I don't believe in heaven but if there is one, I know I'm going there. For whatever reason, the retarded guy who lives across the street from me has decided I'm his new best friend. That in and of itself does not make me special. But this guy isn't one of those fun, friendly retarded people like Corky from Life Goes On or like those people who are always laughing and happy. This guy is in his late 50s, maybe 60s, it's hard to tell. He smokes and is unkempt. He yells a lot at his elderly mother. And he comes over unannounced and asks for favors like using your phone to make long distance calls.
Lately he keeps asking me what I'm doing with my wife's bicycle. He wants me to give it to him. It's a woman's bike. So tonight, while I'm cutting my lawn, he walked over and stared at me for about 20 minutes watching me work. Finally he asked me for a bike pump and I discerned that someone had given him a bicycle. I use a compressor to pump up my bike but I didn't want to offer this because he'd be over my house all the time wanting to use it. And since he can't do it himself, that means I'd be doing it. So, I gave him a spare bike pump I had. Of course, when I gave it to him it was clear he had no clue how to use it. So, I tried to show him but in the end I ended up pumping up both tires for him. Here I was, sweating like an 8 year old boy at a NAMBLA convention, pumping up bike tires for a 50-something year old guy. My life is charmed.
I love squid. Though sharks will always be my favorite marine animal, I love cephalopods, especially squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. I will watch any program on television about these creatures and I recently spent at least a half hour just watching the octopus as the Cleveland Zoo. There's a show on right now about the Giant Squid. That makes me happy. It is unbelievable to me that this is a creature that grows to over 40 feet long, engages in epic battles with sperm whales, and yet we've never filmed one alive. Several dead specimens have been found and examined. An Australian scientist has even found many larvae and is trying to keep them alive. But no one has really captured any great footage of a living Giant Squid. A Japanese scientist recently took several stills that appears to be one coming after some bait. Run together they look like a jerky old movie. Yet with all our technology and exploration, there is not great footage of a live one of these animals. That is amazing to me and really shows you how little we know about our oceans.
Meanwhile, in the I-wonder-why-Cleveland-is-dying segment, I see that Ian Hunter is donating the piano upon which he composed "Cleveland Rocks" to the Rock Hall of Fame. Wow. What's next? The gum Jerry Lee Lewis was chewing when he wrote "Great Balls of Fire?" That this story was even in the Plain Dealer shows how desperate we are. What an absolute joke. If we're trying to use a piano as a way to attract people to the downtown area, we're done for. Jesus Christ, even fucking St. Louis has that damn arch thing. I'm really getting tired of this city. And I hate saying that because it's my home but really, come on.
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5 comments:
This was great, but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole story as you told it to me directly on Friday. You could turn it into a comedy, I swear. Great stuff.
Besides, I'm just glad you used the word "retard" in the title! (And I don't even have a retarded sister, brother, or father!)
Thanks. I'm tired of the fact that no one uses words like "retard" anymore. Some people are retarded. It's a concise term that immediately communicates what you mean. Just like calling kids "dumb" instead of ADHD or learning disabled. Dumb is much better.
Ohhhnonono. Kids who have ADHD aren't dumb. They're usually really smart, and so goddamn hyperactive you wanna slip something into their cereal.
Remember that, to tis guy, you're like Mr. Rogers. You're probably the only person who does anything nice for him all day. Scary, but true.
I actually do prefer squid alive as opposed to dead and deep fried. How can people eat that? I will not eat food that squeaks when I chew.
Ah Mando, always the voice of reason. Statistically, ADHD kids are no smarter than average kids. And my real point was missed. ADHD is now a garbage can diagnosis that kids get dumped into. My problem is that people seem to forget that intelligence is distributed on a standard normal curve. Most people are in the middle. Some people are really smart. And that means some people are dumb. But no parent wants to have a dumb kid so they have to have an explanation/excuse/diagnosis. They have to believe that their kid is just as capable as any other if only she didn't have this horrible biological problem. Well, the horrible biological problem for many kids is simply that they're dumb. That's it. They're just dumb. Doesn't mean they're not nice or that they can't be successful but they're just not very smart, at least in the standard way smart is defined in our society (and isn't that all that really matters?). I think it does a disservice to many of these kids to always try to explain away the porblem. I can't play basketball. I don't have a physical illness. I'm just not big enough and coordinated enough. No one tries to make me feel better about that. It's just something I know about myself and I have to live with.
My next post will be about the whole ADHD thing. Maybe I can stir something up on the 'ol blog.
You? Stir something up? How unlikely.
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