Read This

The following passage, taken from Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, literally gave me goose bumps.  I had an urge to re-read it aloud, gospel-style, in the street to passers by.   As that would have been completely socially unacceptable, I thought maybe I would put it here instead.

“You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will someday happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone ‘Give me the gun’ etc.  Then you start secondary school and suddenly everyone is asking you about your ‘career plans’ and your ‘long term goals’, and by goals they don’t mean the kind you are going to score in the FA Cup.  Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg- that your future will not be the roller coaster ride you’d imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor tiles, is actually largely what people mean when  they speak of life.  Now, with every day that passes, another door seems to close, the one marked ‘Professional Stuntman’ or ‘Fight Evil Robot', until the weeks go by and the doors- ‘Get Bitten by Snake’, ‘Save World from Asteroid’, ‘Dismantle Bomb with Seconds to Spare’- keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn’t necessarily need to be closed…”