Breaking Robots Manifesto

I have always been different. It dates back to my pre-Kindergarten days. Mom used to dress me up like a sailor and drag me around town with her, while she ran errands. I won't speculate as to her motive ( I tend to think it some kind of therapy for her), I will say the costumes were a smashing success among store clerks, counter ladies, and cashiers. They couldn't help themselves -- fawning all over me. Painfully shy, I found human interaction to be extremely embarrassing. I coward behind my mother when grocery checkout girls spoke to me. In many ways, I didn't get over this shyness until my second year of college, the duration due to my daily ridicule in elementary school.

Mom was still dressing me, except in elementary school it wasn't cute anymore. I still remember this hideous pair of rust-colored corduroy pants I wore at least once a week (you see we were a family of few means, and even these rust-colored monstrosities were second-hand from my older brother, who got them second-hand from a thrift store). Phwitt, phwitt, phwitt down the hall. Phwitt, phwitt, phwitt through the cafeteria. Phwitt, phwitt, phwitt all the way home, tears staining my rotund cheeks. Children are cruel and heartless.

Years have gone by and little has changed; all too often, adults are as cruel as children. Adults retain the unbecoming qualities while outgrowing children's inherently good qualities. Their minds are closed to alternative possibilities. They stop learning, they lose the gift of curiosity, they become plain and boring drones - robots. Their thoughts corralled by the fads of the day, their eyes closed to the possibilities around them. Mindless staring blankly into a television hours on end. Mindlessly grinding away at the same inconsequential tasks hour after hour, day after day. Any ambition, any original thought, any creative instinct systematically and meticulously hammered from their being.

I resolve not be an adult, a professional, a company-man, or any other euphemism given to this herd behavior, this mindless drone-like existence. I resolve to have an impact. I resolve to think and to question. I resolve to overcome circumstances. I resolve to persevere.