is very uninteresting to read, however that wasn't so much a gimmick as a drawback.

Then I looked at the question again. What is my Gimmick? My blog may not have one, but what about me?  This thought made me very upset because I knew I would have to reflect on myself as a person and look at my past, present and perhaps future, three things I don't like looking at.

As I reminisced about my past I saw a common theme in my life: I always tried to be the nice guy.  Now before all you people who actually know me get to saying things like "Hey Evan, what about the time you burned down my house because you thought my golden retriever gave you the stink eye?"  To the people who say those things, I say read that sentence again; you will noticed I said I "tried" to be nice.   One moment sticks out at me in particular when I was learning what being nice meant.  I was in about 4th grade, when our class went on a class trip to some godforsaken land. My parents gave me some money to spend if I wanted to buy a souvenir, they told me I could keep it after the trip was over too.  Anyway, I went on the trip, I don't remember much of it, but I do remember coming back and waiting for my parents to pick me up.  Me and several of the other members of my class were sitting around the front lawn of the school when we started to talk about money.  Just then I remembered that I had about 10 dollars left over from the trip, I decided that I should try to make the people around me happy so I took a dollar bill out of my pocket and gave it to Molly, the girl sitting across from me. When she got that dollar her face lit up as if someone had just told her they now make pies that taste as good as cakes.  I noticed that and said something along the lines of "If you liked that, you'll looovvveee this!" and took all the money out of my pocket and threw it in the air.

What I saw

All the girls in my class rushed up and started picking the money around me.  All of them started saying thinks like "Oh Evan you're so nice!" and "You are the most generous person I know Evan!"  As some of my more hippity hopish friends would say "I made it rain on dem bitches."  Needless to say I felt good. However as the years went by and I looked back on that event I felt more and more ashamed by it.  Not because of my actions at the time. Heck I was in 4th grade, probably even younger than that. I didn't start being a conscious human being until I was in at least 9th grade. Rather,  I thought perhaps that was just a microcosm (if that's the right word) of my life.  Perhaps people only liked me for the stuff I gave them and not for the content of my character.

But I digress.  the whole point is that I tried to be nice to the people around me, I wanted to try and do some random acts of kindness.

Right now I think my gimmick is that I am part of a mental hospital and have some good stories and interesting dilemma to deal with.  Those are the things I should talk about in my blog.

However what will be my gimmick in the future? 

I wont be a part of a mental hospital, I can't randomly give my friends money either.  What will become of Evan when he goes back to college? Even more what will become of him when he graduates and has to live a normal life?

I'm getting tired of writing... I''m starting to think.

Moral of the story: Fear the Future