My daughter (aged 9) just asked me:
If you could pick one person, who would you choose to never have been born?
Not Zeppo Marx
Not Vivaldi
Not Herman Melville
Not my Dad
Not David W. McFadden
Not Helen of Troy
Not my Grade 9 math teacher
Not Henry the Hamster who climbed the blue stairs when I was 8
Not John Coltrane
Not Karl or Groucho Marx
Not my mother or the mother of Anton Webern
Not my wife, children, cousins
Not Charles Manson and Jim Jones
Not Paul Bernardo
Not George W. Bush
Not Nadine Gordimer or Cyndi Lauper
Not Brian Marks, my childhood friend
Not Nelson Mandela and Maurice Rocket Richard
Not Stalin, Richard Strauss, Barbara Guest, or Conrad Black
Not Bobby Fisher
Not David the Grade 10 student who noticed that the risers my choir were standing on were about to fall
Not Hildegaard von Bingen or Lindsay Lohan
Not Bach
Not Gould
Not the stylist at First Choice Haircutters
Not Genghis Khan
Not Checkers the Clown
* * *
Who would you pick?
3 comments:
"First of all, I'll make a tour of the whole world, giving exhibitions. I'll charge unprecedented prices. I'll set new standards. I'll make them pay thousands. Then I'll come home on a luxury liner. First-class. I'll have a tuxedo made for me in England to wear to dinner. When I come home I'll write a couple chess books and start to reorganize the whole game. I'll have my own club. The Bobby Fischer ... uh, the Robert J. Fischer Chess Club. It'll be class. Tournaments in full dress. No bums in there. You're gonna have to be over eighteen to get in, unless like you have special permission because you have like special talent. It'll be in a part of the city that's still decent, like the Upper East Side. And I'll hold big international tournaments in my club with big cash prizes. And I'm going to kick all the millionaires out of chess unless they kick in more money. Then I'll buy a car so I don't have to take the subway any more. That subway makes me sick. It'll be a Mercedes-Benz. Better, a Rolls Royce, one of those fifty-thousand-dollar custom jobs, made to my own measure. Maybe I'll buy one of those jets they advertise for businessmen. And a yacht. Flynn had a yacht. Then I'll have some more suits made. I'd like to be one of the Ten Best-dressed Men. That would really be something. I read that Duke Snyder made the list. Then I'll build me a house. I don't know where but it won't be in Greenwich Village. They're all dirty, filthy animals down there - lower than cats and dogs. Maybe I'll build it in Hong Kong. Everybody who's been there says it's great. Art Linkletter said so on the radio. And they've got suits there, beauties, for only twenty dollars. Or maybe I'll build it in Beverly Hills. The people there are sort of square, but like the climate is nice and it's close to Vegas, Mexico, Hawaii, and those places. I got strong ideas about my house. I'm going to hire the best architect and have him build it in the shape of a rook. Yeah, that's for me. Class. Spiral staircases, parapets, everything. I want to live the rest of my life in a house built exactly like a rook"(Bobby Fischer)...read more
Mao Zedong, the most prolific mass murderer in recorded history.
my daughter said her answer would be Hitler. There are sadly too many other people we might nominate in addition to him and Mao. And not just people responsible for genocides.
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