Silvio

Silvio

It never surprises me when I visit my friend Silvio, and he and I will get into a meaningless argument. The arguments usually begin when Silvio will throw down some challenge, and in establishing the rules, he offers one that he knows I will most definitely reject. That’s Silvio.

Silvio is something of an artist, and if one gets to meet him at his private museum, he’s usually wearing a smock, with a beret on his head. The cliched portrait of the devoted artist.

In the foyer of his private museum, one will find various examples of his work hanging on the walls, and some are for sale. He’s known to take the unplanned, candid snapshot sometimes, of museum visitors as they gaze at his art.

Vindication. It’s what he craves most; seeing it is essential.

Silvio uses a snapshot of me leaving his museum to goad me. He’ll show it whenever he’s losing an argument, as sort of an ad hominem attack. It does appear that I’m taking in Silvio’s wisdom, doesn’t it?

Of course, Silvio isn’t only an artist; he’s also a man who is very opinionated and will rarely give up ground in any debate he’s losing.

I’ll go out on a limb and suggest we’ve all encountered this type of debater, haven’t we? Well, maybe not one surprising us with secret photos he’s taken, but the weird type nonetheless. Surprise creates his openings.

Silvio painted the “Think That You Might Be Wrong” sign, months before getting the snapshot that looks like I’m reading it. An optical illusion; I was looking straight ahead. That doesn’t prevent him from trying to heckle me with that photo whenever he realizes he is losing a debate, and even though it is so immature, he will not stop.

We’ve always been best friends. Even though Silvio is obsessed with proving me wrong, he has failed so many times that even to him, it is becoming more of an inside joke than an argument. He’d never admit to it, but the twinkle in his eye gives him away.

I have known Silvio ever since I met him in the third grade, after his family moved into a house near ours. Throughout grade school, Silvio agreed with me all the time, at every opportunity. In Junior High school, our developing interests set us off in different directions; he turned to the arts, while I turned to technology.

For some reason that I’ve never been able to discover or understand, Silvio has absolutely no respect for technology. He hates it. I believe he thoroughly fears it. Well, he’s always been a bit of a wack job.

Maybe it’s his art friends and the way they view things, and Silvio’s whole shtick about proving me wrong is related to ideologies they support. He’s been around them for a very long time and perhaps they have him believing that art is more important than technology, and that technology should be totally destroyed.

_{Silvio © free-reign 2020}

Sentence order:
20, 27, 2, 28, 7, 24, 18, 1, 9, 12, 15, 11, 26, 17, 16, 4, 21, 8, 31, 5, 30, 14, 22, 13, 23, 19, 3, 6, 10, 25, 29

This is my entry to The 31 Sentence Contest Round 17-redo by Hive account@tristancarax. It is a contest based on creating a story with 31 sentences exactly in order, and each sentence has a set number of words to be written. For more information on joining the challenge see this post:

Thanks for reading!

Sources for images used in this post:

(Public Domain photos are from Wikimedia Commons)

_{Silvio Says “You’re Wrong”: Image by Prawny from Pixabay
Prompt Picture: Image by Hive account@tristancarax
Silvio: Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay}