Bad Cop
When I was ten, I had a recurring nightmare that I was being chased and suffocated by a giant pencil eraser. While you might find this funny, I can assure you that being on the receiving end of this sort of dream at that age was not really.
In fact, waking up hyperventilating after a bout with a killer writing utensil night after night tends to wear out the most youthful of dispositions, and even this slightest of episodes did its part to erode my personal boyhood innocence - along with watching JAWS that same year, getting caught shoplifting a box of gumballs, having my valentine's cards shredded by their recipients before my eyes over the homeroom wastebasket, and various other traumas and disappointments that did so much to make me the wonderful, well rounded, mature adult that you all think you know today.
Every man makes confessions sooner or later to stay sane, and I find it both useful and important this time. I find that it is important to have the proper frame of mind, when faced with some nagging childish fear that shouldn't get anyone up in the middle of the night. When I was ten, it was pretty real to me. That was 1977, I believe.
Also the same year, thankfully, I discovered STAR WARS (you know, the good one, where people bled and died), writing as an outlet, and logic, thanks largely to a television character made famous by a pointy-eared shakespearean actor. I found out that plastic model planes didn't always fly but the glue you had to use made you think that you could. I found out about I CLAUDIUS, Dr. WHO, and Narnia. I found out that public libraries closed before bedtime, but they opened before any sane kid would willingly get out of bed.
I learned that while there was no limit to the human imagination, there were still regular business hours, gravity, the speed of light, and other mundane rules designed to temper but not extinguish my boyish and yet not immature exuberance. I discovered diversion, diversity, and most importantly, I found out that not everyone thought like I did or knew that the universe and all its gifts was worth stopping and looking at once in a while. I discovered all this -the irony of society's limits on the limitless- and I also had to accept and live with it. Yes, I was ten. How old were you when this happened to you?
I'm old today. Well, not too old, but old enough. Wiser and more cynical than someone my age should be by a lot of accounts. I know now that children suffer terrible injustice before they reach that magical eye-opening moment which I try to relive every day. I know that dreams sometimes don't get harnessed like I did mine, that they can be prohibitively expensive, and that dreams fade, die, or are murdered just like people. I have seen leaders, been a leader of sorts, having learned not to follow anyone so close that you get a nosebleed from his elbows. I have eulogized some friends, and at times I've been tempted to euthanize others. Life is now a busy, complicated, ugly thing.
I don't have much time anymore to be pushed around by some oversized latex spectre from my past. But there it was, rubbing its way into my wee-hour thoughts like an old friend who snores at campouts. Who knew that the giant pencil eraser would come back this morning and nag me into writing this, after all these years dormant between the frontal lobes. It took very little analysis back then to discover the meaning of this dream. It means never regret what you say. Ever. If you want to sleep at night.
Last week I was called to task by an email forum I started years ago when I had time to reach out and touch people in the world who had similar interests in expressing themselves colorfully, but less tolerance for noise. A forum with rules and moderation that tempered rather than extinguished the mature exuberance and interest of the members. A reprimand I composed for one of those people -who is incidentally over the age of ten- is lately being brandished as evidence that I'm some kind of lout who gets off on seeing innocents suffer.
(Yeah. And when I nearly lost my left eye in a fight at two AM on a worknight, it was because that drunk's rights were being violated when I told him to shut up and go home. His lawyer says I deserved it too.)
Then as now, people are somewhat surprised that I haven't defended myself, and my reaction is exactly my attitude about this whole thing: who cares?
Who cares what is said in confidence between two people? No one should. Who cares how blatantly fair warning is ignored? No one should, when they have the facts from the first to the last. Who cares how my words will be misinterpreted by the third or the fourth or the hundredth person who sees that message? No one should. The monster roars once, but it gets bigger and bigger with the stories told about it.
My words were succinct, and my issue was real. My concern was justified, and my predictions came true. In return, only my disdain and ugliness are magnified -to antichrist proportions- by people who should have just shut up and gone home.
What is there for me to add? Or subtract? The more attention people pay to this fiasco, the more harm it does to them - not me. The less said, the better! Any more said means that this nagging, childish fear, this big eraser that wants me to take it all back and not make people cry anymore, has some kind of advantage over me now.
Fuck that. I'm not ten years old anymore.
Neither, I suspect, is anyone who is reading this, so I can safely assume that I am not wasting my breath. I know very well that right now a half dozen people are out there with their hands over their heads chanting 'nahh, nahh, can't hear you,' Fine. Let them ride headlong into battle to soundly defeat their purpose. As people tend to discover, I am a disappointingly shitty enemy.
I learned a valuable lesson from my nightmares, which was to turn the weapon around and make better use of it. The other end of the giant eraser is a damnably big pencil, and while it doesn't make a very good lance at all, I have found it very useful for communicating. I take both great care and pride in what I write. Care and pride is necessary, when one intends never to regret what one says. I wonder what keeps people from doing the same, a good bit more than sometimes. Maybe they need to be protected a little less. Maybe they just need to grow up. Maybe they need a system of rules to have faith in, instead of one to fight against. Maybe before they take up that sword they have to look me straight in the left eye and ask themselves again, what the hell are they really doing here?
