Chapter 3

If the reader was hoping to find out what happened next, too bad. Enough of the episode has been conveyed to fulfill its purpose, which was to provide an illustrative, graphic example of Mr. Thomas Woerth's penchant for completely misreading people and/or situations. Now, the critic might say here that Little Thomas made a mistake that any five-year-old child could have made, but the problem is, when Little Thomas started becoming Big Thomas, these kinds of "mistakes" did not disappear. In fact, they began to occur with increasing regularity, as he came into contact with more and more people. It is this first misunderstanding, however, that proved to be a somewhat pivotal moment in Mr. Thomas Woerth's characterization, because it was from that point forward that he developed the most oddly peculiar speech impediment to ever befall a human being. He could not help speaking with extreme pompousness and verbosity, while at the same time, he completely lacked the requisite eloquence and articulation for his speech to actually make sense. This may not sound like much of a speech impediment at first, but let it be clear that this trait severely impaired Mr. Woerth.

Think of Mr. Woerth's deficiency as the exact opposite of the much more common form of social impairment, especially on college campuses all around the nation: being drunk. Mr. Woerth never consumed a single drop of alcohol in his entire life, and really, his biggest problem was his complete and total self-consciousness and self-awareness. The opposite social impairment, of course, would be being drunk, i.e., being completely self-oblivious/self-indifferent/self-Fuggit-I-don't-give-a-shit-anymore-because-I-am-so-fucking-confused-right-now-bro. This happened almost every other day to Thomas Woerth's very best friend in the entire world, Jim Cluffe.

[WARNING: TONE & STYLE SHIFTS APPROACHING]

As the author, I made Jim Cluffe Thomas Woerth's best friend to act as a foil, creating a dichotomy that more emphatically highlights Woerth's peculiar qualities as a human being, because there's really no other rational reason why they ended up best friends. I controlled their worlds after all, and could make them do whatever I wanted them to do. As Creator, I decided to bring opposites together, because that's just how I was told it works.

Look: Jim Cluffe vomited on Thomas Woerth's shirt one night at a party. Thomas didn't know what to do. He tried apologizing for being in the way of the vomit. Jim vomited again. That was how they became the best of friends. That should be good enough for you.

Influences: Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)