Twisting Toward Murder

The Big City

Part 10 of 28

All the characters are gathered for this perennial drama. They may have come from far away, even the ends of the earth. Or they may have come from right around here, the Big City. I’ll be direct and say that is where came from, right here in the Big City, because unless they’re missing several key chromosomes, there's very few characters like them back in the small town. Thank goodness, but now here I sit in the Big City, and this is what I’m surrounded with!? Right now there's a siren outside, maybe arson, maybe murder, could be mail fraud for all I know.

When I see a newborn baby, there’s something about that that gets me all sentimental, with a kind of warm feeling leading to optimism. Of course I know I won’t be around to change the child’s diapers and tend to cuts and bruises and steer that precious one straight down the primrose path. But in most cases, just being generous, he or she will turn out exactly like me, an honored member of society, someone who contributes, whether it’s a dime here or there to a worthy cause or some great societal legacy like this blog. But of course that doesn’t always happen.

I hate to dig into the sociology of it too much because there’s often a lot of tragedy involved. The FBI’s Top Ten Wanted List, they all started out young, too, and now what? They’re animals, hunted down like the vicious SOBs they are. Even they had a childhood. And had they only been born gorillas, they might’ve turned out halfway sane. Swinging from tree to tree, peeling bananas, mating in the veldt, beating their chest and protecting their turf. Which you don’t really have to be a gorilla to do, but you can get in trouble if those trees are in someone else's yard.

The way life works, I’ll give you two images, the blender and the mixmaster. Sort of the same, but blenders get a household job done fast and mixmasters (roads) are inert, depending only on the motorist to figure out the key to it and the key to success. Mixmasters in the Big City can be extremely complicated. When you first see a bunch of them stacked up with no clear rhyme or reason, you pull your hair out. But if you lived there, you’d have it down in no time. Then there’s blenders, put the fruit in and three seconds later it’s yogurt. Quite the contrast.

So what’s the cause of going from a bundle of joy to a glowering murderer standing over his prey with the smoking gun declaring his guilt? It’s a three-pronged thing, with the Big City constituting a sort of super prong. Something in his head is askew, something in his environment is askew, and no one taught him never to point a gun at another person in anger unless you’re prepared to use it. Which I guess he was prepared, but still it’s a situation askew. This is when the average perp runs, which is the best thing he can do. His chances of not being caught are slim, but they’re not none.

But I think the real lesson for a successful life has to be, Don’t be born in the Big City.

My Beautiful Spirit Arises

 

Part 5 of 30

My Fragile Self-Esteem

I’m struck right away by the question, When will my beautiful spirit arise? Or, Why should I have any self-esteem at all? Yes, I’ve been in deep dog-doo mourning its fragility. That’s common to many of us, which includes me. But even though it's common doesn't mean it's a just complaint. Because I’m only seeing it from my own point-of-view -- my selfishness is blind as a bat -- obviously a common thing with socially self-oriented creatures. I want it just because I want it. Me, me, me, kick me down, turn me 'round, fetch a pail of water, me!

Being social, of course, it's useful to have stronger self-esteem. Since we’re always in a pecking order of sorts. Like at the dinner table in a family of 12 kids. You don’t want the oldest kids depriving the youngest. So your mother has to be there with a 10-foot cane pole and a paperweight duct-taped to the end. The kids get out of line, the oldest ones hogging the pizza or burgers, she has to come down hard on their heads. And send them promptly to their rooms without food. It’s only just. “You ate your fill yesterday and your brothers got nothing. Now you get nothing and your brothers their fill. And so forth. (Contact me for more parenting tips, available on need-to-know basis, plausible deniability possible.)

Naturally, if you have enough dysfunction taking place not only at the dinner table but throughout the house, with relationships marred and mangled by selfishness and everyone insatiable, it can be a downer. And mothers can’t be everywhere at once. In fact, they're often with the rest of the coven desperate to find new ways to negotiate their families through the modern world. It’s to everyone's benefit for new generations to born and raised, or so they say. It’s part of the propaganda package most of us accept, and I’m not saying it’s wrong. Or maybe it’d be good in the long run to destroy the planet. It'd clear the way for something new to arise in five or six billion years, Nature taking the long view. With no one here those eons take just a blink...

But what about me? Let’s leave feeble mankind aside for a while. Mankind gets all the press and it gets too much. I want to know what’s going to happen to me, me, me now. As far as I can tell, I’m the center of all things. Certainly my own thoughts are uppermost in my mind. I get hungry, thirsty, and even now I’m craving the lust of the flesh (not really, just throwing out some red meat.)

