Beautiful Maria

Peter Moran
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

She was a rare beauty. The type of girl that would cause other girls to pick a fight with their boyfriend when she walked by, not because they caught him staring — which often times they did — but just because seeing a girl like her put them in a bad mood. The type of girl that never got a speeding ticket from a male officer, never lost an argument with a male professor throughout college and never fared poorly when interviewed by a man. She had quite easily coasted through life on the virtue of her stunningly good looks. All this came at a cost though, because Maria considered herself to be pretty exceptional in other areas as well. She liked to think of herself as quick-witted, sharp with her banter and having fantastic and humorous insights. But how could she tell, when every guy that ever approached her would laugh at anything she said? One time she even put it to a test. A guy named Adam took her out on a date and was literally slapping is knee at jokes she considered worthy of a short chuckle at best, so she decided to make a comment about how tables seemed “so unnecessary” before looking at him with a giggle. As if on cue, Adam burst into hysterics. That was the last date they ever went on. Maria had tested other things, too. She showed a writer named Brad her material and he told her “it was one of the best things he’d ever read.” She had literally copied and pasted an excerpt from Wikipedia on the history of Johnny Appleseed and titled it “December Thoughts.” Brad didn’t stick around. When she told Aaron her idea for an invention called “trash toilets” that would make disposal systems more efficient, he didn’t ask her how it would be paid for, how the trash would be transferred through the pipes, or where it would go. He simply clapped his hands and told her that she “should get that idea patented.” Maria was sick of the lies. Aaron stuck around for a few more weeks though, because — to be fair — trash toilets were actually kind of a brilliant idea. But the last straw was when he told her that her she looked like a natural at the driving range as she swung a hockey stick. Maria was so upset with all the lies that she even put on fifty pounds just to see how differently guys would treat her, but she ended up looking even better. What some girls viewed as a blessing she viewed as a curse. Finally, she met Michael. Michael told her that her writing sucked. He only laughed at her good jokes, and while he did like the trash toilet idea, he also made sure she realized how ridiculously unrealistic an idea it was. But he never told her that she looked like an idiot wielding a hockey stick on the driving range, because Michael was blind as a bat. Also, because she didn’t use a hockey stick on the driving range because they never went to the driving range because Michael was blind and the driving range wasn’t his thing. In fact, any sort of driving wasn’t really ideal for him. One last reason that Michael didn’t address the hockey stick thing? Because Michael left Maria, because Maria really didn’t have much of a personality after all, and her “real” ideas and “real” jokes weren’t much better than the ones she used as a test. Except the trash toilet one, that had some promise. Anyways, ignorance is bliss.

Something That I Think Is Underrated:

Deadbeat children. They don’t get the respect they deserve. There’s a certain type of stigma surrounding the late-twenties, early thirties child who spends his or her days in their parents’ basement playing video games, watching Netflix and scrolling social media. Sure, it’s not as glamorous as being a doctor or a lawyer, but people only do that stuff to pay the bills. If your parents are paying the bills, then why get an education and a job in the first place? Too many people want to talk about how important it is to be mentally tough and to learn to fend for yourself, but at the end of the day, we’re all out here just seeking a way to better our lives, and if we can do that without bettering ourselves, why not? I understand it’s not for everyone; it’s not even for me. But I wish it were. If parents can provide this sort of life after the years that it may be considered socially acceptable to be living like that, then they should feel no shame in doing so and children need simply to forget the jealous naysayers and embrace the life of luxury they’ve been afforded.