A person or situation can be defined by what it is not. Note the emphasis on the negative in the following:
I was a war baby. Born in 1944. Which means I am not a baby boomer and therefore do not count. Products are not designed, neighborhoods are not gentrified, and fish are not blackened for my benefit. Presidential candidates do not choose running mates with me in mind. Time magazine does not care what I think. And there's no television show called "Fortysomething."
-Linda Ellerbee
My reasons for running, unlike those of the vast majority of the nation's twenty million joggers, have nothing to do with toning my body or nurturing my cardiovascular system.
I do not run to build self-confidence, reduce anxiety, overcome depression, combat insomnia, or enhance my creativity.
I do not run in search of God, existential truth, nonstop fornication, Coleridgian highs or Wordsworthian intimations of immortality.
I do not even run because it is my dream to be interviewed on the all-sports cable channel. I run--to put it as straightforwardly as I can--so that I can eat more.
-Mike Vare
On Fred Astaire: ..."As the years went on, I found something else about him that I admired tremendously. It was that I knew very little about him. I didn't read about his love life or about him punching someone in a nightclub. I didn't read about him storming off a set, feuding with the director, fighting with the press, or babbling about what he like to eat, what he like to drink, snort, or smoke. He did his work, went home, closed the door, and said, 'That's it world. You get my performance. The rest belongs to me.'"
-Mike Royko
Write a paragraph trying one of the following:
- Compare your own status with that of the members of some group to which you do not belong. (Ellerbee)
- Contrast the common motivations for pursuing and activity with your motivations. (Vare)
- Consider a person who behaves differently from others who do the same job. (Royko)
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