Random Reflections Pt4

6.DON’T trust anyone who says they’re the good guys. The good guys won’t need to tell you they’re the good guys, you’ll know them, respect them, and they’ll sense that respect. The bad guys always have to pretend to be the good guys in order to get anywhere. NO ONE portrays themselves or views themselves as evil. They’re always doing the best they can, just getting by, doing what they can, making the best out of it, trying to help the most people…yadda yadda yadda… And maybe, they aren’t the truly bad guys. Maybe they’re only a little rotten. But once they’re thought of as the good guys…the real bad guys have free reign, and since they’re still living off the credit their predecessors have built up…well, you’re gonna have a hard time convincing anyone what right and wrong are.

7.There are few things more beautiful than a summer day. A cloudless sky so blue it can hurt your eyes, the sound of the leaves being rustled by the same gentle, cool breeze that’s playing off your face, the way the sunlight filters through the swaying leaves and makes yellow patterns on the green grass, the particular slant of the light between 4:30 and 7:00pm. The smell of a grill, the sound of people talking a few houses down…

It’s almost beat by a snowfall at night, the way the snow sparkles in front of a porchlight, the soft clumping rustle the only interruption of absolute silence as it hits the foot or so of fluffy white already on the ground, purplish white of the sky against the black trees, the way the wind doesn’t feel too cold while watching the scene from your front porch. Then you wake up in the morning to a misty white slate sky, snow piled four inches thick along every branch and twig and horizontal surface it can find. Days like I just described are pure scenic heaven. They cannot be photographed, they cannot be described accurately, and more’s the pity that you can only live each unique one once.

8.I hate being unarmed. Absolutely hate it. If I leave my knife in another pair of pants, the fact that I am unarmed sticks in the back of my mind until I have it in my pocket again. This may be disagreeable to some people. They may think I’m paranoid. Well let me tell you something friend, that’s just too damn bad.

When you’ve stood in a cold parkinglot at 10pm and heard some foul mouthed punk say the immortal line “What’re you staring at?” as he starts walking towards you, then you can talk. When you’ve been the only one home during a home invasion, then you can talk. Most people are never placed in situations where they want/need a gun – ever – in their entire lives. I was placed in two, within a year of each other. When you can say the same, THEN we can talk about how my wishing for something other than a glorified razor blade conflicts with your vision of the perfect society. THEN we can talk about how my life means less than your dream of reality.

9.Pop-culture clothing continues to weird me out. Especially the kind designed for the female of the species. What’s up with short pants? Not shorts. Not pants. Short pants, the bottom-hem of which are about five inches above the shoes. Are their ankles too warm? Are they expecting a sudden flood? Where did they get the idea that this is fashionable? Guys don’t tend to look at girls’ feet, so showing off more skin down there makes no sense. And jackets that have short torsos, but long sleeves. *scratches head* Huh? The lack of material negates the need for the extra warmth of the jacket. And writing across the backside. I never thought of myself as much of a puritan, but that’s just…wrong. Is that where they want me to look first? During my favorite part of my life, when I was a third key at Sam Goody, I witnessed the most outrageous example of nonsensical/explicit clothing for girls – a young teen wearing a short skirt and a Martha-Stewart-In-Prison style knit shawl, with no shirt on underneath. I’m still speechless. Her parents should’ve had their heads slammed in a refrigerator door for hours.

Clothing for guys is nearly as strange. Jeans that have been worn out already. Doesn’t that mean you have to buy pants more often? How is that a good thing? When the knees of my jeans wear out, I go looking for another pair. Pastel-plaid cotton shorts – who buys these abominations? You look like you don’t know which way your gate swings if you wear pastel plaid anything as a guy. And now the “Writing on the fundament” style shorts have made their way into the men’s department. Sometimes I want to go blind. And those “ghetto” styles (yes, you know what I’m talking about, and I’m no, I’m not being racist) that think wearing sixteen sizes above yours is fashionable. Where does nine extra yards of fabric hanging off you get fun? And lest y’all think I’m unfairly criticizing women’s dress, here’s a guy example: A young, urban-dressed youth walking through Shopko, the only thing holding up his size 96XXXXL pants being the death grip he had on his crotch. I don’t want to see that. He should’ve had something ELSE slammed in a refrigerator door for his stupidity.

10.Fredrick Douglass’s memoirs were recently reprinted. The modern edition has footnotes explaining the meaning of words like “exculpate,” “arraign,” and “curried.” Granted, they talked mighty strange back in the day, but how is it that a book written by an ex-slave who never attended school should require translation to us, more than 100 years of free public school down the pike?