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Chicken Soup for the antisocial soul
11-11-05
by Shaw

You've seen it in the bookstore. It's in the same aisle as The Purpose-Driven Life, Life's Little Instruction Book, The Idiot's Guide to Happiness, and Self-Castration for Dummies. It's the ultimate self-improvement tract: a collection of stories so neutered and contrived that they sound like one of Jerry Springer's final thoughts. It's the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. As far as I can tell there are now like 200 of these things, and their common authors have probably made a few million dollars each on these fluffed up books filled with "real" stories, each not-so-carefully lifted from the plotline of an ABC Afterschool special. There's Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Unemployed Dock Worker's Soul, and some even more specifically titled ones.

Today DeadlyHippos.com is proud to present the first book in the series which you can actually use. It isn't in print yet, but as an exclusive for our readers, we do have a copy of the cover for you to see.

As you can see by the bottom, the book is too long to reproduce in its entirety in the space for one column, so starting today and from time to time in the future, we will give you a look inside the cover at the stories submitted by real people. Of course, as is always the case with the Chicken Soup series titles, even though the stories were submitted by real people and the only actual work we did was make a table of contents, all of the proceeds will go directly to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series editor and ChickSoul inc. CEO, M. B. Ezler. Obviously.

The first selection:

Chapter 6: Antisocial v. Asocial

Michael, age 28

All my life I have been insisting I was antisocial. I had tons of friends in school, and I have always been pretty consistently dating, but I knew that deep down in my mind, I just felt like I was antisocial. My friends just didn't get it--they would always say stuff like, "Mike, you're not antisocial! Look at how many friends you have! You're such a great guy!"

I always responded the same way: "But I hate all of you."

I'm not sure why, but they always laughed. Idiots.

It took a brief trip to the dictionary for me to finally reconcile my feelings with the truth: you see, my friends thought that, just because I was always around other people and had friends, I couldn't possibly embody being antisocial. As it turns out, they were just confused:

antisocial:
1 : averse to the society of others : UNSOCIABLE
2 : hostile or harmful to organized society; especially : being or marked by behavior deviating sharply from the social norm

asocial
: not social: as rejecting or lacking the capacity for social interaction

So really, being antisocial is a feeling of spite and hatred toward society: it's an unchangeable condition intrinsic to one's personality, while a person who purposefully avoids society is described more appropriately as asocial. As you can see, the unenlightened people who knew me were clearly unaware that a person can be both social and antisocial at the same time: just because you don't like something doesn't mean you can't participate in it!

Ever since the day I looked up those words in the dictionary, my life has been so much better. I am now able to spend time with my friends and family guilt-free, knowing that I am not betraying the precepts of antisociety. You see, what I realized is that, even though I like spending time with people and interacting with them, I hate everyone. That's right, even myself.

And definitely you.

I hope you have enjoyed this selection. Next time, we will preview the Introduction to this very special book, as well as take a peek at an inspirational story that comes later in the book, Chapter 55: Clubbing Baby Seals, by Katelyn (age 8).

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