Today I found Óscar taking care of his front yard. We said hello effusively, and I got closer. Would you like some potato fries? Sure! Why don’t you bring it and we have lunch here? He signalled towards his house. I hesitated, for sure I didn’t want to go inside.

Let’s better have lunch here, I said. He hid his face as to pretend to hide his heart being broken, but I just waved it away, and I went home to cook. I came back with a large container for him, and a smaller one for myself. I wanted to bring the conversation to shared experience, so I spoke about the roosters.

I spoke about the one he named elvis. I saw him drinking water like crazy and then he dropped dead. It was probably a fever. He protested “no no no it was because they had such a tight space, I have a friend who has a ranch, and he only cages fighting roosters. The train of thought seemed to take him through the misgivings he has with my mother, and I had to simply put a stop on it.

Look Óscar, I’ll say this to you because this is the cause of all your misfortune: you critisize the people who help you. You do not critisize the people who do not help you. Thus, as your neighbor, I prefer not to help you. He was alarmed that I was offended, and tried to reassure me he didn’t mean wrong, “I know you don’t mean wrong Oscar, but the fact is that you are critisizing my mother, and I just brought you lunch. Don’t you think it’s rude?”

And he explained that he had a friend who was his therapist, and he described a bit of the process: “Nobody likes me, I critisize too much. Why do you think you critisize? I don’t know. Well, how were your parents, oh they critisized everything, and that is why I am like I am, a disgrace to the world.

You are not a disgrace to the world Oscar. You are perfect just as you are. You should… You don’t have to do anything, just know that the reason why you are so lonely is that you are hostile to everybody. Again he went through the deterministic mindset, “I have an instinct to do it, it comes naturally”. I was actually suprised at his level of insight, given his low level of intelligence.

“Look, you are like that because of your parents. No doubt. But your parents are no longer here, you are free to become who you want to become, look at it that way. And he demurred into the ten thousand excuses about why he can’t help critisizing other people.

Let’s change subjects, he pleaded.

Well, if you could get a ticket anywhere in the world, where would you get it? Egypt. Oh, that’s surprising, why Egypt? The piramids? No. Fishing in the Nile? That, I may. But I’m going to investigate on the issue of the curse of Ramses, becuase they say that anyone who tries to steal from him…

And so the topic went into his fantasies about exploring the world. It was very instructive speaking with Óscar today.