Congratulations on Reading Ayn Rand for the First Time!

Today you’re a fifteen year old girl and you’re going to read Ayn Rand for the first time.

You’ll be sitting in bed with a dog eared copy of The Fountainhead that your aunt, the one who was never married and doesn’t “believe in love,” even though she does almost nothing but read romance novels, lent you. You’ll be pretty bored for the first few dozen pages, up until you get to the first sex scene.

“Oh shit,” you’ll mumble to yourself, unbuttoning your pants and cramming your hand in there as you continue reading. “Oh fuck.”

When you finish you’ll end up passing out, partly from your exertions and partly because of how dense and turgid the prose is. You’ll sleep for a good hour or two before your parent’s cries of “dinner” wake you and you wash your hands before tromping downstairs to sit at the table and look at them glumly. They’ll sense that something is wrong, but they won’t know just what it is until you look at the two of them, open your mouth and ask:

“Have either of you ever read Ayn Rand before?”

The table will immediately go still. Your father will stop chewing and your mother will put down her utensils and look at you with the same expression she gave you when you asked to go on birth control.

“Who told you about her? Aunt Cheryl?” she’ll ask. She’ll sound a little disappointed and very, very tired, as if she’s already done with the discussion she knows the two of you are going to have.

“Kinda. I’ve been reading some of her stuff and it’s kinda neat. Some of it makes a lot of sense.”

At this point your father will flip over the table and just start screaming. He’ll punch the air wildly while his voice pitches up and down, as if he could shout over what you just said and remove it from his memory. Your mother will be slightly more reasonable, shouting to contend with your father’s voice.

“She’s not really a role model. It’s good that you’re reading and making your own choices, but remember. She was a crazy bitch who never had a real friend and is responsible for influencing the worldviews of the many of the people who are directly responsible for the current global financial crisis.” She’ll motion for your father to stop shouting, but he’ll have entered some sort of fugue state that makes communication with him difficult at best, so your mom will just keep on shouting over him. “We’re also positive that she’s the reason your Aunt Cheryl is still single.”

You’ll get up from your chair at this point, which you were still sitting in even though the table was totally upended right in front of you a few minutes earlier, and run to your room weeping. You’ll curl up in bed again and start thumbing through pages, lazily playing with yourself until the combination of boredom with the text and disappointment with your parents makes you fall asleep.

Congratulations on Reading Ayn Rand for the First Time!