someone named benny

i'll have a website up soon enough, but i want to capitalize on my domain name. enjoy for now.

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Location: lakewood, california, United States

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Tonight, the school decided to reward all of my hard work with a Tile.

Yes, a tile.

Not a scrabble tile, a bathroom tile.

Yes, a white, smooth-as-ivory, bathroom tile with the school colors painted on it, neatly pasted onto wood. If you look a few centimeters down, you'll see my name, machine-etched onto a brass plaque.

But, it's a tile.

On my left hand I held a nice navy blue folder with a piece of paper certifying that I had received my tile. Actually, it was a certificate from LA County, complete with paper thin 2-karat gold triming and complimentary seal.

On my right hand, my tile.

Of course you're not supposed to think of it as a tile. It's supposed to be a symbol of recognition. Basically, I got the Academic Achievement Award for Fine Arts, which means I have a lot of friends in high places who think I'm swell. Or maybe I'm just really the stand-in, because if Mr. True Achiever from Fine Arts wins another award someone's going to get upset.

It's kind of like this: the owner of a restaurant wants to award the 1,000th customer by giving him a free meal. Turns out number 1000 is his brother. There's a word they invent for occasions like this: conflict of interest. Maybe that's why I got chosen for this award.

Maybe they chose the tile to represent cleanliness, as in: We're cleaning our hands from the fact that we chose you as stand-in recipient.

Or maybe they thought about it this way: okay, Benedict, you've been sitting your heiney in front of that computer for too long, maybe it's time we let you stand for at least an hour at a time, or walk around and pick up an award or something. Get those veins in them legs of yours pumping. You know, get some exercise. Just think of it as a sport, like tennis. Or golf. Or air hockey. Mmmmm, air hockey.

If that's the reason, maybe the tile's supposed to represent the shower, because after your grueling exercise, you shower.

In the end, I really don't deserve this tile, er, award. There are some people in the Fine Arts department who deserve more than I do this because their output is way better than mine.

But hey, take whatever blessing is given, and take it with the utmost gratefulness. So there.

Achievement. Recognition. Honor. Dignity. Integrity. Purity. Cleanliness. Hygiene. Faucet. Toilet. Shower. Bathroom. Tile.

There you have it. Good night.