Hey, I just read through this whole thread, and if you'll walk with me, I promise I'm going somewhere here:
The Pokemon kid. Watched the clip, and basically had no idea why it was funny, dorky, or otherwise worth watching. I wasn't being judgemental of people who laugh at kids for being pathetic. See, I work at a theatre school. The kids there are twice as dorky, annoying and are especially loud because they've gotten vocal training. And I laugh at them all. the. fuck*ng. time.
So, I ran into an old friend yesterday. A friend I had spent my early teens through early 20's with. The formative years. It had been around five years since we had last seen each other, and we had lost touch because we had lost touch, no fall out - just time and life. There was still a lot of love and warmth between us - it was a joyful moment to see him again after so long. I had been talking to my SO about this friend only a few days before, he had been on my mind, and then I was walking around this tourist mall near the theatre on a break, and there he was. He said he had had a dream about me a few days ago also. We had somehow conjured each other back into our lives.
We talked, and it was a little uncomfortable because since we had last seen each other, I had graduated from university, excelled in my field, built a significant life for myself, etc., while he had dropped out of university and worked at the same bar for all the years since I had seen him. A coworker of mine who also knew him came by for a second and my old friend told the coworker, "I just work at a bar." And I really hated hearing that. For this old friend of mine, acting came incredibly naturally, and he was deeply, deeply talented - far, far beyond me when it came to his abilities, skill and potential - and yet he had never followed through. And this was so hard to accept because he was so good.
We ended up in the lobby of the theatre where I work, and there was a large group of young teens there, about the age of when he and I had met, and they were running around and being loud annoying teenagers, so our conversation turned to them, and we reminisced about how hard it is being that age, and he said he wanted to tell them that "it doesn't get any better," and I talked about how as you get older, things don't get easier, but there are also these moments of simple joy, that have nothing to do with all the trappings of the sort of successes that are painted for you through learning institutions.
Jump to later that day, I'm sitting at my desk, and my coworker is sitting at hers and we're both staring off into space, and we catch each other staring, and laugh. I tell her about running into my friend, and how he had been the most talented, and how everyone including me had been so disappointed to see him not follow through with the whole theatre thing. But then I thought out loud about how I had been really excellent at my bank job, but that didn't mean I was meant to be a banker, and that's when it hit me that my happiness is not someone else's' happiness. My top job isn't on the top job list. Success is deeply personal, it's individual.
See, the Pokemon kid, he's got all his Pokemon shit, and he's got a collection and he's so proud of it that he's set up a camera and he's rocking out about it. And that's his success. And what he defines as success will change as he grows up, but right in the moment, he's rocking out. And I could laugh at it, but that makes no sense. And some business guy could look at how much I made last year, and he would laugh, and I could be a punchline to some wall street joke. But so what? I'm rocking out. And my old buddy, someone could laugh at him and say he's wasted five years of his life working at a bar, but fuck them, he's rocking out. Do you want to drop out of school, spend your life under the hood of a car, go to grad school? Whatever the fuck it it, fuck the rest of the world - you are rocking out.
Learn from the Pokemon kid people. The Pokemon kid is about education.
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Topic: Pokemon Kid (Read 17049 times)