Neglectful In Negligee

 

No. 10 of 30 -- Speaking Ill of The Dead

I don’t care who you are, a two-bit hustling chick on the sidewalk or Mrs. Worthington herself (!), the self-absorbed heiress killed a few years ago, it pays to maintain at least a passing awareness of your surroundings. You're looking in a mirror at your great beauty, maybe also think, "How am I going to maintain my beauty if an idiot rushes in with a knife?"

We know well these days -- I've known it since the time I peed my pants in 4th grade -- anything can happen to anyone at any time. I like the example of chipmunks, which you don’t see very often. There's a good reason for that; they had the good sense to move to the wilderness for self preservation. When we used to see them they were constantly on the lookout. Are any predators nearby? They’d duck in their hole. Kids passing through? Down they went. Sometimes I find myself a little neglectful. I’m walking the dog and there’s a close call, someone squealing their tires around the corner too fast and they just miss me. But usually I'm very alert, like a chipmunk.

When Mrs. Worthington was killed, no judge or jury could ask her if she was in any way to blame. No, of course not, she would've said, it was all the fault of the gardener and his fool dog. But, really? Fool dog, idiot gardener? Is that right? I don’t think so. Yes, Corky could’ve left the dog home that day. But hindsight’s like assholes, and if you’ve ever stood behind a dog with its tail up, you know that’s true. And even if you're smarter than Corky, accidents still happen. I take my dog out and I don’t know what might happen. But at a minimum we don’t dawdle.

So look at her: Mrs. Worthington was obviously a snooty woman very self-absorbed and hence a sitting duck. It wasn't a priority, she didn't have it on her list to monitor her surroundings. Big mistake! Because being aware of your surroundings is not a contradiction of dedicated self-absorption. Just the opposite. Self-absorption demands awareness of your surroundings for purposes of validation. You’re Number One and you're going to stay that way! If riff raff's anywhere near, your mind focuses on all looming threats. But look, she even had a rear view mirror and didn't use it for her survival. Maybe she wouldn't have seen the dog, but that big lunk Corky's always big enough to detect.

So here he comes with a knife, chasing his dog! It’s Oswald all over! The threat was obvious, even the barest bones laziest half-assed security plan pieced together by blind morons or monkeys hanging upside down could've seen at a glance the security threat he posed. But no! Then there’s Corky and his dog. Corky had the right idea, chase down a security threat with his knife. He may have failed but he was still better than the entire Secret Service of the United States of America. Just not good enough to keep the dog from clawing its way up Mrs. Worthington’s gown. And the fact that he stabbed her to death, that was pure mindlessness...

Mrs. Worthington, alas, is gone. Stupid high society dunce, wasn't she? Should’ve been watching better...

There's No Time Like the Past

You're interested in the past. That's why you're here. We have spent our whole lives in what is now the past, and those are moments for us to celebrate.

Today, we are holding a gala celebration for the past, with the purpose of moving on from it. We are bidding a fond farewell to the past, that it all might be left behind, not with a bum's rush but in style and with honor.

I want you to enter the grand hall, with the audience where the audience always sits, and at the front a dais and lectern for the various leaders. Everything has been arranged in advance, you really don't have to worry about a thing. Simply stand and cheer at those times you feel would be most appropriate. Or remain silent.

There will be various ones, divisions of people, marching in. There will be the giving and receiving of awards and certificates. There will be so many different things happening that I won't even be able to write it all. You will have to imagine it where you are. And if you need to shed a tear over something, so be it. Let them flow.

On this occasion we will be extending our thanks and appreciation to those of the past. We will be applauding one another, listening to one another's stories with laughter and sometimes tears. There may be fist-pumping and backslapping. We will be holding up the glories of the past, revisiting the stories.

In comes the magnificent banner with our theme! "THE PAST WAS OUR HOME FOR MANY YEARS, BUT NOW ITS WORK IS DONE."

And here comes The Cavalcade of Decades! With representatives from each one! The 1800s flag is carried in (the whole century, not decades) by someone they found who had ancestors from then, as there are no living representatives from the 1800s. A moment of silence. Imagine that, we couldn't find a single living representative. They've all gone on to their reward.

Next are the flags for the decades spanning from the 1900s to the 1930s. There's a few from the 1900s, a few more from the 1910s, a few more from the 1920s, and several more from the 1930s, getting progressively younger. They plant their flags and we see a symbolic picture from each one. I'll mention the 1920s, a megaphone. And the 1930s, a sign saying "APPLES 5 cents."

The representatives from the 1940s through the 2010s are more numerous, and the symbolic pictures closer to our own experience: World War II, Elvis, Kennedy, Bicentennial, Big Hair, Computers, 9/11, and Guns. I'm personally proud to have lived through quite a few of these. I'm still doing the whole Elvis thing, and of course working with a computer. As for big hair, I'm virtually bald, but I still have decent sidewalls.

I get a tug at my heartstrings with the '50s flag, since I was born then, was one of the world's first Elvis impersonators, at the age of 5, started school then, and crossed the road one time without my mother's permission. The '60s flag tugs at me, too, JFK. I was in an antique store the other day and saw a huge picture of Kennedy. I told him what I've already told his picture a thousand times, "Do not go to Dallas!" The '70s flag doesn't tug quite as hard. I couldn't wait for the Bicentennial to be over, and now it's ages ago. Probably should've put the Fonz on the flag.

Shhh ... they're doing one of the obligatory moments of silence for some past atrocity. I was typing when they announced it and accidentally tuned it out. But it must really be something, because people are putting their hand on their heart. Which I better do, too. And ... there ... OK ... the man at the lectern said, "Thank you," followed by lots of us clearing our throats and coughing.

