Philosophy, Guns, and Stupidity

I recently reread Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, a book by Chuck Klosterman, in which he wrote, “Reality is a paradigm that always seems different and personal and unique, yet never really IS.”  Now Klosterman’s books are not indexed next to Sartre or Nietzsche or Hume, but his profound statement represents an entire branch of philosophy, and it exactly depicts the problems facing the world today.  (And probably every other day that has ever been in the history of humankind.)

All a person has to do is look to the “great” state of Texas, where CRAZY is an art-form.  Being a fringe, religious zealot is apparently a qualification for Texas residency.  I’m sure there are lots of nice, calm, rational people in Texas, but we certainly don’t hear about those people in the media.  Maybe those people are just as embarrassed of their fellow Texans as I am of some of my fellow Americans, but we’ll never know, because they don’t scream quite as loud and carry AK-47s to Starbucks. 

A couple months ago, Texas had a “Gathering of the American Patriot” event, where people gathered, listened to music, toted enormous automatic weapons, and bashed on the federal government.  This group has what they call “liberty issues” – in other words, the federal government is telling them what to do, and they don’t like it.  The real problem is that none of the people who were interviewed really knew exactly what they were protesting, except for the ability to carry around enormous weapons (a right which is already protected in their state). 

Anti-government ranters have these horror stories about our “reprehensible” president and his incompetent federal government (all of whom were ELECTED, by the way) who are out to take away all the things we love.  WHAT, specifically, they are taking away varies from person to person.  The problem is that PERSPECTIVE is shifting from person to person, but REALITY remains the same.  While you may have the RIGHT to carry your AK-47 into McDonald’s, that doesn’t mean you SHOULD.  Frankly, it makes other people nervous to be surrounded by twitchy people with guns.  And I am thankful for our veterans, but how many times a week do we read in the news about a veteran with PTSD killing him- or herself and taking other people out with them?  Protect your home, protect your property, but please don’t try to protect me while I’m getting takeout food.

America is nation of gun-toting xenophobes, who think that the only reality is THEIR reality, but the social contract  exists so that we can live in relative peace.  If some people are afraid of the federal government taking their freedom, why can’t they respect the freedom of those of us who don’t walk around armed and dangerous to live in a civil society?  Can’t we just all get along? 

Of course not.  That’s the point, isn’t it?  When we have pseudo-celebrities like Ted Nugent calling our president a “sub-human mongrel”, we are passed the point of civilized discussion and co-existence.  You can hate Obama all you want.  Hate everyone, if you like.  But that changes nothing about the reality of our changing nation.  It’s not 1800, and the world is changing (like it or not).  We can either embrace the change or shoot each other in the face over issues upon which we disagree. 

But Amurricah is what it is – being stupid and lazy and belligerent is what we’re known for across the globe already.  Why screw with our image?  I understand that there are things to be angry about – but bitching about kids not being able to take guns to school (yes, that’s a complaint in Texas) is fucking ridiculous. 

Like Klosterman said, “Life is rarely about what happens; it’s about what we THINK happens.”  But that doesn’t mean people should stop considering an objective reality in which all people (and their ideas) are equal.

Reality Check

My daughter was invited to a birthday celebration at Worlds of Fun with one of her really good friends.  She was so excited in the days leading up to this weekend that she was counting down.  “Five more days!”  “One more day!”  “Oh my god, I’m so excited!!”

And then came the night before they were leaving… She cried, and then she cried some more this morning.  “I’m gonna miss you so much!”  “I feel sick.”  (She did, in fact, puke twice this morning.)

I finally got her (sort of) psyched up into leaving and got her into her friend’s car. 

And then came the onslaught.  She has texted me 174 times in the past five hours.  I counted.   She called me six times, and we were on the phone for the better part of three hours in total.

Did I do something wrong in making her so close to me?  Should I have ripped off the bandaid and sent her to sleepaway camp (against her wishes) every summer of her life??

The one time I DID send her to day camp, I had to drive to Iowa to pick her up on the sleepover night, because she was having none of that. 