My hideous blobbish form is rousing (see graphic). Whatever bands have held me down, I concentrate my strength with intensity to cast them off. My fragile self-esteem, enforced on me by outside powers, shall be no more! I shall arise from this squalor, and like powerful blobs everywhere, coat the world itself with my being! And when that dries, a second coat. Arise! Arise! While I still have life and breath, I shall arise, and … take over the world! ... Who am I kidding?

Marie's Temper, Thar She Blows

Part 16 of 30 -- Speaking Ill of The Dead

It’s a constant wonder to me — I’m fascinated that I’ve lived so long — that you can die from nearly everything. I read the death news everyday and think, "Yeah, that could happen," meaning to myself. But one of the few things you can’t die from is holding your breath till you turn blue. One of our early fears. Because, as experience tells us, we always choose to breathe. Whether it’s choosing, that’s probably the wrong word; there’s some impetus toward breathing that takes over. And as far as I know, you can't even turn blue willfully. We’re built with an inborn awareness that breathing's good.

Something we certainly can do (and do do) is engage in persistently bad behavior and eventually die from it. For me the biggest problem is worry. I worry about everything and will probably die from it. But at least I'll be able to say I worried about it so much I saw it coming. A murderer leaps out from the bushes and kills you to steal your watch, I didn’t see that coming. But I've actually worried about it even though I don't have a watch. (The guy would settle for other stuff.) Anyway, I'm guilty of worrying too much about worrying too much. And if you pile up a string of worries about what you’re worried about you can see why it could be fatal.

This lady, Marie, the power that was overwhelmingly subtracting from her lifespan was a terrible temper. It’s fine with me that she’s dead, although I would've never said that to her face. Her temper was so terrible, she’d bite your head off if she heard such a thing. So what a relief now to say out loud, "Marie’s dead, and she brought it on herself!" Not suicide, of course, except the slow motion kind that a lot of us commit. Like me from worry. There are coping mechanisms that help, though, mostly reminding yourself that things always seem to work out, whatever the problem.

But with her temper, I don’t think there were coping mechanisms. Having a temper from hell is a thing you apparently have to accept, no refusals. It's ingrained. Picked up, probably, in childhood. The kid who stamps her feet and cries about every disappointment. That's the sort of thing you need to deal with at the time. Although I don’t know how. Reasoning with people with temper (or proto-temper) is often futile.

In childhood psychology, though, I’d guessing you would take away some of the disappointment by granting her wishes selectively. So she'd grow up knowing every wish fulfilled isn't how life works. And that to react with a bad, steaming bad temper is not helpful or appropriate.

But it's not my place today to conduct a full post-mortem on Marie. I’m sure the undertaker was up to his hips in worthless temper dripping out of her, but that’s a science too unpleasant to describe. We’ll just take our place on the other side of the curtain and say — temper or no temper — Marie is now dead, whatever the cause of death on the report, probably listed as a merely physical and not psychological thing, maybe brain implosion. A collapse of the head, now the size of a pea. Like a mine shaft shrinking inward from forceful molecular packing.

It certainly cleared the air for the rest of us. Now we can breathe freely instead of facing Marie's terrible wrath for every little thing. And that’s a good thing, coming not a moment too soon!

Newsletter -- Only Child

INCREDIBLE -- Hard to believe I'm not an only child, because I'm my biggest fan. I reread my first newsletter post of a couple days ago, and I have to say "Bravo!" That business about me posting about DQ as far back as 1971-72 was really prescient, since it continues to be an abiding interest today. I guess I had incredible wisdom back then as well as today! Pointing to something deep, the theory that each of us has things in our consciousness that we are not entirely aware of, at least in their full bloom. The seed is there but it's not in the form we recognize as anything. I'd like to develop techniques to enhance this faculty. One technique I remember from somewhere -- I'm floundering to remember what it's called -- oh, yes, it's brainstorming. What can you say about the world of such amazing techniques?

SUBSCRIPTIONS -- The newsletter idea is bringing out the best in me. I credit this to the fact that I've always been a fan of the idea of a good newsletter. Whether you're sending it out to every employee in a company, to every member of a church, or, as I envision it here, to every member of the online community who makes a full lifetime commitment to receive it, and further, who pledges to make the most of it, i.e., as far as their own wisdom and development, as well as becoming even more of a life-affirming person than they already are. Beware of subscribing, but you're blessed if you do.

ONLY CHILD -- A good newsletter gives you the feeling -- as the writer or the reader -- that you're someone special, because it's just for you, a relatively small group of people, the in-crowd. For me, in my generation, unlike every scrawny honyock today, we didn't have the sense all the time that we were special. The closest you came to that sense was if you were an only child.

My mother had so many kids she didn't know what to do, and I was first. So I was an only child for a while. Looking back on it, if I had then the knowledge I have today, I would've screamed bloody murder every time my parents retired for the evening. They would've thrown their arms up in disgust, gotten mad at each other, each accusing the other of being a bad parent, and I'd have kept them to myself. But of course I love my siblings, that's not the issue.

