A few weeks ago, I looked in a long-forgotten drawer and found a screenplay written by a college friend. Typical excerpt from this masterwork:
ROBBER 1 AND ROBBER 2 (bouncing up and down)Needless to say, I tortured my friend, and this soon became a reunion in Portland. Twenty years after college, several of us convened in a diner. It was great fun."WHOO-HOO! Five hunnerd clams!"
We reminisced about the people we hated, but soon an alarming trend became apparent. After we derisively snorted about an idiot poet who since became an idiot life-coach, one of my friends softened it. "But I'll give her this," said Mariko. "I admire her confidence. She really set out to do what she wanted to do."
"Yeah," said Jon.
Yeah, whatever. She was an idiot then, and she's an idiot now. Next.
We then bashed our old boss, a loser in any decade, a man who tortured us and compelled us to torture others. "But as much as I hate to admit it," said Jon at one point, "He was right."
Mariko nodded.
What?! What was going on here? And then it hit me. They've grown.
We then bashed a cheating shrew for a while, a reprehensible, pointless woman whom I still despise for once making me sit in 12 degrees for several hours. Invariably, one of my pussified friends cited her rough childhood as something we should really acknowledge.
I had had enough.
"Oh, for the love of fuck. Can you just let me hate her?"
"Sorry sorry sorry," said Mariko.
"You are cleared to hate," allowed Jon.
To their credit, their overdeveloped sense of understanding extends to those who refuse to evolve.