Terribly Bad Explosive Temper

Part 12 of 30 -- Speaking Ill of The Dead

Here's some sad hotheads, Helen and McClellan, who in the end couldn't stand each other but never really broke up, perhaps going for some dubious award. We hear such stories occasionally but never expected it of someone we actually knew.

Of course I would've preferred they got along perfectly. The way it was at first for Helen and McClellan. Feeling up each other all the time. Bragging how they were made for each other. The only dinner guests I've had french-kiss at the dinner table. But it was a fairly wanton restaurant, the waitresses with their outfit down to here and shorts tucked in, a little wedged in back, a cute look.

For years they said McClellan completed her and Helen him. And everywhere Helen went, McClellan was sure to go. If McClellan ordered butterscotch tutti frutti, Helen chimed in, “Make it a deuce!” If Helen put a log on the fire, McClellan had a chainsaw near and ran out to fetch a single stick at the very least. Neither thought he was better than her, and her idea was just the opposite but the same. And each had a beautiful voice for lowly yodeling when the magic moment arrived. I overheard this singing down the hall a couple times, gladdening my heart. Only ruined by the squeaky bed springs; by itself it would've made a great ringtone.

How tough it was, then, to have them suddenly at loggerheads. It just started, no one knew why. They just bumped heads over every trivial nothing, and their hearts were beaten and battered in unnecessary struggles to the point of threatening one other, with his or her voice in full-throated derisive minor chords: “You go your way, I’ll go mine!” Countered with, “I will go my way, you go yours!” A tough read for anyone who knew them, his devotion, her devotion, and the devotion they had in common. Like two halves of your heart -- opposite sides -- shriveling up and dying.

And now more bad news. They're gone. And I don't know which I’ll miss more. McClellan was a friend. We were friends from our youth. Then there was my friendship with Helen, which started out me trying to avoid her as much as possible to keep McClellan's jealousy under control. But it turned out Helen was the most jealous, because I was more naturally drawn to McClellan as old friends. And boy to boy friendship action shouldn't have been an issue, because it's easy to be a friend without there being anything more. I wouldn’t cross that boundary for love or money, as crazy as Helen turned out to be.

But now it’s all gone by the boards. The days of what-ifs have passed. The time for finger-pointing’s still here but to no profit. Nothing, absolutely zero net unless it’d just be one of life’s lessons worth learning. That if you’ve got a couple of hotheads, it doesn’t matter what “love” they have for each other, they're going to eventually explode, and there’s always the danger that they'll both be foolishly annihilated.

It started out like nothing. But built from there. Each surreptitiously, completely on the sly, neither one suspecting, and their friends suspecting nothing, managing to accumulate an arsenal. And they studied up on homemade bombs. Someone should’ve known! Then rented out adjacent abandoned malls, such a huge unexpected undertaking that they could do it in plain sight without anyone realizing. Then coincidentally, without synchronization, each lured the other to their respective mall and each ... [if only I could've stopped it] .... plunged the plunger.

Yes, it happened, leaving a hole in our state the size of Wyoming, making the news. So now, after so much mushy romance, they’re dead and gone… Finis, done, outta here, BOOM! I have huge regrets. Seeing how mismatched they turned out to be, I myself probably should've killed McClellan and gone after Helen.

The New Valentine's Day -- Adolf Hitler's Birthday

If you like Valentine's Day on February 14, enjoy it while you can. Because I see a day coming -- and the way the world is going, with lots of hatred, etc. -- when everything might change!

The problem, like I said, is hatred and love together. They're getting mixed up. Or maybe it's always been that way, but people have been too dishonest to say so. They certainly don't love one another. They don't even like one another. It's sad but unfortunately very true. Not everyone, but many.

OK, Valentine's Day, Febuary 14, is a day for telling your supposed love one how you really feel. But, according to the new honesty, you might say, "I really don't love you. It's all been a sham." It's harsh, I agree, but the advantage of saying it on Valentine's Day is that the general spirit of the day, a day of love, cushions the blow. She or he thinks, Maybe it's a fluke, maybe it's a joke. But, no, it's no joke, as you reiterate the negative sentiment, with finally a torrent of hate-filled invective pouring forth from your mouth, by now a non-stop stream of poison.

You can see what would happen if enough people did that -- and they're aching to, for sure. It wouldn't take long until the cushioning effect in general was worn away, because the day would be known for so many break-ups. By then, the spirit of the day would have changed entirely. It would become a day known for domestic crimes, murders, harshness, people flipping each other the finger, and so forth. If it happens it will give the phrase "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" a whole new meaning!

Eventually, then, the day being completely ruined for love and becoming a day representing total hate, those who still want a day for love will cast wide (and fervently) for another day. But what other day is there? They're all basically occupied by something, and you can't have too many holidays right in a row. You need a buffer space so each holiday can have its own niche. Certainly the adherents of other holidays won't want to yield to the orphaned idea of a day of love. Christmas? Arbor Day? Columbus Day? Never! So there will be troubles all the way around.

Then someone will think, what about Hitler's birthday? That's a date, April 20, that's long been more or less kicked off the calendar. I know when the day comes around, there's a lot of hushed tones. Everyone goes, "It's Hitler's birthday, damn it!" No one calls in sick because they want an appointment with the many therapists out in force that day, counseling those who have terrible issues with Hitler. So they decide, Why not rehabilitate Hitler's birthday? It's not good for anything anyway. We could have Valentine's Day then!

In fact, it's perfect! It's long been known for the hatred of its namesake! Why not claim it as the day of love, and completely turn it around? With the hearts and candies and everything that we used to associate with Feb. 14 simply transferred over. I know, it's close to when Easter sometimes is. But Easter, being a nomadic holiday, is always going to be in the way until it finally settles on when it wants to be.

So that's it. That's the future. It sucks, yes, to have to change. If everyone decides to keep Valentine's Day a day for love -- and drop the honesty business -- then maybe we can avert this alternate future. But if you actually do feel like pouring out your true feelings -- I hate you, darling -- then just know we have a fallback date for the true lovers.

Now it's known as Hitler's birthday -- BOO! -- but it wouldn't take much to make it a day of love!