I dunno. I'm old. We all have better things to do. You kids can play out back where no one will get hurt.
Books by Me Newsletter Discussion Group
In fact, waking up hyperventilating after a bout with a killer writing utensil night after night tends to wear out the most youthful of dispositions, and even this slightest of episodes did its part to erode my personal boyhood innocence - along with watching JAWS that same year, getting caught shoplifting a box of gumballs, having my valentine's cards shredded by their recipients before my eyes over the homeroom wastebasket, and various other traumas and disappointments that did so much to make me the wonderful, well rounded, mature adult that you all think you know today.
Every man makes confessions sooner or later to stay sane, and I find it both useful and important this time. I find that it is important to have the proper frame of mind, when faced with some nagging childish fear that shouldn't get anyone up in the middle of the night. When I was ten, it was pretty real to me. That was 1977, I believe.
Also the same year, thankfully, I discovered STAR WARS (you know, the good one, where people bled and died), writing as an outlet, and logic, thanks largely to a television character made famous by a pointy-eared shakespearean actor. I found out that plastic model planes didn't always fly but the glue you had to use made you think that you could. I found out about I CLAUDIUS, Dr. WHO, and Narnia. I found out that public libraries closed before bedtime, but they opened before any sane kid would willingly get out of bed.
I learned that while there was no limit to the human imagination, there were still regular business hours, gravity, the speed of light, and other mundane rules designed to temper but not extinguish my boyish and yet not immature exuberance. I discovered diversion, diversity, and most importantly, I found out that not everyone thought like I did or knew that the universe and all its gifts was worth stopping and looking at once in a while. I discovered all this -the irony of society's limits on the limitless- and I also had to accept and live with it. Yes, I was ten. How old were you when this happened to you?
I'm old today. Well, not too old, but old enough. Wiser and more cynical than someone my age should be by a lot of accounts. I know now that children suffer terrible injustice before they reach that magical eye-opening moment which I try to relive every day. I know that dreams sometimes don't get harnessed like I did mine, that they can be prohibitively expensive, and that dreams fade, die, or are murdered just like people. I have seen leaders, been a leader of sorts, having learned not to follow anyone so close that you get a nosebleed from his elbows. I have eulogized some friends, and at times I've been tempted to euthanize others. Life is now a busy, complicated, ugly thing.
I don't have much time anymore to be pushed around by some oversized latex spectre from my past. But there it was, rubbing its way into my wee-hour thoughts like an old friend who snores at campouts. Who knew that the giant pencil eraser would come back this morning and nag me into writing this, after all these years dormant between the frontal lobes. It took very little analysis back then to discover the meaning of this dream. It means never regret what you say. Ever. If you want to sleep at night.
Last week I was called to task by an email forum I started years ago when I had time to reach out and touch people in the world who had similar interests in expressing themselves colorfully, but less tolerance for noise. A forum with rules and moderation that tempered rather than extinguished the mature exuberance and interest of the members. A reprimand I composed for one of those people -who is incidentally over the age of ten- is lately being brandished as evidence that I'm some kind of lout who gets off on seeing innocents suffer.
(Yeah. And when I nearly lost my left eye in a fight at two AM on a worknight, it was because that drunk's rights were being violated when I told him to shut up and go home. His lawyer says I deserved it too.)
Then as now, people are somewhat surprised that I haven't defended myself, and my reaction is exactly my attitude about this whole thing: who cares?
Who cares what is said in confidence between two people? No one should. Who cares how blatantly fair warning is ignored? No one should, when they have the facts from the first to the last. Who cares how my words will be misinterpreted by the third or the fourth or the hundredth person who sees that message? No one should. The monster roars once, but it gets bigger and bigger with the stories told about it.
My words were succinct, and my issue was real. My concern was justified, and my predictions came true. In return, only my disdain and ugliness are magnified -to antichrist proportions- by people who should have just shut up and gone home.
What is there for me to add? Or subtract? The more attention people pay to this fiasco, the more harm it does to them - not me. The less said, the better! Any more said means that this nagging, childish fear, this big eraser that wants me to take it all back and not make people cry anymore, has some kind of advantage over me now.
Fuck that. I'm not ten years old anymore.
Neither, I suspect, is anyone who is reading this, so I can safely assume that I am not wasting my breath. I know very well that right now a half dozen people are out there with their hands over their heads chanting 'nahh, nahh, can't hear you,' Fine. Let them ride headlong into battle to soundly defeat their purpose. As people tend to discover, I am a disappointingly shitty enemy.
I learned a valuable lesson from my nightmares, which was to turn the weapon around and make better use of it. The other end of the giant eraser is a damnably big pencil, and while it doesn't make a very good lance at all, I have found it very useful for communicating. I take both great care and pride in what I write. Care and pride is necessary, when one intends never to regret what one says. I wonder what keeps people from doing the same, a good bit more than sometimes. Maybe they need to be protected a little less. Maybe they just need to grow up. Maybe they need a system of rules to have faith in, instead of one to fight against. Maybe before they take up that sword they have to look me straight in the left eye and ask themselves again, what the hell are they really doing here?
I dunno. I'm old. We all have better things to do. You kids can play out back where no one will get hurt.
Books by Me Newsletter Discussion Group
