Altruistic Genie, part 5
Altruistic Genie
“Do a kindness unto another person for a pain of equal and opposite proportion unto yourself.”
Part 5
Right away, it seemed like my friends began to drive me much of everywhere to the point it wasn’t too much of a hassle to not own a car. I vowed to save money until I could buy a cheap used car, but I knew even in the same breath or heartbeat that I wouldn’t actually get around to it before going to college.
For the most part I wasn’t bothered by my newfound lack of transport, but I did miss the seclusion, which included the abiliy to sing along to the radio without getting weird looks from my friends. I missed driving alone without equifinality, by which I mean directionless and purposeless, with the only goal in mind to clear my head and sing along to the radio. Life went on, I soon found out, car or no car.
The approach of college-admission tests further reminded me of the clear shore and purpose ahead. I was going somewhere soon, my prep books seemed to whisper to me. The present began to lose its value because I was constantly reminded that everything, or basically everything, I saw and did and lived was temporary. I began to gravitate to my rocks, or that which I saw as permanent in my life: Jason, Avery, Nat, Maya, and my debate partner David Chang.
David was ambitious. At every tournament, he pulled out his SAT prep books in between rounds, prepping for his future in the space we used to prep our cases. As a result, we lost more and more, making it no further than prelims at the state qualifer. I wanted to prep general arguments for Britain using the Euro instead of the pound because the fourth round’s topic area was the Eurozone. Instead, David convinced me to quiz him on SAT vocabulary flashcards. The fourth round’s resolution was “Britain should join the Eurozone.” So we had to prep arguments then that I wanted to have made several hours prior.
I didn’t care that we lost, and at the close of the debate season, I began joining him at the library to take practice tests and so that we could quiz each other. David’s ambition was contagious. Spending more time with David, a rock, seemed to bring me closer to college, my shore. I convinced Jason and Natalie, and sometimes Avery, to join us. By the time the test rolled around, my debate partner and I had made good use of two months’ prep time for the resolution: “The SAT determines, or has the potential to determine, the course of the rest of your life.” David and I were as confident in the strength of our arguments as we had been for some of our best, round-winning cases.
Jason and Nat only had one month to prepare, and they didn’t short change the affirmative to overprepare the negative, that the SAT does not have the potential to determine the course of the rest of their lives; it was more that they saw David’s and my resolution as only a general topic area instead.
In the three weeks between when I took the test and when I found out my score, I became more cognizant of a shift I had undergone or was undergoing in how I took up space in the world. I began noticing when both of people’s hands were full and had started holding the door open for them even before they could ask me to, or, on a good day, even asking them if they needed help carrying whatever was occupying them. I began remembering to put away the milk when I took it out of the fridge and cleaning up after myself in the kitchen or in my room, and I even started to preemptively put away other people’s perishables or clean up after them. On the rare occasion I could borrow a car, I was careful to think of how my parking job would affect the parking space behind me, and I was careful to never scratch another person’s car with my door when I was parked compactly. In other words, I began to think of myself not as an independent entity, but as one of many objects in space in the world. I was no longer a circle apart from other circles, I was just one of many concentric or interconnected circles.
☼☼☼☼☼ ຂຖຜຟຜຖຂສຫຂ ☼☼☼☼☼ ຂຖຜຟຜຖຂສຫຂ ☼☼☼☼☼
The night the scores were posted, I had to refresh the web page twice over before my score actually registered with me.
Nat called me, eager to share: “I got a 2240,” she said. “That’s good enough for Berkeley, I think! What’d you get?” When I told her my lowly 2050, she said, “That’s not that bad!” She thought I was pathetic.
“That’s good enough for a lot of schools.” It was clear she did not think me worthy of any schools. “Do you want me to come over and make you cupcakes?” Maybe she wasn’t all that disappointed in me. She came over and made me cupcakes. She invited David, Avery, and Jason.
“I don’t want a pity party.” I told her.
