CSotD: Fun with Frailty
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Between mandatory holiday gags and editorial cartoonists either pointing out that Charles Manson was a bad person or reprising opinions on sexual assault, there's not a lot of freshness on the comics sites this morning.
However, this Real Life Adventures stands out because, while it references shopping, it's not specific to the flood of Black Friday cartoons, and I can relate to it any day of the year.
If there's any justice in this world, the guy is gonna walk.
But let's be compassionate, in honor of the season.
Imagine if, rather than getting stuck behind this person one day at the checkstand, you were, rather, locked together in holy matrimony, or, worse, the child of this person, such that you'd never ever be able to get away.
Bearing in mind that people like this are like that all the time, not just when they shop.
Don't get me wrong: I laughed.
But I have a friend who is obsessive-compulsive and, while she'd never get in the express lane with one item over the limit, it does dominate her life.
She gets treated for it and you can call her on it and she doesn't get offended. She wants to know when she's stepping over the line and she'd laugh at this gag.
Anyway, I wouldn't want to be in line behind her at a checkstand, but my point is about annoying behavior in general, because people don't set out to be unpopular or unreasonable, and a person who infuriates you is only a passing cloud in your world, but a constant presence in their own.
As part of my Stoicism, I try to see the world through other people's eyes, and that is not based on Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus but on the words of Kid Shelleen.
Granted, my compassionate attitude doesn't often kick in until well after I've considered spontaneous homicide. I'm working on it.
I could almost have run that Real Life Adventure as a Juxtaposition with today's Pardon My Planet, because, as the folksy saying goes, "Every pot has its lid," and it's hard to be so dysfunctional that there isn't someone somewhere whose own frailties and failings cause them to want a person like you.
Another bit of common wisdom is not to buy a puppy unless you can see the parents, but that's not always possible either with puppies or with prospective spouses, and it's a lot easier to spot the flaws in a dog anyway.
Your intended's parents are not likely to crap on the floor or try to bite you upon first meeting, though they may whine or bark.
In this cartoon, the joke is that nobody would ever be this out-front about her sense of self-worth and what she feels she deserves.
She'll pass on the guy she can trust because he's dull and so, as she says, she's just not that into him. Instead she'll find a sense of adventure and romance in a guy she can't trust and who therefore keeps her perpetually on edge.
This attitude, I hasten to point out, is not a trait exclusive to either sex.
In fact, I just finished re-reading Turgenev's "Home of the Gentry" or "Nest of Gentlefolk," – the title depending on the translation — and had forgotten how incredibly sad it is, given that the lead character is a fellow who, in the first flower of youth, marries an exciting, vivacious, totally unfaithful woman, and only years later meets someone far more appropriate and appealing, at a time in history when divorce was not an option.
The moral of which, I suppose, is contained in yet another bit of imperishable folk wisdom:
"Marry in haste, repent at leisure."
Juxtaposition of the Day:
As we explore frailties, this Juxtaposition forms a double-barreled tribute to Attention Deficit Disability.
I remain unsure of my feelings about growing up in an era before ADD was recognized, when kids like me were simply spoiled, disorganized and not living up to our potential, even though I got to see a son go through the same thing. We were both well out of school before getting diagnosed.
Certainly, life is easier when you're not being punished and screamed at for who you are, but, then again, where I've landed is the end product of that struggle.
I'm pretty sure my life would have been much less interesting and exciting without all the sturm und drang, and, to quote myself as a commenter did recently, "If you like where you're at, you ought not to despise the road that brought you there."
I didn't do my homework until, as young Elliott says, I was "totally freaked out," but at that point, the hyperfocus that often accompanies ADD would kick in and I could burn through a term paper, including the research, in 12 hours and get at least a B.
(Alas, it only worked for major projects. Daily homework didn't freak me out and thus rarely happened.)
As an adult, I was a good reporter because the combination of being able to — hell, being compelled to — think of a dozen things at once and then bear down and produce quickly meant that, while my brain had to nag a little about the routine stuff, I kicked right into action over the fast-breaking stories.
I could figure out who to call and what to ask, hammer out a piece and still be home in time to make dinner.
A lot of news reporters are ADD, while writers whose brains function normally have to work for magazines or write books, poor sods.
Meanwhile, Sonny Boy was a firefighter and did VBSS in the Gulf, and is now a trauma nurse. When all hell breaks loose, the world finally moves at his pace.
It would be a lovely world indeed if all disabilities could thus be turned into virtues.
Maybe we just need to look more closely, through their eyes.
'Til then, there's this:
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