when stephen was born he had two parents - lee and alex.
stephen liked lee but he did not like alex.
he had two brothers - donald and joe - and two sisters - carla and nancy.
stephen liked joe and carla but he did not like donald and nancy.
the family had a dog named spot and a cat named fluff.
stephen liked spot but did not care for fluff.
you begin to get the picture.
when stephen went to day care the day care center was operated by two women named betty and shirley, and he liked betty but not shirley.
there were ten other children in the day care center besides stephen and his sister carla.
stephen liked albert, ian, winnie, cleveland, and beanie, bur he did not like woodrow, franklin, angela, malcolm or lee.
stephen was a quiet and unobtrusive child, not particularly good looking or ugly, and nobody much noticed or cared what he thought about anything.
his habits of thought applied not just to people and animals but to things, and to cultural artifacts.
he liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but not peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, potato chips but not pretzels, coffee but not tea, bagels but not doughnuts, cheeeburgers but not hot dogs, blue but not red, green but not purple, star trek but not star wars, zombies but not vampires, football but not basketball…
he always wore a baseball cap straight on his head, never backward.
he progressed through the process of acclimatization to cilvilization without incident.
when he graduated from state college he got an entry level job doing indescribable things at a large corporation.
one sunny afternoon stephen was given a performance and personality review by a human resources technician named dawn.
dawn had a video of stephen interacting with his fellow employees at the annual company picnic.
i notice that you do not mingle with all the other employees, dawn said to stephen. what is the meaning of this? is there some sort of unconscious bias operating here? i notice that you never speak to walter, who is a ukrainian-american, or to claudette, who is a certified priestess of the church of the remnant. are you prejudiced against ukranian-americans, or against the members of the church of the remnant?
not at all, stephen replied, it is just that i can not be expected to like everybody,
oh, and why is that? dawn retorted sharply. this is an enlightened all-welcoming company, and we expect our employees to be all-welcoming too.
but i can only like one half of anything, stephen replied plaintively. it is just the way i was born and have always been.
stephen went on to explain to dawn, as best he could, the workings of his brain, and dawn listened with growing attentiveness.
all this is very interesting, dawn said when stephen had finished. as you see, i work here as a human resources technician during the day, but in my free time i am pursuing a degree in representational interactive sociology, and your case seems to me an interesting one, which might shed no small light on the mysteries of human behavior. i would like to interview you for a possible project which might revolutionize the fields of sociology and psychology. together we can make a great advance in human knowledge. would you be interested in that?
sure, stephen replied, i have nothing better to do.
all right then, how about next wednesday?
stephen and dawn agreed to meet after work on the following wednesday.
but on wednesday something came up in dawn’s personal life, and she called stephen and they agreed to meet on the next monday evening.
with his meeting with dawn cancelled, stephen decided to go for a walk in the park. he was never seen again, and so the hoped for advance in human knowledge was not made.
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