Sunday, June 20, 2010

451° F

"Why aren't you in school? i see you every day wandering around."

"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. being with people is nice. but I don't think it's social to get a bunch of poeple together and then not let me talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place and wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lamp-posts, playing "chicken" and "knock hip-caps". I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?"

-Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

1 comment:

  1. i thought it's missing. so it's with you. huh.

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