“This isn’t a pity party.” It was a pity party. I was happy they were all there.
Almost discretely, they all shared scores. But they were still in earshot. David got a 2300, which he thought was good enough for Wharton or Harvard. Jason got a 2200. The only person who was reluctant to share was Avery, although he told me it was lower than mine.
I considered wishing his score higher, but he didn’t seem too affected by it. It wasn’t that he thought he was dumb, it’s that he didn’t believe the SAT was an accurate measure of intelligence, or else he thought he could still contribute to the world even if it was an accurate measure of intelligence. Maybe he wanted to make a contribution in a non-solely intellectual endeavor, such as music.
While they were leaving, David told me the ACT was offered in a week. He suggested I might do better on the other test. I took him up on it. That week, I took a practice test or two a day. With summer vacation just around the corner, I stayed in and studied. On the day of the Los Gatos High School graduation and the first day of summer, and two days before the test, I was averaging scores of 33/36 on practice tests.
I took the test, and I ended up scoring even higher with a 34. I imagined how high I could’ve scored if I had studied for two months instead of a week for the right test. I had made the mistake of thinking there was only one test.
The summer was monotonous and often boring. Avery was away almost the entire summer for a Spanish language and community service program in Paraguay. I thought about wishing him fluent without needing to go on the program so he could stay home and hangout with me. That was the first of many flawed half-wishes that marked the summer after my junior year.
Jason was gone on several family vacations for several weeks to, as his mom said, “Show them a little culture.” Lrittle culrture. He went to Big Ben and brought me back an old chess piece from one of the castles, but I forget where else he went. I was tempted to wish him or his whole family already cultured enough and home, but he seemed excited for the trip, so I didn’t.
Natalie was working, nannying in San Francisco, so she was gone five days of the week. I could only see her for a little at a time on the weekends, but I had a hard time justifying even to myself how losing the job would be good for her.
I played video games with David sometimes, but he was better than me and frequently beat me. After what felt like several weeks’ worth of going to the beach or trying to be social but was probably only a few days’ length of time, I resigned myself to reading or watching TV by myself from the comfort and security of my bed.
Whenever my peace was disturbed by either an errand for my family or an invitation to get lunch with someone I was not particularly excited to get lunch with, I would wish for a normal genie so that I could wish the disturbance away. Then I either did the errand or got lunch with the person and reprimanded myself for not wishing for a normal genie so I could wish for something more substantial, like a cure for cancer or a million dollars. Although perhaps a million dollars wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
☼☼☼☼☼ ຂຖຜຟຜຖຂສຫຂ ☼☼☼☼☼ ຂຖຜຟຜຖຂສຫຂ ☼☼☼☼☼
Avery returned, and everything fell back into place and felt normal. One of the last weekends before school started, we all got together at an elementary school by Nat’s and Jason’s houses. We were on the roof smoking and talking and drinking when Avery got it in his head to try a rolling jump off the roof to the grass lawn below.
“I saw it in a Youtube video,” he explained. “It’s called parkour. It’s so cool, I just have to try it.”
And everyone else, being the drunk or stoned young people we were, decided to encourage him instead of stopping him. And Avery, being in the impaired state he was in, was not coordinated enough to land a rolling jump, although I have doubts he would have been coordinated enough to pull it off had he been sober. I heard a crack, and Avery cried out. We called 9-1-1 after storing the illegal substances at Nat’s or Jason’s house, and at the hospital they told us he had broken his arm.
“It could’ve been a lot worse,” a nurse told us.
I saw Avery in pain at the hospital and in a cast and sling the next day. I was tempted to wish his pain away and his arm healed, but I knew this pain wouldn’t last long or affect his life much in the long term. I was looking for something worse.
I still doubted, sometimes, whether it was a good decision to use a wish to save Jason’s car. But I saw him smiling when he drove, with the sunroof down and the wind pulling on his black hair. The net happiness of the world had increased, or was at least the same given my pain as a result of my crash, so I didn’t dwell on it.