You can count me out, I said. I am not doing it. No. I left this years ago. I have a life now, I told them. No more of this stuff for me- I'm out now.
Of course, they pleaded. They always do. But I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders in movements perfected over the years. Please, please, please! We'll give you anything you want.
Never any creativity, really. It was all the same thing. They were small. They wanted to be big. How did their little prods affect me? They were merely molehills aspiring to be mountains, and someday if they were lucky they might convince themselves they were- or realize their true worth. Me, I was the latter, and made no pretense of it. I could preach that to crowds if I wanted, as an inspirational speaker. That's not my thing, though. Really. I enjoy, most of all, refusing them, making occasional media statements so the world doesn't forget me. That can happen easily enough, I know. I've seen it happen to the biggest and best. I know I'm better than them, smarter.
Then what do you do nowadays? they say in the end, despairing of all hope. It'll barely take any time- really....
Oh, they all have such big ideas, such big dreams. How I enjoy quashing them, lulling them into a false sense of equality and then destroying it. No molehills for me. I know I'm a mountain.