Little fish

Some 2 million years ago, give or take ten minutes, in a cheery cave in central Africa, an ancestor paused in a moment of consideration and regarded his mate. He wondered how it must feel being constantly overshadowed, with no freedom worth mentioning. Given a choice, he wondered, would she stay with him? Would she bear his children? Was she happy to be alive?

He sighed, uttered an unprecedented grunt of appreciation, and clubbed her into a coma. Honor was born.

It grew alongside courtesy, into a diverse set of social lubricants. A man learned in the fine art of courtesy could turn anger into smiles, snag second helpings of tea and scones, pull ribbons out of cash registers and make even the most resilient of petticoats disappear under random beds.

But for every man that rebuilt his ego in a fistfight, a dozen cowards politely inquired whether he’d really hit a man with glasses on.

And it worked, honor forbade men from eating the little fish. One sunny Tuesday afternoon in 1920, a man in glasses snickered a bit too loudly, and the spell was broken. As he picked his teeth up minutes later, he cursed beneath his breath, and wished terrible things upon his enemy. Very quietly. In the coward’s heads, plagues of locusts visited the man’s corn, hives of warts visited his wife. And lo, cowardice gave birth to passive-aggressiveness.

And now every pissant with a tiny penis uses it.

Choices are often easy: do, or don’t. If you do, you ought to do. Or just don’t, you pissant. But dragging my patience through a maze of bullshit and misshapen testicles, through a thousand what if’s only to vaguely hint at your point, well, ain’t that cute?

‘So I’m your problem?’

‘I never said that.’

‘But you did say that I could be the problem.’

‘That’s your take on it.’

‘And you did say that no one else is the problem.’

‘I may have.’

‘And you did hypothesize on the potential consequences of my being the problem, were I actually the problem.’

‘Maybe.’

‘So I’m the problem?’

‘I never said that.’

Pissant.