The anti-Socrates

 The anti-Socrates                                                                              

When we are alone, we crave company, and when we have company,
we wish to be alone, as if a meal that made us sick before will now
cure us. – Uncle Albert

It seems to be a matter of pride: Mr. Ball – “Call me Hum.” – has “never worked a day in my life.” Rather, he’s “never been paid for a day’s work.” He has “never taken a job from anyone that needed one more” than he has. “Yes, that’s the best way to put it.” And no one ever needed one less than he did.

     And that’s the frustrating end of the conversation. He doesn’t wait for me to ask what he has done instead, how he has filled up the 2,000+ hours the rest of us work in a year. Wrinkling his nose, at the coffee not at me, I hope, he pads quietly out of the kitchen, leaving me to wonder what to do with my – yes, it is shitty – coffee.

This is the way philosophy tends to work for me. Call Hum Ball the anti-Socrates: He raises the question but doesn’t stay around for any discussion of it.

03.31.16

Pick up the story from its beginning here.