Readers, time for a repeat! The Planet was obliged to rise this morning at 4 a.m. to accompany the Art Department on a routine medical screening. This not only afforded The Planet the opportunity to observe the homocidal/suicidal driving patterns of those workers--doctors? nurses? Waffle House waitresses?--who commute at 5 a.m. but to consider age-old questions such as: Why do people work so hard to get into, and out of, medical school if the big reward is to be up at 6 a.m. on Monday mornings looking up other people's anuses?
Anyway, the sleep deprivation, early-morning brushes with death and subsequent day-sleeping left The Planet in a tetchy and misanthropic mood, so that this seemed an appropriate BLA to reprise.
rfw
Have you ever thought how much fun it would be to be really, really mean?
Like when the waitress, who is fat and stupid, brings you a sandwich with the consistency of wet toilet paper, because she has put it on a plate with a big sloppy serving of collard greens, and you don’t want to send it back because it’s taken her 40 minutes to bring it to you in the first place.
So you eat the gloppy stuff out of the middle though it’s not very good, meanwhile covering the pulpy wet bread with a napkin so you don’t have to look at it.
And the collards suck, too.
And then not only does the waitress ignore your pained looks, she presents you with a bill so spectacularly inflated that you don’t have enough cash. And no matter how many times you do the math for her she sticks to her guns because she really has the IQ of a rock.
What do you do in that situation? Probably what I did – count to 10, pay with a credit card and never go back.
But wouldn’t it be infinitely more satisfying to crush her like an eggshell?
If you were mean, you could explain to her that she’s too stupid to live and ugly enough to make a freight train take a dirt road. You could turn over some tables on the way out, maybe break up a few chairs.
But no! You are denied that simple pleasure because there’s this unspoken code that you can’t be mean to stupid people.
I don’t remember anybody ever saying precisely that but society pounds it into you somehow. Stupid people are allowed to be as mean as they like, which really makes it harder for smarter people to be nice to them but you have no choice. It’s the Rules. There’s an onus on those of higher intelligence to stand there smiling as they take a load of crap off idiots.
You don’t even have to be that smart. It’s a matter of degree. Like me, I’m so stupid I was kicked out of math class in junior high school and sent to The Trailer, where Mr. Shows was teaching the real dumbasses how to add and subtract. But I learned, and therefore had to be nice to the waitress, who had not.
My theory is that the Rules--courtesy and chivalry and etiquette and such--evolved from the most basic survival instinct. If the bigger members of a tribe– say, men– grab all the food, leaving the smaller members– say, women and children–to starve, then the human race goes extinct in one generation.
So we developed all these codes of behavior based on stronger people not bullying weaker people, and faster people pausing to let slower people get a cookie off the plate before they’re all gone, and smarter people eating sandwiches the consistency of wet toilet paper.
When actually in our black little souls we would rather be marauding through the countryside, taking what we want by force and mowing down anyone who gets in our way.
Yes, I said “we.” I know I’m not the only one with a heart of darkness because I’ve traveled the highways and I’ve seen the way you drive.
My theory of cars is that they haven’t been around long enough to be incorporated into the Rules. Getting into them frees us from all morality or societal restraint. Put the nicest man with the loveliest manners behind the wheel and poof, he turns into Genghis Khan.
When a sweet old lady hobbles down the street with her cane, people fall all over themselves trying to open doors for her and carry her groceries. But put the same old lady into a Buick with handicap plates and she’s prey. Tailgaters hound her off the road, truckers try to kill her and rude young men shoot birds and throw beer cans.
Tragically, I, as the only courteous driver on the planet, don’t have this outlet, which is hard on me because beneath this mild-mannered exterior I’m perhaps twice as mean as the national average. So I think it’s only fair that I should be let off the leash at least once a year, possibly on my birthday. I promise not to do much damage, just, you know, slap two or three salesclerks, maybe kill a few people but nobody important.
One dreams of the day! But until then, where better to take out our inner meanness than the killing fields of the garden?
"As I’ve aged I’ve discovered that mass carnage can be deeply fulfilling..."
At this time of year, horticulture affords all sorts of interesting possibilities for exploring our dark side. Take rosebushes, for example. By July, the darling buds of May have become nothing more than a place for Japanese beetles to have sex.
So what I do is I get the big clippers out and turn into Hitler. Cut as much as you like, the bushes grow back and bloom again nicely in September, by which time the beetles are just a nasty memory. Hard pruning used to break my little earth mama heart, but as I’ve aged I’ve discovered that mass carnage can be deeply fulfilling.
Weeding is another opportunity for our Hyde side. What could be more cathartic than to sit in the dirt and lay about you with both hands until the ground around you looks like the last scene of Hamlet? Among the corpses strewn around you after this kind of killing frenzy you will usually find some collateral damage, a few murdered beets, an onion yanked untimely from this life; but hell, you don’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
I’ve already written about the anger-management benefits of lawn-mowing. Really, I find that anything that works up a sweat, and allows me the chance to slaughter and maim, makes me immeasurably more tolerant of stupidity and wet bread.
Though waitresses, beware:
II have a birthday coming up.
