September Q & A: Zach and Rich

We close out our September Q & A with one a little more free form, as Rich asks, “If you and I were erased from existence and replaced with Zach Huang and Richard Savage, what would they be like - and what implications for our friends and the world?”

An intriguing if bizarre question, and one that deserves careful scrutiny. While it’s a bit unclear, I’m assuming this is asking what would our lives have been like if we had grown up in each other’s families (and presumably races) rather than our own. Richard Savage would then grow up in a fairly liberal white family with an older and obnoxious sister in a quiet all-white town, while Zachary Huang would grow up in a mystery home and a mystery family in a mystery town with an unknown number of siblings. It strikes me that I am not the greatest possible data-seeker with my friends.

I’m curious as to how Rich Savage would survive the Pitman public school system: I was never really bullied, but I’m not sure if that’s because there wasn’t really a pattern of bullying at my school, or just because my fellow students were kind of afraid of me. So, since he presumably wouldn’t have been involved in such delightful childhood incidents like stabbing a kid in the head with a pencil in 8th grade, or choking a friend unconscious in the hallway senior year, he may have had to face bullies a bit more often than I did. It would probably be made up for though, as his interest in a legal career would almost certainly be better embraced by Mr. Savage, as would his love of ancient history (we both loved video games, so that’s a wash).

It’s a bit more of a mystery to me as to how Zach Huang’s life would be growing up, since I haven’t the slightest idea of what Rich’s childhood was like (we have far more important matters to discuss when we talk, like whether ancient Greece or ancient Rome was better), though I wager I can imagine a few changes in my life: without the father that I actually got, I’d probably have better spending habits than I do now, which would be a double-edged sword of ensuring that I would have a lot more money on hand at the expense of not having the totally amazing movie collection that I currently have. Granted, much like my other friends I doubt I’d know what I was missing (you should hear the foolish things some people have said about my collection being “excessive” or worse!), but that’s no excuse at all. With Asian parents I probably also wouldn’t have been able to try to go to college for theater instead of one I’d be able to make a living from, so there’s a good chance I’d currently have a degree that’s more helpful in getting a job.

Which brings us to college, and our subsequent romances. Rich has always struck me as being a bit more monogamous than me, though that may be somewhat more due to the women we’ve both wound up with. Regardless, he’d almost certainly have properly patched things up with my first girlfriend after the initial break-up (she had cheated on me with someone that dumped her almost immediately after she left me for him -- ah, young love), unlike how I reacted, which was the bad decision to sleep with her a few more times before breaking things off for good (I never claimed to be a saint, people). Hell, poor Rich might still be with her to this day, saddled with children before his time. Of course, Zach Huang would be very unlikely to have had such a lengthy relationship with real world Rich’s ex (I’m keeping the girl’s names out of this, obviously -- Zach Savage and Rich Huang may not be afraid of cyber stalkers, but that doesn’t mean we need to drag everyone else down with us), which probably would have made me actually fit in a bit better with the rest of our college friends, as they were all about relationship swapping and awkward avoidances throughout school, so dating and breaking up with Rich’s ex would be par for the course with all of us. And if Rich’s ex is reading this, I’m sorry dear. I do hope you’re feeling better after such a lousy birthday weekend, but this bird was meant to live uncaged!

It’s hard to say what changes this would all have on the world at large, mainly because neither of us has yet to do anything to affect the world, so I suppose changing our identities would have to have a greater effect on the world at large, because it could hardly have less of one. Still, only time will tell, because we are both still young men, and most of our chances to remake the world in our image still lie before us.

For that matter, while I’m going back to movie reviews tomorrow, I trust that the site’s future is still mostly ahead of it, and I hope that you’ll all stay tuned for that as well. I hope you’ve all enjoyed the occasionally grotesquely self-indulgent September Q & A, and please don’t stop visiting. I’ll cry if you do.