So the hard truth is that no matter how much we hype things up in our minds, reality happens at some point.  Many, many things are great in theory and mediocre in real-time. 

Another example?  Sure

I had a massage today.  Don’t get me wrong, it was lovely,  but … I totally had to fart the whole time, and I couldn’t, because, well, it’s a small room and that’s not cool.   Also, I forgot to shave my legs, so I was a little neurotic about the prickly business down there.  Oh, and I’m getting sick and my sinus are all congested, so at one point, I thought my nose was literally going to drip onto the floor. 

Too much information?  Probably.  But that’s the crux of reality versus the ideal. 

Life is good, but reality sometimes gets in the way of our perfect little image of how things should be. 

Oops

If you have kids, you’ll understand what I’m about to say.  Sometimes, when I interact with or watch my children, I think … “oh shit.  That’s my fault.”  Some personality characteristics are inbred and some are learned.  I am currently teaching my children the following bad habits:

·         Be a martyr.  It’s better than being the asshole who ruins everything.  (Obviously, this isn’t true, because the assholes never realize they’re assholes, so the whole “martyr” thing is lost on the very people who suck.)

·         Stay in a relationship no matter how much it sucks and no matter how much it eats you alive every single day.  (My excuse is that I’m doing it for my kids, but the truth is that it’s making me the very sort of person I don’t want my children to become, because people who can’t make shocking decisions in their best interest don’t deserve anyone’s respect.)

·         Give up your social life for your children.  (Again, obviously untrue; but I’d rather be the homebody parent than the one who takes his/her kids to a bar and surrounds them with drunken, fucking idiots to show them a good time.)

·         Women should take care of the house.  (Honestly, when the other parent is a fucking pig, someone has to clean it up.  Someone has to take care of shit that needs to be done.  Gender shouldn’t matter, but society makes women the default gender to clean kitchens and bathrooms and … every other thing inside and outside the house, apparently.)

·         Just take it.  (Whatever “it” is in that sentence, I’ve apparently taught them that they should just put up with all the assholes in their lives.)

Yep, this is making me sad, so I’m done with this list.  I’m just saying:  be careful with the way you live your life around your children, because they will emulate you in all the good and bad ways you never imagined.  

Dear College

 Here is my contribution to the future college freshmen trying to get scholarships:  (Not everyone is a bi-sexual, American-Indian, whose parents never graduated high school, and lives in abject poverty …)

Dear College:

There is absolutely nothing I can write on this piece of paper (or PDF file) which will make you want to offer me scholarships.  I am not completely retarded, so my GPA is well above average (public school isn’t that hard, it turns out)), but I don’t have a weighted 4.75 or whatever to impress your pants off.  I am also not the president of my senior class (or the president of anything else, for that matter), and I find community service to be morally repugnant.  I know colleges like community service hours, but homeless people remind me of old people, and old people smell weird (plus they’re on the edge of death), and animals in pet shelters just shit a lot, so you see my dilemma. 

Another good college essay topic is overcoming economic adversity, but I live in the suburbs of middle-America, and I have an iphone, an Xbox, and, there’s a TV in basically every room of my house.  Although my car is pretty shitty, I have my own car.  I have never been “interfered with” and I am not addicted to any drugs.  I basically just hang out with my friends (even though I don’t really “like” most of them), watch Netflix, and play the apps on my phone.  Not very exciting - I’ll give you that – but I’m also not a serial killer or a rapist or a sociopath, so I would probably do okay grade-wise. 

People who have really fucked up families can usually cash in on their problems, but my family is painfully average.  I hang out with my dad and talk about … sports.  He’s actually not usually home, so I don’t even know what’s going on with him.  He could be in the Mexican drug cartel, for all know.  And my mom is pretty cool, but I think she might have chardonnay in that sippy cup she walks around with.  Seriously?  I don’t know much about my parents, even though we all live in the same house.  I don’t really see how my parents have anything to do with me getting into college anyway; my parents couldn’t do my calc homework even if my life was on the line.  (That might actually be a really good horror movie dilemma – just a thought.)

