Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

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Like anyone, I've seen those movies about army barracks life where evil drill sergeants, with cobra
venom for spinal fluid, sentence privates to six years of latrine duty for an improperly folded bedsheet
corner. But unlike most people, I have to leave the theater or switch the channel because it reminds me of
my life as a child.
You're nothing, you hear me? Nothing. You're not even visible to God. You're not even visible to the
devil. You are zero.
Here's another thought from the mind and mouth of Reg: You are a wretch. You are a monster and
you are weak and you will be passed over in the great accounting. As can be clearly seen, my
father's primary tactic was to nullify my existence. Maybe today's banking adventure with zeroes stems
from that.
Kent, however, was never nothing. At the very least, he was always expected to join my father's
insurance firm after college - which he did - get married to a suitable girl - which he did - and lead a
proud and righteous life - which he did, until exactly one year ago, when a teenager in a Toyota Celica
turned him into a human casserole up by the Exit 5 off-ramp near Caulfeild.
I miss Kent, but God, I wish he and I had been genuinely close as opposed to
Don't-they-look-nice-together-in-the-airbrushed-family-portrait close. He was always so bloody
organized, and his efforts at all activities always made my own efforts pale. Kent was also righteous; he
was sent home from school in sixth grade for speaking up against Easter egg hunts (pagan; trivializes
God; symbols of fertility that secretly promote lust). Granted, lust is purely theoretical in grade six, but he
knew how to spin things the Alive! way. He was a born politician.
Dad left scorch marks behind him as he jetted off to the school's offices that pre-Easter afternoon, of
course to take Kent's side. Through bullying and threat of litigation (he was an imposing, hawklike man),
he was able to get Easter egg making banned in Kent's classroom. The school caved simply because they
wanted a demented nutcase out of their way. That night at dinner, there was extra praying, and Kent and
Dad discussed Easter egg paganism in detail, way too far over my head. As for my mother, she might as
well have been watching the blue-white snows of Channel 1.
Here's another thought, this one about Reg: when I was maybe twelve, I got caught plundering the
neighbors' raspberry patch. Talk about sin. For the weeks that followed, my father pointedly pretended I
didn't exist. He'd bump into me in the hallway and say nothing, as if I were a chair. Kent the politician
always stayed utterly neutral during this sort of conflict.
The bonus of being invisible was that if I didn't exist, I also couldn't be punished. This played itself out
mostly at the dinner table. My mother (on her sixth glass of Riesling from the spigot of a two-liter
plastic-lined cardboard box) would ask how my woodwork assignment was going. I'd reply something
like, "Reasonably well, but you know what?"
"What?"
"There's this rumor going around the school right now."
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