Vietnamese Student Wilkie: "I do nothing."
Cronauer: "Come on Wilkie, It's cursing class. You're getting pissed off. What would you do?"
Vietnamese Student Wilkie: "I just remain reticent."
Cronauer: "Okay, she goes in the kitchen, she gets a knife, she starts stabbing you. Ste's stabbing you. She's putting forks in you. She's got spoons in your eyes, Wilk. They're starting to cut you, putting spoons in your eyes. What would you do, Wilk? What would you do?"
Vietnamese Student Wilkie: "I'm waiting to die."
--Dialogue from the film "Good Morning, Vietnam!"
This scene scripted above is a relatively short one, and quite "throw-away" to the overall plot of the movie, but I suspect it was kept in to somewhat showcase, as I'm sure many lines of dialogue did, the improv talents of Robin Williams. Whether it was read precisely as scripted by the screenwriters or wholly made-up, or somewhere in between, it's brilliant.
It's odd what people take away from something like a movie. For me, this bit of dialogue was the most memorable.
I often contemplated the mindset of a Wilkie-like personality with utter incomprehensibility when I was younger. I mean, despite being a benign and peace-loving Buddhist, how could someone be so complacent to one's own existence to truly be honest when saying "I'm waiting to die." when describing one's thoughts in a situation that most people would feel a dire need to defend one's self?
It's kinda like the time, way back when I was about 20 years old or so, when a middle-aged woman who was a fellow student in one of my classes in community college remarked matter-of-factly that she felt close to wanting to kill herself at times.
Never when I was a young man did I ever, and I mean EVER contemplate suicide. Even now, it's a concept totally foreign to my way of thinking.
Maybe because I'm an atheist and I think there's nothing after death.
Maybe because I'm an illogical optimist and feel that it will always, given time and patience, get better.
Maybe because I'm an alcoholic and I dull my expectations out of life and just live for the next buzz.
But I'm not a young man anymore. And my thoughts are not only deeper, but sometimes darker.
And the reality of our times makes things no better...
Innocent movie-goers gunned down by a crazed man. Innocent Sikhs gunned down while in the sanctuary of their place of worship.
And just earlier today, a mother who decapitates her own baby, puts it's head in the freezer then stabs herself to death.
Why do I bother to read the news?
It makes me want to be like the Wilkie character and just lie down and...
Wait to die.