I'm taking it all in. It's overwhelming, what the past means for us. And now, here, today, we're leaving it all behind! It's going to be tough! But rest assured, we will carry on. If we ever wonder then, "Whatever Happened to the Old Days?", we can know, with every fiber of our being -- it's like Doritos -- we're making new old days all the time.

Your Place At The Kennedy Assassination

As more and more kids of my generation become senile and forget it all, I suppose I should address the assassination of President Kennedy. We just had the last World War I veteran die, and, for all I know, I might eventually be the last one to actually remember the events in Dallas in 1963.

When I say I will address the assassination of JFK, of course you'll excuse me if I say I'm not going to address everything about it. The scope of that would be so massive, for one, and, two, it's already been done in an encyclopedic way that would far surpass anything I might say by way of ignorant, secondhand conjecture. Not to downplay the veracity of my own opinions. Plus, I simply haven't got the time to do it, since I too am feeling more senile everyday.

So please excuse me if, in the course of this present post, I confine myself to a more narrow purpose, to document the supposed feelings of a few of the folks along the motorcade route. To accomplish this task, first, I will give my own thoughts about standing on parade routes; then, second, I will express some of the supposed thoughts of the people on the motorcade route that day in 1963. The two, my parade thoughts and my thoughts about their thoughts are two separate things, but obviously both will come out of my own head.

First, what I'm thinking when I'm on a parade route. Thanks to the assassination of JFK, oftentimes when I'm on a parade route, I'll think about it. I'll think, If there's trouble, will I be a reliable witness as to what happened?, as I wish I would have been had I been on the scene at Dealey Plaza in 1963. I wonder, depending on the dignitaries present in the parade, if I would leap into action if there were an assassination attempt. In 1963, of course it all happened so quickly, and most people were caught off guard, and anyway, it was the Secret Service's job to protect JFK. But I was at a parade in which former Beatle Pete Best passed by, and someone might've dashed the car, a diehard Ringo lover. For about 20 seconds, I was ready for anything. Lastly, when I'm at a parade and I don't have a video camera, I figure I won't be the Zapruder of the day. I glance over and see another guy with a camera and figure that's our Zapruder.

Notice how concerned I am about possible assassination attempts, all thanks to what happened to JFK. And what happened to his brother and MLK didn't help. I think the key thing in my favor -- and I'm proud of this -- is that, more or less, I can well imagine that I'd be fearless in facing whatever. I like to think I would be. Only, you don't want to leap in if there's no genuine attempt and end up looking like a fool or in jail. Like if an antique car backfires, and I immediately assume it's an attempt on Pete Best's life, I rush the car and push him into the backseat, thereby breaking his hands. Him being a drummer, that'd be disastrous.

But I've been at political events where there's been some genuinely prominent politicians, including, now that I think of it, Barack Obama before he was president. The Secret Service was out in force and told a guy next to me to keep his hands out of his pockets. It honestly could've been that I might've had to have tackled that guy. Again, I would want to have probable cause to do so, or I'd be the one who went to jail. "But he had a gun!" ... "It wasn't a gun, it was sunglasses."

And there have been others who went by me and were able to leave the building or outdoors venue, thanks to my vigilance and willingness to lay my life on the line. And I haven't even mentioned my various time travel fantasies over the years in which I'm able to change history. It bugs me to realize that even if I could travel through time, of course the folks on the scene wouldn't believe me that I was from the future, and it all would've happened anyway. That's only partially true, though. For instance, JFK's security forces never would've believed me, true, because I was just a random kid from the future, but if I could've made my way to the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald didn't have any security, and I would've stormed the sixth floor. I'd love to be the guy to go back in history and kill Oswald. The problem with that would be justifying it to the authorities at the time, since he hadn't done anything yet, except take a couple shots at General Walker, who I wouldn't know from Adam. Let's say I did kill him, then I get back to the present day and everything's changed. Since no one else would know the difference, it'd be no big deal.

My second purpose today is to think of the thoughts of the folks on the actual motorcade route. Whoever was a block away or more would be thinking, "Too bad I was a block away or more. But at least I was there!" Their testimony is worthless, since they were in the wrong place. But those who had the foresight to be right there on the scene -- including Zapruder, although he would've been smarter to have several cameras going simultaneously from various points along the route -- all have a story to tell.

Here's what I imagine they've been thinking over the years: 1) "If only I would've known what was going to happen, I would've done something to prevent it." 2) "It was like a blur, it happened so fast." 3) "I just turned my head for a moment, then--. 4) "I thought it was firecrackers." 5) "It's haunted me all these years, I wish I hadn't even been there, I haven't been able to sleep since." 6) "I was on the front row of history, damn the luck." And so forth. It's a combination of despair and understandable helplessness.

I might back up -- since I thought of a few -- and sketch out some of the thoughts of the folks up-route. 1) "When he passed my station, he was OK." 2) "He wasn't killed on my watch." 3) "I did what I could on my block. All was well." 4) "He was good as new when he left my side." You can see, their thoughts take a different tone, one of heroic participation in the event, as though they had anything to do with where the marksman wasn't. They're a lot more opportunistic, but it's hard to prove they weren't each individually responsible for the president's safe passage thereto, since maybe their vigilance thwarted a second completely unknown assassin.

As for me, I resonate most with Number 5 of the first group, "It's haunted me all these years..." because that's exactly how I feel about it. Nothing in life has haunted me so much, and that includes all the many challenges of puberty. To think Oswald could carry a gun in there that day and do this, it's still too much.