So … to the point:  I would like some money please.  I tried pretty hard in school (and let me just tell you: even paying attention in school is like a fucking marathon), and I got good grades.  I don’t want to stay in this festering, suburban pit that I’ve grown up in (sorry, in which I’ve grown up- thank you, John Baylor), so I’d like to pretty please come to your school in the ________________ (mountains, beach area, urban culture) which I have been missing throughout my childhood. 

Thank you, and don’t blow me off.  I know how this shit works, and if you got this far in my essay, you haven’t thrown my essay into the ABSOLUTELY NOT pile yet.   Have some mercy for a depressingly average person from a state you couldn’t find on a map with a gun to your head. 

Sincerely,

Your Future Student, Esquire.

On Being a Parent

                                                                                                                               

Bringing a child into the world isn’t the right decision for everyone, but there are things I experience with my kids that I don’t get with literally anyone else on earth.  My old family, my parents and siblings, are pretty cool, and I definitely share things with them, but my relationship with my kids is … different. 

Here is a (probably weird) list of things my kids and I have in common that are … rare. 

·         Poop.  They talk about poop all the time.  And here’s the thing:  people shit.  Everyone does, but no one talks about it.  My kids tell me truly unnecessary details about their bowel movements.  Why?  Because they can.  I mean, if everyone poops, then why isn’t it something that people chat about in everyday conversations?  Ooh, awkward, and all that.  But if you feel comfortable enough with your parents to talk about your relationship with the toilet, well, that’s intimacy.

·         Speaking of bodily functions, I’ve been thrown up on my all my children.  I’m not saying that’s preferable or anything, but if some stranger in a bar puked on me, I’d probably kick their ass (or hate them forever, because they were the person who puked on me in public).   Just like people poop, people throw up; and if you can still love them unconditionally after they throw up on you, the bond is strong.

·         Emotions are another super-personal thing.  You don’t want everyone knowing how you feel all the time.  But when you live in such close proximity with people, especially people who don’t know what the hell is happening to their bodies (hormonally-speaking), there’s a personal tie.  I would tell my kids pretty much anything.  Is that good?  Many parents would say no – keep the truth away from the children – but I believe in sharing.  I want to know who these people are that I brought into the world.  And for better or worse, they’re going to know who I am too.

·         Another huge bonus is snuggling.  You can’t really snuggle with your friends.  I mean, I suppose you COULD, but it might be weird.  I spoon with my 13-year-old every day.  I can feel her heartbeat.  It’s probably one of the greatest ways to spend any given moment of your life, spooning.  Go do it with someone you love, right now. 

·         Teaching a person how to drive is another way to really see a person’s personality in action.  I will never forget my dad teaching me how to drive on my manual transmission Mustang.  I was fucking freaking out.  I thought he hated me because I couldn’t get it together, but (of course) he didn’t.  Is it terrifying to be in the passenger seat of a huge death-machine with a driver who doesn’t know what the hell is going on?  YES.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

·         Showing people how to think is pretty cool too.  As a teacher, I try to do this at work, but (more importantly) I want my kids to THINK.  Critical thinking is dangerously absent in society today, so I feel like I’ve done my job when my kids point out things that most adults would ignore. 

o   Side Note:  Playing Cards Against Humanity is a key indicator for intelligence.  People might say it’s irresponsible or inappropriate to play this particular game with my children, but stupid people can’t play it well.  My kids are twisted in all the good ways.

·         In general, it’s also very cool to watch THAT KID become THIS TOTALLY DIFFERENT KID in photos.  The change is sometimes disconcerting, but it’s also beautiful to watch a person grow up, frame-by-frame. 

Bottom line:  I would not be the same person I am today (for better or worse) without my children.  They break my heart periodically, but they make me laugh every day and they make me find a reason to get out of bed in the morning.  Unconditional love is a beautiful thing.

Anger Sucks

Yep. 

This is what I’m doing. 

And the poison is surely killing me. 

So much energy spent on hate, and yet I can’t seem to stop doing it. 

Why is that?

How can a rational person like me not stop doing something which is clearly unhealthy? 

I don’t know.

And I can’t seem to stop hating him.