Something That Made You Cry

Something that Made You Cry

The pages of books, even digital pages comfort me, truly. With them, I can make up my mind on what I see when I digest text.  When it says "his internal organs spurted." I can define the size of that spurt and my reaction to it. The power of words is totally within reach of the reader and I've loved that.

   I've noticed more and more, lately, I have a thing for crime.  I keep thinking I need to add "borderline criminologist" to my signature page on Micechat.com. I noticed this because the headlines under the topic of "Crime" on HuffingtonPost.com keep bringing me back. Plus, the only short story I got a rush of  and a response from was about a serial killer trying to kill a homeless kid.  I am impressed, for lack of a better word, with the amount of pain the world is willing to inflict on one another without care or concern.

                I see the antigay rhetoric screamed loud from street corners, the vitriol spewing from hatred of what is, basically, people doing what the haters cannot do. That is, celebrating their sexuality and finding comfort. I know it is hate now, for when I see a group with the name National Organization for Marriage, group that defines itself as wanting to save marriage--does nothing but fight marriage rights for gay people. That's hatred. If they wanted to bring down divorce rates, they'd go ahead and set up counseling for families. Heck, I'd even join their crusade if that was the focus.

                 For all their hate directed at me, I don't cry for some reason. I bring this up only for comparative’s sake.

                  For me? It's that fucking Sarah McClacan commercial for the ASPCA.

                Tears roll.

                I think because you pick a fight with a supposed equal, that's one and that's what a hate group does. But when humanity takes their energy and, instead of giving it to the good fight of feeding children and housing the homeless, use their energy to beat their dog. A dog that loves their owner for no reason, other than they provide them food.

                 I'm not a cat man, in any sense of the word. But even Betty, the step-cat, crawls upon my lap or chest when I'm reading without fear, knowing I mean her no harm. How can I intentionally hurt her?

                 I brought up the crime bit at the beginning to point out, how can anyone delibrately hurt another person. When they scream hate or anger, it's easier to punch back. If a dog bites your leg, you can kick it. Where does this hatred of companion animals come from? We can be mean to the pork providers, for a pig has never warmed our hearts-but a dog or a cat? This makes little sense.

                 Another thing that makes the tears flow for me?   Nazism.   Weird. My father, a person of Jewish decent, is an idiot. But not because he's Jewish. It is because he's human and had the ill-luck to marry the complicated creature that is my mother. This probably rotted out his brain, regardless of his national origin. But I really lose it on watching movies on the Holocaust. I don't understand how people, a people I can kinda understand crime about, how can people target and work on a group's extermination?

                Wait a minute, I just got it. I made the connection. I don't cry over the lies the National Organization of Marriage makes; but I shed tears over the genocide of the Jewish people. I need to make the link and the jump. They are doing the same thing. The Nazis started with simple, indirect espouses of lies, before moving in for the kill. I need to remember it. And I need to let it overpower me, emotionally, to tears. Maybe that'll get me to move against them in more than words only.

It Bothered Me, So I'm Writing About It.

You know that cliché-“The more things change, the more they stay the same?” I saw the clip below from TED (which, by the way, you MUST watch if you’re one of those creative types) and it started me thinking about several things. Now I’m pretty laid back. I taught middle school for God’s sake. Perhaps I’ve even seen the worst of humanity—bad because it’s a phase that all humans must go through. Being a teenager some how make your brain a bit wonky and, well, difficult to deal with. That’s not too out of the ordinary. I was subjected to the behaviors so much, I became immune. And now that I live in Florida, I keep hearing the same song, over and over again. The populace down here is marked by their age. So, really, is it that surprising to hear, basically, this, over and over again?

It’s a great play/movie, if ever you get a chance to watch it. If you wanna, jump ahead to Paul Lynde dishing the music a good chunk inwards….

Everyone likes to think their generation was right and, since the generation afterwards had a different situation—they’re bad and not at all respectful. Forget the fact that teenagers, as a whole, are as aggravating as all get out sometimes, I always got a kick out of the Boomers loved to whine about Generation X’s way of doing things. Generation X is disrespectful. Generation X has everything we don’t. On and on the list would go. In some ways, now, I see it a bit clearer. My generation is Generation X. They’re the ones with kids now. And I see them having the same complaints over and over again. My generation is the one insisting that kids today have it good with technology and that technology is making kids today ruder than ever before.

Forget the fact that parents are the ones BUYING the technology for the kids, of course.

But you can see where the complaint is coming from. Through going the normal phase of growing up, another generation is being led to believe that they’re inferior to the one that went before. Nice. Good going. Brilliant.

Then, however, I watched this on reddit.com.

Dang, another long one, but worth the effort. In fact, any TED video is worthwhile. I love watching them.

And I guess it bothered me, so I’m writing about it. The video’s essence is this: the web responds to our touch and our wants and needs. You can see it in our web searches; you can see it in the sidebar adverts that pop up when we’re in Facebook.com. I never really gave it much thought, it happens so smoothly. In fact, I do, honestly, sometimes click those links; I do, sometimes, do Google searches. I had no idea that it was tailor-made for this writer.

The fact is, maybe, just maybe the initial cliché I used, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” is becoming outdated. Kids today, are, digitally, getting exactly what they want-they just don’t realize it. And the adults do today as well. I see it when I’m standing in line at the Emporium on Main Street, U.S.A. There will be the parent, the child screaming from exhaustion, the parent in their own bubble, hurling insults at some poor cast member about the fact that they are missing the parade while looking for a Minnie doll in a pink, not red, dress. Their anger sours the immediate atmosphere and any frivolity by other patrons is now bent out of shape as they try to shake that minor but evident example of how-not-to-enjoy-your-vacation.

I try to brush it off as the generation before it saying, again, that people are just walking the same path. Researchers love to explain and zipline this topic for quiet news days. I’m so laid-back in reality, remember those years suffering in middle schools, that I can forget it fairly quickly. But after seeing that Ted presentation, I’m beginning to wonder. Maybe the tradition of rude-ness has been broken.

If people today, not just kid, are getting everything tailored to them—even when they don’t know it---it would stand to reason that they would expect that even in the Happiest Place on Earth. I suppose we could blame the speed of response that technology as well, having everything at the flick of a keyboard and the click of a mouse. True, that. But also advertisements, ones we’re not even totally watching? Maybe, just maybe we are becoming more rude.

I have this friend, see, and he’s a total tech-head. Works out of home. So closeted he summers in Narnia. Can’t deal with humans at all. Rude as all get out. Has no concept of compassion or social graces. We excuse him when we go see movies because of his environment and home life. But, really, is he what we’ll soon all become?

And, are we capable enough to adapt to this new change in people’s personality? It bothered me. So I’m writing about it.