Apparently, we need more of these
I am a criminal. I've been one all my life. Very occasionally, during the course of another crime spree, I wondered how I became this way. I grew up in an intact home. There were no broken windows in my childhood neighborhood. I'm a white college-educated native English-speaking male. Yet all my life I've broken the law.
It started when I was barely past puberty. I took drugs. All kinds of them. In a pathetic attempt at defending my behavior, I note here that nearly everybody in my generation took drugs when they were young. We regarded it as a form of résumé building.
I don't take drugs anymore. Haven't for years. They have drugs now that they didn't have when I was a kid. I don't feel that I need to take them, particularly "bath salts," the newest drug to achieve media recognition, mostly because a man tried to eat another man's face off while supposedly under the influence of it, or them. It turns out the only drug the face-eater was on when he went on his cannibal snack-spree was marijuana.
I'm familiar with that drug. It can make you hungry.
Nowadays my criminality exhibits itself in more subtle ways. I drive the wrong way in parking lots and smirk at people who self-righteously wave their hands or yell at me when I do it. I let my kid drink alcohol, even though he won't be twenty-one for three more months, figuring that he needs the practice. If I accidentally toss a bottle in the non-recyclables, I don't get my hands dirty fishing it out. I speed down the freeway at ten miles an hour over the limit, knowing I am simultaneously breaking the law and annoying all of the other drivers, who are going twenty miles an hour over the limit.
I don't eat donuts loaded with trans-fats and wash them down with 44-ounce sodas because I live in California, where these items are legal. If I lived in New York City I would. I'm that kind of miscreant.
I had long ceased wondering what led me into a life of crime when the unsolicited answer hit me like a brick across the eyebrows yesterday when I flicked on the PC. According to Bob Kingsbury, an 86-year-old Tea Party legislator in New Hampshire, it was because I went to kindergarten. This venerable lawmaker claims that crime is higher in districts where kids go to kindergarten.
Makes sense to me, especially when I recall the person who led me into a life of anti-social behavior, my kindergarten teacher and personal Fagin, Mrs. World. Her actual name may have been Werle or Werld or Wald. We kindergartners called her Mrs. World because she had a globe on her desk. Besides inseminating us with the seeds of criminality, she taught us right from left, how to read a non-digital clock and allowed us to play with safety scissors and cardboard. She let us glue macaroni into lumps of macaroni. She warned us not to eat the macaroni afterwards, but some of us did. It tasted like glue.
Of course she seemed eons older than me then, but she was probably only about twenty-five. She may very well still be around. I should look her up, let her know she's to blame for the mess I turned into.
If she doesn't believe me, she can go ask Bob.
It started when I was barely past puberty. I took drugs. All kinds of them. In a pathetic attempt at defending my behavior, I note here that nearly everybody in my generation took drugs when they were young. We regarded it as a form of résumé building.
I don't take drugs anymore. Haven't for years. They have drugs now that they didn't have when I was a kid. I don't feel that I need to take them, particularly "bath salts," the newest drug to achieve media recognition, mostly because a man tried to eat another man's face off while supposedly under the influence of it, or them. It turns out the only drug the face-eater was on when he went on his cannibal snack-spree was marijuana.
I'm familiar with that drug. It can make you hungry.
Nowadays my criminality exhibits itself in more subtle ways. I drive the wrong way in parking lots and smirk at people who self-righteously wave their hands or yell at me when I do it. I let my kid drink alcohol, even though he won't be twenty-one for three more months, figuring that he needs the practice. If I accidentally toss a bottle in the non-recyclables, I don't get my hands dirty fishing it out. I speed down the freeway at ten miles an hour over the limit, knowing I am simultaneously breaking the law and annoying all of the other drivers, who are going twenty miles an hour over the limit.
I don't eat donuts loaded with trans-fats and wash them down with 44-ounce sodas because I live in California, where these items are legal. If I lived in New York City I would. I'm that kind of miscreant.
I had long ceased wondering what led me into a life of crime when the unsolicited answer hit me like a brick across the eyebrows yesterday when I flicked on the PC. According to Bob Kingsbury, an 86-year-old Tea Party legislator in New Hampshire, it was because I went to kindergarten. This venerable lawmaker claims that crime is higher in districts where kids go to kindergarten.
Makes sense to me, especially when I recall the person who led me into a life of anti-social behavior, my kindergarten teacher and personal Fagin, Mrs. World. Her actual name may have been Werle or Werld or Wald. We kindergartners called her Mrs. World because she had a globe on her desk. Besides inseminating us with the seeds of criminality, she taught us right from left, how to read a non-digital clock and allowed us to play with safety scissors and cardboard. She let us glue macaroni into lumps of macaroni. She warned us not to eat the macaroni afterwards, but some of us did. It tasted like glue.
Of course she seemed eons older than me then, but she was probably only about twenty-five. She may very well still be around. I should look her up, let her know she's to blame for the mess I turned into.
If she doesn't believe me, she can go ask Bob.
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