The Untouchable Books

When I was younger, I hated to read like every other red-blooded, TV-watching, god-fearing, Wal-Mart shopping American. I would get a headache just staring at the pages of a picture book with more than a few lines of text on it. Hell, sometimes in class, I would pretend to have slogged through the assigned reading while instead, I had just stared off into space imagining what it would be like to watch TV while playing video games and eating at the same time. Ok, sure I still do that from time to time. But at some point, I actually began to look at the squiggly black characters on the pages of young adult novels (and adult novels too....heh...heh....Oh screw you) and I began to use what meager brain power I have to muster the ability to decipher the hieroglyphic code. Once I realized that these archaic symbols actually meant something, my opinion on reading had changed drastically.

Now folks, as many of you know, us 'Mericans aren't into all that book learnin'. We have better things to do, like buy shit we don't need and fight pointless wars for ungrateful liberated peoples instead of bettering ourselves by making the most of our own individual potential. We don't have time for all those books, they take too long too read and besides, if they make the book into a movie we can just watch that pile of filtered Hollywood schlock. Well 'Merica, I have some news for you. We are dumb. I am going to let that sink in because I don't think you understand (partially a result of the aforementioned stupidity). We are near retarded, Forrest Gump, Whoops the Condom Broke, Intelligent Design is too a Theory levels of inconceivable ineptitude. Half the people in this country would have a hard time identifying Canada on a map, much less spell it. Obviously, due to the massive amount of debt this nation is in, we can't even balance our cursed checkbooks. ITS ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION PEOPLE. YOU LEARNED IT RIGHT AFTER "Z."

Ok, so maybe I am being harsh. Why do we as a people shy away from becoming smarter? Well, for one, it hurts. Learning is painful for most people (me included) because you have to ram information into your brain over and over again just to make it stick to that dried up husk of an organ. Two, for a long time in our public schools, being intelligent, especially through book learnin',has always had a negative stigma among the students. Intelligent kids, being the meeker in frame in most cases, are shoveled into their own isolated group. This group consists of the nerds and the dorks but, I think there is a far more apt term for this ragtag group of harder-working misfits: the Untouchables.

To clarify, Indian (Not woo-woo, the red dot) society is broken into different hierarchal levels (or was...can't remember. Damn Alzheimer's), the lowest of which being the Untouchables. This group is shunned by society and for the most part dehumanized . The fact that really strikes me about the Untouchables is that they must wipe away their foot-prints as they are walking in the dirt roads, as to not disturb the harmony of the better castes or some shit like that. So for anyone with half a brain stem, comparing the Untouchables to the nerds in public schools is valid. Nerds have to get by everyday by not disturbing their classmates while trying to succeed. They are shunned for their intelligence (mostly garnered from the demonized book-learnin') even though it gives them a better shot at success in life. Even "nerdy" girls would shun the nerdy guys if it meant a chance at pleasuring an ungrateful muscular dimwit football player in the janitor's unsavory closet (Let's face it people, it has happened). The nerdy guys have no such outlet since cheerleaders would not be caught dead touching pizza face and his wire-rimmed glasses. So here we have a completely ostracized group of young men who will never procreate until they pay a hooker for sex and the condom accidentally breaks. Nine months later the baby is left on his door-step etc. etc. Etc. and the nerd is punished once again. But I digress.

Since reading is associated with the Untouchables at a young age, the negative stigma of reading sticks with people for the rest of their lives despite advice from teachers and Reading Rainbow. Sure some of these Untouchables grow up and make enough money to buy their way into the Touchable castes and possibly even win a semi-attractive non-abusive spouse (yeah....sure). But even well into adulthood, reading is seen by many as the activity of the weird hermits destined to live out their days in a basement until they hang themselves off a bridge (Hey.........wait a sec!).

In order to exemplify the reasons many people choose not to read I compiled some examples:

"Books are boring, I'd rather watch SpongeBob while telling my parents I hate them." --whiny brat deserving a punch to the face and a couple of bruised ribs

"Books give me a headache."--someone who has never heard of Tylenol

"Shit man, I can't read a book. Coach told me only fags read books. I'm not a fag, are you?" --Future recipient of a broken leg, ruined "career" and winner of "Who wants to be a gas station attendant?"

"Oh, I don't read because Brad says I am too pretty for it. Too much reading can you give you acne, you know." --Future member of the Society of Worthless, Empty, and Unproductive Housewives who Cheat on Their Husbands and are Killed in a Fit of unbridled Rage (SWEHUHCTHKFUR).

"I am too busy, and besides, I read too much at work anyway."--- A sad broken man i.e. me in 4 weeks.

"No habla Anglais..." --The best gardener this side of the Rio Grande

"Shit man, I can't read a book. Cheney told me only terrorists read books. I'm not a terrorist, are you?"----Ok ok, I couldn't resist


By actually forcing myself to read, I used my meager brain to create whole worlds filled with characters (admittedly, many of them were 1-dimensional and all looked like movie stars). I was able to translate the ideas of one human being and turn it into something I could understand, something I could envision and almost touch. That is what reading is to me. It is not some boring chore designed to force you to waste your time so teach' can go out and have a smoke while complaining about her ex-husband, but rather, a means to flex the pathetic organ lodged between those "heary" things. I believe you apes call it a brain. Through reading, I have become prententious and standoffish. My vocabulary is obscure enough to make Joe Nailedmycousinatthehodownintheoldbarn Smith scratch his head and say "Boy, are you from Italy (Eye-tally) or somethin'?" You see, reading can enable to you be weird and unapproachable. It can make you able to put somebody off with the dry wit one could only build from years of reading sarcastic murder mysteries or dystoptic science fiction. Essentially, it can make you a jerk.........Wait. Scratch that (its true regardless). The point is folks, if more people read in this country a majority of us might actually to be able to identify whatever country we are currently blowing to bits on a map, rather than just refer to it as the "Desert that should be nuked into glass" (I'm looking in you direction Texarkansalaborgia).

So read. Don't go quietly into the slow dumb night. Become a prententious prick and make more money because of it. You want to know why Europe is supposedly so much smarter than us? It's because the whole damn continent is full of prententious pricks that read (among other things) who look at us like we are the gun-toting apes from Beneath the Planet of the ......Apes. Now, I am not saying we should be like Europe. I am saying that this is the United States and we should not give any quarter by becoming obese slow couch potatoes who put more stock in people getting hit in the junk (which is awesome by the way) than a good classic leather bound edition of War and Peace.