parenthetically

Myke is no longer my friend. It wasn't official in my mind until this weekend, when I learned that Pearl had finally lost patience with him and cut him off. I'll say that again. Pearl, Meg, Dr. Poily, the dramliza, the soft-hearted human-relationship craving sister, got fed up and annoyed with Myke and cut him off. She said she was perilously close to screaming at him, "do I have to rip all the skin off your back to get you to show some damn spine?!"

I then compared him to the Screamapillar. This was an endangered species of caterpillar which moved into a decorative fountain Homer had given Marge so she could have a calm place. It screamed whenever it felt...pretty much anything, and the instructions the EPA gave them about it said, "without constant reassurance, it will die." We all agreed that was a funny and apt analogy.

It's a damn shame, I think. Myke's the kind of person I would have hung out with in high school for crazy-idea-discussion purposes and then have that natural contact-break of going away to college. And as I have often been heard to say, he is capable of taking advice and learning new behaviors. Some things, however, can't be addressed by advice-giving. Some lightbulbs you've got to screw in yourself, and first you have to realize (without assistance!) that the room is dark.

And it's not like he did anything terrible to make me not approve of him anymore. Just emotional math, really. Whether he's up or down, you always come away from contact with him with less emotional energy than you had when you arrived. (Kind of like Dad. Except Dad has an excuse; he spawned me, he gets more leeway.)