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What kind am I?

Well, this should be obvious. I am the most common one. Banality of Evil, isn't it?

But I suppose this is misleading, while the things that make me, me are common, I, myself am not. I probably have I have circumstances that make me an unusual person. I didn't know this at first, I thought I was common in every way, but, you see, some realisations just come with time and that took me some time.

I am an upper middle class man, or a young man, if you prefer, son of the United Kingdom diplomat M. Sezinsky stationed in Porto Alegre, a fairly large city in the very south of Brazil. And yes, I am Jewish.

Having studied in a private Jewish school, I was certain I was average. Being average there gave me this impression and I just never questioned it. My father is not the richest person there, not by far, but he is not the poorest either. There are some less fortunate people in the school too (or at least so I thought), this is also a probably a common school, I mean, schools can either be religious or not (so maybe 50% chance here - relax, maths was never my strongest subject), and Judaism IS a religion, so there is maybe an equal chance there? And I was certainly not rich. Special people are rich.

My friend, whose father gave him a Ferrari for his 16th birthday (he can't even legally drive yet, I didn't really understand this), that guy is rich. I told my father this and he answered: "What's wrong with the Jag? I will let you drive it when you get your license, with me of course." My dad had a Jaguar XJ 120, an old person's car, of which he was very proud. But the car was already something like 20 years old, hardly a cool looking auto-mobile.

But I digress. So as it turns out everything I thought it was my doing, my own power, was very much a lie. Like, you think you are Superman, but turns out you are Holden Caulfield.

I remember complaining that we had no family around.

Growing up I had no cousins I could play with or that my parents were always at work and didn't pay attention to me, many things my classmates took for granted, but I neglected the things that I did have. Turns out it is not common to live in a house so big it has its own guest-house. Or that most people do not have multiple swimming pools, most people don't even have a single pool in their homes! What do they do in the summer, is what you are probably thinking, and I have to say, me too!

Jokes aside - I am not that clueless any more - I always had between 5 and 10 people in my house as hired help to take care of me. Gardener, nanny, cook, pool cleaner, aide, guards, a butler at some point and countless secretaries that had, amongst their many duties, making sure our house was in order, safe, clean, and that I was alive and well. Surely, a hug would be nice, but I guess I had other things.

The lovely Greek lady that used to help me pack my bag for school was also a diplomat and  granddaughter of the last grand vizier from the Ottoman empire, Ahmet Tevfik. The man that taught me literature in high-school was a famous published author. My physics professor was an international researcher and taught at a prestigious university and so on. And like that were all the staff at that school and my daily life. I had the most distilled knowledge money could buy, and still I turned out mediocre. Well above average, but only on paper. I can evaluate my skills and I know I am nothing special. I was only playing at the highest level I could because of all the special conditions I had.

You are probably wondering if the coldness I experienced had anything to do with it.

I mean, I don't know. Maybe. What do you learn from personal contact? Is there anything tangible, probably not. Surely my family was absent.

I learned well into adulthood that when I was a kid, my father lived 5 years straight back in the UK and I didn't notice.

Neglect. What is the name? The wire mother experiment? Can I even talk about that?

Okay, so monkeys, when given the choice between a furry comforting mother (it's a toy, a statue covered in artificial fur) or being fed by this metallic shaped wireframe milk-dispenser, they will choose the comforting mother. Even at the expense of food. So going hungry (and this is what I think the experiment is trying to prove) is not more important than physical affect.

Okay, even if it is the case. Is this the case for every monkey? And are humans and monkeys the same in this sense? If a monkey could understand that their mother monkey was in a meeting with other countries' statesmen and this is why they would arrive only very late at home, maybe the monkey would calm down. And then realise it is hungry and drink from the metal wire mother.

Or maybe I could have tried to make one of those secretaries or nannies into a mother or father figure of sorts. I never did. So is there something weird with me or my parents? The most likely answer is all of us.

But it is probably not that bad, right?