I usually am considered thick and more often than not, slow. I am not usually referred to in intellectual conversations but I do find myself interspersed in anecdotes. I have people leaning on me all the time and but my co-dependency isn’t quite tolerated. I don’t claim to have memories but I have passersby. Often, what you would recognize me by would be the chewing gum stuck on my underside. I am a bench. I am a bench and I am not going to go through a metamorphosis through this piece nor am I looking to give a discourse, I am plainly here to discuss the types of acquaintances I have encountered in my time here. 

I have always been looked down upon, like me; all the other benches that were placed in the last row were ‘off their hinge’. If there was ever a competition, the first benches would always claim the prize for having the most attentive, judicious ‘seat bearers’. I was always envious. The ‘seat bearers’ I encountered weren’t merely faces, they were personalities some happy, some sad, some deeply troubled and some deeply troubling. I was always envious but I always had more than a face, I got to see more than a single dimension, but don’t get me wrong, I am still envious, life would have been much simpler, more consistent.

My seat bearers never really had an agenda, now that I think of it. They were always like the hippie subculture children who went with the flow, came late for engagements and were unceremoniously ushered down the aisle where I came to know them for who they really were. I met the sharpest minds in my time, these outcasts from the geometric area of academic focus, they learnt to fool the most trained eye and from what I hear there is a lot of scope for that sort of skill in what people call management. In my time, I met the free spirits, the ones who thought it was cruel to write on paper and wrote on me instead and when forced, they wrote on answer papers what they wrote on me; they went on to become politicians and activists. I met the hungry ones, with the determined jaw and unfaultable appetite; they went on to become accountants and marketing gurus. I met the type who shared every bit of information except the bit that had any sort of evidential truth; they went on to become advertisers and television junkies. I met the ones who gave advice on love, despair, family, lust and the system; they went on to become consultants and investment bankers. I met the ones who did nothing and at the end of it delegated their work to the seat bearers way upfront, they went on to become CEOs and CFOs. 

I don’t have a mantra on success, backbencher or otherwise. Seasoned over time, I have come to learn that every backbencher is fastidious, every backbencher is against a norm, and every backbencher thinks that he is the only one. Successful in life, I can’t say, but these characteristics definitely make the backbenchers successful managers.

Yours truly,

A back bench