I saw this one on Postsecret today.
Seems to me that at my father's urging, I struggled through Kafka's Metamorphosis some time around the age of seven or eight. It took a fair amount of time and I'm not entirely sure how much I got out of it, to be honest, but I did it. I had heard the plot from him a few times before, anyways, and I've read it a couple of times since.
Seems to me that that was about the same time that I told my teacher (who we called Mrs. Doggypants because that was the meanest thing we could think of at the time) to go to hell because I was tired of reading 'Pat the cat sat on a mat' ad nauseum. My mother met with her to complain and my teacher told her that she had no right to criticize her teaching method because she had a masters degree in art history.
Oooh, a masters degree. Scary.
My mother replied that my teacher was being stupid and childish, and that this academic 'my dad's bigger than your dad' put her at the same maturity level as the children she taught all day. She then informed her that if that was the game that they were going to play, she also had a masters degree, a bigger, better master's degree in business administration.
Touche.
At this, Mrs. Doggypants broke into tears and I got transferred into a special program where I wrote poetry and occasionally sat for hours alone, amusing myself by reading books and drawing pictures about them. Yay me.
We used to run into encyclopaedia salesmen all the time whenever we went to the PNE (for non-Vancouverites: a large summer fair, carnival rides, entertainment, petting zoo and mini donuts, lots of mini donuts). Encyclopaedia salesmen have a simple method:
1) find a family made of young parents and young kids.
2) convince the parents that their children will be stupid, unsuccessful deadbeats with no opportunities in life if they don't buy a set of encyclopaedias, and that will be entirely the parents' fault.
3) sign them up and take their money.
4) lather, rinse, repeat.
It works because no self-respecting parent wants their kid to be stupid and there are plenty of parents out there that want every opportunity for their children. Kind of gross and manipulative when you think about it, and my parents did.
In fact, my father was so offended at the suggestion that he and my mother, both university educated, weren't completely capable of raising intelligent and well-adjusted children that he used to say just that to every encyclopaedia salesman he met. His insistence that the salesmen were disgusting and subhuman because they exploited people's insecurity for profit tended to get him into trouble at times.
He wasn't much nicer to door-to-door vacuum salesmen either.
But for me, I was always upset whenever he got pissed off by a salesman because I was always afraid that the salesman would turn into a giant ugly bug like poor Gregor Samsa.
That's what the postcard reminds me of.
If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, you can download the entire Metamorphosis here because the copyright has apparently expired. Reading books is good for you.
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