Busybodies are annoying. I mean, what is more teeth-grindingly, hackle-raisingly aggravating than someone sticking their twitchy nose into your business? What is? That’s right: nothing is. Except maybe a self-righteous genius who thinks by dint of his superior whatever, he has the right and obligation to keep you from straying off the path. Doesn’t matter to him if you aren’t even on the same road; oh no, there is but one way, and one way only. Fricking know-it-all.

Now I am not by nature a violent fellow. Live and let live is a pretty damn good motto. I rarely have the urge to bite off a leg or wipe out entire towns by flooding the streets, but I have to tell you, a person can be pushed too far. and it’s usually the damn busybodies that do it.

I mean, people usually have a plan. Sure, sure, sometimes people jump off a bridge at the spur of the moment or reach and plant a big smooch on the lips of the CEO just because, but generally people have already come up with the idea and at least mulled it over a bit before committing to frenching the boss. And if a guys wants to do something that seems to be a bit, well, on the stupid side, then let him have at ‘er, I say. Live and let live.

Really it;s just an extension of cogito ergo sum: I cog’d already, so just let me sum… I don’t need, or want, your help. And if I find myself keeping the sun off some pompous English twat, then it’s just my bad luck, ain’t it.

But that’s not good enough for some ‘people’. Nope, they got to go out of their way to spell out the errors of your ways, all in some vain hope that they can ‘improve’ the world or some such asinine fecal matter as that.

And just try telling them to mind their own business. It doesn’t work. Because, you see, they really believe your business is their business. And if they are smart enough (my aforementioned self-righteous genius springs to mind) they will chew off your ear with a bunch of indisputable facts and convoluted and twisty logic that just proves their point, thank you very much and please now desist from that self-destructive behaviour before someone gets hurt, pat, pat pat.

Oh, someone is going to get hurt and it isn’t going to be those of us who think self-determinism is more than a six-syllable word meaning pushover. I have a plan for that egotistical, overgrown chinchilla that will make him finally realize the world is not populated with gun-toting Elmer Fudds for him to bamboozle.

The plan? Nope, not telling. We’ll all just wait and see, shall we?

—excerpt from The Beaver Monologues; published 2013