Of course, the reason for my ability to continue rattling on has very little to do with the fantastic uber-excitement that is my life. Quite the contrary as regular readers could attest, my life is really pretty boring. You know, "I gave up sex, booze, and cigarettes, and it ruined my life..." as it were. These days I mostly read a lot, play video games, and wonder how I continue to eek out an existence with very little financial fortitude at all.

So why is it that I'm never at a loss for rambling ever onward? I should have thought it obvious by this point: I really never get tired of talking about ME.

Me Me Me!

I know, it's actually rather an obnoxious trait. But hey, I'm not bragging, just being honest.

Furthermore, I believe this to be, by some strange stroke of fate, and irretrievably innate trait. So much so, in fact, that I believe it to be in no small part a cause of why I am today such an usual personage.

As I was pondering on my past some a bit ago, I recalled a rather disappointed reflection of mine from a very, very young age. I couldn't say how young exactly, but I know my first fairly coherent strings of memory start around 4-5 years old or so. Anyhow, what I recall thinking about was my realization that my family were really just regular old people. That is, that they were not, as I naturally assumed I was, somehow innately superior to most of those around them.

The strange thing is, it's not like this was a repressed memory or anything ... more just that it's only recently occurred to me that this may have been odd. I mean, I was really bummed out. Enough so that I actually kinda wondered if these people could really be my family. Truthfully, I recall that it never occurred to me to question how or why I was unique or special. I don't think I'd learned at that point that our perspectives are unique to ourselves. So it wasn't that I felt that I could be somehow made any less a living miracle by association with my family ... for that matter, I didn't actually feel that other people were somehow lessened or slighted by my being so wonderful. I was just a young child, and actually a really nice one according to all accounts -- as best I can recall, my being innately great was just a personal detail, just as some people are tall or short, thin or chubby.

Anyhow, the problem with all of this, as you might imagine, would be that pretty much everyone in the world in the intervening 25 years or so has not simply taken my sheer wonderfullness for granted. In fact, surprising as it came to my young self, people tended to be quite pissed off that I just assumed I was so great. And so we came by my strange sort of "shy" -- which is to say, I never thought I was shy, but I did learn to be pretty controlled in my behavior. Because for some strange reason, people seem to want you to substantiate your claims of incontrivertible superiority.

Feh. Philistines. One day you shall all grovel before me.

Okay, okay, just kidding. But you see the problem. In a world where very few are really very sure of themselves, one who would insist that even questioning his brilliance must alone prove you a fool and a blasphemer ... yeah, that's why I've been called things like "megalomaniac."

But I'll tell ya, I never meant any harm. It's not like I ever suggested to anyone else that they should not consider themselves damned near perfect. I've no idea why this perspective came naturally to me. So the ironic question becomes, is perceiving yourself as near-perfect inescapably a flaw?