by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or Martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Let me talk of High School-like ultra aloofness’ in old people.

It is a strikingly weird phenomenon despite its dime-a-dozen-ness.

You remember in High School those “ultra aloof” kids?

They did this to falsely boost their image to be seen as “cool”.

Of course this works well in High School.

That’s why it is a ‘go to strategy’ of the juveniles everywhere.

However here’s the weird thing –

I have noticed that there are many old people still doing it.

They’re thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty and still using the High School ‘Ultra Aloof Strategy’.

This is just sad.

It is backward in the extreme.

You cannot get away with this with semi-well adjusted adults.

It surely can only work with the juvenile or the intellectually sub-normal adult.

You see the logic of the practitioner is this:

In high school because of the natural immaturity – you can steal respect via the ‘ultra aloof strategy’ –

conversely for an old person to get respect – you have to back it up with something you can do very well.

You can’t just f*cking try to steal it via treating people like sh*t via the use of U.A.S.

Yet so many ‘so called adults’ these days are doing this while being mediocre in everything they do.

It is like a modern disease, I think.

The practitioners of U.A.S are stuck in their low brow High School personas forever.

They’ll give you no polite human-to-human cordial respect whatsoever.

No eye contact or very little.

You’ll ask them how they are – they give a curt “fine’.

They walk with a false swagger in their gait.

Desperately engaging in the continual cover up – basically that they suck.

They were at their peak in the social hierarchy as sixteen year olds,

And they’re gonna pigheadedly refuse to look facts in the face,

And pathetically keep wielding out the U.A.S strategy till death calls them.

Meanwhile we still have to deal with these types in the workplaces & behind service counters –

And if we are particularly unwise or naive of course they may be in our very homes.

We as victims are forced to be their ‘quasi high school nerd placeholder entity’ that is the other side of the U.A.S. equation.

Assholes always need a victim – it’s like the law of gravity.

Oh isn’t it hard to live in a world of these types.

You’d think evolution would have weeded them out by now.

But then again maybe we are the weird ones ruining their eternal ‘cool group high school party’.

Perhaps it is us who try to improve ourselves, do the interesting, and are decent that are the problem.

It is we shouldn’t be trying to improve Hell while we are on Earth.

That to them is a big no-no.

This is why we are being punished.

How dare we hold them to account?

This is really how they think.

It’s an admixture of stupidity and arrogance.

So there’s really no way you can change these types.

You just gotta let them burn freely and then write of their ironically high-flying flames.

It’s always good to get thoughts of these things out of the system.

Write it all down.

Lest one day you forget the disease U.A.S is there in this dumpwater world at all,

And from there it’s just a short hop-skip-jump to then start acting that way yourself.

You will come down with an acute case of U.A.S

And then ‘Hell on Earth’ has yet another win under its belt.

This is why being self-aware is so vital.

For in life there are three types of garden variety asshole:

One variety is the asshole that never truly knows that they are one.

The second does but is engaged in an extensive prolonged cover up.

The third are assholes, know they are, and don’t deny it at all – they often even warn you.

Obviasly this third kind of asshole we can probably live with best.

Note: the persons I write of – suffering with U.A.S – in this prose are a subset of the second variety.

They are so much worse than the first kind – don’t you think?

Oh this matter has been such a fun journey to talk about!

I really must read up on all the literature on assholes.

And oh what it would be to have a P.H.D. in Asshology!

There I have created a great new term – Assholology.

I can’t wait to call myself

“The Worlds More Foremost Assholologist” –

But then again I don’t really need to –

After all – I am already a writer (little known – but still one).

And incidentally the good ones of us writers are of the third variety of asshole –

“We know we are and we will warn you”.

So at least we will never lower ourselves to use U.A.S tactics.

Even two-bit writers at least try to through some light on this harsh asshole-loving-world.

And surely some of us will in some distant hazy day,

Fully accept the probably unofficial title of Associate Asholologist.

Or am I – as is my prerogative – simply delving into the realms of fantasy again?

Maybe…..maybe.