One Above All

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

I guess the "est" that I was thinking of was more of the kind you could prove. Like given some mondo computer and spy tools or something I could figure out who the tallest man was. But prettiest, talented, feisty... that's subjective.

I like the 'good enough' mantra though. That works for me. Most of the time.

Oh, I do know what you meant. I just took a further leap into subjective comparisons because things like "craziest Roman Emperor" and "nerdiest Star Wars nerd" tend to interest or amuse me more than the "ests" that can actually be determined/quantified, etc. Heh.

But I do think it would be cool to know wh’s fastest at doing complicated long-division problems. And I'd certainly like to see the tallest person in the world. I went to a freak show during a Santa Sangre festival in NYC. Boasted of having the tiniest woman in the world. She was awfully tiny, all dressed up in a tiny pink ruffled dress and sitting (I’m pretty sure she couldn’t stand on her own) on a tiny pink couch. Didn’t seem to know understand English and I worried that she’d been enslaved. But who do you call? Anyway, I paid a dollar to see her and all I wanted to do was cry, tuck her under my arm, and rescue her, even though I couldn’t be certain that she wasn’t happy, or that her life in the “carnival” wasn’t better than what she had going on at home. I felt guilty for paying that $1, a dollar I wasn’t even sure she’d ever see.

But at least I can boast that I saw the tiniest woman, even if it’s not true.