Of social incorrectness and freewheelin

I was 12 when I began to make a list of thousand and one things to do before I die.
The list had things ranging from the overly ambitious (plant an Indian flag on the Moon) to the interesting (own a horse) to the pretentious (sip espresso in a Parisian cafe).

But nowhere in the list was marriage, taxes or life insurance.

When you're 12 and you're clueless, its possibly cute.
When you're 21 and you are still rolling along in a barrel, you're just setting yourself up for a reality checkmate.

The realization came in a particularly stifling drawing room conversation yesterday.
It was a large get together where everybody had only a dim awareness of everybody else and the hapless hosts went about introducing strangers hoping for that life-saving remark "oh you knew Mr. X too? It's a small world!"so that they could move on to a bunch of other people sipping their drinks awkwardly next to the bar.

I was introduced to a surgeon from the UK, a middle aged bachelor with an insufferable arrogance about him which was evident in the way he handled his introduction. The hostess left sooner than she should have leaving me facing him and him looking around the room for someone more interesting, and obviously a great deal older.

I am not good with rude people. I persist in polite conversation with them, quietly suffering their slights of etiquette till I'm whisked away by somebody else.

So I stood there and made enquiries about surgery, and how he found the UK and some boring neutral current affairs. It was then that he enquired about what I would like to do after i graduate. Thats when I made a fatal flaw - maybe it was because he was a stranger, who didn't give a damn anyway, I told him my real plans.

"I plan to travel and to write."

He chuckled derisively. "Write?," he repeated impolitely, "about what?"

Now understand, that this IS what I want to do but I am also aware that it is highly impractical.
There is a 95.4% chance that I'll end up like the lot of them - married with a job and two kids, where the career highlight of the month would be the publishing of some research paper founded on dubious data, and the personal highlight would be discovering that my kids are not doing drugs.
But I can't accept that fate at 21.

"About anything. I prefer short stories actually."

"Oh you do, do you? Ever written any?"

"Sure"

"Ever published?"

"Not in the exact sense of the word"

"How many senses of the word are there?"

He was quite haughty, so I decided to shut up, but he had apparently warmed to the idea of making me squirm.

"So, where does the traveling fit in?"

"I want to travel, and see the world."

"Ah yes, backpacking across Europe, what an original idea. You plan to do it alone? Where are you going to stay? In crabby motels, where a single, young woman with money would blend right in? And where are you going to get the money? Oh wait, the stories, right?"

By now, I was desperate to get away.

"But tell me, and I really want to understand this, if thats what you wanted to do, why waste five and a half years of your life studying, of all things, medicine?"

"Its a useful education."

"Of course it is, but tell me what are you really qualified to treat- a cough and a cold?"

Even an ultra-civil person like me should have snapped by now. I have replayed this instant many times since then, I have thought of a million witty retorts, I have even imagined throwing my glass of ice lime soda in his face, but what happened was this.

The hostess finally caught my eye, came over and leaning on my shoulder, smiled at the monster and said, "I hope you've given her some good career advice. She's a very smart girl."

"Evidently so, one of a kind I would say." He replied, his voice bathed in sarcasm.

There are three points to this narration (where I may have liberally paraphrased)-

One, the venting.

The other two are lessons.

Lesson one- You know the saying, a good answer is what you think of later? Well, I need to work on my timing.

Lesson two- The realization that I am rolling around in a barrel. If I'm not careful, I'll land myself right in the middle of the Bell Curve and end up as a hard-boiled cynic posing as a realist.