OK, big deal, I was deprived back then, but that doesn't mean I can't write a newsletter today ... and catch up!

These days, though, there's so many "only children" the kids have it incredibly good. They're made to feel so amazingly special that I wonder what's going to happen to them when they're thrown to the wolves of the world when they leave home. Assuming they ever have to, since Mommy and Daddy's reach is so much longer now, being online and connected 24/7. On the other hand, maybe it'd be better to be thrown to the wolves, then they could be like me, grasping at every crutch that drifts along, which truly is what this newsletter idea is. I notice none of the "only children" in my family have a newsletter...

Yes, I have "only children" in my family, and I see them daily on Facebook. They've just colored another picture! They put the candle on their birthday cake all by themselves! They just wrecked the car, but, good news, we've already got a new one! Don't get me started...

And wouldn't you know it, there's a big difference between these "only children" and me, their incredible success. They haven't got a newsletter, but that doesn't mean they aren't using crutches. Mostly Mommy and Daddy's continued helicopter parent intervention. And now with drones, I'm afraid what the next generation will be. Both parents have a drone on you, you can't do anything wrong so you may as well be an extraordinary success!

I had some other stuff to say about "only children," but it's coming out a bit harsh. But I'll just say, if my parents had a drone on me when I was in college, things would've been different for me too.

OLD NEWS -- It's the third day and I'm about out of old news. That's how little happened in the past. Oh, I have one. When I was a kid I used to go around the neighborhood singing "Long Tall Sally." You know Little Richard's version, and Elvis' version, fairly tame. Then there was The Beatles' version, with Paul McCartney shrieking out the opening, "I'm gonna tell Aunt Mary 'bout Uncle John, Claims he's got the misery but he's have lotsa fun, oh baby!" I'd be out shrieking that and I remember this one time, a neighbor lady came running out of the house like she thought it was an life or death emergency. She was ticked off to find it was just me singing, but probably relieved too.

Dilly-Dolly Dick-Around

It's a sign of the times, dilly-dally dicking-around. I can't remember exactly when it started in a major way. I had a friend in the '70s who dilly-dally dicked-around somewhat; if he said he'd be there at 3:00 p.m., he'd certainly arrive by 4. But things have gotten so much worse now, probably having to do with people's busyness in general. We have so many labor-saving devices, computers, etc., but it means we take on so much more, then we compensate by dilly-dally dickin'-around.

In addition to people being behind on their schedule, I see a lot of dilly-dally dickin'-around at stoplights. You're in a line of traffic 15 cars long. The light changes green at the front, but the front guy's never ready. He's checking messages, writing an email, taking a nap -- who know what? The second guy's not much better. Then the third. So we have to get the third guy's attention, who gets the second guy's, then he's able to finally rouse the first guy. Now the light's red again. Too much dilly-dally dickin'-around!

OK, the whole concept's infected society -- it's everywhere! -- so it was just a matter of time before some big-time entrepreneur, with his finger on the slow pulse of a plodding society, would capitalize on it in various ways, one big way being for kids, with the Dilly-Dolly Dick-Around doll. A baby for the times! Dilly-Dolly Dick-Around perfectly embodies today's spirit, never quick to start and only arriving when she does.

You can raise her from her bed, put her down, raise her, put her down, and she does nothing. But set her in the corner for a couple minutes, and finally sweet Dilly-Dolly Dick-Around says, "Ma-ma, Ma-ma!" How joyous, she called out "Mama!" Better late than never.

Our Little Mommy has planned a fun tea party with Dilly-Dolly Dick-Around, lifting Dilly-Dolly's tiny cup to her little lips, pretending they're really doing something great together, being refreshed. A few minutes later you hear the sipping noise, she lets out a breath of satisfaction, and gladly announces, "That was a fun tea party!" The table's already cleared.

Too much tea, of course, means a coming bathroom trip. Dilly-Dolly Dick-Around is prepared for this one, fitted with a washable bladder and three little sets of undies. Little Mommy comes over, "You have to pee-pee?" Dilly-Dolly doesn't say anything and seems very content in silence. Until several minutes later when she announces, "Have to pee," when it's discovered she's already wet.

This teaches Little Mommy patience, and probably more to the point, Little Daddy, whoever he may be. We see him when he's around, which isn't very often. It was probably Little Daddy's errant ways that gave Dilly-Dolly Dick-Around her biggest personality defect, putting things off like this, and other signs of irresponsibility. Little Daddy dicked around too, not even acknowledging Dilly-Dolly the whole first year.

