I wanted to start this blog before Thanksgiving kicked in and I entered a food coma so severe that my pulse rate would fall to near death as the juices in my stomach worked to clear out what will inevitably become a logjam of ‘bridge gate’ proportions. I wanted to talk about Monsters. By monsters I mean people who have no real regard for what you or I think and feel both that they can be awful people and chide us for being awful right back.
‘You’re supposed to be better than that’ sounds like the tagline for my childhood. It is one of many things I carried with me into adulthood and, finally, fatherhood. I have established boundaries in broad strokes of what my kids do and do not do. They, as children might, test said boundaries with the regularity and ferocity of a Jurassic Park T-Rex working at the electrified fence. Every failed attempt to break through results in a tskd, ‘you’re supposed to be…’ On occasion one of the trio will ask, ‘well what am I supposed to be?’ Not evil, I answer.
Then I need to reflect on why. Evil is easy. You live in a society based on rules and openly manipulate and fight to alter said rules at your leisure. When you are exposed as a rulebreaker or people call you bad names you immediately chide them for too being rule breakers by pointing fingers at you. This is the blueprint of many a business head, politician, Smoke dealer, etc. All of it amounting to a very clear dividing line between what I deem as good v. Evil.
Evil can look at the tenets of good and say, ‘you people ought to do that and until you do, let me do my thing.’ It is the essence of the glass houses rule and we, the good, are holding David sized piles of stone. So, I tell my kids to be better and play by the rules and not be monsters.
They, in turn, remind me that it is the Monsters that get to have all the fun.