Little Mommy says, "Dilly-Dolly Dick-Around, you need to tell Mommy when you need to pee before it happens, so I can set you on the potty, OK?" Mommy's supported by Little Daddy, looking stern and just itching to take his belt off. But little Dilly-Dolly speaks not a word, simply staring blankly into the distance, a number of clouds taking their time to pass casually overhead.

Mommy and Daddy go in to watch something -- they're binge-watching parenting shows. From the quiet of Dilly-Dolly's crib comes her soft answer, barely audible over the baby monitor, "OK, I have to pee." That was a long time ago! You've already been wet and changed! Or is she referring to a brand new pee, something she'll do a half hour from now? Too much damned dilly-dally dickin'-around!

Time passes, and Dilly-Dolly's now pretend-grown-up. Little Mommy and Daddy try to kick her out of the house. She promises to leave voluntarily, "Just let me go to my room and pack a few things." But all this happened two years ago and she's still there.

The Blog Post Adoption Program

Unto us a son is born, a child is given. The child given, the son born, is your opportunity to adopt my blog posts. Where you can pick up the little tykes, so to speak, that I have written, and care for them and really make them your own. Are you up for that?

This is part of a personal goal I have to make my readers feel more involved and invested. It would be more fulfilling for them, and as far as I'm concerned, I'd get a kick out of it. Just so there's no fighting over any of my "kids." I don't want to have to cut one in half, let's say, to find out the true parent!

At the heart of this idea is the fact that people like to have responsibilities. People want little tasks. It makes them feel useful and a part of the larger whole. Like when we were in school and different ones wanted to clean the chalkboard, or monitor the hall, or taste the teachers' food to make sure it wasn't poisoned. We lost a couple kids that way, but the bright side is they got a full page memorial in the yearbook.

People want to have a part! And so it is with a blog like this one. There's always an upside and a downside. If they aren't included, they drift away. They're always looking for a role to play. That leaves the writer, me, with a couple options. One, do my own selfish thing and let the people drift away. Two, include them, whether in an intrinsic way, like having co-writers, which isn't likely to happen, or get them involved in some other aspect of the blog.

The latter option could of course include nothing more than busy work, like writing me "Attaboy" letters and getting a nice response, but I don't want to go that route. I want it to be something fairly intrinsic without it being entirely so, something just good enough to keep you committed. As they used to say about the canned milk, "Contented cows are happy cows."

So the idea is that my readers will adopt my posts, like Cabbage Patch Kids. Each already has a name, a title. You simply get to know it intimately, kind of nurse it along in the public square, promote it in the world, then sit back and feel the pride of watching it succeed.

You adopt it! It's your "baby!" I would then have a list of the adopters, and periodically send you by email an update on how your baby is doing. If it got 40 visits from around the world, that'd be good. But what if it got 400? What if it just got 4? Of course if it's just 4, you'd have to promote it more!

I haven't got it fully worked out, but we would have to have some rules. Like if you were neglecting your baby, I might have to step in and take it away from you. But I don't really want any unpleasantness to intrude on the relationship at this point. Stay positive, keep everyone smiling!

So let's get started. So far I have over 1,300 babies up for adoption. You can go back to the very beginning, or check out the nursery from 2008, 2009, 2010, or some of our more recent deliveries.

One of my recent favorites is baby "Fahoup Fahep Fitzguh", a recent child, that could use some tender loving care. It tells the hilarious story of how the rock group came up with that name. I can see how a lot of people would like to adopt "FFF," because it'd be easy to promote a child who's a rock star!

You might want to adopt "The Legend of Paul Boone," from October. This child was an underachiever, but I still think it's got something valuable to say. All it needs is a little TLC, a loving parent to take it under his wing to help it make its way in the world.

Here's a good one that'd make a fun child, "Pitbulls, Sex Offenders, and Jake Brakes." This is the only post I know of that had people on Facebook organized against it. You realize, pitbull owners have no scruples against an angry response, and I was the unfortunate target of their ire. But if you're adventurous and can stand the heat, it'd be a lot of fun to see that post adopted. With that one, though, I'd need a full background check of the parent-applicant, just to make sure the pitbull people don't get their hands on it and kill it.

Go through the list and see if you can find a baby of your own. There could be great benefits in it for you. Like if you're a childless couple, can't have kids, and you're struggling with your marriage. This program might put the spark back in your relationship and give you something truly blessed to share. And one other benefit, it's a lot cheaper than an actual squalling rug rat. You get all the benefits of a child but none of the headaches!

Let's get you started. Leave a comment, telling me which one you want to adopt. And if you think you can handle twins, triplets, or even quadruplets, theoretically you could do that, but the process could also be that much more complicated. Definitely the parent who takes the pitbull post will want to stick with that one alone.